Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 609: The Recent Grad Crisis: How AI Broke Entry-Level Hiring

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

A new Oxford Economics report reveals a startling reality: since mid‑2023, 85% of the rise in unemployment has come from recent college grads — and AI is a central driver. We lay out the data, name the real culprits (outdated university policies and short‑term public‑company playbooks), and give clear, practical steps the younger generation can take to avoid a lost generation of talent.Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Thoughts on this? Join the convo and connect with other AI leaders on LinkedIn.Upcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTopics Covered in This Episode:AI's Impact on Graduate UnemploymentUniversity AI Skills GapCorporate AI Quiet Firing TrendFuture Workforce and AI IntegrationStructural Collapse in Entry-Level HiringGreedy Fortune 500 CEO PracticesTransformation in Knowledge WorkParental Actions for AI EducationTimestamps:00:00 AI Impact on Recent Grad Jobs03:06 AI's Impact on Job Market06:09 Tech Shift Fuels Grad Unemployment10:25 Higher Education's Imminent Decline14:48 Innovation Stifled by Educational Leaders18:06 "Changing Employment Reality"21:57 Delayed Impact in Higher Education25:18 "Urgent Need for AI Policies"26:15 "Faculty: AI Literacy Resources Lacking"29:31 Rethinking Private Company Practices33:17 Embrace AI: Unlearn and Innovate37:43 Demand AI in Education42:17 AI Tools and Job Search Insights45:05 "Consider Transferring if AI Banned"47:23 Call Out Corporate GreedKeywords:AI unemployment, recent grads, Oxford Economics study, AI skills, universities banning AI, quiet firing, entry-level job crisis, structural shift, tech sector, workforce future, economic wheel, AI job displacement, societal shift, business leaders, recent college graduates, job placement rate, higher education, greedy CEOs, job prospects, new jobs creation, AI literacy, knowledge commoditization, generalist skills, private companies, public company playbook, baby boomer exit, silver tsunami, IP unlearning, micro credentialing, AI policy, employment prospects, Federal Reserve, slowing economy, accelerating inflation, job search shifting, higher education failure, educational leaders, business professionals, actionable information, thrive in job market, company growth, generative AI for growth, zig-zag opportunity, commoditized knowledge work, AI collaboration, recent grad card,Send Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Start Here ▶️Not sure where to start when it comes to AI? Start with our Start Here Series. You can listen to the first drop -- Episode 691 -- or get free access to our Inner Cricle community and all episodes: StartHereSeries.com Also, here's a link to the entire series on a Spotify playlist. 

This is the Everyday AI Show, the everyday podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live and Adobe Firefly, the All In One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome. The assistant accelerates execution. A new study from Oxford Economics shows that recent grads are facing an all-time high rate of unemployment due to AI.

This is multifactorial. One, obviously, students aren't learning the necessary AI school, the necessary AI skills from universities that have kind of been, blanket banning AI in many cases for years. And employers are kind of doing this quiet firing of employees when it comes to AI. Or in other words, they're just letting employees retire or laying them off and then not hiring new employees. It's a way for companies to kind of come out as the nice guy in this whole AI versus jobs scenario. So on today's show, we're going to go over how will new grads get a job with AI and what you need to know, whether you're an employer, a business leader, a parent, or a student. I do think today's show may end up being one of the more important ones that you listen to.

So I highly encourage you not just to listen to today's show because it's extremely important, but to share it with those. those that are special in your life, your loved ones. This one's going to be an important conversation to have. All right, let's get to it. What's going on, y'all? My name's Jordan Wilson and welcome to Everyday AI. This is your daily live stream podcast and free daily news that are helping everyday business leaders like you and me,

not just learn what's happening in the world of AI, but how we can leverage all this information to grow our companies and careers. If that's what you're doing, you're on the right place. It starts here with the unedited, unscripted, realist thing in artificial intelligence, this very podcast and live stream. But if you actually want to take it to the next step and be the smartest person in AI

at your company, our news or sorry, our website and our newsletter is the cheat code for that. Go sign up at your everyday AI.com. And on our website, you will see more than 550 plus back episodes, all sorted by category. So no matter what you're trying to learn, I've already stolen the secrets of the world's smartest people in AI. So go find them there and listen to them. All right. If you're looking for the AI news, we're going to have that in the news.

