The majority of hiring organizations want workers with ‘ChatGPT experience.’ What does that mean?

When it comes to assessing candidate skills, different companies are starting to look beyond mastery of spreadsheets and toward generative AI. According to a new Resume Builder survey, 9 in ten hiring companies want workers with “ChatGPT experience.”

Stacie Haller, Resume Builder’s chief career advisor, told HR Brew that the survey reflects an evolution of modern skills. Given the generative AI tool’s virality and some companies’ open embrace of it, Haller surmised that mastery of ChatGPT will soon be a skill that's subject to credentials. “There’ll be some sort of certification that everybody accepts, just like if you take a job where you need to have Excel, people could give you an Excel test,” she said.

Currently, however, ChatGPT experience means different things for different hiring companies, Haller explained. Among the companies surveyed, there was a motivation to have “people in their organization who know how to use the system, across the board, in all these different departments to create more productivity,” she said.

The breakdown. The survey queried 1,000 people who identified as C-suite executives (president/CEO/chairperson), owners, or partners of various organizations. Among the respondents, 91% said they’re seeking candidates with ChatGPT experience. Demand for ChatGPT skills was spread throughout several business areas, encompassing 58% of respondents in software engineering, 33% in customer service, 32% in HR, 31% in marketing, 28% in data entry, and 23% in sales and finance respectively.

Generative AI tools can be used for a multitude of tasks: Candidates consult it to refine their résumés; it can also spit out code on demand. HR leaders who previously spoke to HR Brew expressed concerns related to bias and inaccuracy, but are still drawn to the prospect of harnessing it for their teams for more tedious tasks such as writing job descriptions. “In the HR world…nobody likes writing job descriptions,” Haller claimed.

Cutting edge. ChatGPT is new, with an air of viral excitement underscoring much of the conversation around the tool. Haller explained that the definition of “ChatGPT experience” is “still evolving” but will be clearer once organizations understand its usefulness for their needs.

At the moment, at least, the tool’s emergence could be likened to other once-ascendant technologies that are now commonplace at work, she said. “I remember being a young, young professional in Manhattan when fax machines came in and changed the whole way we worked,” she said. “What about getting PCs? There was a time you didn’t have to have any computer skills. Now you can’t get a job without any computer skills.”