College kids can't get jobs because robots reject their resumes before humans see them. The same employers demanding AI skills on every job posting built hiring systems that auto-delete applications from people who just spent four years learning AI. You can't make this up.
Recent grads now compete against software that scans for keywords they were never told to include. The CV gets parsed by an algorithm trained on data from when their parents applied to jobs with fax machines. No human reads it. No human cares. The system spits out a rejection email written by a different algorithm, creating a beautiful loop of artificial stupidity.
Employers want AI expertise. They screen for AI expertise using AI that doesn't recognize AI expertise. The irony would be funny if twenty-two-year-olds weren't spending six months applying to entry-level positions that require five years of experience with tools that were invented three years ago.
Some genius at every midsize company decided the solution to too many applicants was to let software handle it. That software was built by the lowest bidder and maintained by nobody. It filters out qualified candidates because they used the word "proficient" instead of "expert" or listed Python in the wrong section. The system works perfectly, assuming the goal was to hire nobody and blame young people for not trying hard enough.
Meanwhile the advice columnists tell students to optimize their resumes for ATS systems, as if the problem is that kids today just don't know how to trick a parser. Learn to code, they said. AI is the future, they said. Now you need AI skills to apply for jobs you'll never get because AI killed your application in under four milliseconds.
The job market fixed itself right into a perfect circle where nobody gets hired and everyone stays confused. Turns out the real skill employers wanted was being born ten years earlier.
Photo by Good Free Photos on Unsplash
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