Ep 44: Proactive and Holistic Recruitment Strategies for Talent Transformation with Brett Coin

[00:00:00] Welcome to Elevate Your AIQ, the podcast focused on the AI-powered yet human-centric future of work. Are you and your organization prepared? If not, let's get there together. The show is open to sponsorships from forward-thinking brands who are fellow advocates for responsible AI literacy and AI skills development to help ensure no individuals or organizations are left behind. I also facilitate expert panels, interviews, and offer advisory services to help shape your responsible AI journey. Go to ElevateYourAIQ.com to find out more.

[00:00:28] Hey, it's Bob Pulver. Thanks for checking out the show. In this special episode of Elevate Your AIQ, recorded onsite at HR Tech 2024 in Las Vegas, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Brett Coyne, Head of Talent Transformation at Findem, to dive into the future of recruiting and workforce management. Brett's journey from recruiting practitioner to driving AI-powered transformation at Findem gives him a unique perspective on how technology can revolutionize the way we think about identifying talent. We talk about some big shifts in recruitment, like moving from React to the end of the day, and moving from React to the end of the day.

[00:01:13] Let's get started.

[00:01:16] I'm Ryan McCarthy, I'm tänker on it and writing back in the future, and keepysking human.

[00:01:17] Brett also shares how Findem is helping organizations tap into the full spectrum of their talent networks, employees, alumni, and even contingent workers, while addressing challenges like bias and inefficiencies in traditional systems.

[00:01:29] Whether you're an HR leader, a recruiter, or just curious about how AI is reshaping workforce strategy, this episode is packed with practical insights and forward-thinking ideas.

[00:01:37] I really enjoyed this conversation with Brett and I'm sure you will too.

[00:01:40] Thanks very much.

[00:01:42] Hi everyone, Bob Pulver from Elevate Your AIQ.

[00:01:45] We're on the road at HR Tech 2024 here in Las Vegas.

[00:01:49] This morning I had the pleasure of speaking to Brett Coyne from Findem.

[00:01:54] And we are host person keynote sitting in the main hall here.

[00:02:00] And yeah, I'm looking forward to having this conversation, Brett.

[00:02:04] Yeah, so thanks for being here.

[00:02:05] I want you to just give a little bit about your background and your role at Findem.

[00:02:10] Yeah, for sure.

[00:02:11] I've been a practitioner for 25 years.

[00:02:13] Started in agencies like most people.

[00:02:15] I didn't know what to do with my life.

[00:02:17] And a friend introduced me to like a small, I would say back then, an RPO company in the Philadelphia area.

[00:02:24] And this was back in 97.

[00:02:27] We're faxing resumes to clients.

[00:02:29] But what was cool about that job was this company was really focused on tech.

[00:02:33] So all their clients were tech.

[00:02:35] And I got to work on SAP and some old ERP companies.

[00:02:41] Folks were over like JD Edwards, right?

[00:02:42] Sure.

[00:02:42] So I kind of got introduced to that world early and I kind of liked it.

[00:02:46] And then my big break, if you will, I think from a career perspective was I got a job in 99 with Cisco Systems.

[00:02:53] Just a recruiter in a small office in Virginia.

[00:02:56] And at the time, Cisco was the hottest company in the world.

[00:02:58] And then that just started opening doors.

[00:03:00] So, you know, after being there, I got laid off the dot-com bubble, right?

[00:03:12] Okay.

[00:03:35] And then I got into it.

[00:03:35] And a year later, we all kind of went into it.

[00:03:38] So as I wound my company down, we all went there.

[00:03:41] So it was kind of fun.

[00:03:42] But I did a 10-year run into it and learned a ton.

[00:03:45] And then in 2019, I got recruited to go to Okta, which was really in the hyper growth phase.

[00:03:52] And like the recruiting there, we went from 1,500 to 6,000, almost all organic.

[00:03:56] So it was incredible.

[00:03:57] The team went from 27 to 170.

[00:04:01] And then after that, I took a six-month break and was trying to figure out what I want to do.

[00:04:06] I was a little burned out on the practitioner role.

[00:04:08] And so I met Hari Kala, the CEO of Findum, about 18 months ago at Unleash.

[00:04:13] And I was really intrigued by what they were doing.

[00:04:16] The fundamental of the platform is proactively putting in recruiter's hands the ability to proactively search

[00:04:24] all of the sources and channels that make up their source of hire.

[00:04:28] And years ago, I'd unlocked that theory of, hey, people report on their source of hire data,

[00:04:35] but what do you actually do with it?

[00:04:36] How do you turn that into a proactive strategy?

[00:04:38] That's what a sales leader would do.

[00:04:39] And so let me optimize my channels and resource my channels.

[00:04:43] And let me have those channels working for me 24-7 as opposed to getting a rec, posting a job,

[00:04:48] hoping people apply.

[00:04:49] If they don't, I go type booleans all day and hope people respond.

[00:04:52] And so I had to do a lot of that with people and programs and stitching together technology.

[00:04:59] And Hari was building this thing.

[00:05:00] So a mutual friend put us in touch.

[00:05:02] And I agreed to join about a year ago.

[00:05:04] And it's been an amazing experience.

[00:05:06] So my title is Head of Talent Transformation.

[00:05:10] And I'd say it's an interesting title because what we're really trying to do is think about

[00:05:16] three, four years out, starting with the end goal of mine, and then working back from there.

[00:05:21] And what is the impact of being AI first from people, talent, skills, productivity, automation?

[00:05:29] I'm not saying we haven't figured it out.

[00:05:32] But it's been fun because instead of working with one team, I'm working with over 100 different customers.

[00:05:37] And I'm getting a really good sense of what's going on in the market and where different people are in their AI journey.

[00:05:44] And essentially, the tactical part of my job is in all of post-sales.

[00:05:49] So I'm responsible for renewals, expansion, customer support, customer success, implementation.

[00:05:55] It's a pretty fun job.

[00:05:57] That's a lot.

[00:05:58] Maybe because I like the phrase talent transformation.

[00:06:02] That's a lot more than I thought that job would entail, right?

[00:06:07] I mean, customer success alone is generally one job.

[00:06:12] Sure.

[00:06:12] So as you talk to all these clients, you see them shifting their focus to align with your mindset, which I agree with, by the way.

[00:06:26] To just keep throwing money out there, hoping that the right people apply.

[00:06:30] There's something very illogical to that to me.

[00:06:35] Not that you shouldn't advertise for jobs and whatever, but there's no way.

[00:06:41] I mean, that's definitely the minority of potential applicants.

[00:06:46] So do you see people shifting to sort of reinvest or at least diversify better to put more in the outbound sourcing, leveraging?

[00:06:58] Yeah, it depends, right?

[00:07:00] I think it depends on the size of the company and the level of sophistication of the leader.

[00:07:03] And so I think a lot of the leaders I talk to are getting there.

[00:07:07] They're really frustrated with a lot of the outbound sourcing tools that take up sometimes 50%, 60% of their budget and are producing 15% or less of their hires when they report that source of hire to them.

[00:07:19] So I think the desire to change is there.

[00:07:22] The aha moment is starting to be had.

[00:07:25] Like, yeah, there's probably a better way.

[00:07:27] I'd say the adoption curve of how to build the strategy and then leverage the appropriate AI tools that align to that strategy.

[00:07:37] I still see a gap.

[00:07:39] So there still tends to be.

[00:07:41] And the other gap that I've seen, which is a really big aha moment for me, is the gap between leader sees the vision, leader buys in, translating that to recruiter who straps in every day, wants to drive.

[00:07:56] And that old habit is let me review my inbound.

[00:07:59] I don't have what I want.

[00:08:01] Let me go write a bunch of Williams across a multitude of tools where I'm kind of finding the same people.

[00:08:05] And I'm just hoping they respond.

[00:08:08] And I did an analysis at Okta.

[00:08:10] It was statistically impossible, even with a team of 175, to direct source more than 50% of the hires.

[00:08:16] It's statistically impossible based on the throughput and the response rates of candidates that you're just outreaching to.

[00:08:24] So logically, it just doesn't make any sense to me to have, as a recruiter, spend a lot of your time direct sourcing candidates.

[00:08:33] But the reason they do it is because the other way they get talent is failing them.

[00:08:38] So how do I get referrals?

[00:08:41] They're submitted by employees to my rec.

[00:08:43] How do I get contractor conversions?

[00:08:45] The contractors on site or company have to apply to the job.

[00:08:49] Inbound applicants.

[00:08:50] I'm trying to search my ATS, but it's really hard because ATS search functionality is terrible.

[00:08:55] Yeah.

[00:08:56] Right.

[00:08:56] So I'm going through my rec, looking at candidates.

[00:08:59] I'm saying yes, no, yes, no.

[00:09:00] I get frustrated.

[00:09:01] And then what's in my control?

[00:09:03] I can go type Booleans and find the people I want and send the messages.

[00:09:07] That makes me feel good.

[00:09:09] Even though the math says it doesn't work very often.

[00:09:12] But now you're in control.

