WSJ Your Money Briefing - How Young Professionals Can AI-Proof Their Career

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

New workers are feeling the pressure of artificial intelligence conceivably eliminating their jobs. So, how can they save their jobs? Wall Street Journal contributor Bob Hagerty joins host J.R. Whalen to discuss how to take control and AI-proof their career.  Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's in this McDonald's bag? The McValue Meal. For $5.79 plus tax, you can get your choice of junior chicken, McDouble, or chicken snack wrap, plus small fries and a small fountain drink. So pick up a McValue Meal today at participating McDonald's restaurants in Canada. Prices exclude delivery. Here's your Money Briefing for Friday, January 3rd. I'm JR Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. January 3rd. I'm JR Whalen for the Wall Street Journal. As artificial intelligence helps to perform workplace tasks more efficiently, career coaches agree that many jobs on the lower rungs of the corporate ladder are at risk of elimination. But they say AI can't do everything. For younger professionals just starting out, there are ways they can AI-proof their job search and their entry into the workforce.

You are trying to develop your people skills because you can't really compete with a machine in terms of knowing a million facts, but you can compete with a machine in knowing better how to deal with people, how to see the big picture, how to organize a complicated project, how to get along with people. We'll talk to Wall Street Journal reporter Bob Haggerty after the break. The current generation of college graduates is competing with AI in addition to other candidates as they look for work. Wall Street Journal reporter Bob Haggerty joins me to discuss ways they can AI-proof their search and their careers. Bob, where on the career ladder is AI expected to have the most impact?

Probably at the beginning of the career ladder, but the thing is that nobody really knows to what extent AI will change the job market. The way forward is not exactly clear. There's no surefire formula for AI proofing your career, but there are some good ideas. I guess one of those is just is to be prepared. Yes, and another of the ideas is that if you're going to be competing against a machine, you might want to double down on your human skills, such as communication and getting along with colleagues. In other words, your emotional intelligence or EQ. One professor of business psychology told me

that AI most likely has already won the IQ battle, but the EQ battle may still be up for grabs. But people's skills come more easily for some than others, right? That's true. And for those who have trouble with people's skills, it's a good idea to be really cultivating those while you're in school. And people come up with lots of different ways of doing that. At Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, one of the most popular undergraduate electives

is called Acting for Non-Majors. And this is an activity that sort of forces you to overcome your fear of talking to strangers and it helps teach you how to improvise and have fun with a group of strangers. And how does that insulate you from AI? You are trying to develop your people skills because you can't really compete with a machine in terms of knowing a million facts.

But you can compete with a machine in knowing better how to deal with people, how to see the big picture, how to organize a complicated project, how to get along with people. We often hear people talk about thinking outside the box. Why is that important when finding ways to protect your career from AI? Well one idea is that you don't want to seem like just everybody else. Matthew Roscoff, who's the vice provost for digital education at Stanford, told me that AI is like a B plus student and can tell you what the average person would say But he says a plus work is the product of an individual brain with a distinctive voice

So you should be trying to develop your own voice and identity I like the way you characterized it in your story be a moderate misfit. Yes This was another idea from the business psychologist a moderate misfit. Yes, this was another idea from the business psychologist. He says that you've got to develop your own ideas and personality so that you're the type of person who can come into an organization and help that organization change. Businesses use AI to accomplish a full range of tasks. But why do career counselors suggest that people think about taking on big projects to help them? The idea is that machines probably are not as good at looking at the big

picture and organizing a task and making sure that people can get it done. So it's good to show an employer that you know how to envision a big project and then find ways to get it done. I talked to a student, an engineering student at Vanderbilt who had to do his school capstone project. And what he did was went out and bought an old school bus and transformed it into an RV complete with solar panels on the roof. This was a really complicated project.

He had to learn a lot of new skills and he had to work with a lot of different people To get the whole job done and when he mentioned that in job interviewers the employers loved it He's with somebody who had shown he could solve a complicated problem Some educational leaders have said having a portfolio of skills can be effective and protecting your career Much like installing the solar panels on the bus. But is having a wide range of skills enough? It's not enough, but it's a good idea.

You don't want to be totally invested in just one narrow specialty. So it's good to have a double major or a triple major or pick up different qualifications wherever you can along the way. And that doesn't mean that you try to be a jack of all trades because you also have to be able to go deep in at least one or two areas.

You have to be able to know more than somebody could pull out of chat GPT in 30 seconds in at least a few areas. But you should have a wider range of skills so that you can offer a package to employers. That gives you more chances of succeeding against other candidates. You have a wider range of skills so that you can offer a package to employers that gives you more chances of succeeding against other candidates and also just more things you could fall back on if certain skills are totally taken up by AI.

We've been talking about AI proofing your career, but what do people you spoke to say about the value of understanding AI and then being able to work with it? That is a must. That's the one area that is hopeful for young people because if they are able to master how to use AI to improve the efficiency of work, to get more done faster, that gives them a big advantage over older workers who may not really want to embrace a new technology. So everybody should be trying to understand the basics of how to use AI effectively and young people will probably do that best. So it's best not to view AI as the enemy or an adversary. Definitely. It's that you have to treat it as this is a must-have tool, but I have to have other things as well.

That's WSJ's Bob Haggerty, and that's it for your Money Briefing. Tomorrow we'll have our weekly Markets Wrap-Up, What's News in Markets, and then we'll be back on Monday. This episode was produced by Ariana Asparu. I'm your host, JR Whalen. Jessica Fenton and Michael LaValle wrote our theme music. Our supervising producer is Melanie Roy. Aisha Al-Muslim is our development producer.

Scott Salloway and Chris Zinsley are our deputy editors. And Falana Patterson is The Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. Thanks for listening. Music .