Archive for category: First Sun Blog

It’s a new year, which makes it the perfect time to update your LinkedIn profile and communications strategy to make sure it is current, relevant to your goals, and compelling to the people who are checking you out. The world of work continues to evolve, and your LinkedIn profile and networking strategy must position you for success.

Align Your LinkedIn Strategy With Two Critical Forces

Two important areas to consider while evolving your LinkedIn strategy are humanity and AI. As tech gets integrated into every aspect of business, your humanity is what helps you stand out and build meaningful relationships. That means your profile must show that you are clear, human, generous, empathic, and grounded in real experience, all the things AI and technology are not.

At the same time, you need to showcase your skill and interest in AI. AI will impact virtually every role. Make it clear that you’re using AI thoughtfully and are committed to proactively developing AI skills to remain ahead of the curve. This can show up in how you describe your work, the content you share, and the tools or approaches you reference in your profile.

The goal is not to do more on LinkedIn, but to do the right things well. Follow this these three steps:

1. Update Your LinkedIn Profile

A lot happens in a year, so if you haven’t been updating your profile regularly, it’s time to make it current and compelling.

Your LinkedIn Headshot

Your headshot makes you real in the virtual world. It allows people to connect with you on a human level. It should convey the real you and be at least current enough for someone to be able to find you in a crowded coffee shop. If you changed your headshot recently, you probably won’t need to update it if it meets these criteria.

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Updated NEWS: #BestofFSCBlog – May24 we hit Two Milestones: #1– Hit over 1.6 million impressions on our FSC Career Blogs within 7 days on LinkedIn……. #2– Over 3.5 Million participates on our FSC Career Blog page below within three years!  Both the Team/myself want to thank you all for participating! …… Chris G. & Team,www.firstsun.com

Daily FSC Career Blogs/Articles: Articles/blogs on today’s Job Search (Over 8K Daily Readers)- Go to ‘Blog Search’ & type in updated info on resumes, job search, networking, social media job search, etc.

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New- FSC LinkedIn Newsletter– Daily articles/blogs on Today’s Job Market & Seach. Subscribe Today!

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Connect with us on LinkedIn (under Chris G. Laughter) : https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-g-laughter-b46389198/

Best Daily Choice: Follow the Best of FSC Career Articles/Blogs  @

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Question: Searching for ‘the Best Daily Career Search Articles/Blogs on the web’ on Job Search, Resume, Advancing/Changing your Career, or simply Managing People?

Answer: Simply go to our FSC Career Blog below & Type(Jobsearch, Resume, Networking, etc) in Blog Search:  https://www.firstsun.com/fsc-career-blog/

What Skill Sets Do You Have to be ‘Sharpened‘?

Did you know?  First Sun Consulting, Llc (FSC) is celebrating over 32 years in delivering corporate & individual outplacement services & programs to over 1200 corporate clients in the U.S., Canada, the UK, & Mexico!   Visit us @ www.firstsun.com  OR Ask for a Quote for Services at  info@firstsun.com

We here at FSC want to thank each of our corporate partners for the opportunity to serve & moving each of their transitioning employee(s) rapidly toward employment!

Article continued …

Your LinkedIn Headline

Your headline’s job is to make you relevant and confirm for viewers that you are the person they are looking for, or a person they should get to know. LinkedIn gives you 220 characters for your Headline. Use as many as needed to captivate viewers and encourage them to read on. Your LinkedIn headline has three important functions:

• It makes you relevant. Your current title, role, and company make you relevant.
• It helps you get found. Use your headline for search optimization. Include in it all the keywords you want to be associated with, and those people will use to search for you.
• It allows you to showcase something interesting about you that makes the viewer want to learn more. Consider including why you do what you do, how you do what you do, or the results you achieve when you do it. You could also share your passion or life purpose.

Your LinkedIn About

Your About allows you to introduce yourself, tell your story, and make a branded first impression. Because of the power of LinkedIn and how search results are presented in Google, it will likely be your first impression. When you’re thoughtful in crafting your About, it helps you:

• Differentiate yourself in a crowded marketplace
• Attract opportunities that align with your goals
• Build trust and real human connection with others

Your About is also a natural place to convey your thoughts about AI and the role it plays in your work.

