“Yes, a bachelor’s degree is good, but a master’s degree looks even better (to employers)!” If you were born before the pandemic, you have probably heard adults tell you that yarn. But is it still relevant in the AI age? Or were you (and I) told nothing but a lie? On the surface, that decades-old statement may seem to be simply a lie, given the fact that AI is taking over a significant portion of entry-level jobs. Let’s see if it’s really true.

You Graduate With a Four-Year Degree From a Solid University, and

You can’t find a decent job. So, you do what you have to do to pay your bills–you accept a minimum wage job as a barista at Starbucks. It’s not much, but it’s still paying work, no matter how degrading it may be. It has long been a reality for Liberal Arts and Humanities majors. But now, coding graduates are dealing with this, and many are working at fast-food chains, like Chipotle.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s recent data indicated that the new Comp Sci graduates faced an unemployment rate as high as 6.1%. Recent Computer Science graduates did even worse–7.5% of them were unemployed. Interestingly enough, only 3% of biology and art history majors were unemployed. The unemployment rate for all fresh college graduates was 5.3%.

Many are laughing at this development because the Tech field was marketed as being recession-proof and full of cushy jobs with great perks. And to be fair, there has been a lot of truth to that until recently. The AI revolution took off in late 2022 with the rollout of ChatGPT, and the rest was history as far as white-collar jobs were concerned.

Since AI can easily do many of the repetitive tasks associated with entry-level jobs, often more accurately and at a much lower cost than new college grads, companies are rushing to have AI tools take over many of these roles. To be fair, some of the zeal behind employers embracing AI comes from the fact that most of them (employers) perceive Gen Z to be ‘the worst generation to work with in history!’

So, in that sense, new college graduates (all of whom belong to the Gen Z cohort) may have shot themselves in the foot with their work ethic, attitudes, values, and behavior. Perhaps that’s why many AI experts are frightened about the very technologies and tools that they develop and market. They predict that AI may take over about half of all entry-level jobs in the next few years!

But the pandemic is also partly to blame. Employers hired like crazy during and immediately after the  COVID-19 scare. That may have made them more bloated and less efficient. So many are responding by laying staff off, cutting unnecessary expenses, and freezing new hiring. That’s why so many new college graduates complain about sending out thousands of applications for positions and only landing a handful of interviews.

Those who are lucky enough to land an interview say that they are overwhelmed by employers’ demands, which often include numerous online coding assessments, live technical tests, and numerous rounds of interviews. Even after all of that effort, few are hired. What worsens things is that employers often use the work done by candidates without either paying them or giving them credit for their work.

ATS Makes Things Worse

Many employers use Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to screen resumes. According to recent surveys, the majority of employers and over 98% of Fortune 500 companies use ATS when reviewing resumes. You may have been stunned to apply for a job, only to receive a rejection email message or text about 2-5 seconds later. If you were confused because you knew that no human could possibly review an application that freaking fast, you were right.

It used to be that someone in Human Resources would actually sit down and review your application right after you clicked on the submit button. But that’s not the case anymore. All applications go directly to an ATS database, where they are stored for review if a future position comes up. I did write about ghost or nonexistent jobs earlier.

If you submit a resume, but it doesn’t contain the keywords that are ATS-friendly, it will get ignored, or worse, rejected, sometimes instantly, even if you are qualified and have enough experience for the position. ATS systems aren’t going away any time soon because they help employers manage the tens to hundreds of thousands of applications that they receive for various positions annually.

Human resources personnel receive so many applications that they couldn’t possibly manually review all of them. So, they use these systems to identify the best-qualified candidates as fast as possible.

AI Isn’t Just Affecting the Coding Field

Okay, so the coding field is one of the fields that is being impacted the most by AI, but other entry-level niches are also at risk. It’s because AI can handle many basic tasks like customer service, data entry, simple research, scheduling, basic writing, and much more.

According to Goldman Sachs’ most recent analysis, about 300 million full-time roles may soon disappear because of AI automation. Some of these were traditional entry-level jobs: admin, legal, and basic tech. Many analysts are worried because these positions have traditionally given new grads the experience needed to find higher-level positions. The jobs also taught them how to work and behave in the corporate environment.

There are 35% fewer postings for entry-level positions in America since January 2023, and AI is the direct culprit. That development has led 49% of new job seekers to think that their degrees are pretty close to worthless. In some ways, they may have a good point. Many young people now believe that college is an overpriced scam, and their beliefs do have some merits.

Employers also want hires to be experienced–they are loath to hire someone fresh out of college with no work experience. That’s partly because they have to invest substantial time and resources into training new hires. The other key reason is that new hires are notorious for job hopping when they find a better opportunity in a heartbeat.

The latest statistics reveal that the average new technical hire is 3 years older today than in 2021. That suggests that employers are hesitant to train workers from scratch. Additionally, most employers in San Francisco who post entry-level jobs require workers to have at least 2 years of work experience.

However, the future may be a bit rosier for those who know how to use AI. For example, machine learning engineers, or those who build AI systems, have seen a 59% increase in new positions since 2020. It’s time to list the fields most vulnerable to AI and how badly AI has impacted them:

• Marketing:  75.6% decrease
• HR & Talent: 72.3% decrease
• Engineering: 72.2% decrease
• Product: 69.8% decrease
• Operations: 66.7% decrease
• Commercial: 64.8% decrease
• Finance: 63.0% decrease
• Data: 62.1% decrease
• Admin: 62.7% decrease

Times Have Changed

If you’re graduating from high school this year, you need to prep yourself for what could be hard times ahead. Remember that you need to find a job to gain necessary experience–it doesn’t matter if you’re busing tables at a restaurant in your neighborhood. A college degree doesn’t automatically land a job for you anymore. That’s partly because most colleges and universities have outdated curricula that teach unnecessary classes and concepts. But the main culprit is that the professional world is so technologically driven, now that it’s constantly changing.