The skills worth practicing for your first job when AI writes the application

Stephen Isherwood, joint CEO of the UK’s Institute of Student Employers, warned students that AI pushes application volumes up and quality down, and added: “AI can be useful to enhance applications, but they must be authentic otherwise candidates may find themselves in the wrong job.” (Stephen Isherwood, Institute of Student Employers, opens the source) Our reading: polish is no longer the signal. When every draft sounds finished, an interviewer learns more from what you can explain without it: what you actually did, what your numbers do and don’t show, and which part you can claim.

Kent Beck, writing for managers of junior developers, argues the case for hiring juniors has improved because AI can speed up learning, with a warning: “The genie is an endlessly patient tutor, but unlikely to volunteer learning opportunities.” (Kent Beck, Software Design: Tidy First? (Kent Beck’s newsletter), opens the source) The point travels beyond code. Our interview translation: a new hire learns fastest by asking the few questions that change the work, such as who it is for, what decision it feeds and how its terms are defined, before producing anything.

Interns are already handed AI work. NACE’s Shawn VanDerziel notes that, among employers it surveyed, “nearly 60% say they are assigning interns projects that use AI tools and skills” (Shawn VanDerziel, NACE press release, opens the source). Addy Osmani, an engineering leader at Google, describes the habit he wants juniors to start with: “Juniors should learn from day one that AI is a partner, not an authority.” (Addy Osmani, Elevate (Addy Osmani’s newsletter), opens the source) Our reading for any field: trusting AI output is a decision you make per task, by checking it against the source in proportion to what goes wrong if it is wrong.

Alex DiLeonardo, chief people officer at Citadel Securities, writes that AI moves judgment and ownership to people just starting out, and describes who stands out:

That is one highly selective firm’s view. The part that travels, in our reading: owning a small project includes the moment it goes wrong. Finding your own error, measuring what it changed and telling the person relying on it is clear proof that the work is yours.

Aneesh Raman, then LinkedIn’s vice president and workplace expert, told Fortune that skills such as “communication, critical listening, these unique human skills that we have, in a way that it’s starting to get more and more central to how we’re going to judge candidate success” (Aneesh Raman, Fortune CHRO newsletter (interview by Emma Burleigh), opens the source). He was talking about workers in general, not graduates. Our inference for a first job: when AI can draft any message at length, the skill is the short version: the ask, the deadline, a recommendation and the one number that supports it.