Part of Female x Finance's Smart Girl Summer. September is the biggest hiring reset of the year — so before your inbox fills back up, we sat down with Roxanne Taku who runs one of the biggest career communities in the UK - TechTalkUK to talk about what's really working in today's job market.
Fair warning: almost everything you were taught about applying for jobs is now working against you.
A conversation between Leonie Kennepohl (Co-founder Female x Finance) and Roxanne Taku (Co-founder TechTalkUK).
Let's start with the uncomfortable part. "It's tough," Roxanne says, when I ask how the market looks right now. "It's tough across every industry, every market. We're in an AI talent war."
Here's the mechanism, because understanding it changes everything you do next.
AI has dropped the barrier to applying to almost zero. Anyone can build a strong-looking CV in minutes and fire off applications in seconds, so companies are drowning.
"In the last five years, application volume has gone up five to eight times," Roxanne says. To cope, employers lean on AI filters that are, in her words, "a glorified applicant tracking system with some AI sprinkled on" — mostly matching keywords to the job description.
And here's the twist that matters most: the CV has quietly lost its credibility. When every candidate, even a junior one, can use Claude or ChatGPT to make themselves sound polished, a strong CV no longer signals a strong candidate. "They all look the same now," Roxanne says.
So companies have shifted. Instead of trusting the inbound pile, they're going outbound — hunting talent directly on LinkedIn — and leaning far more on referrals. Which means the single most important sentence in this whole piece is this: the cold application no longer carries the weight it used to. Being findable and being vouched for now do.
Here's how Roxanne says to play it.
1. Make your LinkedIn a magnet (not a résumé)
Recruiters use LinkedIn Recruiter to search for talent — by skill, seniority, location, even past employers. If your profile isn't loaded with the right keywords, you simply don't appear. So treat your profile like SEO:
Headline: don't just write "Analyst at [Bank]." Add your specialisms — the equivalent of "Software Engineer | Python, Kubernetes." For finance, signal your lane and your scale: deal type and deal size. (Léonie's tip: add the amount of deals and dealscope that you worked on in the headline.)
a great example of what a strong headline looks like
Summary: most people leave this thin. Use it. Talk about what you've built, the tools you've used, the impact you've had.
Experience descriptions: Roxanne calls these "real estate" — the space under each role that most people leave blank. That's free keyword territory.
Skills section: keep it updated and targeted.
Some great LinkedIn profiles to learn from:
Two things people don't know:
Be narrow, not broad. "If you're aiming for five different roles, you won't have enough keywords for any one of them to keep showing up in a targeted search." Pick a lane.
Turn on "Open to Work — recruiters only." No green banner, no signalling to your current employer. Only recruiters with a LinkedIn Recruiter licence can see it — and crucially, recruiters at your own company can't, and you don't need Premium for that. (Premium mainly helps networking: more outreach messages, and you can see exactly who viewed your profile.)
The finance-specific move: decide the exact role you want. Let’s say, PE analyst — pull up 10–15 real job descriptions for it, and highlight the keywords that appear again and again (valuation, M&A, Excel, whatever recurses). Embed those across your CV and LinkedIn. "And you can use AI for this," she adds. "Use Claude to do that keyword analysis for you, it's much faster."
2. Network like it's the actual job (because it is)
If cold applications are weak, networking is now the primary path to an interview. Roxanne's playbook:
Apply — then immediately reach out. For every role, find three people at the company: the recruiter, the hiring manager, and a potential peer.
Hiring manager: message them directly with a short, specific pitch on why you fit. "The people in our community who land interviews consistently aren't the ones waiting on the application. They apply, then reach out to the hiring manager."
Peer (a future teammate): don't pitch — build a genuine relationship, so they vouch for you internally. That word-of-mouth trust "beats a cold application every time."
Lead with what you have in common. People say yes to people like them. Léonie's example from building her network in LA: her first conversations were with fellow Dutch people who'd also moved over, and people who did the same Master's. "People are proud of their background — they'll take the call."
