View Recording: The New AI Jobs: Which You Need, Which Are Hype, and How to Fill Them

Brian Haydin Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. I am joined with Sarah Burke. She is our head of recruiting here at Concurrency. And we’re going to be talking about something that is, first off, it’s been the interest in this today, people signing up for the webinar. Thank you for joining. But this is something that people have been talking about. I think I talk about it almost every day with my customers. 0:0:29.457 –> 0:0:50.977 Brian Haydin It’s the New AI Jobs and like, what does that mean? What kind of people should we really be looking for? What kind of recruitments that, you know, that the recruiting team, like, what are we going to figure it out? Anyway, before I start with that, a little bit about Concurrency. We are a 35 plus year old Microsoft consulting company. 0:0:51.377 –> 0:1:10.777 Brian Haydin And we are specializing in modern work, Azure data and AI, specifically really leaning in heavy in AI space, helping with governance, et cetera. Just a quick little plug. Thanks to the marketing team. We’ve got a really, really fantastic marketing team for putting these webinars together and getting everything organized. 0:1:11.537 –> 0:1:30.97 Brian Haydin And we publish a ton of content about thought leadership, and we’ll post these webinars, you know, from time to time. So follow that QR code, follow us on Linkedin. That’s where we do most of our announcements, and we’ll go ahead and get right into it. So Microsoft recently announced that about 78 0:1:30.137 –> 0:1:49.177 Brian Haydin percent of leaders were considering hiring for AI specific roles. And that was a number that came out in 2025. I have no idea what the number is today. It’s got to be really, really big. And so this is creating a lot of pressure. And so, Sarah, I want to start with you, like with just a question, like what 0:1:49.257 –> 0:1:55.457 Brian Haydin kinds of jobs are they people asking for? What’s really resonating in the marketplace? What are the gaps? What do you think? 0:1:56.657 –> 0:2:15.537 Sarah Bourke Yeah, I mean, I think that this AI lead list here is like really familiar. I see this all of the time, right? Where a customer has this gap and they’re kind of looking for this one person who can lead the strategy, you know, set product priorities. 0:2:15.617 –> 0:2:35.977 Sarah Bourke build, do the work, write governance policy, and drive adoption all in one. And it’s a really long list. So I feel like, you know, maybe this is possible in one person with like a really small organization. But before we start to really like. 0:2:36.417 –> 0:2:44.817 Sarah Bourke title it, we want to start with kind of like what are the primary contributions that this person needs to make? What kind of work are they going to be doing? 0:2:45.617 –> 0:2:58.497 Brian Haydin We were talking about this and it’s like, this list is really crazy to me that they often say, well, this is just one person, right? How do you handle that? I mean, is that even reasonable, right? 0:2:59.537 –> 0:3:20.97 Sarah Bourke Yeah, I mean, I think, again, it can be. It’s not, it definitely depends on the size of the organization and what foundations they have in place. But I think once you really start to talk about the work itself, it’s pretty easy to find that there are only a couple of these that really are the 0:3:20.337 –> 0:3:23.617 Sarah Bourke primary focus and I think that’s really the best place to start. 0:3:24.657 –> 0:3:45.57 Brian Haydin Yeah, I definitely, I definitely agree with that. What’s, you know, what I find kind of interesting is that if you go back, we had a pretty long conversation about this. If you go back to like the 1990s, you know, when I started my career, you know, we had very traditional project managers. 0:3:45.217 –> 0:4:7.17 Brian Haydin Business analysts, they were responsible to like almost office space, like I get the requirements and I handles, you know, that type of stuff, and you know, it, but you know, then that was the early night, that was like the 90s, and then in the you know, 2000s we had Scrum Masters, we had you know, product owners, you know, kind of a slightly different title-ish, right, and. 0:4:7.97 –> 0:4:27.377 Brian Haydin You know, today we’re kind of looking at pretty much the same roles almost. I mean, business analysts still kind of exist in today’s world. They understand the workflow, they connect business needs, technical requirements. Solution architects are people that, you know, can sit at an elevated position, understanding. 0:4:27.577 –> 0:4:50.257 Brian Haydin how the different systems connect with each other, understand the business problems that it’s solving, you know, as well as the technology, and then, you know, somebody like that is actually doing the work, right? And there’s this new AI product leader and forward deployed engineer kind of thing that’s coming out. And from my perspective, I think when we were talking about it, it really is like, 0:4:50.497 –> 0:5:9.577 Brian Haydin It really hit me like we had a product owner. Well, now that’s somebody that’s just managing the AI process and business analyst, and that is those skills really kind of translate. What do you what do you think about that? How do you do you feel like similar similar skill sets? 0:5:10.177 –> 0:5:12.337 Brian Haydin Or is it new tools? 0:5:13.57 –> 0:5:34.297 Sarah Bourke Yeah, I mean, I know I love this discussion we had, what was it, like a couple of weeks ago? And yeah, it’s really key, right? Because I think why this really matters, especially in talent acquisition, is knowing the journey and these changes, but what’s in common, it’s like there is probably a wider point. 0:5:17.697 –> 0:5:18.177 Brian Haydin Yeah. 0:5:34.577 –> 0:5:55.577 Sarah Bourke of talent than what the title itself suggests. So there are a lot of strong candidates out there, right, who maybe have a lot of experience discovering business problems or translating between the technical and the business. And so maybe they haven’t actually had that. 0:5:55.857 –> 0:6:1.697 Sarah Bourke AI product odor or FDE title, but they have a lot of this experience we’re looking for. 0:6:2.577 –> 0:6:22.897 Brian Haydin Yeah, right? They definitely do. And which, you know, for us, it’s like, what are those new skills? How do you translate those skills from what were these older traditional, you know, type of roles into the new ones? So here’s like a, I’ll just give you like a story, you know, from 0:6:23.57 –> 0:6:41.537 Brian Haydin from back in my day. I remember working at a bank, a large, you know, a large bank, but they had very, very technical business analysts. I mean, they were designing schemas for databases. They were mapping all the fields. They would work with the business, you know, 0:6:38.657 –> 0:6:39.217 Sarah Bourke Okay. 0:6:41.977 –> 0:7:0.337 Brian Haydin And in a lot of ways, they could write like the stored procedures that we would use as developers to like do this stuff. Like, yeah, we’re like really, really into the weeds. And like, you know, so I feel like some of these forward deployed engineers are some of those those like kind of skills. And so I just wanted to get your perspective. 