Thanks to AI, your resume is perfect. So is everyone else’s

The job market is changing. A quick skim through Reddit and there's a clear trend emerging. I'm just tired of the new cycle of AI replacing all the good paying jobs. I don't want to end up doing drywall for the rest of my life. I'm prepping for engineering school, but the headlines have me second-guessing myself. Virtually all white-collar office jobs are going to be highly reduced in terms of numbers. Can you still get white-collar office work? Sure, but now you're going to be in constant danger of competing for an ever-dwindling pool. My daughter is a finance major and I've been reading how AI is going to wipe out a huge number of entry-level finance and accounting jobs. Obviously it's hard to know exactly how this is all going to play out, but I'm growing increasingly concerned that she may face real difficulty when it comes to finding a job in that area when she graduates. Welcome to Stress Test, a personal finance podcast for GenZed and Millennials. I'm Ramalutu, a personal finance editor at the Globe and Mail. And I'm Erica Alini, Personal Economics reporter at the Globe. Things aren't easy in the job market these days, especially for new grads. Companies are hiring less and turnover is low. More and more, we're seeing AI handle entry-level tasks like answering customer questions, writing basic code, and sorting data. AI is also changing the job application process. Candidates are using AI to write their CVs and cover letters while employers are using AI to sift through resumes and pick out the best candidates. It kind of feels like AI is talking to AI. So if everyone's using the same tools, how do you stand out? That's what we're tackling today. We'll start with a career expert who's been advising students for decades. He's seen big shifts before, but this one is moving much faster. And later, Roma will speak to a recruiter about how AI is reshaping what entry-level means. Larry Smith is an economist and professor at the University of Waterloo. He spent more than 40 years studying the labor market and helping students figure out how to navigate it. Hi, Larry. Thank you so much for being here. It's my pleasure to join you, Erica. So Larry, there's a fear out there that AI is coming for white color jobs and particularly entry-level jobs. And my question is, in all these years that you've been advising students, have you seen anything like this before? And what are you telling students right now? Well, in some ways, I have seen things similar to this. This is not the first new technology that is tormented the labor markets in the past decades. So it's a new technology. It's destabilizing careers, it's changing career titles. When the internet internet itself arrived and a whole bunch of professions appeared, there were simply internet related and other professions simply vanished off the face of the earth. So this, in that sense, is similar. Of course, what is different is the speed of the change with respect to AI and the speed with which it is entering the labor market and disrupting it. So difference is speed, but it's not a qualitative difference. Okay. The parallel with the internet really speaks to me. I'm an older millennial. You know, I remember the Dockham boom and the hype around the internet. And certainly the internet did rack havoc on the sector that I wanted to enter, which was the media industry. But I made a decision that that was a career that I wanted and I wanted to try for it no matter what. And I knew what I was getting into when I chose, you know, my path, a university. And it was a similar world when I came out the other end and I graduated. And I feel like right now for students that the key difference is people have entered university thinking that what they had chosen would lead them to a secure job and they're coming out four years later. And it's a totally different world. Would you would you agree that that's a significant difference between what I went through and what, you know, today's young people are going through? Yes, I would because what you're highlighting is again, this speed with which this change is taking place. Forty-sample certain coding functions have sort of disappeared from the planet in this space almost a year so that it means while you're in the middle of you while you've started your education at a university, for example, or a college, you could be halfway through your program and your entire career plan could have collapsed. That whole occupation can disappear while you're in the midst of educating yourself forward is really quite remarkable. So I can see I'm certainly familiar with with the idea of machine substituting for physical labor, but with AI, it almost feels like it's it's qualitatively different. Like we were we're hearing about AI making music, you know, writing essays. So it feels like creative work, right? Not repetitive work. Well, yes, because it is an interesting question, is it not about whether AI can actually produce anything creative of any particular kind? Remember what AI is is in fact an accelerated routine search tool effectively. It has a vast database, it can search it relatively quickly, it can search it highly effectively, it's searching with links and statistical associations. And of course, it does language very well, it understands language, it can speak quite well, it can write quite well, but whether you're actually going to say that by churning together in a large number of pre-existing creative product, stirring it with a big digital spoon and what comes out is to creative work is not clearly the point, it is not creative work, I would argue. It's a lookup tool and it does it very, very well. So what does that look like in the era of AI to find your niche in that sort of creative work that still can't be done by the machine? So from a young person's point of view, how can they be truly creative? Well, for one thing, they can ask better questions. So one of the interesting wrinkles is AI agents don't ask questions very well. So one of the most creative acts of any human mind, this idea that you are a highly creative person, because you think of a question to ask that nobody else has thought to ask. Philosopher is describing this for like a long period of time as a height of intellectual skill. People have said again and again and again for many, many years that if you get the question right, the answer the solution is often almost pre-ordained. It may take some work to get the solution, but the