Hiring for AI adoption · Five-part desk
Hire the person who changes the work.
A great demo is not an adopted workflow. These guides help you use AI to prepare a stronger hiring process, then find, interview, pay, and support people who can improve a real job—and keep the team from drifting back to spreadsheets.
Start with the research briefOne useful sequence
- 1Find the missing capability
- 2Write a truthful role
- 3Interview for real work
- 4Price the actual scope
- 5Prove adoption in 90 days
Who do we actually need?
Start with the work that is stuck and the capability your current team lacks.
What should we ask?
Use the same job-related interview and short work sample for every candidate.
Will people use what they build?
Listen for how a candidate handles skeptical users and the return to old workarounds.
How will we know?
Compare accepted work, corrections, and use of the approved workflow after launch.
The reading path
Five different decisions. One stronger hire.
Read in order or jump to the decision you own. The first piece is an evidence-led synthesis, not an original hiring survey. The other four give you meeting questions, a work sample, a pay method, and a 90-day review. Each includes a copyable AI assignment and a human check.
Who actually makes AI adoption stick?
An evidence-led map of the people, skills, and authority an AI initiative needs after the demo.
Read this guideFind the person before you write the AI job description
An intake method for defining the work, the team gap, and the human qualities a generic AI title misses.
Read this guideHow to interview someone who will make AI useful at work
A 60-minute interview, fair work sample, scoring rubric, and listening guide for AI-adoption roles.
Read this guideHow to pay for AI adoption work without buying a title
A compensation and scope guide that separates business change, technical delivery, and leadership responsibility.
Read this guideThe first 90 days: hire for adoption, then prove it happened
An onboarding and measurement plan that catches the return to spreadsheets, duplicate entry, and unused AI tools.
Read this guideStart this week
Before posting another role
Bring one process owner, one frontline user, and the hiring manager together. Watch one real case from intake to accepted result. Ask what information is duplicated in a private spreadsheet. That answer will make the requisition sharper than another list of AI buzzwords.
Use the ten-question intake