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Indeed's Automated Trainwreck: Indeed has rolled out an AI "Apply for Me" feature that uses automated trying to pinky-swear they comply with the EU AI Act to Pope Leo dropping south-side Chicago shade on automated First, let's talk about automation bias. Chad Sowash (32:09.982) It's explicitly mandates that humans must combat automation bias. the real problem Joel Cheesman (34:43.115) So the world is AI, we're AI, we're automation, we're like that's what we are

Build Your TA powerhouse with tech, automation and showcasing revenue growth. I'm a part of Adway and we do automated social recruitment marketing enabling a 24/7 storytelling experience in social media to attract your most desired candidates, fully automated while leaving the bias out. up yes there's a lot of talk of the rise of AI and automation in recruitment. I would argue that there are certain processes which will be automated.

Driven by PhD Tyler Weeks, the company is strongly committed to analytics and automation. And I run a team called Analytics and Automation. Joel: Well, what a great coincidence that we talk about automation so much on the Joel: Intel, not a small company, but you lead analytics and automation and you #Intel #Automation #analytics #Recruitment #recruiting

On this UNCOMMON exclusive, the boys cover everything from automation, the future of sourcing and why Uncommon automation helps recruiters cut their sourcing time by 75%. Chad: Close, it's called automation. It's simple, actually. We've had many guests come on and say, automation is going to make sourcing irrelevant. I do see some of it being, a lot of it being automated.

Number two is automation, right? So as companies have the resources to automate much of this stuff, whether it be with robotics or software working although you get, in contrast, you get people saying, there'll be more opportunities built with automation So we have globalism, we have automation, we have the gig economy, and I'm asking you to just rate those So if you have to thing, for example, in response to the automation point, I just say like the aging

Joel: You can even automate that. Johnny: Yeah, you can. [crosstalk 00:14:11] can automate it. Joel: And this is an example, not automated in this case, but texting is sort of He said there's automation software, but the companies he was dealing with, they are hotels and motels Do 10% less next year, like automation's going to do that.

flat because of rising competition from low paid workers in foreign countries, aka globalization and automation

The Show takes on many different aspects of automation with more of a SkyNet tone. Companies like Uber, Intel, Google, Ford, and Brilent are pushing the automation envelope and we – mere

seekers can work or not, the success of TextRecruit, the ridiculousness of Talentegy and even discuss the automation

recruiter and author of "The Robot-Proof Recruiter," thinks employers can effectively battle the bots of automation You have so much noise around the technology can just automate everything you're doing and you're just That's automated, the response bit, but then the human, it feels like they've got some clarity and certainty obviously I think high volume is one that is something to pay attention to because that's being attacked by automation #Robots #recruiting #Automation #Technology

This week, the boy wonders discuss LinkedIn’s ongoing ubiquity in news and finally catching up to Facebook and Twitter on this one key offering, eavesdropping on employees and gauging morale via Slack, Hipchat and others, more end of the world chatter from people much smarter than you, Yik Yak and the death of anonymity and another job boards aren’t dead story. The Chad and Cheese Podcast is proudly sponsored by America’s Job Exchange, WebClipDrop (use coupon code HIREDAILY2017) and Beyond.com/cheddar. #LinkedIn #Slack #Vervoe #YikYak #Hipchat

adopting because before, I mean, once I got in front of the Tengai and started to interact, it was like an automatic basically when we launched the first product, 1st of September, which is the combination between the automatic So, so the first score is automatic and that's based on personality of the candidate related to general like the whole, the group, the group of candidates, they get interviewed, you have the first score automatic

In this week’s episode of HR’s most dangerous podcast, the boys cover more automation – this time in the marijuana industry – with Bloom Automation, unlimited PTO, a more official report on CareerBuilder

It's a hype-free discussion around “AI and Automation" Aaron Matos - CEO of Paradox Olivia Yongue - Director It's a hype free discussion around AI and automation. Whether you solve that problem with AI or automation or you have humans doing it, if you are solving Automation platform. #TAtech #Paradox #AllyO #KRT #AI #Automation

But it's going to be hard to automate that because you know, who else has titles of drivers, people who How senior is your team, what does your budget look like, how automated you need X and Y and Z processes So one is sourcing, the other is email automation. So like just use an email automation tool. There's a whole bunch out there. #recruiting #Technology #sourcing #AI #Automation #ATS

