“There is no one way to do recruitment right, there are many ways to do it right but even more ways to do it badly.”
-Bas van de Haterd
“The reality is that we’re in an era of experimentation. We have to experiment continuously.”
-Kevin Wheeler
Summary:
In this episode of Science 4-Hire I welcome two old friends, distinguished Science 4-Hire alumni, and talent acquisition experts, Kevin Wheeler and Bas van de Hatred. The show is dedicated to a deep dive into their new book “Talent Acquisition Excellence,”, which is a practical handbook for those who wish to learn how to create winning talent acquisition strategies and apply best practices using the holistic framework created by these two experts as their guide.
In our discussion we explore what excellence in talent acquisition actually looks like. In doing so, we delve into the book’s key themes, including the transformative role of artificial intelligence in hiring, the necessity for ethical frameworks in AI deployment, and the importance of adapting talent acquisition strategies to fit organizational culture.
One of the most important themes from our conversation is the necessity for talent acquisition professionals to adapt and evolve, emphasizing the need for experimentation and a strategic approach to integrating AI into talent acquisition processes.
Kevin and Bas also share their journey of collaboration during the pandemic, highlighting how their perspectives from different corners of the globe have influenced the book’s content. The conversation also addresses the challenges of navigating a landscape where technology outpaces policy, underscoring the need for talent leaders to innovate responsibly.
Key Takeaways:
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Multifaceted Approaches to Talent Acquisition: The book emphasizes that there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy for recruitment; success lies in customizing approaches to fit organizational culture.
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The Critical Role of AI in Hiring: Insights into how AI is reshaping the efficiency and scope of assessments, with a look towards future technologies like interactive holograms.
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Ethical Use of AI: The discussion sheds light on the ethical implications of AI in hiring, advocating for transparency and human oversight.
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Adapting to Technological Advances: The authors stress the importance of talent leaders being open to experimentation and adaptation in the face of rapid technological changes.
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Policy Development on AI Usage: A crucial takeaway is the immediate need for organizations to develop policies regarding candidates’ use of AI in applications.
Listeners will gain not only a nuanced understanding of the current state and future directions of talent acquisition but also practical advice on navigating these changes. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to stay at the forefront of hiring practices in the AI era while staying true to the foundations and frameworks required to do talent acquisition the right way.
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Full transcript
S4H Kev and Bas
Speaker 0: Welcome to Science for Hyre. With your host doctor Charles Handler. Science for Hire provides thirty minutes of enlightenment on best practices and news from the front lines of the improvement testing universe.
Speaker 1: Oh, and welcome to the latest edition of Science four Hire. I am your host doctor Charles Handler and today, I got a double shot here, two guests that are a great collaborator together and with others as well. And both of these guests have the distinction of being alumni nus, I guess, with two of you. It’s alumni nus of of the podcast. And boss. Boss Vanda hot. No. I’ve that was butchery. He’s gonna tell you how to pronounce it correctly. But he’s got the all time award of the third time on the show, and you’d think after three times I could pronounce his last name right, but such is not the case.
And Kevin Wheeler, whom I’ve known for, oh, gosh, I don’t know, twenty twenty plus years. At least, it’s been a great friend of mine over the years and always somebody who has a great perspective on things. So I’m gonna let you guys oh, and we’re here today, not only to just chew the, you know, digital fat about recruiting and recruiting in this crazy age of of unprecedented technology, but also for them to promote and talk about their new book, talent, acquisition excellence. And so I wanna give them an opportunity to talk about that. They are both excellent at talent acquisition, and their wisdom is gonna be super enjoyable and valuable for everybody. So let’s go ahead and kick off some intros boss. Tell us.
Speaker 2: So my name is Bosch from the Hatterd, and there’s no problem that no Englishman has ever pronounced that name correctly. It’s as Dutch as it gets. And I am, as you know, a consultant on all things talent acquisition and mainly on selection and I also run a research on corporate careers websites. And I am very honored that Kevin allowed me to write a book together with him, which started in the pandemic and took us a little longer to finish how we ever thought. We would and so, yeah, let’s talk about talent acquisition excellence and everything which has to do with the new ways we’re gonna recruit.
In the near future.
Speaker 3: Cool. And, Kevin, Europe. Well, thanks, Charles. It’s always great to see you and be on your podcast. I run the Future of Talent Institute, which is, I think, Tank, basically, we try to look at the future trends that are having an impact on all things talent.
We try to look out couple of years, if we can, look at the trends and just see what is going to shape the future of our industry. And obviously, Right now, it’s artificial intelligence and automation, which is a huge part of this. And that’s what we talk about pretty significantly in our book talent acquisition excellence. Great to be here.
Speaker 1: Cool. Very good. Yeah. Let’s talk about that. Kevin, you may not remember And I’ll be honest, I didn’t remember till I was cleaning out my office that you and I did a book together twenty two years ago or something like that.
About about assessment. Yeah. I wanted to to see if I had it on my bookshelf. I think it’s at home
because I was unpacking stuff from the attic. While we’re talking, I’ll I’ll call up some historical information here and see if I can find the name of it.
