{"id":266,"date":"2026-06-02T19:47:56","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T19:47:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=266"},"modified":"2026-06-02T19:47:56","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T19:47:56","slug":"how-to-try-to-get-a-job-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=266","title":{"rendered":"How to (Try to) Get a Job Now"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A few years ago, Ken Schumacher was working for a technology company. Part of his job involved assessing potential hires: hopping on a Zoom call, giving an applicant an engineering test (kind of like a crossword puzzle with code instead of words), and going on \u201cmute for an hour\u201d as the applicant struggled through it.<\/p>\n

Read more The Ordinary Miracle of Existing<\/a><\/p>\n

Except many of the candidates weren\u2019t struggling. The firm\u2019s exercises were getting posted on sites such as Glassdoor. \u201cAll these savvy 23-year-olds would, of course, practice the problem three times, come to me, and crush it,\u201d Schumacher told me. \u201cNow the bigger problem is everyone\u2019s using AI to write their resume.\u201d They\u2019re also using AI-powered chatbots and teleprompters to help them get to the next round. It\u2019s become \u201creally, really hard for anyone to figure out who\u2019s real and who\u2019s fake,\u201d Schumacher said. (This turned out to be its own market opportunity\u2014he now runs a start-up using AI to detect AI cheating by job candidates.)<\/p>\n

The problem might be particularly acute in software engineering. But the same dystopian phenomenon is contorting the whole labor market. AI has Tinderized hiring. Workers are applying to hundreds of positions and never hearing back; companies are receiving thousands of resumes and struggling to respond. More than that, AI has Amazoned hiring. It has scrubbed the uniqueness out of applications, flooded the market with same-same-seeming offerings, increased the number of frauds, and replaced personal discretion with brute algorithmic assessment.<\/p>\n

People had once hoped that Silicon Valley might not only smooth out the logistics of getting a job but also make the process fairer. Unbiased tools would replace alma-mater networks. Digital portals would accept applications from anyone, anywhere. Workers would get free access to templates, practice exams, and advice. \u201cTechnology in general tends to improve the efficiency of job matching,\u201d Mitchell Hoffman, a labor economist at UC Santa Barbara, told me. But AI in particular seems to destroy it. Employers and employees are locked in an \u201carms race, where it\u2019s AI-on-AI crime,\u201d Kathleen Creel, a philosopher and computer scientist at Northeastern University, told me.<\/p>\n

In just a few years, tools such as ChatGPT and Claude have commoditized the production of cover letters and resumes. Large shares of job applicants are using generative chatbots to polish their language and summarize their accomplishments\u2014raising the average quality of these personal documents, at the cost of \u201ccompressing\u201d and \u201chomogenizing\u201d the information they convey, as one Columbia Business School paper put it. In Silicon Valley, the phenomenon is sometimes called \u201csignal collapse.\u201d CVs used to be filled with advertent and inadvertent signals for hiring managers to parse: degrees and certifications and languages spoken, as well as formatting errors and unusual digressions and over-honest admissions. Now everyone looks better and everyone looks the same and everyone parrots important key words and everyone uses punchy action verbs. Hiring managers are straining to \u201cdistinguish underlying expertise,\u201d and to separate precious signal from cacophonous chatbot noise.<\/p>\n

Because AI has reduced the time job seekers spend writing applications, people are submitting hundreds of them on ZipRecruiter, LinkedIn, and other sites\u2014often for positions that are not quite a fit, often never to hear anything back. Applicants aren\u2019t getting feedback on their strengths and weaknesses. They\u2019re not getting intel on what they might need to do to get hired, or the skills they might need to obtain the job they want. Signal collapse is running in both directions.<\/p>\n

