¶ elcome And Guest Introductions
The Feudal Future Podcast.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Feudal Future Podcast. I'm Marshall Taplansky, and my co-host, Joe Joel Kotkin, is on vacation this week. So it's just going to be me with two really great guests to talk about the employment environment. First is America's CEO of Hayes and Company, David Brown. David, welcome.
Thank you very much.
And from Chaplin University, uh, our assistant dean for placement and career services, Jim Duser. Jim, welcome. Thank
¶ s The Entry-Level Market Collapsing
you, Marshall. Well, gentlemen, we are reading about what sounds to me like an apocalypse in the uh in the employment world, especially for entry-level talent. Um what are you seeing out there? Um let's just start with that and just see where we are today. This is uh basically spring 2026. Uh are we in a unique moment in time? What's happening, David?
Yeah, I think it's a really interesting time uh in the job market for entry-level grads, in that um it is more challenging than it has been in quite some time. There's no question about that. Some of that is cyclical, you know, economically focused on where we are today. But some of it is more structural change, right, in the marketplace, in the job marketplace, more specifically, and what employers are looking for from uh from entry-level grads.
So it's it's uh a market in transition and one that uh is requiring new grads to be pretty resilient and pretty nimble if they're gonna find a good opportunity.
Yeah, and I want to get into some of those structural changes. I'm sure AI has something to do with it. But Jim, how are you seeing it from a career counseling perspective? You've got students that just laid out a lot of money for a first class education. Uh are we are we telling them to forget about it, you're not gonna get an ROI?
No. Well, some student appointments they turn into a little bit more of therapy sessions than than actually uh job search, job search sessions. But um, like David said, there's there are jobs out there, but I think the methodology of how you get a job now is very different. Um and uh students have to be, like you said, more resilient, um, have be a little bit more a little bit more resourceful. Referrals, I think, are more important now more than ever. Um but there are opportunities out there.
It's just you have to just kind of operate differently as an early career person.
Well, well, let's get into the whys
¶ I Changes Jobs And Job Hunting
a little bit, right? You mentioned structural change. What is going on structurally and and what other causal factors are you seeing that are contributing to this?
David, you want to start us off with a happy start with that one. So I think two two things are impacting that entry-level job market. One are the types of jobs that are available and in high demand are changing, and they're changing rapidly, and a lot of that is because of AI. And then at the same time, you have how you find a job and how you separate yourself from the pack is also changing and changing rapidly, mostly because of AI. Right?
So you have the role itself, how I find it, you layer on some geopolitical things, economic things that are going on, and it makes a real murky environment. Again, where I'd say that that uh resilience and nimbleness is more important than ever.
Yeah, Jim, it then are you and this is for both of you guys, actually.
¶ low To Hire And Job Hugging
Is it that jobs are actually being eliminated because of AI, or is it the fear that the jobs will be eliminated that make the employers less likely to want to add the staff because they don't want to commit if they can't follow through?
Yeah, you know, it's an interesting question because I was talking to a HR leader recently uh here in Orange County, and they say the there's a couple of sayings that that they're throwing out there right now. It's like slow to hire, slow to fire. Um, and there's this term out there right now called job hugging, which is there's not that natural rate of attrition for for for jobs.
So some people are holding on to jobs a little bit longer because of the uncertainty that's out there with the impact of geopolitical circumstances and and AI and how it's going to impact everything.
Yeah, and what are you hearing from your clients?
Yeah, exactly right. I think that uh a slight variation on that. The low hire, low fire has been kind of the job market now for better part of two years, I would argue. So if you look further further up the experience ladder with people that have been in the job market for a few years, that means the amount of movement has slowed down considerably. But if you have a job, you probably still have a job or you were able to find one, just the availability of new openings has been less and less.
It's it's okay for that group. Now there's a lot of dissatisfaction in that workforce, but they're employed and they're still uh okay. Low higher environment feeding their families, they're still able to feed their families. Low higher environment doesn't help a new college grad. Yeah, right.
And just out of curiosity, because you both have been at this for a while. You know, you've you're you're seasoned veterans and you've seen cyclical economic changes in the past affect the job market. First of all, does that is that playing any factor, economic uncertainty, leaving aside AI, right? Is is are we is this a cyclical move partially as well? And how does it differ from you know other cyclical downturns that you've seen in just in terms of the feel of it to you?
Yeah, I'm I'll I'll go ahead just just real quick is that um I feel a lot of anxiety with with with the students, the early career seekers right now. What I'm seeing is what's hiring like crazy is startups are hiring like crazy right now. And a lot of them are in that AI, the gold rush for for AI. So and I think students they're looking
¶ hy Hiring Drops Without Recession
in the wrong places, the usual indeeds and LinkedIn is just I think it's oversaturated. So there are so many other job boards out there that students just don't know about. But I do feel the anxiety with students and um most of it because of AI related.