It’s probably not really available in a lot of places, but but I’ll do it. So Awesome. So you and Kevin’s in California, boss is in the Netherlands, so we’ve got and I’m in the middle of it all here. So we got different time zones. So thanks for making some time.
And I’m just gonna put you on the spot a little bit here before we get into the book and all that kind of stuff. I want to see each of you guys. What’s your number one thing? If you just had to leave, you know, less is more if you had to leave our listeners with one thing they need to be aware of and and think about for the future of recruiting. What is it?
Speaker 3: I think it’s pretty clear that artificial intelligence is about to change everything that we know about recruiting. And I think the most important thing for recruiters is to understand that a lot of what they do right now is going to be done by automation for them, and they’re gonna have to develop new skills to be effective and survive.
Speaker 1: Well put Well put. Alright. Boss, what do you got for us? Can’t say the same thing as Kevin either. Well, I guess you could.
Speaker 2: Of course, Jonathan. Now what I think and what I hope also people will read in the book is what we try to emphasize a lot of times is there’s there is no one way to do recruitment right. There are many ways to do it right, but even more ways to do it badly. Yeah. Completely wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: We use several models. Kevin has put several models in there. Some are complementary to each other. Some are actually contradictory. But that’s because for some forms of recruitment, you need one thing.
For others, you might need another, and it needs to be fitting with your corporate culture. So I think one thing is there is no one way, one right way. There are several really good ways to do it. But then again, not taking a specific route is the way to not do it. Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it’s it’s e I remind myself of this all the time because it it it applies to me. I break a lot of stuff, but it’s a lot easier to break something than it is to unbreak something. Found that to be pretty true. Right?
So it’s good to understand that on breaking things, is hard. And so get it right the first time as much as you can. And, you know, that’s one of the I think the most frustrating things over my career, and I’m sure it’s not my only I’m not the only one that that has that frustration is that when we get into organizations to do an intervention, we may see a lot of things that need to be changed, to get at the core that we wanna change, or to really get them in the right direction. And sometimes, it’s just too seismic because you’ve had all these different technology systems that have been put in place over the years. And, you know, people are heavily invested politically in the very various things that have been set up.
And it is hard to unknocked stuff and get your agenda through. And, Kevin, I’m sure you can this happened to you a thousand times more than me, but you can also come in with a lot of wisdom in boss two. You can come in with a lot of wisdom. And say, here’s my expert opinion on the things you need to do and they pay you, say thank you very much and don’t do any of it. So you
have that happening.
Too. You know?
Speaker 3: It’s all about change management, you know. I mean, change is something that none of us like. You know, we all are very comfortable where we are right now and change is never very rarely does anybody embrace significant change in their life. Right? So Yeah. It’s something you have to you have to be forced into, something that we really have to be kicked in the butt to do or have some leap year or somebody who says, this is what you’re gonna do even though you hate it. But, you know, a change just doesn’t happen when you say, oh, come on, sure. I’ll just do it this way. Okay? But this is not gonna work.
You know, unfortunately, that’s one of the lessons that I think you learn when you study change management.
Speaker 1: Howard Bauchner:
Speaker 2: And I think one of the other things we need to realize is, in most cases, when processes are broken, whatever it is, technology isn’t gonna fix a broken process. It’s just gonna emphasize the broken process. And that’s then another thing I hope that we try to really emphasize in the book. That technology is amazing, and we’re living in a time of unprecedented technological change, but if we don’t have a working process, you know, if if we if our strategy, if our our processes aren’t, right, you’re not gonna fix it. With an another technology layer yet again.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And throw an AI at something. It’s, you know, AI is not a solution. It’s a component.
So Kevin and I did find here. We published this in, well, global learning resources, which is your company, a screening and assessment best practices. So that was twenty, not twenty twenty. Oops, two thousand and one. And, you know, I’m thinking about it as we talk about change and change management.
I bet though if if I go back I know I have a copy of that book. I bet the best practices, the basic best practices for assessment, have not changed really at all. Now for the bigger context of it, yeah, probably they have, and that’s a different episode. Probably, I don’t wanna get to assessment focus here because you all bring a a nice broader perspective. So so what led you all to, you know, to to decide, hey, well, we gotta write a book And, you know, let’s do it. Tell tell us about that process a little bit.
Speaker 2: Well, truth is it started early in the pandemic and basically, we are both public speakers. So I reached out to Kevin like, well, what the hell are you doing with all his time? Except drinking more like me, and shall we do something used all with it. And shall we finally write write a book? That that that was basically the first thing, like, Let’s have some something to focus on during this pandemic when we’re both stuck at home and not standing on Covia. Inspiring people. Let’s let’s find a different way to inspire people. That was basically the the start of it all.
Speaker 3: You know, there’s a there’s a real need I felt, I think, Baz and I both felt for spreading the word really about what’s coming. And I think a lot of people are just not really aware. You know, they they kinda hear about this or that and they they see a a an app or a tool, but They
don’t put the big picture together. They don’t connect the dots. And I think one of the things we try to do in the book is just connect all the dots together and and show what could happen. You know, that’s really the
Speaker 2: yeah.
