There are a few problems on the job market right now, potentially caused or exacerbated by AI.

Applicable (mainly) to employees:

  • Employees may need to change their area of work, but they may not have directly relevant references or contacts in the new area.
  • Employees can fall into certain exceptions from public unemployment benefit.
  • Internships are mostly only for students.

Applicable (mainly) to employers:

  • Employers may need to trust in employees that mainly have transferable skills, but little or no directly applicable experience.
  • Employers may receive more applications, and need to automatically filter out more applicants.

Applicable to both:

  • The business environment is changing, old or established ways of doing things can be challenged.
  • Entire lines of work can fall away, either partly or completely. Lines of work need to be newly created, discovered, rethought, or combined.
  • Employers rely on formal certifications, evidence from work in related areas is not as accepted, but it’s difficult to get formal work experience in a new area.
  • Employees may not know which roles and jobs exist to which they could transfer their skills, and employers may not now from which related fields to hire.

I would expect some of these problems only get worse during the next few years.

However, I believe there are many realistic possibilities to improve the current situation, even if just by a little bit, with relatively modest effort.

Some examples:

  • Teach entrepreneurial skills to help people create and capitalize on new opportunities.
  • Write a tool scanning social media for new ways people are making money that didn’t exist before.
  • Write a tool to find suitable occupations based on existing (or easy-to-develop) skills.
  • Tools to track new job boards, new companies.
  • Demystify resume scanners, provide a transparent tool to give feedback on a CV.
  • Advocate to employers to give additional internship-like opportunities to employees other than those early in their career (e.g., paid work trials).
  • Community building to connect people from different areas with related skills.
  • Find ways to reduce the risk of hiring a person with little or no directly applicable experience, but lots of transferable skills.

Even better, many of tools or solutions may already exist. A write-up or review of existing solutions is even easier to do than building from scratch.

Nobody should work on these problems alone, and it’s much more fun together, which is why I’m writing this.

If you are interested in contributing: Please reach out to me.