Employers Prioritize AI Skills Over Experience in Hiring, But Offer Little Training

Fluency in artificial intelligence has become a prerequisite in the job market, as employers across industries seek candidates with AI skills.

Research from Resume Genius shows that eight in 10 hiring managers consider AI skills a priority. Other data indicates most employers would hire a candidate with AI skills rather than one with additional years of work experience.

Many workers recognize the need to build AI skills, but few employers provide the necessary training, said Lisa Gevelber, head of Google's Grow with Google initiative, which offers digital skills training to workers and businesses.

"We know AI can be extremely beneficial and that hiring managers say knowing how to use it is essential, but employers aren't meeting that need in terms of training employees," she told CBS News.

Companies often fail to deliver the AI skills suddenly in demand, said Sam Caucci, founder of 1huddle, a firm that helps companies develop corporate training.

"Companies and academia are not equipped because the curriculum development process is so slow," while AI advances at breakneck speed, he said.

Workers can build AI skills by using free public tools every day, experts say. "Workers are learning AI natively by going directly to platforms to get better at using it," Caucci said. "They are learning AI by prompting ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, you name your platform."

Such platforms are free, and paid subscriptions provide extra features. OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, offers free training in prompt engineering, which it calls the art of communicating with AI models to get desired outputs.

Free AI training materials abound online, Caucci added. He pointed to courses on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube as ways to gain baseline knowledge.

Christine Cruzvergara, vice president of higher education and student success at Handshake, a hiring platform, suggests using AI itself to learn AI. "You can literally use AI to teach you AI," she said. "Go to ChatGPT or Claude and say you're interested in learning more about how to use AI in your role, and it will help you get started. Say, 'Over the course of two weeks or one month, can you build out a schedule of courses?' And it will give you a play-by-play of what you should do."

Corporate AI adoption may reduce entry-level demand now, but Cruzvergara expects companies to hire more young adults who have self-taught AI expertise for various tasks. "Employers are looking to this next generation to do that," she said. "They are the first fully-native AI generation. They are already self-taught."

Career experts stress showing AI skills to employers. "Just saying, 'I use ChatGPT,' is not how workers should be reflecting their skills," Caucci said. "Make sure your resume has an AI throughline."

That involves listing examples of how AI boosted efficiency and productivity, plus any extra AI training.

Grow with Google offers credentials like its Google AI Professional Certificate, available online for $49 a month. The seven-module course takes about an hour per module, with self-paced learning.

"We are teaching the things that employers want employees to be able to do," Gevelber said. Those skills cover using AI for communication, presentations and data analysis.

"Companies buy talent — they don't build it," Caucci said. "My advice is to stack as many of those credentials as you're able to onto your resume to signal that this is an important area of focus for you."