Qi Yang/Moment/Getty ImagesZDNET’s key takeaways
- The traditional career ladder is falling apart.
- People must explore new areas quickly.
- Practical moves help you reach the top.
For decades, the story was simple: start in an entry role, gain on-the-job experience, and move up the career ladder step by step. Now, in an age of AI, that long-accepted narrative is crumbling.
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AI is automating routine tasks at the bottom rungs of the career ladder while giving people the tools to work on more complex tasks earlier in their careers.
In this AI-enabled workplace, instead of a single upward career path, professionals encounter a flexible employment structure where they must grow vertically into senior roles, horizontally across functions, and diagonally into adjacent areas to build new capabilities.
“AI is not just changing what work looks like; it is also changing how people climb,” Ankur Anand, group CIO at recruiter Harvey Nash, told ZDNET. “The traditional career ladder is being replaced with a career lattice, and people who learn to move across it will reach the top faster than those who wait for the next rung.”
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It’s already clear that the workplace of tomorrow won’t look like the one we know today, and neither will its traditional career path.
Business leaders told ZDNET that ambitious professionals will rise to the top in today’s work environment by focusing on two core areas: exploring new territory and making practical moves.
Exploring new territories
If step-by-step promotions are a thing of the past, then professionals will need to find new ways to reach the summit.
Anand said climbing the career ladder means being open to opportunities, especially those that involve emerging technologies. “The route to the top is less about tenure in one track and more about building a broad, transferable skill set while using AI to accelerate learning and impact,” he said.
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That sentiment resonated with Jesse Cox, accounts payable manager at healthcare specialist Solis Mammography, who told ZDNET that upwardly mobile employees are ready to explore fresh territories.
“I was telling somebody the other day, ‘AI is here. You’re either going to get on your surfboard and ride the wave, or it’s going to plow you over, and you’ll get left behind. There’s really no choice.’”
Cox said professionals should prioritize continuous personal development. Smart employees recognize that AI helps them work more quickly and move into new areas that might once have seemed beyond their compass.
“AI doesn’t mean you’re losing your job,” he said. “It means you get to do things that you put on the back burner because you never had the time to get to them. That’s what AI truly means.”
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In his own department, professionals are exploiting AI services to save time and improve existing business processes, such as approving and paying invoices.
People who prove strong AI use cases share best-practice lessons and showcase their ability to become next-generation leaders.
“You must look and say, ‘OK, well, what does this mean? What do I get to do? How do I continue to grow?’ As a professional, you’re going to have to grow with this wave.”
Tal Carmi, CIO at technology specialist WalkMe, also told ZDNET that professionals must embrace AI, recounting a story where one of his senior executive colleagues expressed this requirement in clear terms
“He said, ‘If somebody comes to me and he doesn’t speak AI at the basic level, then it’s like somebody who’s not using the internet or somebody who doesn’t use email or Excel.’”
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Carmi has met people outside the tech industry who’ve said they haven’t explored AI as they’re not developers. This limited approach will constrain your upward ambitions.
“AI is in a different place today,” he said. “Companies will try to give you skills or knowledge. But in the end, I think it’s curiosity that drives people, especially at the rate things change.”
Making practical moves
The key to long-term career success, suggested Kirsty Roth, chief operating officer at Thomson Reuters, is adaptability. The best professionals are enthused by change.
“I remember a bunch of excited team members playing with the big breakthrough models for ChatGPT,” she told ZDNET. “And guess what? Those people have turned out to be some of our most capable engineers in the last 18 months.”
Adaptability isn’t just a core requirement for those at lower rungs of the career lattice. Roth said too many people wrongly assume that younger people are best placed to respond to the career changes brought by AI.
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Instead, her evidence suggests the best professionals, regardless of demographic, adapt confidently to the new, AI-enabled workplace and the continuous learning journey it requires.
These professionals ask important questions about the next rung of the career lattice long before they get there.
“We all get to these points in our careers where we have a choice of job A or job B, and I usually tell people to write what you think are the two or three lines on your CV that will be added at the end of the job,” she said.
“Think about, ‘What are you going to learn? What are you going to have done differently in that role?’ If you go into these changes with an open mind and are willing to learn new things, you’ll be just fine. Those people will be the CEOs and board members of the future.”
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The key message, Anand suggested, is that AI is not just a technology shift, but a leadership test. The people who excel will pass with flying colors.
He suggested six practical moves for professionals who want to keep their career ambitions on track:
- Use AI to learn faster, not just to finish tasks: “Treat AI as a coach. Ask it to explain concepts, test your ideas, and help you explore different approaches before you decide. This approach turns everyday work into a faster learning loop.”
- Aim for judgement‑heavy work early: “Look for chances to review AI outputs, flag complex cases, or surface insights for senior teams. These activities build the decision‑making muscle that defines future leaders.”
- Build a T‑shaped profile: “Go deep in your core discipline, such as finance, recruiting, or engineering, but add a strong crossbar of AI fluency, data literacy, and basic product or business thinking. That combination makes you valuable as roles evolve.”
- Think in projects, not job titles: “Treat each role as a set of projects where you can show clear impact, such as time saved, revenue influenced, risk reduced, or experience improved. This mindset helps you stand out when promotion criteria shift.”
- Invest in human skills that AI amplifies: “Communication, empathy, and critical thinking are the areas where humans still lead. Use AI to handle routine work so you can focus more on relationships, stakeholder management, and problem‑solving.”
- Be open to lateral and diagonal moves: “If a move across teams or functions builds important skills or AI experience, take it. In a lattice, sideways steps can be the fastest way up over time.”
