LinkedIn CEO: How to Stay Employed When AI Replaces Your Job | Ryan Roslansky

In this episode of Silicon Valley Girl, Marina Mogilko sits down with Ryan Roslansky, CEO of LinkedIn and Executive Vice President at Microsoft. Ryan has access to the world's definitive labor market data—and what it shows about AI and jobs isn't what you're hearing in the headlines. Topics covered: ​Why 50% of college graduates are unemployed/underemployed (and what's actually broken)​The 1.3 million new AI jobs most people don't know exist​The 3 hottest jobs for the next 5 years: Data Annotator, Data Center roles, Forward Deployed Engineer​The 5 C's framework: Curiosity, Courage, Creativity, Compassion, Communication​Why skills will change 70% by 2030 and what to do about it now 📌 Follow newsletter and grab FREE 300+ post ideas to stand out on Linkedin https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/300-post-ideas-for-linkedin More from the Silicon Valley Girl: Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@SiliconValleyGirl⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@SiliconValleyGirl LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/in/marinamogilko⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/marinamogilko/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 0:59Speaker 02

  At least in the US, 50% of college graduates this year will graduate either unemployed or underemployed. And credit card debt is being outpaced by student loan debt for the first time in history.

• 1:11Marina Mogilko?

  This is Ryan Roslansky, CEO of LinkedIn. He took LinkedIn from $7 billion to $17 billion in revenue and crossed a billion members by betting big on AI. Smarter hiring tools, skills-based matching, and a massive push into video.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  LinkedIn is the definitive labor market platform of the world. We have amazing insights into actually what is happening across the world.

• 1:33Marina Mogilko?

  His data doesn't predict the job market. It is the job market. What about entry level jobs?

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Entry level jobs across the world right now, the hiring rate that we see are down roughly 12%. While we see that hiring is sluggish across most markets, the reason that it's sluggish doesn't have anything to do with AI.

• 1:49Marina Mogilko?

  Do you think college is just fading away?

• 1:51Speaker 02

  When I talk to people about what they should do with their career, it's less about where do you want to be in five years? It's more about over the next few months, like what new skills do you want to learn?

• 1:59Marina Mogilko?

  So what are the top skills people should be adding to their LinkedIn right now?

• 2:02Speaker 02

  This huge demand.

• 2:05Marina Mogilko?

  Ryan, thank you so much and welcome to Silicon Valley Girl.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Great to be here.

• 2:09Marina Mogilko?

  I am so happy to have you. So you're the CEO of LinkedIn and also Executive Vice President of Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft Office. And we're at Davos today.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:21Marina Mogilko?

  So what is everyone talking about?

• 2:24Speaker 02

  I think there's a lot of the things that I'm seeing, but I think one of the things that's probably most interesting to you potentially is, I think if we were here maybe like three years ago, a lot of the conversations we would be having would be with traditional media. And this year, it's amazing to see kind of the creator influence, like up and down the promenade and kind of the role that creators are playing in this new economy. And, you know, we see it on LinkedIn, there's 4 million members now that their official job title is creator. And it's just amazing to watch this kind of new industry explode where it is today. You recognize at Davos, for example.

• 2:56Marina Mogilko?

  That is amazing. And I'm happy to be part of it. It's amazing to see, starting 12 years ago and being a creator now is just a huge, huge difference. What do people say about AI? Do you think people here are more positive or negative?

• 3:10Speaker 02

  It's interesting. I think people are all over the place because their kind of opinions are based on what they heard from the last conversation. What else about LinkedIn is that as the definitive labor market platform of the world, we have amazing insights into actually what is happening across the world. And it's interesting, while we see that hiring is sluggish, you know, across most markets, the reason that it's sluggish doesn't have anything to do with AI, in our opinion. It's actually more due to macro conditions, interest rates, not AI. As relates to AI, we see something totally different. There's actually been almost, you know, 1.3 million brand new net jobs on LinkedIn for AI, roles like data

• 3:53Speaker 02

  annotators. Over 600,000 new data center jobs exist on LinkedIn, you know, for deployed engineers, the companies need to understand AI. So at least in terms of what we're seeing in the LinkedIn data right now, AI is a net positive addition to the job market, not something that's detracting jobs.

