How Educational Institutions Prepare Graduates For Jobs That May Not Exist Yet?

The idea that would become HIM Business School’s Readiness Index came together over Christmas dinner.

Antoine Casanova-Mazet, Head of Innovation at HIM Business School, had been wrestling with a deceptively simple question for months: if a school promises to prepare its students for the professional world, how can it know whether or not it is succeeding?

Halfway through dinner, the pieces finally clicked. Casanova-Mazet, to the shock of his family, suddenly left the dinner table, shut himself in a room and began building.

I had to do it,” he recalls. “ I almost locked myself in a room for a day.

What emerged was the first version of a system designed to measure something educational institutions frequently promise but rarely quantify: job market readiness.

The future of work is changing what graduates need 

The timing of this system could not have been more relevant. Artificial intelligence, automation and new business models are changing the distribution of work across entire industries. 

The World Economic Forum estimates that 39% of workers’ existing skills will be transformed or become outdated between 2025 and 2030. During the same period, 170 million roles could be created and 92 million displaced.

This is what people mean by the future of work: not just which jobs vanish or appear, but how automation, AI, and new business models reshape the skills every role demands. For education, the task is to keep the gap between what is taught and what employers need, the skills gap, from widening faster than a curriculum can respond.

For schools, the challenge extends beyond predicting which job titles will appear or disappear. Existing roles are changing from within. Tasks once assigned to graduates may be automated, while new expectations emerge around data, technology, judgment and the ability to work alongside AI.

The question is therefore becoming increasingly urgent: how can a curriculum designed today prepare students for a professional world that may look very different by the time they graduate?

The growing gap between education and employment

Universities have traditionally kept their programs relevant through periodic curriculum reviews, academic research, employer advisory boards, graduate surveys and conversations with industry.

These mechanisms remain important. Their weakness is speed.

A curriculum may undergo substantial review every three to five years. Today, the tools used within a profession and the skills expected of someone entering it can change within months. AI has made that gap easier to see and more consequential for graduates.

Casanova-Mazet compares the challenge to navigation. 

Early travelers read the stars; maps made accumulated knowledge accessible, and GPS later made navigation easier. Today, systems continuously monitor conditions and recalculate the route. Education, he argues, needs a similar capacity.

The world is changing so fast,” he says. “ The skills demanded today, the way we hire, how knowledge is shared and even how we operate as humans are all being affected by AI.

This does not mean chasing every short-lived workplace trend or rebuilding a degree whenever a new piece of software appears. It means developing a reliable way to detect meaningful change earlier, interpret it carefully and decide when the curriculum should respond.

Turning employer demand into usable evidence

Casanova-Mazet’s first prototype of the Readiness Index focused on entry-level positions and internships across marketing, finance, sales, human resources and customer experience. It gathered employment advertisements from multiple cities and extracted the skills employers requested most often.

The result was an Excel file with nearly 6,000 skill references. When Casanova-Mazet presented it to HIM’s faculty in early 2025, lecturers could filter the information by discipline and location to examine what companies were requesting in their respective fields.

Then more than 30 people attempted to use the spreadsheet at once.

It broke.

The moment exposed the next challenge. Gathering information was only the beginning; the data had to become accessible enough for educators to use. The spreadsheet gradually developed into a live platform capable of organizing, comparing and visualizing a far larger volume of information.

By the time of the interview, the Readiness Index system had analyzed more than 29,500 opportunities from company websites across about 69 cities and 11 business areas. From those listings, it had extracted close to 742,000 references to professional skills.

The platform maps those references against ESCO, the European classification of skills, competences, qualifications and occupations. A common framework lets you compare different descriptions of similar capabilities and apply the same process to academic material.

A school can analyze its course descriptions, learning outcomes, teaching materials and assessments, then compare what it teaches with what employers appear to need.

The result is a continuously developing picture of the relationship between curriculum and market demand.

When the data challenges assumptions

The findings are sometimes unexpected.

In one early analysis of human resources positions, communication and emotional intelligence featured prominently in the curriculum. Yet employer demand pointed toward another capability: experience with enterprise resource planning software and other workplace systems.

The discovery did not mean interpersonal skills had become less important. It revealed an additional expectation that the curriculum had not fully addressed.

A similar distinction emerged around customer relationship management. Students may understand why companies use a CRM system and how it supports sales or customer service. Employers may also expect them to have worked directly with platforms such as Salesforce or HubSpot.

You teach them the purpose and the concepts,” Casanova-Mazet explains. “ But then you stop there, when you could go one step further and put the software in their hands.

This is where labor-market data becomes useful. Rather than choosing platforms based on familiarity or assumption, educators can identify which tools appear most frequently in relevant vacancies and decide where hands-on exposure would add genuine value.

The same analysis can uncover excessive overlap. At HIM, evidence from the Index helped replace two courses covering similar management concepts, creating space for more applied learning.

These decisions remain academic ones. Job advertisements provide valuable signals, but they imperfectly represent work. They may reflect an employer’s wish list, omit capabilities that are taken for granted or lag behind what teams actually do.

