Julia Pollak, Chief Economist at ZipRecruiter, explains how artificial intelligence will benefit different job markets, the most and least vulnerable jobs, trends in automation, and how job seekers will benefit from using artificial intelligence in the application process. Find out how you can expect to shake what you get.
video transcript
[AUDIO LOGO]
Sheena Smith: The buzz around AI is getting bigger and bigger. But what does that mean for work? Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky and US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo discussed this very topic at Yahoo Finance earlier this week.
Brian Chesky: The near-term impact is that everyone in tech companies will be more productive. Software engineering becomes more efficient because computer programming is a language. And now, all of a sudden, these tools are in some ways as good at developing as, and in some cases better than, humans.
Gina Raimond: There is no doubt that AI will change the way we work. And in many ways it’s a good thing. It makes our job easier. It makes us more effective. It makes us more productive. But it is also true that it is a brand new technology that is very powerful. Therefore, care must be taken to prevent people from getting hurt.
Sheena Smith: Let’s talk a little more about this with ZipRecruiter’s chief economist, Julia Pollak. Julia, nice to see you again. I heard this week that IBM plans to gradually replace about 8,000 jobs with AI. How do you think AI will disrupt the workplace?
Julia Pollack: So, traditionally, new technologies have come online, making the most educated and highly skilled workers more productive and displacing lower-skilled, lower-paid workers. This time things could be very different, with generative AI actually destroying many high-paying white-collar jobs such as legal services, accountants, teachers, HR staff, back his office staff, administrative staff, etc. there is. .
And it’s a fairly low-paying job, very manual, and a completely non-hazardous kind of work.
Akiko Fujita: You know, people hear that they’re more productive, they’re more efficient. And automatically, AI will reduce the number of people. But it’s also not surprising from tech companies that claim a lot of jobs are being created on the other side. what job are you looking at?
Julia Pollack: Now, the first exciting sign of this technology is a just-released study of 5,000 customer support agents at Fortune 500 companies on the impact on customer support agent productivity. So what really happened was that AI tools, ChatGPT-style tools, made the least experienced, youngest, and newest workers the most productive. It gave them the script. It set them an example and got them up to speed faster.
And this is very encouraging news for employers in an industry that is currently very supply constrained. They are struggling to fill vacancies and are very nervous about lowering standards and hiring workers with less experience and education than before. But this new evidence from MIT and Stanford suggests that the labor market probably doesn’t really have that many supply constraints. Perhaps we can hire young people and grow them very quickly.
Sheena Smith: Julia, what kind of impact do you think this is really having on college graduates? Are you thinking about the impact on your work?
Julia Pollack: So most recent graduates say they used it for college homework at some point. It’s a relatively new technology, but they jumped right in and adopted it. About 70% use it for job hunting to find different jobs and write resumes.
So they are very optimistic about this technology. They aren’t too worried about it replacing them. And they are already finding ways to become more effective and productive.
Akiko Fujita: What does it mean for your hiring process? So, we’ve known for years that companies have been using AI as a way to eliminate the early stages of the hiring process. I think with the latest developments it will only accelerate. What do you see in terms of what this might do to that process?
Julia Pollack: Well, hopefully that will improve the quality of all applications. If you could take a terrible selfie with your cell phone and turn it into a beautiful corporate headshot, if you could answer a few questions and create a beautiful resume, every job seeker, every candidate would look amazing. will be And that will drive employers to immediately connect with an actual human being to find out who you really are.
Employers will need to look for something else when the signal is lost on resumes.
Sheena Smith: Julia, what have you heard from employers about this? Regarding labor shortages, which I briefly touched on earlier, have we made any significant progress there? Can you find it? And how will AI be involved in it?
Julia Pollack: Absolutely not. There are still very high turnover rates and very high wage pressures in the consumer services industry, where employers are adding many jobs. And there are very few candidates. And this will be a long-term problem.
The working-age population in the United States is no longer growing. The proportion of college graduates is increasing. As such, there will be a shortage of non-college-educated workers who are ready to do these jobs.
And AI probably won’t help much. So employers in these fields need to understand that this will be a difficult slogan.And they need to make these jobs more attractive.
On the other hand, we are seeing companies like IBM pausing hiring and replacing HR jobs, accounting jobs, and legal jobs with AI. But there will hardly be a shortage of highly educated workers in the US. We know this is a growing economy. And I think today’s jobs numbers show that the longer the expansion lasts, the more jobs will be created.
Akiko Fujita: ZipRecruiter’s Julia Pollak, thank you for joining us this Friday. Have a nice weekend.
