AI or No?

Greg Wyatt • June 8, 2026

What follows is an updated chapter for the Summer edition of A Career Breakdown Kit (2026).

Two main changes:

  1. A range of free resources available to boost your job search - you can access them on www.bwrecruitment.co.uk/resources. These are not generative tools - they are diagnostic tools. Feedback has been fantastic so far, including a message yesterday that attributes advice from one of the reports helped them secure a job offer
  2. Insight into an emergent situation that means the myth of ATS compliance is now actively working against you. It's a good thing the tools above are designed to help you better stand out in a way that is ATS hygienic and puts your best foot forward

If you've already bought the book, DM me when the new edition is published and I'll send you a free digital copy. It's my commitment to any buyer, for as long as I update it.

31 - AI or no?

 

I often see discussions on the uses and perils of AI in a job search.

There are many wonderful applications for AI inside and outside of a job search.

Some automate and take away the burden of the more painful aspects of looking for a job.

From writing CVs to applying at scale for you. And potentially doing the interview for you, with burgeoning deepfake technology.

Should you use AI in your job search and how?

Ask yourself these questions:

‘Will it be seen as cheating, if the employer finds out I’ve used AI?’

And

‘What are the unexpected consequences that wholesale adoption of new technology creates?’

Using AI in place of truth, whether in a customised CV, to game interviews, or deepfake candidacy - I see this as fraud, and it should be treated as such. You aren’t just cheating the employer, you’re cheating other candidates who have better integrity.

Given recruitment processes are in part designed to extrapolate how you might behave and perform in a role, the sense of cheating can lead to an instant ‘no.’

And with the advent of an AI arms race, you should be careful in what you choose to use.

I know the odds are stacked against job seekers through a combination of the market, systems and philosophy.

Do you want others to make arbitrary decisions over your application, only because you’ve used AI?

What do I mean by arms race?

Let’s look at using AI to write a CV.

In one sense it’s no different to paying someone to write your CV for you, such as a CV Writer. And it’s free.

No problem, right?

Let’s set aside the argument “Employers filter with AI so why can’t we use AI to get ahead?” for now. Especially because Some Truths About the ATS and AI (p32) and its follow up chapters show what’s really happening.

The problem isn’t so much employers as it is how your CV sits alongside other applications.

Many applicants who are wholly unsuitable can use the same AI to write a customised CV that paints them as someone worth assessing at interview. A waste of time for the employer, or worse which could lead to a mis-hire and also take attention away from suitable candidates such as you.

This creates suspicion over the veracity of AI written CVs.

For each development in job seeker AI, you’ll see an opposing one come up at the hiring end. And because these are all based on the same principles, they are relatively simple to develop.

An emerging consequence of the arms race

This arms race has a consequence worth taking seriously, because it's starting to affect everyone.

Automated tools let candidates fire CVs at two thousand vacancies overnight. The same tools can optimise CVs against each advert at scale. For an overwhelmed jobseeker this might seem the golden ticket.

But the increasingly reported result is that recruiters now open their ATS to find a pile of CVs that look structurally equivalent: the same section orders, the same keyword density, the same generic achievement bullets.

The features that were supposed to make a CV stand out, its mirroring of the advert language and its claimed compliance with the system, become the very features that make these applications indistinguishable from each other.

With the additional problem that many applications lie at scale to beat the system.

Recruiters must adapt to what they experience, and often it will be by finding the shortcuts experienced humans take when they're drowning.

It's a sad state of affairs that this pain is the same one that drives automated applications.

Recruiters look for signs that a CV represents an actual qualified candidate rather than a machine-tuned approximation of one. Specificity beats generic mirroring. Context-rich achievement statements beat keyword-dense bullets. Inconsistencies between the CV and the candidate's LinkedIn profile become disqualifying, because they suggest the CV was tuned for the advert rather than the truth.

Moreover, signs that applications are driven by an automated service might be discounted at scale, such as one international Talent Acquisition Manager who has set filters to discount applications from LoopCV – because his experience is that they are mainly spammed applications.

And while this situation forces employers to reassess how they administer applications, it also leads to the question of whether advertising is a viable channel at all. Especially when other channels are more specific and controllable, such as using LinkedIn Recruiter Licence to find people directly.

