With slow market and AI shifts, college seniors rethink the job hunt

NINA MOINI: It's that time of year. College seniors are itching to graduate and looking for their first jobs out of school, but they're facing uncertainty in the job market. Last fall, a widely watched survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers predicted a bad employment outlook for spring graduates. But just yesterday, an updated survey showed a turnaround, with employers expected to boost new graduate hires.

Katie Jolicoeur is helping college grads at Minnesota State University Mankato navigate this job market. She's the Director of Career Services at the University, and joins me now. Thanks so much for being with us, Katie.

KATIE JOLICOEUR: Thank you so much for having me, Nina.

NINA MOINI: Katie, will you tell us to start, just a little bit more about your role at Career Services. Are you seeing people throughout their college career or are people coming to you in a huff at the end of senior year, wondering where their life is going?

KATIE JOLICOEUR: It's a mixture. We try to make sure that we have everyone coming in, from prospective students, we're happy to talk to them and their parents. All the way through, we try to get people in their freshman year, sophomore year, to do choosing changing majors, and then try to see them through career fairs and networking events all the way up through graduation. And then we do also serve our alumni, as well.

NINA MOINI: Cool. So from your perspective, what is the job market like for grads? What are you saying to them about it?

KATIE JOLICOEUR: It's a little different than previous years. Like you mentioned earlier, the job market appears to be doing an upturn. But there is a little uncertainty with some employers in terms of how does AI play into things. Are we removing or changing our first destination, first jobs out of college. So there's a little uncertainty there.

And then, I mean, we've got kind of turbulent economic times happening that's making people a little uncertain. However, what I've been telling students is if you keep an open mind, there are a lot of industries that are hiring a lot of people, especially here in Minnesota. Between be manufacturing and agriculture, there's a lot of opportunity.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, tell me more about that. Because what if that wasn't what you really studied over the course of college? Is there still an opportunity there?

KATIE JOLICOEUR: Oh, definitely. So I mean, especially for students, if they know-- I mean, if they have strong communication skills, teamwork, leadership skills, if they've done any internships, part-time work, volunteer work, working in student organizations, that all lends to what we look at as human or soft skills. And those are the skills that are in demand across every industry.

Obviously, a student with a communications major might not be able to move into an engineering role, but they certainly could work within manufacturing or agriculture or even an engineering company, but work more on the human resources side or frontline customer service sales, stuff like that. It's just on the student to be able to demonstrate how their skill set and their experiences connect to those things on the other side.

NINA MOINI: And I feel the skills that you are talking about are skills that are very human and maybe are more protected from AI. How is AI playing a role in what you're seeing?

KATIE JOLICOEUR: Yeah, it really can't touch the soft skills. Across the board, we're always going to need to have a human touch to things, and AI has not come so far yet that it's taken over a lot of things that our new graduates can do. So it's having some influence, but what I've been letting students know is even though we've trained them to not use AI to do their assignments, know they use AI to help accomplish things, either in their internships or with their score, whether it's proofreading, editing. If know how to use AI, they should talk about that in their interview, especially how to use it appropriately and ethically and really effectively. Knowing what prompts to use can be very beneficial to them, especially when approaching an employer.

NINA MOINI: Do you feel like entry-level jobs, so to speak, are decreasing? Do you think that people are having to take jobs that are entry level, even if they are further along in their career because of the way that the economy is right now? What do you think the state is for those very entry-level jobs?

KATIE JOLICOEUR: Very entry-level jobs, I think, they're just, the students are going to have to make sure that they're communicating those soft skills. And again, knowing how to talk about how they've used AI. Because a lot of entry-level positions almost see them being tweaked to where either AI is built into the minimum qualifications or the expectations of the job, which some students may not-- they don't feel comfortable doing that right out of the gate. But if they can quickly learn how to do it, that's going to benefit them.

The other thing, too, that I've been telling students is you've just got done with college, but that doesn't mean you're done learning. What employers want is that ability and desire to continue learning. Because I mean, I've been in the field for 20 years. If I had just stopped learning, I wouldn't have a job.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, it's really just the beginning of learning. But so other than not-- and it's OK if you don't precisely know-- in terms of AI, teaching or practicing how to put in prompts to get what you need from the service. Are there any specific other AI skills that you are recommending that students or even alumni pick up?

KATIE JOLICOEUR: Yeah, I mean, how are they using AI to maybe act as a personal assistant for them with their Outlook calendars, or how are they leveraging things to automate a lot of the basic stuff that they would normally do? How are they automating some of their emails? That way-- I feel like we're all being expected to do more. So then, how do they use AI to take some of that stuff off of their plate?

And here at Mankato, we are having discussions about AI and how to use it on our campus and how to-- there have already been workshops for students on how do you create a prompt that's effective. So we're already working with students to try and help them with that because it's coming, and-- it's not coming. It's already here. So we want to make sure that they're ready for the job market.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, and I think that if you're a senior now, when you put in four years, that maybe when you were starting out four years ago, people probably were not talking about AI. So kind of sounds like it's right at the end of your college career, you're kind of expected to jump into a lot of uncertainty. With that in mind, what is your main advice that you find yourself repeating to students right now? Because there's so much like negative talk, I think, around getting jobs right now, and it just sounds very negative-- not you, nut generally, out and about.

KATIE JOLICOEUR: Definitely. So the thing that I told or I've been telling them-- and it's funny because I kind of-- it reminds me of back in 2008, 2009 when I first started. The thing I repeated over and over to students and had them hopefully understand was, you're not alone. Talk to your friends. Talk to your family. I can guarantee you, you're not the only person walking around out there without a job right now.

And also, don't stop making connections. So a lot of effort has been put in on our campus in the last year to get more employers to our campus to engage with the students in person, and not just once, but multiple times. So we've increased our employer engagement by almost 40% this year, brought employers to campus. They're doing programming with students. And the students are networking because at the end of the day, like, employers are also trying to wade through fake applications. Know the person who's applying, they can help them on the other side get their application through.

NINA MOINI: Human-to-human. Yeah.

KATIE JOLICOEUR: Exactly.

NINA MOINI: Thank you so much, Katie. Really appreciate it.

KATIE JOLICOEUR: Thank you.

NINA MOINI: Katie Jolicoeur is the Director of Career Services at MSU Mankato.