Gen Z Is Texting Through Interviews?! + The AI Hiring Takeover" 🔥

[00:00:00] Oh, Ryan, this one's 16% of hiring managers report Gen Z candidates are using their phones mid-interview, according to a poll conducted by Resume.org. They've grown up on devices. Wait, so hold on. I mean- Heads exploding. Mid-interview. So you're interviewing me, right? Yep. You're interviewing me, and I'm like, hold on, bruh.

[00:00:28] And I pull out my phone. Well, you'll have to say bruh, but yeah. Bet. No! No! You're not getting high? No, not in an interview. With the labor market as it is, Ryan, think about it. No! More of a- No. See? No. Get off my lawn. That's what you're doing right now. You're using what you used to do as the norm for what they need to do, called social mores.

[00:00:58] No, this is a job. Social mores change. Again? Not saying don't use your devices, but like, no. Mm-mm. What's going on, everybody? Ryan Leary, William Tinkup here with another episode of The Barf. This is the week, the look back at the week that was, so you could be prepared for the week that is.

[00:01:25] We have been doing this for over a year. Over a year. And I still screw that part up every time. Not really. I think you do a good job. It's close. Well, thank you. It's a lot of words. Thank you. It's a lot of words, Ryan. It's kind of a tongue twister. Maybe not. I'm just not- Yes. Yeah, well, there you go. Go, bird. There. Living the entire team in free agency, but we're going to rebuild. Let's talk about Super Bowl. Yeah, let's not. So there we go.

[00:01:54] So how's your weekend going on? Everything's great. Van's off to a- It's his spring break. So he's off to a scout camp. And not his camp. It's basically a long camp out in Palo Duro Canyon. Okay. Beautiful. Gorgeous part of Texas. And real rocky. I mean, just beautiful. So anyhow. Nice. So it's kind of helping him get ready for Philmont. So, yeah. Henry returned because his spring break- I don't know why it happens this way, but his spring break-

[00:02:23] It's his previous week. Yeah. So he's back at college. Henry's now- And Van's now off of school. So you guys are free. No children. That is correct. What's on the plans for the week? Well- Then it sounds like a lot of partying. On Wednesday- Well, he comes back Tuesday. On Wednesday, we'll go down to the Lake House. Oh, wait. You said he comes back on Tuesday. No, he comes back- Well, he comes back Tuesday. Yeah. This Tuesday. Yeah.

[00:02:53] And then we'll go down to the Lake House Tuesday night. You're supposed to do stuff when they're not here. Well, my wife is so looking forward to being at the Lake House. Like, it's insane. She gets like this. Oh, it's a nice Lake House. Well, it's not so much that. It's just getting away from the stuff. Like, Easter with faith formation and all the things that happen in Catholicism. It's a busy time of the year. Yeah. And that's what she does.

[00:03:18] Dude, I took the kids to confession on Thursday. That was some funny stuff. I have not been to confession. I can't remember the last time I was in confession. You're not being in a confessional. And the priest teaches you through it.

[00:03:48] It's like, all right, let's start with the basics. It's the Ten Commandments. So in the Ten Commandments, I haven't broke all of them. You see, the problem with all of this, they can see through those little. Oh, no. They do it at our church. They do it seat to seat. They do it face to face. Yeah. Yeah. Which I don't mind. I'm not confessing. No. You know what Michael told me. Michael's my wife, for those that are listening.

[00:04:17] What she told me is just go basic. Just don't try to overwhelm them. You don't need to tell a lot of stories from high school. Well, in 1819. Exactly. I left this motherfucker for dead. I don't know. He might have died. There wasn't the internet then. So I don't know. I just know I left him bleeding. Well, there you go. All right. But anyhow, that was fun because Van and Henry are obviously younger. And so the drive there, I'm like, all right.

[00:04:47] So what are we going to do? Like, what's the bit? What are y'all going to do? And they do like a 20-minute mass service type thing. And then you all go. There's like seven or eight priests. So you can go in any direction and be with a priest. I kind of think, you know, for you, you started at one and worked your way down to kind of. Hey, how you doing? Woo! Well, it's time since I've been here. So let's clear some things out. Yeah. Well, there you go. Yeah, that was fun.

[00:05:17] So we ready to do this? We are. All right. Let me tell you a story. Are you ready? Tell me a story. Deloitte will consider office attendance in performance reviews and bonuses for all employees in the U.S. tax division. The tax practice that requires the tax practice of Deloitte requires employees spend at least 50% of their working hours in the office.

[00:05:44] So we've talked about this on the Financial Times, FT.com. We've talked about this before about, but is this going to create a different RTO? Is it going to create a different class of, you know, all that stuff? Is it help people with internal mobility? All that stuff. And this is one of those stories that basically sums out and says being in the office will impact your performance review and your bonuses. And it's, and they're doing with their tax, but you can see them easily doing it with their consultants as well.

[00:06:14] Unless their consultants are, you know, flying around, being with customers and stuff like that. So yeah. So there you go. Look it up. I think, you know, for me, I think, as I've said many times, I think it's second class citizens. I think you're remote hybrid people. At one point, you're just going to have different classes, which doesn't help the gender gap, pay gap. It doesn't help any of that stuff. It doesn't help DEI. It doesn't help anything because you're treating people differently. Yeah. Not that it should end up that way. Right.

[00:06:44] But I think at some point there'll be a balance of, okay, you're in the office. You're going to get this set of work and you're going to be compensated appropriately. Not to say that you're at home. You can't do that work. Right. There are different tasks. There are different things that could be done that you may be compensated differently. And I would be okay with that because I would be making the choice. It would have to be different, different.

