The bottom rung of the career ladder is getting harder to reach. Adzuna has seen a 30% drop in UK entry-level job postings since ChatGPT's launch, with graduates facing the toughest job market since 2018 techUK – What's actually happening with entry-level and graduate jobs?. The squeeze is sharpest in tech-heavy functions, the ones financial-services firms rely on for engineering, data and risk. The UK tech sector cut graduate jobs by 46 percent in the past year, with a further 53 percent drop projected, according to figures from the Institute of Student Employers The Register.
That matters for inclusion. When firms stop opening junior roles, they close the door on people who build their careers from the ground up, and the pool narrows to those who already have a foot in. In engineering, entry-level hiring has fallen to -19% while senior hiring sits at -10%, a 9-percentage-point gap GOV.UK - A snapshot of entry-level hiring in the UK. If AI now screens the CVs for the roles that remain, the design of that screening decides who gets seen.
Demand is shifting fast towards one capability. Demand for AI skills increased nearly 200 percent in a year, with London accounting for 80 percent of AI-related job postings and nearly two-thirds of all technology vacancies in the UK The Register (Accenture data). For financial services, that concentration is both an opportunity and a risk: the talent you want clusters in one city and around one skill set, which can quietly shrink the range of people you reach.
The good news is that the routes in are widening. Apprenticeships have risen from 3% of AI hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 GOV.UK / DSIT – AI Labour Market Survey 2025 report. And national upskilling is scaling up: during London Tech Week 2025, the UK government announced a partnership to upskill 7.5 million UK workers in essential AI skills by 2030, equivalent to around 20% of the UK workforce techUK. Inclusive hiring means treating these routes as real pipelines, not afterthoughts.
Start with the criteria, not the tool. Write down the skills a role genuinely needs, then make sure the screening weighs those skills rather than proxies like a specific employer, a postcode or a degree class. Apprenticeships now make up a fifth of AI hires, so if your filters quietly demand a graduate CV, you are screening out a growing share of capable people GOV.UK / DSIT – AI Labour Market Survey 2025 report.
Then build in oversight. Use AI to rank and surface candidates quickly, but keep a person reviewing the shortlist and checking that the mix of backgrounds looks right for the role and the market. Open your reach beyond the obvious clusters: with London accounting for 80 percent of AI-related job postings, firms that look wider than one city find people others miss The Register (Accenture data).
We search a database of 15 million candidates and rank a shortlist on the skills a role needs, so you see people you might otherwise miss, including those from apprenticeships and reskilling routes. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. Tell Reed.ai the role and we'll show you who's out there, today.
