Silicon Valley talent keeps getting recycled, so this CEO uses a ‘moneyball’ approach for uncovering hidden AI geniuses in the new era

But HelloSky has emerged to diversify the recruitment pool, using AI-driven data to map candidates’ real-world impact and uncover hidden talent beyond traditional Silicon Valley networks

As AI becomes more ubiquitous, the need for the top-tier talent at firms becomes even more important—and it’s starting a war among Big , which is simultaneously churning through layoffs and poaching people from each other with eye-popping pay packages

Others are scrambling to retain staff with massive bonuses and noncompete agreements

With such a seemingly small pool of reers with the savvy to usher in new waves of AI developments, it’s no wonder salaries have gotten so high

That’s why one executive said companies will need to stop “recycling” candidates from the same old Silicon Valley and Big talent pools to make innovation happen. “There’s different biases and s people’s pedigree or where they came from

But if you could truly map all of that and just give credit for some people that maybe went through alternate pathways [then you can] truly stack rank,” Alex Bates, founder and CEO of AI executive recruiting platform HelloSky, told Fortune. (In April, HelloSky announced the close of a $5.5 million overd seed round from investors Caldwell Partners, Karmel Capital, True, Hunt Scanlon Ventures as well as minent angel investors from Google and Cisco Systems)

That’s why Bates developed HelloSky, which consolidates candidate, company, talent, investor, and assessment data into a single GenAI-powered platform to help companies find candidates they might not have otherwise

Many companies pull from previous job descriptions and resume submissions to poach top talent, explained Bates, who also authored Augmented Mind the relationship between humans and AI

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg even reportedly maintains a literal list of all the top talent he wants to poach for his Superintelligence Labs and has been heavily involved in his own company’s recruiting strategies

But the AI talent wars will make it more difficult than ever to fill seats with experienced candidates

Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently lamented how few candidates AI-focused companies have to pull from. “The bet, the hope is they know how to discover the remaining ideas to get to superintelligence—that there are going to be a handful of algorithmic ideas and, you know, medium-sized handful of people who can figure them out,” Altman recently told CNBC

The ‘moneyball’ for finding top talent Bates refers to his platform as “moneyball” for unearthing top talent—essentially a “complete map” of real domain experts who may not be well-networked in Silicon Valley

Using AI, HelloSky can tag different candidates, map connections, and find people who may not have as much of a social media or job board presence, but have the necessary experience to succeed in high-level jobs

The platform scours not just resumes, but actual code contributions, peer-reviewed re, and even open-source jects, prioritizing measurable impact over flashy degrees

That way, companies can find candidates who have demonstrated outsized results in small, scrappy teams or other niche communities, similar to how the Oakland A’s Billy Beane joined forces with Ivy League grad Peter Brand to reinvent traditional baseball scouting, which was depicted in the book and movie Moneyball

It’s a “big unlock for everything from hiring people, partnering, acquiring whatever, just everyone interested in this space,” Bates said. “There’s a lot of hidden talent globally.” HelloSky can also sense when certain candidates “embellish” their experience on job platforms or fill in the gaps for people whose online presence is sparse. “Maybe they said they had a billion-dollar IPO, but [really] they left two years before the IPO

We can surface that,” Bates said. “But also we can give credit to people that maybe didn’t brag sufficiently.” This helps companies find their “diamond in the rough,” he added

Bates also predicts firms and internal recruiters will start forcing assessments more on candidates to ensure they’re the right fit for the job. “If you can really target well and not waste so much time talking to the wrong people, then you can go much deeper into these next-gen behavioral assessment frameworks,” he said. “I think that’ll be the wave of the future.” Introducing the 2025 Fortune Global 500, the definitive ranking of the biggest companies in the world

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