Winning Jobs in the AI Era

[00:00:01] The world of work is changing. AI, automation, and technology are reshaping how we find jobs, build careers, and connect. But behind every resume and career transition is a human story. And the mental and emotional impact is real. This is Ghosted by the Machine. I'm Mark Lane, and every week we sit down with people living through the biggest changes happening in work today.

[00:00:29] Today's guest has been challenging the way we think about recruiting, HR technology, and the future of work for years. He's the co-founder of WRKdefined Network, the network that we reside. So we're really proud of being a part of that. And if you've ever been to his LinkedIn profile, which I went to this morning, you've probably seen this tagline, which I thought was pretty cool. I say what others don't, can't, or won't. Honestly, that's exactly why I wanted you on the show. William Tincup, welcome to Ghosted by the Machine.

[00:00:59] Brother, I'm so happy to be here and so happy that I think Jay introduced us, another Detroit guy. And like the first call we had, it was just like we clicked. Like it was just one of those deals. You know how it is. Yeah. You just click with a person, and then you were developing a show, and it just, you had the background. And it's like, you've just taken off. I love everything that you've done and are going to do.

[00:01:28] I mean, it's all in front of you now. So I really appreciate that. I know you've been podcasting in the HR space for a long time. Yep. I look up to you and Ryan and the other podcasters on the network. It feels like over the last few years, podcasts have absolutely exploded. And it's 4.5 million podcasts worldwide. Why do you think so many people in HR are turning to podcasts, not just to learn, but to share ideas, have conversations that we're having like today?

[00:01:56] I think it's easier. I mean, so some of it would say people would say short attention span, right? So we went from a written word, thousand word article to a 700 word article written at an eighth grade level, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think people who listen to podcasts at their leisure. So maybe it's during work. Maybe it's during a workout. Maybe it's walking around the block. And it's just easy to do that. Now, could they listen to an article? Yes, of course.

[00:02:26] You could turn that on. But it's just easier to listen to a podcast, two or three people talking, batting around ideas. And, and I, you know, again, I'm one of those people in a 30 minute podcast. All you got to do is get one idea. You get one idea that motivates you. It's like, you know what? I want to write about that. Or I want to, I want to speak about that. I want to talk to somebody about that. That's all you need. Yeah. I learned that when I was in broadcasting, when I go do interviews with news, other newsmakers.

[00:02:55] And I've always looked for that diamond in the rough, that little nugget. I had my questions lined up, but then I'd go find that little nugget and then just go at it. Hey, what did you, you said this and where can we go with that? It's, it's there. It's whether or not we're aware of it. That's the thing is just to kind of tuning, fine tuning yourself to becoming really aware of going, you said one thing.

[00:03:21] Now the rest of it was good, but that one thing I'm going to go and I'm going to go find something to do with it. Right. It made a difference in the. And I think that's why people listen. I think that's why people watch, which is a different consumption. So watching a podcast versus listening to a podcast. Those are two different kinds of consumption layers. There's audio still to this day outperforms video podcast, even though everyone's in a rush to do video podcast. Sure.

[00:03:49] People are still listening to audio podcast because I think that's my take on it is that's habitually. That's the way they've always listened to podcasts and they haven't gotten into the, I can go to YouTube. I can watch this podcast, et cetera. It's just a different workflow. So you recently said something that kind of struck with me. You said everybody looks qualified and that's the problem when it comes to hiring or getting a new job.

[00:04:18] And I've been through it since I was on a boy for nine months. Yeah. Tell me what you meant about that. And what are you seeing in hiring that's changing the way companies are evaluating talent? Well, you've got the range of things, right? Is it culture fit, which we're seeing kind of resurgence. And ironically enough on return to work, we're seeing a resurgence of people that want culture fit. So capabilities, competence, skills, et cetera. You know, we can teach you all that stuff. Yeah.