[00:09:14] So that's what I think people are seeing about Findem is it allows you to have that same control and proactively source all of those channels because the AI technology is here to do it for you.

[00:09:26] Yeah.

[00:09:26] Instead of having to have individuals.

[00:09:29] You need a perfect example, right?

[00:09:30] So we at Intuit, the thing we learned was like, all right, referrals were only 10% of our hires.

[00:09:34] That doesn't.

[00:09:35] There's something unhealthy about the company.

[00:09:37] Employees aren't referring more people.

[00:09:38] Yeah.

[00:09:38] So we went and had a meeting with the CEO.

[00:09:40] He funded a project.

[00:09:42] We went out and did all this research.

[00:09:43] We found out why people do and don't refer.

[00:09:46] That's not the point of this.

[00:09:47] The point is what we found was the gap is education.

[00:09:50] Yeah.

[00:09:50] Right?

[00:09:50] So employees refer.

[00:09:52] They typically don't know what the recruiters are looking for.

[00:09:55] They submit candidates.

[00:09:56] Recruiters don't follow up because they're not qualified.

[00:09:58] Employee gets frustrated and stops referring.

[00:10:00] Right?

[00:10:00] Yeah.

[00:10:00] So you're not in control.

[00:10:02] You're hoping that employees refer the right people.

[00:10:05] But we were converting like one out of 100.

[00:10:07] Right?

[00:10:08] So what we did was, okay, by going out and talking to employees, we found out they just don't know what they don't know.

[00:10:14] So we started building programs and hired marketing resources, marketing people to go multi-channel market a referral strategy proactive to employees.

[00:10:23] We saw the quality of referrals go way up.

[00:10:26] Right?

[00:10:27] Because we were now controlling it by asking the employees to join the party and helping educate them what good looked like.

[00:10:33] Yeah.

[00:10:33] And how to find diverse talent in their networks.

[00:10:35] Like Findem's AI does that.

[00:10:37] You apply your, you do your search.

[00:10:39] We have a channel called Connections.

[00:10:41] It's not LinkedIn Connections.

[00:10:42] It's AI goes out and searches 100,000 public data sources and can tell people if they work together at the same company at the same time in the same department.

[00:10:51] Very high probability they know each other.

[00:10:53] So as a recruiter, you're now in control.

[00:10:54] Yeah.

[00:10:55] You can leverage that AI.

[00:10:56] You can leverage that AI.

[00:10:56] Apply your search to the employees in your company and tell them who in their network is a great fit for the job and ask for an intro.

[00:11:03] It flips the whole script around referral.

[00:11:06] Yeah.

[00:11:07] No, I'm glad you connected those points.

[00:11:09] I'm sure your clients are glad you connected them as well.

[00:11:11] Because it just seems so disjointed and you've got sort of faulty incentives for some of these referral programs, right?

[00:11:20] Like declaring a bounty for a particular job might get you a higher quantity of referrals.

[00:11:30] But are they the right people?

[00:11:31] So I never really understood that.

[00:11:34] And there were some vendors actually at Unleash when you met, you know, Findem last year.

[00:11:39] I remember there were some of these employee referral programs.

[00:11:43] I'm just like, you have no vetting.

[00:11:45] Right.

[00:11:45] There's no vetting process.

[00:11:46] So how is this helping?

[00:11:48] At least if you're paired with, you know, an algorithm that was trained and designed to find those quality candidates

[00:11:56] and then pair it with how can I increase the likelihood of the response?

[00:12:01] That's right.

[00:12:02] Referral is, that's got to be huge.

[00:12:04] Well, and that proves out in all of our analytics, right?

[00:12:06] So not only was it in our analytics, it into it, knocked it, right?

[00:12:09] We take all those learnings and apply them to the vendor side, which I don't think enough vendors are doing.

[00:12:14] Bring practitioners in to say, how do we repackage our value proposition to the practitioner, right?

[00:12:20] So our analytics that we completely rebuilt and launched in July that tell an incredible story about our user journey.

[00:12:27] Almost 100% of the situations will show that when, and this is the power of Findem, it's multi-channel, right?

[00:12:34] So we proactively rank, score, and filter your inbound.

[00:12:37] Refresh the profiles in your ATS and apply the search criteria to that.

[00:12:41] Referrals.

[00:12:42] People that used to work at your company, alumni, boomerangs, great source of talent because they come back in and they ramp in like a week.

[00:12:50] You know, they had already decided at one point in time on your brand, right?

[00:12:54] They might have gone somewhere else for five years, gotten promoted, gained great experience.

[00:12:59] Why not invite them back, right?

[00:13:00] If they're eligible, try to be rehired.

[00:13:02] But all these great channels that historically you're sitting back and waiting for.

[00:13:06] But our analytics will show that when you start with the talent in your network first, your response rates are always higher.

[00:13:12] So again, why, you know, I always joke like in sales, salespeople want the hot leads.

[00:13:17] Yeah.

[00:13:17] In recruiting, they want the cold leads.

[00:13:19] They're like, I want to go hit up the people who are not looking.

[00:13:23] They might be looking.

[00:13:24] You don't know, right?

[00:13:25] And most of the time, they might already be in your database.

[00:13:28] You just can't find them.

[00:13:29] We ran and experimented into it.

[00:13:31] We got so frustrated because we knew in our database, right?

[00:13:34] We couldn't search it.

[00:13:35] We won't share the ATS name.

[00:13:36] But we ran a data extraction project.

[00:13:39] We had 60,000 untapped resumes, right?

[00:13:41] We asked a couple of recruiters for the next week.

[00:13:44] Every time you search on LinkedIn and find somebody you like for these roles, cross-reference to the ATS, we had 7 out of 10.

[00:13:51] So we're sending messages to people who are like, I've applied five times.

[00:13:55] You don't even know I'm in your database.

[00:13:57] Right.

[00:13:57] I'm out.

[00:13:58] Right?

[00:13:59] Well, the power of we can search our database and we can send the right message and tailor it.

[00:14:05] Different story.

[00:14:06] Higher response rate.

[00:14:07] It's really frustrating that you get, even in 2024, you'll get the generic rejection email without combining data from different sources.

[00:14:20] I mean, we could have a whole separate conversation about why ATSs and CRMs are separate entities, platforms anyway.

[00:14:28] But I think you're right.

[00:14:29] I mean, you talk about candidate experience.

[00:14:32] You talk about employer branding.

[00:14:34] Stop inviting me to your talent community.

[00:14:38] It's just a list.

[00:14:40] It's just a list of email addresses.

[00:14:42] You're not doing anything.

[00:14:43] You're not facilitating discussions.

[00:14:45] You're not considering me for future roles like your template says that you're doing.

[00:14:50] You're just letting me, for legal reasons, know that I'm going to be in your database for the next 18 months.

[00:14:56] For two years.

[00:14:57] You're going to have to do nothing with that data.

[00:14:59] I would say it depends.

[00:15:00] I think this is another massive opportunity.

[00:15:04] I see some of the more forward-looking TA leaders are already doing this.

[00:15:09] We certainly, these aren't first-time problems.

[00:15:11] That's some of my frustration.

[00:15:14] We figured this out 10 years ago at Intuit.

[00:15:16] We were doing this, right?

[00:15:17] So it's great to have a community.

[00:15:19] You want people to be able to come and apply to your jobs.

[00:15:21] And then you want a holding tank where they can say, hey, maybe there's nothing that doesn't fit for me today.

[00:15:26] So I'm going to join your community.

[00:15:28] But then it's like, what is the experience they're getting in there?

[00:15:30] Right?

[00:15:31] Typically, it's like an email a quarter with a couple of updates, right?

[00:15:35] That's not doing anything to your point.

[00:15:37] Yeah.

[00:15:37] The forward-leaning companies are breaking down that talent community and reviewing everybody in there.

[00:15:43] That's often a high degree on qualified people.

[00:15:46] It's fine, right?

[00:15:47] You still, for a branding purpose, might want to send that quarterly email just to touch them.

[00:15:51] Right?

[00:15:52] But there's the low probability some of them are getting hired.

[00:15:54] But sometimes there's really good talent, especially for G&A roles or interns.

[00:16:01] A lot of high-qualified engineers typically aren't joining the generic talent group.

[00:16:06] But breaking that down and making sure that you find the people in there that are a fit for future roles

[00:16:13] and physically removing them from that community and putting them into a very intentional talent pool of similar skilled people

[00:16:21] and then going deep with a nurture strategy for that specific group of people.

[00:16:26] So let's say you have a couple of people in a talent community that happen to be marketing managers, email marketing managers.

[00:16:33] And they look great.

[00:16:34] You only hire two or three of those a year.

[00:16:36] But as you're sourcing from all these different channels, you're taking all these great marketing managers and putting them in a pool.

[00:16:43] And then you have a strategy.

[00:16:45] You need to have a strategy where you have multi-channel engagement, not just emails, not just newsletters, but maybe you're inviting them to a webinar.

[00:16:52] You're creating interactive experiences.