Well, that's interesting that AI would be an accelerator for a hiring among AI companies, right? Right? But AI would be a deterrent hiring among regular companies. What what are you finding out there, David, in this regard?
Uh yeah, I I think that's exactly right. I think that um to answer your question of whether it's cyclical or not, I would say somewhat. Um, but what what I'm seeing for the first time, having been in the employment game for a really long time, typically low hire environments are directly tied to the economic performance of uh obviously individual companies, but also of the country overall.
So when we've seen job openings drop dramatically, it's been tied to a recession, you know, a big downturn in GDP. This has actually been unique and that overall, like the general economy has held up okay. Like GDP growth has kind of exceeded expectations many quarters, uh, inflation is relatively low, unemployment is still historically low. Uh out there, corporate profits have been okay up until recently. The stock market has outperformed.
So for the first time ever, we started to see this them pulling away from each other, right? And I attribute a lot of that actually to the AI impact because what companies are saying is we're not hiring because we're distressed. Maybe we're not hiring because we think there may be a better way coming or more efficient way coming for us to do this work.
And many of them haven't necessarily even realized the full potential of AI, but the prospect of it is allowing them to say, well, maybe if I put these tools, even if it's a free tool, in the hands of my more experienced staff, then I won't need that junior associate that I would have typically hired. And you add that up across all the departments and all the companies are out there. So it's really interesting to see that divergence.
What's your thoughts on that, Jim? Um I agree. I don't need that. Well, you know, my here's here's the funny thing is it's the way I'm listening to David talk about this, and I'm thinking about it's it's concern about hiring related to anticipated productivity changes. Yes. Right. I'm kind of a economist at heart, right?
And and I look at it and I say, okay, the big pitch for AI is that we're gonna be able to automate business processes that we really haven't been able to automate and create more efficiency, more productivity among people. But it actually hasn't happened yet. Right. Right. It's just like this is the promise that that the AI guys are dangling out there.
And I find it interesting to think okay, well, we're not gonna hire people because we think maybe something will happen in the future that maybe will actually help advance our productivity. What do you do in the meantime? Yeah.
I think everybody thinks that they have the magic crystal ball and they can see in the future how the future is gonna be impacted. But a question that you know I've had is when you essentially eliminate a layer of young professionals, what's gonna happen in three to five years to that those organizations that don't have those, you know, that though those young professionals?
Are there gonna be, is there gonna be a company out there to do the opposite and say we're gonna really invest in young people? And then when this next cycle um, you know, uh, you know, just kind of uh levels out, they might be have the advantage. I mean, who knows?
Yeah, I mean, what do you think about that, David? Are are people are are employers far-sighted enough to go with a writing out the wave strategy?
Well, what one thing that uh that you said, Jim,
¶ wo Competing Futures For Work
that I 1,000% agree with is no one knows. Uh because what I have actually heard two incredibly different visions of the future around this. One is the entry-level job market is you know going to be decimated for an extended period of time. We'll just continue to try to squeeze additional productivity out of your experienced staff by giving them more and more tools and saying you can now do the job that it needs to be take five people to do.
I have also heard a completely different view of the future, which is actually that's the short term in the medium term that you'll you'll figure out that actually the main value and benefit of that experienced person is all of their knowledge.
And once we're able to have harness all of their knowledge into the AI, then actually the future will be to hire all inexperienced, less expensive staff, give them the tools that has the knowledge of the experienced people, and then you can run an extremely like a much more profitable business.
So that's an interesting, that's an interesting two different visions of of how this could play out. Um you know, the the the doom scrollers, right, that are that are basically saying, well, you won't need to work again because there won't be any jobs for anybody. I'm presuming that you guys kind of write that off as science fiction fantasy, or or is there some truth to that?
I would prefer to write that off as science fiction fantasy because you want to feel that way, because you want a job. Exactly. And I want to feel important from what I do, yeah.
What am I like too, David?
Is there any yeah, you know, even that's funny. So even the scenario um that you mentioned there where no no one works and everyone just a universal high income, right? Uh uh you call you say that's doom scrolling. Some people say that sounds pretty good, right? So even your perspective on that is different. But yeah, I mean what what I do think is is that um you're pretty rapidly, there's gonna have to be some guardrails put in place from a societal standpoint, from a governmental standpoint,
¶ uardrails Identity And Social Stability
around what we are are not going to allow to happen. We are still in control of this. Uh I I don't think it's unrealistic to say that if you just let AI go completely unchecked and allowed it to do everything it could potentially do in the long run, you could end up in that scenario. But uh I don't think that we want that.
