Whether one likes it or not, AI is transforming the 21st-century socio-economic order and, most importantly, how people work. From helping us work smarter to providing valuable insights, AI tools have become part of our daily professional lives.

As these technologies continue to evolve and shape the workplace, employers are also showing eagerness in knowing how candidates understand and use AI. So, standing in 2026, if you are going for interviews, be prepared for this new yet essential question: “Tell me how you have recently used AI at work or home.”

Automation, AI-driven decision-making, and machine learning tools have transformed industries, and businesses are interested in learning whether their employees can work with and take advantage of these technologies.

As AI becomes more integrated into everyday life, interviewers will want to hear that you understand the newest trends, tools, and platforms in the industry and how you might use AI to streamline a process, become more productive, or make better decisions. You do not need to be an AI software engineer, but you should be familiar with how to utilise the most common AI tools. The test is all about your ability to apply AI to make processes more efficient, improve productivity, or enhance decision-making.

Decoding Interviewers’ Mindset

The “AI Question” is increasingly being asked by interviewers because they want to see if the candidates have an understanding of and feel comfortable with AI. Artificial intelligence is transforming various industries, including healthcare, marketing, finance, and customer service.

Employers are seeking candidates who can adapt to using AI tools. They want to see whether the person they want to hire is comfortable with emerging technologies, such as how AI can help streamline workflows, enhance customer experiences, and even develop new solutions to age-old problems.

Companies that recognise the value of AI want to hire employees who not only know how to apply AI but also can think creatively about how to use it to bring more value to their roles and to the organisation as a whole. Thus, your answer can demonstrate your technical competence, creativity, and critical thinking about how you can apply AI in your work.

The post Interviews in 2026? Expect the AI question appeared first on International Finance.

According to the latest figures from job search platform Adzuna, the average advertised salary hit £42,278 in April 2025, a rise of 8.9% year-on-year, marking the steepest annual increase since June 2022. Every month, salaries rose by 0.75%, further complicating the central bank’s efforts to justify additional interest rate cuts.

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Bank of England is now witnessing its key members, including the Bank’s chief economist Huw Pill, expressing concern about elevated wage growth, warning that loosening monetary policy too quickly could reignite inflationary pressures.

According to Adzuna, vacancies rose slightly by 1% year-on-year to 862,876, but were down 0.95% compared to March, suggesting a mixed picture for hiring momentum.

What’s going on?

Sectors seeing the strongest demand for workers included healthcare, which hit its highest vacancy level since January 2023, as well as hospitality, logistics, teaching, and retail. The construction and trade sectors recorded a sharp 15.2% decline in vacancies, reflecting cooling activity in those industries.

The BoE had been hoping for a clearer signal that inflationary pressures were easing before committing to a series of rate cuts in the second half of 2025. However, April’s inflation surprise, which saw the consumer price index jump to 3.5%, up from 2.6% in March, has prompted fresh caution.

Although the ONS reported a slight slowdown in overall wage growth, down to 5.6% in Q1 from 5.9% in Q4, starting salary trends suggest that employer competition for skilled staff remains high, particularly in regions with labour shortages. The MPC has a dilemma: to stay with rate reductions to stimulate growth, or pause to prevent an inflationary rebound.

A Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) study paints a different yet painful picture.

The report, titled “Labour Market Outlook – Spring 2025,” found employer confidence declining again this quarter, with the net employment balance falling to +8 — the lowest level recorded outside of the pandemic. Hiring intentions have softened, and one in four employers now plan redundancies, rising to 27% in the private sector.

Rising employment costs, including increases in National Insurance and the National Living Wage, are forcing many organisations to scale back recruitment, limit training investment, and consider price increases. Uncertainty around the Employment Rights Bill and global events adds to employers’ caution.

“The further softening in employment in April suggests businesses continued to respond to the rise in business taxes and the minimum wage by reducing headcount,” said Ruth Gregory, deputy chief UK economist at Capital Economics.

