The Rise of Gig Work: Skills-Based Hiring, Challenges, and the Future of the Workforce w/ Art Knapp, CEO of HireGenics

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[00:01:10] Hey, this is William Tincup and Ryan Leary and you are listening and hopefully watching the You Should Know podcast. The topic today is gig work is the new traditional career. We're going to have a lot of fun with it. We have Art on today and we're just going to have fun. So Art, would you do us a favor and introduce yourself?

[00:01:29] And your company?

[00:01:31] Sure. My name is Art Knapp. I'm CEO of Hyogenics. We're a workforce solution organization primarily focused around MSP delivery and then direct service.

[00:01:41] How's the MSP? How's it changed? Because I used to do a bunch of work with more of the VMSs, the sort of field glass and B-line, all those player IQ navigators. But I've always kind of been close to the MSPs, but following the market. But how has the market changed for y'all?

[00:01:58] Yeah, I will say this. The MSP delivery of services has sadly changed very little over 25 years I've been in it. And if it has changed, it's probably for the most part gotten worse.

[00:02:14] And part of the reason that I came back and joined this organization was to kind of reset that and hopefully raise the bar significantly.

[00:02:22] I'll just give you a brief little reason in my view, which is that I started in 2000 when it was just starting. And I was with a company called Chimes, which became the industry leader.

[00:02:33] And the major organizations, the manpowers, the allegiances, the adecos of the world, did not want to be in the MSP business.

[00:02:43] It's sort of counterintuitive to them where they just wanted to go directly to managers and cut their own deals.

[00:02:48] So when they got in it, it was just so that Chimes wouldn't control everything and they had their own.

[00:02:53] So they got in it very defensively. Allegis didn't even get in the business until eight, nine years after it started.

[00:03:00] Wow.

[00:03:01] Wow.

[00:03:03] Wow.

[00:03:08] Wow.

[00:03:10] Wow.

[00:03:10] Wow.

[00:03:17] Wow.

[00:03:31] So, wow.

[00:03:31] So I think it's a positive 50. So it's a massive difference. And again, it's not like we're Miracle workers, it's just we do a strategic plan and we go after those clients that want to embrace that. If you just want a tactical solution and then you're going to complain about it a lot and you go other places.

[00:03:49] Ryan came up through the RPO industry through Conexa and IBM and stuff like that.

[00:03:55] And one of the things that you've said that actually sparked a memory for me,

[00:03:58] I don't know if you know John Wilson at Wilson HCG over in Tampa.

[00:04:04] When I met with him in like 06, 07, I was at a Burson conference

[00:04:09] and I was over in Tampa, St. Pete actually.

[00:04:11] And we had lunch and he goes, man, everyone that's doing RPO is doing it wrong.

[00:04:16] And I said, do tell.

[00:04:17] And this was kind of the right thing was kind of in vogue.

[00:04:21] And he was like charging $1,500 or $2,000 per hire.

[00:04:25] He goes, I want to do high-end luxury services.

[00:04:29] I want to go after the hardest hires.

[00:04:31] And I want to wrap an entire team around them and just give them great service.

[00:04:37] And at the time, I'm looking at him and I'm thinking he's crazy,

[00:04:40] but I love what he's saying because just the differentiator of not treating it as a number

[00:04:47] or like that is just like, okay, it doesn't matter if you hire $10,000 or $10,000 or whatever.

[00:04:53] It's just this is the fee.

[00:04:55] And he was looking at that time.

[00:04:58] Business changed, I'm sure.

[00:04:59] But at the time, he's looking at it and saying, no, they're all going down market.

[00:05:02] It's like a race to the bottom.

[00:05:04] And they're not putting service in there.

[00:05:06] And so you remind me a little bit of that.

[00:05:09] It's like, no, this is a game of actually giving people great service.

[00:05:13] Yeah.

[00:05:13] I had a firm I worked with one time back in the early 2000s that it was around call centers.

[00:05:19] And that can really be a race to the bottom.

[00:05:22] And their thing was, you tell me your turnover rate of your full-time people

[00:05:26] and what your contingent workers are at the time.

[00:05:29] And he said, what we're going to do is we're going to train them up

[00:05:33] and we're going to get them incentivized to stay.

[00:05:36] And so our baseline fee might be very low because we're just a body shop.

[00:05:42] But if we deliver like we say, we lower your turnover from 40% to 20%,

[00:05:48] we are charging you a good number because that saves you in training

[00:05:52] and it gives you better.

[00:05:53] So they had a model that was more aligned to what he was saying,

[00:05:58] which is let me give something extraordinary and people will pay for it

[00:06:02] because otherwise you're just doing the same thing over and over.

[00:06:04] Yeah, it was more of a success rate.

[00:06:06] And that's where I fell out of love with RPO rather quickly.

[00:06:11] It was we had the open fee, the close, we had a success fee, but they were tiny.

[00:06:17] I mean, we were more concerned with hiring 500 or I'm sorry,

[00:06:23] 5,000 people per year for a company as opposed to providing stellar service,

[00:06:29] which is what they sold was stellar service.

[00:06:32] What we were doing was filling seats as quickly and as cost effective as possible

[00:06:38] because those fees were tiny.

[00:06:41] The margins were razor thin and it is, it's, it wasn't a race to the bottom.

[00:06:45] It was the bottom.

[00:06:46] So it was, it was a race to kind of stay out of the dirt so you could survive.

