How AI Is Quietly Reshaping Entry-Level Jobs

Picture this: you’re a recent college graduate. After four years of dedication to your studies and hard work with building your portfolio, you’re finally ready to submit your resume to a plethora of companies. Excited, although a little nervous for what is to come, you click “submit” and wait.

One month goes by and… nothing. You’ve either been turned down by all the companies or simply have not heard back. “It’s only been one month,” you say to yourself. “With my decent resume, if I keep applying, I’ll surely find a job.”

So you do, you keep applying for the next couple of months. You watch the green leaves turn colors of orange and red before falling down and turning green again, and yet nothing changes. Everywhere you apply to you’ve still been turned down or ignored.

Unfortunately, this scenario is not just some random hypothetical, it is the sad reality for a lot of recent college graduates. According to Fortune, 58% of new college graduates are still searching for a job, most of which are entry-level, compared to the 25% of previous generations. In addition to that, Forbes warns that the younger generation is amidst an unemployment crisis where few entry level jobs are available to them in favor of those with more experience. What used to be something used to get your foot in the door has now become something that is very difficult to step into.

AI's Influence On Recruiting

The job application world has grown increasingly competitive over the years with a study done by Education Data showing that 29.9% of people aged 25-29 have a bachelor’s degree compared to the 18.4% aged 65 and over. However, this is also seen in how many jobs one applies to. The popularization of automated AI application tools has made it possible for one person to apply to over one hundred jobs. On popular job application sites such as LinkedIn and Indeed, an average job posting is receiving thousands of resumes and submissions per week.

The amount of applications these jobs receive can be overwhelming for the recruiters. After all, they have so many applications to review, how can they possibly review all of those applications so they can get back to them within the right amount of time? The answer is: they don’t, and while you may think you’re sending your application that you worked hard on to a real person for review, you’re actually sending it to an AI “gatekeeping” system called ATS.

What ATS (Application Tracking System) does is it takes the list of qualities that the recruiter is looking for in the potential employee, and it scans the application for those lists of qualities. If the applicant does not mean one of those qualities, then they are automatically rejected. It does not matter how qualified for the job they are, because they do not have a specific quality the AI is scanning for, they will not even get an interview.

Image Credit: Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Take the Quiz: Religion, Schools, and Equality

Religion in Schools: Teaching Respect, Not Bias.

AI Is the New Trainee

In addition to this, employers just aren’t willing to train new employees like they used to. Way back during the Industrial Revolution, entry level jobs were used as a way to train new employees to join the business. This was due to the sudden shift from rural farm work to big city business work, and most of the new companies were also new so they did not have time to wait around for the perfect employee.

At the time all one needed was the willingness to learn and work hard. Although this would change as companies grew larger, they began to favor efficiency and cost effectiveness. So, they would add more and more requirements to entry level jobs.

These jobs would go to skilled workers for a low pay. However, because the pay was so low most of the skilled workers would either move on or try to find another job. So, companies went with the next best thing, AI.

According to a report by Randstad, entry-level job postings have dropped by about 29% since January 2024, and much of the decline correlates with AI being able to perform those tasks. In addition to that, companies such as Salesforce and Shopify have stated that they’re looking to meet their growth needs with AI as opposed to humans.

Computer science professor at UC Berkeley, James Brian, helped explain the line of thinking of “Why hire an undergraduate when AI is cheaper and quicker?” He explains that although AI generated code is not perfect, neither is the code written by new graduates. It is just that while training a junior developer can take up to several months, AI takes several minutes to improve the code.

Image Credit: Tara Winstead from Pexels

But What About the Future?

While filtering out many job applicants using AI and replacing entry level workers with a much faster AI counterpart may seem effective in the short term, it is actually detrimental to our future in the long run. Everyone needs to start somewhere, and that’s what entry level jobs are for. They are there so that the new worker can gain the skills to pursue higher level jobs.

Although what happens when you take away entry level jobs? Those in the higher-level positions will eventually retire, but then who is there to take over? Without the training necessary, you’d either get incompetent workers, or even worse, AI taking over all jobs.

That in itself comes with a whole set of problems such as economics. However, if AI takes over, humanity would not be able to advance forward. Where did all of the great inventions come from?

Humans. Who does AI get its information from? Humans. Without the human mind, we as a society would be completely stagnant.

Image Credit: Pixabay from Pexels

What We Should Do

Of course, that is the worst-case scenario, but the fact that it is a scenario should be scary. We should take care of the AI issue as soon as possible. It’s like a little flame that if we continue doing nothing about will eventually grow into a larger and more harmful fire.

For job applications, we should create a limit to how many jobs someone can apply to per week. That way it can eliminate the automated AI application tools, and therefore reviewers will not have as many applications to review, and they can return to their normal human reviewing. Companies should also go back to actually using entry level jobs to train new employees since it is how they will continue their company going forward.

While it is okay to use AI for little things such as finding an episode of a show you like or searching up what a word means, it should absolutely not get to the point of replacing human workers and preventing the new generation of college graduates from finding a job. After all, these graduates are the future.