Active or Passive: The Recruiter Line That Decides Who Survives AI

[00:00:06] We are back folks. I don't even know. My life is crazy. Is it? You don't even know? This is a false reality. This is the matrix. It's like a false reality. Is there a crazy question for me today? I always have a crazy question for you. Is there any type of home remodeling that you could actually do yourself and you wish you're confident in it? Like any. Could it be flooring, tiling, redoing a bathroom, light bulb? Like anything.

[00:00:34] I can do a light bulb. I wish my wife was here to tell you I can do nothing. I agree with Tammy. Let's give the caveat. The caveat is she won't let me do anything. That's not part. I'm not allowed to touch stuff. And honestly, it makes sense. Knowing Tammy, knowing you, I would also say put her in a corner. Tammy, don't let her even look at it. My nails are too long. I'm too concerned about breaking things. Like I'm not good. But I have tiled. I can change light bulbs.

[00:01:04] I can use the chainsaw. And that's about it. I know. I have a mini pink chainsaw. Let's just get it. Aw, it's precious. That's cute. All right, Ahmed, what have you ever had to do any of this? But two, what's your threshold? What's like your, this is the top of my trade skills? Man, look, I'm more of a software guy. So hardware is always like, all right, do I have to do this? But if I do, you know,

[00:01:29] I just, I just actually built a TV wall in my, in my backyard. So. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe I'll send, send your audience like a picture or something at some point. We're going to have to. Yeah, you're going to have to do it. Because I want a TV wall now. Like what? That sounds cool. Although I will say, so I just thought about this last week. I'm like, you know what? My office is pretty lame. Like if you look at my background, so I need to actually, Desiree, I'm looking at your office and I'm like, who designed that? That's pretty cool. So.

[00:01:59] Tammy. Why? Tammy did it. She made all that's custom. Tammy wood whittles, just to be clear. She is a wood whittler. I don't think she liked, I don't even know if she likes that term, but it's what I've always called her because I love her for it. And I think it's so cool, but she, she whittles the wood man. And she literally like can make something out of nothing. It's just phenomenal. Mine was like yours before. Yeah. Okay. We digress. We could talk about this all day.

[00:02:29] Yeah, we digress. My bad. Obviously. Why don't we do introductions? Well, Desiree, Ashley, thank you both for having me today. Really excited to be here and hopefully you guys will bring me back at some point. So just real, real quick intros. Amit Parmar, CEO of Clickify. We're an employer brand storytelling platform. But prior to Clickify, I led talent. I've been in the trenches, started out an HR transformation with IBM in New York City. I'm an East Coaster, went to school in Philly. I grew up in Philly. So go birds.

[00:02:59] Both of you. And about six years ago, you know, had this idea that, you know, we need to be better storytellers out there to really engage with people at a deeper level. Because as you guys know, right, you guys have been in the seats being a recruiter. I just feel like it's become so transactional now that the human element of recruiting continues to diminish. And that's what we're here to solve, is how do you get recruiters to actually connect and engage with talent? Could be high volume talent

[00:03:29] as well, right? Absolutely. And that's where we're here. That's the discussion for today, folks. We're going to talk about how do you tell a story as a recruiter, right? What's storytelling look like? And what does that mean in the world we live in today, especially in the world of AI and all the crazy things that are the capabilities you have now to be able to do this? What works? What doesn't? What makes sense? You know, and it obviously Clickify is a great story to tell here about the abilities that we have and

[00:03:57] what we're not doing really around that. I mean, there was a great study, an Edelman study or something like that. And I think it was the beginning of this year that said that people still trust their employers and their company more than anything. And if that's true, right, if that's the true study, let's put that kind of put that into context and say, like, if that's the truth, you should be able to tell the story of the people you trust and you should be able to sell that story to who's coming

[00:04:25] through. And so that's a it's an interesting conundrum, right? I would say that study, if they did it today, would probably be very different. Yeah, it's relative. A little bit about that. No, you're right. Actually, that's a good point, Desiree. So I love Edelman and it's relative, right? So the stat you just shared, it's relative. Like, I think the question was somewhere around like, who do you trust most from an institution standpoint? And you had like government

[00:04:49] to choose from businesses or business leaders to choose from employees like your coworkers. Right. And that's so actually, if you look at the data, the trust is actually at an all time low. Yeah, it just happens to be higher than the companies happen to be a higher on the order of trust compared to governments. Yeah. So that's kind of the, but if you look at the overarching kind of,

[00:05:16] you know, trust overall, you know, and you know this, right? Like if a stranger just came to you and offered you some help, like, would you like, you know, positive intent is what I go by. But generally, I think the public would say, I'm not sure, like, why that person just reached out at all. Right. And so we've been conditioned as a society to not trust to begin with. Yeah. And I think there's

[00:05:42] a way that we can actually slowly and turn that around. Yeah, I agree with you. I hope that changes for the future. But I am one of those people. I'm very cynical. So I'm like, what do you want? No. Like, I'm like, what is it that you want from me? Do you need like blood or like, what is happening? I don't know. I always have like, I feel like people always have an ulterior motive,

[00:06:04] which is horrible to say, but it is how I think. And I hope I try every day to get past that. But I think the general consensus is that especially in the world of bots and things like that. Well, I want to back up a little bit, though, because storytelling is if I really had to put it in a context, it's like kind of a fuzzy word, right? It's like the buzzword we all say. And we're like, we're going to great storytellers and all that stuff. What does that mean, though, really to you?

