From hiring to skill gaps, new tech can be a challenge – but experts cite ‘crisis’ if leadership pipeline crumbles
Recently, there has been a downward trend in the entry-level job market.
Job vacancies seeking less than one year of experience and one to three years of experience decreased between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026. During that same time period, vacancies seeking five to eight years of experience and more than eight years of experience increased, according to Statistics Canada.
Two experts speaking to Canadian HR Reporter say AI plays a major role, not only because of the new skills required to use the new tech, but how the new tools filter job candidates.
Pipeline of leadership needed
A slowdown in entry-level hiring isn’t just an issue for jobseekers. Without the next generation, organizations could be lacking when their current leadership moves on, according to Rola Helou, CEO of Chartered Professionals in Human Resources (CPHR) Canada.
“That's certainly a risk,” she says. “If you don't have anybody learning from the people that have been there for a while, then how are they going to take over? So, I think we need to be intentional because if we sever the pipeline now, we're going to be in a crisis in a few years.”
Santiago Campero, an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, points out the choice that employers have between a “low road” — thinking of employees as a cost to be minimized — and a “high road” that views people as an investment. The latter helps to keep an internal talent pipeline alive.
“Organizations who take this kind of high-road approach… use these entry-level jobs to have a pipeline of leaders that can be a resource for the company,” he says.
AI biases in hiring
The hiring process itself has changed with new technology. AI can save time, but it can also introduce biases and potential obstacles to those seeking early-career opportunities.
“The employer's now got automated systems using probably AI to filter through sometimes hundreds of CVs,” says Helou. “The potential risk is the bias that is still in the systems that the AI is using, or the humans that are building the AI are still integrating, unknowingly, some biases. So, unfortunately, we're seeing that emerge in the hiring.”
It’s possible that if a job posting says three to five years of experience is needed, a recent university graduate will automatically be filtered out because they don't tick off that box, she says. “I wonder if there's a link there with what we're seeing in the entry-level jobs and the youth unemployment rates.”
Campero also suggested that the rise of AI could create more uniformity in terms of written applications. That, in turn, makes human relationships even more important for early-career candidates.
“It's reasonable to expect that at least some [employers] are going to put more of an emphasis on referral-based hiring, or hiring through social networks because that is a way for them to differentiate a little bit between candidates,” he says.
“From the perspective of people coming into the labour market… it does kind of make networking and relationship-building even more important.”
Human-focused way forward
But if AI is creating a potential obstacle, focusing on the humans involved could be a practical path forward. If automation, for example, has absorbed entry-level tasks, that doesn’t have to eliminate a role. Instead, it can open new possibilities, both personally and professionally.
“I don't want to be stereotypical here, but we've heard a lot of the younger generation, Gen Zs, [where] for them a better balance of professiona and personal life is what they seek. Mind you, I seek that too. I think we all seek it,’” Helou says.
“So, [with] a job, let's say, 20 hours a week, AI can take over. Then what is the other 20 hours? And how can we optimize the skills that this new person is bringing to the industry?”
Similarly, Campero says that employers need to be intentional about designing jobs with non-automated tasks in mind, saying that “a job carries accountability.”
He also highlights skill-based hiring as a way for employers to thoughtfully respond to the rise of AI.
“This feeds into a trend that we've seen in hiring for a while that does help mitigate some of the inequalities in the labour market, and that's skills-based hiring,” Campero says. “Skills-based hiring really pushes employers to focus more narrowly on the actual skills that a job requires as opposed to kind of broader requirements, whether it be certain degrees or certain years of experience.”
If employers can respond to the advent of AI by being more thoughtful about identifying the skills that jobs, particularly at the entry level require, he says, “this can accelerate this trend towards skills-based hiring, which can help mitigate some of the inequalities in the labour market.”
Despite the uncertainty around AI, Helou believes we have to recognize that opportunity still exists and be willing to embrace it, even if it looks a bit different.
“There's always a lot of fear around these changes," she says. “We saw it with the Industrial Revolution, all the jobs that were lost there… There's some job titles that will not exist [now], but there's going to be a whole bunch of new ones that will exist, and I think we need to approach it with the human in mind.”
