Make a career pivot with help from AI

New AI tools at Salesforce, LinkedIn and others give users insight on how skills in one field can transfer to a different one

- Lindsay Ellis

Finding the job hunt challenging? AI might give you some ideas for pivoting to a completely different field. Career change isn't easy even in strong hiring markets. Candidates need to convince companies that their accomplishments in one field can apply to another—and that betting on someone without exact experience in a role will pay off.

Increasingly, artificial-intelligence tools created by companies including Salesforce, Google and LinkedIn are helping workers sell their skills, tailor their résumés to new areas and identify under-the-radar roles. Other job hunters are using AI prompts to turn widely available chatbots into career coaches.

Brooke Grant had been wanting a new role inside Salesforce when she heard of the company's new AI tool, Career Connect. It analyses employees' skills and recommends roles internally that they might not have otherwise considered—as well as training programmes to help them qualify for those positions.

Grant, who studied communications and organisational psychology, had worked for a decade in a position called change management, helping colleagues adapt to new operational processes. She uploaded her résumé into Career Connect, and the AI tool visualised different paths forward.

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One was her own manager's role, showing her what the natural progression would be. One was a role in AI strategy, drawing from her experience with AI at a former company. And one was a "sales enablement" job—making sure teams have the right tools to close deals and coaching them on techniques and the product. The AI tool identified her overlapping skills for this job. Though she had no sales experience, she contacted the hiring manager, while asking AI for guidance on how to pitch herself.

A new online AI tool at Salesforce, Career Connect, analyses employees' skills to recommend roles internally.