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I spoke with Orla Daly, CIO of Skillsoft, about how companies can best navigate the skills gap in AI, and how job seekers can gain a lucrative new position in the AI sector.
Among the topics we covered:
- Certainly companies are scrambling to hire artificial intelligence professionals, but there’s a lack of skilled experts available. To what extent is this a problem for companies currently?
- What advice would you give to companies seeking to boost their AI hiring? And to professionals seeking to get hired?
- How is Skillsoft addressing the AI skills gap?
- The future of the AI skills gap? How do you expect it to evolve over time?
SEE BELOW FOR A TRANSCRIPT OF THE CONVERSATION.
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This transcript has been edited for length and clarity:
Are companies having a hard time hiring skilled AI professionals?
Yes, in short, they are. And I think it’s an evolving space. And we’re still just grappling with what are even the AI skills that we need. But certainly, this is something that the World Economic Forum has highlighted as one of the key skill gaps. And an area where they’re saying there will be close to 1 million jobs created between now and 2027.
Similarly, we recently completed an IT skills and salary report at Skillsoft. And this was one of the key areas that those surveys expressed challenges in hiring. So certainly I think it’s top of mind right now.
I think it’s more that people are trying to figure out what they need in order to take advantage of what AI offers. Talking to others in the industry, I do think people are grappling with the fact that there is a ton of opportunity with AI.
How do we think about taking advantage of that in a responsible way as quickly as possible so we’re not left behind? And in order to do that, what are the skills that I need and what are the skills that I have within my organization that I can really bring to bear quickly to allow me to keep pace?
So let’s say there’s a company that wants to boost their AI hiring. What sort of advice would you give to them?
So I think first it’s thinking about what are the AI skills you need. So when we think about AI, to your point, it has been out there for a while and now it’s kind of evolving at a much faster pace, with generative AI specifically.
I think we’re also seeing that ultimately AI is impacting every role and every role now I think needs to understand how they can work with AI and take advantage of AI. So it’s ultimately impacting our traditional roles as well.
I think that it really gets back to what is the business value that we can create and therefore: what are the domain knowledge and the technical skills as well as more of the power skills [that we need].
So we’re also seeing a lot of [methods] to really take advantage of AI. It’s about creative thinking, it’s about problem solving. It’s about, ultimately how can you engage in a productive way with some of the tools that are available.
So it’s not just the technical skills. So it really starts with taking an inventory: what is it that you’re trying to achieve with AI?
And then in order to do that, what are the core skills that you need to either augment within your existing organization or retrain to up-skill individuals.
How do tech professionals train themselves, and set themselves up for one of these lucrative artificial intelligence jobs on the horizon?
Obviously there is no substitute – ultimately you have to complete the training and learn the skills.
So I think seeking skills training specific to the technical areas you’re interested in; certifications are always super important. And we certainly see that, again, with the IT skills and salary report that we did that those are certainly valued by companies that are hiring.
Especially in an area that’s newer and evolving, having some good credentials and certifications are important for folks that are looking to branch into that area.
How is Skillsoft addressing the AI skills gap?
For Skillsoft, it’s twofold. One, how do we help our customers? And then how does it impact what we’re doing internally?
I would say it’s an exciting time to be at Skillsoft. AI is very much a topic of conversation. There’s a lot of positive energy around it in terms of the opportunity that it brings both in the larger business context as well as for us internally.
So with our customers, we’re doing a lot around obviously producing content to support our learning community in terms of how to use AI responsibly, some of the ethics and compliance topics around AI; we’ve created and recently launched a ChatGPT journey [course], which gets into more the technical side of things as well as how do you write good prompts.
We’re also working on content around just how do you reimagine business processes and different business models in the context of AI?
So a lot of good work is happening in terms of content around how to take advantage of AI. And then also it’s allowing
us to think differently in terms of how we create the content, so not just the content itself.
So that’s some of what we’re doing on the customer side. Internally, it is like everyone: we’re looking for those productivity gains that can be had by using generative AI and some of the more efficient, smarter ways that we can get work done.
How do you see the AI skills gap evolving over the next one to three years?
The key is, I think it’s going to evolve. And at this stage, it’s a little bit hard to tell where it’s going to go. I do think things will probably normalize. We’re in a certain wave right now. And therefore there are a lot of new skills, like prompt engineering.
But to your point, it’s not going away. I do think it ultimately is going to impact every role. But more importantly, it’s going to be: how is every role going to evolve to incorporate that AI is part of our world and part of how we get things done.
And for those that can figure out how to do that well, it will be a differentiator in terms of how we can increase efficiencies internally or how you can go to market and make an impact and bring value from a customer perspective.
So I do think [AI] is a little different from some of the other, key skill changes we’ve seen in the past where they have been in a particular area or have a particular focus. In contrast, [AI] is going to be a little bit broader in terms of how ultimately it impacts all roles – and what does that look like?
