Job Search in the Age of AI

0:02 Sam Rogers

Signals and subtractions. What to watch. What to drop. Every week.

0:10 Sam Rogers

Welcome to Signals and Subtractions.

I'm Sam Rogers, your host. This is not a Zoom background. We were laughing about it earlier. I'm actually in Cancun, Mexico today. So hopefully everything goes well with the internet here. I actually have faster speeds than I do ever, like anywhere in the US for some awesome reason. And for...

0:34 Christine Rodrigues

Let's be the equator.

0:36 Sam Rogers

Yes, it's the centrifugal force of the Earth,

0:39 Christine Rodrigues

That's right.

0:40 Sam Rogers

think. Getting closer to that, it spins the Wi-Fi out better. If only that were true.

0:43 Christine Rodrigues

Hehehehehe

0:44 Sam Rogers

We are happy to be here.

We have co-host Lee Rodriguez here and a very special guest. Why don't you introduce her, Lee?

0:52 Lee Rodrigues

Lee Rodriguez.

I'm just a co-host.

She is an amazing creative artist who is now taking all of her skills in marketing and helping people to take their job search and use a marketing approach to treat your job search like you would if you're trying to sell a product Maybe you're the product and maybe you aren't thinking about it that way. How would you introduce yourself, Christine?

1:16 Christine Rodrigues

So thank you, Lee. First, we should note that we are married, partners in life and in business. Same last name. So how would I introduce myself? I started off my career in communications and after getting my MBA, switched over to the marketing and strategy side. So my two main businesses right now are, I work with nonprofit organizations to provide strategy and marketing support to them. And also working on this project for job seekers with Lee, I'm bringing kind of the behavior

behavioral and habit formation side of it. Lee's bringing instructional design, how to really organize this information so that people can understand it.

1:55 Sam Rogers

That's great.

It's great to have you here, Christine. Thank you, Lee, for bringing your lovely wife along. And it's a great opportunity to talk about things that this podcast is all about, which is how the world has changed with the onset of AI.

and how to work with that. But exactly what you're describing, Christine, is so important how it is that we are, as humans, in the middle of all this change, and in the middle of changing process and the emotions that AI doesn't have that are really real, that we do need to wrestle with, especially when undergoing something as occasionally demoralizing as a job

2:38 Christine Rodrigues

You know, it's interesting because my own signal runs parallel to signals that job seekers are typically experiencing when they're in their market. So, and I'm actually going to modify your formula slightly because I'm going to go signal noise subtraction signal.

the approach that I'm looking at AI from is with the mindset of a writer.

Right? So a lot of people use AI for a lot of things. I typically use it for writing and planning. And it's been fascinating. I've really latched onto it as a tool and it showed me, you know, kind of the bright side of it and the dark side of it. And I can literally feel it starting to change how I think. And so that that thought process is something that I've really paid attention to recently. So when I'm using it for writing.

The signal when you look at writing before AI was if you see good writing, meant a good writer did it. Right? So you could judge a written piece, you could judge the author of that piece. With AI, you start having the large language models spit out really polished prose, strings of letters and words in the ways that people would use them. And that can be great.

but sometimes the substance of the writing isn't quite right. We've all heard the stories, know, of AI slop and one of the things that Lee and I have discovered is, man, you can delegate and say, hey, make me a plan for this and it will create a five page formatted.

4:08 Lee Rodrigues

Thank

4:09 Christine Rodrigues

you know, lovely dividers

4:09 Lee Rodrigues

you.

