AI Career Skills Move Beyond Computer Science

Artificial intelligence has rapidly changed the landscape of career preparation and the early-career job market. But students are largely keeping up with the shift: A new report from Handshake found that students across a wide range of majors are building AI-related experience as they prepare to enter the workforce.

The job market platform’s Class of What’s Next report analyzed 12.4 million U.S. candidate profiles from current students and recent graduates in the classes of 2024 to 2030 to understand how they’re acquiring AI experience and navigating the job market. The analysis, measured as of June 2026, looked at everything from coursework, projects and certifications to the jobs candidates apply to, the recruiter messages they respond to and the career events they attend.

The report found that nearly two-thirds of candidates with AI-related experience aren’t computer science majors. Even when the analysis expanded to include computing, engineering and math majors, it showed that more than a quarter of candidates with experience using AI come from outside those fields. Among the most common nontechnical majors were business, economics, biology, communications, psychology and marketing.

Kerry Haring, director of product and revenue marketing at Handshake, said the findings demonstrate how students across disciplines are thinking about ways to apply AI within their fields, rather than viewing it solely as a technology for computer scientists and other technical professionals to develop.

“They truly are the class of what’s next,” Haring said. “They’re diving into, ‘What is this new technology?’ They’re figuring out what they can do, and it means different majors and different job types are going to be able to automate and leverage different things with AI.”

“It’s not going to just be the folks that are building AI, but it’s those that are thinking about how they implement it into their major and really help define what is the future of work,” she added.

AI beyond the classroom: Compared with the broader talent pool, candidates with AI-related experience are roughly twice as likely to apply to information technology and internet and software employers, the report found, suggesting many still look to the technology sector for AI-related opportunities even as other industries expand hiring for these roles.

Making AI explicit in job postings appears to attract candidates, the report noted. AI-titled internship postings receive nearly five times as many applications as postings that don’t mention AI, even though applicants to both types of postings have comparable qualifications.

Haring said employers are also considering how to better communicate to candidates the AI skills they’re seeking.

“Talking with employers, a lot of folks are thinking about how they are going to map their roles for the future, what skills they should be hiring for and how they actually bring that through in their employer brand and so on,” Haring said.

Students and recent graduates are building AI experience both inside and outside the classroom. Coursework remains one of the strongest indicators of a candidate’s AI foundation, with machine learning, deep learning and computer vision among the most common AI concepts candidates list from their classes. But candidates are also documenting AI learning through projects and certifications.

“What’s really interesting is that it’s telling us that students want different channels to be able to learn, and I think that’s true for any technology that’s happened or that we’ve seen evolve over time,” Haring said. “It’s really cool to see that they’re not only just taking their coursework, but then they’re applying it, and then they’re also doing some self-learning, too.”

Building career readiness: Candidates with AI-related experience are also more engaged than the broader talent pool throughout the recruiting process, the report found. They receive nearly twice as much employer outreach, respond at more than double the rate and are nearly three times as likely to RSVP to career fairs and employer events.

Haring said colleges and universities have an important role to play in helping students navigate an increasingly AI-driven labor market, particularly by creating opportunities for students to apply what they’re learning through hands-on experiences.

“It’s an opportunity for them to think through, how do they have folks do more real-life projects? How can they connect folks to internships that they can leverage in their coursework?” Haring said. “We’re seeing it from an implementation perspective, a course perspective and then a peer-sharing perspective.”

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