How to Hire an AI Developer

Start from the job, not the model

The model name is the least useful line in a proposal. Customers do not experience the model. They experience whether the answer was yours, whether the booking was a real slot, and whether a person was fetched when the question left the script.

Write the job in one sentence before you talk to anyone: answer these questions, book this calendar, or file this lead. If the sentence needs a comma and a second product, it is two projects.

Five questions that sort a hire

Ask these before you compare prices.

• What is the assistant forbidden to answer, and what does the customer hear instead?
• Where does the transcript go, and who is told if that write fails?
• Whose name is on the phone number, the model bill, and the calendar connection?
• What is the build price, and what is the monthly running cost at a small volume?
• What do I receive on the last day, and how long are fixes included?

Use a small paid test

The chat package is the test: up to twenty of your answers, a name and an enquiry, an email on each one, handover notes. If that boundary is sloppy, a voice agent on the same habits will be sloppy in front of callers.

Do not accept a portfolio of unnamed screenshots as the test. The test is your answers, on a login you can open.

Red flags

“It can handle any question.” That is an unbounded model, and it will invent a price.

A single number with no split between build and running cost.

The assistant demonstrated on the developer’s phone number and calendar.

A promise of a conversion rate. That number is your offer and your follow-up, and nobody has measured it on your pipeline yet.

A timeline of a day or two for voice, CRM, and a custom stack. The voice package here is 2–3 weeks because the failure path is part of the work.