In the fast-developing world of machine learning and technology development in general, it can be difficult to find the best minds for your team. Using these tips to improve your company's recruitment strategies will go a long way toward making sure you pick the best candidates for your crucial positions and projects. One of the best ways to understand how a person operates is to get into the person's role and think like they do. When searching for a person to take on a particular job, it can be immensely helpful to imagine how a recruiter would reach that ideal candidate. It is also helpful to think of which careers and positions may naturally transition into the job for which you are hiring.

Chris Bishop is the director of Microsoft Research Cambridge. The global war for artificial intelligence (AI) talent is raging, with tech giants fighting it out to hire the brightest minds in the field and use them to take their platforms into unchartered waters. There's currently a shortage of people with the skills and experience needed to make breakthroughs in machine learning, a field of computer science that gives machines the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. Fortunately, many of the top minds in the field are going to be concentrated in one place this week when they descend on a conference in Long Beach, California, called NIPS, which stands for neural information processing systems. Google, Microsoft, DeepMind, Facebook, Intel, Nvidia, Amazon, Apple, and Open AI (Elon Musk's AI research lab) will all be at NIPS presenting their latest research and looking to hire people from rival firms, as well as PhD students fresh out of universities like Stanford, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge, and Imperial.

The venture capital community was shocked last week with Element AI's fundraise. How can a Canadian startup founded in late 2016 raise a Series-A in June 2017 for a cool $102 million? Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Intel Capital were among the illustrious group of VCs who put in this sum into a round that makes almost all other Series-A rounds look paltry. When you peruse Element's webpage you see a simple HTML site that talks vaguely about AI-Strategy consulting, expert matching, and AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS). It leaves you scratching your head, wondering how this firm's ideas are earth shattering enough for such a rocket trajectory.

Honda Motor Co. will open a new artificial intelligence (AI) research center in Tokyo to commercialize self-driving cars in the future. Honda R&D Co., Honda's research and development subsidiary, announced on June 2 that it will establish Honda R&D Innovation Lab Tokyo by around September in Tokyo's Akasaka district. The move came as Japanese auto companies are desperately seeking personnel who specialize in the cutting-edge area. AI is viewed as the core technology to develop futuristic driverless vehicles. Honda already has a research center in the northern Kanto region, but it will set up a new facility in the capital to hire more skilled information technology engineers.