AI for Career Resilience - How to Identify In-Demand Skills In Any Industry

Using words that are more effective than others when you communicate with AI is the recipe for a successful prompt. This is called ‘prompt engineering’. You’re talking to the AI.

From here on out, we will refer to it simply as ‘prompting’.

We’ll be using ChatGPT as our example AI model in this article.

There are other reliable AI chatbots out there and they’re unique in their own way.

For example, Claude, Google Gemini, Meta (for context, Meta owns Facebook)and these are ChatGPT’s biggest competitors.

But for this exercise, we are going to use the most popular and familiar AI chatbot, ChatGPT.

Why Prompting Matters: Get the Best Out of AI

The skill of prompting is the process of talking to the AI to get the desired response and output from it. You want to guide the AI to generate responses that best match your intentions.

The way you phrase a question or command is crucial in getting the desired response. 

This is where the human element comes into play. AI is pretty smart, but clear and specific prompts are the goal here.

How to Ask Clear and Effective Questions

The best way to illustrate this, let’s go into ChatGPT and ask it to:

“ Write a short article on gardening”.

The response was a little longer than what you see here, but suffice to say, ChatGPT did a pretty good job. Especially if you didn’t know a thing about gardening. 

The AI’s response goes on and talks about ‘Sustainability’ and growing your own food. It also talks about ‘Community and Connection’ as a way of making friends in your community.

Pretty good job, wouldn’t you agree?

Well now, let’s give ChatGPT a little more context. Let’s have it assume a particular role. In this case the role of a Master Gardener. 

Begin/Open a new chat and ask:

“Assume the role of a master gardener. Write a short article on gardening.”

Two good responses, but two different responses. The first one was kind of a general description of gardening with some information on mulching, watering, organics, etc.

The second one was much more focused, with more information. All we did was add a bit more context, in this case, having the AI assume the role of a master gardener.

This is what context does when prompting AI. It provides a clearer path and direction for the conversation and responses. Keep this in mind every time you write a prompt. 

It’s important to note that prompting is communicating. It’s a skill, and a skill that can be learned. And like writing itself, the more you practice by doing, the better you get. 

Using Follow-Up Prompts to Refine Responses

Let’s refine the prompt even further. Using the same chat session, ask this follow-up question:

“I want to grow my own tomatoes. Write a guide on how to get started growing my own tomatoes”.

Again, we’re adding more context; you’re asking the AI, who is assuming the role of a master gardener, that you want to learn how to grow tomatoes by telling it to write a ‘how-to’ guide.

Now that’s a pretty comprehensive guide!  All possible by asking the right questions, in the proper context, and assuming a role.

That is prompting in a nutshell. 

There is a lot more to it when you’re coming up with a prompting strategy. More on this in the near future, but essentially it means coming up with a prompting framework that you will use over and over, depending on your needs. It’s one that works for you, and you’ll see when I mean as you keep doing.

There are many different frameworks and ways to write prompts and here is a quick example of one framework I use often. 

It’s called RAP (Role, Action, Purpose). Assign a persona to the AI, state what needs to be done, and explain the purpose why it’s being done.

That’s pretty much the framework we used above with the ‘how-to grow tomatoes’ prompt.

R = A master gardener

A = Create a how-to grow tomatoes guide

P = Because I want to learn to grow tomatoes

Common AI Prompting Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Mistake 1: Asking overly broad questions
Example: “Tell me about AI”.
Instead: Be as specific as you can with your requests.
“Explain three ways AI is currently used in HR.”

Mistake 2: Assuming AI knows your context
Example: “What should I do next?”
Instead: “Given my background in HR, what’s a good next step in learning how AI can help with recruiting”.

Mistake 3: Using Complex or Jargon Language
Example: “Elucidate the paramount considerations in implementing AI”. (AI helped come up with this one.)
Instead: Use clear, simple language. “What are the most important things to consider when starting to use AI?”

Mistake 4: Asking for Opinions on matters that are subjective.
Example: “What’s the best AI tool I can use at work?”
Instead: Ask for comparisons instead. “Compare three popular AI email tools (insert tools here) for email, based on ease of use?”

Mistake 5: Asking Yes/No questions
Example: “Would AI be good for my business?”
Instead: Ask for analysis or a better explanation with more context. “What are the pros and cons of implementing AI in a small business?”

AI Next Steps

Prompting is a crucial part of learning AI and applying it effectively is key. It’s about getting what you want out of the AI using clear and effective questions, follow-up questions to refine responses, and avoiding common mistakes.

Be as clear, specific, and mindful of the context of your prompts. Now it’s just a matter of practice and working daily with AI.

What’s more, as you continue to use these models, you will think of things on your own to try, experimenting with your own ideas and thoughts all in an effort to be better. 

Shortly you will start experimenting and finding out how best to use AI at your job. 

And you will get better, I promise. 