[00:06:54] Yeah.

[00:06:54] What we've seen is people, procurement continues to want to cut the fee somehow thinking

[00:07:00] they're going to save money for MSP.

[00:07:02] And so MSPs who really don't want to be in the business anyway,

[00:07:05] they just sort of cut their services.

[00:07:07] And this has just been going on year after year.

[00:07:11] And what you also see is more and more spend goes around the system because they don't find value in it.

[00:07:17] And it's just, it's just a terrible dynamic.

[00:07:19] So, you know, I don't know.

[00:07:21] I'm pretty, I've done, I've grown a company three different times, both chimes.

[00:07:26] And then I went to IQ Navigator actually and built their MSP practice.

[00:07:29] Okay.

[00:07:30] And then I went to, we sold that practice to GRI and I built that up and we sold it to Magnet.

[00:07:35] So I've done it and I'm really passionate about it.

[00:07:39] So we're excited about what we can offer.

[00:07:41] And it's very easy to be differentiated in this market.

[00:07:44] Especially if you go to services and actually not just sell the service, say you do service,

[00:07:49] but actually you back it up and juice your SAT scores are wonderful.

[00:07:56] Let's get into the topic a little bit.

[00:07:58] We've, we talked a little bit pre-show about, you know, gig work's always kind of been there in the mix a bit.

[00:08:04] Maybe you called it, maybe you called it freelancer or contingent or called it different terms to the years.

[00:08:08] What are you seeing right now in terms of with your clients and how much of the, if you think of it as a portfolio of talent,

[00:08:16] how much of it looks like it's more gig work than not?

[00:08:20] Yeah.

[00:08:20] It's, it's growing crazy.

[00:08:22] It's 30 to 40% with clients.

[00:08:24] Some clients have a, you know, a notion that it could be 50% or more.

[00:08:29] I think that, you know, there's a handful of things that have accelerated it.

[00:08:33] I think when Obamacare came out, I think a lot of companies thought, well, I don't want to, you know,

[00:08:39] have these benefits burdened and laying people off.

[00:08:42] You know, I'll go to another path, contingent labor, and they will have benefits with, with this thing.

[00:08:49] And I think that, that accelerated it, but COVID really put it on steroids.

[00:08:53] And I think that now with, there's five generations available to the, in the workforce now, right?

[00:09:01] And so many of them don't have anywhere near the aspirations I had, which, you know, that corner office with a C-level title,

[00:09:08] they just have none.

[00:09:09] They want to, just want to engage as long as it's interesting, and then they want to go somewhere else.

[00:09:14] So, in a lot of ways, even your full-time people are gig or contingent at this point.

[00:09:19] And I think that, and this work from home that came up very prevalent during the COVID, it's hard.

[00:09:26] These companies are really struggling with how to, you know, come back, don't come back, come back partially.

[00:09:32] So, it just is going to continue to feed this growth of, in a sense, gigs.

[00:09:38] Question on the term gig, gig worker.

[00:09:43] When I, and I'll preface this by saying, when I, when I hear gig worker, as, as an employee or potential gig worker.

[00:09:52] Hey, everybody.

[00:09:53] I'm Lori Rudiman.

[00:09:54] What are you doing?

[00:09:55] Working?

[00:09:56] Nah.

[00:09:56] You're listening to a podcast about work, and that barely counts.

[00:10:00] So, while you're at it, check out my show, Punk Rock HR, now on the Work Defined Network.

[00:10:05] We chat with smart people about work, power, politics, and money.

[00:10:10] Are we succeeding?

[00:10:11] Are we fixing work?

[00:10:12] Eh, probably not.

[00:10:13] Work still sucks.

[00:10:14] But tune in for some fun, a little nonsense, and a fresh take on how to fix work once and for all.

[00:10:21] I automatically assume I'm not important.

[00:10:24] I'm there to get this job done.

[00:10:27] Sayonara.

[00:10:27] Sayonara.

[00:10:28] Yeah.

[00:10:28] Yeah.

[00:10:29] Maybe third.

[00:10:30] Right?

[00:10:30] Like, it's just, I'm there to get a job done.

[00:10:33] Goodbye.

[00:10:33] And then I'm going to go on to my next gig.

[00:10:36] Do you think, or are you seeing companies that label them or classify these people as

[00:10:43] gig workers have more turnover and more trouble trying to fill future roles as companies that

[00:10:50] classify them or refer to them in a different way that maybe make them feel they're more like

[00:10:56] it, a real full-time employee, but even though they're there as a gig worker?

[00:11:02] Yeah, it's a great question.

[00:11:03] I think that one of the, what I would consider the biggest hoaxes that's been put on labor

[00:11:09] in the last 25 years was the Microsoft decision of co-employment.

[00:11:14] People have lived in fear of that for 25 years.

[00:11:17] And so when I first got in the business, it was don't treat them like employees.

[00:11:21] You know, heaven forbid you invite them to the Christmas party because they're going to

[00:11:25] demand that they have stock or benefits that they don't have.

[00:11:29] And that has permeated ever since I've been in this industry.

[00:11:33] You know, and you can find a lawyer that will tell you you're at risk the day they start,

[00:11:39] you know, for a home employment issue.

[00:11:41] Um, so to me, this, how you classify them has, I mean, some of them have basically, they have

[00:11:49] a different color badge or they have, you know, almost like a different uniform and you do feel

[00:11:54] detached.

