ChatGPT's search feature changes how candidates research companies

When OpenAI launched search inside ChatGPT in late 2024, most companies filed it under "tech news" and moved on. I think they missed what it means for hiring. Candidates aren't only Googling you anymore. They're asking an AI direct questions about your leadership, your culture and whether you're worth their time.

And the AI answers. Not from your careers page, but from whatever it can find about the people who run your organisation.

A new step in the candidate's research

Candidates have always done their homework. They looked at LinkedIn profiles, read Glassdoor reviews and clicked around the company website. It was slow, but predictable.

Now there's an extra step most companies haven't prepared for. Someone opens ChatGPT and types "What's the leadership like at this company?", "Is it a good place to work?" or "What is the CEO known for?" What comes back isn't a generic company description. It's a synthesised view of your leadership team and culture, pieced together from across the web, usually with links to the sources it used.

What the AI actually finds

When someone asks about your leadership, the AI goes looking for signals of credibility: LinkedIn activity, published articles, media mentions, conference talks. Anything that shows what your executives think about and care about.

If your leaders are visible, sharing ideas and taking part in their industry's conversations, the AI has something to work with. It can say what the CFO focuses on, or that the CEO has written about transformation and culture. If your executives are silent, it has nothing. The answer turns generic, vague or empty, and candidates notice.

The screening you never see

This creates a quiet new filter. Before anyone applies, they're using AI to judge whether your leadership is credible, engaged and worth working for. A strong answer gives them confidence that they know something real about you beyond the marketing. A thin answer raises questions. Why are the leaders invisible? Do they engage, or keep their distance?

You're being evaluated before you know the candidate exists. And because it's instant, the bar is higher than it used to be. Traditional research meant clicking through several sites and piecing things together. One question to an AI now gets one synthesised answer, so a candidate can compare five employers in the time it used to take to look into one. The companies with visible leaders hold up well in that comparison. The ones without them simply fade.

Why your careers page isn't enough

Employer branding has traditionally meant company messaging: the careers page, brand campaigns, culture videos. All of that still matters, but it's no longer sufficient, because AI research goes around the channels you control and looks for signals from your actual leaders.

That fits a broader pattern. In the 2024 Edelman–LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, 73% of decision-makers said an organisation's thought leadership is a more trustworthy basis for judging its capabilities than its marketing materials. Candidates think the same way. Polished company content tells them what you want them to believe. What your leaders say in public tells them what you're actually like.

So the companies adapting well build employer brand on top of executive visibility. Not instead of the traditional channels, but as the foundation that makes them credible. I've written more about why this only works as structure, not a side project, in why personal branding only works when organisations treat it as infrastructure.

Try it yourself this afternoon

You can audit this today. Open ChatGPT and ask the questions a candidate would ask: what is the leadership culture like, is the CEO respected in the industry, what does the company value based on what its executives say, how transparent is the leadership team?

Then look honestly at the answer. Is it substantive or vague? Does it reference recent activity or something from years ago? Does your leadership come across as engaged and credible, or absent and unknown? Now run the same questions for your two or three main competitors. If their answers have more substance, they're winning candidate perception before you even know someone is looking.

You can't game this, but you can build it

This isn't about tricking an algorithm. You can't fake your way into a good AI answer about your leadership team. What works is genuine, consistent presence: LinkedIn activity that shows real expertise, articles that share an actual point of view, and engagement in the conversations your industry is having. That presence becomes the source material the AI draws on. The more consistent and substantial it is, the better you show up. It also helps that LinkedIn itself now favours individual voices over company pages.

When companies get this right, candidates arrive having already seen what your executives care about and read their perspectives. They feel they understand the culture before the first interview, and they join for real alignment rather than marketing promises. Meanwhile, most organisations still think about candidate research the old way, which makes this one of the easier advantages to build. It won't stay an advantage forever. As more companies catch on, visible leadership will become the expectation.

If you're curious what candidates see when they ask about your team, I'm happy to look at it with you. You can read more about how I work, see selected work, or book a 1-1.

— Joost