Navigating the new paradigm is inevitable.
By Ivor Campbell
The arrival of ChatGPT as a mass consumer tool, available to anyone with a smartphone or a PC, in November 2023, heralded a new Armageddon scenario for the global employment market.
The fear that machines would replace humans within months was quickly replaced with a new narrative that, far from making millions of people redundant, AI would be a jobs creator, enabling us all to be more productive.
The reality has been a strange hybrid of the two, but it has given rise to a previously unforeseen phenomenon which, while less catastrophic than the former, has the potential to destabilise companies, sectors and even entire economies – the rise of the multi-disciplinary, power employee.
A paradox is unfolding, particularly within knowledge-intensive sectors like life sciences, with headlines announcing tens of thousands of layoffs, as companies streamline operations and embrace cost-cutting measures.
Bayer, Merck, and Bristol Myers Squibb have collectively shed tens of thousands of roles. Commercial real estate firms like CBRE report that the average lab space per employee is shrinking, a tangible sign of corporate “right-sizing”.
Yet, in the same breath, hiring managers voice a persistent, frustrating struggle to fill critical positions in areas like regulatory affairs, clinical operations, and bioinformatics. This is not merely a hiring glitch; it is a fundamental workforce strategy problem, and at its heart is a profound failure to recognise how AI is redefining human capital.
By acting as a powerful co-pilot, AI tools are enabling individuals to absorb the responsibilities of two, three, or even four traditional roles. However, this creation of a super-productive, multi-disciplinary workforce has a flip side.
It has the potential to trigger a seismic shift in the jobs market, making it less competitive and transparent, and eroding traditional pathways that have long defined career advancement.
The rise of the multi-disciplinary power employee
Employers were quick to recognise that the power of AI lies not in replacing employees, but in augmenting their skills and productivity, none more so that in the life sciences sector. McKinsey Global Institute estimates that generative AI alone could generate $60-$110billion annually for the pharma and medical-product industries.
This value is not created in a vacuum; it is realised through the dramatically enhanced output of the existing workforce.
In research and early discovery, AI tools can extract scientific knowledge from patents and publications in minutes, a task that once consumed weeks of a researcher’s time. In silico compound screening, powered by AI, can identify new drug leads in weeks instead of months, performing predictions up to 1,000 times faster than older methods, as seen with tools like Boltz-2.
This does not eliminate the researcher; it transforms them from a specialist in a narrow domain of biology, to simultaneously become a data analyst, computational modeler, and strategic asset selector, all while applying their irreplaceable human expertise to validate and interpret the AI’s output.
This pattern repeats across the entire corporate structure. A clinical trial coordinator, once buried in paperwork and patient recruitment logistics, now uses AI co-pilots that can analyse trial performance data in real-time, suggest interventions, and even auto-draft communications. Their role expands from administrator to strategic operations manager.
A regulatory affairs specialist, tasked with navigating the labyrinthine pathways of health authorities, now leverages AI engines that predict regulatory queries and help draft complex submission documents, shifting their focus from manual writing to high-level strategic oversight and ethical validation.
The result is the emergence of a new class of multi-disciplinary power employee, able to develop a unique, integrated understanding of multiple facets of the business.
As well as being a regulatory expert, thanks to AI, they also have a deep understanding of clinical data, commercial strategy, and the underlying science. This cross-functional expertise, honed through daily interaction with augmented tools, makes them a repository of institutional knowledge that is incredibly difficult to replicate.
So much for the new super employee, but what happens when they leave the company because they have been offered a better job elsewhere, they have retired, are pregnant, or because they have decided to live in a remote, north Atlantic isle, raising sheep and knitting Fair Isle sweaters?
In those circumstances, the company loses not a single function, but an entire nexus of interconnected capabilities. Replacing them is not a matter of finding another candidate with a similar job title on a CV, but someone who can potentially fill a multi-faceted, AI-augmented role that has evolved organically within the company.
The new hire must learn, not only the company’s culture and processes, but also be trained on specific AI tools and, most challengingly, they must develop the same synergistic understanding of how different business functions interrelate – an understanding their predecessor may have built over years of augmented work. The hole they leave is not a single vacancy; it is a crater.
The death of the CV and the automated labyrinth
While AI has made individual employees significantly more valuable within a firm, it had also turned the external jobs market into a Darwinian jungle, making it less competitive and more impersonal for job seekers.
Companies seeking to hire, or replace top-tier talent, long ago replaced the hopelessly inefficient method of posting job adverts and sifting through incoming CVs, with sophisticated AI tools that scour the digital landscape for passive talent.
By analysing LinkedIn profiles, GitHub repositories, academic publications, conference presentations, and project portfolios, these tools create a digital footprint map, identifying individuals with the precise, often hybrid, skill sets that companies now crave.
While this digitised and automated system is ruthlessly optimised for efficiency and risk mitigation, it is tragically poor at identifying potential and human chemistry.
Applications can often be sifted through six or seven attritional rounds before they are even considered by a human. of A late developer whose CV is not stellar but who possesses unusual drive and intellectual curiosity may be dumped at round one.
A “people person” who excels in verbal communication and team dynamics but is less adept at formulating their experience on paper, may never get the chance to shine. The process privileges candidates who may test well in isolated, automated scenarios, while discarding others who could have brought invaluable human qualities to the organisation.
Augmentation, not replacement – navigating the new paradigm
The central lesson for employers is that their workforce no longer comprises a collection of specialised roles, but more a cohort of augmented, multi-skilled individuals. They must shift from simply hiring to developing a workforce strategy that includes creative internal redeployment, continuous upskilling and cross-functional mobility.
The new mandate for jobseekers in the modern workforce is no longer to guard a single area of expertise, but to adapt and integrate, becoming versatile in using AI-powered tools across multiple domains. Their greatest challenge is no longer to become qualified, but to master the intersection of their core discipline with AI, develop hybrid skills, and embrace lifelong learning to stay ahead of the curve.
The paradox of layoffs and redundancies amid talent shortages is a symptom of this transition. AI is not causing a net loss of jobs, but rather it is a painful and disruptive recalibration of value.
The technology is creating a world in which the augmented employee is indispensable, and where the battle for their talent is fought in the shadows of the digital footprint, while the public job market becomes an automated, impersonal filter.
Recognising this dual reality is the first step for both companies and individuals, not to survive in the employment marketplace, but to thrive in a new age of human-machine collaboration.
The future of work is not about humans versus machines; it is about humans, empowered by machines, achieving what was once thought impossible.
Ivor Campbell is Chief Executive of Snedden Campbell, a specialist recruitment consultant for the global medical technology industry.
