If I disappear call the police

Hi! I’m Peter, CEO of Kickresume, and these career-related stories caught my attention this month — and might catch yours too.

• Today’s story: Your dream job title is back on the market. The dream job isn't.

• Handpicked remote job paying in $$$: Remote roles edition!

• Random piece of career advice that actually works: How to make your cover letter sound like a human wrote it (video)

• Surprise at the end: FREE access to Kickresume Premium for 7 days

I’ve never met a kid who would dream of becoming a data reviewer or a data input specialist.

Come to think of it, I’ve never met an adult who would either.

I have, however, met plenty of people who dream of being a literature expert, a historian, or a philosopher. (I myself went through a brief but intense Nietzsche phase.)

Of course, if you actually committed to any of these, you already know the part that comes next:

“What are you going to do with that? Nobody’s gonna pay you to cosplay Plato and talk about caves all day. Get a real job!”

And for years, you had nothing to say back. The job market for philosophers, linguists, or historians was… not exactly booming.

But boy oh boy, did that change this year!

Open any job board right now and you’ll find openings for Philosophy PhDs, Historians, Literature Experts. Actual job ads, paying actual money.

Sounds too good to be true, right?

That’s because it is.

(Unless you’re the kind of person who sees moral gray areas as business opportunities. In which case, I have great news for you.)

Let me show you what I mean:

All those classic, simple job titles you didn’t even know existed anymore. Remote, paying $40–$150 an hour, and actively hiring.

Finally, the vindication you’ve been waiting for.

But then you actually open one of these listings. And the job description reads something like (I copy pasted these phrases from the actual listings, btw):

• Contribute your domain expertise to help ensure AI systems reflect accurate, nuanced, and research-grounded perspectives.

• Review and evaluate AI-generated text for accuracy, coherence, and relevance.

• Your work will directly support the development of AI systems.

Basically, you figure out pretty fast that it’s just data annotation jobs for AI companies rebranded as academia.

And it’s probably also not what you had in mind when you poured years of your life into your Masters or PhD.

So, is it misleading? Oh yeah. It’s also pretty clever.

These AI companies are borrowing the names of jobs that barely exist anymore to attract people who’ve been waiting years to see them on a job board.

And sure, some people would close that listing and move on.

But to others, this might still sound fine.

The pay is decent, it’s remote, and you can tell yourself it’s temporary — just something until a real job in your field comes along. Plus it’s still kind of in your field. If you squint.

I’d say fair enough and move on.

Except there’s a reason I’m still writing.

Make sure your resume gets to the jobs worth applying for

There are real jobs out there for people with your background.

And a well-tailored resume is usually the difference between getting rejected and getting an interview.

Resume Tailoring takes what’s already on your resume and adjusts it to match the job you actually want:

• Right keywords,

• right experience,

• right format,

• and getting past ATS filters.

So when a real opportunity shows up, you’re ready.

Tailor Your Resume

See, data annotation has always been kind of shady.

Until recently, data annotation for AI was mostly offshored to countries of the global south, like Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan or Venezuela.

Precisely because companies could get away with paying almost nothing, offering zero worker protections, and suspending workers (or entire countries) who depended on the income on a whim.

Then AI got better.

The models don’t just need to “sound like a human” anymore, they need to sound like they have a PhD.

And for that, you need people who have one.

Which brings us to those prestigious job titles with $50–$150 an hour rates.

Surely, if they’re paying that much and targeting the most educated people available, the working conditions will match. Right?

Wrong.

Problem number one: the working conditions are still bad.

An algorithm decides when you work, what you earn, and whether you keep working at all.

And when there is work, you’re competing for it. Tasks drop and you have to grab them before someone else does.

Problem number two: you’re training your replacement.

It’s pretty self-explanatory. You’re literally teaching the AI the things you know so that these companies can package it and sell it as “PhD-level intelligence.”

Problem number three: some of these companies aren’t actually hiring anyone. (I should say upfront that this is based on what people are reporting online, not something I can confirm.)

You apply and you’re immediately invited to an AI-interview that asks very specific questions about your expertise. You give detailed answers because that’s what you do in an interview.

Then you get rejected.

But your answers? Those are already in the training data.

One more thing.

This next part is either investigative journalism or a descent into paranoia and a conspiracy theory. Possibly all three.

Karen Hao, a journalist and author, has been covering this whole subject pretty thoroughly.

But what I found is that some of that work (especially the newest) is suspiciously hard to track down. Some of it has been straight up deleted.

(Though maybe she just needs a better marketing team…)

And on Reddit, the threads about these data annotation jobs have this weird split.

People sharing bad experiences. And people who sound like they’re defending these jobs for a living.

I’m not going to say which group I find suspicious.

But I do find one of them pretty suspicious.

*taking my tinfoil hat off now*

Conspiracy theories aside, here’s my actual advice.

If you want to do data annotation, go for it. Just know what you’re getting into.

Best case: you find a company that’s actually legit, the pay is real, and you’re okay with the trade-off. Fair enough.

Worst case: you go through a fake interview, hand over your expertise for free, and get a rejection email as a thank you.

Either way, do your homework on the company before you apply. Some are better than others.

Some are significantly worse.

I’m not going to name names because I enjoy not being sued. But if you scroll back up to some of those job ads, you might notice a pattern.

I don’t have a silver bullet for this one.

I just wanted you to know what’s out there before you find out the hard way.

And if you’re a PhD graduate reading this, your expertise is worth something. Make sure whoever’s paying for it is actually paying for it.

A small but useful update to this section: these jobs now live on our own job board.

Which means you can apply directly from the Kickresume app and prepare for the interview there too.

#1 Biologist at Montrose Environmental Group

💰$150,000 - $180,000 US base range 💰

#2 Sr. Editor at American Public Media Group

💰$135,000 - $145,000 US base range 💰

#3 Senior Writer and Press Manager at RepresentUs

💰$78,000 - $108,450 US base range 💰

#4 Senior Physics Teacher at MyEdSpace

💰$120,000 - $120,000 US base range 💰

If there’s one thing AI is surprisingly bad at, it’s writing about you.

It’ll give you something polished, sure.

But it’ll also sound like every other cover letter in the pile.

Here’s how to fix that.

If you’ve scrolled this far, you deserve something nice. How about this?

Kickresume Premium is FREE for 7 days for you!

Just click the link, sign up with any email, and your premium will be active right away.

There are hundreds of open roles at the top tech companies right now. Your resume should probably be ready for them.

Catch you later!

Peter