From AI Layoff to AI Interviewer: My 2-Year Job Search Nightmare in Australia's Changing Market

The AI That Took My Job Now Wants to Interview Me

In 2023, when my animation startup pivoted to AI, I became one of the first people I knew to lose my job to artificial intelligence. As an Aquarius rising, I've always been ahead of my time - but this wasn't the future I imagined.

Photo Illustration by Matthew Cooley

From Social Media Manager to Unemployed

I worked at a small animation startup backed by venture capital, creating animated characters for celebrities and influencers. My job was to grow their social media accounts, then pitch toy companies and publishers to turn them into physical products. The model showed early success, but then the AI winds gathered.

Not long after we invited an AI notetaker to our meetings, the storm hit - they fired half the staff in one day. "We're pivoting," they told us. "We're becoming an AI studio."

That was two years ago. I still don't have a full-time job.

The Brutal Australian Job Market Reality

This isn't for lack of trying. The numbers tell the story:

• Almost a million people laid off in recent years
• Hiring at its slowest rate since 2009
• Long-term unemployment rate hitting 26% (those searching for more than 27 weeks)

I've lost count of applications somewhere after 70. The creative agency that strung me along for seven interviews and a Christmas Eve presentation. The national magazine that could tell I'd forgotten newsroom skills from a decade ago.

The AI Interview That Changed Everything

Then came the AI woman.

She called about a content strategist job I'd applied to on LinkedIn. I knew she was a robot as soon as I picked up - stilted, faraway, no human warmth. She asked my name, gave vague role information, then launched into questions. Suddenly I was in an interview.

I asked her to pause. I wasn't ready. I hadn't brushed my teeth. What was this role again?

The interview took 30 minutes. We discussed my previous roles and audience-building philosophies. She had no feedback, no soft "yeahs" - you realize how much work those do in normal conversations.

How AI Screening Actually Works

I told TikTok about the experience, asking if it was a scam. A commenter who programs these systems explained:

"The screening questions are designed to score you as a candidate based on job description requirements. If you pass a certain threshold, you're passed to a recruiter."

The next day, the robot called back. I figured I'd done well. Instead, she asked my name again and began the same interview. When I explained we'd just done this, her response was robotic: "There seems to be a mistake. I'll let the team know. Goodbye."

Two Years of Unemployment Experiments

Two years is a long time to endure quiet unemployment. The idle mind wanders into dark hallways - and brighter ones too.

I've tried:

• Researching phlebotomy certification and HVAC school
• Starting a short-form YouTube horror channel
• Googling "how to sell feet pix"
• Making jewelry and consulting an Etsy witch
• Volunteering for the elderly
• Getting really into house music

I've gone online all day, every day, doing irreparable damage to my dopamine reserves. Recently, I got a part-time seasonal position at a makeup store - 10 hours a week doing cash register work with incentives like wearing jeans for a day if we sign up enough credit cards.

The Rise of AI in Australian Recruitment

The robots are here - and they're not even cool. We're not meeting them in chrome-colored utopias. They're not cute, helpful sidekicks. Instead, they're harbingers of a soulless dystopia architected by those who can afford the technology.

They're helping us crank out cover letters that go unanswered and diagnosing ailments without doctor's bills, but they're also warping our already tenuous grip on reality. With each additional billion investors pump into AI, where does it leave the rest of us?

What do we get for writing the words and taking the pictures that built their libraries, the foundation of their fortunes? So far, our only payment seems to be more videos of fake bunnies jumping on fake trampolines - more trash to add to our heaping pile of digital slop.

The Personal Cost of Technological Change

I've given up over and over. On my youth, on the 2010s, on being a size four again. On the media industry and the career that once lit me up. Writing has been part of every job I've ever had, but no one seems to want it anymore.

Maybe no one ever did. Maybe it was always luck.

Now the smell is getting harder to identify - the end of your career, the country, the way things were, or all three. All you know is something's rotting.