Singapore employers are increasingly seeking AI fluency across a wide range of roles, but hiring processes have yet to catch up, leaving companies with few reliable ways to determine whether candidates actually possess the skills they are looking for.
A new analysis by global talent platform Second Talent, drawing on data from PwC’s 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer and Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower (MOM), highlights a growing disconnect between the demand for AI capabilities and employers’ ability to assess them during recruitment.
PwC’s analysis of around 1.6 million Singapore job postings from 2025 found that 5.3% required AI skills, up from 3.3% in 2024. This translates to approximately 84,000 roles requiring some form of AI capability.
The majority of these jobs were not traditional technology positions. About 82% were AI-user roles, where employees are expected to use AI tools within existing functions, while only 18% were seeking AI developers.
The growth in demand also reflected this shift. AI-user roles increased by roughly four times the number of postings added year-on-year compared with AI developer positions, suggesting that AI is increasingly becoming a workplace capability rather than a skill confined to specialist technology teams.
MOM data further points to the changing nature of work. In the first quarter of 2026, 18.9% of Singapore firms had begun redesigning job functions around AI, while 13.9% had created entirely new roles.
Yet according to Second Talent, recruitment practices have not evolved at the same pace.
“Companies budgeted for AI as an engineering line item and the market went somewhere else,” said Elton Chan, co-founder and CEO of Second Talent.
“The volume is in operations, finance, marketing, and support. Those roles now come with a fluency requirement attached, and most hiring processes have no way to test for it.”
The challenge is particularly significant because AI proficiency in many of these roles is less about coding and more about applying technology effectively to real workplace problems.
Chan said CVs can list AI tools and platforms candidates have used, but they do not necessarily demonstrate whether an individual can identify an inefficient process, break it down and use AI to improve it reliably.
Traditional technical interviews are similarly ill-equipped to assess these capabilities, Second Talent said.
The inability to consistently verify AI skills becomes more consequential as employers attach a growing wage premium to AI-related capabilities. Government and Public Sector roles with AI requirements command a 107% premium, while Consumer Markets roles carry a 96% premium, according to the analysis.
This creates a potential hiring dilemma: employers are increasingly willing to pay for AI capability, but may lack a consistent mechanism to establish whether candidates actually possess it.
There is currently no widely accepted or standardised method for evaluating AI proficiency during recruitment.
Stacie Haller, chief career advisor at ResumeBuilder.com, previously told HRD that employers are still in the early stages of developing effective AI assessments.
“At some point, HR managers will likely implement AI skill tests during the interview process, similar to Excel assessments,” Haller said. “But right now, we are still in the early stages, and there are no standard benchmarks for evaluation.”
Until such assessments become more established, interviews remain one of the most practical ways for employers to test candidates’ real-world AI experience.
Rather than simply asking applicants which AI tools they know, employers can ask candidates to describe specific situations in which they have used AI, the problem they were trying to solve, how they applied the technology and what measurable outcome it produced.
“Companies need to determine how AI skills can best be applied within their organisation, how to evaluate these skills, and how to train existing staff,” Haller said.
“This will be critical as AI proficiency becomes an industry standard.”
For Singapore employers, the challenge is therefore moving beyond AI as a keyword on a job description or CV. As AI becomes embedded in functions ranging from finance and marketing to operations and support, companies will increasingly need recruitment processes that can distinguish between candidates who have merely experimented with AI tools and those who can use them effectively, responsibly and consistently to improve how work gets done.