Communication tactics that drive career progress beyond the resume
If you’re still preparing your resume, interview answers, or career strategy the old way, you’re already behind.We’re living in the AI era, where professionals who adapt fast win big, and those who don’t risk becoming irrelevant. The smartest individuals today aren’t working harder; they’re partnering with AI to work smarter.
Whether you’re applying for jobs, preparing for interviews, or planning your long-term career growth, here’s how to use AI to stay ahead of the curve.
Step 1: Reinvent your resume using AI tools
Your resume is no longer a static document. It’s a living personal brand, and AI can help you upgrade it instantly. Instead of manually guessing what recruiters want, give your experience to AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Notion AI. Include your job titles, key achievements, and dates. Then ask the AI to:
Reformat it for readability and flow Highlight measurable impact Match it to a specific job description Make sure to add context to your prompt. Context makes AI exponentially smarter, and the result looks like it came from a professional resume coach.
Step 2: Prepare for interviews like a pro
The biggest mistake candidates make? Believing interviews are about what they know. They’re not. They’re about how you express what you know. So practice is key. You can use voice chatbots from tools like Meta AI or ChatGPT to simulate interviews. The bot acts as a real interviewer, allowing you to speak your responses, practice refining your answers, and get real-time feedback on your performance. Try this: “Pretend you’re a hiring manager for a Data Science role at a fintech company. Ask me 10 technical and behavioral questions one by one. Give feedback on clarity and confidence after each answer.” Within minutes, you’ve got a personal mock interview coach that never sleeps, never judges, and always challenges you to think sharper.
Step 3: How to move your career forward in the age of AI once you land a job
Based on my experience coaching hundreds of leaders, primarily in the US, but also globally, here are what the high achieving professionals do to advance their careers. The first skill required to make progress in any job, whether you’re just starting out or leading a team is taking ownership. Ownership is about saying, “This is my project. My responsibility. My outcome.” It’s what separates those who survive and those who don’t in this tough job market.
Once you establish ownership, your technical skills become the foundation. They’re what keep you competent, employable, and respected. You need them to survive in your role, whether that’s writing code, auditing accounts, designing systems, or managing products. But here’s the shift no one can ignore, with the advent of AI, survival isn’t enough anymore.
Many of the technical tasks you perform today such as debugging, data analysis, data reconciliation, monthly financial close, documentation, even project coordination is being automated faster than most people realize. So you have a choice: You can be the person who gets replaced by AI, or the person who replaces what you do with AI. That’s where real career growth begins. Start by looking at your day-to-day work. Which tasks are repetitive, tedious, or low-value? Reporting? Scheduling? Generating code snippets or test cases? Those are the perfect candidates for automation.
Use tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or workflow automation platforms like n8n and Make.com to streamline them. Even if your company isn’t fully AI-ready right now, doing this gives you a huge edge. Because when your company does adopt AI, and it will, you’ll already be seen as the ambassador of innovation, the person who proved AI’s value before everyone else caught up.
You’ll be the one leading the transformation, not reacting to it. But there’s one more truth you can’t ignore: just knowing how to use AI tools won’t be enough forever. Five to ten years from now, AI will reach a level of intelligence where most technical work from coding to documentation to analytics can be done instantly, without you writing a single line of code. So if AI can do everything you can do, faster and cheaper, what’s left?
The answer is simple but profound: adding business value. No AI tool can replicate the ability to understand your customers, your business and influence executive decisions. That’s your advantage. Those are the skills the top 1% of the leaders possess and that is why Them Awareness becomes your most valuable skill. I talk more about it in my upcoming book, Mastering the Art of Them Awareness.
Them Awareness means stepping out of your own perspective and into someone else’s, seeing what your boss, your business or your client actually needs, not just what they’re asking for. It’s about moving from execution to insight. From doing what’s asked, to understanding why it’s being asked. When you develop Them Awareness, you learn to read between the lines, ask better questions, and communicate with clarity and empathy. You don’t just deliver results. You deliver impact. And once you combine AI mastery with Them Awareness, you become unstoppable. You’re not just keeping up with the future, you’re defining it. So how do you balance all of this? That’s where the 60-20-20 rule comes in.
The 60-20-20 framework for staying ahead
Think of this as your personal roadmap to stay relevant and powerful in the AI era:
• 60% — Do what keeps your valuable today.Deliver on your current role. Build credibility. Be someone your team can depend on. This is your foundation.
• 20% — Automate and innovate.Identify the dull, time-consuming parts of your job and use AI to streamline and automate them.
• 20% — Build the human edge.Invest in learning skills that AI can’t replicate such as them awareness.
This 60-20-20 balance ensures you’re not just surviving, you’re accelerating. You’re growing faster than your peers, positioning yourself as a future-ready professional who leads with both intelligence and empathy.
The writer is a global AI and communication coach helping leaders align technology, people, and purpose)