Must-have AI skills for today’s job seekers

Looking for a new job? Regardless of your role, industry, experience or seniority level, AI skills will be front and centre on both sides of the hiring table.  

• Employers want to hire candidates with AI skills.

• Job seekers want to work for employers that help develop AI skills through continuous learning opportunities.  

And we’re not just talking about technical roles. In 2025, AI skills will increasingly be a deciding factor when hiring for both technical and non-technical roles.  

On the technical side, hiring of AI talent increased by 323% over the past eight years, according to Microsoft and LinkedIn, so naturally candidates with technical skills (e.g., programming languages like Python, machine learning and neural networks capabilities etc.) will continue to be in high demand this coming year.  

And on the non-technical side, candidates who can demonstrate AI aptitude will join the hotlist, too. For example, marketers and project managers who can use generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot to augment their work.

How important are these skills? The same Microsoft/LinkedIn report found:

So, what skills are most in demand?

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Must-have AI skills (for non-technical and technical roles)

If you’re looking for a non-technical role, you might be thinking you don’t need AI skills. For example, let’s say you work in HR. You’re a people person, not a robot person, right?  

Well, not exactly.  

Going forward, we’ll all need to be “robot people” to some extent, but mostly “robot-friendly colleagues.” That is, we’ll all need to work with AI to enhance our creativity and boost our productivity. Just look at the numbers: Indeed reported a tenfold increase in the number of generative AI job postings from June 2023-June 2024.

To find out which AI skills are most in demand, read Global AI Skills Outlook 2024, a cool, interactive report from Lightcast that looked at employer demand for AI skills across 16 labour markets in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.  

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Key AI skills for the Canadian job market

According to Lightcast, in 2023, the most in-demand AI skills in Canadian job postings were as follows.

Key skills for technical roles

1. Artificial Intelligence

2. Machine Learning

3. Apache Spark (a must-have tool for anyone looking to make sense of large datasets efficiently)

4. Predictive Modelling

5. Deep Learning

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Key skills for non-technical roles

Many employers are looking for basic AI skills like prompt engineering. In fact, from December 2023 to May 2024, enrollment in LinkedIn Learning courses designed to build AI aptitude spiked 160% among non-technical professionals, with roles like project managers, architects, and administrative assistants looking to skill up most (Microsoft and LinkedIn).

And on the non-technical side, Lightcast found that the three most in-demand non-technical AI skills in Canadian job postings were:

1. Generative AI

2. ChatGPT

3. Prompt Engineering

Depending on your area of focus (i.e., finance, human resources, marketing etc.), some other must-have AI skills for non-technical roles include:  

• Data Literacy: Understand the fundamentals of data collection, analysis and interpretation.

• Ethical Considerations: Develop an understanding of AI ethics, bias and governance issues; keep up to date with AI legislation in your region. For example, in November 2024, the Canadian government announced the creation of a new Canadian Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute (CAISI) to help address AI safety risks.  

• Critical Thinking: Learn to analyze AI-generated outputs and make informed decisions based on them.

• AI Tool Proficiency: Familiarize yourself with AI platforms and tools designed for non-technical users. For example, content generators like ChatGPT and Perplexity.ai, note-taking apps like Otter.ai and image-generating/design tools like DALL-E.

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What about soft skills?  

Okay, back to being robot-friendly colleagues. As automation takes on more tasks, employers will be looking to hire people who have critical soft (i.e., human) skills, too—things that complement the robots doing the repetitive tasks. Here are the most in-demand soft skills, according to Coursera:  

• Emotional intelligence  

• Interpersonal skills

• Active learning and willingness to continue learning

• Innovation and creative thinking

• Bias detection

• Analytical judgment and critical thinking

• Flexibility and adaptability

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All of this leads to…continuous learning

Since AI is evolving fast and will continue to take on more tasks in new fields, the best option for growing with AI is to continuously study it. That’s right, we all need to try to stay current in our changing world, so that means in today’s workplace, EVERYONE has to keep learning new things—senior leaders and entry-level workers alike.  

Just look at how important AI skills are for today’s new grads. Microsoft’s recent Work Trend Index found that:

• 66% of leaders say they wouldn’t hire someone without AI skills.

• 71% say they’d rather hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without them.

• 77% of leaders say, with AI, early-in-career talent will be given greater responsibilities.  

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AI courses to take

Everything is changing so quickly, it’s hard to know where to start when it comes to learning.  

As a job seeker, it’s important to pursue your own AI training, so you can demonstrate critical skills (and initiative) to potential employers. Tip: Always update your resume with new AI skills as you develop them.

And employees will need to jump on the AI learning train, too. In Canada, 49% of employees surveyed plan to pursue their own training outside of work (57% expect additional AI training from their employer, according to ServiceNow’s World of Work study).  

Five free AI courses

There are many self-guided AI courses offered online, lots of them at no cost. Top free courses include:

• AI Applications in People Management: Designed for HR leaders, this course will teach you about the limitations of using data in HR decisions, how to mitigate bias, how to use AI to manage the entire employee lifecycle and how to use AI to streamline HR functions.

• Google AI for Everyone: Offered through online education platform edX, this self-paced course takes about four weeks to complete (if you dedicate two to three hours per week to learning). You’ll learn about AI and machine-learning principles and their real-world applications.

• HarvardX: CS50's Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python: How important is Python? This accessible programming language is increasingly being used across a wide range of applications, including data analysis, web development, automation and everyday tasks. This seven-week course covers AI algorithms, game-playing engines, handwriting recognition and machine translation.

• AI Foundations for Everyone: Offered through Coursera, this course is designed for those with little or no background in AI and does not require any programming skills. It will give you a firm understanding of what AI is, along with its applications and use cases across various industries.  

• Self-paced courses through Intel: Intel provides dozens of free self-paced courses on everything from generative AI, computer vision and machine learning to applied deep learning with TensorFlow and natural language processing.  

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LinkedIn’s 10 most popular AI courses (March 2024)

1. What Is Generative AI?

2. Introduction to Prompt Engineering for Generative AI

3. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

4. Generative AI for Business Leaders

5. Learning Microsoft 365 Copilot

6. Ethics in the Age of Generative AI

7. How to Research and Write Using Generative AI Tools

8. Prompt Engineering: How to Talk to the AIs

9. How to Boost Your Productivity with AI Tools

10. Artificial Intelligence Foundations: Machine Learning

And remember, as soon as you learn a new AI skill, finish a course or gain a certificate, be sure to update your resume. As we’ve seen, employers want to know that you come to the table with an open mind and some “AI-deas.”

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Looking for your next great role? Be sure to check out our job portal and come back often—we post new roles daily.

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