“Skills-based hiring isn’t just removing a degree requirement from a job description. It takes a long time and serious commitment to see it through.”
-Matt Alder
My guest for this episode is Matt Alder, podcaster, author, consultant and futurist
This is an exciting episode because it includes the first ever episode of The Take it or Leave it Show!
This short segment takes place in the middle of our interview. This is a fun segment that provides listeners with expert takes on current hot topics. In the segment, Matt and I review two articles from the current news, share our takes on them, and give a collective thumbs up or thumbs down on it. This week’s articles cover the topics of skills based hiring and the use of AI driven personality assessments in hiring. Don’t miss it!
In addition to Take it or Leave it, in this episode we learn about Matt’s background in talent acquisition, his Recruiting Future podcast and his books ‘Exceptional Talent’ and ‘Digital Talent’. Through these efforts and Matt’s work as a top notch consultant and futurist, we discuss the hot topics that are shaping the future of hiring.
Topics covered include:
- The definition of “digital transformation” and its impact on talent acquisition
- The role of AI in recruitment and how companies should approach the adoption of new technologies
- Challenges in skills-based hiring
- The importance of experimentation and innovation in recruitment, and
- Predictions for the future of talent acquisition in 2034.
- Take Aways:
- Embrace Digital Transformation: Companies must adjust to an increasingly digital world, understanding that digital transformation impacts all aspects of business, including talent acquisition. Digital transformation involves more than just adopting new technologies; it requires a shift in mindset to leverage these tools effectively.
- Foster a Future-Focused Mindset: Being open to change and continuously experimenting with new technologies is essential for staying ahead in the HR landscape. Organizations need to think beyond the current processes and explore how technology can fundamentally change their operations.
- Prioritize Skills-Based Hiring: While challenging, skills-based hiring can lead to a more equitable and effective recruitment process, helping organizations find and retain the right talent. This approach emphasizes the importance of assessing candidates based on their actual skills rather than traditional credentials.
- Enhance Candidate Experience: Providing a consumer-grade experience in recruitment processes is crucial for attracting and retaining top talent, particularly among digitally savvy candidates. The goal is to make the recruitment process as engaging and seamless as possible.
- Navigate AI and Automation: Understanding the potential and limitations of AI in recruitment is vital. Organizations should focus on using AI to complement human decision-making and improve efficiency without losing sight of ethical considerations.
- Future Hiring Trends: Matt predicts that by 2034, hiring will be highly data-driven, with advanced AI and automation playing a central role. This will lead to more personalized and efficient recruitment processes, but it will also require careful management to ensure fairness and inclusivity
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Full transcript:
Charles: Hi, Matt. Welcome to the psych tech at work show. How are you doing today?
Matt: I’m doing really well and thank you very much for having me on your show. It’s always good. To be on someone else’s podcast for a change?
Charles: Yeah. Well, you are really what we call, you know, OG as far as it as podcasting goes, and you know, Matt is the is the host of the recruiting future podcast, one that I listen to a lot. I think we both share the the passion for being futurist and the passion for talent acquisition and hiring. So looking forward to our conversation today. We also have hanging there listeners and watchers.
We have a brand new segment called Take It Relief at where we review some some current articles and talk about some trends. So that’ll be a lot of fun. That’ll be in the middle of the show. So let’s get started though, Matt. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background, I believe you’re in Scotland.
Correct?
Matt: That’s right. Yes. I do live in Scotland. It’s actually sunny today here, which is which is great. Been in Scotland for about ten years and it is a lovely, lovely place to live. So if anyone’s never been, I’d definitely recommend visiting. In terms of me, I’ll be working in a round time acquisition for twenty five years now, which is is a very it’s a very long day.
Charles: Mhmm. And
Matt: kinda got all sorts of things. I started my career in recruitment marketing. So I ran two big digital teams into recruitment marketing agencies. Since then done a lot of work as a consultant in this space. And for the last nine years, I’ve been running the recruiting future forecasts.
Charles: Very cool. So I have been to Scotland a long time ago, and it was great. I was ten. We lived in London when I was ten for a while. You know, I was obsessed to lock desk sponsor, so my parents are cool enough to take me to like NASA.
And I I burned about several roles of camera film, photographing logs, and, you know, other such things floating around. But it was it was pretty cool. And I haven’t been back, though. I So let’s see. I I don’t wanna be too stereotypical about Scotland.
I do love backpipes. I do love Scotch, and I do love golf. So there’s a there’s a lot of good stuff there. What about Haggis? What about Haggis?
Is Haggis more like a ceremonial meal
Matt: No. It’s a it’s a legitimate it’s a legitimate food item. You tend to get it with on cooked breakfast. So a Scottish cook breakfast has got nuggets on it. Yeah.
And also a lot of restaurants have a a a a favoring towards making haggis bomb bomb bomb, so kind of battering
Charles: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Matt: It’s good. It’s like I’ve always liked it. I’ve always liked it. It’s not a myth. It’s a it’s a proper thing.
Charles: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve had it only. Well, I said ceremonial. My friend had a wedding. He’s Scottish heritage, so they had one. He cut it with a sword, you know, and and I and I had some it’s oatmeal in there. Right? Is that right? So meal stock and
Matt: various various various bits of sheep.
Charles: Gotcha. Yeah. A bit of sheep. That’s nice. Well, there’s a lot of sheep there. So very cool. And my last last piece about Scotland, I promise, where do you live in Scotland?
Matt: I live just outside Edinburgh. So right on a little town on a beach. So yeah. So it’s great.
