The Indiana Broadcasters Association conducted a job fair last week that attracted many entry-level job seekers. (IBJ photo/Chad Williams)
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The rise of artificial intelligence is not only affecting how people work—it’s also shaping the job market itself, especially for graduates in search of their first professional jobs.
In some cases, young job seekers say AI has been a useful tool for tasks like customizing cover letters and resumes. But others say AI is making it harder for them to gain a foothold in their professions—either because employers are using AI to complete work that people once handled or because the job-search process has become so automated that it’s harder to stand out in the crowd.
When Kayla Owens graduated from Purdue University in December, she figured her degree in computer and information technology—and the internships she’d completed at both Eli Lilly and Co. and Corteva Agriscience—would lead smoothly into her first job.
“My resume was pretty stacked. So I’m thinking when I’m graduating, I was going to have a really good chance,” said Owens, who lives in Indianapolis. “Unfortunately, that was not my scenario.”
After three months of searching, during which she applied for more than 200 jobs without getting any interviews, she said, she found a contract job with an Indianapolis IT firm. It wasn’t really what she wanted and didn’t seem to offer a future, so in October she took a different contract job at a different local consulting firm, BCforward. She’s working as a project manager for manufacturing quality, which is the type of work she’d been looking for—though her goal is to land a job as an employee rather than a contract worker.
“I didn’t really expect it to be that hard,” Owens said of her job-search experience, adding that many of her friends and former classmates have also struggled to find employment.
Owens is among a number of local job seekers, employers and career coaches who report that the job market for entry-level positions is especially challenging right now for a variety of reasons. Among them, they say, is the impact of artificial intelligence, which is influencing both the type and number of available jobs and the job application process itself.
National data also indicates that young job seekers have it rough right now.
According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the unemployment rate for workers age 20-24 is typically higher than that for the overall working population. But the gap has widened since the beginning of last year.
In January 2024, the U.S. unemployment rate for all workers age 16 and older was 3.7%. This August, the most recent month for which numbers are available, the unemployment rate was 4.3%. That’s 16% higher than at the beginning of 2024.
But among workers age 20-24, the unemployment rate was 6% in January 2024 and 9.2% this August—a striking 53% increase.
Drew Carey, a career coach at Ivy Tech Community College’s Indianapolis campus, works with students from the college’s schools of business and information technology and said he started to notice things tightening up late last year.
“I see that something has shifted,” Carey said. Students “are having a harder time finding a job after they graduate.”
He said the use of AI is at least part of the reason. “I think it has to be.”
The impact of AI
In some cases, employers say their use of AI is reducing their need for human talent.
“There’s no real need like there used to be to hire entry-level people,” said Indianapolis entrepreneur Stephen Schweickart, one of three co-founders of a biotechnology startup called MN8 Corp.
MN8 has developed a powder that, when incorporated into the manufacture of clothing, absorbs body heat and converts it into far infrared radiation. The clothing then delivers far infrared therapy to its wearer, helping to improve blood flow, reduce pain and stimulate muscle function.
Leveraging AI, Schweickart said, has allowed MN8 to operate with a tiny staff: just him, his two co-founders and a handful of outsourced contractors.
“Otherwise, we’d probably have 20 or 30 people right now.”
Another entrepreneur, Andrew DeGood of Fort Wayne, is also leveraging AI in his startup, with similar results. Last year, DeGood and his California-based co-founder launched AskBob AI, which offers AI-powered agents that are trained on an organization’s data and deliver answers to conversational queries from employees, customers or clients.
Currently, DeGood said, he and his co-founder run AskBob with the help of a handful of engineers, mostly based in Vietnam and Egypt, and a part-time adviser who helps with AI problems a few hours each week.
“Leveraging generative AI has allowed us to really hold off on bringing additional people in,” DeGood said.
Owens, the recent Purdue graduate, said she’s not sure why her job search was so challenging—but she believes AI is part of the reason.
“When it comes to AI and how certain businesses want to run their companies, there is a mindset of, ‘If it can get done by AI, we don’t need a person for it,’” Owens said.
The use of technology has also affected the job-search process for both seekers and employers.
Ariel Relf of Fishers, who graduated from IUPUI (now Indiana University Indianapolis) in 2020 with a degree in media arts and science, said she’s still looking for a permanent full-time job in her field.
The pandemic upended her early job search, but in 2022 she landed a two-year contract position doing corporate communications for Columbus-based Cummins Inc. She hoped that would lead to a permanent job, but it did not. She’s now working two part-time jobs—waitressing on the weekends and posting social media for a gymnastics facility—while she continues to look for full-time work.
Relf estimated that she’s applied for 150 to 200 jobs since the Cummins job ended in June 2024. One frustration, she said, is that the application process has become so automated.
“Many of them, you don’t talk to a person anymore unless you’re literally having the interview,” Relf said. “Everything’s now with a robot, AI, remote. I don’t have an issue with remote [work], but when will I have that interaction with the person? Who can I email? Who can I follow up with?”
Job-search automation is frustrating some employers as well.
Keith Sims founded Carmel-based Integrity Resource Management in 2004. The firm offers talent recruiting and business strategy services to clients ranging from large enterprise software firms to midsize and startup firms. Over the past six months or so, Sims said, his clients have begun receiving floods of AI-generated job applications from individuals who might not even be qualified for the position.
Sims said job applicants are using tools from companies such as Greece-based Loopcv, which for a subscription fee will automatically apply for jobs on the seeker’s behalf, customizing the seeker’s resume to fit the job (and sometimes adding experience the seeker doesn’t actually have).
