As students prepare for graduation, finding a job in the world’s largest tech city has become a point of great concern among many graduates due to the emergence of generative artificial intelligence.
To create a better understanding of the implications of AI and other restraints on the job market, on Nov. 6, USF hosted a College of Arts and Sciences Career Council Forum, which featured companies like SONY, PlayStation, GAP, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the Golden State Warriors. They all agreed that the job market was hard to enter; however, not necessarily because of AI.
With this in mind, USF has moved to bridge education and career readiness. As Dr. Shin, a sociology professor at USF said, “The university is making an effort to try and use us as agents of educators for students, as well as mentors.”
Dr. Shin recognizes the importance of students as human beings within the workforce, in contrast to AI. She categorizes the three key things employers search for as critical thinking, storytelling and team building. Dr. Shin recalls from the Career Council Forum that a team member from SONY “‘first ten to fifteen years of a career you have to work as a team.’ You have to be able to talk, communicate, make eye contact, and have meaningful conversations. These are all soft skills,” Dr. Shin said. Soft skills, integrated into the fabric of everyday life and a product of the Human experience, are something that AI can’t replicate. Dr. Shin encourages her students to develop soft skills by outlawing technology in the classroom and making group work mandatory.
However, she doesn’t denounce the use of AI as a resourceful tool, “It can be a very useful tool, just like social media,” Dr. Shin explained. “It is fun, but if you’re ‘doomscrolling’ all day long, you can lose a lot of valuable time.”
AI’s prevalent presence in the job market does not devalue human skills. As Janelle Beck noted in her 2024 article “Why AI Can Never Replace Soft Skills,” “AI can automate tasks, but it cannot replace the human skills of empathy, creativity, collaboration and leadership.” These unique qualities drive innovation.
And there is no doubt that these impacts exist and will affect students graduating and looking for entry-level jobs that are being replaced by AI. As National University has assessed that with AI entering the job market, “30% of current U.S. jobs could be automated by 2030.”
Unlike in the past, rising graduates have concerns about their ability to get a job after graduation. Adiyam Gebremedhin, a senior finance major, said, “I know I have a great support system within my family, so I will always have some sort of safety net to fall back on, but as a first-generation college student and a child of refugees, I’ve placed a lot of pressure on myself to be able to help my parents out. I am concerned that I won’t be able to do that.”
Jacob Taylor, a fellow for Global Economy and Development, states, “humans shape the inputs and outputs of AI systems at every step.” Humans play such a vital role in the development of AI, due to it only being able to improve with human innovation.
Deeply embedded in the culture and history of San Francisco, tech has played a big role in the way in which the city functions. It’s so ingrained in day-to-day life, it’s more common to see billboards throughout the city, saying things like “AI is the future,” or “The #1 AI agent for customer service,” compared to the more common sightings of billboards around the country that read “Mc Loving it” or “Burger King Toppers 1.99 each.”
There is a new shift in the labor market that Salesforce describes as “agentic AI future.” There are certain jobs needed in the market to promote the prosperity of AI. Jobs like agentic data specialists, agentic integration specialist, AI architect, agentforce technical architect and agentic experience specialists.”
As USF Professor John Zarobell confirmed, “What we are seeing is in fields like Computer Science, students believe ‘Oh I’ll get a Computer Science career because it seems to be a very lucrative career,’ now suddenly seems like ‘wait maybe that’s not such a great idea.’ And so if it can make programming disappear as a job, then needless to say, there are a lot of other jobs that it could impact.”