4:11 Christine Rodrigues

and it's in your brand colors. And I look at that and I go, oh, wow, that looks great. But if you don't scratch beneath the surface, you know, we'll go back to that document later and start to have a conversation about it. And I go, what does this bullet point mean? I don't even know what this bullet point means, right? So it

4:27 Lee Rodrigues

Thank

4:28 Christine Rodrigues

looks good, but the substance might not be there.

so that's something that I've experienced and I think job seekers, the parallel to that is a good resume used to be the signal of a good candidate, right? And you as the hiring manager could look at your pile and say like, that's a good resume, that's a good resume. We'll interview all of those people. Now, what people do is they upload their resume, they upload their job description, and they say, make me a custom resume to match that job description exactly, which on the surface is a

my God, you could make custom resume after custom resume But the problem is that one, it's not really your authorship, right? And.

everybody else who is using the same tool and the same job description are coming up with very similar word combinations. So while that resume that you created, it looks beautiful and it looks polished. It's the exact same one as so many other people. And sometimes it doesn't quite make sense. there's a term called sovereignty, like thought sovereignty when it comes to AI. And I've found a couple of techniques to really help me.

maintain my sovereignty because I think it's an amazing tool, but I cannot delegate to it. It is not a person that I can say, you got this, go handle it. So the noise that's happening

5:48 Lee Rodrigues

So, thank

5:49 Christine Rodrigues

now is tons of polished writing out there. Maybe it's good, maybe it's not. Tons of polished resumes out there. So those signals, what used to be signals are now noise. And so you're having to find ways of fighting through that, right? So me,

As an individual writer, I've started chunking the information that I'm working with, right? So I never delegate a whole document and say, okay, I'm writing a document. Let's work on the intro. Let's work on this sentence. Let's work on this paragraph. Let's work on this page. And I keep a master document off to the side. And so I'm the one in control of what chunks are going into that document. And it never runs away from me.

When it comes out of Claude, there's these phrases that are in there all the time. Let's be honest about that. Stop and think about that. Like if I see you be honest one more time and it's really corporate speak and very stiff and vocabulary words that who uses that word?

So what I've been doing

6:46 Lee Rodrigues

Thank

6:47 Christine Rodrigues

is rather than when I use Claude like they're all my thoughts and my background and my context and then it spits out a paragraph, but it's not the way I would say it. And I found that like my fingers won't let me type something that I wouldn't say. And so as I'm transcribing that material, I'm going like, no, no, no.

No, no, no. Nobody would say it like that. That's a bad word. Put that into one compound sentence instead of two. So my voice is retained by that. And I think that goes for job seekers too when they're trying to create these custom resumes. If you just push a button and send, it's not really your document. And so one, it may look the same as, you know, three quarters of the other resumes received at that job, which could be in the hundreds.

Right? And when you receive 500 resumes as a hiring manager, you're looking for reasons to eliminate most of them because you can't review that many resumes. So if yours looks the same, bye, gone. And also, if the act of creating the resume, the act of writing is something that needs to be retained, right?

So if you're having AI create these bullet points in your resume, every bullet point is a story that you're potentially going to tell in an interview. And if you weren't involved in really creating that bullet point, you haven't been rehearsing for the interview. And so you may have a bunch of polished bullet points that looks great, formatted beautifully, and then you get into an interview

8:17 Lee Rodrigues

Thank you.

8:17 Christine Rodrigues

room and you're asked to defend something that you didn't write and you can't even remember what was there.

The signal used to be quality writing meant quality person. And now with all the polish that's out there, I heard somebody describe it and I thought this was brilliant. The polish that AI writing gives to you is an anesthetic. I think that's brilliant because I've seen it. What do you think about this document? I'm like, oh, it looks great. Ah, you're nodding along. You're like, yeah, that's great. No, it's not great. It just looks great.

So we've got to get around that noise by finding the ways to preserve the human, preserve the human in this process, the original thought, the voice, the taste, the style, the judgment.

9:02 Sam Rogers

That's fantastic. Thank you, Christine, for the signal and subtraction and noise rolled into one. Lee, you can go ahead and feel free to do your signal and subtraction back to back too.

