It's dystopian' Graduates on job woes in an AI world

Susie, from Sheffield, was unemployed for nine months after she graduated with a PhD last year, despite having applied to more than 700 jobs.

- Jedidajah Otte

"I assumed it wouldn't be too hard to find a job [with three higher education qualifications]," she said. "However, I often spent a whole day applying for a job, tailoring my CV and cover letter, only to be rejected two minutes later with a comment saying my documents had been 'carefully reviewed'. About 70% of jobs I didn't hear back from at all, including some I had attended multiple rounds of interviews for."

AI, Susie felt, had changed the graduate jobs landscape she experienced in one way in particular. "Thousands of people are applying to the same jobs now - on LinkedIn you can see the number of people who have pressed apply and often one hour after a job is posted hundreds of people have already [applied]."

In the end, Susie was offered a position paying under £30,000, "which isn't that much more than a PhD stipend after paying tax".

Her struggles in securing her first graduate role will be familiar to hundreds of thousands of young people in the UK who have been navigating one of the toughest labour markets in recent history.