The Most AI-Fluent People Are Being Filtered Out Before They Even Land a Job – ADWEEK

Twenty-three years ago, I walked off a stage with a master’s degree and into an economy that was rewriting itself. 

Roles that had barely existed before suddenly roared into life: interactive designer or information architect. As a young consultant doing change management, I taught people how to use new technology and redefine their jobs around it. Though some jobs were eliminated.

During that time, curious leaders hired curious people because curiosity was the only credential that kept up with the pace of change.

This year, my cousin turns 23, the same age I was when I walked off that stage. He graduated last year and luckily started his first job this spring. Many in his graduating class are still looking.

Per U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates hit 5.6% in March 2026, well above the 4.3% national rate, and 41.5% of them are underemployed. 

The story everyone keeps telling is that AI is taking those jobs, and certainly the boos at three recent commencements when AI was mentioned reinforces how palpable that narrative feels.

But the leaders deciding to cut jobs—cost savings with AI as the rationale—are short sighted. They haven’t yet noticed something important about this graduating class: they’re the most AI-fluent people in the building, and they’re being filtered out before they get to walk in the door.

What’s actually happening

It’s true that AI is automating real work. In my own field, experience research, strategy, and design, clients are already in-housing with AI some of what they used to hire firms like mine to do. Some roles will disappear in moments like this.

But disappearance was never the dominant story. When I helped roll out enterprise tech across back-office finance and operations twenty years ago, whole new categories of work showed up. 

Today, the picture is mixed. Littler’s May 2026 Annual Employer Survey of more than 300 U.S. executives found only 37% have reassessed job responsibilities in light of AI’s efficiency gains. Two-thirds haven’t done the redesign work. Twenty percent are reducing or planning to reduce hiring in response to AI, and 15% are doing the same with workforce reductions. 

Clearly, meaningful role redesign isn’t happening at scale. The companies getting the moment right are rebuilding their roles around the new technology. Those that aren’t are just cutting headcount and calling it transformation. 

But when companies use AI to rationalize headcount cuts without rebuilding what’s left, the cost isn’t that they’re hiring fewer people. Instead, they’re cutting the rung whose practical expertise should feed their AI strategy.

Plenty of leaders have been smart enough to pull a senior AI strategist into their office. But while those people bring foundational experience, strategy is only half of the system. 

The other half is the ground-truth fluency that comes from running these tools through real workflows every day, learning where they fail, where they surprise you, and where the integration breaks. 

That fluency is concentrated in the most junior cohort. 

And the productivity case for combining the two halves is clear: a 2025 Protiviti and London School of Economics study of nearly 3,000 workers found multigenerational AI project teams report 77% productivity, compared with 66% in teams with low generational diversity. 

This is why so many AI strategies stay stuck in pilot. Without people actually integrating these tools into their work, the strategy gets written in a vacuum.

The companies getting it right

Some businesses are still running yesterday’s playbook. Klarna laid off 700 customer service workers, replaced them with AI, then publicly reversed course after CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski admitted the strategy delivered lower quality.

On the other hand, IBM is tripling U.S. entry-level hiring in 2026 because of AI. “The companies three to five years from now that are going to be the most successful are those companies that doubled down on entry-level hiring in this environment,” CHRO Nickle LaMoreaux said in February. The company rewrote its roles first. Software engineers now spend less time on routine coding and more on interacting with customers. HR staff spend more time intervening with chatbots than answering every question themselves.

McKinsey is increasing North American hiring 12% in 2026, with plans for 15% to 20% growth in non-partner staff over the next five years. North America chair Eric Kutcher told reporters AI is reshaping what consultants do, not whether the firm needs them. The highest-value work still requires human analytical thinking paired with fluency in how to use the technology.

Small businesses are projected to hire nearly 1 million graduates in 2026. As Gusto economist Aaron Terrazas said: “Large companies are playing defense. Small businesses are playing offense.”

Jack Welch pioneered the idea of reverse mentorship at GE in 1999 to teach his executives the internet. Today’s pattern is the same one Welch saw twenty-five years ago: fluency in a generational shift flows up, if you let it.

So let it. Curiosity is a hiring strategy. Credentials are a comfort blanket. The companies that figure this out won’t be the ones who master AI fastest. They’ll be the ones who hired the people who already have, and gave them a seat at the table.