This episode breaks down the Future of Jobs report infographic comparing skills employers consider core now versus those expected to increase by 2030, revealing AI and big data as the highest-growth category despite under 50% current adoption. The analysis exposes a striking disparity where employers show more confidence predicting five-year skill needs than agreeing on present-day core competencies.
Key Takeaways:
- AI and big data top future skills at 90% projected importance but under 50% current recognition The largest gap between present and future value signals massive incoming demand for technological literacy across all professions.
- Creative thinking outranks analytical thinking and systems thinking All three remain essential for becoming an AI driver rather than passenger, but creativity enables pushing LLMs beyond baseline outputs.
- Manual dexterity and procedural skills rank lowest for both current and future value Reading, writing, and mathematics similarly decline to 20% importance, reflecting LLM capabilities replacing traditional foundational skills.
The full episode explores how to position yourself as an AI driver through strategic skill development while maintaining healthy skepticism about five-year predictions.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to Get Serious, excited to be here today. So I was just catching up with some email newsletters and one from one of my core mentors, Ryan LeVeque. I’m actually gonna be up at a mastermind of his in Vermont this coming weekend here. And a lot of these infographics were just related to AI’s impact on today’s world. mean, no surprise, it’s like the topic du jour.
almost any given day. And I really like this one where it, and it might be a little bit, you know, it’s an infographic, right? So I have to convey this over a audio format, but I think the basics I’ll be able to cover. So the headline of this infographic is called Core Skills to Master in 2030.
and it’s from Future of Jobs report. I don’t know how many employers they…
kind of pulled for this, but my understanding was it was a significant number. Let’s just assume that that’s the case here. Either way, I think the takeaways are not that surprising for the most part here. so they, you know, within this core skills to master, they broke it down into four separate quadrants and the different axes were split to where the X axis was what
percentage share of employers consider such and such as a core skill now in 2025. And then on the Y-axis, they have the share or percentage of employers expecting increasing skills in use by 2030. So again, to break that down even further, again, X-axis, it’s like, okay.
what’s a core skill right now. like you’re just determining, you know, across, you know, a whole bunch of skills here. There’s probably at least 25, 30 of them that are listed on this, infographic. What’s considered a core skill right now. And then it’s, positioning that against, okay, what of these core skills do we think are going to be of increased usage over the next five years? So with that in mind, you know, you go from zero to a hundred percent on both of those. want the top.
upper right quadrant, meaning, okay, you already have skills that are defined as core now and still think they’re going to be of high usage five years from now. So that’s probably the, those are the skill sets we want to focus on the most meaning, yeah, they’re core now and expected to increase in importance. Like that’s the takeaway here. So there were a number of them included here. And I think it’s,
We might sometimes like overestimate our own abilities and what we’re bringing to the table and any type of business venture we might be in. But never the less, if we can be honest with ourselves and really determine, how much have I focused in some of these areas, we can kind of orient around, OK, you’re heading in the right direction. And not to say all of these are like
end all be alls, like we’ve obviously seen how, you know, just crazy the professional landscape has been changing even like over the past six, 12, 18 months and so forth. So predicting another five years in the future, I think is pretty difficult to do. But nevertheless, I’m not that surprised with where some of these skills are. So enough preamble here. I’ll give you a few examples. So the one at the very top is AI and big data.
just being a skill set. I’m not exactly sure what they mean by that. I’m just assuming it’s some type of understanding on how to work with LLM models, maybe even be able to work within kind of the inner workings, like the actual coding of AI. mean…
You could kind of look right. Like, yeah, if somebody developed a skill set that’s, know, getting paid those hundred million dollar paychecks at Metta or some of the other big corporations. Yeah, that’s like an incredibly valuable skill set. So I’m not sure exactly how they broke that down. You know, is it like the coding specific part of AI or is it just using AI in general? Either one. I don’t think you really need to split hairs like that’s just not that surprising. So like where that’s being on the top, we’re, over.
Yeah, almost 90 % of employers think that is going to be of increased usage over the next five years. Like that’s by far the highest one, the only one that was over 80 % split across everybody. But at the same time, like it was a little bit lower in terms of a core skill at the moment. So.
less than 50%, like just under 50 % of employers actually thought AI and big data capability is considered as a core skill set now. So that’s a pretty big disparity at the moment. It’s almost like cut in half of what people think the utility is going to be five years from now. So I think that’s a pretty interesting one to look at.
Just looking at the graph anyway, breaking it down, like the share of employers considering what’s a core skill in 2025, there was none that the employers agreed on that even passed 70 % of agreements. So like a lot of the, what we consider core skill sets now, like a lot of it was like a coin flip or right around that halfway point in terms of agreement.
whereas there was, I think a heavier weighting towards like what people think is actually going to be core later on, which could just introduce some bias, right? Like, you know, now that I’m, really thinking through this, Infographic it’s like less people agree on what’s core now, but they are trying to predict five years from now and are more confident about that, which, know, to me is difficult to say, right? Like we’re always better at assessing the present versus the future. So.