letter, but let's get straight to it. So how will new grads get a job with AI? This is something I've obviously been talking about for years on the everyday AI show. And one thing I try to do is I try to not sugarcoat anything. I try to bring receipts. This is one of those. I'm going to do both of those things in today's show. But I'm also going to give, I think, actionable and practical information, whether you're a parent, a student, a business leader, a business owner on how we need to deal with this, not just the fact that, you know, students and recent grads can't get jobs because of AI, but the larger picture on what the future workforce needs to look like and what we all need to collectively do to make sure that this kind of economic wheel keeps turning.

So on today's show, I'm going to talk about why new grads are facing an unprecedented job crisis, how the cold and give you the cold hard data proving AI is displacing entry level work. We're going to tell you the real culprits behind this massive societal shift, and you may not like it because you may be part of the problem, and exactly what you need to do to survive and thrive, whether you're a business leader, parents, or student. All right, Tate Tuesday, y'all. Be a little little spicy.

Live stream audience, it's good. good to see you. If you have questions, if you have comments, I'd love to hear from you. Sometimes I don't know if I'm just a weird guy on an island that pays too much attention to AI or if you share these feelings. But hey, big bogey, good to see you on the YouTube machine. Brian and Dennis joined in from LinkedIn. Great to see you.

Gavin and Charles. Who else we got, Anna? Cecilia, good to see everyone. Jose joined from Santiago. What are your thoughts? on this. And let me know, how hot should I make this? It's up to you. What? Should I take it easy? Maybe just drop one flame emoji. Do I actually need to burn it down? Throw four flame emojis. I'm going to take a sip on my hot coffee and give you all a second live stream audience to decide the fate of the rest of this show.

I've obviously got some very hot takes, but maybe I shouldn't go off the rails. Maybe I shouldn't burn it down. Maybe I need to keep that bridge intact so we can all, you know, drive over it. All right. Kyle gave five flame emojis. Kyle, I'm not even sure how to deal with that. Gavin says as hot as it can be. All right. Let's see what happens.

Let's see what happens. So it started with this. So this was a recent study from Oxford Economics. We actually shared about it many weeks ago in our newsletter, but for whatever reason, this study just started getting picked up in the mainstream media more than a month after it came out. Yet, I'm going to read this is from, directly from the Oxford Economics Study. So I'm going to read kind of the top level bullet point summary directly from the study.

So this is kind of the subhead of this is called Educated but Unemployed, a Rising Reality for college grads. So it says, and I'm quoting directly from the, bullet point study here. Higher unemployment among recent college graduates is a primary function of a structural shift in hiring in the tech sector amid strong labor supply growth. While some of it is related to a normalization after the post-pandemic surge, there are signs that entry-level positions are being displaced by artificial intelligence at

higher rates. Since the mid-2023, 85% of the rise in unemployment rate is concentrated in new market entrance who can't find work. And despite uncertain, employment prospects, recent college graduates remain undeterred as labor force participation rates haven't noticeably declined. This will keep unemployment higher and demand and supply are better, until demand and supply are better aligned. Under employment rates for college graduates and employment in positions that don't require a college degree remain steady, signaling that

graduates aren't shifting their job searches. Although permanent layoffs for this cohort have arisen, they remain relatively low and in line with the broader labor market, which remains healthy. Higher recent college graduate unemployment will add to the federal reserves, concerns of a slowing economy, weakening labor market, and accelerating inflation. However, it doesn't warrant a change to our forecast for rates to remain on hold until December. All right.