UK-based and focused car has tickled the industry's funny bone recently. With a series of marketing strategies that have pushed the boundaries of good taste (and made our eyes bleed a little), founder Gareth Peterson and team have gotten our attention. Yeah, they can cut through the clutter, but does their product have what it takes to face the Firing Squad and come out alive? You'll just have to have a listen, mate. Brought to you by Pandologic, a programmatic job advertising platform that delivers a significant increase in job ad performance without any wasteful spending PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps forward thinking employers create world class hiring and retention programs for people with disabilities. Pandologic (0s): pandoIQs, Programmatic recruitment advertising platform helps employers source talent faster and more efficiently than ever thanks to predictive algorithms, machine learning and AI. Buzzword, overdose alert. Yeah. Pando was on the cutting edge of Programmatic, while being deeply rooted in the recruitment industry. pandoIQ provides an end to end Programmatic job advertising platform that delivers a significant increase in job ad performance without any waste spending to maximize the ROI on your recruitment spend.And their AI enabled algorithms use over 48 job attributes and more than 200 billion historical job performance data points to predict the optimal job advertising campaign. Pandologic (51s): The machine does all that shit. That shit sounds expensive! Think again Cheeseman, pandoIQ provides an end to end job advertising solution that delivers a significant increase in job ad performance without any wasteful spending. Sold! How do I get started? Go to Pandologic.com to request a demo and tell him Chad and Cheese sent you. Ooh. They have a chat bot too, that we can talk to. Oh, kill me now. Firing Squad INTRO (1m 20s): Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad! CHAD SOWASH & JOEL CHEESEMAN are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they got what it takes to make it out alive? Dig a fox hole and duck for cover kids the Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Joel (1m 42s): The British are coming. The British are coming. What's up, everybody. Welcome to firing squad. These are your favorite podcasters. I'm Joel Cheesman joined as always by Chad Sowash and today we have a super special firing squad. The myth, the legend, the, the, the envelope pushers Caroo from out of Manchester. England are here. You've seen their videos. You know them, you love them. You can't get enough. Gareth Gareth Petersen. Welcome to firing squad my friend. Gareth (2m 18s): Hey guys. Nice to finally meet you. Chad (2m 21s): (Music playing) Some sexy tunes right there. Joel (2m 23s): Oh, for, for listeners real quick. Caroo is the company that sent Chad and I, a pair of bikini underwear and a condom. So I'll leave it to you now, Gareth, to describe who you are and we'll get to your company in a second, but tell us about you Gareth (2m 39s): About me, right? Okay. I'm Gareth Pearson. I'm a father of two. Believe it or not. And I'm the managing director for a little known startup in Manchester called Caroo. We're a technology-based business. And we essentially use a lot of data to match candidates to the right jobs. Joel (2m 57s): Excellent. Chad, tell him what he's won. Chad (2m 59s): Gareth, you lucky bastard, you will have two minutes to pitch Caroo. At the end of two minutes, you will hear that bell then Joel and I will hit you with rapid Q and A. If your answers start to get boring and they shouldn't get boring on this episode, kids, Joel's going to hit you with the crickets, that's your signal to tighten up your game. At the end of Q and A, you will receive either a big applause, that's right, you'll be able to buy all the black latex you want. Golf clap, you're probably gonna need to keep that Caroo branded toilet paper around and keep it in stock. Joel (3m 40s): Keep it in your pants. Chad (3m 41s): Then last but not least the firing squad, this ain't the thing, man. You're going to have to jump on Facebook. Marketplace, sell all that S and M gear because you're going to need the cash dude. In three, two, one, your two minutes starts. Gareth (3m 58s): A Caroo. We do things differently as you were about to see, firstly, thanks, Chad and Mr. Cheese for having me and these two minutes to introduce our strategy. So this British chap wrote a rap, that's probably crap, but it's our first podcast and we want to leave our stamp. This might be the best chance that a Chad and cheese club and not the sound of a gun hammer, smacking a bullet on the ass. And obviously and selfishly, I'm trying to talk to that attracts brands that want to match to relevant talent in chat. It's as simple as that and in so doing puts Caroo on the map, but wait, the current cartography, isn't the sort of geography that professionals want to see. And through using Caroo, you will see what these people expect from our delivery. They didn't want agencies, they wanted control and transparency, profile anonymity because alas, LinkedIn shows everything and anyone can contact me. Gareth (4m 40s): Even shows stuff, not conducive to diverse teams and inclusivity. Finally, job recommendations need to be a fit for me because relevancy is key, then and only then should you notify me. To enable this we use algorithms and technology. Not using job titles because they mean something different to everybody. You've seen it yourself type into Indeed. Yeah. I look for marketing manager in they're promoted post. Head of IT. I mean, fuck me, Indeed give them back the money please. And last week I told LinkedIn I was open to opportunities. First one I received was PA to an MD, no read, that's not for me. So people said, focus on skills and experience G. We listened, designed and delivered accordingly. We're not about volume, that's a false economy. You don't have time to manage all of those. CVs are ready-made shortlist is what you need with candidates prioritized accordingly. Gareth (5m 22s): Is it perfect? No, it never will be, but that's just tech. We move fast and improve iteratively. And what you see now isn't a patch and what it's going to be. You want credibility. We've worked with Adidas. Added Ask Jim Sharp Disney and over 400 SMEs, the BBC, but we still consider this MVP. So thanks again, Chad and Cheese and the wider recruitment communities. You welcomed me and shared your expertise that helped shape our experience in technology. Now, if I've got this right, that's a two minute delivery and now it's time for me to drop the M I C Joel (5m 50s): And our listeners can learn more at Gareth (5m 55s): Caroo.co.uk Chad (5m 56s): Yes. And don't forget that. There's also a warning that we have to put out on the front end of this. If you're in the US, you definitely want to listen to the podcast because it's going to be fucking entertaining, but the app is not available to you yet. Go ahead, Joel. Joel (6m 12s): All right, dude. I always get to this first, tell me about the name, how'd you come up with it and tie that in with you. You talked about your background, but not so much the fact that you're not from this industry. So I'm also curious about what drew you to the business. So name and the draw. Gareth (6m 29s): Basically, it's just a mashup of kind of like Caroo and or careers and the idea behind sort of deliveroo. So it's, we want it to stay clear of using the word recruitment, because what we found from our research is that generally speaking, the industry has a bit of a negative perception. So that's kind of where the name came from. In fact, actually, if you look us up on the UK's company's house records were originally incorporated as Tiki CV. So thank fuck somebody got rid of that. Right. So, right. Yeah. So actually my background is just a bit weird, really, I suppose a bit like our marketing. I've just got this sort of insatiable appetite for trying to understand problems and challenges and look at suboptimal experiences and then working with end-users to design what that experience would look like in an ideal world, and then understanding what technology we need in order to deliver that experience. Gareth (7m 21s): So prior to working at Caroo and within recruitment, I was at Manchester Airport Group looking at a variety of different experiences that we could, we could implement using digital in the physical environment because well, Manchester airports are really shits experience. And then prior to that, I was in retail. So the attraction of going into recruitment and doing something different is pretty, it was pretty significant to me, Chad (7m 42s): So that''s a big leap. I mean, everybody understands the experience sucks. It, it shit, no matter where you go for the most part, but to be able to make the leap into an industry that you have never been in before, there's a lot of learning to do. How long has Caroo been around Gareth (7m 60s): Caroo's probably it was around about two years prior to my introduction. And we've been, I've been here for three years and ten months. We've been live with the actual sort of beta through to live version of our product since January the 12th, 2019. Chad (8m 18s): Okay. So who on the team actually has industry experience anyone? Gareth (8m 21s): So we have a couple of solid investors who are from the recruitment background, and we also have a couple of colleagues who are ex-recruiters as well. So they know the industry very, very well. Chad (8m 31s): Okay. So on the candidate side, who is your target market? What types of positions are being filled on Caroo? Gareth (8m 38s): Predominantly we focus on sales and marketing and sort of technology and digital skillset. So software engineers, product, project managers, business analyst, et cetera, et cetera. So it's really just those sorts of sales marketing. Imagine if you were to review higher dot-coms target list is kind of not dissimilar to that. Chad (8m 59s): So we talk about developers getting into the tech roles, aside from all the other roles. I mean, it's, there's a different experience that's there. We see that the coding platforms that actually make you prove that you can do the job to make it easier to jump into bigger titles, right? So instead of having a quote unquote "matching algorithm", you have a proof of concept type of delivery and user experience. Why are you trying to be so broad right out of the gate? Gareth (9m 31s): To be fair, we were actually even broader than this originally. And we were going after all head office functions, but I think it's fair to say that we spread ourselves too thinly in the early days. And now what we've done is we've actually sort of honed in very, very specifically on these particular job functions. Joel (9m 48s): So one of the big challenges that most of our listeners will have is that they can't go to your site and actually test drive the app and see what it does and how it works. So I'm going to ask you a real challenging, I'll give you a real, a challenge in saying like visualize the app through words, if I'm a job seeker, what do I see? Chad has a big, a component of your app, for example, and if I'm an employer, what's the experience there because our mature audience can actually sort of test drive the technology? Gareth (10m 21s): Looking at it from two different experiences, really. So employees use the desktop based web experience and they come in, they create a brand profile, which gives some high-level information about the business, the culture, the brand story. This is all sorts of stuff that candidates have asked us to curate on their behalf. So, you know, when we did the research and dug into what was a brand story, or they really wanted to know who founded the business and where it was going and what the vision and the mission were, et cetera, et cetera. So everything that we asked for from employers is really defined by the other side of the marketplace, which is the candidates. So in terms of the experience, they quickly build a brand profile and then they can post as many jobs as they want. And when pro when posting those jobs, they can attack the relevant skills and experience that are required for that job. Gareth (11m 8s): So in the example of a software engineer, I may say, right, I'm looking for a software engineer. This is the salary bracket. Here is the, the skills required front end, back end, full stack, and then into the particular software stack as well. Then there's a variety of different features that you can use around hard coding things and applying filters. And on the candidate experience side, what we have to do is get people in as quickly as possible so they can see a relevance and we can add value quickly. So there's a few screens on after downloading the app, we never asked for any personal information upfront, we just want you to get in and start browsing the app. And then what we do is we sort of look at those similar tags in terms of your skills and experience. And then you can go onto create a profile. So we'll show you some jobs and then you can create a profile if you choose to or write a CV. Gareth (11m 51s): And then we can pick out additional skills and tools, tasks to improve the matching algorithm there as well. Joel (11m 56s): Is the app specifically for England? I mean, what is the footprint specifically and talk about the growth plan, because it looks like you got about 2 million pounds from optimized capital recently, and you're looking to raise 5 million pounds in the near future. I assume growth is part of that. So talk about that. Gareth (12m 14s): So I suppose one of the things I'm a big believer in is let's not recreate the wheel, right? So there's a lot of tech businesses that have grown rapidly and we can sort of take the best bits of how they've developed their business, their strategy, and how they've grown their businesses. So for example, our approach to design is not dissimilar to what you'd expect to hear from the likes of Brian Chesky at a BNB. Right? Then I decided that we would stay regional because sticking regional would allow me and the team to get out and meet users and actually see them and converse with them. Face-to-face to understand their pain points around the particular user experience that we're designing, but also with their frustrations around the industry. And that was, you know, that the idea sort of came from what I've seen Amazon do when they launch products, they launched locally to their head office. Gareth (12m 57s): And I just think, I believe that speeds the process up. Plus we've got a great test bed in Manchester for, you know, it's one of the fastest growing tech hubs outside of London, as well as leads just on our doorstep as well, strong large populations. So it made sense for us to stay regionally and really get this product working really well in the region before we then sort of took the business national. So the yes, you're right, we would look to potentially fund externally for that set, that amount of money. And then we would take the business pretty much national across the UK. I, my ambition is clear. Like I have, I really want to help people improve their lives through their careers, right? Gareth (13m 39s): And at the moment, what you see is an app that looks very much like a, a job app or a more engaging experience, or you can't see obviously, but more engaging experience like a job board, but there's the potential for this thing is so much bigger than what it currently is. We have some seriously shit, ah, ideas for, for where this goes. And we've just started beta testing, the ability to post content for employers, which can then be tagged and distributed to the relevant audiences as well. So our plan really is Manchester leads the Northwest, and then we kind of branch out into M 25, which is the ring road around London, Cambridge, which is another large tech hub. And then we move around the country in a nine to 12 month roll up. Joel (14m 21s): And beyond that, or is it just specifically, you're going to stay in Europe or the UK? Gareth (14m 26s): LinkedIn could do far better than what it does with the amount of data that it has. I mean, as you heard from my relatively crap rap, I mean, you hit go. I switched on my search and I got PA to an MD. It's nothing really sophisticated happening. Then I just think that the scope for awesome shit in recruitment is mind boggling and it's exciting. So I have no other ambition than, yeah, I would like to take this thing international. I only live once, right. And there's no rehearsals in this life, so let's live it big. Chad (14m 56s): So let's talk about the tech then the matching piece is something that you're hitting off very heavily and yes, LinkedIn has shit tech when it comes to matching. So does Indeed. I mean, we're talking about the two biggest brands in our space and they have mediocre at best tech when it comes to matching what makes your matching so much better and you don't have as much information as Indeed, possibly, or LinkedIn from the profiles. What makes your matching so much better working on less data. Gareth (15m 28s): Building around what people want to be matched on? First of all, me, I mean, I think, you know, the research told me so much more than I could ever really, you know, I thought there was going to be all this need for artificial intelligence. I mean, throw some more big tech buzzwords in there if you want machine learning, blah, blah, blah. But actually when you really boil it down to when people said, you know, there were a few key things that came out of the research. First of all, I don't want recruitment agencies because LinkedIn is buzzing with them, right. That's their domain. That's the little beehive. I'm sick of being inundated by messages from them. This is, you know, specific to certain skillsets, but too many, too many approaches from a recruitment agencies and too many salespeople. Okay, cool. So then we would remove those from the community, right? Gareth (16m 9s): And this is a community that's built around the professional for the professional. The second thing was making sure the jobs are relevant. Okay, cool. Now I need you to define what relevance actually means. Well, first of all, show me software engineering jobs. Don't show me product management jobs. Okay, cool. That's a simple heartfelt, all right. Now let's define that even further. What does, what does it actually mean? Do you want to be matched on your interests? Do you want to be matched on any sort of soft skills now, first and foremost, if you want me