3 strategies to win the AI talent war

Artificial Intelligence (AI) market is likely to hit USD 360 Billion by 2028. The surge in AI innovation is in every industry, from retail, wireless communications, consumer packaged goods to life sciences and healthcare, where it’s being used to model viruses, among other applications.

Artificial Intelligence has become immensely popular, and industries across the globe are rapidly incorporating it into their processes to improve business operations and customer experience. Not only big companies but also small and medium businesses are investing in this technology. 

The demand for AI Technology amid the pandemic increased dramatically and this has continued as the world adapts to the new norms. As leaders seek to create improved customer experiences, reduce costs and boost efficiency through using AI, companies across sectors are scrambling to win scarce AI talent–and the talent pool is not growing fast enough to keep up.

Regardless of whether a business is in a sector where the disruptive potential is lower and adoption is likely to be slower, PwC says, “No sector or business is in any way immune from the impact of AI. … The big question is how to secure the talent, technology and access to data to make the most of the opportunity.”

A recent poll of 3,500 business leaders found that hiring is the no.1 difficulty they face in successfully adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI). Major tech company Tencent has estimated that there are only 300,000 AI professionals in the world, and there are a million+ vacancies globally.

But with the right strategy and the right talent partner, you can still build the team you need to get AI working optimally for you.

How to beat the AI talent drought

There are three winning strategies you can use: make, regenerate and take talent. Here's how.

1. Make talent

There are plenty of resources out there you can use to train your own in-house AI talent. Google offers tutorials, guides and workshops, and you can also find courses and ‘mini degrees’ from many other providers.

A McKinsey report revealed that AI leaders spend 1.52 times more on talent than laggards. However, there are plenty of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) to choose from, many of which are free. They have many other benefits, too:

• Allow employees to set their own pace.
• Modular so people can quickly get up to speed on a specific topic.
• Allow them to learn from top experts in multinationals and universities around the world.

You can then build on this by encouraging IT executives and managers to launch internal projects where AI talent can iterate proofs of concepts and team-build.

2. Regenerate talent

Talent from other areas of your company will have core skills that could serve them well as AI professionals. Before rushing to hiring externally, ask yourself if anyone in your company:

• Has a background in computer science, maths, statistics, or economics.
• Already enjoys working with large data sets
• Is good at strategic thinking, problem-solving and teamwork

Giving your people a clear career path to transition to the exciting new field of AI will also help your talent retention. Specifically, demand is growing for data scientists, robotics and AI engineers, and candidates with experience in deep neural networks, big data and analytics, among other tech specialists.

When an interesting project comes to an end, do not try to keep your data scientists and ML engineers ‘busy’ with unchallenging work. You are likely to lose them. Instead, keep them engaged by offering them an educational programme to develop their skills.

3. Take the talent

The third strategy is to build a strong talent acquisition plan by working with niche recruitment partners. In the current talent war, anyone looking to hire AI professionals cannot afford to rely on long, complex in-house hiring processes.

That means you need a specialist talent partner who can turn their knowledge of the market into a ‘force multiplier’ that will enable you to compete with the giants for the same small AI talent pool. Redline can leverage its extensive network to source the top talent locally and worldwide.

What’s more, we can help you market yourself as an employer to the people you want to attract, creating a strong employee value proposition that will make people want to work for you.

To find out more about how we can help you, from the UK’s most trusted Electronics recruitment agency and High Technology recruitment specialist for professional Contract, Permanent and Executive positions.

For more information regarding how we can help your business, please contact us on 01582 450054 or email info@redlinegroup.com.