In between bites of crème brûlée at Chicago gastropub The Gage last week, ServiceNow Chief Transformation Officer Kelley Steven-Waiss asked a room full of CHROs a bold question: What if computer science degrees weren’t actually as valuable as everyone’s been claiming?
In this heavily AI-powered world, some would guffaw. I leaned in closer. What if, Steven-Waiss posed, it was actually those with communications degrees who would likely win out in the end? The soft people skills that comms majors learn—like conflict resolution and ability to influence, persuade, and inspire—are just going to increase in importance in the age of AI, she said at a Fortune dinner presented in partnership with ServiceNow.
It’s an interesting theory, and may make sense at a time where tech job postings remain 36% below pre-pandemic levels, with entry-level tech roles down 34%, according to a recent Indeed study.
And with some fearing that entry-level roles could decrease thanks to AI, it may be time to think of other options for recent grads. Steven-Waiss proposed a solution: A two-year, entry-level career program where new hires enter a “problem-solving pool.” She envisions companies hiring up to 100 early-in-career, digital natives every year that rotate around a company and figure out where their contributions and passions are highest.
“It’s like the new hustle those of us GenXer’s learned climbing the corporate ladder or doing the summer job. There’s going to be people that figure out, ‘God, I’m really good at engineering,’ or ‘I’m really good at inbound product management’ or ‘I’m really good at finance,’” she said. “It’s a problem-solving team with a mission and they will learn how to collaborate, and we will likely see innovative new solutions that existing teams wouldn’t have come up with.”
Steven-Waiss said this type of model would be a positive for the bottom line, too. Companies wouldn’t have to have specific jobs in each department to budget for. Everyone in the problem-solving pool would make the same salary, and finance departments would know exactly what the spend would be, she said.
“When you grow up in a function or a career path, you almost always wear that jersey. So in the case that they’re coming into this rotation, where there’s no set job, they’re wearing the jersey of the company,” Steven-Waiss said. “They’re wearing the jersey of the problem they’re actually working to solve, and they are going to learn so much about the dynamics, about how the company makes money.”
Kristin Stoller
Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media
kristin.stoller@fortune.com
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