Canva told its staff this week that 1,271 people, 22% of the company, “will be impacted” by a restructure CEO and cofounder Melanie Perkins called a ‘refound’.
Some will leave, some will change roles and some will need to relocate. Canva hasn’t published the split, and its note doesn’t name AI.
If you’re one of them, the right thing for you to do now is just process what has happened.
Losing your job sucks at any time. But at this moment we find ourselves in, it can feel especially daunting. An economy that has many pressures coupled with an ever-evolving workplace through AI means we need to adapt and be aware of rapidly changing dynamics in the market.
Companies are reaching valuations higher than Canva with only a fraction of the staff. SpaceX bought Cursor for US$60 billion in August, and Fortune reported Cursor had more than 300 staff late last year.
Canva was valued at US$42bn in August, and this week’s numbers put it at about 5,800 people.
So with unicorn tech companies able to grow with a fraction of the staff, where will future job opportunities land?
The good news is that it has never been easier to start and scale a business. New companies are cropping up every day, getting to revenue fast and not having to rely on VC funding to hire. And established corporations can also represent a number of options for talent from tech scaleups.
At Tier One People we are seeing an increase in briefs from banks this year looking for tech talent to drive AI transformation.
The hard part of job hunting in 2026 is getting in front of people. It feels like a full-time job in itself. The job market has never been so fractured.
AI means recruitment teams get bombarded with applications that they use AI to review. The odds of your resume falling under the nose of the person hiring are slim.
So how do you adapt your career and your job search to the AI era? First, look at how work is changing.
What an AI-native job asks of you
I wrote in Startup Daily in March about who leads a business after job cuts and downsizing. In a tech scaleup like Canva, most people are used to working in an AI-native way.
But in larger and more established businesses like banks, for example, the people who remain now work at a pace those businesses were never designed for. Many end up running three functions as one, with half the team. All of a sudden they must deliver in days what large teams would deliver in months, without the committees and support structures their careers were built around.
AI-native companies, those built lean from day one, hire a select few and keep management layers thin. Nobody has one narrow job: each person works across product, tech, sales, accounts and customer service. You’ll rarely see a Chief AI Officer there, because every person uses AI.
How to evaluate your career in the AI era
Start by reconciling your experience: go through what you’ve done and pick out the big problems you solve. Then work out which parts of your role AI will do.
Imagine if you could take all the boring, task-oriented, repetitive work and meetings away. What would that free you to do? How much more impact could you make?
How to adapt your job search
The positive spin for Canva employees is that your stock is high with employers. That doesn’t mean you can just sit back and wait for the offers to roll in. The job market has never been so competitive, and you need a strategy that goes beyond meeting recruiters, applying on Seek and trawling LinkedIn.
Canva is considered world class in product. And the way I’d recommend you approach the job search is to think of yourself as a product. What big problem do you solve? Who is your target market? What keeps them awake at night? Why should they use your product over any other product? Most important, what value does it deliver?
Once you have that research, the next part is your go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Who are your ideal customers? Where do they go for information? Who do they trust? How do you engage with them? How do you use social proof and referrals to grow your reach?
Then you go into the test-and-learn phase. Every meeting is about understanding what problems a potential employer has and how you can help them. Think of them as discovery sessions, not interviews. Then carefully hone and craft your product so you’re solving all their problems and creating huge value.
In September I described two types of executive job hunter, the Terminator and the Robot, and both of them use AI. The Terminator is focused on a goal and mission, constantly taking feedback and refining their approach. The Robot just does tasks, repetitively, without asking why or what the goal is. Here is how that plays out, and who to reach first.
- Don’t be the Robot. The Robot uses AI to send as much as possible. They rewrite the same resume to match the keywords in every job ad, then send a thousand LinkedIn connection requests with the same opening line. It feels efficient to them, but the person receiving the message sees spam.
- Use AI like the Terminator, to research, draft messages and tighten your pitch, all pointed at a short list of people you’ve chosen. When you’re about to make contact, it’s all about the human touch.
- Find the 5% who can genuinely help. Of everyone you could call, they’re the former bosses and colleagues who now hire and the people with massive networks, so ask them for their honest opinion. “I’m thinking about a few possible career paths and, as someone I highly rate and whose opinion I trust, I wondered if you had two minutes to chat. I know you won’t sugarcoat things.” Remember this motto: if you ask for a job, you’ll get advice. If you ask for advice, you’ll get a job.
Say yes to quick wins
Don’t go out there with the intention of finding the perfect job. Go out there looking for problems to solve.
It’s amazing how many people I see land the perfect job that was never advertised. How they did it was by having conversations about problems and challenges in their domain. Through those conversations the perfect role was created for them.
Say yes to every opportunity: the time to say no is when you are actually offered the job. I see so many people debate whether to go for an interview. They stay highly selective, then wonder why they can’t find a role six months later.
Be open to fractional work, consulting, a contract or a three-month project. Each one gets you into a business, solving problems and building fresh examples of your work while expanding your network. Quick wins compound into major wins, but only if you say yes.
When you’re ready
Whether you’re leaving or staying, the first steps are the same and they don’t need to happen this week.
Start by picking out the big problems you solve, then write down the names of the 5% who can genuinely help. But don’t leave it too late. We’ve seen the average time to fill senior management and executive roles extend from six weeks in 2021 to four months in 2026! If you haven’t been on the job market for some time, this could come as a shock.
Plant seeds today, and in 90 days you should see some flowers bloom!
- Dexter Cousins is the founder of Tier One People, Australia’s leading executive search firm for fintech, payments and the digital economy. He hosts the Fintech Chatter podcast.