For most teenagers, earning a driver’s license at 16 is a milestone of independence. It grants them the liberty to drive to a friend’s house on their own time, to see a movie, and to skip the bus to school. For Connor Vukelich, at 16, it was the catalyst for launching his business.
After earning his driver’s license in high school, Vukelich was looking for a job. But he and his friends all kept running into the same problem: it was nearly impossible to find one. Most were being out-competed by senior-level applicants, applying to “ghost jobs,” and going through interviews just to get ghosted by employers.
Frustrated by this experience, Vukelich created Poppin’ Jobs, a platform that specifically targets U.S. job seekers between 16 and 24. It currently hosts a database of 100,000 potential job seekers. Vukelich built the platform as an alternative to legacy job boards, which he said tend to prioritize senior-level talent, focusing instead on a demographic that requires more specialized guidance.
“That made us think, why isn’t there a site dedicated to helping entry-level people getting into the workforce?’” Vukelich told Fortune about his conversations with friends at the time. “More specifically, Gen Z, getting us into the workplace and helping walk us through the process of doing it because it’s something we’ve never done before”
The job market today is growing less favorable by the day for those looking to gain a footing in an entry-level position. AI threatens to wipe out large swathes of the entry-level job market. It’s a view shared by Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman, who thinks will happen within 18 months, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who warned it will impact half of entry-level white-collar workers (though he recently tempered those remarks). A recent Anthropic study found that AI is already theoretically capable of automating the majority of tasks in management, business, finance, law, and other white-collar industries, mainly replacing the rote tasks reserved for entry-level workers.
The current state of the entry-level job market
To solve the hurdles young job seekers face—mainly the ghosting, competition, and experiential barriers that prevent those of a high school and college age from securing a spot on the first rung of the career ladder—Poppin’ Jobs features tools like résumé building and an AI interview assistant to guide them through a hiring process most are going through for the first time. And for those who don’t have licenses yet, Vukelich has a solution for that as well: a local job map for those who may only have a bike for transportation.
While there’s a lot of buzz about an ensuing entry-level job “apocalypse,” the unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds hasn’t risen much just yet. Youth unemployment sat at 9.5% in April, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That’s slightly elevated from the days before AI entered the conversation, before OpenAI launched its first AI model in November 2022, when the unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds sat around 8%. But it’s down from a high of 10.6% last November.
Part of that is because some college grads are shifting the type of work they choose to pursue immediately after departing campus. A recent ZipRecruiter study found that a majority of college grads are finding work in entrepreneurship, the gig economy, and in freelance positions after graduating as entry-level white collar roles become harder and harder to find.
Now a 20-year-old student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., Vukelich is now focused on scaling up the number of employers on the website, hoping to attract more local jobs and volunteer opportunities.
He’s aware of the threat AI poses to the job market, and is actively looking for ways to teach Gen Zers how to integrate AI tools into their skillsets. The data supports this approach. A recent study from AI startup Writer found that employees who know how to use AI—and use it frequently—are more likely to have received a raise than workers who resist adoption.
Vukelich said he’s had many conversations with fellow students at college. His advice is always the same. “The only things people are going to hire for are passion or the knowledge of how to use AI in combination with your knowledge,” he said.