{"id":477040,"date":"2026-05-09T23:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T23:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/477040\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T23:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T23:46:09","slug":"answered-by-an-expert-the-ai-career-questions-every-parent-asks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/477040\/","title":{"rendered":"Answered by an expert, the AI career questions every parent asks"},"content":{"rendered":"

The old route from a good degree into a first job is not working the way it did. Graduate schemes are shrinking and internships are harder to find. When my research on which careers would survive AI<\/a> ran in The Sunday Times last month, the response was enormous. I had spent months analysing the data to see which careers had the best resistance to the changes ahead. Thousands of readers contacted me in the weeks afterwards, many of them asking what steps to take to guide children through the changing landscape. Each situation is unique: a 14-year-old drawn to the arts needs a different plan to a 17-year-old drawn to finance. But among the messages there were six questions that came up repeatedly. I\u2019ve set them out here with my best advice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Is the field I want my child to enter still hiring at the bottom?<\/p>\n

Ask what AI has already eaten from the first rung.\u00a0The junior role was always where people learnt the craft. AI now performs much of the drafting, summarising and reconciling that used to teach them. KPMG has cut its UK graduate intake by 29 per cent since 2023, Deloitte by 18 per cent. A Randstad survey of 1,200 employers in developed economies suggests that 38 per cent plan to hire fewer graduates because of AI. The pattern is consistent. Before your child commits to a field, find out which tasks AI has absorbed from the entry role and what is left for them to learn if they were to land a job there. Ask an admissions tutor at a university open day, or contact the relevant professional body; the ICAEW for accountants, the Bar Council for law, the BCS for tech. What you are listening for is whether the first job still teaches the work, or whether AI has taken it. If it has, the field has hollowed out from the bottom and your child should look for routes where the craft is still passed on through direct guidance from a senior in the profession, rather than delegated to software.<\/p>\n

If graduate schemes are shrinking, where else can my child start?<\/p>\n

Follow the routes where humans still mentor humans.\u00a0Graduate schemes taught you via the senior sitting next to you. AI cannot yet be that person. Degree apprenticeships have boomed while graduate schemes have shrunk. The\u00a0Department for Education<\/a>\u00a0recorded 60,350 starts on Level 6 and Level 7 apprenticeships, which are paid, high-level programmes combining work with study, in England in 2024-25, up 20.4 per cent in a single year. Examples include Pinsent Masons (law), BDO (accounting), JPMorgan (financial services) and IBM (technology). The apprentice earns an average of \u00a324,000 a year, according to Glassdoor data, qualifies professionally and has their degree paid for by the employer. The learning still happens alongside a human who teaches. If your child is in year 12 and their school has not covered these, that is homework this term. The government\u2019s\u00a0Find an Apprenticeship<\/a>\u00a0service lists every approved route.<\/p>\n

How does my child stand out when any teenager can produce polished work in minutes?<\/p>\n

\"BabithCHONA KASINGER FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES<\/p>\n

Build the kind of proof AI cannot fake.\u00a0Any teenager with a chatbot can now produce a polished essay or a clean piece of code. What AI cannot replicate is human deliberation and skilled argument. A 17-year-old set on law should already be entering the\u00a0Bar Mock Trial<\/a>, a free national competition run by the charity Young Citizens, where sixth formers argue cases as barristers in real crown courts. A child drawn to international affairs should join Model United Nations, where sixth formers represent countries on real policy questions. Both are open to any pupil whose school enters. This Sunday, ask your child what decision they made last term that no chatbot could have made for them. If the answer is nothing, that is where the summer goes.<\/p>\n

I am worried about my own career too. Am I helping or projecting?<\/p>\n

Separate your career reckoning from their planning.\u00a0The parents expressing the most alarm were professionals who have been watching their own fields change. An accountant asking about his son\u2019s accounting degree while his own firm restructures around AI, for example. Your experience is your child\u2019s most valuable input, but only if you keep your own question separate from theirs. Write both down. Should I retrain, pivot or hold steady in my own career? Is the entry path my child is considering still open, and will the work itself exist in ten years? They are different questions. Answer them separately.<\/p>\n

The school is not teaching this. What do we do?<\/p>\n

Treat the institutional gap as your advantage. While schools tell pupils not to use AI, employers demand they do. You do not have to wait for either to catch up. Thirty minutes a week alongside your child, using an AI model and questioning its outputs, is thirty minutes no school is providing. Families who make time for it are closing a gap the system has not.<\/p>\n

We made a plan last year. How do I know it still holds?<\/p>\n

Review the plan every term, because AI will keep outpacing it.\u00a0The job market is not just shrinking, it is reshaping itself in real time. The\u00a0World Economic Forum<\/a>\u00a0reports employer-demanded skills are changing 66 per cent faster in AI-exposed roles than in less exposed ones, up from 25 per cent a year earlier. A plan made in year 10 will not hold by year 13. Once a term, sit down with your child. Pizza on the table, laptop open, an honest look at what they are studying, what they are building and how AI has moved since then. That hour, three times a year, is worth more than any school careers day.<\/p>\n

Readers of the first piece<\/a> rightly reminded me that careers cannot be chosen on fear of AI alone. A child\u2019s passion matters just as much. It was my wife, Nishtha, who expressed that most clearly. When my daughter Thea asked me whether international relations would survive AI, Nishtha pointed out that a career is two parallel paths: one carries your interest and passion, while the other keeps you in the workforce and pays the bills. The two can merge or run separately. What matters is seeing both clearly before you commit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Babith Bhoopalan is founder of the consultancy Quantumleap Insights and creator of the\u00a0AI Career Playbook<\/a>, which includes a curated toolkit of resources for children, and the AI Career Playbook Generator<\/a>, which will produce a personalised action plan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The old route from a good degree into a first job is not working the way it did.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,18,19,17,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-477040","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116547288073654588","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}