Speaker 3: That’s that’s the whole theme of the book. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Good. Yeah. And and And using the the just Kevin’s strategic thinking, you know, the the broader concepts, the stuff that the global TA leaders can roll out. I’m usually more on a tactical level, like with with the regional TA directors, like, how does that work out? In the Netherlands, what are specific case studies. And I think we really made it accessible for the broad TA community, not just the top leaders, not just the bottom. But basically, we’ve put something in there for for everybody. And what I personally really enjoyed, but I and I don’t know about you, Kevin, was it our discussion is about, yeah, that’s amazing for the US, but that doesn’t work in Europe. And then you’re like, yeah, it’s really funny that you say that, but the US doesn’t do it that way.
So we also made it like a global book Yeah. With with
Speaker 3: Not that I think is big defining characteristic. We talk about Europe. We talk about Asia. It’s not just US centric and ninety percent of the books that I gather either UK or US centric in their their thinking. Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, global’s great and, you know, I was just thinking Kevin specifically, boss, when you were saying about kind of being stuck at home, I mean, Kevin, what’s the book, and I’m not gonna equate you to the actual it’s not a book. It’s a movie. It could have been a book. I’m not gonna equate you to the actual characters like what he’s doing besides that that George Clooney movie in the air.
I don’t know where he’s, like, flying all the time. He never stops flying. So that’s what I think about Kevin’s constantly in motion going somewhere, so you must have felt like a caged animal during the pandemic court. Gotten into gardening like like I did, you know?
Speaker 3: Well, I got into lots of stuff. I got more into my photography, which I love. It’s got a lot more time doing that. And yeah, I did I did do some gardening. I did cooking. I did stuff that I’ve never owned before, but Yeah. It was a bit like a caged animal. But in a way, it was kind of it was kind of good because yeah. I think it was just a a good time that take pause.
Speaker 1: It really did offer us, you know, those opportunities whether we wanted it or not. For for me, I think the The biggest challenge I had was due in remote schooling with my at that time like kindergarten kid. I have trouble paying attention, you know, a five year old or six year old, whatever, definitely has trouble paying attention. And I found myself wanting to goof off and cut up just like my kid was. And he’s taken French immersion, so it was in French a lot of it. Yeah. It was it was challenging, but But fun, I guess. I mean, I worked from my own office for twenty years. So that that part of it wasn’t too too limiting, you know. And boss, what what about you?
I I don’t know anything about your hobbies or anything. I know you’re renovating a part of your
house with your dad, but like, You know, what did you do to pass the time besides fucking Kevin about writing a book? Well,
Speaker 3: That was a full track up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. A bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. That that was that was actually quite a job for chasing down Kevin. They they they say you revert back to kindergarten at at a certain age. Well, I felt like I was chasing a total of that sometimes.
But, no, the the renovation actually came after, and it’s it’s actually finished now. But, no, it’s it’s I mean, I’ve done lots of stuff. I I cycled in an insane amount. You know, it’s it’s I always loved being on my bike and now there wasn’t weren’t speeches to prepare, there weren’t events to organize, there wasn’t international travel to do. So, yeah, I spend a lot of time just working on?
Speaker 1: Yeah. So so, look, we got a kind of basic thing. I’ve skimmed it. I’ll be I’ll bet I haven’t read it, but there’s a lot of layers in there, a lot levels of detail for the macro all the way down to, hey, this is some, you know, specific stuff. So it’s a it’s a playbook and I think written by two real experts.
And and, you know, Kevin, he kinda gave us the entrée into, hey, all this stuff. Is gonna change and you combine that with what boss is saying of, hey, if you don’t do it right, you know, the first time it’s harder even to go back can change. So so if you think about the the combination of those two things, what we’re saying is let’s think pretty hard about the future and technology before we jump into it. And I can tell you I wonder what you guys’ opinion is. So I’m doing a little project where I’m I’m surveying having interviews with IOs that run large scale assessment programs like global companies about how they’re using technology.
And pretty much everybody is in the, hey, we need to wait and see about this even though it’s moving fast. We don’t necessarily wanna jump in with both feet so quickly and then, you know, realize we made mistakes, etcetera. The the hard part about that is it’s changing so fast that if you don’t choose a point to jump in, there’s always gonna be that thing in front of you of, you know, this is an unknown. But but, you know, what have both your experiences been working with Talent acquisition functions. I’m sure the questions have to be as they are to me when I do that work.
You know, what what should we be doing about this? So what What would you tell someone who asked you that, Kevin? No. I think,
Speaker 3: you know, I think we all have this idea that we’re gonna wait for some finished product to appear that we can just sort of plug in to what we’re whatever we’re doing.
Speaker 2: And
Speaker 1: Not a Swedish product. Sounds like a fit fit. It sounded like you said finished. So I was like, what about a finished
Speaker 3: product? Yeah. But we’re not we wanna we wanna try to test it and improve project that we can thrown in place. And the reality is that we’re in an era of experimentation. We have to experiment continuously.
Right? So you’re gonna have to try something with a set of goals in mind. And if they don’t achieve those goals, figure out why. And try something else, you know. So I mean, whenever you’re in a time of change like this, the only way to get through it is to be constantly experimenting and exploring alternatives.