So we'll have the whole study linked in today's newsletter. kind of hard to find. So if you want that, we will make sure to link it for you. Hey, big bogey said keep it cool. All right. You know what? I'm going to do medium high. I'm going to do medium high on this one. I think if I go full heat, this might turn into one of those like 40 minute podcasts where I promise you all I'll do it in like 20 minutes and then it's double. So I'm going to try to keep this succinct. But I'm going to bring the heat. But here's my hot take. Take ways. All right? College grads are largely screwed. So yes, unemployment has hit 6% and it's climbing. Tech hiring has all but collapse. It's down 40% at the height of the pandemic. Yes,

there was over hiring, but it's down 40%. And I think this is obviously going to seep into other industries. New jobs are going to be created and we've already started to see some studies. and I have more stats on this. New jobs are being created and hired for at a much lower rate than year over year averages. And this is not temporary. This is the new norm. So since 2023, like we just saw in that Oxford study, National unemployment rose by 0.6 points, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it's actually hundreds of thousands of jobs.

But 85% of that uptick in overall unemployment comes from fresh grads entering the job market for the first time and finding absolutely nothing. These aren't layoffs. This is just a structural collapse of entry-level hiring. In many U.S. degrees, sorry, are becoming overpriced participation trophies. I hate saying that. I obviously have family and friends who are recent grads. that's the reality.

I have hotter takes. I'll share them now, I guess. I don't want to put my predictions out there, but I honestly think in, I don't know, 15 to 20 years, if you have a newborn now, I don't think, at least here in the U.S.,

I don't think colleges and universities are going to mean or even look like what they do today. I think many of them are going to go belly up, right? Yes, many higher education systems that have been around for 100, 150 years, they're going to go by-bye. That's not even a hot take if you think about it, right? What do places of higher education?

What's their number one thing they always promote? Job placement rate, right? It's job placement rate and being a top X university in the country or a top 10 engineering school in the Midwest, right? You talk about your top blank ranking and then you talk about your placement rate. Oh, 95% of our grads get a job. Guess what? Guess what's going to happen? Because universities have been largely inept for the last three to four years since the generative AI wave came.

They stood onshore as a freaking source. tsunami was coming, cover their eyes and said, this doesn't exist. Yeah. Grads aren't finding jobs. And the problem is twofold, yes. But part of that claim is because of leadership at colleges and universities in the U.S., who I think are self-serving, which puts their students at a disservice. college costs are rising.

They are out of control. And I'm sorry. What most students are getting right now is an overpriced participation trophy. They're getting a piece of paper that prospective employers are looking at and saying,

this holds no value. They're going to say, hey, tell me about your AI experience. Oh, well, you know, I use chat GPT to write all my papers, but for the most part, we didn't have many AI educational opportunities at my university. Useless. Colleges and universities at large are becoming useless. I'm not saying that educators aren't trying.

I know they are. I've talked with many of them, both on the show and off the show. Many people in education understand that this is a huge problem. But at least in the U.S., higher education is, I don't know, whatever's older and slower than a dinosaur. Is anything older and slower than a dinosaur? If so, that is what, for the most part,

the higher education system in the U.S. is. It takes sometimes years to get the smallest changes approved officially throughout the university. That's why universities are going to die. Not all of them, many of them. Bookmark this, right? I don't know if we'll still have the everyday AI. show in 10 to 15 years.

You know, I might literally break down by then by doing this every single day, right? We're on episode 10,000. But you're not going to have the same number of colleges and universities in 15 years as you have today. It is quite literally not possible because what's going to happen is these colleges and universities that from, you know, 2022 to 2020. most colleges and universities banned AI. Many of them still do.

Studies say that still up to 15 to 20% of colleges and universities in the U.S. still have a ban on AI because they don't know how to adapt. They are being self-serving. They are saying, hey, if we open this up to AI, this makes our offering kind of useless. Adobe just introduced an entirely new way to create, bringing the power and precision. of its creative suite into one conversational experience. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in the Adobe Firefly app, the all-in-one creative AI studio.

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Every step the assistant takes is visible so you can refine, redirect, or take over at any time. You stay in the driver's seat as the creative director. Adobe Firefly AI assistant now in public beta. at Firefly.adobie.com. Yeah, Dr. Janet says, food for thought in a new rally cry. Ruth says, I am one, a higher education professional, and we are in trouble. Yeah.

