The Job Hunting Podcast

Episode 346 - As AI reshapes the workplace, experienced professionals face a new challenge: combining decades of expertise with emerging technological capabilities. Professor Jon Whittle explains why successful AI adoption depends on much more than technology, and what professionals over 40 can do to remain competitive. Artificial intelligence is changing how organizations operate, what employers expect, and how professionals demonstrate their value. For experienced workers, the challenge is not to abandon decades of expertise, but to learn how to apply it in a workplace being redesigned around AI.For professionals in their 40s, 50s and 60s, the conversation about artificial intelligence has become increasingly difficult to ignore. Every week brings another prediction about disappearing jobs, another announcement about AI agents performing sophisticated tasks, or another company explaining how technology will allow it to operate with fewer employees. For people who have spent decades building expertise, professional relationships and a reputation for delivering results, the uncertainty raises a legitimate concern: how much of that accumulated experience will employers value in five or ten years?As a career coach working primarily with experienced corporate professionals, I see how this uncertainty affects people's confidence. Some are already looking for work after redundancy, while others are considering whether their current roles will remain relevant. Many understand that they need to learn about AI but are unsure what meaningful proficiency looks like, particularly when their professional strengths have traditionally been leadership, strategy, communication and organizational judgment rather than technology.I recently revisited this question with Jon Whittle, an AI expert with more than three decades of experience, a former senior leader at CSIRO's Data61, and now a professor at Melbourne Business School. When we first spoke earlier this year, I was considerably more concerned about AI's implications for careers than he was. Several months later, despite significant advances in the technology, his position had not fundamentally changed.What emerged from our conversation was a more useful way to think about career resilience. The biggest challenge for experienced professionals may not be that AI makes their expertise obsolete, but that employers increasingly expect them to combine that expertise with capabilities they have not yet developed. This is an important distinction because it shifts the conversation from defending an existing career to actively shaping its next stage.Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Meeting with RenataJoin 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now31 Days of Action for Job SeekersFind Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career GrowLear More About Renata's career coaching and courses Timestamps to guide your listening:0:00 Is AI really coming for your job?1:04 The AI veteran who never expected this in his lifetime4:44 More worried than earlier this year?7:02 Why AI companies are asking to be regulated9:54 The “uniquely human” skills AI is already eroding14:52 Leading AI with imposter syndrome18:31 50-something with a strong career? Start here23:40 Why 80% of AI success isn’t technical29:48 What not to do, and why a gap helps33:56 What 60 Minutes missed about AI and hiring40:28 Why 200 applications get you nowhere46:34 Why an AI professor now posts every day50:56 He left a 1,000-person role, with no website54:43 Don’t build the website firstLinks mentioned in this episode:BookPodcastJon Whittle’s Substack: Being Human in an AI World60 Minutes Australia Investigation into AI in Recruitment60 Minutes Australia Investigation into AI in RecruitmentReset Your CareerPodcast episode 311 with Leanne Brannigan: When the Recruiter Becomes The CandidateAbout the host, Renata BernardeHello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Watch the Episodes on YouTubeFollow Renata on Social Media:LinkedInInstagramFacebookX / Twitter

