I Don’t Want to Spend My Life Reading Things Written by Robots. I Do Want Them to Read Me.

A few months ago I wrote this haphazardly in my notes app, “I don’t want to spend my life reading things written by robots”. And I still very much mean that, but in the months that have passed I have realized that I do very much want robots to read things written by me.

Why you ask? It’s that I’ve realized my future career momentum may depend on it.

As a marketer, you can’t avoid the topic of AEO right now, and you shouldn’t. It’s imperative that you ensure your business can be found and understood by agents so that buyers, who are now using agentic search in droves, can understand what you do and if they should buy from you. Google AI Overviews now reaches 2.5 billion monthly users. AI Mode crossed 1 billion, and nearly 70% of Google searches now end in zero clicks.¹

Also I do understand that if I, myself, read the above paragraph 5 years ago I would have thought current me was having a stroke. But I digress.

Even though we know how important agentic search is for business, many of us seem to be leaving it out of the conversation around personal brand. Perhaps it is because much of it feels gross enough already. You’re telling me I not only have to brag about myself online to humans, and now also to agents? I’m all set.

But, you cannot be all set.

Agents may very well decide if you are hired. They may decide what future clients or partners think of you. What your future hires think of you.

AI is assembling an opinion of you whether you want to participate or not. I wrote a bit about that a few weeks ago here. And all that still rings true, but the way data is being sourced and read is changing by the day. If agents don’t have the data to understand you, they will either get it wrong or leave you out of the conversation altogether.

Hiring teams now deploy agents to find, evaluate and score talent.² So if there’s no info, or bad info, you may very well not make it in front of human eyeballs at all.

Prospect finds nothing on you? You’ll be a far less compelling choice than the person who is brought to the top of the pile as a thought leader.

The person you’re sure will accept the offer to join your growing team? If all your accomplishments and accolades are buried, they might second-guess whether your leadership is what will help their career flourish.

And you’ll need to be cognizant of the platform you use, because many are purposely blocking data from agents. LinkedIn, for example, blocks scrapers, forgoes public APIs for profiles, and spends real money keeping bots out, right down to suing the companies that try to read its data at scale.³ That means the where of your story is just as important to get right as the how.

This current moment is a unique shot to let your personal brand shine. You have a chance to tell your career story early, with human proof, in a way that both humans and robots can read.

Start practicing for how you show up in this new world. Get writing.

1. 1. The Next Web, 2026; SparkToro, 2026.
2. 2. Pin (citing Korn Ferry’s 2026 Talent Acquisition Trends report), 2026.
3. 3. Bloomberg Law, 2026.