Nada Usina is CEO & Co-Founder of NU Advisory Partners.

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I sit on the other side of the table from boards and CEOs filling their most critical technology seats—CTOs, CIOs, heads of AI, heads of data and CISOs—and I'll tell you what I'm seeing that most public commentary on the "AI talent war" misses: The real story isn't a shortage of AI talent. It's a shortage of leadership teams who truly know what to ask for and a growing gap between companies that have figured this out and those still running searches as if it were three years ago.​

Two trends are reshaping who gets hired for these seats, and both should make a lot of boards uncomfortable.​

The Unexpected Industries Leading AI Hiring​

Industries you'd least expect are moving fastest and leaving "tech-forward" companies exposed. For years, the assumption was that the most sophisticated AI and data leadership would gravitate toward the obvious places: hyperscalers, fintech and enterprise software. That assumption is now wrong, and it's costing slower-moving "tech-forward" companies real ground.

I'm seeing manufacturing, industrial services, hospitality and even traditionally analog sectors run searches for CTOs and heads of AI with a level of specificity and urgency that used to be reserved for Silicon Valley. These companies know they have an execution gap, and they're compensating for it by hiring leaders who've already proven they can ship AI-driven transformation somewhere else, often in a sector that looks nothing like theirs.​

What's driving this isn't trend-chasing. It's survival math. A traditional industry that automates a core operational process with AI doesn't just save money—it resets the competitive bar for everyone else in that sector who hasn't. Boards have figured out they can't build that capability internally fast enough, so they're recruiting it aggressively and starting to pay up to look outside their own sector for it. (They still have more to learn regarding the impact of the right hire versus perceived sticker shock, but I digress.)

Meanwhile, I'm watching companies that consider themselves "tech-forward" run a CTO search the exact same way they ran one five years ago: a buzzword-heavy job description, light on what the person will really be accountable for building and constrained by a legacy business model. That gap is going to show up in earnings calls before it shows up in headlines.​

AI Execution > AI Strategy​

"Tell me about your AI strategy" is no longer a request that candidates can fulfill with a slide deck, and private equity is the industry forcing the issue. The era of getting credit for an AI point of view is over.

In searches I’m running, particularly for PE-backed portfolio companies, the bar isn't whether a candidate understands AI conceptually. Every candidate at this level does. It's whether they can point to a specific system they built, a specific cost structure they changed or a specific revenue line they unlocked, with numbers attached.

Private equity operating partners are some of the most demanding interviewers I've ever prepared candidates for, precisely because they don't have patience for theory. They're underwriting a thesis on a five-year hold, and they need the technology leader to be a value-creation lever from day one, not a research function.​

This is reshaping who clears the bar. Candidates who spent the last two years giving conference talks about "the future of AI" are getting passed over for candidates who spent that same time rebuilding a data platform, automating a workflow that used to take 40 people or standing up a fraud model that paid for itself in a quarter. The gap between "can talk about AI" and "has shipped AI that moved a P&L" has become the single biggest differentiator in candidate assessment at the executive level. Technically articulate, well-credentialed candidates lose roles to people with less polished résumés and far more scar tissue from actually building something that worked, broke and got fixed in production.​

What's notable is how fast this standard is spreading beyond PE. Strategic boards and public companies are starting to ask the same kind of questions PE operating partners have been asking for two years: not "what's our AI strategy" but "show me the system, the adoption numbers and what changed." Assessment criteria increasingly look like structured technical rubrics rather than a loose set of competencies because clients have realized that vague criteria produce vague hires, and vague hires don't survive a board that's now paying close attention.​

The Bar Isn't Going Back Down​

Here's my unfiltered take after running searches at this level for 15 years: Most boards are still hiring for a world that doesn't exist anymore. They write a job description that signals AI sophistication without defining what that person needs to deliver, they interview for pedigree instead of evidence and they're stunned six months later when the hire can talk a brilliant game and ship almost nothing.

That failure pattern is becoming the costliest and most avoidable mistake at the executive level right now, and it's entirely self-inflicted. Even more so, the CEO and board must lead the charge and be fully bought in, as the right CTO/AI leader will immediately sense whether they've just been given a story about modernizing or a real mandate for driving change.​

There's a real opportunity here for boards willing to act. You're not just filling a critical seat; you're also positioning your company to compete and win with the kind of leadership that can move the business forward.​

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