to consider this job and then progress that. Well, I need to make sure that I can do the job, I need to make sure it's a match for my skillset. Okay, cool. So let's look at what your composition of skillsets are and get you to tag those brilliant, right? Well then there's a set of tools that I'm used to using. So I'm not just a front end developer or a full stack developer. Gareth (16m 50s): I'm actually skilled in these particular areas like php.net, Java, et cetera, et cetera. Right? So let's then look at those, but let's make sure that we weight heavily towards, towards the skillsets and less so towards the tool sets. But if a tool, a particular tool is a fundamental requirement of the job, then let's make sure that that, the employee can stipulate that. And then that re-weights the algorithm. So we're still early days, right? But actually when you start to just listen to what people want, you can already start to see the small sort of changes that we can make to improve the experience. Chad (17m 25s): When you import your profile from LinkedIn? Gareth (17m 28s): I don't think they'd let us do that. Let's talk about, let's talk about the no staffing rule. Because I remember back in the day when 75% of Monster's revenue was staffing agencies and hot jobs at the time they blocked out staffing agencies. And that is where I believe Monster actually won the battle and they actually acquired Hot Jobs later on. Why did you go, why did you decide to go to employers only and not allow staffing to use your app? Knowing you could put limiters on it? Number one. And so to ensure that you're not getting your database killed by staffing and recruiters, but you are cutting off a huge amount of revenue right out of the gate. Chad (18m 13s): That's what people wanted. And I'm a firm believer that if you give people what they want and build a product around their needs, then they'll end up loving you. I mean, from what I've been seeing, a lot of businesses are starting to build their into, you know, pre COVID and even during COVID, a lot of businesses are building their internal recruitment function. And I think there's this, the market certainly in UK is why isn't it, the idea that we'll actually could be cheaper for a scaling business just to implement our own HR business. So we really just did listen and stayed true to the candidate side of the audience. And to be fair, the employers also wanted to remove the noise of recruitment agencies, too. Joel (18m 49s): Let's talk about marketing. If I had to say you have a secret sauce, it would be the marketing side and to say that you push the envelope is probably putting it too conservatively. Talk about sort of the mindset of the marketing. Obviously it's a cut through the clutter strategy and you talk about the partners that you have. Cause it seems like you rely a lot on agencies that are really pushing this and talk about the relationship you have with them and how they'll come into play as you continue to grow the company. Did they introduce sort of a riskè strategy and you guys are implementing what they want to do or did they come in and say, Hey, you guys are, are meatheads you're beyond what's normal we're going to really accentuate that. Joel (19m 34s): How did that relationship happen? And what does it look like in the future? Gareth (19m 39s): Well, we started as every other tech business and we, yeah, first of all, there's a lot of clutter, there's a lot of noise and, and some, sometimes people get a bit worried that investing in content to try and cut through the noise is going to be a waste of time because there is so much of it. But actually that becomes a mountain of shit that you can stand up on and actually screen. Right. You can get some good cut-through we, you know, we started like every other business, which was, let's go with this agency, let's you know what we'll do, you know what we'll do? We'll test a little bit of swearing just to be a bit edgy. And it was like, what, this is bollocks because it doesn't work? You just look like, you know, your dad, your uncle died trying to be cool. And, and I thought, you know what? Gareth (20m 19s): This is our business. And the people that work in this business are confident. We're all a little bit cheeky and we're in a dry, boring industry. And a lot of this, you know, it's full of corporate clutter and people hiding behind logos. And I just thought, you know what? I'm so proud of the team that we've put in place that they should be in front of the camera. And you know, if the Manchester that people buy from people, then we'll, hopefully that's gonna, that's going to benefit us because they'll get to meet our team. Yes. We work with a couple of agencies. The stuff that you're used to seeing on the creative side is Offended Marketing. I, I knew the founder before he sat up Offended. He was doing, I wanted to test him. Gareth (20m 59s): I'll do a lot of testing guys and I'll see what works. And if it doesn't work, we'll kill it fast. But he was testing some stuff on my own personal brand. And I was just wanted to see whether or not that was gaining better traction. And what's really interesting about how they, how they work in their creative processes is really spend a lot of time with you to understand you and understand your background. What makes you tick? What pisses you off, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And I could just see them as getting bad. So I just, I just said to him like, dude, you've got to take the brands. Like you've got to take the brand, just make sure that you don't get many lawsuits. And you know, I want, I want people to know about Caroo, but I don't want them to just know about Caroo because that's easier. I can, you can put a shitload of cash behind paid media budgets and put in front of everybody. Gareth (21m 41s): I want people to love Caroo. I want the following and I'd seen him do a talk at a recruitment event. And I was just like, me and him, me and him, we'll get on, don't get me wrong. You look at us. We're very different looking people, very different backgrounds. I'm definitely the better looking. And you know, it just, it works like, and those guys are for me, they're genius. So, you know, I gave him the brand and I think it's fair to say we've built up a pretty passionate following of people. Even when people don't engage with our content, like they come back to me like in a conversation or an email, it's just like, I love what you're doing. And it's not for everybody. Joel (22m 16s): So for listeners, I want to highlight, you should go check out the download our app for a BJ campaign that you guys did. I thought that was particularly classy and effective BJ standing for better job. Of course everyone knew that. Yeah. So you talked a little bit about, some people are going to be turned off by that obviously. And you could argue that, Hey, at some level there are employers that aren't going to touch a company that sort of pushes the boundaries that much. Do you think it's a hindrance to scale or do you believe it's actually helped you grow? And is there a particular kind of company that's going to hire a marketing, you know, marketing strategy like that? Joel (22m 57s): And are you okay with saying, look for a lot of companies we're not going to work for you and we're not going to be a fit and that's okay. Or does the marketing evolve into something a little more mainstream? Gareth (23m 7s): It's a great couple of questions. I'm going to adjust the first one, first. I think if you're a business trying to appeal to everybody, you're going to fail, right? And we're a small business and we've got to make the best use of a finite budget to cast on it wider to make sure that people know about us. And I think that's exactly what we're doing. It is very cost effective. It's not designed to be super high gloss, you know, stick me on the front of a magazine style type of stuff. It does well because it's entertainment, right? The best company sort of entertain you. So if it turns you off, it is going to turn some people off. There are some people working for large corporates who believe, it's really hard, I've had people approach me and they contradict themselves in the same conversation. Gareth (23m 47s): They'll tell me the it's listen, it's it's genius. Then they'll tell me, but it's really silly to do that sort of stuff. And then you'll get people who say, no, we can't use you. You're too disruptive. Yet you look at their digital marketing jobs and it says, we're looking for a disruptive marketer. I mean, who do you think is going to be on my platform? Yeah. It turns, you know, we did a relatively, relatively provocative piece pre-Christmas where I wore some rather tight and ill-fitting PBC and we, you know, acted out some sex positions that we claimed was Chad (24m 21s): Karma recruit, tra, which is just to take on Kama Sutra. So that was, yeah, let's just go ahead and put it out there, it was sexy. I watched it a few times. It was amazing. Yes, it is. It is crazy. You guys are making noise on the marketing standpoint. Here's the thing that matters though. How are you, how many downloads do you have? And what's your plan to be able to drive downloads from a candidate standpoint? Because as an employer, that's what I gave a shit about that. Number one, the number two are they the people that I want? Gareth (24m 52s): What we do is we take what people say, right? So what are real, what our audiences, when we do these user research sessions, right? We're not just testing product, we're listening to how they communicate about recruitment. And that then becomes that then you can then spin that because it becomes relatable, spin is probably the wrong word, but you get where I'm coming from. If you're going to talk in a conversational manner using terms that people often use to describe something, then you're going to relate to them. So we're going to continue. I mean, we've just put out our most, probably provocative paid media campaign. I'll be happy to share with you guys. But what I've seen from the last six weeks of that media campaign going on is an absolute surge in the quality of candidates that we've had specifically in software development and anything around e-commerce SEO and PPC. Gareth (25m 41s): And that's because we've listened to that audience, we've put it in a visual and in a way that's visual and we're talking their language from the businesses that we've had sign up that, you know, they've been really happy with the quality. So that's the plan really from a, how do we get candidates perspective. In terms of numbers we've got around about 26,000 candidate profiles, just specific to our region at present. Those emanate from probably anywhere in the region of about a hundred, a hundred thousand installs, that's over the course of probably our 12 month period. But we did take, you know, four months sabbatical for the first, you know, from April to look at the platform while the world was kind of figuring out where to go based on the pandemic. Joel (26m 28s): Let's talk about pricing and you guys have, I guess, sort of really drawn a line in the sand in terms of being really affordable. It looks like you actually started as a free sort of a free service to employers. Talk about your current sort of the flat based unlimited. I mean, it's, it, it feels like very early two thousands pricing. Is that gonna, is that gonna hold or is that something that you guys are gonna maintain throughout your growth story? Gareth (26m 57s): That's very much the plan. I didn't want pricing to be a barrier to entry. I wanted this to be affordable. I wanted varieties of different types of businesses using it, and we want volume that's quite obvious to see, right? So I didn't want a barrier to the smaller businesses because this is clearly affordable to any of the larger business, but I didn't want to bury it to smaller businesses. Cause you know, my personal experience has been that, you know, I found myself as a better fit for a small business rather than a large Corp. Right. And I just believe that a good technology business curates the right information and displays it in the right manner that's digestible and engageable and hopefully fun. So we didn't want pricing to be a barrier. Gareth (27m 38s): We haven't modeled any other, we've got various models, but our, our growth is predicated on the model that you see before you right now. And one of the reasons is that we were massively confident in delivering ROI against that. So, you know, if you look at your cost per hire, then you know, we're pretty confident that you're going to get your money's worth out of Caroo very quickly, which that means that anything over and above is really a bonus, which means that, Hey, next year, I can come back and charge you guys more. Right? Joel (28m 8s): And that's the bell meaning that you get to face the firing squad. Gareth, are you ready? Gareth (28m 13s): Let's do this. Joel (28m 15s): Chad? Chad (28m 15s): It's time for tough love Gareth. So I have to say, I have to say that being targeted and not having the app available to the United States, to me, that's not a big thing because you were being disciplined and focused in how you want to grow, right? You have this growth that you want to monitor and you want to make sure that you're giving a great experience because that's what the underpinning of this is, right. A great experience, not just to candidates, but also to employers. So I love that. The marketing stands out in the question is, you know, can you afford it? To be able, to divide and conquer? Chad (28m 58s): I believe in this market, you can't afford not to do something like this. To do the Kama Sutra. S and M types of things, those are brand builders for you guys. Yes. Will people turn away from you? Yes. Guess what? Fuck them. They're not going to be a part of this experience and that's fine. This is a way that you get out there and you can actually reach out and pull people closer to you, as opposed to, again, not, not really being a brand that anybody even knows or cares about. Now, the hardest part for me from a business standpoint and being in this business, as long as I have is that you can't turn a blind eye to the amount of revenue that you're shutting out of the platform knowing that staffing accounts for the lion's share spend on many platforms that are out there today. Chad (29m 48s): Now, that being said, it's a market differentiator, which I appreciate for job seekers and for employers. So, you know, it's mighty attractive to some, you know, to some extent, but my suggestion overall would be using the Indeed Trojan horse model and allowing staffing in with limitations to ensure spamming and the battering of your database doesn't happen. Use those dollars for marketing and to drive downloads. The thing is, it's nice that you're giving people what they want. The biggest question is will they come and pay for it? That's the hardest piece overall, if you can get that, that's awesome. Chad (30m 30s): But it's going to be a hell of a long slog, if you do it without staffing. That's why I think you guys have a great model, a great idea, but overall you're missing the biggest piece and that's the perspective revenue opportunity, which is why Gareth is getting a golf clap. Joel (30m 52s): All right, Gareth, now it's my turn. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I love British rock. Love it. And when I knew you were from Manchester, learned, you're from Manchester. That, that teed up a lot of rock, sort of a nostalgia for me. So looking at, from Joy Division to the Smiths, to the Stone Roses, to my favorite band Oasis, this is I felt, I felt, yeah, I felt a real connection to going forward. And as you look at some of those bands, some of them remained fringe and some of them, you know, sort of made it big. You could say the Smiths and Oasis made it big, whereas the Stone Roses and Joy Division largely sort of stayed regional. Joel (31m 35s): So when I look at your business, I got to ask the question, does this remain sort of a regional phenomenon that that's popular within sort of the UK borders or European borders? Or is it something that really breaks out into the U S and Asia and all parts of all parts of the world? And I tend to think that that you're not so much Monte Python to break through into a global realm that you're going to be largely, very successful regionally. I think that the pushing the envelope, the fringe sort of marketing, the disruption marketing that you're doing plays really well in a sort of small focused business. I think you're going to attract a lot of job seekers, but I don't know how many serious job seekers, how many older job seekers? Joel (32m 21s): I don't know the breadth of which you're going to attract a ton of people, but for the people that you do attract, I think they're going to love you. I think they're going to talk about you. I think that with a certain segment of the population, you're going to be very popular. And on the employer side, I think you're going to turn off a lot of employers. I think that the number of Adidas's that you have, which I think is one of your bigger advertisers is going to be pretty minimal. So do I think you're going to be the next Indeed. Do I think you're going to be the next Glass Door? I don't, but do I think that you can be a very successful focused sort of appeal to you know, a smaller market, but still be very successful? Joel (33m 5s): I think you need to grade your company on that scale. Now, if you had told me, Hey, we want to be a really great regional sort of job resource. Now, companies here locally, I think my grade would have been different, but the fact that you said, we want to be bigger than Elvis, bigger than Jesus. That makes the scale that I'm grading you on a much tougher. So, whereas if you're a regional player, it would have been probably, a rousing applause, because you want to rule the world with sort of your fringe strategies and marketing. I'm going to agree with Chad. It's a golf clap. If you tweak things a little bit, it could be a rousing applause, but I think you're going to be a taste that not everyone is favorable to. Chad (33m 52s): I think it's tasty. Joel (33m 56s): And with that. We out. Chad (33m 58s): We out. Gareth (33m 59s): Thank you. Firing Squad OUTRO (34m 1s): This has been the Firing Squad. Be sure to subscribe to the chadandcheesepodcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you're a startup who wants to face the Firing Squad, contact the boys at chadcheese.com today that's www.chadcheese.com.

