Building your AI Hiring Strategy:
Three Tips for Getting Started
Finding high-quality talent (read: satisfying hiring managers) has always been, and will probably always be, one of your main challenges. The wild west of AI hiring, whether it is new to you or not, is getting wilder by the week as more and more businesses solidify their next steps and start to act on AI/ML related strategies. As AI and machine learning tools grow in their demand, so will the tech professionals who make them possible. The good news? There is a lot you can do to improve your position in the race for AI talent.
1. Use Skills-Based Hiring Practices (vs. Experience-Based)
As the competition heats up to attract tech professionals with AI/ML skills, hiring teams will have to be strategic about how they evaluate candidate quality. What separates a pile of resumes from a pool of highly qualified candidates? While not as new as many think, AI is still a recent technology and has only demanded the skill sets of specific tech professionals for a handful of years. Simply because of this fact, experience and education are not going to be the key metrics in your hiring process. Hiring teams will have no choice but to make the strategic shift towards skills-based hiring.
Skills-based hiring prioritizes a candidate's relevant skills over traditional factors like education or experience. To be clear, skills like adaptability, creativity, strategy, experimentation, and leadership are just as critical (if not more so) in a skills-based hiring approach. Skills-based hiring lends itself well to tech hiring in general because tech professionals already have a culture that emphasizes skills over titles and experience. It is especially important for filling AI roles because the democratization of AI is still new, so tech professionals with lots of experience in the field will become fewer and farther between as demand continues to heat up.
One of the first steps to take in a skills-based hiring approach is to identify the skills needed for your AI team. Great communication with your hiring manager is going to be essential for this, but it is always helpful to come to the discussion with some understanding of how AI is built, implemented, and maintained.
First you need to understand a bit about what an AI tech professional does. Who you find to fill roles will depend on what they specialize in, the tools they can work with, and the languages they know.
"By focusing on people who’ve been there and done that already, companies artificially shrink the pool of talent they have access to and find themselves in fierce competition for the apparently scarce developers they need. Instead, focusing on key skills and assessment-based evaluations allows those qualified candidates to show what they’re capable of. We’re in the early days of this specialization, and some of the strongest practitioners have yet to join the field.”
Jason Wodicka, Principal Engineering Advocate at Karat
2. Understand Core AI and ML Skills and Applications
Not every AI tech professional is going to be able to bring the same skills to your team, but for most AI tech professionals, an understanding of the following is a great start. We drilled down a more specific list of in-demand skills for the top five AI roles here.
3. Work With Your Tech Leaders to Recruit and Upskill Talent You Already Have
Not all businesses have the bandwidth or finances to hire a totally brand-new AI team, nor would that make sense if they did. This exciting energy behind AI means that demand for tech professionals will go up, while an already limited talent pool gets quickly snatched up.
In this environment, talent teams will need to get creative in their approach to building AI teams.
One way to build your AI team is by looking within your company first for the talented tech professionals who are willing to move and upskill in the AI space. There is a population of energized and talented people in your organization who would love to be part of this exciting movement! The organizations that succeed in the long run will be spending the next few years locating them, growing them and enabling them to fly.
This will require collaboration with the broader HR team and tech leaders, of course, but here are some ideas for where to start:
Company-Wide GenAI Training
Consider offering generative AI training programs to educate your entire workforce on the fundamentals of AI. Not only will this help to create a more AI-literate workforce across all disciplines, but it is a step to identifying potential candidates who show an aptitude for AI concepts.
Identify Future AI Leaders
Look for high performers who demonstrate some or all of the following qualities:
- Awareness and excitement about AI innovations
- Strong programming skills in languages like Python, R, Java, or C++
- Experience with data analysis and problem-solving
- Leadership and innovation potential
Support Transitions into New Roles
Once you've identified potential candidates, provide them with the support they need to transition into AI roles. If it is resources to upskill themselves that they need, support them! This could include mentorship programs, tuition reimbursement for AI skill related courses, or participation in hackathons and conferences.
As we've discussed ad nauseum, any tech professional with AI skills is already in extremely high demand, and that demand will continue to increase. That means recruiting and retention will be challenging. While you may not have as much responsibility in that area in your role, the answers to these questions are also critically important for recruiting.
On that side of the world, it starts and ends with the right offer.
As with all tech roles, AI tech professionals are going to be most interested in an employer that offers the right package of benefits and opportunities.
- Offer competitive salaries and benefits. AI talent is in high demand, so you'll need to be prepared to offer competitive compensation packages. There is a lot of information out there about what tech professionals want from their employer, but we recommend you start here.
- Create a culture of innovation. AI professionals are likely attracted to companies that are at the forefront of innovation. Make sure your company has a culture that encourages creativity and risk-taking.
- Be prepared to assess technical skills. When interviewing AI candidates, be sure to assess their technical skills. This may involve giving them coding tests or asking them about their experience with specific AI tools and technologies.