🔍 ZOOM IN

Closing the Experience Gap | Trend #4 from 2025 Global Human Capital Trends | Deloitte (2025)

Organisations seek experienced talent—yet offer few paths to build experience in the first place.

As AI reshapes jobs and early-career pathways erode, Deloitte shows how the ‘experience gap’ has replaced the skills gap as the most urgent talent crisis. The article reveals how the collapse of traditional steppingstone roles, paired with rising job expectations and shallow development pipelines, threatens both human and organisational sustainability. But it also outlines bold alternatives—redefining experience, reviving apprenticeships, and using AI to help less-experienced workers gain critical judgment. This trend is a wake-up call for employers who want future-ready talent—and a call to action for redesigning how people gain experience in the first place.

📊 DID YOU KNOW?

👀 DID YOU SEE?

The figure below reveals a critical disconnect: while only 48% of leaders view the experience gap as a top priority, far more emphasise the importance of human capabilities like curiosity, adaptability, and emotional intelligence. This suggests a misalignment—organisations seek qualities that are often developed through experience, yet undervalue the very conditions needed to build them.

✨ EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In their article, David Mallon, Sue Cantrell, and John Forsythe argue that the most urgent challenge in today’s labour market isn’t a skills gap—it’s an experience gap. While organisations raise requirements for experience, they’ve quietly dismantled the very roles that used to build it.

Traditional foothold jobs—internships, apprenticeships, entry-level positions—are now rare. At the same time, leaders still rely on outdated hiring proxies like “years of experience,” even as work becomes more complex and human capabilities more essential.

The article calls for a new mindset: experience isn’t a checklist—it’s a process of developing judgment, adaptability, and performance in context. That process can be designed. From AI-enabled development to paid apprenticeships and whole-person hiring, organisations have options.

“Everybody wants to hire somebody with three years’ experience, and nobody wants to give them three years’ experience,” says Peter Cappelli of Wharton. Closing this gap, the authors argue, is not just a hiring fix—but a strategic investment in long-term workforce resilience.

🔍 WHY IT MATTERS

↳ Entry-level jobs are disappearing—and so is future leadership.
The very roles that once built judgment and confidence are vanishing. Without redesigning early-career pathways, organisations risk talent stagnation and leadership vacuums down the line.

↳ Human sustainability is at stake.
When workers can’t access meaningful opportunities, they face underemployment, disengagement, or exit. In India, 42% of graduates under 25 remain unemployed; in the US, half of new degree holders stay underemployed for a decade.

↳ DEI efforts are quietly undermined.
Experience requirements often correlate with privilege. By raising the bar without broadening access, organisations unintentionally shut out diverse candidates and deepen inequality.

↳ AI raises expectations—but also opportunity.
As technology automates rote tasks, the remaining work becomes more complex. That makes experience—and the ability to build it—more critical than ever.

↳ Leaders may be blind to the gap.
57% of executives gained experience through entry-level roles, internships, or apprenticeships that no longer exist. Without empathy for today’s conditions, they may miss what’s broken—and what needs rebuilding.

💡 KEY INSIGHTS

↳ Experience is about judgment, not just repetition.
Deloitte challenges leaders to stop equating experience with tenure. True readiness comes from applying skills in varied, real-world contexts—and building adaptive mental models over time.

↳ “Whole-person” hiring is gaining traction.
Organisations like Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic are moving beyond credentials to consider aspirations, traits, and learning pathways. They’re not just hiring skills—they’re hiring potential in context.

↳ Digital tools can capture tacit knowledge.
AI is enabling something once thought impossible: the sharing of wisdom. Organisations like Amazon use AI-driven coaches trained on performance reviews and internal data to support junior talent.

↳ Internships and apprenticeships offer lasting ROI.
Paid early-career opportunities remain the most effective, equitable way to convert potential into performance. Interns convert faster, stay longer, and outperform peers—yet access remains limited.

↳ Learning must be embedded in work.
Micro-opportunities, talent marketplaces, and digital playgrounds allow learners to develop in context. Isolated training won’t close the gap—but development in the flow of work just might.

🚀 ACTIONS FOR LEADERS

↳ Redesign job requirements around capability—not chronology.
Work with TA and HR teams to replace rigid filters (e.g., “5+ years”) with descriptions of what must be achieved in context—and what traits or adjacent experiences might signal readiness.

↳ Rebuild steppingstone roles.
Partner with business units to identify where junior staff can build judgment safely. Ensure these roles offer structured learning, exposure, and pathways to advancement—not just a backlog of undesirable tasks.

↳ Scale inclusive internships and apprenticeships.
Invest in early-career programmes—particularly paid ones—to widen access, diversify talent pools, and build capabilities with long-term ROI. Ensure programmes are co-owned by business and HR.

↳ Deploy AI to accelerate learning—not just automate work.
Use AI coaches, judgment simulators, and reflective prompts to help new workers apply skills in context. Integrate them with onboarding and team learning practices.

↳ Make managers key enablers of experience.
Equip frontline leaders to coach, delegate stretch tasks, and unlock tacit knowledge. Reduce admin loads so they can focus on mentoring—not just managing.

💬 QUESTION FOR THE BOARDROOM

🔗 CONCLUSION

The experience gap is more than a hiring hurdle—it’s a quiet, systemic failure undermining talent development, diversity, and resilience. As Deloitte argues, leaders must stop treating experience as a prerequisite and start treating it as a product of intentional design.

Organisations that invest in rebuilding steppingstone roles, democratising opportunity, and enabling judgment-in-context will gain more than talent—they’ll gain trust, adaptability, and long-term advantage.

In a world where machines are gaining capability by the day, human judgment—and the paths to develop it—may be the most strategic investment of all.

🎯 KEY TAKEAWAY

📚 READ

🎧 TUNE IN

If this trend had an anthem, Olivia Rodrigo already whispered the truth.

“I got my driver’s license last week…”

The license says ready.
The system says no.

Today’s workers have the skills, the will, and the potential.
But they’re stuck in neutral — blocked by a requirement they haven’t yet been given the chance to earn: experience.

Rodrigo’s heartbreak isn’t about work.
But the emotion lands the same.
You did everything right.
You still can’t get in.

That’s the experience gap.
Not a lack of talent — a lack of footholds.

She gave us the metaphor.
Now it’s up to leaders to remove the barricades and let them drive.

💭 REFLECT

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