Latest news with #jobsearch
Forbes
a day ago
- Business
- Forbes
Land Your Next Job With AI Help (Prompts Included)
AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are transforming the job search process, helping candidates ... More analyze job descriptions, tailor CVs and prep for interviews more efficiently. Applying for jobs can be a tiring, repetitive and mentally exhausting process. Firing off hundreds of identical applications and CVs is unlikely to land you that dream role, so every application needs a thoughtful approach. Fortunately, this is an area where generative AI shines. With the right prompts and oversight, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or any of today's powerful language-based assistants can transform into your personal career coach or resume-writing assistant. The trick here isn't to get AI to apply for jobs for you, but to get it to handle the routine, repetitive and frankly boring parts of the process. This frees you up to think creatively about the important parts. Tips For Successful AI-Assisted Job Hunting So here are my top tips for leveraging generative AI to streamline your job search, as well as some of my favorite prompts to get you started. One of the most popular job-hunting uses for ChatGPT and similar chatbots is writing cover letters. But this isn't a smart move. Recruiters are being swamped by AI-generated CVs and cover letters, which are often easily spotted due to sounding 'robotic', and they immediately scream low-effort. In fact, AI developer Anthropic has itself gone as far as banning generated applications. Instead, use AI to help you brainstorm ideas, gain insights and eliminate repetitive work like matching skills and experience to job requirements. A job description is usually the best source of information on what a company is looking for. Use AI to analyze it and find keywords to focus on in your CV and cover letter. It can help you match your skills and experiences to the job's requirements, and suggest ways to highlight them as relevant to hiring managers. Continuously update ChatGPT's understanding of your job search by uploading each iteration of your CV. This lets it learn how to differentiate between types of jobs you're applying for, and how the information on your CV should be edited or re-framed accordingly. Then you can have it automatically create templates for different roles, levels of seniority or industries your search might include. While it's not a great idea to get AI to write your CV or cover letter, it can be very good for fine-tuning and streamlining what you've written. Asking it to critically assess your application to spot opportunities to shine that you may have missed, or trim fat that's not going to help you get noticed, is always a good idea. AI sometimes hallucinates and makes things up. While this is often harmless, that probably isn't the case if it results in errors or nonsense in your job application. With AI, you can potentially turn one comprehensive CV into personalized approaches to many different companies, but make sure every single one is checked over with a human eye before it's sent out! Useful Prompts For Landing Dream Jobs This prompt is designed to help you think about how skills and experiences might meet a role's requirements. Prompt: 'I am applying for [job title] positions. Please analyze my CV and suggest ways that I can frame my skills and previous experience in ways that highlight their relevance to the job I'm seeking. Helps you quickly work out what an employer really thinks is important for the role, so you don't have to waste time guessing. Prompt: 'Please analyze this job description. Provide a summary of the top skills, qualities or experiences the role requires, and suggest the most important keywords for me to include in my CV and cover letter.' By analyzing the description together with your CV, AI can help structure your application so it ticks all the right boxes. Please help me tailor my CV for this role. Structure the information in it in whatever way best highlights my suitability for the role. Be sure to highlight how my skills and experience match all of the requirements listed in the job description. Disregard mentioning any skills or experiences that can't be framed as relevant. Ever notice how a lot of interviewers ask similar questions? AI has, and is pretty good at guessing what type of questions will come up in yours. Prompt: Please play the role of an experienced, professional interviewer at [company name], and interview me for the role of [job title]. Please use the information in the job description and my CV to ask me questions, one at a time, and try to determine my suitability for the role. When you have finished, give feedback on my performance and suggestions for improvements I can make for the real hopefully, you've realized that while AI can't guarantee you your dream role, it can help with much of the heavy lifting. If the prompts here don't quite suit your flow, it should be simple enough to use them as building blocks for creating ones that do. Just remember to let your human qualities shine through, because often this will be what employers are really looking for.