9:13 Lee Rodrigues

So my signal has been, you may have a portfolio site. And that portfolio site could have been forgotten through all of your changes to your resume and your LinkedIn. So maybe a...

take that portfolio site, take that LinkedIn profile, take that resume and tell your Claude, hey, do some black hat thinking for me. Are these three people, this resume, this LinkedIn profile and this portfolio site, are they the same person? Because I did mine three days ago, they were not the same person. They had gone in different directions and Claude was like, are you sure this is you?

9:52 Sam Rogers

Yeah.

9:52 Lee Rodrigues

And I'm like, bruh.

Apparently I stopped doing stuff in 2015 according to my portfolio site because I just you know, it gets forgotten. If you're have a website, keep it up to date and keep it simple and keep a narrative. And if you're not going to keep up with it, my subtraction is get rid of that portfolio site.

or do what I did over the past couple of days and make it a very simple, clean, beautiful one page scrolling site and get rid of everything that is unnecessary. And I'll tell you what it feels like spring cleaning when you're looking at a messy page going, no, I don't think I'm going to clean this page. I think I'm going to unpublish this page and get rid

10:34 Christine Rodrigues

You

10:34 Lee Rodrigues

of it because I don't know what the hell I had a point when I was like, I'm going to go all nonprofit. I'm going to change the world. Then I realized.

Yeah, I'm really well suited for specific use cases in the corporate world So what I do is a lot of workflow based stuff for corporations and then a bunch of small businesses. do media production, YouTube videos, teachable, how you teach over video, that sort of stuff. It's always been one I'm good at. And my website didn't reflect that even just a little bit. And it's like, well,

So all your current clients are businesses who are trying to do social media to get some videos out there to tell stories about how they work. And your website says nothing even close to that. So that signal is to make sure those things that we have out there, be it a portfolio site, a LinkedIn, a resume, make sure they're aligned.

then all your assets become very simple because you do this ridiculous activity of making sure your resume makes sense and it's all lined up and it works. Align the LinkedIn to that, align the portfolio to that. But if you're trying to wiggle all these at the same time, that's how you paint yourself into a corner and say, I hate them all. I want to start over. Hey, Claude, can you get me a resume? looks like everyone else's. And Claude certainly will, 100%.

11:50 Christine Rodrigues

instantly.

11:51 Sam Rogers

Yes.

11:51 Lee Rodrigues

Instantly.

11:52 Sam Rogers

Hahaha

11:53 Christine Rodrigues

It sounds

like you're talking about, I mean, signal, but you had multiple signals and the signals weren't aligned, which means they were really noise.

12:03 Lee Rodrigues

they were noise

12:04 Sam Rogers

I love your framing of it too, when you have multiple signals that aren't quite lined up, that's called noise.

So just as AI has changed what it's like to be a job seeker, it's also changed how jobs are listed. It's changed what the function of a recruiter is, what those interviews and that hiring process sifting through the pile of resumes as you referenced Christine, all of that part is different. And it impacts everything.

So just like having a great resume used to be a signal of maybe a great employee. Because the floor has been raised on what the quality of good is, now the noise floor has been raised. And as a hiring manager, going through a digital stack of hundreds of resumes, as is not uncommon to get 1,000 applicants in a 48-hour period for a role,

12:57 Christine Rodrigues

Yep. Yep.

13:00 Sam Rogers

being able to sift through that,

First off, let me just say, don't use AI for that. Don't just give the stack of a thousand resumes to chat GPT and say, find the five people I'm going to interview. Illegal in most places. Not everybody knows that, but you should. Don't do that. But even as a human, having been on the other end of this, as you have too, Lee, you've got a stack of a bunch of things and you're looking for anything that makes me think too much is the first pass.

And then from what's left, here's the things that look way too similar. Next pass. Okay, what's left? Now I've got a manageable number of maybe 80 to 100 that I can actually look at and actually go through. So the signal that I wanted to talk about, that's all the preamble, is what AI is really great at, which is

13:55 Christine Rodrigues

Mm.