She also stated that despite a deceleration in wage growth, it remained relatively strong, meaning the Bank of England will remain cautious over future interest rate cuts.

For BoE, the key concern is that if earnings grow quickly, firms will seek to push up prices, thereby putting up the inflation rate.

As per Gregory, sticky wage growth (a situation where wages do not immediately adjust up or down in response to changes in labour market conditions) may mean the bank remains uneasy about inflationary pressures in the near term.

Wage hike: A new battlefield?

The Bank of England has noted that wages have quietly continued to rise, raising concerns that this could indicate a seismic and more long-lasting shift in the relationship between workers and employers. In May, the European country announced its public sector pay awards, which were higher than ministers had previously said they could afford and outstripped higher-than-expected inflation.

Still, it failed to please the disgruntled doctors. In fact, the latter threatened to protest against the new pay structure. After teachers were awarded a 4% increase, teaching unions also responded angrily to the Keir Starmer government’s refusal to fully fund the deal and warned that it would damage the quality of education that pupils received. The largest union plans to take the first step towards possible industrial action.

The decision to award 1.4 million NHS staff, including nurses, midwives and ambulance workers, a smaller rise (3.6%) also met with anger. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said it was “grotesque” to hand doctors a bigger increase than nurses who earned less than them.

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, and Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, sought to defend the rises by highlighting that they represented the second time public sector personnel had received above inflation pay rises since Labour took power in 2024.

Are we seeing a 2022 scenario being played out all over again? Back then, inflation not only rocketed, it led to a situation where, in a desperate scramble to keep pace with rising prices to protect their incomes, British private and public sector workers took widescale industrial action in a way that brought back memories of the 1970s. What followed was a series of pay deals thrashed out between bosses and employees, with unions often arguing they had been due pay increases for years.

When considering the British private sector, relations between bosses and the rank and file have already been redefined by a shift towards remote working caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and then companies’ increasing insistence on more regular attendance at work. Despite the volatile background, Threadneedle Street policymakers now ask whether the wage increases indicate that the power balance has moved back in the direction of workers, allowing them to protect their finances. Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has gone some way to justifying the BoE view.

According to payroll data from the ONS, wages in the hospitality sector rose sharply, with hotels and restaurants increasing staff pay by 8.5% in the year to April, well above the 3.5% inflation rate. Retail workers also saw gains, with median pay rising by 6.9% over the same period. Across the economy, average wage growth reached 6.4%.

Recently, BoE chief economist Huw Pill said the UK’s labour market was becoming less flexible, suggesting employers were no longer able to freely hire and fire as they once could. Businesses, charities and public sector organisations have been laying off staff and freezing job adverts, but those staff who stay behind are well rewarded.

Ben Caswell, an economist at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), said, “Wages adjusted for inflation have returned to where they were before the cost of living crisis began in 2021. And the share of overall national income that is secured by workers rather than firms has also recovered to 2021 levels. While the average pay figures disguise many winners and losers, the aggregate figure showed most workers had benefited from inflation-busting pay rises to recover lost ground.”

He also focused on a slightly less up-to-date measure of pay based on employees’ average regular earnings over a rolling three-month period. This showed a rise in Great Britain that was still well above inflation at 5.6% in January to March 2025, though not as much as the PAYE data shows.

Caswell sees a series of minimum wage increases, closing the gap with the average wage, which is likely to fuel further pay rises as companies attempt to maintain a significant difference between the salaries of those on the bottom rung and the semi-skilled workers and middle managers above them.

What to expect next?

James Smith, research director at the Resolution Foundation, said that the weakening economic outlook worked against a prolonged recovery in pay.

He noted, “If we believe that wages consistent with the Bank of England’s 2% target would be about 3.5%, then we are well above that level at the moment. And that would give the Bank good reason to be cautious about cutting interest rates. However, other pay surveys are showing earnings rising at a much slower rate, so the official figures might be a bit like Wile E Coyote and about to be brought down to earth.”