If you do have any thoughts on this, please chime in. Ruth also saying it's a future that Luddites in higher ed will face. The smart institutions will bite the budget bullet, shift to microcredentialing, and build the fluency. Yeah, I think you've already started to see that a little bit, but that's a great, that's a great point there, Ruth. So who's to blame? I already started placing some of the blame,

but I think that educational leaders, and when I say leaders, these aren't the individuals that are pushing for AI literacy. I'd say your average teacher, professor, department head knows this. It is those in charge that are still as innovation

and education are changing by the hour, the decision makers at these large institutions are just putting up more red tape. You need to be cutting the red tape down in allowing for innovation in the education system. But it is still these self-serving, negligent, intellectually bankrupt, educational leaders that are to blame.

I'm sorry. I don't care. If you are a university president, a chancellor, and you were one of those ones in 2022, 2022, 2023, 2024 that was banning AI in the classroom. Now, you have millions of recent grads, both this year and next, that aren't going to be able to get a job

because of your negligence. Because you thought that you knew better. You didn't want to educate yourself as the leader of an educational system. You don't deserve a job. You should be the one in the unemployment line, not the recent grad that wanted AI education. That's paying tens of thousands of dollars a year to get AI education. And you maybe give them one course, right? You toss them a little bone.

Here you go. You know, so we can say we teach. AI. No. You should be the one in the unemployment line. And then who else is to blame? Well, this one's easy. This is the greedy, socially irresponsible Fortune 500 CEOs who care more about their shareholder interest than human interest. I'm calling a spade a spade today, y'all. that's who's to blame both self-serving putting their own interest or shareholder interest or board of director interests before the people that they're trying to serve yes i understand i understand capitalism i understand economics you need profit but you can't put profit over people because without the people there is no profit Yes, I know that sounds rich coming from the, you know, random AI podcast dude who talks about multi-agentic swarms, but I'm not one. I don't want humans to lose their jobs.

But that is the reality. But I also think the concept of full-time employment is changing. So, as I sip on my coffee, I don't want to say I told you so. But I think it's important for me to take. tell you that I told you so. So then when I give you advice toward the end of today's show, hopefully you'll listen. Maybe you heard me or other people talking about this and forecasting and projecting how this intersection, the intersection between corporate greed and higher education's negligence

was going to hurt the next generation. Maybe you, maybe it fell on deaf ears. Maybe you decided to ignore it and willfully go on your way and your own self-serving interests, right? But I've been warning you for years this is going to happen. This shouldn't come as a surprise. This is math. One plus one equals two.

Or I don't know what you do in the Common Core stuff now. I don't know. Just one plus one still equal to. But y'all, I've been telling you, episode 74 on this very podcast, which is like a million years ago. it was more than two years ago. Go listen to it, right?

I bring receipts, y'all. I always bring receipts. Episode 74, more than two years ago. Here's what I said. I said, if universities ban or ignore AI in education, you're hurting students' jobs prospects. Employers will expect real-world AI experience. AI literacy is now, this is two years ago,

more than two years ago, is now an in-demand job skill, not teaching this is a disservice to students. During the time everyone was talking about AI detection tools, I told you all they are worthless. They are. So if your institution is still using them, you need to be fired if you were the one that came to that conclusion.

And many institutions hope that ignoring AI will either make it go away or they can treat it as a passing fat. Both of those are naive approaches. Another episode, a couple weeks later, episode 88. tackling some of the myths on how universities were handling AI in the classroom. I said assigning handwriting, sorry, handwritten or in classwork only, right? They're like, oh, here's how we'll do it. I said, that's just a temporary delay from using AI.

That's not a real solution, right? Trying to go back to like pre-digital work, not a solution. Refusing to teach generative AI means students graduate with zero skills employers actually want. Oh, go, whoa. Now look at that. Students can't find jobs because you refuse to teach them AI. I said at the time more than two years ago, university bureaucracy is too slow to keep up with how fast AI evolves. Curriculum is always outdated.

And then I said, parents should worry if their kids' school isn't teaching AI. Those students won't get decent jobs, right? And even those AI enthusiasts, you know, people that read the newsletter, I remember when I said this, people like people reached out and they're like, No, Jordan, you're wrong. Guess what? I'm not. I don't want to be that guy. If I come with a hot take,

it's probably because I've been thinking about it for years. I've been researching it for years. My background is in investigative journalism, right? I talk to the smartest people in the world. I am able to connect all these dots. When I come to you with something like this, it's not a hunch. But I'm also not predicting the future, right?

