The Amazing Power of Artificial Intelligence in Transferring Skills to a New Job

 

Steven Simon, Ph.D.

Anyone reading this has probably heard about the potential of artificial intelligence (AI), for better or worse. While we hear about it eliminating jobs, AI can now also play a role in short-cutting the process of searching for a job. Ironically, it is even outsmarting employers' use of AI in selecting employees. So why not also use it to seamlessly transfer your skills to a new job or a whole new field of work.

Let's say you were laid off because your job is being eliminated or phased out of the job market. Or maybe you feel it's time to change directions. But look at all the time you've spent becoming an expert and the training or education you needed to get there. It's pretty disheartening to think about starting all over, especially with financial and family obligations, hopes, and future dreams. Maybe you've seen this coming but now the reality is here. 

How do you even begin to sort out this turmoil you're in? A good place is to assess your transferable skills and where you can use them. Typically this has been subjective process of defining your skills, or using an inventory to assess them in a general way. Then there is the process of finding what occupations require the same or similar skills and applying that information to identify specific jobs and additional education or training you may need. Again, this is largely a subjective process that takes time and effort at precisely the time you need to find something quickly. You have neither the time nor patience to plow through a transferable skills analysis.

AI can help do that, and more, in just a few minutes. If you use one or more of the available AI search engines such as Bard, Bing, Chat GPT, or Claude, you can input your background from a resume. Then you can ask AI to define your soft and hard skills. You can expand to the next question of taking some or all of those skills and asking AI the occupations that require those skills. Then, follow up that question with asking for the currently open jobs in the occupation of your choice that require those skills. You can even ask AI for open jobs only in certain geographical locations. In other words, with the right questions you can do a very targeted search for your best fit situation. Of course you need to pick up from there with applying for and getting a job.

Use of AI for this purpose is in the experimental stages. Its important to take precautions to do some modification of AI results to best fit your unique situation. Also, confirm that you are getting accurate information. Some of the AI search engines provide reference sources to help evaluate and check. Finally, it's often helpful to use more than one AI source for the same questions. The answers may be slightly different or supplement what the other sources found . So try the power of AI and see what it can do for you!

Dr. Simon is the President, CEO and a Career Consultant with Human Services Outcomes, Inc. He specializes in transferable skills analysis and its application to job search.