Recruiting for AI go-to-market (GTM) jobs in 2024 is being driven simultaneously by the rapid growth of the industry and many of the same trends seen in the rest of the technology market. Betts has worked with several dozen firms specializing in artificial intelligence solutions this year alone, and what we have found is that most contend with similar key challenges in the talent faced by SaaS and other tech sectors, while also having to overcome the fast pace and lack of maturity in their space as the market continues to grow.
In this blog, we will go over the top recruiting trends facing the Generative AI industry currently, and what to expect by next year:
AI vs General Tech Recruiting
To fully understand where artificial intelligence hiring aligns with the rest of tech – and where it does not – you must take a step back and look at the big picture for the space as a whole. The technology sector at large slowed down with the economy after riding high immediately before and during the changes of the pandemic years, while AI started to explode out from the shadows of the previous SaaS darlings. Now, many of those top enterprises are launching their own Gen AI tools even as new startups emerge almost every day, creating serious competition for top technical talent among a limited pool.
State of Tech Recruiting in 2024
Recruiting for tech in 2024 is in a state of adaptation – most companies in SaaS and other subsectors are redefining their targets around new challenges and changing sales motions. Whereas many tried to scale by volume with mass hiring before, now most are refining their talent acquisition to source a more experienced candidate with the right knowledge and skill sets they need to close deals more effectively and quickly.
The Hunt for the Unicorn Seller in AI
The perfect, right fit GTM candidate is what we call a unicorn seller – a professional that already has the know-how in your market and aligns with your existing sales motion and culture as closely as possible. This ideal candidate is more or less unique to each organization, or at least to each piece of their market. The majority of searches we have initiated with our clients over the past year have been in pursuit of their ideal persona. Though AI firms are scaling at a faster rate than most, we are still seeing most companies in this space be very scrutinous about go-to-market hiring and following a similar approach to their contemporaries in other industries, bringing on only a few sales or marketing candidates at a time and often primarily senior-level hires to lead GTM teams.
Skill Specialization & Technical Knowledge
The key to unicorn seller recruiting – and any close-as-possible fits – is the search for the right skill sets and knowledge. For the former, these are most often in the realm of possessing emotional intelligence or what we call soft skills, while for the latter this is generally technical knowledge as well as market-related expertise. The key underlying factor behind both these sets of requirements is that these are more likely to be accumulated over time than taught, meaning that many unicorn salespeople are senior-level hires.
Top Experienced & Technical Sales Roles for Tech
The exact titles each hiring manager should be seeking to fit a unicorn seller role can differ by company, but we often see these positions fit the bill for what many tech orgs are looking for and are a good place to start when crafting your right fit persona:
- Sales Engineer: A Sales Engineer (SE) is in a literal sense a professional with some kind of engineering experience (often in software architecture) that can sell – but this position entails so much more than that. In many ways, this is one of the quintessential tech sales roles for most digital solutions, bringing technical-savviness to prospecting conversations and leveraging their knowledge to fine-tune the product to what the customer is looking for after qualifying them. SEs have been growing in importance for SaaS, and we see this becoming a key hire for AI firms trying to scale their GTM teams to ensure deals get closed.
- Enterprise Account Executive: An Enterprise Account Executive (EAE) is a senior-level salesperson that is in charge of not only handling larger-sized client accounts, but also of engaging with C-suite and other leadership titles directly. Decision-makers at these types of organizations are bombarded with plenty of business pitches and other noise that must be cut through, and EAEs leverage their experience to be able to “speak the language” of executives comparing solutions against team goals and needs. For artificial intelligence firms, hiring an Enterprise AE will be a key step towards securing bigger accounts and generating more revenue to scale upwards.
Where Recruiting for AI Will Go in 2025
The Generative AI industry is in a very unique and dynamic place in the technology market, but while they are going through a time of rapid growth compared to the rest of the sector they are still impacted by several of the same trends when it comes to recruiting. Right now, the majority of hiring for these orgs is focused on specific technical titles like different scientists, engineers, technicians, etc. to support and improve things on the product side. However, as the space matures and we start to see customers slow down buying decisions or at least consolidate their purchases to a smaller number of solutions, artificial intelligence companies will need to refine their go-to-market strategies and sales motions at scale to maintain growth.
Limited Talent Pool for AI Tech Sales Pros
Most of the tech sector shares one same talent acquisition challenge – finding a candidate with the exact right skills and knowledge they need, merging technical expertise with experience in selling to key decision-makers. There is a sizable talent pool available after the previous rounds of layoffs over the past two years, but very few with this perfect mix and not too many more that just meet enough of all of the requirements for each and every org. For Gen AI, this number is even smaller – those experienced with the previous generation of artificial intelligence or machine learning tools is an even tinier fraction of the entire candidate pool for GTM jobs in technology.
Redefining Your Unicorn Candidates to Scale
With the previous points in mind, Generative AI companies will have to think very carefully about what type of candidates they are looking for to help continue scaling their revenue and build on their sales motion as the market continues to evolve. There is a very limited talent pool of those who could match every org’s unicorn seller requirements, particularly for those seeking someone with experience in the AI industry. With compensation “bidding wars” likely to emerge over those few candidates, hiring managers at artificial intelligence orgs may need to consider sourcing candidates with backgrounds in other parts of the technology sector to help fill in gaps for their GTM teams.
Upskilling & Coaching
One trend we have seen growing particularly among senior-level and executive titles in tech is a greater emphasis on training and personal development to help meet the expertise and knowledge expectations emerging among many orgs. Since there is an already stretched talent pool for Generative AI – and most firms growing their go-to-market teams are still looking for leadership-level professionals – coaching and other ways to help GTM hires upskill for the industry may be a viable stopgap for the limited experience in the field.
Unlocking Scalability for AI Sales Hiring
We have seen tech companies in other markets maintain an interview-to-placement rate of nearly 50% while for AI it usually drops to around 40%, reflecting the challenges most of the firms in the Gen AI space have in sourcing the right kind of talent for their industry. While every technology company must be mindful of their Cost-per-Hire (CPH) versus revenue, the numbers show that this approach is not scalable and can lead to draining hiring budgets over time trying to track down the right fit candidate.
Betts Recruiting focuses on helping our clients scale their talent acquisition with a cost-effective and data-driven approach, including leveraging our unique hiring platform, Betts Connect. With Connect, your team can take advantage of our reporting and analytics to help refine your unicorn seller persona, as well as our KPI filters to more quickly track down your right fit candidate. Unlike with a traditional agency and other similar platforms, you are not charged a fee for every candidate you hire through Connect, meaning you can source as much talent as you need while maintaining your budget.
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