LinkedIn is ditching classic job search for AI — job seekers ask if it will actually help
A screenshot circulating on Reddit’s r/recruitinghell has given the platform’s job-seeking community something new to be frustrated about: LinkedIn announcing it is “gradually retiring classic job search starting in September” in favour of an AI-powered search that asks users to “describe the role you want in your own words.”
The thread’s reactions ranged from sardonic to resigned. One commenter summarised the entire situation: “We heard everyone say we were terrible, so we decided we can be worse.”
One commenter pointed to the ecosystem that has grown up around LinkedIn’s existing dysfunction: “The fact that so many LinkedIn influencers became popular for tricks on ‘how’ to search jobs on LinkedIn is quite telling. That company stopped caring about candidates years ago.”
Another raised the question every job seeker actually wants answered: “So can I say only show jobs where the company is actually hiring and not just farming resumes to sell?”
One kept it bleak: “As if LinkedIn were not already bad enough, watch us make it even worse, guys!”
Finally, another netizen noted their observation: “Seems like we are retiring classic everything.”
What the post is really about
LinkedIn’s decision to retire keyword-based job search in favour of conversational AI prompts is being marketed as an upgrade.
The existing LinkedIn job search is already widely criticised for surfacing ghost listings, showing roles that have been closed or reposted indefinitely, and ranking sponsored positions above relevant ones. Some Reddit users questioned whether the new AI search will address broader frustrations with LinkedIn’s job listings, including concerns about outdated or potentially inactive postings. One commenter specifically asked whether the new system could distinguish companies that are actively hiring from those simply collecting applications.
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The commenter who asked whether the AI search could filter for companies that are “actually hiring” named the real issue: the problem with LinkedIn job search has never been that users cannot describe what they want. It has been that the listings themselves are unreliable, and no amount of AI-powered natural language processing fixes a database full of job postings that were never meant to result in a hire.
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