[00:07:08] Like if it's two techs, let's say you're an auditor and you're let your bit and you're auditing a Fortune 500 company. You're doing the same job. The job isn't different. Well, sure. Yeah. So it would have to be different for that to work for. Yeah. I think it would have to be like substantively different so that you don't have a Twinkies or number two pencil kind of oranges to oranges comparison.

[00:07:37] I just can't believe we're still talking about this shit. No, I think, well, I think it's going to go more. Well, I think it's actually, we're going to be talking about it more. Not RTO, but companies' philosophy and structure around RTO. The conversation is going to evolve. Right. Into that. So, yeah. Nice. All right. I've got a really fun one. The world knows this already. In May. Yeah. Cue the tombstones, people. Two months. Got it.

[00:08:04] Microsoft is going to retire Skype. I thought it was already retired. No. No, no, no. In May. In May. It's still hanging on. I bet you if we download it and put it on somebody that we were once connected with on Skype. Oh, yeah. What? What college? Yeah. So, they're forcing everyone. They're discontinuing. They're forcing everyone to go into Teams. Yeah. Not really fine. Whatever. I don't like that. I don't hate Teams. It's just very different than what we use. Right.

[00:08:32] But it's corporate enterprise. And, you know, there it goes. But do you remember the days of Skype? My God. That was amazing. I use that thing from 2010. Drivers. Yeah. Probably to 17. 16. All day. Every day. Yeah. All day. Every day. That you'd have for Skype call. Yeah. It's really going to date the movies. That's what's really interesting is any movie that has Skype in it. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be like, okay, that's a VCR. Cool.

[00:09:02] Great. Great. That's interesting. I want to go and Google that and see what show, because there are shows. There's a ton of shows that I feel like. Yeah. That I've heard that. Yeah. So it'll date that. It'll automatically date that in that time period, which, you know, it's fine, too. But. Goodbye, Skype. We'll bless you. RIP. RIP. There you go. All right. So, Ryan, this one's 16% of hiring managers report Gen Z candidates are using their phones

[00:09:32] mid-interview, according to a poll conducted by Resume.org. So you go to Resume.org and see the whole bit. But, you know, as I thought about it, it's like they grew up on devices. They're going to use devices at work. Why would we expect them not to use a device while they're interviewing? You know? Yeah. I mean, it kind of smells like, you know, get off my lawn, you know, type stuff. Like Boomer looking at this type stuff. And I'm like, you know what?

[00:09:59] Maybe the thing is, is just to embrace it and go, you know, because it's an interview. We understand it's important. Gotcha. However, these kids, and I'm going to call them kids, these kids, these people, we've got kids the same age. They do things at the same time. They can talk to you and look at TikTok. Yeah. Yeah. But not in a job interview. It's happening. This is happening.

[00:10:29] No. No. I want Plum to do some research on this. Get off my lawn. That's just fucking stupid. No. I'm not even going to talk about this anymore. No. It took me a minute to think. No. All right. WISQ. So WISQ, WIS, we're advisors to the company. So we'll just say that. This was from a couple of weeks back because we missed our show last week. Yep. I did.

[00:10:56] They launched a new product called Harper, which is the world's first AI HR generalist. So this is a cool little play. Harper automates the routine tasks for HR. So policy, compliance, process, time and attendance, leave, return to office stuff, benefit inquiries, all that type of stuff. So they've launched this as part of their suite, which is pretty cool.

[00:11:24] And I was excited to see where this thing goes. I love it. I mean, the thing is, is I wonder with all the agents being named names. Yeah. Like hurricanes. I wonder if we're actually going to run out of names. They're kind of like domains. Then they're going to go to like ABC. ADB. Yeah. Yeah. Levi with a Y. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to. Don't do that. Don't do that. Is this really the world's first?

[00:11:54] HR generalist, I guess, maybe in the way they positioned it. I haven't seen it. Yeah, probably. I mean, they wouldn't say it is if it isn't. Yeah. Yeah. True. I mean, if someone's done it before, they'll basically point to it and go, you didn't do it first. We did. Yeah. Yeah. I think, again, this gets back to your theory of we're just going to have a bunch of agents around us that do specialized tasks. And, you know, it'll make us more efficient.

[00:12:22] So we don't have to do certain things. We've got the agent doing those things. Agent me up. I'm ready. 100%. All right. Let me pitch you this story. Walmart is challenging Amazon's grip on speedy deliveries by leveraging thousands of freelance drivers who can deliver online orders to 93% of the households in the same day. I have used same day delivery. So. All right.

[00:12:51] So this is Wall Street Journal. So you can obviously go deeper if you need to. This is fascinating to me because they've basically they're leveraging the gig economy workers that do DoorDash and Uber and all that stuff, basically saying, you know, we're not going to invest in a fleet of vehicles. There's people out there that have vehicles. And so it's it's it's it reminds me of South America in the fact that we laid down wire for our Internet.

[00:13:22] And most of South America did. They went with satellites and they went with towers. And now at this point, we we all have 6G or 5G or whatever that we're at right now. You get it from a satellite or you're getting it from towers. But they didn't do that infrastructure. All those land, all those lines, that copper that's in the ground. South America didn't do that. So they skipped that infrastructural step.

[00:13:48] And so Walmart has basically said, could we build out a fleet of cars or trucks? Yeah. We hire a bunch of men and women to do the bit. Yeah. Or there's a bunch of people already out there driving. They're already doing. I mean, look, this model has already been built and rebuilt and built again. And all the lawsuits have come through like they they know what they're doing. I think Henry, I think that's what is what he's going to do this summer to learn Dallas,

[00:14:17] to learn all the stuff is he's going to basically have Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Walmart, all of them on his phone. And just go from one place to another. Yeah. Yeah. We did that with my oldest was learning to drive. She has to get 65 hours in. Right. We did DoorDash and I'll tell you, it was a good bonding experience. That's cool. But it was actually pretty cool. And I enjoy, dare I say, therapeutic to just drive and get the food and go and do it.

