How to Get a Job in 2026: The Current Macroeconomic Climate, AI, and A Counterintuitive Strategy

I talked to two people last week who had recently been laid off from Meta. 

Both are talented. Both have strong track records. Both have spent the last few weeks doing what most people do when they lose a job: updating their CV, setting up job alerts, and pushing apply on LinkedIn.

Neither has had a meaningful conversation yet.

I speak with a lot of job seekers and career transitioners who are looking for a new path, either because they were impacted by layoffs or because they are not progressing in their current setup and are looking for something more fitting. A lot of them have been at it for a few months with not much movement. Not many responses. Certainly not many interview invitations.

The job market is genuinely harder. Here is why.

1. From January 2025 through April 2026, job gains in the US averaged just 26,000 per month — a sharp slowdown by any measure. Companies are not collapsing. They are just not hiring. What the Federal Reserve has described as a "low-hire, low-fire" economy continues to define labor market conditions. Hiring budgets are being held. Decisions that were supposed to happen in Q1 got pushed to Q3, and Q3 is quietly becoming next year. (Source: U.S. Bank)

   
   

2. Then there is the broader picture. The Strait of Hormuz disruption triggered the largest oil market shock in history, sending prices sharply higher and tightening global supply. The European Commission has described it as a stagflationary shock — rising inflation and slowing growth simultaneously. Businesses that were cautiously optimistic at the start of the year are now in wait-and-see mode again. When businesses wait and see, hiring is the first thing that stops. (Source: World Bank)

   
   

3. Entry-level hiring at the top 15 tech companies fell 25% from 2023 to 2024, and the decline continued into 2026. But this is not just a junior problem. At senior and mid-level, the picture is different but equally challenging: fewer open roles, more qualified candidates per role, and hiring managers who are under pressure to get the decision right and are therefore taking longer to make it. (Source: Second Talent)

   
   

4. AI is reshaping what companies hire for and how many people they need to do it. Tasks that used to require a team are now handled by smaller groups with better tools. The learning curve itself is being automated, leaving early-career professionals stranded between AI agents and senior incumbents but the impact runs further up the ladder too. Companies are not backfilling roles when people leave (they outsource the tasks to AI). The result is a market where the number of open roles does not reflect the amount of work being done. It reflects how much of that work has been absorbed by tools, redistributed to existing employees, or simply deferred. (Source: Rezi)

The first thing I tell clients — and what they push back on most

When someone comes to me in the middle of a job search that is not working, the first thing I usually suggest is counterintuitive enough that I almost always get resistance.

Stop applying. For a week. Maybe two.

The instinct when you are looking for work is to do more. More applications, more platforms, more volume. It feels productive. It is, mostly, not.

What I have seen again and again — and the two Meta people I spoke to last week are a perfect example — is that people are burning significant time and energy firing off the same CV to thirty different job postings and wondering why nothing is coming back. The CV says things like "highly motivated professional who knows how to navigate ambiguity" and "strategic leader with management experience." These phrases are quite generic. Every CV says this. ATSs and hiring managers skip through them. 

The first two weeks of a job search, done properly, should be almost entirely internal work. Not sending things out. Figuring out what you are actually offering.

What you are actually offering

Most experienced professionals describe themselves in terms of what they have done. Job titles, companies, years of experience. That is a history, and it's nice but it doesn't tell us anything about their value. 

What a hiring manager is actually trying to work out — consciously or not — is: what problem does this person solve, and what is the evidence they can solve mine?

Before you send anything to anyone, you need a clear answer to that question. 

Not: "I am an experienced sales leader with a track record of exceeding targets."

More like: "I build and restructure sales teams in high-growth B2B environments. The last three companies I joined had broken pipeline processes. All three ended up with predictable, scalable revenue within 18 months."

That is specific. It names a problem, a context, and an outcome. It is something a hiring manager can do something with.

Getting to that clarity takes time. Most people skip it and go straight to the job boards. That is why most people are not getting responses.

