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How to navigate a job market transformed by AI

On Sunday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: Entry level jobs that were once the gateway to upward mobility are disappearing fast. How can applicants prove their human worth to hiring managers? Executive coach Jim Frawley joins The Excerpt to share his insights. Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Dana Taylor: Hello and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt, I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Sunday, July 20th, 2025. The US job market is undergoing a fundamental shift as AI advances roles that were once gateways to upward mobility are disappearing. In a recent interview quoted in The Wall Street Journal, the CEO of Ford conceded that artificial intelligence will "leave a lot of white-collar people behind." For college graduates just entering the job market, the outlook is particularly bleak as advancements in AI make those jobs mostly obsolete. As AI challenges and redefines the landscape of employment, how can society reconcile the human desire for self-sufficiency and the need for meaningful work? And how can individuals traverse an increasingly tricky job market? Here to share his insights on the impact of AI and job cuts is executive coach Jim Frawley. Thanks for joining me, Jim. Jim Frawley: Thanks for having me. Dana Taylor: I want to tackle how to navigate a rapidly changing job market, but first, if CEOs believe they can succeed with a fraction of today's staff, what does that mean for the middle class when white-collar jobs are facing a steep decline? Jim Frawley: Yeah, this is going to be, and we've been talking about it for a long time, a very large shock to the system, and there are two angles to sit on it, right? There's one side of the CEO has to run a business and run that business really, really well, and why do you pay for workers that you just don't need, right? So there's validity there, but there's also almost the social obligation component for the people who are no longer going to be employed and what do you do for them and how do you prepare for them? So, they're really stuck in between the rock and the hard place on how do we actually take care of the people that we don't need? How do we reposition them and how do we make sure that people are going to be set? At the same time, how do you acknowledge the accountability on the individuals who are going to be impacted on what changes can you do now to prepare yourself for the future? Dana Taylor: Staying with that, is it ethical for not only companies, but for a country to oversee the displacement of human workers without investing in retraining programs or a safety net for those displaced? Jim Frawley: Yeah, I think there's an argument to be made from an organizational perspective as well as a political perspective. There is an obligation to the people throughout the world, especially in this country, because we're in America, but what do you do for the people that have committed their lives to working for you, committed their lives to making the country a better place, the organization a better place, and their only crime being that they're looking to provide for their family? So I do think that we have a large social obligation to people to prepare them for the change, and that's where conversations like this go. I mean, we can retrain, we can push people, but there is also, and don't shoot the messenger on this, but there's also an obligation on the individual to start pushing buttons in their own kind of way as well. I mean, we've been talking about AI now for multiple years, we know it's coming. For those who haven't taken steps to start to position themselves differently, I mean, I don't know how else to tell them that there is an obligation here for you as well. So, I think there's obligation on both ends. Companies and governments should be preparing people and helping them in every possible way that they can, but we have to pick up the torch at some point and take care of ourselves as well. Dana Taylor: Can our society absorb unemployment increases of 10% to 20% if as the CEO of Anthropic predicts half of entry level jobs will vanish within the next five years? Jim Frawley: I don't think we can, and I'm not saying that from a monetary perspective. I'm not talking about the money perspective, I'm talking about the what do you do with your time perspective. If you're not working, we get so much from work beyond just a paycheck. We get a sense of purpose, we get time management, we get social interaction. There are so many things that we get from the workplace that we are losing because we're laying off so many people. So it's not just about paying bills, which is very important. We have to keep the lights on and we have to feed our families and all of that, but there are so many other components that we have to take care of as well from the workplace that we need to fill in. That's the real challenge I think society is going to have, is not just the fact that people aren't working, but what are they doing with their time and how do we give them something meaningful to do? It's not just purpose, it's usefulness and feelings of self-worth and mental health, and this snowballs very quickly into a much bigger challenge than just paying for the unemployed. Dana Taylor: Jim, I know you work with a lot of CEOs. What have they shared with you regarding AI? Jim Frawley: They're challenged with it quite a bit. One is you can't not do it. So, they're talking about how do we implement it and how do we adopt it? Because if we don't, the organization's not going to exist. So that's part of where their head is, but they're also worried about their people. A lot of the executives, and they're bringing me in, because they say, what do I do about my people? So they've stopped hiring new people and now they're trying to do the scramble so they don't have to lay people off, but that's keeping them up a lot at night. You have 20,000 employees, 100,000 employees, or even just 10 employees, when you have to cut them in half or 20%, what does that really mean? Because a lot of these CEOs do recognize that they're human beings and they have to take care of it, and they're really stuck between the obligation to the business, obligation to the people, and how do we mesh the two, but that's really where CEOs are struggling right now is how do we implement it, but with the minimal impact to people? Dana Taylor: Millions of students have or will receive their degrees this year. Four years ago they may have entered college with the anticipation of landing a white-collar job upon graduation. Do they just need to reset their expectations? Jim Frawley: I think a lot of people need to reset their expectations across the board, because what we think is going to happen in five years is nowhere near what's going to happen in five years. Even a few years ago, they were talking about college degrees are going to be outdated before people even graduate, so the incoming freshmen year degree's outdated before you even go. I think we have to rethink the way that we think about college and university, just because the degree doesn't prepare you for a job, it's what you learn outside of the classroom that really helps you position yourself. Then also grown-ups. The 30s, the 40s, the 50-year-olds who are in the white-collar jobs, how