A T&S job coach on what it takes to get hired

I'm Alice Hunsberger. Trust & Safety Insider is my weekly rundown on the topics, industry trends and workplace strategies that Trust & Safety professionals need to know about to do their job.

This week, we wrap up our Safe for Work? series by talking about the rise of T&S consultants and job coaches, and what this tells us about the industry as a whole.

If you're trying to break into T&S or pivot within it right now, I hope this series has given you realistic expectations and practical tools. Understanding what's changed in the field (and what that means for your own sustainability and choices) matters as much as knowing which skills to build or which cities have the most jobs.

Before we dive into it, I want to this guide to what tactics and strategies are working for Trust & Safety leaders right now, based on real insights from a T&S leadership workshop I ran. I hope it's helpful to anyone navigating 2026 resource planning.

Speaking of which, Ben and I are doing 2026 planning for this newsletter, so please get in touch if you have questions, ideas, or just want to share your feedback. I'd love to know what you'd like to see us cover more (or less) of next year, and what resonated with you.

Okay, now to the final part of the Safe for Work? series. Let's go! — Alice

Put me in, coach

One of the most fascinating developments that I've seen in recent years is the rise of job coaches who specialise in Trust & Safety.

That's right; despite T&S being a small industry by most standards, there are folks working to help practitioners navigate hiring processes, reposition their experience, and survive an increasingly opaque job market.

There aren't many of them — just a handful by my count — but we've reached a point where there's enough demand for T&S-specific job coaching that these coaches are building entire practices around it.

This development tells us a lot about what it's like navigating job seeking in T&S right now — difficult, slow-moving, and where every shred of extra help goes a long way.

The woman in the know

Ruby Y is one of the T&S job coaches that you might have come across via her helpful LinkedIn videos. She was kind enough to share some tidbits with T&S Insider about the current state of the T&S job market as she sees it:

1. Over the last 12 months, her clients have tended to be one of three segments:

• Professionals with 3-5+ years of experience at BPOs trying to transition into tech. They've spent years doing high-volume content moderation work and want to move into more strategic roles at platforms.
• Government employees who've been laid off and are pivoting into tech. State and local governments have been quietly building content moderation teams over the last few years, and budget cuts are hitting those teams hard.
• Senior T&S professionals with 10+ years of experience who were recently laid off and want to re-enter at a senior or above level.

While this naturally reflects the people able to afford her services, it shows just how competitive the market is at the moment.

2. The time to find a T&S job is around 4-9 months. The more senior the candidate, the longer it takes. Senior roles that used to require 4-5 interview rounds now often involve 7-10 conversations. Yes, seriously. Ten rounds of interviews for a single role! Many companies are also in what Ruby calls "holding patterns"– candidates finish all their interviews, then the company goes silent for a month or changes the role requirements mid-process.
   
3. The busiest times for her this year were April and May due to company layoffs, but the volume has tapered off since the summer. She notes that many people in that round of layoffs landed new roles by September, which tells us that the job market isn't apocalyptically bad, it's just slow and frustrating.

Ruby also shared advice for people trying to land T&S roles in this climate:

• Learn the basics of AI and get comfortable using AI tools: As we've seen, 62% of newly posted T&S roles now have explicit AI safety responsibilities.
• Speak about your achievements confidently: "Many T&S professionals are excellent at their work but too modest about results — and that humility can hurt your job search," Ruby explained. T&S work is collaborative by nature, and taking individual credit can feel uncomfortable. But in an interview with 7-10 rounds, you need to articulate what you specifically accomplished, with numbers and outcomes.
• Network, genuinely: Talk to friends, former coworkers, even gym buddies. Let them know you're job hunting. The jobs that never get posted, or get filled before they're advertised, come from relationships. This has always been true, but it matters more now when companies are being extraordinarily cautious about hiring. Ruby says: "The job market continues to be volatile, and it’s really your network that gets you to hidden job opportunities."
• Protect your energy: Ruby suggests you set a schedule and limit job searching to half the day. Use the remaining time to do something you enjoy. If you burn out during the job search, you won't have anything left when you land the role.

The bigger question

Throughout this series, we've looked at different slices of the T&S job market:

• The rise of compliance
• The explosion of AI requirements
• The bifurcation of entry-level roles
• The geographic concentration in hub cities
• The disappearance of remote work

Seen together, the emergence of T&S specific job coaching start to make sense. Each data point is a signal of an industry that is harder to enter, more difficult to progress in and more restrictive in where you can do that work.

For those of us who got started in tech 15 years ago, there was a sense that competence and willingness to learn would help you climb the ladder. Those times are largely gone. Many of my peers who helped to build this field are consulting instead of working full-time roles, either because they're burned out from internal advocacy battles or because they can't find full-time work that meets their needs. Other can't find roles that value their experience.

Professionalisation is supposed to create clear pathways and stability, so that if you develop the right expertise and put in the work, you can build a long-term career. In T&S, something different seems to be happening. We're building a profession that increasingly requires everything — technical fluency, policy expertise, regulatory nous, emotional resilience — while offering less in return.

The rise of job coaches is a response to all of that uncertainty and to the goalposts constantly moving. I'm glad experts like Ruby exist to guide people in their job-hunting. But, in an ideal world, that wouldn't be necessary.

Does this stabilise as the field matures? Does something force a correction? I genuinely don't know. Right now — and I wish it wasn't the case — the trajectory isn't encouraging.