[00:11:55] I do think that's a little bit offset by the fact that the younger generations don't care

[00:12:01] about attachment that they really want.

[00:12:04] You know, they look at it as a very much a, you know, I have a skill and you have a need

[00:12:09] and let's see if we can do something together for a period of time.

[00:12:12] But I'm not particularly interested in staying here very long.

[00:12:15] So it doesn't matter.

[00:12:16] So as long as the work is interesting, I'm fine.

[00:12:19] But yeah, I think that there are different terminologies.

[00:12:22] I haven't looked at how that might impact turnover, but I do find that it's less of an extent.

[00:12:29] I think my generation, the generation behind me really wanted to feel a part of something.

[00:12:35] And I don't find that the youngest generations really care so much about that.

[00:12:39] They just want to find that the work is interesting.

[00:12:42] Right.

[00:12:42] Right.

[00:12:43] And it's, again, it's, the work should always be interesting on some level.

[00:12:48] Yeah.

[00:12:49] So no hate with the younger generations.

[00:12:52] The treatment of talent.

[00:12:55] You know, we've been through the looking at resumes.

[00:12:59] And so the question is going to be about bias.

[00:13:01] And so we've looked at resumes and I remember having a whole conversations with people around resume gaps.

[00:13:07] Right.

[00:13:08] And so training, retraining recruiters and hiring managers to just not care about gaps

[00:13:15] and to also not care about that they have a, that some workers have a portfolio of gigs.

[00:13:23] They don't just have one gig.

[00:13:24] They're doing five gigs and, and they're, and they're succeeding at five gigs.

[00:13:29] Like they love that they turn things on in the app.

[00:13:32] They turn things off in the app.

[00:13:33] They go do a gig.

[00:13:34] They don't do a gig.

[00:13:35] And they're happy.

[00:13:37] Yeah.

[00:13:37] So what's your take on just kind of, kind of getting recruiters and hiring managers?

[00:13:43] Because I think it's both to get them to rethink the way that they look at talent

[00:13:48] and the way they look at that experience or skills.

[00:13:51] Yeah.

[00:13:52] I think there's two things there.

[00:13:53] One is, you know, we're hearing more and more about skills-based hiring, right?

[00:13:56] Where this causes managers and people, everything to kind of rethink things.

[00:14:02] But, you know, a lot of times, especially in the contingent world, we found managers who says,

[00:14:07] I just need someone for six months to write code in Java, you know?

[00:14:11] And they didn't really think through, well, did he really have to have Java or could he have had this or what?

[00:14:17] You know, they didn't think about that.

[00:14:18] Just show me this experience.

[00:14:20] So the skills-based will help.

[00:14:23] I did a lot of work at one point finding military people jobs.

[00:14:27] And you would look at their background and say, well, how does this relate?

[00:14:30] But I don't know.

[00:14:32] I had a supply chain guy that could deliver things in Iraq under enemy attack.

[00:14:38] I said, I think you could get shirts from a Gap warehouse over to the store, you know?

[00:14:43] I'm pretty sure.

[00:14:44] Figure this out.

[00:14:45] I'm pretty sure.

[00:14:45] And I think that kind of thing, you know, so learning about that, right, I think really makes a difference.

[00:14:51] And it is.

[00:14:52] It's, I always looked at resume reading when I was on the full-time side.

[00:14:56] It's a really negative experience because if you have 100, what is my reason to get rid of something?

[00:15:01] And so there was a bias.

[00:15:03] Oh, there's a gap.

[00:15:04] I used to have one too long with one company.

[00:15:07] They'll never adjust to the other.

[00:15:09] Now that doesn't happen anymore.

[00:15:10] But, you know, you'd say they won't adapt to that culture.

[00:15:13] You stayed 15 years.

[00:15:14] It was so bad.

[00:15:16] How do we manage perception too?

[00:15:18] Because I think it's not, at least from my experience, it wasn't always there was a gap.

[00:15:24] It was the perception of the candidate who had the gap.

[00:15:29] When was the gap?

[00:15:30] Was it after college?

[00:15:31] Well, they were just lazy.

[00:15:32] They went and took a travel where they are.

[00:15:34] Are they entitled?

[00:15:35] Versus did they leave parenting reasons or caring for a sick elderly parent or something?

[00:15:44] I've always had the challenge of managing perception with the hiring managers, not necessarily the gap.

[00:15:52] The gap, we got over that, mainly because they needed to make the hire.

[00:15:56] Perception, because they didn't want that person on their team if they were accepting of the gap.

[00:16:02] They were lazy or they had issues.

[00:16:04] Yeah.

[00:16:05] Yeah, it's hard.

[00:16:06] I think that, again, it comes down to me when we, for example, qualify requisitions with a manager.

[00:16:14] It's understanding what do you actually need and how can you go about filling that need.

[00:16:20] And what are the different creative ways or different ways?

[00:16:23] Because if they just say, in the past, they might say, well, the only way I get this thing filled is if I go to this supplier because he always takes good care of me.

[00:16:31] You know, there's that.

[00:16:32] So no, others could actually give you a good resource as well to what about those skill sets.

[00:16:38] And it's really prevalent in the contingent side of things where they don't give a lot of thought to what is their desired outcome.

[00:16:47] They just want someone there for six months and they have a hard time understanding what's good and what's great or what's just okay.

