What I'd Tell a New Grad in Communications Right Now

It's graduation season. Which means two things are happening simultaneously: a fresh wave of communications graduates is walking across a stage wondering if they chose the right field, and a generation of mid-to-senior professionals is quietly asking themselves a version of the same question.

I see you both. And I want to be direct with you.

The instinct to chase the tools is the wrong instinct.

Every new grad I talk to right now wants to know which AI platforms to master. Every senior professional I know is quietly enrolling in courses, watching tutorials, anxious about falling behind. I understand the impulse. But almost 20 years in this industry — across startups, IPOs, FDA approvals, crisis communications, and national brand launches — has taught me something that does not show up in any certification program:

The professionals who will thrive are not the ones who learned the tools fastest. They are the ones who understood people most deeply.

That has always been true in communications. AI just made it impossible to ignore.

The Honest Assessment First

Let's be clear about what artificial intelligence can already do in our field, because the people who are going to be okay are the ones who are not flinching from that reality.

AI can draft a press release. It can build a media list, summarize coverage, generate ten pitch angles, create a content calendar, transcribe a briefing, and write a spokesperson Q&A in the time it takes you to find the right folder on your desktop. It can write a blog post, produce a social caption, and adapt both for six different channels before your first meeting of the day. It does this cheaply, quickly, and without ego.

If your entire professional value proposition is I can write things fast, that is a real problem.

But here is what I have watched AI fail at, consistently, in high-stakes communications environments:

It cannot decide what not to say. It cannot read the subtext in a journalist's question and understand that the real story they are after is three layers beneath what they asked. It cannot sit in a pre-brief with a CEO and know, from the way she paused before answering, that she is not ready for that question yet. It cannot hold the line when a client is pressuring you to release a statement that is technically accurate but strategically disastrous. It cannot earn the trust of a reporter over three years of honest, consistent communication and then call in that trust when the story is coming out regardless.

That is the work. And it is not going away.

For the New Grad: Build What the Machine Cannot Copy

You are entering a field in the middle of a genuine disruption. I am not going to pretend otherwise. But I also want you to understand something that the discourse around AI does not often say clearly: this is not the first time communications has been disrupted, and the professionals who survived every previous wave did it the same way.

They built skills that required judgment, not just execution.

Here is what that looks like right now, concretely, for someone starting out.

Learn how to think strategically, not just tactically.

There is a difference between being asked to write a pitch and understanding why that pitch is being written, whether it is the right move, and what the second-order consequences of landing the story might be. Most entry-level professionals never get trained on the second part because it is assumed that strategic thinking comes with seniority. You do not have to wait.

Ask questions that go beyond the task. Why are we pitching this story now? What happens if it runs? What happens if it does not? Who else is affected? Developing that instinct early is the single biggest separator between the communications professionals who advance and the ones who plateau.

Develop genuine psychological fluency.

I do not mean take a psychology class, though that would not hurt. I mean start actively studying why people respond the way they do. Why does a journalist write a negative story even when they have been given accurate information? Why does a spokesperson shut down in an interview when they were perfectly prepared in the briefing? Why does a crisis statement that is factually correct still feel to the public like a non-apology?

These questions have answers. The answers come from understanding human motivation, cognitive bias, emotional triggers, and the psychology of trust. That understanding is not something you can prompt your way into. It is something you develop by reading, observing, and being deeply curious about human behavior.

It is also, for what it is worth, the most transferable skill in this entire profession. I have used my psychology background in every single communications role I have had. It has never been irrelevant.

Learn to write for clarity, not volume.

This sounds counterintuitive in a world where AI can generate infinite content. But precisely because volume is now cheap, clarity is expensive. The communications professional who can take a complicated situation — a regulatory filing, a product failure, a leadership change — and distill it into two sentences that are accurate, human, and resonant is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.

Practice this constantly. Every email, every pitch, every brief: ask yourself what the single most important thing is, say that first, and cut everything that does not serve it.

Get comfortable being in the room.

The most important skill in communications is not a writing skill. It is a presence skill. It is the ability to walk into a room — a crisis briefing, a media prep session, a difficult internal meeting — and contribute something that moves the conversation forward. That requires confidence, preparation, and the ability to hold your position when you are the most junior person there.

This is learned by doing, not by watching. Say yes to every opportunity to be in the room. Take notes, ask one smart question, and show up fully prepared every time. Reputation compounds fast in this industry, especially early.

Use AI fluently, not dependently.

