AI冲击下的白领危机：你准备好职业重塑了吗？概要：随着 AI 技术的快速普及，白领就业市场正悄然发生结构性变化。ADP 数据显示，需要高等教育背景的岗位增长最慢，而零售、餐饮、制造业等“传统蓝领”岗位需求激增，薪资涨幅甚至是白领的三倍。Josh Bersin 提出，白领专业人士需正视现实，主动进行职业重塑。这不仅仅是“学习新技能”，更是一次心态与方向的双重更新。经验与判断依然宝贵，但如果不能掌握AI工具和新方法，将难以在职场中保持竞争力。在这个快速变化的时代，你是否也思考过如何在5年、10年后仍保持职业优势？欢迎留言分享你正在学习的新技能，或者你对“终身职业”概念的看法。
以下是正文，最后附录英文原文：
在过去六个月里，我们已经看到大量迹象表明白领经济正处于衰退之中。员工停止跳槽，工资增长放缓，而研究表明，拥有大学学历的员工如今是市场上最不被需要的群体。
请看 ADP 的最新研究，数据显示：那些需要高等学历（“高度准备”的岗位）现在是增长最慢的职业类别。
? 大学学历的需求正在下降
好消息是，这也让低薪、教育程度较低的群体迎来了更多机会。
餐饮、医疗、零售和制造行业的就业需求强劲，工资增长速度甚至是白领工作的三倍。从整体来看，这对美国经济是利好的，因为它有助于缩小收入差距、提升生活水平。
但对于那些在大学、研究生教育甚至博士学位上投入了大量金钱和时间的人来说，我们是否正在变成“未来被边缘化的劳动力”？不幸的是，答案是是的。
那么，我们（以及雇主）该怎么办？
简单地说，“赶快学会使用 AI”，对吧？研究显示，使用 AI 的软件工程师生产效率在几周内提高了 26%。对于市场营销、研究、出版、设计等专业人士来说也同样有效。
但这种转变需要时间。
一次令人震惊的拍摄经历
我最近在伯克利为一门在线课程拍摄视频，当我走进拍摄场地时，我惊讶地看到 6 名资深的视频/音频人员，一个摆满灯光、摄像机和音响设备的房间，还有一名制片人、剪辑师以及其他专业人员，他们大多是 40 到 50 岁之间。这一天的拍摄团队成本估计至少在 5 万美元以上。
而实际上，很多内容完全可以在一个灯光良好的家庭环境中，用一部 iPhone 和几只好麦克风就搞定了。请一位熟悉剪辑的 YouTube 博主，也能出不错的效果。虽然质量可能不同，但我几乎整整一个下午都在注视着一群“旧模式的工作者”。
老一代的职业失落感
我还看过一篇关于 Gen-X（40-50岁）职场人的职业困境的文章，一位资深广告人感叹道：
“我花了 20 年研究广告和品牌，而现在一个 20 岁的网红比我更懂营销！”
这太真实了，真的。
接受现实：我们必须适应变化
我们这些曾经的顾问、分析师、工程师和专业人士，如今正在经历 1970 到 80 年代制造业工人曾面临的焦虑。我们也必须学会适应。
以下是我个人的一些建议：
1️⃣ 放下偏见，承认需要重塑自我
我曾经不断为自己 1970 年代接受的人文学科教育辩护，那段经历确实美好且重要。它教会我“看待世界的角度”，但并不等同于“实用技能”。
此后的职业生涯，我不断“自我重塑”：
80年代学电脑和IT
90年代学数据、市场和分析
2000年代了解互联网、创业、领导力
最近十年，深入研究 HR、管理、领导力和 AI
每个十年，我都重新开始，而“谦逊”是最大的动力。说实话，我曾以为 AI 只是 LISP 编程和一些疯狂的 UC Berkeley 计算机科学家搞出来的东西。直到三年前我才开始重新学习，从 YouTube 视频、播客、文章中补课。
无论你是财务、市场、工程还是设计专业人士，都需要这样做。曾经用滑尺的你，得接受 HP 计算器，再接受电子表格，现在要接受 AI。不学习，你也会被取代。
这很难受，但你任何时候都可以重新学习。请接受这个现实。
并且要明白，“资历”可能并不重要。在这个时代，你可能得重新成为一个“学徒”。
2️⃣ 不要抛弃你的智慧与判断力
尽管技术在变，但你的经验、判断力、教育背景仍然很重要。
比如一位资深的视频制作人，他也可以像年轻人一样掌握 iPhone 和 AI 工具，但他的经验、审美、品牌意识、语言控制力，是新人难以比拟的。
AI 可以让每个财务部门都变得“自动化”，但最终真正盈利的公司，一定是那些更懂成本结构、盈利产品和商业模式的。这些能力不是工具教你的，而是智慧与判断的积累。
3️⃣ 尝试新事物，失败就放弃
技术快速变化，很多人会选择“观望”，等那个“最牛”的工具出现再去学。
但那通常是失败之路。
例如 Galileo 这样的系统，也许已经比你现在用的工具好 10 倍了。即使它未来可能失败，也值得尝试。
1980 年代 Lotus 1-2-3 是一项伟大发明，首次实现了表格、文档和演示的整合。但最终它也被淘汰了。
但那些第一时间学会 Lotus 的人，很快又掌握了下一代工具。一位我在 IBM 的朋友，就是 Lotus 的第一位系统工程师，后来成了 Yahoo 亚洲区总经理，最后还当上了风投合伙人。
如果他当时只顾担心 Lotus 会不会失败，也不会有后面的辉煌。
4️⃣ 投资你的激情、能量和生命力
接受职业终结是痛苦的。有时候让人焦虑、迷茫、甚至抑郁。
我也经历过，花了多年学习的知识，如今一提就被人白眼：“你还活在过去。”我自己也常常这么做，可能跟年龄有关。
解决方法是：重启你的个人能量。
我花很多时间和年轻的 HR 领导、创业者、家庭成员相处，保持活力，吸收新鲜观念。
保持身体健康（散步、早起、健身）也非常重要。这些让你有精力去“重启”。
我每个周六早上都会录播客，这既是总结，也是前瞻。这种反思与更新，是重塑的重要部分。
5️⃣ 接受不确定性
最后一点也是最重要的。
当你的工作没了、或你需要重新开始时，就像跳下悬崖——你不知道落地在哪里。
