New Skillset
Published on: 12. April 2023
Author:
Nicole NeubauerReading time:
When knowledge alone is no longer enough: The skillset of the future
You earn more than 75,000 euros a year? You have studied? You work in a tech or IT company, have a lot to do with data or finance, or work in communications? Then you and your job will most likely be affected by artificial intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT[1],[2].
That’s the conclusion of researchers at OpenAI – the creators of the ChatGPT chatbot – and the University of Pennsylvania. By now, it should be clear to most: ChatGPT is more than just a passing hype. When Netflix launched in 1999, it took more than three years for the company to reach one million users. It took Facebook only 10 months to reach that number. ChatGPT took exactly ¬5 days. No wonder many see it as a kind of milestone for artificial intelligence. For the first time, many people will be able to experience it directly, and it is already possible to anticipate the force with which AI systems will also impact the job market. According to a survey of 1,000 CEOs by the U.S. job board Resumebuilder, nearly half of the companies that rely on ChatGPT have already replaced employees with chatbots[3]. With the launch of these and many other AI systems, the fourth industrial revolution is gaining massive speed.
On factory floors, many jobs have already been replaced by machines. Is this very Artificial Intelligence now ensuring that the same thing is now happening in open plan offices? In this article, I would like to give you some food for thought and sketch out an idea of how the professional demands and challenges posed by AI will change in the future and how you should prepare yourself and your company for this.
This time it’s about the white-collar jobs
What’s new about this wave of automation is that this time it’s not the blue-collar workers who are being targeted, as in the past, but the white-collar workers. Even though most of them have replaced their white blouses and shirts in the home office with comfortable hoodies, it is precisely them who are now being targeted. Because the same rule applies to this revolution: every new technology can either replace or supplement human labor. Business Insider has rounded up which specific jobs these might be in this well-researched article[4]. Spoiler: Data analysts, journalists, lawyers, graphic designers, software developers or accountants – some of these you probably didn’t have on your radar yet. But how can you counter this development? First, with an open mind. Because AI is no longer going away, it’s here to stay. Ask yourself how you can benefit from these systems and develop your role further, because commercial, financial or technical skills alone will no longer be enough in the future.
You should also realize that your personality and soft skills will be the career boosters of the future. Ask yourself how well you have developed these skills:
- Communication skills: clarity of speech, goal-oriented communication, active listening, and the ability to engage in dialogue and conflict.
- Problem-solving skills: problem sensitivity, creativity, processing complex information, critical thinking, ability to make judgments
- Intercultural competence: respectful and reflective interaction across cultures, as well as language skills
- Social and emotional skills: Emotional and social intelligence, empathy, ability to work in a team, ability to adapt or change, resilience
- Intrinsic motivation: curiosity, willingness to learn and enthusiasm
A detailed overview of 21 important future competencies is provided by the study “The future of qualification in companies according to Corona,” which was conducted by the Stifterverband together with McKinsey. In addition to key technological and digital competencies, the study also lists classic and transformative competencies that we need to be able to solve the problems of today and tomorrow in an innovative way.
The renaissance of soft skills
We are also seeing a clear shift in knowledge work from people to machines – and also from hard to soft skills. For a long time, the latter were considered rather marginal: There is no other way to explain why we find such a high proportion of people with narcissistic or psychopathic personality disorders in management positions[5]. What is needed is a willingness to reform and a change in thinking, also on the part of companies:
1. companies need to give more weight to social skills: They are essential for business and cannot be learned in a webinar. People don’t change overnight.
2. In recruiting, more attention must be paid to development potential than to actual professional experience: It makes more sense to consider what a person could do (also in the future) based on his or her experience – even apart from past activities.
3. reskilling is needed: companies have to invest in their employees of all(!) salary levels in the long run. With reskilling they learn new competencies to be able to fill a new position. This also increases employee loyalty. Hogan Assessment has compiled a compact summary of the concrete steps required for this[6].
In any case, assessments can help identify today the personality traits and soft skills that will become more important in the future. Data-driven tests on values and strengths[7] can be used to identify talents and determine reskilling potential. In addition to mentoring and job rotation, one-on-one coaching can also help you expand your soft skillset and identify social weaknesses.
“The only skill that will be important in the 21st century is the skill of learning new skills.”
Peter Drucker
The “good” news at the end: Even with ChatGPT we will not run out of work. As we have seen in the past, machines will take over our routine jobs. If it used to be welding car parts together, now it’s bookkeeping. In return, we will be freed up for new tasks that will require non-machine skills. However, this forces us to reinvent ourselves and our professions, and thus also to establish a culture of lifelong learning.
More info on the topic:
Disruption to knowledge work through machine learning and AI was also the topic of a panel at this year’s World Economic Forum:
More about the idea of “lifelong learning” can be found on the UNESCO website. The in-house institute (UIL) has published a new report there that sets out a future-oriented vision of education and outlines necessary steps:
https://uil.unesco.org/lifelong-learning/new-vision-lifelong-learning-and-world-worth-living
AI also needs to be learned: Steven Forth, CEO of a SaaS company, shows you in his blog how to interact with ChatGPT, how the system works and how to identify biases:
https://www.ibbaka.com/ibbaka-talent-blog/five-ways-to-develop-chat-gpt-skills
[1] The abbreviation GPT stands for Generative Pretrained Transformer. ChatGPT does not access or research content from the Internet. The system gets the information from texts it has already read and been trained on. Hence the name “Generative” and “Pretrained”. The system rewrites or translates the texts, which can come from different fields of knowledge, and outputs this transformed answer.
[2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.10130.pdf
[3] https://www.resumebuilder.com/1-in-4-companies-have-already-replaced-workers-with-chatgpt/
[4] https://www.businessinsider.de/tech/chat-gpt-diese-zehn-berufe-koennten-in-zukunft-von-der-kuenstlichen-intelligenz-uebernommen-werden-d/
[5] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886912004163
[6] https://www.hoganassessments.com/blog/reskilling-socioemotional-skills-talent-development/
[7] Beispielsweise über das Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) und Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI)
