AI has been speeding the shift from a “role-based labor market to a skills-based economy.”
Job hunters beware: some of the hard-earned skills listed on your resume are going unnoticed by potential employers.
Workers’ profiles on job posting websites often feature general abilities, like leadership, communication, teamwork, and problem-solving, a recent report from the Wharton School says. But they’re not highlighting the “specialized, execution-oriented skills,” employers are seeking. That’s created a “skills mismatch economy.”
“People are not representing their skills in a way that’s necessarily resonating with the skills that employers want,” said Eric Bradlow, the vice dean of artificial intelligence and analytics at the Wharton School, who co-authored the report.
Meanwhile, AI has been speeding the shift from a “role-based labor market to a skills-based economy,” the report outlines, making it all the more poignant to know what skills employers actually want.
Bradlow, says generative AI has been “a positively destructive bomb on roles and titles,” by making workers able to carry out tasks that they didn’t know how to do in the past. So “having a specific job title is becoming less relevant.”
The Wharton School worked in partnership with Accenture, a professional services firm, to analyze millions of job postings and worker profiles for the report. The study used data from Lightcast, a labor market data provider, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bradlow spoke with The Inquirer about their findings.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What are some skills included on resumes that don’t make much difference to employers, because everyone seems to have them?
A: Do we think it’s important to communicate? Well, yeah, of course, it is. Do we think it’s important to have leadership skills and manage teams well? Yeah, of course. Last time I checked, those were really important parts of the job — but everybody puts that down. We’re not saying in the report that those skills aren’t important.