Your LinkedIn Featured Section

Because many people keep their Featured section blank, it is an opportunity for you to stand out and showcase your passions, purpose, and accomplishments. Your Featured section sits near the top of your profile, between your About and Activity sections. That means more people will see it. This section is designed to showcase multimedia. Include images and video to enhance your story and make your profile richer and more interesting. Consider including:

• Your Brand introduction. Create a brief 60-second video, that highlights your interests, accomplishments and fun facts about you.
• Your Success Stories. Share one or two pieces of content or stories that highlight your superpowers and differentiators.
• Your Intellectual Property. Use it to convey your proprietary process, framework, or system, like your three-step formula for crafting click-worthy headlines for social media posts.

2. Define Your LinkedIn Networking Strategy

In 2026, effective networking is about relevance and relationships, not volume. With over 1.3 billion members, LinkedIn is a powerful place for networking. Your goal, though, is not to connect with all 1.3 billion professionals. It’s to identify your community and be visible to them. As the new year begins:

• Get your network up-to-date. Look back through your calendar and emails and send connection requests to the people you have met in the past year.
• Decide on your strategy for adding new connections as you meet people. Also, do searches to connect with other like-minded peers so you can build a community for mutual support.
• Put plans in place to grow your network. Consider adding your LinkedIn profile to your email signature, and create a slide to include in presentations you deliver to encourage participants to reach out and connect.

3. Commit To A LinkedIn Visibility Plan

Once your profile and network are aligned, visibility is what brings your personal brand to life. Strong brands are visible and available to the people they seek to impact, influence, and impress. The best way to do that is to share value as your primary thought leadership priority. There’s a lot of noise in the world of social media, and LinkedIn is no exception. To stand out, commit to the three Cs of social media communications plans:

• Consistent. Strong brands are known for something, not 100 things. Know your topic, message, and POV and stick with it.
• Constant. Choose a cadence and commit to it. You may choose to post a couple of times a month, weekly, or even daily. Whatever you choose, treat it as you would any other important item on your to-do list.
• Critical. Not critical in the sense of being judgmental. Critical meaning it is not content that is nice to have. It’s meaningful and valuable to your audience and essential for their success.

One way to achieve the three Cs of effective visibility is with a LinkedIn Newsletter. It’s a powerful way to stay engaged with the people who are interested in what you have to say, and the LinkedIn Newsletter platform makes it easy for you to create, share and promote your newsletter to followers and connections. It allows you to build familiarity and trust over time without having to start from scratch each time you post.

Make LinkedIn An Ongoing Habit Instead Of A One-Time Update

Your LinkedIn profile serves many roles in helping you build your personal brand and achieve your career goals. To maximize its impact, commit to keeping your profile up to date and staying engaged with your network. LinkedIn works when you work it, so adopt the habit of interacting on LinkedIn regularly and create more opportunities that are aligned with your goals.

Forbes.com | April 10, 2026 |  William Arruda

About eight in 10 hiring managers can spot an AI-written resume, according to a new Resume Genius survey of 1,000 U.S. hiring managers.

Yesterday, I reported that more than two-thirds of hiring decision-makers say that AI resumes are sabotaging the recruitment process by slowing it down, making it difficult for them to verify real skills and experiences.

Now, Resume Genius’ latest study confirms the attitude of employers to AI-generated resumes in greater detail, based on what they’re seeing in job applications right now:

• Approximately 79% say resumes are more polished and visually appealing than five years ago
• Around 78% say resumes are better tailored to specific job postings
• About 76% of hiring managers say the overall quality of resumes has improved in recent years

Like this Article?  Share It! You can now easily enjoy/follow/share Today our Award-Winning Articles/Blogs with Now Over 3.5 Million Growing Participates Worldwide in our various Social Media formats below:

Updated NEWS: #BestofFSCBlog – May24 we hit Two Milestones: #1– Hit over 1.6 million impressions on our FSC Career Blogs within 7 days on LinkedIn……. #2– Over 3.5 Million participates on our FSC Career Blog page below within three years!  Both the Team/myself want to thank you all for participating! …… Chris G. & Team,www.firstsun.com

Daily FSC Career Blogs/Articles: Articles/blogs on today’s Job Search (Over 8K Daily Readers)- Go to ‘Blog Search’ & type in updated info on resumes, job search, networking, social media job search, etc.

https://www.firstsun.com/fsc-career-blog/

New- FSC LinkedIn Newsletter– Daily articles/blogs on Today’s Job Market & Seach. Subscribe Today!

https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/fsc-linkedin-network-7081658661743308800

Connect with us on LinkedIn (under Chris G. Laughter) : https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-g-laughter-b46389198/

Best Daily Choice: Follow the Best of FSC Career Articles/Blogs  @

https://twitter.com/search?q=bestoffscblog&src=typeahead_click

Question: Searching for ‘the Best Daily Career Search Articles/Blogs on the web’ on Job Search, Resume, Advancing/Changing your Career, or simply Managing People?

