Marie-Claire AssekoYou can find parts of this article in French here (5 façons d’augmenter la résilience de son emploi) and here (5 questions à se poser pour exploiter ses points forts).
As someone who works in technology, an industry notoriously known of its fast pace of changes (Generative AI anyone?), finding ways to AI-proof my job 🎯 in the evolving job market is one of my top priorities.
So each year, I take a hard look at the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report and this year was no different. The Future of Jobs Report 2025 provides valuable insights into how to make one’s career more resilient, AI-proof, in the face of rapid technological advances and other workplace changes.
Below I’ll share a breakdown of how I’ll apply the insights from the report and one of my favorite newsletters, Almost Timely News, based on my background and aspirations. Hopefully, it can be useful to you too! 🤓
🔍 Understand the Shifting Landscape
By 2030, core skills required for jobs are expected to change. According to the report:
On average, workers can expect that two-fifths (39%) of their existing skill sets will be transformed or become outdated over the 2025-2030 period.
While AI and automation will displace some roles, they will also create new opportunities, especially for those who adapt and upskill.
📌Take this 5-min quiz to see which blind spots are holding you back — and what to do about it.
📌 Try this AI Fluency quiz to assess where you stand regarding your utilization of AI and to know which three specific AI concepts you should focus on mastering! 🤓
🧠 Cultivate In-Demand Human (Cognitive) Skills
While technical skills are essential, human-centric skills are becoming increasingly valuable:
- Analytical thinking: Critical for problem-solving and decision-making.
- Resilience, flexibility, and agility: Adaptability in the face of change.
- Leadership and social influence: Guiding teams and influencing stakeholders.
- Creative thinking: Innovating and thinking outside the box.
- Curiosity and lifelong learning: Continuous personal and professional development.
- Empathy and active listening: Understanding and connecting with others.
- Technological literacy: Comfort with digital tools and platforms.
Why you ask? It’s “simple”:
No matter how intelligent AI gets, it’s still a machine far unable to incorporate nuances in its reasoning.
- AI does what it’s asked to do, often to a fault (i.e. instrumental convergence). That’s where having a human in the loop 🤝 is key: whether at key steps of AI development or while using AI, human beings provide AI with the judgment, the contextual understanding and the reasoning elasticity it lacks.
- AI has demonstrated a survival instinct 👀 when faced with its own extinction, which had it creatively/spontaneously come up with a plan to avoid it—at the expense of humans. We need humans to safeguard our own survival!
Creating an AI-proof job involves emphasizing how multifaceted human beings are, in a way that can be profitable for businesses in the long run. And we’re certainly more complex and with multi-layered reasoning as opposed to a machine made of 0s and 1s. No shade to ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity!
🧰 Embrace the New Skills Triad
The World Economic Forum highlights three foundational skills for the modern workforce:
- Carbon intelligence: Understanding sustainability and environmental 🌍 impact.
- Understanding carbon footprint across product lifecycles—in my case, digital products—is slowly but surely shifting from nice-to-have to mandatory. For instance, the environment impact of Generative AI is multifaceted and won’t be ignored for long as this technology runs on energy-intensive processes and infrastructures.
- Therefore, professionals without carbon intelligence will find themselves excluded from strategic roles as companies face legal obligations and stakeholder pressure to demonstrate environmental accountability.
- Virtual intelligence: Effectively working 💻 in digital and remote environments.
- As hybrid models become permanent fixtures, remote work competence extends to include managing performance and relationships without in-person interactions.
- Without virtual intelligence, you cannot effectively collaborate across time zones, geographies, and platforms—essential requirements for modern knowledge work.
- AI proficiency: Leveraging AI tools to enhance ⤴️ productivity.
- This encompasses understanding AI’s capabilities and limitations, ethical implementation, and strategic integration into workflows.
- Technological skills are projected to grow in importance more rapidly than any other skills in the next five years, with AI and big data at the top of the list.
🎯 Actionable Steps to Enhance Employability
Don’t get discouraged with all these tech-oriented insights. Remember my 1st point: human-centric/cognitive skills are in demand! 🤩
📌Use our 5-minute self-assessment quiz to understand where you are at in your career and how you can unblock the way forward!
