If you're job hunting right now and it's taking longer than you expected, it's not you. I listened to a podcast this week that laid the numbers out plainly (with my own ears, no AI summary).

Job ads are down.

Applications per ad are up.

There's over a million people looking for work right now.

That's not a personal failing.

That's a market.

What stood out to me most, though, was something RMIT Online's CEO said about what employers are actually looking for. AI experience does matter. I won't pretend otherwise. But the real work is figuring out where your specific gap actually is.

Talk to people already working in the field and ask what they're using day to day. Desktop research is one thing, a conversation is far richer. Read the job ads closely, not just the headline requirements, and notice what keeps coming up. Because underneath that, what employers are really looking for is critical reasoning and sound judgment about how and when to use these tools well.

And here's the thing: most people have been building these skills their entire career. It didn't start with AI.

Here's the Link to the episode. It's worth the 25 minutes.