So I think that we need to probably put more guardrails and um, you know, um rules around where we think it's impactful and where we still believe the human element is important.
I I don't have anything to add. I'm sorry. No, my my feeling on this is that you have a a societal question that has to do with people feeling that work gives them identity. Right. And if if work gives them an identity and a method to feel like they're contributing to a broader society, then at least you feel as though societal institutions are being maintained.
Yeah.
If you suddenly go into a world where nobody has anything to do, it just seems kind of anarchical to me, right? Yeah. And so that's that's the worry that I that's the worry that I have about that.
I agree, and that's where again I think the the guardrail is gonna be so important. And I think that that tipping point is much sooner than than maybe people think, because it's not waiting for the last 20% of jobs to to decide if people are gonna allow AI to take. It's much sooner than that, because if you get to the point where sick you see some surveys that say 50, 60, 70 percent of jobs. If we get to the point where 60 or 70 percent of people are impacted, then you might as well go to 100.
Right. Right. I I really think that that's actually coming much sooner rather than later.
Yeah.
¶ gentic AI And Process Automation
Well, you know, we were talking about agentic AI on our way over here, uh, Jim and I, and talking about the notion that um we're in a mode now where people are rethinking how to automate and manage business processes. You know, what steps do you follow in the business model, in the business process? And um, if AI is going to automate, say, two-thirds of the work in a business process, um, what does that really mean? You know, in terms of uh the the need for people?
And then how do you even manage that? Do you manage that? Do you have an AI manage the AIs? Or do you have uh, you know, do you have humans managing whatever manual parts are left to the process? I don't know. What do you guys, what are you hearing from your clients, David?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. Again, to me, that's back to the guardrail part of this, right? Where we've got to decide, and some of it will be decided, you know, uh
¶ ecruiting Automation Meets AI Resumes
for us. Circling back to the job market, I I find it really interesting is that uh in the in the world of job seeking recruitment, there is a lot of um money being put into AI to automate parts of the process. And I think that's absolutely right. I think there are there are parts of it that that um are right for um for automation. But on the other hand, there's unintended consequences.
So right now, so you have a lot of uh tech out there that will um help companies generate, AI generate job descriptions, um uh auto-match candidates based on you know skills that are on their resume and do that, do all of that that type of thing, which historically uh an HR person, a recruiter would have had to do. So in theory, that's amazing. But at the same time, you now have uh candidates that are able to create perfectly uh generated AI resumes that are tailor-made to that job.
So now you've got the perfect AI resume and the perfect uh AI job description trying, they're almost facing off against one another, right? Which means you still need to have a person in the middle. Yeah.
Basically neutralized competitive advantage for any given candidate. Yeah, yeah, I know you you're focused a lot on how do you break through as a as a candidate, right? And what what David is just talking about, you know, in terms of being able to have a polished presentation, even though you might be an illiterate moron. Uh, you know, you uh you now have a polished presentation that's not that's gonna set you up to be at least table stakes with everybody else, right?
Uh what kinds of things do you tell students that they need to do to be able
¶ top Applying Start Targeting People
to stand out?
Yeah, just quickly I'll piggyback on what David was talking about, some of these tech companies that have basically just given up their HR departments to AI. When I hear that, I think that's a huge opportunity for a student because you don't have to go through the the HR department, you can just go directly to the uh the team or the hiring manager.
But for me, what I usually tell the students, and this kind of shocks them a little bit, I would tell them if I lost my job today, the last thing I would do to find a new job would be to just apply for jobs. Um I think that two things are over. One, it's over of the days of you go to college and then just because you finish college, you get it, you get a degree. Um and then the second thing is just applying online or how however that application, whatever the application process looks like.
I think that's that that's done. Um because you have to, you have to set, set yourself apart and differentiate yourself. I tell students, I'm especially with, I mean, it we've never been at a time where more technology has been at your fingertips to help you in job search as today. I will tell a student if um they'll come in and say, I've applied to 400 jobs, 500 jobs, 700 jobs, and I'll tell them the nicest possible way, well, you know, it's it's not working.
We need to change your your process here. So something as simple as you take the job description, you copy the job description, you put that into Chat GPT or whatever your AI um uh platform of choices, and just ask a simple question. Who who would be the hiring manager or HR or recruiter for this job? And then in a short period of time, you'll get three or four names of roles. Then you go on LinkedIn, you look up the company, and you type and you put those into the people section.
