Employers are struggling to find the best way to pinpoint the talent they need to drive their businesses to success in the rapidly changing world of AI. Accenture CEO Julie Sweet, though, has a simple question to identify whether her interviewees are ready for the job.
In an interview on the In Good Companypodcast with Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, Sweet was asked what she looked for when hiring new consultants at the $64 billion tech giant.
“One question that we ask everyone, regardless of if you’re a consultant or you’re working in technology … we say: ‘What have you learned in the last six months?’
“A lot of the time people are asking me, ‘How do I know if someone’s a learner?’ And it’s a very simple way to know. If someone can’t answer that question—and by the way, we don’t care if it’s, ‘I learned to bake a cake’—if they can’t answer that question, then we know that they’re not a learner.”
When asked by Tangen what Sweet herself had learned in the last six months, the Accenture CEO said it had mostly been around AI. During an investor call in December, Sweet said she had met with 30 CEOs in the preceding two months, with AI applications at the top of most of their agendas.
Sweet also said she had managed to learn how to bake bread amid her hectic schedule in the last six months.
Sweet’s curveball question for new hires is indicative of how companies are shifting their recruitment practices following the onset of generative AI, which is upending job specs in every department, requiring a new type of employee.
Bosses have argued that new employees need to be dynamic depending on the changing needs of their business and how AI can be used to supplement their work.
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LinkedIn’s chief operating officer, Daniel Shapero, told Fortune that he asks prospective hires to tell him how they used AI to determine whether they have the desire to learn the tech on the job.
”What that demonstrates is, if you’re comfortable using AI, then you’re more likely to be someone that helps their organization become more AI-centric,” said Shapero.
“You hear about people planning family trips, you hear about people summarizing meeting notes. You hear people generating creative ideas for customers. And so there’s a very wide range of things AI can be used for.”
Amid increased uncertainty about the skills and aptitude required for the future of work, Accenture’s Sweet says a strong human resources department has become increasingly vital.
“I think the best thing to be right now, one of the best fields to be in is HR, because right after gen AI on CEOs’ agendas is talent, and how you train talent has to completely change.”
Editor’s note: A version of this article first appeared on Fortune.com on Jan. 8, 2025.