[00:06:32] Yeah. Yeah. And you're so spot on, Desiree, right? Like, I think storytelling is it's kind of yeah, it is it is this word that's like it sounds great. But then in reality, I mean, it could be as simple as you take a job description, you turn it into, you go to the hiring manager and say, hey, what kind of leader are you? Because that's what candidates really want to know. Right. Yeah. The job is there. You then turn that into the job. Right. And say, OK, hey, I see you have this position. How would you how do you lead and get

[00:07:01] people to get excited about that job? Right. That's a story for that job. So very different. You're still we're still posting the job. You're just the the angle you're taking to that job is completely different. And it completely changes the narrative that trust narrative, Desiree, with the candidate. Yeah, I agree. It's an interesting thing. I wonder if they would even be able to answer that question. Most hiring managers said, I don't know. Show up and give them some task. It's true.

[00:07:29] I keep it moving. Look, I'm a huge Gary Vee fan. Right. You guys know Gary Vee. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, you got to start somewhere. We know you're going to have you're going to have, you know, maybe two percent of your leaders who get that start with those two percent because those two will turn into three, four and even a four percent swing in that story, especially, you know, if you're the larger the organization that you are. I think that's a huge impact that you can make.

[00:07:57] Right. So, yeah. I also think I actually think of storytelling in a different way. So I don't actually not that I don't think about it from the recruiter to the candidate perspective of like selling the business, selling things like that. I actually really think the storytelling that makes the most impact is actually recruiter to hiring manager and the fact of me actually selling the candidate and not selling falsehood. But like just an example, because this actually happened to me

[00:08:26] this week and I was just having a conversation with someone about why it matters that AI is not at the top of the funnel. So I actually had a candidate that out of all the candidates that I had, they actually did not pass one of the questions in my technical screen that I provide. And so if I was AI, that means I move on from this person like I pass. But after this call, this person circled back and they said, you know what? I actually don't know if I answered this correct. Let me actually,

[00:08:51] can I reframe this? Can I do X, Y, Z? And to me, there is this part of an autonomous learner that is proactive and has this type of grit. And those are the type of skill sets that one, it's really hard to teach. They either come with that intrinsically or they don't. But also too, it's something that AI can't measure. And so where I feel recruiters really add their value is not only in these immeasurables, but it's also the story that I decide to tell next. So what AI would say is,

[00:09:21] well, this person didn't pass the technical screening and that's the end of the conversation. Like that is the story. But because I was able to maintain the narrative, it went from even bypassing like, hey, this person actually did not do the best in the technical. I have to be candid with you on that. But it's not that they didn't do the best based off of what they actually provided. They just didn't hit whatever ABC checkbox we were asking. As far as actually showing, you know, again,

[00:09:49] proactive learning, actually in pursuit of being an autonomous learner and being able to do these things and proactive with I'm sticking with it, like that grit of let me find out. Again, not things you can teach. And so their story became very different. It became very like out of all the candidates that I've screened that didn't pass this, this is the only one that actually cared enough to go back, relook into it and say, oh, blah, blah, blah. So all of a sudden, with just one flip of the

[00:10:14] hat, everything happens the exact same on both, you know, nodes, whether it be me or AI. But now the outcome is different. And I actually just got a call. This role has been open two and a half years. I just got a call from the manager that said that person performed better than they've ever had another candidate perform. They were able to do everything in two lines of code. And most people had to have hints. Like it was something to where I was like, hey, I couldn't have done this. Like it just couldn't have. And a lot of that I think comes down to the influence of the manager because I had to get their buy-in that like, yeah, every

[00:10:43] single person that I sent you have passed this threshold except for this person. But let me tell you why they're still worth a call. And that is a type of story that I feel like we've, as recruiters, we have to be experts in. Like we have to be able to say, because it's what adds our value versus, again, AI. Which sadly, nine times out of 10 is what I feel I'm having to convince is like, what is the difference between a bot or a human doing your top of funnel? And to me,

[00:11:09] storytelling is a big piece of that. Yeah. And you're spot on. I mean, there's a danger in using AI at the top of the funnel for many reasons that one of them, you know, he just highlighted. The other one is, are we, do we have like the right things we're looking for to begin with? Even, you know, because a lot of companies have AI. And so that's the other, you know, that's the other piece. Me being a recruiter for many years, which I love and I've missed sort of, you know, we... Do you? Do you really?

[00:11:37] There are pieces of it. I'll go back, you know, there are pieces of it, but there are things that, you know, a wreck just, you know, hit my desk and I'm looking at the JD and I'm like, you know, this JD, like somebody pulled out of a shelf like 20 years ago, right? So, you know, you got to start at the fundamentals. Now, look, granted, I hear these stories all the time. Like, it depends on the type of segment you're, you know, is it white collar, blue collar, whatever collars you're into, right? But you got to, you got to look at it. If you're, if you're hiring experience,

[00:12:06] like quality is, is your top priority in terms of hiring, then you got to look at it with the lens actually that you have, right? Which is, you know, being more consultative, like really understanding the role, the fit within the overall culture of the organization, which I know varies at the department level. But these are the things that I do believe like AI, I never say no, but AI will probably take another 20 years, maybe 15 years to really get at the softer side of,

[00:12:33] of the recruiter's job, right? A good recruiter's job. Now you flip the script to high volume recruitment, right? Where you have constant churn and so on. I would actually argue, and, and I'm, it's just my point of view on this. I would argue that that recruiter was going after quality for transactional talent or high volume talent is actually very important because every person you, because it's, it's a volume, it's a volume play at that point, right? So if you're able to reduce