This news is from June 2026 and things are moving fast. For now, the practical point is that the case for a good-enough CV that's genuinely yours gets stronger as the volume of customised CVs increases. And the case for a well-specified LinkedIn profile that anchors the CV becomes essential, because the profile is what recruiters will compare your CV against when they want to know whether it's real. And because the profile is what may come up in recruiter searches when the jobs they used to advertise aren't advertised any more.

I cover the customisation question in more detail in Should I customise my CV? (p178). I cover the LinkedIn profile configuration that anchors the CV in LinkedIn profiles that convert (p204).

Does that mean you shouldn’t use AI optimisation at all?

It’s situation dependent and you should think about the consequences.

If I were looking for an early career job that paid the bills and was aware of the huge competition for a wide number of vacancies – I might consider automation to do this at scale. However, in this case I’d do the opposite of automation and doorknock instead.

If I were only receptive to a unique opportunity, AI wouldn’t be relevant.

A more straightforward discussion is the uses where AI augments your own intelligence, rather than automates manual processes.

Here, I wholeheartedly recommend looking into options and being creative:

·       Tools to check spelling & grammar, used judiciously (I ignore most of Grammarly’s advice on how to improve my writing style)

·       Compare your CV against a job description. Check for gaps, synonyms, how you might articulate your experience

·       Ask for examples of achievements you can use as collateral to support your documentation and interviews, then replace those examples with the facts of your experience

·       Build a keyword thesaurus to aid in searching for, applying for and being found for vacancies

·       Use for ideation and sense checking. I’ll paste content into Claude and ChatGPT and ask for its ‘thoughts.’ Some of its feedback is helpful. Sometimes it lies and gaslights me

·       Ask questions around your career path - job titles, industries to look at; qualifications to underpin your experience

·       Use as a buddy to ask questions of, help with research and interview preparations (e.g. what questions might I be asked in an interview for a CTO; the company is a venture funded start-up with 30 employees, operating in SaaS)

·       Purpose specific tools that have been error checked. Such as those that share market insights in your domain - prospects for speculative approaches, networking opportunities, knowledge sharing, etc

None of these can be seen as cheating, given it’s invisible behind the scenes work that supports your candidacy.

Additionally you can google or AI search for how others have solved their job search applications with AI – there are many case studies in the wild including open source access to their prompts and apps.

However, you might prefer to have unlimited free use of tools I have developed to support your job search.

Go to www.bwrecruitment.co.uk/resources

These tools are based on the principles set out in this book, the associated CV template (which you can download here too) and my new book on effective key hire recruitment – A Recruitment AiDE. They are diagnostic, not generative, therefore have a different use than AI optimisation.

Here are the tools available right now, which I may add to over time:

·       CV template and guide

·       CV diagnostic – assess where your CV sits right now and how you can better articulate your candidacy. A structured report you can act on immediately

·       CV-Vacancy analysis – assess whether and how you should apply, SWOT analyse your CV against expected competition, scraped inferred pain that informs why the vacancy is actually recruited, company context and relevant information, and potential interview questions that may come up

·       Rejection decoder – plausible analysis of why you may have been rejected. This may give constructive advice, it may just help you move on.

·       Is it a scam? Paste a suspicious message and it will highlight how suspicious it actually is

·       AI interview practice – infer questions that are likely to be asked from a job description. Practice, transcribe and record your answers to review. Plus an AI analysis of your answers. Nothing is stored outside of your browser session.

·       LinkedIn profile optimiser – get more easily found by Recruiters including for jobs that aren’t advertised. Optimised for Recruiter Licence: the number one tool on LinkedIn for sourcing potential candidates.

·       Salary negotiation insights – an advisory analysis to help you determine whether an offer is fair, and whether and how you might negotiate

I’ve designed these so that nothing is stored outside of your browser session. Nothing is visible to me. Full instructions on the resources page.

There’s a wider discussion to be had, outside of the purview of this book, which is that of reasonable adjustments. Such as for disability and neurodiversity.

What about for non-English speakers when fluent written English isn’t necessary?

How about someone with limited time that happens to be the perfect candidate?

Shouldn’t we enable candidates to put forward the best version of themselves straightforwardly?

If you are someone with hiring authority reading this, let me add this.

AI in itself isn’t a cheat, if what is represented is true.

When you catch a candidate out for using AI, ask why, instead of assuming.

The process of securing a new role is a skill, much of which can be learnt over a long-term job search.

