Stories
Beyond ChatGPT: Why Companies Want Workers Who Turn AI Into Results
- •Employers are shifting from basic AI tool familiarity to seeking workers who can apply AI to solve real business problems and improve outcomes.
- •Practical skills such as evaluating machine-generated results, workflow automation, and agentic AI are becoming critical differentiators in India's job market.
- •Data from Naukri and Deloitte show a significant surge in daily generative AI usage and AI-related job descriptions across both tech and non-tech sectors.
- •Professionals with AI skills command notable salary premiums, with IT and non-IT workers earning higher median annual salaries compared to their peers.
- •Candidates are advised to move beyond listing ChatGPT on resumes and instead demonstrate practical projects, workflow improvements, and human oversight.
Key Questions Answered
Employers are prioritizing practical AI application, including agentic AI, AI orchestration, workflow automation, prompt engineering, RAG, and the ability to evaluate machine-generated results. Candidates must also demonstrate industry knowledge and data literacy to turn AI outputs into reliable business outcomes.
According to Naukri's World AI Day Report 2026, AI-related skills in technology job descriptions grew from 0.9% in 2020 to 15.4% in 2026. Meanwhile, mentions in non-technology roles increased from 0.26% to 1.59% over the same period.
IT professionals possessing AI skills earned a median annual salary of Rs 13.7 lakh compared to Rs 11.9 lakh for those without them. For non-IT professionals, those figures stood at Rs 11.3 lakh and Rs 7.5 lakh respectively, though skills alone do not cause the gap.