To develop them and AI-proof my job, I focus on these 5 pillars:
- Continuous learning: Engage in online courses, workshops, and certifications to stay updated. Hone your critical thinking abilities! 💭
- Networking: Connect with professionals in your field to exchange knowledge and opportunities. Surround yourself 👥 with growth-minded individuals.
- Mentorship: Seek mentors and also mentor 🙋♀️ others to foster growth and learning opportunities.
- Stay informed: Regularly read industry reports and news 🗞️ to anticipate changes. Attend but also contribute to industry events.
- Adaptability: Be open to changing 🔁 roles or industries as the job market evolves.
🚀 Leverage Your Unique Strengths
We all have strengths and experiences we can leverage amid these workplace disruptions.
With my background in Business, Technology and Sales, I have a strong foundation that I want to build upon to remain relevant. As part of my personal quarterly review, I revisit the following questions to ensure that I stay on track:
1. Which of my current skills create compound value when combined with emerging technologies?
The purpose of this question is to help me identify existing skills I have that amplify rather than compete with automation.
Domain expertise paired with AI proficiency can create exponential value—a financial analyst who masters AI-driven forecasting becomes irreplaceable, while one who merely processes data becomes redundant.
AI won’t take your job. Someone using AI better than you will.
2. How do my cultural background and lived experiences position me for roles requiring human-centric skills?
My multicultural fluency, my immigrant perspective, and my industry transitions represent unique problem-solving frameworks.
These experiences translate into competitive advantages for roles requiring cultural intelligence, change management, or stakeholder navigation—skills that remain fundamentally human.
3. What problems do I solve naturally that others find complex?
- If you naturally translate technical concepts for non-experts, you’re positioned for roles bridging AI and human teams.
- If you excel at relationship building, you’re suited for human-centric roles experiencing growth.
📌 Take this AI Fluency quiz to assess where you stand regarding your utilization of AI and to know which three specific AI concepts you should focus on mastering! 🤓
4. Which emerging fields align with my existing knowledge foundation?
What I am about to write will shock you! 😉
There’s no point trying to keep up with technology!
Technological advances are happening so fast, and in many industries all at once, that it’s actually fanciful to think you can be an expert in all of them 🤷♀️.
- What truly matters is your ability to understand how these technologies can work jointly or competitively towards a business goal. Easier said than done, but systemic thinking is a muscle. So it can be developed with practice!
- Rather than starting from zero, identify adjacent opportunities where your current expertise provides entry points.
- For instance: marketing professionals can pivot to AI ethics, HR specialists can move into workforce transformation, and project managers can transition to change management roles.
5. How can I position myself as a bridge between declining and emerging roles?
Well, 92 million jobs will be displaced and 170 million new ones created by 2030. This means that professionals who understand both legacy systems and future requirements will become invaluable during these transitions.
If you work in a declining field, identify how your knowledge can guide organizations through transformation rather than (dreading it and) simply being displaced by it.
✨ Feeling Stuck or Out of Sync in Your Career? Try the Career Clarity Quiz! 🤩
TL;DR — How to AI-proof Your Job And Increase Your Employability
The world of work is changing but cognitive skills remain pivotal for organizational efficiency, relevance and competitivity. Regardless of your past accolades, don’t rest on your laurels: you still need to adapt!
You need to:
- Improve your human-specific cognitive skills: those skills that can’t be programmed today (judgment, contextual understanding, intellectual elasticity, etc..) are what will make you invaluable.
- Leverage your existing strengths and experiences to identify how AI can complement them, or how AI opens up new professional paths for you to explore.
- Embrace change: use your expertise to be a contributor, influencer or stakeholder of change within your organization. As they say, “the only constant is change”. The sooner you embrace it, the better you can guide it.
Above all, remember, the key is to be proactive. By continuously developing both technical and human-centric skills, you’ll not only make your job more AI-proof but also position yourself as a valuable asset in any organization.
Onwards and upwards!
