Leave it to the experts in machine learning to figure out that “machine learning” has lost its oomph. When it comes to terms in job postings which help fill those jobs more quickly, “artificial intelligence” and “AI” are also waning, according to Textio, the Seattle startup that analyzes the words that work.
In a new blog post on Wednesday, Textio co-founder and CEO Kieran Snyder takes a shot at the many job listings which rely on those terms to attract new talent. It’s not the jobs that are going away, Snyder insists — AI and machine learning are obviously still a huge deal for tech companies. It’s just that the same-same nature of all those listings waters down the effect and slows the time it takes to fill an opening.
Snyder says AI and ML are going the way of “big data,” which she calls “once cool, then cliche, now beginning to feel hopelessly dated.”
Using its own data analysis to test this theory, Textio found that terms like “AI” and “artificial intelligence” were hot a couple years ago and did indeed pay off, with jobs advertised with those terms filling nine days or 28-percent faster than average engineering jobs .
But in 2017, job listings with any of these phrases are filling between one and two days faster than average. The increase in investment in these areas has led to an increase in the number of jobs, and thus the number of listings using these phrases has jumped significantly.
A quick search of Amazon jobs — because they have more than 7,200 openings in Seattle — using the term AI returned 106 listings, and 123 when artificial intelligence was searched.
So, Textio says, if you want to stand out, don’t sound like everyone else. The company looked at terms that are on the rise right now — but you better hurry. It clearly won’t take long for the now-hot “deep learning” and “chatbot” to lose their appeal.
