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.


A standard diagnostic

By Greg Wyatt • October 22, 2026
The other day I read a LinkedIn post about the iron triangle as it relates to recruitment. That you can be fast and good, but it will be expensive. That you can be fast and cheap, and it will be bobbins. Or that you can be cheap and good, but it will take longer than the heat death of the universe. At first glance it’s always made sense, with caveats, though that sense has been ablated with the promise of AI. Something that promises to be quicker, cheaper and better than people can manage. The only thing this triangle lacks is judgement-with-responsibility, something AI-style LLMs are currently incapable of, which is why they can be such problematic technology for recruitment. Though if your priority is speed, saving money, and filling jobs, the lack of judgement in even those algorithms that promise black box bias freedom might not be a problem you’d think much about. And when the top is spinning in an elegant way this might seem a standardisation you can apply everywhere, while you get on with your day job. Sadly the only place a spinning top doesn’t stop is when you were dreaming all along. AI has made me think about why the fundamentals of recruitment are so important, using judgement before we launch our projects. Which is why I like the 5Cs of project management as a way to look at recruitment: complexity, criticality, compliance, culture, compassion. With an adaptation and an additional C to be fit for purpose. It’s a great way to consider what approach to deploy: Complexity: the number of moving parts in a role, supply and demand in the candidate market, resources required to engage and bring forward the right people Criticality: the impact a vacancy has on the organisation. The opportunity a great hire brings. The damage the wrong hire can cause. And everything in between Channels: we go where the candidates are, whether at the end a headhunt, from an advert, from sourcing across LinkedIn Recruiter/equivalent tools, CV Databases, ATS records, other platforms, internal applicants, suppliers, consultants, temps, networking, referrals or even from a little black book, which I suspect will become more relevant again when data becomes noise Compliance: not just employment law, but how technology is used to find, engage and assess candidates in a fair, equitable and inclusive way Context: the full picture of the company – its organisational and local cultures, principles and values, mission, vision, goals, challenges and trajectory. The nuts and bolts, what that means for your candidates, and trying to understand the same in them Compassion: recognition of the impact a vacancy has on the employer and its team, balanced with how everyone can be brought together. And compassion for everyone that interacts with our recruitment, in process or invisibly Yes, I swapped context for culture. Hiring for context necessarily includes culture, and goes much further. And I've added Channels, which should always be established before going to market. I like these because they’re a way to ensure that how you recruit is proportionate and appropriate. They may even highlight you shouldn’t hire at all. But what you shouldn’t do is assume one recruitment process is the same as the next, nor that the investment made in reaching desired outcomes should be. What may seem expensive to you might bring an unexpected return on investment. What seems slow at the outset might bring a starter quicker than hoped – proper planning and all that. What seems good quality might fall apart, when the promises prove inadequate. That’s why it’s so important to diagnose first, before standardising. Greg p.s. You're welcome to try my free Hiring Diagnostic & Plan . It's not based on the 6Cs, which I think require more depth than a free tool can reasonably provide. Instead, it draws on principles from other disciplines: True and Fair from accounting, and Suitable and Sufficient from health and safety. It's free and private. Give it a go, and let me know if you'd like to chat through how the 6Cs might apply to your recruitment and enhance the resul 