Episode 345 - After decades of work, many experienced professionals can describe what they have done but struggle to explain why it matters now. This episode explores how understanding your value, rather than relying on titles, credentials and experience alone, can change the way you approach job searches, career transitions and the next stage of your working life.One of the hardest career questions for an experienced professional should, in theory, be one of the easiest: What is your value?After 20, 25, or 30 years of work, there is plenty of evidence to draw from. You have qualifications, projects, promotions, difficult problems solved, teams led, budgets managed, relationships built, and lessons learned the hard way. Yet in my work as a career coach, I regularly meet accomplished professionals who struggle to explain why any of this should matter to the person sitting across from them in a job interview.The problem is rarely a lack of experience. More often, they have confused experience with value.That distinction became the central idea in my recent conversation with Helen Palmer, creator of value(x) hub and the broader Self unLimited approach to working life. Helen argues that value is not a fixed characteristic we accumulate over a career. It is contextual, plural and dynamic. What one employer prizes, another may barely notice. What mattered enormously to us professionally at 35 may matter considerably less at 55.“Value is in the eye of the beholder,” Helen told me.For experienced professionals, this idea is more challenging than it first appears. It means that having impressive credentials, a senior title, or a long track record does not automatically make our contribution relevant to the next opportunity. It also means we cannot outsource the work of interpreting our experience to employers and expect them to reach the conclusion we hoped for.Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Meeting with RenataJoin 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now31 Days of Action for Job SeekersFind Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career GrowLear More About Renata's career coaching and courses Timestamps to guide your listening:00:00 Why capable people can't describe their value00:50 Twenty years of friendship, and one question about value03:54 Value vs values: what value literacy means06:07 Why time for money is nobody's real value exchange08:33 Value you create for your employer vs value for you14:10 "My boss doesn't value it": value is in the eye of the beholder17:51 What your old credential tells the person reading your application19:47 "I'm an accountant" is a feature, not your value23:11 Why most value proposition statements fall flat24:11 Months without interviews: do you still value the work?26:37 You don't need passion from every job (the workscape)31:11 When what you value changes in your 50s32:50 The value exchange ledger, and why you time-box it39:22 When your identity is welded to your job title42:18 "You should stay": leaving when there's nothing left to give44:53 Seeing your career in eras, and grieving the old one49:54 Break the egg: Helen's advice if you're unsure what's next51:21 Where to find HelenLinks mentioned in this episode:Understanding “workscape”Value-literacyHelen Palmer’s LinkedIn profileAbout the host, Renata BernardeHello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Watch the Episodes on YouTubeFollow Renata on Social Media:LinkedInInstagramFacebookX / Twitter

Episode 344 - Career change after 40 does not have to mean abandoning everything you have built. In this conversation with Kate Dillon, we explore portfolio careers, small career experiments, transferable career capital and how to create more professional options without making an unnecessary leap. There is a particular kind of career dissatisfaction I see frequently among experienced professionals. They are successful by conventional measures. They have seniority, expertise, a respectable salary and two or three decades of professional history behind them. Yet increasingly, they feel uneasy about the idea that the next ten or fifteen years of their working life should look much like the last ten or fifteen.The problem is that many people interpret this uneasiness as evidence that something dramatic needs to happen. They imagine leaving their employer, retraining completely, launching a consultancy, buying a business or finally pursuing the idea they have been quietly carrying around for years. Then reality intervenes. There is a mortgage, children at university, aging parents, a lifestyle built around a certain income, and a professional reputation that took a long time to establish.This is where the conversation about career change can become unnecessarily binary. Stay or leave. Corporate career or entrepreneurship. Employment or consulting. Security or freedom.My conversation with Australian lawyer, strategist and entrepreneur Kate Dillon offered a much more useful possibility: perhaps the next stage of an experienced professional's career does not require abandoning what came before. It may instead involve building outward from it.Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Meeting with RenataJoin 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now31 Days of Action for Job SeekersFind Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career GrowLear More About Renata's career coaching and courses Timestamps to guide your listening:00:00 The myth that you have to pick a lane02:47 How she built a portfolio career (it wasn’t planned)06:31 The loss and public failure that freed her10:35 Planner or not? Vision without a rigid plan14:34 Why she built a business without quitting her job21:06 The smallest experiment before you leap25:35 Who to talk to (and the boss conversation to have)31:31 The money question no one warns you about37:02 “What do people pay you for?” and why you never start from scratch41:30 AI, and the hardest skill: unlearning47:02 Your next 12 months: where to startLinks mentioned in this episode:Kate’s diagnosticsFind my talents TalentPredix strenghts assessmentBook Mentioned: Do the Work, by Steven PressfieldEpisode 121 - Impostor Syndrome and Fear of SuccessEpisode 242 - The Role of Business Intelligence (BQ), Emotional Intelligence (EQ), and Social Intelligence (SQ) in Career AdvancementEpisode 287 - Hiring Makes No Sense Anymore: Why Recruitment and Hiring Feel Like a Burden and How Leaders Can Fix ThemEpisode 288 - How to Job Hunt During the Mid-Year SlowdownAbout the host, Renata BernardeHello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Watch the Episodes on YouTubeFollow Renata on Social Media:LinkedInInstagramFacebookX / Twitter