As you continue learning and using AI, you can get articles and videos like these sent to your Inbox every week. If that sounds good, fantastic! Then, Go here, sign up and as a bonus, download my free guide: “5 Ways Business Pros Over are Using ChatGPT to Grow Their Profit & Cut Expenses (Even if You’re Not Tech Savvy)”

Disclaimer: AI did not write this article, but after chatting with it for several minutes and giving it more context, it gave me a nice outline that I essentially wrote from. So…..I’ll say 100% was written by me, the human. But AI did its job and helped me out big time.

You’re hearing about it more and more every day, yet only 6 months ago, you barely heard a thing.

Now it’s everywhere.

Can you guess what I’m talking about? That’s right, artificial intelligence, or AI. 

All of a sudden, people you work with are starting to talk about ChatGPT and they’re marveling at its ability to generate really good text out of a few simple text prompts. It’s happening where I work.

They’re using it to write better sales and marketing copy, summarize business communications and meeting notes, and who knows what all?

Some are having conversations with it and producing powerful new product descriptions, new and more compelling copy for the company website and personalizing the customer experience.

Keep in mind, today’s AI is the least capable AI that you will ever know. In other words, it’s as ‘dumb’ as it will ever be.

Now imagine 2 to 5 years from today. Especially if you’re over 50 and still working. Where will you be with AI? 

Maybe your business processes will be streamlined, your customer service will be unparalleled, and you now have more free time to focus on what truly matters to you during your normal day.

Or what if AI remains on the periphery of your plans and it’s just ‘over there’. You’ll get to it, right?

I’ve never been one to say,  “never’’. But in this case, if in 1-2 years from today (4/20/2024) and you’re not involved with AI in some way, it could get bad. And get bad fast. Hell, probably within 1 year.

In a world where this technology is advancing so rapidly as it continues to get smarter and better, your competitive edge or advantage will be gone. 

But I’m happy to be the bearer of good news. Because these are still early days with AI, you have some time, and even time to move ahead of your competitors by leaps and bounds. You can.

Step into your future today, or watch it pass you by. Your future success depends on it. I say that with full confidence and conviction.

Getting Started with AI in Business

The first areas of opportunity I recommend where AI can help is your existing tech stack. In other words, the software applications you use daily.

What productivity tools are you currently using that has AI already baked-in?

My guess?

You’re already using one, or two, of the following:

Microsoft 365

Copilot is the name of Microsoft’s 365 AI companion. Actually, Copilot is the AI piece of practically all of their products.

Copilot is available now for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook and Teams if you are a Microsoft 365 Business Standard customer or Microsoft 365 Business Premium customer. A license is required to purchase Copilot for Microsoft 365 for $30 dollars per license/seat.

Google Workspace

Gemini (formerly Duet) is now the moniker of the AI companion for Google’s suite of business applications such as Docs, Sheets, Slides, Gmail. Gemini is available now for all if you’re a current Workspace subscriber.

Both tools can perform similar tasks and with the help of AI in data analysis, they can be your own sales assistant, writing coach, creative partner, and so much more.

Pricing for Google Gemini for Workspace varies from $20 to $30 monthly depending on your subscription.

Zoom & Google Meet

Zoom and Google’s Meet conferencing applications both have similar features and capabilities with AI now integrated into each platform.

At a high level, both can summarize meeting notes very well. 

If you’re invited to a meeting, but don’t really need to attend, you still have another option. Both Zoom and Meet can ‘attend’ meetings for you, take notes and provide you with a personalized summary.

This allows you to get more done in less time, but still staying on top of things.

The folks over at Zapier have a very good blog post on the similarities of Zoom and Google Meet that is worth the 3 minute read. You can find it here.

Finally, now that we’ve identified applications you use daily and their respective AI capabilities, the next steps would be, learn to use these tools and then go all in. You have to.

There are plenty of detailed videos on Youtube and other places to find how AI works with each respective application. You just have to take the time.

In future articles/posts, we’ll demo platforms like ChatGPT and others, and the various ways they can help you both professionally and personally.

ChatGPT

Finally, ChatGPT. I could end this paragraph by saying, “it’s the best $20 a month you’ll ever spend.”

But I won’t.

Instead, I’ll tell you, it’s the best digital tool, outside of the tools you use daily. Period. It’s user-friendly, it does so much for one tool, and it is the leader, the ace face, and quite possibly, the Godfather of AI tools.

I would imagine a lot of folks reading this have tried the free version. Make no mistake, the free version offers very little compared to the paid version.

It’s an easy learn, and for right now, we’re all learning together. Let’s do this.

On a personal note, and for a little bit of fun….

If you’re a lover of Italian cuisine like me, you enjoy a nice marinara.

Here is my marinara sauce recipe that ChatGPT and I came up with.

It’s pretty damn good by the way.

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This eBook is designed for you, the business owner or professional over 50 who needs to become AI literate and learn how it works, and how it can help you both professionally and personally.