PwC expects junior hiring to ‘push back up’ across professional services despite AI fears
The chief executive of PwC UK said he expects the hiring of young people across the professional services sector to “push back up”, challenging the notion that AI is replacing junior work and slowing entry-level recruitment.
Marco Amitrano, the Big Four giant’s UK chief executive and senior partner of PwC UK and the firm’s Middle East Alliance, said during a conversation with the Chartered Management Institute’s chief executive, Ann Francke, he is “expecting” graduate recruitment and the broader recruitment of young people to “push back up again” in the sector.
There has been growing concern across the professional services industry for some time over whether AI will impact swathes of work, particularly the administrative side, where junior employees have historically been tasked as firms move to invest in AI and automation, causing the sector to pull back on hiring.
However, the Big Four chief said the reality is quite the opposite, in the industry more broadly and at PwC.
“I don’t see a single statement of ‘AI is going to reduce the number of young people we are hiring’ as a valid statement at all,” Amitrano said.
The Big Four firm confirmed that its numbers of entry-level recruits were “broadly consistent” with last year, approximately 1300. PwC UK added that while it does not yet have the numbers firmed up for next year it “will continue to be a significant recruiter of young people at the start of their careers.”
Professional services ‘mirror the world of their clients’
Amitrano, who has been at PwC for 34 years, said instead of AI, economic instability and lower investment has been “the pinch point of the last year or two” leading to a flatter period of hiring.
“In professional services, at a firm like PwC, we mirror the world. If my 25,000 clients here in the UK, and the 210,000 clients around the world are not doing anything, then the demand for what we’re doing slows,” he said, adding,”that is more of the reason for small setbacks in graduate recruitment or broader recruitment of young people.”
“I’m expecting that to push back up again, and we’re investing in AI tools and the education system so that young people are more work ready, to come and do things differently compared to what young people joining the firm did five years ago,” Amitrano said.
The tools include an ‘AI training studio’ – a one-stop shop that houses tech, training, and governance.
However, AI is forcing the Big Four to re-think its graduate training as digitally-native young people enter the workplace with strong technology skills but require more support with ‘human skills’.
At the start of September, City AM asked each of KPMG, Deloitte, EY and PwC how they are adapting their training programmes for these new realities the sector is facing, and all have either recently completed major overhauls or are actively restructuring them.
Firms must jump on the AI train to keep up
The professional services industry is not the only sector being impacted by AI. Across the board the tech is creeping in, with many fearing it will wipe out certain roles entirely.
“AI will diffuse through every job in every sector. It won’t necessarily eliminate them, but it will diffuse through every single job in every single sector in every part of the world. So you can either be an agent of that – a part of that – or you can spend your time fearing or fighting it,” Amitrano said.