Again, take that part with a grain of salt, but nevertheless. Also near the top of the list is just technological literacy. Again, I would put that almost hand in hand with using AI models, just kind of manipulating and LLMs and probably a lot of other SaaS tools that interact with LLM models. Take your Zapier or various
know, web development flows that are connected with AI and so forth. That’s all just going to be pretty standard to utilize here. like, yeah, I’m not surprised at all. Like technological literacy is probably like, but again, only 50 % of employers think that’s a core skill right now. Like how is that not like near 90 for, well, again, I don’t know if it’s.
across how many different professions, maybe like woodworkers or something like that. Yeah, you don’t really need to be tech literate for some of this type of stuff. Which again, just goes to show blended. More people still think even if you’re a woodworker, blue collar employee of some kind, tech literacy that they’re still assuming is going to be higher five years from now. Other ones are curiosity and lifelong.
Learning again not too surprised by that like you always have to kind of stay ahead of what’s what’s coming down the pipe learn how to utilize what’s new and kind of coming in and I you resonate with that one Very much, you know, I did the the gallop strength finders top five personality tests. I’d highly recommend that one. It’s super useful like my number three out of the 34 some odd skills
or strengths learning was definitely, well, it was top three for me. So not surprising there. Another one is creative thinking. Again, I think that’s just, you know, creative thinking and analytical thinking and systems thinking. They were all like relatively bunched up. Creative thinking ranked higher than analytical and systems thinking, but all of them are kind of combined here because you kind of need all of them to.
have the tech literacy and interact with AI models in and of themselves or, you know, be able to work with the builders and the people who would work with those models more. So again, you can kind of stay ahead and be a AI driver versus an AI passenger. And that’s another article, do another podcast soon about to, but it’s like there’s so many folks who are just.
as AI keeps getting better and better that they’re just taking whatever AI is sending them and just presenting it or publishing it without having the more back and forth conversation with it to be more of an AI driver and think much more critically about the output and being willing to push back. So that’s a far more valuable skill and will only become more valuable. So you still need the creativity to kind of think, okay, how can I push the LLM’s to the top limits in order to,
still Excel beyond what’s going to become the new baseline. So, you know, to me, yeah, it’s kind of a combination, right? You have to be creative to think on how to still be a trailblazer. You have to be analytical enough to understand where to push back on AI or other people versus not. And you also need to be a systems thinker because these AI models fit within, or they’re, starting to need to fit within, most,
professions at this point. So it’s like, okay, how can I like actually introduce it into our operations? So they all kind of go hand in hand. Other pieces, resilience, flexibility, agility. I mean, when has that not been valuable, right? Like that’s, that’s been, going to, it’s core skill set going to continue to be especially in this fast paced environment, like no surprise leadership and social influence. Sure. Again, yeah, possibly even more so. And like, no wonder you have people are
Well, no, it’s about 60 % of people think it’s valuable now and about 60 % think it’s going to be valuable five years from now. So yeah, not that surprised where, again, I think people are, they’re not going to know who to believe in this world of AI. Oftentimes it’s like, okay, who can build up the real trustworthy brands and have the proof points to still provide like legitimate leadership and influence in a society where
You know, think trust may just continue to dip. Talent management still high up there. And again, that’s something I always, now I’m thinking about like Sharan Trivats’s thing of, you know, the top three or the only three areas a CEO needs to focus on is vision, people and cash. Like those three things are your job to figure out. So I’m constantly thinking about that in relation to my day-to-day and how to fit that within.
or how my zone of genius fits within those three. So yeah, talent management’s like just critical for opening up more avenues for your business to keep growing. And motivation and self-awareness, that was like right. Just crossing an empathy and active listening. Again, I think that should always just be high as well too. That’s how we interact with each other. But yeah, motivation, self-awareness, that resilience and flexibility. Like when are they not gonna be helpful here?
I know I’m running a little lot. It’s just it’s really interesting here. I won’t do all the rest of them here Maybe I’ll speed a little bit but there there were Two kind of two and a half skills that were considered less essential now like 20 % 10 % of people thinking they’re useful now, but like close to 70 80 % later on one is just networks and cyber security again, not that surprising. I don’t know about like every
employee there. think you can probably outsource a lot to experts, but yeah, clearly, you know, with AI being able to, you know, just push through, think, existing security loopholes and be able to impersonate voices and so forth like that, or, faces for recognition. Yeah. It’s just going to be tough. Like fraud is going to continue to go through the roof. So yeah, we probably need more help there. And another one, yeah, this environmental stewardship.