UAE Moments
2 days ago
- General
- UAE Moments
Your Daily Career Tarot Card Reading for July 29th, 2025
29.7.25 The Hanged Man: Drawing this card can indicate a period when nothing much seems to be happening. It might even appear that your career progress or job search has come to a halt, leaving you frazzled or bored. Try not to fight this, as the first stirrings of positive change will show up in their own time. You can't push the cosmos to accommodate your needs. Instead, you'll have to work on its timetable.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
How To Add Consulting Work To Your Resume Without Raising Red Flags
How To Add Freelance Or Consulting Experience To Your Resume (Without Raising Red Flags) I've been consulting for the past year and I wasn't sure how to put it on my resume. I know that employers don't like to see that. – Accountant Your resume is an important part of your job search, so it's good that this accountant is thinking about how to maximize each item they include. However, overly generalized assumptions (such as, employers not liking consulting experience) are not good. See previous post, The Reason Your Job Search Isn't Working Is Not What You Think, for a more detailed explanation, but essentially the wrong assumption can derail your search, and even a correct assumption likely doesn't apply to every job you're targeting. Why Employers Care About Consulting Experience If your most recent experience has been consulting (or freelance), then employers care about it because employers prioritize what you have been doing most recently. Listing all of your experience (including the consulting) ensures that you don't leave employment gaps that you'll need to explain. A prospective employer might skip over resumes with gaps, assuming that the candidate hasn't been doing anything. Add consulting experience to your resume as soon as you confirm that you'll be consulting, rather than working a traditional job, for several months, certainly at the one-year mark. Consulting projects give you results to discuss in your interviews and networking meetings. You can point to skills and expertise you have developed and used firsthand. Make sure your resume sells your consulting experience by itemizing specific software and other technical skills you are using. If you are concerned that sharing quantitative information will betray your client's confidentiality, then share less specific information (e.g., % improvement rather than the actual result). If you work with brand-name clients that your target employers know, then your clients give you a halo effect – i.e., if your work is good enough for them, it's probably good enough for the employer. If you have worked with a variety of clients, you can sell your diversity of experience and access to multiple strategies and best practices as a competitive advantage. If you are concerned about listing specific client names, then list a description that still gives readers a sense of the type of client you served (e.g., industry, size using terms like 'small business' or 'Fortune 500', tenure using terms like 'start-up' or 'established'). How To Avoid Raising Red Flags When Looking For A Full-Time Job After Consulting Or Freelancing That said, a move from consulting back to full-time employment can raise red flags if positioned incorrectly. Employers may question your motivation because consulting work and the consulting life is different from being a full-time employee. You need to convince prospective employers that you are genuine in why you're making the change, ideally focusing on why you want to be an employee and not on why you don't want consulting. Motivation is not something that comes across in the resume, so make sure to attach a cover letter framing your transition into consulting as temporary. Focus on networking where you can tell your story prior to sharing a resume. Tell your story in the About section of your LinkedIn profile to preemptively address any questions about your motives. You can't be unemployed for a year, do a day of pro bono work and call yourself a consultant to paper over an employment gap. While you don't need to have worked 40 billable hours each and every week to match a full-time schedule, you should have multiple clients, or multiple projects for a single client, to point to, so your experience is taken seriously. On your resume, if you have multiple clients or projects to showcase, dedicate a separate bullet in your consulting experience section to detail each client or project. Employers are tuned to WIIFM radio (i.e., What's In It For Me). You may have impressive results-focused consulting experience but until you show how it's relevant to your target employer, they may discount it. Don't just list your experience, and assume your prospective employers will see the value. Promote your value by talking about the specific needs they are facing and showing how your experience, expertise and skills are the solution. This is best done in a cover letter or in a networking meeting. On the resume, include details that your target employer cares about. For example, if you are targeting accounting jobs at large companies and you have large company consulting clients, when you describe your consulting, be sure to include the sizes of your clients. What Career Changers Can Do To Get Past The Resume Screen And Into The