Sure, AI-Forward Talent Is In Demand, But Companies Still Need An Internal Strategy
Every client wants candidates that are AI-forward. Even roles you wouldn't expect would be AI-centric, like sales. Everyone wants the same thing, but doesn't have an internal strategy yet.
Mandi McCarthy
Managing Director
RJR Partners
Across the tech sector, companies are suddenly hunting for “AI-forward” talent. But the push to hire for these new skill sets is moving a lot faster than the internal playbooks required to manage them. Right now, many employers are posting ambitious job descriptions for roles that literally did not exist four years ago. Instead of starting from a defined AI roadmap, some hiring teams expect incoming candidates to figure out how these tools should be used. Relying on applicants to build the strategy often leads to unrealistic employer expectations and makes it harder to evaluate people fairly, especially as labor markets adjust and candidates begin using AI tools during the interview process itself.
Mandi McCarthy has watched this friction play out from the front lines. As Managing Director at Bay Area boutique recruiting firm RJR Partners and a Talent Consultant for the insurance provider Understory, she has spent more than 11 years scaling a team of up to 29 professionals and overseeing hundreds of senior-level placements. That background, paired with a Master’s in Psychology and a TopGrading Interviewer Certification, shapes how she views the current gap between employer expectations and candidate behavior.
“Every client wants candidates that are AI-forward. Even roles you wouldn’t expect would be AI-centric, like sales. They say, ‘I don’t know, we want someone to come in and tell us what AI could do for us.’ Everyone wants the same thing, but doesn’t have an internal strategy yet,” says McCarthy.
The demand has outpaced the definitions. In many organizations, hiring teams are posting ambitious job descriptions for roles that did not exist four years ago without a corresponding internal strategy for how AI should actually be used. “We always laugh internally that we get these job descriptions saying, ‘I want four years of forward-deployed experience,'” McCarthy says. “Well, this wasn’t a role four years ago.” When you ask what that experience looks like, the answer reveals the gap.
Define the strategy before opening the headcount
For HR leaders, evaluating candidates consistently is naturally difficult when a hiring team doesn’t yet have an internal AI-adoption strategy. To fix this, companies are putting more emphasis on defining AI policies in the workplace and setting realistic expectations before opening a headcount. Company-wide AI programs tend to work best when they include dedicated training and clear leadership direction.
McCarthy points to one client that paused normal operations for three days to run a company-wide AI enablement program. “Every single person at the company was doing trainings,” she says. “The new CEO basically said, ‘This is the mandate moving forward. Everybody’s going to use AI for this and this as part of their day job.'”
That kind of top-down direction on AI use gives hiring teams a much clearer basis for assessing incoming talent.
Caught in the crossfire
Meanwhile, candidates can find themselves in a confusing middle ground. The workflows that make them more efficient, like using AI to help draft materials or analyze data, can suddenly raise red flags for hiring teams during the vetting process. McCarthy notes that some candidates have been passed over when their presentations felt entirely AI-generated. Whether the role involves using AI assistants during technical assessments or submitting AI-generated application materials, some hiring teams end up passing on candidates who rely too heavily on AI to augment their workflows, highlighting the difficulty of evaluating candidates using AI.
“It’s kind of ironic because our hiring managers are saying, ‘Hey, we want someone who’s very AI-forward and who’s going to come in and implement a lot of AI to drive efficiency,'” McCarthy says. “But then, ‘Oh, we don’t want you to use it in the interview process.'”
To navigate that tension, McCarthy encourages candidates to treat AI as an editor rather than an author. “You write a thoughtful thank you email and then you have it edited by AI to make sure that it sounds as good as you want it to,” she says. “When people knock a candidate for something that they’re asking them to do in their long-term job, it is kind of silly.”
The fractional workaround
Technology is not the only factor disrupting the modern org chart. Macroeconomic cost pressures have led some later-stage companies to slow or freeze hiring, creating more room for younger firms to add headcount and capitalize on recent talent market changes. Because early-stage companies often cannot afford full-time C-suite leaders, McCarthy is seeing more startups turn to fractional roles, particularly in marketing and finance, where work is naturally project-based.
