New Delhi, July 15 -- Boasting about using billions of tokens or writing thousands of prompts is no longer enough to land a job in the artificial intelligence (AI) space. If anything, it could be a red flag for cost-conscious, outcome-focussed startups unless candidates can show how generative AI could help build products faster, cut costs, improve customer experience or boost productivity, founders and recruiters said.

"When we hire folks, the ones who are mentioning: 'Oh, I max out these many tokens; I've used 5 billion tokens or 10 billion tokens in the last one week or three days or whatever'-that's a red flag for me if you're not giving me an ROI (return on investment)," said Additi Upadhyay, co-founder of AI startup Noveum AI. "I t...