Emphasising the likely short-term nature of the current bumper pay rises, the bank’s regional agents say employers are limiting pay rises to between 3% and 4% by the end of 2025. The Starmer government is not planning to pay more than 4% to public sector workers on average, and more departmental budget squeezes may be coming up.

Talking about other industries, take the hospitality sector, for example, which is known to employ a high proportion of minimum wage workers, and the same applies to the retail industry, boosting pay in 2025.

Senior journalist Phillip Inman claimed that most likely not next year or the year after, the legal minimum salaries will start rising more slowly.

Seemanti Ghosh, principal economist at the Institute for Employment Studies, sees the significant return to office-related demands from the companies as direct evidence of worker power reaching its limits. There has also been a gold rush for digital skills, which will result in another paradigm shift in the labour market.

Employers had to pay higher wages this time around, as they needed to retain skilled staff and pay them more while they embarked on a search for workers who were more adaptable in an ever-changing work environment.

“If wage increases are not driven by negotiations with unions, then they are due to employers wanting to hang on to skilled staff. This matters for all companies that increasingly rely on soft skills for things like project management and tech skills in other areas. We also see it in the green sector, where there is a shortage of people with the skills the industry needs,” Seemanti remarked.

How much of this dislocation is systemic and will keep wages higher for longer will be a subject of debate for the rest of the year. Pill advocated for keeping interest rates elevated while the trends become clearer, believing there is less damage from higher rates than letting inflation run away again.

Other MPC members disagree, arguing that businesses cannot invest in skills training while borrowing costs are prohibitively high.

It reflects a starkly different view of the labour market, one that emphasises the lasting damage caused by rising job losses and prolonged economic stagnation.

Swati Dhingra and Alan Taylor want rates to come down quickly. Who wins the argument inside the central bank could dictate whether workers or bosses have the whip hand in the great tussle over pay.

The post UK wage hikes: Who dictates terms? appeared first on International Finance.

Employee self-evaluations come with benefits for both employers and employees by facilitating self-reflection, accountability, and engagement. For employees, the process encourages self-awareness, personal growth, and a sense of ownership in their development. Employers, on the other hand, gain valuable insights into employee perspectives, identify training needs, and improve performance management processes.

Employee Self-Evaluations Vs Traditional Performance Reviews

However, employee self-evaluations are typically not carried out to guarantee a bonus, promotion, or raise. Instead, they are employed to support employee development, promote personal development, and help start a conversation.

In contrast to traditional reviews, which may reduce an employee’s sense of control, self-reviews allow individuals to address issues without passing judgment. Additionally, a self-review provides an introspective viewpoint rather than just telling workers what they are doing well or poorly.

Traditional evaluations typically highlight both exceptionally high and below-average performers. However, what about those who fall somewhere in the middle? Self-evaluations give the full spectrum of performers a platform. An additional issue that comes up during reviews is the inability of managers and employees to agree on what constitutes “good performance.”

Self-reviews allow individuals to reinterpret and broaden concepts such as “good performance” and “areas of improvement.” They let workers concentrate on aspects of their work that are significant to them. This could lead to fewer conflicts or, at the very least, make it easier to discuss differences of opinion.

Benefits Of Employee Self-Evaluations

Self-evaluations capitalise on an employee’s familiarity with their work. Also, they enable the individual to engage in the process, which increases employee accountability. Employees can review and define their goals through self-reviews.

Additionally, these assessments provide participants with a way to identify areas of weakness that can subsequently be discussed between an employee and their manager. A manager and employee can indeed improve their professional relationship, boost their sense of worth, and ultimately advance the company’s strategic mission through follow-up and professional communication.

Negative experiences may be easier to describe in a self-review than in a traditional employee evaluation. In contrast to an irate supervisor, whose words may be more critical, an employee can be a little more tactful and less incriminating.

