26th June, 2025.
I’m getting ready for a coaching session with someone facing redundancy after 17 years in one business and all of that time in the same leadership role. He was recommended to me by his manager who I’ve managed a lot of hires for in the last 6 years. I’ve been asked to help him get his mind ready to approach a job market which is drastically different to the one he knew back in 2008.
Why I journal this is to highlight the preparation I’m putting into a common case where a mix of institutionalisation and shock are going to be evident and restrictive to his initial efforts.
My focus for our first session is going to be an introduction to the digital job economy and how it’s dominated by internal recruitment teams and thousands of smaller external recruitment companies. Meaning, a modern job seeker cannot simply just register with a handful of agencies and expect success. They must be ready to attack a market broadly to begin with and work out how to get noticed by various companies and recruiters among a sea of applicants.
Fore reference, in 2008 I would see an average of 30-40 applicants per role, but in 2025 it’s well over 200.
Being able to uniquely grab the attention of hiring managers and recruitment teams is a skill in itself and using mutual connections, LinkedIn comments and well thought out introductions plays a greater part in the job search than ever.
Simply using templates, AI or any other automated way of getting noticed puts the modern job seeker at a significant disadvantage because they will not stand out at all.
Being strategic, direct and intentional will always beat the machine gun approach 99 times out of 100 (that 1 time being a combination circumstance and luck!).