The Human Skills Retailers Are Hiring For in an AI-Powered World

If you’ve been worrying that AI makes your career less secure, here’s a more useful way to think about it: AI is making a specific set of human skills more valuable than they’ve ever been.

The trick is knowing which ones, and being able to actually show them, not just claim them.

Retail businesses are already using AI to analyse data, produce content, improve forecasting and take repetitive work out of people’s hands. That changes what employers need from their teams. Being able to complete the task still matters, but increasingly, so does knowing what to do with the output.

For candidates, that’s an important distinction. The strongest careers won’t necessarily belong to the people who know every new AI tool. They’ll belong to people who can combine technology with judgement, curiosity, communication and commercial thinking.

What we heard at the Ecommerce Summit

One of the strongest themes at the recent Ecommerce Summit was that AI increases the importance of uniquely human skills, rather than diminishing them.

AI can generate content, analyse large amounts of information and automate repetitive tasks. What still requires people is deciding whether an output makes sense, understanding its commercial implications, challenging it when necessary and communicating what should happen next.

As one speaker put it, AI isn’t replacing marketing, it’s redesigning it.

The capabilities discussed repeatedly were critical thinking, complex problem solving, interpreting AI outputs, commercial decision-making, relationship building and compelling brand storytelling.

The takeaway was simple: the future isn’t AI versus people. It’s people who know how to work effectively with AI.

That matters well beyond ecommerce and marketing. The same shift can be seen across Buying & Merchandising, Finance and other retail head office functions where technology is changing how work gets done.

Why this matters now

The skills required for jobs are moving quickly.

LinkedIn’s Work Change Report estimates that 70% of the skills used in most jobs will change by 2030, with AI acting as one of the catalysts for that change. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 also found that 39% of workers’ existing skill sets are expected to be transformed or become outdated between 2025 and 2030.

But that doesn’t mean human capability is becoming less important.

The World Economic Forum identifies analytical thinking as employers’ most sought-after core skill, followed by resilience, flexibility and agility, then leadership and social influence. Creative thinking, empathy and active listening, and curiosity and lifelong learning also feature prominently.

So, if you’re thinking about your next retail career move, building a CV entirely around technical proficiency in tools that will keep changing is unlikely to be enough.

Technical capability still matters. But your longer-term value increasingly comes from what you can do around the technology: how you interpret information, make decisions, adapt, communicate and understand the commercial context.

Across Buying & Merchandising, Marketing and Finance, we’re consistently hearing briefs shift from “can they do the technical task?” towards “can they interpret what the technical output means and act on it commercially?”

That’s good news for candidates prepared to build those skills deliberately.

The skills that don’t automate

“Be more human” isn’t particularly useful retail career advice. So what does it actually mean?

Leadership

You don’t need a management title to demonstrate leadership.

It can be taking ownership when something goes wrong, bringing different teams together around a problem or being prepared to make a decision when you don’t have every piece of information you’d ideally like.

Employers notice people who take responsibility rather than waiting to be told what happens next.

Communication

As AI handles more first-draft work, communication doesn’t disappear. The skill simply moves further up the value chain.

The question becomes less “can you write this?” and more “do you understand what actually needs to be said, to whom and why?”

That includes influencing stakeholders, simplifying complicated information and knowing when an AI-generated answer technically works but is completely wrong for the audience.

Commercial thinking

Commercial thinking is what connects your work to the reason the business needs it.

A merchandiser isn’t valuable simply because they can produce a report. The value comes from understanding what the numbers are saying about stock, margin or customer behaviour and helping the business decide what to do next.

The same applies elsewhere. Marketers need to connect activity with commercial outcomes. Finance professionals need to turn numbers into decisions. Ecommerce teams need to understand what customer data means for conversion, profitability and growth.

Adaptability

Nobody can confidently predict which platforms and AI tools will dominate every retail function in five years.

That makes adaptability particularly valuable.

“I haven’t used that exact tool, but here’s how I’d get up to speed quickly” can be a stronger answer than trying to bluff your way through a technical question.

It shows confidence in your ability to learn, rather than dependence on what you already know.

Creativity

Creativity isn’t limited to traditionally creative jobs.

In an AI-powered workplace, it can mean seeing another route through a problem, connecting information in an unexpected way or questioning whether the obvious answer is actually the right one.

AI can give you options. People still need to decide whether those options are useful.

Emotional intelligence

Retail remains a people business.

Reading a stakeholder, understanding why a conversation isn’t going well, adapting your approach and dealing constructively with disagreement are difficult capabilities to reduce to a prompt.

They matter in leadership roles, but they’re equally valuable earlier in your career.

Curiosity

Curiosity may be one of the most useful skills to develop because it feeds so many of the others.

