What I’ve learnt by joining a hot, dynamic AI Talent Startup – 3 months in:

Having been in this role for three months, I am more excited than ever to continue tackling the challenge of growing and building a sustainable AI Talent business. I joined TalentSeer & Robin.ly as VP of Business Development, and Venture Partner at BoomingStar Ventures on June 01 2019; I have truly had an incredible time bringing on new clients, creating partnerships, developing a new set of relationships and much more. A good starting point to understand who we are and what we are up to is to begin with our unique and streamlined business approach:

1. TalentSeer is an AI Talent Search Firm that connects and inspires talent by providing robust and dynamic opportunities. We have a true passion for growing teams and companies through our machine learning technologies and our deep understanding of the AI startup ecosystem to help AI talent find their next venture.
2. Robin.ly has been created to provide an AI community platform designed to help Researchers, Engineers and Business Leaders share their knowledge and to develop entrepreneurial insights as they prepare to become the next generation of innovators and trend-setters. 
3. BoomingStar Ventures is an $1.5B Fund focusing on AI, Robotics and Autonomous Driving. We believe the key to growing this industry relies on the principle of "less unknowns = less risks". With a concise understanding of the AI industry, talent network and business strategy, we support startups to grow in an organic and healthy manner.

What I’ve learnt in the last 3 months

Everyone wants the best AI Talent: PwC estimates that AI is set to contribute $15.7 trillion dollars in value to the global economy by 2030 across multiple industries. There are over 2.5 million subscribers to online Machine Learning courses in 2019, such as those led by MIT and Stanford University. The US currently has the most AI Startups, private equity, and venture capital funding. Along with this, the US is leading the way in attracting, educating and retaining AI Talent, with the highest quality of AI research underway. Of course, for the US to appropriately capitalize on the industry, it will need a robust plan. A 2019 piece by Michael Kratsios noted that to “turn these ideas into reality, [the US] needs infrastructure. For AI, that means data, models, and computational resources”. This places AI Founders,VC’s,CEO’s and Talent Acquisition Leaders in a constant hot space; founders want to build solid and dynamic startups in a super-fast, super-tight talent market. VC’s want to invest in winning teams with the right technology, but more importantly with the right talent in order to grow fast and become profitable. All our clients, both established and newcomers across the US and globally are working in an extraordinarily tight market, looking for exceptional people who will build products, lead teams and fit into the company culture. Each need amazing tech, the right foundations, and especially the right AI leadership that will not only attract the talent but retain it. 

Finding the best AI Talent is hard: Finding the right people is incredibly hard work. You need to develop relationships, knowledge, experience and a creative means of developing your reach. 

Relationships: I am fortunate that our team of recruiters have deep networks and have established solid relationships over the past few years, and are constantly building new ones with engineers, developers, data scientists, academics, business leaders, universities, innovation hubs, AI companies etc. These relationships help us move fast, understand how the market is changing, and determine what is required next from us. We know where candidates are in their career journeys and what the next opportunity needs to look like for them to make their move. 

Knowledge: Our team have a refined knowledge of AI and emerging tech; we have experts in Autonomous Vehicles, Robotics, AI Hardware, Retail & Consumer products, Healthcare, Media space, Blockchain, IoT and much more. Back in June, our entire company attended CVPR 2019 (Computer Vision & Pattern Recognitions Conference) in Long Beach, LA. We met with new and established candidates, joined the education sessions, and took part in paper talks to learn about the latest developments and research. We completed 30+ interviews with AI Leaders such as Chris Manning (Head of Stanford AI Research Institute), Engineers, and Academics such as Shumian Xin – CVPR 2019 Best Paper Award Winner. All of this ensures that we stay current within the industry, which is critical when working with founders, CEO’s, VC’s and highly accomplished candidates. 

Experience: Based on our experience of placing 200+ candidates in top AI companies since 2017, our team has developed a unique recruiting model; termed the 3I Recruitment Mindset. This focuses on bringing together 3 core strategies: Information based recruiting, Insights based recruiting, and Influence based recruiting. 