Charles: Yep. I have been to Edinburgh. That was one of my other. Other places. Good. So let’s get going a little bit here. You’ve talked about your your background a little bit and your podcast, you know, and I encourage everybody to listen to that podcast. I do quite a bit, and it’s it’s really educational as as a lot of the good ones are. So tell us a little bit of a little bit more about it, kinda what inspired you to to do it, you know? Because nine years, that’s that’s a long time that if you look at a graph of the number of podcasts that are out there, my guess is it’s it’s kinda flat.
For a little while, and now it’s almost got a direct vertical, you know, launch. Right?
Matt: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I started it because I was mainly working as a consultant. I was having some fascinating conversations with people, either the clients that I was working with or the research that I was doing into what was going on in the sector, what was going on in other sectors, where was innovation coming from?
And it just and I’ve always liked audio. So it I’ve always liked I’ve always liked audio. And at the time, I had a blog that was that had the same name, Recreasing Future. And it just kinda struck me that, a, I might enjoy recording a podcast more than I enjoyed writing a blog, which was which was true. But also, I thought it would be great to do my research in public. So I was having these great conversations and it just seemed to be a waste of a really good insights that I could share with a wider audience. So I started the podcast on that basis to to share those conversations and really, you know, try and try and start more of a debate about the future of recruitment, the future hiring, the future of acquisition, I think back then, everything was about social media. That was the that was the technology innovation of the day. And, yeah, I just think it’s kind of really important to have these conversations. And and now the podcast is really about helping helping people who work in Tel acquisition by showing them what else is going on in the industry, what some of their peers are doing.
And very often, I think you find that people aren’t as far ahead as as as you thought they were Yeah. When when you kinda look at what people are doing.
Charles: But at the
Matt: same time, there’s some, you know, there’s some great ideas on there. I’m always looking for people with new stories to tell And I look outside the industry as well. I look at what’s going on generally in in business and what can we learn from other sectors, other areas of the enterprise. And, again, I think it’s really important to to have that kind of future facing outward looking view on things, and that’s what the forecast is all about.
Charles: Yeah. And it’s so important to pull in. I mean, we’re increasingly multidisciplinary. Right? It it takes a lot of people to make stuff happen from different disciplines, but also those perspectives, you know.
And you hear a lot about, I think it’s interesting from a talent acquisition standpoint, we hired a an anthropologist to join our product team and they brought all these amazing ideas. That’s just an you know, just I randomly pulled that. But But there’s stuff like that going on, you know, which I think is fantastic. That kind of diversity of thought is is really essential. So I try to do you know, the same thing and and a podcast is such a great way to expose people in our field to some of this ancillary stuff.
It’s so important to kind of expand our minds. And you’ve you’ve also written at least one. I think we’ll talk about your latest book here in a little while, but tell us a little bit about the other stuff that you do because doing a podcast, we wish it was lucrative enough to support ourselves, but it is absolutely probably not. So What other things are you doing? Let’s start with the book and then talk a little bit about kind of your practice as well.
Matt: Yeah. Sure. So I I’ve written to you because I’ve co authored them with my good friend Mervyn didn’t. The first one was out about five years ago, and it was called exceptional talent. And what we sort of looked at what we talked about in that book was the joining together of the employee experience.
Charles: So
Matt: we were saying that from an employee’s perspective, they they they work for a company. It’s it’s that’s what they do. From the HR perspective, they’re dealt with by talent management, by onboarding, by learning development, by digital, just all of these different all of these different silos. So he’s looking at how eventually, all those parts of the the the kind of the employee life cycle will work together and really give people that sort of great experience. And and the purpose of that was to help organizations get exceptional talent into their into their businesses. That was the first book, and then we followed that up about three years later. So it came about two years ago with digital talent. And we just kind of took that theme a bit further, and we looked at all the digital transformation that was going on, we looked at the fact that employers were needing completely new skills in their business that they’ve not had before. And again, skills that were very difficult to find, very difficult to retain. So we kind of looked at that again, looked at
that life cycle in terms of through that digital lens and said, what about works changing? What do we need as an you know, what do you need as an organization? To make sure that you have you’re you’re kind of reinventing the the talent you have in the organization and the skills you have in the organization for this digital future. And that’s what the second book is about.
Charles: Oh, very very cool. I mean, need needed stuff. You know, when you talk about employee experience, the light bulb just kinda went off in my head of of how, and I’ve never thought about it this way. How directly linked that is to psychology. Right? The psychology in the workplace that what you experience as an employee, the support, the psychological safety, the the recognition, the sometimes nonrecognition, you know, whatever happens. That’s really gonna form a lot of important bonds around how committed you are to an organization, how productive you are, how happy you are. Right? So my mission is you put the right person in the right job, the individual is happy, and the organization benefits. And that’s what work should be all about.
And be but because we’re people and everybody’s different and we have so many individual differences and context different, it’s really hard to do that at scale all the time. Right? That’s why people like us exist. That’s right. So to help companies figure that out.
So that it that’s important stuff. I had a thought you use the term digital transformation. I hear that term a lot and I may not be somebody who has pushed a digital transformation. But if you have to define digital transformation, you know, especially in the context of what we do. What’s what’s that all about?
Tell her tell her listeners.
Matt: Yeah. So it’s a I mean, it’s a very broad term that she uses lots of different things. At the I suppose at the most general level, it’s about companies having to adjust to an ever more digital world. So in terms of how they sell their products and services Yeah. What their products and services are, who their audience is, and how they consume them.
And that obviously all moves all the way back into the talent that they have in their organization. And I think that we could the pandemic was a great lens to sort of look at all this through because
Charles: Yeah.
Matt: They’re not businesses had to digitally transform overnight. And even businesses that thought they would never have to have to go down this part. So for example, theater companies suddenly Yeah. Having to deliver their performances digitally. And, you know, you think about all these skills that are needed in that.