Instead of simply accepting a process, ask why it works that way. Understand what happens before your part of the job and after it. Learn what matters to another function.

The World Economic Forum expects curiosity and lifelong learning to continue rising in importance through to 2030. In retail, where customer behaviour, technology and operating models keep shifting, it’s easy to understand why.

How to actually demonstrate these skills

This is where plenty of good candidates undersell themselves.

“I’m a great communicator.”

“I’m commercially minded.”

“I’m adaptable.”

None of those statements tells an employer very much on its own.

Evidence does.

Think about a time you changed your approach midway through a project because something wasn’t working. Talk about a decision you made with incomplete information and explain how you reached it. Describe a situation where you disagreed with somebody and how you handled it constructively.

The important part is explaining your thinking.

If you’re talking about commercial thinking, don’t stop at what you did. Explain why it mattered to the business.

If you’re demonstrating adaptability, explain what changed and how you responded.

If you’re discussing leadership, show how your actions affected other people or the outcome.

Specific stories make abstract skills believable.

Practical advice you can apply this week

Pick one genuinely ambiguous problem from your current or most recent role.

Write down four things: what was happening, what decision you made, why you made it and what happened afterwards.

Then do the same for a situation involving AI.

Perhaps you used an AI tool to analyse information, create a first draft or speed up part of a process. What did you do with its output? Did you challenge anything? Did you spot something it missed? Did you add context it couldn’t have known?

That story is much more useful in an interview than simply saying you’re “confident using AI”.

Next, look at your CV. Search for adjectives such as “commercial”, “adaptable”, “creative” and “collaborative”. Wherever possible, replace the claim with evidence.

Finally, choose one part of the business outside your immediate role and learn more about it. If you’re in ecommerce, understand more about merchandising. If you’re in finance, learn how commercial teams use your reporting. If you’re in marketing, understand the operational implications of the campaigns you’re running.

That wider understanding is where commercial thinking starts.

ZD Perspective

What we’re hearing from clients is that technical capability still matters, but it’s rarely the whole brief anymore. Across Buying, Marketing and Finance, employers increasingly want candidates who can explain their thinking, show curiosity and connect their specialist knowledge to a wider commercial outcome.

Candidates can sometimes assume interviewers mainly want to hear about the software or platforms they’ve used. What we’re seeing land well is the ability to explain how you think, not simply what you’ve used.

For hiring managers, that raises an equally important question: when you last hired someone, did you genuinely assess their judgement, or did you assess technical proficiency and hope the judgement would follow?

Looking ahead

Expect retail interview processes to continue putting more emphasis on scenarios, problem solving and judgement.

That makes sense. If knowledge can be retrieved quickly and first drafts can increasingly be produced by AI, employers need better ways to understand how somebody thinks when the answer isn’t obvious.

For candidates, preparation therefore needs to move beyond rehearsing standard answers.

Think about the decisions you’ve made. The assumptions you’ve challenged. The occasions where the data pointed one way but context told you something else. The moments where you’ve had to influence someone without having authority over them.

Those examples reveal far more about how you’ll perform than a list of platforms you’ve previously used.

If you want a fuller picture of what employers may assess, our companion piece, What Hiring Managers Are Really Looking for in 2026 and Beyond, looks more closely at changing interview expectations.

Final thoughts

The idea that AI simply threatens careers misses what’s actually changing.

AI and technical literacy are becoming more important. At the same time, employers are placing significant value on analytical thinking, adaptability, leadership, creativity and curiosity. The opportunity isn’t to choose between human skills and AI skills. It’s to get better at combining them.

For your career, that means being comfortable with technology without allowing your value to become defined by a particular tool.

Build judgement. Understand the commercial context. Learn how to communicate your thinking. Stay curious when the way your job gets done changes.

Those are capabilities you can carry from role to role, however the technology develops.

How Zachary Daniels can help

We speak with candidates across every stage of their retail, marketing and finance careers, and helping people understand how to demonstrate these skills, rather than simply describe them, is one of the most valuable conversations we have.

If you’re preparing for your next move, we’d be glad to talk it through.

FAQs

What skills should I focus on developing if I’m worried about AI?

Focus on judgement, communication, commercial thinking, adaptability and curiosity alongside your technical skills. These capabilities help you interpret information, solve less predictable problems and make better decisions, even as the specific tools used in your role change.

How do I show these skills on a CV or at interview?

Use specific examples rather than general claims. Talk about a real decision you made, a problem you solved or a situation where you adapted your approach. Explain what you did, why you did it and what happened as a result.

Are technical skills still important?

Yes. AI literacy and other technical capabilities are becoming more important, not less. The difference is that technical skills alone may not differentiate you. Combining them with judgement, commercial awareness, communication and adaptability gives employers a clearer picture of how you’ll use those skills in practice.