[00:16:53] Whereas when you hire full-time, you oftentimes have a lot more.

[00:16:57] There's more to the process.

[00:16:59] You're more defined on what you want.

[00:17:01] You want to make sure they fit in with your team.

[00:17:03] And so I think there's more to it.

[00:17:05] But I think setting expectations of the manager is really one of the number one jobs we have because that really eases the process if you get that right.

[00:17:14] So you said skills-based hiring, and it is last year, so it's been really in vogue.

[00:17:21] I'm not necessarily a buyer of skills-based anything because I've been through this enough to think that this is just competency models that are kind of rolling around for the last 20 years that people talk about but they don't really use.

[00:17:38] So I think it will play out and we will get good at it.

[00:17:42] I don't think we're there yet because I think it's just really easy to talk about skills-based hiring.

[00:17:49] It's really more difficult to actually do skills-based hiring.

[00:17:52] So where that relates, not to the full-time stuff, but the gig workers is how do they effectively understand what skills they have now, but also what's transferable, where they're going to need to train them, upskill them, all of those other things.

[00:18:12] Like this gets back to kind of a bias that we've seen in learning 100 years ago.

[00:18:17] If we train them and they leave, we've lost, right?

[00:18:23] What if we don't train them and they stay?

[00:18:26] Well, okay, so you got that.

[00:18:28] So if we do skills-based hiring with gig workers, let's say we make all of our bets and we do that, and now we start investing in upskilling, reskilling, et cetera.

[00:18:39] Will we have the same type of attitude in terms of those people when they leave?

[00:18:46] Like we've made the investment, we upped their skill, and now they're leaving.

[00:18:50] Well, it's hard to say.

[00:18:52] I think it's a great question.

[00:18:53] I think that one of the things that needs to take place is the understanding that it's an evolution.

[00:19:02] And I think you're going to benefit from someone else maybe upskilling someone else, and then you've got them.

[00:19:08] And right now, I think it really only applies to 10% or 15% of the jobs.

[00:19:14] You know, when you think about it, these experts in AI, right?

[00:19:18] Yeah.

[00:19:19] They're kind of like the focus of the experts, right?

[00:19:21] I mean, I don't know how you were an expert in something that hadn't taken place before, but they were.

[00:19:26] But if you're an expert in AI, right, it's like, well, you didn't go to college for that.

[00:19:30] You didn't start that way.

[00:19:32] So what did you have for a path and skill that enabled you to pick this up?

[00:19:38] And again, I think that's where I think we can see things today that we could get to skills based in that area.

[00:19:45] But it's really not applicable to so many of the needs that we're filling, I don't think.

[00:19:52] But it's just like when the gig economy came out.

[00:19:55] It's the buzzword that's the latest and everybody talks about it.

[00:19:58] But how they apply it is oftentimes not there.

[00:20:01] I feel as if it's – I'm listening to both of you talk about the subject.

[00:20:08] And, William, I'm with you.

[00:20:10] Like I feel that way around skills based hiring.

[00:20:13] But then I'm listening to you talk and I think, well, that's where the gigs come in, right?

[00:20:20] The consultants who we would have called consultants 15, 20 years ago or contractors or people like that.

[00:20:28] When they came into the office and they were – he's a consultant.

[00:20:34] Like there was a – he had an aura about that or that person had an aura about themselves.

[00:20:39] They're there for a reason, right?

[00:20:42] They're a consultant.

[00:20:43] I don't think gig workers get that respect, right?

[00:20:46] And I think gig workers today are Uber drivers and door dashers and things like that, right?

[00:20:52] That's the level that people see them at.

[00:20:55] And so I think there's that perception issue there.

[00:20:58] But I really think obviously when you get into development and software and engineering and all this other stuff, marketing, all this stuff, gig workers have – they're consultants of 2024.

[00:21:11] Yeah, there's real value.

[00:21:13] There's real value there.

[00:21:14] There's real value there.

[00:21:16] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:21:17] I think that's the skill.

[00:21:18] This is where companies need to understand what are core competencies that we kind of have to own ourselves.

[00:21:25] Yeah.

[00:21:26] And what are things that we do need to just bring someone in, get us down the path and then we can – or solve this problem and then we can move on.

[00:21:35] And oftentimes companies have been very inefficient where they accumulate talent that they don't need once something is done, right?

[00:21:44] And that's why I think we've seen such massive layoffs in the technology world in the last couple of years, right?

[00:21:51] Right.

[00:21:51] Is they just were accumulating talent.

[00:21:53] Right.

[00:21:53] And then when things get up, they say, well, I don't really need that, you know?

[00:21:57] Yeah.

[00:21:58] And a lot of those people didn't want to be there anyway.

[00:22:00] Once the development is done, they did not want to do the maintenance.

[00:22:03] No, they wanted to move on to the next big thing.

[00:22:06] They wanted to move on.

[00:22:07] Yeah.

[00:22:07] Yeah.

[00:22:08] Yeah.

[00:22:09] So with gig workers, how do they – the responsibility of skilling is an interesting part of this conversation is whose responsibility is it?

[00:22:20] This also goes back to 100 years ago, who's training – who owns training or who owns your career management and stuff like that.

[00:22:28] With gig workers, do you think that the younger generation or people that are just driven into gig work on their own accord, do you think they're self-motivated and they're just going to keep – continue to build their skills and continue to be, you know, I think on demand for – with people?