[00:16:53] So that the next time you do have a job, that pool is consuming your job versus you having to go kick off a search to go find them.

[00:17:01] Build the pool.

[00:17:02] When the role comes, let them know it's open.

[00:17:04] And if you have enough people in that pool and you spend enough time building that relationship, pretty sure three or four are going to reapply.

[00:17:11] And now you're showing up at a hiring kickoff with people ready to roll as opposed to taking an intake from a hiring manager.

[00:17:17] You've hired the same person five times for type of profile and going and starting a search from scratch.

[00:17:23] Yeah.

[00:17:24] Yeah.

[00:17:24] I mean, I think there's still a lot of companies that are far less mature.

[00:17:31] Yeah.

[00:17:32] And they're so robotic in the way that they do it.

[00:17:37] Buses start with a new finance approving a new job and creating the JD.

[00:17:43] And it's like if you're going to try to, you know, just parachute in new information somewhere along the way, it's not finding its way into the sort of the data, you know, funnel.

[00:17:56] So that the people who actually need to take action can do so in a logical way.

[00:18:01] So I just think that a lot of companies, they need to realize that they're a missed opportunity.

[00:18:07] It's a huge missed opportunity.

[00:18:08] I think it's how you choose to see yourself.

[00:18:10] It's the other thing I talk to as TA leaders now about in my role is are you a recruiting leader?

[00:18:15] If you are, you're probably reacting to the business and you start when they tell you to start.

[00:18:20] Are you an HR leader?

[00:18:22] And recruiting is your day job that you're thinking more holistically of how the intersections of talent development and talent right.

[00:18:28] Or are you a business leader?

[00:18:30] Because if you're a business leader first, you're running the analysis of the past three years of all the hires you've done and the seasonality.

[00:18:37] And you're looking at the percentage of hires that are common hired roles.

[00:18:44] So we use product managers.

[00:18:45] If you work in a big SaaS company, most managers are looking just for the stereotypical, I shouldn't say stereotypical, just a really strong, qualified, hopefully diverse platform product manager.

[00:18:56] They don't necessarily care if they have CRM specific versus marketing automation.

[00:19:02] Just get me someone who really knows how to build great products.

[00:19:04] So if you already know, or if you run that analysis, which a business leader would, and say, look, I'm going to look at my three-year trend.

[00:19:12] And then I'm going to forecast next year's headcount and attrition run rate.

[00:19:15] We're probably going to hire 25 product managers across the business based on that.

[00:19:20] And I know 75% of them is the core profile you always hire.

[00:19:24] I don't need a headcount.

[00:19:27] And then for those 25 hires, I know I probably need to get about 75 to 100 on-site interviews if I know my ratio of throughput of on-site to offer and offer accept.

[00:19:38] So for 100 interviews, how many screens do I need?

[00:19:41] Probably 200.

[00:19:42] I need about 1,000 people in my product management pool.

[00:19:45] And I need about 100 of them to be interested over the next year.

[00:19:48] And I'm going to focus on the pool versus going and launching new searches.

[00:19:53] Yeah.

[00:19:54] That's the muscle that I see missing a lot of places.

[00:19:57] They're always waiting for the business.

[00:19:58] You have access to all the data to run your business as a business.

[00:20:04] And, you know, 80-20 will.

[00:20:07] 20%, you're going to get surprised.

[00:20:09] They're going to shift headcount from Canada to India.

[00:20:11] Okay, fine, right?

[00:20:13] But if you can't prepare for the 60% to 80%, that's shame on you.

[00:20:17] Yeah.

[00:20:19] So as you think about, like, the structure of the TA teams and, you know, the value that Pondon brings to the equation,

[00:20:29] like, how do you see TA teams evolving to maybe find new roles for similar, assuming they had outbound sources?

[00:20:37] Yeah.

[00:20:37] How do you see them evolving?

[00:20:40] Are they realizing that these people are capable of lots of other things and they're finding other opportunities for them around, you know, rec ops or talent advisory?

[00:20:51] How do you see that?

[00:20:53] Yeah, it's a good question.

[00:20:55] I think it's evolving.

[00:20:57] I'd say, again, it depends.

[00:20:59] It's still early adoptive phase.

[00:21:01] Some of the companies who are already moving on this, and, again, we were doing this a long time ago.

[00:21:06] So I think this concept of, like, AI is new and impact, it's not.

[00:21:12] The tools have been around for a long time, but, again, they've been seen as tools, right?

[00:21:15] And I don't think everybody really fully understood how to use them to their benefit.

[00:21:19] Yeah.

[00:21:19] But organizationally, AI or not, but I'll start with not, is if you're running your recruiting team at the business, it's really no different than being chief revenue officer when you have sales and marketing.

[00:21:33] So would the marketing team go out there and post tiny little ads and hope customers come, right?

[00:21:38] Maybe it's part of a strategy, but it's got to be part of a variable about strategy.

[00:21:42] And would they send emails one at a time, hoping someone responded and wanted to buy, right?

[00:21:46] So when I think about the makeup of a team, just a traditional recruiter sourcer, it doesn't work for me at all.

[00:21:52] And I think a lot of the more sophisticated, I would say, minds and some of our clients, they're migrating in a much different direction, which leads me to in the AI world, right?

[00:22:05] They're realizing just direct sourcing.

[00:22:07] It still has a place.

[00:22:09] I really believe it does.

[00:22:10] 10, 20% of the roles, they have to be sourced.

[00:22:12] You're going to get a principal architect with a unique skill set.

[00:22:15] Okay, someone's got to go find that person.

[00:22:16] You've got to do a search.

[00:22:18] But applying that way of working to thousands of hires, not very scalable.

[00:22:22] So I think where we are now is seeing a lot more migration, bringing marketing talent into the recruiting space.

[00:22:31] Not just brand marketing, right?

[00:22:34] This is somewhat controversial.

[00:22:37] I don't believe in the employer brand.

[00:22:40] I've seen, because we've made the mistakes of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on paid media in front of the top tech talent, thinking it's going to drive them to our careers page and apply.

[00:22:50] It didn't prove out.

[00:22:51] What proved out is moving down funnel from awareness to consideration to engagement and talent engagement marketers who are actually executing large-scale acquisition campaigns, A-B testing the messages.

[00:23:04] And then also on the talent pool side, loyalty marketers who come in and look at a pool of customers, which are candidates, and figuring out really how to nurture them to application when there's an open job.

[00:23:17] So what I kind of see happening is marketers coming in and kind of doing a lot of that large-scale, what you consider sourcing, driving much larger numbers.

[00:23:28] The AI technology where you're not going to put the marketing teams to drive those, helping recruiters not have to spend so much time sending messages, looking for candidates.

[00:23:39] I mean, in Findim, you can attach your JD to a search and it will extract all the attributes, build a search across all the channels in like less than 10 seconds.

[00:23:47] And you just have a list of candidates and then you can shortlist 10 or 20 of them into a campaign and leverage the Gen.AI to tailor the message.

[00:23:55] It takes you like 30 seconds, right?

[00:23:57] That would be an hour's worth of work before.

[00:23:58] So I think, you know, the recruiting job kind of changes.

[00:24:04] A lot more project management skills.

[00:24:07] Hopefully ability to take more recs because you're spending your time in different areas.

[00:24:11] Sourcing, still valuable, like just maybe a smaller chunk of the team.

[00:24:15] And then how these tools play out, like lifting productivity.

[00:24:19] The thing that I'm looking forward to and I don't think we've been able to, like this whole transformation thing.

[00:24:24] The reason I have all that in my remit, if you can't onboard customers, if you can't set the right kind of approach with the customer coming into leverage a vendor, it's all about AI automation, right?

[00:24:38] And the anticipation of getting productivity gains, right?

[00:24:42] It's important that anticipation.

[00:24:43] We're going to come back to this, right?

[00:24:45] And you can't onboard them in a way that gets them to quickly adopt.

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[00:26:00] And quickly maximize the ROI so that, you know, on a 12-month deal at nine months in, it's a sure thing that they're going to retain.

[00:26:08] I mean, they're going to renew your contract.

[00:26:10] You're never going to transform anyone.

[00:26:11] So from renewing, then you want to expand the account.

[00:26:16] More seats.

[00:26:17] Maybe some CRM.

[00:26:18] Start to put a new strategy.

[00:26:20] Multi-channel sourcing right there.

[00:26:22] We're slowly, hey, you guys have a reactive referral strategy.

[00:26:24] We're going to help you build a proactive.

[00:26:26] That's transformation one step at a time.

[00:26:28] And you build and build and build and build.

[00:26:30] So having that all under my umbrella, we're getting to work with customers and kind of go through that journey.

[00:26:36] But the reason I want to come back to the expected intent and output that I hear all the time is two things.

[00:26:42] Well, instrumenting AI and adopting it's going to make recruiters more strategic.

[00:26:47] No, it's not.

[00:26:48] Like that's capability building of a recruiter that has to go into building capabilities and recruiters to become more strategic.

[00:26:56] What does that look like?