[00:14:48] I got to go to this place. It got annoying after a while, but she needed the hours and she got to drive at night on windy roads on places I would have never have taken her. Right. It's actually a really good idea to get them to do it. So there you go. So there you go. Walmart. There you go. All right. The EEOC slams Taco Bell. So Taco Bell franchise is accused of allowing sexually hostile work environment.

[00:15:17] So EEOC, they filed a lawsuit against it. I find that. This is Mexican based. Yeah. Michigan based. I'm having trouble today. That's funny. I like what you did there. Yeah. Brought those words together. Yeah. Mexican. That's actually pretty funny. That's I didn't mean to do that. That's actually pretty funny.

[00:15:41] So Michigan based franchisee alleging that it allowed a sexually hostile environment to persist over about a two month period. By an area coach. This is an interesting story. Right. Although the franchisee, the HR group at the franchisee's parent. Investigate it properly. Right. They did it timely.

[00:16:08] They complain came in and I believe it was like the next day they began the investigation. Get on it. However, they allowed this coach to continue to work as they investigated for two months. I think that's typical. It continued. Well, it is. It is. And it's not because it's a gray area. Yeah. So I did some research on this and all the HR people are going to just tear it apart because I'm probably very wrong with this. However, it depends on the claim and how many of the claims.

[00:16:37] There's a lot of factors that go into it. Yeah. Well, there's a there's a ton. There's a prompt. It promptly promptly in quotes, air quotes for those not watching. But it doesn't define what promptly means. Yeah. Promptly could be six weeks. Although they investigated immediately. Right. The issue persisted and people continue to complain that they didn't complete the investigation. It is. It's very interesting.

[00:17:03] It's interesting because you wonder, like, first of all, doing the investigation, sometimes HR will tell the person they're being investigated. Like, listen, there's been a claim. Right. Other times they don't. And other times they don't. And so if you don't tell the person and they continue to stay on shift and they continue to do the same things, well, it's furthering your case, but it's also putting people at risk. Exactly. Exactly. So.

[00:17:32] So it's the thing for me in this one is what recourse does Taco Bell, the company have over the franchise? Because, you know, they they they've a franchise. They've bought the restaurants. Right. Right. But they still pay Taco Bell. And so like what recourse? Because it's hurting Taco Bell's brand. Yeah, absolutely. Not Taco Bell's franchise and Michigan's brand. It's actually. So I wonder how. I mean, I love.

[00:18:00] I'd love to have an employment law attorney on that deals with this. Help us. We know someone. Yeah. Oh, we know a couple. Kate. Yeah. No bunch of books. Yeah. All right. Southwest Airlines promised to take care of employees. Until it couldn't. The company recently dropped many employee centric tenants, including avoiding layoffs. Southwest. So Southwest for years has had this thing. Yeah, we're not going to lay off.

[00:18:30] We're just not going to do that. And people saw it back in the day. They had kind of a philosophy of the same thing. Hey, if you did something wrong, different issue for cause. But without cause, they'd just reroute you, train, do just different things. So this is a Wall Street Journal. So you can take a look at it. And I'm personally, Southwest is local to us. To me, it's in Dallas. I'm surprised they made it this far with that culture.

[00:18:57] So when I first read it, I'm like, dude, they're still not doing layoffs? Like, that's crazy. So that culture first strategy. So it got me to think about culture first strategy. That's what it really did. It's like people talk about people first, culture first, all that stuff. I came to the conclusion that culture is a derivative of margin.

[00:19:22] In high margin industries or products, et cetera, you can afford culture. And when it's thin, they're in the discount airlines business. They're going up against Spirit and all the other, I don't even know their names, whatever they are. But they're going after, that's what Southwest has always done. Short routes, cheap economy flights, all that type stuff. And very minimalist. Yeah, they give you some peanuts, I guess.

[00:19:50] But again, it's not the frou-frou of like an American or United or whatever, but it's not a luxury. Their margins are thin. So outside of Southwest, like Ritz-Carlton, they can afford culture. Yeah, absolutely. I can see that argument. I can't remember the name of the airline, but I literally just saw this interview a couple days ago

[00:20:14] where the CEO, maybe the former CEO of the airline said his plans were to have standing room in the plane instead of sitting. Hold on to the strap. Hold on to the strap. Paying to use the bathroom. That'd actually be pretty good. Yeah. Like things like that. And he said- Pay to use the restroom. Nice. Yeah, things like that. And he said, you know, we're not a luxury airline. When you buy a ticket on our airline, I have to go back and find the airline.

[00:20:43] You might have to be in a storage compartment. Yeah, but you know what you're getting, right? You're buying a discounted ticket, and we need to find ways to get more people on the plane. Not that I would make fun of Air Africa or Air India, but you kind of understand what you're going to get. Yeah, no, it was a European. I'll have to find it. Same thing with the Emirates, the airlines that are super, super expensive and super nice.

[00:21:12] You kind of know what you're going to get. So, all right. It's yours. There you go. I've got one more EEOC thing to talk about here. This is timely, but I just found- I'm talking about this for political reasons, but it just made sense, and it was interesting to me. The EEOC is targeting universities for anti-Semitic treatment of their staff.

[00:21:39] And so the key here in this entire, you know, of their state, let's say there are no lawsuits. These are statements that they're making. Right. That the universities are workplaces, not just educational institutions. So free speech outside, not free speech inside. Yeah, well, that, and it's a place of work. You need to protect your employees, not just the students. That's interesting. It isn't just educational.

[00:22:10] And it all makes sense, 100%. Well, first of all, anti-Semitic, there's no place for- There's no place for any of that stuff. But it's interesting that it's, well, in today's culture, yeah. Right. Yes. It's all happening. Right. But I agree with this, that educational institutions, and there's others, like, examples I can think of. We don't necessarily look at them as workplaces. Right. And I look at sports franchises, this, as the same way.

