In today’s age of artificial intelligence, it’s easy to assume that mastering ChatGPT and other tech tools will give you a leg up in a competitive labor market. But as someone who has reported on the challenges of today’s workforce, one thing that I’ve consistently heard from experts and hiring leaders is that the qualities that increasingly separate top candidates from others aren’t just technical—they’re human.
As AI becomes more capable, these experts say employers are looking beyond traditional hiring credentials like degrees, job titles and technical expertise when making new hires. Instead, they’re focusing on candidates with essential skills that can complement and utilize AI, but can’t be replaced by it.
“It’s sort of an inversion of where we’ve been historically,” Brian Elliott, future of work strategist and CEO of the think tank organization Work Forward, told me. “We’ve usually valued the depth of expertise in a specific field of knowledge, and now it’s going to be more about the combination of experience and learning mindset and leadership capability.”
According to a global LinkedIn survey, one in five professionals feel that not having the right skills is making their job search more challenging. To help workers better navigate the job market, I spoke to Elliott, as well as other workplace leaders and an economist, about the skills workers should be building right now in order to get ahead.
Read here to discover why these experts say communication, storytelling, adaptability and curiosity are the top human skills employers want in a candidate—and how you can sharpen these traits to become a more competitive applicant.