To sift through all of those applications, companies are turning, again, to AI. A recent survey by Resume Builder found that four in five companies are using AI to scan resumes, two in five are using chatbots to communicate with candidates, and one in five is giving AI interviews. AI screening tools in particular are creating an \u201calgorithmic monoculture\u201d in hiring, a new study of 4 million job applications has found. More candidates are being rejected by every firm that they apply to; in general, hiring decisions are more uniform than they would be if HR managers were not using algorithmic screens. A decade or three ago, firms would \u201cgo through the resumes and pick out schools they knew, or fancy schools, or schools that had good programs\u201d in relevant fields, Creel told me. \u201cThat\u2019s bad in its own way, from an egalitarian point of view. But at least different people had different arbitrary screening criteria.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Atlantic Trivia: Opera and the Atmosphere<\/a><\/p>\n

Moreover, screening algorithms are discriminating against Black and Asian candidates, the paper found. \u201cThere\u2019s this filtering happening, and we don\u2019t understand it, because these systems are opaque and custom-built for different institutions, and we don\u2019t know the functionality,\u201d Sarah Bana, a co-author of the paper and a digital fellow at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, told me. Nevertheless, the algorithms\u2019 tendency to advantage the advantaged and disadvantage the disadvantaged seems clear.<\/p>\n

For candidates who make it past an AI screen, a test such as the one Ken Schumacher administered may await. Companies ask applicants to describe how they would respond to an unruly customer, or figure out an engineering fix to a software problem. In a lot of cases, this step involves AI writing the exam, proctoring the exam, and taking the exam. \u201cI look at this stuff all day, every day, and even I have to pinch myself sometimes\u2014the amount of fraud!\u201d Schumacher said. \u201cIt\u2019s just totally ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is that AI is slowing HR down instead of speeding it up, because companies have to spend more time scrutinizing applications and performing background checks. A number of large firms are making face-to-face interactions a bigger part of the hiring process again. Google is ensuring that candidates have \u201cat least one round\u201d of in-person interviews, to \u201cmake sure the fundamentals are there,\u201d Sundar Pichai, its CEO, has said. Cisco is increasing \u201cverification steps and enhanced background checks that may involve an in-person component.\u201d Companies are also extending probationary periods and hiring people on contract, with the intention of turning them into full-time employees after managers can vet their work.<\/p>\n

Finally, some firms are resorting to old-fashioned methods: referrals, alumni networks, local job boards, headhunters. Schumacher said that firms were \u201cretreating to pedigree.\u201d They aren\u2019t doing this because \u201cthe Harvard engineers are the best in the world,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s the safer play in an era where it\u2019s really hard to tell who is legit and who is kind of full of crap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even with those techniques, hiring has simply gotten harder\u2014so much so that the entire labor market might become a touch more sclerotic, and business dynamism might dim a bit. Companies are concerned that worker tenure will go down, as managers end up having to fire underqualified workers and ill-suited employees get frustrated and leave. Bana worries about businesses replicating their current workforces, and missing out on employees who might break them out of groupthink and expand their ambitions. Hoffman, the labor economist, raised the issue of AI reducing workers\u2019 incentive to learn new skills and deepen their expertise.<\/p>\n

What should a person looking for a job in this AI hellscape do? Nobody I spoke with was certain. But being yourself in a cover letter and dropping it off in person doesn\u2019t seem like the worst idea.<\/p>\n

Read more Why the Worst Get on Top<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AI has made applying for jobs easy, and getting jobs nearly impossible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ideas"],"yoast_head":"\nHow to (Try to) Get a Job Now - Commercial Relocation Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=266\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to (Try to) Get a Job Now - Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"AI has made applying for jobs easy, and getting jobs nearly impossible.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=266\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-02T19:47:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=266#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=266\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\"},\"headline\":\"How to (Try to) Get a Job Now\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-02T19:47:56+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=266\"},\"wordCount\":1245,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=266#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/ddf81e8af3d41a6dca4d4ed6dbed9357.avif\",\"articleSection\":[\"Ideas\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=266#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=266\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=266\",\"name\":\"How to (Try to) Get a Job Now - 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