2025 Hiring Predictions

Too much to read? Feel free to check it out on YouTube here.

Before we dig in, let’s remind ourselves that humans have an incredible track record of resilience. We can handle change. We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again.

Technology

AI fluency becomes basic requirement.

Embracing AI won’t be optional for the average office worker. This doesn’t mean we’ll all be machine learning engineers. But general comfort and understanding how to use AI, evaluate AI driven tools and follow AI compliance will become a basic requirement.

This is an incredible opportunity to create a competitive advantage given that Section School’s AI proficiency test found only 9% of respondents were practitioner to expert level. 47% were still AI novices and another 34% had just begun experimenting.

Shadow AI (AI being used by employees without employer guardrails) will likely cause some upsets resulting in more reactionary clarity and guidance from employers.

Leverage stays with employers but is very split by level. Rising demand for top performers and falling leverage for entry level to average workers.

You can keep up with leverage with me here in the Leverage Index. I see overall leverage living with employers but that level will have even more impact on this equation. Entry-level workers should be ready to compete hard and employers should be ready to still need to actively court exceptional performers.

Counterculture movements towards human first organizations and initiatives.

I love the way Greg Isenberg says that human first will be the “new organic”. There will be a certain premium, boutique feel to things that are still highly relationship driven. The critical piece here though is that just a human interaction isn’t enough. Your human interaction will need to be stellar. This isn’t about the old school call center with a script and a bad connection. This is about a sense of delivering both value and humanity.

Work Culture

Gen Beta is here (on Earth, still babies) and Gen Alpha start getting first jobs.

This isn’t quite a trend so much as a fun fact. But whew, time flies! Gen Z is about to get the reprieve they provided Millennials on rote “how to deal with young people” content.

Premiums for in-person work and events.

As strategy, attention and product become increasingly valuable, teams will spend more time colocated for that type of work. Is remote work dead? Of course not. But when employers hold the leverage, they’ll use it often to gather people. And employers will value people willing to show up. There are real collaboration upsides to this for teams who can pull it off without sacrificing flexibility and morale.

More pay per outcome.

AI tools are really expensive to run on a freemium model and plenty of startups have already started moving to a pay-per-use model over subscription. The next level of that is pay per outcome. For example, Sierra.ai uses outcome-based pricing, meaning customers pay based on the measurable safety improvements their AI-powered solutions deliver. Instead of a fixed fee, costs are tied to results like reduced accidents, compliance improvements, or operational efficiencies. This model aligns Sierra.ai’s incentives with customer success, ensuring value-driven investment.

This isn’t wildly new for the world of work. We just call it “commission only”.

Along the way, the business climate at large is more focused than ever on efficiency and outcomes (see: Meta and others willing to publicly call a layoff a reduction based on performance).

Do I think every job is going commission only? No.

But I think we’ll see more companies shifting significant elements of compensation into more performance-based measures.

Rises in purveyor of novelty jobs.

We’ve spent over a decade training our brains to be dopamine addicts scrolling for the next hit. Add more anxiety and boredom into the mix and you’ll find a sea of people ready to pay for entertainment. You can see signs of this in malls turned into escape room mini-golf meccas. This will happen at micro levels too. More goat yoga. More curated experiences.

Collective action ↑

This may or may not be full on union activity. Employees will continue to organize and push for change collectively. Think coordinated petitions, viral workplace movements, and internal pressure campaigns rather than official unionization efforts. Kicking the year off with another big tech petition from employees.

Consider that this gossip rag Us Weekly is reporting on Barstool salaries. That’s a signal of cultural enmeshment. Google employees are already petitioning for input on how layoffs will be conducted this year.

Will it work? In some cases yes and in some no but exec leaders need to be prepared to lead and communicate with groups rather than relying on historical hierarchical chains of communication.

Taste as the top skill.

When AI makes the content and sends the content and follows up on the content and reads the content… you get a lot of noise.

The ability to cut through noise and not just follow trends but activate them will be key in 2025. This is especially tough to both identify and teach as it’s so real yet subjective.

Growing divide between high and low performers

Bell curve widening indicating larger gaps between high and low performers.

As skill gaps widen, the most in demand skills are some of the hardest to teach:

• ability to navigate rapid change and ambiguity

• deep business context

• ability to both strategize and execute

• taste and judgment

People who embrace the “new” in their field could be 10 or 100x stronger than their former peers.

Declining trust between employees and employers.

Embellishing on a resume isn’t new. Neither is people faking their way through interviews. Who else in tech consulting remembers talking to someone while their eyes dart off screen? And AI opens up a whole new world of fully AI-generated resumes and screening.

A recent survey showed 29% of Gen Z or Millennials catfishing or ghosting an employer.

Employee vs. employer rhetoric on LinkedIn is starting to have the same bold allegiance and sweeping generalizations as politics. And we all know what trust is like there.

At the same time, candidates are tired and don’t want to be jumping through hoop after hoop. When an employer doesn’t trust --- employees respond in kind. Always.

Compliance

Pay transparency sticking around.

Over 25% of workers live somewhere with mandated pay transparency. And the other 75% are increasingly coming to expect it. As employers well know, this is complicated and staying compliant is increasingly tricky for nationally posted roles. But I don’t see it getting rolled back.

Not the old-school “pro-business” administration.

Elections tend to have us readying for either pro-union or pro-employer regulation along party lines. Pro-immigration or reductions.

So far on a rhetoric level, this administration is making both enormous changes (see: Executive Order 11246, originally signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, which had mandated affirmative action and prohibited employment discrimination by federal contractors) and siding with port workers and their unions. Within the GOP, heated debate has ensued over H1-Bs which allow U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in specialized occupations, typically requiring a bachelor's degree or higher in fields like technology, engineering, or finance.

We should be thinking along the lines of Populist expectations rather than what we might usually attribute to Republicans vs. Democrats.

Disclosures for AI in hiring.

U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) in collaboration with the Partnership on Employment & Accessible Technology (PEAT), released the "AI & Inclusive Hiring Framework." TBD if this DOL keeps these or changes them. At the state level, we’ll see more clarity around how and when AI can be used for hiring.

What did I miss?

You can see how I did in 2024 here and would love your ideas on what I’ve missed for 2025!