Ep. 13 | What’s Changing in the World of Work with Pei Ying Chua

The year hasn’t settled into a clear pattern. Growth is showing up in parts of Asia, but hiring still feels cautious. Job ads are rising, competition is tight, and AI is moving faster than most organisations can keep up with.

In this episode, Rich sits down with LinkedIn’s APAC Head Economist, Pei Ying Chua, to unpack what’s changing beneath the headlines. From the move toward skills over job titles, to how AI is reshaping roles in uneven ways, they explore what’s really happening in the job market.

It’s a grounded conversation about work, careers, and the decisions leaders and professionals need to make as things continue to shift.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hey everyone, welcome back to Work Right with Glitch, the show where we get into the honest unfiltered side of what it really takes to make work and well work. I'm Richard Farmer, your host and agent management director of C. Now, it feels like we've jumped into the year pretty fast, and it's been a bit unpredictable so far. There's a lot going on. Growth in some places, caution in others, and no one's quite sure where it's all heading yet. So, what does all this mean for our jobs and where work is moving next? Joining me today is Pei Ying Chua, APAC head economist at LinkedIn. We're going to talk about what she's seen so far in 2026, what's happening in the job market, what's changing, and what it might mean for leaders and professionals. Pei Ying, great to have you on the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Thank you. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Fantastic. And it's really good to have you. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while. So I always like to start. I mean, obviously, LinkedIn, what an amazing brand and business. And you probably have the biggest data set or probably one of the most current data sets in the world from an Asia lens. What's surprising you from the data that's currently coming in today?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

I think one thing that I've really noticed picking up a lot is a shift towards skills rather than job titles.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Yeah. So what we are starting to see on the platform is that recruiters are looking more for candidates with the right skills and not just the past job titles. And at the same time, candidates themselves are also starting to showcase skills more. And towards how do I build a good a skill a portfolio of skills rather than a portfolio of previous jobs or a portfolio of previous degrees. And to me, I think that signals a big shift in the way we think about the labor market.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Yeah. No, and that's actually especially important right now because we see a lot of rapid change going on in the types of skills that are needed. We see a lot of transformations of jobs currently because of new technologies that are being adopted. So with all of this in mind, I think skills really are the currency of the future workforce.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Right. So, and you've mentioned this before in other articles you've done, which I'm an avid reader of, by the way. And you're saying that skills require the jobs, they're changing rapidly. So, do you think we are witnessing the slow death of the traditional career path? Is it is it going to be a new way of hiring people that we'll see?

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Yeah, I think increasingly we are already, we've we've already started to see, you know, careers over the years, over the decades, they've gotten a lot less linear than they used to be. In the previous, you know, previously careers were very, uh, I guess, very straight. You went to school, you got a job, you got promoted, you continued working, maybe you changed, changed roles, you continued climbing the same ladder. But what we see now is that career paths are no longer so linear. They are they are increasingly dynamic, they're increasingly uh curvy. You know, you go to school, you get a job, you might take a break, you might go back to school, you might pivot to a different industry, maybe start a side hustle, and and all of those things that come in with the changing, with the changing mindset of what a career is or what what work is really?

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Yeah. I mean, we we're definitely seeing that change from a CXC lens as well, like the rise of portfolio clears or fractional work. We've had some fractional executives on there. And for being a recruiter myself, you said searching job titles. But now, is it that the job titles are all so broad that they don't actually say what the person's doing? Is that why you think people are looking at the skills? Or is it just that companies just need that specific skill set they're coming into?

SPEAKER_01 3:58

So I think it's just the pace of change that's going on. So, for example, when when we look at LinkedIn's data, we find that uh about 20% of jobs that are being hired for in Asia Pacific right now. Uh, these job titles actually did not exist in 2000.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Really?