[00:26:56] The technology alone is not going to make them more strategic.

[00:26:59] It's taking off their plate maybe some monotonous work, right?

[00:27:03] That's a nice benefit.

[00:27:05] But who says they're then going to go spend their time being more strategic?

[00:27:08] And the second thing is with all of the kind of down market the past 18 months, I don't see a lot of clients who were the teams have full rec plates, full plate of recs.

[00:27:21] So if a typical recruiter is going to carry 15 recs in the GNA space, let's call it, and the expectations are going to fill 10 roles a quarter, right?

[00:27:30] They don't have 15 recs for them.

[00:27:32] So a lot of teams I see are a little overstaffed because they're waiting for things to come back.

[00:27:38] But in a world where you have a capacity model of 10 hires a quarter and you think by introducing all these AI tools, you're going to get that person who does 10 to 12, right?

[00:27:47] That's a lot.

[00:27:48] Two more hires per quarter, eight hires a year per recruiter across a large team.

[00:27:54] That's a lot more hires you could get out of that team.

[00:27:56] So as the company's growing, you can go back to finance and say, hey, I got great news.

[00:28:00] I don't need any more people, right?

[00:28:02] But we're not there yet.

[00:28:03] I don't see any teams where they're saying, hey, my team's at max capacity on recs.

[00:28:07] Let's work for the next year and get these people who are doing 10 up to 12 by implementing tools that help drive productivity with AI and automation.

[00:28:16] That's what I think is going to be the fun thing next year.

[00:28:20] But you put that all together, I think it's why it's hard right now.

[00:28:24] Business leaders are saying, go buy AI tools.

[00:28:26] You can drive productivity and be more strategic.

[00:28:29] That's a much bigger conversation.

[00:28:32] Much bigger conversation.

[00:28:33] Yeah.

[00:28:34] No, I'm glad you brought this up because one of the things that openly harped on in the past is this maniacal focus on individual productivity.

[00:28:44] As AI is working, everybody, you know, jump in the pool.

[00:28:49] Like that doesn't tell you where you've reinvested the time.

[00:28:54] To your point, I don't know if you moved up the value chain to be a talent advisor and you're doing more strategic work.

[00:29:03] You're talking to people in, you know, business strategy and technology strategy and helping to align talent strategy.

[00:29:13] Maybe that's above your pay grade and you're just not going to do that.

[00:29:18] But what else could you do?

[00:29:19] There's always more things to be doing.

[00:29:22] There's always things left undone because you have a bandwidth issue, whatever.

[00:29:26] So even I would say to focus on, well, how do we get these recruiters from 10 recs to 12 recs a month or whatever it is?

[00:29:35] Like, is that the long term goal?

[00:29:38] Is that the best thing that we think they should be doing is just increasing throughput of candidates that are maybe qualified, maybe not?

[00:29:45] I mean, part of it, I think adds value to to finance, you know, proposition that says, look, we can we can help you things not just faster, but better.

[00:29:57] Right.

[00:29:57] And you're helping you make better decisions by showing you potential very qualified candidates that you would otherwise not go after.

[00:30:07] And just you're just you're playing chess.

[00:30:12] Yeah.

[00:30:12] Right.

[00:30:12] And so I just feel like continuing to focus on individual productivity, you know, we work in teams.

[00:30:19] There's always more things to do.

[00:30:21] If you ask them, you know, what would you be doing if I gave you, you know, money for whatever?

[00:30:28] Would you invest in technology?

[00:30:29] Would you invest in more recruiters?

[00:30:31] Would you give people more recs?

[00:30:32] So I just think it depends on who's sort of driving some of that conversation.

[00:30:37] And if it's a COO is going to try to optimize things and be more efficient and save costs and cost savings and cost avoidance.

[00:30:46] But if it's someone with a, you know, a progressive, strategic, innovative mission, what else could we be doing to optimize our total talent?

[00:30:59] Yeah.

[00:31:00] Yeah.

[00:31:00] That's a big question.

[00:31:02] There's so many things going through my mind.

[00:31:05] And so I think so much of it depends on what's happening in the company as well.

[00:31:09] Right.

[00:31:10] But, you know, companies could have different strategies at different times.

[00:31:14] Or say, in the next three years, we're going to double down on internal mobility.

[00:31:17] The next three years, we're going to double down on increasing our contingent workforce, more flexible.

[00:31:21] From there, you have to realign how you're going to spend time, resource, and what technology investments you're going to make to support that company goal.

[00:31:28] Yeah.

[00:31:29] But all that aside, I think there's a couple of constants, right?

[00:31:33] Try to make this as simple as an answer as possible based on that.

[00:31:36] That's a big question, right?

[00:31:39] I think, you know, the short answer is the constants are, as a TA leader, there's two things you can always be looking to do, which is save time and save money.

[00:31:48] Right.

[00:31:48] At times, you can often get more money, you can often get more resources, you can never get more time.

[00:31:54] Right.

[00:31:55] So how are you optimizing your time and how are you helping the company save money?

[00:31:59] Then on the teams, how can you help people be more productive, more efficient, drive higher engagement?

[00:32:05] Right.

[00:32:05] Because when people are busy and they're working and they're getting wrecks filled, recruiters, they love that.

[00:32:10] And your engagement scores go up.

[00:32:11] And then that is fun.

[00:32:12] People are having fun.

[00:32:14] Now you have a better culture.

[00:32:15] Right.

[00:32:16] So I think those constants need to be a focus no matter what's going on in any situation at any given time.

[00:32:23] But how does that ladder up to what you're kind of describing as total talent management is what you're saying?

[00:32:30] You've got to look.

[00:32:31] Anytime you think you need a new resource, do you borrow?

[00:32:37] Is this a stretch assignment for an existing employee or a new role for an intern employee?

[00:32:43] Maybe go into a talent marketplace if you've got one of those.

[00:32:47] Is this project going to continue indefinitely?

[00:32:51] And I've got the budget.

[00:32:52] Is it full time?

[00:32:53] Do I look into my contingent spaces?

[00:32:56] Is this a freelance thing?

[00:32:57] Because this is a very niche and time boxed sort of need.

[00:33:03] And how do you think about it?

[00:33:04] So it's a build versus buy versus bought decision.

[00:33:10] Like what is the best resource to fulfill this regardless of source, regardless of where that talent is technically working and available?

[00:33:24] Or is it something that an AI agent could be built to handle?

[00:33:32] So I just think you've got to think about the costs and implications and the runway of what your needs are, which you may not know.

[00:33:45] So how do you, I just think it's all part of this, it's like a stochastic optimization kind of problem.

[00:33:53] There's a lot of variables.

[00:33:54] Yeah.

[00:33:54] No, I get what you're saying now.

[00:33:55] And I think the way I would frame that is I think the technology is finally here to help deliver on that.

[00:34:03] What I mean is the two companies I worked at prior, right, Okta and Intu, almost 15 years combined.

[00:34:11] And we did a lot of progressive things.

[00:34:12] One of the things that we really struggled with at both companies was total talent management.

[00:34:18] And when I say that, I mean looking through the lens of who are all the different resources that are attached to the company right now, whether that's employees, contractors, interns, partners, right?

[00:34:30] How can we see that all under one umbrella?

[00:34:32] And even just internal mobility alone, it was really difficult when someone got hired two years later to really have the information of what skills have they gained since they've been working here.

[00:34:43] They might have got a project management professional certification, right?

[00:34:46] The only way you would know that as a recruiter, if you were working on project management roles in this part of the business and the person I'm talking about was in this part, is if you went and cross-referenced externally and hope that person, for example, updated a LinkedIn profile.

[00:35:01] Yeah.

[00:35:01] So getting that information on people was really challenging.

[00:35:06] Understanding who all of your contingent workforce was, working directly for the company through any number of vendors, right?

[00:35:14] Through a consolidated MSP, really difficult.

[00:35:17] Right.

[00:35:17] AI now gives us that ability that anyone associated with the company, we can see all under one umbrella.

[00:35:23] Like, fine, fine, we'll do that.

[00:35:24] But the advantage to that point, the question you were asking is, I think more TA leaders need to think holistically about all the talent at their disposal, as opposed to just their team and what they can deliver on from a full-time hiring perspective.

[00:35:42] Now, even if your mindset was there five years ago, it was very hard to get the information.

[00:35:47] And again, you had to stitch it together.

[00:35:48] You had to have a lot of different conversations with different people and do the best you could.

[00:35:51] But now you can get it all in one place.

[00:35:53] And so bringing that to the forefront as part of the proposition of, like, workforce management across the company, that would be a conversation I think all CHROs and heads of finance would really appreciate.

[00:36:06] Yeah.

[00:36:06] To show how, hey, we're not just filling recs on time, right, and help meeting the company's headcount plans.

[00:36:12] But we're bringing a new perspective to look across the total workforce and make sure that there are situations where if this team's going to get slow and this team's busy,

[00:36:21] let's borrow for six months and put them back, right, as opposed to this team going out and hiring and you have capacity over here working at 50%.

