Name: These are the skills LinkedIn’s CEO thinks will be most valuable in an AI future
Uploaded: 2024-04-24
Duration: 6 min 55 s
Description: LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky shares his insights around the job market and talent shifts in a landscape increasingly—and rapidly—shaped by automation.

LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky shares his insights around the job market and talent shifts in a landscape increasingly—and rapidly—shaped by automation.

These are the skills LinkedIn’s CEO thinks will be most valuable in an AI future

Photo illustration by Fortune. Photograph courtesy of LinkedIn.

Leadership

You know, to, again, to maybe reframe this one a little bit. Um I'm two for two. I'm reframing both your questions now. So, thanks. Uh We're, we're so excited that that's, that's what the people we interview do all the time. We're really just props the questions we ask are your relative and when you reframe a question, it helps you provide the kind of answer you wanted to provide. So, yeah, go ahead. What do you have? Uh Do you have a question for my answer? Welcome to leadership. Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Alan Murray and I'm Mia, you know, there are lots of people who are worried that A I is gonna eliminate jobs, maybe their job. There are others who say, oh, it'll eliminate some jobs, but it'll create even more. And all of us are just speculating but you have the data. So what is your data show where, where are skills and jobs uh in less demand and what skills and uh are in more demand as we move into this profound technological change. It's really important for people to change the way you think about jobs jobs historically been thought about as a title. Um But fundamentally, if you can take a different view, which is jobs as a set of tasks, your job is a set of tasks. My job is a set of tasks. Everybody's job to be done is a set of tasks. And when you can start to really break down, every job is a set of tasks, you can then take the next step to understand where technology can help either augment uh or make certain tasks more efficient or certain tasks are going to be just completely automated. Then you start to realize that, oh, you know what, like if your job is just a set of tasks that is going to be automated, you need to start looking for a new job. So one of the things that we're doing across linkedin is taking every role in the world and doing a score of certain jobs as tasks and, and understanding that, hey, there's certain jobs like, you know, a lot of copywriting or translation type jobs where the majority of the task to do those jobs are tasks that can be automated. So, you know, it's important to start thinking about a new job. The majority of jobs though in the world are the types of jobs where you know AAA specific portion of those tasks will be automated and you need to learn how to leverage those tools to help in that part of your job. But still a lot of human skills are needed for uh for the majority of the job. Yeah. So give us some examples of skills that you think are going to be more valuable in the future because of what's happening now. First and foremost, it, it is really important to learn, learn, learn your way into using these A I tools. It's only going to help you in whatever job that you're doing to, you know, be able to leverage these tools to help you be more productive. My big bet is on people skills. Um you know, learning how to build people skills, communicating, um knowing what to do when your camera falls off of your computer during a podcast interview, which, which is just so our listeners know just happened to run and he did a total of glimpse right in the middle of the interview is gone. Yeah. Uh EQ communication, collaboration, creativity. That's a place where, um you know, I, I would be putting a lot of time and effort. Um if I was just entering the workforce or thinking about what the future might look like. And then I think that there's this concept which is for so long we've been taught or thought about the importance is to build for stability. And I think the future is more about building for agility instead of stability, uh being able to adapt, being able to, you know, take on something new the way I did my job last year is gonna be the way I'm gonna do my job this year. So I think a lot of that goes into what I would at least be thinking about right now entering the workforce, or at least I'm thinking about for myself transitioning, you know, through a leadership job that's always changing as well. So, what role do college degrees play in all of this? Are they important for different reasons? Because, um it's not just the skills that you accrue through a degree, maybe not just a four year degree. Um But, but it's also eq right, the last part is spot on, especially on the EQ side. And, you know, I'm not sure that outside of um being with a group of people doing work or being with people at a school, et cetera, there, there's been a real strong way to teach, um you know, a lot of people skills besides just kind of being in that environment. But I think it's an area of opportunity that, you know, society, we need to really figure out um in terms of, you know, college degrees in general, I think degrees are uh important in so far as they contain the set of skills that are really important and necessary um to be productive in society. Historically, recruiters would use degrees as you know, the the way to assess or find talent because we had no better view to do it. So for example, you, you see a lot of recruiters do things like, well, I just want to see candidates that, you know, went to Princeton, someone went to Princeton. They must be smart. Um, or they have, you know, you know, or, or previous company, this person used to work at Google, they must be smart as well. And when you only look at, I don't know the, the degree or the pedigree on its own as, as the post goes underneath it, two things happen. Number one, everyone's looking at the same group of talent because all the recruiters do the same search some people who, you know, used to work at Google and went to Princeton, like everyone's looking at this tiny group of people which does not create a very equitable or efficient labor market. Um And number two, it turns out that, you know, often times those degrees alone aren't signal enough for what needs to be, you know, done inside of the job. So we've been pushing a lot on, you know, skills are the currency, the actual skills that need to be done and it falls in line really well with this idea of the future about looking at jobs, set of tasks, as opposed to just the job title itself. I think across the board requiring require ourselves to go a level deeper in terms of what are the actual, you know, skills or tasks to be done instead of just relying on the, you know, the name of the degree alone. But, um, I really think you're on to something that with the EQ point and that's something we need to figure out.