但这是可以接受的。
如果你愿意更新技能、接触新世界，总会有新机会出现。就像那些失去工厂岗位的蓝领工人，后来转行做木工、包工、教师等等。
如今我们这些“白领被冲击者”，可能无法像从前那样清晰地规划未来。
但我敢保证，新机会一定存在。只要你准备好，未来一定充满希望。
Over the last six months we’ve seen much evidence of a white-collar recession. Employees have stopped changing jobs, wage growth is slowing, and research shows that workers with college degrees are the least “in-demand” in the market.
Note this new research by ADP which shows that jobs requiring advanced degrees (“extensive preparation”) are now the slowest-growing part of the job market.
The positive of this is that lower-wage, less educated workers are seeing opportunities.
Demand for food service, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing workers is strong, and in fact their wages are growing at 3-times the growth of white-collar jobs. And this is positive for the US economy, since it reduces income inequality and raises standards of living.
But for those of us who invested heavily in college, graduate school, and other advanced degrees, are we becoming the new “dislocated workforce” of the future? Unfortunately the answer is yes.
What Should We (and Employers) Do?
Well the simple answer is “get your act together with AI,” right? Studies show that software engineers who use AI are 26% more productive in weeks, and the same is true for those of us in marketing, research, publishing, and design.
But this shift takes time.
I recently spent an afternoon doing a video-shoot for an online course here in Berkeley, and when I arrived at the location I was astounded to see 6 senior video/audio people, an entire room of lighting, cameras, and audio equipment, and a producer, editor, and other professionals, each of whom were in their 40s or 50s. This massive team of video producers was probably costing the vendor $50,000 or more for the day.
I bet most of this could have been done in a nicely lighted home with an iPhone and some good microphones and a YouTube influencer who knows video editing. I’m not saying the quality would be the same, but I was literally staring at “legacy work” for hours as I sat painstakingly through the interview.
I recently read an article about the career frustrations of Gen-X workers (now in their 40s and 50s) and I had to smile. One of the professionals lamented “I spent 20 years learning about advertising and branding and now a 20-year old Influencer knows more about marketing than me!”
