Craig Fisher: AI in Hiring, Personal Branding, and How to Stay Visible in the Job Market in 2025 | Be Yourself Podcast

Be Yourself Podcast

CraigFisher

Author of Hiring Humans & Founder of TalentNet — on How AI Hiring Algorithms Filter Candidates, Why Personal Branding Is Now a Career Survival Skill, and How to Stay Visible and Employable in 2025 and Beyond

32 minutes

AI Hiring · Personal Branding · Fractional Work · LinkedIn SEO · Authenticity

Watch on YouTube Craig's TalentNet

About This Episode

Why AI Is Transforming Hiring Faster Than Anyone Expected — and Why Your Personal Brand Now Matters More Than Your Resume

AI is reshaping the hiring landscape at a speed most job seekers haven't caught up with yet. Easy Apply created a flood of applications that no recruiter can manually review — so companies rely on matching algorithms, applicant tracking systems, and AI-powered search to filter candidates before a human ever sees a single resume. If you're not showing up in those systems, you don't exist for that opportunity, regardless of how qualified you are.

Craig Fisher has spent decades at the intersection of recruiting, technology, and personal branding. As the author of Hiring Humans, founder of TalentNet, and a veteran of full-desk recruiting, he understands both sides of the hiring equation — what recruiters actually do when they look up a candidate, and what job seekers are getting wrong in how they present themselves online.

In this conversation, Craig and Serhiy dig into the current state of the job market, why white-collar workers are feeling the pressure most, how storytelling and context — not just keywords — power AI search results, how fractional work and consulting can become a lifeline and a launchpad, and what authentic content actually looks like when you're building a brand for the long term. Craig also shares his own unfiltered take on AI tools — including why he thinks you should treat AI as an employee, not a friend.

Why AI hiring tools ignore most candidates — and how to bypass the filter

Ford Motor Company gets up to 700 applicants for a single job. No recruiter can review all of them. Matching algorithms decide who gets seen. Craig explains what these systems are actually looking for — and why submitting a resume through Easy Apply puts you at the back of the line instead of the front.

Personal branding as a career survival skill — how to build a LinkedIn presence that ranks in AI search

Having a LinkedIn profile isn't enough. Craig breaks down how to build a personal brand page that AI search engines can actually find and match — naming it correctly, linking it to your resume, creating the kind of context and content that surfaces your name when a recruiter runs a search. It's not about vanity. It's about visibility in a world where the algorithm decides your odds.

Storytelling in search results — why keywords alone don't work anymore and context wins

Craig is an SEO nerd by his own description. And he's clear: AI search engines don't respond well to keyword clusters without context. A resume that reads like name, rank, and job title is invisible. But a resume that tells a story — that puts your keywords inside sentences about passion, team, and contribution — gets picked up by AI matching engines the same way Google rewards good writing over keyword stuffing.

The fractional work economy — how to set up consulting as a fallback and watch it become an offer

When you get laid off, the worst thing you can do is wait. Craig's advice: always have an LLC or consulting identity ready as a fallback. Start doing bits of work for former colleagues. Those bits of work turn into fractional CMO and CPO engagements — and fractional engagements turn into full-time offers more often than people expect. This is the new path into the jobs market, and it starts with showing up as an expert before anyone officially asks you to.

How to get speaker gigs — recruiter karma and consistency over time

Craig ran TalentNet Live at least twice a year every year starting in 2009. He gave free presentations to job seekers at churches 47 times before accepting his first paid speaking gig. He calls it recruiter karma — helping people without expectation of return, and watching that investment compound over years until the invitations come to you. The conference, the podcast, the hashtag chats for recruiting — all of it was community building, not self-promotion.

What authenticity means online — the 5:1 give-to-ask ratio, three personal topics, and posting without expectations

Craig avoids politics and religion online. Not because he doesn't have opinions — but because those channels exist for growth and community building, not for cutting your audience in half. He uses a 5:1 ratio of giving to asking, shares three personal topics he's comfortable with, and posts things with no agenda. His best-ever post was about which travel bag to buy. And yes — it generated business. Because when your profile is set up right, even an off-topic post reminds people who you are and what you do.