In some situations, people can afford CV Writers, LinkedIn profile upgrades, career & interview coaching. All these do is allow them to provide a better version of themselves.

AI is no different, albeit less effective on an individual basis. If you see use of AI as problematic, this may discriminate against people with less means to pay for support, the same people who likely need the most help.

Don’t be too quick to judge. Don’t you use similar tools to enable your work?

At the moment, what matters is how hiring processes might view the use of AI. This is a key consideration.


An inverted job search

By Greg Wyatt • October 7, 2026
I realise I've shared this chapter fairly recently, but there's good reason to revisit it. On Friday, I launched a new AI tool - Your Job Search Plan. You can find it here: https://your-jobsearch-plan.netlify.app/ It's based on the inversion principle below: the optimal job search is an inversion of how that job is optimally recruited. In other words, the first step in a job search should be to understand how recruiters and hiring processes seek to fill your ideal vacancy. Then to access all those channels while putting your best foot forward. It connects your applications, your networking, your CV, your LinkedIn profile, and so on, all of which should stem from your professional identity, the context of your career, the market conditions for that career, and therefore the work you'll need to do to boost your odds. One thing I'm pleased about with this tool is how it relates to the other tools and resources on www.bwrecruitment.co.uk/resources . So what seemed abstract, or painful activities without guaranteed outcome, become a practical arrow in the quiver of your search. I hope you find these tools helpful. They are a starting point, rather than a resolution. 20 - An inverted job search So, your broad approach to looking for a job is based on a product marketing strategy. How does this link to your job search and how companies hire? The next step is to recognise a job search is an inverted recruitment process. Whatever you can learn about the actual workings of recruitment, the better armed you are to navigate them. The first way in which this is true is around the routes to market employers take to fill a job. Employers want to fill vacancies in the most economical and efficient means possible. Sometimes they’ll rely on external advice, sometimes they’ll figure out their own way, and sometimes they’ll employ people to do it for them (such as a Talent Acquisition Manager or internal recruiter). When they rely on external advice, it may not surprise you it’s as varied and contradictory as job seeker advice. Take this nugget of wisdom: 80% of suitable candidates are not actively looking for work. By advertising, you’ll only have access to the 20% that applies to adverts. Hang on a minute! Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like the hidden jobs market? Of course, candidates aren’t hidden - much like hidden jobs, the priority is to understand the channels through which candidates are found. These channels directly mirror the channels through which you look for that job: Job boards; LinkedIn; Recruitment agencies; Confidential headhunting; Internal promotions; Secondments; Temp-to-perm hires; Consulting-to-perm hires; Referrals; Networking; Speculative approaches; Careers pages; Talent pools; Candidate databases Every job is different, dictated by principles like supply and demand, confidentiality, reputational risk, wherewithal, budget and capacity. The hiring process of a Software Developer is different from that of a Sales Director. If an employer only hires through an advert - this means if you don’t apply for adverts, there’s no way in which you can be considered for that vacancy. A second way it’s accurate is the notion that what’s true for one may not be true for others. This relates to candidate resentment . You may read online that some recruitment behaviours are signs of a bad employer. Yet, you should always follow the instructions given when applying for an advert or through an agency. They may instruct you to: 1/ Write a CV, cover letter and duplicate it on their ATS 2/ Tell them your salary when they don’t list theirs 3/ Do 17 interviews before reaching a decision 4/ Deliver a 6-month strategy plan by presentation 5/ Or any other request deemed unreasonable by Career Coaches, Job seekers, or people otherwise uninvolved in that process What some consider red flags, others will deem acceptable practice. It becomes your choice to play the game or not. Either follow their instructions or step away. You don’t have to apply if you don’t want to. In a similar vein, if you hear a hiring process has a preference, or if there are gaps in their employment armoury - these might be biases you can lean into. The hiring manager loves Arsenal Football Club and is biased towards people who love the same? Now might be the time to switch allegiance, if you can fake it or make it. They love a one page CV? Apply with a one page CV. You know the hiring manager of an advert with 400 applications? Give them a call - they might give you an unfair advantage. Poor practice from the employer, yet these are problems you can turn into opportunity. A third way in which this is true is by comparing inbound and outbound activity Outbound activity is where you go to your prospect (phone calls, messaging). Inbound activity is where the prospect comes to you (job adverts, content). Yet an outbound activity for a recruiter is an inbound activity for you (you receive phone calls and messages). While an inbound activity has you getting in touch because of their advert or content. When we talk about optimising your work, whether your CV, profile or interviews, it has to give the process what it needs. How can you be more discoverable, so you receive more relevant calls and messages? How can you improve your return on applications and your outbound messages? What about inverse non-recruitment? A brilliant, if strange question, with the same answer. When networking, going direct, seeking to become a referral, doorknocking, or other, what is the inverse of that activity? How does that person find or recommend people, if they become aware of a vacancy? How might they see you as a person to solve their problems, even if it isn’t a vacancy? You do these activities because of how they might help you and because of the benefit the other party experiences. What’s in it for them? If there isn’t anything in it for them, why should they help you? For each and every stage in recruitment, there is an opposed force, as candidates and the hiring process meet each other. It’s rarely an equal force, because every vacancy has supply and demand, resource, skill level, biases and intent at play. This is why each type of role has a different method of looking for work. Executive vacancies typically prioritise headhunted candidates, with fewer public adverts. Here the priority shifts towards building relationships with, and being discoverable by, Executive Search recruiters. If executives rely mainly on job boards, they may never think to focus on more suited channels. If you can learn what the other needs for that process to be successful, you can deliver the same. Speak to peers, speak to hiring managers you know, speak to recruiters, speak to former job seekers. How have they found work, and how would they recruit for your roles? Research your market to find viable employers, to identify recruiters and to build your network.  Then execute an appropriate strategy to access these channels.

