Are Resumes Dead? AI, Ageism & The Real Deal on Job Hunting
"AI is going to happen no matter what." - Ben Baker
Let’s get real: the job hunt is no longer just about a polished resume and a firm handshake. In this episode, Ben and Syya dive headfirst into the messy, fascinating, and sometimes downright absurd world of hiring in the AI age.
✨ From why your social media might land you a job (or get you ghosted) to how referrals beat resumes, this episode dishes out the tea on everything from ageism in hiring to the rise of gig work.
💡 Spoiler alert: AI is everywhere, but humans are still the X factor.
What you’ll walk away with:
🚀 Why resumes are getting replaced by algorithms and attitude
📱 How your TikTok might matter more than your GPA
🤖 The good, the bad, and the cringey of AI in hiring
👵 The truth about age bias and second acts in your career
💼 Why gig and consulting work might just be your ticket to freedom
📣 And how companies need to stop hiring like it’s 1999
If you're a job seeker, career changer, or just wondering if your LinkedIn posts are helping or hurting, this one’s for you.
👉 Hit that play button. Your career might just thank you.
#HiringTrends #FutureOfWork #AIinHiring #JobSearchTips #CareerAdvice #SocialMediaMatters #ResumeTips #GigEconomy #Ageism #RecruitmentRevolution
Transcript
If there's one thing we've learned about business and life is that people are the X
factor.
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:They constantly surprise us both in amazing ways and not so much.
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:We're Ben and Sia and welcome to the Nod On This Business Bites podcast.
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:This show is all about real life things we all deal with every day, how they relate to
business and how to make some sense out of our daily chaos.
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:Welcome to the show.
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:And welcome back to another episode of non this business bites.
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:I'm Ben and this is Sia.
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:Now I was talking to some people the other day and we came up with an idea that we thought
would be really good because you know your typical resume it's two pages of SEO is what it
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:is.
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:It's can you get every single word that's in the application onto your resume in such a
way so some tracking system can go through your resume.
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:and tick boxes and make sure, yes, yes, he's got this, yes, he's got this, yes, he's got
this.
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:Okay, now let's give it to a human being.
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:What if we could go beyond two pieces of
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:Every single one of us, or at least the vast majority of us, have been on social media for
years.
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:What if we, if we gave permission, enabled AI to track us across our social media, take a
look and sit there and say, who are we truly as a human being?
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:I mean, for me, for instance, I've written two books.
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:I've got 200 plus LinkedIn articles.
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:I've written articles for 30 different magazines.
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:I've got two podcasts, including this one, and a variety of different people that I've had
interviews with over the years, probably 500 or a thousand of them.
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:There is a vast majority, a library of stuff that gives people a great idea of who I am,
what I do, why I do it, how I do it, and how I could probably add benefit to them.
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:And if we could train AI.
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:to be able to look at that composite of information and get a more holistic view of me as
a human being, prior to them making a decision of whether to throw my resume in the
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:garbage or actually move it forward, I think this would be better not only for us as
people looking for a job, but for companies that are looking to hire to have a better idea
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:of who they're getting in bed with.
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:So Sia, let's nod this.
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:Okay.
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:you're bringing up something that I haven't thought about in 20 plus years.
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:And so I think my information is going to be hella outdated.
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:So full disclosure, everyone in the audience, they're chatting with us, chatting away.
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:I'm curious, give me numbers.
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:How many years has it been since you've done an actual interview?
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:I'm curious because I think this conversation is going to be vastly different between
people who have recently interviewed and people who haven't, right?
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:Absolutely.
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:My understanding of, and I think you might be creating a brand new product, by the way.
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:So this is our unpatented ideas.
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:Don't be stealing at you people's entrepreneurs.
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:uh, yeah.
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:So Ben, let's think about this.
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:So we know in this day and age, most things are automated and especially when it comes to
the hiring process.
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:So usually the first quote line, I don't want to call it line of defense.
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:Let's just say first process, first step process in the job.
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:seeking journey is typically, submit your resume into a amorphous cloud system.
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:And if you're lucky, you're allowed to put a cover letter with it that gives it little bit
more human fit.
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:But let's go from there.
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:Let's assume that.
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:Okay.
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:So let's, let's make this my assumption.
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:Then my assumption is maybe your ultimate question is, is not so much do we trust AI, but
it is knowing that's going to be integral, integral, integral, what ads part of the
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:process.
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:What if it is.
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:We reprogram sell a new program for the human resources, peoples of the world, recruiting
peoples of the world.
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:where you have the ability to submit what I call unstructured data to them.
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:And I'm using a technical term, but that's what the social media is.
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:Like look at my quote social.
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:When we say social media, we're not talking about your tech talk dances.
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:Okay.
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:We're talking about what, what have you leveraged?
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:AKA LinkedIn, for example.
