Things didn’t go as planned: you got caught in a re-org, a merger. Whether due to AI efficiencies or not, you suddenly find yourself out of work and primed for a re-boot. You will need to re-enter a very different job market since you last visited, now dominated by AI. With 40% of working hours affected due to the rise of this technology, you will likely need to adapt and re-train for an AI-Powered comeback. Five steps for recovery and reinvention.

AI Professional – Fiona Passantino, late July 2024

Laid off

Things didn’t go the way you wanted them to. You were the victim of a re-org, a layoff or redundancy. You didn’t get that promotion, new position or assignment you wanted. Your old job isn’t coming back; it’s now being done by a younger version of yourself who, thanks to AI, is doing your job and the jobs of five others.

You’re a freelancer in a role that is being swallowed up by AI. You’ve felt it coming on for a while; you were getting fewer assignments. Specifically, the kind that are small, tight-turnaround and low-visibility. The “nuts-and-bolts” translation, the corporate illustration, the voiceover for a company online learning program.

Losing your job when you’re a committed, serious professional is hard. It impacts your finances, your plans and puts a crack in your self-esteem. It may even cause you to redefine who you are, and your place in the world. It can derail your career and make you re-consider your purpose.

The first thing we tell ourselves, and usually the first thing we hear from the transition professional assigned to your case is “it’s not about you”, or “don’t take it personally”. But you feel it in your stomach that this is a lie we’re being told: it’s entirely about you. The company or client is saying “We don’t need you.” Since not everyone is losing their job. The company has chosen to go on without you. If you care about your job, this is personal.

What isn’t a lie is that you’re not alone. About 40% of all working hours could be impacted by generative AI, mostly because reading, synthesizing and writing tasks account for 62% of our total work[i]. AI has cracked the Human operating system: our language. The result? Widespread layoffs: 44% of large, international organizations see job losses due to AI efficiency[ii].

The Good News

The good news is that the odds are with you. Over 70% of those laid off find a new job within the first three months of redundancy and 52% received a higher salary[iii].

You know that getting up and dusting yourself off is the next step. Polishing your CV, reaching out to contacts and headhunters, attending networking events and “getting out there”. Chalking the layoff off as a learning experience of the past and setting your sights on the future.

Time to start looking for something new. And while you’re at it, retraining to become an AI-powered version of yourself. As you learn, apply for roles beyond what you can currently take on; Employ Inc. tells us that 71% percent of recruiters report taking more chances on new hires in the last few years than before[iv].

Generative AI is changing the anatomy of work; we are augmenting our individual capabilities by automating individual activities. Even the tools we have now can automate about 60-70% of a professional’s individual tasks that take up so much of our time – reading and summarizing emails and writing cogent replies[v]. Thanks to the increasing ability to understand natural language, this amounts to 25% of total office work time.

Five Steps to becoming AI-Powered

AI-Powered professionals are in high demand in nearly every sector of today’s economy. People who understand and use the tools have an easier time getting new and better work. It’s time to consider becoming an AI-Powered version of yourself to compete in the new market.

Step 1: Take a break

Every Human needs time to decompress, mourn and come to terms with the situation in the immediate aftermath of a job loss, or the closure of a freelance practice. Every breakup needs thinking through and closure in your own mind, even if you hated your boss or felt deadened by the tasks.

The goal is get out of your own head by changing your environment. Have some fun, get some fresh air; hike, camp, explore, discover, swim, boat. Combine physical activity with cognitive engagement. This is achieved by seeing and doing something new; rock climbing, horse riding or visiting a new city you’ve always dreamed of. Your next moves will require some creative thinking, and the best way to set this off is to completely lose yourself in something different.

This will also help you with your next step: 60% of us will need training before 2027 and, according to World Economic Forum, the priority is on creative thinking​​[vi].

Step 2: Tell a New Story

What happened? Why did this happen? Was it a simple result of the numbers or was there something you did to influence the turn of events? Did you make enemies at the office or were you slow to adapt to changes in workflow, tooling or mission? Taking partial responsibility for what happened quickly moves you from the victim role, the first step in empowerment and regaining energy.

We don’t need to spend too long on this. Craft a simple explanation for what happened that you can share with professional contacts and potential hiring managers. The idea is to keep it short, upbeat and casting no blame. There’s nothing wrong with explaining that the rise of AI played a role, which sparked your new attitude towards the AI workflow and your subsequent retraining campaign, from which your new employers and new clients will benefit.

Step 3: Set Training Parameters

Before you can decide “who you’re going to be”, you need to understand the tools. What’s AI, and how does it work? What can AI do, and what is the role of the Human? This requires a campaign of training. Many companies give you a transition budget to work with, and many in-company training programs are starting to offer basic AI curriculum. Make sure you chase after that budget and put it towards the schooling that will allow for the best possible re-invention.

Whether you’re using your transition budget or going it alone, spend some quiet time with a slide rule and determine your budget, time allotment and the level of expertise you will need to re-define yourself. Do you give yourself 30 days? Six months? Naturally, this re-discovery is not happening in a vacuum; you are still applying to jobs or seeking new clients as you engage in your training. And naturally this training is going at the top of your CV.

Select the program that meets your time and budgetary frame. Do you go for a live course, face to face, with other Humans, or opt for the convenience of an online program? Does the training institution offer an AI badge for your LinkedIn profile? Will you get a certificate at the end of it?

Step 4: Find your AI-Powered Self

Consider what you do, and what you love. What are your favorite types of tasks in your old job, or series of gigs as a freelancer? What kinds of assignments lit you up, and which ones drained you? Learn to use AI to take on the draining parts of your new role while considering the new requirements for the Human aspects.

