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AI and the Workforce
AI and the Workforce
Understand the Shift. Build Your Skills. Keep Your Values in View.
AI Is Changing the World of Work
~
3
×
as many entry-level jobs require AI skills in spring 2026 as in fall 2025.
2 in 3
AI résumé skill mentions come from non–computer science majors.
~
58
%
of employers surveyed assign interns AI-related projects.
70
%
of hiring leaders surveyed expect AI to change entry-level role requirements.
Build Skills for What’s Next
Choose Rutgers tools and learning resources to build your AI skills. Protect your information and follow employer rules. Start with our guide or talk with a CES adviser.
Use Your Rutgers Tools
Access Copilot Chat, Gemini and Gemini Notebook through Rutgers. Add Grammarly for writing support and follow university AI guidance.
Learn with LinkedIn
Build generative AI foundations or explore AI for your job search through practical, self-paced courses. Rutgers provides free access to LinkedIn Learning.
Show Your Career Readiness
Connect AI practice to the skills employers value. Learn to describe your judgment, teamwork, and results in job applications and interview conversations.
Explore AI Career Programs
Friday, November 13, 2026, 5:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m.
Monday, November 09, 2026, 12:00 p.m.-1:30 p.m.
Wednesday, November 11, 2026, 10:00 p.m.-11:00 p.m.
Thursday, November 19, 2026, 12:00 a.m.-1:30 a.m.
Put AI to Work in Your Career
Choose a career task: explore your options, strengthen your applications, or prepare for an offer conversation. Find Rutgers guidance for your next step.
Explore how AI is changing work across industries. Discover what it means for your career and build the skills to navigate a changing workplace.
Connect your interests, strengths, and values with career possibilities. Use AI prompts to reflect on your goals and plan your next steps with confidence.
Explore roles and industries that match your interests. Use AI to compare career paths and find experiences that help you decide what fits you.
Use AI to strengthen your resume and cover letters. Learn to tailor applications, highlight your experience, and keep your own voice in every draft.
Compare job offers with your goals and priorities in mind. Use AI to research pay, weigh benefits, and prepare for a confident negotiation conversation.
Explore how AI is changing medicine and scientific research. Learn where human judgment matters and which skills can help you prepare for the future.
Human insight. Thoughtful AI.
AI Advice You Can’t Simply Find Online
The most useful career insight starts with your own experience. Fourteen Rutgers career professionals share ways to use AI to uncover that insight, test your thinking, and prepare for conversations that matter.
Hover over a photo, focus with your keyboard, or tap to explore. Press Escape or use the close button to dismiss the card.
Shalini Jain
Senior Assistant Director, Career Fair Strategy & Event Experience
Let AI ask the questions
Instead of asking AI to write your resume, ask it to interview you about one experience at a time and keep asking questions until you can describe your own unique experience. Work with it as a brainstorming partner to develop a customized resume. Thinking through those questions can also help you prepare for an interview later.
Christine Anderson
Senior Assistant Director, 4WARD Career Pathways Mentoring Program
Look for missing evidence
Prompt AI to act as the hiring manager for a position you are applying to, and give it the job description and your resume. Ask why your resume might be rejected and what is missing. Review its response carefully: AI can fabricate metrics, titles, and duties, so feedback from a career advisor or another trusted person is critical.
Stacey Kohler
Associate Director, Scarlet Career Mentoring Network
Practice your career stories
Copy the job description into AI and ask it to generate questions you might be asked in an interview. Use those questions as a starting point to develop your career stories using the problem, action, and result or situation, task, action, and result approach. You cannot predict every question, but this can help you prepare and feel more confident.
Jaime Flagg
Senior Assistant Director, Career Success Strategy
Own every application
AI tools that autofill applications may save time, but you need to pay attention to what they say you can do. You might get an interview and then struggle to connect your experience to what the employer needs. Take the time to understand both the application’s claims and the needs of that employer.
Bill Kelly
Senior Assistant Director, Student Employee Enrichment Program
Stand out from the same
AI is accessible to the other people competing for the same jobs, too. If you use it to offload the intentional work of a job search, taking the easier route is unlikely to separate you from other applicants. Use it to augment your application strategies while still doing the work that makes your application your own.
Aaron Ratzan
Senior Assistant Director, Career Success Strategy
Make it interview-ready
If AI chooses your words for you, consider how you will articulate the same experience in an interview. Your resume also needs to work for the human who eventually reads it, rather than focusing entirely on getting past an applicant tracking system. Balancing those audiences takes time to write, edit, and refine.
Rania Plazas
Senior Assistant Director, Scarlet Career Mentoring Course
Bring your lived experience
Nobody knows your lived experiences better than you do, so use AI to support and polish your bullet points rather than create them. Do not leave out valuable experience simply because it was unpaid or does not directly match your target industry. Projects and unpaid work can still demonstrate skills a recruiter wants to see.
David B. Bills
Associate Director, Career Advising
Trust your own voice
Use AI as an editor rather than the first and last word in writing your resume. Trust your common sense and intuition: if something does not sound like you, replace it with words that do. Your own judgment still belongs in the writing process.
Scott Borden
Assistant Director, Career Advising
Keep people in your corner
A long job search can bring frustration, silence from employers, and feelings of failure that make it difficult to keep applying. AI cannot prepare you for all of those challenges. Turn to people as well, including your career center, alumni, industry-related student organizations, and recruiters at university career events.
Jennifer Broyles
Senior Director, Career Readiness
Let employers see you
Relying too heavily on AI can make you look average instead of outstanding. You risk losing your voice and uniqueness, which can reflect poorly to an employer.
