Companies Want AI Fluency, But Are Struggling to Get It

95% of respondents of a new study list AI fluency as a hiring requirement. However, a significant number of organizations are still reporting having made a bad AI hire.

Historically, employees have been encouraged to experiment with AI to find out how it could suit their specific needs. Now, standardized AI use is emerging, which will help hiring managers choose the right talent.

Wouter Durville, CEO of TestGorilla, spoke to Tech.co about what AI fluency means and how businesses can hire with this skillset in mind, all while avoiding common mistakes at the interview stage.

Companies Are Looking for AI-Fluent Job Candidates

TestGorilla’s State of AI Fluency study finds that 53% of hiring managers now prefer a candidate with high AI fluency over one with deep domain expertise. However, of those managers, 59% report having made a bad AI hire.

Wouter Durville, CEO of TestGorilla, highlighted how impactful an AI fluent employee can be. “I think people who are really AI fluent, the outcomes they generate are massive. It’s a big difference.”

Companies certainly want to hire with AI in mind, the study finds, but are often going about it in the wrong way. Durville explains how the study was borne from customers communicating to him how much they were struggling with the issue. Eventually, TestGorilla landed on the term “AI fluency,” one Durville knows is difficult to properly define.

“It’s really about getting those people who know how to use these tools in the right way, and in a responsible way. Who are agile, who are using different tools for different things, who are system thinkers that see the bigger picture of where to use AI and where to put the human in the loop,” he explained.

It goes without saying, though, that this definition will vary based on your company and its goals.

Businesses Are Moving Towards Standardized AI Use

The first step when AI started to make waves in companies was convincing employees to actually use it. Common advice was to let employees figure out the tool for themselves, find ways to embed it into their own workflows, and experiment.

Arguably, this could explain the rise in individual productivity compared to company-wide gains some studies reported. But, this tactic seems to have faded.

“For example, in product development, it becomes quite messy if everyone is using a different tool for coding.” – Wouter Durville, CEO of TestGorilla

Messiness aside, it makes it easier to police the technology if everyone is using it across repeatable, company-wise processes.

That’s not to say organizations should stamp out individual moments of AI brilliance, but standard practice could protect against costly data breaches or common AI mistakes.

In the case of hiring, it’s likely much more productive to have a standardized company practice when it comes to AI. That way, in interviews, hiring managers can assess exactly how a candidate has used AI, and whether it matches up to AI expectations within their organization.

How Can Companies Hire for AI Fluency?

As well as standardizing AI use, there are other tactics companies can use to test AI knowledge. The first is actually defining what AI fluency means to your organization, which 71% of respondents of the survey have already done.

Likewise, the study found 37% of organizations set the bar at tool awareness when hiring a candidate. Rather than putting a tick next to someone’s name when they mention ChatGPT or Gemini, Durville encouraged businesses to “go deeper,” and figure out exactly how the candidate has used AI.

“You want to actually test an example in an interview,” he explained. So, asking a candidate questions like, “tell me about a workflow you actually built, or something that you automated. How did you go about it, what went wrong, and how did you fix it?”

“If you ask those questions, if you peel the onion a bit or go a bit deeper, you’ll very quickly notice, okay, this person has no clue how to do this,” he said.

Furthermore, Durville said AI use — and how it’s going to be tested in interviews — should be related to the job role as much as possible. You’re likely to test a marketing executive on their knowledge of AI video editors, for example, but this is less useful when interviewing for an engineering job.

Overall, Durville has positive views about AI and how it will impact hiring. While the CV and cover letter have basically been killed, he told me, companies can use AI to give more opportunities to candidates at the interview stage.