David’s mom, a Fairfield, Connecticut attorney, was bewildered. David graduated with a Computer Science degree last May. He had not found a job. She was growing despondent. He tried to explain what was happening. She didn’t “get it.”
She was a family lawyer in a solo practice in Westport. Her work world had not been affected by AI Her fellow family law practitioners, mostly all in solo or small law firms throughout Connecticut, similarly were mostly unaffected by AI.
Yes, she knew that AI could help her with research – sort of an advanced Internet, as she put it – but the law that makes Connecticut family law is mostly well settled, so she already had boilerplate templates for most legal motions.
Similarly, court filings and client interactions were not yet affected by AI. She really didn’t know the world had… and is rapidly changing… but what bewildered her most of all: MY SON IS A COMPUTER SCIENCE MAJOR!!!
Yes, she did yell. Wasn’t that supposed to be the field that would be either unaffected or would benefit from all this technological change.
No, she had read recent news about AI taking away coding jobs.
The New “Entry Level”: Navigating the AI Shift in 2026
For decades, the “entry-level” job was a social contract: a graduate provided the labor (the research, the drafting, the data entry), and in exchange, the company provided the training. Today, that contract has been rewritten. As AI masters the “grunt work,” the bar for new graduates has shifted from execution to orchestration.
If you are a parent or a student navigating this transition, here is the new reality of the professional landscape.
1. The Hollowing Out of the Middle
The most significant change is the disappearance of “training wheels” tasks. AI can now draft a legal brief, clean a dataset, or generate a marketing plan in seconds. Consequently, the “experience gap” has widened. Employers are no longer looking for people who can do the work; they are looking for people who can audit and direct the AI that does the work.
2. The Rise of the “Human-Centric” Premium
As technical tasks become “commoditized” by AI, the value of uniquely human traits has skyrocketed. In our practice at Career Counseling Connecticut, we are seeing a massive “price premium” on:
-
High-Stakes Empathy: The ability to navigate a client’s emotional crisis.
-
Ethical Judgment: Making calls where there is no “right” data-driven answer.
-
Complex Persuasion: Leading a team toward a vision that doesn’t yet exist.
3. From “Degrees” to “Proof of Work”
A diploma is now a baseline, not a differentiator. In 2026, the “Portfolio Economy” is in full swing. Graduates must show a tangible digital footprint—a “Proof of Work”—that demonstrates they can solve real-world problems. Whether it’s a GitHub repository, a niche consultancy project, or a portfolio of AI-managed workflows, the “show, don’t tell” rule has never been more vital.
4. The Conductor Mindset
We advise our students to stop thinking like “workers” and start thinking like “conductors.” A successful new grad in this era is someone who knows how to chain different AI agents together to produce a result that is 10x more efficient than what a human could do alone. AI literacy is no longer a “bonus” skill; it is the new literacy.
5. The Durability of the Physical
Interestingly, the most “AI-proof” roles are often those that require complex movement in the physical world. Specialized trades, surgery, and physical therapy remain remarkably resilient because the “robotics gap” is much harder to close than the “software gap.”
The Bottom Line
The career path is no longer a ladder; it is a lattice. It requires constant upskilling, a healthy dose of skepticism toward automated outputs, and a doubling down on the one thing AI cannot replicate: authentic human connection.