In 2025, it’s a full-time job to find a job. Hiring has stalled and mass layoffs are happening, there’s economic uncertainty, tariffs and of course, AI. Companies are tightening their belts, employees are staying put and the stats coming out of cities like New York are frightening.
New York City reportedly added only 956 private sector jobs in the first half of this year vs. 65,000 in the same period in 2024. In other words, if you’re out of work, wherever you live, it’s not you.
But while AI is taking jobs, maybe it could also help you get one.
You can use AI to write a resume and a cover letter, ask for job advice and negotiate a starting salary or raise. And now, you can use dedicated AI agents to find job opportunities while you sleep. Imagine that.
Get unstuck in your job search
I heard about an AI agent called Work It Daily from a famous TikTok recruiter. Her videos are fire, so I had to try it out.
When I first opened the Work It Daily browser, I was prompted to upload my resume or LinkedIn profile. I did both so I’d get better results, then I picked the Get matched with jobs button.
It pulled up a list of active job ads that I could peruse, with a percentage rating based on how well I matched the role. The chatbot below can further personalize your search.
I clicked on one of the jobs to see what the interface was like. I hadn’t heard of the company before, but it didn’t generate any information when I requested it — it just said “generating info” with an endlessly scrolling gray wheel. So I found the listing and company myself with a quick Google search.
Back on Work It Daily, I clicked on Generate Job Match Matrix, which says it will “instantly create a one-pager that helps you prepare for interviews by analyzing how your existing profile and experience align with the job criteria.”
It matched the job duties with my experience, then gave each one a rating.
I could use the AI Assistant button to chat through questions. Work It Daily gives prompts for you to use, like “Can you tell me more about the company?” It gave me a short company bio, so I asked it to provide more information and employee reviews. It did, pulling info in from ZoomInfo, LinkedIn and Glassdoor. I followed up with questions like, “Who is the CEO?” and it gave me a name with their LinkedIn profile.
The customized job page it produces for you is cool, and you can even apply for the roles from right there.
Make sure to populate your profile well, so you don’t run out of jobs. In this market, it’s a numbers game.
Lachlan Ma is a global technology recruiter at Affirm, where he partners with leaders across machine learning, developer productivity and AI agents to recruit specialized talent. Prior to Affirm, he spent most of his career at TikTok, where he helped build engineering teams from the ground up, including launching US engineering for TikTok Shop.
He tells me the key is to be AI-forward, not AI-dependent when applying for jobs.
“AI is a great starting point, but candidates still need to personalize and humanize the output,” Ma says. “I’ve seen resumes where two different candidates submitted the exact same AI-generated bullet points, which is a red flag.”
AI should be used for doing things like brainstorming what to include on your resume and helping you prepare answers for potential job interview questions, but its suggestions always need your refinement.
“In my experience at TikTok and Affirm, recruiters still review every application manually. There’s no AI filter automatically rejecting resumes,” he assures me. “We do keyword searches, but the human element is still very real.”
Ma says job seekers should use AI for aspects like mock interview questions and researching past candidate experiences to help with preparation and confidence.
New AI agent on the block: Indeed’s Career Scout
If you’re always on Indeed looking for jobs and leads, then its new AI agent launching Wednesday, Career Scout, is worth a look. It’s a free AI tool that’s available in the Indeed app that acts as a personal career coach, helping job seekers find more opportunities and apply faster.
According to Indeed, it reveals hidden jobs that you may not have otherwise considered. It explains why each match is a good fit for you, even those outside your current field and maps how to make the leap. This is the era of the great career pivot, after all.
You just need an Indeed profile and the app to access Career Scout. Make sure to populate your profile well, so it can give you the most personalized results.
Here’s how to find the AI agent:
- Navigate to your Profile.
- Toggle Employers can find you on (it should be green).
- Confirm your job preferences, including title, type, location, schedule, pay and more.
- Click on the Career Scout button in the bottom menu.
You can either go straight to the job search or explore career paths, get company insights and try a mock interview.
I clicked on Find jobs, and it generated a few questions for me to answer, like whether I’m open to in-office work, before it searched. With every step, it had a multi-choice prompt to further clarify its search.
I had entered my desired hourly rate as a freelancer, but the system automatically calculated the comparable salary, which was much higher than I’d go for. So, I typed the correction in the message bar.
I liked the prompt options, as they allowed me to further direct my search. This is helpful for multi-hyphenate people who work across different specialties. For example, for me it was journalism, copywriting and public relations.
There was an endless scroll of jobs like this.
Next, I checked out the Explore careers section. It requested that I take a quiz so it could learn more about me.
For fun, I wanted to see what new career it would suggest, based on what it knew about me and my experience. I had to prompt it that I was interested in fertility nursing and helping women struggling with infertility.
It drew on my communication skills, even though I said I’d be happy with a hypothetical career change. It suggested marketing, communications and writing roles that center around health. When I clicked on the specific career, it provided personalized insights as to why I’d be a good fit, earning potential, a growth trajectory and an action plan to help me transition.
I liked the chat feature where I could ask it anything about my work life. To test out its capabilities, I asked about a shift into fertility nursing. I asked it to look at my skills, experience and capabilities to provide advice on how to best transition into women’s health and fertility. The chatbot was a little lackluster, as it felt automated. It pushed me to do the career quiz again, or told me things I already knew.
I asked for fertility-related jobs that don’t require a nursing degree. It provided some advice and then linked to available jobs, which was cool.
But it wasn’t without its flaws. It only brought up one job, so I expanded the search area, and then it added a Registered Nurse job — yet the prompt was to generate jobs that don’t require a degree.
A quick look on the main Indeed site for fertility coordinator jobs and I saw 22 listings, with roles such as patient services coordinator.
While AI chatbots are limited when it comes to career advice, I like how AI agents aggregate all relevant jobs and make searching a lot easier.
At this stage, it feels like AI/AI agents and a traditional search, not either or, will yield the best possibilities.