0:6:49.777 –> 0:6:50.577 Sarah Bourke Wow, okay. 0:7:1.217 –> 0:7:8.577 Brian Haydin on what skills do move to the right, right? What starts with what you currently have and what goes to the right side. 0:7:9.697 –> 0:7:28.657 Sarah Bourke Yes, and I think this is like a really, this slide here talks about a really good starting place. That’s all it is, right? It’s kind of a place to start. You know, so like we’ve been talking about, okay, there’s these existing like transferable skills that a lot of folks have from maybe those formerly, 0:7:29.17 –> 0:7:51.97 Sarah Bourke or former titles. And so you can kind of split it up right into like the transferable existing, which would maybe be like stakeholder judgment, you know, the discipline around the delivery, workflow discovery, and then, you know, of course, like. 0:7:51.217 –> 0:8:13.777 Sarah Bourke All of that is central to the work and like you talked about in this example, maybe some of those technical chops, they can get pretty deep into the weeds. But as you start to move kind of right, there is some transferable experience, yes, and they do need to demonstrate these new technologies, this new knowledge, 0:8:13.937 –> 0:8:27.537 Sarah Bourke in addition to that, because there is still like this gap, right? And they have to be able to demonstrate the AI fluency, you know, understanding the limits of the tools and which tools to use. 0:8:28.97 –> 0:8:47.137 Brian Haydin I was just going to say, you touched very briefly on that for a second, but these new skills, right? What must be demonstrated? We talk about AI, applied AI fluency. What are some of the things that you’re looking for when you talk to people for these roles? 0:8:47.497 –> 0:9:4.897 Brian Haydin What does that mean? We’ll go through this list really just for a second. Like, how do you scale, like, because I think a lot of people that are here listening to this want to understand what should I be looking for? What should I be listening for? Or maybe even like, I want to level my skills up, what should I be focusing on? So let’s start with AI fluency. 0:9:5.857 –> 0:9:26.257 Sarah Bourke Yeah, so usually what I’m looking for here is I want to make sure that, I mean, we all know like AI is changing on a daily, right? It changes very quickly. So usually I’m asking like how this candidate or applicant is keeping up with AI, what they are engaging in in terms of outside 0:9:26.337 –> 0:9:35.217 Sarah Bourke communities to really understand what’s new and what’s the latest and the greatest. And then I’m also wanting to make sure that they kind of understand. 0:9:36.537 –> 0:9:42.257 Sarah Bourke where and what specific AI tools are where they’d be useful. 0:9:43.457 –> 0:10:2.17 Brian Haydin Yeah, I would, I want to stack onto that too, just a little bit. And so you do a great job of talking to candidates and vetting them out, whether they’re, you know, serious or they’re seriously interested in AI work. When I start talking to them, I want to understand, like, how do they really delineate machine learning from AI? 0:10:3.297 –> 0:10:3.777 Sarah Bourke Okay. 0:10:12.897 –> 0:10:13.377 Sarah Bourke Mhm. 0:10:13.417 –> 0:10:32.257 Brian Haydin You know, just a, you know, a Q&A kind of chat bot, right? So from that perspective, like, you know, an AI fluency to me means not just understanding like, you know, what tools are out there, but like when to use the right tools for what types of jobs. And that’s really important. 0:10:32.977 –> 0:10:56.817 Brian Haydin Next on the list is, you know, evaluating non-deterministic output. And I think we’re going to talk a little bit more about this, so I want to make sure that the people in the audience kind of understand what we’re talking about. So, you know, in traditional software, it’s a very deterministic result. You put in a number into a field and you click save, and it calculates a thing, and it puts it into a database. You can go check to see that that 0:10:57.137 –> 0:11:16.17 Brian Haydin value got put in the place that you wanted or that you know, it’s just it’s deterministic. In the AI sense though, it’s not right. You’re asking a question and you get an answer. And how do you know if it’s right with like the nuances of words? Just think about the English language, you know, for us and maybe, you know. 0:11:16.257 –> 0:11:38.497 Brian Haydin I might use a word that has a slightly different meaning than Sarah would have. And so that can cause confusion. And it’s the same thing when you get these AI results. Like you want to be able to say, like, is that the right answer without saying these five words had to be in the exact same order every single time, because that’s not going to happen. So people that have those kind of skills and know what to look for. 0:11:39.617 –> 0:11:57.937 Brian Haydin I would say, and I don’t want to get too far into the weeds on this, but like another good example of evaluating this type of output is just because you got the right answer, it doesn’t mean that the answer is correct. You know, you have to know how AI got the answer. 0:11:58.97 –> 0:12:18.577 Brian Haydin you know, you have to know, did it call the right tools? Did it actually go look into the database? Did it actually go check the weather, you know, and give you the answer in order to just make it up, right? So that’s what we’re kind of talking is, are those skills that you are seeing more and more, specifically talking about the evaluating and, you know, testing, you know, kind of aspect. 0:12:18.697 –> 0:12:20.17 Brian Haydin What are your thoughts on that? 0:12:20.737 –> 0:12:37.937 Sarah Bourke Yeah, starting to see this more and more, probably just within the last like 3, four months, I would say. This is going to continue to be something that people are talking about more and more. And you know, what you’re looking at is just like, can this candidate really like, 0:12:39.57 –> 0:12:48.817 Sarah Bourke take you on the journey and like understand what’s going on under the hood, right? Which is exactly what you described to. So. 0:12:49.617 –> 0:13:9.777 Brian Haydin Yeah, and then the last one, knowing the limits of the tools, you know, I think it’s pretty transparent, you know, pretty obvious. Well, it’s obvious to me, I work with this stuff every day, but like, you know, is this like people use Chatgpt or Claude or Copilot even, you know, and you get wowed by the first answer. 0:13:10.257 –> 0:13:31.137 Brian Haydin And then you start thinking about it and you’re like, that really wasn’t the right answer. So knowing the limits of what the tools are capable of and which models can do certain things, I think is an important thing for us to establish. One of the more important aspects of like this slide to me is that don’t lose any of the skills that got you to where you are in your career, right? 0:13:31.497 –> 0:13:46.17 Brian Haydin having that like, you know, business sense, the mindset, the understanding of ERPs, like those are all still valuable skills. But you can add on to that some of the supplemental stuff as well. So, but some. 0:13:32.257 –> 0:13:32.737 Sarah Bourke Right. 0:13:47.297 –> 0:14:6.137 Brian Haydin Let’s do a little bit of a lightning round. Let’s do, I’ve got a couple of job titles. Let’s start talking about the job titles themselves. And these are some that have been floating around. I’m going to throw some polls up here in a second. And what I want people to do is, as we talk about each one of them, say, is this a real new job? 0:14:6.817 –> 0:14:24.817 Brian Haydin Is this just a job that’s been rebranded? Or the third option is responsibility. And what we mean by that is that this is just, you have your job, but now you sort of have to do this as well. So it’s just added responsibility to the one. So let’s go first with the AI product owner. 0:14:25.297 –> 0:14:32.417 Brian Haydin Um, and Sarah, what are, what’s a good two sentence description of what an AI product owner is? 0:14:33.937 –> 0:14:41.537 Sarah Bourke Someone who owns the entire like AI product strategy. 0:14:43.777 –> 0:15:3.217 Brian Haydin Yeah, so I, exactly. So one way I would say that an AI product owner is responsible for evaluating certain AI initiatives, AI projects, AI tools, and whether it provides real business value for the organization, helping the executive team prioritize 0:15:4.97 –> 0:15:11.697 Brian Haydin You know what, which ones that they should be focusing on, how to measure results, right? Like, it’s sort of that that all in. 0:15:14.257 –> 0:15:25.937 Brian Haydin So, seeing kind of a little bit of a 50-50 split here between real and rebranded. You know, I, Sarah, what was your thought before we go on to the next one? Which one did you vote for? 0:15:26.257 –> 0:15:45.497 Sarah Bourke Yeah, I would probably say 2 for this one. I mean, I can see the business case for it maybe being a real new one, but I also feel like especially going back to that slide where we walked through the transferable, I’d lean more toward rebranded. 