If you're applying for junior roles right now, you may have noticed something strange: the list is still there, but the doors feel a lot harder to push through. Applications are pouring in and you see friends with respectable CVs being ghosted.
You don't think about it. I've covered this on the blog before, when I broke down Anthropic's report on the labor market impact of AI: low-level roles in AI-revealed jobs show a real, significant decline in the numbers of 22-25-year-olds entering the workforce. The people who are being laid off the most (although we have layoffs in big tech, the unemployment rate has not gone too high), are not being hired in the first place.
In the past year, I've interviewed over 500 DareData candidates, but I've also recommended dozens of candidates to companies that reach out to me asking for Data Scientists, ML Engineers and Product Managers. In this blog post, I want to share what works for people who are broke. None of this”jump a lot” advice and not technology, for sure.” And a lot of what hiring managers care about isn't on the list of things people think they should prepare for — or for the job.
Let's get into it.
1. Be a person who takes care of things
This is, by some distance, the most underrated skill in the modern job market. And that's the first thing I look for when I'm interviewing someone for a small role – especially when I'm looking for situations where they've taken responsibility when they didn't have to. I have talked about this skill many times on my leadership blog.
“Taking care of things” sounds vague, but it's simple: if something is on your plate, everyone knows you'll get the resources to do it (note that this doesn't mean be useful, but that you you will find resources required to complete the task).
If you've ever worked in a team, you know exactly what kind of person I'm talking about, and you know how rare they are.
The reason this skill is so important now is because AI is in charge work you layer well. What he can't do is own a thread of work that ends in all people, systems, and ambiguities. That's an increasingly important gap and if you're known for closing loopholes, you are hired in a way that does not depend on which frame is hot this year.
You can practice this skill anywhere: at school, at volunteer work, even at home. Take on a task that seems overwhelming and just succeed.
2. Learn to disagree without getting hurt
The team's version of the advice is “be a team player,” which isn't very specific. What I look for in debates is that someone can argue with me constructively in a 45 minute debate.
I will convey an opinion that has been deliberately closed, about the choice of architecture, or the question of process, or the way of putting together a project. I want to see how the candidates think and if they can exchange ideas and opinions without getting defensive. Bad answers are the obvious ones (just agreeing with me, or vehemently disagreeing).
Disagreeing well is a skill that requires experience, but you can get a head start by observing how badly many young people do it. 🙂
3. Volunteer somewhere
Volunteering is the holy grail of communication.
My first proper gig with DareData came through a volunteer organization. I wasn't applying for jobs at the time, I was just helping run things at a non-profit where I met people who later thought of me when a leadership position opened up. Volunteering in areas related to the work you want to do is a way to expose yourself to luck.
A mistake that young people make is to treat volunteering as a CV line. The CV line is the product, while the real value is that you spend time with people who do things, and those people remember you. Six months later when someone said “we need X's person”, your name is at the top of the list, especially if you follow advice number 1.
If you are a fresher, find a student club, NGO, open source project, meetup group. To be useful in a place where useful people pay attention.
4. Your portfolio is your resume now
If you are a technical person, GitHub is essential as well as a personal website. Anything that allows a hiring manager to see your career stories in a world full of AI-generated CVs.
When I review a small application, the CV tells me what you want but the portfolio tells me what is really true. Since I mostly hire AI developers, I can tell within 30 seconds of looking at someone's GitHub if they understand what they're doing, the commit messages, the quality of the README, the structure of the projects, whether the repos are abandoned shells or working things. Yes, and I can see the AI generated slop in the repos too!
You don't need impressive projects, you just need real projects that are connected to something you enjoy and love. Size doesn't matter, but how much passion you put into it, does.
If you're not an expert: the same concept applies, just in a different format. A portfolio site with case studies, a few well-written reviews on Medium, a presentation site from an actual project you've created. Anything that allows someone to test a job, not just a claim.
5. Write publicly
Most of the youth think that they have nothing worth saying until they have more experience and that is wrong. I have read readers' pieces so full of curiosity that I would love to read a longer story from them.
Pick a topic you care about and start writing about it publicly. Substack, Medium, LinkedIn, your blog, it doesn't matter. The platform is important under consensus. The reason this works is simple: most juniors are invisible to hiring managers until they apply. If you have been writing publicly about your field for six months, you come to the interview already a little known. The hiring manager may have read your material or noticed it.
The trick is to write about what you learn, not what you already know well. It's effective: you can get noticed, but also develop an understanding of the topics you want to know about.
Oh, and never let AI define your writing style. 🙂 Everyone can spot obvious AI prose from a mile away now, don't cut that corner.
6. Know how to work with AI before AI works without you
This is probably the most obvious advice.
Every young person I interview now, I silently check one thing: can they work with an AI tool intelligently? Today, working with AI intelligently is not about copying code or sections from AI tools. I mean more: do they know when to trust your output, when to back off, when to confirm, when to reject? Do they treat the model as a watchful partner, or as an oracle?
Small employers are currently treating AI as a multiplier in their judgment. Those who are not, take it as a substitute for their judgment.
Do real work with these tools, often, and pay attention to where they help you and where they hurt you.
If you're a student or recent graduate reading this, I don't want to lie to you: the market is tougher than it's ever been, and the concerns you're feeling are reasonable. To pretend otherwise would be wrong.
But the things that currently hire you are not things that AI does automatically. AI is good at tasks, but it is not good at having a job chain for everyone and ambiguity, not disagreeing constructively in a room full of ideas, not being aware of what is shared by no one, being a person to be trusted. That's still you.
People are not job creators. It's a layer that shows how tasks connect, who needs what, when something goes off track, and what really needs to be done in the first place. That layer is very important, because there is a lot of flying effect that requires someone with judgment to make sense of it.
Show up as the type of candidate who already seems to be doing the job, and the door opens. If you establish yourself as a reliable future professional, your reputation does the networking for you, no applications required.
