To stay competitive, traditional companies must rethink the definition of a tech employee.

The traditional tech industry is losing its allure for potential employees. The unique benefits and sizable salaries that once attracted fresh entrants to the tech workforce have been undermined by rounds upon rounds of layoffs as small and large tech companies embrace routine personnel reductions. 

2 Types of Employees to Hire for the Age of AI

1. Holistic employees, who have project management, critical thinking and other skills in addition to coding. 
2. Subject experts such as accountants, lawyers or even agricultural specialists who can apply unique business skills to their work.

Qualified computer science graduates are adjusting by casting their job-search nets beyond traditional tech firms, pursuing roles in real estate investment, banking and retail, or opting for more stable governmental careers. 

The Pros and Cons of Hiring for AI Skills

The seemingly obvious path to distinguishing oneself as a preferred tech candidate, then, would be to specialize in specific artificial intelligence software coding capabilities. 

Recent research by Microsoft and a professional jobs platform found that the proportion of its members that added AI skills like Copilot and ChatGPT to their profiles in 2023 was 142 times greater than the year prior.  According to the same survey, 71 percent of business leaders say they’d rather hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without them.

In fact, big tech employers are offering million-dollar salaries for the best AI talent. The problem: applicants with specific AI proficiencies are difficult to find. In a recent survey, Amazon Web Services found that close to three in four employers that are prioritizing hiring talent with AI skills are having difficulty finding qualified candidates.  

Paradoxically, overemphasis on hiring workers with singular technical abilities, such as AI tool generation , may ultimately result in a workforce limited in its ability to adapt to the very business models that the advent of AI platforms will spawn.

To continue to attract top talent and maintain an agile team capable of adapting to evolving AI advancements, traditional tech companies must change hiring strategies to target two new important candidate types — the holistic employee and the subject matter expert.

Holistic Employees

Companies must assess all candidate qualities and attributes, not just software proficiencies. In a qualitative study, interviews with hiring experts reflected a broad consensus that more critical thinking skills are necessary for success in today’s dynamic workplace.

Assuming a core understanding of computer science, the ability to lead a large team project or handle a rapid shift in priorities can be as valuable as specialized AI training. These characteristics will be essential given our current pace of change.

Next, tech firms must proactively target hires from diverse employment and educational backgrounds. Humanities majors, for example, bring more robust research and writing skills, so much so that firms like BlackRock are recruiting outside of the tech and finance field and tapping English and history majors to round out their talent.

From an AI standpoint, these unorthodox hires can use their language talents to fine-tune prompt-engineering, effectively communicate challenges at the technology’s edge and offer diversity of thought that will drive innovation. Beyond AI, these hires will bring new perspectives that inform strategy shifts and diversify company culture.

As the AI-driven tech era matures, savvy companies will seek quick-learning, creative individuals to adapt to the next AI infrastructure, find new automation solutions or perhaps reinvent the company’s business model altogether. While tech candidates should continue to train for basic AI software skills, they should also nurture critical thinking and ingenuity — skills that cannot be automated. Developing these characteristics will enable tech employees to provide more value to their current company and make them more marketable for future roles. 

Subject Matter Experts

Tech companies also have an opportunity to differentiate their service delivery by hiring deep subject matter experts. Think of employees who are certified public accountants, lawyers, or perhaps experts within a specific industry such as agriculture, machinery, etc. 

The subject matter expert is adept at identifying valid business use cases and understands exactly how to direct tech teams to solve those use cases. In this way, the subject matter expert’s skill set augments traditional coders and allows tech teams to be better communicators, providing more effective solution delivery within their client base. As traditional coding skills become more automated with AI, tech companies can level up with subject matter experts who streamline the implementation of new technologies and understand the true business need that the technology solutions seek to address.

Hiring tactics do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they are borne from an overall corporate strategy. Tech firms and their leaders are in the driver’s seat to define the strategy for responding to our new AI-driven world.

To stay competitive, traditional companies must rethink the definition of a tech employee. By abandoning siloed hiring and seeking well-rounded candidates who combine creative thinking, overarching subject matter expertise and AI knowledge, organizations can greet the new era with a workforce as agile as the innovative business models that will inevitably arise.