• 4:14Marina Mogilko?

  That's great. But what about entry level jobs?

• 4:17Speaker 02

  So entry level jobs across the world right now, the hiring rate that we see are down roughly 12%, but they are not disproportionate to any of the other jobs. So they're down just as much as all the other jobs in the world. I think kind of what I was saying before, a lot of that contraction is due, you know, large part to macroeconomic and kind of climate and interest rates and, you know, you know, companies investing less in general. So then the question becomes, what do, you know, any professional, you know, even any of the professionals do? And, you know, we're seeing kind of two trends emerge. One, the one that I said, which is that, you know, micro entrepreneurship, you know, a rise in creators, which is that, hey, if the traditional

• 4:59Speaker 02

  path doesn't exist, I need to take my career into my own hands. And number two, a real affinity now towards trade roles. And I think if you go back a couple of years ago, you know, people weren't as into these trade roles as they are right now, but especially kind of Gen Z seizes a much safer option.

• 5:18Marina Mogilko?

  What do you mean trade world?

• 5:20Speaker 02

  Like, like first line jobs, you know, typical like trade roles, not office jobs. And they see those as more resilient in an AI world. These are the types of jobs that AI probably won't take. So we're seeing more affinity towards that as well.

• 5:36Speaker 00

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• 6:06Speaker 04

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• 6:35Marina Mogilko?

  Interesting. Have you seen like a huge uptick in creator? Like when people put creator as job title?

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Right now, there are 75 million people on LinkedIn that somewhere in their profile say they're a creator. And there's 4 million people that say their complete 100% full-time job is creator. So it's fantastic. And look at what you started.

• 6:59Marina Mogilko?

  How do career paths change? Because you also track people through their career inside the company. You start as, I don't know, assistant and go up and up. But because I think I heard you at one of the conferences talking that a lot of people are hiring generalists now. So you don't necessarily climb up the ladder. You expand horizontally, acquiring new skills. Do you see that trend as well?

• 7:20Speaker 02

  So I think first and foremost, the really important thing, like since the beginning of LinkedIn, the feature that is requested most from members is, show me what a typical career path is supposed to look like. LinkedIn, you have all this data. So if I want to become a CFO or a CEO or an accountant or whatever, what is the path that people take? And the reality is in the data, there is no such thing as a linear career path. Like it's all over the place. So the more that people first and foremost recognize that you have to take your career into your own hands. There's no natural path that exists that you just get on. I think is really, really important. Right now it's more important than ever though, because, you know, skills are changing.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  The, the types of skills are necessary for a specific role on LinkedIn have changed north of 25%. You know, over the last couple of years alone, we expect they'll change by 70% by 2030, largely influenced by AI and new tools and new ways of doing these professions. So, you know, my, you know, I often, when I talk to people about what they should do with their career, it's, it's less about where do you want to be in five years. And it's more about over the next few months, like what new skills do you want to learn? Because to your point, these roles are flattening. Generalists are more and more where people are going these days.

• 8:35Marina Mogilko?

  So what are the top skills people should be adding to their LinkedIn right now?

• 8:39Speaker 02

  It's funny, there's this, you know, this huge demand kind of on both sides of the spectrum. Obviously like AI literacy is important. And I think no matter what's your role, your profession. You know, familiarizing yourself with these tools is a really, really smart investment in your own career. You don't have to love them, you don't have to use them all the time, but just familiarizing yourself, putting yourself in the mindset that I'm going to figure out how I can be better at my job through AI is one thing. So a set of AI skills. But just as important on the other side are human skills. Curiosity, creativity, courage, communication, compassion,

• 9:19Speaker 02

  the ability to work with other people, the ability to sit down with someone and actually have a conversation. You can't just be mired in using technology in a bubble and be successful in a lot of work setting. Just be able to, you know, disagree and commit with someone, to be able to communicate with someone, to help galvanize people to get something done. So I think the key right now is that combination of, you know, learn those AI skills and then if you've got a way to be strong on those, you know, you know, more human skills. They're typically called soft skills. I think that's a misnomer. They don't, you know, soft kind of feels like it's less important. I think they're more important than ever.