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Correct. So 20% of people being hired today, they're going to jobs that didn't exist in 2000. Jobs like content creator, digital marketing specialist, social media manager, data scientists, even. These are roles that didn't exist. And so I think that's that's really what's driving the change because fundamentally is going on so quickly. And therefore, you know, you you can't just look at a title anymore because titles change, but skills, you know, they stay, uh, they stay with a person.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Yeah, yes, they do. So does this mean, and this is probably going a bit tangible, but maybe just dig deeper on this, is also how people present themselves on LinkedIn as a platform needs to change in terms of do they need to highlight these skills to be noticed? Or is it the the way that a company looks at how they want to bring in their talent needs to change as well?

SPEAKER_01 5:15

All of that needs to change. So, you know, individuals, uh, we we see individuals starting to signal skills more and more on the platform. Also, not just skills, but starting to signal uh experiences other than work, uh volunteer experiences, side projects, and like you know, that we see people posting more and more about their interests, what they do outside of work, maybe what what new skill they have learned or what new course they've taken. We see all of it coming in.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Yeah, I've definitely seen a rise in that myself. I mean, for me, when I was doing executive search, we've obviously worked with senior execs where I said what you actually need to present is not just a CV, but a portfolio of what you've done. People want to know about the person, the you, right? So all how we kind of want to integrate with different people. So, what have you done outside of work, your career path, all these different things? So I think that's that's a clear thing. So if you're looking at APAC as a whole at the moment, and obviously there's a lot of fluctuation in in the world, right? And obviously, as an economist, you know, you must be looking at going, you're seeing the oil prices going up, you see, you know, different things happening. So from an Asia lens, where do you think you know we're gonna be going for Q2, maybe Q3 and beyond? Where do you see the kind of trends happening?

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Well, that's uh that's a very big question because there's so many, so many different things that could happen. Uh sorry, but I wanted to ask with one one thing, one thing that the past couple of years has really taught us is that you know, there is no, I think there is no like certainty. There's no you know, things change and things can change and things can change very, very fast. So for me, I think the biggest lesson really is about agility. It is about being willing to adapt as things change. And from a career perspective, quite often, that that takes on a skills lens. That means being willing to learn new skills when needed, relearn new skills and unlearn things that might not be relevant anymore.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Yeah, great advice. So the the the certainty is uncertainty and be agile as much as we can, right, in the in the current market. And just some advice, because we have a lot of leaders that listen to the show. Like it, I mean, obviously you've got your data set at LinkedIn, but for for leaders, how do they stay stay on top of the information? Because we see so many headlines today. And if you react to the headline, what would your be advice of where they could be finding the right data? Where can they make those informed decisions?

SPEAKER_01 7:55

So I think it's I mean, definitely it's always important to you know have different sources of information. And that's not just that that's not just you know, look reading different so part of it is is reading different like newspapers, for example, or different publications. Uh and it's also having diverse networks. Because a lot of times, you know, we we get information from the people that we interact with. And that's why I think networks are very powerful. Because when you have a diverse network, you know, a network that gives you perspectives from different different parts, then that's where you can piece things together and start to see uh the bigger picture.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Yeah, I agree. I think networking is all important, especially when you start talking to people from different sectors, because they have different leverages at the moment. Obviously, oil and gas sector, I've got friends working it, they're talking about the price of ore, how ships are being moved, all these things, but they all have a knock-on effect. There's also like a domino effect about is how we go in. So I think that it is really interesting. And uh staying on touch of different news forms, don't just read one, is always a key piece. Um, but I always say to like if you are a recruitment company, you are a business, speak to the candidates, speak to the clients, find out what they're doing, what's different and what's new. So if you just take a step back and look at the actual APAC job market, um, and you know what things are actually happening? You've mentioned that people are looking now at skills rather than job titles, which is a massive shift. We are seeing an uptick in like jobs being posted, um, if you look at a lot of the data, but the market still seems quite flat at the moment. So, is there any areas that you feel what are making organizations hesitate? Is it that they're not understanding what skills they need? Is it that they're looking at it from a different lens?

