The headline story is that AI is taking the jobs. The real story, Katie Fortunato argues, is messier and more useful than that

In this AI Central Voices x Jobstream interview, we sat down with Katie Fortunato, Co-founder and EVP of Innovation at Hire Innovations, where she leads Jobstream - a platform where career creators get paid for the job opportunities they share

Before Jobstream, Fortunato built a talent-technology marketplace connecting buyers and sellers - which is where her AI experimentation started - and she's spent the years since watching hiring behaviour shift in real time

We talked through what the platform is actually seeing, against the backdrop of Talivity's April 2026 Talent Market Index - where AI is displacing roles, where it's quietly creating them, and what senior professionals should do about it

Key takeaways:

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Her summary is three words - volume up, signal down. "We're seeing more applications than ever, mainly due to AI - and it's become increasingly more difficult to vet talent, or interview who's actually qualified," Fortunato said. Candidates now apply everywhere regardless of fit, and employers respond by tightening filters - sometimes screening out perfectly matched resumes in the process. The middle is where people get lost, she said, and timing has become everything. Apply early and the applicant tracking system and recruiters are far likelier to see you.

The macro backdrop matches what she's describing. Talivity's April index shows a labor market sending mixed and often conflicting signals - unemployment fell to 4.4% and March added +178K jobs, the strongest monthly gain in about 15 months, yet the drop was driven partly by labor force participation slipping below 62%, with wage growth slowing to roughly 3.5% year-over-year. Tight on paper, softening underneath. Talivity also flags early signs of disengagement - longer job searches, rising skills mismatch, and more movement toward self-employment - which lines up with the rise in LLC filings Fortunato is tracking as people run side hustles to supplement core income.

AI is genuinely removing repetitive roles, Fortunato said - screening, coordination, basic ops, and entry-level work. Marketing and talent teams are getting leaner, and she ties that to the wider squeeze of soft consumer spending and layoff fear. When consumers don't spend, companies don't grow, and when companies don't grow, they don't hire. Some of the pullback is real. Some of it, she argues, is positioning - AI as a headline that moves the market and, occasionally, as cover for cost discipline that was already coming.

But the more interesting half is what's being created. "AI is quietly creating roles for people who are more experienced, and who possess practical business sense - this paired with AI makes a super employee," Fortunato said. She's tracking what she calls the "HALO market" - heavy assets, low obsolescence - the dexterity and trades-based work that AI can't easily touch. "The volume of opportunities in these essential verticals remain strong - like healthcare, retail, travel, K-12 education, and this is why you see headlines about young people becoming the millionaire toolbelt generation," she said.

The index backs the pattern. Healthcare rebounded with +76K jobs in March, and Finance & Operations and Healthcare continue to anchor the Index, while year-over-year pricing pressure is led by Retail at +166%, Sales at +147%, and Light Industrial at +135% - the high-volume, revenue-driving, and hands-on roles. Healthcare stands out as the biggest area of need, which Fortunato reads as a function of an aging population - and an opening for companies and government to build better pathways into those professions.

AI now handles the first-pass work - drafting job descriptions, filtering, scheduling, matching. Jobstream built its own engine to match skills against job requirements, though Fortunato is candid that soft skills stay hard to filter. Humans step in later. "The first interview is often with a system - you just don't see it," she said. Job seekers know this, and many optimize for the system before they ever meet a person - which is fueling a live debate about ethical standards and gaming the filters.

The one thing most aren't doing is changing how they look for work. "If you're applying cold, you're already behind," Fortunato said. Her starting point is the personal brand - like it or not, employers check your social presence before they read your resume. Make yourself discoverable for your skills, post, engage, activate your network. The market rewards visibility, and it rewards connection - she notes 64% of placements come from referrals.

That advice cuts with the grain of a selective market. Talivity's read is that employers are becoming increasingly selective, concentrating spend on high-impact roles while pulling back where consumer demand is soft, with 7 of 9 segments still sitting above baseline on attraction cost. When employers are paying premiums only where it matters, being discoverable for the right skills is the whole game.

It's advice so generic it's nearly useless. Fortunato reframes it as systems thinking, not coding. "Can you take something repetitive and redesign it with AI?" she said. Start with your own workflow - email, research, reporting - because that's where the opportunity shows up first. She frames the ROI as time saved, and time as capacity for the real-life connections that actually move a career.

Fortunato's answer - it's no longer a hobby, it's infrastructure. "Your network is currency," she said. "An audience is the only asset that compounds regardless of your past employers." The professionals she watches build income streams before they need them - and that foresight changes how they navigate risk when the market turns.

The line I keep coming back to is that the first interview is often with a system you can't see. That reframes the whole game - the market isn't just harder, it's differently shaped, rewarding people who are discoverable, connected, and building optionality before they need it

The Talivity numbers say the same thing in a different language - targeted demand, uneven recovery, premiums paid only for the hardest-to-fill roles. Fortunato's read is oddly optimistic underneath the churn - experience is becoming an asset again, as long as you pair it with the tools and stop waiting for one ladder to carry you up

Katie Fortunato is Co-founder and EVP of Innovation at Hire Innovations, where she leads Jobstream. She has spent her career at the intersection of media, talent, and technology, working with brands including MTV, AOL, and The Wall Street Journal, and previously built a talent-technology marketplace connecting buyers and sellers. Her focus now is the career creator economy - helping trusted professionals turn their audiences into income.

Jobstream is a platform where career creators get paid for the job opportunities they share. Through its Career Creator Network, Jobstream lets trusted voices monetize the audiences they've built by connecting job seekers with real openings, using AI-matching to turn credibility into income. It is a product of Hire Innovations.