I honestly do not understand what is happening with the job market.
I have done everything people told me to do. I went to the Job Centre. They said I needed more keywords to get through the sift. I went to the university careers office. They said my CV was strong. I paid £500 for a professional CV review. They said it was basically perfect. I ran it through ATS scanners. It scores 9.2, 9.4 and sometimes 9.7 depending on the website.
I have tailored it for every role. I have added action verbs. I have added measurable impact. I have added stakeholder management. I have added cloud. I have added AI. I have added data. I have added delivery. I have added strategy. I have added resilience.
I have added every keyword I can think of because everyone keeps saying this is how you get through the first sift.
My background is:
2018 2020 Retail Assistant / Warehouse Operative
Worked in a fast-paced customer-facing environment. Built transferable skills across stock control, logistics, customer service, communication, teamwork, time management, problem solving, process improvement and working to KPIs.
2020 Python Bootcamp
Completed an 8-week Python bootcamp covering Python, data analysis, machine learning, APIs, Flask, SQL, Git, Docker, pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, basic cloud, automation and software engineering fundamentals.
2021 Junior Data Analyst
Worked on dashboards, reporting, Excel, SQL, Python, Power BI, data cleaning, KPI tracking, business intelligence, stakeholder reporting and automation.
2022 AI Engineer AI Gym Trainer Enabled App
Worked at a startup building an AI-enabled gym trainer app. The product used computer vision and machine learning to help users improve form during workouts. I worked across Python, APIs, data processing, model testing, basic cloud deployment, user feedback, analytics and product iteration.
The startup later went under and I was made redundant.
2023 2024 AI/ML Engineer
Worked on machine learning and generative AI projects using Python, OpenAI APIs, LangChain, embeddings, vector search, RAG, FastAPI, Docker, AWS, SQL, GitHub, CI/CD, model evaluation and internal tooling.
I did fail my review at the second company. To be fair, I did not fully understand how Git worked at the time, especially branching, rebasing, pull requests and resolving merge conflicts. I was learning, but I know now that I should have understood the basics better before going into that role.
2024 2025 Senior AI/ML Engineer
Worked across generative AI, RAG pipelines, prompt engineering, LLM evaluation, data pipelines, API integrations, cloud deployment, stakeholder demos, internal automation, documentation, model monitoring and AI strategy.
My skills section now includes Python, SQL, JavaScript, Bash, AWS, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Linux, Git, GitHub Actions, CI/CD, DevOps, MLOps, LLMOps, Agile, Scrum, Jira, Confluence, Power BI, Tableau, Excel, Snowflake, Databricks, Spark, Airflow, TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn, Hugging Face, OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma, FAISS, FastAPI, Flask, Django, REST APIs, microservices, Lambda, RAG, embeddings, fine-tuning, prompt engineering, model governance, responsible AI, data engineering, data science, machine learning, deep learning, NLP, computer vision, generative AI, stakeholder management and commercial awareness.
I have also added Python packages because I was told recruiters search for specific tools: pandas, NumPy, SciPy, scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Keras, XGBoost, LightGBM, Matplotlib, Seaborn, Plotly, Streamlit, FastAPI, Flask, Django, SQLAlchemy, Pydantic, Requests, BeautifulSoup, Selenium, Pytest, Jupyter, Dask, PySpark, boto3, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Transformers, SentenceTransformers, spaCy, NLTK, OpenCV, Pillow, MLflow, Airflow, Prefect, ChromaDB, Pinecone, Weaviate and FAISS.
I added networking as well because some AI roles mention infrastructure: TCP, UDP, IP, DNS, DHCP, HTTP, HTTPS, TLS, SSH, SFTP, SMTP, IMAP, WebSockets, gRPC, MQTT, VPNs, VLANs, NAT, load balancing, reverse proxies, API gateways, firewalls, OAuth2, OIDC, SAML, JWT and Zero Trust.
I added cloud because every job seems to want cloud now: EC2, S3, IAM, Lambda, ECS, EKS, CloudWatch, VPC, Route 53, RDS, DynamoDB, SQS, SNS, API Gateway, SageMaker, Bedrock, Azure Functions, Azure ML, Azure DevOps, Blob Storage, Cosmos DB, GCP Cloud Run, BigQuery, Vertex AI, Pub/Sub and Cloud Storage.
I added soft skills because I was told technical skills are not enough: communication, collaboration, adaptability, resilience, curiosity, problem solving, critical thinking, ownership, accountability, mentoring, stakeholder management, leadership potential, working at pace and being a self-starter.
I keep being told my CV is excellent. I keep being told it is ATS optimized. I keep being told I have all the right keywords. I keep being told I need to network more. I keep being told I need more projects. I keep being told I need to post more on LinkedIn. I keep being told I need to build a personal brand. I have done all of this and I am still not getting interviews.
I am now thinking about doing a Project Manager course as well, but I am not sure if that is worth it because I think a lot of those jobs will probably be automated within a year. I am trying to stay positive, but every entry-level AI role seems to want five years of production machine learning experience, Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS, stakeholder management, LLMOps, MLOps, commercial delivery, system design and the ability to explain business value to senior leadership.
I do not know what more employers want. The economy has made everything worse. Thanks Liz Truss.