The challenge of identifying AI talent
Finding the right person for a critical and highly specialised position is a major challenge, but also the best opportunity to apply top talent tactics and processes.
When does quality recruiting really matter?
Identifying talent is always a complex challenge. When organisations recruit for low-cost entry-level or low-qualification positions, the negative impact of getting a bad hire is limited from a general business perspective. However, when the job is critical to the business, requires highly specialised hard-to-find profiles, who are anything but low-cost, then the business case for high-quality talent identification becomes extremely clear.
As we set out to help companies improve the way they hire, we quickly realised that, in many cases, organisations do not prioritise recruitment quality. They don’t until a hiring challenge becomes critical, typically because of one of the following reasons:
Recruitment takes much longer or costs much more than expected.
Repeated hiring mistakes lead to a role being vacant multiple times.
That’s the situation facing many organisations these days when they try to find AI talent. New job openings come up in the field every day, trying to generate the competitive advantage that this technology can bring. However, a few factors make the search far from business-as-usual:
Scarcity: AI professionals are in short supply, and finding the right fit for a specific opportunity is even harder.
Competition: the job market is highly competitive; candidates secure roles quickly and their salaries are huge, especially those who perform well on standard processes—even though they may not necessarily be the best fit for a given role.
Assessment difficulties: unless there is already an AI expert in the team, it’s hard to evaluate whether the candidate has the necessary skills and profile.
To make things even more complicated, the rapid evolution of AI means that today's in-demand skills may become obsolete in just a few years.
Companies not only need to hire the right AI professionals, but they must also consider how to retain and upskill them to keep pace with technological advancements. This requires a long-term talent strategy rather than just filling roles reactively. Without a structured approach, organisations risk investing in talent that might not be able to adapt as AI tools and frameworks continue to evolve.
Another key challenge is that AI roles are diverse. A data scientist might not have the same skill set as a machine learning engineer. However, many job descriptions group these roles together, leading to mismatches in hiring. Companies that fail to clearly define their AI talent needs often struggle to attract the right candidates, which slows down projects and increases hiring costs. A refined, well-structured recruitment process is essential to avoid these common pitfalls.
A specialised process that works for many
Large companies with deep pockets and economies of scale can afford to design tailored recruitment processes to secure the best AI talent, but that’s not true for the majority out there.
We have decided to focus our business on helping businesses of all sizes with the challenge of identifying AI talent, to access the expertise they need without the complexity and cost of building a highly technical and specialised recruitment function in-house.
By working across multiple organisations, we refine and optimise our approach to deliver a world-class hiring process, ensuring all companies can attract and assess the right AI professionals efficiently.
The exciting part is that, by applying our talent identification process we not only can find a seasoned AI expert ready to hit the ground running, but also a high-potential candidate just a few more months away from reaching the right performance. In many cases, nurturing skilled individuals who are growing towards excellence can be a smarter investment—it may pay back with long-term loyalty and cost-effectiveness, while still securing the expertise you need.
Ready to uncover the best AI talent?
The demand for AI talent is soaring, yet traditional hiring methods are struggling to keep pace. Finding AI professionals who genuinely align with your needs shouldn’t be a gamble.
At hiringvalue, we’ve developed a specialised AI talent identification process that helps companies:
Maximise the hiringvalue using our end-to-end recruitment refined process.
Handle sourcing, selection, decision making, negotiation or any combination of them, to help where you need it most.
Accurately assess AI skills, including in your team members, to identify strengths and growth areas.
Identify internal talent, getting help with internal hiring, promotions and other talent selection to ensure the right people grow into key roles.
And you, do you need to fill an AI position but don't know how to choose the perfect candidate? We can help you! Get in touch!
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