Laurel’s CPO says AI hiring favors builders

hiring builders – Jiaona Zhang, CPO at Laurel and a Stanford instructor, says AI is collapsing the old tech career ladder—while her hiring process increasingly rewards candidates who show agency, curiosity, and the ability to replace tedious work with AI.

When Jiaona Zhang sits down with candidates for Laurel, the questions don’t start with resumes or degree checklists. They start with a screen. She asks candidates to walk her through how they use AI, what they’re building, and when they last replaced tedious manual work with AI.

Zhang teaches product management fundamentals at Stanford, where she’s been running an annual graduate-level class in-person and online since 2018. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is in her late 30s. but the shift she describes is bigger than geography. It’s about how people break into tech—and what “entry-level” even means now.

In 2018, when she began teaching, computer science graduates were finding well-paid jobs at top companies. Students could expect to earn a base salary of $120,000 with equity on top.

Over the past two years. Zhang says the pathway that used to feel predictable—studying computer science. going through a giant interview loop when big companies came to campus. getting in. and working their way up—has been “obliterated.” She has noticed entry-level offers drying up. and students gravitating to smaller startups or entrepreneurship.

The reason. in her view. is blunt: much of the hard. mundane work students learn in computer science—and the junior-level tasks software engineers used to do—can now be handled by AI. You can build a product in a day or an hour, even if you aren’t super technical. And in many cases, entrepreneurs can capture so much value at an unprecedented pace.

That change is forcing students to rethink the basics. Zhang says they’re doing a lot of soul-searching—asking what problem they really want to work on, whether they want to be a founder, and what they want when “anyone can do anything.”

At Laurel, the hiring focus reflects that same shift. Zhang tells candidates she’s looking for “workers who are builders with curiosity and drive.” She isn’t asking them to master every single AI tool out there. Instead, she wants them to hone a skill set that lets them spot opportunities.

One reason students are drawn to her Stanford product course. she says. is that she teaches how to understand the user and build unique insight into a market or problem. If someone can identify a user group and work out what problem they’re experiencing. Zhang says a product is more likely to hit the bull’s-eye.

When she interviews candidates at Laurel, Zhang also looks at agency. She has her candidates share their screen. walk her through how they use AI. and explain what they’re building and when they last swapped out tedious manual work for AI. In her assessment. a candidate’s level of agency is highly related to how good an employee she thinks they will be.

Technology has leaped forward, Zhang says, and it will benefit those who are curious. For her, the job isn’t about being technical. It’s about being a builder—curiosity and drive, and doing the thing without waiting to be told. Those are the ingredients she believes will matter most for the next generation.

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