Interview Process The change from consulting to full-time employee is a career change, even if you're returning to a similar function, like accounting, and/or returning to the same industry you worked in before (e.g., media, retail, banking, etc.). Generally, employers prefer people who have done the exact role before. In a choice between someone who had been in-house versus a consultant, they may feel the in-house candidate is a safer bet. If your consulting work was taking over for a full-time employee and essentially filling that role, just not on the payroll, then emphasize this for future employers. You're positioning yourself as an employee who happened to be a consultant, minimizing the change. If your work wasn't structured like that, find other similarities between your work and the in-house staff, such as working closely with them, using the same processes, or interacting with the same senior leaders. Resumes make it easy to filter candidates out, not invite them in. Employers look for gaps in dates, search for keywords (and note their absence), scout for recognizable names (and discount ones they don't recognize) and skim years or decades of background in seconds. Relying on a resume to make your case cedes control of your job search to the resume reader (if anyone reads the resume at all!). Spend more time reaching out to decision-makers and other working professionals than sending out unsolicited resumes. If you haven't made it known to your consulting clients that you would prefer a traditional job, do that ASAP. Your clients know, like and trust your work so if there is an ongoing need, they may convert you to a full-time employee. If there isn't, they can at least be strong references for you and may have opportunities to refer. Once they see how serious you are about leaving for a traditional job, they may create something for you in order to keep you. Your consulting experience is a lead generator for your job search, not a detractor. When looking for a job, consider both consulting and traditional jobs.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified
My heart sank when I saw those damned words again: 'Thank you for your application but we have decided to move forward with other candidates.' As I read that sentence, four months of pain, humiliation, fear, and despair engulfed me, leaving me to stare dejectedly at the floor. I've read that soul-destroying sentence, and dozens of variations of it, more than 250 times since I lost my job as part of cuts at the media organisation at which I worked earlier this year. Each rejection has chipped away at my formerly bullet-proof confidence and peace of mind, leaving me wondering if I'll ever be useful to my family again? What is the point of me? Will my wife and son ever be able to look at me with pride? Struggling for work despite decades of experience, transferable skills and a reputation for being a smart, hard-working team player was not supposed to be in the script. Unemployment is worse than being stabbed The pain of being out of work, dealing with hundreds of rejections, and constant worry over how you will be able to provide for your family is far, far worse than being stabbed in the throat by Jihadist terrorists. I can say this with absolute authority because that is exactly what happened to me on 3 June 2017. Isis fanatics murdered eight innocent people during the London Bridge attack. I ended up being involved in it because earlier that evening, I helped a pub bouncer who was being assaulted by two drunks. That fateful decision put me in the path of the Isis fanatics, who attacked the restaurant we were in. While defending my friends, I was stabbed twice and left to die in a bloody heap on the floor. The odd thing about being stabbed in a life-or-death knife fight was that it did not immediately hurt. There was shock, but also a strange absence of pain, probably due to adrenalin. After my physical recovery, the relief of surviving, the support of my family, friends, Fleet Street colleagues and peers helped me to recover quickly, while counselling sessions and talking openly about my ordeal has helped keep the demons at bay, bar the odd nightmare. Unemployment is far worse. Not having a job, worrying about your family finances and the future… the guilt you feel about letting your wife, son, and parents down is crushing. Having fallen victim to job cuts twice in the space of 12 months, I feel mounting despair and fear that I am obsolete. The anguish and torment is relentless The guilt, fear, and worry, all of that anguish and torment, is present every single second of every single day. It is relentless and keeps me up at night. I am fortunate to have such a wonderful, supportive wife, Cecile, but there is no disguising the anger she feels towards all the companies that rejected me, including the publisher that released me last year after 17 years of distinguished service as part of a cost-cutting drive. She hides it, but she worries for the future. However, Cecile is extremely practical and so, while we are in a decent financial position now, we are starting to cut our expenses. My parents are worried, as is my extended family. The problem for Britain is that my situation is not unique: according to recruiters, we're in a 'white-collar jobs recession'. Experts warn that the growing use by businesses of artificial intelligence (AI) could