You have to know how to how do you film this to get the estimates of that of that performance? How do you market it? How what technology do we use? So I think that’s kind of a great example of you know, digital transformation just happening almost instantly. And the pandemic was definitely a catalyst for it as well because, you know, many organizations learned to do things digitally and haven’t moved back from that.
And it continues. I think that AI is another and I’m sure we’ll talk about that later, is another factor that’s that’s fueling it. And we’re sort of seeing it in more and more, we would have called
in traditional businesses, are being affected by the move to the to the digital everything, which is what’s going on. So it will continue. So it’s that I think it’s particularly applicable to you know, older companies who are having to change change what they do.
They might be competing with newer startups who just started in a digital first world. So it’s that transformation about. I think it has a really big impact on stat talent skills.
Charles: Yeah. I mean, if you’re not doing that, you are swimming against the current or maybe you’ll just get washed away by the current. I don’t know. But it it’s like become something that everybody must do better, probably not kicking and screaming, but there’s lots to figure out. Right?
I mean, as you start tripping into the realm of of AI. I mean, there’s the the dilemmas are not crystal clear. The answers are not crystal clear. You know, for me, it’s it’s about a couple of things, you know, creativity, balancing efficiency with responsibility. Right? And it’s about experimentation, tinker in or out trying stuff, I believe. Right? And I think companies that are doing those things and thinking forward a little bit are gonna come up with answers that may not have always even been, frankly, apparent In other cases, vendors are putting stuff out there and you see that and you’re like, oh, that’s available. I had I had no idea. Let’s give that a try, you know.
Do you have an example of something in your realm that you feel like was this is a great story of how, you know, some organization or individual that organization was able to to to kind of personify this this idea of digital trans information.
Matt: Yeah. I think it’s a it’s a really interesting it’s a really interesting area. And I think to sort of speak to earlier, probably really being future focused and having the right mindset as you approach the future is a critical is a critical part of that. I mean, I think there are loads of there are loads of examples, but if we if we kinda look at Tower acquisition and let’s look at some really kind of up to date things that that’s happening. Obviously, everyone is is obsessed with talking about AI at the moment, but there’s a question about how many people are actually doing something with it?
And can we do anything anything with it? Or do we have to wait for it to wait for the the the products and services to develop or to be in incorporated in in some of the things that we do. But on my hook host a couple of weeks ago, I interviewed the the depths you’ve director of talent acquisition for Humberse, which is the UK tax office. So it stands for his majesty’s revenue and customs or something. So we got that anyway.
The tax office. Not the tax office is not the place that you would expect to find expect to be a hotbed of innovation. But what had happened is they their recruitment team had done a lot of experimentation with the cap current capabilities of the generative AI they they have access to and built some pretty cool systems, built some systems that were designed to save hiring manager time to promote consistency in things like job descriptions across the organization, deliver talent intelligence in a consistent way. And it it just kinda showed you these were these were nontechnical people with no budget, who’ve managed to build a platform that probably five years ago someone would be selling you for a hundred thousand dollars or something or something like that. And I think that’s a great example of having that future focused mindset and,
you know, playing with playing with these tools, but really thinking about the problems that they solve and how it’s gonna take their business forward.
And I think with anything to do with digital transformation, it’s not just taking what you currently do and try to reinvent it and and try to just transfer it into the digital realm is actually looking at what are the what are the benefits, what the advantages? How can we just tear our thinking down about this is the always always the way that we’ve done this?
Charles: Yeah.
Matt: And build up again and say, well, actually, now what’s possible. And why would we do that if we don’t if we would do if we don’t have to do it? I think it’s a great thing for recruiting as a whole because I think if you look at the the obsession with with resume and unstructured interviews and and and all of these things that are just habits and tradition. That kind of is challenging in the new world that we’re moving into. And I I hope that happens. So I think it’s yeah. Really challenging. Having a mindset that challenges this data’s growth looks in the future, you know, experiments isn’t afraid to to fail but fail quickly and makes things better for everyone. I think that’s the that that that would that would be a way of encapsulating it.
Charles: Yeah. And, you know, in your example, one thing I I thought of as you were, you know, talking about it is, in my experience, you know, it’s great to to have an opportunity, which is not very common, to start from the ground up. You got nothing and you’re gonna build this out because What we find is in HR technology, things are siloed. You have different vendors. There’s not a lot of communication.
So as you start to think about a transformation, and you’ve got all these existing systems that it’s hard to burn those to the ground and and start back. Right? So and there’s a lot of stakeholders that are invested in certain technologies and and such. It makes it really hard, you know. I think that’s why that’s a barrier.
Right? And and I don’t have an answer to to overcome that. If you’re a brand new startup or something, you know, maybe you get that opportunity and that’s to me a good one. I see that a little bit in I don’t know if this is a perfect example or anything, but one of the things I I noticed, right, is I feel like HR technology of any sort that touches especially applicants needs to be providing a consumer grade experience. It needs to look like your banking, it needs to look like your social media, which means constantly updating your UI and to some extent your UX, In the assessment world, most established companies, that’s the last thing on their list. So sometimes you can see a real incongruity. And as an applicant, especially now that applicants are expecting to be able to use technology in the workplace. The younger they are, probably the more they will. You have an incongruous experience like that. And it’s not good for your employment brand, but but it doesn’t really get changed because there’s so many moving parts. Whereas if I’m a startup and I just start yesterday, I can get my UI and UX pretty pretty nice and hopefully I’m building things in there to make it easy to change those things. So that’s that’s kind of my example. It’s a micro example compared to to the big stuff, you know?