I am lining together facts, stats, and anecdotes over the course of sometimes hundreds of hours of research and conversation. And this is not going to get better because this is a lagging, a lagging effect here. So a very easy way to think about this without getting too morbid is if you think of COVID, right? So when people first got COVID, there was, you know, a two. or three week delay until they kind of got sick and went in the hospital. Then unfortunately, many people passed away. And sometimes that was many weeks or months later. So you didn't really see the impact of something like COVID and it came in waves months

later. And the same parallel I think can be drawn with what's happening now in the higher education and specifically in the employment situation. It's taking years to play out. And we're just now, over the past couple of months, starting to see the ugly, sour fruits of our labor from 2022 to 2024. When we decided, oh, we're going to ignore AI in college. But yet on the employment side, we flipped a switch. I'd say we flipped a switch in 2024, right?

In 2022 and 2023, it was still kind of taboo. to use generative AI, at least company-wide. Now it's a freaking requirement, right? Before it was like a sneaky cheat code. Now it's oxygen. If your entire organization isn't using AI, you are as screwed as the students right now who can't find a job.

So what happens when those two very opposite forces collide? Right? It's been years of doing a disdainting doing a disservice to students. It's been years of organizations trying to figure out this AI thing. Now that organizations have either figured it out, they're like, oh, wow, we don't need as many humans. Or they're like, hey, the humans that we do need, they need to know everything about AI.

It's nowhere to be found. Some more facts you need to know. Receipts, y'all. So some of these studies up from 2024, you know, a lot of these studies only get updated once or twice a year. So even though I'm saying 20, 24 studies, which I know can be archaic, I'm trying to find the most up-to-date stats and facts.

Okay. So only 9% of chief technology officers believe that higher education is prepared to handle AI's rise. And if I'm honest, I'm really curious about that 9% that thinks higher education is prepared to do it. I don't know,

maybe some of those CTO Those were also, I don't know, professors at night. I don't know. I would love to talk to those 9% that even a year ago thought that higher education was prepared to handle the workforce's AI's demands. It's not. 70 to 80% of institutions lack comprehensive AI policies of any kind. 70 to 80% don't have AI policies,

which means that 81% of college presidents in this higher ed 24 survey reporting their institutions had not published any policy governing AI use. If I'm being honest, it takes 10 minutes. Get your decision makers in a room. Come up right. Your first iteration on AI governance may stink, but there's so many great resources out there.

This isn't something that you can afford yourself a couple of semesters. a couple of years to figure out how to govern AI. You need to do it yesterday. You need to actually do it a couple of years ago. Also, only 14% of faculty are confident in their ability to use AI in teaching. And also, 78% of faculty believe their institution hasn't provided sufficient AI literacy resources. What's that mean? The writing's on the wall, y'all.

Higher education has been trying to ignore or brush aside AI, specifically generated AI in large language models. And guess what? A lot of students, there was a viral clip. I don't know if anyone saw this. I think it was at UCLA. Live stream bodies, let me know if anyone saw this.

They were showing some recent grads at UCLA, you know, in the Jumbotron in a big arena. They zoomed in on one student that had their laptop up. I think maybe the cameraman, you know, saw, oh, it's their final project or something, you know, cutesy moment. Let's put it on the big screen. Right. As soon as he gets on the big screen, he zooms over to a new window showing that he wrote the whole thing in chat GPT, right?

And then the student is, you know, kind of given props and given thumbs up to chat GPT for doing his homework. Right. Every single student is doing that. Right. Higher education hasn't changed. Students are just blindly using AI and not very good. If I'm being honest, a lot of the ways that I see students use AI, it's pretty slop.

We have a huge problem. And we've only begun to realize the repercussions of our actions. Cool, Jordan. Way to paint a bleak picture. So what do we do about it? Let's talk about it. I think about this a lot. Right?