So true, so true.
Let me not belabor the issue, we just have to accept that things have changed. We, as the privileged consultants, analysts, engineers, and professionals in the world, face the same frightening fate which manufacturing workers felt in the 1970s and 1980s. And we have to learn to adapt.
Let me give you my advice.
1/ Let go of your bias and admit you have to reinvent yourself.
I spent a lot of my life cost-justifying the “liberal arts education” I received in the 1970s, and it was a wonderful and important experience. And I continue to maintain that learning about history, science, and philosophy is valuable over time. But what it taught me was “perspective,” not skills. Yes, I learned to read and write and think, but most of my career since has been about reinventing myself regularly.
In the 1980s I learned about computers and IT; in the 1990s I learned about data, marketing, and analytics; in the 2000s I learned about the internet, entrepreneurship, and leadership; and in the ensuing decades I’ve learned about HR, leadership, management, and now AI.
Every decade you have to reinvent yourself, and in every situation your humility is what drives you. Honestly I thought AI was all about LISP programming and the crazy UC Berkeley computer scientists I worked with until three years ago. I woke up like everyone else and “relearned” what I needed to know, watching YouTubes, reading, and listening to podcasts.
If you’re a finance person, marketing professional, engineer, or other white collar worker, you must do the same. Just because you found your slide-rule fun and trendy to use in the 1980s, you had to shift to the HP calculator, spreadsheet, and now AI to stay ahead. If you fail to reinvent, you too can find yourself “thrown aside” for a younger replacement.
This is a humbling experience, but you can learn at any age. Just accept that the world has changed.
And let me add this. Your “seniority” and “experience” may not really matter. In a world of career reinvention, you may have to be a bit of an apprentice again.
2/ Don’t let go of your wisdom, judgement, and maturity.
Despite the amazing skills of some, your experience, judgement, and education does matter. While you learn new tools and skills, it’s ok to fall back on everything you’ve learned before. And that means you, as a white-collar professional, are bigger and more than your “skills.”
Consider the videographer, for example. He or she may learn to use AI and the iPhone like a teenager, but they bring their experience with mood, branding, tone, and language. Your experience as a finance professional, an engineer, a designer, or a leader still matters.
Technical skills are actually the easiest to obtain – it’s the judgement, wisdom, and experience that create value.
Imagine, for example, if every finance department is fully “AI-enabled.” That doesn’t mean every company in an industry will be as profitable – it will be the companies that deeply understand their cost structure, their profitable products, and their business models that outperform. That stuff comes from wisdom, judgement, and experience.
3/ Try new things and throw them away if they fail.
When technology changes quickly there’s a tendency to “wait.” I’ll just wait until the world’s leading “design tool” or “finance tool” comes along, and then I’ll jump in and reskill myself.
Sorry, that’s a recipe for failure. New systems (like Galileo, for example), may be 10 times better than the ones you’ve used before, even though some may fail.
Lotus 1-2-3 was a miraculous invention in the 1980s and it taught us how to integrate spreadsheets, documents, and presentations. (Believe it or not, nobody even considered such integration in the 1980s.) But Lotus went the way of the dinosaur, and those skills were stranded.
The people who jumped into Lotus and learned how to use it quickly migrated to a new generation because they had been playing around. One of my friends at IBM in the 1980s left the mother ship to join Lotus as their very first systems engineer. Yes, he eventually left but later that he became the general manager of Yahoo Asia and then a successful venture capitalist.
If he had worried about Lotus’s future (it was a small company at the time), he never would have succeeded as he did.
I play with lots of new tools all the time, often just to see what’s going on in my domain. This is why I talk with almost every HR tech vendor that approaches us.
4/ Invest in your own passions, energy, and longevity.
It’s not easy to face the demise of your career. It’s painful, frightening, and sometimes depressing.
I spent so many years learning about my old stuff and when I bring it up people roll their eyes and think “this guy is living in the past.” I know I still do it and maybe it’s because of my age.
The solution is to reinvigorate your energy: personal and professional. I spend a lot of time with young HR leaders, young entrepreneurs, and my own young family members. It helps me stay current and excited about the future, because many of the things they do are amazing and unexpected.
