Close Gen Z’s Experience Gap to Reboot Their Careers

In the past, the career path parents often recall at family dinners looked straightforward: go to university, earn a degree in a professional field, and start an entry-level job where you spent a couple of years doing routine tasks while more experienced colleagues taught you the trade. Today, that routine “grunt work” is often performed by prompts and automation, and beginning your career can feel like walking a tightrope without a safety net.

Ryan Craig, Managing Director at Achieve Partners and author of the book Apprentice Nation, warns that Gen Z faces a fast-widening “experience gap.” Employers expect new hires to already have practical experience for roles labeled “entry-level,” which creates a paradox: organizations want proof of on-the-job ability before they will invest in training. This shift is changing how young people should weigh options between classroom learning and job-site experience.

The “college or Chipotle” conundrum

Recent graduates are often presented with two stark choices. Craig describes them as divergent paths: spend two to four years in a classroom earning a degree that offers no guaranteed job outcome, or enter frontline retail or hospitality work that frequently offers limited upward mobility. What’s missing is a scalable middle option—an earn-and-learn model that combines education with paid, real-world experience.

Canada’s co-op culture provides an advantage compared with many U.S. programs, but Craig argues that North America still overinvests in tuition-driven, classroom-based career launches and underinvests in systems that directly lead to employment. The result: many degrees lack the work-integrated learning employers now require.

The AI wildcard: why “trades” aren’t the only answer

Social media has amplified the pitch that trades offer a debt-free, secure alternative to university. Craig acknowledges that robots are not replacing tradespeople en masse, yet cautions against choosing a trade solely out of fear of automation. The real issue with AI is not wholesale job loss but rising expectations for job entrants.

“AI is changing the nature of entry-level jobs,” Craig explains. “Where you used to do menial work to learn the ropes, now you’re expected to use AI to perform those tasks and to do higher-value client, project, or product work from day one.” That raises the bar for practical skills and amplifies the importance of experience-based learning.

So, is university still the best bet?

Despite financial pressures and mixed outcomes for some graduates, Craig’s guidance is not strictly anti-college. If you have the social and financial capital to attend, university can still be a powerful way to develop durable skills—provided the degree is paired with meaningful work-integrated experiences like co-ops, internships, or apprenticeships.

Craig emphasizes that brand recognition alone no longer guarantees career success. Degrees without integrated work experience are becoming high-risk assets. The future of higher education, he says, must blur the line between coursework and employment so students graduate already prepared for real workplace expectations.

The new playbook for Gen Z

If you’re deciding what to do next, here are practical takeaways based on Craig’s perspective for navigating the 2026 labour market:

1. Follow focused passion: Pursuing what interests you still matters. Standing out in a crowded labour market often means doing something unique or combining disciplines—such as pairing a humanities major with digital skills—so you offer a distinct contribution.
2. Pursue earn-and-learn pathways: If you lack resources for years of full-time study, apprenticeships and paid training programs are high-return options. They avoid tuition debt, provide skills employers value, and let you test a career without being worse off if you change direction.
3. Prioritize co-op and work-integrated learning: If you choose university, treat co-op placements and internships as essential, not optional. These experiences close the experience gap that grades alone cannot fix.
4. Look for human-centered roles for resilience: Jobs requiring direct interaction with people or physical objects—such as health-care roles or many skilled trades—tend to be more resilient to automation. But remember that long-term satisfaction should remain a core consideration.

Ultimately, the most important factor is not whether you sit in a lecture hall or work on a job site; it’s whether you are gaining real experience. Ask yourself: “Am I just learning about the job, or am I actually doing it?”

“Pursue something that you love, or find at least interesting, and you’ll figure out how to make a career about it,” Craig concludes. “Build some level of expertise and a reputation for yourself, and then work will find you.”

Read more from Moneyflex:

• Why Gen Z is choosing career vibes over big paycheques, especially early on
• Financial reality check: five money rules Gen Z should retire
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• Gen Z is leading the way on money habits—here’s how you can catch up