we'll be able to better integrate some of that through Teams specifically, as we think about how to automate And how does technology tap into the best parts of us and automate the rest?

PandoLogic uses powerful automation to drive higher performing job ads without the bloated budget. No, it's not at all because you're automatically pinned into Slack. What you're doing.

It’s a hype-free discussion around “AI and Automation” Aaron Matos – CEO of Paradox Olivia Yongue – Director It's a hype free discussion around AI and automation with Aaron Matos, CEO of Paradox, Olivia Youngue And if so, who will be the companies most likely to buy up the chat bots and the automation tools? Aaron: But there's actually automation that's happening and functionality of ... #TAtech #Paradox #AllyO #KRT #AI #Automation #MachineLearning

After our "Automation and A.I.: Is Your Job Safe" Smart Stage presentation at SHRM Talent we were immediately Joel: We just got off stage talking about AI and automation to- Chad: If automation is sourcing candidates and pre-screening them and scheduling them- Chad: #Jobcase #SHRMTalent #AI #Automation #School #SHRM #HR

Joel: So the auto reply grew the job board essentially? Carlos: 100%. what's going to happen, and it's almost, like folding in what you're talking about, with regard to automation We're going to automate ourselves out of this, because it scales faster, it learns faster. #Brand #CultBrands #CultBrandSeries #Marketing #Automation #Robots #Smashfly

Charlie also goes in depth on his opinion on how automation affects employee testing and the jobs of