What does NOT work during job search

1. Applying to job postings at volume. About 98% of Fortune 500 companies now use Applicant Tracking Systems to filter applications before human eyes ever see them. A generic CV — however impressive your actual experience — gets filtered in seconds if it is not tailored to the specific language of that job description. The spray-and-pray approach was never great. Right now it is close to useless. 

   
   

2. Pushing apply on LinkedIn with the same CV. This is the professional equivalent of shouting into a room and hoping someone turns around. The people who get responses from LinkedIn applications are either extremely well-matched to a specific role or have a profile strong enough that a recruiter has already been looking at them. For most people, the application is invisible.

   
   

3. Waiting for the right thing to appear. Many roles are filled through referrals or internal networks before they are ever posted publicly. If you are only looking at what is listed, you are fishing in the smallest pond at the most crowded time.

What, I have seen, works to land the job

1. Targeted outreach, before roles are posted.

The most effective approach right now is to identify a focused list of companies where you genuinely want to work, then reach out to people inside those organizations before any role appears. Not to ask for a job but to have a conversation. To be curious about their experience. To be remembered as a thinking person, not an application. 

This feels uncomfortable, especially for people who have not had to job search in a while and are used to opportunities coming to them. I hear this a lot. Push through it. A fifteen-minute conversation with a hiring manager at a company that is not actively hiring puts you in a completely different position when something opens up than someone who applied through the website three months later.

2. Treating your network like a relationship, not an emergency lever.

The people finding roles fastest right now are the ones who kept their professional relationships warm before they needed them. If yours have gone cold — which is completely normal — the fix is not a round of "just checking in" LinkedIn messages to people you have not spoken to in years. That lands badly and everyone can tell.

Start with the people you are closest to. Have real conversations. Be honest about what you are exploring. Ask good questions. The ask — when it comes — lands completely differently in a warm relationship than in a cold one.

3. Making your LinkedIn profile do actual work.

A profile that says "results-oriented leader with a passion for innovation" is doing nothing for you. Your profile needs to be clear about what you actually do, who you do it for, and what changes when you are in the room. Written in plain language. No jargon. Specific enough that someone who does not know you could explain your value to a colleague.

Recruiters search LinkedIn constantly to find candidates who are not actively applying. Being findable — and credible when found — is more valuable than most job seekers realize. 

4. Showing evidence of your thinking.

72% of employers are now prioritizing skills-based hiring — they want to see what you can do, not just what you have done. A post that demonstrates real thinking about your industry.

A comment that adds something to a conversation. A short piece of writing. None of this requires a big platform. It requires showing up consistently with a point of view.

This is particularly important for senior people. At that level, hiring decisions are rarely about qualifications. They are about whether the people in the room trust your judgment. Visible thinking builds that trust before you are ever in a conversation.

A note on senior people specifically

The experience that made you excellent in your last role can narrow how you are perceived in a search. If you were a VP at a large tech company for six years, you will find yourself too senior for some roles and not an obvious fit for others. The instinct is to broaden the search. The better move is usually to sharpen the story.

Hiring at senior levels is about fit, judgment, and whether you make the decision-maker's life easier or more complicated. The interview process at this level is as much about the questions you ask as the answers you give. The candidates who stand out have done their homework — not on the company's Wikipedia page, but on the specific problem the organization is trying to solve right now. They walk in having thought about it already.

On pacing yourself during job search

Three to six months is now a normal timeline for a mid to senior role in this market. That is a long time to maintain focus and absorb rejection.

The people who get through it well are the ones who pace themselves, keep other things going in their lives, and do not let the search become their entire identity.

A rejection in this market is almost never about you. The volume of qualified candidates is high, the number of roles is low, and hiring managers are being cautious. If you are getting to late-stage interviews and not converting, that is worth examining. If you are not getting conversations at all, the problem is almost always positioning and visibility — both of which are fixable.

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Merve K. Hokamp is an executive coach and Venture Partner at Loyal VC, working with leaders and founders across Europe and globally. If you are navigating a career transition and want to think it through properly, you can book an intro call at leadrisecoaching.com/callrequest. Also check out our FREE worksheets on job search essentials, career transitions, how to write good CVs, how to ace the interviews and more.