Hiring for AI

Good afternoon. In today’s letter, we’re looking at:

Companies are increasingly testing job candidates on their ability to use AI. McKinsey is now asking potential hires to use AI during interviews to assess candidates’ familiarity with the technology and see how they use it to perform research and analysis. AI tests can involve asking candidates to explain how they use it, improve a poor prompt, or demonstrate how they would use it to solve actual business problems facing the hiring company. “We have disqualified people who are not crossing the AI bar at the senior level, especially. We need people not to be afraid to learn new things,” one C-level executive told the Financial Times. PwC found that workers with AI skills are earning a wage premium of 62%, but hiring is slowing for jobs that AI allows non-experts to do more easily.

The stock market was green, green, green this morning on news of a U.S.-Iran peace deal. The deal announced yesterday between the U.S. and Iran has sent equities soaring and oil prices falling back to lows not seen since March. Some analysts have expressed caution about the agreement holding, as the full terms of the peace have not been released and there are parties on both sides who would likely prefer the war to continue. In any case, for now, investors are taking an optimistic view and betting that a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz will stop inflation from creeping any further into the economy, reducing the likelihood that the Federal Reserve and other major central banks have to raise interest rates this year. 

Warsh makes his debut as Fed chair. Speaking of central banks, Kevin Warsh, the new chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, will oversee his first meeting of the central bank’s governors this week. On Wednesday, the Fed is expected to hold rates steady, but more important will be Warsh’s presser — that’s where we’ll get a better sense of how he is looking at the economy and whether he is sympathetic to the calls of some powerful individuals (the current occupant of the White House, namely) to cut interest rates.

44% of Canadians are looking for a new job. A new Robert Half survey of more than 1,500 Canadian professionals found that 44% plan to hunt for a new gig in the next six months, way up from 33% earlier this year and just 26% a year ago. Millennials (53%), HR (57%), and tech workers (53%) are the most likely to bolt. Career advancement and feeling underpaid are the top reasons cited for looking for a new gig, while those sticking in their current roles say flexibility is what’s keeping them around.

Data shows that the decline in remote work is leveling off. Around a quarter of work days are still being done from home, around the same level as two years ago, according to new data from the U.S. Before the pandemic, that figure was just 7%, suggesting that businesses are sticking with some version of remote work arrangements. Most people who work from home are doing so as part of a hybrid arrangement. Only around 10% are fully remote. That lines up with a recent Statistics Canada finding that 33% of workers expected to work from home for at least some of the time over the next three months.

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