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PwC Finds Employers Want Senior-Level Skills For Entry-Level Jobs
Age up your skillset // Illustration by Kate Walker
A new report from consulting giant PwC found that employers — especially in fields exposed to AI — are increasingly requiring senior-level skills for entry-level jobs.
Why It Hurts: It’s common knowledge that landing a white-collar job today is exceedingly difficult, but PwC’s new report shows exactly why: the expectations for entry-level applicants are anything but entry-level. With layoffs mounting and the pool of associate roles shrinking, positions once earmarked for new graduates may increasingly be going to workers much further along in their careers — and who now have little choice but to accept a pay cut.
Between The Resumés: PwC’s new report analyzed 2.4 million entry-level roles in the US… and found that AI is changing who gets hired.
The firm found that “AI-exposed roles are seven times more likely to list ‘traditionally senior’ skills than they were in 2019,” per Business Insider.
Those skills include motivational leadership, team building, people and stakeholder management, process management, mentorship, and data-driven decision-making.
The job market is becoming increasingly complex. While typical entry-level job openings have fallen 10% over the past six years, openings that require senior-level skills have grown by 35%.
Final Decision: PwC determined that a skill is considered “traditionally senior” if it “appeared more than 50 times in experienced, non-entry-level, high AI exposure job postings in 2019, but fewer than five times in entry-level, high AI exposure postings in 2019.” In other words, the bar for landing jobs where AI has transformed the work is now much, much higher. That’s because entry-level white-collar roles have historically involved many repetitive tasks, such as data management and research, which have increasingly been automated by chatbots.
The best way to stand out, then, is to excel at what chatbots still struggle with: being a critical-thinking human.
The Future: Considering the real-world, team-oriented experience now required for many entry-level jobs, a strong internship may be more valuable than a traditional college education.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.