AI may be after your job, but this AI agent promises to help you get a new one

'Jobright Agent' can apply for jobs on your behalf

The jury is still out on whether AI will take your job, but there's a new AI tool that promises to help you find a new one if you're pressed.

On Tuesday, Jobright.ai, a recruiting startup co-founded by Ethan (Yudian) Zheng and Eric (Yuan) Cheng in 2023, released Jobright Agent, a software-based service that can apply for jobs on your behalf.

The company previously offered an AI service called Orion that was able to identify job listings that matched a job seeker's criteria. It helped with resume revision and the application process but offered assistance rather than automating the job application process.

The company claims its new agentic service scans over 400,000 job posts daily to match candidates with opportunities that align with their stated career goals, and can submit job applications to companies on its own.

Concurrent with the launch, Jobright.ai is announcing a $3.2 million funding round led by Translink Capital, with participation from HR Tech Investments, the venture arm of online recruiting biz Indeed.

Zheng, Jobright's CTO, told The Register in an email that early testing of the company's agent showed it helped job seekers to save 80 percent of the time they'd typically spend hunting for and applying for jobs. And he claims the agent service helped job applicants land twice as many interviews.

"We invited around 200 people to test it three weeks ago," Zheng said in an email. "More than half have already landed interviews. Roughly 10 to 20 people have already received at least one offer, and some others are still in the middle of offer negotiations."

Zheng said this marks a shift from manual, search-based job hunting to autonomous, agent-driven career management.

"Instead of sifting through listings and reapplying endlessly, users now have an AI that takes initiative – even while they sleep," he said.

Jobright's primary host for the agent is AWS, and the company uses a mix of foundation models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.

"Each model brings unique strengths – for example, Gemini excels at visual understanding, while OpenAI's models are particularly strong in reasoning and language tasks," said Jobright's execs.

"In addition to these, we fine-tune Llama-based models on resume-specific and job-matching tasks to better align with our domain. This hybrid approach allows us to combine the best capabilities across models while optimizing performance for real-world job search scenarios – ensuring our Agent not only performs well on general tasks, but also deeply understands the nuances of job descriptions, applications, and recruiter expectations."

Eric Cheng (left), Ethan Zheng (right) – click to enlarge

There's widespread sentiment that the job application process is broken. A survey conducted last year by Resume Genius suggests that 72 percent of job seekers say looking for work has harmed their mental health. Candidates cite grievances including hirers ignoring applications, low salaries, excessive skill requirements, and job listings that don't correspond to actual openings (ghost jobs).

Asked why job seekers might choose an agent, Jobright's co-founders said: "Because job search is exhausting, repetitive, and often overwhelming. Most people don’t need more tools — they need actual help. An AI agent removes 80-90 percent of the busywork, so they can focus on what really matters: interviews, skill-building, and making real connections.”

The two execs claim that employers have been very positive about receiving automated job applications, noting that Jobright Agent only applies for positions when candidates are qualified. Some human jobseekers take a more optimistic or random approach.

"Based on last year’s data, applications submitted through Jobright have a higher interview conversion rate, and many companies have proactively approached us to post jobs directly on our platform," said the CTO and CEO.

Zheng and Cheng don’t think the backlash against AI bots will hurt their business.

"We're not too concerned about job crawling," they told us. "In fact, many job boards and ATS [applicant tracking system] providers actually encourage healthy, responsible crawlers – it helps them distribute jobs to more candidates, similar to what Google Jobs does. The real concern for employers isn't job crawling itself – it’s receiving large volumes of low-quality, inaccurate applications."

The pair said that if an employer or job site explicitly blocks bots, the agent always respects those rules. In that case, the agent will direct the job seeker to apply manually. But, they added, in their experience, that represents a very small portion of the job market.

The Jobright Agent works for US-based jobs in tech, education, and government, but can't yet cover other industries. Zheng and Cheng said they're planning to add broader geographic and job sector support in the future.

"The reason we’re intentional about this expansion is that AI still can’t fully understand the nuances of every industry out of the box," they explained. "Different job categories have very different matching criteria, hiring processes, and employer expectations. Every time we enter a new category, we work closely with domain experts and fine-tune our AI models using extensive real-world data to ensure Jobright can deliver high-quality, relevant matches that actually help people land jobs. We don’t want to offer a generic solution – we want it to feel like you’re getting advice from someone who truly understands your field."

Most of Jobright's core features are free to use but subject to limits. The company does have a premium tier plan for unlimited usage that starts at $30 per month.

"Some advanced features inside the Agent, like premium resume rewriting and advanced job market data analytics, may have usage limits on the free tier," said Zheng. "But the free allowance will be quite generous and should cover most users' regular job search needs."

The co-founders said they've seen strong revenue growth from job seekers and see even more potential from corporate customers.

"Companies typically have larger hiring budgets and a strong need for qualified candidates, and we're actively developing tools to help them hire faster and more effectively through Jobright," they said. ®