I review a lot of marketing job postings. Most of them look like they were written six years ago.
“Proficient in Adobe Creative Suite.” “Experience with video editing software.” “Knowledge of HTML/CSS a plus.” “Familiarity with marketing automation platforms.”
These aren’t bad skills. They’re just increasingly irrelevant.
It’s like posting a job in 2010 that required “expert knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System” when Google already existed. Sure, librarians still needed to understand information architecture. But the actual skill that mattered had shifted completely.
The McKinsey Reality Check
Here’s a telling statistic.
More than 70% of companies expect to reskill at least 11% of their workforce in the next three years.
Source MarketingProfs.
That’s from McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI Report.
Translation: Most companies know their current teams don’t have the right skills. But look at what they’re hiring for, and you’ll see the disconnect. They’re still posting jobs for yesterday’s skills while planning to retrain people for tomorrow’s needs.
That’s backwards.
What We’re Actually Hiring For Now
When mobile hit in the mid-2000s, smart companies didn’t ask “can they code an app?” They asked “do they understand what mobile changes about user behavior?”
Same thing here.
The question isn’t “can they use Midjourney or ChatGPT?” AI tools change every month. What you learn today about prompt engineering might be obsolete by summer.
The real question is: Can they recognize good work when they see it?
Because here’s what’s happening. AI can now generate a blog post in 30 seconds. Design a logo in two minutes. Create a video script faster than you can brief a freelancer.
But AI can’t tell you if any of it is actually good. If it’s on-brand. If it will resonate with your audience. If it’s strategic or just slop.
That requires human judgment.
The Invisible Skill No One Lists
I worked with a startup last year that needed someone to manage their content. They posted a job listing for “content marketing manager” with the usual requirements. SEO knowledge. CMS experience. Writing samples.
They hired someone who checked all those boxes. Three months later, they let her go.
Why? She could produce content. Lots of it. She knew the tools cold. But she couldn’t tell the difference between content that would actually drive results and content that just filled the editorial calendar.
She was optimizing for volume, not value. And in a world where AI can produce infinite volume, that’s not a skill anymore.
What they actually needed (and eventually hired for) was someone with taste. Someone who could look at ten AI-generated headlines and pick the one that would actually make people click. Someone who understood their audience well enough to know when “technically correct” copy would fall flat.
The New Skills That Actually Matter
If I were writing a job description today, here’s what I’d focus on:
Strategic thinking. Can you connect marketing tactics to business outcomes? Can you explain why we’re doing something beyond “because our competitors are doing it”?
Bullshit detection. Can you spot when an AI output is confidently wrong? When it’s technically accurate but tonally off? When it’s good enough versus when it needs work?
Taste and judgment. Can you articulate why one approach is better than another? Can you defend creative decisions with reasoning beyond personal preference?
Audience understanding. Do you know what our customers actually care about, or are you guessing based on what you’d personally respond to?
Adaptability. When the tools change next quarter, can you figure out the new ones without needing formal training?
Notice what’s not on that list. Software proficiency. Technical certifications. Years of experience with specific platforms.
The Compensation Disconnect
Here’s another data point worth considering. A recent GLOZO marketing report found that despite their high impact on compensation (up to +30%), only 31% of marketers report proficiency in Python and SQL. Glozo
Companies are paying premiums for technical skills that are already becoming commoditized by AI. Meanwhile, the skills that will actually matter (judgment, taste, strategic thinking) are barely mentioned in job descriptions and rarely tested in interviews.
That’s going to flip. Soon.
What This Means If You’re Hiring
Stop copying last year’s job description. Stop listing software requirements that will be obsolete before the new hire finishes onboarding.
Start figuring out how to screen for judgment. For taste. For the ability to recognize quality and explain why it’s quality.
(Next week, I’ll share a specific interview question that actually tests for this. It involves giving candidates AI-generated work and asking them to fix it. The results are revealing.)
What This Means If You’re Job Hunting
If your resume is a list of tools you know, you’re positioning yourself as increasingly replaceable.
Reframe around judgment calls you’ve made. Problems you’ve solved. Results you’ve driven through strategic thinking, not just tactical execution.
Because the companies who figure this out first are going to scoop up all the talent who actually understand what matters now.
The rest will keep hiring for 2019 and wondering why it’s not working.