How Students Can AI-Proof Their Careers

The current generation of college students is facing a challenge that those who came before never had to worry about: They’ll be competing with AI for jobs.

What can they do to get ready?

After all, artificial intelligence is likely to eliminate at least some jobs that formerly served as first rungs on career ladders. “We have to accept and embrace the idea that in fact with AI we are going to have jobs that are going to be eliminated and jobs that are going to be created, and we don’t know which ones,” says Joseph E. Aoun , president of Northeastern University.

That uncertainty leaves today’s college students struggling to prepare for a workplace that is changing faster than ever. We asked a range of career counselors and employers how they would suggest students AI-proof their careers. One consensus: It’s important to master skills not easily matched by machines, such as human-style communications and the ability to understand and work smoothly with people who have different perspectives and personalities.

“In many ways the human skills are going to be more fundamental than they are now,” as machines take over some routine tasks, Aoun says.

A survey of 255 employers by the National Association of Colleges and Employers last year found that the three top “competencies” they sought in job candidates were communication, teamwork and critical thinking.

Communication and teamwork rely on emotional intelligence, or EQ. “AI has probably won the IQ battle,” says Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic , chief innovation officer at Manpower Group and professor of business psychology at Columbia University, “but the EQ battle is up for grabs.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean students shouldn’t master AI. Skill in using AI as a productivity-enhancing tool can give them an edge over older workers who haven’t mastered ChatGPT and other AI programs.

But knowing how to use AI effectively isn’t enough. Here are some suggestions from the experts on how students—or really anybody—can reduce the risk they will eventually be replaced by AI.

Cultivate your ability to work with other people, including jerks

AI can write computer code, improve grammar and solve math problems, but so far it lacks the ability to mediate squabbles among colleagues, charm potential clients over cocktails or soothe angry customers. So developing those skills may be one of a job applicant’s best selling points.

Anything that requires talking and cooperating with strangers is helpful. That includes volunteering in a nursing home or an after-school youth program, or leading an on-campus club or sport. Jobs that require dealing directly with lots of other people, including jerks, are an educational opportunity. “If you’re a waiter you will understand human beings better,” says Chamorro-Premuzic.

Go wide and avoid hyper-specialisation

Focusing too heavily on one type of expertise could be a mistake if, as expected, AI eliminates lots of jobs in some specialties. It isn’t a risk only for technology fields like computer science; other fields such as accounting and finance are also being transformed by AI.

Instead, experts recommend having a portfolio of skills.

“If you have one skill, you compete with the masses that have that same one skill,” says Anna Esaki-Smith , author of “Make College Your Superpower.” In contrast, she says, “Should you stack on another skill, you become qualified for a wider range of opportunities.”

That could mean adding a minor or two to a major or going for a double major. It also could involve a strategic selection of electives. D. Raja , chief executive of CEI, a Pittsburgh information-technology consulting firm, says he increasingly looks for job candidates who have both technical skills and a grounding in business, enabling them to understand clients’ needs. An M.B.A. stacked atop a computer-science degree is one good strategy, he says.

Though a range of skills and knowledge is an advantage, it’s still important to develop deep expertise in at least one or two areas. “AI has disrupted superficial expertise,” Chamorro-Premuzic says. In other words, you have to know more than generative AI programs can spit out in a minute or two.

Show you can organise a big project and get it done

If AI will do at least some of the grunt work, people will still be needed to devise strategies and carry out complicated projects. Machines do pieces of work, but “we still need big-picture humans to put it all together,” says John Behrens , director of the technology and digital studies program at the University of Notre Dame.

To help students learn how to manage complexity, many universities require them to complete a capstone project before graduation. Those can include primary research, ambitious artworks or community-service projects.

Vanderbilt University calls such projects “immersion.” For his Vanderbilt project, Logan Glazier is converting an old school bus, once consigned to the junkyard, into an RV with solar panels mounted on the roof to power his refrigerator and other appliances.

He expects to finish the project within a few months, before graduating next spring with a degree in civil engineering. Glazier had to sell his idea to university administrators, persuade them to give him space to work on the bus, develop a plan and find materials. He watched dozens of YouTube videos and consulted with Vanderbilt professors.

He recalls the reaction he got from people at the engineering consulting firm HNTB when they heard about the project: “Wow, that’s really cool!” He got an HNTB internship in 2023 and recently accepted a full-time job at the firm starting in May, after his graduation.