Answer: Simply go to our FSC Career Blog below & Type(Jobsearch, Resume, Networking, etc) in Blog Search:  https://www.firstsun.com/fsc-career-blog/

What Skill Sets Do You Have to be ‘Sharpened‘?

Did you know?  First Sun Consulting, Llc (FSC) is celebrating over 32 years in delivering corporate & individual outplacement services & programs to over 1200 corporate clients in the U.S., Canada, the UK, & Mexico!   Visit us @ www.firstsun.com  OR Ask for a Quote for Services at  info@firstsun.com

We here at FSC want to thank each of our corporate partners for the opportunity to serve & moving each of their transitioning employee(s) rapidly toward employment!

Article continued …

However, as they note, “better tailored doesn’t always mean more distinctive. AI tools can quickly mirror job descriptions and insert keywords, which helps candidates check the right boxes, but can make applications sound the same.

Among hiring managers:

• Four in five say they can often tell when a resume has been written by AI
• An estimated 77% say many resumes appear completely or partially AI-generated
• A further 69% say resumes are more generic or formulaic than they were five years ago

Additionally, around three in four hiring managers state that:

• Candidates should disclose AI assistance in application materials
• AI-written resumes make it harder to understand what a candidate actually did
• Heavy reliance on AI actually makes candidates seem less skilled

“At the same time,” Resume Genius notes, “some hiring managers view thoughtful AI use positively, but opinions are split.”

About 59% say using AI signals a candidate’s adaptability, while half of all hiring managers say it signals efficiency.

“When hiring managers think a resume was written with AI, it’s usually not one glaring mistake,” they said. “It’s the overall feel. If the tone sounds off or the details feel thin, that’s often enough to raise suspicion. And most hiring managers say they do notice these signals.”

Top 3 AI Resume Mistakes To Avoid

The top three AI giveaways to avoid?

• Unnatural phrasing or tone (51%)
• Repetitive or overly generic language (44%)
• Vague or inflated descriptions (41%)

Coming in at fourth and fifth place are buzzword-heavy writing (41%), and, yes, ironically, perfect grammar with no variation (39%).

How To Write Your Resume Using AI

So how can you ensure that your resume passes the AI sniff check?

1. Train ChatGPT On Your Style Of Writing

Use the settings and personalization feature in ChatGPT to train it based on your voice. Some professionals I know upload documents with examples for ChatGPT to be trained on, for instance, LinkedIn posts, blogs, emails, etc. that they wrote entirely without AI, that brought in the most traffic or the most positive responses.

You can create an entire folder in ChatGPT and upload these in the “sources” section of the project folder, to be referenced in connected chats, so that when you’re ready to create documents like a resume or cover letter, these are written as closely as possible to your personal tone and the way you usually write and speak.

2. Check For Redundancies And Be Specific

ChatGPT and other AI tools have a strong tendency to repeat themselves over and over using different phrases that actually mean the same thing. This makes your resume look rushed and unedited, obviously AI, and that you didn’t put sufficient thought into it.

One way to get around this is by cross-checking the output of one LLM against another. For example, you could take the resume ChatGPT created and upload it to Gemini and enter this prompt:

Spot any repetitive language or redundancies in the facts or skills presented in my resume.

You should also be highly specific. Steer away from:

• Buzzwords and cliches like “dependable team-player”
• Rambling on and on into paragraphs without being definitive and concise
• Stating what you did without quantifying impact using metrics and specific details

3. Proof-Read For Honesty

AI-generated resumes will usually appear flattering because AI is biased to almost always make you look and feel good. Ask ChatGPT to tailor your resume to a role, and it will go to great lengths to do so, even fabricating experiences, achievements, skills, and titles that do not exist in your work experience.

