AI can find top C-suite candidates. The harder part is persuading them to take the job. - Business Insider

AI has finally cracked the hardest riddle in business: finding someone qualified to lead a company. The catch, as Business Insider reports, is that persuading that qualified someone to actually take the job is still beyond any algorithm. Marty Parker, CEO of Waterstone, admits candidate identification is becoming 'commoditized' — which is corporate for 'a computer can now do what we used to charge a fortune for.' The rest remains slow. So the grand AI revolution has reduced the greatest minds in finance to algorithmically generated shortlists and a human with a warm handshake.

The comedy is exquisite. We have built models that can write essays, ace exams and chat in any language, yet they cannot convince a vice president to accept a CEO post without a human recruiter whispering sweet nothings about stock options. That is the entire AI economy in one headline: it automates the boring five-minute search and leaves the genuinely difficult human work — flattery, negotiation, pretending to care about culture fit — exactly where it was. Parker says the other parts 'remain slow.' Let's translate: the only part that got faster is the part that was already fast. The rest of the executive search process, which is basically sales with a confidentiality notice, hasn't budged.

This should terrify anyone who thinks AI is about to take over white-collar judgment. If a model cannot persuade a manager to take a corner office, it is not about to replace the C-suite. The technology's entire value proposition to consulting firms is that it can find a needle in a haystack; the needle still has to want to be found. So the search industry's job security is intact, not because AI is useless, but because it cannot do the one thing humans are socially evolved to do: brown-nose effectively. We'll let the machines draw up the shortlist. Someone still has to charm the mark.