This can vary widely according to your profession. The disrupted Human artist can take two paths towards his own re-invention: he could double-down on the “Human”, by producing physical, live, in-the-moment, experiential pieces that an AI can’t do (yet). Think of the visual artist who produces a live cartoon during an in-person event, or the sculptor creating handmade, limited-edition objects from clay.

Consider the live DJ creating a live Human experience, weaving digital streams of textures, beats and riffs into a unique, creative performance that have never been heard before. These professionals would sell work that is “100% Made by Human”, selling objects that are so original and spontaneous that AI could never replace it. Or the artist whose work is created and consumed live, which cannot be consumed in the digital space.

If you are a writer, you may need to become someone who orchestrates the writing process, floating over the execution of the actual work, operating many different AI generative tools and combining the results to build a storyboard, a wireframe and a rendering. This professional would be selling a concept and the project management capability rather than the work itself.

Step 5: Train the Human

The AI-Powered Professional will need to get better at being a Human. What are the skills that the Human half of an AI-co-creator team might need?

A good place to start is to figure out what part of our working experience cannot be replaced by AI. We will still need the ideas, the “spark” that sets off a new campaign, initiative, product or training program. AI can carry out the work, but cannot initiate a new idea on its own.

We will need to interact with and support other Humans in the live, physical space. While advances in robotics are progressing quickly, we are not yet at the point where we can place a LLM into a fully-functional physical agent who is able to interact with the world the way a Human might.

If we’re engaged in re-training, taking on the skills and tools of the time, we will need to develop our soft skills in the following areas:

Communication: The ability to convey information clearly and effectively, from one Human to another, in a compelling, connective and inclusive way will be a key skill in the AI world. We need to get better at the live presentation, facilitating a professional event or running a physical training. We all rely on our Human persuasion skills; our ability to convince others to understand, accept, or agree with our point of view. Our abilities to connect, network, sell, ideate and bind will be more important than ever.

Leadership: Inspiring and motivating a team to share a common vision of an organization in a way that makes it tangible to the teams is crucial. No AI can inspire us, push us to be our best, make us feel valued and seen as we do our jobs. This is the task of the Human. We need to understand the psychology of teamwork, motivation, conflict resolution and problem-solving so we can all be at our best at the office, virtual or otherwise.

Critical Thinking: We all know that AI’s have the tendency to hallucinate. While this has gotten vastly better with the release of every new model, it’s still not a reliable enough tool to self-fact-check. Every fact coming out of an output window will need analysis and verification, along with the very Human gut check. The AI assistant will give us advice and recommendations based on data. But the Human takes data from the environment and non-traditional sources into consideration: those based on feelings, empathy, intuition and our ability to shift perspective.

Creativity: The Human is the best at generating new ideas, seeing innovative solutions where none existed before and adopting new ways of thinking. Along with this comes flexibility and the capacity to adjust to new conditions or circumstances as the environment shifts around us. Creativity comes naturally to some, effortless, even; but this is a muscle in the Human brain that can be trained, by building in more small creative tasks into a standard routine every single day.

Emotional Intelligence: We all have the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, as well as recognize and influence the emotions of others; this was the case back in our ancient tribal histories and it’s still true today. The ability to interact effectively with others, being sensitive to others’ needs and feelings is what allowed us to survive over the millennia, and will be what’s needed every day that automation is a larger and larger part of our lives. We will need to understand and respect cultural differences to broaden our effectiveness as our working teams become more diverse.

Resilience: As our bounce-back from a layoff will teach us, we rely on our capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; we Humans have an innate toughness, persistence and grit which is only visible in times of adversity. We also possess the drive to achieve, which is reflected in our ability to take on and complete projects guided by our own determination.

Start small, and as you learn about the system, you will quickly see where you fit into it. Like the internet, we all use it in our own way, each individual adopting a completely unique set of tools and workflows. Some habits picked up along the way, on the job, some you had taught yourself. AI is no different; we will all find our Stack, our groove and our Human added-value.

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Need help with AI Integration?

Reach out to me for advice – I have a few nice tricks up my sleeve to help guide you on your way, as well as a few “insiders’ links” I can share to get you that free trial version you need to get started.

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[i] World Economic Forum (2023) “These are the jobs most likely to be lost – and created – because of AI” World Economic Forum Davos Agenda. Accessed February 12, 2024. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/05/jobs-lost-created-ai-gpt/

[ii] Curry (2023) “Recent data shows AI job losses are rising, but the numbers don’t tell the full story” CNBC. Accessed February 12, 2024.  https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/16/ai-job-losses-are-rising-but-the-numbers-dont-tell-the-full-story.html

[iii] Brower (2022) “Laid Off? Great News About Your Next Job—And 5 Ways To Find It” Forbes Magazine. Accessed February 2024. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrower/2022/12/26/laid-off-great-news-about-your-next-job-and-5-ways-to-find-it/?sh=1222f4d57bf7 

[iv] Brower (2022) “Laid Off? Great News About Your Next Job—And 5 Ways To Find It” Forbes Magazine. Accessed February 2024. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrower/2022/12/26/laid-off-great-news-about-your-next-job-and-5-ways-to-find-it/?sh=1222f4d57bf7 

[v] McKinsey (2023) “The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier” McKinsey. Accessed February 12, 2024. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/the-economic-potential-of-generative-ai-the-next-productivity-frontier#introduction

[vi] World Economic Forum (2023) “The Future of Jobs Report 2023” World Economic Forum Report. Accessed February 12, 2024. https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2023/digest/