Employers Want Experience. So Who’s Building the First Rung?

A new employer survey from Korn Ferry landed this week with a headline I didn’t expect: most companies say they plan to grow entry-level hiring, not cut it. Buried a few paragraphs down was the line that stuck with me, and it’s the reason I think employer school partnerships are about to matter more than they ever have. Even as firms move to skills-based hiring, one Korn Ferry partner said, “leaders want candidates who have some work experience.”

Here’s the thing. If you want your first hire to show up with experience, someone has to give them that experience first. Who is that going to be?

Two other pieces this week, one in The 74 and one in Education Week, answered that question better than I could. And the answer points straight at employers.

What’s happening: employers want experience, students can’t get it

Start with the employer side. On October 20, AMS, a Korn Ferry company, released a report called Class of 2030: The future of early careers hiring, based on surveys of more than 5,000 candidates across 13 countries (with a focus on 16- to 24-year-olds) and more than 500 HR and talent leaders. According to Korn Ferry’s announcement of the report, 81% of organizations plan to grow early-career hiring over the next two years, and nearly three-quarters expect entry-level work to change rather than vanish. About half of them, though, don’t yet know what that change will involve.

Korn Ferry’s This Week in Leadership piece on the report (October 21) is honest about the other side of the ledger. It notes several firms in finance, professional services and tech have announced entry-level cuts, and quotes Korn Ferry’s Ron Seifert: “There’s no doubt entry-level hiring has dropped from where it has been historically.” A fair reader should hold both: this is a survey of intentions, from a firm that works in recruiting, and intentions aren’t hires. Still, the direction employers say they want to go is clear. They want early-career talent, and they want it to arrive with some experience.

Now the school side. In an October 21 commentary in The 74, Bruno V. Manno of the Progressive Policy Institute makes the case that career and technical education is booming (high school CTE enrollment rose about 10%, from 7.8 million to 8.6 million, between 2022-23 and 2023-24, per the U.S. Department of Education) but that the hard part is design. Two numbers in his piece should stop every employer reading this:

• Per a RAND survey, two-thirds of high school seniors planned to do an internship or apprenticeship. By spring of senior year, only 22% had one.
• Only 37% of districts offer internships and 21% offer apprenticeships. As Manno puts it, opportunity, not student interest, is the constraint.

And this one: a federal evaluation of the local planning process districts must run for federal CTE funding found only 37% of districts closely involved employers. More than a third didn’t closely involve any outside group at all.

Enrollment is not the goal. Opportunity is.

Bruno V. Manno, The 74, October 21, 2026

Why employer school partnerships are the missing rung

I’ll admit I read those two stories and felt a little whiplash. Employers say: we want experience. Students say: we want experience. And in the middle there is a gap that, according to the data, mostly isn’t being filled.

I don’t think that gap is the fault of young people. Two-thirds of seniors planned to get real work experience. That’s not a generation that doesn’t want to work. That’s a generation waiting at a door nobody opened.

I also don’t think it’s simply the fault of schools. Schools can build pathways, schedules and credit systems. What they can’t do on their own is create placements. An internship needs a place to intern. An apprenticeship needs a workplace and a mentor. That part belongs to employers.

Back in 2013 I wrote Millennials and the Job Market, arguing that young people needed a public portfolio and real work for real audiences more than a paper resume. I still believe that. But I’d add something now: real audiences have to show up. A student can’t do real work for a real audience if the audience never comes to the table.

The Education Week story from October 22 shows what it looks like when the people who know the work are in the room. At Cass Career Center in Harrisonville, Missouri, integrated math teacher Lisa Elifrits gave fire-science students a pump-operation problem. Fire-science teacher Bill Shaumeyer spotted that the equation called for far too much water, the kind of mistake that could endanger a building, and asked the students what they saw. Elifrits fixed it on the spot, and Shaumeyer asked to keep the flawed version for future classes: “That’ll be a great conversation to have.”