0:15:47.377 –> 0:16:6.97 Brian Haydin I kind of, I’m with you. I actually voted for rebranded too, and I really struggle with this being a new role versus not. Let’s move on to a forward deployed engineer. That’s one is, I think, probably the hottest job title that I’m seeing in the marketplace, you know, and 0:15:51.297 –> 0:15:51.777 Sarah Bourke Okay. 0:16:6.577 –> 0:16:9.857 Brian Haydin Can you talk a little bit about what that role is, what people are asking for? 0:16:10.897 –> 0:16:29.537 Sarah Bourke Yeah, so for forward deployed engineer, I would say we’re usually a customer is looking for someone who is very technical, hands-on on the AI engineering side, but someone who can sit with the business of the customer and really real time be 0:16:30.657 –> 0:16:41.537 Sarah Bourke really deep in the requirements and understanding like exactly how you know this agent or whatever they may be building is going to be used and what the workflow is. 0:16:42.417 –> 0:17:1.377 Brian Haydin Yeah, but they have to build it too, right? That’s the thing is that like, they’re the ones that are building it. These are the new software engineers, you know, that you rely on, but it’s, they have to have that business sense because there is no, there is no like, you know, turnstile kind of rotating your, 0:16:45.457 –> 0:16:46.657 Sarah Bourke Absolutely, yep. 0:17:1.497 –> 0:17:21.457 Brian Haydin you know, here’s the requirements, you’re a developer, you go get the thing. Like it’s kind of expected to be done in the real time. I also find that a lot of times these agents with the tools to build them are so quick to market, right? You can get an agent built in a couple of anywhere from a couple hours to a couple days to a couple of weeks. Like it’s not like super, you know. 0:17:21.857 –> 0:17:39.137 Brian Haydin super hard for some of these things, you know, you don’t have time to sit there and like go through the requirements and, you know, you know, hand these things off as well. So it looks like a lot of people think this is more of a responsibility. That seems to be the one that’s taking away. What do you what do you think? 0:17:22.337 –> 0:17:22.897 Sarah Bourke Right. 0:17:35.537 –> 0:17:36.417 Sarah Bourke Interesting. 0:17:39.777 –> 0:18:0.737 Sarah Bourke Wow, yeah, I’m really surprised by that. Actually, I would have, I voted one for this one. Because I think while there are some transferable skills, this is like different than we’ve seen before when you talk about like them really being deep in the requirements and the business side, you know, sitting with the customer, but also building the thing. 0:17:45.297 –> 0:17:45.857 Brian Haydin Yeah. 0:18:1.17 –> 0:18:3.57 Sarah Bourke So I went with one. What about you? 0:18:3.457 –> 0:18:23.537 Brian Haydin Oh man, I was one all the way. I didn’t even think about it. It was like, this is a new job. I mean, there are definitely a lot of, there’s definitely a lot of skills that transfer, but the people that are in, that are good in one of those areas, whether it’s like the engineering aspect of it or the forward deployed aspect of it, like they have to learn a new skill, right? 0:18:8.417 –> 0:18:9.537 Sarah Bourke So that’s interesting. 0:18:18.737 –> 0:18:19.297 Sarah Bourke Okay. 0:18:23.577 –> 0:18:43.457 Brian Haydin They don’t, they don’t naturally have that. So if I was working with a business analyst and want to get them into a forward deployed engineer, I mean, we had some really fantastic ones that I’ve worked with here in the past that were pretty much forward deployed engineers before AI. But like, it’s usually, that’s a skill. They have to learn how to build tools. Like they know software requirements. 0:18:43.777 –> 0:19:5.297 Brian Haydin but actually building with something they’d never really done before and they have to kind of get in that mode. Or you could have people that are really good developers that have naturally been good at working with business users and stuff like that. But now they have to take that discipline of gathering requirements and documenting requirements, something that they usually could have somebody else do and sort of add that. So yeah, man, I said, 0:19:4.257 –> 0:19:4.657 Sarah Bourke Right. 0:19:5.457 –> 0:19:24.497 Brian Haydin I feel like this is a new job that you could move somebody into it, but it’s a definitely a different job title and it’s definitely not rebranded. And I find it to be hard to call it a responsibility, but I guess I could see like, we’re just going to make you do other things, if that’s really what people are thinking, but. 0:19:25.537 –> 0:19:43.937 Brian Haydin So, let’s move on real quick to, yeah, let’s go on to the evals engineers. So, yeah, I’ll take this one for a second. You know, we talked about, you know, writing evals and having that like mindset of being able to test non-deterministic systems. 0:19:26.257 –> 0:19:27.457 Sarah Bourke Yeah, really interesting. 0:19:44.977 –> 0:19:59.697 Brian Haydin And the harnesses, the way that we use these things are definitely different than the tools that we’ve used before, some kind of planting, you know, maybe the answer here. But, you know, what do you think? I mean, I’ll let you go first on what your thoughts are on this. 0:20:3.457 –> 0:20:14.657 Sarah Bourke I would say that this is a real and a new role, but I would say it depends on the organization if it needs to be a full time hire for everyone. 0:20:15.57 –> 0:20:34.537 Brian Haydin Yeah, yeah, well, that’s a really fair point. And I would say that it’s, from my perspective, they’re definitely new skill sets. I could make an argument. I mean, I’m seeing here nobody that rebranded, but I could make an argument that your traditional QA people just need to learn new skills. 0:20:25.697 –> 0:20:26.97 Sarah Bourke Okay. 0:20:34.697 –> 0:20:54.617 Brian Haydin new testing methodologies, new skills, you know, to be able to support that. But it is a very different way of thinking about things. So I could also appreciate why people would think that it’s not, you know, that it’s that it is there is some difference to it. But interesting. Yeah, definitely interesting results here. And then the last one is this AI governance lead. 0:20:47.937 –> 0:20:50.177 Sarah Bourke Interesting, yeah, that makes sense. 0:20:55.417 –> 0:20:59.657 Brian Haydin So do you want to talk about that? You want me to talk about it? Which you want? I don’t want to hog the… 0:20:58.977 –> 0:21:3.457 Sarah Bourke You first and then I’ll kind of add some of my own recruiting side. 0:21:4.217 –> 0:21:5.337 Brian Haydin So this is. 0:21:7.17 –> 0:21:31.17 Brian Haydin This is a really interesting one. There was a lot of governance talk at the beginning of like the Chatgpt, Openai, you know, sort of, you know, our data protect, you know, there was a lot of concern about it, but nobody really invested in governance itself. And it wasn’t until like agents started to really explode where Copilot users could actually create their own agents and 0:21:31.257 –> 0:21:54.57 Brian Haydin Copilot Studio became not a paid license, but something people could actually use with their Microsoft licenses, we started to see some of this agent Sprawl. And I think organizations are getting concerned about that. It reminds me, back to my 1990s, you know, of all the access databases that used to be out there running businesses. We have all these agents that are out there running businesses now. 0:21:54.497 –> 0:22:14.697 Brian Haydin And so, there’s definitely an uptick of interest in AI governance and what that means to an organization. And there’s not a real clear set of tools either yet that tell people what, what it, you know, what it means or what it, you know, what those job skills are. So, this is a tough one for me to kind of categorize. I don’t… 0:22:15.337 –> 0:22:16.497 Brian Haydin Your thoughts on it. 0:22:17.57 –> 0:22:38.417 Sarah Bourke I was thinking the same thing. Like, I feel like I could build a case for either one, two, or three for this one. Just depends on like, you know, because on one hand, it’s a real new role, but then I’m like, well, is it sort of the kind of, maybe it just falls into the AI product owner? 