Alright? And if you’re familiar with Dave Snowden in the UK, he was written the Kinephrine framework. And he talks a lot about this. When you’re in an era of uncertainty, of chaos, basically. The only way out of it is to experiment.
And try different approaches until you find one that works. So, you know, to me, the whole idea that, you know, human nature is that I’m just gonna wait till somebody makes the product that I can buy, that will do whatever I need, and that’s probably not gonna happen in your lifetime. Right? So you know, we’re in a tremendous era of innovation and exploration and whether it’s chat, GTP, or whatever it is, you know, tomorrow, it’s gonna be completely different than it is today. So you have to be willing
Speaker 1: to experiment. Gotcha. So what have you had any any of your clients course, you’re not the name name. Have you been involved in any experimentation with anything that’s super interesting that you felt like, wow, this is pretty cool. I’m glad these people are willing to do this. We really are gonna learn a lot or learn that we don’t wanna do this or whatever it is.
Speaker 3: It’s kind of a little bit like medical science. You know, you wanna introduce a new drug, but you don’t wanna kill anybody. Right? You want new techniques, but you don’t wanna, you know, leave them permanently disabled. Right?
And I think it’s the same in recruiting. We wanna try new things, but we don’t wanna have bias or prejudice. You know, we don’t wanna hire the wrong people. You know, we don’t wanna get in trouble legally. So you’re kind of in the rock in the hard place, right, when you’re in recruiting. And I think that’s part of the problem that, you know, you just can’t throw any old solution out there. You have to have some guidelines and rails around it understand the ethics behind what you’re doing and inform people about what you’re doing, and present it as an experiment. You know? So whether you’re using, let’s say, using chat, GTP, to a chatbot to screen people. Tell them what you’re doing.
You know, tell them I’m gonna use this chatbot. We’re trying it out to see and get your feedback on it. Right? So be open and honest about your experimentation and don’t try to hide it or cover it up or expect that it’s gonna be perfect. It’s not, you know, it’s it’s not yet.
It’s gonna take years before we’re gonna get to the point where we can just turn the chatbot loose. Right? So, I mean, it’s really a matter of just having a common sense practical approach to what you’re doing and keep people informed and be transparent about what you’re doing. I think that’s really the key to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So boss, have you had an opportunity to advis on or get involved with a really interesting use of technology and talent acquisition or recruitment that you feel is you know, hey, our our book kinda supports this. This is really something that, you know, I think has a lot of opportunities
Speaker 2: Well, I’ve I’ve seen some, yeah, we’ve at some organizations with, for example, we took last phase assessments to first phase assessments. So instead of assessing basically the candidate, we already decided we were gonna hire, but we needed you know, to check off for
legal reasons that an external assessor agreed on it. We moved it all the way up front. Which was an interesting experiment, which which had eventually some downsides. But the the idea was good, the execution a little less.
I was recently very much from the sidelines, but involved in an organization which thought they were gonna use and let’s call it an AI based tool on assessing somebody’s willingness or desire to work at that specific organization turned out that wasn’t the big factor what made somebody successful and then which is actually also very much rooted in the book, go back to your core. In their case, they were used to, you know, their entire culture was build your own, hire graduates, train them, train them up, etcetera, etcetera. So now they are moving towards something which fits that sculpture, which is hire on potential, but actually take the assessment data with you on the future development trajectories of you know, the the graduates something which they did back in the day before we actually had really great assessments or we didn’t asses them that well. And then for some reason, they lost their way. And now they’re going back to their original culture of of hiring for potential graduate, you know, training people, an internal mobility, which is basically what we keep saying in the book all the time as well, make sure that your talent acquisition strategy fits your your corporate culture, your DNA?
Speaker 1: Talent acquisition has become more and more marketing too. Right? I mean, you gotta have a recruitment marketing function. And when you’re marketing, hopefully, you’re talking about the essence of your company and what value you have to the world and to your perspective, employees and and customers as well. Right?
So employees are job applicants and hopefully, employees too and customers these days should be one and the same. Right? And so you you need to have that attitude in my opinion anyway that you need to serve your recruits, you know, with the same cared feeding as you do. And that, I mean, that should have been the mantra for hundreds of years. I don’t know how much it really has been, but but it should be, you know.
Speaker 2: First, you have to know, Charles, what your stand for? What is your culture? You know, you you you said you need recruitment marketing telling what it is you want or what, you know, what type of people you want, what your culture is. The thing is, especially in major or big organizations, which we see now in the organizations only got bigger and merged, etcetera, etcetera. And there are so many departments with so many different cultures. I mean, I’ve been inside several of the the the big four accounting firms. And I can tell you, their merger and acquisition team and their fiscal teams have a completely different culture, but they also even three on core values sometimes. So it’s amazing what you can communicate and how you can basically get people to apply, you can treat them like like customers. But then if the product you you sold just doesn’t fit reality, you’re you’re still gonna go completely wrong.
Speaker 3: I mean, there really is no such thing as the corporate culture, in my opinion, really, if Yeah. Every department, every division, and even every hiring manager has their own culture, right, sub culture. If you wanna call it that, there may be some overarching values that a company has. But to your point about marketing, I mean, absolutely, it’s essential. I mean, you know, we’ve got a lot of things going on.