[00:13:02] your high volume, you know, high churn rates by even 0.5%, just the volume of the hiring, I mean, you're looking at, if you just invested a little more time into the recruiting process, you know, without just outsourcing the whole thing to an AI agent, I actually believe TA leaders or chief people officers or even organizations, there's a lot of ROI to be had there to actually say, you know I'm actually going to focus on quality of hire with high volume talent. Yeah. And I think to me,

[00:13:29] I think that's important. And I will say I did high volume CDL truck drivers for quite some time. And there, there is this plateau that happens. There is not a term for this. We should probably make it up on this show because the recording does copyright on YouTube. So we'll come up with a term by the end of it. But basically, so let's say you're a truck driver, you have certain airbrake licenses, certain things like that. So there's only certain type of trucks that you can drive, you can't just switch from doing a school bus to a long haul, like those things don't happen. So

[00:13:58] whenever you get into the niche of those type of roles, and you understand the headspace, there comes this plateau. So example, I worked for a lot of recycling, sustainability and trash companies. So these are people that can work a front loader things that go overhead, they're doing commercial waste, right? There comes a point where they've tried almost every single waste company like there will come a point where they will move around and have worked at almost all of the

[00:14:25] competitors. And once they get to that plateau, there does come a point where they actually start selecting things no longer based off of money. And that is a part of the volume game that I think people don't talk about because now it does change, right? Whenever you're dealing in high volume, but with maybe more tenured people, especially if you can gain those people into your pipeline, that will change your whole volume game because those people, it doesn't actually look appetizing

[00:14:54] on paper, you'll see it and you'll be like, Oh my God, they went to here to here to here to here. But there is this type of, again, this type of plateau that they hit where they realize 50 cents actually isn't going to matter that much to me anymore. Because now I have kids, a family, a person going through college, I'm going to need XYZ. And that's whenever how good are you as a recruiter comes into play? Because now they're going to be focused not only on the money, but what is the actual type of attention? I mean, like, how do they treat me? How do they respond

[00:15:24] internally as a business? And they're actually evaluating those things. So I will say if you are high volume, even something as small as CDL, where you're losing and attritting people for 50 cents, if you can start honing in on those people who are more tenured, who have gone and have featured now this plateau, this competitive plateau, if you will, all of a sudden, everything changes for them. So I will say you are accurate because I've seen it just in altering who I go for based off of what

[00:15:53] competitors they've worked for. Because if I know they've been around the bush, then I know that they value things a little bit different now because they've circled back, they've done a full 360. And that kind of goes into storytelling too, is like, how was I as a recruiter? I'm going to sell this to you because now I know based off your experience, you've worked at XYZ, you've worked there. And so you know that they don't care about safety at that place. And you know that they don't care about XYZ. So being able to use those things that you know would matter to this audience and

[00:16:20] actually tell a story that entices them is going to be half the ballgame with those volume people once they've had, I mean, it only takes two or three years of tenure. I mean, that's how quick a lot of these people are treat sometimes. Same thing with call center people, a lot of these things. But there does come a point, like I said, the competitive plateau where it's like, now's the time to do your real sale. Now's the time to tell your stories because they will be listening for that. This episode of the Talentless Podcast is brought to you by Do Better Consulting.

[00:16:48] Hiring is broken. Job searches are broken. And honestly, most career advice out there is just recycled nonsense. Do Better Consulting exists for people who are done guessing. They work with mid to senior leaders, founders, and talent teens to get clear on their signal, how they show up in the market, how they hire, and how decisions actually get made. No fluff, no templates just to say you have

[00:17:14] them. Just strategy, structure, and honest feedback that actually works. If you're tired of spinning, it might be time to do better. Head to dobetterconsulting.net. I love that. I love that term. You should, Ashley, since you came up with us on this show. You know, I've come up with many things on this show that never really took off. She comes up with something on every show. There's a plateau at the individual level, and then there's the plateau in terms of labor supply

[00:17:43] in that particular geography, especially as it relates to high volume roles, right? There's only so many people available within, you know, 20 miles of the zip code. Yeah. Unless we start breeding them, we are going to have to trade them. That's all we can do. Which breeding isn't the right term, but growing them. You know what I mean? Okay. I know. It wasn't right. I saw Desiree's face as I said it. I also felt gross. I mean, you're creating programs that enter that

[00:18:08] talent. Yeah. So Ashley and Desiree, I would love to, and please let me know if we're digressing from whatever the agenda was today, right? So. What agenda. Come on. But I'd love to, I'd love to really get your take on, since you brought up this topic of AI and trust. So my belief right now, without a lot of data, is that we're approaching this scary world right now

[00:18:31] where, or dangerous rather, not scary. Yeah. Where you've got, you know, bots talking to bots, right? So you've got applicants like gaming the system. And by the way, this is no, I mean, this has been happening for eons, right? Like candidates trying to figure out how do I get in front of this recruit? Well, hiring manager, right? I think the scale is just crazy right now with now these bot applicants. ATS is trying to put all these filtering mechanisms. And then you've got,

[00:18:58] you know, recruiters on the other side, you know, or maybe even a bot saying, hey, hiring manager, here's like, here are four candidates that match your criteria. Assuming that the criteria was right to begin with. Yeah. What are you seeing in terms, what are you hearing out there? And what are companies doing about it? Yeah. This is one of the things that I was just talking to a client of mine about solving this problem of having AI in the process, right? But not losing the human part of everything

[00:19:28] that they do and still having the volume, because they have very high volume coming in as far as applicants go and not a lot of headcount on their recruiting team. So AI has to be involved. They're not getting the okay to change the headcount, right? They're not getting, but they are getting okay to put all these stupid tools. Right? Right? If you compound, like I have a thing about this,

[00:19:58] because if you compound the amount of tools you put into a system that don't work together, they don't come together. They don't understand that the science behind them, the compliance, all of the stuff, you're just making more of a mess. You just handle, hire a recruiter. But anyway, I digress. But the problem is- I have a stat on that, Desiree. So an average enterprise today, if you're over, you know, 10,000 employees, maybe even 8,000 employees, a typical enterprise, not just in HR, but the entire company has around 225 applications.

