Colton Masi checked each box after college in search of a good job in the computer science industry.
The 23-year-old Drexel University attends a Philadelphia school that focuses on real-life experiences. He majored in software engineering, which is the discipline he has been hearing about throughout his life, and it is synonymous with stable, high-paying jobs. His plan is to avoid many millennials falling into part of their fate after the Great Depression.
“When I was 13, I kept surfing the Internet,” Colton told Today, I explained Co-host Noel King. “I was on Tumblr and I saw a lot of young people who are currently graduating talking about their struggles in the job market and building their own struggles…I always like, ‘Oh no, I need to do something that will find me a job.’”
So Masi accepted everyone’s advice Joe Biden arrive Chris Bosh arrive Ashton Kutcher In that era: he learned to code.
But Masi graduated from Drexel in June this year A bad job market in history Used in entry-level computer science locations. Since then, he has applied for about 100 jobs – no one even provides an interview.
“It’s like, everything you’re going to do is right. You follow the instructions, but the field changes,” Colton said. “There’s nothing you can do. It’s just: keep pushing until you find something.”
Masi is becoming increasingly common, for recent college graduates and others seeking to break into white-collar industries such as computer science and marketing.
“I heard a lot of rejections from job seekers,” Lindsay Ellis, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Processing numbers About entry-level job declines, tell Noel King. “[The] The market is a little troubled to many people. ”
Ellis talks with King about why big companies plan to be much less entry-level employees, people will find jobs with wild employees and career advice executives are giving their kids wildness.
Below are excerpts of their conversation for detailed description and clarity. There are more in the full podcast, so listen Today, I explained Wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcast,,,,, Pandoraand Spotify.
If I guess what happened, I would say it must have something to do with AI. Yeah?
This is a factor, and I think it’s a whole host of other factors that have led to a significant slowdown in the white-collar market over the past few years.
You know, from the beginning of 2023, companies and hiring managers are actually digging brakes in many departments. have A large number of technical layoffs It started in 23 years, but it started with inflation [and] Geopolitical conflict, then imminent elections and a lot of uncertainty (as far as policy is concerned) [about] Things are leaving. If the hiring manager says, “Hey, we can stick with hiring this hiring and there may be more buffers in terms of payroll expenses,” they may see how long they can last without hiring that hiring.
You then add AI as a layer on top of all of this and the calculations are completely different. I spoke with James Hornick, chief growth officer of Chicago-based recruiting company Hirewell. He told me that clients almost stopped asking for entry-level employees. Those young graduates used to be in high demand, but their jobs are now home runs for AI.
We’ve been trying to figure out what data is and what anecdata is. You can hear a story about a person who applies for three or four jobs a day, getting nothing, and this will always be in your brain.
But now the unemployment rate in the United States already exists 4.2%which one is super low, right? Is there a tension between an extreme story and an actual trend?
Behind this number, I think you’ll see several other trends that indicate the picture is more complex.
The first is labor data on the time it takes to find a job. My colleagues and I have been watching two things. One is for the sake of unemployed Americans, and now it takes an average of 24 weeks to get a job, which is nearly a month longer than a year ago.
The number of Americans who have been unemployed for a long time – that is unemployed for at least 27 weeks – now that number is 1.8 million per year. Before, it was like 1.5 [million]. So this is also an upward trend.
Another factor here is what departments do you want to be hiring at the moment, [and] Most of the employment growth comes from state and local governments, or departments such as health care, social assistance, leisure and hospitality, construction, etc. White-collar project managers may not be eligible for health care roles or may not look for local government jobs in different states. So, I think it’s also a question of how to match skills and how to proceed.
The long-standing job application process is: maybe there is a portal where you submit your resume, or you email it to the hiring manager. Has AI changed the way we apply for jobs?
Oh my god, you don’t know.
This is my total obsession. Now, in my opinion, the job application process can now describe it as a robot vs. robot weapons competition.
What you hear from applicants is that they are very frustrated with the company’s recruitment software that will scan applicants’ resumes and cover letters based on their qualifications and the basic details and rankings for them. They feel that this kind of artificial intelligence basically forces good people to slip through the cracks.
Therefore, in response, [applicants are] Using your own AI to create cover letters and resumes, using job descriptions and their own content, basically combining all keywords, [to] Show how they handle specific job responsibilities. However, there are even tools that can scan the entire internet for potential jobs and then spew out candidate applications in seconds.
The whole thing is very annoying for applicants and employers because employers are totally – all their portals are blocked and it’s hard to tell who is really interested and who uses real good tips or keywords. Applicants are really frustrated because they will look at a job on LinkedIn and will say how many people have applied, it’s like, I didn’t have a chance to shoot. Should I even do this? Then, if they do put their time into the application, they may be denied at a few hours later or at 2 a.m. on Sunday. It feels just super impersonal, frustrated on both sides of the table.
Now told what to do? What are the choices?
I’ve been asking executives the same questions. I mean two [perspective of],,,,, What are you talking about with the university – Because there is a lot of communication between the business and the advanced ED- What are you telling your child?
I spoke with the CEO of a consulting firm in Ohio and he basically said, I tell my kids to really focus on the work that really requires in-person or customer-facing communication. He said one of his children is becoming a policeman and while AI can affect how he works, there is nothing that can replace face-to-face relationships in the community.
And now, the CEO is talking openly about the enormous capabilities of AI, and the ability to work, and even more [just] At the entry level. I mean, you have executives Amazon,,,,, Morgan In recent weeks, they said they hope their staff will shrink significantly. CEO Ford says he hopes AI will replace half White-collar workforce in the United States. These figures suggest that people who play various roles, experience levels, should expect significant disruption.
You have spent a lot of time talking to people who are really struggling across the country. How do you think of these people, many of them young people, how will they deal with all of this?
Many people feel very low. It was a very difficult stretch, it was a very difficult time to put it on the market, and I didn’t want to make sugar for it either.
I’m talking to some people who said What really helped me was going outdoors, doing some gardening, going for a run, going for a swimming. The swimming was great. You really can’t hold your phone in your hand. But, what I want to say is: Many of them spend a lot of money to be able to speed up the process and stand out from the crowd and potential employers.
I talked to a guy who said he spent $10,000 on a marketing company that saw him as a product, basically taking his resume there and making him a website trying to introduce him to managers and people who hire jobs that are not posted publicly.
So I think for some people, it helps when they can put frustration in a strait, I want to do this; I want to really work hard. Others keep telling me Look, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. I need to make sure I spend time outside of this hunt to keep my mental health stable.