So, the best approach is to use ChatGPT either as a:

• First draft, for a rough outline to see how you’d like your resume formatted and to see what key skills and requirements would be included; afterwards, heavily alter it with your own wording and descriptions and proof-read each section for accuracy.
• Or, use as a final draft, to grammar-correct, ATS-optimize, and professionally smooth over a resume you’ve already written from scratch.

Either way, always sense-check the final product so that you’re confident you can easily back your claims in an interview. Otherwise, being “AI-savvy” will prove to not be so savvy after all and will backfire.

The whole point is, the hiring process needs to be more humanized–not just from the hiring manager’s side, but also from you, the candidate. If you want to win in your job search and land your target role, you need to lead with human skills.  And the first place you evidence this is in the way you write your resume.

Forbes.com | March 19, 2026 | Rachel Wells

One of the most daunting parts of writing any document, be it an article, blog, LinkedIn post, or the first line of a presentation, is, Where do I even start? How do I begin?   Ultimately, how you begin sets the tone for the rest of the document or presentation.

It helps the reader anticipate what to expect, and whether they should continue reading at all.  And nowhere is this impact more significant than in one of the most important and crucial documents you will ever have to write in your professional life–your resume.

Your resume:

• Opens doors for career opportunities
• Gets you considered so that your expertise and wealth of knowledge and experience can shine
• And positions you as an expert in your field

But if you don’t start it right, it’s highly likely that the rest of the resume will never even get read, regardless of how much effort and energy you’ve put into your work experience section.

What Employers Want To See In Your Resume

Here’s a startling fact for you:

Did you know that when recruiters open a resume, they quickly decide within about seven seconds if they want to continue reading it or not, per Harvard Business Review?

By the end of that short span of time, they’ve already made up their minds as to whether they want to progress you to interview stage or not. And naturally, the first seven seconds is spent scanning from the top down.

I tell my clients this all the time: The top fold of your resume is the most important part of the document.

If you don’t start it right, you’re less likely to progress to an interview. You remain invisible in the job market. Simple.

The risk factor becomes even more crucial when you’re applying for more senior-level roles that require greater depth of expertise, more strategic or leadership responsibility, or are impact-driven and management-heavy.

These roles typically sit above the $100,000 pay threshold, for both leadership roles with line management responsibility, as well as roles that are IC (individual contributor) led.

In both instances, employers want to see evidence of impact, the outcomes you’ve driven, and what changed because of you. That’s what hiring managers are scanning for, and that means the first fold of your resume should get straight to the point and speak directly to that.Common Resume Mistakes To Avoid.

Like this Article?  Share It! You can now easily enjoy/follow/share Today our Award-Winning Articles/Blogs with Now Over 3.5 Million Growing Participates Worldwide in our various Social Media formats below:

Updated NEWS: #BestofFSCBlog – May24 we hit Two Milestones: #1– Hit over 1.6 million impressions on our FSC Career Blogs within 7 days on LinkedIn……. #2– Over 3.5 Million participates on our FSC Career Blog page below within three years!  Both the Team/myself want to thank you all for participating! …… Chris G. & Team,www.firstsun.com

Daily FSC Career Blogs/Articles: Articles/blogs on today’s Job Search (Over 8K Daily Readers)- Go to ‘Blog Search’ & type in updated info on resumes, job search, networking, social media job search, etc.

https://www.firstsun.com/fsc-career-blog/

New- FSC LinkedIn Newsletter– Daily articles/blogs on Today’s Job Market & Seach. Subscribe Today!

https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/fsc-linkedin-network-7081658661743308800

Connect with us on LinkedIn (under Chris G. Laughter) : https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-g-laughter-b46389198/

Best Daily Choice: Follow the Best of FSC Career Articles/Blogs  @

https://twitter.com/search?q=bestoffscblog&src=typeahead_click

Question: Searching for ‘the Best Daily Career Search Articles/Blogs on the web’ on Job Search, Resume, Advancing/Changing your Career, or simply Managing People?

Answer: Simply go to our FSC Career Blog below & Type(Jobsearch, Resume, Networking, etc) in Blog Search:  https://www.firstsun.com/fsc-career-blog/

What Skill Sets Do You Have to be ‘Sharpened‘?