compound this, resulting in job losses on a scale not seen since the deindustrialisation of Britain in the 1980s. When Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in 1979, Britain was regarded as the sick man of Europe. To fix that, Thatcher sought to tame inflation, which had hit 25 per cent at times during the 1970s. By sharply hiking interest rates and slashing public spending, she succeeded. However, it came at a cost. High interest rates reduced domestic consumption and business investment, hitting the economy and jobs. Worse, high rates strengthened sterling and made Britain's industrial sector, which started declining in the 1960s due to a widespread failure to invest and adapt, even more uncompetitive. British exports became more expensive and so manufacturing job losses accelerated. From 1970 to 1979, manufacturing employment had fallen from 7.7 million to 6.7 million. Between 1979 and 1983, 1.5 million manufacturing jobs were lost. In areas where there was a once dominant manufacturing employer which had shut down, demand fell for all the surrounding, dependent local businesses, further reducing employment. That in turn hit local finances, impacting the availability and quality of services such as schools and hospitals. Coupled with people moving to seek work elsewhere, it left communities trapped in a cycle of decline. The consequences of the deindustrialisation that devastated communities in the North, Midlands, Wales and across the country are still being felt today, decades after all those factories and plants shut, points out Valeria Rueda, assistant professor of economics at the University of Nottingham. For a start, when areas suffer wide-scale manufacturing job losses they also see increases in suicide rates, drug overdose and alcoholism. In the US, says Rueda, this phenomenon is called 'deaths of despair'. 'In certain contexts, worklessness can be lethal,' she explains. The loss of income and anxiety and stress that comes from unemployment does not just affect those who have lost their jobs, it impacts their children, as wealth is a key factor of health. 'Children of industrial decline' Rueda pointed to studies that show that the health of the children born in coal industry areas during its decline tend to be shorter, have more extreme weights and worse physical and mental health than those who grew up in other parts of the country. 'These are the 'children of industrial decline' and today they still carry the scars of growing up through hard times,' says Rueda. 'Their offspring – the third generation affected – also appear to be born with poorer health. 'The negative health effects of massive job losses can transmit across generations, putting at risk the fundamental democratic principle of equality of opportunity.' It come as 'no surprise' to Rueda that frustration has taken hold of people in areas that suffer from a chronic lack of economic opportunity, giving rise to popularism. 'The loss of industry jobs – which were not replaced by new ones or alleviated through improved access to other opportunities – has scarred health and brewed discontent across generations,' she notes. Fast forward to today and economists and labour market observers point to a worrying trend. The latest Office for National Statistics data shows that job vacancies in the UK have fallen for 36 consecutive months, obliterating the previous record of 16, which was the result of the global financial crisis in 2008. At the same time, the past three years has seen the rate of redundancies almost double from 55,000 people per month to 114,000, and the impact has fallen disproportionately on middle-aged and older workers. More than one million people have been made redundant over the past three years, with 34 per cent of the job losses hitting people between 35-49, while 30 per cent were aged 50-plus. What is truly frightening is that all of this has occurred during a period of economic growth, albeit weak growth. The general consensus is that when an economy grows, jobs are added, and when it shrinks, jobs are lost. Yet this relationship appears to have broken down and experts believe this is down to a convergence of factors, including the rapid advance of AI. Britain's cost-of-living crisis was prompted by inflation soaring from 0.4 per cent in February 2021 to a peak of 11.1 per cent in October the following year. Employers' costs rose as workers demanded increased pay to help them cope with squeezed living standards, which in turn fuelled further inflation. In order to wrestle inflation back to its 2 per cent target rate, the Bank of England took a page out of Thatcher's book and hiked interest rates. As it was in the 1980s, it has come at a cost to the economy. Increased demands on employers 'In the UK, interest rates are still quite a bit higher than they are in places like the Eurozone,' explains Julius Probst, European labour economist at Totaljobs, owned by The Stepstone Group. 'The Bank of England's rates policy was to put the brakes on [economic] growth to slow wage increases to get interest rates back to target. But now the Bank [of England] is worried.' Employers are also struggling to contend with the increased demands that have been placed upon them by the Government. Prior to his career in the City, Panmure Liberum's head of research Simon French worked for the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP). 