0:22:23.97 –> 0:22:23.737 Brian Haydin Yeah. 0:22:39.217 –> 0:22:52.177 Sarah Bourke role in a way and or is it built out and then maybe kind of spread the responsibilities across some other existing roles in the org, right? I just think it depends. 0:22:50.137 –> 0:22:50.417 Brian Haydin Yeah. 0:22:52.377 –> 0:22:53.177 Brian Haydin What did you vote? 0:22:54.617 –> 0:22:55.97 Brian Haydin Did you? 0:22:54.657 –> 0:22:56.657 Sarah Bourke I voted responsibility 3. 0:22:56.177 –> 0:23:21.57 Brian Haydin Yeah, that was me too. I did responsibility. I think until we really have the center of gravity kind of come into like a plane of existence, like a real control plane that people can manage, I just think it’s going to be a responsibility that people that work either in the administrative, like office administrative, like or security admins, like they’re just going to have to take on this responsibility. 0:23:5.297 –> 0:23:5.777 Sarah Bourke Okay. 0:23:21.57 –> 0:23:44.577 Brian Haydin responsibility until we sort of get a little bit more muscle memory about that. All right, so job titles aside, you know, I wanted to like sort of reflect a little bit on like how agents are built, how Concurrency approaches this, and we’ll kind of like take these skill sets, you know, eventually and sort of talk about it. But when we start agent projects or any kind of AI project, 0:23:44.657 –> 0:24:9.17 Brian Haydin generally. We’re trying to choose and figure out what the right priorities are. So I might sit with a group of executives or a group of business leaders at an organization and say, what are some things that would move the needle in AI for the organization? And then we have to figure out what the ROI is. We have to figure out what the impact is, the data readiness. And that helps us basically prioritize each one of those 0:24:9.657 –> 0:24:28.897 Brian Haydin projects that we might consider, and then we choose it. Then we move into a build phase, so we get somebody that’s going to actually, or a team that’s going to start building the agent to the AI product that we’re building, and you know, definitely engineering. And then we move into this, we’ve released this in the wild, and now what’s happening? 0:24:28.977 –> 0:24:47.977 Brian Haydin Can we prove that it is actually doing the things we expect it to do? So do we have the right success metrics? Not only defined, but are we calculating the right success metrics? Are we measuring those against what our expected results are and are we figuring out what the right tolerances are of getting wrong answers? 0:24:48.377 –> 0:25:13.137 Brian Haydin So that’s that proof stage, and then govern. So now it’s been in the wild. How are we monitoring this? How are we controlling costs? Who gets to decide when new features are added? You know, all that type of stuff, right? So those are the responsibilities. And, you know, I also, well, I kind of wanted to map that out to like what some of those titles were that we just talked about. And so 0:25:13.137 –> 0:25:20.297 Brian Haydin So Sarah, why don’t you walk us through a little bit about the product owner? Why, like that seems like an obvious one, right? 0:25:21.457 –> 0:25:45.217 Sarah Bourke Yeah, I mean, I think, well, first off, just kind of backing up a little bit, like this exercise is so important, right? Because you’re kind of first deciding like, what is the work, right? You start with where the work is. Is it choose, is it build, is it prove, or is it govern? And at that point in the process, like you don’t even need any titles at all, right? You’re really just talking about the work itself. 0:25:37.817 –> 0:25:38.217 Brian Haydin Yeah. 0:25:45.697 –> 0:25:50.497 Sarah Bourke And I think you can just have a much better back and forth conversation about… 0:25:52.737 –> 0:26:11.617 Sarah Bourke about that part first before you start to talk about like a job description or title or opening or acquisition. So I love this idea of just like first and foremost, let’s talk about the work itself, right? Which one is it? And then yeah, I feel like of course it makes sense if you’re still choosing. 0:26:7.977 –> 0:26:8.377 Brian Haydin Yay. 0:26:11.977 –> 0:26:31.57 Sarah Bourke that you’re looking at more of that AI product owner, right? Like, we’re talking about prioritizing, we’re talking about tying the work back to the ROI, right? You’re still kind of in that discovery phase where you really want to lean on a product owner, an AI product owner here. 0:26:32.57 –> 0:26:50.777 Brian Haydin Yeah, exactly. And I think that you called it out when we were talking about this earlier, too, about trying to leave the job titles out of the conversation. Where are the bottlenecks for the organization happening right now? And that kind of tells you, like, if you really need to. And look, I would also say that a take away that you and I talked about earlier on this 0:26:42.577 –> 0:26:43.57 Sarah Bourke Right. 0:26:51.177 –> 0:27:12.177 Brian Haydin this slide specifically is just because you might be having some problem with proving it doesn’t mean that you have to go out and rush and hire a bunch of e-mail engineers. Like, you know, you might have to concentrate on those job skills a little bit, but that doesn’t mean that you should be going out and hiring these people. It kind of has to determine like, how big is your organization? How many agents do you have? What’s the business impact? 0:27:0.657 –> 0:27:1.57 Sarah Bourke Right. 0:27:12.297 –> 0:27:20.537 Brian Haydin to some of these that definitely can drive that conversation. So, all right. So. 0:27:22.617 –> 0:27:42.937 Brian Haydin I wanted to like just say that from our perspective with Concurrency, customers come to us generally asking for one of two roles. They’re asking either for product leadership, that product AI, you know, or the AI product manager, that’s something along that lines. Or they come to us and asking, you know, for a forward deployed engineers. Like they. 0:27:43.97 –> 0:28:3.377 Brian Haydin Those are the two roles that instantaneously people are kind of coming to us. And they, those, if you have the ability to hire both of those, there’s crossover where those two work together. And so I think what I wanted to talk about here was on the product leadership, if you’re gravitating from there, you’re generally having a problem 0:28:4.137 –> 0:28:24.97 Brian Haydin deciding on the values and priorities, developing A roadmap, how we’re going to measure trade-offs that, you know, different initiatives would have versus another one, and then most importantly, what the business success measures are. You know, and so if you’re at that stage, you know, and you’re just trying to figure that out, you’re probably going to lean in with the product leadership. 0:28:24.177 –> 0:28:46.537 Brian Haydin But notice how the shared responsibilities from a forward deployed engineer means that that person ought to be able to get into discovery with technical users and they be able to they should be able to challenge some of the assumptions and maybe do a little bit of building, but like predominantly, they’re going to really be able to lean in from even from a technical perspective to help the organization decide. 