SPEAKER_01 9:47

I think you know, whenever things change, it takes time for organizations to adapt and figure out how they change their strategies accordingly. So I think that's that's where we are now. We're in this transition phase. We're in this transition phase of uh jobs being transformed and jobs being changed. So organizations need to adapt accordingly. They need to rethink what their business is gonna be like. They need to rethink how they're gonna train their workforce. They need to rethink how they're gonna deploy their workforce. And all of these kind of strategizing, it takes time. So what we're seeing now, I think, is a lag between the adoption and the adoption of new technologies, understanding what these technologies can do, understanding how do I adapt the business around this. And therefore, what do I do then in terms of in terms of uh the hiring front? Who do I hire for? What skills do I need? So I think we're at that transition point right now.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Yeah, we're in that kind of major transition. What we've seen, and it'd be good to get your insight, it's the first time that I've seen an open shift towards contingent workforce in Asia. And we're like look at companies looking more to contractors to actually solve the situation. Is that something that you've you've seen as well from your data and so forth in terms of the rise in in contracting or contingent or fractional work?

SPEAKER_01 11:18

No, so we we haven't we haven't studied that specifically, but what I what I have seen really is a rise in in skills-based hiring, you know, people looking for candidates based on skills and not just based on past job titles. Because I think that's that's where the shift really is when you're looking for workers now. You need to find someone who's got the right skills for the job that you need.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

Yeah. And you mentioned the the skills like content creator and so forth that came through. But is the is the skills that have come in the last like 12 months that is completely new? Is there job titles that no one knows about? I mean, obviously you've got prompt engineers and a few different things, but is you have you seen any new ones that are coming up within the LinkedIn platform?

SPEAKER_01 12:05

I don't know if you'd call them new. But what we've actually found is that with the emergence of AI technology, we see that a lot of new, a large number of new jobs have actually been created. So jobs like AI engineer, data annotation, uh forward deployment uh engineers, a lot of these include the increasing number of hires that are happening into these roles because of the, because of, because of the uh adoption of AI.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

To me, what's actually most interesting when I think about, when I think about this like whole AI space and AI skills, what we've done is we've split uh AI skills into two broad categories. One is AI engineering and the other is AI literacy. So AI engineering skills are the technical, are the technical skills needed to build the tools of the AI tools. And these include skills like uh large learning modeling, uh include skills like machine learning and algorithm happing. So those are the technical skills. And what we have found is less than one to two percent of the workforce are actually having these skills. So less than one to two percent of the workforce are AI technical engineering skills. Right. And that is to be expected because AI engineering in and of itself is a niche area. It's important, but it's just a very small part of the workforce. What we see going on in uh going going into the future is the rise of AI literacy. And we've we've already seen AI literacy as a skill set increase in prevalence like seven, 60 to 70 percent over the years. And that tells us that you know it's becoming more important not to know the specific AI engineering skills, but more so of knowing how to apply AI tools, how to use AI tools in a way that's responsible, in a way that's effective, and in a way that you know brings out the best of human judgment and discernment.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

I think that's really good insight. I think the AI literacy, I think we've all started using from Chat GPT to arrange your holiday to how you use it in your you know your day-to-day, but also how you can adopt it into your business, which is you know, I suppose the literacy part if you're using between co-pilots, you're using you know chat GPT. One of the things we've seen is many companies talk about AI. I haven't seen, and we speak to companies every day, companies that have really adopted it to either A, save a large amount of money, or B to create a lot of money. It's more about they've adopted it to either kind of ease a certain burden or skill set or to ease some kind of administration component. How we've adopted it yet is really kind of key. Um, I think um, and how it will be adopted to expand roles. I believe it should be a tool um for people not to take roles, but do you see, you know, from from your lens as an economist, is there gonna be roles that will disappear because or are gonna be the most impacted because of the AI trends that you're seeing coming into probably into leaving LinkedIn because you'll see certain roles not advertised as much anymore or they're gonna be changed. Have you seen any of those clear, clear areas?