And so this doesn't turn into another. 30 minutes. I would highly encourage you if you haven't already. Go listen to our 2025 AI predictions and roadmap series. It's on our website. It's free. Go listen to it. It's episodes 443 to 447.

I talk about this different aspects of this a lot. Also, I was thinking about doing like a midterm update on these. because not shockingly, a lot of these predictions and roadmap items already came true, even though a lot of them were wild projections at the time. So I don't know, if you want to see updates to those shows, just, I don't know, say midterms in the comments

or email me midterms or just email me and let me know. So check out your show notes. If you're listening on the podcast, always put my email, my social media, send me a DM. Just say midterms. I'm just curious if people, people, if you want a midterm update on that, spent dozens of hours putting those shows together. And I still reference them a lot.

Anyways, I talk a lot more about what business leaders can do. But I want to boil it down here. Okay. If you're an employer, here's what you need to do. Again, there's a problem. And it's much larger than this Oxford study, you know, the study that we started with from Oxford economic that shows recent grads are facing an all-time high level of unemployment. This is about much more than that. That is the very tip of the tip of the iceberg of a much larger

societal problem that we have going on here. Employers, here's what you need to do. Non-public companies, if you are the leader or in leadership of a private company, do not follow the playbook of a public company. Because what public companies are doing, right? They have to answer to shareholders. They have to say the word, you know, multi-agentic AI swarms on their earnings calls 50 times so their stock doesn't tank. Don't follow public companies playbooks if you are a private company. Because for the most part,

what public companies have been doing for the past couple of quarters and we'll continue to do through 2026 is chop employees. employee headcount. They're chopping employee headcount and they're not hiring new grads. Don't follow that playbook because there is room for Zig while everyone else zags. Public companies have different pressures. If you are in leadership at a private company, I want you to think about growth. Using generative AI for growth. When everyone else, y'all, what better time in the world is there? You have, have tens of thousands of people highly educated, highly experienced that worked in big tech

companies that have an unimaginable amount of skill and expertise. And many of these people, yes, they're going to start their own companies or they're going to hold off for another job in big tech, sure, but there is a wave of people who are highly employable who want a job, right? Whether it's for, you know, financial purposes, health insurance, or just people who just want a meaningful career still. You, leader at a private company, have an unprecedented talent pool to choose from. You can zig, well, everyone else, zags. I don't know over the past year if there's ever been a time in recent history.

I mean, you could probably go back and make an argument, you know, kind of the dot-com bubble bust, but definitely not since then. Has there ever been this kind of influx and availability of just insanely talented people looking for work? And also, the baby boomer exit is coming, the silver tsunami, right? You have millions of baby boomers with decades of institutional knowledge, decades of irreplaceable domain-specific expertise that are walking out the door. Companies, you need to hire more people and you need to start collecting. I say you need to mine unstructured data.

You need to start collecting all of that unique IP, but you need to unlearn, actually. You need to unlearn. I hate the term, upskill, re-skill, skill, skill, skill, skill, shan, blah, barf, gross, vomit, yuck, stop doing that. You need to unlearn. In the unlearning process, especially for billion-dollar companies, I consult with them all the time. They hire me to help them unlearn old processes and start from scratch using generative AI. That's what we do.

And I'm not doing this whole podcast thing, right? You need to unlearn your company's IP. You need to unlearn what your company's unique selling proposition is. And you need to unlearn your company's SOPs. you need to start over and you know what could really help fresh grads hungry for jobs recently laid off experienced people in big tech in big companies who are hungry to put their expertise at work you can grow now don't just follow the playbook of companies who are investing billions of dollars in AI yet laying off hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of employees, that doesn't mean that's the only way for it to be done. They're listening to other outside sources. All right.

So that's what you need to do if you're a employer. For everyday business professionals, you need to realize knowledge work is already commoditized and it's only going to become commoditize more. And the market is going to continue to figure that out. So here's what you need to do. You need to never stop putting new AI solutions into practice. I think a lot of busy everyday professionals like you and me, you find some nice gains from using AI,

from using chat, GvT, Gemini, Claude, co-pilot, whatever, and you stop there. Guess what? AI development doesn't stop every day. Those four big names that I just talked about, right? ChatGBT, GBT, Microsoft co-pilot, Claude and Google Gemini, every single day.

