AI is taking jobs — here’s Coursera CEO's No. 1 tip for grads to stay competitive

With entry-level jobs declining arsenic employers proceed to deploy AI, Coursera's CEO has shared his apical tips for graduates to enactment competitory successful the occupation marketplace and basal retired successful interviews.

Greg Hart, erstwhile method advisor to Jeff Bezos astatine Amazon, became president and CEO of online learning level Coursera successful February 2025. He told CNBC Make It that successful the property of AI, it's important for young radical to prosecute further learning alongside a degree.

"The proposal that I springiness to my sons... is 1 of the champion things that you tin bash is to augment your assemblage grade with micro credentials specifically," helium said successful the interview.

Micro credentials are abbreviated courses that supply a certification for a circumstantial accomplishment oregon cognition and they instrumentality little clip to implicit than a accepted grade oregon diploma. It's go progressively important to supplement degrees with further certifications, arsenic postgraduate jobs are astatine hazard of being replaced by AI, Hart said.

Major firms person been laying disconnected unit this twelvemonth and person cited AI arsenic portion of the reason, from Amazon making 14,000 workers redundant arsenic it bets connected AI to Salesforce slashing 4,000 lawsuit enactment roles saying AI tin bash 40% of the tasks astatine the company.

Meanwhile, 62% of U.K. employers expect that junior, clerical, managerial and administrative roles will beryllium the astir apt beryllium mislaid to AI, according to a caller survey of 2,019 elder HR professionals and determination makers by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD.)

Additionally, the U.K.'s Institute for Student Employers recovered successful its yearly Student Recruitment Survey that 1.2 cardinal applications were submitted for conscionable 17,000 postgraduate roles, highlighting the aggravated contention and the constricted positions disposable to young people.

"They [micro credentials] show to employers that not lone did you get immoderate assemblage grade you're studying, but you augmented that with thing that is mostly overmuch much workforce focused," Coursera's Hart added.

As AI dominates, galore workers are pursuing upskilling opportunities with LinkedIn's Skills connected the Rise report, earlier this twelvemonth uncovering that AI literacy was the astir fashionable accomplishment that radical were adding to their profiles.

Hart explained that caller graduates going into occupation interviews should item their property and quality traits alongside their experience.

"Say you're a young idiosyncratic successful assemblage close now, you are mostly going to get hired into your archetypal occupation based chiefly connected the traits that they spot successful you," Hart said.

"They're going to beryllium assessing your mindset and your traits arsenic a quality being much than your experience, due to the fact that by definition, you truly don't person overmuch acquisition and truthful they're not truly hiring you for your experience, they're hiring you for your... property traits."

Hart outlined that "one of the astir important traits" that employers privation to prosecute for are "people who are proactive and hard moving and instrumentality initiative, who beryllium to beryllium ready, learners."

The champion mode to amusement these traits is having micro credentials alongside your degree, particularly ones that are tailored to your field. For example, Hart encouraged his son, who is simply a concern major, to instrumentality an further people connected AI for finance.

In fact, experts antecedently told CNBC Make It that workers who person been laid disconnected arsenic a effect of AI should train themselves up connected caller skills including expanding AI literacy via abbreviated courses, alternatively than pursuing a caller grade which would beryllium much costly and clip consuming.

Having the dedication to prosecute further learning demonstrates that you volition besides bring those traits to the job, they told CNBC.