[00:04:48] But can we, can we work together? We're going to be working 10 hour days. Can we work together? You know, it's not going to be perfect, but can we work together? Can we figure it out together? We've seen a resurgence of that. When I was talking about everyone looks qualified because everyone's using AI in much the same way to make the resume look for a particular job. Let's say we're going for a VP of marketing job. I would take my resume. You would take your resume.

[00:05:17] We both use AI. We use the job description. And we'd say, make me look the best as it relates to this company and this job description. And now all of a sudden our resumes, even though we have completely different backgrounds, our resumes kind of, they look similar and we're qualified. I think that makes it harder on the talent acquisition and hiring folks because it's like, wait a minute, I got 30 candidates. All 30 candidates look fantastic. Right.

[00:05:47] Now what do I do? Right. And, you know, it's almost like winning the lottery because, you know, it used to be living in the Detroit area. There's a job at Ford Motor or the job at GM or one of the car companies, wherever. You go there and there may be like 25 people that are applying for that job because it's in-house, it's at their plant and boom.

[00:06:08] So now with hybrid remote, you've got hundreds, if not thousands of people when they see it on LinkedIn or one of the other platforms and they're applying. They've got over a thousand resumes or applications in. And then you've got easy apply on LinkedIn or you've got this other program where you click a button and it'll send, send, send, send, send. It's just, it's absolutely crazy. It creates noise.

[00:06:33] So what you have on the employer side is AI to detect stuff like that. And what you have for the employee or the candidate, you have things that will help that. So it's basically this battle above us of AI versus AI. One's trying to do the detection and kind of fraud prevention, if you will. And the other is trying to actually make you look as best as you can possibly. It's not, there's nothing evil.

[00:07:02] It's just, it's, it's one of those deals where at a certain place in history where it's like, you should use the tech technology to make you look as good and as attractive as a candidate as humanly possible. That you should do that. Sure. Right. And that leads us to my next question. Has hiring become one giant AI arms race? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And getting worse. Comma better.

[00:07:31] So the AI detection from the employer side is they're going to be able to assess this. Was it made with AI? Now, if it's a job where you're doing AI, they love that. Because it's like, you're going to be working, building and clawed. You're going to be, we want you to know how to use AI. But if you're going to be doing something that has nothing to do with AI, we don't, we don't want you to be an expert in creating a mythical version of yourself in AI. Mystical version. Right? Right?

[00:08:01] This is the Herculean best representation of William Tincup or Mark Lane. And yeah, I, so I, I look at it and say, both are right. They're both doing their best. One's trying to detect, like when we just used to kind of copy or print our resumes on fine linen paper and we turn them in.

[00:08:26] And there was, even in those days, there were, there were some exaggerations in our resumes. Okay. So take it, take for instance, I was a part of a sales team, me and eight other people. And we, we closed $30 million in business. Now on my resume, it'll say I closed eight, $30 million in business. Right. But I was a part of a team. Right.

[00:08:55] You know, I might, I might've closed one, but there was the other 29 million. But you said you led, you would change it to lead or. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Program that brought in $30 million. And, and, you know, that now, now you get into the fun stuff. I came in at the last 30, 30 days. So we hit, we hit the $30 million mark. Did I lead? Well, for 11 months, somebody else led, but for that last month I led.

[00:09:23] Now, what I'm, what I'm suggesting is there's always been exaggerations. That's just the way it is. Yeah. There's always been kind of a, the minor adjustments, the minor things that just kind of put you in a positive light. This is not that. This is, this is taking liberties that are far out, exceed those liberties. And the rules or the goalposts keeps moving. The rules keep changing. The goalposts keep moving.

[00:09:53] Yeah. And I, when I lost my job last March, um, in 2025, I networked. I never put, but yeah. Oh, don't worry. You're going to get something in a couple of weeks. Don't you've got so much experience. You've done this for 20 years. And then as I got going, you've got too much experience. Yeah. Turns out ageism is a thing. That's one thing. Two, we're at a hiring inflection point where people don't know what to do in hiring. Right.

