Layoffs are continuing to happen in the market, most heavily impacting the tech & finance industries. As Vanguard’s research, reported by Business Insider, reveals, a white-collar job recession looms.
Most companies are downsizing to trim excess or brace for headwinds ahead with the economy or are adopting AI to replace mundane tasks. Meanwhile, tech giants like Google are pivoting to global hubs like Mexico and India for cost-effective talent while laying off resources here.
How do you compete in a landscape where hiring crawls at just 0.5%?
Resumes flood the job market, often inflated and indistinguishable, and full of mainstream buzzwords. While they offer a quick readers digest of your credentials, resumes are hard to differentiate from other resumes. Resume writing services often help but tend to use the same keywords. Hiring managers and HR professionals have to review hundreds or thousands of job applicants for some jobs, an unsustainable form of hiring. They have limited time, businesses have a need to hire as soon as possible, and that means that ineffective processes have to be leveraged to find resources.
How is the right candidate being hired? What if they disqualified the best candidate for the job because they didn’t use the right keywords? How do applicants from underserved communities stand a chance against these practices? Is there opportunity to make hiring more efficient? Can AI help in hiring best practices while also helping professionals in growing their skills for new roles?
Often times, people from underserved communities don’t have access to all of the available tools that others mights, going back to the resume writing services, etc. A pre-covid column written in Forbes mentioned that “many underserved communities lack resources”. As the industries move towards skills based labor vs the traditional college education and degree model, there are numerous resources available online to help develop skills. To name a few, Udemy and Pluralsight are very effective in baseline content and offer a plethora of content for all things tech at an inexpensive cost. By continuously learning new skills, and using storytelling to show application of the skills, professionals previously underrepresented will now have the opportunity to compete, though the white-collar job market challenge still remains. AI is also providing learning content instead of the traditional classroom and is very impactful. It was predicted in 2019 that AI will account for 50% or more of learning.
A recent quote from an article written by the Society for Human Resource Management mentioned that “If your intention is to find more sophisticated ways to screen people in, then AI can be incredibly powerful. One of the most powerful insights is seeing skills proximity between where someone is and where they need to be for a new role. Very often, that skills gap is pretty small. If you can identify that, you can develop that person.”.
Storytelling about your career, highlighting your skills, sharing different experiences, how you practiced soft skills, and how you helped mitigate risk is the way to separate yourself from the crowd, offering credibility amidst the sea of applicants. It offers valuable insights into your thought leadership capabilities while establishing trust with the company.
The problem remains whether professionals can effectively navigate the murky waters of the looming white-collar recession. Using traditional methods will not be enough. Leveraging networking, storytelling, and establishing your brand will be the differentiators between success and failure. On the contrary, employers leveraging AI for effective hiring practices will be the most tangible method in hiring the right resources, regardless of their socioeconomic standing, removing human bias when reviewing resumes.
Don’t wait for adversity to strike. Leveling up your skills, and building your professional brand through storytelling now will serve as a lifeline during tough times ahead. Make it a routine and lead by example!
Sources:
Business Insider: https://www.businessinsider.com/hiring-slump-professional-white-collar-jobs-recession-high-salary-2024-4
Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/12/27/why-we-should-train-students-in-underserved-communities-in-ai/?sh=1e519dc95ba1
CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/01/google-cuts-hundreds-of-core-workers-moves-jobs-to-india-mexico.html#:~:text=Google%20is%20laying%20off%20at,roles%20in%20Mexico%20and%20India.
SHRM: https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/talent-acquisition/ai-has-potential-advance-skills-first-hiring