are you positioning yourself? Because your role's not going to be there in 10 years, so if you're in your late 30s, early 40s, how are you positioning yourself today? Things like in-person social interaction, building up a network, asking the types of questions and taking each day to challenge yourself, to push yourself forward in some other kind of non-traditional way. I think non-traditional is going to be the buzzword of the next decade. Dana Taylor: Not everyone can become a Michelin star chef, but are there AI-proof career options to explore? Jim Frawley: I think if you're looking for something AI-proof for at least the next decade or two decades, a lot of people will tell you the blue-collar jobs, right? The robots aren't going to be fixing plumbing and that kind of thing, that's fine. But outside of that, if you were thinking about a white-collar job, there's still roles. Anything I would go social interaction, things like psychology, psychiatry, the social need, the human need, all of the things ... now, there are apps and everything else that are going to be there, but there will always be a place for in-person social interaction for human beings. There is significant, significant need for that, so if you're thinking of what you want to do and where you're going to want to go in response to AI, I would think about what do people need and humans need, and how do you support that. Dana Taylor: How important are soft skills and emotional intelligence at this moment? Are these the uniquely human skills job seekers need to develop to make themselves more valuable in the workplace and to inoculate them from the impacts of AI? Jim Frawley: 100%. I think the number one advice that you can give anybody today is pick up on that emotional intelligent, emotional quotient kind of focus. In-person social interaction is what's going to save you from AI, because if you're looking for a new job, we hire people we like and we hire people we know. If you're looking for some kind of mental health hope, the support system around you are the people that are going to be able to do that. So the in-person social interaction, the social obligation we have to each other, that's ultimately what's going to save us from AI, and I will die on that hill 100 times a week. So when we surround ourselves with the right type of people, we then generate new ideas, we're able to create different types of things, we create new job opportunities in our minds and job prospects and everything else, new businesses, whatever it might be. So in-person social interaction, emotional intelligence, I think that's a huge one. Dana Taylor: Jim, are there best practices for demonstrating soft skills during a job interview? Jim Frawley: The number one piece of advice I give to people or the number one thing that I find I'm working on with a lot of executives is the ability to ask questions. It sounds incredibly simple and ridiculous, but most people don't know the true definition of a question. When you understand what a question is, it's a request for information where you legitimately do not know the answer. We are then by doing that eliminating judgment and assumption and being interested in the present moment and the people across from us. When you can ask a question with no judgment or assumption, you're welcoming information from them, that opens up a whole new level of interpersonal connection. That allows you, whether it's from a leadership perspective or a management perspective or an interview perspective, to make a different type of connection by showing an interest in the person there by asking a question with no judgment, no assumption. Dana Taylor: For some companies, AI is now integrated into the hiring process from resume screening to interviews. What are some of the best practices for navigating these new hiring processes? Jim Frawley: I would say ignore them. I mean, you can upload it all you want and you can work your resume and you use AI to build your resume, and you do that and you upload it and AI's looking at that, go to the people directly. If you can meet a person directly in-person socially, ideally when you're still hired, you want them to see you when you're at your best. When you can meet someone in-person, your name will go to the top of the list, right? Still at this moment human beings will trump AI in terms of AI found these five people, but I want this person, 'cause I met them and I know I'm going to work well with them. Dana Taylor: A quick scroll on LinkedIn is all it takes to see the mental toll this evolving job hunting process can take, and for those who are employed, there may be a psychological toll in trying to prove their job can't be done by AI. What do you see as the long-term mental health implications here? Jim Frawley: Massively significant. I mean, even if you're still employed, it's in the back of your mind, this uncertainty takes a major stress toll, it leads to burnout, it leads to so many other different outcomes and challenges, and it snowballs pretty significantly. I think one of the challenges we have is most people take their work and they align it with their identity of who they are as an individual and their self-worth, but work is only a part of who you are, and there is a big shift that we have to make when we're thinking about AI and the future of work and how does this support the person I am, I don't become the person that is the only person who can work. Rethinking your priorities, your motivations, your values is going to be an incredibly important part of responding to this challenge where you have a belief system in place, an anchor into where you can go, so that when the roadway ends your belief system, your anchor, your philosophy can bring you past that to let you know what direction you need to go into next. Dana Taylor: We've all heard the adage, if you can't beat them, join them. Is there a smart way forward that embraces the reality of AI? Jim Frawley: Yeah, I think accept it, it's going to become here. I think when you think about the arc of change, it really starts with awareness. We're beyond awareness, we know it's here, now it's about preparation, so you accept it, you prepare yourself in the best type of way. Whether it's from a mental health perspective, whether it's from a social perspective, whether it's from a physical perspective, whatever it is, you get yourself ready, then you move into learning and then wisdom. So we're in that preparation and learning type of mode, and so if we can embrace it, we need to start learning about AI. If you have not started toying with AI and testing AI, you are so far behind the eight-ball at this point. You need to at least become familiar with it, because at a basic level if you don't understand how AI works, you are going to be left behind. So, that's really an easy first step that you should be taking immediately. Then otherwise beyond that, get the social interaction and see how we as humans can help each other in responding to this new change. Dana Taylor: Terrific insights here, Jim. Thank you so much for being on The Excerpt. Jim Frawley: Thank you for having me. Dana Taylor: Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance, our executive producer's Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@ Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor, Taylor Wilson. Be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY's The Excerpt.