Each year, the URx Conference brings together professionals from across university recruiting, early talent programs, and college career services to share insights, strategies, and innovations for building the workforce of tomorrow. URx 2025 continued that tradition with an agenda centered around AI, experiential learning, inclusive hiring, and scalable talent development. With sessions led by industry leaders, educators, and tech innovators, the event showcased how organizations can evolve their early talent strategies to meet the moment and prepare for what’s next.
ICYMI, we’ve recapped four major themes that emerged from this year’s sessions, and provided a deep dive into a session presented by Tigran Sloyan, CodeSignal CEO and co-founder, on AI-powered hiring.
Key takeaways from URx 2025
AI is already reshaping talent pipelines
Artificial intelligence was an unavoidable topic in nearly every URx conversation. In his session on AI’s impact on hiring, for instance, Tigran Sloyan demonstrated how AI-native assessments and simulations are revolutionizing how recruiters evaluate skills, deter cheating, and streamline interviews. This theme was echoed in “From Campus to Career: Transforming Early Talent Acquisition with Innovation,” where panelists explored how AI and data are driving more efficient, scalable hiring strategies across the board. The message was clear: early talent teams that embrace AI today will lead the charge in building faster-moving and more future-ready hiring pipelines.
Employer-academic partnerships boost work readiness
Multiple sessions underscored the importance of bridging academia and industry to close the career readiness gap. Northeastern University’s Liz Zulick illustrated how employer-integrated experiential learning is creating scalable, real-world pathways for students. From classroom collaborations to hybrid internships, universities are becoming proactive architects of employability, responding to uncertainty in the hiring landscape by embedding career preparation directly into education.
Inclusion requires investment, not just intention
From panels on building bridges to racial minority talent, to uncovering hidden talent, to recruiting neurodiverse applicants, several sessions tackled the structural barriers facing underrepresented and neurodivergent students. Attendees explored tangible strategies, such as partnerships with Minority-Serving Institutions, the Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) Career Collaborative, and neurodivergent-inclusive recruitment models, that are turning inclusive hiring from aspiration into practice.
Offer structured programs to boost employee retention
Early career employees aren’t just looking for a job—they want a journey. Sessions like “Retention and Growth for Early Careers” and “From Onboarding to Advancement” dove into examples of rotational development programs, intentional onboarding, and structured career pathways as key drivers of long-term retention. Panelists encouraged employers to treat early career hires not as temporary hires but as future company leaders, and to invest in them accordingly.
Deep dive: Tigran Sloyan on AI-powered hiring
In “AI Is Rewriting Hiring. Are You Ready?,” Tigran Sloyan tackled some of the most pressing and complex questions facing early career teams as they adopt AI. Addressing everything from reneged offers to algorithmic bias, Sloyan positioned AI as both a tool for efficiency and a catalyst for transforming your hiring process. He emphasized how leading companies are using AI-driven assessments and interview simulations to better gauge real skills, reduce noise in high-volume applicant pools, and enhance candidate evaluation—all while actively mitigating issues like AI-assisted cheating.
Sloyan also addressed concerns around fairness, data privacy, and inclusion. He highlighted how CodeSignal integrates employer feedback into assessment design and continuously evaluates its systems to detect and mitigate algorithmic bias. The session underscored the importance of responsible AI implementation, especially at scale, and encouraged organizations to invest in training their teams to make the most of these tools to hire the right talent, faster.
Final thoughts
URx 2025 made clear that the early talent ecosystem is undergoing a major shift today. Four key themes stood out from the conference: AI is already reshaping early talent recruiting processes; experiential learning partnerships between employers and universities are essential to close the career readiness gap; inclusive work environments require strategic action; and long-term retention starts with investment in career development. As organizations navigate this shifting landscape, the path forward requires investing in innovation, deepening collaborations, and building recruiting systems that are both efficient and equitable.
To see how CodeSignal is helping early career hiring teams lead this transformation, explore our AI-native solutions for scalable, skill-based university recruiting.
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