0:28:46.977 –> 0:29:7.337 Brian Haydin where to prioritize some of these and how to get started. Now, you might already have some of that. And we’re starting like with, you know, people bringing in the four deployed engineers first. And I think that’s okay, because they’re starting with that, already having ideas, the creativity of ideation around this. 0:29:7.617 –> 0:29:27.337 Brian Haydin and they’re going straight into like, let’s work with the users and do technical understanding of this, and then that person can also build it. So I could kind of go, you know, either way on this one, where people are starting. I, where, what resonates with you more on this? Do you feel like product leadership is a good starting point for 0:29:27.457 –> 0:29:32.617 Brian Haydin Employees engineer is a good starting point, and what are customers do you think asking you for the most? 0:29:33.857 –> 0:29:54.817 Sarah Bourke Yeah, I mean, I, so for me personally, I think there is this overlap in the center, but like you need both and you, and you should start with product leadership because you know, a forward deployed engineer, and again, this doesn’t mean you need to bring 2 brand new full time titles in, right? Like we’ve talked about, but. 0:29:55.297 –> 0:30:14.17 Sarah Bourke For a deployed engineer is going to be able to really help around requirements, but they don’t have the discipline right to really to really tie this to the organization’s goals and their Roi like a product leader does, and on the same. 0:30:14.497 –> 0:30:33.17 Sarah Bourke note, right? The product leader really, they’re going to be like, they’re going to know enough about AI to be dangerous, but they’re probably not going to be building. So I mean, in my opinion, I feel like you need both and there is overlap, but it does not mean that like both of these roles have like 0:30:33.337 –> 0:30:35.577 Sarah Bourke The same accountability. 0:30:36.777 –> 0:30:59.177 Brian Haydin I think I’m going to challenge you on that a little bit. And there’s not a one-size-fits-all. So it’s not like nobody’s wrong when you answer one way or the other in this. But I’m just thinking about the last couple of years and some of the different organizations that I’ve worked with in the past. And like, if you have strong leadership that has a good understanding of the technology, 0:30:39.817 –> 0:30:40.297 Sarah Bourke Okay. 0:30:59.657 –> 0:31:19.97 Brian Haydin They can fill some of that gap. I’m thinking of some of the CIOs that we’ve worked with, without naming names, that, you know, in the last couple of years, where they’ve really been driving that product leadership and saying, this is important, we need to focus on this use case. And then they’ve leaned in with somebody on the forward deployed engineer a little bit harder. 0:30:59.737 –> 0:31:0.217 Sarah Bourke Okay. 0:31:19.497 –> 0:31:39.897 Brian Haydin because they knew the mission, right? They knew the business value and they could kind of define that. And I just need somebody that’s going to come in and prove this to the business. Now, what winds up happening in that case is that get this forward deployed engineer and that leader has gotten a win under their belt. And then now they can bring in more product leadership. I never see it happen where that 0:31:39.977 –> 0:31:58.137 Brian Haydin CIO, that executive, like stays that product leader for long, but sometimes they bring that forward, deployed engineer in first to build momentum for the organization, and that allows them to, you know, bring in that product leadership, because now it’s like, oh, we’re going to have 10 of these projects, not just one. So I could go either way, but 0:31:58.777 –> 0:32:4.577 Sarah Bourke I guess I can see where like maybe you may get momentum with the FDE, but aren’t you going to. 0:31:59.177 –> 0:31:59.817 Brian Haydin And it wasn’t. 0:32:6.457 –> 0:32:27.497 Sarah Bourke Okay, maybe the better way for me to frame it is like, there’s a gap in both places if you’re not filling the gap, right? So you could technically start out with an FDE for a little while first, or you could start out with the product leadership first, but 0:32:7.257 –> 0:32:10.377 Brian Haydin Yeah, play devil’s advocate. Come back at me. I like it. I like this. 0:32:27.657 –> 0:32:30.617 Sarah Bourke Eventually, you’re going to feel that gap. 0:32:31.577 –> 0:32:53.737 Brian Haydin Yeah, I do agree that you will feel that you will have that gap. So let’s see. I’m going to take a pause. We’re going to do some ad hoc, you know, type stuff here really quick. A little surprise, surprise. But for the audience, I just want to say if you have some questions, feel free to, you know, pop some things in the chat. We’ll try to monitor them and answer them. But 0:32:43.497 –> 0:32:43.977 Sarah Bourke Okay. 0:32:54.17 –> 0:33:12.857 Brian Haydin Several of you did ask some questions coming into this when you registered. So John, you asked, as the organization’s plan for 2027, is the forward deployed project manager a new role or simply a future evolution of project management product management? And so 0:33:13.657 –> 0:33:31.897 Brian Haydin You just, well, first, John, I think that you kind of smooshed the two titles together with a forward deployed product manager. And I guess that’s a thing too, but I would separate those roles would be my first gut check for this specific reason, because I think there’s overlap. 0:33:31.937 –> 0:33:45.417 Brian Haydin I don’t think you’re going to find that unicorn that can be a product manager and do all the engineering. You can find people to do it, but man, that is a that is a that is a unicorn, right, Sarah? 0:33:46.217 –> 0:33:56.697 Sarah Bourke Right, hard to find, really hard to find, especially when you’re talking about some of these tools and technologies that are so, so new. 0:33:57.577 –> 0:34:16.627 Brian Haydin So now the second-half of that question was, is it simply a future evolution of product management? And we kind of did the voting on this one already. So we sort of like, you know, kind of go either way. You know, for your organization, John, I would say that this is definitely a 0:34:16.697 –> 0:34:37.177 Brian Haydin new role, just based on what I know about you guys. But for the rest of you that I’m not talking specifically to, I would say, like we had that conversation before, it could kind of be either way. What’s your maturity level? How much of A workload is it? I think that if you have product management that is 0:34:28.777 –> 0:34:31.17 Sarah Bourke Depends. It does, yeah. 0:34:37.577 –> 0:34:48.377 Brian Haydin you know, AI forward thinking, you know, type of, you know, people, you could probably evolve them into that role, but it also could be a new hire. 0:34:51.97 –> 0:35:11.577 Brian Haydin See, another question was how to move from IT to business in pharma AD&D and be a user of AI driven solutions and become an AI visionary. So that’s a lot there. But how to move from IT into business. So this is that, going back to that slide where we said 0:35:11.897 –> 0:35:18.377 Brian Haydin traditional skills into the new skills. And I would lean back into that to answer this question. Sarah, what are your thoughts? 0:35:19.257 –> 0:35:43.937 Sarah Bourke Yeah, I think so too. It goes back to that slide where we talk about what’s transferable and what’s new. So if you’re looking to, you know, stay up on this and kind of where can you build more skills, I think it’s going to be that right side of that slide where we talked about understanding the right use cases and the latest tools in AI and then understanding where 0:35:45.97 –> 0:35:51.417 Sarah Bourke where it might break and what risks there are. So, that, that, that, that’s what I think. 