3 Things an AI Certification Taught Me About the Current Job Market

The return of demand for tech workers

In just one month, I’ve successfully passed my second AI certification from AWS, leveling up my skillset with the brand-new trend in generative AI.

This adds into my background a much sought after skill set and achievement for the year. I have high hopes that it will come in value especially during the significant shift in the job landscape.

I’d like to highlight three key points that I’ve learned coming out of my AI certifications and how they might help you in your next job search.

Let’s begin with the somewhat unsurprising experience that I’ve noticed — companies are still trying to figure it all out.

1. Companies are confused when it comes to AI

Many companies are still in confusion with what exactly to do with AI.

I’ve spoken with multiple corporate recruiters seeking to fill leadership roles for an “AI expert” with the goal to build new teams with AI expertise. However, the requirements for these roles tend to focus on data science, data analytics, and database administration. Some descriptions even stretch to include machine learning as well, but this still falls short of the current AI movement.

Companies seeking data science expertise is no different than the past decade with regard to AI skills. But generative AI is substantially different.

Companies are just not ready to fully leverage it — yet.

A database administrator in disguise

Many of the new job postings for roles directly related to AI, or having AI within the job title, may not always appear as they seem.

I’ve noticed how several of the job listings are titled for “AI roles”, but the skill sets being sought tend to focus on traditional database administration. For example:

• SQL
• Stored Procedures
• Data Analytics
• Extract, Transform, Load (ETL)
• AWS, Azure, Cloud

These skills are not what I would consider AI. However, there is a good reason for this divergence in job postings in conjunction with exploding AI capabilities — and it’s probably good news for tech employment.

Turtle versus the hare

Larger industry companies tend to be more cautious and move more slowly, especially when it comes to emerging technology.

Established companies rely on experts skilled in AI specializations to help guide them towards profitable ventures and cost-saving changes in their industry. This is where I’ve experienced that having certified credentials can place oneself above other candidates during an interview process.

Demand is likely to quickly evolve towards more AI-specific skills as they become more readily available in candidates.

This brings us to the next observation — AI is in-demand and it’s only going to become bigger.

2. Large language models - it’s only a matter of time

The tech industry is moving so quickly that it seems nearly every week there is a new report on breakthroughs in AI accuracy.

In fact, the tech industry is largely playing a game of leapfrog, as one AI company surpasses another in accuracy across a range of generative tasks. Many companies are springing up to compete against OpenAI as the next big thing in AI.

However, I’m beginning to see a change occurring from the smaller companies and startups in how AI is being used for profitability. While it may begin with the nimbler companies taking risks with AI, it is sure to flow upwards to larger companies hoping to reap the benefits as well.

Take the software engineering industry, for example.

Replacing or augmenting programmers

When I put aside any distractions from the media hype, I can start to see a clear path to where this could all be leading.

Software development is a task that is being performed at increasingly better accuracy rates by machines with each new release of an LLM model. From OpenAI, GPT-4o, Llama, Claude, and many more, it’s becoming clear that the future of programming will involve AI.

This is not to say that I believe AI will completely replace developers. However, I do feel that the way software has been developed up until recently is going to change significantly.

Software development is already evolving

I like this anonymous quote, which sums up my thoughts quite precisely.

AI won’t replace programmers, but programmers that use AI will replace programmers that don’t.

As such, I know that it’s more important than ever to refresh, and even re-invent my skillset with a background in generative AI.

This brings us to the third observation. When I initially began searching available certification paths and courses, I realized a very interesting occurrence — there are suddenly so many to choose from!

3. An explosion in AI certifications

It seems that a barrage of AI certifications has suddenly appeared from out of nowhere.

A quick peruse of online courses and corporate universities display a large variety of options for learning AI. For example, take a look at any of the following certifications.

• Coursera — Courses to master artificial intelligence for advanced problem-solving.
• Udemy — Artificial intelligence courses from real-world experts.
• Udacity — School of Artificial Intelligence for AI training, machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, and natural language processing.
• Google — Google AI Essentials.
• IBM — IBM AI Developer Professional Certificate.
• Microsoft — Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals.
• Oracle — OCI AI Foundations Associate.
• DataBricks — Generative AI Fundamentals.

It’s not just online platforms either. Universities and colleges are advertising their own AI certificates and post-graduate programs.

Demand for skilled workers

The diversity in AI certification is not surprising, considering the expectations for growth in just the next few years.

Artificial intelligence is expected to be a $60 billion industry by 2025.

Such a broad range of companies are sponsoring AI certifications beginning with foundational topics and focusing on generative AI. Of course, the question is — why?

The reason is that companies are demanding skilled workers in AI — there simply aren’t enough.

Training or marketing

The companies that most desire to hire experts skilled in AI are often the ones sponsoring new certifications.

It’s their way of training a new cohort of workers to (hopefully) join their company.

However, whether or not you ultimately choose to work for the same company that you’ve received a certification through, your experience and job prospects will improve, nonetheless.

A convincing career change

It’s no surprise that generative AI skills are in such high demand by employers.

As the advancements in LLMs begin to consolidate and companies find reliable profitable applications, I believe we’re going to see a swath of new jobs begin to open for those skilled in generative AI.

I want to be sure to be on that side of the fence, experienced in the concepts and tools.

And you can be there too!

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