For all of the job seekers, recruiters and hiring managers, this one is for you.

It’s a story about my last four months, grinding through a job search market that’s by turns broken, on fire, depressed and volatile.

It covers the context for where we are now. It shines a torch into the job seeker experience – both my personal journey and blood boiling experiences from other people. It offers some advice, and a potential way to help job seekers beat AI bots.

Darren Caveney calls it “a brilliant, worrying and important new guest post which is essential reading”. High praise indeed – and I’m super grateful to him for publishing it through the excellent comms2point0 platform.

Darren’s one of the good ones, which is why I wanted to collaborate with him to publish on Comms2point0, rather than here. I’ve known him through various job searches for years – if you’re hunting for a new comms role, specifically in the public sector, do get in touch with him.

So, without further ado – this is “The long, hard road of job search in 2025”.

I’d love to know what you think.