[00:20:25] I mean, it doesn't make sense, right? And so we're in the process of taking what they have, figuring out what is actually necessary being used, what it's doing, and what part of the process it's actually even tied to, right? And that is the problem with AI, because everything's shiny and pretty and cute right now, and everything's promising the world. You say, well, I'm going to put this screener here. I'm going to put this sourcing tool here. I'm going to patch in some, you know,

[00:20:55] interview prep intake note taker, I don't know, thing at the end. I'm going to do all these pieces to the puzzle, but none of them, and they all sit on my ATS, right? Which was already doing nothing for you because you didn't configure it, right? That's right. You can't do all the things you're supposed to do there, but let's just slap some more stuff onto it. This is the problem that I think we're facing, and people are reaching out to companies like mine and saying, like, finally saying,

[00:21:23] like, hey, stop, we need to press pause because now we're just buying applications for application's sake. Yep. Do I think that they can get away with none of them? Probably not, but just because of the amount of inbound, right? Which is why, can I ask, because I will say, unless the company has had massive brands, I have, and this is just my personal experience, because I've seen people, so it's just, I think what's that, yeah, like, you've got, like, amazing tools out there, right? And I'm using

[00:21:53] amazing, you've got tools out there. The moment you publish a job, it's basically on the internet, right? And so you've got, like, these, you know, crawlers, who, like, these job boards, who the company actually hasn't even contracted with. No. Your ATS does, though. Right. Just so everybody knows, that's how it's done. But they're not really the customer, I guess, somebody's paying. But really, what's happening

[00:22:18] is the moment I publish a job, all of a sudden, like, it's out there, right? Like, it goes, it probably goes to, like, hundreds, maybe thousands of channels. Yeah. And so the, I think the intent was right, which is how do you, how do you amplify this position so you get the, not the most candidates, but you get the most qualified candidates, which is, I think, where things went wrong. It is where the, that's the breakdown, and that's the breakdown in this company. Right. We got all these tools to increase the, the inbound, right? But what we're getting

[00:22:46] now is trash, right? And that trash now has to be filtered, right? With some kind of internal process to get us to a place where we're only either identifying and seeing the right candidates that actually are worth our time, right? Yeah. And then taking the time with those, but because there's so much trash over here, and then you say, let's put another tool on it to filter through that trash. Yeah.

[00:23:12] You're just creating this, like, loop-dee-doop of bots going around in a circle. I have the term. I wrote this term down whenever we talked with Alex, and it's called the WataBot layer. And the reason it's called that is because, one, it takes, like, 16 ounces of water every time you put something in there. So keep that in mind fresh up. Yeah. But it's called WataBot because, ultimately, your recruiter is using a bot to come talk to your bot, and now you need a separate bot to filter through those bots' thoughts.

[00:23:40] A new bot present everything to us because storytelling. And then once that's done, we can actually do our job. So it really is this WataBot layer of, like, bot on bot, wasting water, and we're just coming back to where we were and just honestly adding a lot of technology and waste. And the problem is, like we've always said on this show, you've never solved the first problem before you started providing a solution. Right? You haven't identified or diagnosed or

[00:24:08] assessed or audited or done anything at all. You've just literally seen a thousand applications in an inbox for a recruiter and gone, okay, we need to solve this problem, so let's stick AI on it. And I will also say, sorry, I mean, we're coming right back to you because I see it. I see it ready to roll. But I will say, season one, we said this, there are three layers in, there are three levers in the talent sphere. You got your people, you got your process, and you got your product, and people just bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, slapping that product layer because it

[00:24:38] can't be them. And it can't be the process because, you know, whatever, whatever reason that's silly. But the point is, is they always keep slapping that product layer because that is products profit off of recruiter dysfunction. They are selling to you that they can solve every single thing that you have because your process or your people are experiencing or are as the product. That's right. Oh yeah. I'm so sorry. Totally good. Look, I'm one of you guys. I grew up.

[00:25:07] I agree with it though. I'm interested to see what you've said now that we've said so many things. Yeah. Look, I think people process product or tech. That's how we've, you know, we've been trained that way, right? People process tech. Now, I think there's a, there's a strategy above that, right? Which is what is the strategy people process tech. Actually, I think it's strategy process people who fit that process because your process will actually define what kind of people you need.

[00:25:35] And then enabler is the technology or the product, right? So that's how I think about it, right? But I will say you're right. I think, look, we're humans, right? And I'm getting kind of philosophical on this. So bear with me a little bit. We love that. No, that's our cup. Humans innovate because we, including myself, are lazy. Okay. Innately, we're generally lazy. It doesn't matter if you wake up at five in the morning, you go to the gym and so on, but we are

[00:26:01] wired to figure out how to do things faster, better, and hopefully cheaper, right? But faster and better, right? I think what happens is because we want things to be easier and, and there are all kinds of reasons for that. You got 40 recs, 50 recs, whatever you're working on right now from a recruiter mindset standpoint. I get it, right? I've been there. It's like, man, I'm just trying to get this shit filled, right? Like, excuse my language. No, we don't care. Oh yeah, no, you're good.

