Welcome to another edition of Leading Momentum, where we cover on-the-ground insights leaders need to know about getting AI operations to work in their organization.

Today’s post was inspired by a recent CEO coaching conversation - we hope this may help you if you’re in this spot.

So I was on a call last week with a CEO I coach. He's trying to hire someone for AI. He knows what he wants. He described it to me and it was clear to me! Like he could see the person in his head.

But when I asked if he had a job post, he said not really. He had posted but none of the people he was getting were a good fit.

Huh. I asked him follow up questions…

He kept calling it a "content creative slash marketing person." Someone who could take their body of work, repurpose it, build out workshops, handle the processes that happen over and over. And also, you know, do the AI stuff.

He was thinking $75 to $80K…

Ah.

I told him he actually needed two things in one person:

The first part he already knew. The second part is what makes the role an AI Operator, not just another hire.

And that role, if you want someone good, is more like $120K. If not more.

His response was immediate: "For the right person, I'm totally open to that. Because they're doing more than one person's job."

That's the part that stuck with me. He wasn't resistant to the salary. He was relieved. Because he'd been trying to hire for a role he couldn't name, and it was starting to feel like the person he wanted didn't exist.

They do exist. He was just looking for the wrong thing.

So here's what's wild. We recently released our May AI Operator Job Index where we scraped 24,000 job postings and used AI to identify which ones are actually AI Operator roles, regardless of what the title says. We found 1,000+. But what was interesting - they were spread across 636 different job titles.

636 titles for one role. AI Enablement Manager. AI Adoption Lead. AI Strategy Consultant. Marketing Operations Manager. Chief of Staff. All describing essentially the same job.

And when we looked at what these postings actually ask for, 59% list ops skills. Adoption. Workflow design. Change management. Stakeholder alignment. Under 5% mention coding or engineering.

That's why it feels impossible to hire for this. You're not competing for a scarce talent pool. You're writing a job post that doesn't match what you actually need.

You describe an engineer when you need an operator. Or you describe a generalist when you need someone who thinks in systems and playbooks.

The CEO on my call was about to make the exact same mistake. If I hadn't been on that call, he would have kept that posting for a $75K content person, gotten 200 resumes from people who can write copy, and none of them would have been what he was looking for.

So if you're trying to hire someone for AI right now, or thinking about it, here's what I'd sit with. Can you describe what that person would actually do on a Tuesday? Not "own AI" or "drive adoption." The actual work. If you can't articulate the job, you're going to write the wrong post and wonder why nobody fits.

Hit reply and tell me: are you trying to hire for this role right now? What are you calling it? I'm genuinely curious what titles people are using out there.

Thanks for reading. It's a privilege that you spend time with these!

Whenever you're ready, here's how we can help:

Cheers,
Rachel