[00:10:21] So instead of doing something, they do nothing. So it's like the, it's like that, that graphic that you've seen online where a bunch of people are standing around the pool and they're all got their toes like dangling north. You just need one person to jump in and then the hiring will take off because they're all waiting for somebody to kind of make the leap of faith and say, you know what? We need to actually hire. We need people. Yeah. We need technology. Yeah.

[00:10:49] We need to, you know, we need to kind of look at our workflow and kind of have technology to do part of the process, have humans do another part of the process. All that's true. All that's true. But we need to actually have humans too. Well, and we also, I think leadership, I spoke to James Ellis a few episodes. Good guy. And we're talking about leadership and how that's changed. And, you know, they came up with this. Hey, let's use AI. Let's do this. Let's do that. This can help us. And now they're coming back going, hey, wait a minute.

[00:11:19] I mean, I just read an article in BBC about regarding Ford Motor, that they're having an issue with quality control issues. They let go all these engineers that were in that department and now they're finding AI can't handle that. And so they're going to be bringing some of them back and they might just have to hire everybody back by 2027 because they're going, wait a minute, this isn't working for us. You see the bets being made by large technology companies, the Googles and Meta's of the world. Well, they'll lay off 2000 people.

[00:11:49] What they never really say in LinkedIn or wherever that's posted is they're hiring 3000 people. So they made a bet in Metaverse and they hired a bunch of people from Metaverse. They did that bet. Okay, that didn't pan out or blockchain or they didn't plan out like they thought it would. And so they're just readjusting the bets that they're making. So could they retrain some of those people? Possibly.

[00:12:17] But I think it's easier for them to let those folks go and go hire someone new. Which that shouldn't be the way, but I believe that is the way of modern hiring. It's just easier to start. This is why like when you apply to a job, you get into somebody's ATS. Most recruiters never go back into the ATS. They just cast a new job. They get new candidate flow. They never go back and go, Mark Lane's in our database.

[00:12:47] He applied to a job six months ago. He's perfect for this job. They don't do that. They don't do that. They don't do that. And they've never done that. I applied for a few jobs and we'll put it in our database. And then I saw the job post. I have to apply again. Yeah. Yeah. It's insane. Now, there are technologies, you know, to give your audience a little bit of hope. There are technologies that are doing that for them. Yeah.

[00:13:15] So whenever they come up with a new job description and they're about to post, it goes without them. It goes and looks in their database and says, you've got 10 candidates already in your database that you should probably reach out to first before you post this. But that's actually a good use of AI or automation. Yes. Yes. That would be amazing. Now, I have not heard of that. I mean, I'll do some research on that. It's resurfacing.

[00:13:45] There's a couple of different technologies that do it, but it's basically they do it. The recruiter doesn't do it. The technology doesn't. So they do a job description, work out what they want to do with the hiring manager. So that's usually kind of a, they do some of an onboarding call, kind of get like, what are you really looking for? This, that, and the other. And so they build the criteria and then the technology goes and looks in the database to find people that fit the criteria.

[00:14:15] And if there's no one, that's fine. Put it on ZipRecruiter, put it on Indeed, put it on LinkedIn, put it everywhere you want. But if there's people in your database, the cost of your recruiting, your recruiting cost goes down. Yes. Because you already have the candidates. You don't have to post it. So that, that again, that's a great use of technology. Now it's just to get that message out there to these job searchers.

[00:14:44] I think, I think changing recruiting behavior or recruiter behavior, that's a waste of time. Just let's, let's just stop that. I think, I think it's automating, augment, augmenting and having AI do the things that they don't want to do. Like it seems easy to you and I, they got a brand new UI developer that they need to hire. There's 16,000 UI developers in their, in their, in their database. Yeah.

[00:15:13] Having a technology to go run through all that stuff and go, here's your best candidates. And then, and then asking the creditors because they can actually reach out to those candidates. Are you still interested? Are you available? Right. Etc. Etc. And they can even qualify them. So they can do the qualification. They can do the communication and then bring it back up to the recruiters and say, Hey, out of all the people, here's the 10. We reached out to them. Five of them are really interested. Boom. Boom.