[00:26:28] We've all been there. Like, I just need to fill this thing and just get the hiring manager off my back, right? That's, that's unfortunately, you know, the reality of the situation. So then what happens is you've got all this noise that's created by the just pure volume play. And then you immediately, it's like a vicious circle. You go to, all right, you know what? Like, I don't have time to look at strategy. I don't have time to look at process. What is the easiest thing? Now I know, granted,

[00:26:54] it's all relative, right? It's not easy to implement a product. I get it. But on the grand scheme of things, that is actually the easy, easier things to do, which is, oh, I'm just going to pay, you know, $99 a recruiter per month. And we're going to try to solve this thing. I don't think that's the right approach, right? But I think the reality is we're all struggling with just trying to make more time in a day to number one, ultimately, hopefully your listeners want to make time for their families.

[00:27:21] And ultimately it's like, man, I don't want to be working on a Saturday, just trying to, you know, keep up with these wrecks. And so that's what I see happening out there is like, they see the shiny object. They're like, okay, you know what? I'm going to try it for a year, see what happens, right? It doesn't bother me about buying the shiny product. I totally don't have a problem with it. It's going to happen. I mean, it's been happening for forever, right? And we buy the shiny product

[00:27:44] because it does, you know, all industry makes sense. But that being said, make sure that when you buy the shiny product that you put it into a process that actually has some meat to it, right? You're not just slapping it on to an already truly, truly dysfunctional system. And I get that some of the products do solve some of that problem. But again, I think we, again, talk about this on the show all

[00:28:11] the time, thinking strategically, especially as a leader of TA, about how your team functions and what the processes are and how you influence the organization as a whole will stop you from buying some of these products because they don't fit into the process you've set for the team and for your department and for so on for the organization. Well, what's happening is I agree

[00:28:37] with you is that we want things to be faster. We want the work-life balance, but we're not looking at the overall big picture. We're solving for that one problem. And it's causing this consistent loop. And it's only going to get worse. I mean, I was watching CBS Sunday morning and I think Sam Altman was on there. I forget who was on there. But it was just how fast AI is moving. You say 20 years till we can do something. I know. I was like, I think it'll be 20 minutes. I was saying five, right? I'm saying

[00:29:06] three before it, you know, starts to take over even critical thinking. And so this is where we get into this crazy space of how much AI is too much AI. When do we stop telling the story back to the topic of the show? And when do we stop telling the story and let the AI tell the story for us? And that is where I think your company, especially where we are doing the full storytelling around an organization means something right now.

[00:29:34] Right. It's not AI swap. It's the real deal of the organization, the people, what's happening, what's being built. All of those pieces come together as a true story versus we have a lot of AI bots and you're going to get interviewed by an AI, you know, assistant named Jane. Yeah, look, full transparency. We have AI in Clickify, but we're using AI differently. We're using AI to

[00:29:58] understand the psychology, the behaviors. What are people gravitating towards? If a recruiter is just posting a job out there without actual content, right? What is that doing? Right. So we're using AI from an intelligence and analytics standpoint versus just AI slop content creation, if that makes sense. Yeah. I think AI being used for intelligence is the best use of AI, candidly. I think that if you are

[00:30:26] using it to educate yourself, to create depth within whatever industry you're working in, to actually get comprehension about that full end, things like that, like things that actually make the human better is where AI can shine. Anything that's the other way around is where I'm kind of like, the other thing that I would say, and Des, you were like right on the tip of this. And I was so sad because you've said it before, and this is technically your quote, but products most of the time are

[00:30:52] solving only symptoms. And we know that just based on the escalation process of how you actually get approval to buy products. And what I mean by that is like, for instance, the symptom is we're not higher. We don't, we don't have a higher. It's been 90 days. We don't have a higher. We don't have a higher. And so their quote unquote root cause analysis will always be, well, it's an issue top of funnel. We need bigger branding. We need better, whatever. So enter in AI. And again, it comes back to

[00:31:17] that actually probably you could have just had a really bad recruiter not filtering well. Like you actually have no idea. We're just assuming it's top of funnel because again, the person wants is not going to blame the process because that's their boss's creation. And then they're not probably going to blame themselves unless you're me and super self-aware and like, yeah, it's probably me. But the thing that I would say is a lot of products, and I see it all the time whenever it's escalated to senior leaders, just to do the purchasing for procurement. They are

[00:31:46] always listing symptoms. I can't tell you how many times I'm like, what is the actual root cause of this? Because so many products that people use and then it gets years down the line and it's like, we don't actually know why we bought this product. We're using it this way now, but we have no idea. Like there's actually a company that I was recently at that had a whole video screening and they don't know why they have it, what they're using it for. They're paying endlessly every year and don't know why. So I would say that. And then the other thing that I was going to say that Amit had kind of

[00:32:13] said, whenever you're talking about human behavior, you're super right. So humans, we love to preserve our cognitive resources. So you mentioned being lazy. There was something that I don't know why I always want to call him Tim Apple, but whatever his name is, who made Apple? Oh, Tim Cook. No, no, the one before. Oh my God. What's his name? Dude, what is his name? I can picture Steve Jobs. Okay. Steve Jobs always. Yeah, that was pretty embarrassing for the both of us.