0:35:52.217 –> 0:36:11.977 Brian Haydin All right, let’s jump to the next slide. Where projects tend to stall, you know, so this is, I guess this is kind of like the strongest argument for governance, you know, in general, where people are struggling right now is that 0:36:13.97 –> 0:36:31.57 Brian Haydin Projects tend to get deployed. These AI, you know, these AI Agents or some sort of an AI project get deployed and they can stall out there for a couple of different reasons. Mostly it comes down to trust. And trust can be, I don’t want to get into the politics or whatever of AI, but, you know, it could just be like a general 0:36:31.257 –> 0:36:50.937 Brian Haydin Like, I don’t want AI taking my job. Or it could be, it gives me the wrong answer, like, you know, 20% of the time or 30% of the time and I got to do the work anyways, so why am I using this? And so those are real. I just want to acknowledge that those are real things that happen with agents. It’s not predictable. 0:36:51.977 –> 0:37:11.257 Brian Haydin You know, I could start off a project with a customer and say, this feels like we’re going to get about 60% of the workload automated, and then it turns out to be 13. You know, I mean, it literally had a case where we thought it was like 80%, and then we put it in the field, and it was like 13% of it was actually like things that could be automated. 0:37:12.857 –> 0:37:33.737 Brian Haydin And what is important about some of those lessons is that if you have nice engineering in that proof state where you can actually see what the agent is doing and go back and explain it to the business users, then you can get over that kind of trust hurdle in this like 13% use case. 0:37:34.857 –> 0:37:55.737 Brian Haydin The reality is once we explained it to the business users, the agent was doing the right thing. It was actually following the rules that were established, but they couldn’t see what, why it was making the decisions that it was making. So it just didn’t have the trust. And I think that’s why it’s important to think about that evals engineer and telemetry and agent ops, you know, that 0:37:47.897 –> 0:37:48.417 Sarah Bourke Mhm. 0:37:55.977 –> 0:38:20.457 Brian Haydin that whole story. And then the other part of that trust is like the governance aspect of it. Like I just can’t let something perform actions on my behalf. Like that’s a lot of responsibility. I was talking with an executive team a couple of weeks ago and said, you know, if I give this agent the ability to act on that user’s behalf and that user happens to be the CFO of an organization. 0:38:20.817 –> 0:38:44.577 Brian Haydin just think of what that means. Like if they can do everything that the CFO can do, that’s a lot of power to give to an agent. So you got to be kind of mindful about that and then have like the ability to control it and make decisions about when it should be able to do that, et cetera. So I know this is kind of a technical lead-in slide, but I just want to give you an opportunity to give any 0:38:26.977 –> 0:38:27.257 Sarah Bourke Yeah. 0:38:44.697 –> 0:38:46.457 Brian Haydin perspective that you have here, Sarah. 0:38:47.417 –> 0:38:51.657 Sarah Bourke Yeah, not a ton. I guess for me, I’m not seeing these. 0:38:52.537 –> 0:39:12.777 Sarah Bourke these roles as much, right, as like the AI product management and for deployed engineer. But I think I will. I think I will start to see this gap more and more. You know, it’s just, it’s not what I’m seeing from our customers a lot yet. 0:38:55.897 –> 0:38:56.377 Brian Haydin Yeah. 0:39:13.657 –> 0:39:31.857 Brian Haydin Yeah, I would agree. It’s kind of quiet yet on means, but I think you’re going to see that change as it’s more and more commonplace for people to have agents that are running in their system and they’re seeing either anomalies or lack 0:39:31.977 –> 0:39:39.177 Brian Haydin progress or you know want to gain even more momentum than they have. These will be important roles to be thinking about. So which can. 0:39:38.297 –> 0:39:58.697 Sarah Bourke I think especially with like the evals engineer, right? It’s like once there is more in production, we’re going to start to see that more and more. And I think on the governance side, there’s that seems like it’s sort of like baked in as a responsibility in other areas so far. 0:39:58.857 –> 0:40:1.577 Sarah Bourke with the customers that I’m engaged with. 0:40:2.777 –> 0:40:14.777 Brian Haydin Well, I want to get another poll because I set all these up, so I want to use them, darn it. But why not exactly, right? Let’s see, we got one thing here in the Q&A. Let’s do that real quick. 0:40:8.577 –> 0:40:12.497 Sarah Bourke Because why not? Yeah. 0:40:17.17 –> 0:40:36.537 Brian Haydin This diagram highlights discovery with users, challenging assumptions, and iteration as critical functions between product and engineering. Many organizations rely on UX researchers for exactly those activities. AI changes how work gets done. Do you see UX being more central to the shared middle? 0:40:36.857 –> 0:40:57.257 Brian Haydin or do you see those responsibilities being absorbed into other roles? Adrian, that is a fantastic question. UX has always been something that I’ve really been a supporter of, and Sarah can attest to this. I mean, I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the best UX people that Wisconsin has to offer, and I stayed pretty connected with them. 0:40:57.657 –> 0:41:18.17 Brian Haydin and the UX user group. I was at one of their meetings last month, and one of the things that I heard over and over from them is that UX as a traditional software role is really struggling to find work. And I challenged some of them to kind of think about how to take 0:41:18.97 –> 0:41:38.377 Brian Haydin those same human-centered design skills that they’ve been practicing for, you know, 10 or 15 years, you know, and apply those to the agent process and how people are likely to use AI. And so keeping that job title of UXR or, you know, UX just in general, 0:41:38.617 –> 0:41:58.577 Brian Haydin I think is going to be problematic because people aren’t looking for that job right now. They’re not looking for that job skill. But I think they are, just like I’ve always thought that business analysts would translate into a forward deployed engineer, super amazing. I think that now is the time where UX is going to transition into that. 0:41:58.697 –> 0:42:20.777 Brian Haydin pretty well. And I’m keeping an eye on the clock to make sure we don’t run out of time with my bloviating here. But let me give just one more sort of perspective on that little topic. And this is such a great question, Adrian. I remember talking with some of my UX people here at Concurrency over the years and saying, I do not want you to learn JavaScript and web development. 0:42:5.257 –> 0:42:5.737 Sarah Bourke Yeah. 0:42:21.177 –> 0:42:40.937 Brian Haydin It messes with your creativity aspect of it if you’re always concerned about, can I make this CSS padding fit? Can I get this control to do this kind of thing? And I want you not thinking about the technical limitations. I want you thinking with your creativity and not having to worry about it. We’re at a point with some of these tools where 0:42:41.497 –> 0:43:1.577 Brian Haydin like a UX person isn’t going to know how to write the code. They don’t even care about it. They just say, I want it to work like this and the tool will do it. So I think the time is kind of right for them to be able to have those kind of like whiteboarding sessions with, you know, end users and then build something for them to test and do AB testing like right there on the spot. 0:43:2.97 –> 0:43:20.777 Brian Haydin and say, oh, well, let’s tweak this, let’s have Claude change this thing, and then you take a look at it. So I know there’s a lot there, but that’s such a, I could probably do a whole talk on that. So let’s go back to this slide. And Sarah, why don’t you walk us through this while I bring up the poll? I got to get my screen back. 0:43:19.497 –> 0:43:20.297 Sarah Bourke Perfect. 