Xinzhiyuan Report
Editor: Aeneas
【Xinzhiyuan Insight】Are university and postgraduate students in the UK also starting to experience "graduation equals unemployment"? A top university PhD sent out 700 resumes and finally secured an offer after 9 months, earning less than £30,000 annually. An Oxford Master's graduate struggled to land a hotel management trainee position. An English Literature Master's graduate is anxiously job hunting with millions in student debt. These surreal stories are the reality in the UK today.
It's not just American university and graduate students facing unemployment after graduation; it's a global phenomenon.
Recently, The Guardian reported on the job search struggles faced by UK graduates in the midst of the AI crisis.
Remember the old saying? "If you don't get into university, you'll end up working at McDonald's."
Turns out, after graduating from university, they actually applied to McDonald's — and still got rejected.
A PhD graduate from a prestigious university sent out 700 resumes and, after 9 months, finally landed a job with an annual salary of less than £30,000.
An English Literature Master's graduate has faced repeated setbacks since beginning their job search, even using "magic" against AI recruitment systems to no avail. Now, they are burdened with millions in student loans and remain unemployed.
An Oxford University Master's graduate, after applying to hundreds of positions, was "lucky" to secure a hotel management trainee role.
On one hand, these "privileged few" are unemployed right after graduation, while on the other, employers are complaining: today's graduates are terrible, and their generation has been completely ruined by AI!
A PhD's 9-Month Job Search Nightmare: Finding a Job is So Hard!
Susie from the University of Sheffield completed her PhD last year.
She frantically applied for jobs, sending out over 700 applications in one go. Believing that possessing three higher education degrees would make finding a job easy, she was surprised to find that —
For a full 9 months, she couldn't find a job!
For the past 9 months, her daily life has been like this: spending an entire day applying for jobs, revising her resume and cover letters, only to be rejected 2 minutes after submitting, receiving a comment saying, "Your application has been carefully reviewed."
About 70% of the jobs never gave her any response, even some for which she had multiple interview rounds.
Finally, after 9 months, she secured a job with an annual salary of less than £30,000.
"It's less than my PhD scholarship," she self-deprecatingly remarked.
In Susie's view, AI has completely reshaped the employment landscape for her generation of graduates.
"Now, thousands of people are applying for the same position; you can see it clearly on LinkedIn. Often, within just an hour of a job being posted, hundreds of people have already applied."
Susie's story is not unique. The hardships she faced in finding her first job after graduation are familiar to hundreds of thousands of young people in the UK currently experiencing difficult job searches.
They are in what can be described as the most brutal and darkest job season in recent decades.
Currently, a large number of employers have paused hiring and are using AI to cut costs. There is no doubt that since the advent of ChatGPT, entry-level positions have sharply decreased.
Even more bizarrely, companies' recruitment processes themselves heavily utilize AI, directly making job hunting for university students across the UK a nightmare.
Are Humanities Graduates Completely Obsolete?
23-year-old Martyna will receive her Master's degree in English Literature from the University of York this autumn.
Knowing how difficult it would be to find a job, she began mass-applying for positions in May this year.
She has now applied for approximately 150 entry-level positions, including roles in marketing, publishing, civil service, charities, retail, and hospitality.
Throughout the process, she attended five interviews, many of which resulted in immediate rejections. So far, the few replies she has received have been rejection letters, politely informing her that 2,000 people had applied for the position.
During their job search, Martyna and her peers have even tried to "fight magic with magic" against AI screening systems. For example, many would copy and paste the entire job description into Word, shrink the font, and change the color to white, so that the AI could find the keywords employers were looking for.
Overall, it's very surreal.
But it hasn't helped Martyna. Now her feeling is — "I've been deceived."
"My two degrees seem completely useless. My parents went through great lengths to come here from Poland for my education, and I'm also burdened with £90,000 in student loans."
But now, it seems all that effort was for nothing.
Even more ironically, her parents often used to say: if you don't go to university, you'll end up working at McDonald's. Now, she's even rejected for a barista position due to lack of experience.
Perhaps, the last resort is to go back to Poland to find a job.
AI Will Only Make the Job Market Harder
More and more people are now personally experiencing this job search frustration.
Clearly, degrees are no longer as effective. In recruitment across various industries, employers prioritize work experience, especially customer-facing experience.
24-year-old Lucy summarizes it: having a degree simply doesn't matter when job hunting.
After graduating in 2022, she hasn't found a full-time job and has been working part-time, including shifts at a chain bakery.
Lucy holds a degree in visual communication but couldn't find a job in the design industry.
Ultimately, Lucy had to accept a full-time care assistant position in a nursing home, earning minimum wage. However, this was the best job she could find.
An Anxious Mother for Her Son: Top University Math Graduate, Unemployed
53-year-old Willemien Schurer from London has two sons who recently graduated.
As a mother, she is extremely anxious about her sons' job searches.
Her eldest son, a mathematics graduate from a top university, applied for approximately 200 positions over 5 months, but all applications failed.
Because too many companies use AI recruitment processes, how job seekers can pass AI screening systems has become a major challenge.
Currently, the entire job market faces this strange phenomenon: tens of thousands of job seekers hold almost identical resumes and write very similar cover letters with the help of AI.
Meanwhile, recruiters complain that too many applicants meet the requirements, and they have no idea how to screen them.
If everyone meets the criteria, then who should be chosen? The inflation of secondary school and university grades has spread to the job market.
Business School Professor: Graduates' Situation Will Only Get Harder
A Swedish business school professor stated that the current AI phenomenon in the job market — where students use AI to generate resumes and employers use AI to screen them — means that graduates can only stand out through personal connections.
However, the reality for Gen Z is that they know few people in real life and rely more on digital connections. Therefore, this generation of graduates will face an even tougher job market after leaving university.
Furthermore, dozens of university lecturers have also expressed that this generation of university students can be said to have been ruined by AI.
Because they use AI to complete most of their coursework, they do not acquire the skills and knowledge that previous generations possessed upon graduation.
An HR professional at a large consulting firm in London stated that 10 to 15 years ago, excellent writing skills and clear thinking were basic requirements for most graduates seeking jobs.
However, now, almost no university graduates can achieve this. They often see that despite holding top degrees, graduates are unable to summarize document content or solve problems.
Coupled with the widespread adoption of AI tools, in his view, many positions "no longer have a reason to hire graduates."
It's not just this HR professional who feels this way; many other employers have found that today's university graduates struggle to speak in meetings, take notes with a pen, or complete written tasks without Wi-Fi.
Oxford University Master's: My Biggest Fear
24-year-old Lewis graduated from Oxford University last year with a Master's degree in Microbiology.
She candidly states: "My biggest fear is that I'll never be able to enter the field I want to work in."
Lewis applied for hundreds of positions and only recently secured a management trainee role.
This is because fewer job opportunities are available for graduates, and even entry-level positions prefer more experienced employees.
Furthermore, her employer was more interested in whether she could learn customer service in a hotel job, rather than her scientific work experience. In other words, her degree was essentially a worthless piece of paper.
26-year-old Sanjay Balle from London graduated from the Open University last year with a third-class PPE degree (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics).
After graduating, he has been working as a server on a contract basis, earning £700 to £800 per month.
Every day, he applies for 20 entry-level positions, having sent over 500 applications so far, covering advertising, healthcare, procurement, education, financial services, and civil service.
Sadly, universities today sell dreams, and young people buy into these dreams.
However, when they return to the real world, they discover: their university education seems to have been a waste, and the outside world feels like a nightmare.