From the Diary of Ryan MacArthur

Candidates and employers are automating against each other. A career coach with twelve years at Canary Careers explains how it happened, and how a stalled job search gets moving again.

A candidate in a live interview told the interviewer there might be a delay on his connection. He then used each pause to type the question into an AI tool and read the generated response. “It did not go well,” says the career coach who was working with him.

The coach calls it an extreme example. It is not an isolated one. When the Institute of Student Employers reported on its 2025 survey of UK graduate and school-leaver recruiters, the form of candidate misconduct employers named most often was using AI in an interview without saying so or asking first: 61% reported it. In the same survey, 79% said they were redesigning or reviewing how they recruit because of AI.

The coach is Ryan MacArthur, Director of Canary Careers, the Norwich business where he has spent twelve years writing CVs and coaching people through the job market. Canary Careers, in his words, helps people “find clarity, the right messaging, and a way forward in a challenging job market.” For him the interview story “shows where this can lead: a tool that might help someone prepare becomes a substitute for showing what they can actually do.”

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How Both Sides Ended Up Here

Ryan’s account of how hiring got here has no villain in it. “Candidates are using the tools available to them to compete in a difficult job market,” he says. That might mean ChatGPT, Claude, Teal or Rezi to help write a CV, tools that apply for jobs at scale, or AI in the interview itself. Employers and recruiters, meanwhile, “are trying to work out whether an application reflects the person behind it and whether they can trust what they’re seeing. Each side’s response pushes the other to adapt.”

The scale shows in the ISE figures. Its member employers received an average of 140 applications for every graduate vacancy, the highest number since the institute began collecting the data in 1991.

Ryan has written about the loop with Mark Cobain, in a two-part article titled “The Arms Race Nobody Signed Up For.” The two came at it, he wrote, “from opposite ends of the same problem.” Introducing part one, he put the problem this way:

“Recruiters call candidates because a system told them to, sometimes with no idea why. Candidates game the same system because they feel invisible to it. Nobody set out to build this. It happened anyway.”

Ryan MacArthur, Director, Canary Careers

He has also tried to correct what candidates believe is happening to them. “Most jobseekers think AI rejects them,” he wrote in another post. “It usually doesn’t. A recruiter does. What AI decides is whether that recruiter ever reaches your name in the pile.”

Whether a given application was written by a machine is harder to settle. “Recruiters may notice patterns that make them suspicious, but a hunch is not proof,” he says. His own practice has changed in response. “In our work, we’ve responded by putting less emphasis on keyword stuffing and stiff corporate language,” he says. “We focus on helping people explain their experience and value clearly, specifically and in a voice that sounds like them.” Which part of a search needs that work is a separate question, and he has a name for how he answers it.

What a Career MRI Looks At

“I keep seeing strong candidates do everything right and still go nowhere,” Ryan wrote in the post that introduced it. They tailor the application, they network, they interview well, “and the search still stalls.” His diagnosis: “In almost every case, the problem isn’t effort. It’s misalignment that’s hard to see from the inside.”

He wrote that he had “formalised the diagnostic work I’ve been doing into something I’m calling the Career MRI.” It is a paid, 45-minute diagnostic. “Not coaching. Not resume writing.”

It starts with a conversation. He wants to understand what the person is trying to achieve, what they’ve tried so far and where they’re getting stuck. How many roles have they applied for? Are those applications leading to interviews? Have they approached anyone for a referral, or started conversations with people in their target field?

Then he looks at the search as a whole: whether the person is clear about the roles they want, how well the CV and LinkedIn profile communicate their value, and whether there’s a practical plan for reaching employers. “Sometimes the CV needs work,” he says. “Other times, the bigger gap is that they’re relying entirely on online applications when building relationships or making themselves more visible to recruiters and hiring managers could open up other routes.”

“The ‘MRI’ is about finding the actual bottleneck. Once we know what’s holding someone back, I can recommend steps that fit their situation instead of assuming everyone needs the same service.”

Ryan, Director, Canary Careers

He offers one very recent client as the example.

Harriet’s Search

Harriet is a programme manager in tech who came to Ryan a few months after being made redundant. “She was under a lot of stress and wasn’t getting responses to her applications,” he says.

Her Career MRI identified several things to work on. Her CV “described her responsibilities, but it didn’t clearly show what she had achieved.” They rewrote it around outcomes, then spent time defining the kind of company and working environment where she would perform at her best. They also worked on her interview stories, so she could explain her experience clearly and “have a more natural conversation with interviewers.”

Ryan tells the story without an ending, because it doesn’t have one yet. “Since then, she’s had several interviews, with some progressing to final rounds,” he says. “We’re still waiting to see where they lead, but she has gone from getting little response to having serious conversations with employers.” Harriet’s is one search among a great many.