Take care of your physical health (go for walks, get up early, go to the gym). This gives you the energy to “reinvent.” I spend every Saturday morning working on my podcasts, largely as a way to “think ahead” as well as summarize the week. These periods of personal reflection and exercise are vital as you reinvent yourself.
This morning I was watching a video of a job fair in Washington DC, watching dozens of middle-aged professionals who had been “DOGE’d” out there looking for work. One woman, a senior research professional in the FDA, was lamenting her need to reinvent her career at the middle of her life. I could see the sadness and fear in her eyes.
She made the comment, “I spent a few days sitting on the couch wondering how I could ever get up again,” but then went to a job fair and suddenly realized there was a huge market of new opportunities. The reporter asked her how she felt, and I could see her eyes flash as she realized “maybe this reinvention will be good for me.”
5/ Uncertainty is ok.
And that leads me to the final point. When your job is gone or you need to reinvent, it’s like jumping off a cliff. You don’t know where you’ll land.
Well that’s perfectly ok. In most cases if you build your skills and reach out into the new world, you will find something new that you never expected. Many blue collar workers who lost factory jobs became carpenters, contractors, teachers, or other careers. We, as the white collar disrupted, may not see the future as clearly as we have in the past.
I can guarantee, however, that new opportunities do await. Just strap in for a ride and positive things will happen ahead.
Additional Information
Will Chatbots Take Over HR Tech? Paradox Sets The Pace.在快速发展的人力资源技术领域，Paradox.ai 已成为领跑者，其先进的对话式人工智能平台彻底改变了招聘流程。通过利用自然语言处理和人工智能，Paradox.ai 提供了一个全面的解决方案，涵盖了从最初的职位申请到入职的整个招聘过程。该平台不仅简化了筛选和面试安排等繁琐流程，还提升了应聘者的整体体验，显著改善了招聘时间和招聘质量指标。
Paradox.ai 由亚伦-马托斯（Aaron Matos）于 2016 年创立，目前为联合利华、CVS Health 和通用汽车等大客户提供服务，实现了 90% 以上的招聘流程自动化。
Paradox.ai 凭借其强大的集成能力和大幅缩短招聘时间、降低招聘成本的能力，在人力资源技术领域充分体现了对话式人工智能的变革力量。
Chatbots used to be tinker-toys. You type, try to get help, but usually result in “please call support.” Well all this has changed.
Thanks to advanced NLP (natural language processing) and AI (retrieval-augmented generation) chatbots are entire applications. They can answer complex questions, search databases, and invoke transactions on your behalf.
Pretty soon we’ll be able to ask our phones “please find me a flight to Los Angeles next Tuesday morning” and the system will check your location and calendar, look at flights, and book you a seat.
Where is this going in HR? Well the leader in this space is Paradox.ai, a company that pioneered the application of conversational AI in recruiting. And their system “defines the category.”
Let me explain.
Recruiting Is The Perfect Market For Conversational AI
Recruiting is a goldmine for automation. When you post a job, applicants want to ask many predictable things: “How much does it pay?” “What are the hours?” or “What uniform do I need” or “What are the benefits?”
The recruiter, a person devoted to filling positions, has to answer all these questions and more. They have to screen candidates, schedule interviews, check for qualifications, and look at credentials, experience, and more. It’s time-consuming, error-prone, and filled with wasted time. (That’s why talent acquisition teams have many “scheduler” and admins.)
The average “time to hire” is over 45 days and often the process goes on for months. And throughout the experience the job seeker is left wondering “when will they call back” or “what else do I need to know?”
(CEOs cite hiring as the third most time-wasting process in companies, following emails and meetings, estimated at “40% wasted time.”)
Paradox uses Conversational AI to solve this problem. And because this is a “narrow but deep” space, the system does many things we can learn from in all our AI efforts.
Paradox was founded by Aaron Matos in 2016. Aaron’s vision was to transform the candidate experience, revolutionizing the way candidates apply to jobs. Today Paradox has become a complete Conversational AI Recruitment Platform (chat to apply, scheduling, candidate support, ATS, assessments, onboarding, career site, and more), serving clients like Unilever, CVS Health, Pfizer, L’Oreal, Nestle, McDonald’s FedEx, Compass Group, Disney, and General Motors.