• 9:56Marina Mogilko?

  When you talk about soft skills, as someone who hires on LinkedIn, I don't really sort people by like, oh, creative, whatever, but I read their posts. So what I found really helpful in hiring is that now we hire based on content that they post because it shows their personality, it shows how deep they are in the subject. We just hired a YouTube strategist who's amazing and we hired him purely based on what he was posting about building a YouTube channel.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  I love that. So we always thought that the extension of your LinkedIn profile isn't just where you went to school, where you've worked, what skills you have, but the ability to demonstrate the actual knowledge that you have in your head, like by posting on LinkedIn. And it's awesome to hear that you use that as a way to understand someone's identity better.

• 10:45Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, you don't have to jump on a call. You don't do anything. You just read the posts. Yeah, saves a lot of time.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  So people post more on LinkedIn, that's what.

• 10:52Marina Mogilko?

  Also, as someone who started posting actively on LinkedIn last year, and we made something that's equal to like a full-time salary just on LinkedIn. We grew from like 10,000 to 50,000, almost 50,000 in a year.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  Wow, congratulations.

• 11:07Marina Mogilko?

  So LinkedIn is definitely the social network right now. Thank you for that. By the way, any tips to grow on LinkedIn?

• 11:14Speaker 02

  You know, LinkedIn is unique because our platform exists to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Our feed exists as a mechanism to showcase your identity, exactly the story that you just told. So that if I'm trying to get hired, or I want to make a name for myself in a specific field, the content that I share is a way to do that. Other platforms tend to stem from, you know, their vision is around, you know, entertainment, or, you know, large engagement. Our largest business is in recruiting. So we don't come at it from a perspective of, you know, we're trying to help you get,

• 11:56Speaker 02

  you know, a gazillion likes, or, you know, 10 billion views, or something like that. We're trying to help you create authentic content that only you can do, based on the skills that you have, what you have in your head, get that on the platform, to the right people who may be able to, you know, learn from that, or do something with it, or hire you because of it. And that's where we find success. So I think that that's just a different mindset that we always tell people about using LinkedIn. You may not get, you know, the views you get on so many other platforms, but the people you reach, the quality of the audience, the opportunities that come are what we're really trying to do.

• 12:34Marina Mogilko?

  You get the right views. Also, what I notice as a creator, telling your personal stories, especially if they are tied to some events.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:41Marina Mogilko?

  Really, really helps.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think it's interesting. I mean, I think especially, you know, more in the younger generation, it always kind of felt taboo to talk about anything that felt, you know, not buttoned up and professional on LinkedIn. But, but more and more, I think the next generation, not only are they okay with it, but it actually tells a lot more about who they are, their personality, what they know, how they think. It's really kind of refreshing to see that happen on LinkedIn.

• 13:07Marina Mogilko?

  Absolutely. Let's go back to our LinkedIn profiles. There's a huge section, education, right? And a lot of people would take like, top universities, small courses, just to have that name, right? Because it meant a lot. Do you think college means as much these days? Or because we can acquire any skill online, it's just kind of fading away?

• 13:26Speaker 02

  So two things. One,

• 13:30Speaker 02

  I dropped out of college very early on and was really focused on the skills that I needed to start a company and be an entrepreneur. So I had kind of a mixed view on that. I do know right now, at least in the US, 50% of college graduates this year will graduate either unemployed or underemployed. And credit card debt is being outpaced by student loan debt for the first time in history. So there's something that's not really working in the current system. I am nowhere close to going so far as to say college isn't worth it. The social experience, the learning to, you know, the soft skills and you being able to be around

• 14:14Speaker 02

  people and communicate, I think are critical. And if you can, you know, if you're fortunate enough to be in a college environment to have that experience, I think it's really, really worth it. But I think that it's really more about a lot of those soft skills for most professions than the typical hard skills that we always thought about from college in the past. And more importantly, you know, more and more now, when recruiters or anyone looking to hire on LinkedIn or starting their process, they aren't looking at what school did you go to. They're looking at what skills do you have? Or what did your last post look like? So I know more about you. So it's it's mattering less than it has in the past, what what school you went to.