[00:36:30] I think leaders need to think about this as a network, as a system and how do you optimize the network.

[00:36:39] And so you see other tools, you know, organizational network analysis, social network analysis, knowledge graphs,

[00:36:47] and you can see how information is flowing if you're monitoring communication channels anonymously, anonymously data, of course.

[00:36:54] But I just feel like if you can pull all these things together, you're going to have that visibility that you would never otherwise have other than pure serendipity to find these people.

[00:37:10] Or, you know, because it'll come up, you can run into people here, like, oh, how did you not know that so-and-so had a background in, you know, chemical engineering or whatever it is, right?

[00:37:20] Like, you don't know, and I'm not saying, of course this happens all the time and I'm not trying to, you know, boil the ocean here,

[00:37:28] but it just seems like going into, like, skills-based hiring and skills-based organizations, like, the more you can gather either from self-reported data

[00:37:38] or skills inference from things that they've done but didn't use a specific keyword or whatever, which is why, you know,

[00:37:46] I was never a sourcer, so I'm not, you know, a recruiter, so I'm not a huge, like, you know, Boolean guy.

[00:37:52] Because when I pivoted into this space from large enterprise transformation, one of the first things that this RPO I was working for asked me to look at was sourcing tools.

[00:38:04] How can we, you know, accelerate that without just adding more, you know, staff, which were all contractors?

[00:38:10] How do we, you know, at the time of recruiting, like, you couldn't pay recruiters enough a couple years ago.

[00:38:17] And most in-demand job in the world, I think in 2021, the Washington Post.

[00:38:22] Exactly. Yeah, like, first quarter, second quarter.

[00:38:23] It was unbelievable. Yeah, it was crazy.

[00:38:25] Great time to get hired.

[00:38:26] Right.

[00:38:26] They were making a lot of money.

[00:38:28] So, but yeah, like, we're not going to be able to find sourcers, you know, good sourcers fast enough.

[00:38:35] So, how do we scale? How do we do it effectively and intelligently?

[00:38:40] And so, yeah, no, it seemed like such a great, great lift.

[00:38:45] But, but yeah, I think you just, everyone's got a network going back to, you know, circling back to the referrals thing.

[00:38:52] Everyone's got these great, oh, well, you know, this person used to work here.

[00:38:55] You mentioned alumni as well.

[00:38:57] Maybe they left for more money, but a couple months later, they're not happy.

[00:39:03] And somebody who's still at the company, you know, knows this.

[00:39:07] You know, we could get a boomerang, you know, candidate back here.

[00:39:10] They'd be perfect for that new project and, you know, whatever.

[00:39:12] And so, I just think, you know, we don't do enough of that for whatever reason.

[00:39:19] Well, and that's kind of the crux.

[00:39:21] And I think what we figured out of Intuit years ago, studying business.

[00:39:25] Businesses don't operate the way recruiting teams operate.

[00:39:27] Like I said, they don't post a job and send messages one at a time.

[00:39:30] And then wonder why they don't hit their numbers, right?

[00:39:32] They have a multitude of channel strategies that they're always optimizing to work for them.

[00:39:38] I think that's the shift, right?

[00:39:39] That's what I love about Findem is putting that proactive power in the hands to go do that.

[00:39:43] Because, I mean, if you think about what's happened over the last two years,

[00:39:47] I have this conversation with you all the time.

[00:39:49] Like, are you spending money on LinkedIn job slots?

[00:39:52] Yeah.

[00:39:53] Are you spending money paid ads on the deal?

[00:39:55] Yeah.

[00:39:56] Like, all right, do you have brand marketing?

[00:39:58] Yeah.

[00:39:58] They're doing social media.

[00:39:59] They're, you know, organic traffic.

[00:40:01] They're like, okay, how much has your database grown in the past two years?

[00:40:04] Almost everyone's has 2 to 10x, depending on the size of your company, right?

[00:40:09] Some of them have gone from 200,000 to a million, right?

[00:40:12] And a lot of good people have been let go over the past couple of years, right?

[00:40:15] So they're applying to all these jobs.

[00:40:17] I find it a phenomenal time where, like, this whole concept of really want the people who aren't looking.

[00:40:21] A lot of good people just got let go of financial decisions.

[00:40:24] They were great.

[00:40:25] I had to do it at my last company.

[00:40:26] I let a lot of recruiters go.

[00:40:28] If I went back in seat, they'd be the first people I call.

[00:40:31] You just get in these situations.

[00:40:32] You don't have a choice, right?

[00:40:34] Yeah.

[00:40:34] So what a shame that people are still spending a tremendous amount of money on ads to drive more people to their current openings.

[00:40:43] Why?

[00:40:44] You can't search the database.

[00:40:46] So what's the point of even having it, right?

[00:40:48] So that is becoming a big thing now.

[00:40:51] It's like, how do we optimize the database?

[00:40:52] We met with a client Monday morning before I flew here, a prospect.

[00:40:56] They get a million inbound applicants every 90 days.

[00:41:01] So we kind of had the conversation that they should never have to source anybody.

[00:41:06] Ever.

[00:41:07] Just the volume through inbound, who they already have in their ATS, the referral volume they get from their tens of thousands of employees.

[00:41:16] They shouldn't need any other source.

[00:41:18] But having AI mechanisms to go optimize that data and actually update the skills and know what you have and match them the current openings.

[00:41:27] We're just getting there from an industry perspective.

[00:41:29] And people are just starting to figure that out.

[00:41:31] Because that's talent that's already made it.

[00:41:32] You don't need them for your brand.

[00:41:33] They've already made a decision on your brand.

[00:41:35] You're going to hire 20,000 people a year and you have 50 million people in your database.

[00:41:40] You just need to optimize your database.

[00:41:42] You need to update the skills.

[00:41:43] You need to get them to match the current roles, right?

[00:41:45] You need more information on people.

[00:41:46] Your network of employees.

[00:41:49] How many people inside the company might be looking lead because they're tired or they're worn out?

[00:41:55] They don't like their manager.

[00:41:56] Why aren't we matching them to a different role, right?

[00:41:59] Proactively, right?

[00:42:00] It doesn't usually happen in companies.

[00:42:02] That turn starting to happen, I think, kind of validates what you're saying, where if you don't know what you have, you can't do anything with it.

[00:42:09] So what do you do?

[00:42:10] You're always going and looking for elsewhere.

[00:42:12] I think I used this term when we briefly met yesterday.

[00:42:15] It's like making the invisible visible.

[00:42:17] That's what I see AI doing.

[00:42:19] It's like, oh, we didn't know we had 250 qualified women SaaS sales reps in our database.

[00:42:24] We didn't even know.

[00:42:25] Yeah.

[00:42:25] And we're spending money trying to go post ads and a sourcer's whole job is to go find diverse sales reps.

[00:42:32] But we had 250 in our database.

[00:42:34] Well, that was invisible to the recruiters.

[00:42:36] Yeah.

[00:42:36] Now with AI, I can extract that, update and refresh their profiles and match them with their jobs.

[00:42:41] Yeah.

[00:42:41] It's game changing.

[00:42:42] Do you think that incentives need to change in a way, not necessarily incentives.

[00:42:48] Maybe it's just like the metrics that people are measured on.

[00:42:52] This is the way I'm getting measured.

[00:42:54] I'm measured on throughput.

[00:42:56] I'm measured on some traditional metric.

[00:42:59] And that's why people are just not incentivized to take a sort of systems thinking approach to, you know, where I might find talent.

[00:43:08] Like your goal should be to fill that job with the most qualified person as quickly as possible.

[00:43:14] Not I'm only incentivized to go in this one direction or whatever.

[00:43:21] Because I've experienced the same thing that we're describing when I was at NBCUniversal.

[00:43:26] They made me go through vendor management and through a bunch of staff in the agencies to find a principal, you know, engineer.

[00:43:34] And I said, wait a minute, we've got dozens of engineering teams across this, you know, Comcast family of companies.

[00:43:42] You're telling me that there's not a senior, an existing principal engineer or a senior engineer who's ready.

[00:43:50] Ready. Yeah. Who's not already getting, you know, poached by other media companies or whatever.

[00:43:59] So, like, that's just, in some ways it's like a known unknown.

[00:44:03] But it's like, you can't put your head in the sand and think that I can't go and look internally.

[00:44:11] Right.

[00:44:11] Just because, like, I know you don't have money for a full-time person.

[00:44:15] That's why you're asking to go and get a contractor.

[00:44:17] Right.

[00:44:17] Because, you know, the accounting will say, that's okay.

[00:44:20] I can spend most of them on a contractor.

[00:44:22] I just can't spend a dime on a full-time.

[00:44:24] Right.

[00:44:24] They don't want to hire.

[00:44:25] But what if you just did a transfer?

[00:44:28] So, I think some of it is around metrics and then maybe even culture.

[00:44:32] Maybe this goes into the shortcomings or not shortcomings, but one of the challenges of implementing an internal talent marketplace is talent hoarding.