most difficult part was figuring out what question to ask. So let's make this very concrete. So I'm thinking about now everyone's using or almost everyone is using AI in the job applications. And so the standard thing to do is to pluck the job description into AI and ask it to adapt your resume, write a cover letter for you, help you prepare for an interview. So that's a standard way of doing thing. What is using AI creatively here and asking it like better questions? Like what's a way of doing that in a way that will make you stand out because you can ask this better questions because you can use AI creatively. Well certainly because the strategy you've just described which is in fact being used by many students including my own, that's before I showed at them. Let us make very clear why that is an extraordinarily strange thing to do to ask an AI agent to create the cover letter for you for job description, which will guarantee that your cover letter will look like everybody else's cover letter. So if you are trying to make yourself not stand out, you would use an AI agent to do so because I would have thought that every job applicant is trying to distinguish themselves from their competitors rather than looking all alike. So would it not be better to actually use the digital agents to try to find a way for you to ask a powerfully interesting question and make that part of how you distinguish yourself in the job market. So for instance a cover letter that says I'm particularly fascinated by problem ABC and part of the ABC problem is something the employer has not heard and you could not therefore ask the digital agent to invent it. Sorry to to find it because in fact you found it out of your head and that would be your competitive advantage just to give you an example. Let's talk about someone who wants to be wanted to become a software developer and now there are precious few jobs out there. What might their transferable skills be? Well the first thing any a software developer should do assuming here she really really wanted to do it and didn't fall into it because they thought it was a safe job with big bucks. So let's start with someone who really just really loves software development loves writing code. Now for many people that's an extraordinarily boring thing but for someone who loves it it is not. For people who do coding who really can do coding they see it is like writing poetry. Now of course the specific job activity is as eroded excuse me dramatically. So then they have to say to themselves something like this okay well you know I really did enjoy this you know meticulous creation of code and of course it has to be done meticulously it's why a lot of other people don't like doing it because because you make one teeny tiny mistake somewhere, the whole thing will come unraveled. But if you have every single tiny detail correct, now the only trouble is we don't need that for coding, but then the question becomes okay, if that's what I really enjoy, and the reason I was drawn to software was because I have this like meticulous step, step, step, logical nature where I really meticulously like every tiny piece in place, it makes me happy. For example, elegance of design because nothing is wrong, nothing is out of place, nothing is like half working, it's completely working. So then that's a question of saying okay, where is that same orientation valued? Where do we need meticulousness? Where there's a strong human element? Well, there's more than one place, but one of those places, for example, is compliance in a world in which that is getting more and more complicated in which there are now more kinds of fevers than there ever was before, where cyber crime is raging of the whole issue of compliance auditing, which at one level is for some people boring, and for other people, they feel like they're a ferret. They're out there, they've got a day, they're searching for something, they may have to search a thousand places in a thousand different ways, but when they find treasure, when they find an anomaly, when they find an irresponsible action by someone that is jeopardizing stability of the financial markets, they smile, yes, they'll be properly paid for it, but they're in the right place where that same intellectual orientation, that behavior orientation, that old passion, has realized in an alternative job. Now, that takes some thinking, that takes some effort, that takes talking to people, that takes exploring, that's requiring you to ask good questions of yourself, and where your passions, your skills lie, and who else wants them. Larry, that was so interesting, and also hopeful. I would feel hopeful if I was facing the job market right now after hearing you speak, so thank you for so much for coming on the show. - It was my pleasure. - After the break, Roma will speak with someone on the phone lines of the job market, who sees firsthand how those hiring decisions are changing. - Travis will work as the president of Hayes Canada, a recruitment firm. So Travis, thanks for joining us in stress test today. - My pleasure, thank you for having me. - So it's tough out there for job hunters, especially for those who are just starting out in their careers. The youth unemployment rate was 14% in February, that's quite high. How much of that is due to AI? - How much is due to AI? No one knows really, I think AI washing, to be frank, is a term that is becoming a little bit more common where any CEO or global board can use AI as a means of no longer hiring, or can use AI as a means of limiting or termating or doing layoffs. So the amount of jobs of people coming in at the entry level, it's definitely lower. Your reference, the February youth employment number, and absolutely, AI is kind of replacing some of those easier, repeatable, foundational tasks. Let's look at call centers, for example. When I grew up, it was pretty simple, you called, and there was a call center person, maybe they'd chip you in the right direction. Then it kind of got a little bit more advanced, and it's a push one for this, push two for this, then it started to get into some of the more AI kind of functionality, and they're not great yet, most of them at least, but certainly the first level of customer service, very often, is now AI. If you go to a website these days, instead of calling and speaking to an entry level salesperson, you're often going to talk to an AI bot. I think if you go into accounting departments right now, a lot of the things like paying an invoice or