[00:15:41] My recruiting costs. I don't have to go post. I can now focus on five candidates that were already in my database. It's, it's found money. Yes. That's amazing. The sad, the sad part is that the other thousand or so are just going to still sit there in the can and it's right. That's right. And possibly be ghosted. Not, not know anything, not be told. 100%. No, that's the worst.

[00:16:05] The worst thing in that is ATSs, all ATSs have the functionality to give feedback to the candidate. They all have it. Greenhouse, lever, Oracle. They all have it. And all the companies turn that off. Yep. Now, if they were to make that mandatory, like you can't turn it off. You have to give feedback to a candidate. We wouldn't be in this place.

[00:16:31] You know, the technology would force them to put in, okay, I liked your experience, but I think we need a candidate that also has this. Okay. All you need is something simple. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's what drove me to this podcast. That's why I'm in this spot. Yeah.

[00:16:53] I mean, being ghosted, not getting those, the messaging or the feedback from either the application process or the interview process. The technology exists. Yeah. Isn't it? This is not a technology problem. Well, I know it exists. I mean, or you get, thank you for applying. We're going to put you in the database. The general. Any feedback? That's worse. You're overqualified. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:20] I don't mind if someone says I'm overqualified and they go, here's the five things that make you overqualified. Yes. You got too much experience. We're looking for someone in this age group or we're like, I can't say the age group, but right. But this and it's trained. And whereas you are in this category, you're a great candidate, but not for this position. We've already now put you on to these other jobs in our, that you had to be looked at.

[00:17:47] So you might or might not be interested in them, but you're overqualified. Like the generic, that, that non-personalized stuff. I'm not sure which is worse, not getting something or getting something so generic that they, that it felt like it was set to 66,000 people. I'm not sure which one's worse. Right. Cause they're both horrible. It's like, would you rather die by drowning or in a fire? You're going to die.

[00:18:17] Which way? Which one do you want? It's going to hurt less. Yeah. It's, it's interesting. Some of the struggles and so, you know, my, my daughter, I was talking, my wife and I were talking to some friends the other day and they're asking me about a podcast and I was telling them why I had started. And I said, funny thing, you know, I was, I was getting ghosted and I was writing blogs on my LinkedIn and telling people my journey. And my daughter graduated from college last year. She's got a four year select degree and she's applying for jobs.

[00:18:45] Well, about a month and a half ago, she, she got this email from one of the jobs she applied for a year ago, letting her know, thank you for applying. We've already filled the position. We'll keep your resume on file. A year later, a year. She said, dad, now I know what you went through. Yeah. Oh yeah. I'd say, you missed the Halloween party. And it was awesome. Two years ago. Dude, seriously. Don't send me that email. I get that Mac.

[00:19:14] Did you get that Sunday night at three o'clock in the morning? Unless it was sarcasm. Like if somebody did that bit and they added sarcasm, they're like, clearly we're not fast, but we want you to know we are trying to get this resolved. You applied, you put your heart into it. We filled the position. We're sorry. We're just trying to get better. Now, you know what?

[00:19:40] I didn't get the job and it's a year later, but I'm probably giving them points at that point because it's like, at least they admitted it. Right. Like so much of life is just, you're going to fail. What are you going to do when you fail? Right. Just going to have to get back up and try something else. Like I wouldn't mind getting a message from somebody that says, okay, clearly balls were dropped. Got it. Sorry that this is a year late. That's on us. You didn't do nothing wrong.

[00:20:08] And you know, like you could turn it into a positive brand experience. Like you could give them, if it's a consumer oriented company, you could give them a gift card. You're like, you probably have a bad brand experience with us because of this. Right. But you know what? Let us try and make this up to you. I had a couple like that where I got really nice rejection notices or emails. And one of them, I actually went online and thank them, post them on LinkedIn and they responded back. That's fantastic.

