Hiring; Reality Check

Last week at a live event, I presented an overly simplistic piece on hiring.

It hit some key points, it was relatively useful, but in hindsight it missed the (new) starting line.

The old question of when to hire was simple.

You hit capacity and chose one of three options:

Keep going alone.
Hire a human.
Contract the work out.

Now there’s a fourth option:

Can AI do it?

So yes, hiring just got more complex.

And at the same time, a lot simpler.

For years we’ve all been told the same thing:

Find good people.
Train them well.
Build culture.
Scale the business.

All true.

Also no longer enough.

Because now there’s a new variable sitting in the room, quietly replacing entire layers of work.

Yesterday, hiring felt like growth.
Today, it can feel temporary at best… or like an outdated mistake at worst.

To be clear, this is not a “how do I use ChatGPT” conversation.

This is a “should I hire anyone at all” conversation.

Because if a role is built on repetition, process, or predictable thinking… it’s already being eroded.

Not someday.

Right now.

Aggressively.

Which means the hiring question has changed.

It’s no longer:
“Can this person do the job?”

It’s now:
“Should this job even exist?”

That’s a very different lens.

And it forces a few uncomfortable realities.

You don’t need more people.
You need fewer, better people.

People who can think.
People who can decide.
People who can use AI as leverage, not compete with it.

Culture still matters, maybe more than ever.

Just not the ping pong table version.

The real version.
The ‘people like us do things like this’ version.

What else matters?

Speed.
Ownership.
Output.
Accountability.

The way people actually behave when no one is watching.

This is a big topic.

Bigger than a blog post.
Bigger than a single conversation.

So on April 30th in Burlington, we’re going to spend a full hour on it, maybe more.

Hiring & AI.

What gets automated?
What stays human?
How to build a team, humans and AI agents, that actually wins in this version of the market.

Because this isn’t theoretical anymore.

It’s already happening.

Are you hiring for the world that was… or the one that’s here?

DW

P.S. - Sign up for the Burlington ON April 30th workshop HERE