Matt: Yeah. I think that’s an interesting point, and I think it’s one of the problems that yeah. It’s one of the problems that we face as a sector. What I think is interesting what I think is interesting
moving forward though is I think during the pan the pandemic proved that actually if there’s a compelling reason to make those changes, those changes can be made really quickly. So Yeah. Again, if you think about recruitment processes changed overnight to embrace video interviewing, because they just had to. Mhmm. And while, obviously, it’s incredibly important for employer brand and employee experience to to have that consumer grade experience
Charles: Yeah.
Matt: It it doesn’t seem to have become it doesn’t seem to be the compelling reason that we we think it should be.
Charles: Yeah.
Matt: However, now that you have armies of dog seekers who have access to AI and they’re able to apply to, you know, put out great applications to lots of jobs at the same time. I have a feeling it will start to break these systems. Yeah. And you’ve got or, you know, if you can’t distinguish between you got ten thousand applications, they all look the same, then you you kind of have to say, take a step back and say, you know what? We need to reinvent the way that we do. Mhmm. Because we we can’t fix this. This is not a problem that we can fix. We cannot put things in place to stop people using AI or all this sort of stuff. The arms to actually take a step back and say, is this working for us in any way?
How could we reinvent this process? How could we make it more personalized? And give people that that experience and actually get what we need from it. So I have a feeling we’re heading towards one of those one of those points I could be wrong. Everything I’m seeing so far would indicate
Charles: that Yeah.
Matt: That that’s the case. That is the case. I think then, organizations will have that compelling reason to to change and reinvent what they do.
Charles: Yeah. All I gotta do is ask Chad GTP. It’s, you know, redesign my recruiting process to make sure that note, we can differentiate between applicants. I’m sure.
Matt: Johnson, the answer is out and asking why isn’t it?
Charles: Yeah. Somewhere. If you think about the whole Internet
Matt: I think yeah. You won’t solve the problem No. By trying to tweak your current process. I think that’s the thing is you have to do that. You have to rethink that.
Charles: I know. And the way technology is moving so quickly, it’s like it’s it’s a little scary to think of how often you might have to rethink it you know, as things change, but it’s also there’s a difference between, you know, being in the stone age and not. So, you know, that that part of it. It it’s gonna get, you know, really interesting. Really, really it’s it already is in my career.
Matt: You
Charles: know, you think about the things that that have been kind of the the hot, you know, topics or whatever, the the site guys to of the time, things that I honestly have, most of them been a little skeptical of. Of course, social media, you know, game, this assessment games that don’t look like the job, the metaverse, you know, blockchain. Oh, these are important things, but they haven’t had the revolutionary impact that they get hyped up to be. But generative AI is It is. I feel like.
Matt: Yeah. I think that I think that’s I think that’s very exciting. There’s so much hype around lots of things. And there’s lots of hype about JEMLIBRA, which is obviously, there’s a scale hike.
Charles: Oh my gosh.
Matt: However, I think that anyone who who is who is using it can see the instant benefit. I think that’s a difference between that and the Metiverse, for example. You have to be more headsets. Exactly. You can actually just you know, you can see an instant an instant benefit from it. Even if that benefit doesn’t live up to the, you know, the the current height, and I think that’s what makes the that’s what makes a difference. I think you’ll have people you have people arguing about the the scale at which is gonna change things. But I don’t know if you’re talking about the fact that it will change things.
Charles: Yeah. Yeah. It’s hard to know, but, you know, I just recently did a project where I interviewed I I a psychologist at twenty of them, probably at a giant company. You know, in in industries every company you’ve heard of. You know, they run assessment programs, which is only a micro part of the overall hiring funnel, workflow tech stack, what have you. But an important one, obviously, from my perspective, and none of them are really doing anything you know, different in that regard. Right? They’re all okay. We’re gonna look at it. We’re gonna wait.
See. Saw my husband, does your company have a blanket policy about employees using generative AI. The spectrum there is everywhere from absolutely can’t use it, but wink wink. You know, it might happen on my personal computer too. To Yeah.
We have our own corporate Yeah. Yeah. We have our own corporate version of of chat g t p or a large language model that everybody uses and we love it to we don’t care, just get the work done. So there’s there’s a lot of variation there, but but overall, in the assessment world, there’s not a lot of AI stuff being done. I think as you move higher up in the funnel too, recruitment process automation and just general recruitment of of sourcing and and initial screening. You see a lot more of it, but that’s been going on since before January of AI. That’s, like, the last five years that’s been happening.
Matt: Yeah.
Charles: You know? Yeah. Gotcha. So as we I kinda look at our show today as past present future. And as we as we kinda wind down the present part, what would your advice be, you know, I’m a talent acquisition leader, I’m looking at the need to keep up, to safely innovate, I
would call it, and, you know, I need ultimately My thing is always, we’re there to make ourselves look good to our bosses, and we do that by performing.
And even the CEO does that, the bosses are the shareholders. The board, whatever. Right? We all have a a boss. And so I I need to do that.
And because, you know, I need to get results. And so what Yeah. What advice would you give to somebody, you know, in that position? Maybe somebody who’s listening here today.
Matt: Yeah. I think the first thing is to is to have that understanding. About what is it you’re trying to achieve? What is it your company that’s trying to achieve? And then you have to start with you have to start with that because this so much noise.
There’s so much going on. There are so many rabbit holes to fold out. Robot holes to fold out. There’s so much distraction. You’re gonna need that north star to to to shave it. And then on then the next thing really is that is is having the right mindset. And I think that people have a lot of like, cognitive bias hitting kicking around when they look at the what the future will look like. So, you know, thinking it might stay the same, being very, you know, optimist or is it optimism buyers’ data mobiers, all these kind of things. I think it’s just being having that sort of have developing a really kind of open mind in terms of how you how you look Good thing. So I think that’s a that’s another aspect to it.
