When the bots start recruiting the bots
Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
Career Insight | AI, job search and the human touch Image by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
A recent Sydney Morning Herald article introduced me to Mavis.
Mavis is a bot.
More precisely, journalist Stephanie Wood uses “Mavis” as the name for a hypothetical personal AI job-hunting agent.
While you sleep, Mavis could search job boards, identify suitable opportunities, access your résumé, tailor applications and leave them waiting for you to review.
At the employer's end, Wood introduces Bob.
Bob is another bot.
Recruitment technology can already help employers sort applications, shortlist candidates, screen people and move them through, or out of, the hiring process.
Mavis, meet Bob.
Or, as the article puts it:
“The bots just botting each other.”
It made me smile.
Then the rest of the article reminded me of client situations I've seen in the past.
The frustration.
The helplessness.
The gradual loss of confidence.
Sometimes getting to the point where someone feels like giving up.
Behind all this technology are people trying to find work.
One person in Wood's article had made about 50 applications without a face-to-face interview. Another had applied for more than 100 jobs over two years. Others were dealing with ageism, financial pressure, housing insecurity and career uncertainty.
That's the part that stayed with me.
Don't fight the technology
We've had versions of this conversation before.
Street directory or GPS?
Printed book or ebook?
Petrol or electric car?
New technology arrives. Some people embrace it. Some resist it. Most of us eventually work out where it fits.
AI will probably be no different.
That doesn't mean every use of it is good.
But refusing to engage with it simply because we don't like the change probably isn't very useful career advice either.
Learn it.
Experiment with it.
Question it.
Use a lot of it or very little.
Work out where it helps you.
Jobseekers are already using AI to research organisations, understand industries, tailor résumés, identify gaps and prepare for interviews.
Employers are using AI too.
So perhaps the question isn't whether you should use it.
How do you use AI without letting it take over to the point where you no longer recognise yourself?
What makes you, you?
Wood's article makes an important point that isn't mine.
As AI becomes more involved in recruitment, human relationships may become more important, not less.
That left me thinking about what this means for the jobseeker.
If everyone can use AI to produce a polished application, a polished application on its own probably isn't going to make you stand out.
So what will?
What makes you, you?
Sometimes it's what I call an ordinary superpower.
Something you do so naturally that you barely think it's worth mentioning, but other people notice and value.
And often there are story-worthy moments hiding behind it.
The time you noticed something other people missed.
The customer you handled differently.
The problem everyone assumed was just part of the job until you found a better way.
The new colleague who kept coming to you because you could explain things without making them feel silly.
The situation you sorted out that you still describe as, “I was just doing my job.”
Those little stories can tell me far more about you than another impressive sentence on a résumé.
They give us evidence.
They show how you think, how you work and what other people might value about having you around.
AI can help polish your words. Your story-worthy moments have to come from you.
Not every recruitment process gives you easy access to another person. Not everyone has an established professional network either.
But even if your application has to go through a machine, there can still be a recognisable human being inside it.
And don't assume you have to wait for a vacancy to be advertised before you start looking for the humans.
I have a Thinking Partner
There's an obvious elephant in the room.
I use AI.
Quite a lot.
One of the jobseekers in Wood's article describes using it as a “thought-starter” and “study buddy”.
I smiled when I read that too.
I have what I call a Thinking Partner.
This Career Insight is an example.
I read Wood's article, brought my reaction to my Thinking Partner and started exploring. We challenged assumptions, looked for evidence and went back and forth with suggestions, rejections and further editing.
(You're reading version 7, by the way.)
And it got things wrong.
At one point, we'd taken an argument from Wood's article and started treating it as though we'd developed it ourselves.
So we went back to the original source, checked it and changed the draft.
That's why my judgement stays in the process.
AI makes mistakes. It makes assumptions. And it can write something very convincingly that isn't quite what I think.
I don't use AI because it knows what I think. I use it because it can help me think.
The same applies to a job application
Use AI to help you research, recognise transferable skills, articulate your experience, test your evidence or prepare for an interview.
But I'd add one very simple instruction to your prompt:
Don't lie.
If information is missing, ask me.
Don't invent experience I don't have.
Don't give me technical knowledge I don't possess.
Don't fill the gaps with something that merely sounds plausible.
And don't make me sound like someone I'm not.
Because a brilliant AI-generated application might work.
It might get you the interview.
Then you have to be the person the application said you were.
If you can't explain the terminology, defend the claims or tell the story behind the achievement, AI hasn't necessarily helped you.
It may simply have moved the problem to a more uncomfortable place.
Use AI to help tell your story. Don't ask it to invent you a better one.
AI can help you articulate your experience, identify transferable skills and prepare for an interview. But you still need to recognise yourself in what it produces and be able to stand behind it.
Keep looking for the humans
Wood's article finishes with Amanda Bowler.
At 48, after a long career in hairdressing and business ownership, she'd completed an honours degree in psychology and was trying to move into a different field.
After around 50 applications without a face-to-face interview, her application finally progressed.
Then came a video interview with a human being.
Then came a job offer in child protection.
And Amanda turned it down.
At almost the same time, she learned she'd received a Commonwealth Supported Place and decided to return to university for her master's instead.
I like that ending.
After an article full of algorithms, screening systems, bots and recruitment technology, the final career decision wasn't made by Mavis.
Or Bob.
Amanda made it.
That's the part I don't want us to lose.
Use the tools.
Learn how the systems work.
Adapt when what you're doing isn't working.
Find the humans where you can.
And where you can't, make sure there's still a recognisable human being in your application.
Keep your judgement.
Keep your agency.
Keep turning up.
Just don't keep turning up in exactly the same way when it isn't working.
Sources & acknowledgement
This Career Insight was prompted by Stephanie Wood's “‘The bots just botting each other’: In the world of jobseeking, an absurd future is upon us”, published in the Sydney Morning Herald / Good Weekend, 29 August 2026.
Wood's reporting is the source for Mavis and Bob, the jobseeker experiences discussed above, the use of AI by candidates and employers, and the argument that human relationships may become increasingly important as AI becomes more involved in recruitment.
Read Stephanie Wood's original Sydney Morning Herald article
Additional evidence used to test the thinking behind this Career Insight included 2026 Australian research from Robert Half on the challenges employers report in identifying standout candidates, including high application volumes and AI-generated CVs.