Job growth for job seekers without experience and AI implementation — new labour market trends

Trend towards inexperience

Employers began to pay more attention to young applicants — in 2024, the number of vacancies for candidates without experience increased by 28%, reaching 165,300. Such statistics were provided to Realnoe Vremya by the hh.ru press service.

The reason for the trend has been talked about for a long time — the reason was the shortage of personnel. So, according to the service, there are 3.6 resumes per vacancy in the republic, with a rate of at least 4.

“In this regard, employers are expanding the boundaries of hiring: they are considering younger or older candidates, people without experience or from other regions," the press service explained.

At the same time, the number of candidates without experience has not changed much: their share in the total volume of resumes over the past two months has amounted to 32%.

“As a rule, the number of applicants without work experience does not change much throughout the year," the analysts noted. “The growth may be observed due to seasonality, for example, in the summer, when schoolchildren or students enter the labour market in search of a part-time job.

At the same time, employers strive to create conditions for inexperienced candidates — the relevant vacancies indicate internal training, mentoring, the possibility of combining with studies and choosing a convenient schedule. The median salary for people without experience was 55,200 rubles.

“Due to that the shortage of personnel in the Russian labour market is a long-term trend, and the market has turned towards the applicant, employers are focusing on retaining staff, creating comfortable working conditions and training. In addition, they expand the boundaries of hiring (age, territory, work experience, or requirements for certain skills). Over the past three years, 41% of Russian employers have revised the requirements for the age of applicants in the direction of increasing it, and half of them are representatives of small and medium-sized businesses, analysts added.

New trends in the service also include the introduction of artificial intelligence into company processes. At the same time, it does not replace human resources, but speeds up processes by performing routine tasks.

“Some people are easier to teach from scratch”

A less obvious reason for hiring inexperienced employees was the activity of employers to train specialists within their organisations. This opinion was expressed by Yulia Gabutdinova, the director of Personal Рrofy personnel solutions centre, in a conversation with Realnoe Vremya. According to her, more than 70% of employers are ready to hire newcomers, of course, taking into account the specifics of their activities:

“There are employers who specifically hire people without experience due to the peculiarities of the labour market. This has long been practiced in areas such as sales, administration, office work, etc. But nowadays there are more such directions. For example, chain bakeries are happy to hire a “baker's assistant” to train and raise a specialist in their company, as well as chain stores, hotels, call centres, and utilities enterprises. In other words, it can be easier to teach an employee from scratch than to find an experienced specialist.

“I can also note that over the past 3 years, there have been more people working outside of specialised education. This may also be due to that young people enter educational institutions unknowingly, having not yet figured out who they want to work with, and possibly due to that the labour market has changed dramatically in recent years, Gabutdinova believes.

The interlocutor of the publication attributed increased attention to corporate culture to other trends:

“In the literature, this is called “human-centricity.” People are not just looking for a job, salary and career growth, but an important criterion for choosing is the meaning of the activity, the separation of goals and values of the company, and a deep interest in the work and its results. Employees began to appreciate partnership and human relations in the team more.

Also, according to Yulia Gabutdinova, employers are increasingly pointing to versatility as an important selection criterion: “This is confirmed by research from specialised companies. According to HeadHunter, the number of ads mentioning the multitasking requirement has almost tripled, by 181%.”

Increasing the number of students' resumes

Along with the number of vacancies for specialists without experience, the number of student resumes has also increased, Aigul Civikova, the head of the recruitment department at Yuvika, noted in a conversation with the publication.

“Firstly, the standard of living is increasing. Everyone wants to earn money, so they go to work earlier. Previously, students were not involved in specialized work, but were hired only as interns, but now they are also assigned complex professional responsibilities," she explained.

Secondly, demand generates supply. Accordingly, once employers are ready to hire students, they do not give up the opportunity, Chivikova believes.

“The shortage of personnel has turned the rules in the direction of applicants. This has led to the emergence of new trends. For example, there are a lot of offers for project work now, rather than hiring, because a specialist can work on several projects," the expert said.

The most common offers for project work are found in the IT field, law and administration. According to Chivikova, outsourcing is sometimes found in production at the stage of opening enterprises.

“As for artificial intelligence, the trend is only at its origins. I won't say that many companies have implemented it, we are just starting to study neural networks. I am sure that AI will be used more often in the future, but it will not replace humans," the recruiter summed up.