For decades, the career path in IT and the modern services sector looked similar. A young employee started with simple, repetitive tasks – reporting, initial research or creating simple code snippets – to learn the business by osmosis. This model is just now becoming a thing of the past. According to Gi Group Holding’s latest ‘Labour Market Barometer’, more than 41.6% of companies in Poland are already using AI tools, and automation is effectively displacing duties that were previously a testing ground for juniors. For the industry, this means that talent deployment systems need to be completely remodelled.
Artificial intelligence has ceased to be just a technological curiosity, becoming a firm part of operational strategy. Almost half of companies declare implementations, with logistics and industry leading the way. This dynamic is hitting the employment structure of entry-level positions directly. According to Business Insider, large technology companies in Poland hired 25% fewer graduates in 2024 than the year before. The reason is prosaic: algorithms perform simple tasks faster and cheaper than interns. Karol Boczkowski of Grafton Recruitment notes that the career start has become more difficult because of this. Nowadays, a candidate is expected not only to be willing to learn, but to think analytically and to be independent from the first day on the job. The ‘safety buffer’ of simple tasks on which mistakes could be made is disappearing.
The paradox of the current situation is that technology is hitting the best-educated group of workers. A report by the Polish Economic Institute shows that of the 3.68 million people in occupations exposed to automation, as many as 82% have a university degree. A university degree is no longer a guarantee of a secure start. What’s more, despite the fact that Generation Z is regarded as digital natives, their competences are often at odds with the needs of business. Research by Talent Days and Microsoft shows that although 97% of young people use AI privately, only 12% feel ready to use these tools in a professional environment. The competency gap is clear – according to PARP, only 35% of 25-34 year olds have digital competencies beyond the basic level.
For employers and IT managers, this means a new challenge. Agata Jemioła of Grafton Recruitment stresses that companies need to stop treating implementation as learning from scratch and start seeing it as a process of adaptation to work with an algorithm. The junior can no longer just be an executor of commands, he must become an operator and verifier of machine-generated content. In the IT industry, senior professionals treat AI as a lever to increase their efficiency, while for newcomers it is often an insurmountable barrier without proper mentoring.
The job market is not shrinking, but radically transforming. By 2030, 78 million new jobs are expected to be created worldwide, mainly in the areas of data analytics and cyber security. For today’s juniors, however, the message is clear: the time of simple tasks is gone forever. In order to survive, they need to offer what an algorithm does not (yet) have – critical thinking and the ability to connect the dots in a complex business context.
