Recruitment in the Age of AI: Key Skills to Stand Out

The Impact of AI on the Recruitment of Young Graduates

In the current context, artificial intelligence is profoundly changing the job market, and young graduates are feeling the effects. Although job postings for junior positions are still present, candidates feel as though their applications are disappearing into a void. According to a report from Anthropic, there is a statistically significant decline in hiring rates for young people aged 22 to 25 in professions exposed to AI. This trend does not necessarily indicate an increase in layoffs but rather a decrease in new hires, particularly in software development.

Over the past year, a DareData manager has personally interviewed more than 500 candidates. In parallel, he has recommended numerous candidates to companies looking to hire Data Scientists, Machine Learning Engineers, and Product Managers. Here, he wants to share the strategies that have allowed some to succeed in this challenging context. These tips are not just about working harder or mastering specific technical skills, but about developing qualities often overlooked by candidates.

Taking Initiative: A Valuable Skill

The ability to take initiative is one of the most underestimated skills in the modern job market, and it is the first thing this manager looks for during interviews for junior positions. He is particularly interested in situations where candidates have taken on responsibilities without being forced to. He has often discussed this topic on his leadership blog. "Taking care of things" may seem vague, but it means that when something is on a candidate's desk, everyone knows the candidate will find the necessary resources to move it forward. This does not mean the candidate already has those resources, but that the candidate is able to obtain them.

Anyone who has ever worked in a team knows what kind of person this is, and also knows how rare such people are. This skill is valuable because AI handles the task layer well, but it cannot own an end-to-end thread of work across humans, systems, and ambiguity. It is this gap that is becoming increasingly valuable. A candidate who becomes known for closing loops becomes hireable in a way that does not depend on current trends.

This skill can be practiced anywhere: at school, in volunteering, even at home. Taking on the task that seems too big and succeeding at it will set a candidate apart from others who merely follow instructions.

The Art of Constructive Disagreement

The cliché version of teamwork advice is "be a team player," which is too vague. What this manager is really looking for during interviews is whether someone can constructively disagree with him during a 45-minute conversation. He puts forward an opinion that is deliberately a bit off-center, regarding an architectural choice, a process question, or how to define a project. He wants to see how candidates think and whether they can exchange ideas and opinions without becoming defensive. The wrong answers are obvious: simply agreeing or arguing aggressively.

Disagreeing well is a skill that strengthens with experience, but it is possible to get ahead simply by observing how poorly most young people do it. This ability to exchange opinions respectfully and constructively is rare among young people, but it can be developed through experience and observation.

Volunteering: A Lever for Networking

Volunteering is often underestimated by young candidates, but it represents a valuable opportunity to get noticed. This manager's first real position with DareData came from a volunteering organization. He was not applying for jobs at that time; he was simply helping to manage things in a nonprofit context where he met people who later thought of him when a leadership position opened up. Volunteering in spaces related to the work one wants to do is the way to expose oneself to luck.

The mistake juniors make is treating volunteering as a line on a resume. The resume line is the byproduct, while the real value lies in the time spent around people who take action, and those people remember you. Six months later, when someone says, "we need someone for X," your name is at the top of the list, especially if you follow tip number one.

Those at the beginning of their careers are advised to find a student club, an NGO, an open-source project, or a meetup group. Be helpful in a place where useful people are paying attention.

The Importance of an Online Portfolio

In a world where AI-generated resumes are common, an online portfolio becomes essential for technical candidates. A well-stocked GitHub account or a personal website can concretely demonstrate a candidate's skills. When this manager reviews a junior application, the resume tells him what the candidate claims, but the portfolio tells him what is actually true. As he primarily hires AI engineers, he can tell in 30 seconds by looking at someone's GitHub whether they understand what they are doing, the quality of commit messages, the quality of the README, the structure of projects, and whether the repositories are abandoned shells or actually functional things. Yes, and he can also spot AI-generated repositories!

Impressive projects are not necessary; real projects related to something one loves are enough. Size does not matter, but the passion put into it does. For those who are not technical: the same logic applies, just in a different format. A portfolio site with case studies, a few well-written analyses on Medium, a presentation of a real project one has completed. Anything that allows someone to evaluate the work, not just the claim.

Writing in Public to Stand Out

Most young people think they have nothing valuable to say until they have more experience, and that is false. This manager has read articles from students so full of curiosity that he would be happy to read a long essay from them. He advises choosing a topic one cares about and starting to write about it publicly. Substack, Medium, LinkedIn, one's own blog, it doesn't matter. The platform is less important than consistency. The reason this works is simple: most juniors are invisible to hiring managers until they apply. A candidate who writes publicly about the field for six months arrives at the interview already half known. The hiring manager may have read the candidate's writing or noticed the candidate.

The trick is to write about what one is learning, not what one has mastered. It's a win-win: one might get noticed, but also improve one's understanding of the topics one wants to explore. Oh, and never let AI define one's writing style. Everyone can spot AI-generated prose from miles away, so there is no cutting that corner.

Mastering AI as a Collaborative Tool

Finally, the ability to work effectively with AI tools has become crucial. Every junior this manager interviews now, he discreetly assesses one thing: can they work with an AI tool intelligently? Today, working with AI intelligently is not about copy-pasting code or paragraphs from AI tools. He means more: do they know when to trust the output, when to challenge it, when to verify, when to discard? Do they treat the model as a teammate they supervise, or as an oracle?

The juniors who are being hired right now treat AI as a multiplier of their judgment. Those who are not see it as a substitute for their judgment. The advice is to do real work with these tools, frequently, and to pay attention to where they help and where they hurt.

For students or recent graduates reading this, there should be no mistake: the market is tougher than it used to be, and the anxiety felt is rational. Pretending otherwise would be erroneous. But the things that get people hired right now are not those that AI automates. AI is effective for tasks, but it is not capable of owning a thread of work through humans and ambiguity, of constructive disagreement in a room full of opinions, of noticing what has not been assigned, or of being the person colleagues trust. That remains the preserve of humans.

Humans are not task executors. They are the layer that maps how tasks connect, who needs what, when something goes off the rails, and what is truly worth doing in the first place. This layer is becoming increasingly valuable, as there are more outputs circulating that require someone with judgment to make sense of them.

The advice is to present oneself as the type of candidate who already seems to be doing the job, and the door opens. Once someone establishes themselves as a reliable professional, their reputation does the networking work for them, with no application required.