Careers Aren’t Linear Anymore

August 2026

Careers aren't linear.

College or A-Levels at 16. Straight into work, an apprenticeship maybe these days, or university. Qualifications later, a promotion, maybe a business of your own.

The point is that everyone is different, not cookie-cutter. And recruitment, when I started, was a very human business. I still think it should be.

That's why I've been going on about the lazy adoption of AI in recruitment for a couple of years now. It's soul-destroying for candidates, who get overlooked or ghosted, turned into ones and zeroes rather than seen for who they are. Employers lose out too — they just don't always notice.

Today's job-hunting process is broken and needs a wake-up call.

Which is why I put my entrepreneur's hat on and backed Hike, with time and investment. Career intelligence, behavioural science and recruitment expertise, combined to understand job-hunters properly. A brilliant mentor or career adviser, not a filter or a feeding mechanism for ‘doomjobbing’.

Hike's post comes hot on the heels of our leafletting blitz in Manchester a few weeks ago — we had some great feedback and it feels like the proposition is on the money.

On a personal level, I'm buzzing that after 18 months of work behind the scenes we're going public. Proud of the team and enjoying being at the start of something again — muscle memory firing back up, a high-growth team around me, skin in the game that actually means something.

It's made me a better adviser and NED too. Much easier to be useful to a founder when you're back in it yourself, not just talking about it from the sidelines.

It might be the summer but a busy August and September ahead.