Resumes Lie. Standards Don't. How I'm Building an AI-Ready Team.

It was almost 8 at night. I'd been going since 6 that morning.

Five of those hours were with my Chief AI Officer, interviewing team members and building the workflows they'll run.

Long day. Good day. Because when you're building in AI, the technology isn't the hard part.

The people are.

The experience doesn't exist yet

Here’s the wall you’re about to smash into:

The tools are too new. The playbook is being written right now. Nobody has a decade of running AI across a mid-sized company.

If you wait for the perfect resume, you'll wait forever, and you'll overpay for someone who learned from another company's mistakes.

So I stopped hiring for experience.

I hire for the standard, and I’m building my tribe.

History already solved this

I've been reading history more than business books lately. Two stories keep coming back.

It's 1939. War is coming, and the Army isn't ready. General George Marshall looks at the senior officers and sees bloated staffs and big egos. So he goes around them and finds a colonel named Dwight Eisenhower.

That ONE decision about his people shaped the century.

Then the Revolution. Washington is losing battles, and some of his own generals are going around him.

So who does he lean on? Lafayette was 19. Hamilton was in his early twenties. Henry Knox was in his mid-twenties. Young enough to be his sons.

Two centuries. Same lesson. The right team isn't the most experienced one. It's the hungriest one, held to the highest standard.

What I'm actually looking for

When someone doesn't have the track record yet, I look at five things:

1. First impressions. Did they show up on time and prepared, before they said a word?
2. Character. Do they tell the truth when it costs them something?
3. Work ethic. Will they do the unglamorous reps without being asked?
4. Preparation. Did they study the company, the role, and me before they walked in?
5. Coachability. Can they take feedback today and show me the change tomorrow?

Every one of those matters more in an AI company, not less. The tools change every quarter. The people who win learn the fastest and hold the line on quality while everything moves.

Lieutenants, not employees

I don't build teams of employees. I build lieutenants: people who can carry part of the mission without me in the room.

My lieutenants commit two years. Year one, you learn the system. Year two, you run it.

And I don't wait for applications. Most mornings before 8, I'm on LinkedIn looking at profiles and sending a few personal notes. Not templates. Real notes to real people about why I noticed them.

The pretender performs the role. The operator carries the weight. I'm looking for the second one.