[00:22:39] Sports fans, like, I, up until probably 10 years ago, I never looked at the Eagles or the Phillies as a business. It is. Even though you know it's a business, right? Not just as a business, but, okay, where does HR play in that business? All of that, yeah. But it was my sports team. And they should be doing it for me and represent the city. They don't care about representing the city. Right.

[00:23:05] They care about the TV deals and the brand deals and, you know, and the CBAs and all that. I look at education the same way. Well, no, they're there to educate. Well, they are. But they're also a business, and they're also there to pay their professors. So let me ask you a question that's similar but different. For your Eagles. Super Bowl champion. Yeah, Super Bowl champion. So, like, two. So, whatever. Whatever. So, yeah.

[00:23:35] Where's the workplace? Is the workplace the office structure and practice facility, or is the workplace the field? So I think different people have different workplaces there. I think. Pick your favorite wide receiver. Well, I think so. I think for the employees of the team, excluding the players. They are employees, but excluding them. Okay. Just normal employees. Yeah. You know, in the stadium.

[00:24:03] In the offices, all of that. Right. Regular business as usual. Right. Like, you're in the office, you're in the office. You're not in the office, you're off duty. The players, however, I think they are on 24 hours. They are representatives of the team, the brand, they're ambassadors of the team, off the field and on the field. So, on the field, can they say whatever they want? I'm not dealing with free speech. I'm dealing with, because we brought up anti-Semitic behavior.

[00:24:34] Can they, you know, like basketball, like there's just a lot of things that get beeped out, right? Yeah. Football is no different. It's interesting. For any sports team, I think it's, this is where the fan versus the employee comes in. That's right. It's an interesting conversation. I think there's a lot of more, a lot more leeway there. I think, I think, culturally, well, they're independent contractors.

[00:25:01] So, they're, I don't think they're in a union. And that might have been negotiated in the union. So, we'd have to go back and look to see what's protected, what's not protected. But we both know that when a quarterback's lining up against a wide receiver, there's words that are being said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and that's where, like, the NFL. Better not friendly. Better not friendly. Or the MLB comes in. They have rules. Yeah. To what you can and can't say, right? There's unsportsmanlike conduct. Right. Well, that's too rare.

[00:25:31] You're putting guardrails. Yeah. Even to players. Even the players, though. Oh, really? Yeah. Player to player. Yeah. And that's like the celebrations and what they're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The words they're using and all that. So, I get that. But, yeah, I mean, it's an interesting conversation, one that'll never be contained. You're never going to get a professional athlete to not say what this is. Thank you on the field. It's not going to happen. Get over it. Yeah. It's not going to happen. All right. Let me. This is a quote. So, let me start with a quote.

[00:26:00] I recommend being in the office at least every weekday. 60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google. And a memo to employees on what's needed for the company to lead AI development. This is New York Times. So, I don't know if this is a Gen X in me or not.

[00:26:30] But, like, I agree with his statement. 100%. I was like, you can't flex your way out of this if you really want to lead. Yeah. If you want to lead. They're not talking about, hey, we will participate in the AI revolution. No, they want to lead it. Yeah. Look, Google didn't become Google. Amazon didn't become Apple. Or Amazon. Apple didn't become Apple because they went home at 25 hours. And the story, like, that's just what it is.

[00:26:59] I think it's going to separate the people that have work ethic and those that don't. The people that do what they're saying will be there for the next generation of whatever Google is. Those that don't. Whoa. They just don't fit the culture. And this goes back to, like, the Amazon story, right? Everybody hates Amazon. It's a sweatshop. They work people. Unless you work there and you honestly want to work there.

[00:27:28] If you work at Amazon and you truly believe in, like, the customer and all of that stuff and you take pride in working in the warehouse and working 15 hours and packaging things perfectly. So when someone gets the box, the tape's on good and all this stuff. Right. Then that's the right environment for you. Same thing here at Google. And if not, then there's other environments for you. A lot of people take pride in working around people like Sergey. Yeah. I'm on a first name basis with them today. Yeah, 100%.

[00:27:57] And say, I work 60 hours to help build Google. They want to tell their grandkids that. I have no problem with that. That's just the work ethic that we have from the era that we grew up. It's just, I'm thinking about it from Gen Alpha, Gen Z receiving that message. No. Go ahead. No, no, no. How? Was there a typo? No, those are the ones taking off Monday through Wednesday to go do some shit. It's some great stuff. And then explaining to their other friends why they can versus can. Yeah, dude, we're going to the museum. Everyone's going.

[00:28:30] And now it's time for the plum stat of the show. When people flourish, business thrives. Unlock the benefits of 360 degree talent insights at plum.io. Well, you know what that means. This is the part of the show where we pull up and talk about the plum status show from our friends at plum. Thank you for sponsoring this section.

[00:28:52] According to plum's research, 80% of employees feel underprepared for the future of work. I think if people were really honest with themselves, I think that number is higher. They're terrafoid. Yeah. I mean, 88% sounds nice. And a lot of people use the 80-20 rule for a lot of things to justify a lot of things in life. But I think that number is much, it's in the 90s, much like higher.

[00:29:19] And they're just kind of dealing with it as it is and hoping. Do you think that they're truly underprepared or is it a fear of being underprepared? But they have the skills to actually be prepared with just a few minor tweaks. What's the difference? If you feel like you're underprepared or if you are underprepared? Well, I think it's a mindset. Is there a mindset saying, okay, I'm so unprepared. I don't know what to do. I have anxiety over this.

[00:29:48] As opposed to someone who's maybe a little more cool and conflicted and saying, I need help, but I'm kind of prepared to do whatever I need. That's a both Cool Hand Luke and Snoop Dogg quote, you got to get your mind right. Yeah. And so you got to get your mind right around AI. And you got to get it. And like there's a clock. Yep.