13:56 Sam Rogers

in the distribution curve, like a normal distribution of tasks.

14:02 Christine Rodrigues

Mm-hmm.

14:02 Sam Rogers

is really good at the stuff in the middle of that normal distribution. It's less

14:07 Christine Rodrigues

Hmm.

14:08 Sam Rogers

good at the stuff that's on the edges. And this has been shown in

14:11 Christine Rodrigues

Mm.

14:11 Sam Rogers

study after study. The more famous one is a Mount Sinai one that ChatGPT did on their medical offering using AI to answer questions. And what they found was AI is really good at answering questions that are the most common ones, but it's really crap.

at answering anything that's on either end of that normal question range and inferring

14:36 Christine Rodrigues

Mm.

14:36 Sam Rogers

things there, was much, much worse than humans. Even though you do get the performance and cost that insurance companies are interested in to be able to get those basic things, right? It's the same with resumes.

So if you want a resume that looks really strong in that middle of the distribution curve, basically that looks like an average of all of the resumes that are out there, if you want to look like that, then you should absolutely use AI to make your resume look as average as possible, because that is by default what will happen. But when you want to do things on either end, to stand out.

15:10 Christine Rodrigues

Like like

be one of the top five that they select

15:13 Sam Rogers

yeah, that top 5 % is on the leading head of the distribution curve, right? So if you want to be there, making it something that is less reliant on AI, specifically for that end-to-end process, like you're suggesting, Christine, is a great move. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't use AI or you can't use AI in parts of the process, but the targeting, as you were describing, I think is spot on.

It can really help with stuff, but ultimately, you're the one that owns the process. take ownership over that process. And most importantly, I love that idea of like, you know, if this works, you might have to talk about bullet three in the second job that you have there. It'd be good if you knew what that was and what it meant. So you're not just

16:04 Christine Rodrigues

Yeah.

16:05 Sam Rogers

vamping in the interview. Yeah.

16:07 Christine Rodrigues

You

16:07 Lee Rodrigues

we've

covered this before what you become is that kid sitting in class who has to give a book report on a book you have not read and that is very clear in an interview

the whole purpose of a resume since the beginning of resumes has been to leave some signal or marker that sets you aside that makes you memorable

All the people that I hired for my roles had one thing. had one candidate I was looking for, and this guy was an editor for a small town newspaper for four years. And it turned out he was an exceptionally good writer. And a lot of the job was writing, and his writing was top notch. And our communications, outreach, and everything leveled up when this dude came on. And I could see that solving a problem I had for my team.

Another person was a creative costume designer for years on cruise ships. And it comes out improvising on video shoots, having someone who's used to getting the show to go on for the club med performance on the boat that is going to happen in 30 minutes ready or not. That attitude that I can make this work was perfect for production, right? That set them aside. But if you use AI to draft the resume, what you've done has made yourself completely not memorable.

You have just buried yourself at the 80%. And what we're all saying here is the corner cases are really shitty or memorable. And you're kind of going for the memorable. And if you stick to your boring resume format and have Claude polish a couple things, you may be more memorable because you're someone who actually wrote the damn resume.

17:42 Christine Rodrigues

Well, what you guys are talking about is having to put the human back into the process. And this is something that you hear in the, recruiting field right now is that, the resume is broken, right? Because again, it used to be this great signal. The other thing is just the easy apply button, right? And so,

what method are people using to find the job openings? If they're going to job boards, they're finding the same jobs as thousands of other people and you're praying that you're one of the top five. And so one of the things that we tell people is you need to be more human in the part of the process where you're finding jobs to even apply for. And this is what really throws people off because they're like, I don't want to pick up the phone. That's going to seem like I want something from them.

my gosh, you need to be a human being having conversations with other human beings

so for a brief period of time, you know, having these technology tools made it better for everybody in the market. But then they got so much better that they then broke it. And so it's bogged down. These methods just don't work anymore. So companies like internal referrals.

