Job titles are out and skills are in, Wharton expert says. Here’s what employers want to see.
That skill on your resume probably isn’t catching the employer’s eye, a new report from the Wharton School says. Here's what companies are looking for.
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.
What are some skills included on resumes that don’t make much difference to employers, because everyone seems to have them?
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. What we’re saying is there’s an over supply of people stating those skills, as opposed to companies saying these skills are what’s going to get you the job.
Companies are realizing that depth of skill is what’s going to be really important.
Do people lack the specialized skills employers are looking for? Or are they just failing to highlight them on their resumes?
That’s something, trust me, I wish I could answer.
If we had people’s transcript data, or if we knew what courses someone had taken, then we could try to get an understanding of what skills people actually have.
I think two things are going to happen, based on this Wharton-Accenture Skills Index gap report. Number one is, you will see a migration where people [will say] “I need to acquire those skills, if I don’t have them, if I want a job.” Second, you’ll see [organizations] — whether it’s an academic institution or a for-profit institution — saying “wait a second, here, we need more people with this skill. We’ll create a certification program.”
You found that some skills are actually tied to higher-paying jobs. Was that surprising?
I’m not sure I had hypotheses about which skills would be paid higher or lower.
I think maybe the part that surprised me a little bit was that there wasn’t massive swings and variation like “if you have this skill, your salary doubles.” That’s not what we found in the data.
What advice would you give someone crafting their resume?
One is talk about the specific skills you have. Every resume I read says “I’m an effective communicator, experienced leader.” That’s fine, but that’s not what’s going to stick out and become differentiated, because everyone’s going to say that. To the degree that you have specific expertise and depth or skills, those are the kinds of things to put on the resume.
The second thing I would say is that … we should be in the skills acquisition business, be a lifelong learner. Skills will always be valued. Jobs in a particular workflow can go away. People with skills will be hired.
Take, for instance, a customer support agent in a customer satisfaction group. If you’re someone with exceptional problem solving skills, you’re hearing your customer, and you’re able to tie it to some remedy, that skill is not going to go away even if the job you’re currently in happens to go away.
What skills are needed more or needed less because of the adoption of AI recently?
I don’t view it as AI replacing humans. I view AI as that decision-support tool you should use for every decision. If I were an employer today, I wouldn’t even consider hiring someone that didn’t recognize the power of artificial intelligence as a decision-support aid. I don’t know what business decision — pricing decision, product launch decision, product design decision, possibly even hiring decision — [for which] I wouldn’t use artificial intelligence as a decision support tool.
I would also say, equally, I’m very concerned about the agentic use of AI — in some sense totally handing over high stakes decisions.
From where you stand, is AI coming for people’s jobs, as we often hear, or is it coming for their skills? What’s the difference?
Go through the history of mankind.
The train engine came. So you mean we don’t need as many horses? Electricity came. You mean we don’t need as much coal? Green energy came, and so now we don’t need as much nuclear fusion?
Doesn’t technology always come and translate one set of jobs to another set of jobs? It’s not AI is coming for your job. What companies are realizing about AI is there are certain roles and functions that AI can do extraordinarily well, with high accuracy, and in some cases better than humans can do. These tend to be functions, by the way, that many humans don’t like doing anyway.
I don’t see AI coming for your job any more so than any set of technology. This is an extraordinarily disruptive technology, but we’ve lived through periods of extraordinarily disruptive technology.