As organizations face IT skills shortages, they are looking to attract talent in automation, which reduces the need for manual input for everyday tasks. That could include physical robots in manufacturing or generative AI agents in retail customer service.
“There’s not a glut of talent out there,” says John Deal, senior director of product marketing at Phenom, an HR technology company. However, companies need tech professionals with the automation skills to improve a company’s customer experience or increase revenue, he explains.
“It may not seem super sexy to be a developer and work on a floor in a manufacturing plant or to be a developer and be writing automation for store operations at a large retailer,” Deal explains. “So that's part of the challenge in that the hiring needs have increased, but also the complexity [how to recruit them] has increased for these types of professionals.”
Organizations are hiring their own software developers and data scientists to integrate third-party tools and build tools internally to help with automation. Sometimes IT professionals in-house are making decisions on what to automate, and in other cases, they consult a company such as Deloitte to perform that analysis, he says.
Here are five industries that are seeking tech professionals in automation.
1. Manufacturing
Manufacturing may be the industry most right for automation as humanoid robots work the factory floors.
The manufacturing industry uses automation not only for manufacturing processes but also in logistics or procurement, Deal says. The industry is hiring AI integration specialists to optimize and automate manufacturing processes, according to Phenom’s State of Skills 2024 Industry Report. Cognitive automation engineers use AI and machine learning to develop cognitive automation solutions that streamline decisions in manufacturing. The manufacturing industry needs IoT solutions architects that work in industrial automation.
“The need for more technically skilled folks in the plants, on the floor, and working behind the scenes to create these fully automated systems has increased over time,” Deal notes.
2. Healthcare
Growth in telehealth has brought a need for more technical skills to automate front-end work in healthcare, according to Deal.
Automation allows healthcare providers to automate initial communication and direct patients to the right clinician. Automation handles follow-up tasks for clinicians and communicating info if a patient needs to fill a prescription or go for a blood test.
Meanwhile, centralized medical billing systems are incorporating automation and reducing the need for manual billing clerks, according to Phenom. Also, radiologists are using automation in imaging technology.
Deal sees the healthcare industry requiring more tech professionals in automation as healthcare gets more distributed with outpatient clinics and urgent care centers.
“As it becomes more distributed, there's a bigger need to be able to automate to scale operations,” Deal says. “So I think you're see [healthcare] step it up as well. You see more and more use of robotic automation for surgeries and simple procedures. That's no small feat.”
3. Retail
Retailers automate repetitive tasks to streamline operations. Chatbots provide initial support for online retailers, and inventory management applications simplify workflows for retailers.
Retailers use customer relationship management (CRM) software and ERP apps such as NetSuite. Retailers need tech professionals with skills in automated business analytics to allow retailers to collect, analyze and act on data as well as predict future trends. Retailers also need tech professionals that can perform market automation using targeted email, social media and advertising campaigns to generate leads.
In-store self-service kiosks automate the checkout process, and so the retail industry requires software developers, AI and machine learning engineers, and quality assurance engineers to build these systems. In addition, companies such as Shopify need professionals for its mobile POS system to serve retailers.
Financial Services
Although financial services companies are likely to turn to vendors like Salesforce to use the automation features of a customer relationship management (CRM) application, they do build their own advice platforms internally, according to Deal.
In finance, automation can help with loan origination to reduce the need for manual loan processing skills. Although automation may reduce the need for manual invoice processing, the opportunity exists for tech professionals that can develop accounting software and electronic invoicing systems.
Financial services companies use automation for invoicing, expense management, payroll, accounts payable and receivable, budgeting and forecasting and tax compliance. Automated tools for tasks such as tax calculations, filings and compliance frees up workers to focus on other tasks. Applications like FloQast automate accounting processes. Tech professionals in finance can learn how to develop AI agents that automate workflows to free up accounting teams and financial services professionals to work on higher-level decision-making.
Hospitality
In hospitality, organizations are hiring tech professionals with skills in automating self-service tasks such as booking a hotel room, cruise, or airline flight. Adaptive AI assistants have grown beyond the capabilities of traditional chatbots to initiate calls with travelers when a flight is delayed, Deal says.
AI agents incorporating AI agents are now more conversational so they can automate interactions and react to human emotions, such as when travel arrangements unexpectedly change, according to Deal.
“On the hospitality side, it's not necessarily new that they're using self-service or this type of AI assistant, but it's more how do you really make them fully agentic, fully conversational and fully able to address needs in the moment, versus having somebody end up getting frustrated and just start screaming at a representative,” Deal says.
In the end, a key strategy for organizations is hiring tech professionals that can augment efficiency with automation rather than replacing jobs, according to Deal.
“People are concerned about automation removing jobs when really automation can improve jobs and change the way that people work,” he says.