[00:44:41] And, yeah, like, I've got short-term commitments and I can't do it.

[00:44:45] My guys are constantly looking for what's next and, you know, these other sort of pseudo-legitimate excuses.

[00:44:53] I know.

[00:44:54] So, these are all big issues.

[00:44:55] I think you're right.

[00:44:56] It's, we're going to start with that, right?

[00:44:58] I mean, culturally, for one, I think sometimes there's only so much the talent team can do.

[00:45:04] You know, I think we should be doing all of these things and looking holistically.

[00:45:08] I think holding companies, private equity firms, like, we have a couple clients and, like, you own all these companies.

[00:45:14] My take would be no one ever leaves the PE portfolio.

[00:45:17] Yeah.

[00:45:17] Right.

[00:45:17] Like, hey, you did five years at this company.

[00:45:20] You were looking for a change.

[00:45:22] Great.

[00:45:22] We got 10 other companies.

[00:45:23] Go work for them.

[00:45:24] Right.

[00:45:24] Like, it should be a lot easier instead of they all tend to operate independently.

[00:45:29] To your point, like, we're going to build our own budget with our own tools.

[00:45:32] I don't get it.

[00:45:33] Right.

[00:45:33] There's such a better way to do it.

[00:45:35] But culturally, I think companies still have to kind of get on board and come around to the fact that it's never my talent.

[00:45:43] It's our talent.

[00:45:46] Because when it's my talent, right, it's just, it's so limiting, limiting from the perspective of if you study attrition data, it's almost always consistent with the top three reasons people.

[00:45:59] If they feel like they're not growing in their career, they don't like their manager.

[00:46:03] Right.

[00:46:03] So this is almost consistent everywhere you look where they want to make more money.

[00:46:08] Okay.

[00:46:08] The first two are always solvable.

[00:46:11] The third can be.

[00:46:12] Right.

[00:46:13] It just depends on your compensation practices.

[00:46:15] But I've seen it at places I've worked where people do have that mindset, unfortunately.

[00:46:19] Like, I hired that person.

[00:46:21] They're on my team.

[00:46:22] Well, they're getting recruited from other companies all the time.

[00:46:26] So if we just flipped our mindset and we embraced mobility, you can put some guardrails in place.

[00:46:33] Hey, I need 15 months out of somebody.

[00:46:36] Because how much can you, I don't think you want a complete free-for-all, right?

[00:46:41] And people bidding up salaries.

[00:46:43] Come to my team, I'll give you a raise, right?

[00:46:44] That's a little too far, I think.

[00:46:46] But I don't understand.

[00:46:48] Not.

[00:46:50] Hey, this is William Tenka, Work to Find.

[00:46:52] Hey, listen, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about Inside the C-Suite, the podcast.

[00:46:56] It's a look into the journey of how one goes from high school, college, whatever, all the way to the C-Suite.

[00:47:03] All the ups and downs, failures, successes, all that stuff.

[00:47:06] Give it a listen.

[00:47:07] Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:47:10] Focusing on it.

[00:47:12] And I know a lot of it, so because Findem has the technology to identify all the people in your company and update their profile,

[00:47:19] whether they just started there last week or if they started there four years ago and it's updated elsewhere, we'll pull it in.

[00:47:25] So you can look at your whole.

[00:47:26] So one of the questions I have our team ask now that we go to implement is, what is your internal mobility policy?

[00:47:33] And I'd say 90% of the time it's like, it's hands off.

[00:47:37] We're not allowed to recruit.

[00:47:38] The internal employee has to decide to apply.

[00:47:42] Right.

[00:47:42] And that to me is like, that's backwards thinking.

[00:47:46] Right.

[00:47:47] If it was a culture of, hey, we want to promote growth and we want to give you more opportunities because we want you to grow a career here for 10 to 15 years.

[00:47:57] And we know you're going to recruit it elsewhere.

[00:47:59] And by the way, we also know because you can get this information anywhere now, like the average person stays two and a half years in tech.

[00:48:06] Yeah.

[00:48:06] Okay.

[00:48:06] How come at 18 months we're not proactively helping them find new roles?

[00:48:10] So like you talk about like, I think it would be nice to see more teams have an internal mobility recruiting function.

[00:48:18] Cause like, I guess you step back and look at all these things we're talking about.

[00:48:22] I think recruiting can play such a bigger role in helping to drive and optimize talent across the company.

[00:48:30] Right.

[00:48:31] Not just fill open racks, but partner with L and D look at all the skills in the company.

[00:48:35] What are we deficient?

[00:48:36] If we don't have to go higher, go build some programs and put people through that.

[00:48:40] Right.

[00:48:40] We're growing the talent.

[00:48:41] Right.

[00:48:42] We're putting them into other parts of the business.

[00:48:44] Go work with talent management and let's look at all the people who we have that might be ready now for promotion.

[00:48:50] Let's make sure they're always getting interviewed for the next, the next time.

[00:48:53] I don't see a lot of teams doing those things, but I think it is our responsibility.

[00:48:58] And again, like it always comes back to like, there are tools out there now.

[00:49:02] Find them just happens to be one, but like you can get all this information now, but it's then it's again, that's not going to make you strategic.

[00:49:09] Right.

[00:49:09] So if you're thinking this way and then you marry that with the right technology, it'd be super powerful.

[00:49:14] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:49:16] So, Brett.

[00:49:18] So we're here at HR tech.

[00:49:20] AI is, of course, all over the place.

[00:49:23] I was curious if you just any particular like use cases or tools that we're using either personally, professionally or getting a lot of value.

[00:49:32] I personally love ChatGPT.

[00:49:34] I mean, I really, really do.

[00:49:36] We wrote an article the other day and I thought, what the hell, I'm going to pop it in here.

[00:49:43] And I asked ChatGPT to just, I said, hey, please soften the tone.

[00:49:49] It makes this more inclusive and easier to digest for the common person who doesn't work in the recruiting industry.

[00:49:56] 90% of the article is the same.

[00:49:57] Yeah.

[00:49:58] But as I read through it, it really did make it just like a little more digestible.

[00:50:03] Because I was probably writing a little bit too much like from a practitioner's perspective.

[00:50:09] So it's things like that I think are super helpful.

[00:50:13] We use it at home.

[00:50:14] Like my wife was laughing the other day.

[00:50:15] We planned this big trip to Italy.

[00:50:18] And she said, you know, I already planned the trip.

[00:50:21] And then I decided to check it out.

[00:50:22] And it spit out like all these great things that should have already been thinking about, right?

[00:50:26] Plan a trip.

[00:50:26] So I think that's fundamentally kind of where a lot of people are spending their time.

[00:50:31] That's being embedded.

[00:50:32] Some companies are building proprietary.

[00:50:34] A lot of fun with that.

[00:50:36] I have a lot of fun with finding.

[00:50:37] I mean, I really think it's an awesome platform.

[00:50:39] And I'm still, you know, finding new things to do with it all the time.

[00:50:44] I think the use cases are so beyond just talent acquisition.

[00:50:48] And I think we could build a whole talent management practice with the data and information we can get

[00:50:52] into the hands of those types of folks and what they would do with it.

[00:50:56] But I'm walking around here.

[00:50:58] I mean, there's just, I think the thing at HR Tech, it's overwhelming how many vendors there are.

[00:51:05] So if you're a buyer right now, where do you start?

[00:51:08] Right?

[00:51:09] You know the big names.

[00:51:10] They're pretty obvious.

[00:51:11] But there's probably so many cool technologies here that people really took the time to sit down with them.

[00:51:17] They're probably pretty excited.

[00:51:19] Yeah.

[00:51:20] No, there's definitely a lot of people pushing the envelope and doing some cool things.

[00:51:25] Of course, me was my responsible AI focus.

[00:51:29] I always try to ask some of the tough questions, you know, about how the models were built and making sure we're being fair.

[00:51:36] And we've got some governance and ethics around, you know, what we're building.

[00:51:41] Especially in the talent space, because we're all talking about.

[00:51:43] Yeah, for sure.

[00:51:44] These livelihoods.

[00:51:46] And so, yeah.

[00:51:47] So I always like to poke and prod.

[00:51:50] Yeah.

[00:51:51] Talk around the expo.

[00:51:52] But, yeah.

[00:51:53] And then just in terms of how AI is becoming ubiquitous, I believe we've been talking about.

[00:52:01] Any advice for people who are sort of laggards and haven't tried to chat to PT or anything like that?

[00:52:08] Yeah.

[00:52:08] Even like generative AI, I think, is really cool.

[00:52:11] I forgot.

[00:52:11] I mean, I've had a lot of fun with that.

[00:52:16] One thing I would share is, you know, in TA, I think, you know, data wins all arguments, right?

[00:52:22] So if you have the right data set and you're telling the right story, you can be very influential.

[00:52:26] With leaders, with your team, whoever.

[00:52:28] I see a lot of recruiting practitioners just don't have that muscle.

[00:52:31] Yeah.

[00:52:31] Well, there's Gen AI built doing a lot of these dashboards that will give you a summary.

