Everyone
has advice.
Who do you
believe?
A closer look at how students navigate AI, the unwritten rules of recruitment, and the search for a way into work.
Explore the findings ↗GradLaunch / Phase 1 · Working report
Many sources. Different signals. A decision to make.
Participants describe catching invented qualifications, inflated responsibilities and achievements that never happened. Yet checking a claim about their own experience can be easier than judging advice about an unfamiliar hiring process. That uneven access to credible guidance connects the four themes: where recruitment beliefs come from, how advice is judged, what claims can be defended, and who is available to help.
Beyond the polished CV.
Four themes, each with the evidence behind it and the accounts that complicate it. The working corpus spans different routes into work: graduate schemes, nursing, care management, creative work and self-employment.
Who taught you how hiring works?
Recruitment known at second hand.
Explore the theme ↗THEME / 02Looks better. But is it better?
The difference between checking a fact and trusting advice.
Explore the theme ↗THEME / 03Could you defend that sentence?
A future conversation becomes a present-day check.
Explore the theme ↗THEME / 04Who can you ask at midnight?
AI, human support and the cost of asking again.
Explore the theme ↗“Help me work out which jobs I can realistically do. Before it writes the application.”P16 · Business student · Q18