They are dropping new ways that change, old work. You can't stop. Just because you're finding some efficiencies in your day-to-day role, you can't stop. Also, you need to get rid of that specialist, you know, or SME, right, the subject matter expert. You need to get rid of that mentality, even if that's been you for decades, right? Specialists, if I'm being honest, it's not. a bright future and that's okay you need to learn generalist skills specifically generalist

AI skills the easiest way I can write uh illustrate this is through my own experience right um I was a reporter uh then I was in you know marketing and comms and I've kind of been in different, you know, MAR Tech comms roles for 25 years, full time, right? I would say my overall background is in writing and strategy, right? I'm probably interviewing and talking to people, I guess, right? I can't just use AI to deepen those skills. I need to use AI and morph my subject matter expertise into generalist applications, right? Because what's happening, those people who are making themselves more employable are leveraging

AI to turn their domain expertise, to turn their specialist skills into give it general adaptability. right people like myself right let's just say if you were a writer a marketer you're doing a lot more things now right whereas maybe 10 years maybe you were just literally just writing all day you know I don't know creating content outlines now you're turning that and creating videos with it you're creating presentations you're creating multimedia experiences you're infusing AI into all of these things. AI allows specialists to do so much more. So you have to start thinking outside of your role, which can be hard, right? Because you might be like, all right, Jordan, well, my role hasn't changed yet. Okay, well, then you need to change it. You need to be pushing into

new areas because if you aren't, your competitors are. For parents, all right, I'm trying to hit everyone here. What do we do? Like I said, I think this is one of the more important episodes that that we can all listen to. Parents, you need to demand that your child's school AI policy, you need to get it in writing. And if they don't have it or if that school isn't actively teaching AI or still bans it in any way, don't walk, run. That might sound harsh, right?

I'm saying even at the high school level, but especially at the university level, you need to have a serious conversation with your kid. Are you getting a valuable education that's infused with AI? Or are we spending tens of thousands of dollars? And it's not about the money. It's about the experience. Or are we wasting it away on an overpriced participation trophy?

Because if your child's day-to-day learning experience, right, especially high school, college post grad is not infused with AI. I think it's time wasted. And you need to have a serious conversation if that's the right place for your child. And also know that AI education just isn't in the classroom. So a lot of successful executives,

I'm talking about, I've talked to C-suite people at Fortune 500 companies on this show and outside of the show. What's wild is they say, yeah, we've been building AI, we've been investing millions of dollars. in AI for years, but a lot of people, a switch flips for them, and I think this can help students and young people as well, when they start to see the value of it outside of the classroom or outside of work, you need to make AI hit home, right?

If you haven't already, you need to start to learn to use the best way of the best that AI has to offer in the home. If you have younger kids, sorry, you need to rethink what higher education looks like, what it even means. Yeah, I came with an extra spicy take. I said in 15 years, I think there's going to be way fewer universities. I think institutional names that have been around for 100, 150 years, they're going to be gone, period. There's literally no other way around it. If you continue to push away AI and they're going to see those job placement rates go down,

which makes the marketability of the university go down, which makes enrollment go down. State funding is going down. Federal funding is going down. They're going to eventually, many of them go out of business. So you need to rethink what that looks like. You need to start identifying now universities that are doing this right. Also, at home, parents, build companies with your kids,

build apps with your kids, build AI enabled hardware together, right? I do think it might seem a little weird now. I think that's going to be as commonplace as reading a book to your child, right? As Lincoln logs, as an etch-a-sketch, building things together with AI is going to be the cultural norm here in a couple of years. Don't wait. You're listening to this podcast, so you should innovate. Last but not least, students in recent grads.

I'm sorry. Your university has failed you. It's not too late. If you are a recent grad, use that recent grad card. It's going to expire. What does that mean? So I was, you know, shout out actually to DePaul University. I think I saw Jackie here in the comments.

They invited me to a panel, a couple of months ago. I was also lucky enough to be able to teach an AI course there at DePaul, one of the nation's largest private universities, fantastic experience. But at this panel, I was talking to a group of students afterwards, right? And many of them were in their last semester.