You’ve got a younger generation of workers who really don’t wanna work for corporations. Speaker 1: Yeah. I know. Not that.
Speaker 3: Not their primary desire. We’ve got fewer and fewer university graduates now. I just read an article out of a hundred graduates of a university. Only five will actually work in the field they studied. Which is shocking and amazing.
And that’s in the US. I I think, but I think it also applies to some degree everywhere. So if you’re a company and you want to attract really hard to find skills. You’ve got to market. Otherwise, they’re not gonna even know that you’re that you’re a desirous of having them. Right? So marketing is just a core element and that may be the essence of talent recruitment of talent acquisition where a lot of the routine stuff can be automated, but the marketing strategy and messaging is not something that’s gonna be automated right away.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you know, one important note I’ll maybe it’s a little side note, but values, you know, work values, corporate values, and corporate culture are not the same thing. Right? I mean, you you have, gosh, examples like I’ve worked for companies where innovation is there. One of their core missions and they do.
They absolutely do bring innovative things in. Is that really the same as culture? Maybe there’s some overlap, but in the psychology world, you know, they’re not necessarily the same. But the words there there’s some similarity and the words get badtered around, you know, meaning basically the same thing. And without real standardization of what we mean sometimes. It’s it’s hard to to speak in absolutes. Right?
Speaker 2: That that’s actually why we made definitions of what we mean with certain terms when it comes to marketing, culture, DNA, etcetera, in the book. And we describe, like, this is what we call your brand DNA. This is your well, what we describe as your employee value proposition. This is them what we So we we define those terms and then said, how do you deal with them? And then said, which technology can support you using them. That’s basically how we went about this because we we had so many discussions about this during the writing of the book at a high at some point where we’re like, yeah, let’s let’s just write down a definition here. Of what we mean and then people could argue about our definition, but at least it’s clear that yeah. What we wrote down was based on that that And,
Speaker 1: yeah, part of my training has always been to, you know, operationally define any term. I mean, we’re just so so ingrained with that that, you know, I typically do that too. Well, let what about some stories? Have either one of you all been, like, had a client. I’ll just open it up because there’s other you know, there’s various scenarios, but Have you been involved or had any discussions with actual end users about a really kind of wacky or none, like, you know, from an AI and a and a basically, you know, computational perspective, whatever have you all been and disgust or a bit involved with or whatever.
Some really stuff that year, like, five years ago, there’s no way we would have even seen this or this is a glimpse into the future. You know, I’m so happy to be talking about it now or it could even be a disaster where you’re like, oh my god. If client tried that. I don’t wanna be any part of it. Right?
So anyway, so stories from the front lines, man, what do you got?
Speaker 3: Well, I think I think one that one that I like is what some of the RPOs are doing, and that’s a recruitment process outsourcing companies Right. That basically do recruiting for corporations. And I think partly because they’re for profit and they have a revenue stream that
they can invest in technology. They have really pioneered the development of some pretty exciting and interesting use of technology and recruiting. Mhmm.
For them, it’s a it’s a it’s a financial advantage to help them reduce the number of people they need to do something and increase their profit margins. So It’s been very stressful. They have produced they’ve introduced some modules now that our AFIN companies can buy stand alone from not not buying the RPO service, just buy the technology. So there’s some really interesting things going on in that space, and I think that’s going to continue to grow over the next few years. And a lot of companies are adopting that technology.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So automation Kevin, is that what you’re talking about mostly automation?
Speaker 3: Yeah. It’s automating, like, a part of the process, not the whole process yet. For example, it’s helping it’s helping streamline sourcing and the initial screening of candidates, and taking that workload off of the recruiter.
Speaker 1: Gotcha. Vas, what do you got for us?
Speaker 2: Well, one of the cases which at least found interesting, I’m still not sure if it’s from a bias perspective, if I completely agree with it, but with they don’t care that much about bias in that part of the region of that part of the world, which was actually it’s in the book Emirates Airways. And they get so many customer support applicants, basically, because they hire internationally. They were doing video interviews, and they basically trained an algorithm on who would the recruiter select and who wouldn’t the recruiter select. And they build a linguistic I know you recently had a linguistics professor in in your podcast as well. They build based on the language, you know, the words they used and they they managed to match those with being service oriented, which a customer service rep needs to be.
And they were now able to, I think, automatically select about one third of all the applicants, and they simply got a job without a recruiter ever saying yes to them. So they they saved tons on on recruiters looking at videos. They were auto rejecting a lot of people also because of the quality of English. Yeah. And So basically, I think they had, like, one third of all the people only needed to be reviewed by humans.
That was an interesting case study. Yeah. And like I said, and there there are several others which I recently came across an IT firm which which hired graduates, upskilled them, and put them at big operations. And They were able to by using data analysis over certain assessment technology, they were able to define which type of IT job fits you? You know, there’s they were still depending on an IT diploma.