The recruiters are doing outreach to like contact human beings. And so it's not just the resume part of it. You also have to really think about how you're identifying the opportunities and developing human relationships outside of that cycle because otherwise you're with the herd and maybe you'll get a job that way, but the chances are very, very, very slim.

19:13 Lee Rodrigues

Well then that goes into the, guess what? Instead of hitting on two girls with the same terrible pickup lines, I hit 10 girls tonight with terrible pickup lines and the results was pretty much the same.

19:30 Christine Rodrigues

The same. Yeah. Yeah.

19:32 Sam Rogers

Yeah,

That's a good analogy to draw there. Like, how does it feel being on the other end of that?

Jobs are really human things, right? So remembering that that is a human network, it's often a human phone call, like this doesn't need to scale, actually. It doesn't need

19:51 Christine Rodrigues

Yeah.

19:51 Sam Rogers

to reach bigger numbers. It needs to reach the right numbers

19:56 Christine Rodrigues

that's right.

19:56 Lee Rodrigues

How about some current events?

19:58 Christine Rodrigues

Good point.

19:58 Lee Rodrigues

I just

heard recently that a guy, forget what state he was in, he tried to kill his wife.

They subpoenaed his chat GPT logs and they found a chat with chat GPT, how to kill your wife and get away with it. And it's like, yes, premeditated. It's premeditated. And he's like, he told his attorney, there's no way. attorney's like, there is no client attorney privilege with the tool on your phone. It is a communication device. We're gonna say, if you literally went to chat GPT and said, how do I kill my wife and get away with it? It's like,

that entire thing is going to appear in a courtroom. And it's like, do not think that one of these corporations is going to spare you to protect themselves over something you shouldn't have been saying in your phone to begin with. Let's just say a little further here, maybe morally you shouldn't try to kill your wife. You know, that's kind of where we're at. Anyway, that was a distraction, not a subtraction.

20:57 Sam Rogers

Yeah, being that your wife is on the call, I think that is the appropriate position to take, Lee. Thank you for

21:02 Christine Rodrigues

I endorse this statement.

21:04 Sam Rogers

that.

21:04 Lee Rodrigues

Hahaha!

21:06 Sam Rogers

Well, not only is there no attorney-client privilege, but like when it comes to medical records and the privileges that we often give AI with regards to our medical history or psychological history, people using it as you would use a psychologist

There are risks there. And as long as you know what the risks are, and you can manage those appropriately with your communications, no different than you would at a backyard barbecue or a cocktail party or a restaurant, right? Like we have certain conversations that are at this distance for someone across the table. And then there's the things that we, it's okay if people overhear, right? Like we know how to manage that as people in personal situations. We've never had to have that skill quite as strong.

for how it is that we work with AI. But it really does make a difference. And it's not that different. Yes, simple hygiene. And

21:58 Christine Rodrigues

Yeah, yeah.

22:00 Sam Rogers

I love the sovereignty of thought.

22:03 Christine Rodrigues

sovereignty.

22:04 Sam Rogers

That's a good word for it. From the very beginning, my first exposure to AI was with running local models on my local laptop before they put the chat in ChatGPT, being able to run local models locally.

That, just for anyone listening, opens up new possibilities that don't have to do with what you're sharing with the clouds, what you're sharing with OpenAI or Google or Microsoft or Anthropic or whatever. When you can run AI locally, it's not connected to the internet, it's not spying on you or doing anything. So, especially for businesses and regulated industries who may be listening to this.

know that just because it's AI, that doesn't mean it's bad and it's going to compromise all your IP. That's a cloud issue. And the benefits of AI can still run on your local devices, behind your firewall, on your phone even. There's actually no known lower bound yet. So we've been able to take this technology and get it to work on lesser and lesser quality devices. Now that said, it's not going to be GPT 5.6 Sol

running on your cell phone. It's not going to be that good.

