South Africa has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. According to official figures from the first quarter of 2026, 32.7%, or around 8.1 million, South Africans are currently unemployed. While this reality is often described as a numbers problem – too many job seekers and too few jobs – these stats also reveal a growing disconnect between qualifications and employability.
For decades, the path to employment has seemed fairly straightforward: study hard, earn a qualification and start your career. But in our current labour market, employers are increasingly looking for candidates with practical experience.
This is not an indictment of higher education, but rather an acknowledgement that a degree alone is no longer enough, especially in a market changing as rapidly as ours. Which raises the question: what do we need to do to bridge the gap between qualifications and employability and how do we identify what truly makes someone job-ready?
Unfortunately, the way the education system is structured means that it takes a very long time to make changes and introduce new ways of learning. Our approach to testing is still based on learning material and measuring how well learners can recall it. But recalling information is not the same as understanding it. True understanding is demonstrated through application and traditional assessments often fail to measure how effectively learners can apply what they know in real-world situations.
Additionally, traditional learning doesn’t encourage young people to question and challenge what they’re taught. But these are actually the skills that modern employers are after. They want graduates who are solution-focused, curiousand good at problem-solving and critical thinking. This doesn’t mean that higher education needs to be completely redesigned. But it does mean bringing in strategic partners and working with industry to ensure that students leave university with useful soft skills.
Here, it’s important to highlight that the problem doesn’t only lie with tertiary education. Hiring also hasn’t evolved. Employers might say they’re looking for employees with grit and resourcefulness, but they overlook the candidate without a degree who woke up before the sun, took several modes of transport and walked kilometres to get to a job interview. Businesses that still use old-school hiring methodologies and refuse to consider candidates without degrees risk disqualifying people with the softer skills they claim to value most.
Questioning AI outputs
Right now, the job market is a ‘buyer’s market’. By this, I mean that job opportunities are limited, which gives employers the upper hand. Because they have no shortage of candidates to consider, simply having a degree does not guarantee you a job.
With this in mind, new graduates need to be thinking about how they can become the kind of candidates the market wants. One simple way to do this is to start challenging the technology so many of us use every day across most aspects of our lives – artificial intelligence (AI), specifically generative AI tools, like ChatGPT.
I recently came across a study that monitored the brain activity of students solving math problems with the help of an AI agent. Most had activity levels similar to someone watching TV. But a few had spikes in activity, which the researchers later linked to incidents when the students argued with the machines and questioned outputs. In questioning, these learners did more cognitive work.
Over time, this type of student will be sharper than their peers who took the AI output to be the truth. This is because when you actively engage with information, learning moves from short-term recall to genuine understanding. By questioning the model’s logic and considering different perspectives, judgment improves. When you regularly critique AI outputs, your decision-making capabilities improve because you are being asked to choose one outcome over another. This might sound simple, but when you consistently repeat a behaviour, you build new pathways in your brain and essentially train yourself to be more of an analytical thinker.
Beyond this, AI can also help recruiters and businesses find candidates that are best suited to the job. I’m not talking about parsing CVs based on key criteria. I’m talking about using AI to create assessments that accurately assess soft skills. For example, you could use a generative AI-powered chatbot as a virtual customer. As the conversation unfolds, the tool will reveal how someone listens, responds to feedback, negotiates or manages difficult situations.
In a country where too many qualified people remain unemployed, the challenge is about so much more than creating job opportunities. It’s about understanding what the market needs. It’s about shifting our perceptions and rethinking how we define talent. It’s about finding creative ways to develop soft skills. And it’s about using technology to assess capabilities in new and creative ways. When we better align education, training and recruitment with the realities of the world of work, it will be far easier to recognise true potential.
Written by Chanél Oldfield, Head of CAPACITI