Everywhere you look, companies are racing to prove they’re “AI-ready.”
Boards are demanding strategies. CEOs are making shiny new hires. Recruiters are posting roles that didn’t exist two years ago.
From the outside, it looks impressive. It looks like progress.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: when you ask the simplest of questions - “What AI skills do we already have in our workforce?” - most leaders can’t answer.
That’s the AI skills mirage. From a distance, it looks like readiness. Up close, it’s an illusion.
The Rush to Hire
It’s easy to see why companies default to external hiring. It’s visible. It reassures boards. It makes for a great headline: “We just hired a Head of AI.”
But the cracks are showing. Just last month, Accenture announced cuts for staff they deemed “unable to be reskilled for AI.” This is a company with one of the most sophisticated learning operations in the world - and still, some roles were considered non-viable.
At the same time, developers in other firms are leaving on their own, fearful they’ll become irrelevant if their employer isn’t investing in AI. Employees are reading the signs - and voting with their feet.
The lesson? Hiring talent while shedding existing employees isn’t transformation. It’s triage. And it comes at a high cultural cost.
The People Already Inside
The irony is that reskilling and redeploying your own people is almost always faster, cheaper, and more sustainable than buying talent at a premium.
Your employees already have transferable skills. Many are eager to learn. Most want to see where they fit in a changing world. But if they don’t see a pathway, they’ll leave.
And when they do, they don’t just take skills with them. They take trust, knowledge, and culture too.
The Inhuman Cost of Ignoring Skills
This is the part that keeps me awake at night. If companies don’t get serious about visibility and mobility, people will be treated as disposable.
- Jobs will vanish without clear pathways into new ones.
- Skills will be wasted because leaders didn’t know they were there.
- Cultures will fracture as employees realise their organisation sees them as replaceable, not redeployable.
AI isn’t just a technology shift. It’s a people shift. And when leaders focus only on hiring headlines and cost cutting, they risk losing both the people they need and the people they already have.
Seeing Beyond the Mirage
Spreadsheets might have been enough when you had 100 employees. They won’t get you through 10,000.
What organisations need now is clarity - a living, breathing view of skills that updates continuously and connects directly to business priorities. That’s how you move from the illusion of readiness to measurable progress.
It’s how you answer with confidence when the board asks:
- Which roles will AI change?
- Which skills do we already have to adapt?
- Where should we reskill, redeploy, or hire?
Because the winners won’t be the ones who hire the most AI talent.
They’ll be the ones who make the most of the people they already have, while showing them a future worth staying for.
Accenture’s recent decision to “exit” staff who can’t be reskilled is a stark reminder: even the best reskilling engines have limits. The bigger danger is for companies that don’t invest in skills visibility or mobility at all.
On the flip side, developers are already leaving companies that aren’t investing in AI - fearing that staying will make them irrelevant.
The message is clear: the danger isn’t moving too quickly. It’s believing you’re ready when you’re not.
So let me ask you: if your board asked tomorrow “What AI skills do we have today, and how are they changing?” - could you answer with confidence?
Because if you can’t, you’re chasing the mirage.
The Mirage Ends with Visibility
If your AI readiness strategy depends on guesswork, you’re not leading transformation, you’re chasing an illusion.
True readiness starts with clarity: knowing the skills you have, the ones you need, and how they’re evolving in real time.
That’s where GoFIGR comes in. We help organizations see beyond the AI skills mirage, revealing the talent, potential, and pathways already inside your business.
👉 See how it works. Book a demo with GoFIGR
Helena Turpin spent 20 years in talent and HR innovation where she solved people-related problems using data and technology. She left corporate life to create GoFIGR where she helps mid-sized organizations to develop and retain their people by connecting employee skills and aspirations to internal opportunities like projects, mentorship and learning.
