71% of Interns Think AI Makes Hiring Easier. Here's Why They're Wrong.

The headlines are hard to miss.

"The Job Market Is Hell" - The Atlantic, September 2025

"Companies Predict 2026 Will Be the Worst College Grad Job Market in Five Years" - Wall Street Journal, November 2025

"There's Just No Reason to Deal With Young Employees" - New York Magazine, November 2025

The narrative is consistent: AI is shrinking entry-level opportunities, employers are overwhelmed by applications, and early-career talent is struggling to break through.

So when we asked learners in our Future-Ready Talent research how AI would impact their ability to gain employment or an internship over the next 12 months, we expected anxiety. Uncertainty. Maybe even pessimism.

Instead, 71% said AI would make it easier or much easier. Why?

The Personal Advantage Bias

When we dug into the qualitative responses, the pattern became clear. Interns aren’t thinking about the job market. They’re thinking about the application process.

AI helps them tailor their resumes faster. It generates cover letters in seconds. It prepares them for interview questions. From their perspective, AI is a personal advantage. A time-saver. A polish tool.

What they’re not seeing is the structural shift happening on the other side.

If AI helps you write a better resume, it helps everyone write a better resume. If AI helps you tailor your cover letter to match the job description perfectly, it does the same for every other applicant. The advantage disappears the moment it becomes universal.

And that’s exactly what’s happening.

When Everyone Looks Perfect

The Atlantic article describes it vividly: young people are using ChatGPT to write their applications, HR is using AI to read them, and no one is getting hired.

One graduate they interviewed applied to 200 jobs and got rejected 200 times. Actually, he clarified, he didn’t get rejected 200 times. A lot of businesses never responded at all.

This is what economists call "Signal Inflation." When the cost of producing a polished application drops to near zero, the signal that application sends drops too.

A tailored cover letter used to mean something. It showed effort, attention, genuine interest. Now it shows you have access to ChatGPT. Which everyone does.

Research from Yale’s Department of Economics confirmed this. In a controlled study, AI-written applications initially boosted callback rates by 51%. Within two months, that advantage disappeared entirely as AI use saturated the market. The relationship between cover letter customization and actual hiring outcomes fell by 79%.

The resume isn’t broken because it’s a bad format. It’s broken because AI made it too easy to fake.

What Employers Told Us

The employers in our research echoed the same frustration. They described an influx of applications that all looked polished, professional, and nearly identical. The old signals weren’t working anymore.

One leader told us they’re now "overwhelmed by perfect resumes that match the requirements to the T" and that this has become a red flag, not a green one. When everyone looks like a perfect fit, the resume stops helping you decide who actually is.

Some companies have started adding friction to the process. Hidden instructions in job descriptions to catch applicants using auto-apply bots.

Scheduling tests that require candidates to coordinate a meeting without a provided link. Interview questions designed to probe disposition and problem-solving rather than rehearsed answers.

The hiring process is becoming adversarial. Employers are trying to find humans in a sea of AI-polished applications. Candidates are trying to stand out in a market where polish is now the baseline.

A Widening Perception Gap

This is the gap our research surfaced. Interns see AI as a tool that helps them compete. Employers see AI as a force that’s making competition harder to judge.

71% of interns believe AI will make hiring easier for them personally. Only 50% of employers believe AI will make hiring easier for early-career talent overall.

Interns are optimizing for the application. Employers are questioning whether applications tell them anything useful at all.

That’s not a skills gap. It’s a perception gap. And it’s leaving both sides frustrated.

What Actually Stands Out Now

If polish no longer differentiates, what does?

The employers we interviewed kept coming back to the same answer: proof. Not claims about skills. Not keywords optimized for an ATS. Actual evidence that a candidate has done real work, solved real problems, and can explain how they did it.

Portfolios. Project outcomes. Work samples. References from supervisors who watched them perform. These are harder to fake because they require someone to actually do the work.

The resume asks: What can you do? The portfolio answers: Here’s what I’ve done.

The Real Question

Interns aren’t wrong to use AI. It’s a practical tool, and ignoring it would be a mistake.

But they may be wrong about what it’s doing for them. AI doesn’t give you an edge in a market where everyone has the same tool. It raises the floor. And when the floor rises, you need something else to stand out.

The question isn’t whether AI will help you write a better resume. The question is whether a better resume is enough.

This hiring disconnect is one of the central findings from our Future-Ready Talent Series. Download the full report to see how Signal Inflation is reshaping early-career hiring and what’s replacing the resume as the primary signal of readiness.

Next in the series: Closing The Readiness Void: Solving the Training Standoff