0:43:21.497 –> 0:43:41.257 Sarah Bourke Perfect, yeah. Okay, so there’s four different situations, right? Brian’s going to pull up the poll, but the idea is just drop in there. Which situation are you really in the thick of today? You know, maybe there’s a few of these that resonate for you, but what’s 0:43:41.337 –> 0:43:44.537 Sarah Bourke costing you the most right now in your org. 0:43:45.737 –> 0:43:48.697 Sarah Bourke And then just uh, we’ll vote and then um. 0:43:50.137 –> 0:43:51.897 Sarah Bourke I can’t do two things at once, so let me vote. 0:43:52.457 –> 0:43:56.777 Brian Haydin Yeah, well, you want to do your vote. I’m seeing some of the responses come in. 0:43:54.537 –> 0:43:55.977 Sarah Bourke I know, yeah. 0:43:59.137 –> 0:44:0.937 Brian Haydin A lot of people are at AD&D. 0:44:2.697 –> 0:44:6.697 Brian Haydin Which is good. Uh, Sarah is going to cover a… 0:44:11.377 –> 0:44:13.17 Sarah Bourke Has everyone voted? 0:44:13.577 –> 0:44:32.57 Brian Haydin No, we got 10 responses. We’re good. We’re seeing very little D. We’re seeing a little bit more on the many ideas, no priorities, and then promising ideas, no evidence, and a stream, not a project is kind of like in the off to the side. So yeah, like. 0:44:15.897 –> 0:44:16.377 Sarah Bourke Okay. 0:44:32.857 –> 0:44:35.897 Brian Haydin Why don’t you kick us off with that many ideas, no priorities? 0:44:36.457 –> 0:44:55.417 Sarah Bourke Cool, yeah, sounds good. So for A, which looks like we’ve got the most votes in so far for A, so this is a common one. Yeah, I mean, usually when you’re at this point where there are a lot of ideas and no priorities, it is more of an authority. 0:44:42.537 –> 0:44:43.257 Brian Haydin Absolutely. 0:44:55.457 –> 0:45:14.617 Sarah Bourke Problem, you know, so you could maybe be looking at a need for an AI product leader, and but you also may have someone in the organization who has the protected time and like authority to kind of help help help you along that discovery. 0:45:15.737 –> 0:45:33.417 Brian Haydin Yeah, I would definitely, if that’s where your bottleneck is, I would start with that product leadership and strategy to help you set that. So promising ideas and no evidence. You know, this is, I answered it not from the lens of Concurrency, because 0:45:34.377 –> 0:45:53.657 Brian Haydin Like, I wanted to think about the lens of where I think most people are, and this is where I thought the most responses would be, was in the promising ideas, but no evidence, you know, of its success. And so a lot of the projects that we do at Concurrency start with a time boxed exercise to 0:45:39.257 –> 0:45:39.657 Sarah Bourke Okay. 0:45:53.737 –> 0:46:13.737 Brian Haydin prove the value, a proof of value, a validation, but a discovery aspect to make sure that you’re getting, that you’re doing the right things before you invest a lot of money and time, or hiring a resource, or et cetera. C, a stream and not a project, right? So do you want to take this one, Sarah? 0:46:14.537 –> 0:46:34.57 Sarah Bourke Sure, yeah. And we had quite a bit of responses for this too. Oh, it’s like pretty tied between C and B. I love watching this change. So yeah, for C, a stream, not a project, right? So it’s not a quick, you know, project team type of situation. You’ve actually, you see a steady stream. 0:46:21.17 –> 0:46:21.977 Brian Haydin Yep, yep. 0:46:34.337 –> 0:46:54.857 Sarah Bourke And I think this is where you can justify the ongoing work, right? And so in this case, if you’re at this point, you’re probably looking at more of a full-time capacity, where you’re not just talking about what happens initially at the launch, but you’re also looking at… 0:46:55.697 –> 0:46:59.97 Sarah Bourke What’s like the support and monitoring going to look like ongoing? 0:46:59.977 –> 0:47:19.17 Brian Haydin Yeah, I would add here too, like this resonates with that company that we were talking about earlier in the week. And they’re moving through the backlog really, really quick. They’ve got a lot of really good, like quick win agent ideas. They just need capacity to help build it, right? 0:47:16.937 –> 0:47:17.417 Sarah Bourke Right. 0:47:19.417 –> 0:47:39.577 Brian Haydin and no shortage of ideas, meaning there’s a stream, but not big enough to like carve out a big project that’s going to take two, three months. It’s more just like, can we get people in to help accelerate it? And then there’s one person who is got a defined outcome, but very specialized work, and 0:47:40.457 –> 0:47:59.257 Brian Haydin You know that that happens, like that’s a lot of that’s a lot of where I spend my time is with people that want to do like really detailed forecasting models and how to use those things. And that is a, you know, a specialized team and you’d work with somebody like Concurrency in a situation like that. 0:47:59.817 –> 0:48:2.457 Brian Haydin So, alright, Sarah. 0:48:4.377 –> 0:48:5.417 Sarah Bourke Yeah, cool. 0:48:4.697 –> 0:48:6.57 Brian Haydin Sponsors and champions. 0:48:7.97 –> 0:48:25.977 Sarah Bourke I know and I really wanted to have a slide about this in here because so, so important. So I’m not going to spend a ton of time on this, but I just want to like, when you’re talking about these, bringing these new roles into the organization, whatever they are, whether it’s project or 0:48:26.217 –> 0:48:49.97 Sarah Bourke or full time capacity, this idea of having an executive sponsor and having an AI champion is really important and they’re not the same thing. So, you know, when it comes to like an executive sponsor, you’re talking about someone who like authorizes and gets the funding for the work, you know, protects capacity. 0:48:49.577 –> 0:49:9.177 Sarah Bourke A champion, on the other hand, is like someone who has the domain knowledge and helps like that adoption internally and in the actual workflow. So you really usually do need both of these. And most of the time I would say they’re not the same person. I don’t know if you have thoughts around that, Brian. 0:49:10.217 –> 0:49:30.617 Brian Haydin definitely not the same person more often than not, right? Because the champion is somebody who’s going to be in the weeds. And yeah, I would I would just echo what you said. Every one of our every one of our customers we typically start with, you know, is the executive team bought in. 0:49:30.937 –> 0:49:49.897 Brian Haydin Are they going to sponsor this? Are they, you know, because, man, I’ve had projects that have kicked off and then like just the brakes get put on as soon as they caught wind of what we were doing, right? So definitely have that executive sponsor. And down at the bottom here, it’s not position, right? It’s just who’s going to be that person. 0:49:33.257 –> 0:49:33.657 Sarah Bourke Great. 0:49:49.497 –> 0:49:49.977 Sarah Bourke Right. 0:49:50.697 –> 0:50:11.417 Brian Haydin So like it could be the head of accounting, that’s the champion, you know, like they’re managing team of analysts and, you know, that we built a product for them. They got to figure it out, measure success and drive adoption, you know, or, or just the executive sponsor. And we talked about this a little bit earlier when I said that some of these Cio, some of these 0:50:11.977 –> 0:50:34.217 Brian Haydin you know, executives are, they’re pushing this. Like they’re pushing the executive level of funding, authorization, and making sure that they’re making space for their team to be able to invest in it. So I’m glad that you didn’t cut the slide or that you asked me to put it in. It is a really, really super important thing that people should be thinking about, you know, at this point. 0:50:35.417 –> 0:50:39.417 Brian Haydin And then, let’s see, alright, so… 0:50:40.377 –> 0:50:46.777 Brian Haydin what you bring and what you do next. So where do you want to start on this slide? 