Getting Hired in the AI Era, Part 1
What hiring managers are really evaluating, and why your CV is only the start.
Career progress is not just about doing good work. It is about making the value of that work visible. A strong GitHub profile, a few years of experience and a solid tech stack don’t automatically tell a hiring manager what makes you different, how you affect a team, or why you’re a better bet than another qualified candidate.
That gets harder when AI can help almost anyone produce a polished CV, cover letter or LinkedIn profile. This is Part 1 of a five-part career series by Anna J. McDougall, Field CTO at IBM HashiCorp, on turning your experience into career momentum.
Know the other player’s game plan
If you have played a strategy game beyond a basic level, you know that the best players are not thinking only about their own plan. A chess player who optimises their own game but never considers the opponent’s ideas will beat an amateur off the street and never reach grandmaster. A poker player who bets only on her own cards loses quickly if she ignores the table.
The same applies at the interview table. Some hiring managers really are only testing data structures and algorithms. Most are balancing technical depth against something else, and you cannot adapt a strategy to a goal you have not understood.
Performance versus trust
Hiring a high-performing team involves much more than hiring high performers. The US Navy SEALs evaluate two things: performance, meaning how good you are at the tasks the job needs, and trust, meaning who people actually feel comfortable around.
Someone high on both is the obvious first choice. The interesting part is second place: the SEALs prefer average performance and high trust and will even consider low performance and high trust. High-trust people reduce turnover, mentor others, and lift the output of everyone near them. Given a team of eight engineers, would you rather have one very productive person, or someone who makes all eight productive?
The brilliant jerk
Which leaves the high-performance, low-trust individual. Brian Pulliam, a former engineering manager at Zillow and Coinbase, has argued that knowingly hiring jerks shows a lack of respect for the team you already have.
However talented, someone who thinks only about their own success, or who lacks the empathy to support teammates, is a net loss. Engineering leaders are not only asking who is best for the role. They are asking who works best in this team, with its existing personalities and problems. Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
What your application actually has to prove
Left with no other information, hiring managers fill the gaps with their own expectations, biases and concerns. Three things, in order of importance:
- Stand out. You need to be remembered, not be another face in the crowd.
- Appear valuable. Engineering ability, agentic awareness, teamwork, business and product knowledge.
- Appear low-risk. Where your experience doesn’t fully align, the gap should look minor, and closeable.
