Experts say that “job postings requiring AI skills grew 3.5 times faster than postings for all jobs since 2016.” Does your resume reflect this growing trend? While not every tech professional is a specialist in AI, many of them are familiar with how AI impacts their specialty and have been incorporating ways to demonstrate AI skills to add to their resume.
Employers will come to expect a minimum basic understanding of AI and the ability to adopt AI-based tools in creating their work products. In fact, 70% of software developers surveyed earlier this year noted that they are “using or are planning to use AI tools in their development process this year.”
What kind of AI skills can you add to your resume?
Tech and non-tech jobs are in some way already incorporating a level of gen AI usage into their daily work routine. Using AI to help draft emails and letters, build schedules, create presentations, and sort data are some of the everyday examples readily accepted by working professionals.
For specific tech roles, AI skills can be more specialized to complement tech skills. Yet, according to Pluralsight, while “81% of IT professionals feel confident they can integrate AI into their roles right now, only 12% have significant experience working with AI.”
How can you increase your AI experience and update your resume to reflect that?
According to Coursera, there are technical skills that directly correlate to upskilling in AI-centered knowledge. Skills in demand include:
- Prompt engineering
- Programming languages such as Julia, Python, C++, and Javascript
- Math, including statistics and algebra
- Machine learning
- Cognitive learning and language processing
- Applying application programming interface (API)
You can also promote your experience as AI-adaptable by honing many of your soft skills and applying them to AI-supported initiatives. These include the ability to detect bias in language, demonstrating strong critical thinking and analytical skills, as well as Emotional intelligence, especially as it applies to AI’s humanity in the workplace. This is particularly important as AI ethics protocols and various regulations are introduced in the workplace.
AI skills for IT support roles and tech specialists
In many tech support roles, professionals will operate platforms and applications that are widely used in many organizations. You may be an expert in HubSpot, Salesforce, Zendesk, or Teams or others and with so many of these tools incorporating AI into their core offerings, they can be considered carry-over AI skills as well.
When it comes to coding with AI, there are many schools of thought about the tools that can best assist IT developers. Pragmatic Coders offers a snapshot of their tested tools. It is not an exhaustive list, but it is a great introduction when looking for somewhere to start.
What AI skills keywords should your resume include?
That’s the key question! And it will vary. Remember, it is important since most resumes are screened through an ATS first, to ensure that you hit the keywords that are applicable to the job posting first and foremost, in a natural writing style and not looking “stuffed” with words.
However, when it comes to AI, some keywords appear on resumes of applicants with AI skills. with suggestions including, of course, Artificial Intelligence (AI) but also more specific AI-related terms like Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Python, PyTorch, Algorithms, and more.
Demonstrating the importance of AI skills on your resume
While adding the keywords is a key first step, formatting your resume to show how you put them to use is critical. Similar to how you would indicate sales experience (use of numbers, outcomes, benefits to organizational success, etc.), the focus should be how you used AI to generate success and net positive results. Incorporating the AI-specific coding tools you know in your resume should go hand-in-hand with how they helped launch an in-house system that saved costs, increased efficiencies, improved productivity, and more, with quantifiable evidence attached.
It was recently shared that AI skills are in high demand and will lead to quicker hiring and promotion. One CNBC article suggests: “Nearly all executives — 96% — feel an urgency to incorporate AI into their business operations, according to a March 2024 Slack Workforce Lab survey of more than 10,000 professionals.” This is further evidence that having the AI skills that will help organizations meet their goals will put you on the fast track to hiring. If you are interested in growing your experience with roles that introduce AI and machine learning skills, contact our SSi recruiting and staffing experts today to discuss.