Be open to new experiences

As AI and other technological changes make career paths less predictable, adaptability will be an advantage. “We don’t know what the world is going to be like in five years or 10 years,” says Behrens.

Students can develop their adaptability by seeking out new experiences, such as studying abroad or taking unconventional courses. At Carnegie Mellon University, renowned for computer science and robotics, one of the most popular electives is “Acting for Non-Majors,” offered by the Pittsburgh school’s drama department. Students have long taken the course, but now demand has soared as students see it as a plus in the job market, forcing them to shed their inhibitions and engage with other people in unscripted ways.

This year, to accommodate demand, CMU quadrupled the capacity of the course.

“It’s exhilarating,” says Emily Ma , a math major. “Acting forces you to step outside your comfort zone.” That’s particularly important for a generation of young people who were isolated during the Covid-19 pandemic and spent far more time staring at screens than they did engaging directly with people.

Be a moderate misfit

Amid all the changes AI is bringing, companies want fresh thinking. So one route to success is to be a “moderate misfit,” unhappy with the status quo and ready to innovate, says Chamorro-Premuzic. By moderate, he means that “you fit in well enough and work well with others but are not so bland and risk-averse as to lose the desire for change and progress.”

Chamorro-Premuzic advises young people not to seek employers that fit perfectly with their values but rather to “look for places they like but which they also dream of transforming and improving.”

AI is like a B+ student and can tell you what the average person would say, says Matthew Rascoff , vice provost for digital education at Stanford University. A+ work, he says, is the product of an individual brain with a distinctive voice. So he urges students to develop their own voices and identities. “The more you outsource” to AI, he says, “the less you are developing that muscle.”

Give gold bugs their due. The yellow metal has been a light in the investing darkness. At a recent $3,406 per troy ounce, it’s up 30% this year, to the envy of stock, bond, and Bitcoin holders. Cash-flow purists will call this a flash in the pan, but they should look again. Over the past 20 years, SPDR Gold Shares , an exchange-traded fund, has surged 630%—85 points more than SPDR S&P 500 , which tracks shares of the biggest U.S. companies.

That isn’t supposed to happen. If businesses couldn’t be expected to outperform an unthinking metal over decades, shareholders would demand that they cease operations and hoard bullion instead. So, what’s going on? If this were gasoline or Nike shoes or Nvidia chips, we would look to supply versus demand. With immutable gold, nearly every ounce that has ever been found is still around somewhere, so price action is mostly about demand. That has been ravenous and broad since 2022.

That year, the U.S. and dozens of allies placed sweeping sanctions on Russia, including its largest banks, and China went on a bullion spree. Its buying has since cooled, but other central banks have stepped in. Perhaps this is unsurprising, in light of a decades-long diversification by finance ministers away from the U.S. dollar, which is down to 57% of foreign reserves from over 70% in 2000. But the recent uptick in gold stockpiling looks to JPMorgan Chase , the world’s largest bullion dealer, like a debasement trade. Investors are nervous about President Donald Trump’s tariffs, his browbeating of the Federal Reserve Chairman over interest rates, and blowout U.S. deficits.

Surging Demand

It isn’t just bankers. Demand among individuals for gold bars and coins has been surging, with some dealers experiencing sporadic shortages. Gold ETFs were bucking the trend, but flows there have turned solidly positive since last summer, including recently in China. All told, there is now an estimated $4 trillion worth of gold held by central banks, and $5 trillion by private investors. Calculated against $260 trillion for all financial assets, including stocks, bonds, cash, and alternatives, that works out to a global gold portfolio allocation of 3.5%, a record.

What’s next? BofA Securities says that central banks have room for much more gold buying, and that China’s insurance companies are likely to dabble, too. RBC Capital Markets analyst Chris Louney says ETFs could drive demand growth from here, especially if angst reigns. “Gold is that asset of last resort…the part of the investing universe that investors really look for when they have a lot of questions elsewhere,” he says.

Russ Koesterich, a portfolio manager for BlackRock , a major player in ETFs including the iShares Gold Trust , says that gold has proven itself as a store of value, and deserves a 2% to 4% weighting for most investors. “I think it’s a tough call to say, ‘Would you chase it here?’ ” he says. “There have been some pullbacks. Those might represent a good opportunity, particularly for people who don’t have any exposure.”