23:20 Lee Rodrigues

Well,

you can run it locally so then only Facebook is listening to your conversations and advertising to you about that. Are we getting close

23:26 Sam Rogers

Right.

23:30 Lee Rodrigues

to the advertisement time because we are...

23:32 Sam Rogers

Why

don't we do that? That's a great idea.

And this just in, Christine Rodriguez has a new report.

23:42 Christine Rodrigues

Still searching the old way, finding firing applications into the void and hearing nothing back. The market changed. AI broke it. Volume and polish don't work anymore. System 2 focus is a smarter, calmer approach to job search. Strategy over spray and pray. Signal over noise. A real system, not just a pile of tips. So stop

Counting your number of applications and start running an actual strategic search. Get our free newsletter at system2focus.com. That's system, the numeral two, focus.com. System to focus, a smarter approach for a serious search.

24:27 Sam Rogers

Thank you, Christine, from the field.

Well, thank you. I would like to get back to vacation. I've just been presented with a lovely mojito here. And why don't you tell the nice people at home how they can find out about you and System 2 Focus, starting with Lee.

24:48 Lee Rodrigues

System2Focus.com. And this is all about a systematic performance first approach around the workflow of a job search. And why does this matter? Because all the times you do a job, you're a part of a team and you're all working together. Second you lose your job, you're on your own.

And sometimes we send a hundred resumes a week for a while. Once that peters out and you realize it doesn't affect, you may say, nothing I'm doing is working. this is the right time for you to use a workflow based system, which takes the mental aspects that happen with this. And I have a background on mindfulness and yoga and working through my own PTSD from army stuff back in the day.

taught me ways to bring the focus back. And we use all of those skills through this. And we take Christine's approach of really being a master of marketing and saying, do all these tools in marketing to sell a product. What if you became the product? You would do some market research. You would do some interviews. You would do some analysis. You would think about the words that you're using. It almost seems like that would work for a job search approach.

Christine, maybe we should start a business around this and start teaching people how to do it. What do you say we

26:07 Christine Rodrigues

You

26:08 Lee Rodrigues

do workshops, a series of six workshops starting in September?

26:13 Christine Rodrigues

That's right. We've got a webinar series that we've created to help people understand the different stages. We call it a workflow because one thing that I see when job seekers come to me and they're like, I'm just, I'm not getting anything. you know, I'm really getting frustrated and wondering if it's ever going to work. say, well, honey, you keep jamming yourself into step five.

Right, of course nothing's working, but we get so wrapped up in it But that we're not willing to stop and go in reverse back to step one So we have the step process We'll have webinars starting in September And if you'd like to hear about what we have to offer because we're adding new things all the time go to system 2 focus.com

Sign up for our newsletter. You can also find us on LinkedIn both Lee and I as individuals and we also have a system 2 focus company page. We're also on Facebook and Instagram. And if you happen to be a non-profit looking for strategic planning, you can also find us at randpassociates.com

27:11 Sam Rogers

Sounds great. Well, thank you both for being a part of this It's great to have you here, Christine. Really great to see what you're doing and how much help you can bring to people who are mid job search in the age of AI. Thanks again, Lee, as always, for being co-host.

27:31 Christine Rodrigues

Always a pleasure, Sam.

27:32 Lee Rodrigues

Thanks

27:32 Christine Rodrigues

Adios.

27:33 Lee Rodrigues

a lot.

27:34 Sam Rogers

Thanks and I'm your host Sam Rogers. It's been nice streaming with you from Cancun, Mexico. stay tuned next week when we will have Sabino Marquez coming to talk about the CISO perspective in the age of AI. Looking forward to a great show there. please come visit at sigsub.show. That's where our newsletter is. That's where you'll find previous episodes.

where we'll drop the polished podcast on Fridays and the newsletter on Sundays. Live streaming again next Wednesday. Hope to see you then.