If you only have an hour a week, match the effort to your urgency. Need a job now? Spend it on LinkedIn outreach to hiring teams. Just exploring a pivot? Go to in-person events — but choose small and niche over giant conferences. "You don't want a broad tech event, you want a software-engineer-fintech event. The more niche, the closer you get to the people who actually matter for you."
Befriend recruitment agencies. Unlike an in-house recruiter (where being off on culture fit can close the whole company to you), agencies carry a portfolio of clients — so even if you're not right for this role, you could be perfect for the next. One caveat from Roxanne: be crystal clear on what you're good at and what you want, and remember the company is their client, not you. "Don't walk in with 'so, are you going to find me a job?' — that leaves a bad impression."
3. Use AI as an enabler, never a replacement
This is where most people get it wrong. Roxanne's rule: AI should make you faster and sharpen your own thinking — it should never do the thinking for you.
Do:
Use it for the keyword analysis and company research above.
Rewrite your CV step by step, feeding it real context — your projects, your achievements — while you lead the edit.
Refine (not generate) your interview answers.
Debrief yourself after interviews to actually improve.
Don't:
Rebuild a brand-new CV from scratch for every application. "It's not sustainable, and it makes your CV read exactly like everyone else's."
Use auto-apply tools that blast 100 jobs a day. "That's just spraying and praying. A big fat no."
Hand it your one-page CV and ask it to write your interview answers. "There's only so much context on one page — you get generic answers you then try to memorise, and the interviewer can't picture the work you actually did."
On interview debriefs: Roxanne's community uses Granola — the desktop version can capture a meeting without visibly joining the call — plus a custom "interview feedback" recipe that tells you where you could have improved. Coach yourself with it; keep it private. (Editorial note for Léonie: worth a one-line reminder to readers to check local recording-consent rules before recording any interview)
Show, don't tell
Because CVs have lost their edge, we've become a "show-don't-tell" market, so show your work up front:
Portfolio: build one with Lovable or Claude Code, even if you're not technical.
Video résumé: Roxanne rates Reslink — you record a short video on top of your CV and send the link straight to a hiring manager. "'Hi Léonie, I saw you're hiring a PE analyst at Female x Finance, here's a bit about me…' — it's so much more human than a PDF."
The forecast: why this matters now
Don't wait for the market to rescue you. "I don't think 2027 will be any easier than 2026," Roxanne says. It's still shaky — hiring freezes mid-process, sudden layoffs, roles that vanish. Companies have so much choice they can be brutally picky. "I know so many brilliant people who reach the final round again and again and miss the offer over one thing completely outside their control."
Which is exactly why September is the moment to start. If you want to move within a year, the work — the LinkedIn, the relationships, the story — begins now, while you're still in your seat. And Léonie's addition, which Roxanne co-signed: when a good opportunity shows up before you feel ready, take it. It may not be there in a year.
Roxanne's Career Toolkit
Tools mentioned in this piece:
Claude — keyword analysis, company research, CV refinement, interview prep (FxF's and Roxanne's go-to)
Granola — AI meeting notes; records interviews for self-coaching
Lovable / Claude Code — build a portfolio site, no coding required
Reslink — video résumé you can send straight to hiring managers
LinkedIn Premium — understand it so you can be found
Reads, listens & follows
Books - Two books Roxanne recommends for building a career on your own terms:
Podcasts - Two podcasts Roxanne has on repeat.:
Getting smarter this summer isn't only about the tools. It's about understanding that the game changed — and being one of the few who adjusted before September.
This is our last episode of Smart Girl Summer. Still need to catch up on previous read? We've also covered how to read culture like an investor and what to consume instead of doomscrolling.
Do you have some tips AI, Investing or Recruitment tip for our community? Reply to this email and we will share with them!
Sharpening your career doesn't take a break just because it's summer.
