New college graduates this year face an especially daunting task — putting their degrees to work just as “generative” artificial intelligence technology like ChatGPT is beginning to change the American workplace. 

“We are entering an entirely new economy, so the knowledge economy that we have been in for the last 50 years or so is on the way out, and a new economy is on the way in,” Aneesh Raman, Chief Economic Opportunity Officer at LinkedIn, told CBS MoneyWatch.

The impact of AI on Americans recently out of college is already visible across a range of industries and jobs, from technology and finance to media, legal fields and market research. As a result, for the first time unemployment among fresh grads recently surpassed the nation’s overall jobless rate — a shift some experts attribute in part to the creeping influence of AI.

“There are signs that entry-level positions are being displaced by artificial intelligence at higher rates than the roles above them,” said Matthew Martin, senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics.

With the adoption of AI at work only expected to accelerate, we asked three experts across academia, recruitment and consulting for advice on how new college grads should navigate this new normal. Here’s what they said.

Become fluent in AI 

Perhaps most important, young job-seekers start using gen-AI tools — today. 

“Almost anybody in that audience, irrespective of the job that they’re pursuing, will be expected to use AI with some facility right away,” said Joseph Fuller, a professor at Harvard Business School and founder of the Managing the Future of Work project, comparing the task to learning how to use Microsoft Office for a previous generation of grads.

To get the ball rolling, experts encourage those who are starting to hunt for work to familiarize themselves with the array of tools at their disposal, such as Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s ChatGPT. That means learning how to engage with such tools beyond simply using them as a search engine. 

“You want to get in a dialogue with it,” Fuller said. “You want to ask it to take different perspectives.”

Emily Rose McRae, an analyst at research and advisory firm Gartner, said learning how to use AI apps can also be a good way to develop transferable skills. For example, asking AI to summarize documents and then validating its findings to ensure accuracy. 

Meanwhile, although AI can be helpful when it comes time to filling out job applications, users should proceed with caution given that recruiters can often spot AI-generated language, experts note. Nearly two-thirds of job candidates today use AI at some point in the application process, according to a report from recruitment firm Career Group Companies.

“If you’re using it to write your cover letter and your resume and you did not review it, everyone can tell,” McRae said.

Another way to gain potentially valuable experience with AI, while also seeking work, is for interview practice. For example, users can ask the chatbot both to provide sample questions they might face in an interview and then rate the quality of their responses. 

“If you are using it as a tool to get your own understanding of self in interviews, you’re going to start being leaps ahead of everyone else,” Raman said.

Hone your soft skills

Experts say that as AI surpasses humans in executing certain tasks — think actuarial math or corporate compliance, for example —more attention will shift to job candidates’ so-called soft skills, such as problem solving and communication. 

“You cannot outsource your thinking to AI,” LinkedIn’s Raman said. “You have to continue to hone critical thinking and complex strategy thinking.”

The focus will be less on your pedigree — where you went to school or even whether you have a college degree — he added, and more on what he calls the “5 Cs”: curiosity, compassion, creativity, courage and communication. 

To improve their soft skills, Fuller encourages entry-level job candidates to work on turning what they regard as their biggest weakness into a strength. For instance, if you typically shy away from public speaking or talking in groups, push yourself to get comfortable in those situations. 

“The inability to do that is going to be penalized more severely in the work of the future than it has been in the past,” he said.

The Harvard professor also suggested highlighting examples of advanced social skills directly on your resume to help paint a picture for recruiters of how you can contribute to the workplace.

Choose your employer wisely

Beyond skills development, experts say college grads should be thoughtful about the type of company they choose to work at, knowing that AI could drastically alter the business in the coming years.

“The most important thing, if you’re a new grad, is where you work — not what you do at the place you’re going to work,” Raman told CBS MoneyWatch.

He encouraged college graduates to seek out employers that are integrating AI responsibly and with respect for their workforce — as opposed to embracing it chiefly to replace people. Companies that are adapting to what is a major technological shift in real time will typically offer the best opportunities for learning and growth, Fuller said. 

In evaluating a prospective employer, young job candidates should try to gain an understanding of how they fit into the company’s future. For example, McRae recommends asking hiring managers up front what types of investments the organization is making in its employees and what the room for growth looks like. 

