PMI Queensland | Upcoming Events Calendar

OVERVIEW

This session will explore how project professionals and emerging project managers can use AI more effectively and ethically when preparing job applications. The focus is not on using AI to “write the application for you”, but on using it as a thinking partner to better understand the role, interpret the job advertisement, identify relevant experience, and communicate value more clearly. 

The presentation will cover how AI can assist with analysing position descriptions, identifying likely selection criteria, tailoring a CV, preparing cover letter content, developing examples for interviews, and strengthening a candidate’s overall positioning. It will also highlight the risks of over-reliance on AI, including generic applications, inflated claims, loss of personal voice, and inaccurate or fabricated content. 

Key Learning Outcomes:

• Leave with a practical framework for using AI ethically, accurately and confidently 
  
• Learn how to analyse a job advertisement or position description more effectively
• Develop stronger, more targeted CV and cover letter content
• Recognise the risks of using AI poorly in job applications
• Improve how they identify and communicate relevant project experience

OUR SPEAKER

Albert Kalaja | Career Wings

Albert Kalaja brings a rare combination of technology heritage, recruitment industry experience, business leadership and career coaching expertise to the discussion on how job seeking is changing in the age of AI. 

Albert began his career in information technology in the days of mainframes, COBOL, DMS II, and well before Burroughs became Unisys. moving from hands-on technical work into managing technical teams. His early career gave him a front-row seat to the evolution of workplace technology — from mainframe environments to PCs, laptops, Novell LANs, centralised and decentralised databases, Cloud, RPA and nd now AI-enabled tools that are reshaping the way people work, hire and search for jobs. 

Albert entered recruitment almost accidentally in 1987, at a time when fax machines were advanced technology, job advertisements appeared in newspapers, and a small three-column by 12-centimetre advertisement would cost around $2,000. A typical advertised role might attract 20 to 25 applicants, not hundreds. Candidate databases were often filing cabinets organised alphabetically, perhaps supported by handwritten indexes — the analogue equivalent of today’s hashtags. 

Since then, Albert has seen every major shift in recruitment: the rise of job boards, applicant tracking systems, LinkedIn, social media, offshore sourcing, algorithmic screening, automated communications and, now, generative AI. He has worked through the full transition from relationship-led, paper-based recruitment to today’s high-volume, technology-enabled hiring environment. 

Albert founded and grew Paragon Recruitment Services, an IT recruitment and contracting business from 1998 through to 2015. Itt serviced a broad range of corporate clients and operated through periods of significant industry change. He personally has recruited for CIOs, technical, project, business and leadership roles, built and managed recruitment teams, advised clients on hiring strategy, and worked directly with candidates navigating career transitions. 

Today, Albert works as a career coach and job-search strategist through CareerWings. He helps professionals understand the modern job market, reposition their experience, build stronger CVs and LinkedIn profiles, prepare for interviews, and approach their search with greater clarity and intent. His work includes coaching job seekers, international professionals, graduates, mid-career specialists and senior leaders. 

Albert’s perspective is practical rather than theoretical. He understands the old world of recruitment because he lived it, and he understands the new world because he works with job seekers inside it every day.  

His focus is on helping people adapt to a job market where AI can help, but where clarity, judgement, storytelling, confidence and human connection still matter. He believes the future belongs to job seekers who rely less on passively responding to job boards and more on actively positioning themselves in the market — building and leveraging relationships before they urgently need them.  

In a world where interviews may become fewer, harder to secure and more competitive, he also places strong emphasis on never wasting an interview opportunity: knowing your own story, knowing how to tell it, and being ready to demonstrate the value you bring. 

Linkedin: Albert Kalaja