Has Outplacement Become Redundant?

A resume template. A tidied up LinkedIn profile. Sent back into the market and told good luck. That's what a lot of people tell me outplacement gave them, built for a market that doesn't exist anymore.

Increasingly it's not even a person providing the advice or coaching anymore. It's now an AI resume tool, a generic career portal, some cookie-cutter standard advice irrespective of which provider is running the program. A system built to help people stand out is quietly turning into a cookie cutter, the same as everything else in this market right now - AI bland.

And that's for the employees who actually get something. Contractors don't get outplacement at all. Day rate, fixed term, doesn't matter.

Meanwhile the market itself has gotten harder to read. Job seekers can't tell if a human or an algorithm rejected them. Good advice, bad advice, five year old advice, it all sounds equally confident coming out the other end of a chatbot, a friend, a relative or the LinkedIn newsfeed.

It's so hard to watch people suffer. Good people who are clearly suitable for the vacancies they are applying for getting rejected in minutes.

So I decided to do something about it. Outplacement needed a human leading it, not an AI cookie cutter, one size fits all solution, because it takes a human to help a human find their way to success.

So I built The Hustle Game. The people's outplacement program. Funded by people, not employers. Built to find success, not hand out templates.

It's the world’s first gamified version of job seeking. Crazy but effective. It focuses on what you can control - your hustle activity - being active, being discoverable, being memorable, creating momentum to put yourself in the right place at the right time for the right opportunity. It's group coaching at its best and it's done within a supportive community environment.

And our success speaks for itself. 24 successful job seeker in 26 weeks with more on the way.

I'd love to know how many people reading this went through outplacement and actually found it useful, versus how many were handed a CV template and told good luck.