[00:20:38] They responded. Thank you so much. We need more of that, Mark. Yeah. We need more of that. That was all we hear about is the negative. I guess I can name it. It was Hello. Hello. Hello at the pray app. I, you're looking for a marketing director. So I went in and I mean, I got a real nice note back. Thank you very much. You know, good luck. You could tell that they actually considered you. Yes. And it was an, it wasn't, it was an AI. It was like, it was, let me wrote that. So I went back and I wrote a piece on LinkedIn. Hey, this made my day. I really, I appreciated this.

[00:21:08] This, this gives me hope. You know, that's the highest form of flattery. You can give a recruiter or a hiring manager is I didn't get the job, but I love the process. That's the highest form of flattery. You know what I'm saying? Like you didn't get that job, but they made you feel better about yourself. They're like, okay, I can believe in humanity again. Yeah. Well, 60 days.

[00:21:32] On the flip side, when they show up 10 minutes late because lunch lasted too long for an interview and they, you know, we're really sorry. We're late. Lunch lasted a little bit too long for us. So now to the interview. Yeah. I'll just zero out all the questions that I was going to ask you. Let's just get to these other ones. You know, I think that's a, I would rather get an email from somebody five, three minutes into the interview and say, Hey, running late. Yeah. Well, I, we can do two things.

[00:22:02] We can keep the time. I'm probably going to be about 10 minutes late total, or we can reschedule. What, what are you, what's best for you? Like, that's too easy. It's, it's an email. Like it's right there in your hands. Like people get, people are late. I remember years ago when I did a networking in Dallas, you know, we always have construction in Texas. That's something we're like known for. There's always something being built.

[00:22:30] And so some of the major highways were under construction and you could be 10 minutes early to a meeting at Starbucks or 10 minutes late. Right. And you had no control. And so I remember kind of a Jack Hanks, one of my mentors telling me, he's like, it's just a grace period. Somebody could show up 10 minutes early, be graceful. Somebody could show up 10 minutes late, be graceful. You know, they drove, then they had to, they had to deal with some things. It's not like they didn't prioritize you.

[00:22:59] They prioritized you. They, they just didn't think that the travel was going to take them that long. And I, I use that today in, in modern, modern meetings where I'll wait three to five minutes and just go, you know, things happen. Life, kids. Doctors appointments, whatever. 15, 20 minutes. And you get that. I was at lunch. I asked that. That was, that was tough. That was too easy of an email at lunch. The bill's not getting here.

[00:23:29] It's, it's not coming. The person's like, I've got my phone in front of me. Hey, Mark, my appointment, I don't have to get into lunch. My appointment's running late. It's going to be 10 minutes. Let's reschedule. So I get maximum time with you. Yeah. Well, I've got, you would have been a, you would have been like a little put off at the same time. You'd be like, okay, I'd rather have the 30 minutes. As a job seeker at the time, you're freaking out. Do I have the right link?

[00:23:58] Like, there's all this emotion going through your head. Anxiety. Anxiety. Getting prepared for this. Oh, I'm online. I got to make my tie is right. I'm okay. Mike is on. The team's meeting notice is right. No, wait a minute. I need to check my phone. The fact that you own ties is actually fascinating to me. But you're good. You're good. I still love you. I just. It's the experience. I'm sorry. I don't own a tie. I don't know. Really? I don't own a suit. Wow.

[00:24:26] And my son's 22 and he just got a job and he had to go get his suit. And I was like, God bless him. God bless him. How does I tie a tie? You still got a tie too. I can do. I can tie a tie. I just don't have any ties. I donated them. There's a place here in Arlington that helps people with interviews, like some of the homeless and stuff like that. And so they gather work clothes for people to go on interviews with. And so you can slide by there. They got all the racks and all that stuff. And you can choose out something.

[00:24:55] You go on your interview, you come back and then you leave it there. And then they get them dry cleaned and all that stuff. Like I had from business school a hundred years ago, I had an amazing tie collection. Because if I'm going to do something, I'm going to be a snob about it. I'll take a picture of my closet with my tie. I had two racks, two Brooks Brothers tie racks. They rotate. Little batteries, they rotate. They stick. When I showed up to the, I can't remember the place.

