A public school student from Oklahoma did everything right. Let’s call her Bailey. She went to summer camps. She was scrappy, smart, curious. Applied for an Ivy-league student leadership summer program scholarship to help her explore colleges and careers outside her small town. Landed at an elite university in New York City far from home and was a star student. Willing to experiment. Willing to learn. Willing to work.
The exact kind of young person companies say they are desperate to find.
And still, the internship search was, in her words, “kind of a nightmare.” AI interviews. Ghosting. Applications disappearing into digital voids. Jobs quietly filled through networks and referrals. Silence dressed up as process.
At one point, she completed multiple rounds of interviews with a major organization, was told to expect an answer soon, heard nothing for weeks and finally received an automated rejection minutes after following up.
What struck me listening to her was not a lack of resilience. It was how much resilience we now expect young people to carry entirely alone.
Today’s Workforce
In my organization’s recent Convergent Leader research with Catalyst, we found companies caught in a contradiction: demanding adaptability while reducing the very opportunities where people learn to become adaptable. A 2025 British Standards Institution study found that 39% of organizations had already cut junior roles, and 43% expected to cut more.
Many leaders still do not understand that young people are entering a workforce that increasingly feels impersonal, opaque and exhausting before they have even begun.