[00:22:49] Like I'm wondering, we go forward in time for a couple years and is it the company's responsibility to skill a gig worker or is it a gig worker's responsibility to skill themselves?

[00:23:03] Hey, what's going on, everyone?

[00:23:05] Ryan Leary here from Work Defined.

[00:23:07] You know, if there was one thing that I could change about recruiting, it would probably be the amazingly awful candidate experience that job seekers have to endure at one of the most stressful times in their life.

[00:23:23] Hiring teams, it is time to step up.

[00:23:26] You've got to create an experience that is memorable, fast and efficient.

[00:23:31] And you can do that with Indeed Smart Sourcing.

[00:23:35] Check them out online at Indeed.com or just Google Indeed Smart Sourcing.

[00:24:07] Well, what's kind of interesting, if you think about the contingent world, right?

[00:24:09] If you look at back in the 90s, early 2000s, if you went to work for tech systems, they kept adding to your skill set because you were an asset to their company and they could bill you at a higher rate if they gave you more skills, right?

[00:24:24] As the MSPs developed, you know, a lot of services they used to provide were cut.

[00:24:30] And I've said recently there should be more people because they don't find you a job.

[00:24:37] You can find your own job if you're, you know, a technically able person.

[00:24:40] They don't upskill you.

[00:24:42] I mean, they really don't provide much of a service for you if you're talented, right?

[00:24:46] And I think that it's like anything else.

[00:24:49] I don't think a lot of people are motivated to do things on their own.

[00:24:52] I think so.

[00:24:53] Someone has to take that responsibility.

[00:24:55] The person that is is going to get their skills some way or another, but the others.

[00:24:59] So if the company wants to keep you a while, one of the things they could offer is to give you the skills, right?

[00:25:04] Or if someone is your, you know, payroll provider, they could do that for you.

[00:25:09] But you're going to have to adapt or you're going to find your choices become limited.

[00:25:14] So this is an interesting point you bring up, and it was totally unexpected because outside of this conversation, I was having a conversation the other day, and it was just about this.

[00:25:26] Who is responsible?

[00:25:28] Maybe not in these terms.

[00:25:29] Who's responsible for upskilling gig workers?

[00:25:32] And so my take on this, kind of similar to yours, but my take on this is, and I'm curious to get your thoughts on it.

[00:25:38] If the employer wants to do well, they upskill, right?

[00:25:43] They upskill the gig worker.

[00:25:44] They make the investment.

[00:25:46] They stay.

[00:25:46] They use them.

[00:25:47] They move on.

[00:25:47] There's a mutual agreement.

[00:25:48] I'm going to come work for you.

[00:25:50] I'm going to get experience.

[00:25:52] Right, and that's called, in HR, that's called, we want the best version of you now.

[00:25:56] Right, right, right, right.

[00:25:57] So whatever they –

[00:25:59] But now if we leave the upskilling to – this is what I'm thinking about in my mind.

[00:26:06] If we leave the upskilling to the gig worker, and let's just say this goes on for 10 years, and 60% of the workforce are gig workers, and nobody's upskilling.

[00:26:18] They're just getting the job that they can get to get paid to live.

[00:26:23] In 10 to 15 years' time, how far behind are we?

[00:26:28] Because we've relied on gig workers.

[00:26:30] Right.

[00:26:31] Now we're up Schitt's Creek, right?

[00:26:33] And I'm so curious to get your thought there, Art.

[00:26:35] I guess my question there is, how do we prevent that from happening?

[00:26:39] Because gig work is kind of the traditional workforce right now.

[00:26:45] Yeah.

[00:26:46] Yeah, and I think that it's probably an opportunity.

[00:26:50] For example, we do payroll services, and we have a pretty extensive training department.

[00:26:56] And for us, we look at it as an opportunity to train people and give them more skills.

[00:27:01] Because, I mean, again, there's always something in it for the provider as well.

[00:27:04] Either you get better work if you're the company that's doing it, or they're more valuable to you if you're the supplier, right?

[00:27:10] Because they can be billed higher if they have more skills.

[00:27:13] And I do think it has to fall with someone else.

[00:27:16] I just don't think that enough people are motivated, have that thirst for learning, and have the time and energy.

[00:27:24] I mean, you know, you get people, they're doing gig work because they're also very busy doing other things.

[00:27:29] They have that work-life balance that many in my generation didn't have.

[00:27:33] They have other responsibilities.

[00:27:35] And they're just not going to get it done if somebody doesn't sort of hold their feet to the fire.

[00:27:40] So the concept of portfolio management and finance, right?

[00:27:45] So you don't have all your eggs in one basket.

[00:27:47] You build a portfolio.

[00:27:49] You've been around long enough to see the portfolio of talent, full-time, part-time, contingent, etc.

[00:27:57] What is that today for some of the customers that you have?

[00:28:01] Like when you look at like, okay, half their workforce is full-time.

[00:28:04] Got it.

[00:28:04] Some of it's seasonal, some of it's part-time.

[00:28:07] And this part, maybe even by skill, this part is gig.

[00:28:12] And we won't go out to flying car stuff, but in like the next five years, what do you think that portfolio looks like?

[00:28:19] Yeah, I think that what we're hearing more and more is companies thinking about, you know, what we used to always just call outsourcing.

[00:28:28] But thinking about what is it that I want to do in-house and what if I don't?

[00:28:34] Rather than it's been kind of a mixed bag over these last 20 years.

