One of the most important skills of an HR or administrative professional can have is the ability to solve problems by asking great questions. Today that skill is being transitioned into the AI space. The skills needed to master AI is all about interacting with your AI agent in ways that produces the most effective responses – IOW it’s still about asking the right questions.

What’s interesting to me is that our ability to make smart, targeted use of AI technology is starting to show up in the practical outcomes we care about. We have more time. We get more done. We have less stress.

It’s no wonder we are starting to see these new AI skills getting a name. Some call it “prompt engineering” or “agent management” and recruiters are starting to query candidates in how far along they are in their mastery of the AI skill sets that fall under these labels. We are also starting to see how important AI skills are to our job satisfiers and careers!

The GOOD NEWS is that most of us already know how to be “prompt engineers” – we just need to learn how to apply what we already know in conversations with our AI agent.

AI and HR – “a perfect fit”

For those of us in HR roles, we already know that there are many aspects of work that AI is uniquely equipped to handle. Writing job descriptions creating interview questions, preparing employee handbooks, constructing training materials, even conducting performance reviews can all become tasks we can delegate to our AI agent. What you delegate to your AI agent and how can make a huge difference in how quickly you can respond to routine requests, support your organization.

AI can also help you prepare for meaningful discussions on workforce strategy, apply technical expertise to complex HR scenarios, and create user ready policy documents. It all comes back to how you, as your own AI engineer, learn how to give your AI agent clear, specific prompts, to ask questions with the right level of specificity, and to keep asking until the right work product is produced.   

How You PROMPT Your AI Agent is What Makes a Difference!

The quality of the conversations you have with your AI agent, the better results you’ll get from your AI agent.

Using a typical HR scenario as example, instead of just asking your AI agent to write a job description for an office manager, how about a more detailed prompt…

“Write a job description for an Office Manager at a 40-person manufacturing company, emphasizing customer service, payroll coordination, Microsoft Office skills. Make sure you cover all the soft skills that will be important in a setting where there is always lots to do with multiple priorities that need to be juggled on a daily basis. Use a friendly but professional tone and keep it under 600 words. Prepare your draft using the latest version of MS word and format the document consistent with other job descriptions in our library.”

The second prompt gives AI the context and guidance it needs to produce a much more useful job description and turn it into a finished product – turning what once was a multi-hour task into something that can be accomplished and delivered in a matter of minutes.

If you’re an HR professional and are committed to “getting good at AI, here’s just a few things that AI can do for you – most times in a matter of minutes…

• Draft any communication – from the simple to the complex. 
• Research the technical info you need to answer a question, solve a problem.
• Develop talking points for high impact conversations.
• Write policy using the right tone and word choices.
• Create summaries of conversations in bulleted format.
• Generate internal staff training materials and checklists.
• Brainstorm and triage the pluses and minuses of new ideas.
• Create or review a vendor contract

Yes – AI can actually deliver a real “do more with less” solution!

Think of AI as your PERSONAL ASSISTANT…

…because it is.

And don’t be afraid to get up close and PERSONAL with your AI agent. Treat AI like a conversation. Provide context for your query. Add details as you go. Tell your agent what you like about their response and what you’d like changed. Keep dialoguing until you’re happy with the results. You can’t hurt anyone’s feelings – the best kind of personal assistant.

Here’s a brief outline of the key steps in initiating an AI conversation…

• Describe who you are.
• Outline what you are trying to do and where you need help. Describe the goals or outcomes you are trying to achieve.
• Detail the factors that you consider relevant to achieving these outcomes.
• Explain how you want the response to be delivered, which can be as formally or as informally as you need. You can even specify the length, format, or tone that you want to see in your agent’s response.

As example, I recently asked my AI agent for some information about how to how to calculate overtime pay rates for a workforce we were paying scattered throughout several states, each state with its own set of employment regulations and taxing authorities. I told my agent that I was a staffing company providing EoR services for a client with employees working in multiple states and was anticipating some tricky policy questions having to do with employees working over 40 hours in a week where they were also paid a premium rate for work performed on a holiday, plus a performance bonus for reaching specified outcomes. 

I asked my AI agent to give me options for calculating overtime pay and hours using regulations that would fit FLSA standards plus regulatory requirements in all the states where my client had employees. I specifically requested that they lay out their calculations in an excel format so that I could see the impact to the employee of the different methods of calculation.

What I got back from my agent was 2 full pages of things to consider in making those calculations, and some alternative ways to calculate overtime rates and applicable hours. In the bigger picture, my AI agent highlighted for me the importance of helping my client establish clear policies about how overtime will be calculated with the intent of anticipating employee questions and honoring my client’s compensation goals. In other words, it reminded me of all the things I needed to consider when calculating pay under a complicated set of conditions, provided me with alternative ways of doing the overtime calcs and offered up some policy language that might help my client communicate its intent clearly. I learned a lot.    

Your AI Agent is Always on Top of Its Game!

One of the things I’ve recently learned about my AI agent is that it never gets tired of my ongoing questions and curiosities. I’ve learned to continuously refine or add to my prompts so that I get the best possible answer by asking the best possible question. 

In fact, AI works best when you treat your interactions with your AI agent as a conversation. If the first response isn’t quite right, ask it to make changes, add details, simplify the language, or focus on a different audience.

Let’s pretend you need some help creating the right posting for a high impact job you are trying to fill.

Yes, you can start with the basics…

“Write a job description for a Customer Service Manager at a family-owned manufacturing company with 75 employees. The ideal candidate will have 5+ years in some area of Customer Service, have been in a leadership role overseeing the work of at least 2 direct reports. Use a friendly, welcoming tone with special emphasis on attracting candidates looking for a long-term career opportunity in a small company environment.

After the first draft comes back…. here’s some typical second stage prompts….

• Make the language more conversational
• Shorten the content – no more than 850 words.
• Remove jargon.
• Highlight growth opportunities – we’re growing.
• Emphasize our company’s family styled culture.
• What job boards do you think would be most likely to deliver the candidate we’re seeking?

The Bottom Line…

The skills needed to get the best out of AI technologies isn’t a set of technical skills reserved for programmers. In fact, many of these skills, asking questions, probing for clarity, etc. are already skills that most of us already have – but now need to be adapted to fit the AI space.  

At PACE we see firsthand the payoff earned by folks who have learned how to effectively communicate with their AI agent. They are consistently able to produce higher-quality work, get more done each day, and focus their time and energy on those higher-level pieces of work that their AI agent cannot do. We believe AI is at its best when it amplifies human expertise, not replace it.