Live from Paris at UNLEASH World, the boys are on stage with Keith Sonderling, EEOC Commissioner & Oana Iordachescu Associate Director, Talent Acquisition - Technology Europe/Asia at Wayfair Deutschland. And they’re talkin’ A.I. issues in hiring, focused on Europe. We’re always keeping you away from land mines, no matter the continent. What’s more? How about a special show summary with fellow podcaster Matt “That British Guy” Alder? You’re welcome. INTRO (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Matt (26s): Press record now. Chad (33s): You are mispronouncing it. It's called shit. Joel (40s): Oh yeah. What's up everybody? We are at Unleash World. You know the game. This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad (48s): Gay Paris. Joel (48s): I'm your cohost, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, "the Laphroaig to my Aberfeldy" Chad Sowash. And we are, if you can stop laughing. Welcome Matt "that British guy" Alder popping in for a visit. Taking a break from podcasting. Matt, welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Matt (1m 9s): Thank you very much. I can hear the whole of Scotland now up in arms about the way that... Joel (1m 13s): How many kilts just went up in flames? Matt (1m 16s): Mispronouncing some of their greatest love brand names Joel (1m 21s): Fellows. Chad (1m 23s): Aberfeldy Joel (1m 24s): Prince Aberfeldy. Chad (1m 25s): Really don't enunciate things in Scottish. Right. Everything just kinda like runs through. But it's got this wonderful. Joel (1m 31s): You're offending him. Look at how red's getting, stop offending it. It's a Chad (1m 33s): It's a very rich kind of like robust guttural. Joel (1m 37s): Yeah. Chad (1m 37s): Love is what I feel when I hear somebody speak. Joel (1m 39s): I've never been. But we're gonna change that. Chad (1m 41s): But we know Scotts. So Joel (1m 43s): We know Scots. We like all the Scots. We know it. Chad (1m 46s): You're really Welsh though? Right? Matt (1m 47s): English? I'm English. Chad (1m 48s): Oh, I thought you were Cardiff. I had Cardiff by the sea. No? Matt (1m 50s): No, no, no, no, no. I'm English. Okay. I used to in Cornwall, but that's part of England. Chad (1m 55s): Sorry about that. Matt (1m 56s): So, I now I live in Scotland. Scotland, okay. Yeah. So I'm not a Scottish, but my wife and family are all Scottish. Oh yeah. Chad (2m 2s): But you live in Scotland. So Matt (2m 4s): I'm becoming assimilated slightly. I'm not wearing a kilt, yea. Joel (2m 7s): They accepted you yet? Matt (2m 8s): Just very open, accepting inclusive country. So you'd even be welcome. Chad (2m 12s): I don't know about that. Joel (2m 14s): Wow. That's saying something, cuz I offend everybody. Chad (2m 18s): Yes. We're here today kids, in liEU, let's say of the Friday show. We're gonna go over a Unleash recap, talk a little bit about all the fun parties. People are back. We're in Paris. But at the end of the day, listeners want to hear how this shit went. Yes. The FOMO is real. Kids. Joel (2m 36s): Well, fomo all over like we're in EUrope. Fomo. We're Paris. Chad (2m 40s): Is that a song? Joel (2m 41s): We're at Unleashed? It could be a song. Let's write a song right here, right now. Chad (2m 46s): Fomo all over. I'm gonna FOMO all over. No, sorry, go ahead. Joel (2m 51s): I'm going to get the Vonqin' FOMO on you. It's great to be back in person. That's all I have to say. Chad (2m 59s): It is. Yeah. Joel (2m 60s): We're human beings. We need to socialize. And for two and a half years we didn't get to do that. Especially as podcasters, we talk to people, we speak into the ether to no one and it's great to come and see people. Chad (3m 13s): Yes. Joel (3m 13s): I don't want to break my own arm patting myself on the back, but to have fans come by the booth, I'm sure you've experienced the same thing. Like, you know, love you guys keep, keep doing what you do. Chad (3m 25s): Matt's big in Europe. Joel (3m 26s): You're full of shit on my startup that you talk shit about. It's great to get all that feedback. Matt (3m 31s): I Think that's well it's great to have. We've got this podcasting area with these kind of branded backdrops. Chad (3m 37s): Pretty sweet. It's pretty good. Matt (3m 38s): Yours is kind of bright yellow. Chad (3m 40s): Ours is like screaming. Matt (3m 41s): The people coming by my booth have mainly been coming to plug their phones in to recharge cuz I've got a spare socket. Chad (3m 47s): We covered ours up so people couldn't see it. Matt (3m 50s): Yeah, absolutely. But it's, no, it's a really, it's a really great event. I mean there's lots of interesting companies exhibiting. I was hosting the recruitment stage yesterday. There's some great content. Chad (4m 1s): Yes. Joel (4m 1s): Tell the listeners what that is. What kind of content were you overseeing? What were they? Matt (4m 7s): So it was a string of very senior TA people. Joel (4m 10s): Okay. Matt (4m 11s): Talking about their various challenges. We had a great panel on first up talking about all the things that are affecting talent acquisition at the moment and how large companies are dealing with them. We heard from Deloitte, we heard from Deutsche Bank all kinds of other, you know, large, large EUropean or large multinational companies looking at all kinds of different areas of Talent Acquisition. Joel (4m 34s): They all say we're in a hiring freeze for the next 12 months. Matt (4m 37s): No! Not at all. There was still. Joel (4m 39s): Actually activity. Matt (4m 39s): Yeah. Joel (4m 39s): Cuz there was a lot of Americans think it's doom and gloom over here in EUrope and not so much. Matt (4m 43s): I mean it is but that doesn't translate. Chad (4m 45s): Doesn't stop us. Joel (4m 46s): But we're still hiring. Matt (4m 48s): It's still really the sense was that, you know, there's lots of economic pressure recession in quite a few countries, recession coming into ones that aren't there yet. Joel (4m 57s): Yep. Matt (4m 58s): However, still very difficult to attract and retain talent. So, you know, companies may not be hiring in the numbers that they were hiring before, but they've still got all the same problems they had a year ago. And so interesting to see people linking TA also and employer branding with retention. So retaining people still big issue. How do you build Joel (5m 21s): Upskilling. Matt (5m 21s): cultures? Had you upskill people all kind of thrown in the same presentation, which we didn't see before. That would be three different presentations, like two or three years ago. So, that was really interesting yesterday to see that. Chad (5m 34s): Pretty amazing. I mean we see the big names. They're all over the expo floor here. Joel (5m 39s): Not all the big names. Chad (5m 41s): All of the brands that are now, especially cuz we're in EUrope that are the Atlases, the Remote, the EOR companies. Joel (5m 50s): Yeah. Chad (5m 50s): Who are popping up and like exploding. Well probably because they got hundreds of millions of dollars, but exploding because EUrope, there's a bunch of countries and it's not easy to hire in EUrope for all of the different countries. But when you're looking for talent and you have the problems that you were just talking about, Matt, you need that those types of services. So we did see them in the US at HR Tech, but they, I mean they're big and strong here. Talk about that a little bit. Matt (6m 20s): Yeah, absolutely. It, you know, again, going back to the speakers that I saw yesterday and the people who've come on my podcast that I've sort of interviewed over the last couple of days, you know, they're all recruiting in multiple countries. All kinds of issues with, you know, different regulations. Lots of different things going on. Chad (6m 37s): Yeah. Matt (6m 38s): And yeah, just an explosion of tools, you know, to help that and also to really help people tap more into, you know, global workforces and, you know, borderless working and all that and all that sort of stuff. So yeah. Really interesting. Chad (6m 53s): We have a drive by listener Joel (6m 56s): A drive by. Chad (6m 56s): Who are you sir? Lieven (6m 58s): I tried to stay anonymous. Joel (7m 2s): We don't do anonymity. Matt (7m 4s): But we can see you. Chad (7m 6s): So Lieven. So yeah, Lieven is here, but for some reason he's been trying not to get on the mic, so I had to get him on the mic. So about this show, other than not going to the champagne tasting. Well what's been great? Lieven (7m 20s): The exhibition basically it's marvelous. So many companies I never heard about and I'm trying to hear about now. Joel (7m 27s): Lieven's making a shopping list for House of HR acquisitions in 2023.0. Lieven (7m 31s): Buy this and this and this and we're gonna buy all something like that. And I was trying to build the best I recruitment congress in the world and now I think have some work to do. Chad (7m 41s): Oh. which is going to be where next year? Lieven (7m 46s): Amsterdam Joel (7m 47s): Hold on. So did I heaer him the eCongress is gonna be this size at some point. Like you have bigger ambitions than what it is? Lieven (7m 58s): Smaller yet better. Joel (7m 60s): Oh. Kinda like Belgium. Smaller but better. Matt, liked that one. Lieven's taken us to Moulin Rouge tonight. We need to be nice to Lieven. Chad (8m 8s): I need to work through that. Yes. Joel (8m 11s): Boobies and Champagne tonight apparently is what was on tap. It's France. Chad (8m 15s): It's France. So that should be standard. So yeah. So we started off with the Vonq rooftop party. matt, you were there. You were there. Matt (8m 22s): I was there. Chad (8m 22s): You were there. Joel (8m 22s): You were there. You got in a day before. Yep, I got in the day of the party. Did you come in on Tuesday? Matt (8m 29s): I literally came in, I landed an hour before the party started. I came straight to the party. Chad (8m 33s): So talk about last minute. I mean, Jesus Cheesman comes in like a few hours before. Then Alder makes. Joel (8m 41s): I ride in, I make my plans well in advance. The show starts on Wednesday. I come in on Tuesday. That gives me like 12 hours. Chad (8m 51s): Gotta know that something is happening prior. Joel (8m 52s): Get adjusted prior and then a month before a party gets scheduled or hey, somebody's doing it. So then it's like, Chad (8m 59s): It's Paris! Joel (8m 60s): I got two hours. Chad (9m 1s): It's Paris. Joel (9m 1s): Instead of 12 hours. Chad (9m 3s): You got a little nap. Yeah, Joel (9m 4s): Unfortunately I have a five year old, it's harder for me to, Matt (9m 7s): But you know, I'm on an hour time different. So I didn't really need it. Didn't really need a nap. Chad (9m 12s): Okay. That's good. Joel (9m 15s): That's good. And Matt always parties all the time. So he's ready to go. Chad (9m 19s): Yeah. Joel (9m 19s): At a moment's notice. Chad (9m 21s): Always. So that was a blast. Rooftop. Joel (9m 25s): Dude. Paris rooftop. Eiffel Tower. Sun setting. Perfect weather. Chad (9m 29s): Free drinks. Joel (9m 31s): Perfect weather. Yeah. Free drinks. French whiskey and fried chicken. Chad (9m 35s): French whiskey. Surprising. Joel (9m 36s): Surprisingly good. Chad (9m 37s): I could not believe the fried chicken. Joel (9m 41s): Some fried chicken at this party. Chad (9m 42s): You know what it tasted like? It was from some upscale shake and bake. That's what that shit was. Joel (9m 47s): Yeah, you're right. Chicken breast. And there was some steroids in these chickens cause they were huge. Chopped nicely. Breaded exquisitely. Chad (9m 55s): It was shake -n - bake. Joel (9m 56s): A nice little dip. Chad (9m 58s): Yep. Joel (9m 58s): It was fantastic. And the French whiskey, I'm kind of convinced that it's Irish whiskey aged in some sort of French barrel. Chad (10m 5s): New label. Joel (10m 6s): Yeah, it's made in Bush Mills distillery. And then they aged over here. Chad (10m 9s): See I got Matt one of those and he was like, I'm not drinking that shit. I'm like, Matt, really? I'm like, Matt, Matt, try it. Matt (10m 16s): I really wanted a beer. That was why I really wanted a beer. They had a very nice IPA so it was good. But actually the whiskey was very nice. It'd be nice to know what it actually actually was. Joel (10m 30s): It was Irish whiskey? Matt (10m 31s): Irish generic French whiskey. Yeah, Maybe, Maybe. Joel (10m 34s): Maybe. Matt (10m 34s): Yeah. Joel (10m 34s): Definitely not scotch and definitely not bourbon. Chad (10m 36s): Say it was. Yeah, I know it was, it was a little, it was much smoother. Joel (10m 39s): It was light. Triple distilled for sure. Chad (10m 43s): Yeah. More of a sweeter. Joel (10m 44s): Yeah. So thanks to Vonq for having the party. Yeah. Supporting, supporting that. After that we had a nice Italian dinner that you took me to in Paris. Cuz that's what you do in Paris. You have Italian food. Chad (10m 56s): When you're going somewhere with Julie Sowash, that woman wants pasta. I mean, and she hadn't had pasta for a couple of days, so we had to make sure that she got it. Joel (11m 5s): She loves the noodle. Chad (11m 6s): Yes. The rigatone noodle. So yeah, no, that was a good time. Plenty of wine. Plenty of good time. The first day of the show got in here. I was really expecting to see more of kinda like a downsize because you know, people coming back. Is it gonna come slower? It didn't. Joel (11m 22s): This one might be a tad smaller, a tad more intimate. No? Matt (11m 26s): I think it's a similar size to the one there were three years ago. Yeah. I mean it's difficult to remember anything that happened before the pandemic. But it seems familiar at this kind of size. Joel (11m 35s): The Eightfold booth is smaller. Maybe that's why they didn't go with the 380 by 380 booth at this one. Chad (11m 42s): Maybe, they actually limit. Joel (11m 43s): Oh that would be very European. Chad (11m 45s): Yes. The amount of booths that you can have in one fucking space. Joel (11m 49s): Don't be too American with your booth size. Chad (11m 51s): No. Then we did dinner with Max from Talk Push last night. Joel (11m 56s): Yeah. Well we did a session with our friend Keith Sonderling, which was great. And that was well received. A good crowd. Chad (12m 3s): Which you're gonna hear right after this short update. Joel (12m 6s): Which will play for you after this. But yeah, funny story you, you took off to get ready for dinner, which we had with Max. I had the intention of going to the Eightfold party talking about Eightfold. And there are apparently two hotels of the same name that both have a rooftop bar. I went to the wrong hotel. I did go to the rooftop bar and I go up and I say Eightfold party and they spoke French so they didn't know what I was saying. Luckily I saw Sarah White and Lagunas. Chad (12m 37s): Kyle Lagunas? Joel (12m 38s): Yeah. In the corner there. And I said, yes, this is where I belong. They let me in. I had some Laphroaig. Matt (12m 45s): You got it right! You got it right. Joel (12m 47s): And it was great. I met some new friends and then left and met up with you at a real French Cafe, Bistro restaurant, whatever they call it. Chad (12m 55s): It was very small. As a matter of fact, Max Arm Brewster was actually spent a good amount of time. Joel (13m 4s): What did he have? Sheep brain? Chad (13m 5s): Some brain something. Joel (13m 5s): Gorilla Brain. That was a weird French. Chad (13m 7s): French will eat everything. Apparently. Apparently. They'll eat everything. Joel (13m 10s): Drink and eat everything. Chad (13m 12s): Yes. But yeah, to Talk Push thanks to Talk Push for dinner last night. Woke up this morning. I felt like shit not because of the alcohol. Joel (13m 18s): Yeah. Chad (13m 19s): Little bit of a cold. Joel (13m 20s): Yeah. You're dragging a little bit. Chad (13m 23s): Little bit. Little bit. But other than that, Joel (13m 24s): Chad dragging is like everyone else's 100%. So it's not too bad. Chad (13m 30s): And a shit ton of interviews we had Zev from Syndio. Oana was on stage with us. Yeah. Joel (13m 39s): Fuel 50, Textkernel. VONQ. Yeah. It was a parade of influencers and companies making miracles happen is what we had. Chad (13m 44s): Yeah. And we got some Wayfair too, so that's good. Joel (13m 47s): They got just what we need, Chad. Chad (13m 48s): Yes. Joel (13m 48s): That Wayfair. Chad (13m 49s): And then we got Bas on and we had to cut him to 10 minutes. Joel (13m 55s): I don't know. We need to get Bill Borman and Boss to go bowling. Chad (13m 59s): Jesus Christ. Joel (13m 60s): The eight hour bowling match is what that would be good. Chad (14m 6s): Yes. Joel (14m 6s): God, those guys could talk. A Brit and a Dutchman go into a bar and stay there for 24 hours and talk apparently. Chad (14m 13s): Any parting shots, Matt? Joel (14m 14s): Words of wisdom because they generally don't get that from our show. Matt (14m 16s): Yeah. Well I just, you know,I did go to the Eightfold party last night, so. Joel (14m 22s): Okay. Matt (14m 23s): I went to the right place. I read the instructions properly, but also I just wanna make a big shout out for Social Talent who had an amazing dinner last night. Possibly the smallest room I've ever been in in my life with the most amount of people. Joel (14m 37s): Did you say sexual talent? Matt (14m 38s): Social talent. Joel (14m 38s): Social talent. Matt (14m 39s): Social talent. Sorry, I think you're hearing is going. Chad (14m 42s): He's always hearing what he wants to hear. Matt (14m 44s): Absolutely. No, definitely Social Talent. So shout out to them cuz you know, that was some great conversations there. Joel (14m 49s): Tell the story about their booth or lack thereof. I think that's a funny story. Matt (14m 53s): I don't know that story. Joel (14m 54s): The booth next to us is having a barista and they have really nice coffee. Matt (14m 57s): Yes. Joel (14m 57s): So, Dave is over there. I'm like, Hey guys, where's your booth? Da da da. So apparently someone I don't know, forgot to like, have the booth delivered if there is even a booth. Who knows? So they have no booth over there. They've totally just like gone with it. Fortunately everyone there wears these green like super green shirts with the ninja thing. So Yeah, that's my funny story. They have no booth, but they have a booth and they're making it work like truly Irish. Matt (15m 25s): Leaning into not having a booth. Joel (15m 27s): Yeah. Like a true Irish, like let's just roll with it. No booth. Matt (15m 32s): Yeah. Joel (15m 33s): Which is a great conversation starter. Chad (15m 35s): Which I love is what Johnny said. He said, it sucks, but nobody died. Let's make this work. And that my friend is how this shit should work in the first place. Matt (15m 43s): I think that should be the motto of the next 12 months. Chad (15m 49s): Amen. Joel (15m 49s): Chad's words to live by. Take a step back, take a deep breath and ask yourself, did somebody die? And if they did, call 9 1 1. But generally no one died. Chad (15m 59s): What is it here? Is it 211? 