Then it’s it’s just being really intentional with the research that you do. So really taking control of that in terms of what’s going on? What do I need to experiment with? Where do I need to look for this information? And not just relying on a stream of vendors coming through your door, telling you what’s going on with, what’s going on with things like AI is actually, like, let’s, you know, let’s listen to some great podcasts about it.
Yeah. And I don’t see this stuff. We think it’s that it’s that yeah. Exactly. So you you really have to do that do that research bit look at different opinions, really think about what are people’s motives for for telling you this.
Also, I think with AI, there is so much out there map of side tel acquisition talking about what’s gonna happen and and all this sort of stuff. So there’s some great there’s some great content. So, you know, I think that’s the other the other important thing. And then from there, it really is about just getting started and experimenting. So Yeah.
I think you you have to have that long term view, but also you have to be hands on and experiment with it. Into balance and and where that balance sometimes becomes unaligned is I’ve seen lots of people sort of panicking and saying, right, I need to train my entire team to be prompt engineers in
Charles: Yeah.
Matt: In a month’s time to do this thing. It’s like, work it. We’re we’re have you why? Have you thought about you? What are your objectives?
All that sort of stuff? And I think it’s that balance between well, where is this gonna be in two or
three years time? Or will we even need to write prompts? Because they’ll just probably go in their automatic grid, something. So completely That would probably be a waste of time, but it’s not a waste of time to actually take put some time aside an experiment and see what’s possible right now and try and think about where it might go in the future.
So it’s a it’s a it’s a difficult balance, but it’s kind of important to get that right because I think too many people get stuck in there. What’s right in front of them right now, and that will change very quickly.
Charles: Yeah. I would add to that. I think that’s really good insight. I would add to that. You need to understand that your candidates and especially younger candidates are digitally savvy. They expect to use technology in the workplace. They’ll probably use technology in the application process. And in my opinion, that’s okay. You need to change your process to make sure that you’re meeting that. And there’s there’s some good research that I’ve seen Arctic Shores that put out pretty good little summary and and that they surveyed a lot of employers and applicants.
And, you know, applicants, they don’t wanna work for a this is college, university, graduates, early career. They don’t wanna work for a company that isn’t gonna let them do that, use those technologies. They expect to use them on the job. So if you’re not meeting those people where they’re at, you’re gonna have a harder time even, you know, finding the talent. So it it’s The power is in the hands, and that’s what technology does.
It democratizes. The power is in the hands of the job seeker in some sense. Right? In that at scale, you might find it a lot harder to attract people.
Matt: But most often, it has been We’ll say that has been a plus as well.
Charles: Yeah. I think so. Alright. So now we’re gonna we’re gonna move into a little segment to take it or leave it show segment. I have a whole sequence of little production things here. So hopefully, this goes pretty smoothly. If not, watch again next time and it’ll go more smoothly. So I’m gonna start the process here and let’s see what happens. Okay? Alright. So we’re gonna cap down to the show and we’ll talk a little bit about what goes on in the show. Here in a second. Alright. So here I am. I’m gonna supposed to be q and, like, inch show music. Down. There we go. So a little sequence, but not bad. So what we’re gonna do, here’s how the show goes. I have two articles.
I am gonna first show the actual article then I have a a TLDR slide so that, you know, it’s gonna be hard to read an article when I scroll. But for some reason, I feel like, authentically, it’s good to actually show that the article exists. And then, Matt, you’re the guest. You’ll you’ll give your take on it, and and it’s not as much on article, but on the subject of the article. Right? And just just how you think about it. And then I’ll do the same and then we’ll do a little vote. Do we take it or do we leave it? That’s pretty much it for this for this first time. So I’m gonna scroll down to the first article.
This is an article. Hopefully, it comes up. Here we go. This is an article from Forbes Magazine, and it’s about skill based hiring and basically saying, you know, skill based hiring is really not working right now. So if we and and I have strong opinions about this.
I’m sure you do too. So here’s the TLDR about it. Right? And you we could take a scan of this and Generally, we’ll say that there’s some research here that I think is always good to see numbers. And it just looks like there’s not much going on.
There’s type o error in there, so we’re gonna ignore that. And with a bullet that doesn’t go anywhere, and it just seems like people are maybe giving lip service to this probably because it’s not easy to do and, you know, it hasn’t been very successful from translating from theory to practice. So what do you think, Matt? Give us give us your take on this.
Matt: Yeah. I I looked at the article and it I don’t know the title riled me because it was just so they yeah. The skills based hiring has failed, the the absoluteness of it. So I think that there is a serious point in this article. What I did though was it annoyed me so much. I went back and actually read the report that it’s based on.
Charles: Mhmm. And I
Matt: think there’s a couple there’s a couple of things that that come out. I mean, the first thing is, as you say, skills based hiring isn’t easy. It’s, you know, it’s very difficult It’s something that takes a long a long time. It’s something that that’s reflected in the report that this article is about. And also, skills skills based hiring isn’t just removing a g degree requirement from a job description.
So I think that whole thing about it’s failed because because of his data around degrees is is a bit ridiculous. The the degree stuff’s interesting because if you again, if you read the original report, what it says is actually thirty seven percent of the company’s that they they looked at who had made this announcement about removing degrees. We’re doing really well, and we’re we’re making great progress with it. And actually strikes a really optimistic. It gives a really optimistic view about what the future looks like.
So it says, you know, this is really hard and it’s easy for companies to make that statement. We are removing degrees from from what we do, but it’s very difficult to then to see that through and actually see that make a tangible difference in what the organization does. So, yeah, it’s not really surprising. I don’t like the tone of the article at all as you could probably get. There is an interesting point in there.
There is a point about this is hard and actually it’s not just about making those kind of announcements. You really have to follow through in everything that you do everything that you do as well.