[00:30:12] If you wait, again, if you fear and you have anxiety, it's like all that stuff's wasted. Just throw yourself into it and learn stuff. So the faster you get over that anxiety, the more prepared you will feel. Right. Yeah. So you think that number is higher? 95, 96%. Oh, that. I think the only people that feel prepared are the ones that are actually working in AI. Yeah. Huh.

[00:30:41] That feels really high to me. I think 80% is probably. I wouldn't even thought it was 80%. No, it's much higher. Yeah. Much higher. Again, if you're honest with yourself. Think about all the stuff that we read, we're talking about and how you're talking about Wisk and Harper, all that stuff. All of that stuff. We're talking about it on a weekly basis. Yeah. That stuff's happening on an hourly basis. Yeah. So I guess, does it depend on the job, on what you're doing?

[00:31:10] Like, does an engineer or does a customer service rep, do customer service, customer service rep, do they need to be prepared? 100%. For AI or do they need to be prepared to work with AI? Yeah. I'm going to tell you about a story in funding that has revolutionized sales with agents. They built a SDR, RevOps, and calls, and call. So like sales, any sales.

[00:31:36] But that's prepared to be able to use the platform. No, that actually is, they're going to just go do that. Yeah. But I mean, customer service reps, they're not preparing or being, they're not underprepared to develop technology, right? They're never going to do that. They just have to be prepared and be open to using and learning it. Well, or being what they used to do. They won't be doing that. Right.

[00:32:05] And it's not necessarily using the technology. The technology will be using it for the business. Yeah. They'll be doing something different. But that's going to impact every single aspect of our life. Yeah. Everywhere. I don't see that as being underprepared. I see that as being not willing. Well, if you're in customer service and you're not keeping up with it, and all of a sudden at one point your company says, hey, we're going to test this out, call to Allie, and

[00:32:31] Allie's going to do all the customer, basically your job, and Allie's going to do it. And you're not thinking that thought right now. You're underprepared. Okay. So we're saying the same thing. You're just saying underprepared. I'm just saying, think about it. Like you need to be willing to work with it. And if the company's bringing tech in. See, you're thinking about working with it. And I think it's displacing your work. Well, yes. Involvement. It's not like you get to play with Allie. Yeah. Allie's doing your job for you. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:33:01] So they need to train you to do something else, right? Or you're just going to lose your job anyway. Or you need to train yourself to do the next thing, whatever they may be. That too, I guess. And there you go. The plum stat of the show. All right. Well, there you go. We ready to talk some acquisitions? A hundred percent. We got three or four. Let's go through them. You ready? Yeah. Deal. Deal. Our friends at Deal. Yeah. Acquires Safeguard Global's payroll division.

[00:33:30] The acquisition combines deals, tech, and infrastructure. Sure. You know, they've raised so much money. All right. And Safeguard's enterprise global payroll knowledge and delivery expertise. This is actually on deal.com. So D-E-L.com. And I think it's a great acquisition because Safeguard's been doing, they've been slugging it out, doing global payroll for 15 years.

[00:33:56] I met their founder at the first HR Tech Europe show. His name's Bjorn. And he lives in Austin now. He used to live in London. A great guy. A absolutely just wonderful person. But they've been doing it for 15 years. Not an overnight success. Right. Not an overnight success. So super happy for Safeguard and Bjorn in particular, and also super happy for the folks at Deal. Yeah.

[00:34:24] They're going to be acquiring a bunch of new customers that need this new tech. There you go. There you go. All right. So this one happened a couple of weeks back as well. Employee, they acquired our friends at Pillar. And so full disclosure, we work with both Employee and all their brands. And well, I guess now all, all of their brands, because we also work with Pillar. But they've acquired Pillar. For those who don't know, Pillar is an AI interview intelligence platform. Right.

[00:34:53] So I think this is a really solid play. I love this. I love the suite of solutions that they're now offering. And this is, as you always say, this is a solid example of build versus buy. And taking them on, I think is going to go well. They have a lot of customers there that will benefit from this. And they're already baked into, I believe it's... Lever. Lever, right. They're fully baked into Lever already, integrated into Lever. Jobbite, and then they'll go down to...

[00:35:23] Or the jobbite. And then possibly in the Jazz, we'll see how that works. But I think this is a good play and happy for everybody there. We know a lot of people there and everybody is still there, which is fantastic. So we interviewed Steve Cox, the CEO of Employ. And one of the things he said towards the end of the interview is, this is our first acquisition, but it won't be our last. Right. Yeah. A dramatic foreshadow. Because they've been working on this deal since October. Yeah.

[00:35:53] October they start. Which makes me think that there's a bunch of other deals already in that process. But it reminds me of Steve Lucas when he became the CEO of iSIMS. Steve Lucas, when he came in, he was outside the industry, he came in and he bought like six companies and they were all... Quired, yeah. Yeah. They acquired six or seven companies and they're all great acquisitions. So again, they've made the determination they're not going to build it all.

[00:36:21] They shouldn't build it all. No, you don't need to. So again, if you haven't watched that interview, go watch it. Yeah, we'll tag it in the video somewhere. The challenge becomes now, how do they integrate it into all products, right? It's already in job by our levers. Sorry, they're going in the job by... I think they're going to be very successful there. I wonder if they stay standalone as well, not just for the time being, but future. Do they fold it in?

[00:36:51] Every company does it a little bit different. Yeah. Pillar and employ company. And so they can have outside customers because they've integrated with a lot of ATSs. So I would probably keep them independent and have a deeper integration with the employee product. Right. Exactly. Yeah. For a time period. And then at one point, it doesn't make as much sense. Well, congrats to the team over there, to everybody. Wonderful, wonderful job.

