From Want Ads to Bots: A Brief History of Job Seeking

How did I get my first job in the publishing world? I answered an ad in The New York Times.

Back in the land that time forgot, before smart watches, before the internet and even before the most primitive cell phones walked the face of the earth, jobseekers actually purchased the Sunday paper and engaged in the weekly ritual of scanning the employment pages for work.

Some weeks that section of the Times felt as thick as a Sears catalog (a 500-page ink-on-paper ancestor of Amazon), ripe with staggering lists of open jobs that ran the gamut from advertising copywriters to zookeepers. Other weeks, pickings were slim.

No matter. Those of us on the hunt for gainful employment parsed every possible lead, circling promising prospects with our trusty ball point pens, whether a perfect fit or even marginally close. We promptly typed up the requisite cover letter, enclosed an updated résumé and posted it to the appropriate hiring party, crossed our fingers and waited.

Nowadays, an online résumé can be tailored and tweaked in the blink of an eye. Likewise, there's no need for a cumbersome portfolio when your work samples can be easily accessed via a branded website or shared on any number of FTP locales.

In the dark ages, it was a different story. Creating a professional CV was a daunting process in which would-be hires agonized over layouts and typefaces as much as language. The perfect paper was also a concern: plain white or linen ecru with a hint of texture? If the paper was flimsy, then perhaps the candidate it represented lacked gravitas as well, while too-heavy a grade might read ostentatious or frivolous. Like Goldilocks in search of the ultimate porridge, the winning formula had to be "just right."

God forbid you found a typo in the finished product! (Insert profuse and colorful profanities here.) Back at square one, you were obligated to create a new — and hopefully pristine — document and trundle off yet again to the copy shop, where your quickly diminishing supply of coins vanished into the insatiable coin-slot maw of an immense apparatus that spewed out the 10, 20 or 50 photocopies you would need in the days, weeks or months it might take to land your next gig.

Fast forward to the 21st century.

After a recent hiatus from the workforce necessitated by fending off some nasty cancer-related hobgoblins, I decided to dip my toe back into the job-seeking pool. Within a nanosecond of changing my Linkedin status to "Open for Work" ever-vigilant artificial-intelligence (AI) minions neatly harvested data on my education and experience and regurgitated my potential worth as a candidate into the human resource pipeline.

Moments later, I was in-boxed by three separate headhunters (IMs to follow).

Now, I've known several generous and supportive recruiters who've tried to fit my square peg into round holes when the occasional offbeat opportunity arose. But for all their best efforts, I have never gotten a meaningful job offer through an employment agency.

With my eclectic and somewhat unconventional work history, I know it's a tough sell. No hard feelings — although I can usually tell when someone's just going through the motions and hasn't delved any deeper than my hashtags.

Recruiter No. 1: "So, are you interested in an entry-level position?"

Me: "This many decades in, I'd have to say not really."

Recruiter No. 2: "Did you leave your last job due to layoffs or an industry shift?"

Me: "Nope, it was that darn pesky cancer thing."

Recruiter No. 3: "Your experience is impressive, but it looks like you're lacking a few critical skills. Let me refer you to a résumé coach." (It seems my CRM was MIA and my SWOT was AWOL, among other things.)

Me: "No, thank you."

I'm aware in the ever-more-specialized lingo of business acronyms, I'm ill-equipped to compete with an evolving legion of "generationals" who were reared from birth suckling at the teat of technology, and the fact is, my appetite for new apps just ain't what it used to be.

However, bowing to the dictates of current hiring wisdom, I have shaved a decade (plus a bit more) from my chronology, plugged in a keyword list and added an elevator pitch to my most recent résumé.

But let's face it, rebranding has its limits. Even if I pour my accomplishments into a shiny new bottle and add some jazzy SEO labels, it's still an older wine I'm peddling — although I'm not entirely convinced that's necessarily a bad thing.

When the AI tsunami with its promise of instant gratification and unprecedented ROI first roared onto the scene, a host of veteran creatives were summarily swept into the sea of oblivion. For many, the future looked hopeless.

But as smart as AI may be, the finished product it routinely churned out was often factually impaired, inauthentic or just plain awful. Soon enough, clients started to complain, and the ROI suddenly didn't smell as sweet. Editors found themselves working overtime to render chatbots' flawed rehashes readable, and at least a few relieved writers were quietly hired back in the wake of all the hype and hoopla.

In a 2023 segment of The New York Times tech podcast Hard Fork, cohost Casey Newton posited, "If you think about these things as a plagiarism engine (a phrase coined by Tom's Hardware Editor-in-Chief Avram Piltch), it makes sense that the more you . . . plagiarize a set body of work, it's just obvious that no new ideas are going to get in there." He compared relying on AI to chewing gum. "It's just going to lose its flavor over time," he said.

Citing findings by researchers at Oxford University, he added, "I do feel this is intuitive . . . If you just set up a model that recursively plagiarizes itself, it's going to become horrible."

The episode was titled "Is AI Poisoning Itself?" but the subhead said it all: "The missing ingredient in AI generated content might soon be human generated content."

"I think it has become clear to many that AI has its place — mainly in research and repetitive tasks but content that appears to be AI-generated is looked at askance," says Karen Danziger, Managing Partner at the elite New York City recruiting firm Koller Search Partners.

"Employers hiring content professionals want someone who is adept at emerging technology, such as AI, but skeptical and savvy enough to know dangers, limitations, warning signs . . ." she added. "Every new thing has a burst/boom of enthusiasm and then scales back to reality, practicality, et cetera."

Danziger concedes in her experience, AI is more of a requisite in the fields like HR, product/tech, and some finance roles, but less so for content. "Candidates tout knowledge/experience but I haven't seen clients really asking for it," she notes.

Of course, no one believes AI is going anywhere. It's simply too valuable a tool. As a result, many of the job functions and their "biological and technological distinctiveness" it assimilated in an eerily familiar Borg-like fashion have gone the way of the Sunday employment section for good.

That said, as long as there are clients who value originality and experience over bulk output, I'll be open to work. Chalk it up to the last gasp of optimism from a member of Generation Jones if you must, but I truly believe there are still some folks who prefer the taste and complexities only an older vintage can provide.

And if I don't know my CRM from my elbow? I'm hoping it's not the end of the world — at least not just yet.

Judy Cole Former Playgirl Editor-in-Chief Judy Cole’s writing has been featured in Creative Loafing, Charlotte Magazine, SKIRT! and on the Good News Network. She also scripted eight seasons of the award-winning PBS kids’ cooking/travel show Twice as Good. Updates on the re-release of her debut whodunit, "And Jilly Came Tumbling After," can be found on her website, www.judycoleink.com. Read More