“Certain candidates are just at very high price points and they get boxed out of the market at the lower ends because companies can’t afford them,” McCarthy says. “This allows them to come in, maybe work with an earlier-stage startup, get a piece of equity, whereas the company would never be able to hire them full-time.”
The arrangement also functions as a discovery mechanism for candidates. “It’s a little bit ‘try before you buy’ from the candidate’s perspective where they can go in and see, ‘Okay, do I like this working dynamic with the CEO or with the team?'” she says. “Oftentimes, what happens is you see people do fractional work and then eventually they pick one that they love and go in-house.”
Scoping the relationship
Fractional hires offer a clever economic workaround for seed and Series A companies that need senior expertise on a tight budget. To make those relationships sustainable, expectations generally need to be explicit. Hiring managers frequently express concern about divided attention, and candidates seeking full-time roles are sometimes advised to temporarily remove side businesses from their LinkedIn profiles so their focus is clear during a search.
For leaders who want to stay fractional, a frequent challenge is scope creep: a 10-hour-per-week engagement quietly turning into 25 hours of overload. “The ones that have done it for a long time are very specific about scoping on the front end,” McCarthy says. “Maybe there is a flex of 10 or 20%, but if it starts to go way over, a lot of the individuals I know, it’s a 60-to-90-day commitment with a renewal. So if it’s not working out or it’s more than they signed up for, then they just won’t continue.”
Selling the opportunity
Even with flexible hiring models in place, securing top talent often comes down to the interview experience itself. In the early-stage startup market, the companies that consistently win top candidates treat interviews as a mutual conversation rather than a one-sided test.
“The companies that hire the best are often the ones that think of it as a two-way dynamic,” McCarthy says. “They put a lot of time into selling the opportunity, getting the candidate equally as excited as they’re vetting them for fit. It’s as much about the candidate wanting to feel the love as they are selling themselves.”
The mechanics matter just as much as the energy. “If you’re doing an hour interview, 15 minutes should be set aside at the end to say, ‘Hey, what questions do you have? Let me tell you why this is really exciting,'” she says. From there, McCarthy advises setting aside calendar time to get candidates through an entire interview cycle in two to four weeks. When days pass without an update, candidates often assume the process has stalled and move on with their search.
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TL;DR
Mandi McCarthy
RJR Partners
Managing Director
Managing Director
Across the tech sector, companies are suddenly hunting for “AI-forward” talent. But the push to hire for these new skill sets is moving a lot faster than the internal playbooks required to manage them. Right now, many employers are posting ambitious job descriptions for roles that literally did not exist four years ago. Instead of starting from a defined AI roadmap, some hiring teams expect incoming candidates to figure out how these tools should be used. Relying on applicants to build the strategy often leads to unrealistic employer expectations and makes it harder to evaluate people fairly, especially as labor markets adjust and candidates begin using AI tools during the interview process itself.
Mandi McCarthy has watched this friction play out from the front lines. As Managing Director at Bay Area boutique recruiting firm RJR Partners and a Talent Consultant for the insurance provider Understory, she has spent more than 11 years scaling a team of up to 29 professionals and overseeing hundreds of senior-level placements. That background, paired with a Master’s in Psychology and a TopGrading Interviewer Certification, shapes how she views the current gap between employer expectations and candidate behavior.
“Every client wants candidates that are AI-forward. Even roles you wouldn’t expect would be AI-centric, like sales. They say, ‘I don’t know, we want someone to come in and tell us what AI could do for us.’ Everyone wants the same thing, but doesn’t have an internal strategy yet,” says McCarthy.
The demand has outpaced the definitions. In many organizations, hiring teams are posting ambitious job descriptions for roles that did not exist four years ago without a corresponding internal strategy for how AI should actually be used. “We always laugh internally that we get these job descriptions saying, ‘I want four years of forward-deployed experience,'” McCarthy says. “Well, this wasn’t a role four years ago.” When you ask what that experience looks like, the answer reveals the gap.
Define the strategy before opening the headcount
For HR leaders, evaluating candidates consistently is naturally difficult when a hiring team doesn’t yet have an internal AI-adoption strategy. To fix this, companies are putting more emphasis on defining AI policies in the workplace and setting realistic expectations before opening a headcount. Company-wide AI programs tend to work best when they include dedicated training and clear leadership direction.