Something we don’t like, we kind of think in the back of the mind, but from an employer perspective and what is an actual skill in the professional side, yeah, do we all need to band together and keep trying to save our earth? Yeah, just a huge disparity there where it’s like, yeah, 10 % of people think that’s a core skill now, or just over and almost 70 % think that’ll be valuable five years from now. That’s a pretty interesting one.
design and user experience is like kind of right on the border of people who don’t think that’s that valuable right now, like 20%. I disagree. I think great design and UI is like, how is that not helpful? But more people think it’s going to be better in the future. Again, I think a lot of AI already is starting to help with that, like we’re doing with landpricer. So and then out of focus skills, not as essential right now. And
they don’t think it’s going to increase in use either. So some of these are like multilingualism. Like I tried to teach myself in Spanish, Duolingo and so forth, being in central Texas. And it’s more for like the brain activity and kind of testing yourself. But yeah, I mean, you see some of these language tools where it’s like, you know, Google has live translation, like two people speaking two different languages live and it’s auto translating right in front of them. yeah, there’s clearly we’re coming to a time where you don’t
really need to be bilingual in anything with kind of these cheap tools to work with, it can just auto-translate. So it’s more of kind of just a boutique skill, you could say, versus a necessity. Like just something that you would do for a hobby instead. Marketing and media, they put lower. Again, there’s someone like AI avatar type thing, like the marketing capabilities from LLMs are just getting way higher. Programming, no surprise, lot of young programmers not getting hired.
Global citizenship. Yeah, again, de-globalized world. That’s interesting. Manual dexterity, endurance and precision. I would have thought that would be high. I kind of disagree with that. think procedural skills are like the least at risk from AI coming in. well, actually people think that’s like very minimal right now, like 10%. That’s a good skill set and like 15 % in five years from now. So,
Maybe that’s not, yeah, people aren’t thinking it’s going away. It’s just like only a handful of folks might actually still been doing that. like reading, writing, and mathematics, I think is, again, they’re still saying like right now, 20 % is a good useful seal, 20 % in the future. Yeah, that’s a shame. It’s like a lifelong reader. I hate to see it. And as a writer too, but it’s like, if these LLM models just keep getting better and better, you just.
chop down on what you can kind of consume and the writing keeps getting better as well. I still think it’s way off from being truly top notch, but in any case, that’s something else to be there. Quality control, they’re saying, is lower as well.
Yeah, yeah, quality control. mean, if you can kind of teach and automate AI to handle a number of…
Um, kind of key factors to be aware of or dependability and attention to detail, something I pride myself in, you know, we built a whole funding business about this, but again, we built land price here because it’s like, yeah, these LLM models are becoming even better than us, um, in terms of attention to detail for like image analysis and so forth. So yeah, I’m not surprised that one is getting, uh, getting a hit, um, as well there. So, uh,
And customer service, they’re still saying it’s a steady skill, but not necessarily like bumping in terms of value going forward here. Teaching and mentoring. Well, right now they’re saying it’s like 30 % consider that a core skill, but they’re bumping it to 40 % over the next five years. I don’t know why teaching and mentoring would ever kind of go away.
You can have AI really teach you and mentor a lot. I guess I could see it from that sense.
But yeah, why it would be an out of focus, like we’re always gonna need some type of teaching or like how do we even, know, cause the AIs are still pulling in info from somewhere. Like somebody has to be teaching the core models on what to do. So kind of disagree a bit on that, but I know we’re running a bit that that was kind of the overall here. just, you know, it’s really, really fascinating to kind of really break this down and think about it. And even as I was talking through this, like it’s helping me reach different.
and updated conclusions, just taking a closer look here, but all of that in mind, again, we know AI is, is kind of here to stay. So it’s like, all right, what, what type of skills do I still need to succeed within this, within this environment? Yeah. You have to be technologically literate. You’ve got to be a creative thinker. you’ve got to be able to lead other people and you’ve got to be quick on your feet.
flexible. Again, that you could probably could have been saying a lot of this for the past 5000 years of human history, just different type of setups. again, I’m not that crazy surprised by this. So we should actually probably take that to heart. It’s like, yeah, the people who kind of maximize these particular areas, obviously the AI and big data that was never around, but these other ones were like technologically literate. I mean, back in the printing press, you would consider that, you know, new technology to,
to jump in on, so it’s not like any of this has ever gone away. And the people who master these core skills are always kind of at the top of the heap when it comes to returns from professional rewards. So just take that to heart. We all keep moving forward here and it’ll be really interesting to see how these next five years or even this next year pans out. With that in mind, SeriousLand.Capital for any of your funding needs.
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