What I most want to branch off into from the topic of “casting a wide net with AI job applications” is another kind of net-casting: professionals making their introductions so all-encompassing, you’d think leaving out one skill would cost them an entire Tao Zhu Yin Yuan luxury tower.
“Brand strategy, social media management, website design, digital transformation—comprehensive integrated services.”
Okay, I recognize every word, but put them together and I have no idea when I should call you. It’s about the same as writing “I like food, travel, and movies” on a dating app: your service scope covers all of humanity, and you’re about as distinctive as a convenience store plastic bag.
I lean toward the opposite: if you want AI to recommend you, you may first need to tell it which needs you aren’t suited for.
That sounds a lot like telling business owners to turn customers away. Even the rent wants to call the police.
But squeezing yourself into every search result and becoming a credible option for a specific need are two different businesses.
The Customer Is Looking for a Leak; You Introduce Yourself as Someone Who Loves Water
Imagine this: at ten at night, a renter asks AI, “My bathroom ceiling keeps dripping. Is there a repair professional who can assess the likely cause first and is willing to explain it to my landlord?”
Professional A’s website says: “Professional workmanship, honest service, quality first.”
Professional B writes: “Serving Banqiao and Zhonghe; evening appointments available for preliminary leak inspections; on-site photos and an explanation of the assessment provided; if upstairs residents are involved, a separate joint inspection must be arranged. Same-day repairs cannot be guaranteed.”
B isn’t putting on a better show. They even admit up front that they can’t save the world immediately. The PR department may already have fainted.
But this introduction lays out the location, service, deliverables, and limitations. For a search system, there’s more information to match against; for an anxious renter, there are more details to check.
This doesn’t guarantee B will be recommended. Whether AI can access the page, whether the information is outdated, and how other sources describe them can all affect the result. But A hasn’t even submitted anything that can be checked—just four lines of auspicious New Year slogans.
A Price Gap Is Emerging Between “Being Found” and “Being Popular”
Marketers can easily get caught in the middle here: the boss wants buzz; the customer wants answers.
An office meme with a hundred thousand likes might be great at warming people up to a brand; a page that only a handful of people read, titled “What Does a Preliminary Bathroom Leak Inspection in an Older Apartment Check?”, might be closer to the entry point for an actual commission. The difference is how close each is to a need. You can’t judge the winner by reach alone.
So I’d want to shift some digital marketing budget from “how impressive we are” toward documenting “what we’ve actually handled.” What conditions a case involved, how we assessed it, and what we ultimately delivered; anonymize anything involving client privacy, and don’t hype results you haven’t verified.
Of course, clarity comes at a cost. Making your service boundaries public may genuinely mean fewer phone calls; the more transparent your pricing and process, the easier you are to compare. Some people support their families by taking on a flexible range of projects. You can’t casually tell them to slice themselves into a specification sheet.
More troubling still, AI may choose the person who’s best at packaging ordinary services into polished information. Expertise doesn’t automatically win as a result. There’s simply another competition over “who can provide a credible description.” A veteran has been doing the work for twenty years, and all they have online is a phone number; the business next door opened three days ago, and its FAQ is already up to question eighty. There’s something a little absurd about that picture.
At 10:03 p.m., the renter is still standing in the bathroom doorway, catching water in a basin. They don’t have time to study whose brand spirit feels the warmest. They just scroll through the recommendations to that one line: “Photos and explanations can be provided to help you communicate with your landlord.”
Then they take a screenshot and send it to the landlord: “Would this one work?”