[00:52:37] And so it's like, so back to like, you know, people who aren't getting on board yet.

[00:52:42] But the reason I told that story first is like, don't be afraid.

[00:52:46] Right.

[00:52:47] It's, it's, I think in some cases, sure.

[00:52:51] Over time, it may replace certain.

[00:52:54] Now, I don't even want to say jobs.

[00:52:55] It's certain areas where people spend time because it's just more efficient and it's going to outperform the person all day long.

[00:53:02] Okay.

[00:53:04] Embrace that.

[00:53:05] Right.

[00:53:05] Now, some people like doing that type of work.

[00:53:07] Yeah.

[00:53:07] Right.

[00:53:07] So that's going to be a hard thing for those types of people.

[00:53:10] Right.

[00:53:10] That's fine.

[00:53:11] Right.

[00:53:11] That's just the evolution of the world.

[00:53:13] With this technology, I'd say, you know, just embrace it and try to get comfortable and experiment.

[00:53:20] Because if you take like your average recruiter who started an agency is two years in corporate and they really don't understand how to look at all these different metrics and tell a story to a hiring manager influencer, no problem.

[00:53:33] Ask the Gen AI to do it for you.

[00:53:35] Read what it wrote.

[00:53:37] Digest it.

[00:53:37] Try to understand it.

[00:53:38] If not, go ask your manager to come help you.

[00:53:40] And the more you do that over and over, you will start to build a muscle.

[00:53:44] So you can almost teach yourself new skills working with the technology as opposed to working against the technology.

[00:53:50] So I see it as an assistant right now to help accelerate our careers and our professions more so than something that I would be afraid is actually going to take my job.

[00:54:01] I think about it, EQ and IQ.

[00:54:02] Yeah.

[00:54:04] I don't know if it's going to ever get to that place where it's going to really have the intuition of a person.

[00:54:11] But boy, I sure love to get all this stuff off my plate that it can do better and help me be more productive.

[00:54:17] Yeah.

[00:54:18] No, absolutely.

[00:54:19] I do.

[00:54:19] I like the thought partner and a co-pilot aspect to it.

[00:54:24] And I like just using your Italy trip as an example.

[00:54:28] I mean, yeah, you could spend a lot of time doing a lot of research and crowdsourcing advice from your social network or whatever.

[00:54:37] But in some ways, you know, the center of AI is already gathering a lot of the collective intelligence and has already crowdsourced because that's went into what was in its sort of training set to come up with its recommendations.

[00:54:54] But you've almost got at least a little bit of a cognitive diversity a little bit in your planning, right?

[00:55:01] Because maybe you weren't thinking about, oh, well, our favorite, you know, wine happens to be from this region that we're going to go to.

[00:55:09] Or remember that pasta dish you had at your favorite Italian restaurant that came from this other place or whatever and they do tours.

[00:55:17] Like, so there's just things that you would never otherwise think about that could enhance the experience.

[00:55:23] Yeah, I think it's just it's a great starting point.

[00:55:26] And even now, I'll go do something.

[00:55:28] I had I had I love landscaping.

[00:55:31] I did it all through college.

[00:55:33] That was my new collar life.

[00:55:35] I love it.

[00:55:35] Right.

[00:55:35] Still to this day, no one's ever been paid to do my yard.

[00:55:39] It's my happy place.

[00:55:40] Right.

[00:55:40] So we have this backyard.

[00:55:41] You live in California.

[00:55:42] It's not very big.

[00:55:43] But I had a mole problem.

[00:55:45] I started going out in May and June.

[00:55:46] All these little moles popping a mole.

[00:55:47] You can't.

[00:55:48] You never see these things.

[00:55:49] Right.

[00:55:49] They're destroying my yard.

[00:55:51] So I'm trying all these different things.

[00:55:53] Right.

[00:55:54] Weeks go by.

[00:55:54] And like my kids and my wife just laugh.

[00:55:56] Like, oh, you crushed this lawn.

[00:55:57] Right.

[00:55:57] It really bothers me.

[00:55:58] I go in the chat GPT and I'm like, how to hit.

[00:56:01] Right.

[00:56:01] And I'm like, why didn't I just start here?

[00:56:05] Right.

[00:56:05] It's taking all this information about what works and what doesn't work.

[00:56:08] And all the people who put information all around the world and deal with mole problems

[00:56:12] in their backyard.

[00:56:12] And it gave me a solution that I hadn't even tried.

[00:56:15] And in two weeks, I didn't have any moles of them.

[00:56:17] I'm like, so my boys just accelerate to the obvious or the best guests.

[00:56:23] It might not have been in your mind.

[00:56:24] I was racking my brain.

[00:56:26] I was at Home Depot buying all this stuff that doesn't work.

[00:56:28] I probably spent $300.

[00:56:29] Next day, I come out.

[00:56:30] There's another hill in my backyard.

[00:56:31] I'm like, ah.

[00:56:32] Right.

[00:56:33] I was envisioning you, you know, full Caddyshack.

[00:56:36] Right.

[00:56:37] With Bill Murray out there.

[00:56:37] Oh, I tried that.

[00:56:38] I put the hose down there.

[00:56:39] I didn't go that far.

[00:56:40] It just wasn't.

[00:56:41] Yeah.

[00:56:41] I mean, you just.

[00:56:42] So it's a great place to start.

[00:56:43] It doesn't mean it's going to.

[00:56:45] You're going to do what it says.

[00:56:47] Right.

[00:56:47] But it just gets you thinking about things.

[00:56:49] I'm excited about it.

[00:56:50] Yeah.

[00:56:51] I think the recruiting profession, a lot of things are going to stay the same.

[00:56:55] But the last thing I'll say, I've had this conversation with people here, too.

[00:57:00] We all kind of believe this is the case.

[00:57:02] If you don't get on board, you're going to get left behind.

[00:57:04] Because it's really like I've seen now an interview question.

[00:57:08] Teams are interviewing recruiters, clients of ours.

[00:57:10] How do you leverage ChatGPT?

[00:57:13] How have you used AI?

[00:57:14] What they're looking for is not an expert answer.

[00:57:17] It's your comfort and familiarity.

[00:57:19] Yeah.

[00:57:19] And can you put your ego aside and say, hey, I'm flexible.

[00:57:23] I'm willing to change.

[00:57:24] I'm willing to get on board with the future.

[00:57:26] Yeah.

[00:57:26] I play around with this.

[00:57:27] Here's what it's done for me.

[00:57:28] That's all they're looking for.

[00:57:29] Yeah.

[00:57:30] Because we're still so early.

[00:57:31] You don't have to be an expert.

[00:57:32] Just are you going to run away from it?

[00:57:34] Are you going to embrace it?

[00:57:35] That's it.

[00:57:36] So this is exactly why I started this podcast and why I called it Elevate Your AIQ.

[00:57:45] Because you have to start getting comfortable.

[00:57:48] You will, wherever you go to work, with some exception, I suppose, but they're going to start asking those questions.

[00:57:57] And it wasn't that long ago, less than a year ago, where recruiters themselves may not have even thought about it because they weren't using it.

[00:58:05] They didn't know if it was, you know, bad or whatever it was.

[00:58:10] You know, certainly there was, it's been, you know, overhyped, I would say.

[00:58:14] But that doesn't change the fact that it is here to stay.

[00:58:17] This is part of the evolution of technological, you know, advancement.

[00:58:21] And you have to get comfortable with it, just like I had to get comfortable, you know, using the internet and using the computer and using social media.

[00:58:31] And this is, this is the next, you know, big one that affects us.

[00:58:36] Oh, I mean, you could stay off Facebook, but you can't escape AI in your everyday life.

[00:58:43] I mean, we've been using it.

[00:58:45] Perhaps I'm knowing you.

[00:58:46] Yeah, I just, I, again, this is just a mindset, but I just learned over the years, like the world is going to evolve with or without you.

[00:58:56] And what, if you, if you're old enough, which I am, like to look back and say, knowing what we know now, you tend to look back and say, well, we worried about it, right?

[00:59:07] It will work itself out.

[00:59:08] There's a lot of smart people out there, way smarter than me, looking into you, looking at this response.

[00:59:13] Like everybody's looking at this from all angles.

[00:59:15] It's still early, right?

[00:59:16] Remember people didn't want to put their credit card online to buy something.

[00:59:20] Yeah.

[00:59:20] Right.

[00:59:21] The right people figured out how to do it securely, safely.

[00:59:24] And then over time, you know, it's like the curve over time.

[00:59:27] Like it's so much easier than getting in my car and driving to the store.

[00:59:29] I'm just going to do it.

[00:59:30] I'll just, and then more and more, more people just get more comfortable with the risk.

[00:59:34] But the risk starts to go down.

[00:59:37] I mean, a year ago, robots are going to blow up the world.

[00:59:39] I don't know.

[00:59:39] Right.

[00:59:40] But like, I'm just willing to bet that we as humans will figure out how to do this responsibly.