following up on a credit check, a lot of that stuff is now being handled by AI. So there are definitely roles that are being replaced, but if you look across Canada specifically, there are very few instances where an entire department is actually being replaced by AI. What you're seeing more so is, if you have a team of 10 people who work in a department and one person resides, the team's going to try and get on with nine because they have AI tools in place and the best motivation to get your employee to use the tool is forcing them to do it because there's so much work, and then you start to get those productivity gains. Now you talked about departments and companies doing more with less people, but are there any specific industries or jobs that seem most impacted? - Yeah, I think it's going to customer service definitely impacted. People who work in research roles or in some instances creative writing roles are being impacted. - As AI gets better, what jobs or industries do you foresee getting hit even harder? - I think technology, somewhat poetically replacing itself is the number one at risk. I think you've had various leaders come out. I think Zuckerberg talked about within two years, well over half of all code is going to be written by AI itself. So customer service for sure, a lot of transactional accounting based roles are going to be no longer required. Again, within the writing space, research, absolutely. I think the roles will be impacted, roles will be changed, but absolutely some of them will be eliminated, not dissimilar to many examples we've seen previously in history as technology evolves. New roles are created, but the old ones are eliminated. - Okay, so now the flip side, what are some sectors and roles that would appear to be relatively safe from AI? - I think anything that is using your hands is certainly going to be safe. And I think AI is actually creating massive needs within the physical world. So one thing I always look at is kind of follow the knowledge. And so I use Google Gemini, that's probably the AI that I enjoy the most. You'd say, okay, well, I type in the question, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, here's the answer. Well, that went to a data center. So there was a transmission line, there was fiber octocables that actually got to that data center. And with the more and more pressure being put on those data centers, we're going to have to do things with our teleco lines, we're going to have to do things with our satellites in order to improve those roles. So there's certainly, you know, line people who are going to be required. Now we're at the data center itself. Well, we've got to build the data centers, we've got to have facilities managers, we're going to need electrical engineers and specialists within those sites to get those things up and running as fast as possible. The data centers themselves need a level of electricity and a level of power that does not exist right now. And I think that's why you're seeing a lot of electricity builds rising up throughout the world at these data centers, suck them. How we're going to generate that electricity? It's going to come from an energy grid of some kind that needs to expand. So people are going to need to build those. So the oil and gas and energy space itself, there's going to be a lot of booming from there. Now the chips that are needed to power AI, a lot of rare earths and minerals that come from Canada specifically are going to be required. So our mining industry is going to see a boom as a result of that. But none of this means anything with an oil and gas and mining without the critical infrastructure in order to get there. So there's going to be roads and bridges and railways. And then you need electrical lines to get out to these facilities. And people are going to be flying in and flying out and there's going to be airports. So I think the last mile of AI is you and I sitting on our computer and playing around to get the answer. But the jobs required to power AI are in the physical world. So when I look at things like people who work in construction or skilled trades, those are the roles that are going to be really crucial going forward. There's plenty of reports that employers are asking new grads if they're proficient in a bunch of AI powered tools that have just been rolled out. For many people, that's not something they learn in school. So what can they do? How do they get proficient? I think the first piece that I would be doing is your point is an accurate one. Universities are a business. And if you're paying money to a business that is going to be providing you with old technology or old knowledge, stop paying. I would be looking very closely at the programs that I'm taking and making sure they're going to actually make me employable on the other side of it. I would be advocating within the institution that may update our curriculum. So I think that would probably be the first step. But then secondly, there are a plethora of courses and online tutorials and a lot of free stuff out there. IBM offers some great stuff, LinkedIn offers some good stuff. There's lots of great technology certifications or diplomas that you can get. because the value of the degree certainly will always be, this is a human being who worked really hard for many years in their life to get the grades in order to get into this school. Well, they were in that school. They showed enough dedication and commitment to get through it. And that speaks to your character. And as an employer, I want to make sure that I hire somebody with character. Now, is it worth paying $120,000 in debt for character? I would say no. There's other ways that you can demonstrate that. But the value of a certification or diploma or some way to show that your AI proficient still does exist. I would just probably limit that as to the tightest time frame that I could. But I think demonstrating what you have done is just as important. And I think your portfolio of work or your portfolio of knowledge is more important than what you say you know. And I think these days with, you know, inthropics tool like Claude, there are so many amazing things that you can do from booking your family vacation. You know, starting a little side hustle on the side, that's the type of thing that I would be highlighting, whether it's an applications or a job interview process is to show the practical application that you have in the utilization of AI. Because what was once valuable from a degree, which was