Call WorkHacker Chief Strategist Rob Garner at 469.347.4090, or email info@workhacker.com for more details on we can help your business. www.workhacker.com FULL TRANSCRIPT The HR Managers Guide on How to Hire an SEO Expert in 2026 - Navigating the New AI Era If you’re hiring an SEO right now, you’re entering one of the fastest-changing areas in digital marketing - transformed by both artificial intelligence and automation. Some of this podcast episode may sound a bit technical, but stay with me here, and maybe even listen twice. In this episode, you’ll learn how to identify real expertise in a crowded field, apart from just namedropping new acronyms like GEO, AEO, and AIO alone. We’ll cover the shift from keywords to context, the rise of AI-driven workflows, and why hands-on experience still matters more than ever. You’ll discover how to evaluate different roles, spot genuine thought leadership through a candidate’s digital footprint, and understand when specialization is an asset - or a blind spot. We’ll also talk about the importance of language fluency, staying current with industry updates, and how the best search pros connect optimization directly to business goals and revenue. By the end, you’ll know more about what to look for, what to avoid, and how to find an expert who can help your organization thrive. Artificial intelligence has changed the game for search pros - from how search engines interpret information to how content gets created, optimized, and distributed. Yet, most hiring managers are still using outdated criteria when evaluating search talent. It is important to note that while many things have changed, it is all still largely based on the core principles of SEO. But search pros of the past must have new perspectives and experience to succeed, and this perspective is not only critical - it is imperative. This outlines the main function of a good human resource professional tasked with filling an SEO position: Understanding the core need, understanding a candidates core skill set and experience, and making the right choice for the job at hand. There are many objective and subjective considerations for hiring an expert, literally too many to cover in a single podcast episode. But let’s start with understanding the conceptual shift from keywords to context, which can quickly shed a great light on how prepared a search professional is for future challenges. This concept is at the crux of understanding the new age of AI-based retrieval, and will help you qualify the best candidates. A candidate speaking in these terms can help you understand if they are on top of current trends, and thinking toward the future. A decade ago, search revolved around ranking for the right phrases. But now, search systems - powered by massive AI models—understand meaning, entities, relationships, and user intent. So while many newcomers are still chasing keywords, true professionals are shaping context - using structured data, embeddings, content entities, engaging topics, and brand signals to train search engines on what their business represents. This does not negate the fact that keywords and keyphrases are still considerations in modern search, it is just that the way we work with them has changed. And that’s where real experience becomes irreplaceable. Someone who’s lived through multiple Google updates, seen the impact of automation done right and wrong, and understands how content, links, and user signals interplay over time - has instincts you can’t learn from a quick course or prompt. Large language models can speed things up, but it can’t replace judgment. Ultimately, they are prediction engines that set the stage for human judgment, and that is not going-to change in the near future. And that again is where experience is critical. Let’s break down some of the fundamental modern SEO roles you’ll encounter. The Technical SEO is now part developer, and part data analyst, managing everything from structured data to automation scripts and large-language-model assisted indexing. The Content SEO might act as the editor-in-chief of machine-generated, but brand focused and personalized digital assets - ensuring that what AI produces is not only accurate, but aligns with brand voice, compliance, and user trust, and builds to the scale needed for growth The SEO Strategist is the conductor - designing the workflow that ties it all together. They know which steps to automate, which to keep human, and how to ensure that all of it feeds into measurable business growth. That’s why strategic optimizers, particularly those with specific hands-on strategy experience, are more valuable than ever. They’ve built workflows manually before automation existed. They understand how long tasks should take, what dependencies matter, and what goes wrong when you automate blindly. That experience lets them build smarter, more reliable systems - where automation accelerates - not replaces, strategic thinking. Now, let’s talk about agency versus in-house experience. Agencies deal with multiple clients, and can have a first hand view of search performance across multiple industries. That makes them a great place to find people who know what’s working right now. But experienced in-house SEOs bring something equally valuable: depth. They understand the company’s tech stack, culture, approval workflows, and long-term goals. Both of these experience scenarios can bring a different level of perspective to your own organization, and it is important to understand the differences before you hire. Also ask your candidates about their side projects, big or small. While many companies view side projects or work as a potential distraction, having a little bit of side experience can be a good thing for you. You don't want experimentations to happen on your main site - that level of testing is for other projects without the same level of risk tolerance. Do they manage their own test sites? Have they built automation tools for keyword clustering or content briefs? Do they test AI-generated content pipelines? The best SEOs have sandbox projects where they break things on purpose to learn faster. That’s how they stay ahead. Again, it is not required, but it can bring a different level of insight to meet your expectations and needs. So, what should you ask during an interview? Here are some additional questions that reveal whether a candidate truly understands search in the AI era: How has AI changed your approach to SEO in the past year? Can you walk me through a workflow you’ve automated - and what parts you still do manually? What data do you rely on most when measuring success today? What’s an example of something you chose not to automate, and why? How do you see SEO evolving as LLM answers continue to reshape discovery? Each of these questions exposes a candidate’s depth - not just their familiarity with tools, but their reasoning process. Another critical part of hiring the right search pro, is finding someone who understands that search isn’t just about discovery and visibility. It’s about business outcomes. The best candidates don’t just report on impressions or traffic alone. They know how to connect search visibility to revenue, lead generation, and overall company growth. They can draw a clear line between optimization efforts and real-world results - whether that’s increasing e-commerce conversions, driving qualified calls, forecasting, lowering acquisition costs through organic visibility, or generating bottom-line revenue. That alignment with business goals separates tactical operators from strategic partners. A strong SEO candidate should be able to sit at the same table as the CMO, CEO, or client, and translate data into business terms. They should know how to prioritize initiatives based on ROI, not vanity metrics. And there’s another layer to this - education. Search often touches every department: marketing, IT, design, sales, public relations and corporate communications, even customer service. Yet many of those teams don’t fully understand how their work affects search visibility. A great search pro knows how to bridge that gap - not by lecturing, but by educating diplomatically, and when appropriate. They bring others along for the journey, showing designers how UX decisions affect indexing, or helping writers understand how to structure content for AI-driven discovery. Does your candidate explain concepts clearly, and confidently, in a way that a person with no other search knowledge can understand? Can they boil a complex technical tactic down into clear business goals and outcomes? Can they summarize and give direct answers to questions in a way that doesn't take five minutes to explain? The ability to teach, collaborate, and inspire understanding across departments is just as important as technical skill. Because when everyone in an organization understands how search connects to the bottom line, optimization stops being a checklist—and becomes a growth engine. Another powerful way to evaluate an SEO candidate is by reviewing their digital footprint. Search is a field built on visibility. Look at how they show up online. Have they written about search publicly? Have they spoken at conferences, contributed to podcasts, or shared thoughtful posts that demonstrate real understanding? Peer validation also matters. The SEO community is vocal and interconnected, and experienced professionals tend to have some form of recognition - whether it’s thought leadership articles, LinkedIn engagement from other experts, or past collaboration with respected brands or agencies. In a crowded space where anyone can claim to “do SEO,” seeing a track record of public insight can help you separate the truly experienced from those who might only have surface-level familiarity. It’s not about fame or quantity of fo
