Why AI Will Make Job Hunting Impossible

So back in the day about 10-15 years ago when someone wanted to apply for a job they would apply for 100 or 200 different jobs. They would hear back from about 10 of them for first round interviews. They would do that. They would do three or four second round interviews and then they might get one or two job offers. But nowadays you have people who are applying for hundreds of jobs even thousands of jobs and they still haven't found anything 6 months later. And I think part of this issue has come down to the fact that AI has almost destroyed the job application process. Nowadays, there are many AI tools and like software that will apply for thousands of jobs on your behalf in minutes. I won't mention their names, but you can find them online pretty easily if you just search on Google. But basically, every individual person, the average person can now apply for 30, 50, 100 times more jobs than they previously could have 5 10 years ago. So, every company is now getting way more job applications per person. So, what are they going to do? They're also going to use AI. And since the job application form or like the job AI that's applying for the jobs for you has written a really customized cover letter and CV that is perfectly tailored towards that particular job and role and that company since it's written it all for you. The company's AI who is looking for the job applications is going to have a much harder time trying to find who is like the right candidate for that role. So

you have some kind of good hearts log going on here and you have so much noise in the system that the only way to beat through the system right now it seems to be through volume. So people put out like thousands of job applications with the help of AI and then eventually they might find something and then the companies hiring these people will realize like hang on the quality of our hires is not as good as 5 10 years ago before like AI was prevalent and that's because of all the noise in the system. So even though you could have been in top five applicant for that particular role or job and you wrote your cover letter yourself CV yourself without the help of AI, that company will be flooded with thousands or tens of thousands of job applications which are written by AI and the likelihood of you getting rejected is so much higher because of all the noise in the system and you wouldn't even know if you got rejected by a human or AI. So I think there'll

got rejected by AI. So I think there'll be a couple consequences from the whole thing. I think one of which is that companies will no longer require cover letters or they just won't even read your cover letter because they all look the same since everyone is using AI to write a very generic cover letter for that particular company. The second is many companies will look more at the name of the university you went to and also the names of the previous companies you worked at because the actual contents besides that can all be written quite easily with AI but the university you went to and the companies you worked at previously that's a bit harder to fake and then the best candidates or the smartest people for that particular job will end up quitting the whole process they don't want to engage with the process because they'll realize like hang on I just need to pay an AI I need to put out thousands of job applications play this numbers or volume game and then hope the company's AI that I'm like applying for is able to understand whatever my AI wrote and my AI is better than the company's AI and I can like trick them into like giving me an interview or a job or something. They'll realize like this whole process is pretty stupid and they'll just do something else entirely. And I'll talk more about that in a second of what else they're going to do. And then there'll be many mediocre candidates who send out thousands of job applications, play the numbers game, they get lucky with it, and then they get a job at a particular company, and then they end up getting fired because the company realized they weren't actually good for that particular job. So then they waste a lot of like hiring resources or HR resources. So then the companies will be like, "Wow, we're not going to look at our job applications anymore. We're going to find other alternative processes to find the best candidates. " And I think the long-term consequences here will be that recruiters and hiring managers and people in charge of hiring at these companies, instead of relying on job applications and resumes and cover letters and all, they will just use internal networks instead. And that will make the process of getting hired much harder for people outside of these internal networks. So for example, they might ask their employees saying, "Hey, do you have a friend who's like very good at this particular thing and they're looking for a job? " or they'll reach out to people at existing companies because often the best people in the job market, they're not even in

the job market. They're already hired at a particular company. So, they would reach out to those companies and they would say, "Hey, can we hire you or like can we pay you better? " Or they might hire a few graduates who they know from their summer internships or something and they would say to those graduates like, "Hey, do you have any friends who are still looking for a job and you think are really good and talented and could be a good fit for this job? " And I think the people in charge of hiring will slowly realize that the hires that they're getting through these internal networks are of better quality than the mediocre candidate which is applying with thousands of job applications using their AI. So then they will just double down on this process and what it means is that it'll just be harder and harder to get a job through the actual form on their website. So now the question becomes what are you supposed to do to find a job if AI is completely killing the job application process? And I think there are a couple of different things or techniques are slowly taking over and arising. I think one of the techniques I've seen pretty effective online recently is people just applying in different ways. So there's a video that this uh girl made about three days ago and she is applying or she now got a marketing internship at Spotify and she saw that there was a marketing internship available on their website. So then she just made a video on YouTube and she reached out by saying, "Hi Shopify, room for one more. " And it's actually a very compelling video. I've seen it myself. It's very impressive. And then the uh chief operating officer at Spotify replied and said, "You're hired. My DM's open. Message me and I'll find you an internship. " And then everyone likes this post as well. And I think that was pretty good or just went down well. This falls under the category of just applying in different ways. Like if you can't stand out because there are thousands of job applications that applied through the job portal. Like you could probably apply through Twitter instead or just make something cool or make a nice video like this and then tag the company and reach out to them. Like for this girl, even the president of Shopify replied saying, "Love this ambition and hustle. " And even though she got an internship, I imagine she will likely get a full-time

