Your skills gap doesn’t just impact company profits; it hurts your salary potential as well
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Anyone can play around with ChatGPT; but not everyone has applied AI skills for work–skills like leadership, creativity, critical and analytical thinking, and business acumen. Companies right now are struggling to fill AI roles because they lack an adequate supply of professionals with real AI fluency.
According to Skillsoft’s 2025 Global Skills Intelligence Survey, “only 10% of HR and L&D professionals are fully confident their workforce can deliver on business goals in the next 12–24 months,” while about “28% of respondents say skill gaps restrict their ability to pursue new markets or opportunities.”
So this is where you have your golden opportunity. Whether you work in operations, in leadership and management, in marketing, or in sales (and of course within IT), mastering the skills listed in this article could move you closer to unlocking your next six-figure opportunity.
Below, you’ll learn the five skills companies need for AI-powered jobs in 2026, plus you’ll also discover courses and certifications, some of them free, that you can use to upskill yourself and fast-track in these specific areas before the new year. I’ll also include an example of how you can incorporate each skill into your resume’s bullet points.
Let’s go!
What’s An AI Job And How Much Do AI Jobs Pay?
First, let’s define what an AI job is. It’s not what you’re thinking. It doesn’t have to be machine learning or artificial intelligence engineering. It doesn’t need to be a data science or an AI engineer role, although these are all important.
An AI job is simply a role that can be amplified or augmented by AI, and right now, that’s almost all jobs. As a matter of fact, IBM executive Justina Nixon-Saintil told me earlier this year that all jobs, in some way or another, will be, and are being, impacted by AI.
So if you’re working in a job right now and you’re not using AI, be warned. You’re at risk of being laid off. Look at Accenture’s recent layoff wave of employees who could not adapt to AI as an example of where you could be headed. Your role is about to either be fully or partially automated.
Therefore, learning the AI skills in the article could save your career.
AI-powered roles have significant earning potential. Indeed research and an AWS survey from 2024 noted that AI skills like Gen AI could boost salaries by as much as 47%. AWS specifically noted from their research, “Employers said that they would be willing to pay workers with AI skills a premium in sales and marketing (43% higher salary); finance (42%); business operations (41%); legal, regulatory, and compliance (37%); and human resources (35%).”
Let’s take a sales and marketing role as an example of how developing AI skills could bring significant ROI for your career:
If you work as a product marketing manager, your average salary is $143,233 in the United States. With a 43% salary premium, you could expect to make as much as $204,823, making your salary highly competitive in the job market.
Yet even on the lower end of the scale, if you worked in HR as AWS suggested, and earned $95,621 yearly as an HR business partner, your salary premium would be $129,088 in total.
So now that you can see the earning potential, here are the skills you’ll need to achieve those salaries:
1. Workflow Redesign Skills
When I interviewed Asana CEO Dan Rogers a couple months ago, one of the things he told me was that for companies to be able to implement AI effectively, they need to completely reimagine and redesign their existing workflows and processes.
Otherwise, they’re just applying a patch to a wound and not addressing the root issue: ineffective, inefficient, poorly designed workflows.
Professionals will be in demand who know how to take existing workflows and flip the script and reimagine processes effectively with artificial intelligence.
Where to learn this AI skill?
- Workflow Specialist Certificate (this is currently free at the time of writing) by Asana
- Artificial Intelligence Practitioner Certification (AIP), by APMG International
How To Include This Skill In Your Resume
“Designed and implemented a new workflow for our internal project approval process, reducing project delays by 30%.”
2. Prompt Engineering Skills
Knowing how to ask AI what you want, to get the best output, will be a critical skill in 2026 and beyond.
The smarter your prompt, the smarter the output and the more effective you’ll be in your role and the more efficient your AI agents will be within your team.
Where to learn this AI skill?
How To Include This Skill In Your Resume
“Designed and crafted highly effective prompts for LLM tools like ChatGPT and Copilot which cut report drafting time from three hours to 25 minutes.”
3. Ethical AI Skills
Professionals who know how to use AI within a business context while protecting against misinformation, bias, AI hallucinations, and ensuring integrity of their work will be in strong demand.
As an example, consider Deloitte’s recent report provided to the Australian government, which contained significant errors due to it being mostly AI-generated. As a result, this cost the company $240,000 in reimbursement they had to pay back the Australian government.
“Humans in the loop” as Victoria Chin, Asana’s AI product strategy executive termed it in our recent chat, will be needed to sense-check AI outputs and to ensure ethics and quality are upheld.
Where to learn this AI skill?
How To Include This Skill In Your Resume
“Completed the AI ethics certification by Google and taught AI ethical best practice to my team of seven, reducing errors by 45%.”
4. Creative Thinking Skills
If ethical AI is essential, just as important then are creative thinking skills. This ensures that you and your organization retain your unique voice without having it compromised by AI. Instead, AI simply augments your voice. Creative thinkers with strong unique ideas will be able to make a mark in their organisation and will know how to use AI effectively instead of producing AI slop.
Where to learn this AI skill?
How To Include This Skill In Your Resume
“Wrote landing page copy for our sales funnel, fusing AI copywriting tools with the company voice and strategic oversight, leading to a 15% boost in sales conversions.”
5. Strategic Thinking Skills
Implementing AI in organizations requires its leaders, managers, and those aspiring to leadership and management roles, to look at the bigger picture. This moves you from an individual contributor or regular operator, to a strategic partner and indispensable employee.
Instead of merely using AI, having strategy means you have a direction for its use, and know how to establish effective systems and execute real use cases that ultimately positively improve your organization’s bottom line.
Where to learn this AI skill?
How To Include This Skill In Your Resume
“Developed an AI-enabled strategy for our communications department, enabling AI-powered analytics and boosting our employer brand and PR campaign reach by 27% in six months.”
Workflow redesign skills and strategic thinking make you indispensable in the job market
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It’s time to step up in your career. You owe it to your employer, to your industry, and to that new job or promotion you’ve been dying to get. But most importantly, you owe it to yourself. To achieve your full career (and earning) potential, all you’ve got to do is upskill and apply what you’re learning. If you commit to developing these AI skills, you’ll be perfectly positioned for the future of work and AI-powered jobs. You’ll be better equipped to navigate the highly competitive job market and will be in high demand as an employee, freelancer, or consultant.