This article, “Celebrating 1 Billion Members with Our New AI-Powered LinkedIn Premium Experience to Elevate Your Career,” by Tomer Cohen, LinkedIn’s chief product officer, stopped me in my tracks.
Like me, you may have gone numb to the constant cadence of AI taking jobs and all sorts of gloom and doom predictions, but is this new LinkedIn offering the nail in the coffin for career coaches – or not?
With one billion users across the globe, more than 140 resumes are submitted each second on LinkedIn, says the article. That’s bonkers. The new features will help you parse your feed to identify trending topics and important information, position yourself as the right candidate, draft outreach messages to recruiters and hiring managers, and much more.
Hypothetically, it will help with all that difficult and sometimes overwhelming work you have to do in your job search.
Susan Tyson, a marketing executive and consultant, astutely pointed out that job descriptions would have to be accurate in order to effectively match candidates with roles. Frequently, job descriptions are cobbled together by a junior resource or are a fishing expedition for a professional that could not exist, so that is a potential problem.
Kristina Sorrelli, who recently completed multiple AI certifications, recently told me that she can spot AI writing a mile away and can often even identify which program generated it.
I suspect there will be an explosion of bland writing and everyone will ignore it over time.
I had already decided to pivot the business and do more workshops like Recalibrate and longer transformational programs (currently in development), but now it looks like an even smarter decision.
Will AI-powered LinkedIn actually take over career coaching? Maybe for professionals targeting a similar job in a similar industry (round peg, round hole candidates).
At a minimum, LinkedIn finally gave people a compelling reason to pay for LinkedIn Premium.
Several people who saw my post on LinkedIn mentioned that the human touch and personal connection is exactly what is needed in a career transition, so maybe it’s not the end of my business.
I have always said that professionals who want to do more or less the same job function at a similar company don’t need to hire me. They can get what they need from inexpensive or free resources.
My ideal clients are professionals who have been gutted by a toxic work environment, experienced a bad business breakup, or had a health diagnosis or death in the family. These professionals will still need the high-touch approach and big heart that my co-coach Angie Rome Gonzalez and I bring.
So, how do you guard against AI killing your business?
It might be to be more human.
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