AI as an employee, not a friend — the gamification threat and how to use the tool correctly

Craig's take on AI is sharp: it's gamifying you. The loop of getting the prompt right, having a breakthrough, then losing it — that's a slot machine. That's a game that's sucking you in. His advice: treat AI like an employee. Give it better inputs — transcripts of how you actually talk, years of writing that captures your voice. And use it as a tool, not as a shortcut around the work of knowing what you actually want to say.

About the Guest

Craig Fisher — Author of Hiring Humans, Founder of TalentNet

Craig Fisher is the author of Hiring Humans, founder of TalentNet — a training and recruiting strategy firm — and a respected voice in talent acquisition, personal branding, and the future of work. He began his career as a full-desk recruiter, placing technology candidates from around the world, before becoming one of the earliest and most consistent advocates for digital personal branding in the HR and recruiting space.

He launched TalentNet Live conference in 2009 and has run it at least twice a year ever since — one of the longest-running events in the recruiting industry. He started one of the first hashtag chats for recruiters, built a large following on Twitter and LinkedIn, and has spent years helping individuals navigate job transitions, fractional work, and the evolving relationship between human talent and AI hiring systems.

Craig lives outside Dallas, Texas, by Grapevine Lake. He has three sons. He travels constantly. And his best LinkedIn post was about a travel bag.

Who He Is

Author of Hiring Humans. Founder of TalentNet — recruiting training and strategy. Director of talent marketing. Former full-desk recruiter placing technology candidates globally. One of the most consistently active voices in personal branding, recruiting technology, and the intersection of AI and hiring.

TalentNet Live

Craig started TalentNet Live conference in 2009 and has run it stubbornly at least twice a year since. He gave free presentations 47 times before ever accepting a paid speaking gig. The conference, the podcast, and the recruiting hashtag chats he created were all about community — not self-promotion.

His SEO Philosophy

Craig describes himself as an SEO nerd. He builds websites, optimizes for AI search, and has been applying search engine thinking to personal branding long before most people knew what AEO (AI search optimization) was. His core thesis: keywords without context are invisible. Stories with keywords rank.

On Recruiter Karma

Craig doesn't charge individuals for career advice. He helps people because he believes in recruiter karma — the idea that consistently helping others without expectation of return compounds over time into speaking invitations, referrals, and opportunities. He's seen it play out over decades.

Key Quotes

AI is gifying you. The whole process of trying to get that prompt just right and getting the correct results and occasionally having this brilliant breakthrough and then it goes right back to giving you results. That's a game that's sucking you in. So watch out your relationship with AI. That's not your friend.

Craig Fisher

you have to tell stories. In fact, put your keywords in a story about your job and talk about the passion that your team had for X, Y, and Z, right? And how you contributed to that. Storytelling is huge.

Craig Fisher

I suggest you always have an LLC or your consulting business as your fallback option, right? And very quickly, bits of work that you offer to do for your friends and former colleagues turn into offers for full-time work a lot.

Craig Fisher

Episode Chapters

0:00 Intro 1:23 Current Job Market 4:15 Personal Branding 7:55 Fractional Work Demand 9:27 Storytelling in Search Results 12:04 Visibility 13:11 How to Get Speaker Gigs 17:15 What's Authenticity for Craig 19:40 Tip for Lead-Generation 21:50 Content Posting Expectations 23:02 The Time Craig Protected His Choice 25:02 Fake Name Sergey Used 27:49 AI: Threats / Opportunities

Full Transcript

BTW: This episode of the Be Yourself Podcast is produced by Beverly Media. Want a podcast that looks and sounds this good? Check out Beverly Production →

0:00 Intro

Craig AI is gifying you. The whole process of trying to get that prompt just right and getting the correct results and occasionally having this brilliant breakthrough and then it goes right back to giving you results. That's a game that's sucking you in. So watch out your relationship with AI. That's not your friend.

Craig I just installed this new app called Stanley AI. It's made specifically for LinkedIn. Chris Do shared the link and I've written a few posts with the help of this Stanley. But there is just something really complaints from white collar level and above jobs and job seekers at the volume level and blue collar level. There's not as much of a crisis.