knowing the answer, isn't that valuable anymore? Anybody can get the answer. But how you actually apply it and move from being, you know, just a prompt engineer to a problem architect and how you've solved a problem, that's really a lot more relevant. And that's what employers like me want to hear about. Okay. So if you're a new grad, a young worker, what are your best steps to take to increase your chances of getting hired? What specific things can you do? I think that you definitely still be online, right? You got to be on LinkedIn. If you're not online, you don't exist to the algorithm. And whether it's human being doing recruitment, whether it's an AI agent out there doing recruitment, we can't find you if you're not online, you'd I fully have to be there. But that working is the only thing that AI can't automate. Go to where the bots aren't. The faster that you can get into a human to human interaction with a hiring manager or somebody at that organization, the better. I think you got to be a little creative, put you honest with you. If one more person sends me a LinkedIn message that says, I'd love to learn a little bit more about you. I'd like to go for coffee. Like that ain't going to cut it because agents are doing that on behalf of your competitor graduates right now. You know, Claude is sending out 50 would you like to go for a coffee is every single day. The value is old school pick up the phone. Pick up the phone and call somebody walk into an office and talk to somebody at the front desk. I had somebody hand me a business card that had a QR code and the QR code popped up and it was a video of somebody talking about how much they really wanted to work for the organization and telling me personal things that they've researched about myself. So there's lots of different ways that you can stand out in a world of noise and be creative because again, you're telling me not just about yourself when you send me that video as an example. You're telling me that this is a creative person. This is an ambitious person. And this is the type of employee that if they work for me, I'm going to be able to harness that creativity on behalf of my organization. I'm always going to give that person the time of day. What about being interviewed by a bot? There's word of job postings where employers aren't even talking to candidates anymore, but leaving it to AI to do that. How does one prepare for an AI-powered job interview or should people just stay away from those job postings? I don't think you can stay away. I think even if you, you know, your probability, your odds are low. Practice, practice, practice. That's a look at that as a free opportunity to learn how to navigate through an AI interviewing process. But ultimately, you kind of think of when there's a bot doing an interview, it's a checklist. And when you look at your job description, that piece of AI is trying to take off every single thing on the list to make sure that this is somebody who can actually do the job that it's been instructed to screen for. So I would just keep the thing in front of it. Know what the five or six or seven key points are in the job description. And as I'm talking to the AI, make sure I'm clipping each one off nicely, because ultimately there's an algorithm and a scoring on the other end of it. Think about how you're answering your answers. You want to ramble on trying to be concise. People who are concise are more efficient. And it's, it's, we're not splitting atoms on this kind of thing. Just be yourself. Okay. Travis, I'm going to finish here with a million dollar question. What does it take to get an entry level job today in this new era where AI is taking hold? Hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. In school, to get out as quick as you can, you need to hustle on the side to find ways that you're going to utilize these tools and be able to demonstrate that you know how to use these tools. And you need to hustle to get that job. You're competing with a lot of people. You're competing against an organization's desire to cut costs. You're competing against your graduates at schools around the country. You're competing against new Canadians who are trying to feed their families and get their first job. The competition is fierce. But hustle will always win. And the person who works the hardest, the person who shows me they want the job the most is typically the person that I'm going to bet on. So you need to wake up every day and from nine to five when you should be working, that's your job. You were hustling from nine to five every single day. And if you do that, you are going to land the role. And if you're not, you're not trying hard enough. And I'm going to hire the person who is. I think finding the intersection is can be really useful. And I think what it means by finding the infrastructure intersection could be if you're an accountant grad and learn AI. And on your resume or an end interviews, use all of your examples to highlight how accounting and AI intersect. Or if you were a graphic designer and your passion is environmental ethics, your resume should highlight that you specialize in environmental ethics and graphic design. And I think finding two complimentary things will help you stand out from graphic designers or accountants. And I'd always just look to what skills you have, what passions you have that make you unique or different and lean into those. So what does all of this mean if you're trying to land your first job right now? Erica, give us your takeaways. One, we're in a tough job market. Hiring is slow, competition is high, and fewer entry-level roles are opening up. AI is part of that shift, but it's not the only reason that breaking in feels harder. Two, standing out matters more than ever. Employers want to see how you think, how you use AI tools, and how you show creativity, adaptability, and initiative. Also, AI can't replace networking. So get out there. That's it for this episode of Stress Test. This show was produced by Kyle Fulton, Zara Kozema, and Katie Lour. Our executive producer is Karen Radna. Thank you to Larry and Travis for joining us. And thanks for co-hosting with me, Erica. Thanks, Roma. You can find the stress test wherever you listen to podcasts. If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Next week on Stress Test, we look at why the traditional starter home may not work the way it used to, and what that means for would-be buyers. Until then, find us at theglobinamail.com. Thanks for listening.