AI, once a bold vision of the future, is now becoming a prominent reality in the business world. Surveying 803 companies across 27 industry clusters and 45 economies, the World Economic Forum’s latest biannual The Future of Jobs Report explores how jobs will evolve in the next five years and how trends may shape the workplace of the future.
We summarize the insights related to artificial intelligence. Here are five key takeaways businesses should be aware of, as well as how existing AI tools can help you as an employer to find quality candidates faster.
What WEF says about AI
1. Businesses are prioritizing investing in AI
To begin with, artificial intelligence is not one of those tech fads that will fade into relative obscurity; businesses, regardless of industries or size, are adding AI and LLMs (large language models) to their blueprint.
According to the report, more than four in five (86.2%) companies surveyed identify increasing adoption of emerging technologies and broadening digital access as the trends most likely to drive transformation in their organization. AI features near the top of the list within technology adoption, with three quarters of companies (74.9%) looking to adopt AI by 2027. By comparison, fewer than three in five companies share the same sentiment towards similar technologies such as augmented and virtual reality (59.1%) or non-humanoid robots (51.3%). While trends like the metaverse may seem like costly and high-risk bets, the vast majority of companies see AI Adoption as critical to their future success.
2. Job growth to outweigh job losses in the next 5 years
Despite the media’s pessimistic doomsday predictions around AI – the takeover of jobs and wiping out humanity – the report suggests that the impact of AI on jobs is expected to be a net positive in the next five years.
Broadly speaking, more than half of employers expect that increased adoption of new and frontier technologies will drive job growth, while fewer than a quarter predict job displacement.
Looking at AI specifically, globally, most employers also agree that the disruption will do more good than harm in the labor market. While close to a quarter of employers surveyed expect AI to displace jobs, nearly half forecast an AI-induced job growth, resulting in a net positive (25.6%) as a whole. Comparably, American employers are slightly less optimistic (21% net positive) about AI than global respondents.
3. Automation is taking longer than expected
Globally, businesses are introducing automation into their operations at a slower pace than previously anticipated. Organizations estimate that 34% of all business-related tasks are currently handled by machines, and humans take on the remaining 66% – marking a 1% uptick in the level of automation compared to the last Future of Jobs survey conducted in 2020.
Interestingly, relative to 2020, employers have revised down their expectations for future automation of all tasks by 5% – from 47% automation by 2025 in 2020 to 42% automation by 2027 from now.
Looking more closely, employers have grown more confident about the prospects of using AI to automate tasks including reasoning and decision-making, coordinating, developing, managing and advising, communicating and interacting, and performing complex and technical activities.
But crucially, employers have scaled back their expectations for automating “looking for and receiving job-related information”. This suggests that many employers have yet to unlock the dynamics of automation in job search and recruitment. There are de facto many AI-powered recruiting and job search tools existing in the market right now, and Adzuna is one of the leading pioneers tapping into programmatic technology and AI from early on. Our world-class matching technology will help you zero in on the right candidates for your roles. Make smarter hiring decisions today.
4. Unfinished tasks to tick off before funneling money into AI
While businesses are embracing AI, there are several major roadblocks companies need to sort out while looking to adopt the new technologies. First, many companies are still undergoing digital transformation. 86% of companies surveyed are expecting to incorporate digital platforms and apps into their operations in the next five years, while 75% plan to adopt e-commerce and digital trades. The report forecasts a growth of four million digitally enabled roles, such as e-commerce specialists, digital transformation specialists, and digital marketing and strategy specialists.
The maturity of AI is the second hurdle. Despite recent breakthroughs, there is still a long way to go. Emphasizing AI maturity, technology-related roles, including data analysts/scientists, AI and machine learning specialists, spearhead the list of fast-growing jobs.
5. AI robots will be a massive gamechanger
While businesses project a positive impact of AI on the jobs market, they don’t share the same outlook towards robots, whether humanoid or non-humanoid.
The report reveals that robots are forecast to have a net negative overall impact on employment.The strongest sectoral picture emerges for the adoption of non-humanoid robots, wherein 60% of companies operating in the production of consumer goods and the oil and gas industry foresee job displacement, while 60% of companies operating in IT services foresee job creation in the next five years.
New AI tools jobseekers are using to maximize their job search (not ChatGPT!)
In the last half year, our mailboxes and social media feeds have been flooded with AI news about powerful upgrades, new features, and mind-blowing tools. Amidst this deluge, it could be easy to overlook the AI tools designed specifically for job search – but that would also mean overlooking the changing ways candidates are looking for jobs in 2023.
At Adzuna, we’ve been leveraging technology to match jobseekers to better, more fulfilling jobs for the past decade. With an unwavering commitment to becoming a one-stop platform for candidates, we’ve therefore developed three AI-powered tools tailored to assist jobseekers at every stage of their job search.
First came ValueMyResume, the free machine learning tool released in 2017 that empowers every jobseeker to assess their worth and secure a fair wage. Last year, we added salary estimates to the mix, using AI to predict an accurate salary for every job posting on Adzuna.
This June, we released an exciting new addition to our AI toolkit: AI interview coach Prepper. Based on the recent advances in large language models (LLMs) alongside Adzuna’s proprietary data and expertise, Prepper allows jobseekers to prepare for job interviews at any company in the US by generating questions likely to be asked based on information from the job ad, as well as coaching them on how best to respond, changing the game for interviewees.
Since its launch, Prepper has rapidly gained momentum among jobseekers, hitting a staggering 2,000 daily users just 10 days after the tool went live. Our early analysis shows IT professionals are most likely to use AI to prepare for a job interview, with software engineers, software developers, product managers, trainee programmers, full stack developers, and data scientists all featuring within the top 20 roles using Prepper. It underscores a strong appetite among jobseekers to use AI tools within their job search. Firms like Amazon, Mr Cooper, Google, Zoho, and Heineken are the most sought-after employers.
How can AI tools help you find top talent faster?
Jobseekers aren’t the only ones benefiting from these AI tools. By giving candidates a better and more comprehensive job search experience, employers are more likely to receive higher quality applicants for their roles. On top of that, with more jobs than anywhere else, Adzuna has truly transparent data to help employers make smarter hiring decisions and lock in the best candidates.
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