Getting your firstAI search hire right
Nobody in the business has done this role before, so there's no one to write the spec, score the interviews, or judge the work. That's us.
The first hire is the difficult one
Hiring for AI search isn't like hiring for the rest of your marketing team, because you've no internal reference point. Nobody has done the job, so there's no one to write a spec that describes it accurately, no one on the panel who can tell a strong answer from a confident one, and no one to review the work once it starts.
That's a lot of risk to carry. A GEO hire is a salary, recruitment fees and a year of runway, and if the role's scoped wrong you usually find out late. We cover the parts your team can't, from the job spec through to the work itself.
Wherever you are in the process
Before you hire
From £950
We scope what the role actually needs to do in your business, whether it's a full role or an addition to an existing one, and what it's worth. You get a job spec, an interview question bank with model answers, and a practical task with a marking rubric, so your panel is scoring something real.
While you're hiring
We'll sit on the final panel and give you an independent read on the shortlist. Useful when the CVs all say the same things and nobody internally can tell the difference.
Once they've started
From £2,500 per hire
A structured programme that gets your new hire productive quickly, then ongoing support so they're not doing the hardest job in your marketing team alone.
Training a team rather than one person? Ask us.
Your hire's first six weeks, structured
Your hire arrives knowing marketing. What they need is the specifics: how answer engines actually choose and quote sources, and how to build work that gets chosen. We cover:
- The engines, and what each one looks for
- Measurement, and what the numbers actually mean
- Designing a tracked prompt set around your customer journey
- Writing content that gets retrieved and cited
- The source ecosystem beyond your own site
- Keeping AI accurate about your brand
In person or online, one to one or to a team. It ends with a capability baseline, so you can see where they're strong and where they'll need support.
Wider team sessions? Workshops and training
A second pair of eyes, every month
A first hire is usually the only person in the business doing this. No peer to sanity-check their thinking, no manager who can review the work on its merits, and nobody to ask when the data looks odd. That's a hard position to be in, and it's where good people quietly go wrong.
Each month we review the work and send a short readout:
The questions being tracked+
The ones your customers actually ask, or the ones that were easy to write?
The content+
Built to be retrieved and quoted, or just good content?
The measurement+
Set up so the numbers mean what everyone thinks they mean?
The reporting+
Does it tell leadership the right story?
An independent read+
We track your brand ourselves, so nobody's marking their own homework.
Your hire also gets a monthly session with our team, for the questions they can't take to anyone internally. Most come to value that more than the report.
From £700 per month. Six month minimum, then rolling.
FAQs
We haven't hired anyone yet. Is this still for us?+
Yes, and it's the best point to start. A vague spec attracts vague candidates, so scoping the role properly is the single biggest thing you can do to make the hire work. We'll also tell you if we think you don't need a full role yet.
Are you a recruitment agency?+
No. We don't source candidates and there's no placement fee, so we've no stake in whether you hire. We scope the role, help you assess the people you find, and support them once they start.
Will our new hire feel like they're being checked up on?+
They shouldn't, and we'd be doing it wrong if they did. The monthly session is theirs, and most first hires are glad of somewhere to take the questions they can't ask internally. We're a team for them and a straight answer for you.
What if we already have an SEO team?+
That works well. Plenty of the strongest AI search people come from SEO, so we scope the training around what your team already knows rather than starting from scratch.
Can we do the training without the QA retainer?+
Yes. Plenty of teams start with the training and add the retainer later, once they've seen where the gaps are.
How long is the QA commitment?+
Six months, then rolling. AI search moves month to month, so a shorter window won't show you a trend or tell you whether the work is landing.
Hiring, or already hired?
Either way, a short call will tell us whether we can help. We'll give you a straight view on the role, the market and what good looks like.
Not ready to hire? Fractional GEO & AEO