Also a consulting background here. I was in serious client & job search 12 months ago and it took about six months before I got any traction. The things that helped me, that I was *not* finding in all the traditional/popular sources:
– Lose some attachment to looking for consulting work and clients. I’ve been a freelance consultant for 23 years; looking for a day job felt like hanging up my hat. I resolved that I wasn’t making a decision for the rest of my career but for 2026, and I’d think about 2027+ in Q3 2026. I’d rather be paid by a day job to revitalise my consulting business in a year than not be paid by anyone to do the same task.
– “The generals are always preparing to fight the last war, not the next war.” My approach to the job search, including my CV, LinkedIn, etc., was all set up to find me my last job, not my next job. It’s hard to be more specific, but fixing this meant figuring out what I was unusually good at that clients or employers would pay well for, and then changing things so that they would find me *and* recognise that I was what they wanted. Trivial example: no recruiter will ever search LinkedIn for profiles that are “thought leader looking for next role”; they might search for “Supply Chain | Strategy, Planning, & Delivery | Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle Supply Chain & Manufacturing”.
– Understand the Job To Be Done of each job search artefact. 10 years ago I could write my CV in a way to persuade clients to engage my consulting services. Today I think no one is making a decision to hire based (solely) on a CV. The job of the cover letter is to get someone to read the CV. The job of the first six lines in the CV is to get someone to read the rest of the CV. The job of the CV overall is to get a screening call. The job of the screening call is to get an interview. The job of each interview stage is to get to the next stage. I found I approached everything differently with this in mind: I was no longer trying to convince them to hire me at each step (a big ask) but to feel safe to progress me to the next stage without anyone questioning their judgement. Much easier; much less stressful; helped me stay on track for what *they* cared about rather than what *I* cared about.
– In a world where everyone is desperate for work, distrustful of expertise, thinks themselves qualified for everything, and has outsourced everything to AI, there are few Big Wins. It’s all about incrementally improving the numbers. Cold inbound – where we apply for a job – is now the hardest way to gain work. My job search strategy now is to bypass that wherever possible. I’d rather recruiters contact me – so why would they even know I exist or think that I was a great candidate? I rewrote my LinkedIn based on what recruiters look for and care about. I do still look for work on LinkedIn… to identify the individual recruiters (LinkedIn often names them) and the recruitment companies they work for. I *always* Follow both. I do *not* send Connection requests; they get a million of those and its a turnoff. “Following” is lower key, less in their face, they don’t have to do anything about it… but they do still get the notification that someone followed them. That alone sometimes gets a “who is this rando” click… and now a recruiter is reading my LinkedIn.
– Become a power user of AI and LinkedIn in actually useful and non-slimy ways. LLM prompt: “I’m interested in [this sort of work, with this range of job titles]. Who are the top 50 recruitment agencies who recruit for these roles in London, and for remote work in the UK and that can be done from the UK? I am a UK citizen and also an EU citizen if that helps.” Then one by one take those firms and look for them in LinkedIn. Follow the company page. Then search people who work for that firm with “Recruit” or “Talent” or “Scout” or “Hiring” in their job titles. Follow every single one of them. Repeat for all the recruitment firms. Likewise repeat for places you’d like to work at, look for their internal talent/recruitment/etc people. Follow them too.
– Be responsive. Respond to everyone who ever sends you a message on LinkedIn. Even the spammers and scammers. Have your friends send you messages just so you can respond to them. Recruiters see this – LinkedIn tells them how likely it thinks a person is to respond, and it affects our rankings in their search. If a recruiter reaches out: respond. Same day definitely, same hour if you can. (But they know many people can’t during business hours.) Fast and helpful response leaves a good impression. They are more likely to present us to their clients if we do this. If they or the client ever ask a question: respond fast. Don’t ever be the one they have to follow up with. It apparently also leaves a good impression if we follow up with *them*, with a reasonable and calm judgement of when it is right to do so. Not the next day. A week later is fine to touch base and gently and calmly ask if there’s been movement, or if they have any feedback on our CV. Always act on every piece of feedback – this is essentially part of the screening process. “Can this candidate accept and act on feedback decisively and immediately?”
– One CV per job isn’t practical. One CV per *job title* is. I have about a dozen CVs now because the work I do is described by at least that many job titles. There are some differences between each one, based sometimes on recruiter feedback, and sometimes on (heavily scrutinised) AI comments.
– Back to AI: do not let AI write your job materials or LinkedIn profile. Everyone else is, and the default settings mean everyone reads the same. At an absolute minimum use “set temperature=2.0” in *every* new prompt because that at least makes it sound not like everyone else’s. Asking “how well does this CV match this job ad” is a good use of AI so long as it’s you rewriting it based on that. “Ask all questions needed to give the best answer, and do not proceed with answering until you have all that information” should also be at the end of every prompt.
– One more on AI: it can be *amazingly* helpful for interview prep. I have said “here’s the job ad, here’s the CV I used to get to this interview, here’s the LinkedIn profiles of my interviewer(s). What questions can I reasonably expect in a 30/45/60 minute interview? Rank them by probability of being asked, most likely first. Always include ‘Tell me about yourself’, ‘Why are you leaving your current role’, and ‘Why do you want to work here’. Don’t write answers to these questions, but instead advise me on the likely ‘questions behind the questions’, show me the matters that I must include to give a good answer, then show me what would turn that into a great answer, and both good and great explain why.” Every time I have run that prompt it identified questions I hadn’t thought of… and spookily at least 75% of those “didn’t think of this” questions were in fact asked in the interview. Some of them almost word for word. I would have bombed a lot of interviews without this.
I’ll stop here, this is already way too long. There’s more.