In recent conversations, we asked executive talent leaders what’s holding them back from more advanced AI adoption around data collection, management, analysis, and deeper research. 

Nearly 40% cited a lack of understanding as the primary barrier, followed by legal and privacy concerns, and poor data quality or access.

For many, the root cause of these issues can be traced back to whether leaders’ organizations have an established AI policy or not. Risk-averse companies might have highly restrictive policies in place, hindering talent leaders’ ability to learn and experience AI tools firsthand. Companies with no policy leave confusion and doubt about whether AI usage is permissible, which slows adoption.

So, how can executive talent leaders interested in leaning into AI overcome this?

The answer is personal experimentation with non-sensitive company data.

We built a synthetic dataset you can download and plug into the AI tools you’ve been most curious about to see how they work, and more importantly, what value they could bring to your workflows. 

Skirt Institutional Barriers with Synthetic Data

What is synthetic data? It’s AI-generated data that can be modeled after real datasets to help teams build and experiment without compromising security.

Most LLMs are capable of generating synthetic data with a few pieces of information. For this one, we used ChatGPT and prompted:

“Create a synthetic dataset of 50 executive candidates with revenue, go-to-market (GTM), or finance experience in B2B SaaS or Fintech that includes First Name, Last Name, Title, Company, Experience (current years in seat), key skills, and whether they are actively looking for new opportunities or passive candidates, and the date of our last interaction.” 

The output was a .csv file of 50 candidates with the following properties.

  • Titles: VP of Sales, VP Of Finance, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Operating Officer, SVP of Business Development, Chief Revenue Officer, Head of Go-to-Market, Chief Financial Officer
  • Skills: Partnerships, Pricing Strategy, Sales Strategy, Financial Modeling, Market Expansion, Pipeline Growth, Fundraising, M&A, Forecasting, Enterprise Sales
  • Candidate Status: Passive (27) and Active (23)
  • Industry: B2B SaaS (22) and FinTech (28)

Depending on your industry, sector, and specific function, you may need to adjust the prompt to obtain a more realistic dataset for your workflows.  

Click Here to Download the B2B SaaS Synthetic Dataset. 


What’s Possible with Perfect Data

This synthetic dataset differs from real-world data in the following ways:

  1. It’s fully complete and uniform
  2. It assumes the ability to easily centralize this information across every executive candidate in your network

This is not the reality for most executive talent leaders we work with, roughly 60% of whom describe their data as somewhat centralized but inconsistent.

The purpose of this exercise isn’t to highlight the current gaps in your data, but to inspire you with what’s possible when your data foundation is strong. With centralized, complete data, you can ask more strategic questions and get better answers. 

  • “Which candidates have Pipeline Growth experience in Fintech?”
  • “Which candidates could transition from VP of Finance to CFO?”
  • “Find passive candidates we haven’t spoken to in over 180 days (re-engagement targets).”
  • “Show me executives who can handle both fundraising and operational scaling.”


These are the queries that executive talent leaders aren’t yet seeing real value from, but many acknowledge that data silos across the company and manual data entry are hindering their ability to centralize executive talent data, making it impossible to conduct deeper research.

Ready to Experiment?

AI is experiential. The best way to understand its power is to experience it for yourself. Use this synthetic dataset to sign up for the AI tools you’ve been curious about, experiment with different prompts, and discover how this technology can optimize your workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and deliver new value to your organization. 


Speak with our team about how Thrive can centralize and normalize your executive talent data.