[00:32:40] I'm not going to lie. Mainly for me, mainly for me. Speaking of preserving cognitive energy. Yeah. Right. But yeah, no cognitive resources preserve energy. But one of the things that Steve Jobs always said is he was like, if I get to assess someone for talent on doing the job, I'm picking the laziest person because they will find the quickest, simplest, easiest route to do something with the most minimal amount of effort possible. And they are the type

[00:33:08] of people that actually can do strategy. I mean, it's cutting corners, but he's able to see how many corners can be cut before we can actually create whatever it is. And so there is something to say about sometimes whenever we're talking about having people who do cut those corners and then we're talking about product solving symptoms. Some of these symptoms are personally created because we were cutting those corners because we wanted to preserve

[00:33:32] whatever X, Y, Z it was. And so even just thinking of the video interviewing with people, because they're like, well, I don't want to take time to interview. And it's like, that's the whole job. But OK. So anyway, but I'm going to move past that. But I did just want to say you are pretty spot on about that part. And then also tying it back into what Des was saying. I think that it's some of those cut corners that create these symptoms that we've now attached to a full organization's process and people problem when really it's just. Yeah, totally. And I think, you know, and.

[00:34:02] For me, I think about and this is something maybe we can coin on this call as well is is active and passive recruiters. I know you have active and passive candidates, but you also have active and passive recruiters. And and of course, it depends on kind of your strategy, right, as a leader. But really, I think about like some of the best recruiters I had, especially for like the niche talent or the active recruiters. And I hated this, but they did it. And now I'm thinking about I know why they did it is they wouldn't even look at the applicants.

[00:34:32] Right. They would pride themselves that, hey, I got the rack and I'm going to go out there and get the right person. OK. And so what would happen is I would, of course, as a team leader, we had all these metrics. So I would run a dashboard and I'd say, OK, these candidates, you know, what are you not dispositioning them? Like what's going on? He would come to me and be like, look, I'm a recruiter. Yes, honey, I want to hug whoever this is. I'm not going to. I'm the same way.

[00:34:58] Now, I do disposition because if you make the effort to apply, I'm going to give it the view. Not going to lie. No. So I will say, yeah, I don't I don't quit just because we got to apply. His role was like, yeah, we'll make sure we disposition everything after the candidate, you know, after we know who it is we're hiring. Right. So that's how now it happens. So I think about these active recruiters and I do believe in the age of AI, the ones who pride themselves are actually that's the definition of a recruiter. Right. You're going out there,

[00:35:26] all these candidates flooding into your ATS, which right now, as we said, Desiree, a lot of it is trash. Right. Like, you don't know. I'm allowed to say that's my show. It's trash. It's trash. Right. Like you don't know. So again, going back to preserving cognitive resources. Right. It's like, you know what? Let that noise happen. I'm a recruiter. I'm going to work this rack and I'm going to get to my one, two people, my ABC slate, and I'm going to hand it over to the

[00:35:55] manager. The other 80 or 90, whatever that number is, we'll address them when the time comes. That I do believe that that, you know, if if you're going to get to how should I say this? If you're really going to survive in this job, though, that's the level of recruiter that we, I think, need as opposed to these passive recruiters who are just relying on all this tech. The jobs are going to go away. And listen, it's the creation of our industry, right? We've created

[00:36:24] those passive recruiters just by everything that we've done over the last, I don't know how many years we've created those. I mean, I think it was 2022 when it was like the boom of everything. Oh yeah. Everyone got to act like they were working at Google. Be a recruiter, right? And like, we slapped him in the seat, gave him all the tech and was like, go push paper. Like, you know what I mean? That's what they did. And so we created our own monster in it. And those are the ones that need the help storytelling to me, right? Like they're the ones

[00:36:53] that you could call today and be like, tell me about so ABC company that they work for and they can't give you the answers because they have no ability to tell the story of their own organization, which is because they're not, they're not active recruiters. I'm going to start using that language. They're not active recruiters in that they are not trying to be strategic. They aren't telling a story. They aren't doing all those pieces. They are literally pushing paper and pushing paper and

[00:37:23] making phone calls. Yeah. And that's the stuff that AI will take over within two years, maybe one year, maybe it's already here, right? But I do think, I think we need a definition as an industry of what an active recruiter is and then just get people to opt in. Like I'm going to be an active recruiter or I'm going to be a passive recruiter and just let AI do 90% of my job. Yeah. To me, that's the difference between a recruiter and like talent acquisition specialist, which I know is so wordy and like such a thing. But in that shift of them changing,

[00:37:50] even the titles internally within corporate is the same time that we see the shift of like, okay, people are allowing us in boardrooms. Okay. People are allowing us to have strategy at the operations table. People are, so like in my head, I kind of use it like that, but I will say people use those stuff interchangeably and it doesn't like, they don't even care. I will also say whenever it comes to active recruiters, cause I think I actually like that a little more. To me, the two things that set a recruiter apart from active and active is going to be sourcing ability.

[00:38:18] Like, and I know Desiree hates it, but that's my germ. Hear me out. Yo, like that's where I shine. And then number two is going to be, how do they reject their candidates? To me, that is what separates the girls from the littler girls is, you know, what is it? The boys from the, it doesn't matter. Whatever. They separate the people from the people. I don't care. I was trying to like not do that one, but then I was. The girls from the women? Yeah. But then it just all got confusing. And then we were just like, what is she talking about? I think, I think you

[00:38:47] guys are onto something like I, it would be great. And I'm sure there's some, you know, PhD out there somewhere like writing about this, but I think it would be great to actually like hone in on, okay, what makes an active recruiter or just my language, they should be just recruiters, but yeah, you have come to this delineation, right? So what makes a solid, like high quality recruiter? Right. Yeah. And there's gotta be competencies or skills, whatever you want to call

[00:39:14] it. Like these are the five things, regardless of industry, what you're recruiting for. Like these are the five things that are almost like AI proof, if you will. Yeah. Yeah. And I will say, because Desiree and I have talked about this too. I do think that those competencies are evolving because now, like I said, how we're transitioning from you're doing this, you're the admin of people who get hired, you start there, stop there. And we're moving into more of a strategic, we're having