[00:25:25] It's here in Arlington. It's not Mission Arlington, but there's another one. And I showed up with like all of these ties and then like I had my suits and all this stuff. I went to Hong Kong at one point to get suits made. So I flew to Hong Kong to actually get 10 suits made. So it's not like I'm above having a suit. It's just at this point in my life. Yeah. Why? Don't need one.

[00:25:51] But anyhow, I remember showing up with those ties and I had them in a garbage bag or whatever the bit it was. And I was pulling them out and a woman was like, how many ties do you have in there? I'm like, it's probably 150. She's like, we don't, I don't know what we're going to do. My gosh. I said, you know what? I had the Tyrex. I brought the Tyrex with me. Well, we just get a drill. We'll pull up the Tyrex. And then that way you've got a Tyrex.

[00:26:19] So literally we just put up the Tyrex and then we put all the ties up there. And she was just like, you can't believe how many people are going to come in here and then try to figure out which tie they want to wear. Like, it's going to be a thing now. Yeah. Whereas before we had four ties. That's awesome. Yeah. So it's anything you could do to help people that are in interviews. Yes. Well, I have a, had a relationship with Goodwill. I worked there for many years. Yeah.

[00:26:47] And we, you know, the stores, we would get people going on for interviews and we would help them. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's amazing. I mean, the dignity about, you know, getting a job is so important. And we were, we were always trying to help them with the barriers to get them employment. And we would create businesses to employ people in South Eastern Midian. So. Everyone wants to look their best. Like that's the thing. No matter what socioeconomic, where you came from, second chance, et cetera, you want to put your best foot forward.

[00:27:16] Whatever the job is, it's a forklift driver. It's a car salesman. It doesn't matter. You want to put your best foot forward to give yourself the best opportunity to get the job. So this, in this, uh, in this podcast, one thing I hear a lot is that job seekers feel disconnected from the hiring process, talking about jobs and getting jobs and stuff, but they feel filtered out before they ever get to talk to a person.

[00:27:40] So as companies continue adopting AI, how do we make sure that we don't lose that human connection in the hiring process? I think dare to be different. So I think if you're doing anything that someone else could put their name on, you're doing it wrong. I had a good friend of mine that was in the ad game, Greg Isler in Cleveland. And he wanted to get a job with, I think, BPPO or one of the, I can't remember, Young Rubicon,

[00:28:09] one of those, one of the large agencies. He was, he was a boutique agency guys. And he found out the guy that was hiring for the account management folks was a Beatles nut. So he went and bought a Beatles white album. Don't know how much he spent. His wife had a really good job at Goldman Sachs. So he was doing good. Don't worry about him. But he went and bought an album and he put his resume in the sleeve of the album.

[00:28:37] And so he FedExed it. So he made sure that it got delivered to the guy. And the guy pulls out and looks at the people and he pulls out Greg's resume. He's like, okay. Okay. Wow. I get it. Gets the job. So my advice to job seekers is if you're doing it the exact same way as someone else, you're already failing. You've, you've got to do something different. Like this is the game of differentiation. You've got to be different.

[00:29:07] Like I, you know, I ran a marketing agency for a while. People would say, we want to be different. We want to be different. We want to be different. And you'd kind of go through that exercise. They're like, yeah, but we're kind of scared about, you know, you know, and they might put off this. It's like, well, do you want to be different or do you not want to be different? Yeah. Pick a lane, Sally. I don't care, but pick a lane. So I think the best advice you can give all candidates at all levels is be truly unique

[00:29:37] to your strengths, whatever your strengths are. Be truly true. Know your audience. Go on LinkedIn. Find them. Stalk them. Figure out everything you can about them. Figure out what they care about. You know, what boards they serve on, things like that. Go, go and angle yourself for the best possible experience. If you're just going into LinkedIn or Indeed and hitting apply, apply, apply, apply, you kind of get what you pay for.