But that does not mean a worker should be less honest or outright dishonest. A small amount of self-reflection, however, can be less painful and therefore more enlightening. For workers who are prepared to own up to their mistakes and grow from them, this is especially true. A self-evaluation that includes a discussion of how the employee can perform better the “next time” actually shows a dedication to excellence and ongoing development.

Self-evaluations are useful to management because they show how staff members feel about the work they have done. Employees are forced to review a complete body of work. Employees can examine their performance when self-reviews are included in the evaluation process, which sends a crucial message: their opinions matter.

Employers can also use self-reviews to record an employee’s performance over a specified time frame. Such documentation can serve as a helpful standard for establishing objectives and making adjustments. A chronology of a specific project can also be obtained from it.

Through self-evaluations, employers can record specific performance items in their long-term files. Through self-evaluations, individuals can demonstrate to their employers that they are serious about their careers and jobs.

Additionally, they lessen some of the stress that comes with the evaluation process. Sometimes, even though it may be uncomfortable, it is preferable to face your own demons and consider what you could have done differently rather than depending only on your supervisor’s opinion.

The post Why employee self-evaluations are ‘win-win’ for employers & staff appeared first on International Finance.

Here are five crucial steps which will help you to ensure a more seamless and successful career transition. These practical suggestions will help you reach your career objectives, from evaluating your present skill set to strategically networking and keeping up with market trends.

Assess Your Current Skills And Interests

Start by examining your present interests and skill set about your financial career transition. You can better understand your strengths and weaknesses by using this self-assessment.

Are you enthusiastic about investment management, financial planning, or auditing? Determining these areas of interest will help you make decisions and make the transition go more smoothly.

Additionally, it makes the adjustment period shorter and more productive by allowing you to concentrate on roles that organically fit with your strengths. The first step is to know yourself well.

Upgrade Your Education

Investing in higher education is one of the best strategies to manage a financial career shift. Acquiring more certifications or advanced degrees can enhance your employability and establish you as a subject matter expert.

These courses give students the conceptual understanding and useful abilities needed to succeed in the financial industry. Furthermore, they demonstrate to potential employers your dedication to continual professional growth.

Network Strategically

Making the move to a new position in the financial industry can be facilitated by networking effectively. Developing connections with experts in your target industry can yield insightful information, employment leads, and mentorship opportunities. Participate actively in online communities like LinkedIn groups, go to industry events, and join organisations for professionals.

Never hesitate to get in touch with former co-workers or graduates from your schools. These contacts can connect you with employers and provide advice. By networking, you can get an advantage over other applicants and gain access to hidden job markets.

Gain Relevant Experience

In order to make a successful transition from one financial career to another, you must acquire relevant experience. Look for opportunities, whether through contract work, part-time projects, or internships, that fit with your new career objectives. You can also gain the essential experience and skills by volunteering for special projects related to your current work.

Practical experience boosts your confidence in your new position and looks better on your resume. Employers are looking for applicants with practical knowledge, so show them that you can apply what you’ve learned to actual situations. This increases your attractiveness as a candidate for your next professional step.

Keep Updated With Industry Trends

In the quick-paced world of finance, keeping up with industry trends is essential. Reading the financial times, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications on a regular basis can offer priceless insights into regulatory changes and market movements.

You can stay informed by subscribing to pertinent podcasts or newsletters. You can learn more about emerging technologies and best practices by participating in webinars and industry conferences. You can prepare better for interviews and make wiser decisions during your career transition by staying up to date on these trends.

The post Five essential steps to navigate financial career transitions appeared first on International Finance.

Strategic lists can assist you in concentrating on the content of your applications and interviews rather than becoming bogged down in pointless details, according to Cheryl Hyatt. The following eight lists will help you monitor your progress and locate your next position.

Employers

According to Jill Gugino Panté, director of the Lerner Career Resources Center at the University of Delaware, a list of 10 to 15 possible employers is an excellent place to start.

