For years, recruitment marketers have lived a life of one rule: optimise for Google, rank for the exact keywords and take a good look at traffic. In 2025 and beyond though, a fundamental change is inevitable. No longer is it just about appearing in search results, it’s now about being cited by AI.
Welcome to Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) where the likes of ChatGPT and Gemini are the new content gateways. This is not a future issue, it’s an immediate one that is shaping how candidates are learning about opportunities, seeking out places to work and connecting with their agencies.
If traditional SEO keeps you searchable, GEO will keep you visible in conversations. For recruitment firms, that’s the difference between getting clicked or quoted or highlighted or summarised. But now here’s the big caveat: in this new world, authenticity trumps volume. And AI-generated content alone will not get you there.
The statistics tell a powerful story. According to Semrush, AI Overviews appeared in 13.14% of Google searches in March 2025. The resulting impact on user behaviour has been significant. Pew Research Center data shows that when an AI Overview is present, users click through to traditional search results only 8% of the time, compared to 15% when no AI Overview appears. Even more notably, just 1% of users clicked on the sources cited within the AI Overviews themselves.
This poses a very important problem for recruitment marketers. If AI-generated summaries do not reference your content, you’re no longer taking clicks, which means that your visibility becomes less apparent. The industry is paying attention. Approximately 41% of businesses now refer to themselves as “GEO” to show up in the answers that AI generates. This migration shouldn’t mean giving up the classic SEO fundamentals, it’s about changing and adapting accordingly. SEO focuses on keywords, backlinks and rankings, while GEO is geared to get citations from AI models while creating trust, authority and freshness. That’s a quiet, but also important shift.
Conventional search engines compare pages based on relevance signals like domain authority and inbound links. In comparison, generative AI models privilege trusted, verifiable and multi-source content. Instead of simply crawling and indexing, they’re synthesising, summarising and recommending content at scale.
Here’s a troubling reality that’s emerging. Although AI tools can be deployed to generate content, search engines and AI models become more adept at detecting and devaluing content derived solely from artificially-generated AI text. LinkedIn’s algorithm reorientation in the recent past mirrors the trend generally. The platform has moved away from rewarding recency (how much, and how often you post) to prioritising relevancy (which means whether your content genuinely adds value to your audience). This is no accident, it’s a direct response to the plethora of AI-generated content flooding digital domains. The implications for recruitment marketing are massive.
AI-generated information is of lower authority than original, human-authored insight. Modern plagiarism detection tools are not only advanced in being able to identify not just copied text but AI-generated patterns as well. Search algorithms are adapting to prioritise authentic, experience-driven content rather than cookie cutter, mass produced content. The AI models themselves also preferentially cite sources that show they know something better and have original thought.
In other words, you can’t just ChatGPT route your way to success in GEO. The AI tools you want to show up with are trained to surface the real stuff from reputable sources, and what you post is not that of other AI tools.
Nowhere is this AI change more obvious than in recruitment. A study from Hiscox reveals that 53% of job applicants say they’ve used AI tools to assist them in writing their CVs. Approximately 61% of all applications from a sample of 100, identified in a separate analysis by digital agency Reboot Online, were AI‑generated CVs or cover letters. Though widespread reports on “automated” mass‑application bots powered by AI abound, with some claiming as many as 11,000 submissions per minute, there’s little, if any, official evidence for that scale and none that is clearly confirmed by academic research. This adds staggering noise to recruiters’ lives, but is also a sign signifying a shift in candidate behavior.
Job seekers aren’t simply Googling “marketing jobs near me” anymore. They’re querying ChatGPT: “What are the best companies that are hiring marketing professionals in London?” or "which recruitment agencies specialise in tech roles?" And here's the thing: AI models are answering those questions. They're recommending employers and agencies and they are shaping a pool of placements that are based on the content they can find, see and trust.
If your employer brand content isn’t machine-readable, credible and truly authoritative, you just won’t show up in those AI-fueled recommendations. You're going to become invisible, not only in search results, but in the discussions that increasingly move candidate choices. This is recruitment's AI moment. Optimising job postings for what’s fed into the Google algorithm is no longer sufficient. With that, recruitment marketers must now be putting their content, from employer branding, thought leadership and case studies to insights, configurations for AI discovery and citation.