[00:28:39] You know, you have your finance department and you supplement or augment it with other people.

[00:28:44] I think now they're looking at various functions and saying, do I really need to be doing this?

[00:28:49] You know, why do I need to run payroll when other people can run it for me?

[00:28:53] Or why do I need this?

[00:28:55] You know, Uber took it to the extreme, right?

[00:28:58] When they tried to say that their core business, which was driving, and none of the drivers worked for them, right?

[00:29:03] It's like, wow, you don't really want to outsource your core competency.

[00:29:08] But I think that that's where I think we'll see more and more changes is where it's not just a mix.

[00:29:16] Because the mixes oftentimes have trouble interacting, whether it's because they're thought of differently or whether they just don't blend as well.

[00:29:25] And so I think as you see more and more changes over the years, it'll be more around what do we just get rid of and monitor ourselves?

[00:29:33] Is there anything that, like you mentioned insurance earlier, is there anything that gig workers are going to miss?

[00:29:43] Like we've talked a lot about training, but like some of the things that a full-time employee, you've got paid time off or, you know, you've got benefits, you've got health insurance, you've got all of these things that come along with full-time employment.

[00:29:59] If you're a gig worker, you might not care about that at 26, let's say.

[00:30:06] But at 36 or 46, you might care more about those things.

[00:30:11] So the question becomes like, is, do you see some of this as at a particular age, this makes sense?

[00:30:20] Or do you see this as a fundamental shift to the way that work is done?

[00:30:24] Regardless, they can get those things and they'll get those things through other means, not necessarily an employer.

[00:30:30] Yeah, I think that's just a super question.

[00:30:32] I will say this.

[00:30:33] I'll draw a really unusual parallel maybe, but I was reading an article the other day about what has happened in our society as we try to mobilize around automobiles.

[00:30:46] You know, everybody wanted a car.

[00:30:47] And it goes back many, many years where kids used to play in the street.

[00:30:51] And when you played in the street, you had neighbors that you were a part of and you knew their mother and this one and that one.

[00:30:59] And there was a sense of belonging to this neighborhood.

[00:31:02] And you developed a lot of social skills because it wasn't you all went and played as all your eight-year-olds are going to go play together at the park.

[00:31:10] It was you were playing with 16-year-olds and 12-year-olds and boys and girls and adults were there.

[00:31:16] And there was something to that kind of living.

[00:31:19] And I think when I think about what your question was, I think about there's something to belonging to a company.

[00:31:26] There's something to that.

[00:31:28] There was a, you know, there's a community that developed in a culture that you really felt a part of.

[00:31:36] And then obviously there's times when that culture turned you off and you went somewhere else or that, you know, you got frustrated.

[00:31:43] But for the most part, people that you see stay a while, you know, they take great pride.

[00:31:48] I mean, I only worked for Procter & Gamble for a couple of years out of college, but I'm the most loyal Procter & Gamble person in the world.

[00:31:54] You know, there was something about that organization that bred that, you know.

[00:31:59] Yeah.

[00:32:00] And I think that this idea that, you know, I'll just go gig to gig to gig.

[00:32:06] You know, first of all, it can be a little bit tiresome, you know, being the new kid on the block all the time.

[00:32:10] And I think there's social ramifications to that.

[00:32:13] But I also feel there's a hole there of, now you may replace it.

[00:32:17] Maybe you have a really strong neighborhood you're a part of.

[00:32:19] Maybe you're part of a club that you, everybody gets together.

[00:32:22] I don't know.

[00:32:23] But I do think that there's something.

[00:32:25] It's just like going back to the office where there's been such a struggle.

[00:32:29] I've happened to be remote most of my career, but there is nothing like being in an office, just putting your head in somebody's office and chatting and picking up that hallway conversation that I think is missing in today's work where it's just much more transactional.

[00:32:46] And there isn't that sense of, you know, this is what we do.

[00:32:50] Yeah. How has the, and I think this kind of gets us along those lines, but Art, how have you seen the relationship between employer and employee change over the years that you've been doing this?

[00:33:02] And how does that affect the worker post-work?

[00:33:07] So you kind of touched on it here, but I think we can go a little deeper on that.

[00:33:12] Yeah, I think that this started even before I got in this business, but right around 2000, and, you know, give or take five or 10 years.

[00:33:21] When companies stopped having pension plans, right?

[00:33:25] Retirement plans.

[00:33:26] Yeah.

[00:33:27] That's what I came to the workforce.

[00:33:30] The world changed, right?

[00:33:31] There was, you didn't, especially in all the mergers and acquisitions, right?

[00:33:35] Where you just became, the synergies of that were, well, we had two CFOs and now one's out of a job and we have all of this, right?

[00:33:42] And I think that that has fundamentally changed.

[00:33:46] I think it was Thomas Bakerson who wrote a book about, you know, it used to be we had terminology like Ma Bell.

[00:33:53] You know, we took care of you.

[00:33:55] And now it's just here.

[00:33:57] I've got a skill.

[00:33:58] You have a need.

[00:33:58] Let's get together and chat for a while.

[00:34:00] That's it.

[00:34:00] And so there's no one taking care of you.

[00:34:02] There's no sense of that.

[00:34:05] And so there's no loyalty, you know?

[00:34:07] And so now you can be right in the middle of a project that you know the company is relying on you for and I got a better offer and see you later.

