How AI-Enabled Are You? (The Zapier Test)
Zapier, an automation tool like n8n, has created a list of tiers for prospective hires based on their AI abilities. The full piece is here: https://zapier.com/blog/raising-ai-fluency-bar-in-hiring/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email. For marketers especially, here's what they're saying [Add your thoughts in the comments below]: Unacceptable (if this is the extent of what they do) - Uses AI for first drafts only. Output reads like unedited AI; hasn't developed a process for improving quality or adapting tone. - Uses AI for campaign ideas but has no real workflow. Cannot explain how AI has changed their process, speed, or output quality. Before AI and after AI looks the same. Capable "I use AI to operate at a meaningfully higher level." - Uses AI regularly across content, SEO analysis, and performance review. Output volume and quality are both up, and they can point to specific examples. - Built a reusable prompt library for top content formats that the team now pulls from. Can explain how they've iterated on it over time and why certain approaches work better than others. Adoptive "I orchestrate AI and build systems that elevate how I work." - Has run AI-driven experiments with measurable results (e.g., A/B testing copy that increased CTR by 18%) and now defaults to this approach across campaigns. - Built a content system that drafts, formats, and schedules posts across channels. The team stopped doing that manually. - Has built always-on agentic workflows that run without human involvement: content pipelines, monitoring, or campaign ops that operate 24/7 - Transformative "I re-engineer how work happens." - Built a personalization engine that serves AI-generated campaign variants at scale, tied directly to pipeline. - Restructured how the marketing team works: what gets automated, what gets owned, how success gets measured. - Has automated entire job categories and is driving measurable impact on pipeline and revenue. The team's output is qualitatively different from what was possible before AI.