Why Are AI Consultants in Such High Demand? And How Can You Become One?

It’s no secret that many businesses, big and small, are looking to adopt AI but along with the rewards there are plenty of risks. As such, data and AI consultants are in high demand right now, providing real and meaningful insight into where AI is and isn’t useful in a business context.

But what are companies looking for in their AI consultants? And do you have the expertise to become one?

AI Consultant Jobs

First up, it’s important to understand what an AI consultant is and what it isn’t. Anyone can try out a few AI tools and call themselves an AI consultant but that won’t make money for you or your clients.

What clients will go for – and what many companies of all sizes are crying out for right now – is someone who knows their niche and how to effectively implement tools within that niche.

For a practical example, let’s think about recruitment firms.

Ask anyone in recruitment and they’ll tell you they’re sick of being recommended AI tools. This is for two reasons. First of all, the market is saturated. People have been trying to ‘solve’ recruitment for decades now and AI has only inflated the number of bad solutions available. Secondly, recruitment isn’t as easy to solve as many tech startups assume.

Both pre and post AI boom, new recruitment solutions have focused on better sorting and filtering. This is useful to a point but it’s mostly a solved problem. Recruiters already have good tools for sorting through thousands of CVs to find the ones they’re looking for. The problem isn’t sorting the CVs they have, but bringing in the ones they need.

Put simply, the most employable people are often already employed. The biggest challenge recruiters have is getting a job listing in front of those people and tempting them away from their current job. They don’t need better sorting, they need better headhunting.

What does all this have to do with becoming an AI Consultant?

Well, a good AI consultant wouldn’t make the mistake these tech startups are making. Instead of leaping in and saying “here’s how I can fix your problem” a good consultant would find out what the real problem is first. In fact, an ideal consultant would be one with experience of the recruitment industry and who specialised in recruiting specifically.

How To Become an AI Consultant?

Becoming an AI consultant is a good idea for those with deep industry experience. Unfortunately, the flip side to that is that if you don’t have first-hand knowledge of an industry, then you’ll be limited in your ability to recommend tools and design pipelines/workflows.

That said, there is one skill that can make up for lack of experience and that’s good software engineering. Specifically you’ll need to know how to work with tools like Zapier to automate and integrate different parts of a client’s process. If you can show that you have experience building valuable custom solutions then that’s a real and tangible skill you can demonstrate.

All of this to say that if you really want to become an AI consultant then you’ll need to pick a niche, do a lot of research in that niche, and build a solid portfolio of satisfied clients. It’s more of a small business than a side hustle but if you commit the time and you make the effort to solve real problems, then it can be very worthwhile.

Is There a Career Path for AI Consultants?

At Career Navig8r we cover all kinds of careers from specialising in law to becoming an optician. In most fields there’s some kind of established career path or at very least a clear direction for progression.

AI consultancy is different which makes it both exciting and risky. There is no clear career path in this field. As a growing industry, anything could happen and the future is far from set in stone.

That said, companies will always need good consultants when it comes to tech and the stronger your portfolio, the easier it will become to network and grow your business. All told there really is no better time to become an AI consultant and take the chance to help build this new and exciting industry.