Did you know?  First Sun Consulting, Llc (FSC) is celebrating over 32 years in delivering corporate & individual outplacement services & programs to over 1200 corporate clients in the U.S., Canada, the UK, & Mexico!   Visit us @ www.firstsun.com  OR Ask for a Quote for Services at  info@firstsun.com

We here at FSC want to thank each of our corporate partners for the opportunity to serve & moving each of their transitioning employee(s) rapidly toward employment!

Article continued …

Common Resume Mistakes To Avoid

• Full address and/or date of birth
• Unnecessary extra details about their life story
• Meaningless phrases, jargon, and cliches that clutter and fill up space without actually making any sense at all
• A resume objective, i.e. “Seeking a challenging role at a fast-growing organization.”
• Education (degrees, certifications, etc.)

Ditch all of these.  They’re not only unnecessary, but they’re doing your resume and professional image more harm than good.

The above common resume mistakes can result in:

• Employers thinking your resume looks outdated
• Unnecessary age and location discrimination, or discrimination based on other protected characteristics
• Wasting the recruiter and hiring manager’s time when they already have hundreds of other resumes to parse
• Focusing too heavily on what you want the employer to do for you and what you desire out of the job, rather than what you can offer them (this is not the space to negotiate what you want; that happens at the job interview). An exception could be if you’re taking a step back in your career and you want to briefly highlight what you’re looking for at this part of your professional journey, to avoid speculation.
• Emphasis on the wrong things at the wrong time (education should go after your work experience history, not before, unless you’re a fresh graduate)

How To Start Your Resume

Here’s what to do instead.

The only things that matter in the top fold of your resume are:

1. Your name
2. Contact info (email address and contact number so the employer can easily reach you for an interview)
3. Your LinkedIn profile URL
4. Portfolio website URL if possible
5. Your professional summary
6. Skills highlights

That’s it. After you’ve included those, work down towards your employment background and education/certifications.

Now, let’s explore each of these sections in detail:

1. Your Name

This almost needs no explanation, but just a quick note: Use a title font size for your name so it doesn’t blend in with the rest of the text.

2. Contact Information

The email address you use on your resume needs to be professional. Avoid using email addresses that contain:

• Suggestive referencing
• Slang or jokes
• Numbers and characters that don’t make sense or reference your date of birth
• An uncommon or less popular mail provider
• Your work email (you could lose access at a moment’s notice)

It’s better to keep things simple, like your first name and last name and use a standard provider such as Gmail or Outlook.

3. LinkedIn Profile

A significant share of recruiting activity is conducted through LinkedIn; having a well-optimized profile, with solid industry connections, and regularly engaging on the platform with value0driven content and real-life experiences/observations, is something to show off to employers on your resume.

This is especially important for leadership and business development roles, where the power of your network is one of the deciding factors in the decision to hire.

4. Portfolio Website

A portfolio evidences your proven expertise to employers. This can include case studies, and they can tangibly see what you’ve already delivered as evidence of what you could bring to their organization. Think of it as a sales pitch. The portfolio is especially suited for applying for jobs such as:

• Product manager
• Senior project manager
• Software/app developer
• Digital marketing manager
• Social media marketing campaign manager

A portfolio website can include case studies of your work and the results. Otherwise, you can also feature this on your LinkedIn profile as a living, breathing portfolio.

5. Professional Summary

Your professional summary should be just a few sentences–about five lines long at the most. It should:

• Be written in the third person.
• Contain keywords from the job description and person specification of the role advert, but only in a way that actually makes sense; no keyword stuffing.
• Be concise. No rambling.
• Highlight two or three outcomes you’ve delivered or led.
• Include the number of years of experience you have.
• Focus purely on the exact competencies that match you to the role. “Hardworking individual,” “Dynamic leader,” etc. won’t cut it.

Resume summary example (this is a real summary I wrote for a director-level client recently):

Senior benefits account management and operations leader with 20+ years’ experience in health & welfare benefits administration, client relationship management, and team leadership within a TPA environment. Known for managing complex employer portfolios scaling up to $10M in revenue, driving renewals and open enrollment strategies, and partnering with brokers and carriers to improve plan performance and client satisfaction. Combines deep expertise in FSA, HSA, HRA, COBRA and emerging funding strategies with strong presentation skills, CRM implementation leadership, and a consistent record of high client retention, revenue growth, and NPS improvement.

See what I did there?

6. Skills Highlights

Your skills section should list unique skills that are specifically listed as requirements in the job description, especially in their “ideal candidate” or “person specification” section.