'When I was at the DWP,' he says, 'the idea was that any changes you brought in [that would affect employers] would be gradual. 'With this government, what we have had is an increase in employer national insurance contributions at the same time the national minimum wage is rising, as well as the changes coming in the Employment Rights Bill,' he continues. 'What we have is indigestion, in terms of the demands and work placed on employers at once.' The bursting of the post-pandemic boom by high interest rates, slower demand, higher costs and the economic uncertainty caused by US President Donald Trump upending global trading, as well as ongoing conflicts, has seen employers look to rein in their costs by cutting jobs and freezing recruitment. Probst agrees that the UK is now in a 'severe' white-collar jobs recession and that for middle-aged workers, finding work is much, much harder than it was previously. 'For middle-aged workers, if you want to change roles, it is very difficult as job postings are down and there is very little churn,' he says. Prime targets for efficiency drives Middle-aged people tend to occupy the rungs of middle management in white-collar roles and thus are the prime targets for efficiency drives, which invariably results in job cuts. However, business leaders warn that the children of those middle-aged, middle-class workers will increasingly struggle to get work. Combine the two, business leaders warn, and the economic and social damage will be comparable to that suffered in the 1980s. According to James Reed, chairman and chief executive of Reed recruitment agency, the increased burden on businesses is pushing them to embrace automation and the increasing use of AI to do what were traditionally white-collar jobs in order to save money. Reed's internal data shows that graduate vacancies, as a proportion of total available jobs, have halved, down from 8 per cent to 4 per cent, since 2018. This is because automation and AI is taking graduate jobs in industries such as finance, accounting and law, and as the technology becomes more powerful and more widespread, it will result in more job losses. 'We're heading for a jobs crisis like the 1980s,' says Reed. 'Lots of people are going to be left behind as a result. If we see the hollowing-out of white-collar work it will affect millions of people, their living standards and the Government's tax take. 'The consequences of this have yet to be properly thought through, but there will be social, economic and fiscal consequences,' he adds. The International Monetary Fund's managing director Kristalina Georgieva describes AI as a 'tsunami hitting the labour market'. She warns that 60 per cent of jobs in advanced nations such as the UK will in just a few years time be either 'enhanced, become more productive, or transformed, or eliminated'. In other words, the technology could benefit humanity, or it could result in unseen levels of inequality. 'What is happening with AI, it can be a great story, a world that becomes more productive,' says Georgieva. 'Or it can be a sad story, a world that is more divided where the 'Haves' have more and the 'Have Nots' are completely lost,' she says. 'AI is going to replace half of all white-collar workers' In June, I saw Ford chief executive Jim Farley deliver a blunt warning to parents at the Aspen Ideas Festival. He informed them that they need to make sure their children learn vocational skills for the 'essential economy' (basically anything that needs to be moved, built or fixed), as AI was going to wipe out millions of white-collar jobs. 'Hiring entry-level workers at tech companies has fallen 50 per cent since 2019,' noted Farley. 'Is this where we want our kids to go? AI is going to replace half of all white-collar workers.' While the effects of the 1980s job losses are still being felt today, Panmure Liberum's French hopes that the transition to an AI-enabled economy will not be as brutal or long lasting. 'In economies there is destruction and then creation in times of technological change, but it does not occur simultaneously, there a gap,' he says. 'In the 1980s we had destruction, many jobs were lost, but eventually they were replaced with ones in call centres. 'This time around, my instinct says that the process will go faster than previously. Moving from manufacturing to services is a bigger leap than services to services, it's a clearer transition,' he continues. 'It will probably take years rather than decades, but that is just a guess.' It seems that I am far from alone in being affected by the ongoing purge of middle-aged workers. Indeed, you only have to look at LinkedIn to see vast numbers of people posting about their increasingly difficult search for work. 'Broke and broken' Joe Emery, 43, is a copy writer and has previously worked for Virgin Media O2 and City funds group M&G Investments. He was made redundant three years ago and, since then, he has only been able to pick up two nine-month temporary contracts, leaving him 'broke and broken'. 'It's been really, really hard,' he says. 