[00:59:45] And the other thing I was going to ask you about, which I find fascinating, I was talking

[00:59:49] to some vendors yesterday out by the food court.

[00:59:52] We all kind of had this funny situation with the same, there were two of us trying to sell

[00:59:56] into the same exact tech company.

[00:59:58] And we both got right to the finish line.

[01:00:01] And then the newly formed in-house AI council got involved.

[01:00:08] And the security review and compliance review and all the paperwork that normally moves in

[01:00:14] about four to six weeks, it's now been like four months.

[01:00:17] And so I'd love to get your take on these new AI councils.

[01:00:23] Our take is like, no one knows enough yet, but they're putting these councils together

[01:00:26] and they're just blocking and slowing everything down.

[01:00:28] And they're overly de-risking situations that right now aren't very risky.

[01:00:35] So are you seeing that?

[01:00:37] And what's your take on it?

[01:00:38] Yeah, I think it depends on that council and how, if that was just sort of slapped together

[01:00:45] and what the exact mission is, because there are, Shirley and me talked about this a little

[01:00:50] bit in her keynote, but there's like, you might have an AI center of excellence.

[01:00:54] And maybe that's really, from an execution standpoint, they're going to make sure that all the,

[01:01:01] you know, if you've got a hub and spoke model and you've got people using AI in different

[01:01:05] departments and lines of business to make sure there's some consistency.

[01:01:09] And these are the tools and these are the practices and this is the governance and stuff like that.

[01:01:14] But there's also, you could have an AI ethics committee that says, before we implement or

[01:01:21] make, you know, vendor choices or figure out what platform to build custom models on top

[01:01:26] of or whatever, you know, we're going to take a look at that and we're going to bring in

[01:01:30] cognitive diversity.

[01:01:32] This is, this should be a net new group, a cross section of people from different disciplines

[01:01:38] and different kinds of business that bring cognitive diversity to some of those decisions,

[01:01:42] make sure certain use cases are, you know, have additional scrutiny because it's personally

[01:01:48] identified information and we don't want to make sure that stays in a closed loop, you

[01:01:53] know, proprietary system.

[01:01:55] But I think the problem is you're right.

[01:01:58] They've now gone, pendulum swung too far the other direction.

[01:02:04] And now it's just like, well, we're all for, you know, innovation and we know AI is coming,

[01:02:10] but here's the problem.

[01:02:12] We don't have visibility to, you know, this particular vendor because they don't, haven't

[01:02:17] disclosed how their models are trained or whatever it is.

[01:02:21] So the problem is there's just variables and there's components of the risk profile that

[01:02:26] they just don't know.

[01:02:28] So there's a lot of extreme caution as they move forward.

[01:02:33] But the problem is there are no standards yet.

[01:02:35] I was just talking to Jerry Crispin in the analyst room about this.

[01:02:38] Like there's no standardization of how companies are adhering to the practices.

[01:02:43] We can't rely on legislation because it's always going to be sort of trailing some of the

[01:02:47] innovation, but how do we sort of self-govern in a way across the industry to say, these are

[01:02:54] some of the key questions.

[01:02:56] So from Jerry's perspective, he's got a list of questions that he created that you should

[01:03:01] be asking vendors.

[01:03:02] And eventually, if not already, this should be in your RFI and RFP to these vendors to

[01:03:06] say, you know, if you can answer these questions.

[01:03:10] So I think at some point, just like if you went through a cyber review before deploying

[01:03:14] a new solution in enterprise, for example, you've got to go through and they've got a

[01:03:20] list of questions and things like that.

[01:03:23] So there's definitely more hoops to jump through.

[01:03:26] But to your point, I think there's also just people who are being overly cautious.

[01:03:33] I was going to bring up, Jerry, it's interesting to set back because Career Crossroads has an

[01:03:37] annual TA leadership and they invited a few vendors for the first time.

[01:03:43] And we got to be part of that because they like what we're doing.

[01:03:47] People are cool and innovative, right?

[01:03:48] So I went and that was a big topic.

[01:03:52] This was a year ago, September, but I remember that conversation that he led.

[01:03:56] It was really interesting from the sense that it all makes sense, right?

[01:03:59] Like you haven't, you know, you have security paperwork, you have AI paperwork, right?

[01:04:03] You have to go, but there is no standardization.

[01:04:05] And there isn't like a governing body right now that says this is the way it should be

[01:04:10] done.

[01:04:11] So there's been asked of vendors to do like an AI audit and where it was last year.

[01:04:16] This made sense, but I don't really know where we are today.

[01:04:19] That's why I was asking.

[01:04:20] Doing some type of audit is better than doing nothing to at least say you're starting down

[01:04:26] that path.

[01:04:27] But you could do an audit and three of your competitors could do an audit and you're all

[01:04:31] auditing different things, right?

[01:04:34] Because you're all looking at it differently.

[01:04:35] And so, you know, the industry, at least in the tech, HR tech getting in a place where

[01:04:39] it is consistent, right?

[01:04:41] Probably aligning to some of these things Jerry's thinking about, but just how are we all,

[01:04:46] how are we all passing the test?

[01:04:47] Yeah.

[01:04:48] What is the test?

[01:04:49] That's, that's what's still a little underlined.

[01:04:51] Yeah.

[01:04:51] I can't say for certain that some of these like AI governance platforms are all looking,

[01:04:58] they're all telling you whether you're in acceptable, you know, range of adverse impact

[01:05:04] or whatever, like you haven't crossed the four fifths rule, for example, is, is the one

[01:05:11] thing that everyone says is sort of accepted, you know, practice.

[01:05:14] We have to have, uh, you know, if you're hiring or if you're moving forward with, you know,

[01:05:18] 50, you know, white people, males or whatever, we've got to have at least, you know, 40 minorities

[01:05:25] or, you know, 40 women or whatever.

[01:05:27] So that's, that's the only general practice, but I don't know that, you know, the governance,

[01:05:31] you know, frameworks are all, you know, similar or I'm sure they would say that their insights

[01:05:37] are unique in some, you know, fashion or whatever, but, but yeah, I don't think, um, I don't think

[01:05:44] that's enough because we could be creating adverse impact much earlier than any legislation

[01:05:51] might be considered.

[01:05:53] Like right now, if you're not a solution involved in the decision-making process, so, you know,

[01:05:59] an ATS gives you a score or a stack link and then, you know, maybe there's a score in the

[01:06:04] skills assessment.

[01:06:05] So these things that are coming up with scores are obviously influencing the decision, but

[01:06:13] in the case of New York city, is it a material influence in the decision?

[01:06:18] Right.

[01:06:18] Well, you've just added subjectivity to this and now it's essentially unenforceable.

[01:06:23] But that's not to say that California or, you know, Illinois or Colorado or somewhere else is

[01:06:28] going to come up with a different, some other rule for some other part of this.

[01:06:33] I mean, technically there could be bias in the algorithms that do the recruitment marketing that

[01:06:37] we both agree is not a place to spend your money.

[01:06:41] But if you do, how do I know that you're not targeting only a certain subset of your population?

[01:06:49] So, so you could, this starts all the way back.

[01:06:51] The potential bias goes back to how this was designed and how the system was trained and

[01:06:57] tested all the way through, um, you know, talent management decisions, emotions, um, you know,

[01:07:03] attrition, there's all kinds of things that we need to do.

[01:07:06] Yeah.

[01:07:06] So I, I struggle with like, is it getting better or worse because people are incredibly

[01:07:10] biased, right?

[01:07:11] You see it in companies all the time.

[01:07:14] So if something like, if there's something recommending a list of people and scoring and

[01:07:18] ranking against a job description or a job description that then a recruiter goes and can

[01:07:23] tweak the search, these weren't really the right people, right?

[01:07:25] You're already doing this on other platforms.

[01:07:27] And we, the nineties, I was searching on monster.com, right?

[01:07:31] You know, probably had implicit bias.

[01:07:33] I didn't even understand back then making certain decisions on who I was going to put forward in

[01:07:36] the process.

[01:07:37] The AI is now recommending different people.

[01:07:41] I'm still making the decision, right?

[01:07:43] So is it giving me a biased list or am I, you know what I mean?

[01:07:45] Like it's hard to pinpoint like where, where does this end?

[01:07:48] Yeah.

[01:07:49] Where's it stop?

[01:07:49] It's tough.

[01:07:50] And in general, you know, it's the, it's the power and scalability of the AI that,

[01:07:55] there's of course the, the concern because if you already have human biased data that it's

[01:08:00] being trained on to the general, then it's just, you're in this like perpetual.

[01:08:04] So anyway, let's leave it there.

[01:08:06] Yeah.

[01:08:08] It was awesome to have you.

[01:08:09] Yeah.

[01:08:09] Thank you so much.

[01:08:10] Yeah.

[01:08:10] This has been great.

[01:08:11] Thanks everyone for listening.

[01:08:13] We are live from HR tech 2024.

[01:08:16] This is Bob Pulver with Brett Coyne.

[01:08:19] Find them.

[01:08:20] So we'll see you again next time.