Today's Digest is a 5 minute-read

Young people are being told to become job-ready at the same moment entry-level jobs are shrinking and AI is changing the work through which beginners once learned. Employers are also looking further into candidates’ digital lives, raising difficult questions about how much of a young person’s online history should shape their future.

This edition follows that route from access to assessment and then into the changing idea of readiness itself. The thread is employer responsibility. Young people can prepare and adapt but organisations decide whether they are offered a fair route in and given room to grow into the experienced talent businesses will later need. This makes this a workforce planning issue as much as a youth employment story.

1. Who will run the business in 10 years?

The first job has always done more than provide an income. It is where young people begin to understand how work works and where employers start building the capability they will rely on later.

The signal: As schools break up many young people will be looking for a summer job, work experience or the first line on a CV. They are entering a market in which the route into work is becoming narrower. More than one million people aged 16 to 24 in the UK were outside education, employment or training during the first quarter of 2026 and some of the country’s largest retailers are warning that the “ladder of opportunity” is wobbling.

AI is part of this story but it does not explain the full decline. Early-career hiring had started to weaken before the release of ChatGPT in several sectors. Weak growth, employment costs and cautious recruitment have also shaped employer decisions. Technology can easily become cover for reducing junior intake without confronting the longer-term consequences.

Why it matters: Entry-level work gives a young person income and a foothold. It also gives the employer a future supply of people who understand how the work is done.

Much of this learning once came through routine tasks now being absorbed by AI, including preparing first drafts, basic analysis and coding. Removing those activities without rebuilding the learning around them leaves new employees expected to evaluate work they have never learned to produce themselves.

MIT economist Frank Nagle describes cutting junior staff and saying it’s down to AI as a “critical strategic mistake”. Firms that continue recruiting could gain access to stronger candidates while competitors pull back. They may also learn from the way younger employees use the technology. In Nagle’s research on software developers the change in the balance between coding and project management was three to five times greater among junior workers than among senior colleagues.

What’s really going on: The immediate saving from reducing entry-level recruitment is easy to calculate. The capability cost arrives years later.

New employees require training, management time and space to make mistakes before the investment pays back. Yet today’s inexperienced recruit is also tomorrow’s specialist or manager. If enough organisations stop building talent they will eventually compete to buy experienced people from a much smaller and more expensive pool.

Some employers are choosing a longer horizon. M&S has announced 1,000 training places for 16 to 24-year-olds. Lidl is removing the CV requirement and reserving interview places for people who have been unemployed for at least six months. These interventions cannot repair the wider labour market but they demonstrate that access remains an employer decision.

The leadership question: Where is your organisation still creating a genuine first rung and what learning will replace the routine work AI now performs?

Workforce plans need to identify which early-career roles should be protected, where new joiners must still learn from first principles and whether managers have enough time to help them develop sound judgement.
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👉 Read my full story to explore why entry-level recruitment is weakening and how employers can preserve the talent pipeline while redesigning junior work for an AI-enabled organisation: The first rung is disappearing. What happens to business when young people cannot get into work? 6-minute read

2. The CV nobody taught you to write

Securing an interview is only part of the hurdle. Young people may also be judged through a digital identity they have built over years without realising that it could become part of an employment decision.

The signal: Social media screening is becoming a more established element of recruitment. Estimates of its prevalence vary and Susie Thomson, a former chair-elect of the Professional Background Screening Association, says there is no single reliable industry figure. What screening providers are seeing is clear growth, including more formal use within regulated sectors such as education and healthcare.

The distinction between a structured check and a hiring manager searching for a candidate online is important. Formal screening can apply agreed criteria and create an auditable process. An informal search may expose a manager to personal information, protected characteristics or an isolated post that has little relevance to the role.

Susie says legitimate checks focus on evidence of serious risks such as discriminatory or abusive behaviour, threats of violence, criminality or breaches of confidentiality. Employers should look for patterns and context rather than treating every clumsy comment or photograph as evidence of someone’s character.

Why it matters: Many young people do not know these checks happen. They may understand that platforms collect their data while remaining unaware that an employer could use their posts, comments or profiles when deciding whether to offer them work.

This gap in knowledge creates an unfair advantage for young people whose parents, university or personal networks can explain the rules. Others may reach recruitment without knowing what is publicly visible about them or how LinkedIn could help demonstrate their curiosity, communication and interest in an industry.