[00:37:19] And yeah, a lot of good things coming. Well, sponsors, you said, oh, JobGit acquires restaurant hiring platform seasoned, which I think is a great name for a restaurant recruiting play seasoned. So this is Staffing Industry Analyst, StaffingIndustry.com. You can take a look at that. As you may or may not remember, JobGit acquired Snagajob in November. We reported on it.

[00:37:46] And this just kind of continues their quest to be the best restaurant, food service, whatever you want to call it, talent acquisition platform in the industry. Because Snagajob acquired People Matter, and they had a bunch of products, you know, talent management products. And Snagajob had a job board and also had a bunch of other products. And now they've acquired Season. Here's the kicker. So first of all, Season, great name. Whoever did that, kudos.

[00:38:15] Customers, customers including Jack in the Box, Taco Bell, Dave & Buster's, Wingstop, Arby's, Little Caesars, Applebee's, and Chewy. Hey. Sounds like a lot of sporting goods. Brands that you might know. I mean, if you just acquired them just for the customers. Yeah. Check. You win. So that's, first of all, great play and a great example of consolidation. Yeah. Well, congrats.

[00:38:45] All right. Research time. I've got a, one that I like, and I think this number is going to be getting extremely higher. So this is a survey that was done. It's workers' productivity in generative AI. And so this was done by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis across 4,682 people.

[00:39:13] This is called 4,700 people between 18 and 64. So this is a real-time population survey. Oh, wow. Okay. 33%, those who are using Gen AI in the workplace see about a 33% boost in productivity per hour, saving them four hours weekly that they were able to track. Right. Which is fairly significant. Right. That's going to get higher. And I think the more that gets higher, then obviously you've got less stuff. 39.4.

[00:39:42] So 39.5% of U.S. adults were aged 18 to 64 in this survey. 28% of employed respondents used Gen AI at work. 10.6, so call it 11%, use it every single day as part of, according to them, as part of their daily work tool. Right. Yeah. They've replaced Google search as ChatGPT search or whatever. Exactly.

[00:40:12] They use it every day. Yeah. They've replaced their current stack with something AI, Gen AI related. Right. Correct. That's cool. Yeah. I mean, again, a great study. I got no hate. I think, again, those numbers, that in 11%, we're going to fast forward a year, and that 11% is not going to be 11%. No, it's going to be north of 50. Yeah. It's going to be north of 50, easily, I think. Yeah. All right. Let me give you one.

[00:40:38] Only 15% of professional women have a formal or informal mentor at their organization compared to 24% of men, according to the 2025 Women Professionals and the Modern Workplace Report by HiBob. So you go to HiBob, H-I-B-O-B.com, and this is an excellent study. The graphics are excellent. The questions that are asked.

[00:41:05] Just, just, well, I just pulled one stat out, which I pulled that one out, and I'll tell you why in a second, but it just compares men and women, and it does all those. It's the interactive graphics. It's worth going and looking at the study because you can learn so much about, like, here's what's going on right now. And, you know, everything from career advancements to flexibility, they tackle everything, tackle all the topics.

[00:41:31] Now, why it caught my eye is I would have thought those numbers were reversed. So if you were to take off, if you were to flip men and women and those numbers, I would have bought that. Because I think men just, I don't know, bias. I think men, I still think they have as many mentors. And this might be just me. It's just you. Yeah.

[00:41:59] Like, I've never asked for help or mentorship. So it could be me. But I would have taken those numbers and said, okay, yeah, women are trying to help other women. And of course that makes sense. Like, of course that number is different. But 15, I mean, it's 10% difference. Yeah. I think I'd be interested to see what percentage of men and women have it, have a mentor. Period. Period. Right.

[00:42:28] Even if we just said professional mentor, not at the organization. I think those numbers are low, but I think that's about right because not everybody really wants to be in contact with people at work. Go to the place, do the thing, go home, be done. No, that's right. However, I could see, I probably wouldn't have, I would have said the number was much higher. Right. I would say if you told me it was 50% or 48%. Okay, so take the numbers out for just a second.

[00:42:56] Would you think that women would have more mentors than men? No. Really? No, because I would think the men would be the mentors and the women would be uncomfortable. I've always felt that way. Yeah. I've always felt that way because I've seen it. I've seen it at previous companies where the leadership, right, middle management and leadership was mostly men back then. And so the mentors, oh, you didn't want to mentor with someone you were a coworker with.

[00:43:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or a peer with, I should say. 26-year-old, hot blonde. Yeah, yeah. So you don't want to be a peer mentor. You wanted a mentor. Or a mentor. And, you know, there's only so many leaders in the company that are willing to do that or managers in the company willing to do that. And the majority of them are men. And women were not, I just don't feel like women were comfortable. Same with like negotiating salaries. 100%. There's a difference. Yeah. I think it's changed. I think that has changed since I last in an office.

[00:43:55] And I think if you took that number outside the office where they've said outside of organization. Right. And just said professional mentors. Well, even not in like just professional. Right, right, right, right. Like career-related mentors. Women would have more. Oh, I don't know about that. I just don't see dudes asking other dudes for career advice. I just think the number would be more 50, 60% range. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

[00:44:21] But yeah, go look at the study because I just plucked literally one stat out of a hundred. We'll have to get you a mentor. That's it. Good luck. All right. So Deloitte did a survey on Gen Z millennial just to get an idea of trends. Like what's going on? What's going on with these guys? What's going on? What's going on with these guys? Whatever. So this survey was for 22,800 people. So we'll just say 23,000 respondents across 44 countries.