112 or something? Matt (15m 60s): Anyway it's different. Chad (16m 5s): You can gone on that one. Joel (16m 8s): Nine one. Somebody call 211. Cuz this podcast is dead. We out. Chad (16m 13s): We out. 7 (16m 14s): Good afternoon, guys. Welcome to the Influencer stage. You'll see that this is down as a panel, but the two guys that lead this, obviously the most hrs most dangerous podcast, never have a panel. Plus it definitely is a fireside chat. And they will be unpacking. Can you trust hiring with AI? Over to you guys. Chad (16m 39s): Hello Paris? Joel (16m 40s): Oh Yeah. Chad (16m 40s): Hello. Where's the free, where's the free champagne? That's the question. Everybody should be getting free champagne at this point. I am Chad of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (16m 50s): I am Cheese, Joel Cheeseman of the Chad and Cheese podcast. If you don't know about us, you can check us out on any podcasting platform that you currently enjoy. And we are just giddy, giddy as hell to introduce these two guests with us. First and foremost, Oana Iordachescu. Did I butcher that too much? Chad (17m 10s): Oh yeah, that was too much. That was horrible. Joel (17m 16s): She's associate Director of Acquisition Technology in EUropean Asia at Wayfair. Chad (17m 18s): Wayfair. Joel (17m 18s): Wayfair. If you haven't gotten your furniture at Wayfair. What are you waiting for? Chad (17m 23s): You gotta sing it when you say it. Joel (17m 24s): Wayfair, you've got just what I want or need. Want or need. I don't know. And you, go ahead and introduce Keith. Chad (17m 33s): Okay. So Keith Sonderling. Yes. A commissioner at the EEOC. We actually had bring the US over to have a conversation around EU. Keith (17m 40s): Taking the show on the road. Chad (17m 42s): Yes. Joel (17m 42s): America. Chad (17m 44s): Keith, give us a quick Twitter bio of you. Long walks on the beach. Joel (17m 50s): That's right. Chad (17m 51s): Frequent Keith (17m 51s): Thats's right, frequent Chad and Cheese. Joel (17m 54s): He loves a good perp walk. That's right. Keith (17m 56s): Hello. My name's Keith Sonderling, I'm commissioner at the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And what that means is we are the premier civil rights agency in the United States, responsible for enforcing all workplace discrimination laws. So everything from the "Me Too" movement, to pay equity to disability, you name it. Everything relevant to HR professionals. That is my agency. Joel (18m 17s): And a Twitter bio from Oana. Is that enough characters? That's good for now. That's good for you. Oana (18m 23s): You do all the cool stuff. Chad (18m 26s): He's in government. You just said he does all the cool stuff. Really? Oana (18m 31s): Yeah, I mean, Me too. Discrimination. Lawsuits. I love that! Oana Iordachescu for those who want you're the try harder next time. Chad (18m 43s): Oana Iordachescu. Oana (18m 44s): I live currently in Berlin. I'm originally from Romania and worked in technology recruitment for the past 10 years with booking.com. Facebook always building technology teams in this organizations, of course as part of TA we use a lot of these tools that they are trying to regulate. And that's a good thing. So we're gonna talk about that. Chad (18m 60s): Oh, regulation's a good thing. We must be in the EU. Joel (19m 5s): She kept it professional, didn't she? Chad (19m 8s): We must be. Keith (19m 8s): I don't hear that often in America. Here get away from us. Chad (19m 12s): Yes. Joel (19m 13s): Oana also loves disco, dancing and dressing like a rock star. Let's get to the Q and A, shall we? Chad (19m 19s): Let's do this. Joel (19m 20s): So the AI technologies that many attendees are seeing here today are filled with a minefield of potential risk. Chad (19m 28s): Are you saying risk? Joel (19m 30s): Risk? I'm saying risk. Risk is out here everywhere. Keith, what are some prevalent risks that people should be looking for, from an EEOC perspective as they're talking to these vendors around the expo hall? Chad (19m 38s): Even here in the EU? Joel (19m 38s): I mean, yeah, and I wanna take a step back and it's really important to, you know, put the context of where we are and how we got here. So artificial intelligence, as we all know, it's a buzzword. It's throughout the industry. So the other sides of your businesses outside of HR have probably been using artificial intelligence to make your business more effective, efficient, make more money. And there's been so many products to out there under the AI side that your C-suite and your board of directors have loved because they've implemented that. It's saved costs. It's just made companies more profitable. So now we're seeing AI coming into a different area, which is our space and human resources with the promise to eliminate bias. Joel (20m 23s): And I think that's a really thing. Chad (20m 25s): Promise. Keith (20m 25s): With a promise. Promise to eliminate bias because you have these very smart computer engineers who have figured out to make the other size of your business better. And now let's make HR better. And how do we do that? What do we have to eliminate? Now I'll ask the questions, Chad and Cheese. What do we have to eliminate to make? Chad (20m 44s): That's not how our show goes. Keith (20m 45s): An AI product, super effective. Eliminate bias, eliminate discrimination? The H or the R? Which one do we wanna eliminate? Chad (20m 49s): Probably the humans. Yeah, we don't need the humans right? Keith (20m 53s): Why do we wanna eliminate the humans? Joel (20m 54s): They're a pain in the ass. Keith (20m 56s): They're a pain in the ass, but they're also, you know, full of potential bias. So in all seriousness, where a lot of these products are being sold is to eliminate the human from the decision making process. And if you eliminate the human, you also eliminate some of the longstanding biases that have plagued the workforce. The reason my agency exists in the United States and similar agencies here in the EU, is because employers discriminate. And whether they intend to do it or not, they're going to be liable for those decisions. Both from a government enforcement perspective and a publicity's perspective of discriminating against women, discriminating against agents, you name the protected characteristics. Keith (21m 36s): It's not good news for any of that. Chad (21m 39s): So getting back to your question, artificial intelligence out here, and a lot of vendors are now creating a product to eliminate that bias. To just use nEUtral characteristics, whether it's the characteristics related to applying for the job, succeeding in the job, to make the products have less bias. Yeah. Does that sound simple? It does, but I don't, I don't think Oana buys that. Do you buy that? Keith (22m 1s): I'm not selling anything. I'm the government. Chad (22m 3s): Are you buying that, that it's eliminating risk? Oana (22m 4s): No, absolutely not. Okay. It's not eliminating risk. I think actually it's probably creating some interesting side effects. And a lot of these tools we're talking about, they're not actually being sold to us to eliminate bias. They are sold to us to make the process more effective, faster. Right? So I think the different products that we can use, promise that while whatever you're trying to solve, speed, quality, volume, whatever, it's not generating more bias than you would with humans, Right. Because you're liable if you do discriminate without the ai? Chad (22m 34s): With the humans. Joel (22m 35s): Yeah. Which is a great point because I think a lot of people believe, well if it's their product, am I on the hook for it? Because I didn't create it. It's not an Amazon situation where we, this is a homemade technology. So I think a lot of these people are here concerned about what questions should I be asking these vendors to make sure that I'm not in trouble when shit hits the fan? Keith (22m 56s): And in the United States, the employer is liable for the employment decision. So whether it's made by a computer or whether it's made by a human, you can't say, Well yeah, we discriminated, but the computer did it so we're off the hook and we can't get in trouble. That's just not how it works. And I don't think anywhere in the world they're going to buy that. So the challenge is now with all these very innovative products coming online that truly, and we'll talk about if they're designed properly, whether you know it's the right data, the very diverse data set to help you recruit, or if it's an algorithm that that doesn't let you filter based upon somebody's sex, their national origin, it can actually help companies with their diversity can actually eliminate some of the bias. Keith (23m 38s): But if it's not, it can scale discrimination larger than we've ever seen before. So there's always two sides of the equation here. But you know, that oversight is what's gonna be critical. Chad (23m 50s): So to Oana's point is that humans are biased. There's no question there, they're biased. But guess what humans can't do well? Scale. So when you start using ai, if the AI is biased because of human developments, guess what? You're gonna scale bias, which means your opportunity to be more biased goes up dramatically and it goes up Fast. Keith (24m 12s): Yeah. And there's a stat that the average talent acquisition person takes around seven seconds to look at a resume, right? Chad (24m 17s): Yes. Keith (24m 17s): That's six. Okay, we lost a second. And that's not because of, you know, they have short attention spans, right? It's because of sheer volumes of resumes you're getting. Chad (24m 25s): Yeah. Keith (24m 25s): So think about if you have an HR manager or talent acquisition manager who doesn't wanna hire older women, right? And so they have to look through, okay, when do they graduate college, what's their name? Okay, here's one in the trash. No here's the trash. With an algorithm in 0.7 seconds, probably even faster, you can scale discrimination from what that one person takes the look through resume in a millisecond to thousands and thousands of resumes. Chad (24m 51s): Which is what we saw on Amazon. It's exactly what we saw at Amazon. I mean they were scaling it, but Amazon to their credit, found it and shut it down. Oana (25m 1s): But I'm gonna go back to his question. What questions should we ask when we wanna design or buy? Chad (25m 8s): Yeah. Oana (25m 8s): And I think a problem with what Amazon did was which data was fed into, right? And I think this is also where we need to ask our vendors, providers, is it structured data, unstructured data? Are you working only with our company data? Are you working with a certain nationality? Regionality? There is so much option there that you need to understand before even considering a product. So you can make some decisions where you can say, yes, I can take this risk. Because I think we're still in a phase where everything has a risk. We just need to quantify, is this a risk I can take? And I can work with this vendor on that because you need that continuous maintenance or not. And I'll wait another five years and I'll see what happens. Chad (25m 48s): Yeah. Well, so as I have Joel (25m 49s): A questionnaire at the EEOC, right? Questions to ask in terms of your recruiting, I'm sure the EU has similar. Keith (25m 52s): Yeah, we've put out a lot of guidance on that. But I think to your point, you're making a very good point and I think we need to just set the stage. There's basically two ways AI can discriminate. Chad (26m 5s): Only two? Keith (26m 5s): Well, two, like, let's just go two major ways. Okay. And that's, you know, either on the data set so you can have a data set that's not diverse. And in the Amazon example, it was a resume set of mainly men. So what happened, it lowered anyone who was a female or had any characteristics related to being a female. And that's because it was, you know, bad data. And that data, even though the data, the characteristics were nEUtral, that was the predominant characteristics. So that's due to the data discrimination, which is what largely everyone is talking about. But the other type of discrimination really occurs from the algorithm itself. So you could have the most neutral, perfect, diverse data set that is representative of your area, that has all the candidates you want. Keith (26m 48s): But if you're only then showing those job advertisements to certain people through an algorithm, let's say younger recommender system. Chad (26m 54s): Like a recommender system? Keith (26m 55s): Or you have a bad HR manager who wants to go in there, like the example I gave you earlier and filter out certain people. That is not based on a bad dataset. That's based on intentional discrimination and that's no different than a human discriminating against by what they see on their resume. So it's very much, it's so important to keep, when you're thinking about AI discrimination, a lot of it is not that much different than human discrimination, right? Chad (27m 20s): No, just scales faster. Right? Oana (27m 21s): But then is it the system or is still the human? Because I was actually thinking about this, I was putting some people in a LinkedIn project for a recruitment in a certain area, and then I get all these recommended people which are from the same school and I'm like, LinkedIn, I don't need this, I need diversity, please. Because I selected one person and the second maybe tangential. Chad (27m 44s): More like Bob. Oana (27m 45s): Right? Right. Chad (27m 47s): More like Bob. Oana (27m 47s): More like Bob. Yeah. Be more like Bob. So in the end when we have this option of people training the algorithm, right, this is the problem as well. Chad (27m 58s): Right. Okay. So we've set the table, I think from the standpoint of obviously humans are biased, no question. AI can scale that bias. One of the things that he said though was that right now the employer is on the hook, right? In the EU there's actually guidelines that are being proposed that are being put forth that the vendor will actually be put on the hook as well. So there will be a shared responsibility. So can you talk a little bit about that? Keith (28m 28s): Yeah. So this is a really critical issue for companies looking to go all in on AI for, you know, whatever the benefits are, whatever the potential drawbacks. I think with HR technology, we can all agree it is the future. Companies are gonna have to use artificial intelligence in HR, no matter what. But what we're trying to raise awareness of and really the point of this panel is to be competitive, you're gonna have to use some of it, but what do you use it for and what purpose and how do you not discriminate while using it? So you know the regulatory landscape and it is appropriate to start with me on this one because I am a real regulator. It's really. Chad (29m 6s): As opposed to a fake regulator like Joel and I. Keith (29m 9s): Yeah, exactly. Chad (29m 9s): No, I got it. Keith (29m 10s): That's what I was hinting at. But you know, in the United States there's exist, like my agency was created outta the civil rights movements in the 1960s. And I've been arguing that our laws from the 1960s still apply to this new technology that's not even that's being developed and will be developed in the future is the same way it applies to decisions made by human, by pen and paper since the 1960s. And a lot of that is just how do we apply these decisions made by algorithms and compare them to the decisions made by humans, which we know how to do. Which a lot of it is results. Chad (29m 46s): Which is outcomes. Keith (29m 48s): Which is outcomes hiring. We see discrimination. And how did that discrimination occur? Was it based upon, was it it if it's an algorithm involved, was it the bad dataset or was it a discriminatory algorithm? But liability and the discrimination's gonna occur. So what you, what you're seeing across the United States, which we'll talk about on a state and local level, and especially here in the EU, is this rush to make new laws related to artificial intelligence. And probably not a surprise to anybody in this audience. The EU, like they did with GDPR, wants to get ahead of the United States and wants to get ahead of other countries. And they've done that through their proposed EU Artificial Intelligence Act. Keith (30m 28s): And in that act, it basically different types of AI use is goes into different risk categories. So they've said that the risk of using AI and employment is in the highest risk category, which subjects it to robust disclosures, auditing, and other requirements. But one of the key differences in the EU if this proposal goes through, is that there will be liability towards the vendor, either those who put it on the marketplace for sale or created and use it themselves. And that's far different than the United States where the vendor does not have