[00:39:40] to take on a lot more hats. So like even something as small as now we have to understand employer branding. Now we have to understand EVP. Now I need to understand how your comp data and philosophy works. These are not necessarily conversations that we were allowed to be a part of 20 years ago. And so for every added conversation, for every added group that we're working in with, so the more we're drawing AI into our process, the more we're going to have to be working with IT and understanding how is the data? What is the difference between validating an assessment versus the reliability

[00:40:08] of an assessment? Like now we're having such different conversations that those competencies, in my opinion, are shifting drastically. Like if you were someone who was just hammered in on talent and they put you in a fortune 200 company right now as a leader, you're not going to be able to hang. Like, and I've seen it. I've seen where people have hired people who were just very tenured in what they do, but they do not know how to have a conversation with marketing. They cannot comprehend that

[00:40:34] internal data and understand analytics. And that's a whole different ballgame than what we've been accustomed to. So I will say, I think you're right. I think that there does need to be some form of like common competency that's industry wide. But I will say the more that, you know, we get to venture into all of these different businesses and do what Des and I do, the more we're really realizing you've really got to be a jack of all trades to be an actual solid TA leader and professional in

[00:41:00] these large orgs because you can't be coming to these tables just only talking about talent. You're going to have to talk about how talent is impacting them, affecting them and matters to them. And that's a completely different conversation. And you're going to have to be able to read data, which is not something recruiters ever had to do before. Most people went into recruitment because it's a very soft skill heavy. Now that's changing. Now it's, can you show me your pipeline? Can you show me what this means and why you have a three here, a six here? And like, that's a, again, it's just, it's evolving. I love the evolution of it. I like where it's evolving, but I do feel like we're going to have

[00:41:30] a drop off of competencies as well. And a drop off of people doing the profession at all, right? Which honestly they should, bye. Right. No offense, but like, bye. I'm so tired of those people. I'm not going to lie. Well, I want to keep all the active recruiters. Okay. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. That inactivity, I'm not interested in. That's it and wait and the whole, well, just the post and the prime. Yeah. Just bye. We're going to have to have you back because this was like totally free flowing

[00:41:58] and like kind of our jam when it works like this. So yeah, I want to bring it back to your company though, just really quickly, because I know that you said you use AI for the intelligence layer part of the things that you do. But I also know there's a part to Clickify that like scrapes the everything. I think it's called Clio or something like that. Yeah, Clio. Yeah. Scrapes everything and, and pulls it all together. It does all the, so where, you know, kind of where, where,

[00:42:26] as CEO, where are you drawing the line where for AI right now from intelligence and crossing over and Clio is scraping and all of those things. What's the line for you? Yeah. Great question, Des. I heard Ashley call you Des, so that's okay. It's totally fine. So, so Des, Clio stands for Clickify Engagement Optimizer. Yeah. I know it's a fancy term, but ultimately,

[00:42:53] ultimately what it's meant to do is scrape all this data to help you engage in a more optimized way. Okay. And so there's a lot of thought put into, into the name of Clio. Yeah. And what Clio does today for our customers, and these are large enterprises, right? Like very complex, 130 plus countries around the world. It'll go out there every month and it'll basically tell the organization, the TA leader, maybe even the chief people officer, depending on which level,

[00:43:23] you know, is interested in seeing the results. It'll actually tell you your competitive landscape, like who are you losing talent to in that particular geography. And then it'll actually tell you the pros and cons based on what people are talking about externally or internally. We haven't approached the internal piece yet because TA leaders are still guarded from engagement survey data and things like that. So we'll get there at some point. What Clio really does, Des and Ashley, is,

[00:43:48] is actually takes all this. And this is the power of AI because before the compute power for all of that, like I could probably do it maybe once a year, maybe every six months, but now you can actually have enough compute power with like the NVIDIAs and the AWSs of the world to be able to do this very quickly in a very dynamic way. So right now it's monthly. I can see it happening in real time and in the near future where you actually have intelligence that says, Hey, I'm trying to hire a data scientist

[00:44:13] in, you know, Budapest in Hungary. And this is where we're losing data scientists in Hungary to, to these four companies in that locality. And then this is the message I need to be sharing with them if I'm a recruiter in Hungary. And that's the level of detail we're getting to with this Clio intelligence data. We're not taking over the recruiter's job. We're just enabling the recruiter to tell a more compelling story than just like, Hey, you know, I'm calling from Clickify. We're

[00:44:41] hiring data scientists. We're a fast growing company. You know, that's like very generic, but we want to actually get to like, this is the type of candidate we want. And this is the exact message or the type of message you should be sharing with them across the journey. Right. And so historically, as you know, being recruiters, it's just so hard to do that without the context of that particular geography. And that's just one role, right? You might have four or five different kinds of jobs. So that's what Clio enables you to do.

[00:45:09] That's awesome. No, it was really cool. I was, I was reading about it and I was like, I think I get this, but I don't get it. Like, you know. And we need to do a better job on the website. So we're updating it. But no, I got the premise of it, obviously, because I sit and talk about these things all day and with Ashley all the time. So I got the premise of it. But you explaining it to me right now made a lot of sense in how, and I do think that employer brand is a responsibility of a recruiter.