[00:44:50] And I pulled out a couple of stats, but I pulled one out after we had an interview this week with FinFit. Yeah. And so I pulled this out. 30% of Gen Z and 32% of millennials feel financially insecure. There. More than half live paycheck to paycheck. Now, when we talk with FinFit, they were saying, what is it? 70% or something like that. It's much higher. Yeah. Paycheck. And they also put a baseline of like 100 and-

[00:45:20] 150. Yeah. It was 150,000. Below that? Yeah. The numbers go way up above that. Right. Numbers are a little bit different. Yeah. So there's a lot of other stats. It's a fairly good report. I mean, it's a good report. Deloitte doesn't mess around. Yeah. No. And then it gives anything like sense of purpose and all that other stuff, which, you know. Right. You know, if you don't, you know, just go to work. Shut up. Go to work. But I need a sense of purpose. For what? Go to work. Go to work. That's your sense of purpose. Yeah. You're setting a purpose.

[00:45:49] I'm going to check on Friday. There you go. Sense of purpose. Purpose. Just because at one point in life, I may need to be employable. I totally, I'm totally a team player. I'm with you guys all the way. It's over. Have a purpose. Just understand that once you've gone down this very dark path of entrepreneurship, you're unemployable. There's a 20-something right now watching this and saying, if this dude ever walks into my office, I'm just going to play this episode. Yeah. Can't. Won't.

[00:46:19] So, all right. Let me give you this one. 60% of residents believe the federal government employees are essential to the function of the United States, functioning of the United States of America. However, 40%, obviously, the other, but think the United States could effectively function without most federal government employees. And this is according to Marist, M-A-R-I-S-T.

[00:46:48] When I first looked at it, I thought it said Marxist. Wow. So, kind of threw me off at first. I'm like, well, why are we looking at a Marxist poll? Anyhow, maristpoll.com. So, 60%. That, I just don't believe that. I just don't believe that 60% of the populace of the United States, you know, 340 million people, whatever that number is above 18. I think it's 347.

[00:47:17] That they think that 60%, that we need all of those federal employees for us to run? I just don't believe it. And I think, you know, this, again, not being political, it's just understanding what Trump has unleashed on the government with Doge. It's like, okay, you've unleashed an entrepreneur. It could be Elon. It could have been Zuckerberg. It could be anybody.

[00:47:44] Just an entrepreneur that thinks that way, they're going to cut until it hurts and then keep cutting and then figure out, okay, yeah, we need that. We can build it back. Right. Right. Okay. So, national park employees, we're just going to, yeah, there's only one guy that needs to be there. Next. Next. And so, we'll feel the aftershocks of all of this. In fact, this week, this past week, they made a bunch of cuts in the Department of Education

[00:48:13] and in particular in Dallas, there's a civil rights division that handled a lot of the civil rights cases for the Department of Education. The entire department, there's no longer a department for civil rights for the Department of Education. Like, that's gone. Boop. And, you know, my wife was asking me, she's like, where are they going to go? I said, well, a lot of them are, they're lawyers. So, they'll go into the private sector. Or they'll set up their own firms or whatever.

[00:48:42] But it is a massive, like, we're going to be dealing with the aftershocks of all of these things. However, I do believe after all is said and done, I think we'll be more efficient. Sure. Yeah. It'll hurt. It's just going to be, it's going to be painful. And it's going to, I mean, these are affecting on people's lives. So, I mean, it's. Yeah. Let's not forget that there's real people that are being laid off. I will say this. My mom worked for the government for. I did too.

[00:49:11] Whatever number of years, 40 years, something like that. And she's going to watch this clip. Because I'm going to pull this clip out. I'm going to pull this clip out. And I'm going to make it a short. And I'm going to stick it on my page. And I'm going to tag her on it. I'm going to look in the camera. And I'm going to tell her. She ate so many pretzels. And smoked so many cigarettes. Smoke break. I'd call her, I'd call her when I got home from school for two hours. Someone else would answer her phone. Your mom's outside having a cigarette. She's having a pretzel. Yeah, send me back. She was never there. Yeah.

[00:49:41] Dude. I'm just saying. My mom worked at the IRS. So, at the IRS and the liens department. Yeah. So, yeah, I got all kinds of stories about inefficiency. But, you know, the numbers are the numbers. And whether or not it's 60 or 70 or 40 or whatever. Like, it's what's happening is going to impact everybody. Yeah. Like, when you go to a national park, I was telling Michael this. Like, when we go to Yosemite, we're going to bring a gun. I'll have pistols and a rifle.

[00:50:11] Oh, shotgun. I'm going to be loaded because they have fucking bears. Right. So, like, I can't call the ranger. Dude. Bear. What do we do? I'm just going to shoot that motherfucker. Well, there you go. But, yeah. Go have some more pretzels, Mom. Just saying. All right. I was getting some acquisitions or some fun things. Yeah, we got a couple. It was a lightish week. Darwin Box, which is an Indian base.

[00:50:41] HCM Play. Great company. Raised $140 million. Yeah. I think the PE got involved. So, raised is, you know, it is what it is. Yeah. Business Wire. You can look this up. Businesswire.com. That's where I got it. They've been in business. Darwin Box has been in business for 10 years. And from the jump, they've been expanding. Yeah. So, the first thing was Southeast Asia. And then they've went to the UK.

[00:51:09] They've been to Australia, New Zealand. And they've come to the United States about two years ago. Yeah. And so, I think with this type of funding, because it's KKR, I think we're going to see a whole lot more of Darwin Box here. Yeah. Because we consume so much. It threw me off. Yeah. You're either an Einstein person or a Darwin person. Yeah. It always threw me. Yeah. I got you. Congrats to them. Yeah. All right. Helios. Yeah.

[00:51:39] Secures 15.5 million in seed funding to simplify how companies manage and pay global teams compliantly. That's very important. They've only got a seed round? Dude, that is a 15. Great point. Right. Let's start with that. 15.5 seed. Which means, and this is some of the analysis, right? That was on PR Newswire. Go find the story. Whatever. Whatever. That's a huge seed. Yeah.