Hierarchy of Pain

By Greg Wyatt • September 23, 2026
I had an aborted conversation at a networking event on Tuesday. It was about a problem vacancy a fractional people lead was looking at. Her client had instructed various executive search firms and none had produced a viable candidate. It seems the consistent approach was to match CVs to job description - pureplay transactional - and none were candidates that met the goal of the vacancy. You see that organisational pain that the vacancy heals wasn't defined by documentation, and therefore if you rely on that documentation to find candidates, it's happenstance that you come across someone viable. It's such a common problem, and when I 'fix' problem vacancies, it's invariably something that isn't described which was holding back a successful hire. The irony is this shouldn't be a hidden pain - presuming it's appropriate to share, it should be front and centre. What complicates modern recruitment is that, instead of better specifying vacancies, both sides of the hiring fence increasingly rely on LLMs to produce documentation that shaves the edges off. And as a result a candidate that has extensively healed the hidden pain a vacancy might even remove the evidence from their application in a bit to better match an advert or job description. The more transactional recruitment comes, particularly through reliance on technology, the worse this problem becomes. Probably not an issue for business as usual vacancy, but when a vacancy has impact, standard process of "5 CVs by Friday" will invariably hold you back. The chapter below is from A Career Breakdown Kit , my guide for navigating a skewiff employment market. It may be for job seekers, but the problem and solution are directly mirrored by the hiring side. It's taken word for word from the book, so some of the content is interconnected with other chapters. You can read most of them for free in the Jobseeker Basics newsletter. Hierarchy of pain This chapter reflects on how buyers make decisions, how this is reflected in hiring and why it matters in how you put forward your CV, application, interviews and other messages. If you’ve ever encountered sales in your career or life you are likely familiar with the concepts of Features and Benefits. The product is what is proposed. Features are what it does. Benefits are how it helps. However there are actually three other components in this hierarchy that make up commercial messaging. Value is what the benefits mean to you. “Sell the sizzle, not the sausage” - the sizzle isn’t a benefit, if you don’t like sausages. Outcomes are the tangible long-term results from using that product or service. “Sell the picture frame, not the screwdriver” - or rather what’s in the frame. Why does it matter? The idea being these peel back the layers of the onion to help a potential customer understand exactly What’s In It For Them. Yet, it may not matter whatsoever if your brilliantly put together message doesn’t achieve one element - show how you heal their hidden pain. In that frame example above, this might be a photo of a loved one, no longer with us. The photo is for our memories and feelings. The frame has to be right, to commemorate them properly. While it needs to be mounted well, using tools that make the job easier. Could you market that loss to sell a screwdriver? Hopefully not, though the message might be, “For memories that matter,” instead of "High Quality Screwdriver". It's a common pain many share, yet not one you might discuss down the DIY shop. Early in my career I had a lesson on hidden pain and its importance. I recruited an HR Manager for a high growth business whose requirement was for someone with broad experience in a similar environment. I presented an excellent candidate who was only available due to the shutdown of her employer - she had to stay to the final day to manage the process well, which limited her availability to start work. That was the only reason I explained her current situation to this new employer, because redundancy management wasn’t on the job description. She got the job! On day one of her new employment, her role was made redundant and she was offered a retention bonus to shut down the local site - everyone was to lose their jobs. The hidden pain here was redundancy, something not even mentioned to me during the vacancy briefing, and something I never broached with Julie. IIRC, there was no mention of it during the interview process either. Perhaps that’s an extreme example, but it does show what can happen behind the scenes. And if you happened to be out of work, a fixed term contract with a retention bonus might be quite appealing. Were you to apply to that