SPEAKER_01 15:32

So what we did, what we we did an analysis where we looked at every skill and we classified it as a skill that's either replicable by AI or a skill that's complementary to AI, meaning you know, if you have this skill, it's it's a good fit to use together with AI. And then we took every job and we looked at what skills were needed for every job.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Yeah. And what we found actually is that while there's definitely a spectrum, right? Some jobs will have a larger proportion of uh AI replicable skills and smaller proportion of complementary, and some jobs will have the other, the the vice versa flip side. But what we found was that there wasn't a single job that was fully comprised of only AI replicable skills.

unknown 16:21

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

So that was a very, very key finding. Because what that tells us is like there is no single job that is only composed of skills that can be done fully by AI. So yeah, parts can be done, but not the entire job. An implication of where I see this going, therefore, is that jobs themselves will the nature of the jobs will change. And maybe as the nature of the job changed, the name of the job, the title of the job may change to better reflect what the job is. But the job itself will not completely disappear. It will evolve.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

That must have been a big study. Did you do that globally for LinkedIn or was it just for Asia? It was a global study.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

It was a global study. This was a global study.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Yeah, I would agree with that. I think what it should do is a lot of AI is is alleviate some of the manual tasks that we do, but to focus on more strategic thinking and more ability to do other parts of the role.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

If we in the report, we've we published a list of skills that are AI complementary. And one thing that's very notable about these skills is that at the heart of them, a lot of them are very human-centric. So skills, uh, so examples of these skills include uh leadership, empathy, uh problem solving, judgment, creativity. No, these are these are skills that are very uniquely human. And they are also things that are not as easy to be replicable by an AI because it's uh it requires context and it requires like connecting the dots between between different threads.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Yeah. Yeah. I I totally agree with that. I think that's the the piece is like we can talk about AI, but it still has to be done, it still has to be implemented, it still has to structure around it, it still needs guardrails as well. So as you mentioned, like the roles that are coming out today, like I've I've got three small children, and you're like, well, what will the world be like when they're older? What what career path should they take? Right. Um, and I I suppose you probably get asked a lot of advice by parents and people saying, Oh, what what what should people be doing these days for their future career? Do you have any answers for them? Or do you often just say, I don't know?

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Yeah, I mean, I like I mean, I I became a I I before I became an economist, I was a data scientist. Okay. So if you had asked me or you asked my parents, asked if if someone had asked this question in the past, right? I'd be like, if you asked it before 2000, my job didn't exist before 2000. It didn't exist before 2000. So really there is no way, you know, no, no one has this, no one's got the perfect crystal ball of what's going to happen. What we what we can do is see where trends are going and understand, you know, where how to teach the next generation to to be resilient and to adapt to the changes that are coming.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Yeah, yeah, definitely that. I think resilience is one, especially for younger generations, but also to look at, you know, there's definitely a rise of younger people, younger generation being more entrepreneurial, wanting not to take the standard career path, right? Of there's also so many different career paths now that didn't exist. I mean, there's professional podcast hosts, there's all these different things out there, right, that you can create. Um, I mean, you mentioned the crystal ball and no one has that, but um, you know, the the the podcast is a lot about also leadership and areas to look at. So if you're looking at at a leadership team at the moment, um, and you mentioned kind of looking forward and they're planning for the rest of the year, what would what would what would you, or maybe you've already done this for the LinkedIn teams, to think, okay, what should they you encourage them to be rethinking about their talent for work, but also maybe looking at their strategy. What would you be advice would you be giving them?

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Yeah, I think it's increasingly, increasingly important for leadership to recognize that that uh HR isn't just about hiring anymore. It's also about skilling. It's also about internal mobility and internal training. And the best, um, I think the best advice I can probably give is that a lot of the AI complementary skills that we see, I can mention, they are very human-centric in nature. And what that also means is that they take time to build. You can't just sit through a three-day course and expect to have learn, learn everything about leadership because that's that's not how leadership is learned. Leadership is learned through experience. And therefore, I think the the best advice I can give is for uh is for company leaders to think about how do I groom the next generation? How do I give them the experiences that are needed so that they can learn these important skills that take time to build? How do I design work, uh, internal mobility opportunities, program rotations, upskilling courses, project work. How do I ensure all of that is embedded into the way I train and encourage and grow my workforce?