'I ended up in psychiatric care, depressed and with suicidal thoughts. Only my family and friends have kept me going. It's been so stressful. I'm 43 and I have to rebuild my life, not from scratch but from multiple levels below zero.' Watching your finances dwindle and the despair it brings is also something Craig Webster, 51, knows all about. Until the end of last year, he was a senior recruitment professional at an IT company. He took voluntary redundancy and thought he would quickly find a new role. He did not. Seven months on and nearly 1,000 failed job applications later, Webster has finally returned to the workforce, but that time in between has left its scars. Being rejected from a staggering number of employers was bad, admits Webster, and affected his mental health. But having to tell his son about his changed financial circumstances was far worse. 'I had to tell my son in May that we might have to stop going to watch Spurs together as I wouldn't have the money,' he says. 'Going to football, that's our thing and telling him that was painful – it made me feel like I was less of a dad. 'I've taken a role that is two levels below where I was, on half the money' 'I have lost six months of my life, my self-worth, and I have to start again,' he continues. 'I've taken a role that is two levels below where I was, on half the money, and I have had to cut my cloth accordingly. I have had to go backwards to go forwards.' One of my neighbours, Jan*, was also fortunate in that it only took him three months to find a new job after being made redundant. However, that period of unemployment knocked him for six. 'I was dazed; it was incredible,' he says. 'I couldn't believe it. How could this be? I spent most of the day walking with the dogs.' When you lose your job, you initially think you will bounce back instantly. But as the weeks become months, you quickly realise that all the things you took for granted from your formerly stable, comfortable life, will soon be beyond you. My wife has a great career, but going from two decent incomes to just hers and my patchy, inconsistent freelance earnings means we're watching the purse strings. Our next holiday, for example, which was paid for and budgeted for last year, will be our last for a while. I never felt alone or down in the aftermath of being stabbed by Isis. I had my family and friends around me, and I had the security of knowing that not only would I recover, I would be back at work stronger and better than ever. Losing my job, my status in my chosen profession and my income is far worse. Nothing cuts quite as deep as looking at your son and knowing that you may not be able to provide the life he deserves. Fortunately, my story is set to end on a happy note. I wrote a post on LinkedIn about my own difficulties in this jobs market and it led to a flood of messages and phone calls from interested groups and, most importantly, job offers. The upshot is I have shaken hands on one offer and I cannot wait to get started. I am lucky, but there are too many talented, middle-aged and middle-class people out there wondering where their next pay cheque will come from, and what future their children will have. My four months of hell is nothing compared to what some of them have been through.
New York Times
2 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
The Bull Market for Economists Is Over. It's an Ominous Sign for the Economy.
The moment it dawned on Thomas Fullagar that his job search was not going well came in April, about six months into the process, when he applied for a position in Manhattan, Kan. The job, at a technology company called CivicPlus, involved relatively straightforward data analysis that he wouldn't strain to do. In fact, he had done much more complicated work while completing his Ph.D. in economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Further improving his odds, he had grown up in Manhattan, the home of Kansas State University, and his mother knew someone at the company, who helped fast-track his application. Yet despite his connections and credentials, he did not get the job. He didn't even get a second interview. 'It was in Manhattan, Kansas — who the heck is applying for this?' Dr. Fullagar, 33, wondered. 'That one was really baffling.' For decades, earning a Ph.D. in economics has been a nearly foolproof path to a lucrative career. Even as bearers of advanced degrees in history, English or anthropology struggled to find gainful employment, the popularity of economics as an undergraduate major created plenty of tenure-track teaching positions, while government agencies snatched up Ph.D. economists in bulk. Those looking for even larger paychecks could turn to tech companies, Wall Street and consulting firms, which bid up the price of economists as if they were a bespoke cryptocurrency. Last year, the average base salary for newly hired economics professors at major research universities was more than $150,000, according to the American Economic Association, and their compensation swelled to about $200,000 once bonuses and summer teaching were included. As recently as the 2023-24 academic year, the employment rate for Ph.D. economists within a few months of graduation was 100 percent, said John Cawley, the chair of the association's Committee on the Job Market, citing the group's surveys. Job satisfaction topped 85 percent. Those glory days seem to be ending. Universities and nonprofits have scaled back hiring amid declining state budgets and federal funding cuts. At the same time, the Trump administration has laid off government economists and frozen hiring for new ones. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
