The AI company that isn’t taking your job, but helping you find one.
By Jana Gous
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the machine that completes our quizzes, helps us with our degree, and then takes our job. Everything we say these days is in lists of three, we pause, and then we compare, as AI is not just writing our essays and emails, it is us outsourcing the very fibre of our being.
For students at Stellenbosch University (SU), the anxiety is real: if AI can do so much already, where does that leave graduates entering an already competitive and oversaturated South African job market?
According to Luke Tollman, founder of Apti, an AI recruitment company based in Cape Town, that anxiety is understandable, but not new in historical terms.
“New technology changes the world, and thus the roles humans play in it,” he says. From the production line to the internet, technological shifts have always removed certain jobs while creating new ones. In his view, AI is more likely to remove repetitive and administrative work than to eliminate the need for graduates altogether.
That distinction matters, because much of what students fear losing are entry-level roles, the stepping stones traditionally used to gain experience. If AI automates those tasks, the pressure to prove “human value” may increase. Creativity and critical thinking are thus becoming survival skills.
This is where companies like Apti enter the conversation. Rather than using AI to replace workers, Apti uses it to match students to firms. “Recruitment has long been shaped by bias, limited networks and subjective judgement from recruiters,” argues Tollman. A data-driven system, he believes, can reduce those distortions by focusing on measurable compatibility.
Still, skepticism remains. Alyssa Venter, Head of Marketing at Apti, says “It’s important to question these things.” Venter further explains, “But it’s more important to distinguish between a threat to your job and a tool used to advance your career.”
She compares AI to a Global Positioning System (GPS). The driver remains in control; the technology simply removes navigation fatigue. In recruitment, that means handling transcript sorting, initial screening and data matching, thus tasks that are time-consuming, but not necessarily deeply human.
Yet, AI in hiring raises its own concerns such as algorithmic bias and the risk of reducing people to data points. While some argue that data can lessen human prejudice, many question who designs the system and which variables are prioritised. The debate is far from settled.
On campus, Rachel Reardon, Apti’s Social Media Manager and a fourth-year BCom (International Business) student, goes around and interviews other students on their degrees and opinions. “I speak to a lot of people, and most students aren’t paralysed by AI anxiety.” Reardon explains, “Their main concern is finding meaningful work, specifically roles that they enjoy in healthy corporate cultures”. Reardon further elaborates, “I’ve found that many Gen Z students expect their careers to shift over time and not have a job set in stone.” In this context, AI is not a single threat but a constant factor.
The real question isn’t whether AI will take jobs, but how students position themselves alongside it. As people, we can leverage judgment and empathy where machines cannot.
