Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar S opens up on jobs, hiring and AI: ‘We will need more school graduates’

Cognizant Technology Solutions CEO Ravi Kumar S has said that the rise in Artificial Technology would create various job opportunities for employees at the entry level — a far cry from many of his peers who fear that AI will steal most jobs in the upcoming years.

In an interview with Fortune, the Cognizant CEO said that is company is approaching a different way to hire its entry-level employees.

“Rethinking your assumptions in a world which is moving at a high pace is important. I think we’ll need more school graduates in the AI era,” he told the magazine, highlighting the importance of entry-level jobs in the AI era.

Why will Cognizant hire school graduates?

According to Ravi Kumar S, many companies have a pyramid where the school graduates are at the bottom, and this pyramid is going to change into a manner that more experts are produced.

“So many companies have a pyramid with the bottom where school graduates are. That pyramid is going to be broader and shorter, and the path to expertise is going to be faster,” he said.

The Cognizant CEO noted that undergrad education can be revamped in a way so that it can be more focussed on using AI tools.

“It’s going to be faster if you can rewire your K-12 schooling system with lifelong learners and make undergrad education much more about using AI tools and creating interdisciplinary skills,” he said.

“This year, we are hiring more school graduates than ever before. I can take a school graduate and give them the tooling so they can actually punch above their weight. AI is an amplifier of human potential. It’s not a displacement strategy,” Kumar added.

Who is getting hired at Cognizant?

Talking further about the type of students Cognizant is going to hire, Ravi Kumar S said that the focus will be more on interdisciplinary skills.

“If I’m a historian, I could blend it with computational skills and become a futurist. If I am a biology major, I could crack drug development cycles and disease using computational skills,” he said.

The Cognizant CEO said that a large part of work is based on problem solving, and departments around problem solvers have been created.

These departments were mostly in the non-STEM categories, while at the core of the enterprise was STEM disciplines.

“Now, if problem solving is assisted with machines, you would find an equitable distribution of problem solvers and problem finders in an enterprise, which then means the mix of people on the core is going non-STEM disciplines like anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, journalists; people who can be more purposeful problem finders,” he said.