Types of skills you can include:

• “Soft” skills, also known as power skills, such as interpersonal skills (communication, cross-functional collaboration, etc)
• Leadership skills, like problem-solving, critical thinking, P&L, stakeholder management, etc.
• AI skills: AI strategy, applied AI workflows, industry and role-specific AI tools, etc.
• Any licences required for the role (sometimes it may be appropriate to include a relevant certification like a CSM [Certified Scrum Master] here)
• Other role-specific skills, for example lead generation, OKR and KPI development, PPC ads, etc.

Again, keep this concise. Every skill you have does not need to be listed.

Bear in mind that this section (and your professional summary) will need to be adapted each time you apply for a new role, because the exact skill requirements and keywords used will vary.

Forbes.com | March 12, 2026 | Rachel Wells

Every few weeks, a fresh wave of AI rhetoric crashes through your feed.

One headline warns that your entire field will be automated out of existence within 18 months. The next declares that early adopters are on their way to becoming fabulously wealthy. Then comes the counter-reaction: skeptics mocking believers, believers mocking skeptics, and somewhere in the middle you are supposed to make actual career decisions.

Like this Article?  Share It! You can now easily enjoy/follow/share Today our Award-Winning Articles/Blogs with Now Over 3.5 Million Growing Participates Worldwide in our various Social Media formats below:

Updated NEWS: #BestofFSCBlog – May24 we hit Two Milestones: #1– Hit over 1.6 million impressions on our FSC Career Blogs within 7 days on LinkedIn……. #2– Over 3.5 Million participates on our FSC Career Blog page below within three years!  Both the Team/myself want to thank you all for participating! …… Chris G. & Team,www.firstsun.com

Daily FSC Career Blogs/Articles: Articles/blogs on today’s Job Search (Over 8K Daily Readers)- Go to ‘Blog Search’ & type in updated info on resumes, job search, networking, social media job search, etc.

https://www.firstsun.com/fsc-career-blog/

New- FSC LinkedIn Newsletter– Daily articles/blogs on Today’s Job Market & Seach. Subscribe Today!

https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/fsc-linkedin-network-7081658661743308800

Connect with us on LinkedIn (under Chris G. Laughter) : https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-g-laughter-b46389198/

Best Daily Choice: Follow the Best of FSC Career Articles/Blogs  @

https://twitter.com/search?q=bestoffscblog&src=typeahead_click

Question: Searching for ‘the Best Daily Career Search Articles/Blogs on the web’ on Job Search, Resume, Advancing/Changing your Career, or simply Managing People?

Answer: Simply go to our FSC Career Blog below & Type(Jobsearch, Resume, Networking, etc) in Blog Search:  https://www.firstsun.com/fsc-career-blog/

What Skill Sets Do You Have to be ‘Sharpened‘?

Did you know?  First Sun Consulting, Llc (FSC) is celebrating over 32 years in delivering corporate & individual outplacement services & programs to over 1200 corporate clients in the U.S., Canada, the UK, & Mexico!   Visit us @ www.firstsun.com  OR Ask for a Quote for Services at  info@firstsun.com

We here at FSC want to thank each of our corporate partners for the opportunity to serve & moving each of their transitioning employee(s) rapidly toward employment!

Article continued …

The public conversation about AI has become almost entirely unmoored from evidence, driven by two powerful emotional currents more interested in being right than in being accurate. That makes navigating an already uncertain future harder than it needs to be.

What makes this especially disorienting is that both camps regularly cite the same research. Reports like this one from McKinsey get quoted by doomsayers to prove displacement is inevitable, and by optimists to prove transformation creates opportunity. That pattern reflects genuine ambiguity, and ambiguity is uncomfortable, so we reach for the emotional frame that fits our existing worldview.

Understand Where AI Actually Works

The research, read carefully, points somewhere more useful than the debate does. A Harvard/BCG study of 758 consultants found that AI significantly boosted performance, improving speed by roughly 25% and quality by more than 40%, but only for tasks within what researchers call the “jagged technological frontier.” Outside this frontier, AI actually hurt performance.

The same study found something else worth noting: AI boosted the performance of lower-performing consultants more substantially than it did top performers. The tools appear to help most the people who need them most, which suggests that consistent, deliberate practice may matter especially for those earlier in their careers, when the gap between where you are and where you want to be is largest.

