Survey shows AI skills vital to get hired

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 13/05/2024

Use of generative AI has nearly doubled in the last six months. 75%of global knowledge workers are using it. The pressure to make AI use profitable is making leaders inert. While leaders agree AI is a business imperative, many believe their organisation lacks a plan and vision to go from individual impact to applying AI to drive the bottom line.  66% of leaders say they would not hire someone without AI skills, a report from Microsoft and Microsoft-owned LinkedIn says. The survey comprises 31,000 people across 31 countries. 

“Despite fears of job loss, leaders report a talent shortage for key roles. And as more employees eye a career move, managers say AI aptitude could rival experience. For many employees, AI will raise the bar but break the career ceiling.”

Other key findings:

• 78% of AI users are bringing their own AI to work.
• While 79% of leaders believe their company needs to adopt AI to stay competitive, 60% of leaders worry their organization’s leadership lacks a plan and vision to implement it.
• 66% of leaders say they would not hire someone without AI skills. • 71% say they’d rather hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without.
• There was a 142x increase in skills like Copilot and ChatGPT added to LinkedIn profiles last year. 

 What AI users say:

• Users say AI helps them save time (90%), focus on their most important work (85%), be more creative (84%), and enjoy their work more (83%). 
• The heaviest users of video call solution Teams (the top 5%) summarised 8 hours of meetings using Copilot in the month of March, the equivalent of a workday.
• 52% of people who use AI at work are reluctant to admit to using it for their most important tasks.
• 53% of people who use AI at work worry that using it on important work tasks makes them look replaceable.

“Work has accelerated faster than employees’ ability to keep up. The data is clear: People are overwhelmed with digital debt and under duress at work—and they are turning to AI for relief”, the report says: 

• 68% of people say they struggle with the pace and volume of work, and 46% feel burned out.
• Email overload persists—85% of emails are read in under 15 seconds, and the typical person has to read about 4 emails for every 1 they send.
• Meetings and after-hours work are holding steady at their post-pandemic highs, and the workday still skews toward communication: in the Microsoft 365 apps, users spend 60% of their time on emails, chats, and meetings, and only 40% in creation apps like Word and PowerPoint.
• While some professionals worry AI will replace their job (45%), about the same share (46%) say they’re considering quitting in the year ahead—higher than the 40% who said the same ahead of 2021’s Great Reshuffle.
• In the US, LinkedIn studies show a 14% increase in job applications per role since last fall, with 85% of professionals considering a new job this year.