Introduction to the hidden jobs market

By Greg Wyatt • October 14, 2026
On Wednesday 21st, I'll be doing a LinkedIn Live on The Hidden Jobs Market, joined by Paul Woodhouse. Paul is a marketing leader who has been looking for work in our challenging market. A previous role was a Hidden Job, and has also hired people himself. We'll be looking at his experiences to give a little substance to what can be a nebulous term. I'll show the steps anyone can take to become available for unadvertised vacancies, and for advertised vacancies that are filled by other means - after all employers consider more than only applications when taking a standard approach to recruitment. As a recruiter I don't advertise around half my vacancies, which might be for reasons of confidentiality, a lack of definition in the brief, a on the QT replacement for someone about to be dismissed, or mass availability of candidates. I'll use LinkedIn Recruiter to look for potential candidates, CV databases that can be more effective for immediate hires, my network for referrals and recommendations. My previous candidate pools for other vacancies - some of whom might have once open a time been applicants. Indeed, that last point shows the absurdity of much job search advice. If you apply for a vacancy on an ATS, you might be rejected, yet still be considered for future vacancies in the same employer. A hidden job hidden by an advertised job, where tailoring your CV with AI might make you less likely to be considered. Join us on Wednesday, or if you aren't free, the recording will be available immediately. Both can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/events/7516049669924225027?viewAsMember=true . The chapter below from A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) shows a simple metaphor for the hidden jobs market, why it's such a silly term, and a better way to think about your own job search. 3 - The hidden jobs market In most of the calls I have with job seekers they will ask me about The Hidden Jobs Market. What is it? Is it real? How can I access it? Before we get into that, we should talk about tomatoes. As you read this next section, imagine a tomato is a job. So, you want to procure some tomatoes. How would you? Your local farm shop. The supermarket. Wednesday’s stalls. Maybe you subscribe to a weekly box of veg. Maybe you grow your own. Maybe you trade for the tomatoes from Tim’s allotment. Maybe you look at people funny when they ask for an intro to Tim because his tomatoes are wonderful. You likely wouldn’t buy some from Amazon - they don’t sell fresh food. Not to me anyway. Though you might buy tomato seeds from Amazon if you grow your own. Maybe even cans of crushed tomato, sauce, puree, or whatever meets your needs. As the channel you use to source tomatoes isn’t the only consideration, so too is the configuration of what you need. While you and others all access tomatoes in different ways, some of which overlap, and some of which are mutually exclusive - none of these channels are hidden. It’s just that you may not know how to access some channels, while others won’t be available to you. Now I want you to read that section again. Instead of being your desired job, you are an employer whose desired tomato is a candidate of choice. While recruitment is the inverse of a job search (more on this later), the analogy is better from the employer perspective because they are on a buyer’s journey where you are the product. Employers want to fill their vacancies through the best means. Some vacancies are easy to fill, others not so, and they will access the channels necessary to find the right people. In many situations, they won’t advertise a vacancy, which might be for reasons of confidentiality or convenience. Some say this is as much as 80%, a flawed figure which comes from a flawed survey, or perhaps it comes from a newspaper article in 1974 before computers were a thing. In my recent small-scale research, it was indicated more than 62% of vacancies are advertised. 53% responded they advertise more than 75% of vacancies. Many of the respondents were headhunters, whose business may be based on not running public adverts. I expect this will have skewed the results lower than the true figure. What employers don’t do is hide vacancies systematically. To access these vacancies, you need to understand the channels through which employers hire and invert these channels to form your strategy. Much like how tomatoes are sold through channels which consumers buy from. Is the hidden jobs market real? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that not all jobs are advertised. Some are confidential, some for reasons as mundane as not wanting to deal with hundreds of advert applicants. No, because it isn’t a term that has inherent meaning. Speak to people who advocate for it, often a career coach, and they’ll tell you it’s anything from personal branding and networking to going direct and being referred in. When vacancies aren’t advertised by employers, they often fill them through sourcing - this is a specialist skill related to finding people where they may be found: LinkedIn, CV databases, corporate databases, GitHub, Facebook, YouTube. These are all channels you can access as part of an appropriate multichannel strategy. Which means if you have the right multichannel strategy (I call this Through-the-Line, which we’ll cover in parts 2 and 3), you access all jobs available to you, including those which are hidden and those which are in witness protection on another continent. Who are the headhunters that specialise in your domain? Who are the people who can refer you to jobs? How can you be more discoverable on LinkedIn and CV databases? How can you gain an understanding of the ways in which your ideal job is recruited, so you can take advantage of those channels? Those are better questions to answer to allow an effective through-the-line, multichannel strategy involving outbound and inbound leads. Despite me being vocal about why Hidden is a flawed notion, two people have thanked me for advice that led to their new roles claiming they’d accessed the hidden jobs market. As I gritted my teeth in hidden rage and congratulated them on their success, they unveiled the truth. What they actually did was map out their real life network of people they’d worked with and got in touch. If the people you know don’t know that you are looking for a role, what reason would they have to tell you about a vacancy? It’s simple marketing - right place (LinkedIn), right person (ex-colleague), right message (looking for work), right time (we’ve a vacancy). Of course, that takes a bit of luck to achieve the right congruence. Odds you increase through volume and follow up. And when you do find those opportunities, they are easier to win because you are a known name, not another unknown CV. There it is, the hidden tomato market.