How to stand out as a job applicant when AI raises the bar for everyone
SofiaBalderson
Published on May 5, 2026 7:36 AM GMT TL;DR: AI has raised the bar for appearing competent, making formal job applications harder to win than ever. Two things still cut through: judgment you can defend, and the surface area you've built before you needed a job. Acknowledgements: thank you to Kevin Xia for your feedback on this post! The baseline has moved A well-structured report, a clear email, a researched summary, a tidy presentation. These used to take skill and time. Now they take a good pro