So you had to finish college, which is quite normal in the Netherlands and and not as expensive as in the US. But and they now had a ninety five percent accuracy, not only on saying this is, you know, you’re better of a software engineer, you’re a project lead, you’re a scrum master, but also putting them in specific companies because they know, like, a discounting firm. We know this specific skill is over rated. So people who are great at this need to go there and here we have a building society and they overemphasize uncertain skills. And they said we now have a ninety five percent satisfaction rate from our customers on the people we place.
Speaker 1: Cool. That sounds awesome. Yeah. I think, well, I know, on the on the thing you’re talking about for Emirates, that’s really interesting. I’m working on a product idea right now that’s similar, but has some more dimensions, which has been really fun because I’m starting to
get into learning how how would I train models like this?
And I well, the first thing I learned is I need to hire somebody else. But but at least I’m understanding, like, you know, the the big picture of it, which is which is fun, you know. And and actually, Bosto, you know, you’ve been real helped to me just in my work track in the market and stuff. The number of vendors in the Netherlands selling predictive hiring tools and some of the more interesting use cases to me is really it’s notable because you don’t have many other countries. The US and the UK have the most of these type of firms.
And there’s at least five or six I can think of from the Netherlands. They’re doing doing some interesting things and a lot of those things that I I think While they’re laudable, you know, it’d be hard to get those done in the US. Some of them are sketchy, whatever it is. But we’re starting to see, I think, more and more new models. Models that can be scary to people, worried about risk, etcetera.
And that’s a viable thing. Obviously, there’s across the board, there’s there’s, you know, ethical considerations that are that are happening that we they’re not happening fast enough to keep up you know. But, I mean, Kevin, have you had have you worked if clients who are really concerned and, you know, kind of advising them on how do we how do we make sure we’re building an ethical, you know, platform here? Seems like something you’d be into.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely. Fact, most of the clients are very wary of using the technology, both from a personal inclination and because their legal department, is, you know, breathing down their neck around the legality of using some of these tools. So, what I’m finding is the large companies are very slow to pick up on this because of those concerns that they have. I find that a lot more experimentation is happening in the the small companies.
That don’t have to don’t worry so much about these things or don’t have big legal departments. So there’s several really interesting end to end automated recruitment solutions that I’ve looked at recently. They they pretty much promised to do everything from sourcing to right up to presenting them to the hiring manager. And they’re very they’re very they’re very good. They seem to be quite quite well designed, but there’s no big company that’s gonna use those tools today.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They just do much of our revenue. So smaller companies are definitely experimenting.
And I think, like, most things in life, the little guys that do all the the early stage Mhmm. Learning and discovering and testing. So I don’t expect I’m gonna see other than maybe an IBM where it just has a a huge infrastructure and ability to do this kind of thing. But other than a company like that, you’re not gonna see a lot of big companies doing really exciting innovative stuff on a big scale. They may do it on a small scale or certain things.
But and they get worried. I mean, they get scared like the Amazon case, which still, even though that was years ago, where Amazon, you know, had an algorithm that was selecting only men for jobs because the data they trained it on was only male oriented. So the the algorithm thought that they only wanted men. And even though that’s
Speaker 2: Which they actually never went life with, and they still got life with. Right? They they they actually had that was one of the very few times They had a great auditorium system, and they killed the project because they saw this happening, and now they still got blamed for it. So I understand that people don’t wanna experiment anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, they get very scared.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You you end up with a stigma like, you know, higher view, they they’re you still find people that are concerned about facial recognition, etcetera. This is not a commercial for them, but they’ve they actually first of all, that was a small percentage of their algorithm from the beginning, and now it’s completely removed, but they still bear the scars in the marketplace of of that kind of thing. So, you know, you do have to think about what you’re doing and and make it, you know, long lasting in with with with chat GTP too. You know what I mean? You can’t really have enterprise level systems that are utilizing chat GTP is the as the large language model engine without a lot of risk. You know, that’s why I think people will take a an open source and and train it you know, to to to on their own closed data set, which is we’re seeing, you know, more and more being able to leverage that. Because, Jeff, GTP is one large language model. You know, there’s millions of them out there. So so what I’m I’m curious what’s your I wouldn’t call it guilty pleasure, but what’s the thing that you might think you shouldn’t admit that you use Chachi TP four.
Right? You’re seek I’ll tell mine. I’ll start out with mine, and then you guys can tell yours or make something up if you want. But for me, I I had a I’ve had, like, in my filing cabinet a a kid’s book, that I wanted to write for a really, really long time. And I have basic story idea, but never written one of those, didn’t know how to execute it.
And I worked four, I’m still doing it. You know, working with ChatGTP. It’s been a real resource. It’s not writing it for me, but it’s telling me I can research things. It helps me break things down into, you know, what’s the right format, etcetera.
And so I’ve been able to move the ball forward, you know, quite a bit. So I’m not afraid to admit that. That’s something that I’m doing. I don’t know when that book will be out. I don’t wanna talk about it much more because I I wanna do it before I talk about it.
But what about what about you guys? Don’t be afraid.