[00:30:05] I'm not, I'm not, you know, victim blaming or shaming anybody. I'm just like, what do you expect? Everyone else is doing the exact same thing. How do you expect to stand out? You're not doing anything to stand out. Yeah. It's almost like you want to grab a sandwich board and go in the street corner. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Bruce Willis. Die hard. Yeah. I had some epiphanies. It's like, how do I get my name out there? How do I do this differently?

[00:30:34] As a marketer, how, how do I look at myself? What's my brand? It's, it's a whole new world with looking for a job. It's a painful, it's in sales, they call it rejection management. You know, you're going to win 20% of your deals. So that means four out of five, right? You're going to get one out of five. The other four knows. In hiring, it's worse. So it's rejection management. What do you got to do to refuel your battery?

[00:31:04] What are you going to do to make yourself different, et cetera? Like, how do you set yourself apart? So looking at that crystal ball, looking down the road, what do you think recruiting looks like down, down the road? I think it's mostly, if not fully automated until the moment of human interaction needs to happen. So the sourcing of candidates, the screening of candidates, skills testing, behavioral assessment,

[00:31:33] like all of that stuff, ID verification, all that stuff can be completely automated AI. But there's a moment in which you have five candidates and you need to have five hour long calls. And so that's not going to be outsourced. It's just pushed further back in the process, which means that, again, as a candidate, you got to do all this other stuff, but you also have to reach that recruiter and get in front of them so that you're memorable.

[00:32:01] That's the thing, likability and memorability. So it's the Boston Consulting Group 2x2. You want to scale high on likability and you want to scale high on memorability. Because I want to like you because people hire, whether or not we like it or not, people hire people they like. And that's not necessarily how it should be. I'm just telling you how it is. People hire people they like, comma, they hire people that are memorable.

[00:32:31] So how do you play that game? And that game is an individual game. It's a fingerprint. It's so unique to you that only you can do it. What's tough is that we have this. We don't have the personal interaction that we used to have. I was talking to someone this morning about that. It's like, I know that person from talking to him on a screen, but I'm a kind of guy

[00:33:00] where if I met you, William, I'm going to give you a bro hug or I'm going to give you a nice to meet you and a handshake. And here I haven't had that handshake. I still don't know the boundaries. I don't know that person in a face-to-face conversation with a face-to-face conversation. I think some of that's consent. So some of that is when you're talking to him face-to-face that I want to get to know you better, but I don't want you to be weird about it or I don't want to be weird about it. So can we connect on a couple of social media platforms? Is that okay?

[00:33:31] Can I send you a note? Like I want to make sure that I don't weird you out at the same time show you that I actually care, but I want to have deeper relationship. So it's consent-based on both sides, but on the candidate asks those questions and says, Hey, even if I don't get the job, I like talking to you. I'd like to kind of get to know you. If you go somewhere else, I might want to apply to another job because I like you, but now I got, I need to ask you.

[00:34:00] The consent part is really important. But you know, I'm, you know, I'm talking about, I mean, getting up in a boardroom and giving a presentation had to do that many a times and you, you connect with people, you have body language, but this is, you know, the interview process, you could be, I'm in shorts and you know, I got my suit on, but I'm in shorts and my lip flops. Yeah. There's not that professional element.

[00:34:25] I think the definition of professional and professional is changed and will continue to change. Like think of our father's fathers, you know, they wear three piece suits to a job. Right. Right. My dad, when he worked at Weyerhaeuser, he would wear a suit with no tie because it was car graded. It was a car graded industry. So he's still down on the plant, still doing some stuff. So, but he wouldn't wear a tie unless he had to meet sales executives, something like that.

[00:34:54] And then, and then you look at me and like, again, at a certain point, I just gave up all that stuff. So I think the definition, like if we go back and look at Lady Vanderbilt's book of etiquette and read it now, half of us would be laughing because it's so outdated. Don't walk and smoke at the same time. What? Okay. Should we even be smoking?

