Get ready to be judged for the things that make you uniquely human.

Generative AI tools are replacing some of the tasks that have historically been the purview of entry-level employees learning their way around at the start of a career. That doesn’t have to mean those jobs go away, a human resources leader for one large tech company told an audience at South by Southwest on Monday.

“I think we have to think differently about what those entry-level jobs are,” said Nickle LaMoreaux, chief human resources officer at IBM.

Artificial intelligence is a big topic at SXSW here in Austin, Texas, this week, including conversations around accountability, creativity, trust and the use of synthetic data. A glimpse at the SXSW program shows all the ways this technology might one day seep into our lives, if it hasn’t already.

One big way: AI is changing our jobs, and it’s changing the way we get those jobs. LaMoreaux said companies will have to look for different qualities in employees — the ones you can’t find in a machine.

AI as a hiring manager?

LaMoreaux said many companies are already using AI to screen resumes or otherwise filter job candidates, but IBM doesn’t. The decision depends on how comfortable the company is with using a tool for that purpose and whether it fits that company’s culture and goals. The goal is to use these tools to reduce bias, but sometimes, they can reinforce or amplify it, she said.

IBM, she said, is a “skills-first” company, meaning they focus on the technical skills of a candidate rather than where those skills came from. LaMoreaux said she worries an algorithm would reject candidates who come from non-traditional backgrounds, but who possess the skills to do the jobs.

The big way AI is going to change the hiring process for your next job is how it’s going to affect what skills the company will look for. The job itself will change.

“I actually think you’re going to see selection methodologies to try to get at this uniquely human part of talent acquisition,” LaMoreaux said.

One thing you shouldn’t expect: The idea that you’ll be applying for jobs alongside your “digital twin” AI agent. Those agents will likely be developed by your employer to handle the work of that employer — and one company isn’t going to let you walk with all of that information to a competitor or another business.

“If you left a job, it’s not going to go with you to the next job,” LaMoreaux said. “It will be fit for purpose for that role.”

Focus on human skills

If LinkedIn influencers are to be believed, the hot new job to evolve in the past few years is a generative AI prompt engineer, someone with expertise in getting an AI model to produce the best outputs. But LaMoreaux said AI tools are quickly becoming so user-friendly that prompt engineering isn’t as crucial as it once seemed to be. “‘Prompt engineer’ is the same thing as an ’email drafter,'” she said.

The future workforce will need more workers who have domain expertise: People who can look at the output of an AI model and identify what works and what doesn’t, what’s correct and what isn’t. That domain expertise will also help with decision-making ability beyond what a machine can capably handle.

“With AI and generative AI, domain expertise becomes more important, not less important,” LaMoreaux said.

Judgment and communication — the ability to make the right decision and to explain that decision effectively — will become the most important skills employers look for, she said.

The new entry-level job

LaMoreaux expects AI tools will handle some of the more rudimentary work, but they can’t handle everything. They will make employees more productive by cutting down on lower-level work, but humans will still be needed to handle high-level decision-making work.

“Think about it like email or mobile phones or the internet,” she said. “AI is a tool. AI is a platform. Every job has been transformed by that.”

If digital tools take over more work that had been handled by workers who were learning their jobs and building their experience, how are those workers supposed to learn the skills needed to perform at a higher level?

Employers need to rethink the role of workers who are just starting out, LaMoreaux said. Those jobs need to focus specifically on cultivating the skills to do the things an AI can’t, including solving complex problems and making complicated decisions.

“When I say AI is transforming all jobs, I’m talking about total work redesign,” she said. If employers don’t take a hard look at how to change their entry-level roles to support employees’ growth, that could lead to a scenario where a generation of workers won’t pick up the skills they need to do the jobs that are available.