Artificial intelligence is changing the nature of work on a scale some predict will be as transformative as the Industrial Revolution. It’s also exposing the yawning gaps in a fractured US employment system that many companies and workers find difficult to navigate.
The situation demands a dramatic overhaul of how policymakers, educators, and employers devise, construct, and manage career pathways, which are the routes aspiring workers take as they graduate from education and training to gainful employment. A white paper from the Project on the Workforce at Harvard argues that such a transition is urgently required if more young people are to launch successful careers that will lead to economic security.
“What’s left are the things that are hard to automate, called foundational or human skills.”
Even as unemployment hovers at historic lows, some 44 percent of US workers are trapped in low-wage jobs, the authors note. Those workers, along with younger first-time job seekers and adults reentering the workforce, are an untapped resource in the labor market. Many have the “soft skills” to complement emerging technologies, such as generative AI, that will shape how we work in the future, says Joseph Fuller, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and a co-head of the project.
Fuller likens the shifting job demands to a melting ice floe. “What’s left are the things that are hard to automate, called foundational or human skills,” Fuller says. “They were already becoming more important at all levels of the labor force as we move from a more mechanical engineering, manufacturing economy to a post-industrial society. Retaining and cultivating those skills as part of learning on the job is becoming more important than ever.”
Waze app for career management
Fuller partnered on the work with scholars at the Project on Workforce including Kerry McKittrick, co-director; Ali Epstein, research project coordinator; and research assistants Sherry Seibel, Cole Wilson, and Vasundhara Dash. The team reviewed more than 350 pieces of research and consulted over 60 experts to paint a picture of the world of career navigation, and to draft recommendations for improving it.
The report calls for overhauling the systems now in place under a new umbrella: “career navigation.” For people trying to launch and successfully navigate a career, something akin to a Waze app for career management is needed, Fuller says.
Most aspiring workers have very limited access to information on the labor market—what jobs are available near them, what skills or credentials are required to qualify for consideration, and what they pay. As a result, they rely on data gleaned from job postings and social media and impressions from informal conversations.
“Companies invest tens of millions of dollars on user experience for customers, but don’t bring any of that discipline to applicant experience.”
That puts employers in a quandary. They grapple with issues posed by restrictive US immigration policy during a period of growing skills gaps. In a quest for efficiency, they rely on AI-powered hiring systems that inadvertently exclude skilled candidates due to minor shortcomings in their qualifications, are difficult to navigate without robust internet access, and baffle even the savviest of online applicants.
“You look at an online job application, and it’s incredibly user unfriendly,” Fuller says. “Companies invest tens of millions of dollars on user experience for customers, but don’t bring any of that discipline to applicant experience.”
By and large, firms post job descriptions that “go way beyond describing the minimal baseline skills you need to qualify,” Fuller says. “They’re like the most overloaded Christmas tree you ever saw—12 paragraphs of what they’re looking for.”
The result? Employers often resort to playing what Fuller describes as the “spot market” for labor, spending heavily to lure away incumbent talent from competitive firms, while decrying the lack of skilled talent.
Developing partnerships
The key for employers is to recognize both how their own actions create a shortage of talent and what factors inhibit workers from entering or staying in the labor market.
An essential first step is to build connections with school systems and other skills providers, Fuller says. Such partnerships offer a way to contribute to curriculum development so schools prepare workers for careers at companies.
“The best thing you can do as an employer is create programs where you’re working with younger people in a work-based learning setting,” Fuller says.
Those can include apprenticeships, paid internships, co-op programs with community colleges, and other avenues to tap people that often don’t know—or don’t have access to the tools that can help them find—a particular career path, creating inherently unequal systems, Fuller says.
Employers should recognize that factors like caregiving limit the capacity of qualified workers from applying or remaining in a job, says Fuller. Offering “wrap around services” that meet such needs can expand the labor pool by turning marginalized candidates into productive employees.
Four main steps
Fuller says that creating a career navigation system that is fit for the 21st century requires:
- Creating new data sources. Good career navigation relies on accurate, timely data. Most job seekers will make wise decisions about how to cultivate skills relevant to the labor market when presented with information about job availability, compensation, and the prospects for upward advancement. Employers should encourage governments to create such data sources and help ensure they are accurate and up to date.
- Recognizing foundational skills. The most durable skills in a labor market featuring rapid technological change are human skills. Employers need to make deepening such skills integral to their training and corporate learning programs.
- Acknowledging workers’ changing needs. Tomorrow’s workforce requires different types of benefits than previous generations of workers. Employers should revisit their benefits packages, enhancing them to reflect the needs of today’s employees like caregiving support and educational and training support.
- Moving directly to generative AI-powered capabilities. Generative AI is ideally suited to address the many shortcomings of the current career navigation system. It can provide aspiring workers with definitive, real-time information on job availability, skills requirements, and outcomes for workers in specific positions. And it can provide employers with accurate insight into who has succeeded in their firms historically, enabling skills-based hiring.
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