Gen Z can’t catch a break. They’re struggling with mass unemployment as entry-level jobs vanish. Some 40% of bosses have admitted they plan to hire even fewer grads this year because AI can do the same job cheaper, preferring instead to keep only seasoned staffers on board. But at one AI company, the less experience you have, the better.
Alon Chen, founder and CEO of Tastewise—a generative AI platform trusted by PepsiCo, Nestlé, and Mars—is actively looking for Gen Zers with zero experience and no degree required. And he has a very specific reason why.
“There are some positions where you actually want people that do not have the prejudice or the old way of working,” Chen tells Fortune. “because it’s just not relevant anymore.”
In the past few years, there’s been an explosion of new tools, job functions, and ways of working thanks to AI. And in his eyes, younger workers are the best positioned to take advantage of these.
“I’m hiring entry-level because they have no boundaries or limitations in how they think about the world. They’re almost like AI natives themselves, having been born and raised in this new realm of opportunities. And I see some of the best ideas coming from the younger generation that have not yet been in the job market.”
Is more experience less important in this new AI era?
Chen knows a thing or two about betting on unconventional talent. At 15, Chen had already started his own business, selling computers to thousands of small and medium-size businesses in Israel.
He became CMO at Google at 28 with no marketing degree—and went on to build the $2 billion product line, Google Partners. He then walked away to found Tastewise, which has raised $71.6 million and now works with more than half of the Fortune 100 food and beverage companies. He’s fully invested, and he’s hiring.
And in an era when AI is moving fast, he says experience is no longer the currency it once was.
“The playbook is irrelevant today, because there are so many new ways to do this, the very same job,” he explains.
The more deeply someone has learned the old way of doing something, the harder it is to get them to see past it. Chen doesn’t have that problem with a 22-year-old who’s never had a way of doing things.
“When you come as someone who just sees the problem and finds the best way to solve it,” Chen says, “it’s sometimes better than someone who has been doing the same job for so long and may just try to redo what’s been working for them in the past.”
To be clear: Chen isn’t only hiring Gen Z. For R&D, he still wants seasoned people. But within certain departments, like customer insights—where employees help clients get more value out of Tastewise’s AI—he’d rather have someone who’s never done the job before.
And these entry-level hires aren’t just temporary: Complete this job and then you’re out. Chen says they’re becoming “pivotal” across the company—moving fluidly among technology, business, and client in ways that more siloed senior employees simply aren’t.
Other CEOs prefer to hire ‘less biased’ Gen Z, too
Chen isn’t alone in this thinking. Ricardo Amper, founder and CEO of $1.25 billion AI company Incode Technologies, has made the same bet—and put it more bluntly. “My belief is that coming out with a fresh mind, first principles, is important. That’s why young people are particularly helpful in tech, because they’re less biased,” he previously told Fortune. “I think too much knowledge is actually bad in tech: You’re biased.”
Despite Gen Z getting flak for being lazy—including showing up late to work, ghosting job interviews, refusing to put in any overtime for free—the $62 billion consumer giant Colgate-Palmolive isn’t buying it. Chief human resources officer Sally Massey previously told Fortune that young digital natives bring “new ideas, new perspectives, curiosity…They’re pushing us to get better and to do things differently—I think it’s great.”
Steven Bartlett, founder and host of The Diary of a CEO podcast, took it even further—hiring a candidate whose CV was literally two lines long, with zero formal experience, after she thanked the security guard by name on the way into her interview. Six months later, she had become one of the best hires he’d ever made.
For Chen, the message to Gen Z is simple: The door is open. You just have to be worth letting in.
“I would come to a job interview with a portfolio of what I’m able to do and show for,” he says. “Execution is everything.”
He adds, “I think there is actually an opportunity for younger people, if they are resourceful and can actually flag in some way that they’re better than others, and more determined to succeed than others.”
