I knew exactly how to apply for jobs.  

We’d covered it in school. Hours of PSHE lessons spent highlighting job descriptions and performing mock interviews. We’d all got quite cocky about it. We’d elected to not fill out our self-reflection forms. We didn’t need to consolidate what we’d learnt. We didn’t need to make a list of points to improve upon. It was easy. Getting a job was simple. It wasn’t rocket science.  

 Until technology improved. Then it became a lot more like science. 

 Because the classes we’d sat through at school had been focused on giving good handshakes. Dressing smartly. Perfecting the introductory small talk.  

 I’ve yet to get to the point of needing to worry about whether to wear suit trousers or chinos.   

 I sit at the kitchen table. Outside, the sky is grey. The kind of grey that offers no clues as to what time of day it is. I load up the job description and highlight the key points, just as we were taught at school. The highlighter is bright yellow and glares off the computer screen in an insulting manner. It's mocking me. Jeering at me for being so miserable. I switch to a grey highlighter. That feels more fitting. 

 This isn’t rocket science. But it is AI science. And I don’t have a GCSE in that.  

 I must have done a hundred applications. I sit at the kitchen table typing away. The clicking of the keys drowns out the sound of dad on a work call upstairs. His work doesn't seem to have been affected by AI. Just mine. 

 I used to receive rejection emails. More commonly that not, they went along the lines of - 

 ‘Dear Ben, thank you for applying for the Graduate Marketer Role. However, on this occasion, you have not been successful.’ The reasoning was never stated.  

 Once, someone replied to my call for feedback-    

‘Lack of experience with modern technology such as AI,’ they said. Because evidently AI, being a new technology, is the sort of thing one can have acquired ample experience with. 

More recently, the rejection emails have stopped and no, they have not been replaced by acceptance ones. I hear nothing. I ring the companies, but I never get through. Until yesterday. I got through to a recruitment department at an engineering firm. 

 "Your CV didn't get through to us," they said. 

 "How do you mean? I got a confirmation email." 

 "Yes, but it didn't get past the AI." 

 It turns out AI isn't only the thief of jobs, but the gatekeeper to them also. I learnt unless you include specific phrases in your CV, the AI deflects it with heart-breaking ease. It doesn't matter if you're a 'ground-breaking innovator', if you're not a 'creative', you fall through the cracks. 

 There's no list of these phrases. There's no coherence from company to company. There's no way to cheat the system. At least when a dashound jumps through hoops, it can see what it's aiming for. 

And so, I return to highlighting job descriptions with grey pixels. I wonder how many more 'submit' buttons I will press before AI lets me through.