Small companies are at a disadvantage in hiring top AI and data science talent. But freelance hiring companies such as Toptal, Adeva, and CodementorX have the ability to supply the needed talent to firms in need.
Pedro Alves Nogueira, head of data science at Toptal, writes that companies should consider freelance hires as a solution to the scarcity of AI talent in this article published in InsideBigData:
Despite the ever-increasing interest and focus on AI, there is a significant barrier to continued growth: the shortage of available AI and data science talent. A recent survey conducted by Ernst & Young found that 56 percent of senior AI professionals identified this issue as the largest barrier to developing new technology. In the United States, where the workforce consists of approximately 150 million people, there are only around 235,000 data scientists. AI professionals are even more scarce at just 300,000 worldwide, with only 10,000 of them qualifying as ‘specialists’. These numbers are staggeringly low when compared with estimates that 58 million AI related jobs will be created in the next four years alone, according to the World Economic Forum’s report, The Future of Jobs.
Due to the low supply of AI professionals, competition to secure available talent is fierce. The hiring of AI specialists and data scientists is primarily monopolized by tech giants like Facebook and Google, which offer exorbitant salaries and competitive perks to AI talent — even those with little previous experience. This puts smaller companies that lack the resources to offer competitive incentives packages at a major disadvantage, and it continues to preclude them from finding talent to develop their technology. As AI becomes more commonplace, tech companies will also have to compete with those in other sectors. Non-tech industries such as media, defense, banking, and automotive are beginning to incorporate AI into their services, further heightening demand from an already shallow talent pool.
[…]
Toptal is a global network of the top three percent of on-demand talent in technology, business, and design. In just two years, the company has seen a 145 percent increase in requests for professionals in AI and data science.
