You can also access this resource and many others in Issue 363 of my Talent Edge Weekly newsletter.
Last week, I covered a new International Labour Organization report arguing that AI literacy is becoming a foundational expected skill rather than a nice to have. A new IZA Institute of Labor Economics study drills into one subset of that literacy, prompting skills: the ability to formulate instructions, evaluate outputs, and deploy workflows. Researchers had decision makers from 992 German firms repeatedly choose between hypothetical applicants varying in prompting skills, skills gaps, and social skills, yielding 15,660 hiring choices. Applicants with stronger prompting skills had a 4 to 5 percent higher selection probability, and employers paid roughly 2 percent more for those skills. At larger and AI adopting firms, that advantage nearly doubled to about 9 percent. While prompting skills mattered, it was not the most important skill. Employers valued job fit and social skills far more, and prompting did not offset gaps in occupation specific knowledge, suggesting it is becoming an added expectation rather than a substitute for expertise. There are limitations to the study: it was a hypothetical experiment, not real hiring decisions, conducted in Germany amid rapid AI adoption, and not yet peer reviewed, though it still offers valuable insight. From my standpoint, as various aspects of AI fluency become part of hiring decisions, we need real ways to evaluate and develop it, not just recruit for it. With that backdrop, I am excited for our upcoming conversation with Tracy St. Dic, Zapier’s VP of Global Talent, in Talent Edge Circle, my private community for internal HR practitioners, on Zapier’s AI fluency initiative.