Ava Aulisi
Senior Assistant Director, Career Success Strategy
Protect your unique value
Use AI to support your unique value, not replace it. Remember the authentic experiences, skills, and insights you have that AI can’t replicate.
Michelina Beaumont
Senior Assistant Director, Career Success Strategy
Compare first and personalize
AI can help identify key words and phrases in a job description and compare them to your resume. Finish your descriptions with your own writing style and knowledge to add the human touch.
Sue Pye
Unit Director, Career Discovery
Give AI a focused editing task
Use AI to enhance your resume, such as checking the grammar in your accomplishment statements. Ultimately, your resume should reflect who you are as a professional.
William Jones
Assistant Vice Provost for Career Development & Executive Director
Plan the experience you still need
When AI identifies a skill missing from your resume, ask it to suggest a manageable project where you could practice that skill. Discuss the project with a faculty member or supervisor, then do the work. Your next resume improvement could come from gaining experience, rather than rewriting what’s already there.
Read all 14 tips
Shalini Jain
Senior Assistant Director, Career Fair Strategy & Event Experience
Instead of asking AI to write your resume, ask it to interview you about one experience at a time and keep asking questions until you can describe your own unique experience. Work with it as a brainstorming partner to develop a customized resume. Thinking through those questions can also help you prepare for an interview later.
Christine Anderson
Senior Assistant Director, 4WARD Career Pathways Mentoring Program
Prompt AI to act as the hiring manager for a position you are applying to, and give it the job description and your resume. Ask why your resume might be rejected and what is missing. Review its response carefully: AI can fabricate metrics, titles, and duties, so feedback from a career advisor or another trusted person is critical.
Stacey Kohler
Associate Director, Scarlet Career Mentoring Network
Copy the job description into AI and ask it to generate questions you might be asked in an interview. Use those questions as a starting point to develop your career stories using the problem, action, and result or situation, task, action, and result approach. You cannot predict every question, but this can help you prepare and feel more confident.
Jaime Flagg
Senior Assistant Director, Career Success Strategy
AI tools that autofill applications may save time, but you need to pay attention to what they say you can do. You might get an interview and then struggle to connect your experience to what the employer needs. Take the time to understand both the application’s claims and the needs of that employer.
Bill Kelly
Senior Assistant Director, Student Employee Enrichment Program
AI is accessible to the other people competing for the same jobs, too. If you use it to offload the intentional work of a job search, taking the easier route is unlikely to separate you from other applicants. Use it to augment your application strategies while still doing the work that makes your application your own.
Aaron Ratzan
Senior Assistant Director, Career Success Strategy
If AI chooses your words for you, consider how you will articulate the same experience in an interview. Your resume also needs to work for the human who eventually reads it, rather than focusing entirely on getting past an applicant tracking system. Balancing those audiences takes time to write, edit, and refine.
Rania Plazas
Senior Assistant Director, Scarlet Career Mentoring Course
Nobody knows your lived experiences better than you do, so use AI to support and polish your bullet points rather than create them. Do not leave out valuable experience simply because it was unpaid or does not directly match your target industry. Projects and unpaid work can still demonstrate skills a recruiter wants to see.
David B. Bills
Associate Director, Career Advising
Use AI as an editor rather than the first and last word in writing your resume. Trust your common sense and intuition: if something does not sound like you, replace it with words that do. Your own judgment still belongs in the writing process.
Scott Borden
Assistant Director, Career Advising
A long job search can bring frustration, silence from employers, and feelings of failure that make it difficult to keep applying. AI cannot prepare you for all of those challenges. Turn to people as well, including your career center, alumni, industry-related student organizations, and recruiters at university career events.
Jennifer Broyles
Senior Director, Career Readiness
Relying too heavily on AI can make you look average instead of outstanding. You risk losing your voice and uniqueness, which can reflect poorly to an employer.
Ava Aulisi
Senior Assistant Director, Career Success Strategy
Use AI to support your unique value, not replace it. Remember the authentic experiences, skills, and insights you have that AI can’t replicate.
Michelina Beaumont
Senior Assistant Director, Career Success Strategy
AI can help identify key words and phrases in a job description and compare them to your resume. Finish your descriptions with your own writing style and knowledge to add the human touch.
Sue Pye
Unit Director, Career Discovery
Use AI to enhance your resume, such as checking the grammar in your accomplishment statements. Ultimately, your resume should reflect who you are as a professional.
William Jones
Assistant Vice Provost for Career Development & Executive Director
When AI identifies a skill missing from your resume, ask it to suggest a manageable project where you could practice that skill. Discuss the project with a faculty member or supervisor, then do the work. Your next resume improvement could come from gaining experience, rather than rewriting what’s already there.
Advice from 13 survey respondents and William Jones. Survey responses lightly edited for clarity.
References
[1] National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), Job Outlook 2026 Spring Update (PDF), pp. 10 and 14. The ~3× comparison reflects the employer-reported share of entry-level jobs requiring AI skills in spring 2026 versus fall 2025. NACE describes this as nearly tripling in Demand for AI Skills in Entry-level Jobs Nearly Triples Since Fall 2025 (April 20, 2026). Approximately 58% of employers surveyed assign interns AI-related projects (57.8% in the report).
[2] Handshake, What does AI mean for your early talent pipeline?, summarizing Workforce Outlook: The Class of 2026 in the AI Economy. Source for 70% expecting changes to entry-level role requirements. This figure describes hiring leaders’ expectations.
[3] Handshake, 2027 Hiring Outlook: What the data says about talent, skills, and AI (October 2026), 11:40. Two-thirds of AI skill mentions in its résumé analysis come from majors outside computer science. This measures reported skills, not tested proficiency or the share of all students with AI skills. See also Handshake’s AI capabilities framework.
Last Reviewed: October 16, 2026.