In 2024, we captured over 1 million interviews on Metaview across geographies, departments, and types of companies. Looking back on a year that continued to be full of evolution and tumult for the world of hiring, we wanted to take a peek into the black box of interviews to go beyond the headlines and understand what candidates and interviewers were actually discussing. So we built Metaview Trends. For the first time ever, you can search for any keyword or phrase to understand how it’s trended in interview conversations throughout the year. Here’s a glimpse into some of the top trends we uncovered from interviews that happened in 2024.
1. AI officially became mainstream
We’re now more than two years out from the moment GenAI burst onto the scene, and the influence of AI shows no signs of slowing down. According to PwC’s Global AI Jobs Barometer report, postings for AI jobs are growing 3.5x faster than for all jobs and jobs that require AI skills can carry up to a 25% wage premium. Given all of the hype in this space, we’d expect to see interviewers increasingly probing AI skills and candidates wanting to show off their AI knowledge.
Our data shows a continued upward trend of AI mentions across job departments in 2024. Overall, we’ve seen mentions of AI increase about 35% since the start of the year and frequency of mention is now at an all-time high for the year.
Similarly, discussion around “prompt engineering” hit the year’s high in November.
Though discussion of prompt engineering was, of course, most popular in Engineering interviews, it was mentioned in interviews for all departments, highlighting the fact that AI skills for technical and non-technical roles alike continue to be a major differentiator for top talent.
From March onward, we saw that candidates began to mention prompt engineering even more frequently than interviewers did—which supports the idea that candidates are increasingly proactively promoting their AI literacy, even when not explicitly asked about it. It’s no surprise we’re seeing a surge in these skills in response to the obvious need for talent of all types to get comfortable leveraging AI to remain competitive.
In their recent Octoverse report, GitHub shared that for the first time, Python surpassed JavaScript as the most popular language on the platform. They explained, “The rise in Python usage correlates with large communities of people joining the open source community from across the STEM world rather than the traditional community of software developers.“ We’ve seen this trend reflected in interview conversations, where we’ve seen that Python has been mentioned more than twice as frequently as JavaScript throughout the year, confirming that AI is changing the face of software development as it opens up coding to new groups of people.
We also saw that discussion around “AI agents” overtook discussion of “AI assistants” earlier this year, with the highest frequency of mention happening in Engineering, Product, and GTM interviews. With much buzz about agentic AI becoming the next big thing, we expect to see that trend continue into 2025.
2. The debate around workplace flexibility raged on
As companies continue to wrestle with what workplace norms should look like in a post-COVID world, it’s no surprise that chatter around remote, hybrid, and in-office work remained high all year. A 2024 report by Flex Index revealed that 82% of Fortune 500 companies still offer flexible work, while only 18% require full-time in-office work. So how did we see these trends manifest in interview conversations?
Though relatively few companies have actually enforced full return-to-office mandates, we saw that mentions of “return to office” have been on an overall upward trajectory since the beginning of 2024, peaking in October. With a number of high profile companies like Amazon and Alphabet continuing to push for more stringent in-office plans, this more frequent mention could be a sign that employers are increasingly looking for talent that’s open to less flexible in-office attendance, and that employees want clarity on what employers’ expectations will be.
Mentions of “remote work” remained higher than mentions of “hybrid work” throughout the year. Interestingly, we saw a switch from May onward where candidates started mentioning remote work more often than interviewers did, which may be a sign that there’s growing candidate demand for fully flexible work as many companies swing back to full or partial in-office return. Discussion of flexible work options has remained relatively constant throughout the year, showing that this will continue to be a topic of interest for both sides of the interview.
3. The tides of culture turned
2024 has been a year of reckoning for workplace culture, with heated discourse about which values have a place at work—and which don’t. To much controversy, SHRM announced it was officially eliminating “equity” from its DEI agenda and big-name companies like Boeing and Ford disbanded DEI departments entirely, kicking off debates about merit versus diversity. So how did these hot-button topics show up in conversations with candidates?
We saw that mentions of DEI peaked in January and dipped to their lowest point in May. In December so far, DEI was mentioned about 30% less frequently than it was at the start of the year. Aside from a blip in September, DEI has consistently been mentioned more frequently by candidates than by interviewers.
DEI was most frequently mentioned in People-related interviews, with the lowest relative mentions happening in Engineering and Product interviews.
At the same time, we’ve seen that discussions around “company culture” peaked in June, and, as of December, were over 40% higher than they were at the start of the year. So while talk of DEI is on a downward trend, conversation about company culture and values continues to heat up. This suggests that when bringing in new talent, it’s increasingly important for both sides of the table to have frank conversations about preferred working norms and values and whether there’s a real match.
4. The macroeconomic mood started looking up
It’s been a rough couple of years for the global job market. Between a barrage of announcements about mass layoffs and hiring freezes that felt never-ending, the mood sometimes felt bleak. But, things are definitely starting to look up. There’s plenty of data to support the global job market’s rebound in 2024: For example, the US economy added 227,000 new jobs in November and total job postings are back to pre-pandemic norms in countries like the US, the UK, and Canada.
In 2024 interviews, we saw that mention of terms like “recession” and “layoff” peaked at the start of the year, hitting their lowest points in the last months of the year. As of November, mentions of “recession” were over 35% lower than at the start of the year.
As the economy continues to strengthen, we expect to see mention of these worries continue to dissipate as interviewers and candidates gain confidence in job security and workforce stability.
5. Adaptability emerged as the key to future-proofing talent
As AI continues to change the face of what virtually all jobs look like, the only constant we can count on is continued change. Earlier this year, LinkedIn reported that “adaptability” was a top skill of the moment and would continue to grow in demand. Our data shows that mentions of adaptability have been on a steady upward trend since the start of the year. Discussion around related traits like resiliency and problem solving also surged in popularity this year too, suggesting that even more so than technical skills or specific backgrounds, organizations are looking for talent that can roll with the punches and find ways to maintain their value as the pace of change accelerates.
As we look forward to 2025, we’re excited to see how AI will continue to reshape what workplaces and workforces look like. With the breakneck pace of innovation continuing, it’s poised to be another year of incredible change and progress for both organizations and talent alike. In the meantime, be sure to check out Metaview Trends to explore any other interview trends you’re interested in diving into.
A note on methodology: Metaview Trends aggregates anonymized data from interview conversation transcripts, and identifies frequently mentioned terms and topics. We then track their popularity over specific time periods. We scale mentions to a score of 0–100, where 100 marks peak popularity, 50 reflects half the interest, and 0 indicates insufficient data.