[00:52:06] But my bet is they're going to raise another round before the end of the year. And it's going to be in the- Really a big one. Tens. Yeah. It's going to be much. I mean, 15.5 of the seed? Okay. So they're going to do another round. But it reminded me, Rick Hamill, who did not ship you your hoodie. I know you still have an issue. I know you have an issue with it. I just sent him an email this morning. Okay. Okay. We're going to get on and do some product updates. Good.

[00:52:36] Now that I know he can afford a hoodie. Yeah, my hoodie. Rick. Like, seriously. We're still watching you. So he was on our You Should Know podcast. And just a great guy. Like, we had fun. The podcast was the podcast, but we had fun. We were talking about a lot of different things. But congrats to them. I love it when people that we know and like get funding. And congratulations. Congratulations. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Good. Good. Good.

[00:53:05] All right. Perfect. Another great name. Yes. For a company. You better be perfect though. 23 million. They raised 23 million to fix recruitment flaws with AI. There are a lot of flaws. Turns out. In recruitment. Yeah. So these guys work on reducing bias and candidate matching and eliminating repetitive tasks. And things like that.

[00:53:33] So this money is going to be used specifically to fix the flaws and like bias in the inefficiencies. So. Very nice. There you go. Yeah. Good win. Love the name. I've never actually seen the product itself. No, we got to do a demo. Yeah. Well, take a look at it. Alta raises 7 million seed round to amplify AI powered revenue workforce. So this is at demandgenreport.com. And that's where I found this.

[00:54:02] So this is what I referred to earlier in the show. This is really cool. Alta's workforce includes AI agents, Katie, a sales development representative, SDR, Luna, an AI rev ops agent, and Alex, an AI calling agent. So that's that front end of sales qualifying and doing all that stuff. That makes the sales team more efficient because no one wants to be an SDR. Let's, let's be honest.

[00:54:31] No one's, no one's like really wants to do that. Well, people don't want to get paid. Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Again, there are people that dig digits. I get that. But most people would rather that someone else do that bit. So I think, again, this is going to make sales teams because that's just going to work 24 seven. They don't give breaks. That's not a union. Like that machine is just going to roll. It's the same with sourcing. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:54:59] And you're going to come in and it's like, it's already done all this stuff. Now you get to go do the things. For the record, I will not make a clip out of me saying this is just like sourcing. No, no, no. Fair enough. I'll disrespect my sourcing community. Fair, fair, fair, fair. All right. Smart suite. And this reminds me of a company and I can't, I can't remember the name of it. It was an Excel, an Excel program, smart, smart sheet, smart sheet. That's what it was.

[00:55:29] Anyhow, smart suite, 38 million. They raised 38 million. This is a workflow management type of solution. Like service now workflow? Yes. I maybe. Yeah. I've never seen it, but they do prebuilt workflow templates for sales, HR, marketing, compliance, IT, all that stuff, finance, et cetera. So for example, let's just say you have an employee onboarding.

[00:55:59] They have an employee onboarding template that manages all the tasks, right? Paperwork, training schedules, workstation setups. I've never seen it. I'm assuming the answer to your question is yes. They can use it standalone. People can use it standalone. Right. Or they can actually use it inside other systems because it doesn't degrade, but you can use it standalone. You do not need to use other systems. So that's very cool. And a good seat. Good for them. Yeah. 38, 38 and for them. So there you go.

[00:56:29] Last one we have for this show is Hey Milo. So H-E-Y-M-I-L-O secures 2.2 million to interview and evaluate candidates at scale with AI agents. So Hey Milo.ai is there, that's where I got the report, but that's where their press release is. That's the company's domain. I think when you read this initially, I think most people that have been in talent acquisition

[00:56:58] will go, okay, how do we consider biases, adverse impact, and the science behind the algorithm to help you do all this stuff, right? But for me in general, this is the way forward with recruiting. It's just going to be automated. Everything's going to be automated. And this is one of those, this is side note. So as we do our research for the audience, if you're still listening, I do our research separately. We don't talk.

[00:57:28] We bring it together right before the show. And so if we have duplicates, we'll dupe out. But the weird part of this one is when I was researching this, I did the bit. And then about 12 hours later, I get a LinkedIn note from Hey Milo. There you go. Said that we'd love to show you a demo, this, that, and the other. So first of all, could that be a coincidence? Maybe.

[00:57:54] But the fact that that happened, I'm like, we're going to be talking about you on Sunday. Like this is good timing. Congrats. And we've already got a demo scheduled with them for next week. Yeah, good. So I'm going to say the fact that it's, Hey Milo, I think it's going to be like, Hey Google. Yeah. Right. There's going to be some type of thing there. Probably not. That's just me being me. Kevin Durant wanted to be Yo Google. Those, I thought that would have been better. I think, yeah, you know what?

[00:58:24] Yeah. Google needs the page. Google needs to step it up a little bit. And as long as it says Google or has a command in that way, make it work. Because I don't want to say, Hey Google. Hey Google. Like it sounds weird. Like Yo Google. Or just like, Hey, you know, like Alexa. Like you're just yelling at Alexa. Turn it down. State Capitol of Texas. Yeah. Anyhow. All right. Well, that wraps us up. That wraps us up for the week. Fantastic show. Thank you all for listening. Thank you all for watching. Love us. Like us. Share us.

[00:58:54] Rate us. We love ratings. Only if they're good. If they're bad. Don't rate us. Don't tell them. You can email it and tell us. We should actually just tell the people. Just positive rating. Yeah. Positive ratings only. Please. Don't give us a three star. Yeah. We'd rather you not rate us. Don't make us go glass door in your ass and change it. All right, guys. We'll see you next week.