For months, the job market narrative for Gen Z has been grim: Artificial intelligence is replacing entry-level jobs, employers are pulling back on hiring, and recent graduates are facing one of the toughest labor markets in years. While much of this is true, considering overall hiring of recent grads is down 20% from pre-pandemic levels, new data from Indeed shows there could be another side to the hiring outlook for young professionals.
In a survey with YouGov of 1,001 job-seekers and 300 hiring decision-makers, Indeed found that nearly half of employers (45%) say they are actively seeking AI-native talent, meaning individuals who are highly skilled and comfortable with AI tools. Yet just 19% of employees overall feel fluent in AI. When broken down by generation, 35% of Gen Zers consider themselves AI fluent, the most of any generation.
“That is the contradiction here,” says Kyle M.K., senior talent strategy advisor at Indeed. “It’s that you’ve got individuals saying we need to hold back on hiring entry-level roles while also saying the generation that makes up those entry-level roles are actually sought after talent.”
To address this paradox, M.K. says organizations need to have a larger conversation about what an entry-level role actually is and what they want out of emerging talent. In many cases, he says, entry-level jobs are for individuals who lack real world experience and who “don’t have the lessons that come with trying and failing.” But, he says, that doesn’t mean they aren’t smart and skilled.
“These are highly intelligent individuals who are educated in the world of technology,” he adds, while explaining that it would be a mistake to view them as unnecessary talent.
M.K. points out that many colleges today are actually preparing their students for an AI-infused workplace with real experimentation and training that isn’t offered on the job. For example, at the Georgia Institute of Technology, which has been named to Forbes’ New Ivies List for all three years it has been published, academic leaders introduced an AI minor program in 2024 and are using AI to ensure students have the human skills needed to work in any industry.
According to Matthieu Bloch, associate dean for academic affairs and professor of electrical and computer engineering, the school has created AI-powered avatars for students to interact with. “These avatars represent different people depending on the context,” he explains. “They could be somebody who’s a VC and the student has to do an elevator pitch to the VC. The avatar could also be somebody who’s taking them through a technical review of their product.”
The goal, he says, is to “leverage these new technologies to make our students better engineers, not just technically, but better at all the things that matter when working in a team in the workforce.”
Fixing The AI Training Problem
Indeed reports that just 32% of current employees feel like they have received proper AI training from their employer, further emphasizing the need for companies to not overlook Gen Z talent more likely to be already equipped with this knowledge.
“There is a huge training desert within most organizations out there,” says M.K. “And there’s kind of a reckoning of, ‘Well, we need to upskill our people,’ and they don’t have the infrastructure to do it.”
In the age of AI, M.K. says it’s not enough for employers to place staff in front of a computer to watch a training module. Instead, he says organizations need to have hands-on activities that show employees how they can implement AI into their workflow and they need to have AI-native trainers in each department who can answer questions and concerns.
M.K. explains that this lack of training is common among managers too, with 48% of those who lead AI-native talent admitting to Indeed that those direct reports have better skills than they do when it comes to AI.
“Historically, employers would hire operationally gifted individuals as people leaders,” he said. “They would take someone who was really good at the job and then put them in charge of other people good at the job.” Nowadays, he says, managers cannot rely solely on operational expertise, as they need to also know how to coach employees on AI tools and ethics in order to succeed.
With the demand for AI-native skills on the rise, M.K. says it’s important for all professionals to demonstrate up front that they know how to use AI as a problem-solving tool; that they know how to pair it with human judgement;and that they know how to design autonomous workflows when needed.
“In the past, if you were given a project, you would probably think of each individual step that you’d need to take in order for each task to be completed and from there you’d be able to determine a timeline and level of output,” he explains. “Now you’re thinking more from an autonomous workflow perspective and this architectural mindset is going to be very popular going forward.”
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