Artificial Intelligence has become part of routine business operations, as employers across most industries use AI for tasks ranging from drafting emails to answering customers’ calls.
We are business professors at Drexel University who have spent the past year examining how AI is changing both the workplace and higher education.
Much of the conversation in business education to date has centered on helping students learn how to use AI responsibly and effectively.
Even so, our recent findings show that other qualities and skills still matter. This is especially true when it comes to helping entry-level workers succeed and advance in their careers.
We spoke with 647 employers over the past year about workplace preparedness. Employers we spoke with ranked communication, professionalism, teamwork, reliability and critical thinking among the qualities they valued most in recent graduates.
A shift in entry-level work
For many decades, entry-level positions have helped employers meet immediate business needs, while also giving new graduates opportunities to learn from experienced colleagues through everyday work, whether it is analyzing data or preparing reports.
Through this work, graduates learned how organizations operated and how experienced colleagues made decisions.
Entry-level work, then, traditionally functioned as a kind of apprenticeship. Each assignment prepared graduates to take on greater responsibility in the next phase of their careers.
But today a newly hired financial analyst may first review an AI-generated forecast or scenario analysis, rather than building the initial model from scratch on their own.
And a recent college graduate at a marketing firm may begin their new job by evaluating campaign ideas generated by AI, as opposed to sitting down to draft an idea entirely on their own or with colleagues.
Many schools are incorporating AI into their curricula in different ways.
Yet students are often still prepared for traditional, entry-level roles in which they develop judgment by producing the first draft themselves. In many workplaces, this template is no longer relevant.
Employers still value people’s judgment
If AI is changing how entry-level employees develop their professional judgment and skills, what do employers now value most in new graduates?
Our recent survey, called the 2026 Early-Career Skills Outlook, is based on responses from 647 employers across a broad range of industries and organizations, big and small.
We found that employers consistently ranked communication, professionalism, teamwork, reliability and critical thinking among the qualities they valued most highly in recent graduates.
AI skills also mattered, but these alone did not distinguish the strongest candidates.
The findings point to a continuing demand for the human capabilities that support professional judgment.
The problem is that routine entry-level work has long helped graduates develop those capabilities.
As more of that work is automated, new professionals may have fewer opportunities to practice communication, collaboration and decision-making alongside experienced colleagues.
Knowing when to override AI
Employers cannot address this challenge alone. Business schools have traditionally provided foundational knowledge, while the workplace supplied many of the experiences through which graduates developed judgment. As AI reshapes early career work, we think educators should reconsider this division of responsibility.
Our own school, Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business, reflects this broader trend by integrating AI into its programs, while retaining a focus on human judgment.
The challenge is no longer simply to teach students how to use AI. It is to prepare them for workplaces where AI is becoming part of everyday decision-making.
Students must learn to work with AI, while questioning the answers and work it generates, and recognizing when human judgment should override AI’s instruction. This judgment will matter more as AI takes on a larger share of routine work in people’s everyday and work lives.
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