Lord Sugar has it sorted. On the BBC show The Apprentice, he gets to watch candidates’ skills for weeks, under pressure, before he commits to anything.
Unlike the majority of employers, he can “try before he buys” – or invests – while the rest of us have to hire from a description and a chat.
I have made bad hiring mistakes. Despite a brilliant CV and recommendations, it became clear to me early on that the right skills are not easy to test in an interview or from reviewing a CV. And making a wrong hire is not cheap.
The next wave of employees are entering the market after GCSEs, A-levels, and university.If you’d asked me at their age: “What should you know to make yourself most employable, and to ensure you’re still employable in ten years?” I would have answered with a resounding: no idea. Ask this cohort and their answer will be two simple letters: AI.
But while they might get a grade 5, a C or a 2.2 for that answer, those who studied economics know that demand is only half of the equation. The other half is supply, and the skills that are paying more at this moment won’t necessarily still be the most important ones in a decade. Especially when everyone is rushing in the same direction to flood the market.
After many years in business I can tell you the skills that will pay more are not the loudest ones, they are the ones quietly becoming rarer.
Start with AI. The Institute of Student Employers, which surveys Britain’s big graduate and apprentice recruiters, this year found that employers are almost twice as likely to build digital and AI skills on the job to hire for them.
They have budgeted to train you in this. It is already on the induction timetable.
But look at the size of that budget. Employer training spend is now £1,700 a year per employee, down nearly a third in real terms since 2011. They will teach you the tool, but are spending less on teaching than at any point in 15 years.
There is less teaching to go round, and that is precisely why what you walk in with matters more. And yes, there is some cheek in employers spending less on training and then asking you to turn up more finished.
I’m not committing modern-day blasphemy and saying do not study AI. The market is paying a premium for it: in the UK, job adverts asking for AI skills carry advertised salaries around a third higher than comparable adverts that do not.
But that premium shrinks as the scarcity does. Fluency is becoming the floor, not the edge. You need enough skill to know what a machine can be asked to do and to catch it when it gets that wrong. That actually measures judgement, and judgement benefits go beyond what the programming language does.
Those same employers list critical thinking, communication and adapting to change as the skills rising in importance. Almost none of it is technical.
So, here’s where I would put my time and money, and if it sounds simple that’s because I believe it is.
Employers have been saying for years, “bring me the right attitude and I will do the rest”. Well, bring them a positive attitude and the ability to talk to people you don’t know.
Trinity College London asked more than 1,500 young people about work last year. Some 38 per cent said they dread making small talk, while 30 per cent are frightened of picking up the phone. Nearly 60 per cent of those surveyed said working alongside older colleagues would be difficult.
I am not mocking anyone, as the fear of speaking to new people affects all generations. Now in my 50th year, I know that many of my peer group of Gen-Xers weren’t braver than the new Gen Alphas and Zs. We just had less choice.
Remember, the only phone we had was in the passageway on a table with a circle dial, and sometimes it had a lock on it. And we had to be punctual: if I told you I was going to be somewhere at 10, I had to be there at 10 – I couldn’t text to say I was running late.
The ability to communicate on a phone with your voice rather than your thumbs, and to be on time, has become rare in people under the age of 30. That does not make it old-fashioned, that makes it valuable.
Three things I tell my own teenager, who has just smashed his GCSEs and is now thinking about those next steps:
Use AI daily on real work, not just as a hobby, until it is as unremarkable as email. Weekly, make a call you would rather have texted: ring your Nan before you go for Sunday dinner, rather than texting her “thx” and an emoji. And regularly spend time in rooms with people who are not your age, because that is where you’ll learn how people really interact, not from the latest Netflix binge-worthy series.
In five years, the tools we need to get ahead will have changed again. Whatever we are frantically learning as new this month will be issued to the next intake on day one. Being brave, kind and ok with the uncomfortable will not be.
Those are the skills that the next generation of employees have to bring to the table to impress entrepreneur investors on TV or any other employers in the world, and it’s these skills that will always be in demand.
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