Generative AI models don’t just favour any content, they also prefer credible, authentic content that isn’t simply optimised for algorithmic usage. Traditional search algorithms could be framed with clever link-building strategies or keyword stuffing. AI models are designed to prioritise trustworthy, verifiable information from multiple sources and, increasingly, to identify and deprioritise generic or AI-generated material.
Signals of authority in turn have fundamentally transformed. Press mentions and awards from industry, original research work, real case studies and third-party verification all lead to what we coin your "AI citation potential." When a recruitment company publishes original salary benchmarking data on actual placements that are cited in industry publications, that content becomes infinitely more likely to be cited by AI models.
What comes out with the most success in the GEO era is the ability to draw from real experience and proprietary know-how. The written word needs a real voice and point of view, supported by actual data and real-world examples and validated by external sources and third-party recognition. It’s also important to consider the mechanics. When AI models develop a reply about “best recruitment agencies in the UK,” they are synthesising across a number of sources. It’s seeking consensus, credibility, recency and authenticity. Agencies with media coverage, thought leadership articles based on real expertise and unique insights will be at the forefront of those AI-generated responses.
Those churning out bland, AI-generated content will be ignored or actively filtered out. The stakes are high, because exclusion from AI summaries doesn't just mean missed opportunities. That’s because AI Overviews have already cut traditional SERP click-throughs at an alarming rate but also erode legitimacy in your community. This dramatically redefines the importance of content for recruitment marketing.
Content is no longer just about getting organic traffic. It’s a matter of branding your brand as a genuine and authentic source AI models trust enough to cite. It’s about establishing the sort of multi-touch digital space where someone with authority comes across as authoritative, not just to human readers but also to the increasingly advanced machine learning model that’s steering the pace at which candidates find and judge the right path for opportunity.
Recruitment marketers must layer their SEO and GEO strategies to achieve ultimate authenticity and seachability. This means making sure that your AI models know who you are, what you do and who you stand for. It’s applying data structure so machines can parse your content in an effortless way and it means writing in language that is clear and authority-laden so that it comes from real expertise and can be accurately cited by AI models. Search algorithms are growing and the accuracy and efficacy of AI models are changing. LinkedIn’s move from recency to relevancy tells us the general trend of which platforms are continuing. But both of these points are significant. Quality and authenticity will win every case over volume and automation.
But AI detection is deep enough to tell you to avoid generic “expert” quotes that could be from everywhere. Instead, seek out deep insights from real proprietary data and honest experiences. For recruitment brands, it will take the form of proactively seeking media opportunities where you can offer honest recommendations, insights and expert commentary that’s based on market knowledge. Each resulting mention increases the chance that AI engines will want to cite you when candidates pose relevant questions.
Machine-readable content is more likely to be selected by AI engines when generating responses to user queries. However, there's an important balance to strike. Today's plagiarism detectors and AI detection tools are highly sophisticated. Content that appears to be purely AI-generated or overly optimised for algorithms is increasingly being filtered out or deprioritised.
To increase visibility in AI-powered search results, focus on clear structure, FAQ sections, schema markup and authentic language.
Also take the time to monitor if you’re being cited as a reliable source, that is, if the citations use your original ideas or general knowledge. In the GEO era, this intelligence matters as much in qualitative terms as in quantitative metrics. When candidates ask about your specialty, if AI models don’t flag your brand, you’ve got a visibility issue that your traditional SEO metrics will not get at. If your content engagement is declining despite high posting frequency, you can fall into the irrelevancy trap.
The face of recruitment marketing is changing the most since the advent of Google. As search and assistant software powered by AI and automation rise to the fore, the rules of visibility are being rewritten. But here's the essential truth emerging from this transformation: authenticity is the new algorithm. Traditional SEO keeps you present in the search results. GEO makes you visible within AI dialogue, summaries and recommendations. Still, sincere, original content ensures you remain credible, competitive and connected to your core audience. For recruitment brands vying for talent in competitive markets, that is a very big difference. The companies that will prosper in this new age are those who authority and true expertise as the new currency of digital exposure. For recruitment brands, that's where visibility, trust and a commercial advantage will be won or lost.