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Yeah, I think that's that is key. Because it's you're not going to be able to bring some of this talent. Sorry, not the talent, but the skills into Business in time. So you're going to have to build it yourself. You're going to have to look at people. And as you mentioned, you went from data scientists to economists. You know, maybe someone goes from technology into being, you know, head of AI, right? And really understanding that and having that passion. I also think there's a real piece here for reverse mentoring as well, because some of the senior leaders or people that are a bit older, like myself, sometimes will need some ideas coming from the younger generations to go, this is how you do this, this is how it's viewed, this is what it's seen. So I think that can also be critical as well. Um, and and I suppose we know if you you your businesses set the strategy, they're looking forward of what what they're looking at. From a more business lens or from an APAC lens, what what's your thoughts on the on the future for APAC in terms of you know trends and economic trends? Are we going the right way? Um is is is is it is Asia where we should be at the moment? Is it is is this, you know, can you see a bright future in terms of growth currently?

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Yeah, absolutely. I think Asia is the fastest growing region in the world. We have a large growth in terms of GDT. We also have a large growth in terms of working age population. And all of those is going to drive uh growth of the region. On top of that, there's also a high level of digital literacy. Increasingly, increasingly established infrastructure. I really think if you're looking for pockets of growth in the world, Asia is it, because Asia is growing in terms of productivity and growing in terms of uh of people, is that how growing in terms of business opportunity?

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Yeah, yeah. We've definitely seen that. Um we've seen up so in our business where we've seen, you know, not to just pinpoint countries, but we've definitely seen more interest because from our lens, we see you know businesses from the US, Australia, uh, Europe coming into Asia and the countries that they're looking at. And that kind of seen Philippines as it keeps coming up from a growth perspective in terms of skill sets as well. The technology skill sets have grown, also engineering. Um, we've seen as being the location for a lot of those GCCs or outsourced areas from North Asia, um, but also Mia. Um, but then also India is a self-perpetuating economy now. We're seeing deals done inside India for India and so forth. And and Singapore, we still see some growth, but it's been kind of a bit flat. But it'd be great to see you know the investment coming back in from like kind of um uh businesses. But from the LinkedIn lens, have you seen any rise in terms of what I I think we've we've not been seeing is that kind of start-up, um, the the businesses, high-quality growth businesses coming into Asia and growing at that scale, or even local ones, like you've seen the Uginal corns like Grab and so forth. Has um LinkedIn, because you obviously see kind of trends and hiring trends, is there is there an influx of of startups or you know, private equity back businesses growth, or are you seeing larger businesses kind of doing any kind of um kind of purchases, or is it a sector that's growing faster than the other sectors? Is there anything there paying that you've seen from a trend perspective?

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Yeah, so we studied um expansion of companies uh into countries outside of their HQ. And one of the things we found was that there is, you know, the rate of expansion into Asia is again much higher than the rest of the world. And I think that's just because businesses recognize that that there is a lot of growth, uh, both in terms of business opportunity, but also in terms of the number of consumers that are on the ground. So they are they are expanding into Asian markets in order to expand the market the number the people that they that they sell to, that they that they can do business with. So we see that. And when it comes to uh expansion trends, I think one very interesting thing I saw was that although expansion into Singapore hasn't been hasn't been as rapid, hiring of senior leadership is highly concentrated in Singapore. So we see a lot of hiring of senior leadership in Singapore when it comes to companies that are that are expanding outside of their HQ countries. And what that tells us is that you know Singapore is really Singapore is really the place that you go to if you're looking to grow a business in Asia. Singapore usually becomes then the HQ for the rest of Asia.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Yeah, I've probably seen that over the 14 years I've been here. I definitely think that's the the the key thing. You kind of have that hub and your spokes come off into the different areas of Asia with your sales teams, with your hubs here. Maybe the teams aren't as big as they used to be or locations, but you definitely see the senior leadership in base here because it's a fantastic country, it's also easy to get around the region, but also it gives you a really good foot into the Asia market uh as that grows. And from a LinkedIn perspective, have you, you know, uh it's got a fantastic courage as a platform now for the region. But have you seen any particular country where it's it's the fastest growing area for you in Asia is in terms of new members? You know, where's LinkedIn coming alive uh in the region?