Twelve Years, Every Continent

Canary Careers has been Ryan’s work for twelve years. “I get people interviews, build the confidence they need to succeed, and provide direction,” as he puts it on his profile. The same page counts more than 2,500 resumes written, for clients on every continent, and puts his success rate in getting clients interviews above 99%. It lists where some of those clients were when they found him: a sales director in the Bronx, a pipe-fitter working in Antarctica, a banking executive in London, a construction manager from Idaho, a marketing leader in Singapore.

Part of that work was done in an unusual place. Ryan has written that at 33 he “earned the opportunity to move to and play for a soccer club in Gibraltar,” where he had four weekly training sessions to attend “in between building my business and writing resumes.” The club won the league cup, the league and promotion, and lost 9-1 in the Rock Cup quarter-finals. The squad appeared in Football Manager 2019. “I believe I was the shortest GK in the game,” he wrote. His LinkedIn headline ends with the words “Former Mediocre Footballer.”

The profile goes further. He has “fought in a cage…twice” and “once bombed spectacularly doing stand-up comedy on a cruise ship.” Then it gets to the point: “Those experiences shaped how I coach. Calm under pressure. Honest feedback. No fluff.”

He says sport is where he learned what to do with pressure.

Three Goals Down at Half-Time

“Coaching athletes taught me that giving good advice is only part of the job,” Ryan says. “You must understand where someone is emotionally, communicate in a way they can hear, and help them act on what you’ve said. The approach that works for one person may be completely wrong for another.”

In college athletics, he says, “results matter and the pressure can be immediate.” As a player he dealt with hostile crowds in England, Spain and Gibraltar. “Those experiences taught me to stay focused when emotions are running high.”

That matters in career coaching, he says, “because people sometimes come to me frightened about money, shaken by redundancy or feeling as though they’ve run out of options. I’ve had grown men in tears on calls.” “In that moment, they don’t need a list of everything they’ve done wrong.”

“It reminds me of going into the changing room three goals down at half-time: you identify what needs to change, give people a workable plan and help them believe they can still move forward.”

Ryan, Director, Canary Careers

He has given that talk for real. “As an assistant coach at William & Mary, I was left to address the team when we went two goals down at Hofstra; I focused on giving them a way forward, and at the end of the season the captain gave me a gift and told me it was the best half-time talk they’d ever heard (we ended up drawing 3-3).”

Asked who shaped how he works, he names his father. “My dad shaped how I lead: whether supervising at UPS, running an insurance agency or coaching sport, he showed me how much a good coach can bring out of people.” The habit Ryan says a colleague would recognise as his is the same one: “When people have stopped believing things can improve, I find a way to get them excited about what’s still possible.” Of practical direction and hope together, he says the combination “has had the biggest influence on how I coach.”

Where Ryan Is Now

The AI question now arrives in Ryan’s week whether he raises it or not. “Every week a client asks me some version of the same question: ‘should I be using AI for my job search?’” he has written. “My honest answer keeps getting longer.” The results he sees don’t split neatly. “Several Canary Careers clients landed interviews and offers this week,” he wrote in one post. “Some used AI to get there. Some didn’t. The difference is more interesting than you’d think.”

Asked what he wanted this feature to do, he said he’d be pleased if it brought new clients to his business. “But my main hope is that it gives people useful insight and helps them see a way forward.” The people he most wants to reach are “anyone trying to navigate the current job market, or supporting someone who is.” He names young people starting out, people returning to work after a long break, and people considering a career change. What he offers them is one sentence long: “You have a partner in your job search: we’ll uncover what sets you apart, show employers what you’ve achieved, and build a plan you can act on.”

Outside work, he gives one entry. “I’ve also dabbled in mixed martial arts, which taught me a lot about how I respond when things get difficult,” he says.

As for what comes next, his answer ran to two sentences. “Keep kicking ass in the job market. That’s what we do.”

The Ryan MacArthur Playbook: Getting a Stalled Job Search Moving

Find the bottleneck before you fix anything. A Career MRI looks at the whole search first, so the steps fit the person “instead of assuming everyone needs the same service.”
Write what you achieved, not what you were responsible for. Harriet’s CV was rewritten around outcomes.
Sound like yourself. Less keyword stuffing and stiff corporate language, more experience explained “clearly, specifically and in a voice that sounds like them.”
Don’t rely on online applications alone. Referrals, conversations in the target field and visibility to recruiters and hiring managers “could open up other routes.”
Let the tools help you prepare, not stand in for you. A tool that helps someone prepare can become “a substitute for showing what they can actually do.”