Artificial intelligence has made the way we live and work more efficient, but this efficiency has eliminated the need for human workers in roles across many industries. College graduates and experienced professionals alike should be developing skills that robots will never have; skills that will make them employable no matter what the future holds. Those wishing to become un-automatable should be able to communicate a deep understanding of their domain effectively and understand the context of both their organizations and those they work with. Moreover, emotional competence is essential to developing strong interpersonal skills and succeeding in any workplace. Professionals should also strive to be effective teachers and build a large network of human connections. Finally, possessing an ethical compass will be important as algorithm-driven machines begin to make morally weighted decisions. These seven skills will make you successful in any profession and shield your career from a robot takeover.
Today’s young professionals grew up in an age of mind-boggling technological change, seeing the growth of the internet, the invention of the smartphone, and the development of machine-learning systems. These advances all point toward the total automation of our lives, including the way we work and do business. It’s no wonder, then, that young people are anxious about their ability to compete in the job market. As executives who have spent our lives assessing and implementing digital technology in every type of organization, we often get asked by them: “What should I learn today so that I’ll have a job in the future?” In what follows we’ll share seven skills that can not only make you unable to be automated, but will make you employable no matter what the future holds.
Communication. In a world where U.S. adults’ total media usage is nearly 12 hours a day, on average, communication skills are essential for getting people’s attention and moving them to action. The most basic form of communication is constructing a compelling story. The good news, from a competitive standpoint, is that most people have turned their brain over to bad software, resulting in the all-too-familiar “death by PowerPoint.” Instead of just listing facts, compelling storytellers use both soft and hard data. This is true whether the speaker is Albert Einstein imagining himself on a train nearing the speed of light to explain relativity or John F. Kennedy quoting John Winthrop’s saying, “We must always consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill – the eyes of all people are upon us.” In effective communication, story and fact, rhetoric and science intertwine to enlist the emotions of others to take action on a topic or an initiative. And although efforts have been launched to create robot authors, and the impact of robots on fake news and echo chambers is undeniably significant, the ability to communicate compellingly will always be in high demand and hard to automate.
Content. Of course, communication must be about a particular topic. And if you know a great deal about a given domain, you have a rich base on which to draw. Moreover, if you have an appreciation for the dynamics of that domain, you have something mere Googling can never replicate. Even deeper, if you have a reputation for excellence in a domain, it will feed on itself and give you preferential access to new knowledge and information because of your insider status.
In professional services, experts can write their own ticket. Take Rohit Kumar, the principal and leader of National Tax Policy Services at PWC, where Adam works. Kumar is well known on Capitol Hill and with global tax experts because he has deep and broad knowledge of the subject and understands the dynamics of how policy will shape up now and in the future. Again, it is those with a combination of expertise and the ability to move new knowledge forward who will stay ahead of the robots.