Serhiy Hey everybody, this is Be Yourself podcast, the podcast on expressing our true selves. Today my guest is Craig Fischer who's a director of talent marketing, founder of Talentnet. He's a personal branding expert and he's an author of best-selling book Hiring Humans. Craig, welcome to the show.

Craig Sergey, great to be here. Good to see you. Thanks for having me on.

1:23 Current Job Market

Serhiy It's my pleasure. I actually checked some of the videos that you have on your YouTube channel prior to this conversation and first thing that I want to ask you, how do you assess the current situation in the job market in the US and what are the things that you believe can remedy these horrendous unemployment rates?

Craig Yeah, so it's interesting. There are high unemployment rates, but you know what we see on LinkedIn for instance, which is where we in this space get a lot of our information is really complaints from white collar level and above jobs, right, and job seekers. At the volume level and blue collar level there's not as much of a crisis as what we're led to believe. There's still plenty of hiring going on and now our volume of hiring and our GDP growth over the next 10 years is expected to be lower by a lot — by half of what it was the last 10 years. And so we've got some challenges. Are the tariffs going to actually help to rebuild the US independent economy? Who knows? It's questionable. And inflation doesn't just go away overnight, right? That's a long-term thing that takes years to get back to a good state. And so the jobs market is affected by all of these pressures.

Craig And then we've got the whole scenario where certain groups in the US feel that there's too much outsourcing to overseas and hiring of H-1B visa candidates. I've never believed that. I think that our economy runs very well on a combination, right? And we really don't have the supply in a lot of the areas where we do hire these H-1B visa candidates as specialists for certain roles. There's just really not the supply, at least not that employers are willing to afford. So how do we fix it? Great question. The economy has to improve. And so it's not just a jobs problem, but we see and I've been foretelling the economic issues that we're having now for years, right? Because we see it in the jobs market first.

4:15 Personal Branding

Serhiy So you said on numerous occasions that people workers — and I think you allude to white collar here — they should focus more or start focusing on personal branding. Is that like an obvious conclusion of what you're learning in your research?

Craig Yeah, it is. And here's the reason, right? We've made it as employers too easy to apply to jobs. Okay, so the quick apply, the easy apply, right? You answer a couple of questions in the right way. Do you need sponsorship? Do you live in the area? Sure, I'll answer yes to both of those things. And then you can apply, right? And so Ford Motor Company, for instance, the talent leader there is a friend of mine and speaks at my TalentNet Live conference. And I was just at a different event with her yesterday. And they get a hundred applicants for a job. And that's just an example. Maybe sometimes it's 700 applicants for a job, right? But you can't do a quality review of that many candidates in what should be a reasonably expected time to fill that job. And so now we rely on matching technology and applicant tracking systems and things like that. So, your odds of being one of the ones chosen, regardless of how good your resume is and how applicable your experience is to that job, your odds are still very, very low to even be selected for an interview.

Craig Unless you do something more, have a way to stand out. So, I suggest to job seekers that you show up in the AI search engines that are now powering Google and everything else in additional ways to just submitting your resume to a company. Have a personal profile page. Build a brand page for yourself on LinkedIn as an employee seeking to do XYZ type of work. Name it something that Google and other search engines could find and latch on to, right? And then I very much believe this — somehow eventually your name will start to float to the top when these matching algorithms happen. So link out in your own resume to those places where there's more information about you and at some point this will all come back to — but the other thing is recruiters go check you out right, they see a profile online through LinkedIn recruiter or something like that and they go to click on the links and look and do a search about you and sometimes their applicant tracking system says here's what we found. And so any other type of personal branding and outreach and networking and writing about yourself and creating video — and name that video, by the way. Craig Fischer is an expert in employer branding and recruitment technology strategy. And all of these things come up in search results.

7:55 Fractional Work Demand

Serhiy I have a client. Her name is JT O'Donnell. You know her for sure. And she's talking about the same thing. She's preaching about this greater economy that is going to be huge or already huge and that job seekers should actually start doing what you're saying — help not only potential employers but companies who might invite them to be fractional CMOs, CPOs for these type of partial engagements — and the only way you can do this is basically help the algorithm find you all across the internet, all across major platforms.