[00:34:15] And whether you're a gig worker or whether you're a full-time worker, that's the attitude.

[00:34:19] There isn't that.

[00:34:21] So, Art, you're going to laugh at this on some level, but I equate that break in loyalty to free agency in sports.

[00:34:31] In sports, yeah.

[00:34:32] So the moment that free agency became a thing in any sport, baseball, football, it doesn't really make a difference.

[00:34:40] Once free agency is, I can go play.

[00:34:44] Okay, so now I'm going to take my talents.

[00:34:47] I'm going to take my talent, yeah.

[00:34:49] At that point, that broke that – and it was both sides.

[00:34:53] It's both the talent as well as the owners.

[00:34:57] So it wasn't – you can't blame one of them.

[00:34:59] It's really easy to point blame at the owners, but it's just as much of blame on the talent.

[00:35:05] And so, again, when you break that loyalty, that's gone.

[00:35:09] You can't put Humpty Dumpty back together.

[00:35:12] You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

[00:35:13] Yeah.

[00:35:14] What do you think the impact of LeBron was on that?

[00:35:17] Like, when you think about it, when he said I'm going to take my talents to South Beach or whatever he said, how many kids –

[00:35:25] Dude, it goes way back.

[00:35:27] It goes way back.

[00:35:28] It goes back farther.

[00:35:29] I think LeBron changed the NBA.

[00:35:32] Yes.

[00:35:33] Because they – and again, it's changing it a little bit back the other way, but it became the super teams, right?

[00:35:38] I'll get my three best friends and we'll go – because you can impact a basketball team when you're – when three-fifths of the starting lineup shows up together, you've got it, right?

[00:35:48] I think for the other sports – because in my memory, it was Kurt Flood who started the whole process in baseball.

[00:35:54] Yes.

[00:35:54] And he went and won his freedom.

[00:35:57] And that reverberated through that.

[00:36:00] That's right.

[00:36:00] And each sport has tried to figure out their best paths for this kind of thing.

[00:36:06] And I'm shocked that employees haven't done this more, where engineering teams haven't gotten together and go –

[00:36:15] Hey, it's Bob Pulver, host of the podcast.

[00:36:18] Human-centric AI, AI-driven transformation, hiring for skills and potential, dynamic workforce ecosystems, responsible innovation.

[00:36:27] These are some of the themes my expert guests and I chat about, and we certainly geek out on the details.

[00:36:32] Nothing too technical.

[00:36:33] I hope you check it out.

[00:36:35] Wait a minute.

[00:36:36] They're really buying the seven of us.

[00:36:39] What?

[00:36:40] Why?

[00:36:40] You know, we can renegotiate a contract with this company or we can just take our talents to this other company.

[00:36:47] We're going to Microsoft.

[00:36:48] I'm actually shocked that that hasn't – I wouldn't say – maybe we don't know that it's happening or it's not.

[00:36:55] I wouldn't say it hasn't happened.

[00:36:57] I definitely think it's happened.

[00:36:59] Non-competes and all that, but we just talked about this a couple weeks back with non-competes going away.

[00:37:05] Yeah.

[00:37:07] Non-competes going away will be a massive, massive shift.

[00:37:10] Going to happen.

[00:37:12] That's right.

[00:37:12] And it shows you, to me, the cultural differences.

[00:37:16] Like, I always equate, like, the auto industry, which was just brutal.

[00:37:21] Like, you couldn't even drive a competitor's car, let alone go to work.

[00:37:25] No, no, no.

[00:37:26] Right?

[00:37:26] No, no.

[00:37:26] A foreign car.

[00:37:28] A foreign car.

[00:37:29] I remember going to Detroit.

[00:37:32] This is probably late 70s, early 80s.

[00:37:34] You didn't see Toyotas.

[00:37:36] No.

[00:37:37] In Detroit.

[00:37:38] There were no – those Nissan?

[00:37:40] I'm sorry.

[00:37:42] You couldn't do that.

[00:37:43] Whereas, you look at the way Silicon Valley developed, right?

[00:37:47] It was open source stuff.

[00:37:48] And you're like, you know, let's get together.

[00:37:50] People from Google get together.

[00:37:52] From Microsoft, let's chat.

[00:37:53] You know, what are you guys working on?

[00:37:54] And there was – you know, I think those are the differences, right, in the old industries and the new industries and how that dynamic has changed.

[00:38:03] And I think if non-competes go away, companies are going to have to rethink a lot of things because they right now have been able to basically completely restrict certain players that were very important.

[00:38:17] Right?

[00:38:17] And now it's going to change.

[00:38:19] And they're going to have to maybe treat people better and think about what they're doing.

[00:38:25] So, final question from my side but may get us off track.

[00:38:30] But I got to ask it.

[00:38:32] So, maybe two weeks ago, William and I were doing a new show.

[00:38:36] We do a new show on Sundays.

[00:38:37] And we were talking about a story of a woman.

[00:38:40] Her name was Melissa Weaver who was rejected and she was going for a VP of HR role.

[00:38:47] It was a video interview.

[00:38:49] And she didn't get the job.

[00:38:50] She – very strongly, she should have gotten to the next level at least and asked the recruiter for feedback.

[00:38:56] And the recruiter told her she didn't look the part.

[00:39:00] She wasn't made up and she wasn't wearing makeup and all this stuff.

[00:39:04] And so, it went crazy viral, right, and all this.