0:50:49.257 –> 0:51:8.497 Sarah Bourke Yeah, I mean, I feel like, so we’ve kind of already talked about like, we’ve narrowed in on like, what is the work that you need to get done, right? So now, let’s talk about how we actually cover that gap. And then like, obviously, and we talked about this in the last slide, each and every one of these, like, 0:51:8.777 –> 0:51:27.17 Sarah Bourke You need the internal partners, you need the decision authority and the workable foundation for any of these. Because you know, you can’t like just hire somebody or give someone the new responsibility and that fixes it, right? You’ve got to make sure that there’s… 0:51:28.377 –> 0:51:35.337 Sarah Bourke available data, clear mission, right? And that, you know, leaders are on the right track and know the direction. 0:51:34.817 –> 0:51:57.417 Brian Haydin Well, let’s not forget too, there’s one really important thing. We were talking about this, I took this note that like, it’s one thing just to find the person to come in and help you grow, help you, you know, hire. But you also have to have people inside your organization that are going to help them be successful. And you used a couple of the things like the tactical things, but like at the strategic level, I just wanted to say, 0:51:57.897 –> 0:52:16.617 Brian Haydin Like, do you have people identified in the organization that are going to make sure that this person is going to be successful as well? So, yeah, on the growing, hey, you know, we’re going to grow or hire on the embed and engage a team. You know, that’s, you know, when we get into more of the project-focused work, 0:52:17.657 –> 0:52:36.857 Brian Haydin you know, that’s when we can work in a couple of different capacities here at Concurrency. So we’ve had customers that they have people that are building these tools today and building agents, but they need, you know, just a little bit of acceleration or maybe just a little bit of specialization in there. 0:52:34.377 –> 0:52:34.857 Sarah Bourke Okay. 0:52:37.737 –> 0:52:58.857 Brian Haydin And so we’ll be kind of embedded, work side by side with them to build the agents. Or there’s other times where it could be that the specialized things that they need to have done, maybe it’s including hardware or something like that, where they just, they don’t really feel comfortable, they’ll offer that as a project for us and we take that on as. 0:52:59.977 –> 0:53:18.337 Brian Haydin Team, and then, or it could be that they know they could do this too, but they just really don’t have the capacity, and it’s a small enough thing that, hey, Concurrency, you know, you can go ahead and take that, so they’ll just engage a team. I think the, you know, the important part is… 0:53:18.457 –> 0:53:38.97 Brian Haydin you know, like you started out having the internal partners in any one of these areas, it’s important to have the internal partners that are going to make sure that we have the resources that we need, that we can get the information that we need, that we have access to the data, you know, that type of stuff. The decision authority is absolutely imperative. Like we, 0:53:38.297 –> 0:53:56.617 Brian Haydin everyone on the contracts that we write for a project says, I need to have a throat to choke. I need to know who that person is when there’s a disagreement about the direction that we should go. We’re at the fork in the road, who makes that final call, and get that called out ahead of time. And this applies for all four of these things, you know. 0:53:57.257 –> 0:54:15.657 Brian Haydin And then having that foundation is super important, right? Like understanding like what tools are in scope and out of scope, what governance controls you’re going to get put into place, what the spend, you know, is limits should be, you know, and these types of things. So those are all things that people are considering. And 0:54:15.97 –> 0:54:15.737 Sarah Bourke Agreed. 0:54:16.57 –> 0:54:17.977 Brian Haydin Yeah, anything to add before the… 0:54:19.137 –> 0:54:20.217 Brian Haydin Penultimate slide. 0:54:21.497 –> 0:54:41.737 Sarah Bourke Yeah, I think just like the distinction between, you know, trying to kind of grow or develop internal talent versus hiring. And I think, you know, this exercise and when you identify the gaps is really important because then you can determine like, is this gap really a bridgeable one that we can use that internal 0:54:39.737 –> 0:54:40.57 Brian Haydin Yeah. 0:54:42.697 –> 0:54:58.377 Sarah Bourke team member for and then also are you identifying what you’re taking off their plate, right? You talked about like the internal support or partner, but also like what do we, what do we deprioritizing, I guess. 0:54:58.937 –> 0:55:7.17 Brian Haydin Yeah, yeah, I would agree. We have 5 minutes left. I want to get to this slide because this is what to do next, right? Like, we’re like… 0:55:3.657 –> 0:55:4.937 Sarah Bourke Oh, wow. Okay. 0:55:10.537 –> 0:55:11.497 Sarah Bourke Yeah, for sure. 0:55:11.537 –> 0:55:32.137 Brian Haydin where we fit. Like, so where does Concurrency, I led a little bit into it in the last slide because it’s hard not to, but to really kind of make the transition here, how Concurrency can help you. I guess there’s really three different ways, you know, and it depends a little bit more on what’s in your way. Now, talent and embedded capacity. 0:55:32.217 –> 0:55:47.417 Brian Haydin We talked about that on the last slide, grow and hire. Sarah, I know I had a very pointed question I wanted to ask you about this one. And what are the things when somebody comes to talk to you about talent acquisition that you want to have the conversation? What’s important to you in that conversation? 0:55:48.937 –> 0:56:7.977 Sarah Bourke Yeah, I think like once we’re starting to talk about hiring and we’re talking about strategic staffing, I feel like this is when I start to get involved and really my first question is going to be not what title are you hiring for, right? But 0:56:7.737 –> 0:56:8.297 Brian Haydin Right. 0:56:8.617 –> 0:56:23.257 Sarah Bourke I just really want to understand what the organization is trying to accomplish by hiring this person and what capabilities maybe they already have. We can uncover that so that we can understand what’s missing. 0:56:24.137 –> 0:56:25.337 Brian Haydin Yeah, I would agree. 0:56:24.457 –> 0:56:44.857 Sarah Bourke Then once we kind of talk through just that high level, right, that’s the first step. And then we kind of can get into more of like, what, okay, is this more of a short-term contract need? Is this more of an ongoing, you know, permanent need? And kind of get into more of the specifics from there. 0:56:45.497 –> 0:57:4.537 Brian Haydin Yeah, I would agree. And then we get into like the scope discovery and project delivery. That’s that engaging us as a team or having us embed some engineers to help you with some of the technical problems. That usually, from my perspective, leads to a scoping call, right? Understanding what the problem is that you’re trying to solve and 0:57:5.177 –> 0:57:24.457 Brian Haydin any technical limitations and stuff like that. Look, we could we could continue to go on and on and on about this all day long, but I, you know, I definitely want to, you know, just leave the little bit of a hook here that Concurrency is happy to meet you where you are at as an organization. 0:57:25.337 –> 0:57:45.657 Brian Haydin And then if you want to reach out and give us a little bit of feedback on this webinar, there’s a QR code for you to share some of the feedback and reach out to us. Sarah, it’s been really, really fantastic having you, and this is your first podcast webinar, you know, with me, but thanks a lot for joining us. 0:57:45.937 –> 0:57:49.417 Brian Haydin Any last thoughts you want to impart with? 0:57:50.577 –> 0:58:1.897 Sarah Bourke No, thank you for asking me to join you. You know, I know this is the first time that I’ve been able to join you for one of these, so I’m glad to be a part of it. 0:58:2.457 –> 0:58:6.137 Brian Haydin Fantastic. Well, have a great day, everybody, and a good weekend. 0:58:3.697 –> 0:58:4.297 Sarah Bourke Good talk.