The platform automates tasks such as screening for requirements, interview scheduling, reminders, offers, and new hire onboarding. And because it’s so easy to use, it helps companies radically improves time-to-hire and quality of hire. Based on my conversations with clients, Paradox can automate more than 90% of the end-to-end hiring process, saving hiring managers hours every week and increasing candidate conversion by more than 10 times.
But this innovation did not happen overnight. As you know, going to a candidate website and looking for a job is a frustrating process. There are often hundreds of jobs listed, a complex scrolling website and very hard to even determine what job to apply for.
You might argue that the website paradigm for job applications was never really a good idea in the first place. People don’t want to browse for jobs: they want to apply for a job that’s best for them. So the first thing Paradox did was create an easy to use assistant (Olivia) so candidates could ask questions and schedule interviews. And this meant that Paradox had to build integrations with every ATS and personal email and calendar tools out there.
Then, as companies started to use Paradox for scheduling, the company added more. Today Olivia, the chatbot, can integrate with background check vendors, schedule interviews, deliver assessments (Paradox acquired a conversational assessment Traitify designed for this), and function as an ATS … all from a mobile phone. In many ways Paradox can be “the integration platform” for candidates and recruiters, stitching together the messy systems behind the scenes.
This turned into a massive opportunity. Just as the Google Assistant or Siri hopes to be our single contact with the internet, Paradox partners with systems of record like Workday, SAP, and Oracle to bring conversational AI to any company. The company’s revenues have grown 11 times in the last four years, and are now nearly doubling each year.
For customers Paradox has been amazing. As the candidate pipeline speeds up (by an order of magnitude), clients get higher quality candidates with dramatically reduced staff. (Staffing administrators can almost go away.)
Consider high-volume hiring companies. These businesses (McDonald’s, Compass Group, Neighborly, FedEx, Disney) hire service-related workers on a regular basis. Their revenue is dependent on having enough people. With Paradox they can set up a “continuous recruitment process,” one that even hires people the same day they apply.
Paradox has become essential to these companies growth, often paying for itself in less than a year (through reduced hiring staff, reduced spend on job ads, and reduced turnover.)
Today, as Paradox built out its ATS, customers can rely on the platform to integrate front end tool (job portals and candidate support) to back end tools scheduling, ATS, onboarding) most of which are legacy. One of our clients has 27 recruiting tools and they anticipate replacing more than half of them with a platform like Paradox.
What about higher level white collar roles? Paradox works here too. General Motors uses Paradox along with Workday (ATS), (branded Evie) to redesign the process.
Interview Scheduling: Evie automates scheduling of phone screens and interviews between recruiters, candidates, and internal teams. This has reduced the time taken for interview scheduling from an average of five days to 29 minutes.
Candidate Experience: Evie interacts with candidates from the moment they land on GM’s career site until the completion of their interview. Candidates appreciate the immediate communication from Evie after they apply or complete an interview, and enjoy the autonomy to select and change interview times.
Efficiency and Cost Savings: The automation of interview scheduling has led to a major reduction in the cost of external contractors for coordination.
Career Site Interaction: Evie sits on GM’s career site, answering questions from potential candidates about jobs, benefits, and company culture. This interaction enhances the candidate’s experience and provides them with immediate responses to their queries.
Where Is Paradox Going
The company is perfectly positioned to continue its growth as companies look for AI solutions to improve the productivity and effectiveness of recruiting. And demand is high: the 2024 PwC CEO survey found that recruiting was considered the #3 “most bureaucratic process” by CEOs (following email and meetings).
The impact on recruiters? All positive. Clients tell us they can redeploy hiring staff to help recruiters focus on the most important part of their job: talking with candidates.
But there’s a much bigger story. When a job candidate is handled efficiently and effectively the process becomes a brand-builder for the candidate, improving quality of hire. Ambitious job seekers will not put up with (or wait for) a messy, confusing hiring process. So not only is the process faster and more efficient, the quality of hire goes up.
Companies are desperately looking for AI solutions that work. As Paradox has proven, when you focus deeply on the problem, conversational AI can be transformational.
Listen to my conversation with Adam Godson (CEO) and you’ll hear the details. This is where the HR Tech market is going.
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