Getting Hired in the Age of AI: The Hidden Job Market, AI Screening and How to Stand Out

Looking for a job was already brutal. Now there's AI on both sides of it. You use AI to fire off applications, the company uses AI to screen them, and somewhere in the middle an actual human may never read a word you wrote. So how do you stand out when everyone's using the same tools?This week Ailish sits down with Roxanne Taku and Joana Rocha, co-founders of TechTalk, a career community with over 6,000 members and a track record of getting people hired at the likes of Google, Salesforce and TikTok. They've also built Reslink, a platform that puts a short video of you on top of your CV, with the aim of bringing the human back into hiring. Roxanne fought her way into UK tech from South Africa and came back from the 2023 layoffs with offers from Salesforce and HubSpot. Joana arrived from Brazil needing a visa sponsor and became a marketing leader in fintech. They've lived the job hunt from every side, so they know how it actually works now.Roxanne and Joana walk us through what really happens to your CV after you hit apply. The keyword scoring, the AI screens, the interviews now run by a bot, and the "hidden job market" where the best roles never get posted at all. They're refreshingly practical about what works, and honest about what doesn't.And here's the stat that reframed the whole thing for me. Roxanne reckons 80 to 90 percent of the people in their community who land interviews get there through networking, not cold applications. So the numbers game most of us are playing might be the wrong game entirely. We also get into where this is all heading, because if AI keeps changing work this fast, the job stops being just doing the work. It becomes thinking about how you add value, far earlier than we used to.In this episode, we get into:What really happens to your CV after you apply, from keyword scoring to AI interviewsThe hidden job market, and why the best roles often never get postedWhy networking, not mass applications, is how most people actually get hiredHow to build a LinkedIn profile that makes recruiters come to youWhose bias gets baked in when an algorithm screens your applicationThe 70 to 80 percent rule, and which bits of a job spec you actually have to hitUsing AI to get better at your job, not just fasterWhat all of this means for graduates and anyone starting outWhether you're deep in the job hunt right now, thinking about a switch, or just trying to stay ahead as AI reshapes work, this one's for you.