SPEAKER_01 27:37

Well, we'll excuse me. Well, we're we're growing in every region really. Uh and Asia itself is is the fastest growing region of LinkedIn globally. So we've seen we've seen massive membership growth across the entire Asia Pacific. And I expect that we will continue to see this growth because you know, as as companies look to grow in this region and as businesses look to expand in, we're gonna see more interest in Asia and therefore more growth in the platform.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Oh, fantastic. And you you mentioned some of the skills and looking at skills and like areas that they could be deployed. Um are we seeing any particular skill, I suppose, that that's most in demand at the moment? Well, what's the one that's coming to the top that's you know everyone's talking about is the probably the most demand skill for the region?

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Yeah, we're we're seeing we're seeing AI literacy just appearing uh on top of a lot of lists that we study.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

We recently looked at uh a list called Scales on the Rise. I'm happy to send you know details over.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

But what we saw was that AI literacy is really, really gaining traction because increasingly people understand that they need to know how to use AI tubes. They need to be literate in using AI tubes, and therefore we see a lot of push uh towards towards AI literacy.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

And are you seeing with this AI literacy, are you seeing certain sectors of the market adapting better than others? Obviously, technology companies probably lead the fore, but is it is it sectors? Because we we we we work across multiple sectors, and obviously businesses, some of them are a bit laggards in when it comes to technology, other ones are running ahead and really doing that. Are you seeing any trends around that area?

SPEAKER_01 29:30

We're actually seeing the rise of AI literacy and the rise of AI adoption across all sectors that we study. Because AI itself, it's uh it's a general purpose tool. So it can do a lot of things, and therefore it's it's its impact is broad and across the entire economy. Like we're seeing it's and it's not just isolated to tech or finance, it's really across all sectors that we study: education, manufacturing, administration, like you name it, it's there.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Yeah, so it's kind of going across all different sectors, but it's rising across all those different types. And um, you mentioned it before in terms of the the skills, like we were looking for skills. You will see in the in the media that there's a skills shortage um or a talent shortage. But do you from the data, is it a talent shortage or is it a skill shortage that we're seeing? Do you think that's the gap?

SPEAKER_01 30:25

I mean, it's that's it's effectively the same thing, right? Because if you have a shortage of skills, you therefore have a shortage of talent because talent are skills. So I I think in that sense, that's it's the same thing. I I think like in terms of skills, what we are seeing is uh you know, uh there's a shift in the types of skills that are needed, and some skills just take time to build. So that's probably some of what we are seeing manifest right now.

SPEAKER_00 30:54

Yeah, okay. And um, so we've kind of covered, we've got uh the strategy of your business, looking at obviously reskilling, giving people the areas, the fact that we're searching more on skills rather than job titles, so that's bringing the business forward. I think Asia's particularly well positioned to the future of work, um, which is like we we've got the the people, the talent, um, we've got the growth, which is which is really good to hear, especially if you're living in Singapore or the Asia region. But is there Pacific economies that you do think that are better positioned for this growth in Asia? And is there any that you think that may fall behind?

SPEAKER_01 31:39

I actually think every every economy is positioned to take advantage of the growth that's coming. It's a matter of where the growth is going to be. Because, you know, there are when whenever there's change, there's a lot of opportunity. And what we've already we've already seen, like some of that start to come in in in like recent months. You saw that we saw the GDP numbers come in for for Singapore, for Malaysia, for some other countries. And a lot of the a lot of the GDP numbers came in way above forecast. I think that's starting to show like you know that growth is is starting to manifest and the effects of the effects of the opportunities being tapped, they're starting to manifest.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

I suppose they'll all grow in different regions or different areas, right? Certain sectors will be more embedded into those areas from that. And that's that's gonna be key for the region as a whole, right? How we grow, how we adapt. I mean, I think AI is one tool, but we can't just leave what we've been doing before behind. I think there's still the day-to-day, there's still things that you've done before that you'll need to keep on doing as a business. From a LinkedIn perspective, obviously they've launching new products, still looking at it from a real recruitment perspective. Well, what's what's the conversations on the in the LinkedIn broadroom about what uh what they're looking to do differently at the moment?