offer as well. I think the second component is having some kind of proof of work. So if AI makes applying for jobs really easy cuz that's making the CV or cover letter for you. Having proof of work that you can do something similar to what the company is already doing is really good in terms of getting a job, especially if you combine it with the previous technique where you're reaching out online. So for example, if you wanted to do a job at OpenAI, like what would be better? You just applying for a job at OpenAI or if you made your own large language model, albeit a very small one, made it really optimized at one particular thing, got a lot of likes on Twitter, posted about it online, and then just reached out to Sam Alman or anyone else at OpenAI asking for a job. Or if you were already working at a competing company, you'd get a job pretty easily because they want to take their competitors employees away. So basically, if you do work that the company's already doing and then reach out to particular people at that company who are capable of making hiring decisions, then I think you'll be much more likely to get a job in that case. It's the same reason why many big companies buy out other companies that they think will be competitors in the future. It's the same reason why Facebook bought Instagram and they bought WhatsApp as well. As for more practical example, let's say I was an average software engineer and I could make mobile apps. So what I would do is I might come across this website for example, com principal Japanese. I know of this website because I personally use it for my Japanese studies. Uh, and they have 8,600 subscribers and they pay about $8 a month uh, and 12 months in a year. So, they make about $825,000 definitely make a lot of money through this website, but they don't have a mobile app yet. And if I was a mobile app developer, I know this is on their road map because they mentioned it's as well. I would make a mobile app version in like two days or three days, like a very basic one, show it to them and be like, "Hey, can I use this to get a job or can I get a job in like making the mobile app for your website? " It's the same reason that if you were applying to be a YouTube video editor for someone, you might download one of their videos and then you would make an edit of their video and then it could be like a 20 30 second edit and then you would send it to them or like tag them and then ask if you can be a video editor. If you have some proof of work before that you've done something similar, that's much better than CV often. And they don't even care about looking at a CV if they see that your proof of work is really

good. And now the next thing applies more if you're a student. And that's to develop more connections and just develop more relationships during college because university and college is one of the few times where you have so many people around you from all walks of life who will go and do amazing things in the future and you can be well connected to all of them. If you spend all your time in your room studying and you get really good grades, then you're going to suffer the same problem that everyone else is facing where they have to use an AI to send out thousands of job applications to beat the noise. But if you have a lot of connections or internal networks that you can work through to get a job, then you'll be able to find a job much more easily. So, for example, if you're really good at hardware and circuitry, then you might want to find people at your university who are doing things similar to what you're doing. And the likelihood is one of them will get a job at a good company in the future, and then you can ask them for a referral to that company. And that saves you a lot of time and a lot of hassle and it saves you going through this messy application process with AI and all. And if you're really good at something and no one knows that you're good at that particular thing, then it's going to be much harder for you. Like the people who are both really good at something and everyone knows that they're good at that particular thing, they always have people reaching out to them asking them like, "Hey, can you come and work at our company? " And I know some of these people and they have like recruiters reaching out to them all the time on LinkedIn and on their email and so forth. And because they're such

in demand, they can decide which company they want to work for. they can negotiate on salary much more easily and so forth. And another aspect, as cliche as it sounds, is to just think outside of the box. And I used this example before in a previous video because I think it's a really good example. One of my friends from university, he did an internship for Elton John, who is a like famous musician. And the way he got that internship first started out with him writing a handwritten letter and then delivering it to Elton John's house. And this was during co so he wasn't touring at the time. So he kind of knew that he would be at home and his house was nearby to his college six form whatever. And the letter was just inviting Alton to give a talk at his school, college six form, whatever. And then after the talk, he asked if he could work for him during that summer. And then he took a gap year during university and went back to work for him again because he enjoyed it so much. And another example is this. I saw this yesterday and it says, "Stop applying to jobs like everyone else. DM VCs. VCs are venture capitalists to like investing companies. Ask them to intro you to their portfolio companies. It works like magic because no one is doing it. So, if you're thinking outside the box and you're following techniques that no one else is doing, you're definitely going to stand out. Anyways, as a brief aside, I also started my own community for people who are interested in building things with AI. So, it's on school over here and you can join. There's a link in the description and there's also a classroom that I'm working on where I have a 11-hour class on how to make mobile apps with AI. And I'll be sharing a lot of lessons that I learned in building things with AI. So, so far because I made a few mobile apps, I made a whole class about this. Um, but I've also been making like extensions to help me learn Japanese faster and then a few other programs.