In this compilation episode of The Parlor Room Presents: Hello AI, host and Harvard Business School Online Creative Director Chris Linnane gathers HBS faculty to share actionable advice for early-career professionals. Featuring professors Nien-hê Hsieh, Christina Wallace, Joe Fuller, and Iavor Bojinov, the conversation explores how to build skills, develop expertise, and create value while working alongside AI.
From using AI tools effectively to strengthening human skills like communication, curiosity, and empathy, faculty share what it takes to adapt, grow, and stand out in today’s evolving workplace.
Resources
Catch up on previous episodes of The Parlor Room, featuring faculty from this compilation episode:
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Transcript
Editor's Note: The following was prepared by a machine algorithm and may not perfectly reflect the interview's audio file.
Nien-hê Hsieh: The higher up you go, the less it's going to be replaced by AI. So, trying to understand how to develop those skills is probably what I would be thinking about.
Voiceover: Starting your career right now can feel like the rules are changing before you even learn them.
Chris Linnane: What can you do to be prepared and to use AI?
Christina Wallace: This is no longer a case where—especially if you're not a technical founder—you say, well, I'm going to hire someone to take care of that.
Voiceover: As AI takes over more work, the skills that make you human may become your biggest advantage.
Joe Fuller: That, in the way I describe the situation, everybody heard what they needed to hear in a language that they understand.
Voiceover: So, how do you develop those skills?
Iavor Bojinov: What are the one or two things that you are going to build a lot of domain expertise in, so that you truly understand that, and you understand it better than your colleagues and the AI system?
Voiceover: Welcome to The Parlor Room Presents: Hello AI.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Chris Linnane: Welcome to another special episode of The Parlor Room Presents: Hello AI. This is part two of early career advice in the age of AI, and we have four faculty members joining us today: Christina Wallace, Nien-hê Hsieh, Joe Fuller, and Iavor Bojinov. I hope you enjoy this episode, and please remember to follow and subscribe wherever you watch or listen to your podcasts. Our first guest is Christina Wallace.
Chris Linnane: If you're a first-time founder, you're just getting into this world right now. What can you do, what should you do, to be prepared and to use AI?
Christina Wallace: First and foremost, you have to learn these tools. You have to go in and tinker and build to understand not just what can be done, but also, right now, it's a proliferation of tools, and they're not all going to win out. There will be a consolidation down to best in class for this and best in class for that. But you need to have a working knowledge of what's out there, and how they fit together, and how you can use them.
This is no longer a case where—especially if you're not a technical founder—you say, well, I'm going to hire someone to take care of that. I'm here for strategy, for fundraising, for vision. No. Entrepreneurs are now patient zero for understanding the technology and getting in the weeds with it. So that's first and foremost.
I think the second thing that first-time founders building right now have to understand is the advice that they're hearing from serial founders, from venture capitalists who've been in this space for 20, 30 years, even the blog posts that they might be referencing from a few years back, they have to have the critical lens of, "Is this still true?"
Because many of the things that we say, well, we know. Best practice was like a pre-2023 world. And there's this pre and post the introduction of AI into the mainstream, where you might need to expire your data and say, I know everyone says that this is how you go to market. I don't know if that's still true.
So I'll take the input, but I'm going to go test it myself. I'm going to go connect with other people who are building in real time like I am. And we're going to share learnings about what is true now to see if that insight still holds, or if I need to go about it in a very different way.
Because one of the things we always tell first-time founders is you don't have to learn things the hard way. Go talk to people who've been there, done that, and use their cheat codes to get up and running. But now the question is, "Are any of those cheat codes expired?" And if so, don't use them because that's wrong.
Chris Linnane: Next, we'll hear from Nien-hê Hsieh.
Nien-hê Hsieh: Well, no, that's a good question. I think it probably depends on the job. And maybe, unfortunately, for most entry-level jobs, those opportunities aren't quite there. But if we think about, for example, working in professional service firms, ultimately, a key part of what it means to be successful in a professional service firm is being able to work well with your clients and meet their needs and understand where they're coming from. And that's not something we understand as being able to be outsourced to AI.
