Kevin O'Neill

NZ Tech Hiring – July 2025 A quick pulse check for anyone recruiting in the current climate. 📉 Perm hiring remains slow across a lot of the tech space — particularly mid-senior delivery, engineering and leadership roles. Most businesses are being cautious, prioritising BAU over transformation unless it's tied to revenue, risk or compliance. 🛠️ Contracting is ticking along, especially in areas like cloud, cyber, data, and large regulatory programmes. We're seeing demand for flexible resources, often scoped to shorter terms. 📊 The good news? There’s solid talent on the market. Some high-calibre PMs, developers, BAs and architects are open to work following restructures and programme wrap-ups. These aren’t the “active candidates” from job boards — these are proven operators who are open to the right opportunity. 🎯 But that’s the catch: they’re being selective. People are looking for clarity — hybrid expectations, meaningful work, and engaged leadership. The days of vague briefs and unclear pipelines won’t cut it. 🔍 From a recruiter’s view, the market is: Candidate-rich but opportunity-lean Fast-moving in contracting Quietly competitive for top-tier talent If you're hiring and not seeing results, it may be time to reassess how the role is positioned, or how you're approaching the market. Always happy to talk through what we're seeing firsthand. #techrecruitment #nztech #contractingnz #digitalhiring #talentmarket #techjobsnz #marketinsights

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AI is Not Your Product. It’s Your Powertrain. Just came back from Perth after accompanying my daughter, Anaya, for her first week at the University of Western Australia. She just started her degree in Business; Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and naturally our conversations quickly turned toward startup ideas, pitch decks, and what’s “hot” right now. At one point, Anaya asked, "What if I build something using Gen-AI? That could be my product, right?" It stopped me in my tracks. Not because the idea was wrong, but because it’s something I hear over and over from founders, accelerators, even some investors. So I told her what I’ve learned the hard way: AI is not your product. AI is your powertrain. It’s not the thing you sell. It’s the thing that makes the thing you sell better, faster, and smarter. Your customer doesn't care that you use GPT‑4 or Gemini. They care that you save them time, cut their costs, increase their accuracy, reduce their churn, or get their product to market faster. What You’re Really Selling The temptation to lead with “powered by AI” is huge right now. But think about it like this: When someone buys a Tesla, they don’t buy it because it runs on lithium batteries. They buy it because it’s silent, sleek, fast, and can drive itself in traffic. The battery is the enabler. Not the value. It’s the same with AI. Don’t sell GPT‑4 or any other LLM models or Generative AI. Sell what AI enables. How to Think Like a Product Builder This is what I shared with Anaya as we sat by the Swan River, watching the sun dip behind the city skyline: Start with a painful problem. Something that keeps your customer up at night or slows their business down. Design your product around a real, felt benefit. Can you help them do something 10x faster, 5x cheaper, or radically better? Use AI to power the delivery of that benefit. But never mistake the tech for the value itself. Especially for SaaS and Manufacturing Founders In SaaS, your users want fewer clicks, smarter defaults, faster answers. Gen-AI can make that happen behind the scenes. But if your pitch is just “we use AI,” you’ve already lost them. In manufacturing, AI can predict failures or optimize planning. But your customer is buying uptime and precision, not machine learning. AI should feel like magic but not be the magic trick you're selling. Final Word, From a Dad and a Builder I told Anaya: If you want to build something lasting, start with the human need. Start with the problem. Let AI help you solve it beautifully and scalably, but let your user experience the result, not the raw tech. And maybe that’s a reminder for all of us. Whether you’re building your first MVP or leading a scaled company: sell the destination, not the engine. Let AI be the thing that powers the journey, not the sign on the door. #founderinsights #GENAI #GPT4 #Gemini #AI #productdevelopment #entrepreneurship #SaaS #manufacturingtech #startupthinking #UWA

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