A digital presence can offer useful evidence when a young person has little formal work history. Volunteering, a personal project or thoughtful engagement with a subject can help an employer see beyond a short CV. An absence of guidance can also lead young people to create inflated LinkedIn profiles that make them sound implausibly accomplished before they have begun their careers.

What’s really going on: Employers cannot expect candidates to navigate a process they keep largely hidden. Anyone using social media screening should tell applicants what will be checked, why it is relevant and how the findings will be assessed. Human judgement remains essential, particularly as AI becomes more involved in collecting and filtering large volumes of information.

Young people (or indeed any job seeker) can also take greater ownership of the impression they create:

• Search for yourself and review what is publicly available
• Check whether old content could be misunderstood or raise a legitimate concern
• Create or improve a LinkedIn profile without trying to sound like a chief executive at 21
• Follow organisations and contribute to conversations connected with the work that interests you

The leadership question: Could your organisation explain its social media screening process openly to a young applicant and demonstrate that the same fair, role-relevant standards are being applied to everyone?

🎧 Listen to the full episode of Work’s Not Working… Let’s Fix It! to hear Susie Thomson explain what employers look for, where screening can become unfair and how young people can build a digital presence that helps rather than hinders their first step into work: Your Hidden CV: The Job Search Rule No One Teaches Young People 30-minute listening

👉 And watch Susie talking about why HR must build context, transparency and human oversight into the process in our Forward Thinker video: Social media screening is growing. Is HR ready to use it 13-minute watch

3. Ready for a job that keeps changing?

A carefully managed digital profile may help a young person reach the recruitment process. They can still find themselves excluded by another poorly explained expectation: that they should already be ‘job-ready’.

The signal: Entry-level candidates are increasingly expected to use AI confidently, challenge its output and show commercial judgement. Yet many employers continue to use previous experience as the main evidence that someone can do these things.

This creates an obvious difficulty. A school leaver or graduate may be familiar with generative AI without understanding its limitations or the risks surrounding data and accuracy. Equally, they cannot arrive with the professional judgement that develops through seeing decisions made at work and learning from their consequences.

Victoria Knight, chief people officer at Node4, says employers need to stop expecting young people to arrive as the finished product. Recruitment should look for how someone approaches an unfamiliar problem, what information they question and whether they can explain why they changed course.

Why it matters: If employers define ‘job-ready’ as already having experience and confident judgement they shift the burden of development onto young people before giving them access to work. That favours candidates with family networks, internships and the financial freedom to take poorly paid opportunities while excluding others who may have equal or greater potential.

It also creates a business problem. Organisations need people who can learn quickly and use AI responsibly, but previous experience is an increasingly weak proxy for either. Recruitment that continues to screen for yesterday’s version of the role may miss the people best equipped to grow into tomorrow’s.

What’s really going on: The meaning of ‘job-ready’ is shifting as AI takes over some of the routine activity previously given to junior employees. Preparing basic research or checking figures may have been repetitive but it also helped people recognise mistakes and understand what good work looked like.

Dr Vijayakumar Parameswaran Unnithan describes the risk through the example of a consultant who once had to wrestle with a difficult brief before finding a way through it. AI can now produce several frameworks before she has properly encountered the problem. The output may improve while the capacity built through that struggle weakens.

Young people can reasonably be expected to bring curiosity, communication skills and evidence that they can learn from. Employers have to provide the role knowledge, feedback and exposure through which sound judgement develops.

One recruitment change could help. Replace at least one experience requirement in every entry-level job with a direct assessment of reasoning. Give candidates an AI-generated recommendation and ask what they would check, what seems to be missing and when they would seek help. This shows how someone thinks without demanding knowledge they could only gain after being hired.

The leadership question: Does your definition of ‘job-ready’ describe what a young person needs to begin learning or what you hope they will become after several years in the role?

👉 Read the full story to explore how employers can assess potential more fairly and rebuild early-career learning as AI changes the work available to beginners: What does ‘job-ready’ mean when AI is changing entry-level work. 5-minute read

I’m taking a short break from the Digest now and will be back in September. I’ll still be sharing new stories and podcast episodes on LinkedIn so do keep an eye out there. Wherever the next few weeks take you I hope you find some time to pause, recharge and enjoy a change of pace.

Find your quiet space!

Siân

Editorial director, The People Space​

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