Charles: That’s a good one. I did not go back and read the article to to extra points for attention to detail and, you know, research there. As far as I’m concerned, I love the idea of Skillshare hiring. Believe me, especially as an assessment guy because one of the things you can substitute for that educational background, etcetera, is a is a way to just measure where someone is or what their potential is for certain things. So so I love it.
I am not surprised to see the information here. I do think though forty percent at where we are now so early on in this is not a bad number, really, to see forty percent of people are succeeding. To me, the barriers to it are not necessarily what the company is interested in or not, but there there’s the first barrier to me is how are you defining a skill. Right? I think there’s a lot of what I
call empty calories in this.
So if you think about some of the platforms that take job descriptions or other means, mostly job descriptions, probably and say, you know, we’re gonna turn that into a cloud of words that relate to this job. If you can’t measure those words, if you can’t verify those words, that to me becomes
difficult to execute on this. Right? So companies need to not only look at those skills, so they need to find a way to to to not take the technology’s word for it if it’s just grabbing some stuff. Right?
So I think that part is important. And I’ve had a little bit of experience. I’ll tell a little story I like to do this. It’s probably about it’s probably been six, seven years ago. I I helped a a research project called the Essential Competency Project, and it was it was sponsored or funded through grants by the conference board, which is a, you know, enterprise research company independent. And our goal was we, Canvas, I think, twenty global companies and our goal is to get them for one job to substitute an assessment or a series of assessments for the educational background or resume part of the hiring process. And we were able to sign up five to pilot. And zero of those five were able to actually execute because they couldn’t change the hiring process. To my point earlier, to actually make it so there was an assessment, not the resume, and especially because it was one job. So so I saw a a great idea and some great research just completely fail because of technology and process.
So so for me, those are the things we need to overcome. I think the intentions are in the right place, but it’s it is hard to execute. Right? So I have kind of mixed feelings. So let’s let’s see. As far as I think we would both vote, you know, thumbs up on SkillBase hiring, but as far as this article goes and how it did all that, what what is your take? Do you take it or do you leave it?
Matt: So my initial reaction was to leave it because I said I don’t like I don’t like the way that the article is is is pitched itself. However, I’m gonna take it because I think it’s actually good to see articles challenging some of the aspects of skills based hiring because there’s just so much kind of it’s a juggernaut of positive pressure, and this is really easy. So for the fact that it’s raised the the point that this is hard and we’re not making fast progress on it, grudgingly, I’m going to take it.
Charles: Gotcha. I think I’m going to take it as well And so we got a we got a positive on this. And and I agree, you know, none of this stuff’s perfect, but I like that. People are being made aware of the fact that it’s not easy. And if if I’m gonna be implementing one of these things, you know, what can I learn from an article like this?
How can I overcome those objections within my company? Just to understand, I think maybe maybe vendors sometimes lead you know, companies down a Primrose path of thinking, oh, man, we can we can totally get you skills based hiring because we have all these skills and you just choose from these skills and it’ll work out great, and it’s not like that. So, you know, that that’s how I feel. So Yeah. Alright.
We’ll go to the Yeah. To the second article here. Let’s see. Interesting thing about this article technology wise. I couldn’t I I had to change a CSS or something change the background, but we’ll talk about it.
But the the upshot is that there is an assessment company that uses these kind of gender neutral,
ethnicity neutral, Blue Aliens and they ask job seekers, is it like me or not like me? And this is an assessment that a lot of companies use. So this is kinda what it looks like. So now let’s go to the TLDR And, you know, basically, what what they’re saying is that job applicants, especially hourly scale jobs are are being asked to to do this task. And the result is it’s gonna tell on a very common, the big five model of personality, you know, where these people lie, and hopefully, the company has calibrated those to what’s important on the job, but sure seems like that job applicants are not thrilled about this and there may be some some questioning of the scientific basis, you know, of this.
So what is your take, Matt?
Matt: Again, my take of it is I didn’t like didn’t like the article. I think it it plays on the fact that the visuals look very strange out of context. And it Yep. It it puts a whole negativity on it. So it’s, you know, it’s asking questions about the scientific basis of all of this, but actually isn’t asking the company behind it, what the scientific basis of of it is.
It’s just kind of it’s kind of sneering at the whole thing. So I didn’t like it from that perspective. I do think though it raises a really important point, and I’ve seen this in quite a few articles about what’s going on in recruitment quite recently. I think as an industry, particularly when everything’s changing like it is now, we have to be so much better at educating people in terms of what’s going on because I think if you if you drill down to how this has been set up and the science behind it and all those kind of things, I’m pretty confident that there’s probably a very good reason and basis behind this. They’re taking the views of one person rather than actually what do the other candidates think about who went through this process.
But I just think it it’s kind of our industry setting itself up for for this kind of article. And I think that we just need to be much better at educating educating people in terms of what’s going on and perhaps some of the great work that that may that may sit behind this and and the point of it. Because I think that hiring and recruiting is just such an easy target, especially if you’re putting especially if you’re putting AI into it because then there’s the whole suspicion that computers are making decisions and Mhmm. There’s not a kind of a a strong sort of basis behind that. So this, to me, is a kind of a warning of the the kind of breath that might happen moving forward. And I think it’s really important that we are so much better educating people in terms of what’s going on and how things are gonna change and how, you know, what the benefits are, particularly people who are not taking, you know, who were who were not did go through that process at the moment and might not realize what why it was better than the old process, for example.
Charles: Yeah. That that’s great. And you know, I love it that you have that viewpoint. I’m an assessment guy. That’s what I’ve been doing for, like, thirty years.
