Nearly a quarter of global HR leaders report that at least one manager in their organisation has already stopped hiring for entry-level roles because of automation driven by artificial intelligence. The finding, drawn from a Gartner survey of 110 HR directors at global firms finalised in December 2025, indicates that 22 percent of leadership teams curtailed junior recruitment last year, with 95 percent of respondents having implemented AI in some form, predominantly for less complex tasks performed by early-career staff.

At the same time, recruiters are confronting a parallel challenge: candidates who use AI tools to coach them through live interviews. A manager at a US tech firm’s Paris office described hiring a junior salesperson after a video interview in which the candidate appeared highly proficient on technical topics. The new recruit’s inability to recall those topics on the first day, combined with a systematic reliance on AI-generated summaries, led the manager to terminate the probation period. “I got caught out by AI. I was a bit naive because I had never faced this case and I had to recruit quickly,” she said, noting that HR colleagues confirmed the practice is recurring.

Viewed from Jakarta, the pressure on formal credentials is accelerating. At a PPM School of Management discussion, Dean Wendra argued that while a degree still helps a candidate secure a job, soft skills—teamwork, communication, confidence, leadership and problem-solving—are what make a career. He emphasised that continuous learning is becoming as important as university-acquired competence, as routine tasks are increasingly handled by technology. The discussion highlighted a persistent mismatch: many graduates remain unemployed while others work in fields unrelated to their studies, signalling that companies now weigh relevant, adaptable skills more heavily than academic indices alone.

Broader data from Russia reinforces the productivity calculus behind these shifts. Analysts at Sber’s macroeconomic research centre estimate that large-scale deployment of generative AI could add 1.2 percentage points to labour productivity growth. A June 2026 Central Bank of Russia survey found that one in seven Russian enterprises already uses AI and one in five plans to do so, with marketing and sales the most common application. Among mass-market roles, sales managers, developers, accountants and marketers face the highest exposure to AI-driven change, while drivers, warehouse workers, cleaners and cooks are assessed as least affected. The next milestone to watch is how firms recalibrate assessment methods—moving beyond credentials and scripted interviews—as AI tools become more accessible to both sides of the hiring table.