• 14:53Marina Mogilko?

  You're still betting on college for your daughters? Because I have three daughters, right?

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And I think, again, I think a lot of the social, you know, components of that are critical. It's a great place to learn how to grow up, to learn how to interact with other people, you know, to form a network, to make mistakes. And so, you know, while I would never mandate anything that any of my children do, you know, so far, at least my oldest one, like, that's the career path that that she's taken and she's having a wonderful time.

• 15:20Marina Mogilko?

  Have you ever regretted dropping out?

• 15:22Speaker 02

  I think I missed a lot of really fun years by leaving college early. That's for sure.

• 15:26Marina Mogilko?

  All right. That's, yeah, still, still a big question. So you are releasing a book. Open to work. Can you talk about how someone can use this book to navigate their future? I feel like you're the best person to write this book, by the way, because you have all the data, you're seeing what's happening on the market. And yeah, I'm looking forward to reading it.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Thank you. So it's been actually kind of unique because I've spent 25 years building, you know, internet products where you can build a product and test it out with people and see what happens and then change it really quickly. When you write a book, you write it and it's kind of final and you hope and, you know, pray that it goes out there and people find value out of it. So we're excited to release it soon. But it's a book that was written to help people really understand and bring some clarity to what career paths look like in an AI-first world. There's a lot of uncertainty and people are scared. They don't know where to start. They don't know where to turn. This book acts as a guide to help you understand how to think through it, what AI can do, what AI can't do, the importance of the human skills that we just talked about and how you can, you know,

• 16:29Speaker 02

  kind of pull those two things together and figure out what you want to do with your career and make the best career path for yourself. You know, it's not a crystal ball, but you know, it's, we try and leverage a lot of the things that we know and see on LinkedIn to help people make right career decisions because it's so difficult, especially when you're starting out, to know what to do or how to think. And right now, there's so much, you know, unique craziness in the world of, you know, what does AI mean for jobs and roles and skills? So at the end of the day, if we can help more people make smarter career decisions, like that's what we're aiming to do. And we do that every day through LinkedIn, but we wanted to try some different approach as well for people who maybe aren't on LinkedIn or just, you know, want to kind of see it in the book form, so.

• 17:11Marina Mogilko?

  Is there a principle from that book that you can share that people can use to guide their careers?

• 17:15Speaker 02

  I think most importantly, a lot of what I see on LinkedIn are people just absolutely hyper-focused on.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  The hard skills, the AI skills, the technical skills, and they're completely dismissing the human skills. So we talk about it in five Cs that we think are critical for you to learn and to master that will make you stand out in the future. Curiosity, courage, creativity, compassion, and communication. Like, learning and understanding the importance of those five skills are where I would invest the majority of my time right now as a professional.

• 17:54Marina Mogilko?

  It's interesting, because we have a lot of tools on how to develop our hard skills. But when it comes to curiosity, how do you even acquire it?

• 18:01Speaker 02

  So it's hard. I mean, some people are fortunate enough to be born with it.

• 18:03Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  But, you know, we do a lot through LinkedIn Learning to also help, you know, through the data that we have to, you know, teach techniques and how to think about a lot of these soft skills. People think they can't be learned, but they actually really can be learned. They need to be practiced like any other skill. But again, I think it's kind of that misnomer that soft means it wasn't as important, then just kind of bringing that to the forefront. I think it's the most important thing right now.

• 18:26Marina Mogilko?

  You guys know how much work goes into this podcast. Thank you so much for your support. I started a newsletter to share more my business mistakes with this and another company that I'm running, AI tools that I'm testing and using actively, and behind the scenes of building my team. It's free and lands in your inbox every week. Link is in the description. Let's keep learning together in this new AI era. I've heard someone say, in the next five to 10 years, you either become an entrepreneur, maybe with a new niche, or you die. What would you say? Like, die as a professional?