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:And if you are doing tick tock, maybe you're talking about business concepts.
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:that can further augment like your brand to that company.
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:So AI doesn't just look at a piece of paper to say, nah, nah, nah, nah, nope.
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:You don't have all the SEO keywords we're looking for.
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:So therefore you're rejected, right?
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:So that's my answer to you is AI is going to happen no matter what, whatever software
program that they're going to use on the HR side to scan and read through things they
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:think is potentially the best candidates, it is what it is.
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:But I do think
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:all those companies that have that program, you should add in a section of, what are your
social media handles?
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:They may do it already.
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:Correct me.
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:Everyone tell me in the audience if I'm wrong or not, but, you know, what's your social
media handles?
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:Is there a QR code that we can find it?
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:What's your link tree?
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:If you want to just do it, here's my link tree code that goes everything, maybe specific
highlighted videos.
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:Here's some interviews that I've done.
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:then you're allowing that hyperlink, access.
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:So yes, I'm right there with you.
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:But it's also the interpretation of it because yeah, there's a lot of companies that sit
there and say, okay, give us your YouTube channel.
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:They give us your LinkedIn profile.
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:They give you that.
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:And they'll give it a cursory look as a human being.
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:Says, yep, he's got one.
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:Okay.
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:It doesn't look horrible.
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:There's no pictures of him, you know, parting down on South Beach.
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:Okay, fine.
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:know, topless bikini pictures and all those types of things.
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:Fine.
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:Okay.
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:There's none of that stuff.
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:It takes an enormous amount of time and effort for a human being to comb through your
social media.
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:I've been on LinkedIn for 17 years.
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:You know, I have produced over a thousand podcasts of my own.
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:I've probably been on another 500 podcasts.
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:AI can do that in a matter of seconds.
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:Within a matter of seconds, AI can look through all of that data and be able to sit there
and say, okay, here's a more
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:holistic picture of who this human being is.
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:And is it going to be perfect?
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:No, it's not.
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:But what it is, is it's going to give a far better representation of a candidate as a
human being and the various things that we should be looking at, say, here's some things
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:that I want to look at when I'm looking at this person's social media platform and have
the AI bot go out there and search based on that criteria.
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:So it enables us to be, use technology as technology should be.
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:Now there are people out there that don't want to have their social media combed.
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:It's going to get combed anyway.
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:The question is, is it going to get combed in a way that's going to help you or hinder
you?
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:You know, honey, it's so 20, it's 20, 25.
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:Yeah.
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:It better be help you not hindered you.
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:Let's let's like at this stage, if you're sitting there doing like, you know, upside down
beer pong shots, you know that that better be part of your fricking branding by now.
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:I mean, none of this should be a shocker.
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:And again, I feel like.
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:Well, maybe for the youngins.
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:Hey, did you know that just because Snapchat has eight seconds, you know we still have
access to it,
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:All you need is somebody to share your snap on Instagram or on to Facebook or something
like that and it's there forever.
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:And it's there forever.
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:So, okay, let's talk about this though.
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:Okay.
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:There is something inherently, I don't want to say unfair about the fact that, you know, I
don't say unfair, but it does suck.
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:AI could potentially do false negatives, meaning like they dump you because you just
didn't, you know, look right.
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:but can we argue though?
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:At least it's objectively.
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:rejecting you versus like a human recruiter looking and going, I don't like their font
next.
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:You know, there's a bias removal.
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:I think, I think that maybe I'm just trying not to defend the AI, but I'm just saying
maybe a combination of the two, maybe check, check.
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:I'm sure there's gotta be these software programs where it says, the AI is rejecting it,
but here's people who hit 70%.
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:And then it gives that.
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:Maybe it needs it down for the humans to go.
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:Okay.
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:Let me look, right?
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:mean, someone tell me, I don't know.
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:I don't know, man.
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:I think that there always has to be a human final stop.
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:Yeah.
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:There always has to be a human final stop.
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:Okay.
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:Here, let's be realistic.
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:You know, human resources puts an ad out there.
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:They're going to get three, four, 500 people that apply for a job.
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:60 to 70 % of those people have no right whatsoever to be applying for those jobs because
they've got maybe 20 % of the things, but they sit there and say,
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:I can create an AI bot that's going to apply for every job under the sun for me, so I'm
going to do that.
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:So you have all that going on.
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:The trick is to sit there and say, how do we sit there and say the people that are
questionable, people that sit there and a second, they're right on the threshold.
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:Maybe we should look at more information.
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:Maybe we should look at more information to sit there and say, OK.
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:Are they truly who they say they are or are they worth another look so we can give more
information to the human beings that are actually coming through that last line of defense
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:to give them the opportunity to make better decisions.
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:And I think that that's what it's using is sitting there going, okay, I want the AI bot to
be looking for this, this, this, this, and this.
