The best hires scale themselves with AI

The best hire you make this year probably won't have the best CV.

There's a talent war starting for people who can scale themselves with AI, and I don't mean AI engineers on half a million a year. I mean the marketer, the bookkeeper, the salesperson, the office manager.

The gap between AI-enabled employees and people working the way they did five years ago is becoming impossible to miss. One person who runs AI well gets through the output of a small team.

I've watched it play out on my own desk. Work that needed an extra pair of hands two years ago now runs alongside me while I'm with clients.

Before anyone reaches for the comments, this isn't about cutting staff. It's about getting more done with the team you already have.

For a hundred years, experience was the safest signal you could buy. The CV told you where someone had been, and that used to be a fair guide to what they could do next.

That link is weakening. What someone can actually do with the tools in front of them now tells you more than the years they've clocked up.

If you're great at your craft and you can scale yourself, you can command a premium for it.

And if you're the one hiring, the old shortlist criteria will filter out exactly the people you most need.

Try this in your next interview. Ask the candidate to walk you through one task they've automated, start to finish. Get them to show you something they've built with AI.

You'll learn more in those five minutes than from anything on the CV.