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Well, I mean, I can't comment on conversations in the LinkedIn boardroom. I'm not in the LinkedIn job. But you know, I think I think definitely from my perspective, I see a lot more emphasis on skills because you know, as as the as the labor market shifts so quickly, as the as jobs and workforces transform, I think really skills are going to be what anchors uh the future, and skills are gonna be what helps to drive the next the next wave of change.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

Right. So would you say that'd be the biggest work risk trend as a CEO or as a leader is the the skills training or the development of their own workforce or how they're hiring skills.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

Yeah, I think everyone knows that skills are important. I think the challenge then is the challenge is always in the execution. It's always in implementation. Because you know, job titles are easy to optimize around. They are tangible, but skills are a lot more intangible. So it's and you know, and and skills in human skills, like creativity and and empathy, those are even more intangible. So I think a lot of the challenge moving forward is how to shift from uh strategy towards execution.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Yeah, I think that you you you definitely hit the the nail on the head with that because a lot of the time it's the people don't know the what the skills they need for the role or the or their company. It's like what skills will we need to be able to do this. I've seen a lot of assessment tools now coming out, AI-based or non-based, they're looking at how you actually look at someone from an empathy, like what is their level of empathy, what is their level of soft skills that they can do? What is the kind of person you need in your business to be able to take the business forward from a skills and talent perspective? Um, which is is going to be key. It's ever changing. Sometimes we do have to take a step back and also just think about okay, well, what what are we doing here? What do we need to do? Um, it's not just all about out there as well. Okay, from a perspective Pai Ying, if you could offer one piece of advice for you know leaders out there today, um, they're in APAC, um, or globally, that they're looking obviously to start looking at you know their job specs and skills, but you know, what what what advice would you be give for 2026 in terms of you know from a So I think the the best advice I can give is to think about how I help my workforce use AI better.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

How do I help my workforce use AI more effectively, more productively, more responsibly? Part of that is giving training to the workforce, but a bigger part of that is having guidelines because every company is unique. Every company is going to use AI in different ways. And so giving guidelines to employees makes them feel more empowered. It gives them guardrails around what they can and cannot do, and therefore it gives them the confidence to use the tools more effectively.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Yeah, I think they're they're the key ones that just how to adapt and how to use it maximize to help your business grow and also to support your people, um, use as a tool to make their jobs better and their lives better. And probably my last kind of like kind of question, but I suppose you're always very famous at dinner parties because once it gets to all questions around the world, economy, what's your insight? You're probably the person that always gets asked about what they should be doing and what should we be investing in. If you're talking to people about educate themselves or like what book do you gift to people in terms of if they want to know more about economy or to understand a bit more about the world today? Is there anything that you're telling people to read or um from a personal perspective?

SPEAKER_01 36:52

So I think, you know, I I I personally like a book called The Undercover Economist, because it's it's a very readable book for people who are not economics trained. You know, it's it's quite it's quite amusing. And I think that helps people to understand the concepts without without getting bought down by all the details.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

Okay. Undercover Economist. I'll I'll get it now. I can remember Freak Economics. I think I read that one a while ago. Yeah. So the underpoint. Undercover Economist, alright. You've read it here soon. And and that's like just from a talent perspective, if you know, have you got any advice? So say someone's you leaving university or coming out into the workforce, what advice are are you giving to the the other side of the LinkedIn world or or or the members?

SPEAKER_01 37:38

The best the best advice I can give is to remember the importance of agility. So the world is not like things and things are not set in stone, and we need to be agile and adaptable to the changes that are happening and the changes that will come.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

Yeah, totally agree. Be agile, adaptable, don't just get set in stone. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and work part with Rich Paiing. That was absolutely amazing in terms of the conversation. I could talk to you for hours. I've got so many more questions, but I I know you've got to get that to work. Um, but thank you so much for joining. And um, I'll be getting the book today. So thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

Thank you, Rich.