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:Here are the five criteria we want to look at within the social media.
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:How do they rank on this based on these objective things that we're looking for?
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:And I think if we can be smarter at the questions that we ask, we can come up with better
answers.
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:And I look at it and sit there and say, why not?
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:Why aren't we?
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:Why aren't we giving companies the opportunity to make better decisions?
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:Because right now it's a revolving door.
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:in HR.
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:People are lasting six days, six weeks, six months, 15 months.
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:And beyond that, it's a miracle.
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:You you look at people's resumes, you look at you talk to HR professionals, and the amount
of revolving door there is backfilling jobs that should not have to be backfilled, because
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:there's not a culture fit that there's not an alignment, there's not a purpose fit that
the persons out there just looking to, you know, see
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:If they can get a better job title at your company so they can apply for somebody else,
something else somewhere else, all that is out there.
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:And I think that the more information we can give people to make better decisions, the
better the hiring process is going to be for everybody.
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:So I'm really intrigued to hear about the experience of the job searcher.
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:Like is it
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:Like, I guess I've been very fortunate.
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:Like my two jobs that I had were referrals.
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:So is today's market for searching for your next thing?
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:it, I mean, is it, do we just have to accept the fact that either if we don't have a
referral, we're really slinging a ton of resumes out and hoping something catches?
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:how, what's that experience been?
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:Have you talked to folks about it?
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:Like, is it like-
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:I'm right there.
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:I'm right there.
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:I decided December 31st to burn down the ship.
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:I decided after 17 years of owning my own company and someone who hasn't done a resume in
30 years, hasn't looked for a job in 30 years, that it was time to go back in-house to
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:work for a mid to large corporation where I can be somewhere that can create impact and
somewhere where I can coach, mentor and lead the next generation.
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:I've decided it's time in my career to give back.
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:and be part of something bigger.
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:Now to do that, the truthfully is the real deep conversations I've had, the meaningful
conversations I've had, the ones that have been impactful are somewhere where I've known
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:someone or somebody I know has known someone.
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:If you're just putting your resume in without a back door, without having some magical
special skill, without having something that is
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:that it's very challenging out there.
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:And the truth of the matter is, the older you get, the more challenging it gets, and
there's other things involved.
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:But that's okay.
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:That's interesting.
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:mean, because the stuff that I want is very specific.
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:was just gonna say, think age, good, bad, ugly, and different kids, especially Sgen Xers,
we're aging out.
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:I don't wanna say we're aging out, but we are.
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:But you know what, we also are the ones that have been down the holes, that know the way
out and know how to avoid them.
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:And that's worth a lot of money to organizations.
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:I've saved companies millions of dollars because I know where the holes are and I know how
to avoid them.
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:something doesn't even know where the holes are.
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:You know where the bodies are buried so can avoid them.
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:So you're not digging and resurfacing them.
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:No, I'm thinking along the lines.
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:OK, so let's let me let me let me let me like modify our conversation a little bit further
and go let me ask this and go and ask.
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:Here we go.
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:Yo, here we go.
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:OK.
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:then we get lighted up with a
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:You don't, yeah, you can offer yourself up to pay it forward, know, as an employee, but
couldn't it be argued that the consulting, the gig economy is really more along the lines
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:of the direction corporate entities are moving towards?
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:Like, do we really want to be a full-time employee?
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:W nine maybe or 10 99.
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:There are arguments for both sides and that's a completely different conversation.
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:That conversation is completely different in the fact that you know what, whether you want
or:
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:to what are the things that are important to you, both as an organization and also
somebody wanting to be within the organization.
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:You know, not everybody wants to be self-employed.
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:Not everybody wants to be, you know, living a life where, you know, sometimes you're
really rich and sometimes you're living off your past experiences.
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:You know, I've been an entrepreneur for over 25 years.
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:It's got its great points, it's got its bad points.
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:So there's good days, there's bad days, and there's ugly days.
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:And you know what?
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:It all depends on what you're looking for and what's important to you as a person.
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:And also in an organization, some organizations want to have top tier talent in house.
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:You know, they, they know the unpredictability of the consulting market and there is a lot
of unpredictability in the.
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:But as I said, that's a different world.
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:Let's get into that next time.
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:But for today, the question lies, and this is something for everybody to ask for
themselves, whether they would as if they were applying for a job.
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:would they want an AI bot having the ability to comb through their social media and
through their online life to be able to enable a better understanding of who they are,
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:what they do, and why they do it.
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:And I'd be curious to hear what people are saying in the comments.
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:So let's leave it there.
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:I'm Ben, and we'll see you soon.
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:Hey hey hey, thanks for listening to another episode of Not On This, Business Fights.
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:and podcasting.
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:We cannot wait to hear from you.
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:See you next week for another episode of Non This Business Fights.
