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Lila Ibrahim on degrees and AI hiring

What employers want from a new graduate is shifting, and Lila Ibrahim's take as Google DeepMind's chief AI readiness officer puts the degree in a smaller frame: by itself, it's losing its pull with hiring managers. What the company looks for more and more is evidence that someone kept learning after the formal schooling stopped. "One credential will tell me what you've learned, but multiple credentials tell me that you have a learning mindset." The logic behind it: courses at universities can't keep pace with tech, so the material someone absorbed years back may count for less than their capacity to pick up something new going forward. Ibrahim also flags intelligent questioning as a skill on the rise. "Getting answers is super cheap these days, but actually knowing how to ask really good questions is getting harder and harder." In concrete terms, a graduate with self-taught skills, side projects and independent thinking may sit ahead of one who leans only on academic qualifications. My read: AI is turning hiring into something closer to meritocracy, where what you can actually do carries more weight than a degree that's getting easier to obtain. That may offend DEI ideologues. Source: Business Insider / Writer: Mhedi

1h

Jolyon@jolyon

Follow

Lila Ibrahim on degrees and AI hiring

What employers want from a new graduate is shifting, and Lila Ibrahim's take as Google DeepMind's chief AI readiness officer puts the degree in a smaller frame: by itself, it's losing its pull with hiring managers. What the company looks for more and more is evidence that someone kept learning after the formal schooling stopped. "One credential will tell me what you've learned, but multiple credentials tell me that you have a learning mindset." The logic behind it: courses at universities can't keep pace with tech, so the material someone absorbed years back may count for less than their capacity to pick up something new going forward. Ibrahim also flags intelligent questioning as a skill on the rise. "Getting answers is super cheap these days, but actually knowing how to ask really good questions is getting harder and harder." In concrete terms, a graduate with self-taught skills, side projects and independent thinking may sit ahead of one who leans only on academic qualifications. My read: AI is turning hiring into something closer to meritocracy, where what you can actually do carries more weight than a degree that's getting easier to obtain. That may offend DEI ideologues. Source: Business Insider / Writer: Mhedi

1h