liability, the employer has liability. So we are at such a critical time here and this conversation is so relevant and why I'm really excited, I think we're all excited to be here to talk to all of you, especially based in the EU, is that if that goes forward, it completely changes the game when it comes to HR technology. Chad (31m 18s): Yeah. A race to regulate is what I just heard. Oana? Oana (31m 22s): In the risk of making this EU versus US competition. Chad (31m 26s): Let's go. That's fine. Oana (31m 28s): You said the EU us? No, I don't think so. I think the EU cares more about its citizens. Can we maybe Chad (31m 35s): Agreed. Yeah, agreed. Wait a minute. Wait. Citizens versus the almighty dollar. Oana (31m 38s): Yes, but no, I think whatever what Keith said actually is correct and this is happening, it's in discussions technically in the next two years we will know if the law passes or not. But what I'm actually dissatisfied with this law is that it puts everything on the employee or the impacted person. You have to go and say this algorithm from this provider within this company with the lawyer, you know, prepared for all this battle, you need to prove, which I don't think it does anything to be honest. Like right. There will be so little action, like real action that we can interpret this without, like, unless you are, I don't know, you bring some Bloomberg in it or something, right? Oana (32m 21s): Like big stuff, but it doesn't really fix the problem of protection and prevention as much. Keith (32m 26s): Yeah. But it's put us all on notice. And your point is that the EU even putting a proposal on this really makes us all have this conversation. And it has a different context now of not, you're not just buying a product, but what else do you have to do once you buy the product? And who is going to do that for you? Is it you as the employer? Is it the vendor's responsibility? To your point, is it going to be an employees hiring a lawyer to force those audits to happen? But if this law passes, it adds a whole additional layer onto this conversation, onto the sales and purchase of these products that we're not talking about yet. That doesn't exist right now in the United States, even though the law may from the 1960s may require that audit to occur. Keith (33m 10s): So it's just gonna completely change the dynamic around purchasing and developing AI technology. Joel (33m 15s): Do you see American companies following suit with European laws in terms of companies being on the hook? Or do you think that they'll continue to get a pass from the US legal system? Keith (33m 25s): I think they're gonna follow, obviously in the United States, a lot of these products are being developed, designed there as well. And I think they're gonna keep continue following the US legal standard, but very much like GDPR and how it affected all US companies. I mean as you know, when we're in the United States, we have to click through all those popup GDPR things in the US even though most of us don't even know what it means. Chad (33m 49s): Thanks Europe. Joel (33m 50s): Accept all. Keith (33m 51s): Right. But in all seriousness, I think that when it comes to this, if vendors and employers are gonna have to start doing these audits and paying for the audits here in the EU, the question then purchasing it in the United States, we wanna see those audits. Well you've done an audit and if your audit doesn't show bias, then do it for us here in the United States. So it's certainly will have that effect of adding that additional layer on, if a company has already paid for and done an audit. Joel (34m 16s): Can we focus on audits for a second? Yes. What do you mean by an audit? And I think companies being on the hook means you can't just buy an audit from a third party and say that it's legitimate. It becomes a different weight in terms of what an audit is. So define it and what's the future and risks of an audit? Keith (34m 37s): Well, from our perspective, from the, at the E E O C and under US law, any types of employment audits, we look at only that individual employer. So any of these generic audits done on, you know, statistical basis of the workforce as a whole does not matter to us. When our federal investigators show up to your business, you know, we're asking only for your data set. We're asking only for the snapshot of your employees. Who applied, who you hired, and that whole chain and looking at those results. So any of these aggregate audits or audits done for other companies or by other vendors mean absolutely nothing to us. And what does that look like? That's the hardest question to answer right now because Joel (35m 18s): Everyone's, I wanna, I wanna underscore means absolutely nothing to us, meaning the government agency, that's an important, I think, thing to highlight. Keith (35m 24s): We only care about your company and if you come and show us a brochure that it was audited by somewhere else or worked at somebody else's company. Chad (35m 31s): Just what it is, is a brochure. Keith (35m 33s): We don't, it doesn't fly. And I think that is really, and I'm not saying that, you know, to, to scare everyone. I'm just saying what the, what the law requires and what the reality is. We only look at your employer and everything else that's not going on there. If the product works for somebody else, great, that's great. But we care how it works with your business, with your employees, with your diversity. And that's so critical for everyone to understand. There's not just this, once it's certified, it works. Joel (36m 1s): Will there ever be a government agency that audits these AI technologies? Chad (36m 7s): Hell yeah. There will be. I mean, okay, so let me give you. Joel (36m 11s): Are you sure? Chad (36m 11s): Oh yeah, I can guarantee you. Here's why. So back in like 2008, the United States actually shut down a site called America's Job Bank, which was a distribution mechanism for jobs, but it was a part of compliance. So what they did was really the private sector took that on and it became a product. It was productized, although that product had to complete within audit, right? So you had an infrastructure for job distribution and then you actually had auditing information that you had to provide to your clients. I mean to me, from an AI auditing standpoint, every single one of these companies that are out there today should they, they could have a market differentiator if they had a audit and also third party audits to provide to a company which, which again doesn't save you although you go through the mechanism and you actually understand what you're looking for. Chad (37m 10s): So that when the guys come in the door looking to do an audit or to check to see if there is discrimination, you at least have information to start to go by. Some type of infrastructure. Keith (37m 20s): And I wanna go back to Joel's question. What is an audit? It sounds great, right? Audit, audit, we did an audit, we paid for an audit, we're audited, right? Okay, that's great in accounting, that's great with your finances. Yeah, but what does that mean in employment? And this is what the most difficult part is. And this is where the EU does look to the United States and most regulators around the world in employment. And they look to the E E O C. Because in 1978, that's right, in 1978, the EEOC came out with guidelines in coordination with the Department of Labor and Department of Justice on how to do audit testing in employment. Okay? But that was created in 1978. Chad (38m 1s): That was before Oana was even born. Keith (38m 3s): And that is the standard around the world. So in New York, for instance, New York City, as you probably a lot of you have heard of, it's the only real auditing law that is about to go into effect in January, 2023. And it's for use of AI systems for recruiting, but then limited to New York City where their jurisdiction is. And they said it's gonna be, if you're using this, you're gonna have to do a yearly bias audit. Well, what does that mean? And everyone's pushing New York, pushing New York, tell us what that audit means because we're gonna have to do it if we're in New York City. So New York just two weeks ago finally came out with what an audit is and you know what they said? Look to the EOCs 1978 guidelines, because nobody has come up with a better system or anything. Keith (38m 45s): And that system was really designed for pen and paper Scantron tests, assessment tests, and whether we've all taken one, a lot of companies used to give that, you know, you wanna work here, take this psychological test developed in the 1940s and fifties, you know, the Wonderling tests. There's a lot of different tests and we're gonna see if those tests are biased based upon their results. So that's how those tests were designed. But that's a big overhaul to do that. There's a lot of other things going on. So right now the really the worldwide standard for what is an audit is these 1978 guidelines made for pen and paper tests. Chad (39m 18s): Oana how are you auditing bias today without AI or with ai? I mean. Oana (39m 23s): That's what I was gonna, is the audit gonna be done by ai? Keith (39m 27s): Right. Well there's a lot of companies out there who are, they're now developing ai, right, to audit AI and? Oana (39m 32s): Yeah. Keith (39m 32s): Sort of a half a joke, but there's really now vendors coming online building AI to see if your AI is biased. And then do we need another AI to check that AI? Chad (39m 42s): Startup in the audience. Keith (39m 43s): When does it end? Chad (39m 44s): There's a startup already in the audience doing that? I'm sure. Oana (39m 47s): I don't remember the question, but Chad (39m 50s): How do you currently audit? I mean what to what standards? Because there oh yeah, there's still standards, right? And just because it's happening with AI doesn't make the standards any different because it's all about outcomes. Oana (40m 0s): But in a way, at least here, we basically if you are a ProducT, dunno HorseFly for example, or Candidate ID or things like that, they need to go and submit their product and say, I am GDPR compliant, I am AI compliant, I am also local regulation compliant because German is different than the UK than France and so on. So in a way, as an organization, usually you're like, are you compliant? Great. Then we do our own compliance with our own legal team. But that's the third party that you say we shouldn't care about, right? So if you work with your PWC or whoever, right? If you can have that, that's good. But a lot of organization do not, especially small and medium, you will not pay PWC X amount to say, Keith (40m 42s): Well you're asking companies with smaller budgets to buy these sophisticated products. And then you're asking them to go, like for instance, company like yours, you have a lot of outside auditors, but what about for the smaller companies and how is that dynamic going to work and where is the cost shifting gonna go there? And a lot of these questions aren't answered because no one has forced them to do it yet. The EU law is just a proposal to probably no surprise of anyone in this audience. The state of California is also trying to implement, under their labor department auditing requirements and vendor liability. But we haven't really seen that requirement happen outside of New York. Keith (41m 23s): But again, it's just for those New York City residents. So we haven't seen push come to shove on how it's going to then be part of the whole, we're selling you an AI package in HR, does it include this? And where is the cost? So I really think it's gonna be so fascinating coming back to this conference in a couple of years from now. Chad (41m 42s): Yeah. Keith (41m 43s): To see how that dynamic has changed. Chad (41m 45s): Yeah. So, so we're seeing, we're seeing a wave though. The EU we see big, I mean huge states and cities like New York, California, I mean this seems like inevitable. Keith (41m 53s): Talking, if it's inevitable. The laws still apply right now and so much of this AI discussion. So. Chad (41m 58s): Yes! Keith (41m 59s): It's now you can't use AI to discriminate right now. And a lot of people are in the meantime thinking, well we don't have, you know, this New York law is not in effect, California's proposal, the EU. We're okay right now and you're not in no sense. And those requirements to make sure that AI is not discriminating. And there's more than just use in hiring, right? It's being used across the board for managing employees to making pay decisions for employees to even terminating employees. It's being used across the board. And from my perspective, from Washington DC we have to make sure that there's companies in every use of AI in the workplace all are still complying with the laws that have been on the books where started from the 1960s. Keith (42m 41s): And whether there's new auditing requirements required by law, it doesn't matter. You still have to this second be making sure they're not discriminating and the second being diligent in who's using the systems and how you're buying them and how you're implementing that. And I think that really gets lost in the conversation when you start talking about the future of AI regulation because there's laws right now that prevent discrimination. Oana (43m 2s): What is though being added now, which I think is very interesting from the EEOC. You always add this equal employer statement, right? So you have an obligation, and we do that in Europe as well. Each state has its own kind of guidance. But now at least with this European law, we need to add that we are using product with AI to judge your selection. Like you have to have this statement in your job description throughout your recruitment process so people are aware how they've actually been through a process and what they can action if they want action, anything. And I think that's interesting, but probably in 20 years, 30 years from now on, everybody would've been using it. So the statement is void, right? Keith (43m 43s): And I'll quickly take the contrary to that because yes, that you can't discriminate in hiring, everyone needs an equal opportunity. But now with the AI disclosure requirements that New York's having that some of the, you know, the proposals have that, if you're gonna be subject to artificial intelligence, you need all these disclaimers. You have the ability to opt out. Okay? Well now we're going further than how it works now or say if you're dealing with a hiring manager who's racist, a hiring manager who doesn't wanna hire you because you're pregnant or you have a disability. There's no disclaimers now that's saying you're being subject to a somebody in talent acquisition with bias. And you know, you may not get hired, you may think, well I just wasn't qualified. But the real reason you weren't hired is because you're pregnant or you're disabled. Keith (44m 27s): And how are we supposed to know that? How do we get into the human mind, the black box of the human mind? But now when it comes to AI, we're holding AI to a much higher standard in a sense where we're making it a lot more confusing because of the black box of AI. Well, I could also argue that AI is more transparent than the human brain, right? So is anyone ever going to admit, I didn't hire you because you're a woman? Is anyone gonna ever gonna say, I'm not hiring you because my bias. But now we're we're saying that the AI will, you know, it needs to prove it on that side. So you know, where are now the different standards of putting AI that is actually potentially more transparent on a different level playing field than a human when the human is the one actually building and designing the AI and I think that's another very complicated conversation. Joel (45m 13s): Come back next year when we'll be talking about AI hiring for squirrels and dump trucks in the metaverse. Everybody give it up for Keith and Oana! Guys, particularly Keith, maybe you as well. If they wanted to learn more about these issues, where would you send them? What's a good resource that they can tap into? Oana (45m 29s): Half of the vendors here have AI component in their promise, machine learning, deep learning. We will see. Go and check them out. I think, they're gonna teach you what they do and then you can take it from there. Keith (45m 39s): If you want to go back and listen to the Chad and Cheese podcast, we did a whole deep dive for an hour. Joel (45m 45s): Yeah. Chad (45m 45s): About how the technology's being used in different kind of technologies and the regulations. But it's really important for me as a regulator. And from here I'm going to another conference with EU regulators and regulators from around the globe. I think we really want to get this right. I think we're at a really interesting time where, you know, how do we make sure that employers, like you buying these software, have the tools they need, have the questions. How do we make sure that the vendors who normally the EEOC doesn't have jurisdiction over and doesn't deal with, have the tools they make? Cause I truly believe that nobody wants to build a product or sell a product that violates civil rights laws, right? So how do we get to that group as well? So as this conversation continues, I'd really like to hear from all of you, what you would like from all from us, from the regulatory perspective. Chad (46m 30s): What questions we can answer, and then what we should, the questions you need to ask a vendor? You know, run them by us. And I think that's how we're gonna be able to make great guidelines as well. Joel (46m 45s): I'm Cheese, he's Chad, we are the Chad and Cheese podcast. Thank you everybody. We'll see you soon. Keith (46m 53s): Thank you. Joel (46m 53s): We out. Chad (46m 54s): We out. OUTRO (46m 54s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. OUTRO (47m 33s): Is so weird. We out.

