In the Jefferson Frank Careers and Hiring Guide: AWS Edition, for example, over three-quarters (77%) of employers reported planning generative AI-related AWS projects in the coming year, and a further 74% of professionals told us that they’d like training and development in AI and machine learning.
But amidst all these hot conversations and exciting innovations, how can employers and tech professionals walk the walk and not just talk the talk?
We spoke with Karoline Saffi from Mission, to find out how organizations and talent across the AWS ecosystem can unlock the power of AI to bolster their business or career growth.
As Chief People Officer, Karoline has been pivotal in leading the People and Culture team at Mission for six years. Under her leadership, the company has maintained an employee net promoter score (eNPS) consistently above 80%, far above the tech industry’s average eNPS of 26%.
Karoline is highly passionate about driving equitable opportunities within the cloud. Her efforts have focused on creating a supportive and inclusive environment, driving talent development, and leveraging non-traditional talent pools to foster diversity and inclusion. Under her leadership, Mission has filled over 20% of its roles through its Evolution program, and has been named one of the best places to work for six consecutive years.
You can check out our full interview with Karoline below, but don’t forget to head over to our Careers and Hiring Guide for Karoline’s invaluable insights on successfully integrating AI into workflows and ensuring teams feel confident working with these new solutions.
As more organizations have begun adopting AI workflows, what are the most exciting opportunities for professionals in the ecosystem, and what new opportunities do you expect to arise as AI continues to evolve?
The demand for AI roles has increased here at Mission, including everything from machine learning and gen AI to data analytics. But aside from roles, expect to see more opportunities emerge around developing AI solutions and consulting with customers to help find the best one for their needs.
We’ve adopted many AI products internally to help drive efficiency and productivity across the team, and we’re all reaping the benefits. Things like automated note-taking—and automating many repetitive tasks—help us focus on the parts of our jobs that we really enjoy doing.
How can AWS professionals learn, upskill, and build experience with AI most effectively?
We’ve placed a huge focus on achieving AI foundational certifications.
AWS has just released the new certification, AWS Certified AI Practitioner, which everyone’s very excited about. They’ve also put out a lot of great content to help people learn. A lot of this content is gamified, too, so anytime you can make learning fun, that will be a win!
Our team just put together a blog post outlining the experiences and advice of our team members who’ve taken the certification exam. We had a goal to achieve ten certifications across the team within the first couple of months it was released, and we’ve beat that! So that’s a very exciting way to learn and continue to upskill.
How can employers better understand AI use cases and identify the best way to utilize tools to achieve various business objectives?
I don’t think you can really understand AI until you just jump in and try it.
A lot of times, you’re probably already using it and just aren’t aware. Plenty of software has AI features incorporated into it, so doing a little bit of research into whether the tools you already have include any of these is a good place to start.
Another place to get started is by focusing on your pain points, and then figuring out if there’s an AI solution that can address them. Once you get going, these tools will become part of your day-to-day.
When AI first emerged, job security concerns and change resistance were major talking points. How has the reception to AI changed as more organizations have begun to embrace it?
If you don’t understand how something works, anything can be scary at first. Progress and innovation are scary in general, I think.
But I don’t believe that this is an ‘everyone’s going to lose their job’-type situation. I think it’s more of an evolution of work. Our focus at Mission, for example, isn’t on whether a specific job, in the specific way it’s currently being performed, will remain the same forever. Instead, we try to be proactive by talking about it, normalizing it, and embracing it—this really helps to stay ahead of this evolution.