Episode 243 - Salary is one of the most uncomfortable parts of the job search, especially when employers ask for expectations early in the process. In this episode, compensation consultant Matt McFarlane explains how companies think about pay, salary bands, job titles, negotiation, and what experienced professionals need to understand before naming a number.Few moments in a job search create as much discomfort as the salary question. It often appears too early, too bluntly, and too impersonally. A candidate is completing an online application, still unsure whether the role is a genuine fit, and suddenly a form asks for salary expectations or current compensation. For experienced professionals, especially those in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, that question can feel less like an administrative step and more like a trap.Read the full Blog on the WebsiteBook a Free Introductory Meeting with RenataJoin 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now31 Days of Action for Job SeekersFind Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career GrowLear More About Renata's career coaching and courses Timestamps to guide your listening:0:00 The question that traps every job applicant0:47 Why nobody wants to talk about salary1:56 What employers really do with your number7:02 A smarter way to answer the salary question9:42 How companies build your pay package14:38 Why the top of the band is rarely offered18:21 Job titles, ego, and what they cost you22:29 Why startups hand out titles instead of money25:23 What startup hiring gets wrong (and right)30:55 The client who wrote his own job description34:07 Do employers expect you to negotiate?38:57 What you can negotiate besides salary39:47 Who fixes broken pay structures42:49 Inside the Startup People Summit44:34 Ask Matt your questions on LinkedInLinks mentioned in this episode:LinkedIn profile, Matt McFarlaneWatch the Replay of the Startup People Summit 2026FNDN’s website (Matt’s business)Podcast episode about salary negotiation (245)Podcast episode with startup founder Alex Naoumidis (47)Podcast episode with startup Chief People Officer, Emily Zhang (191)About the host, Renata BernardeHello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Watch the Episodes on YouTubeFollow Renata on Social Media:LinkedInInstagramFacebookX / Twitter

Episode 342 - What if confidence isn’t the thing holding you back? I’m sharing what I’m seeing in the job market right now, from executive presence and relatability to why being more human may be your biggest advantage in the age of AI.Confidence has become one of the most common explanations experienced professionals give me when their careers stall.“I need to be more confident.”“I’ve lost my confidence.”“I don’t think I come across confidently enough in interviews.”I hear versions of these statements every week from people with 15 or 20+ years of professional experience. They have managed teams, delivered complex projects, advised executives and built careers that demonstrate considerable competence. Yet when they enter a job search or begin aiming for a more senior role, confidence suddenly becomes the diagnosis. Increasingly, I think we may be diagnosing the wrong problem.The professionals who stand out today are not necessarily the people projecting the greatest certainty. Often, they are the ones who communicate with enough self-awareness to be credible, enough courage to be visible and enough humanity to be memorable. And in an employment market increasingly saturated with AI-assisted communication, those qualities may become considerably more valuable.Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Meeting with RenataJoin 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now31 Days of Action for Job SeekersFind Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career GrowLear More About Renata's career coaching and courses Timestamps to guide your listening:0:00 The new luxury is not using AI1:06 Why today is off-script2:49 Three things I can't stop noticing4:18 Why relatable beats confident8:21 Confidence is overrated10:31 It's not really confidence they lack12:04 What executive presence actually is15:07 There's no one right way to command a room17:16 The worst thing you can do in an interview19:43 The new luxury: slowing down in an AI world21:27 The career privilege nobody talks about23:54 When AI writes everything, being human is scarce26:23 Why slow is the new status symbol30:19 Become more of yourselfLinks mentioned in this episode:LinkedIn post from the beginning of 2026Episode 118 - Generalist or Specialist: Chances Are, You May Be Misusing the Labels!The ONE Thing Executives Who Land Jobs Fastest All DoAbout the host, Renata BernardeHello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Watch the Episodes on YouTubeFollow Renata on Social Media:LinkedInInstagramFacebookX / Twitter