Craig That's right. And I say this — so I help a lot of people get started doing fractional work because when you get laid off in this economy and in economies that I've seen in the past, I've been helping people like this for a long time. It's difficult to like immediately turn around and find a new job. So, I suggest you always have an LLC or your consulting business as your fallback option, right? And very quickly, bits of work that you offer to do for your friends and former colleagues turn into offers for full-time work a lot.

Serhiy Yeah. Yeah. This is the magic of it all. That's right. Craig, how important is the skill of storytelling? Let's say we come to terms with the fact that we now need to build a personal brand. How important is storytelling?

9:27 Storytelling in Search Results

Craig So, you know, it's interesting. And this still goes back to — I'm an SEO nerd, right? Search engine optimization. I build websites. I do like, you know, all the reasons people can find me is because my SEO kung fu is very good. And so, one of the things that's important in AI search optimization or AI SEO or ASO — there's various names for it — is that search engines now use context to match. So, if you just have keywords in a cluster on your resume and you're basically just giving name, rank, and job title, and you had some hashtags and you want to play the algorithm — it's not a story. And so, AI search engines don't pick up on it as well because there's no context. And so, you have to tell stories. In fact, put your keywords in a story about your job and talk about the passion that your team had for X, Y, and Z, right? And how you contributed to that. Storytelling is huge.

Serhiy What are the other things that you can point out in terms of growing or building a strong personal brand?

Craig So, one of the most important things, Sergey, and you know this, and you probably preach this as well, is consistency over time. So, too often people get a job and then they bury their head and they don't come out and work their network for a year or two and then they need to fire it up all over again. If you can just keep posting once or twice a week on various platforms, then your network stays with you and when it's time to reach out for a favor, a referral, I need to hire somebody or I need to get hired, whatever it is — I'm selling something, who knows, my next gig — then your network is there waiting for you because you've been a good contributor over time. And consistency over time is also rewarded by search engine.

12:04 Visibility

Serhiy Yeah, I cannot agree more. Because I remember when I sold my equity to my first investors and there was a period in my life where I felt that I'm invincible, that I will always be able to start a new business and make a lot of money. So for an entire year I was nowhere to be found. I was just living my life, spending the money. And man, when I spent all the money, I found myself in a position that no one remembers me. Craig.

Craig Yeah. Yeah. Everybody feels like they're popular at some point and I'm just going to stay popular. How could I not? Where's the press following me around taking pictures? But it doesn't work that way. I mean, especially anymore, right? You have to make yourself visible on a regular basis.

13:11 How to Get Speaker Gigs

Serhiy I think you already gave us a few secrets but I see that you have a lot of invitations to perform on stage and you're a sought-out speaker. I talked about it with Torin Ellis. Hi Torin if you're listening, if you're watching. What are the things that you think make you a desirable speaker?

Craig Well, there's nothing better than word of mouth marketing, right? And I don't have any sales team helping me get gigs. It's just me being out in the world, but also me having conversations with individuals who need help, right? And when you do that, you know, in my space, we call it recruiter karma. I don't have a coaching business and I don't charge people to give advice. When it comes to individuals, I'm just here to help. And when you do that, and this goes back to consistency over time — I started my conference in 2009 and have stubbornly done it at least twice a year ever since. And if you think that starting 10 years before that I probably started counseling people about their careers and things like that and just offering assistance to startup companies — those people eventually go on to be leaders someplace and turn around and invite you to speak. People will tell me years later, even people who worked for me, something you told me back then really stuck with me and it changed my life, right.

Serhiy Yeah. I get goosebumps. That means that what you say really resonates with me. I think we all have to — we all want to be recognizable but until you give first, right, until in my case until I invite someone on my show no one's going to invite me. Reciprocity I guess here.

