{"id":159619,"date":"2025-09-21T16:53:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T16:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/159619\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T16:53:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T16:53:12","slug":"how-is-ai-affecting-jobs-for-graduates-in-ireland-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/159619\/","title":{"rendered":"How is AI affecting jobs for graduates in Ireland? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, Irish graduates<\/a> enter the labour force<\/a> carrying a proliferating list of concerns.<\/p>\n

For a long time, if you were fortunate enough to make it to university, the path to professional life seemed straightforward. Of all the mutable factors now muddling that road, artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI) might be the most highly charged.<\/p>\n

In July, a Morgan McKinley Quarterly Employment Monitor report showed that graduate hiring in accountancy and related areas is now being significantly impacted by AI and automation. Earlier this year, in the UK, a report from job-search site Indeed suggested graduates there are facing the toughest job market since 2018, with a pause on hiring and the introduction of cost-cutting AI listed as contributory factors. <\/p>\n

Coverage around AI tends to be dramatic, often exaggerating or catastrophising its impact beyond what is known. It is worth noting a reduction in graduate roles is also influenced by factors such as offshoring, the geopolitical landscape and, for the UK, Brexit. Major companies argue that jobs are not disappearing because of AI, but that the nature of work is changing. <\/p>\n

Alan Smeaton, a professor of computing at DCU and a member of the Government\u2019s AI Advisory Council, broadly agrees with that sentiment, though he does warn against the damage of a widespread reduction in graduate roles. Smeaton cites futurologist Roy Amara, and more specifically Amara\u2019s Law, which says that we tend to overestimate technology\u2019s impact in the short term and underestimate its long-term impact. <\/p>\n

\u201c[We say] it\u2019s going to change the nature of everybody\u2019s jobs and there\u2019s going to be loads of redundancies, but in the long term is where the real impact will be,\u201d Smeaton says. \u201cAmara\u2019s law has been proven true time and time again. I think we\u2019re still in the early stages of realising what AI can and can\u2019t do for our jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt cannot replace people; it can help with tasks. Some people get scared about this because they\u2019re scared of the change that it\u2019s going to introduce. AI can\u2019t automate any task that we do which requires us to make a decision, where we need justification, explanation and transparency. Where there\u2019s any element of design or innovation or art or creativity or social interaction with others, AI can\u2019t replace those. It can help with tasks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Traditionally, a graduate may expect to get their foot in the door somewhere and learn from experienced colleagues before being thrown into more specialist work. There will be less breathing space with AI, but as the labour grows more technical in lieu of menial tasks, there still needs to be a large supply of jobs available for people coming out of education. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t have the lower rungs on the ladder, then people won\u2019t learn how to climb up it,\u201d Smeaton says. \u201cBut the thing about that is, a lot of the tasks that we do now and that we would do almost manually, will be automated or semiautomated in a way. We can look at the work that accountants do. Spreadsheets and calculators have replaced a lot of the work that accountants would\u2019ve done many years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat that really does is it behoves a student who is coming out as a graduate to be familiar with AI. For their own career prospects and career development and for their own continuous learning. It doesn\u2019t end when you do your final-year exams and walk out with a degree parchment. It\u2019s lifelong learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AlanAlan Smeaton: ‘we\u2019re still in the early stages of realising what AI can and can\u2019t do for our jobs’ <\/p>\n

Marie Laffey is head of the career development centre at University of Galway. She echoes Smeaton\u2019s words on automation and says that graduate roles had been moving away from routine tasks prior to AI entering the labour market.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe current graduate roles [don\u2019t consist of] menial tasks any more,\u201d Laffey says. \u201cThey\u2019re expected to contribute at a good level. They don\u2019t want to [do menial work] either; they\u2019re looking for a challenge. In terms of things like data entry or transactional and lower-level work, 40 per cent of the work that we all currently do will be automated. That\u2019s according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at that, I think it\u2019s going to make people work quicker and more efficiently. Think about someone that\u2019s going to be working in accounting. Rather than doing the menial, low-level auditing tasks, they actually probably get more involved at a strategic level in terms of developing the business. That\u2019s really interesting work for graduates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the industries that are most impacted by AI do not, on the face of things, appear to be short of employment opportunities. Areas such as finance, tech, healthcare and pharmaceuticals are more dynamic now, but they still offer secure career prospects. To be highly employable is to be adaptable to the changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne key thing is getting students to realise they\u2019re self-agents in their career,\u201d Laffey says. \u201cThey\u2019re going to have to be. The biggest thing is career agility. If you look at it as a graduate and you think about the impact AI is going to make, you have the WEF saying 92 million jobs will be displaced by 2030, but, at the same time, it\u2019s talking about 170 million being created.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have a net of 78 million jobs there. What do those jobs look like? For [universities], it\u2019s about developing that creativity and self-agency so that it\u2019s not just a case of \u2018I\u2019m done learning now\u2019 [when they complete their degree].\u201d<\/p>\n

Laffey\u2019s message for graduates, then, is to embrace AI in the right ways. It is her message for everyone in fact. Alongside a potential reduction in job opportunities, graduates now have to contend with a competitive field of prospective employees all wielding the same large language models. It can be difficult to stand out.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery single person should be looking at doing what I call their own personal AI resilience plan,\u201d Laffey says. \u201cWhat are the things that will be automated in my role as a graduate? Then look at what the key skills are. Critical thinking, analysis, problem solving, communication skills, adaptability and agility; that\u2019s what employers are looking for. If I have a skills gap there, then I need to close it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf elements of my job are going to be automated by AI, what are the AI tools that are going to do that? Someone told me recently that their son got a job with a big employer, and was really surprised when the employer expected them to know how to prompt a language model with generative AI … If you think about data analysis, one of the tools is [Microsoft] Power BI. Maybe I need to learn Power BI, be proficient at it and then be able to put it down on my CV for an employer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also working at University of Galway, Justin Tonra is an associate professor of English and an academic integrity officer. His first piece of advice to students comes before graduation; if you are found to cheat using AI in university, it will have disastrous consequences for your employment prospects down the line. <\/p>\n

In terms of impressing your own skills upon employers, human judgment and critical thinking are crucial assets in the shifting employment landscape. Personality and creativity too, particularly in a job application process, stand out as desirable traits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are ways of writing that just communicate information and nothing more,\u201d Tonra says. \u201cBut there are better ways of writing that have that flair and interest, and that are more appealing for people to read.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really do think that learning to write and embracing the human creativity, that\u2019s what constitutes good writing. It\u2019s one way of standing out above what an AI can produce in terms of text.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today, Irish graduates enter the labour force carrying a proliferating list of concerns. For a long time, if…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[45,49,48,78597,56757,78598,124,1785,78599,5368],"class_list":{"0":"post-159619","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-grad-week","12":"tag-graduates","13":"tag-graduates-in-ireland","14":"tag-jobs","15":"tag-students","16":"tag-third-level","17":"tag-work"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}