# AI *Talent Gap*

Which AI capabilities an energy company needs by 2030, where the gaps emerge and how to close them. A consulting project with a real corporate partner.

> Project page: https://clemenshoeller.at/en/projects/ai-talent-gap
> Category: consulting/industry-lab

## Key facts

- **Format** · Industry Lab
- **Partner** · VERBUND
- **Institution** · WU Vienna, master's
- **Period** · Winter 2026
- **Status** · starts winter 2026/27

## /01 The question

The energy industry is under pressure from two directions at once: it is rebuilding its generation while AI shifts which capabilities the jobs behind it actually require. The Industry Lab asks exactly that question for **VERBUND**, Austria's largest electricity producer: what will roles there look like in 2030, and what does that mean today for recruiting, development and workforce planning?

The brief sets out four guiding questions:

- Which job profiles in the energy sector will become most AI-critical by 2030?
- Which skills are needed in the short term versus the long term, across the entire value chain?
- Where will AI augment employees, and where might it take over tasks or entire roles?
- Which universities, programs and talent pools are actually relevant for building a future pipeline?

The real difficulty sits in the second half of each of those questions. Every study claims that roles are changing. It only gets interesting when you name **which ones**, **how much** and **by when**, and do so for a specific company with a specific structure.

## /02 Approach

The Industry Lab is not a seminar with a case study but a consulting setup with a real corporate partner: our own problem definition, our own analysis, our own recommendations, and at the end a presentation not just at the university but at the company itself.

### The expected deliverables

- A structured overview of the future, AI-shaped job profiles in the company.
- A **quantified skills gap analysis** together with a forward-looking workforce planning model.
- Actionable recommendations for HR strategy: recruiting, talent development, organizational design.
- A benchmark of relevant universities, academic programs and talent sources for AI and digital energy.

Participation requires familiarity with the basics of digitalization and how it relates to economic efficiency. The course and the main report are in English, with the executive summary and final presentation additionally in German.

## /03 Status

The lab starts this winter semester. This page therefore describes the assignment and the approach, but no results yet.

> **🔒 Non-disclosure** — As soon as company information is shared, students sign a non-disclosure agreement. Any publication of results from this project, including in synthesized form, requires formal approval from VERBUND. This page therefore contains only the assignment, the questions and the approach as stated in the course's public project brief. Findings, figures and recommendations will only be added here if and when they are cleared.

### What I take from it

What I can note regardless is what makes the task appealing: it forces you to translate a technology question into a workforce question. "AI changes work" is a headline. "These roles are shifting in this direction, the company lacks these capabilities for them, and here is where you find those" is a basis for decisions. Getting from the first formulation to the second is the actual work.

**Skills gained:** Skills gap analysis · Workforce planning · Requirements & solution design · Stakeholder communication · Benchmarking · Presenting in English

## /04 Related projects

These projects connect more tightly than the tiles on the home page suggest. Here are all the others, sorted by how closely they relate to this one:

- [AI Automations](https://clemenshoeller.at/projekte/ki-automatisierungen)
- [Consulting Cases](https://clemenshoeller.at/projekte/consulting-cases)
- [AURORA](https://clemenshoeller.at/projekte/aurora)
- [Zotter Marketing Plan](https://clemenshoeller.at/projekte/zotter-marketingplan)
- [LLMs & Creativity](https://clemenshoeller.at/projekte/llms-kreativitaet)
- [Google vs. ChatGPT](https://clemenshoeller.at/projekte/google-vs-chatgpt)
- [Prompt Injection](https://clemenshoeller.at/projekte/prompt-injection)
- [Healthcare Fraud Detection](https://clemenshoeller.at/projekte/fraud-detection)
- [This Website](https://clemenshoeller.at/projekte/diese-website)
- [VWA: Origin of the Internet](https://clemenshoeller.at/projekte/vwa)

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*German version: https://clemenshoeller.at/projekte/ai-talent-gap.md*
*Industry Lab project with VERBUND (WU Vienna, master's): which AI capabilities an energy company needs by 2030, where gaps emerge and how to close them. Starts this winter semester, results under NDA.*