[00:35:20] Anyhow, but it's, it's, it's looking at, it's not 1984, George Orwell, the words are changing. That's not this. This is just, I think through time with the definition of a word is changing based on people's actual interaction with that. What used to like, again, if you go to wall street, professionalism is exactly what it was 20 years ago. Sure. John T.

[00:35:48] Malloy dressed as just for success. You're not going to outdress your boss. Your boss is in a three piece. You're not wearing a three piece. Like that's, that rule still exists on wall street. It's just other industries are not that way. Right. Right. So I like to end the show on a positive note, open all that good stuff. If you could wave a magic wand and redesign hiring for the AI first world, what's the first thing you would throw out?

[00:36:18] And what would you replace it with? I, I think I would throw up background screening and I would replace it with ID verification to reduce fraud, which helps everybody. Yeah. Fraud's always been in staffing. It's always been in hiring. We talked about levels of fraud with kind of the misstating or misrepresenting yourself, but there's other types of fraud. I would, I would move to three and four point verification to make sure that person is that person.

[00:36:48] Right. And I think that can be done early into process to make sure you're dealing with the right person so that you don't get a lot of trash in the process. Because it would help the people that are really legit, interested, qualified, et cetera, by having some of that, that noise out of the way. Well, we need to hear it. I have heard from talent acquisition and headhunters that they'll get three or four candidates and they look great.

[00:37:16] And then they bring them in for the interview and all of them, they're not even close to what their resume says. That's right. We need to, that's the thing is it's fraudulent. Talent is, is a little bit much. It's like, but the taking liberties part, like you can't be who you're not. Like whoever you are, whatever skills you got and whatever your, your potentiality and the things you want to learn, all that stuff, things that make you truly unique.

[00:37:41] Like that's cool, but don't try to force yourself into something you're not. Right. That's the ultimately is going to be bad for you and bad for them. Well, how AI has changed it. I think a lot of people can give a rat's ass. That's right. That's right. They're just looking for a job. And that's sad part of what this, this AI has done. Yeah. Along with the economy, but you know, it makes it easy. Yeah. It doesn't make it better. Right. It makes it easy. Oh, I got lucky. I got an interview.

[00:38:11] Easier is not better. I'm close to this job. How'd you get an interview? I said this the other day on social, I was just laughing to myself. Just because something zero sugar doesn't mean it's zero calories. Yeah, you're right. So, so AI, fantastic. We're all using it in kind of fun and unique ways. Does it make it, does it make hiring better? And at this particular juncture in history, hiring is worse. It's harder for all involved. Everybody.

[00:38:42] Everybody's going through pain. It's just different types of pain. Well, William, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your thoughts and your perspective. It was amazing. 100%. Every time we talk, I leave thinking a little differently about where hiring is headed. And I appreciate your challenging all of us to rethink the way we evaluate it, especially with AI. I mean. Well, I appreciate you, brother. I appreciate the work you're doing actually for candidates because you're teaching candidates at the same time you're teaching hiring managers and recruiters.

[00:39:11] So you're actually, you've got two audiences that are learning from you. Hopefully they're not mad at me. No. Hopefully we're talking, we're telling the truth. We're trying to tell them. That's, that's the bit. If you're going to get, if you're going to be hurt by the truth, well, you're going to be hurt. Yeah, it is. So if you're watching and thinking, Hey, this sounds like my experience. You're not alone. If you'd like to share your story, feel free to email me or send me a DM. And if you want to stay plugged in the real stories, real insights and real humans behind

[00:39:40] today's hiring system, make sure to follow and subscribe. We've got new episodes and shorts and conversations every week. And if your organization believes in making hiring human again, please. And wants to support conversations like this, we're opening a few sponsorship spots. Feel free to reach out. I'm Mark Lane, and this is ghosted by the machine. And that is William Tin Cup. Thank you, sir. Absolutely, brother. Thanks for having me on.