[00:39:07] She's now got another job and all that.

[00:39:09] But William made a point which I understand but I don't agree with.

[00:39:16] I know R.J. Reynolds was a smoking building, right?

[00:39:19] Like you had to drive a non-foreign car, things like that.

[00:39:23] But do you think with this – from what we're talking about here, as an employee or even going in for the interview, that you need to be loyal to that brand?

[00:39:35] For example, you can't go interview or work at Nike but wear Adidas.

[00:39:39] You have to remain loyal to that brand or is that off the table?

[00:39:43] That's interesting.

[00:39:43] With gig workers in particular, do they have to play that game?

[00:39:48] I don't think anyone should have to play that game.

[00:39:50] Yeah, you shouldn't have to but, you know, again, to me, with everything else in life, it's like you pick your battles.

[00:39:56] It's what do you want to do?

[00:40:00] And, you know, if there's a reason that people could perceive that you're actually anti that company that you're not wearing, it's like, why do you want to do that?

[00:40:09] Because, you know, so it's – yeah, I'm restricting your freedom maybe to a degree but at the same time, I don't know.

[00:40:17] To me, it's one of those things where I know what I would be doing.

[00:40:20] I just wouldn't – but I do think that – but we – I think right now, especially with social media, people want to make judgments about everything.

[00:40:31] And we want to render opinions about everything.

[00:40:34] And so what might have miffed me a little and I just let it go, now it's like I got to come down and say something, right?

[00:40:42] Yeah.

[00:40:42] You're no longer just going to Yelp.

[00:40:44] You're going to TikTok.

[00:40:45] Yeah, I mean that's really been the issue, right?

[00:40:47] It's just gotten so difficult.

[00:40:49] We're going to parse what everyone said.

[00:40:53] Maybe it was seven years ago.

[00:40:55] Maybe it was at a party.

[00:40:56] Maybe it wasn't.

[00:40:57] But we're going to go back, you know, and in the political season, I've been like, can't we just talk about what you think you want to do going forward?

[00:41:06] And I'll judge that versus the other guy instead of, do you realize I've got a video of you doing this?

[00:41:13] Yeah.

[00:41:13] You know?

[00:41:14] Everybody's – everybody's done dumb things.

[00:41:17] I was 17 at the time.

[00:41:19] Relax.

[00:41:20] Yeah.

[00:41:20] It was a – keg stand was involved.

[00:41:22] So the thing is where I differ from the two of you is not just the optics of it.

[00:41:29] If you show up to a North Face interview and you're wearing Patagonia, I think it's disrespectful.

[00:41:35] I totally see your point.

[00:41:36] I'm 100% on board with that.

[00:41:38] Yeah.

[00:41:38] And I would play the game.

[00:41:40] Yeah.

[00:41:41] Again, if you show up to any interview for whether or not it's gig, full-time, whatever, and, you know, again, you use Nike and Adidas.

[00:41:50] Those are great things.

[00:41:51] I wouldn't hire you.

[00:41:52] I don't care how talented you are.

[00:41:54] If you're not smart enough to know how to play this game, I clearly don't want to be around you.

[00:42:00] So it isn't so much about loyalty.

[00:42:05] We didn't win Apple when I was at IQ Navigator, which we did win.

[00:42:08] But we got rid of an entire row of Dell computers and replaced them all because we brought them into the office to show them.

[00:42:18] And people didn't even know how to use the program.

[00:42:21] No one was going to say, because you didn't even know how to use them.

[00:42:24] We had to screensaver up.

[00:42:26] When we walked by, it was like, okay, they love our beer.

[00:42:29] They're an Apple shop.

[00:42:30] They're an Apple shop.

[00:42:30] There's nobody working here.

[00:42:32] We don't know how to turn these fuckers on.

[00:42:35] Screensavers, screenscavers going.

[00:42:36] That's all that matters.

[00:42:37] That's all that matters.

[00:42:38] Last thing for me is advice that you would give gig worker candidates.

[00:42:43] Is there anything top of mind that you would say to people that are out there in the throes of gig work and they want to continue doing more gig work?

[00:42:53] Is there anything you'd give them as advice?

[00:42:55] Yeah, I think that to me, the differentiator oftentimes is the amount of effort you put in before you go to someplace.

[00:43:04] Whether to understand the business and what's going on, whether to understand the role.

[00:43:09] But I find the lack of inquisitiveness by certain candidates appalling, right?

[00:43:16] It's like, don't go in and just figure out, just ask all the questions.

[00:43:20] Come in, some questions you have based on the research you've done.

[00:43:24] Yeah, I like the current rebound.

[00:43:26] It looks really cool.

[00:43:27] How does that align with what I'm doing and kind of stress test that stuff versus coming in and say, okay, tell me why I should work here, basically.

[00:43:37] And I think that because it gets, I get it.

[00:43:40] They're confident.

[00:43:41] They know they can do jobs.

[00:43:43] But I think, again, it's sort of the respect.

[00:43:46] Show whoever you're going after the respect of saying, this is why I want to come here because I've read about the exciting things you're doing.

[00:43:54] I love that.

[00:43:55] Intellectual curiosity.

[00:43:56] It's like we didn't get that merit badge.

[00:44:00] Art, this has been fantastic for us and the audience.

[00:44:03] Thank you so much for carving out time to be with us and a great topic and great talk.

[00:44:10] Thank you so much.