I started asking Gemini instead of searching for career advice

Watching the job board refresh itself

I spent another two hours last night staring at the job portal site I usually check. It’s the same cycle every day. Refresh, scroll past the jobs that want five years of experience for an entry-level salary, and then close the tab in frustration. My friends keep telling me that there’s some kind of AI transition happening in the industry and that if I don’t catch up, I’m basically invisible. It’s funny because I read an article about universities signing these ‘AI industry-academia’ agreements, promising to turn everyone into an AI-ready talent. But looking at the job postings, it’s just the same old requirements.

The weird advice I keep getting

People keep pointing me toward government-funded programs. There’s always some new initiative—like a turf management program in Hoengseong or a bio-tech training center in North Chungcheong—that promises direct employment links. I looked at one that cost about 500,000 KRW for a registration fee back in the day, though some are free now. It’s all very structured, and maybe a bit too stiff for what I actually need. I just want to know if my degree in biology is ever going to be useful or if I’m just staring at a wall for the next year. I tried asking a few older seniors, but they just give me that ‘keep your head down and work hard’ look that makes me feel like I’m already failing.

Giving up on traditional search results

I was getting tired of clicking on random articles that are just machine-translated press releases from universities anyway. You know the ones—they always have that disclaimer at the bottom saying the translation might be error-prone. They never actually answer the question of whether a field is dying or just changing. Last week, I just decided to stop using standard search engines for career questions. Everyone is talking about ChatGPT, but honestly, it feels like it’s just repeating the same generic corporate fluff I’ve already read a hundred times.

My experiment with Gemini

I started typing my specific frustrations into Google Gemini instead. It felt a little desperate at first, talking to a chatbot about my career, but the answers were surprisingly less ‘corporate.’ It didn’t tell me to ‘stay positive’ or ‘leverage my network.’ It actually broke down the job market reality in a way that felt like someone just dumping a massive amount of data on me without the filler. It’s still just a screen of text, though. It doesn’t actually get me a job interview.

Is there an AI gap or just a lack of open doors?

Seoul is apparently trying to provide free access to tools like ChatGPT for young people to close the ‘AI gap.’ I keep thinking about what the mayor said—that the gap in AI skills is going to become a permanent life gap. That’s a scary way to put it. It makes me feel like I’m already behind, even though I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to use these tools to write a better resume. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just using these AI services to procrastinate rather than actually finding work. The information is all there, but the actual process of getting hired feels exactly as slow and opaque as it was before I started using these tools.