“What are they telling me they care about? What do career paths look like for this role like now? How do you help people develop the skills they need to become experts?” she said.

In researching companies, McRae also encouraged recent college grads to look for places that offer apprenticeship or rotational programs, which can offer ways to quickly ramp up their knowledge base, especially if traditional entry-level roles are in short supply.

Recent college graduates are having a harder time finding work, despite their higher education degrees, which usually give job-seekers a leg up in the labor market. 

That’s according to a new report from Oxford Economics which shows that unemployed recent college grads account for 12% of an 85% rise in the national unemployment rate since mid-2023. That’s a high number, given that this cohort only makes up 5% of the total labor force. 

What’s more, the rate of unemployment among workers who have recently graduated from college and are between the ages of 22 and 27, is nearing 6% —which is above the national unemployment rate of 4.2%. 

“People who have obtained a bachelor’s degree or higher have a higher unemployment rate than national average, and this is the first time this has happened in the last 45 years of data,” Matthew Martin, senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, told CBS MoneyWatch. 

That’s noteworthy, he said, because “those with higher educational attainment usually have better prospects overall than their peer with less.”

So why are recent college grads are having a tougher time finding work post-college than previous graduating classes did?

While the report points to a couple of factors, it finds that a slowdown in hiring in formerly hot sectors is driving the growth in unemployment among degree holders.  

“The rise in the recent graduate unemployment rate is largely part of a mismatch between an oversupply of recent graduates in fields where business demand has waned,” according to the report. 

That holds especially true in the tech industry, as more college students graduate with degrees in computer science and related fields than any other major. 

“Prospects for employment will remain minimal for these individuals, keeping the unemployment rate elevated in the near term,” Oxford Economics researchers wrote in the report. 

Tech sector-centric

Computer science is among the fastest-growing fields of study among undergrads, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, but jobs in the sector are particularly vulnerable to replacement by automation. Recent advances in artificial intelligence also expose workers in the field to being rendered obsolete.

“There’s a mismatch between business demand and the labor supply overall,” Martin said. “And it’s very concentrated in the technology sector.”

The industry hired at a fast clip when the economy reopened post-pandemic, before pulling back. Those cuts are likely still affecting the current unemployment rate, according to Martin. 

“Some of it could be a normalization after the tech sector’s hiring surge at the end of the pandemic around 2021,” he said. “But there’s also evidence that AI is starting to impact lower-level computer science gigs,” he added.

Experienced workers who graduated with computer science degrees but have racked up more than a few years of experience are faring fine, noted Martin. It’s those who do the kind of lower-level, rote work that AI is already adept at, who are seeing a mismatch between the number of jobs available and the supply of workers seeking them. 

“Some of it might be businesses being productive with the workers they have and not wanting to increase costs overall by hiring. It could also be higher adoption rates of AI,” Martin said. “At the moment, it looks to be a bit of both.”

Uncertainty slows hiring

Economic uncertainty, driven largely by President Trump’s aggressive, yet ever-changing tariff agenda, is also leading a number of businesses to press pause on growth and investment. Because of this, the unemployment rate among recent college graduates could continue to inch upward, according to Martin.

“We are heading into a period where uncertainty is really high; the impact of tariffs is starting to bleed through, and businesses are facing higher input costs,” he said. 

Although recent college graduates who have secured employment aren’t being laid off at higher rates than the rest of the workforce, Martin doesn’t expect things to get easier for young graduates on the hunt for employment, absent a surge in hiring by tech companies or mass exodus of workers from the labor force.

“There is some softening in demand overall, but a lot of it is concentrated at the moment in recent college graduates, and we are looking for the unemployment rate to rise,” he said. 

The “underemployment” effect

When qualified workers with college degrees try and fail to find work in their desired field, they tend to continue seeking work, sometimes looking for a job in another sector, as opposed to withdrawing from the labor force, the report notes. That can lead to college-educated workers finding themselves “underemployed,” or in roles where 50% of the workers who occupy them do not have a bachelor’s degree or higher. 

This scenario can doom them for years to come: Underemployed workers tend to remain so for the rest of their careers, according to a report.