I look at talent acquisition as a holistic thing, but but it’s this is what I specialize in in in pretty deep way. So what I can tell you is that I think assessments are are good But I think the article has a very, very valid point when it comes to what that assessment looks like. I know as a job
applicant, if I saw those creepy blue things and then, you know, I I looked at it and I’m like, I wouldn’t even know how to tell if one of those is like me or not, I think the execution here is really poor. I am shocked that a company would would use something like that. I mean, look,
nobody likes taking tests.
I’m a test guy. Anything you could do to make it more engaging and entertaining? Yes. Test can have bias. So this is obviously in the positive column and attempt to mitigate any bias by looking at something and saying, if it’s me, not me, and there’s any cues as to, you know, race, ethnicity, gender, etcetera, that’s gonna contaminate things.
So I I totally understand this. When the the criticism of efficacy about, you know, the science I will tell you this, there is a lot of very good science behind this stuff. There’s a lot of direct crappy science behind this stuff. I don’t know enough to know, looking at this, what category falls into. To me, we have a thing in my field called face validity, and that is, you know, does the test or the hiring process look like the job.
Can I make a connection in my mind that I’m being asked something relevant? To the job. I don’t see that here. And if I were consulting to an organization, I would never ever let them use that assessment. If you’re just after big five trades, there’s a billion assessments that do that. And it’s the most common thing that gets measured in my So as far as, I think, again, it’s it’s hard in this take up, take it or leave it to separate the the concept necessarily from the, you know, from the the article. You did a great job of doing that last time. So you you leave here and tell me if you take it or leave it
Matt: out. So
Charles: Anywhere you want it.
Matt: Yeah. Anyway again, it’s just Yeah. Again, it’s kind of hard because I always very much I always very much leave it, but having listened to, you know, what you’ve what you’ve just said that that’s that’s that’s kind of really interesting. So I think that and obviously the basis that I think this is a great example of how as an industry we need to much better at talking about what we’re doing, I am gonna even more or regurgently take it
Charles: Yeah. Good. So what I would say is I’m gonna I mean, I get to make the rules. It’s my show, but what I would say is I’m gonna give it a a thumbs up for the article but I’m gonna give it a thumbs down for the assessment itself. I I feel like people need to know that that assessment is not a a thing that I would want someone to use as an expert.
So I will go thumbs down on that part, but I think the article’s doing a good job. I don’t like how it says, you know, questioning the scientific basis, but that’s actually legitimate. So I’m gonna give it one of these for the actual stuff, and then I then I’m gonna give it some some applause too. So that’s pretty much it. And The funnest part here is I’m gonna send all the way to Scotland, the take it or leave it, show t shirt.
I don’t know if that’s actually showing up on camera. So let’s let’s go back to this. Right? So here’s if you wanna be on the podcast, Here you go. We got a nice t shirt for you to reward our guests.
So Yeah. Yeah. That was fun, man. It it went almost almost flawlessly as far as the text go. So I’m happy about that.
And let’s just kinda start, you know, moving into the into to the future and wrapping this thing up
a little bit. What’s your take? What’s the workplace? What’s talent acquisition gonna look like in twenty thirty four.
Matt: Yeah. Twenty thirty four. So I think that I I think it will have fundamentally changed. I think when if you look back at twenty fourteen and forward to twenty twenty four, you could say, well, actually, there’s not much as, you know, not much has actually shifted. I I think I think he’s gonna shift this time.
I think I think we’re gonna see some I think we’ll see some dramatic change. I think there’s sort of two scenarios here, and I’m gonna go with the optimistic one. So you can see a scenario where actually things might get worse, we might have more bias in the recruitment process because of bad technology decisions. We might have a worse candidate experience because of badly implemented automation, those kind of things. However, I’m gonna be more positive. I think that the technology coming in, I think that we could see a better candidate experience with candidates getting more transparency, more information, more efficiency. It’s not being bogged down by by humans not responding stuff or doing stuff. So I think that’s one thing that’s designed really well. And I would hope that we’ve we’ve really made that progress with with skills and skills based hiring, and that facilitates along with the job seekers breaking the systems. That facilitates the changes in the recruitment process that just makes hiring, you know, better, more equitable, and that kind of stuff.
And I think what I’d be really What I’d be really excited about is if we could crack that skills thing that it means that it makes it easier, for people to move between occupations and move between disciplines based on the skills that they’ve got. I think that’s better for society. I think
that’s better for employers. And I think that’s better for everyone. So I would hope that that’s where we got to in ten years time in terms of just being able be able to be for people to get the job that they that they they’re gonna be really they’re gonna be really good at. So I’m taking that ultimate optimistic view. Thinking there’s gonna be a lot of change, and that’s gonna be this sort of general direction that we that we go in.
Charles: Yeah. Very good. Okay. So I’m gonna put my twenty thirty four glasses on here. This is what my glasses will look like in twenty thirty four and a and they’re not prescription. So so you’re a little fuzzy, but that’s alright. So I think that mobility for people to find a job that they’re good at is going to be greatly increased I think that there’s gonna be a lot of regulation that in in my mind honestly Well, I’m optimistic that things like the EUAI act and and having to certify where your training data came from and all this stuff is is gonna help. I truly believe that AI can remove bias when trained properly because, you know, humans have bias probably, and that’s how the stuff was trained, but I I firmly believe you can you can de bias these things as well to be more objective. So I I think we’re gonna find that and I think it might be regulatory pressure that that helps provide that. Now thinking that things will be more transparent is is hard just because as these neural networks and all these things are working get more and more and more complex, it’s gonna be harder to know that.
So we’re gonna be needing to look at the output that the ends justify the means kind of thing. I think it’s gonna be a lot more of a fluid process that happens a lot faster. I love tech gadget. So I have the Rayvan meta glasses. And I’ve talked about them on this show.