• 19:05Speaker 02

  I absolutely expect that AI is going to

• 19:12Speaker 02

  democratize access to opportunity in a way that so many people that have always wanted to create something or start something, build a business, be an entrepreneur, will have the tools to do it.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  I don't think it's going to be the only path, but I do think we will see many, many more entrepreneurs, and I think that's a really, really good thing.

• 19:33Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, yeah, me too. Can you give me, you think, top three jobs for the next three years, three to five years?

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Top three as defined how?

• 19:44Marina Mogilko?

  Most in demand.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  So, right now, there's a role called data annotator. You know what this is?

• 19:50Marina Mogilko?

  No.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  It's fascinating. So anytime you use a large language model,

• 19:57Speaker 02

  at the end of the day, the way that those models keep getting better and better are there are many human beings that are, you know, being paid to evaluate the output of those models based on their expertise. So, you know, maybe you're a, I don't know, a cardiologist is your full-time job in like, you know, the real world, in the real life. But, you know, a large language model company is trying to make their model better for people who are asking questions around heart health. They will take the response that the model is giving, actually hand it to, you know, the cardiologist and pay them to say, mark this up, you know, is this right or wrong? What do you think? And then take that and put it back into the model. They're huge companies, huge companies in sourcing those people to.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Exactly. And so that role is, I mean, if you think about like every, you know, topic, every niche topic, every language like has to be covered through these models. And there's so much knowledge in people's heads that I think that's going to be a really, really, you know, hot job moving forward. I also think anything that has to do with building out data centers, and these are all types of jobs. These are, you know, trade jobs, these are hyper-technical jobs, these are, you know, maintenance jobs. But building the infrastructure of data centers moving forward, I think is going to be critical because in order for anything that's AI-related to actually flourish, there's a foundation that needs to be put in place. And then the

• 21:23Speaker 02

  last one I'm paying a lot of attention to is actually something which is called a, you know, a forward-deployed engineer. And that sounds like a really kind of odd term, but basically what it means is when a company decides that they want to pull AI into their company, they want to better use AI, it's really a tricky like thing to figure out. And historically, that was kind of up to the IT department to figure out. But this new role. You know, a forward deployed engineer is someone that will sit in the actual business in the marketing department, in the product department, who is really skilled at both business needs and understanding how AI works to kind of make that connection inside of a company. So companies are frequently hiring these people right now to help, you

• 22:05Speaker 02

  know, not just make AI a cool thing we put in our company, but actually help it return real value to the business.

• 22:10Marina Mogilko?

  I love that.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  And creator, that's my fourth really important job, sorry.

• 22:14Marina Mogilko?

  Thank you so much. Thank you. I feel like we're on the rise. That's awesome. And do you think there are any jobs, maybe like three jobs that you think are disappearing?

• 22:22Speaker 02

  If you think about.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Everyone's job, your job, my job, anybody's job. Ultimately, it's a set of skills and tasks. If you break your job down like that, and then you kind of think about the ability for each task to be automatable by AI, you can quickly see that if your job is just a set of tasks that can be automated, you need to start finding a new job. So AI right now is really good at things like summarizing, or rewriting, or translating. So, you know, those types of jobs where AI is good at those skills are the types of jobs where, you know, we both try and through our data, help LinkedIn members who have those jobs realize, hey, here's some more skills you should be adding, you know, to kind of, you know,

• 23:37Speaker 02

  future-proof yourself. But that's kind of the framework to think through, maybe where jobs will be more impacted.

• 23:43Marina Mogilko?

  I love that. Thank you so much, Ryan. That was so insightful. And I hope everybody who just watched, you go and start posting on LinkedIn. I've been telling this to everyone around me. My husband started posting. He got a few thousand subscribers right away. So the algorithm is really working. Thank you so much.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  Thanks again for being here. Thank you.

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• 24:59Marina Mogilko?

  Thank you.