Reimagining Early Careers
The recruitment of early careers talent is a key focus area for organisations, and a big part of the annual HR calendar. The importance of attracting the best and brightest to build a solid foundation for the future to give organisations a competitive edge, was brought into sharp focus by recent reports of a significant drop in graduate vacancies.
Reports of the mismatch between employer skills requirements, and the graduate population are not new, with reports as far back as 2019 highlighting that education systems have done little or nothing to help address the skills shortage. Nevertheless, a tenuous link is now being made between disruptive technologies, such as generative AI, and the drop in employers’ graduate hiring.
This has prompted me to reflect on what underpins these links and how the trends that we have been seeing in recent years around the priorities and attitude to work of younger generations, demographic changes, and labour market challenges, together with disruptive technologies, are shaping early careers.
If the drop in graduate vacancies is the start of a trend, it does raise several questions on how experience and expertise can be developed, the potential anxiety for younger generations in how to navigate their careers, and societal impacts from persistent low levels of employment amongst the graduate population. So how can we begin to address these questions and continue to maximise human potential for the benefit of business, the economy and society.
Is it time to re-think early careers?
Economic uncertainty, demographic changes leading to labour market challenges, and disruptive technologies, alongside the COVID-19 pandemic, have impacted work models, and jointly contributed to a changing mindset and attitudes to work across all generations, but more starkly GenZ’s and Millennials.
According to Randstad’s Workmonitor 2025, the gap between pay and work life balance is most significant for GenZ talent, with 74% ranking work-life balance over pay (68%). Mental health support also exceeded pay in importance for this group (70%). Millennial and Gen Z respondents ranked markedly above GenX (45%) and Baby Boomers (42%) in being unwilling to consider working for a business that didn’t have the same social and environmental values.
In terms of the impact of AI technologies, while early career workers are reporting being excited about the opportunities AI can bring to their work, at the same time they report that opportunities for on-the-job training and experiential learning have been declining since the COVID-19 pandemic pushed workers into remote settings. Also, employer demand for formal degrees is declining for all jobs [8], with employers demanding industry experience for entry-level roles, only onboarding those who are capable of higher-level work. A recent analysis of close to 4 million jobs posted on LinkedIn since late 2017 showed that 35% of postings for “entry-level” positions asked for 3 plus years of experience.
According to a Deloitte (2024) survey early career workers appear to be adapting by reporting that they are more open to starting their own business, or being self-employed, as well as potentially turning to blue-collar jobs involving hands-on work that may be less susceptible to automation. Nevertheless, research by Paul Osterman at MIT shows that non-white workers, less educated workers, and those employed on a contract or freelance basis get less job training than others [7].
These trends, therefore, raise some fundamental questions around skills development, the future of entry level-roles, as well as the value of experience. In considering these questions it may be helpful to distinguish between the skills gap and experience gap. The former reflects discrete abilities employers expect of early careers candidates, whilst the latter is knowing how to apply those skills in a specific job function and industry. With AI’s ability to perform many of the foundational tasks, early career workers may find themselves advancing to more complex work without the same safety net, leading to gaps in skill development.
A combination therefore of changing, and increasingly divergent expectations of employers and early career workers, as well as the availability of entry-level roles, necessitates a re-think of the role and structure of early careers to address the emerging skills and experience gaps, as well as potential societal impacts.
Reimagining early careers: where do we start?
Recognising the changing nature of work, and an emerging workforce ecosystem – given the increasing trend of freelancing and self-employment amongst GenZ’s and Millennials, a re-think of early careers should consider how best to engage those who possess the required skills and expertise outside of structured programmes. This may no longer mean attracting and developing talent in-house but bringing that in from outside and accommodating that alongside existing employment frameworks. The emergence of a workforce ecosystem [5] should also recognise that humans will work side-by-side with transformational AI technology, whilst the work undertaken may be located both inside and outside the organisation where the expertise may be available. Embracing an ecosystem model will mean casting a wider net in identifying and deploying early careers talent.
Re-thinking early-careers hiring – the use of generative AI is already disrupting hiring processes, being used to recruit early career workers with non-traditional backgrounds who may have the skills or experience needed to do a job. Google demonstrated an innovative approach to recruiting by identifying individuals with an interest in coding and inviting them to online coding challenges on a special platform, fast-tracking promising candidates directly into their recruitment pipeline. AI technologies can also enhance job matching by analysing signals through candidate profile information, analysing preferences, motivation and willingness, enabling more tailored placements.
Supporting non-traditional development paths – with the breakdown of traditional career pathways that offered the promise of a long career, it is critical for both early career workers but also experienced workers, to benefit from continuous skills development [6]. Examples of approaches to support targeted and practical skills and experience development are:
Internal skills marketplaces, where individuals are matched to part-time project opportunities based on skills rather than job role, grade or business area [11]. These could also be applied to external workers with skills and experiences relevant for the work that needs to be completed and could work well in the context of a broader workforce ecosystem approach.
Apprenticeships have long been available but are becoming increasingly more relevant for both early career and more experienced workers in encouraging knowledge sharing and offering practical work experience that early career workers may be missing because of the accelerated pace of their development. By pairing early career with more experienced workers they can learn about different aspects of their roles, including learn new technologies together.
What is the future for early careers?
Re-imagining early careers is necessary to adapt to changing motivations, and expectations of both organisations and workers, considering the evolving nature of work.
With the graduate premium being eroded, and roughly one in five graduates expected to see a negative return from going to university [4], alongside a worrying deterioration of young people’s mental health, alternative models and structures are necessary to support younger generations build sustainable futures.
Resources
Anghell, Irina, Some of the Big 4 consulting giants already think AI will trim years off the path to partner, Fortune, December 4, 2023.
Chris Westfall, “How AI is hurting Gen Z careers,” Forbes, July 17, 2023.
C. McCurdy & L. Murphy. We've only just begun: Action to improve young people’s mental health, education and employment, Resolution Foundation, February 2024.
https://blogs.deloitte.co.uk/mondaybriefing/2025/06/graduate-prospects.html
Elizabeth J. Altman, David Kiron, Robin Jones, Susan Cantrell, and Steve Hatfield, “Managing external contributors in workforce ecosystems,” MIT Sloan Management Review, March 15, 2023.
Lascaze, E., Corduneunu, R., Kreit, B., Cantrell, S., Kulkarni, A., Rifkin, D., Williams, NS, Forrest K. AI is likely to impact careers. How can organisations help build a resilient early career workforce? Deloitte Centre for Integrated Research, December 6, 2024.
Osterman, P. (2022). Contract Employment: Measurement and Implications for Employer–Employee Relationships. ILR Review, 76(2), 320-356. https://doi.org/10.1177/00197939221132530 (Original work published 2023)
PwC report. The Fearless Future: 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer.
Ryan Craig, “Chataclysm: How AI will upend entry-level jobs,” Forbes, April 21, 2023.
The Global Skills Shortage: Bridging the Talent Gap with Education, Training and Sourcing. Society for Human Resource Management, 2019.
World Economic Forum Good Work alliance. HSBC: Providing Upskilling and Reskilling opportunities for our Employees, 5 April, 2023. https://www.hsbc.com/-/files/hsbc/investors/hsbc-results/2022/annual/pdfs/hsbc-holdings-plc/230221-esg-review-2022.pdf
World Economic Forum Insight Report (2025). Matching Talent to the Jobs of Tomorrow: A guidebook for Public Employment Services.
Workmonitor 2025: A new workplace baseline. Randstad.