You can look at stuff and ask them what am I looking at, and they’ll tell you through the little speakers. They don’t have AR on them yet. But they will in the probably the next year, the newest version. I can imagine a time when I’m I’m actually interviewing candidate maybe face to face. And these things are giving me listening and giving me probing questions and, you know, helping me.
I I talked that somebody about that. And they said, yeah. But the candidate’s gonna be wearing them too, and they’re gonna be getting prompted on how to answer. And so I I do things might happen. Yeah.
We might have our personal agents interviewing, you know, other personal agents, but I just feel like we’re gonna have better resolution on who someone is and what’s required in the job, more fluidity to move between those things. If I I didn’t, think about what the hard part’s gonna be. And and while I’m talking about it, I’m gonna give you the luxury of a few minutes to think about it. So what what are the biggest challenges in hiring gonna be in in twenty thirty four? I don’t believe it’s gonna be that technology has completely replaced workers of every sort. I I think that there will be a replacement of some of this stuff. But if you look back to the you know, the luddites in the first industrial revolution, it created more jobs. Now granted there were no factories of in sort, you know, so there was a lot of open space then. But I guess I have to be a little optimistic about that. So what am I pessimistic about?
I think it’s gonna be a challenge to keep people in jobs. I think people are gonna be functioning way more as independent agents. So as an individual, I like that, as an organization, that might be hard for me. I might be constantly hiring and bringing people in. I might be having to deal with fractional people.
You know, I might have to deal with the fact that there’s huge shortage of talent because people can go into business for themselves so much easier. Maybe that’ll be backfilled by robots. I have no idea. So so for me, it’s it’s actually about the the employee population and who they are and managing that off the cuff because I didn’t even have this question in my nose. I just thought of it.
So so what do you think?
Matt: I agree with you there. I think that there are two things that are already baked in for Teddy’s time. So, you know, there’s not there’s not much you can be certain about about what’s not happening anytime. There’s two things that we can be. So, first of all, in the US and Europe, we have aging populations.
So there are lots of other countries around the world that have much younger populations. So, you know, we could see a shift in terms of labor and talent and all those kind of things. Now what state are you gonna do to to to fill the gap there? That’s a kind of an unknown. Yeah. But it’s very likely we’re gonna have we’re gonna have talent shortages because of that. I think the other thing is if we’re talking thinking about twenty thirty four, everyone who’s gonna be in the workforce in twenty thirty four is either already in the workforce or they’re currently in the education system. Yeah. Yeah. And speaking as a speaking as a parent of an eight year old, I think if you look at the education system and what the, you know, what what it’s currently teaching people in in a lot of countries, not every country, The day is not the skills for the sheet chat.
The young people coming through aren’t being equipped with the the skills that maybe they’re gonna need when they enter the workforce in ten years time. So I think that we’ve got we we got a talent and skills problem that is that is that is really, really built in, and people need to be thinking about that right now.
Charles: Yeah. So I have a ten year old. I would say that watching obnoxious people scream on YouTube is not a future skill, but my ten year old seems to spend a lot of time doing that. And I think, you know, I was gonna ask you once you said that he or she did do they know what do they talk about what they might wanna be when they grow up or an occupation? Or is there any of that going on?
Matt: Any Yeah. It could get big games designer.
Charles: Oh, nice.
Matt: He went from a fireman. He went from a firefighter to a computer game designer. Cut us overnight. So That’s
Charles: So, yeah.
Matt: And I think it I think it’s interesting as well because there is a big thing about YouTube and TikTok and how, you know, people consume media and how that that that changes everything. But also, a lot of it is people screaming each other that I don’t understand. But but also, so much knowledge that comes across in those in those meetings as well. So yeah. It’s really interesting.
Charles: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. So yeah. My my child’s never firemen plays a lot of video games. I he’s really into birds. So if I anything, I think you wanna be like a bird scientist or something. But here’s what I I do this a lot. I’ll come into the room and he’s watching, you know, against some guy screening. I’ve actually seen a few of those that are pretty entertaining, but The watching people play video games is is puzzles me.
But what I’ll do is grab the remote and say, let’s learn about something. And I’ll go I’ll go find a subject and we’ll watch some videos about that subject. He doesn’t default to that. But but I’m trying to demonstrate that there’s a lot out there on YouTube that is instructional for people, and I feel like that is actually I mean, come on. I love fixing things.
I’ve been able to fix all kind of stuff. There’s no way I’d be able to figure that out by watching, you know, all the stuff on YouTube. It’s a true revolutionary thing. And I just was reading that I don’t know if it’s OpenAI or one of the large language models. They actually now have started to transcribe the entire YouTube content to train their models.
So they’re actually taking the videos transcribing them and putting them into the model. So there’s gonna be a lot more knowledge
Matt: That’s,
Charles: you know, going on there.
Matt: That’s terrifying.
Charles: It is. It’s terrifying on the on the shouting part. So awesome conversation today. Thanks for being the guinea pig on the take it or leave it show. We’ll get your to send you me your address, and I’ll get you sure.
But anything you wanna leave or guess with, you know, how I think it’s obvious how they can follow you, but but give yourself a plug for your awesome podcast, and let’s hope some some of our listeners and viewers are gonna tune into that. You know?
Matt: Yeah. Absolutely. So anyone wants to connect with me I’m very easy to find on LinkedIn, and you can find recruiting feature in my podcast wherever you get your podcast. And also, the website recruiting feature dot com, there’s a there’s a kind of an archive of six hundred or eight six hundred episodes that are searchable by via content. So a great resource for looking into some of the topics that we’ve been talking about.
Charles: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. You’ve been an awesome guest all the way from close to Edinburgh, Scotland, and it’s a sunny day there. So that sure makes you pretty happy. Thank you very much.
Cheers.