Craig You know it's funny you say that. Because originally when I started speaking on stage, I was giving free presentations to groups of job seekers at local churches and places like that. And I had something to say. I had a platform on Twitter. I was fortunate to be popular on social media. And people kind of started to know who I was and started asking me to come speak. But I did my presentation free for — I don't know — 47 times probably before I ever accepted a professional speaking gig and because I wanted to speak on more stages. That's why I started at that time my own conference and my own podcast and the first hashtag chat for recruiting, right? And it was me trying to get my community together to say, hey, let's talk about these issues. And I'm volunteering to be one of the leaders out here that is the voice for our industry. And you have to — it's like you're always invited to come on my boat. Okay. But if I don't call you and remind you and specifically invite you, you're probably not just going to show up.

17:15 What's Authenticity for Craig

Serhiy The name of the show is Be Yourself. To my signature question — is what authenticity for you and how important it is in your professional and even personal life.

Craig So yeah, I am unashamedly me, right? No matter what — I don't generally in public talk about politics and religion. And that's the advice I give most corporate teams. Like, listen, do you want to alienate half your potential audience right off the bat? Why would you want to do that? Because these online channels are good for growth and business development and community building and I'm not in politics. I don't really have — I used to be, but I'm not now. Go figure. But, you know, there's plenty to talk about without a few things. Like I'm not really into the oversharing online that we get now with people complaining and talking about their failures — I'll talk about failure, no problem. But I'm not constantly doing that as clickbait, right? And I think it's disingenuous to complain and do all these things just to get clicks and likes. I think if you are helpful or funny or entertaining more often than you are asking for things — and that's what clickbait is doing — you're better off. And so I use this ratio, the 5:1 give to ask ratio, right? So I have ways to be myself on a regular basis without just asking for things all the time.

Craig The other thing is I recommend everyone has three things at least that are personal about themselves they feel comfortable sharing that's not divisive and not alienating your potential audience. So, I've got three boys. We live by Grapevine Lake outside of Dallas, Texas. I'm a dog lover. I travel a lot. So I've got these things that I discuss. And one of my best ever posts was about what kind of new travel bag do I get. Not about employer branding. I've got real issues walking around with a roller bag and a heavy backpack.

19:40 Tip for Lead-Generation

Serhiy Did this post generate some business result?

Craig Oh, always. Always — unrelated post. Yes. Because if you've done the right things to set up your profile, right? You see people all the time who maybe are on Facebook or other meta channels and they haven't written anything about themselves in their profile. It's not obvious to the viewer because people say I only want my friends on those channels. That's ridiculous. Those are some of the top channels in the world for doing business. And I don't really personally want to ask my close personal friends and family to do business with me. And so my network on those channels goes far beyond that. I want my friends and family to see that I have this business network and vice versa, right? And so I'm a more well-rounded person this way. So, even on LinkedIn where I share things like what kind of travel bag should I get and things about my kids and other things, I'm not really overdoing it with personal stuff. But I am more of a 360 degree person, a real 3D guy, than you would otherwise know me if I was just very buttoned down and only occasionally posted that we're hiring for something.

21:50 Content Posting Expectations

Serhiy I now have a green light to post more — but you know sometimes we post about failures just as you said because subconsciously we kind of know that it will lure in a lot of eyeballs. But you were saying that sometimes no agenda — just post something that's on your mind and don't expect anything. Having no expectations is the rule that you definitely abide by.

Craig You know this is so funny that you say that, Sergey. So occasionally I've got a small following on TikTok and a big following on X, and big following on the Meta channels and LinkedIn, but the small following that I have on TikTok where I post things where I really don't expect much — occasionally I get tens of thousands of views or impressions, but most of the time it feels like it's in a void. But the rule on TikTok is don't go deleting those posts because they didn't go viral. And I hear about that stuff from people out in the world when I'm out at events and things more than I do anything that I ever do on LinkedIn. It's funny. So yeah, no expectation.

23:02 The Time Craig Protected His Choice

Serhiy Do you have like a moment in your life or a period in your life where you had to protect your choice that you made that you didn't have an apparent evidence to back up, right? But it just felt right in your gut. Do you have something like that in your life?

