How to Accelerate Your Career in the AI Age

This article was created in partnership with Microsoft. All opinions are my own.

It feels like I spend 95% of my waking hours talking about AI.

And there’s one thing that unites these conversations. Whether it’s the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, a founder of an AI startup, a small business owner, or just someone next to me at a bar, they ask how they can stay ahead.

They ask how AI can help them get a job or new job opportunities.

They ask how they can grow.

The 4th annual Work Trend Index from Microsoft and LinkedIn explores this phenomenon from a few different angles, but one stat in particular inspired today’s article: 76% of professionals say they need AI skills to remain competitive in the job market. There’s a strong appetite to bring AI into the workplace, especially from people who are seeing first-hand the effect AI can have on productivity when wielded correctly.

I want to share my insights, both from this report and hundreds of hours of conversations with some of the top companies in the world, to discuss why adopting AI now is the best next step you can take for your career—regardless of your industry, experience, and technical skillset.

Let’s get started.

1. If you’re entry-level, work towards making your résumé AI-competitive.

Employers are starting to understand AI aptitude as a valuable skill set and are prioritizing candidates with AI experience. That’s why 77% of leaders say, with AI, early-in-career talent will be given greater responsibilities, and 71% say they’d rather hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without them.

Today, AI is a competitive differentiator on your résumé—but it’s rapidly becoming industry-standard.

The building blocks to becoming AI-competitive:

• Learn from experienced practitioners. Take AI courses such as LinkedIn Learning courses and earn certifications you can add to your résumé. If you can find a role-specific course (like AI for marketers), take it.

• Know your toolbelt. Research popular AI tools, like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, and start experimenting with as many as possible, keeping track of what’s useful, where there are gaps, and your favorite hacks.

• Update your profile to get more inbound. Once you’re certified and familiar with high-value AI tools of your choosing, add relevant AI keywords (like ChatGPT, generative AI, prompt management, custom GPTs and automation) to your resume and LinkedIn profile.

• Use AI for work or personal projects. Bring your newfound knowledge of AI into real-world situations and learn from experience.

Your AI skills are a competitive advantage. It may sound obvious, but employers are looking to upskill their workforce and shift toward an AI-first culture. Make your pitch easy—if you apply to a job and already have AI skills, you’ll be at the top of the candidate pool. Effectively communicate how you use AI and the quantifiable impact of leveraging it in your work.

2. If you’re an individual contributor, focus on becoming an AI power user.*

You can use AI to write a business memo, synthesize a long article, learn from a research paper outside of your field, create an action plan for a new project, interview you to gain clarity on a problem, help you think through a decision, and even help you fix a broken washing machine.

Don’t laugh, I actually did that.

AI power users are reaping the benefits at work and future-proofing their career. Globally, skills are projected to change by 50% by 2030 (from 2016)—and generative AI is expected to accelerate this change to 68%.

Not to mention, 69% of people say AI can help get them promoted faster, and 79% say AI skills will broaden their job opportunities.

The building blocks to becoming an AI power user:

• Experiment—safely. The number one predictor of becoming an AI super user is experimentation. Power users are 68% more likely to frequently experiment with different ways of using AI.

• Build AI-first habits. Start training your brain to think “how can AI help me do this?” every time you’re doing a task or come across a new problem.

• Be an active voice among your peers. Contribute regularly to team chat channels about AI and initiate conversations on new tools or announcements.

• Volunteer for opportunities. Test out new systems and offer to teach others.

Your AI skills are a growth accelerator. Work backward from your org’s promotion and leveling guidelines and develop a strategy to use AI to not just outperform expectations, but to rethink how work should get done in the first place. Emerging as an AI champion will get you in front of more business-critical conversations.

3. If you’re a manager, activate your team’s AI potential and lead by example.

The best managers I know provide safe spaces for their team to communicate, create, test, fail, build, and reinvent, setting the vision and guardrails while trusting their reports to execute. So when it comes to AI, recognize its transformational power and inspire its responsible usage, without getting in the weeds.

Users say AI helps them save time (90%), focus on their most important work (85%), be more creative (84%), and enjoy their work more (83%).

The building blocks to activating your team’s AI potential:

• Define an appropriate AI policy for your team. Think about data security, ethical use, and compliance with industry standards.

• Recruit, identify, and reward AI power users on your team. Look for those who are already leveraging AI effectively (they’re out there!), and incentivize them to mentor others.

• Create a dedicated time/place for sharing AI learnings. Set up regular meetings or a forum to share successes, challenges, and new ideas about AI use cases.

• Share feedback upwards. Leverage your insights to justify more resources and decision-making input.

Your AI-first team is a step-shift in productivity and efficiency gains at scale. Empower your direct reports, introduce responsible positive impact on your team today, and measure the overall team improvement to report it back to org leaders and augment your resume.

4. If you’re an executive, operationalize AI across your org.

AI is a rapidly evolving technology, and with that, comes growing pains around strategy and adoption. Would it surprise you to learn that 60% of leaders worry their organization’s leadership lacks a plan and vision to implement AI?

That’s a big problem in the boardroom, and it has the potential to set back your business.

On the flip side, the executives who are well-versed in AI understand its long-term implications. Forty-one percent (41%) of leaders who are “extremely familiar” with AI expect to redesign business processes from the ground up with AI within the next 5 years.

The building blocks to AI operationalization:

• Build a small AI task force to create an AI mission statement and policy. Include key stakeholders from various departments, ensure alignment, address potential concerns.

• Define and communicate your vision for org-wide adoption. Share how AI can transform operations and create value.

• Work with your CIO/CTO/IT team to provide a secure AI sandbox for employee experimentation. Don’t risk the integrity of your proprietary data.

• Invest in training and incentivize adoption. Upskill your workforce through workshops and courses, reward departments that integrate AI effectively.

Your AI leadership is setting the compass for long-term innovation. Leaders and ICs alike are struggling with AI fear, inertia, and red tape. Your customers, investors, and board are looking to you for reassurance, boldness, and integrity. Take the steps now to ensure you remain competitive.

This article is sponsored by Microsoft. The full 2024 Work Trend Index report can be found here, including survey methodology and source information. #MicrosoftPartner #WorkTrendIndex #AI

*Microsoft research defines an AI power user as someone who says they are familiar or extremely familiar with generative AI, use generative AI for their work at least several times a week, and have saved more than 30 minutes every day by using it.