Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing how many jobs operate. Even if you’re not in the tech industry, you can gain a lot by learning to leverage AI. You don’t need to worry about it replacing you if you know how to leverage the technology to do your job better.
1. Learn More About AI and How to Use It
One of the most beneficial ways to leverage AI in your career is to gain expertise. As more companies embrace AI, knowledge of how to apply it will become increasingly valuable.
AI skills will eventually be some of the most in-demand worker qualifications. Experts predict that technology will be crucial to 81% of businesses’ success within two years, but 68% of companies trying to use it today face a skills gap. If you can learn more about AI and implement it successfully, you’ll become a high-value employee.
Start by reading free AI content online. As you learn more, consider taking some courses or trying your hand at your own AI projects. Pursuing this first-hand experience outside of work can get you ahead of the curve as AI redefines the job market.
“If you can learn more about AI and implement it successfully, you’ll become a high-value employee.”
2. Automate Routine Tasks
You don’t need to be an AI expert to start using it in your daily work, either. Free tools like ChatGPT make it easy to access powerful AI models and you can use these to make your job easier.
Generative AI can draft emails to save you time when reaching out to people. Alternatively, you could use AI to perform basic research or summarize online sources to kickstart writing or research projects, saving time you’d otherwise spend manually searching.
Tasks like this may seem small, but they take up 62% of the workday on average. By automating them, you can give yourself much more time and energy to focus on value-adding work. Just be sure you always check its work for mistakes and handle any sensitive issues yourself.
“You can give yourself much more time and energy to focus on value-adding work by automating tasks.”
3. Discover Areas of Improvement for Your Company
Another way to use AI to boost your job performance is to highlight ways the organization can improve. Many businesses use AI this way already, but if yours doesn’t, you can take the initiative and uncover some handy insights to show your leadership. Helping the company improve could make you stand out.
AI analytics can scan things like expense reports or customer data to pick out trends and make predictions. Because computers are better than people at spotting patterns in data, you’ll often find you wouldn’t have noticed these insights without AI’s help.
This kind of analytics is more complex than simpler AI applications like basic automation, but they can greatly help your business. However, you must ensure you have the right to use the data you feed the algorithm. While the U.S. doesn’t have a comprehensive federal data privacy law, several states have their own cybersecurity laws you may have to follow.
4. Learn New Skills
AI can help your career in less direct ways, too. Because it can adapt to real-time changes, it’s a great way to get personalized help when gaining new skills or knowledge. As a result, AI-powered lessons can help you expand your qualifications faster and more effectively.
Many online learning platforms now use AI to tailor lessons to your progress. Seeking these out can help you learn more about business or gain valuable skills even if you don’t mesh well with a traditional learning environment.
The first step is to find an area you’d like to develop. Depending on your career, you may want to learn a new language, gain coding experience or increase your business management skills. Once you know what you’d like to learn, look for AI-powered lesson platforms or use a bot like ChatGPT to help you learn more.
5. Find New Job Opportunities
Using AI in your current role is an excellent way to advance your career, but sometimes, seeking opportunities outside your company is best. If you decide to look for a new position, AI can be a revolutionary job-seeking and application tool.
AI can compare your skills and experience to current job openings, and highlight positions where you may be a good fit. That way, you can find exciting opportunities faster than a traditional search or find ones you may have yet to consider.
Once you find an opening, generative AI can help write eye-catching resumes and cover letters to help you stand out from other candidates. Recent studies have found almost seven in 10 applicants said using AI this way boosted their response rates from organizations.
“Almost seven in 10 applicants said that using AI boosted their response rates from companies.”
AI Can Help You Succeed in Any Industry
AI will forever alter how every industry works, not just technology sectors. As a worker, that means it’s a good idea to start gaining experience with AI today. It could help you stand out from your peers tomorrow.
These five steps all present excellent opportunities to boost your career with AI. Regardless of what kind of role you’re in, you can use AI to work smarter and faster.