The Entry-Level Hiring Process Is Breaking DownGrade inflation and the rise of AI are making it impossible for employers to evaluate recent graduates.
Rose HorowitchDecember 16, 2025, 7 AM ET
Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic
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Even in the best of times, searching for a first job after college is an exercise in patience, resilience, and coping with rejection. And these are not the best of times. Companies have no idea which candidates to hire, applicants have no idea how to stand out, and everyone is miserable.
Historically, new college graduates were more likely to have a job than the average worker. Now, however, the recent-grad unemployment rate is slightly higher than that of the overall workforce. That’s in part because there are fewer positions to go around. Job postings on Handshake, a career-services platform for college students and recent graduates, have fallen by more than 16 percent in the past year, and companies are warning that this year’s entry-level job market could be even worse. (To be clear, the unemployment rate for recent graduates is still far lower than the rate for young people who didn’t go to college, and workers with a college degree continue to outearn those without.)
Another factor is making job hunting even grimmer: The hiring process is starting to break down. In the past, companies looking for fresh entry-level talent could rely on a college graduate’s GPA as a mark of their intelligence and work ethic. Hiring managers could assess a candidate’s cover letter and interview performance to get a sense of their writing and communication skills. Now those signals have lost much of their value. Rampant grade inflation has rendered GPAs almost meaningless. The widespread use of AI to write cover letters—and even to assist with job-interview performance—has robbed those assessments of their predictive power. |