McCarthy points to one client that paused normal operations for three days to run a company-wide AI enablement program. “Every single person at the company was doing trainings,” she says. “The new CEO basically said, ‘This is the mandate moving forward. Everybody’s going to use AI for this and this as part of their day job.'”
That kind of top-down direction on AI use gives hiring teams a much clearer basis for assessing incoming talent.
Caught in the crossfire
Meanwhile, candidates can find themselves in a confusing middle ground. The workflows that make them more efficient, like using AI to help draft materials or analyze data, can suddenly raise red flags for hiring teams during the vetting process. McCarthy notes that some candidates have been passed over when their presentations felt entirely AI-generated. Whether the role involves using AI assistants during technical assessments or submitting AI-generated application materials, some hiring teams end up passing on candidates who rely too heavily on AI to augment their workflows, highlighting the difficulty of evaluating candidates using AI.
“It’s kind of ironic because our hiring managers are saying, ‘Hey, we want someone who’s very AI-forward and who’s going to come in and implement a lot of AI to drive efficiency,'” McCarthy says. “But then, ‘Oh, we don’t want you to use it in the interview process.'”
To navigate that tension, McCarthy encourages candidates to treat AI as an editor rather than an author. “You write a thoughtful thank you email and then you have it edited by AI to make sure that it sounds as good as you want it to,” she says. “When people knock a candidate for something that they’re asking them to do in their long-term job, it is kind of silly.”
The fractional workaround
Technology is not the only factor disrupting the modern org chart. Macroeconomic cost pressures have led some later-stage companies to slow or freeze hiring, creating more room for younger firms to add headcount and capitalize on recent talent market changes. Because early-stage companies often cannot afford full-time C-suite leaders, McCarthy is seeing more startups turn to fractional roles, particularly in marketing and finance, where work is naturally project-based.
“Certain candidates are just at very high price points and they get boxed out of the market at the lower ends because companies can’t afford them,” McCarthy says. “This allows them to come in, maybe work with an earlier-stage startup, get a piece of equity, whereas the company would never be able to hire them full-time.”
The arrangement also functions as a discovery mechanism for candidates. “It’s a little bit ‘try before you buy’ from the candidate’s perspective where they can go in and see, ‘Okay, do I like this working dynamic with the CEO or with the team?'” she says. “Oftentimes, what happens is you see people do fractional work and then eventually they pick one that they love and go in-house.”
Scoping the relationship
Fractional hires offer a clever economic workaround for seed and Series A companies that need senior expertise on a tight budget. To make those relationships sustainable, expectations generally need to be explicit. Hiring managers frequently express concern about divided attention, and candidates seeking full-time roles are sometimes advised to temporarily remove side businesses from their LinkedIn profiles so their focus is clear during a search.
For leaders who want to stay fractional, a frequent challenge is scope creep: a 10-hour-per-week engagement quietly turning into 25 hours of overload. “The ones that have done it for a long time are very specific about scoping on the front end,” McCarthy says. “Maybe there is a flex of 10 or 20%, but if it starts to go way over, a lot of the individuals I know, it’s a 60-to-90-day commitment with a renewal. So if it’s not working out or it’s more than they signed up for, then they just won’t continue.”
Selling the opportunity
Even with flexible hiring models in place, securing top talent often comes down to the interview experience itself. In the early-stage startup market, the companies that consistently win top candidates treat interviews as a mutual conversation rather than a one-sided test.
“The companies that hire the best are often the ones that think of it as a two-way dynamic,” McCarthy says. “They put a lot of time into selling the opportunity, getting the candidate equally as excited as they’re vetting them for fit. It’s as much about the candidate wanting to feel the love as they are selling themselves.”
The mechanics matter just as much as the energy. “If you’re doing an hour interview, 15 minutes should be set aside at the end to say, ‘Hey, what questions do you have? Let me tell you why this is really exciting,'” she says. From there, McCarthy advises setting aside calendar time to get candidates through an entire interview cycle in two to four weeks. When days pass without an update, candidates often assume the process has stalled and move on with their search.