1) Information based recruiting: most recruiters are familiar with information-based recruiting, which depends on how much you know about the employer and their position. When you engage with candidates, simply tell them who is hiring and what will be the position. In many cases, especially with passive job seeking candidates, this direct way of selling has the least impact on their interests; leading to the conversion rates to a candidate being even lower than 1% on LinkedIn. 

2) Insight based recruiting: you will not only talk about the employer and their positions, but also the whole ecosystem such as competitors, vendors, and the company’s customers. You will know how to position the employer when competing with other companies for the same candidates. These insights can take the form of knowledge of the industry, technology, business or career path. There are many decisions for a candidate to make if they wish to join a company, and any insight can benefit them in the critical hiring process. This is where Robin.Ly, our AI Community platform and Leaders in AI podcast plays a critical role. We have interviewed with 120+ founders, engineers, VC’s, business leaders, academics and other professionals. The conversations we have reveal critical insights on the AI ecosystem and can help both recruiters and candidates form a much better overview into the opportunities at hand. 

3) Influence based recruiting: once you are able to deliver insights to your candidates, you will gain influence and make an impact on them. One-on-one conversations can be impressive, but they are very inefficient. If recruiters can speak out or even post on social media, candidates will eventually reach out to them for advice or job opportunities. 

We encourage our team to engage with candidates in a consultative manner; not only does our team offer information, insights and influence, we also care deeply about our candidates and the companies they are potentially joining. With this mindset, we look to offer the best guidance and career mapping to ensure that we have a win/win on all sides.  

It takes time, dedication, and a focus on developing relationships to successfully execute this mindset. This is not only critical for recruiters but for anyone looking to be successful in the AI Ecosystem. 

Our unique business model ensures that we maintain perspective on the field of AI and continue to stay ahead of where the AI market currently is at. Demand for the best AI talent will only continue to rise and one needs to remain educated, knowledgeable, and connected to flourish.

What the next number of months look like: As we head into Fall, the next 3-4 months is going to be very busy for TalentSeer:

1. TalentSeer is hosting our second AI Talent Summit: Building Teams for the Future of AI on Thursday 19th September 2019 at the Computer History Museum. With a great selection of speakers from the VC community, Start-ups and Talent Acquisition leaders this is a much attend event. Complimentary registration for the first 10 people that sign-up.
2. Sponsoring Springboard Rise: Data & Design Summit on September 7th 
3. Delivering a Talent for AI Transformation Session at O Reilly AI on Thursday September 11th - come join us if attending, we’ll be at Booth K3
4. We’ve recently partnered with Women in Big Data & will be hosting a meetup session in October - Date TBA
5. In December we will focus on the NIPS Conference in Vancouver
6. For the Robin.ly community, I will continue with our founder and Leaders in AI podcast interviews; this last week I had the chance to meet with Keno Fischer from Julia Computing in Boston and look forward to publishing that shortly. 

For more information on TalentSeer please contact: [email protected].

Follow us on LinkedIn @TalentSeer @Robin.ly visit Robin.ly and download Leaders in AI Podcast for more great AI conversations. 

About Margaret Laffan

Vice President, Business Development,@TalentSeer & Robin.ly Venture Partner, @BoomingStar Ventures

Margaret Laffan is the Vice President of Business Development at TalentSeer—a specialized AI talent partner dedicated to building and nurturing AI teams for companies at various growth stages—and a venture partner with BoomingStar Ventures—a $1.5b fund focused on AI, robotics, and autonomous driving early stage startups. Margaret leads the development of new partnerships to accelerate the expansion of TalentSeer’s AI talent ecosystem. Previously, Margaret drove sales and business development at SAP and has held leadership roles in various startups. Laffan is published on Forbes and contributes to other media. She earned her master’s degree in political science from the University of Dublin, and has 15+ years working in industry, nonprofit and startup sector. Follow Margaret on Twitter @MargaretLaffan