The challenge, of course, is that for many people who are in entry-level positions in professional service firms, their job isn't really at that point to be engaged with clients, but that's something that they will learn over time in the context of that organization.
So what I would say to them is—and this is true, I think, for any entry-level job—is to look in the organization, if you want to stay there, and look at the people who are above you and who've been successful and who seem to be doing the things that the firm needs to have done and understand what that is. Because I think in most situations, the higher up you go, the less it's going to be replaced by AI.
So, trying to understand how to develop those skills is probably what I would be thinking about with regard to...in that situation. So it's maybe less about what you can do with AI, so much as actually understanding, well, what parts of the jobs further up along won't be replicated by AI? And how can I help to develop those kinds of skills and demonstrate my value to the organization?
Chris Linnane: Now, we sit down with Joe Fuller.
Joe Fuller: The skills that are going to have sustained value are skills that have always been sought after by recruiters, companies, sports teams, and militaries. The first is curiosity, that you're interested in the way things work, that you're open to not knowing, that you respond to feedback, grit, that when something doesn't go the way you hoped or wanted, that your attitude is OK, we'll figure out how to get around this. Or, "OK, I made a mistake. I'm going to address that." That you're able to take on and act against feedback—good, bad, and indifferent—that you're trying to improve.
But all of that can be binned in a broader categorization of what I'm going to call human skills. They're often called social skills, foundational skills, or power skills. In the literature, historically, they were described as soft skills, as opposed to hard skills. I don't like that term of art because it suggests they're easy, and they're not. They're hard to attain.
It's really, in part, having what psychologists call a theory of the mind, which is the ability to put yourself in another person's position and imagine how they see the same situation you're observing from your position. Social skills are—they're broad, but they really have to do with being able to deal with different people in different ways, in different contexts.
A good illustration also would be, let's say that I'm working in a company, and I have to get on a call with my boss's boss, my boss, a peer, and my subordinate. And each of them needs some information from me to do what they need to do next, that in the way I describe the situation, everybody heard what they needed to hear in a language that they understand.
So how do you cultivate those skills? A lot of it's already happened because a lot of those skills are developed in childhood. But you can get better at them, to the extent to which you still have choices to make about what you do in school and pursue some breadth.
When I was a CEO, we found that people who are outside successes, as our company had done very well in college, we were hiring college-level grads and people with graduate degrees. But in college, they almost invariably had another major activity.
They were the president of their sorority. They were on the tennis team. They were an editor of the newspaper. They didn't have to be in charge, didn't have to be the editor in chief, but they wrote for the newspaper. They were on a team, debate team, or they sang a cappella, or whatever. But they weren't just in the library being good at school.
Chris Linnane: And our last segment is courtesy of Iavor Bojinov.
Iavor Bojinov: I think there are three things, and two are contradictory. The first one is, of course, you need to understand AI. You need to be fluid in it. You need to understand the basics, et cetera. But there are two other things, and they're going to be contradictory. And I know, and I'll try and explain why.
The first one is that you need to be flexible. You need to be able to do many different things, sort of a bit of a jack of all trades. But the second thing is you need to specialize. You need to figure out what are the one or two things that you're going to build a lot of domain expertise in, so that you truly understand that, and you understand it better than your colleagues and the AI system, so that you're adding tremendous value.
Because I think this is what we're going to see. We're going to see people who are really experts on a specific thing. So maybe you work in marketing. And so maybe you become absolutely excellent at understanding your customer and understanding what type of content they want to engage with. And you don't get that through just like reading your post.
You go out, and you speak to your customers, and you build that understanding. You build that mental model that not everyone has. But then you want to be flexible enough to be able to go from content creation to making videos to copy editing. You want to be able to do everything in your chosen area. So that's my suggestion.
Chris Linnane: Thank you again for listening to this special episode. And if you enjoy what you're hearing and watching, please remember to subscribe wherever you watch or listen to your podcasts. Thank you very much.