A St. Louis Fed study adds a frequency dimension. Among workers who used AI every workday, 33.5% saved four or more hours that week. Among those who used it just one day, only 11.5% did. The difference between daily and occasional use is not a matter of degree. It determines whether the tool actually changes how much you can get done.

Asking whether AI will change your field is the wrong question. The more productive one is which parts of your work sit inside the frontier and which sit outside it.

Four AI Practices Worth Considering

Conduct a task audit. Stop thinking about your job as a single block and break it into specific activities. Identify which tasks are pattern-based and repetitive (drafting routine emails, summarizing meeting notes, pulling data) and which require nuanced judgment, relationship navigation, or contextual expertise. Delegate the first category to AI aggressively. Protect the second category deliberately, because that is where your career’s long-term value lives.

Diversify your information diet. Spend less time with people predicting AI’s future and more with people using it today. Ask colleagues further along in your field what tool actually saved them time this week and where the AI failed them. Real-world friction data from people doing your kind of work is worth far more than a consultant’s ten-year forecast.

Think before you prompt. Before opening an AI tool for any substantive task, spend two minutes writing or sketching your own initial take. This one habit keeps your judgment in the driver’s seat rather than in the passenger seat, reacting to whatever the model produces first. It also guards against the slow erosion of your own analytical instincts, which is a real risk for heavy AI users.

Invest in high-stakes relationships. As AI makes information cheap and content abundant, trust and credibility become the scarcest professional commodities. The ability to build genuine relationships, navigate complex negotiations, and earn hard-won domain credibility are precisely the capabilities that sit furthest outside the jagged frontier. These are worth your deliberate investment regardless of how the technology develops.

The Real Competitive Advantage

The professionals who will look back on this period as a turning point are not the ones who were loudest about AI, in either direction. They are the ones who quietly figured out which parts of their work to hand off, which parts to protect, and how to get better at both. That is a more boring story than the doom-and-hype cycle offers. But it is also the one that will actually matter.

Forbes.com | Februay 24, 2026 | Andy Molinsky

The headlines are everywhere: Skills are shifting, and AI is reshaping the world of work. This has led to a sense that you should be doing something, such as learning a new tool or taking an online course.

But when change feels constant, it’s hard to know where to start. Moreover, nearly 40% of the skills used today will change by 2030, and 63% of employers cite skills gaps as a major barrier to transformation, according to the World Economic Forum.

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What Skill Sets Do You Have to be ‘Sharpened‘?

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Article continued …

That doesn’t mean you need to chase every certification, but you should be deliberate about how you prepare for what’s ahead. Here are five ways to stay current without burning yourself out:

1. Build AI literacy. You don’t need to code, but you do need to understand the strengths and limits of AI, and when human judgment matters.

2. Invest in soft skills. Communication, adaptability, judgment and collaboration retain high professional value even as technologies shift.

3. Deepen your expertise. Upskilling improves performance by strengthening the skills you use today and adding new ones that support your current role.

4. Position yourself for the future. Reskilling prepares you for emerging roles and responsibilities as parts of your job are automated or phased out.

5. Create a sustainable learning rhythm. Small and consistent habits matter more than dramatic resets.

If you want a deeper dive into the data and practical examples from companies that are already investing in upskilling and reskilling, you can read the full analysis here. Staying relevant isn’t about tackling everything at once—it’s about being strategic and adaptable as work evolves.

Caroline Castrillon: Many professionals have heard that 40% of skills will change by 2030. What do they misunderstand most about this number?

Dorie Clark: People hear this and think 40% of jobs will disappear. While there may be some of that, it’s more likely the changes are in aspects of your job. There’s probably not going to be a wholesale wipeout of professions.

How can someone stay visible and valuable without burning out?

There are three components in what I call the Recognized Expert Formula: content creation, network and social proof. Put your ideas out publicly. Build relationships so people know you. Develop markers of credibility that show you’re worth listening to.

What is one step someone can take this month if work feels uncertain?

Give yourself more options. Reach out to someone in your extended network whom you haven’t spoken with in a while, ideally in a different company or industry. These diverse connections are especially valuable during disruption.

What is the one capability that will matter most over the next decade?

Soft skills. Working with AI is table stakes. What separates you is being personable and easy to get along with. Personality and expert reputation will matter more than ever.

 Forbes.com | December 17, 2026 | Caroline Castrillon