Yes, learn the tools. Use them daily. Understand what they are good at, where they hallucinate, how to prompt them effectively, and how to edit their output so that it sounds like a human being with a point of view rather than a plausible approximation of one. AI should be your research assistant, your first draft engine, your brainstorm partner.

But it should never be the one making the judgment call. That is your job. Keep it.

For the Mid-to-Senior Professional: The Advantage You Are Not Using

If you are five, ten, fifteen years into a communications career right now, you have something the new grad does not — and it is not familiarity with legacy tools or a longer contact list.

It is pattern recognition. It is the scar tissue from the story that almost went wrong. It is knowing, without being able to fully explain why, that a situation is more complicated than it looks. It is having been in enough rooms to know when the energy in a room has shifted before anyone has said anything.

That is your competitive advantage in an AI-augmented world. The question I want to ask you is: are you naming it, developing it, and making it visible? Or are you so anxious about the tools you have not learned that you are underselling the judgment you have spent years building?

Here is how I would think about the upskill for this cohort.

Stop learning tools and start sharpening your strategic offering.

I am not saying ignore AI. I am saying that if the only way you are responding to this moment is by learning new software, you are solving the wrong problem. The mid-to-senior communications professional's value has never been in execution. It has been in knowing what to do. Invest in that.

What does that mean practically? It means getting better at articulating your strategic point of view. It means being able to walk into a room and explain not just what the communications plan is, but why it is the right plan, what the risks are, what you are optimizing for, and what you would do if it goes sideways. It means becoming the person in the organization who is trusted to make the judgment call — not just the one who produces the work.

Learn to operate at the intersection of communications, legal, policy, and product.

This is where the most irreplaceable communications work happens, and it is the area where AI has the least to offer. The ability to sit in a room with a general counsel, a product lead, and a growth marketer — to understand all three of their priorities, translate between them, and synthesize a communications position that serves the business — that is not a skill you can automate. It is a skill you build by deliberately expanding your domain knowledge and your stakeholder range.

If you have been operating primarily within the communications function, start inserting yourself into cross-functional conversations. Understand what the legal team is worried about. Learn how the product team thinks about launches. Know what the business metrics are and why they matter. The communicator who can do this is not a vendor to the business. They are a strategic partner.

Develop a coaching and advisory muscle.

As AI takes on more of the production work in communications, the human work that remains is increasingly about developing other people's judgment. Coaching spokespeople. Advising executives. Building the instincts of junior team members who are going to be making decisions in the field.

This is a skill set worth deliberately developing. Study how executives communicate. Understand the psychology of high-pressure performance. Get good at giving feedback that changes behavior rather than just critiquing output. The communications professional who can make a nervous CEO compelling in a media interview is not replaceable by any model currently available.

Get a public point of view.

This is the one I find myself saying most often to mid-to-senior professionals, and the one most people resist: start writing publicly.

Not press releases. Not client work. Your own thinking, in your own voice, for a public audience. A newsletter, a blog, a LinkedIn essay — the format is less important than the discipline. Writing publicly forces you to develop and defend a perspective. It builds the narrative instincts that make you better at your actual job. And in a world where everyone's output is increasingly AI-generated and therefore increasingly indistinguishable, a genuine human voice with a genuine point of view is a professional asset.

It is also, frankly, the best career insurance available. Your reputation is your most durable credential. Start building it intentionally.

Mentor someone who does not look like your career path.

This sounds less tactical than the others, but I believe it belongs here. The communications professionals who will be most valuable in the next decade are the ones who understand audiences that are not like them — who can develop messaging that resonates across demographics, platforms, cultural contexts, and generational reference points. The fastest way to build that range is to be in genuine relationship with people whose experiences differ from yours.

Mentorship is not charity. It is one of the best learning investments available to a senior professional.

The Through Line for Everyone

Graduation season has a particular energy to it — a combination of genuine excitement and low-grade terror that I remember vividly and that, if I am honest, returns in a different form every time the industry shifts significantly.

This is a real shift. The tools are powerful, they are accelerating, and they are going to change what communications work looks like in ways that are not fully predictable.

But here is what I keep coming back to, across fifteen years of watching this field evolve: the skills that have always mattered most are the ones that require a human being with judgment, empathy, and the courage to hold a position under pressure.

Those are not soft skills. They are the hardest skills in the building. AI did not create that reality. It just made it more visible, more urgent, and more worth investing in than ever before.

So whether you just walked across that stage or you have been doing this long enough to have a strong opinion about it — start there. Build that. Everything else is learnable in an afternoon.