Hot take: Hard skills are not as important as they used to be.

Especially with AI.

In recent years, AI has taken over many traditional jobs, including data roles, driving and even customer service.

But AI’s takeover isn’t a cause to go crazy, panic and riot – not yet.

There IS a way to work around this.

How? By working on our soft skills, e.g. sales, EQ, networking, and people management.

Soft skills used to be heavily discounted

Especially in Asia - where we emphasize studying something practical at school and getting a technical job

That’s why being a doctor, lawyer, or engineer is so popular!

Soft skills on the other hand were seen as useless, something you relied on if you didn’t have the smarts, and some soft skills like sales were seen as sleazy even.

But with AI taking over many things, one thing that still makes us relevant is being human.

And moving forward, these human-centric traits are key.

Soft skills will be increasingly valued and companies will hire based on personality traits.

Many of the hard skills traditionally valued in education will become less relevant.

Instead, soft skills, which were previously undervalued, like sales and emotional intelligence will now hold greater importance.

Because at the end of the day, people hire people.

Yes, most of what work is includes doing the job.

But there’s also a sense of identity and purpose that comes from doing fulfilling work.

And a sense of camaraderie that comes from doing work together.

So fret not, AI will never replace us.

Just as the internet never replaced us and instead created a whole array of new roles like software engineering, front/back-end development, UI/UX etc.

We will never be out of work, work will just take a new shape and form.

So if you’re stuck in a job because you spent years studying the hard skills for it – be it in medicine, law, computer science, or accounting – know that you DON’T have to stay there just because that’s where your hard skills got you.

And if you need help figuring out how to future-proof your career from AI, Contact me “AI” to book a call with me and my team.

I’ve helped countless folks stuck in their hard-skills-crazy jobs in companies like EY, Shopee, Amazon, Grab, and Apple focus on their soft skills and find their dream job.

I’d love to help you, too.