That’s one small moment, but it’s the whole argument. The person with real-world expertise turned a worksheet into a lesson about consequences. The same article notes that local fire departments that hired Cass students praised their knowledge of pump operations, and that area police chiefs, state troopers and fire chiefs will sit on a panel interview with second-year students. That’s what partnership looks like in practice: employers inside the learning, not just at the end of it.

In The Next Turn, I argue that the definition of work and the structure of work are changing at the same time, and that leaders have to rethink how people prove what they can do. “The standards remain. The proof system changes.” If entry-level work is shifting, and Korn Ferry’s own data says half of employers don’t yet know how, then employers have every reason to help design the experiences that become the new proof. Who better to define what “ready” looks like than the people doing the hiring?

The tagline I’ve used on this blog for years applies to employers as much as schools: Preparing students for their future, not our past. The first rung of the ladder used to be a job that taught you on the way in. If that rung is changing, we can’t just complain that young people show up without experience. We have to build the rung.

What employers and industry leaders can do this week

1. Find your district’s CTE planning process. Districts receiving federal CTE funds run a local needs assessment every two years that is supposed to include employers. Call the CTE director and ask how to be part of it.
2. Offer one placement before you build a program. One internship, one job shadow, one mentor. Manno’s piece notes that upgrading existing programs works better than launching new ones without partners in place. Start small and do it well.
3. Put your experts in front of students. Sit on a mock interview panel, review a student project, or co-teach a single lesson. Like the fire-science example, your expertise changes the learning.
4. Write down what “some work experience” means to you. If you’ll accept a school-based enterprise, a portfolio of real projects or a summer apprenticeship, say so publicly. Students can’t aim at a target you never named.
5. Ask your talent team the Korn Ferry question. If entry-level work is changing, what will your 2030 entry-level role actually do? Then ask your local high school to help you pilot it.

Frequently asked questions

What are employer school partnerships?

They are working relationships between businesses and K-12 schools or districts that give students real exposure to work: internships, apprenticeships, job shadows, mentoring, industry projects and employer input on career programs. The point is to connect what students learn to what the workplace actually needs.

Are entry-level jobs disappearing because of AI?

The evidence is mixed. Korn Ferry’s AMS survey found 76% of talent acquisition leaders say entry-level jobs aren’t disappearing at their organizations, and most expect the work to change rather than vanish. The same Korn Ferry coverage notes some firms have announced entry-level cuts, so the honest answer is that the roles are shifting and the picture varies by industry.

How can a small business help high school students get work experience?

Start with one thing: host a single intern, offer job shadows, or volunteer for a mock interview panel. Contact your local district’s career and technical education office, which is expected to involve employers in its planning, and ask where you’d be most useful.

Why don’t more high school students do internships?

Interest isn’t the problem. According to RAND data cited in The 74, two-thirds of seniors planned an internship or apprenticeship but only 22% had one by spring, and only 37% of districts offer internships at all. Students need more placements, and placements need employers.

The rung doesn’t build itself

Employers are telling us they still want early-career talent and that they want it to come with experience. Students are telling us they want that experience. The gap between those two sentences is a design problem, and it won’t be solved by schools alone or by employers alone.

If your organization is trying to figure out what the first rung looks like now, and how to help build it with your local schools, this is the work I do with leaders every week. You can find me at JeffUtecht.com.

So here’s my question for the employers and leaders reading this: when was the last time someone from your organization sat in a high school classroom? And what would it take to make that happen this year?

Sources

• A Glimmer of Hiring Hope for Young Workers — Korn Ferry, This Week in Leadership, October 21, 2026 (report announcement: Korn Ferry Report: AI Isn’t Eliminating the Entry-level Job, It’s Redefining It, October 20, 2026)
• Career and Technical Ed Is Booming. Now Comes the Hard Part — Bruno V. Manno, The 74, October 21, 2026
• The CTE Program Answering the Question ‘Why Do I Need Math to Be a Firefighter?’ — Lauraine Langreo, Education Week, October 22, 2026