That became clear when HIM presented an early version of the Readiness Index project at its World Readiness Symposium. Industry and academic participants were intrigued by the data but challenged the school to look beyond employment advertisements. Some of the qualities employers value most never appear in a formal job description.

The model consequently expanded to incorporate employer feedback, internship evaluations, academic assessment and direct discussion with industry. The purpose is to give educators better evidence more frequently. Human interpretation remains essential.

A clearer picture of what students can do

Curriculum relevance is only one side of readiness. A modern degree must also communicate what a graduate can do.

A diploma confirms that someone completed a program. A grade reflects academic performance. Neither offers a detailed picture of how that person communicates, collaborates, solves problems, applies technology or responds under pressure. Casanova-Mazet says

The grade doesn’t tell you who that person is

HIM began issuing Readiness Certificates to graduating students in June 2026. The current version draws on a capstone simulation conducted over three days and assesses a defined group of capabilities. Students receive an individual profile presented as a radar chart, showing areas of strength and those that require further development.

The ambition is to create a fuller record of development across the student experience, incorporating evidence from classes, projects, internships and other assessed activities.

For students, such a profile could provide more than another credential. It could help them understand where their capabilities are strongest, which roles align with their evidence and what they may need to develop before pursuing a particular opportunity.

This matters because the future of work will require more than learning one fixed collection of skills. OECD research describes adaptability as increasingly important as graduates move between occupations, organizations and industries throughout their careers.

Readiness, in that sense, is not a finished state reached at graduation. It includes knowing how to identify a gap and continue learning.

When applying becomes the easy part

AI is also changing how students enter the employment market.

Applications can now be generated and submitted at extraordinary speed. Casanova-Mazet recalls speaking with an innovation leader whose company received approximately 2,500 applications within hours of posting an internship. Many arrived within the first few minutes.

For employers, greater volume does not necessarily mean better choice. When hundreds of candidates use similar tools to tailor résumés and cover letters to the same description, applications can become polished, plausible and increasingly difficult to distinguish.

Casanova-Mazet believes this is exposing a deeper weakness in recruitment: a résumé remains largely declarative. It records what a candidate says they have done and can do.

A verified skills profile could offer a different form of evidence.

This idea led to Talent Match, an emerging extension of the Readiness Index. An employer can specify the capabilities required for a position and view anonymized student profiles aligned with them. Names, gender and nationality remain hidden at the initial stage. If the employer wants to learn more, the student decides whether to release additional information.

It’s not just a good fit,” Casanova-Mazet says. “ It’s a proven fit.

The concept is still in development, but it raises an important question for education and recruitment alike: as AI makes professional presentation easier to manufacture, will demonstrated capability become more valuable than the claims made in an application?

The readiness of the institution

The most revealing aspect of the Readiness Index may ultimately be what it measures about the school itself.

Institutions cannot know exactly which jobs will exist several years from now, and education should never be reduced to training students for the most recent list of vacancies. Its responsibilities are broader: developing judgment, knowledge, curiosity, ethical reasoning and the ability to understand a changing world.

Those enduring qualities become more valuable when technical tasks can be automated. The International Labour Organization points to creativity, critical thinking and emotional intelligence among the distinctly human capabilities likely to grow in importance as AI changes work.

Yet broad capabilities and practical relevance do not have to compete. Students can learn to think deeply and leave university knowing how to apply that thinking. They can understand business theory and gain experience with the tools through which modern businesses operate. They can develop human judgment while learning to use AI critically and responsibly.

For educational institutions, this requires a different rhythm. Curriculum development can no longer be viewed solely as a major exercise completed every few years. It increasingly needs to become a continuous process of listening, testing, interpreting and adjusting.

If you want to make the students ready,” Casanova-Mazet says, “ you need to be ready yourself.

No platform can predict the future with certainty. What it can do is help schools recognize change sooner and respond with greater purpose.

The students best prepared for tomorrow may not be those trained for one imagined future job. They will be the ones who understand their capabilities, can apply them in unfamiliar situations and know how to keep developing as the world around them changes.

To see how this approach shapes what students learn and practice at HIM, explore the Bachelor of Business Administration.

Frequently asked questions

What is the future of work?

The future of work describes how jobs, skills, and workplaces are changing as automation, artificial intelligence, and new business models spread. It is less about jobs simply disappearing and more about roles evolving from within, changing the mix of tasks and skills each one requires.

What is skills-based hiring?

Skills-based hiring is a recruitment approach that prioritizes what a candidate can actually do over their degree, job titles, or background. Employers define the capabilities a role needs and assess candidates against them directly, often using verified evidence rather than self-reported claims.

 

What is labor market intelligence?

Labor market intelligence is the practice of collecting and analyzing real-time data, such as job advertisements and required skills, to understand what employers actually need. Schools and companies use it to spot changing demand earlier than traditional surveys or periodic reviews allow.

Will AI replace jobs?

AI is expected to displace some roles while creating others; the World Economic Forum projects 92 million jobs displaced and 170 million created by 2030. More often, AI changes existing jobs rather than removing them, automating specific tasks while raising demand for judgment and human skills.