Here’s a slightly awkward truth about hiring for AI right now… you can’t really ask for five years’ experience in something that has only truly been around for the last three.
Yes, we know AI has been around for longer, but with the public release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT back in 2022, there has been a real shift into the use of more mainstream generative AI and the demand for AI fluency across many sectors.
And yet, we still see job descriptions like this one: “Senior AI Product Manager, 5+ years’ experience in generative AI.” The person you’re looking for doesn’t exist, or if they do, they’re normally very happy where they are, and fifty other start-ups are trying to tempt them away.
So, if you’re trying to build a role with AI-fluency in mind and without a traditional talent pool to fish from, here’s how we’d approach it.
Stop hiring for the CV and start hiring for the trajectory
With most roles, you can look at someone’s career history and see a clear path: junior, mid, senior, lead. With AI roles, that path often doesn’t exist yet.
Instead of asking “Have they done this before?”, ask “Have they done things like this before, and how quickly did they get good at them?” A data engineer who taught themselves how to build with large language models over the last 18 months might be a far better bet than someone with the perfect job title and very little curiosity.
Get really clear on the problem, not the job title
“We need an AI person”. That’s great, but AI covers an enormous amount of ground, so you need to really nail down what problem you’re trying to solve with AI.
Do you need someone to build models from scratch?
Integrate existing tools into your product?
Help your team use AI more effectively day-to-day?
Make product decisions about where AI actually adds value?
These are all very different people, and on a start-up budget, hiring the wrong one is expensive.
So, start with the problem you’re trying to solve in the next 12 months, and right job title will tend to reveal itself once you’ve done that.
Look next door
If the exact talent pool doesn’t exist, look at the adjacent ones, as some of the best people moving into AI roles are coming from areas such as:
- Data science and analytics
- Software engineering, especially backend and platform
- Research and academia
- Product management in data-heavy businesses
- Linguistics, psychology and other fields that think hard about how people communicate
These people bring transferable skills and, often, a fresh perspective that a narrowly defined search would completely miss. It also means you’re not competing with every other funded start-up (and big tech) for the same handful of candidates, which is a brilliant way to build a diverse team from day one.
Make your interview process test what matters
If you can’t rely on experience, your process has to do more of the heavy lifting. That doesn’t mean a four-hour take-home task (please don’t do that!). But it does mean designing conversations that reveal how someone thinks.
Ask them to talk you through something they’ve learned recently and how they went about it. Give them a real problem your business is facing and see how they approach it. Ask what they’d do if they didn’t know the answer, because in this space, that’s going to happen a lot.
Be honest about what the role is (& isn’t)
The AI hype is very real at the moment; some candidates are wary of it, and some worry the bubble will burst, and then where will that leave them?
So, be upfront about where you are. If you’re early in your AI journey, say so. The right person will find that exciting, a chance to shape something from the ground up, and you’ll avoid a costly mis-hire six months down the line.
Think about growth, not just the hire
In a field moving this fast, whoever you hire today will need to keep learning, so;
- What does development look like in your business?
- Is there time for experimentation?
- Is there budget for training?
- Is there space to fail and try again?
You may not be able to match big tech salaries, but you don’t need to. The start-ups winning at AI hiring aren’t necessarily the ones paying the most; they’re the ones offering people a place to grow alongside the technology by looking at the bigger picture.
So, where does that leave you?
Hiring for roles without a traditional career path can feel daunting, but it’s also a real opportunity. When everyone else is chasing the same handful of “perfect” CVs, the businesses that look for potential, curiosity and transferable skills are the ones that get ahead.
At Hera, we work closely with founders to define what they actually need, look beyond the obvious places and find people who’ll grow with the business, not just fill a gap.
So, if you’re trying to build an AI team and the perfect candidate seems to have vanished into thin air, let’s have a chat. They might just be hiding in plain sight.