Speaker 2: No. No. Well, it’s actually I I I’m a pro I’ve got a pro account for Chegg Epti these days, and I’m actually loving using Dolly, which is the the the picture engine of JD PPT, way, way too much. So I use it a lot for getting photos into my the white papers I write on on all kinds of topics. I basically I stopped buying stock photos, and now Dolly is generating everything. And then in the evenings, I’m using Dolly to make pictures of groups of friends that I have, friends that play in bands and ask Cheddar GPT if it knows the band and create images in van Go style stuff like for the band. That’s one of that that recently I got asked by my friends to please stop posting those photos. Yeah.
Speaker 1: She said she wanted me and Kevin and I before the thing and it didn’t look. So Kevin, I had the glasses. Kevin did it. Kevin, you look fantastic in that thing. You you look like Hollywood,
Speaker 3: where should I look are?
Speaker 1: And I I love you very distinguished, I would say, but I think it might have gotten anyway, I use Dolly all the time too. It is awesome and hilarious. And, you know, I just went to the GTP store, which is now available. And I think one of the things that’ll be really interesting with that, I also entered in hiring. Just what GTPs have people built for hiring. There’s so many of them you go to future media dot dot ai, I think it is. That’s a tracking of all
the different you know, stuff people have been building as well. You put hiring in there. There’s literally hundreds of apps. So you could imagine recruiter just go and renovate, saying, oh, I’m gonna use this you know, a cool GPT tool somebody built to do x y or z.
And with with no understanding of the quality or anything like that, but but those are also good for things like dolly. Like, I I had one. I asked it to to break down my writing style and articulate it. So it could I I want to see could it write a blog in my own voice, which it failed at but but but because I’m a little complicated as a writer. But what about you, Kevin?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I use it for research all the time. I mean, it’s just become my my new Google, I guess you could call it, where I just, you know, ask it. When I’m writing one of my articles or, you know, one of my columns, I just If there’s a question about a figure, a a date, a data point, can you give me an example of somebody that’s done x, y, or z? It’s been it’s been really, really helpful for that. So I think for me, it’s primarily been used for research and informing me about things or looking up looking up stuff that otherwise would take me forever, you know, to find in other ways who said this and what book
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: Just like this. Yep. And it really quickly identifies the author or whatever for me and what it just saves tons of time.
Speaker 1: It’s incredible.
Speaker 2: Oh, so maybe one of the cool things to to to end on is also we actually in the book and our publisher denied it, so it’s in a in a frame now. But we actually ask CAGPP to write the introduction of the chapter on ethics on AI. And so – and it came back with a really great ethical debate on on using artificial intelligence and and or the privacy concerns writing credits concerns and everything else that go goes with it. So we actually but we were forbidden by the by the publisher to use AI generated content in the book except for saying upfront there with AI generated content. But we actually played around with letting AI write certain parts of the book, but we have to
Speaker 1: to Don’t deep fake your readers now. Come on. That’s the thing. I just played around with the text to video. I posted on LinkedIn today, although this will air a month, but later, but it’s called in NVIDIA, I think, or NVIDIA.
And you tied in one prompt, and it it creates a video for you. I’ve asked at different times to take a voice of a narrator. So this one I asked to take the voice of a squirrel, So it made the whole video about squirrels. And the squirrel’s voice was actually a British male, but the whole video about hiring was just narrated what it just had pictures of squirrels doing stuff. And so, you know, that was one prompt.
I know you can work with it more, but that’s gonna be you know, a future that we’re gonna we’re gonna end up with. I could even imagine if somebody taken a, like, a video interview and deep faking the you know, having the a text to video person or just even having the the a video avatar answer the questions for them. So we’re getting into a crazy new world when it comes, you know, to all this stuff. And we’re we’re all gonna experience that together, and there’ll be some laughs surprise probably with it all, but but we can’t stop it at this point. So as we as we play out here, question for you to both answer start with you, Kevin.
So what if the if a talent leader came to you and said, where should I put my money right now? Where should I where should I invest? Given all the stuff that’s going on, what should I invest? And that could be technology, it could be planning, whatever it is, what would you advise them to do?
Speaker 3: I think the a good entry point for starting to use technology effectively is assessing screening candidates, the initial screening of candidates. And I think that the tools are are fairly good now to do that. There’s lots of them, which I’m sure you are well aware of. And if you have a good accurate job description. That is actually what the hiring manager is looking for. I think you can do extremely good job of of screening out candidates that just are not qualified or not gonna fit that bill. Yeah. So to me, the sweet spot to start would be in that initial screening process. And even some of the assessment process. The other area that I think is being used by some clients, some of my clients is using CADDP to help rewrite job descriptions
Speaker 1: Mhmm.
Speaker 3: And make them more effective. That’s done with human oversight, obviously. But You take a a very boring job description and you ask GTP to make it more interesting or whatever. It’s doing a pretty good job at that. So there are definitely areas where I think TA leaders can start to use the technology effectively.
And those are those are two areas.
Speaker 2: I would actually start at a job description, and I’m probably not used JDPT, but an actual trained tool for it. The best results I ever got at companies is by implementing tools like Textio and just writing inclusive and amazing job descriptions just to attract the right talent. Which, as Kevin said, is also then the base for a better prescreening tool. Because if you don’t know what you’re hiring for, then how to help a new screen on it. And the other thing I would definitely look at even though it’s probably not there yet, is internal mobility. See if you can get AI to identify the best people within your organization or maybe even within your ATS. A CRM system, your candidate CRM system who are fit for the job. But the very first thing I would advise every talent leader to do right now is have a policy on candidates using AI to apply. Because whatever you do, And I’m not saying you should allow it or not allow it. But whatever you do, you can’t leave it up to the recruiter and to hiring manager to decide what to do with you need a policy and you need it yesterday.