And then within a few minutes, you will have a handful of people you can probably you you know are probably hiring for that role. And then I would advise, you know, I think in LinkedIn right now is a little oversaturated with um messaging. So use another AI tool like an Apollo.io or you can find basically anybody's email address out there, and then just and send the um the recruiters or the hiring managers directly a message.
Because it's not so much about I well, I think that some universities have really failed students in that we have taught students how to apply to jobs and not how to get jobs. And um and then you know, and my goal is like just get as many screen interviews as you can. And when you stack up as many screen interviews as possible, you're gonna be in pretty good shape as a as a as opposed to just cold applying.
Interesting. Well, you are the middleman in this process. So it sounds to be like you don't want people to do that. You'd rather have you'd rather be the screener. So how do you but what what do you do that's different today as a result of all of these things?
¶ irect Outreach Emails And Screen Calls
What different methods do you use?
Well, and and and to be clear, I want everybody to have a job, right? So how however, however they can find it, right? So uh and I completely agree with Jim, by the way. I think that is great advice because the um send just sending in, it's become so easy to send in resumes, it's just a sea of sameness and it goes uh nowhere.
In many ways, with as tech has elevated and become a bigger and bigger part, it's brought us back to the basics of you mentioned earlier, referrals, networking, looking for connection. Do we have anything in common if you find the three or four potential hiring managers for that job? Do we have anything in common like your university system interests, you know, anything that I could leverage there?
Uh, if I am gonna reach out to you, it's not gonna be just to send you my resume, but it might be to say, you know, I've been I I I've been you know doing some research on your company because it aligns with you know my interests, and I've noticed this, or you reference something that was in the news about them, or something with maybe a competitor's doing the uh maybe an idea that you could bring to the table.
Um I've I've um started to set you apart from just an applicant. Yeah, now you become an applicant.
I I noticed that you guys just did a big acquisition that's really exciting, or I noticed one of your competitors was doing this, and I've got experience in doing these types of things. Um, whatever that may be, something like that to set you apart. Uh I've started to notice an increase in the amount of video outreach that I get. That's interesting. Yeah, that that's interesting. That sets you apart. People recording videos, I'm getting them in my email. I'm also getting them on LinkedIn.
People are sending little videos in themselves, like oh, marketing campaigns on the right.
Um especially for for jobs where presence is important. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, absolutely.
A lot of LinkedIn messages, you get one that has a video in it, come and watch the video, right? Immediately that put you in the top one percent because you may not read every every um a buy that you get. All right, Jim.
Yeah, you're you're speaking my language. This is a this is exactly what we're we're telling this the the students to do.
¶ eferrals Research And Video Pitching
Differentiate yourself, professional portfolios, first 90 day plans. And when it comes to it, a lot of the stuff is not hard to do. It's just you have to put in the time. I will tell a student that take your most Difficult class you've had and put in about 20, 25% of the effort. Um, and it's gonna, it's, it's gonna make an impact and it can change the trajectory of your life at the same time. Yeah.
I I've got a question for you guys. I think we're once we reached the the end of our session together. There are two areas that I wanted to explore. The first is the competition to getting a job, which is entrepreneurship. Right? People saying, I don't want a job. I want to do my own thing, which by the way, as a professor myself, a lot of my students come to me and say, Hey, I want to start my own, you know, my own thing.
Are you seeing a lot more of that, both of you, um, just from your own perspectives?
I I am. And you know what? Me in my in my job and my role, I would probably say, don't do it. But me as a person, I would probably I'm I'm okay with that because for me, it's like, you know, when you're young, take the risks. When I was more entrepreneurial in my in my early, early years too. And I learned so many valuable tools in being an entrepreneur, entrepreneur early.
And those skills and those tools that you gain along the way um are gonna, you don't know exactly how it's gonna impact you. I would I will say that you know, we can only live life moving forward, but it only makes sense look look looking back. So um I do but I do see students wanting to be more entrepreneurial, probably because partly should be because they don't want to go through the whole system of having of the applications and getting rejected. Um, but yeah.
Yeah, well, and how do you see that, David?
Yeah, I I completely agree. And I I think that's actually a trend that's been emerging for several years now, for quite some time. And and I think it has to do with kind of a different view about jobs in general. So if you go
¶ ortfolios First 90 Day Plans
back to our generation, right, uh the idea was is you go to school, you come out, you get a job, if all goes well, you progress up the ladder at that company, and ultimately it's someday you retire, maybe you get a pension, you know, from that organization and the gold watch, and you know, thank you very much. Uh increasingly, like younger people, especially, they don't see careers in the same way. They don't see it as a linear, you know, type of path.
