TL;DR
Topic: Graduate and early-careers hiring trends, challenges, and AI-driven solutions.
Problem: Rising application volumes and limited recruiter time make it difficult to assess early-career candidates fairly and efficiently.
Insight: CVs do not differentiate between graduates; potential and traits (curiosity, collaboration, resilience) are stronger predictors of success.
Case study: Qantas used Sapia.ai’s Chat Interview to assess every graduate at scale, ensuring fairness, inclusion and efficiency.
Key results:
- Reduced manual screening workload and faster shortlisting.
- Demonstrated fairness across gender and ethnicity.
- Candidates reported a highly positive experience aligned with the Qantas brand
Graduate hiring today
Graduate hiring volumes continue to rise across industries. The Institute of Student Employers (ISE) reported a 6 percent increase in graduate vacancies in 2023, with applications per role up 38 percent year on year (ISE, 2024). Recruiters are now managing higher volumes with the same or smaller teams.
At the same time, the pressure to build diverse and fair early-careers programs has intensified. Early-careers hiring is where an organisation’s future workforce begins. It’s an opportunity to identify potential, not just experience — yet traditional CV screening makes that difficult.
When graduates have limited experience, CVs rarely differentiate one candidate from another. Attributes such as curiosity, adaptability, and empathy are stronger predictors of long-term success than grades or job titles (Harvard Business Review, 2017).
Why Qantas needed a new approach
Qantas already works with Sapia.ai to support their high-volume hiring for cabin crew and customer-service roles, using conversational AI to find the people who belong with the brand fairly and at scale.
For its graduate program, Qantas faced similar challenges. The 2025 intake drew 4,500 applications. Manual screening was time-consuming and subjective, making it hard to ensure every applicant had an equal opportunity.
The Qantas team wanted a process that reflected the brand’s values: fairness, inclusion, and a high-quality candidate experience.
How AI interviews transformed Qantas’s graduate hiring
Using Sapia.ai’s Chat Interview, Qantas introduced a structured, automated way to assess every graduate at scale. At the first stage, each candidate completed an untimed chat interview with a consistent set of questions designed to reveal job-relevant traits and values.
Responses were evaluated using science-backed AI to measure traits linked to success in Qantas’s graduate roles. The Qantas Talent Acquisition team received ranked shortlists and explainable insights within their ATS SmartRecruiters, allowing them to focus on engaging top talent rather than filtering CVs.
“Sapia has been a valuable tool for improving diversity, accessibility and efficiency in our hiring process.”
— Michael Eizenberg, Head of Talent, Qantas
The results
- Efficiency: Automated scoring reduced the manual screening time of 4,500 candidates for the 2025 intake, saving over 1800 hours in screening time. The team could move top candidates to the assessment centre stage quickly, keeping them engaged in the hiring process and ensuring transparency for all candidates.
- Fairness: Data showed equitable outcomes across gender and ethnicity, a critical requirement as Qantas builds their future talent pool of diverse talent.
- Candidate experience: Graduates described the chat interview as inclusive, reflective of the Qantas brand, and easy to complete. Giving each candidate a chance to tell their story, rather than long forms or CV uploads, was a unique experience that created brand advocates among the candidates. Candidates rated the experience 8.8/10 and 96.7% of candidates completed their interviews.
Building future talent pools
Early-careers programs are critical for developing future leaders and driving workforce diversity. Studies show that organisations with diverse leadership teams are up to 36 percent more likely to outperform peers (McKinsey & Company, 2023).
Qantas’s experience shows that fairness and intelligence can work together, delivering measurable equity, brand-aligned experiences and more confident hiring decisions for early careers hiring.
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