Question
My son recently graduated with a first-class honours Business degree and anticipated starting his career journey, as many previous graduates have, with one of the big four consulting firms – Deloitte, PwC, EY or KPMG.
Sadly, the demand for graduates seems to have been affected by the advances in AI, which seem to be resulting in significant cuts in graduate recruitment.
What advice would you give those who find themselves with top-class degrees and no job offers after four years of study?
Answer
The employment market for all graduates and school-leavers is changing daily, and traditional employment tracks have been completely transformed – at a breathtaking pace. Many high-level employers are now asking a simple question: when a function needs to be filled, can AI meet our needs or do we actually need to employ a human being?
The World Economic Forum (WEF) in their Future of Jobs Report 2025 identified 10 key skills that employers are seeking in people they recruit. Graduates who are seeking employment positions following completion of their undergraduate education need to present or fine tune their competencies in these 10 areas.
AI can already leave human beings in the dust when it comes to processing data of any nature, and in solving mathematical or scientific questions that we as humans have yet to unravel.
AI technological literacy is rapidly outpacing our capacity to control its actions, giving rise to a debate as to whether we need to slow the technology’s development before we lose the capacity to slow it.
Employers still need graduates who are expert in scientific, mathematical or other fields of data, so that humans can still discern the accuracy of the outcomes of AI’s endeavours.
But employers also need humans who can think analytically about problems within their organisation. They need people who can respond with resilience, flexibility and agility to the daily challenges that our ever changing world presents.
The human mind has the unique capacity to think creatively in every area of human endeavour, from the arts, literature, fashion, design, sport – in fact in every area of human interest.
We also have a unique ability to develop our sense of self-awareness and self-motivation which has over millenniums created the world we live in. We can also hone the skill to nurture motivation in others in our team, showing leadership skills through this process.
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Humans are also unique in our capacity to actively listen to the often subtle messages we transmit in our daily words and actions, and to respond empathically, thus winning the trust and loyalty of those we encounter in our professional and personal lives.
Some of the greatest advances in human knowledge and insight, which have brought humanity and the world to their current state of development, have come about through curiosity and our constant striving to unravel the unknown within our fields of interest.
Leadership and management are central to all human advancement and success, and that ability to harness the talent within a team or organisation is uniquely human.
The final core skill that the WEF identifies s our capacity to be service-orientated and skilled in meeting the needs of our customers, in whatever sector of the economy we find ourselves operating.
The challenge to any graduate today is to select a field of employment in which they have an innate interest and a level of expertise and knowledge, and to benchmark themselves against the 10 key competencies identified by the WEF and seek to actively develop and hone them in living out their daily lives.
askbrian@irishtimes.com