The Secret to Recruiting Top AI Talent
There is a secret to recruiting top AI talent. And, these days, you need one. Chief AI Officer and Chief Data Officer searches are famously challenging. It is also hard to build out the data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence teams. When you recruit AI and ML talent, you are competing with the top technology companies in the world with very deep pockets. So, the talent doesn’t come cheap. Top artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced analytics professionals often command compensation in excess of $1 million. The compensation is so astronomical it was reported in the New York Times.
The newspaper reports A.I. Researchers Are Making More Than $1 Million, Even at a Nonprofit, and Tech Giants are Pay Hug Salaries for Scarce A.I. Talent.
LinkedIn Recruiting is Not the Best Approach
If you’re recruiting AI leadership, AI data science, and AI engineering talent, you might think it would be easy to recruit AI talent on LinkedIn. So many profiles mention “AI” and “Artificial Intelligence” in the Headline field next to member photos and in their Titles. But after a while, you’ll notice a number of famous artificial intelligence luminaries are completely missing from the social network. Their influence filters down. We’ve noticed that many up-and-coming artificial intelligence scientists and engineers avoid LinkedIn as well. They simply don’t need to be there to be recruited. The jobs come to them.
So what about LinkedIn members who tout their AI expertise? Many are newcomers to the discipline. Others have simply tacked on the buzzword because it is an area of interest or because a product offered by their companies features AI. That doesn’t mean they are subject matter experts. Of those that are subject matter experts, many have minimalist profiles. You have to do a lot of extra digging to determine what they do and whether they’d qualify as an AI candidate.
In other words, if you haven’t yet figured it out, AI professionals are not a population that likes to hang out on LinkedIn. Many AI professionals avoid LinkedIn, preferring to leverage academic networks and relationships with renowned professors. While most have a presence on the Internet, that information is scattered like buckshot across myriad websites, publications, conferences, and homepages. Aggregating that information takes time. Sifting through it to separate old information from new takes time. So does developing and verifying contact information. So what’s a company with AI openings to do?
Sifting through AI Research Takes Way Too Long
Many artificial intelligence scientists and technologists conduct serious research advancing the scientific community’s understanding of machine learning. So, you might think research holds the key to recruiting AI talent. Simply go through AI research papers, track down the authors, and then find out if they’d make viable candidates today. Well, that is far easier said than done.
Karen Hao is an AI artificial intelligence reporter for MIT Technology Review and author of “We analyzed 16,625 papers to figure out where AI is headed next“. Ms. Hao downloaded the abstracts of all 16,625 papers available in the “artificial intelligence” section of the open-source databases of scientific papers, known as the arXiv (pronounced ‘archive’). The chart below details the number of research papers that mention “artificial intelligence” by year.
Ms. Hao then analyzed the words mentioned in those research papers to understand how AI research is changing. According to MIT Technology Review, research on machine learning has become more focused on neural networks: Bayesian networks, Markov methods, evolutionary algorithms, and support vector machines. If you are recruiting AI talent, this is all good stuff to know.
However, if you are attempting to track down the best and brightest through published AI research, there were more than 3700 AI papers published last year alone. Some research papers have in excess of a hundred authors. You’d have to sift through the list of authors for each publication, track down each author, and then determine if they’d qualify as a candidate. Spoiler alert: Many authors are students who go on to do other things.
AI Startup Talent Pools Are Shallow
With all the AI startups out there, surely you’d think they’d be brimming with AI talent for poaching. But don’t get too carried away. AI startup talent pools are shallow. The best AI expertise usually resides in the founders. To acquire said talent, you’d need to acquire the company. That happens all the time. But if you’re not in M&A mode, AI startups are not the best companies to target for AI recruitment. Clearly, there has got to be a better way. And there is. Simply start by targeting the deepest, highest quality AI talent pools available today.
The Secret to Recruiting Senior AI Talent
Artificial Intelligence Org Charts
Intellerati offers custom talent mapping that builds org charts of the leading technology companies with the deepest artificial intelligence talent pools. We regularly research top technology data science and artificial intelligence teams because our clients keep asking for them. With the overwhelming demand for artificial intelligence and data science talent, custom AI Org Charts give you a competitive advantage. They simply show you precisely who the AI candidates are at the companies you target. All you need to do is recruit them. AI Org Charts enable you to recruit the best and the brightest AI talent that the technology industry has to offer.