She explains that this list is crucial as it narrows down and organises one’s job searches. Once you have this list, you can start looking at the available jobs, your LinkedIn connections (or connections from colleges) who work there, the events they’ll be attending, and, most importantly, how you can share this information with your internal networks.

“When you say you’re looking for a job, say in finance, it’s hard to get others to help you, for example. Yet, when you state that you are seeking a career in finance at XYZ company, individuals can already connect you with those people in their networks. If you don’t know where to begin when creating your dream employer list,” Pante remarked, while interacting with the ‘Fast Company’.

Carisa Miklusak, CEO of Tile, an app that connects employers with job seekers, advises looking at organisations ranked as the “Best Companies to Work For” by regional publications. Then, make a list of the top employers you want to put extra effort into pursuing, she advises, and take the time to explore the kinds of businesses you want to work for.

Positions

According to Hyatt, there are numerous ways to find positions of interest.

“You need to capture the position to a central list so you can return to it later,” she advises.

“Whether you see a position on LinkedIn, hear about it from a friend, or are contacted by a search firm. Study positions on this list to see whether you’re a good fit for them, and learn as much as you can about the employer to use in your cover letter and resume,” Hyatt stated.

Connections

Debora Roland, vice president of human resources for CareerArc, a hiring and outplacement company, advises making a list of all the people you know and interact with personally and professionally.

“Give them an overview of what you do and the position you’re hoping to land,” she advises.

Create a list of the employees at the companies you are interested in on a priority basis, and ask any of your contacts whether they know any of them. By requesting an introduction, you can obtain some traction.

Events For Local Networking

Building relationships with people who can open doors to opportunities or provide guidance and information is one of the best methods to obtain a job, according to Carisa Miklusak.

She also advised choosing two or three networking events from a list of potential ones in your area to attend, as part of your job-hunting efforts. This task also helps to make a brief list of what you intend to accomplish beforehand.

Answers To interviews

Typical interview questions include “explain me about yourself” and “what can you add to our company?”

Make a list of your responses and practise them until you are confident, advises Miklusak.

These are some of the most common icebreakers during interviews, although the CEO of Tile added that they might be challenging to respond to on the spot.

Before participating in a game, athletes practise extensively. Before you swing, practise alone, with friends, and with family, treating yourself like a career athlete.

The post Searching for a job? Here is the strategic list for you appeared first on International Finance.

The Chartered Insitute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) said that the number of applicats per vacancy had fallen since last summer across all levels of skilled jobs, and that these shortages were forcing many companies to raise their wages in order to attract more people.

The number of people moving to the UK from other EU countries has fallen to its lowest level since 2013, according to the latest official figures, with the net figure for long-term migration from the bloc at 101,000 in 2017. The number of people applying for the average low-skilled vacancy has fallen from 24 to 20 in the past year and from 19 to 10 for medium-skilled posts.

Half of organisations with recruitment problems said they had increased starting salaries in response.

Gerwyn Davies of CIPD said: “The most recent official data shows that there has been a significant slowdown in the number of EU nationals coming to work in the UK over the past year.”

“This is feeding into increasing recruitment and retention challenges, particularly for employers in sectors that have historically relied on non-UK labour to fill roles and which are particularly vulnerable to the prospect of future changes to immigration policy for EU migrants,” she added.

Alex Fleming of recruiters the Adecco Group, which collaborated on the research, added: “With Brexit looming we’re seeing a talent shortage and a more competitive marketplace. In this candidate-short landscape the pressure is on employers to not only offer an attractive salary, but also additional benefits.”

A government spokesman said: “EU citizens make a huge contribution to our economy and we have been clear from the beginning of this process that we want these citizens and their families in the UK to be able to stay.

“After we leave the EU, the UK will continue to be the open country it has always been. We will have in place an immigration system that delivers control over who comes to the UK, but that welcomes the brightest and best who want to work hard and contribute.”

The post Fewer EU citizens coming to UK leaves companies in Brexit ‘supply shock’ appeared first on International Finance.