They see it as a series of experiences, right? As a series of skills that they develop. Uh, and when you start to think of it like that, and you don't get married to I'm coming into this company and gonna retire at that company, you view the job landscape completely differently. So you're um maybe you're interested in a role, uh, you're interested in an experience you could gain, or you start to challenge and say, Is that something I could do on my own?
I think that's only accelerated over the last couple of years, and some of that is social media, right? Uh uh young people coming up now, they see entrepreneurs on social media, they say, I want to be a content creator or a brand specialist, or it's opened up a whole different way of thinking about how they can support themselves.
Well, when you look at candidates for not so much entry-level jobs, maybe that kind of next job up. Yeah. If somebody is does a if a candidate has been exhibiting some form of entrepreneurial behavior, how do companies view that? Do they view that as, oh, this guy doesn't really want to be here, wants to really do his own thing or her own thing, or do they view that as a positive and saying, hey, they can contribute more because of that experience?
I would think it just depends on on the hiring manager and the leader. So some might be threatened by it, but
¶ ntrepreneurship And Nonlinear Careers
the right person I think would be encouraged by that. Because you, I mean, essentially, you know, in a good business, you want, I would want my employees to act a little bit more entrepreneurial with um how with how they approach with their process and how they do either do customer acquisitions or or hand or handle customers. So I think it's a positive.
Well, how do people see it from your end?
I completely agree with that. So I think business works best when people people operate like owners versus renters. Right.
So more of a stake if they've had some entrepreneurial experience. They think more like owners.
That's right. If they if they view their their business or their job as their own small business, and they're and they view it, they make it their mission to do it in the best way possible, to deliver the best service in the most efficient way, as if it were their own business, I think that's what you want to encourage.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I let me one last thing that I wanted to explore, and let me start with David on this, because your your firm has a very large footprint. You've got 10,000 employees worldwide, multiple offices, multiple countries. How unique is the American employment environment versus what you're seeing in other countries?
Yeah, so um I will tell you, I talked to people from all around the world, and you know, my experience with most things, and employment is different, different legislative environments in different places. So that notwithstanding, about 80% is the same. The uh the same challenges, the same opportunities, the same fears, the same uh places that people uh areas that people get excited, that's the same.
Uh I will say that uh from an AI perspective and the acceleration of AI and how it's impacting, it's more acute and happening more rapidly here first. Uh but six months from now, it's probably a six to nine month lag to Western Europe. And then as you go further east from there, um, they'll be experiencing the same things.
Interesting. Yeah. All right. Are you seeing uh what are you seeing on that?
I I see yeah, virtually, I mean, basically the same thing as as David. One thing I was gonna add is that
¶ ow The US Compares Globally
um from one of the last comments is that even even the mentioning of the word career for some young professionals is a bad word. Kind of to David's earlier point of it's more experiential, chase your passions and that kind of stuff.
Yeah. And I, you know, it's interesting if if I remember myself at that age, and I certainly did not have the self-knowledge or the self-awareness to be able to say, oh, I'm gonna collect a whole portfolio of experiences. What should my portfolio look like in 10 years? But it sounds like if you could do that, right? If you could somehow pull yourself out of yourself and say, hey, you know, I'm a uh I'm a collection of experiences.
What should those experiences be to give me the greatest advantage five, 10 years from now? Yeah. It sounds like a reasonable way to go, right?
Yeah. And I think for some students, they have to remind this is the 1.0 version of yourself. You know, we're all still trying to figure out what we want to be. I mean, I I know I am, Marshall, you probably still trying to figure out what you want to be too, right? David, um, that it it's it's okay to experiment. And like I said, this is the 1.0 version of yourself, and you're just a collection of your experience. It's gonna be great in the end. It's all part of your story.
I think that young professionals put a lot of pressure on themselves to do everything right, right off the bat.
¶ inal Advice Passion Plus AI Fluency
David, any last I'm gonna give you the last word. Any last advice for young people who are navigating these these difficult waters?
Yeah, I mean, like, and this is true in any generation, but I would say this is true now as well. Uh, chase your passion. Right? Like that's contagious. You'll you'll do you'll be better at your job. You'll also have a better chance of attracting people to you if you're passionate about it. Uh, from an AI perspective, lead into it. It's not going away. Right. So I would encourage people to uh really learn how to become uh great at using AI to help enhance the things that make them uniquely them.
So well, sage advice. Thank you very much. And it has been really a pleasure getting your perspectives. And I was originally coming into this thinking we would be talking with tremendous uh doom and gloom. And this you've you've helped me get some hope for uh not only the world, but for my students as well. So thank you, David. Thank you, Jim. We appreciate your time, and thank you for tuning in to the Feudal Future podcast.