“I just talked to a VP at a company who told me that they often have to turn off job postings within four hours, because they’ve had 500 or 600 applications,” Sims said. The vice president told him that, in one case, his company had found only six qualified candidates among 500 applicants.
The flood of unqualified AI-generated applications, Sims said, is clogging the system for qualified applicants, especially for entry-level jobs. Jobs at more senior levels are less vulnerable to the phenomenon because they require much more specialized knowledge and don’t attract the same volume of applications, he said.
Other factors
Sims cited another and more fundamental reason he believes young job seekers are struggling: They’re less likely to have worked in high school or college than those in previous generations.
In January 2000, 52.2% of 16- to 19-year-olds were participating in the labor force, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This January, just 36.3% of 16- to 19-year-olds were in the workforce. (The labor force participation rate includes both people currently working and those looking for work.)
Among 20- to 24-year-olds, the labor force participation rate during that period dropped from 78.3% to 70.2%.
Sims said young job seekers who have never had a job often aren’t prepared to enter the workforce and are thus less attractive to employers.
“They’re bypassing these new grads because they don’t want to train them and develop them,” he said.
In response, Sims said, his company has started offering extra preparation for the young job seekers his firm works to place. “Anyone under 30, we’ve developed a whole new protocol,” he said.
The sessions, which Integrity launched a little over a year ago, focus on preparing the young candidates for interviews and emphasizing the importance of researching the company in advance. Once the job seekers are properly prepared, he said, they have much better success at landing a job offer.
Muge Tuna, executive director of employer relations at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business in Bloomington, said the job market is going through a “rebalancing, restructuring” from pandemic disruptions. Those disruptions included hiring freezes early in the pandemic, followed by a sharp rise in employee resignations in 2021 and 2022; turnover shot up, and employers were scrambling to fill those vacancies. In many cases, companies over-hired.
Employee turnover is now much lower, Tuna said, creating fewer opportunities for newcomers to get their foot in the door. Uncertainties around tariffs and work visa policies have also put a damper on hiring for some employers.
The Kelley School tracks metrics such as the number of job postings and number of employers participating in job fairs. Tuna said she hasn’t seen a big change in those numbers. “We are still pretty aligned with last year and the year before,” she said.
Tuna’s job is to help the Kelley School’s undergraduate and graduate students find internships and post-graduation employment and to help employers find the talent that fills their needs.
The job market is “more selective” than it was a few years ago, Tuna said, “but not necessarily a tougher one for the right candidates.”
“Employers are being more intentional and more skill-focused in their entry-level hiring,” she said, “meaning they want graduates who can show readiness to contribute from day one.”
AI proficiency is becoming a baseline skill employers expect from job seekers, Tuna said. This expectation, she said, is similar to what happened with Microsoft Excel. Microsoft released the software in 1985, and Tuna said by the 2000s, employers expected business graduates to know how to use the spreadsheet program.
The human touch
University of Indianapolis junior Nate Long, who is majoring in communications and wants to land a sales job in the broadcast industry after graduation, said he’s not worried that AI will threaten the sales positions he’s seeking, because he sees sales as a crucial role that requires the human touch.
“People want authentic people to talk to,” Long said at an Indiana Broadcasters Association job fair held in Indianapolis this week.
Long said he considers AI more of a brainstorming tool. He is working in sales and sports broadcasting at Martinsville radio stations WCBK-FM 102.3 and WMYJ-FM 100.5 while attending college and uses AI to help him create advertising or come up with potential advertisers to call on.
At the same time, Long said, AI is able to replace some of the broadcast production work that has traditionally been handled by humans.
Dave Arland, executive director of the Indiana Broadcasters Association, said his organization hosts job fairs twice a year, typically drawing television and radio stations from around the state along with about 100 job seekers.
Federal Communications Commission regulations require broadcasters to abide by equal employment opportunity rules, including widely publicizing their available openings. But beyond helping broadcasters comply with these rules, Arland said, the job fairs also provide something that’s increasingly valuable: the chance to meet prospective employers face-to-face.
“I think, actually, the rise of AI is why job fairs like this are so important,” Arland said.
In fact, career advisers say, one of the best practices students can focus on in a challenging job market is the age-old tradition of networking.
Tuna said the Kelley School teaches its students the importance of networking early on. Not only can it help students make connections with potential employers, she said, but it can also help open students’ eyes to opportunities they hadn’t considered.
Carey, the Ivy Tech career coach, said he hadn’t emphasized networking much when working with students in the past, but that’s changed as the job market has tightened up. “Over the past several months, that’s all I talk about with students,” he said.
Jennifer Payne, who graduated from Butler University in May with a degree in strategic communications focused on advertising and public relations, credits networking with her success in finding a job.
After beginning her search in January, Payne said, she submitted resumes to 150 to 200 employers, which led to five interviews and job offers from three of those companies.
Payne said she plans to start working for one of those companies in January after she finishes an Indianapolis-based internship with the social media company Yelp at the end of this year.
Payne said she’s taken some online employee training through Yelp, some of it focused on creating AI prompts, and found the training to be a big help in editing her cover letters and tailoring her resume for particular job openings.
But the factor that helped her the most, Payne said, was her willingness to network, reaching out to people at companies of interest to see if they would talk with her about their jobs and what their job searches had been like. Those conversations sometimes led to referrals for a job opening.
“I really, a lot of times, had no shame and had no holding back” in contacting people, she said.
Payne estimated that she had about 20 meetings, either in person or virtual, and said it was time well-spent. “Each one led to something else and [to] learning about something else and understanding the world a little bit better and how things work.”
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