[00:45:39] I do believe that there's a stat out there. It's like 51% of people go to Glassdoor and see a bad review, don't move forward with their application. These are real numbers that affect your pipeline. And so if you don't understand what's happening around your employer brand, and James Ellis can talk about this all day, if you don't understand about that and how that moves the needle or doesn't move the needle, then you're already three steps behind to me. As a person that came out of marketing

[00:46:06] into talent, I think goodness bring that with me, all that, you know, years of doing that. But most recruiters do not and do not think it's part of the job. And unfortunately, like Ashley said, the role is morphing, right? It's something else now. And so if you don't think it's part of your job, think a little better. A little better. And ultimately, it's meant to help you do your job better, right? Because you're still spending the 30 minutes or whatever it is on, you know, with a

[00:46:34] candidate. Yeah. It's just do you want the 30 minutes to convert a quality candidate? Or do you want the 30 minutes to do something else with it? Right? Right. Right. And that's, I think you're still spending the same amount of time, maybe less with Clickify and Tio, but the outcome is what, you know, you should be outcome-based, right? As a recruiter to say, okay, I want this conversation to turn into a quality hire ultimately. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the philosophy that we all need

[00:47:03] to apply as recruiters. I'm still recruiting, right? Because even though I'm CEO, I still have talent for Clickify, right? And so for us, it's just really about what do you do with the limited time and, you know, are you converting the right kind of candidates? Makes sense. This is the point of the show, everybody, that Ashley does her thing or doesn't. First of all, I haven't not done it in ages. Second of all, I'm actually, okay, so I'm actually gonna, I'm gonna do this with a myth.

[00:47:30] What are you gonna do to flip the script thing? If it's okay, but only if, only, I'm curious. So I'll kind of tell my bit and then I'm going to pass it over to Amit and see what he has to say. But one of the things that you talked about early on was actually the crawlers. And so I think a lot of people actually don't know how their job postings get to the internet. Like I truly don't think so because most recruiters, they post it in their ATS and then all of a sudden it's on Indeed and it's on all these other places. And so I'm going to give a little bit of a historical lesson. And then if you

[00:47:59] want to chime in on a technical side, please feel free. But a little bit of the history lesson is years ago, whenever ATSs were really starting to boom, because at first we kind of just had databases and then we moved from a database to a tracking system because that was more for what HR was looking for as far as cleanliness, not really having Intel in there that can get us in trouble, XYZ. So they stuck to more of a tracking, not a database, right? And so now we have what's called ATSs and what would happen whenever you bought an ATS like iSIMS, Taleo, and some other ones,

[00:48:29] that are even older than that, is they would have deals with companies like Monster. Monster's been bought. So a lot of people listening are probably like, what is that? It's not the thing under your bed. It is a company that used to exist. I had a reference to Monster at some point. Yeah. So I had a profile on Monster. So there was Monster. Career Builder was a big one, but it was these companies that the only way that they got any traffic on their website was by having

[00:48:53] job postings. And they were struggling with trying to get companies to give them their job postings. So what they decided to do instead was actually make deals with ATSs that would say, if you, whatever companies you have that will buy into your ATS, we will make sure that every job posting is posted on our website for free. And we will do crawlers that will crawl every so many hours, scrape it, and we'll put it up there for free. So if you look on Indeed and you see a post that's not

[00:49:23] sponsored, that was a crawled post that just got scraped and is on there. So there are so many recruiters where they'll see sources in their ATS of Indeed, maybe even a cryptic Monster. Sometimes, I swear, Monster comes out of nowhere sometimes. Maybe a Career Builder, and they're like, I never posted on here. It's because of this arcane deal that they did years and years ago with trying to just get traffic to these brand new job board sites that really didn't know how

[00:49:49] to make money or income because they're consumer-based. They don't necessarily have businesses to sell into until recruiters started experiencing dysfunction. And then they were able to maintain a database that HR was too scared to keep. And now that is, for the most part, what you buy. You're buying the database, the collection of people within which they have, and the capability to message them. Now, Amit, if you want to talk about any of the technical portion, please do. But just a little history lesson, because I think a lot of people don't actually know how they get

[00:50:18] what they get and where and why. And knowing that is important whenever you're a leader, where they're coming to you and saying, we need to open up Top of the Funnel. We need to go buy all these things. And we put it on all those things that are already for free scraped, honey. So it is an important lesson to know. Small history lesson. Yeah. The only thing I'd add to that, spot on, Ashley, the only thing I'd add to that is actually we're getting to a convergence where everybody is hitting one data source. Yeah. All right. Amit, it's been fabulous.

[00:50:49] Yeah, likewise. We're going to have you back. We do love it when we flow and do all the things, but I want everybody to know where to find you, where to hunt you down, if they can hunt you down, your company website, all of those things. Go ahead and plug yourself. Yeah, sure. Thank you. First of all, Des, I'd love to be back. I like the free flow. There's so much knowledge that all of us collectively have to share. So thank you for having me again. Your listeners can find me on LinkedIn. I'm actually active on LinkedIn as a recruiter sometimes.

[00:51:19] And so you can find me on LinkedIn. Amit Parmar. Clickify is the name of the company, C-L-I-Q-U-I-F-1. Clickify.me or .ai. We own all of those domains. It will just redirect you. I love it so much. Again, this has just been wonderful to all of our listeners. You know, I just encourage you to think about where your employer brand stands, how well you're telling a story, how you're moving your career forward as an active or inactive or passive recruiter.

[00:51:48] It is very important as we move forward in the world of AI. You know where to find us. Blue Sky, website, threads, Instagram, Facebook. I mean, we're everywhere and you know it. If you have trouble finding us, you can reach out to Ashley or myself on LinkedIn. And I have a book coming out. If you didn't know already, you've heard it for the last five episodes. It comes out October 27th. Leadership is a practice, not a personality. Look out for it, though. I don't know how you're

[00:52:16] going to miss it. I'm going to be all over LinkedIn. Thank you so much. And we'll see you next time. See you, Des.