Daniel Major, who covers materials stocks for UBS , points out that gold miners mostly haven’t wrapped themselves in glory in recent years with their dealmaking and asset management. As a result, a major index for the group is trading 30% below pre-Covid levels relative to earnings. UBS increased its 2026 gold price target by 23%, to $3,500 per troy ounce, before gold’s latest lurch higher. Many miners are producing at a cost of $1,200 to $2,000. Major has bumped up earnings estimates across his coverage. “I think we’re gonna see further upward revisions to consensus earnings,” he says. “This is what’s attractive about the gold space right now.”

Major’s favorite gold stocks are Barrick Gold , Newmont , and Endeavour Mining . More on those in a moment. We also have thoughts on how not to buy gold—and what not to expect it to do: Don’t count on it to keep beating stocks long term, or to provide precise short-term protection from inflation spikes and stock swoons. But first, a little history, chemistry, and rules of the yellow brick road.

Flesh of the Gods

The first gold coins of reliable weight and purity featured a lion and bull stamped on the face, and were minted at the order of King Croesus of Lydia, in modern-day Turkey, around 550 B.C. But by then, gold had been used as a show of riches for thousands of years. Ancient Egyptians called gold the flesh of the gods, and laid the boy King Tutankhamen to rest in a gold coffin weighing 243 pounds. The Old Testament says that under King Solomon, gold in Jerusalem was as common as stone. Allow for literary license; silicon, an element in most stones, is 28.2% of the Earth’s crust, whereas gold is 0.0000004%.

Marco Polo described palace walls in China covered with gold. Mansa Musa I of Mali in West Africa, on a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324, is said to have splashed so much gold around Cairo on the way that he crashed the local price by 20%, and it took 12 years to recover. To Montezuma, the Aztec king whose gold lured Cortés from Spain, the metal was called, as it still is by some in Central Mexico, teocuitlatl —literally, god excrement. Golden eras, gold medals, the Golden Rule, and golden calf—so deep is the historical association between gold and wealth, excellence, and vice that it seems to have a mystical hold on humanity. In fact, it’s more a matter of chemical inevitability.

Trade and savings are easier with money. Pick one for the job from the 118 known elements. Years ago on National Public Radio, Columbia University chemist Sanat Kumar used a process of elimination. Best to avoid elements that are cumbersome gases or liquids at room temperature. Stay away from the highly reactive columns I and II on the periodic table—we can’t have lithium ducats bursting into flame. Money should be rare, unlike zinc, which pennies are made from, but not too rare, unlike iridium, used for aircraft spark plugs. It shouldn’t be poisonous like arsenic or radioactive like radium—that rules out more elements than you might think. Of the handful that are left, eliminate any that weren’t discovered until recent centuries, or whose melting points were too high for early furnaces.

That leaves silver and gold. Silver tarnishes, but rarer, noble gold holds its luster. It is malleable enough to pound into sheets so thin that light will shine through. And, despite the best efforts of Isaac Newton and other would-be alchemists, it cannot be artificially created—profitably, anyhow. Technically, there is something called nuclear transmutation. If you can free a proton from mercury’s nucleus or insert one into platinum’s, you’ll end up with a nucleus with 79 protons, and that’s gold. Scientists did just that more than 80 years ago using mercury and a particle accelerator. But what little gold they produced was radioactive. If you think you can do better, you’ll likely need a nuclear reactor to prove it, but a large gold mine is one-fifth the cost, and we have to believe the permitting is easier.

We passed over copper due to commonness, but it has become too valuable to use for pennies. The 95% copper content of a pre-1982 penny is worth about three cents today. The equivalent amount of silver goes for $3.10, and gold, more than $320. But the three trade in different units. A pound of copper is up 17% this year, at $4.72. Silver and gold are typically quoted per troy ounce, a measure of hazy origin and clear tediousness, which is 9.7% heavier than a regular ounce. A troy ounce of silver is $32.70, up 13% this year.

Some Finer Points

Confused? This won’t help: The purity of investment gold, called its fineness, is measured in either parts per thousand or on a 24-point karat scale. A karat is different from a carat, the gemstone weight, but our friends in the U.K.—who adopted troy ounces in the 15th century—often spell both words with a “c.” Gold bricks like the ones central banks swap are called Good Delivery bars, and weigh 400 troy ounces, give or take, worth more than $1.3 million. If you buy a few, lift with your legs; each weighs a little over 27 regular pounds (as opposed to troy pounds, which, it pains us to note, are 12 troy ounces, not 16).

