Early career recruitment trends coming out of the United States often shape local markets around the world. Krys Ardayfio and Shawn VanDerziel at NACE share the key trends to watch.
Early talent recruiting is in full swing in the United States, and while local labour markets are relatively distinct, the world labour market is interconnected in many ways.
Four major U.S. trends are likely the ones to impact early talent recruitment around the world.
1. Tight labour markets
New graduates are facing an uncertain U.S. labour market. Reflecting an uncertain job market, employers are projecting just a 1.6% increase in hiring for Class of 2026 grads compared to their Class of 2025 counterparts.
Though hiring is overall quite flat, it’s important to note that 60% of employers responding to NACE’s recent Job Outlook survey plan to maintain hiring at last year’s levels, and some industries - including miscellaneous professional services, engineering services, construction, finance, insurance and real estate, and management consulting - expect to increase their hiring.
Other developments in the U.S. are impacting higher education and the labour market. The sharp birthrate decline around 2008 means that now, 18 years later, there’s a drop in traditional age college student enrolment. According to NAFSA enrolment statistics, United States international student college enrolment declined significantly in 2025-26 after years of an upward trend.
Various U.S. federal policies could also impact international student enrolment rates, the ability to acquire visas, and ultimately opportunities for careers in the U.S. for international early talent. Despite these new pressures on the American higher education system, American employers till value higher education with only about a quarter of employers discussing or removing degree requirements for entry-level roles according to NACE’s 2025 Recruiting Benchmarks.
When navigating a tight labour market anywhere in the world, candidates may find employers to have more selective criterion, and respond by adjusting how they position themselves. For example, in the United States, many employers look at internship experience as a candidate differentiator. It’s worth considering the relationship between demand for talent and selection criteria and how to create strategies that prepare early talent to compete effectively.
2. Tricky internships
Around the world, internships bridge the college experience to the world of work and are leveraged to build the early talent pipeline by converting college student interns into full-time hires.
For many U.S. employers, internships are an important piece of the early talent pipeline: Current NACE benchmarks show 51% of interns converting to full-time hires, illustrating why most employers consider internships their best recruiting tool.
While internships are central to the success of many organisations’ early talent strategy, not all internships are created equally. In fact, NACE has consistently found that paid internships have the greatest ROI for students, resulting, in general, in more job offers and higher starting salaries (NACE’s Unpaid Is Unfair campaign was an effort to build awareness and effect change).
Paid verses unpaid internships are influenced by culture, policies, laws and regulations, and the economy, so it’s not always relevant to local labour markets. However, there may be aspects of internships or experiential learning that intentionally or inadvertently hinder the success of early talent. Efforts to identify those aspects and champion change have been well received in the U.S..
3. Skills-based hiring
U.S. employers are leaning into skills-base hiring, using competency-based job descriptions, assessment tools for screening, and skills-based interview rubrics.
Early talent who successfully traverse the skills-based hiring process are able to acquire and articulate their skills - often referred to as ‘competencies’ in higher education - that employers value.
U.S. colleges recognise that need: In a recent poll, 83% use NACE’s career readiness competencies to help their students prepare for the world of work. To support that effort, NACE created a tool to help students, career professionals, and employers gauge competency development.
Discovering which skills employers in your area value and then preparing students accordingly is key. Globally, skills-based hiring expands the talent pool by more than six times, expands workforce demographics such as female representation, and benefits early talent, including Gen Zers, in most countries.
4. AI
The obvious good news is humans have value. Although AI is used both within the workforce and to develop it, it is currently not replacing entry-level professional jobs in a significant way. In fact, more than 60% of organisations said they do not expect to replace entry-level jobs with AI while more than one-quarter are discussing how AI might be used to augment them.
Meanwhile, in a recent survey, only about 15% of employers have had or are in discussions about actually replacing talent with AI. Instead of replacement, the global labour market is responding with the emergence of totally new AI careers, such as roles in prompt engineering, AI ethics and governance, AI machine learning support and quality assurance, and more.
Aware of this trend, nearly 90% of American new graduates feel that AI has some level of importance for their future career (NACE Student Survey 2025). And, they’re right: Data show that generative AI job postings have risen sharply, with a 75-times increase from April 2022 to April 2024.
AI also has a place in recruiting: Among employers responding to a recent NACE benchmark survey, 22% said they are using AI as an assistive recruiting tool and another 22% expect to do so within the next year.
Conversely, as employers ramp up the use of AI in their recruiting process, a surprising 67% of students responding to our annual student survey said they haven’t used AI in their job search, due mostly to ethical concerns, lack of expertise, and ironically, concerns about prospective employer reaction.
Perspective is important. Although AI-related jobs have increased rapidly, they are still a tiny portion of total job postings at just 2% in the United States and just 0.12% of all global job postings, up from .002% two years prior.
As the new landscape matures, we will likely see a balance between employers using AI to recruit for jobs and new graduates using AI to seek them. In all, these trends are pointing to a very competitive and increasingly complicated hiring landscape in the US.