Speaker 1: So while we were talking, I just wrote. I just prompted chat https to write a job description for your job because we were talking about that. So the I I can’t read the whole thing because I wrote a lot, but The job title is AI language model assistant. The location is virtual online, and the job type is full time twenty four seven availability and the just reading the job description. As a chatGTP AI language model assistant, you will be responsible for engaging in conversations with a wide variety of users, answering queries, providing information, generating creative content and assisting with problem solving task.
You will operate in a text based environment and handle requests spending numerous topics and domains and your goal will be to provide accurate relevant and timely responses, ensuring a high quality user experience. I mean, it’s pretty pretty funny here. There’s a lot of stuff in the middle I
won’t bore you guys with, but but the final thing is note this position does not require physical presence travel or traditional office hours. As the AI operates in a virtual environment accessible
worldwide. There’s not many people that could could meet that job description, but sounds like a perfect job description for for chat g t p.
You know?
Speaker 3: I was gonna say it sounds like a job description for a robot or a a bot. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 1: Well, that’s what it is for or don’t let it tell you otherwise. Although, it will always tell you that. So great. What a good conversation as always with you all again, we didn’t even we we scraped into topics that we could spend all day talking about, you know, and there’s just so many
there’s that’s the thing that’s happening to me. I get overloaded overwhelmed. I’m just constantly. I feel like I’m caught up in this thing because I’m I’m really, really into this whole thing right now. And I and I probably will be forever, but but it creates it’s moving so quickly and you read so much new stuff. It creates this this whirlwind around me. I’m always trying to be calmer and you know, more centered and it’s it’s harder in this vortex of of technology that we can access to do, you know, all kinds of stuff.
It’s nuts.
Speaker 2: And you know what, Charles? That was actually one of the great things about writing this book with Kevin. At some point, you’re like, no. This is the scripts. This is where we’re gonna stick to, and we had to to to keep each other on point several times that we’re like, no. We’re not gonna add I I I told Kevin in several times. No. We’re not gonna add anymore to the the the manuscript. And The great thing is writing a book because it needs to have at least five or ten years of value. So you really need to think about the fundamentals of the world that we’re in. And I think if if writing the book really helped us both focus on what are the true fundamentals of the thing we’re going through right now. What is height? Who what it? Who?
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. And this is a final code here. I do remember the book, and I actually have a copy of it. But I just never I had to really you had to really kick my brain to get me to remember it. But I was looking through a a file cabinet of old global learning resource things, and I saw that book in there, and I totally forgot about it.
I have to go we’re done here, I’m gonna go try to find it.
Speaker 1: Me too, I pulled it out of the attic when I was finding a bunch of books that I was going through. So Anyway, well, good stuff. So let let everyone I mean, both of you all are pretty active on LinkedIn just as we all are and and you know, often and well networked and always amazed and impressed by the network that you guys have. So beyond that is her, you know, it’s like I asked people how do people follow you and they all say LinkedIn and I’m like, why am I even asking this question? But it’s It’s perfunctory as part of my job here. So so last minute pitch where to find you and what you’re working on.
Speaker 2: Well, if I can do a shout out here for all your listeners, one of the bucket list items that still on my list is I wanna be a professional speaker at an American conference. I actually had five out of four out of seven con six consonants now but the US is still lacking. So just get me over there in the US as well and get me on a stage. You can meet me in real life.
Speaker 1: I’ll help you because I’ve been wanting to to speak overseas a lot. I’ve only done it twice. Once an amp sterdam and once in with Kevin in Australia, I think a couple times in Australia, actually. So so I I wanna get Yeah. Over there too.
I love to travel. So anyway, you helped me. I’ll try to help you. Kevin, what about you?
Speaker 3: For me, I just subscribed to my free newsletter, f o t news dot future talent dot org. I know that’s a big mouth, but f o t news dot future talent dot org or just look for future of talent newsletter or whatever. Future talent
Speaker 1: I can endorse that. I get it. And I’ve been getting it for a long time, and it’s really good. So so awesome. Thank you all.
So very much. For your time and for sharing the book. And of course, the book, I would say the same thing, but I’m sure it’s available on Amazon. No? Yes.
Of course, it is.
Speaker 3: Yes. It is. Yeah. Yep. Yep.
It’s available on Amazon and on many other including Target in the US and sites in the UK and Europe as well.
Speaker 1: Nice. Here we go. As we wind down today’s episode to your listeners, I want to remind you to check out our website rockethire dot com and learn more about our latest line of business, which is auditing and advising on AI based hiring tools and talent assessment tools. Take a look at the site. There’s a really awesome some FAQs document around New York City local law one forty four that should answer all your questions about that complex and untested piece of legislation.
And guess what? There’s gonna be more to come. So check us out, we’re here to help.