Craig Yeah. Yeah. So, years ago, I made the conscious decision to use my three things — like put my kids out on social media for marketing purposes, right? Because they were cute and funny. But I never used their names. I only ever called them numbers one, two, and three sons for years until they were old enough and were athletes and things like that and wanted to be famous. They wanted their names out there. But forever, I never even once used their names because I know the kind of stalking that we do in the recruiting and sourcing community. Oh my god. And so the stalkers that I'm stalking are certainly capable of stalking me back. And I've had plenty of stalkers.

Craig I'm told that these are just mostly not individual people. This is a room full of people in a Russian conglomerate that you're never going to get any satisfaction with trying to shut them down. It's not going to work out. So, you just report it and move on. But I think I felt like I made the right decision by doing that. And I've always said that if you want to put your loved ones in the public eye a little bit, you can do it with nicknames. They don't necessarily have to be tracked down like that.

25:02 Fake Name Sergey Used

Serhiy You know what? This reminded me of my affair — or I don't even know how to call it. I used a made-up name for almost seven years because I thought that having a Ukrainian name would hurt my chances of doing business with Americans. So I called myself Chris for seven years. And I actually felt like I was just having a completely new life once I started saying Sergey, you know, and there's no better feeling in life. And this is partly the story that prompted the name of the podcast Be Yourself because I actually lived like someone else's life, pretended to be someone.

Craig Well, so I love hearing that and I'll tell you that at least from my perspective, I could see through that, right? When people do that, I can see through. I mean, your name's not really Chris. Asian people do that as well or African people all the time. Indian people do and that's fine. So, that's a nickname, right? And no problem. It's just easier to handle for a lot of people. And I recruited technology candidates from all over the world for years. I was a full desk recruiter before I ever was an author and a consultant and a speaker. And so I've seen every variation of that. But so me saying I can see through that might be unique to what my profession is. But at the same time, I also feel like if you're Chris and people know you as Chris, you're still you. But probably it felt better to be Sergey.

27:49 AI: Threats / Opportunities

Serhiy Let's wrap up with this ubiquitous topic of AI. And I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole. I love what I love about you — and I love it about all writers, all book writers who I had privilege of talking to — you guys are concise, you know how to be concise, you know how to make pauses and that's something that I'm learning myself. And I think this is uniquely a writer's skill because people who write books they kind of understand the power of a new chapter or a comma or things like that. If you were to point out threats and opportunities that AI brings as we're ending on the verge of 2026 basically.

Craig So threats — AI is gifying you, right? So the whole process of trying to get that prompt just right and getting the correct results and occasionally having this brilliant breakthrough and then it goes right back to giving you, you know, results. That's a game that's sucking you in. So watch out your relationship with AI. You need to be treating it as an employee. All right? That's not your friend. Secondly, opportunities — you can do more if you just understand that this is a tool. Just like a phone, just like the internet, just like a job board, this is a tool. And if you use the tool correctly, do a little bit of research about how to use the tool and listen to the experts that are talking about the possibilities and things you can do — you can wildly expand your opportunity to live in the human real world better.

Craig I just installed this new app called Stanley AI. It's made specifically for LinkedIn. Chris Do shared the link and I've written a few posts with the help of this Stanley. But there is just something — it's just not clicking for me there. It's not me, you know, Craig. And I think the people desperately want to create the version that will get us and be just like us.

Serhiy What's your take on this?

Craig So, it's very interesting. You have to give the machine something to work with. So, for instance, you and I on this podcast — if you upload the transcript to Chat GPT or Claude or one of these, it's going to get to know you better because that's your personality. That's the way you talk. And I write like I talk. Not everyone does that. Hemingway didn't certainly talk like he wrote, but I think that in this day and age, you should write like you talk. And so give the machine better information to help it write like you. And I've written two books mostly based on speeches and conversations that I've given it. And so it knows and understands my actual voice. Plus I've been writing for so many years that when ChatGPT appeared, it already knew what I thought and said about certain things, which is pretty cool as well.

Serhiy I think we can proofread what AI generates.

Craig Well, yeah. I mean, even in business situations, especially in business situations, but definitely when you're just posting to LinkedIn, it's easy to spot when something is just AI generated. Put the human touch in it for sure.

Serhiy Cool. That was Craig Fischer, everybody. Thank you, Craig.

Craig Thanks, Sergey.