There are many options for smaller players, like Canadian Maple Leaf coins, which are 24-karat gold; South African Krugerrands, at 22 karats, and alloyed with copper for durability; and Gold American Eagles, 22 karats, with some silver and copper. Proof coins cost extra for their high polish, artistry, and limited runs, and may or may not become collectibles. Humbler-looking bullion coins are bought for their metal value. Prefer the latter if you aren’t a coin hobbyist. Avoid infomercials and stick with high-volume dealers. Even so, markups of 2% to 4% are common. Costco Wholesale , which sells gold in single troy ounce Swiss bars, charges 2%, but often runs out, and limits purchases to two bars per member a day. Factor in the cost of storage and insurance, too.

ETFs are more economical. For example, iShares Gold Trust costs 0.25%, not counting commissions. For long-term holders, as opposed to traders, there is a smaller fund called iShares Gold Trust Micro , which costs 0.09%.

Resist fleeing stocks for gold. The surprisingly long outperformance of gold is mostly a function of its recent run-up. From 1975 through last year, gold turned $1 invested into about $16, versus $348 for U.S. stocks. That starting point has a legal basis. President Franklin Roosevelt largely outlawed private gold ownership in 1933; President Richard Nixon delinked the dollar from gold in 1971; and President Gerald Ford made private ownership legal again at the end of 1974.

Gold has been a so-so inflation hedge over the past half-century, and at times a disappointing one. In 2022, when U.S. inflation peaked at a 40-year high of over 9%, the gold price went nowhere. The problem is that high inflation can prompt a sharp increase in interest rates. “If people can clip a 5% coupon on a T-bill, often they’d prefer to do that than have either a lump of metal or an ETF that doesn’t produce cash flow,” says BlackRock’s Koesterich.

Likewise, while gold has generally offset stock declines this year, it hasn’t always done so in the heat of the moment. Recall tariff “liberation day” early this month, which sent U.S. stocks down close to 11% in three days and pulled gold down nearly 5%. “This isn’t an uncommon scenario,” says RBC’s Louney. “When investors were losing elsewhere in their portfolio, gold was sold as well to cover those losses.”

Our top tip on how gold behaves is this: It doesn’t. People do the behaving, and they are appallingly unreliable. Use bonds as a stock market hedge. If they don’t work, fall back to patience. For inflation protection, think of assets that are a better match than gold for the goods and services that you buy every week. A diversified commodities fund has precious metals but also industrial ones, along with energy and grains. Treasury inflation-protected securities are explicitly linked to the consumer price index, which measures inflation for a theoretical individual whose buying patterns differ from your own, but are close enough.

Own a house. Stick with a workaday, reliable car. Yes, cars deteriorate. But so does nearly everything on a long enough timeline. Rely mostly on stocks, which represent businesses, which wouldn’t endure if they couldn’t turn raw inputs like commodities into something more profitable. There’s even a miner, Newmont, in the S&P 500.

The Case for Mining Stocks

Speaking of which, UBS’ Major recently upgraded both Canada’s Barrick and Denver-based Newmont from Neutral to Buy. “Both very much fall into that category of having a challenging recent track record,” he says. Newmont has lost 20% over the past three years while gold has gained 76%, which Major blames on difficult acquisitions and earnings shortfalls. Barrick, down 8%, has been in a dispute with Mali since 2023, when its government instituted a new mining code that gives it a greater share of profits. In recent days, authorities have shut the company’s offices in the capital city of Bamako over alleged nonpayment of taxes.

These are the sort of headaches that Krugerrands in a safe don’t produce. But Major calls expectations “adequately reset,” free cash flow attractive, and guidance achievable. Newmont, at 13 times next year’s earnings consensus, is selling assets, and Barrick, at 10 times, has healthy production growth.

Major also likes London-based, Toronto-listed Endeavour Mining , up 40% over the past three years and trading at nine times earnings, although he says it has “higher jurisdictional risk.” It is focused on West Africa, especially Burkina Faso, which had a coup d’état in 2022. You’d think the stock would be doing worse amid such political upheaval. Then again, Burkina Faso since 1966 has had eight coups, five coup attempts, and one street ousting of a president who tried to change the constitution to remain in power. That works out to an uprising every four years, on average.

Montezuma’s scatological name for gold might have been prescient, considering the sometimes-odious consequences for small countries that find it.