HR Tech gets a lot of attention, and why shouldn’t it? The structure of the market – whether it’s called “personnel administration” or “human resource management” – has long favored big systems for managing employee programs and policies.

But, here’s the rub. That structure rested on the assumption of labor availability. Even McKinsey’s 1990s clarion call about a War for Talent didn’t really stress the ability of companies to find the workers they needed and to do so with relative ease and a minimum of investment. Oh sure, there were spot shortages here and there, but for most employers, business went on as it always had with plenty of candidates from which to choose. And now, that’s no longer true.

Today’s War for AI Telent Hegemony is driven by a new reality: There simply isn’t enough AI-ready talent to go around. And, won’t be for quite some time. Pundits tell employers not to worry; they can simply switch to AI agents to get work done. But alas, here’s another reality: Getting those AI agents to work productively requires … ta dah, AI-ready human talent.

So, what are employers to do? To begin with, they can stop treating talent acquisition as an ancillary HR function. It should be the other way around. You can’t manage the resources you don’t have, so it’s the recruiting team that should report to the CEO (and the Board), not the HR Department.

That’s not the entire solution, of course, but it does position employers to compete. And for the first time in the information era, that’s critical to bottom-line success. You see, in the War for AI Talent Hegemony, there are only winners and losers. A company either captures an unfair share of AI-ready talent or it is no longer a viable business enterprise. Sine excusationibus, sine exceptionibus – there are no exceptions.

Food for Thought,
Peter