And, you know, a little group of them, you know, I can tell that they were all buddies. You know, they kind of gathered around me. And they said, you know, hey, what should we be doing? right now. You know, and they were asking about tools, right? They're like, hey, what, you know, how should we be using chat. Upt?

What do you think, you know, cursor versus bolt, you know, all these technical things. And what I said, and not only that is they were also asking about the best AI platforms to help them apply to more jobs because they're like, hey, it's hard for internships. It's hard for jobs. even though they were learning, you know, AI in the classroom and, you know, going out of their way outside of school hours to listen to a panel, right? I think this was pretty cool. I was able to do a little keynote with Logan Kilpatrick from Google.

I think it was a really cool conversation. But, you know, they were like, hey, what AI tools can we use to apply to more jobs? So students in recent grads don't think like that, right? That's also a huge problem. You need to go meet humans. You need to solve business leaders' problems, preferably with a eye. All right? You need to go out in the real world, touch grass, shake hands, right?

But use the recent grad card before it expires. What that means. I get people still reach out to me and say, hey, I'm a recent grad. Could I ask you questions about A, B, and C? And I'll always say, absolutely. I'm sorry if I get the same from a mid-career professional. I can't, right? Maybe that's something about me.

I really care about the next generation. But if someone's a student, a recent grad, y'all, you could reach out to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, say, hey, I'm a recent student, you know, do your research. I saw, you know, early in your career, you did A, B, and C. I'd love to ask you X, Y, Z if you had 15 minutes. I'd really appreciate it. Most mid-career business professionals can't.

You can't do that. You have this powerful, this powerful, you know, Trump card that is going to expire. Use that thing, recent grads. Obviously, you need to build. You need to build. Instead of spending hours using AI to apply to, you know, 85,000 jobs a day, build something with AI every day. Solve one of your problems. Go talk to busy professionals. Use AI tools. to see what people are talking about on Quora, Reddit, social media, et cetera, build a solution for someone. Okay? If you are still in school for students, here's what you need to do. Demand more from your educational institution. Let me say this. If your school still bans AI,

you should probably think about transfer. Talk to your parents about it, but you should. Do your due diligence, though, and make sure that you find a better. landing spot. Even if you're going into your senior year and if you haven't learned a single thing about AI, I don't know. I might even think about still transferring or, you know, maybe taking fewer classes this upcoming year in finishing your degree off somewhere else where it's not just a overpriced participation trophy. I think that employers are going to

quickly learn the universities that are properly teaching a We don't have it figured out yet, but if I'm being honest, students, it's a very tough time right now. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. But you need to demand more from your educational institution and what you can do. If transferring isn't in the cards, I get that. But start an AI club, right? Should be pretty easy. Integrate AI into your current RSOs and your current registered student organizations.

Employers want to see that. right if if your university doesn't offer a in all encompassing AI curriculum build something start an AI club do your a cursor club you know a chat GPT club like whatever go start something because i also think that's the future of full-time employment is just people starting you know it's you're you're probably going to have multiple businesses that most people own because i think overall in the long run the price of professional services go down but you need to be building, you need to be using,

you need to be creating, and you need to be solving problems. All right, I hope this is helpful, y'all. It's tough, right? And I understand it's easy for me to sit here and to point fingers.

But someone needs to do this, right? If we don't start calling out right people in positions of power at educational systems if we don't start calling out you know corporate greed you know and people just cutting thousands of jobs if we don't do that this problem's going to get worse I don't want to be having this same podcast episode in five years when we see you know oh the you know unemployment go from you know six percent to nine percent or you know college placement rates go from the 90s to the 50s i don't want to do that but we all have to collectively do our part to change the current conversation because where it's going right now

it's not a good place but it's on you to do something about it so if this was helpful i know it's a longer one please repost this share this with your team share this go listen to this again with your family know sometimes we go a little bit off the rails, a little bit crazy, a little bit off track, but y'all, I'm bringing the receipts, the facts, and the stats and trends. Do your own research, but talk about it. I think this is so important for all of us. So if this was helpful, please repost this. If you're listening on the podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to the show.

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