Hiring for AI governance: look beyond policy expertise
An AI policy works only if someone can put it into practice, so look for that when you hire and ask about it at interview.
An organisation can have an AI policy without having effective AI governance. For employers recruiting legal and compliance professionals, that distinction should shape both the role description and the interview.
A May 2026 American Arbitration Association survey of 500 senior legal and executive leaders at large US and Canadian organisations illustrates the challenge. While 87% of respondents reported some form of AI governance, only 22% said it was operating effectively. The findings highlight weaknesses in escalation, audit readiness and legal involvement. Read the published findings.
For hiring teams, the question is what the incoming professional will need to make work in practice.
Define the responsibility before searching
“AI governance experience” is too broad to serve as an assessment criterion on its own.
Does the organisation need someone to advise on regulation, assess suppliers, design approval processes, investigate incidents or coordinate enterprise-wide oversight? Who will make deployment decisions, and what authority will the legal or compliance professional have?
Clarifying those responsibilities helps distinguish a specialist advisory appointment from a role requiring wider organisational leadership. It also helps candidates assess whether the remit is achievable.
Ask for evidence of implementation
Knowledge of the rules matters. Interviews should also explore how candidates have translated advice into decisions and working processes.
Useful questions include:
- Describe a technology initiative where you changed the proposed approach. What happened?
- How did you allocate responsibility between legal, compliance, technology and the business?
- What happened when a concern could not be resolved through the normal approval process?
- How did you establish whether the controls were actually being followed?
Strong answers should identify the candidate’s contribution, the constraints they faced and the outcome. Familiarity with terminology alone reveals much less.
Assess influence as well as expertise
A professional may understand the risks but lack the authority or relationships needed to address them. Equally, an employer may expect one appointment to resolve an issue requiring several functions to cooperate.
The hiring process should test both sides: the candidate’s ability to influence decisions and the organisation’s willingness to provide a workable mandate.
Our view is that an effective brief connects technical knowledge with implementation responsibility, stakeholder influence and clear expectations. That produces a more useful search than asking for an “AI expert” and leaving the practical remit unresolved.
Source
American Arbitration Association, Most Organisations Have AI Governance; Few Say It Works in Practice, 14 May 2026. The survey concerns large US and Canadian organisations; its findings should not be treated as representative of every employer.