vacancy, it would be important to highlight your redundancy experience - customising your CV might even have worked against you! So how does this hierarchy fit within your job search? You are the product, with your next employer on a buyer’s journey. Your features are what you offer. In a CV this is a combination of job titles, qualifications, skills and areas of experience. It’s also your salary requirement, where you are based and other elements like Visa status and working arrangements. Get these right and a little luck might mean they are all you need, considering that these same elements are what we source and filter on. I expect in this market you’re in competition with many people that offer the same Features, so the differentiator is what you bring to the table uniquely. The contexts of your career combined with how you helped, your impact, your achievements, and what the outcomes were. Related chapters: Principles of a Good CV Should I customise my CV? LinkedIn profiles that get found LinkedIn profiles that convert These are all resources that will help you communicate the benefits of your experience, the value you bring, the problems you solve, and the outcomes of these solutions. As for the hidden pain question, which in many vacancies isn’t articulated, how can you unpick hidden? Go back to why vacancies are recruited. How did they come about in the first place? They only fit into two piles - new and replacement. However these two piles have many subcategories relating to the problems they solve and the pain they heal. Researching the company can help. Inside knowledge definitely helps - it’s one reason good agency recruiters will be a valuable ally. But this knowledge isn’t always available, and sometimes the employer may not even know! I always come back to the principle, “You can’t be all things to all people.” And when you try to do this, you appeal to no one. It’s one reason why using LLM style AI to customise CVs is so problematic. The output is necessarily same-same because it’s a probabilistic determination of what you want based on an aggregate of data. It’s why, when recruiters receive a volume of AI augmented CVs, they all look the same. Your ‘good enough’ core CV ( Should I customise my CV ) leans into your strengths. While you might tweak it to meet the essential requirements, in the language of the employer, this should naturally support your greatest strength - the unique fingerprint that is your career. The downside of relying on customisation against vague, and often misrepresentative, adverts is that you can deemphasise and even remove your biggest achievements. The same achievements that would have helped you stand out. If your application doesn’t heal the hidden pain of a vacancy, it’s either because you have not defined your strengths correctly or you aren’t that close of a fit with the actual needs of the vacancy. An example to show this pitfall in practice. I caught up with a friend yesterday who has resigned from a post that was missold to him. His career is based on commercial acumen and enablement in a field that is heavily focused on risk management and compliance. So he’s already unusual in a good way (though his CV didn’t show this). On day one of his new job, he encountered a literal unexpected disaster. While these things happen, and he managed the situation effectively, this proved a consequence of the business culture and strategy. These problems kept coming up and his functional area in the business needed a complete overhaul at executive level. Rather than the commercial enablement picture they painted, they needed someone who relished chaos - a master of disaster. Completely the opposite of the career Simon wants. This isn’t something they could publicise in their recruitment process, for reputational reasons, yet it was a fundamental baked-in aspect of the role. I’ve no doubt Simon’s CV is a match for their job description. Yet he is not a match for their job. What if they’d seen CVs of people who’d leant into strengths of healing dysfunction? What if he’d leant into his strength of enablement? He may not have left his previous job for something he went on to regret. If you’re sceptical about how crucial hidden pain is in recruitment, think about your own hidden pain when applying for jobs. What’s going on in your life that impacts which roles are ideal for you. The same points you might not divulge when you’re just trying to get back into employment. Perhaps you've even experienced the pain I did when considering a hardware purchase. How did that pain inform your buying decisions? It’s no different for employers when they consider the pain and problems inherent in their vacancy.