If you've been in employment for any period of time, you know Lars Schmidt, author of the Bestselling Book, "Redefining HR," podcast host, founder at Amplify, and Fast Company contributor. If you don't know Lars, well, let us introduce you. Hot off the presses of his latest book, the boys dig into everything swimming around in Lars' head at the moment. And trust us, it's a deep, deep dive. Enjoy, the water's warm. Knowledge building goodness powered by Sovren AI so human you'll want to take it to dinner. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions partners with our clients to build best-in-class inclusion programs and reach qualified, talented individuals with disabilities of every skill, education, and experience level. Sovren (0s): You already know that Sovren makes the world's best resume CV parser, but did you know that Sovren also makes the world's best AI matching engine? Only Sovren's AI matching engine goes beyond the buzzwords. With Sovren you control how the engine thinks with every match the Sovren engine tells you what matched and exactly how each matching document was scored. And if you don't agree with the way it's scored the matches, you can simply move some sliders to tell it, to score the matches your way. No other engine on earth gives you that combination of insight and control. With Sovren, matching isn't some frustrating "black box, trust us, it's magic, one shot deal" like all the others. No, with Sovren, matching is completely understandable, completely controllable, and actually kind of fun. Sovren ~ software so human you'll want to take it to dinner. ou'll want to take it to dinner. INTRO (1m 1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (1m 25s): Oh yeah. What's up everybody? This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host in chief. Joel Cheeseman joined as always by my cohost Chad Sowash Chad (1m 37s): Chief, my ass. Joel (1m 38s): We are, we are super jazzed today. It only took four years for us to get Lars Schmidt on the show. Lars. Welcome. Lars (1m 46s): Hey guys, it's good to be here. Has it been four years? Has it been that long? Joel (1m 50s): Well, podcasting for four years, last time we saw you was drunk on a stage in London. Thanks for breakfast. Or at least according to Chad, only one of us was drunk. We won't mention who. Lars (1m 59s): On our way too. How about that? We we're on the road. Joel (2m 3s): Yeah. I feel like you, a lot of people know you, but some don't, so let's get the introductions out of the way. You have a lot of shit going on on LinkedIn, but you want to funnel it for the audience as founder of Amplify HR and the author of How Millennials Are Redefining HR, how millennials are doing it is my own, a little title for the book, but we can get into that in a little bit. Anything else that we missed there that the listeners should know? Lars (2m 31s): That's good. Joel (2m 32s): Okay. All right. I did my job. Chad, it's your ball now. Chad (2m 35s): So give us some background, some story around a book. You write a book and this is not, I mean, coloring book for God's sakes. I mean, this is total research, big names, big wigs, and an enormous amount of focus in discipline to put out a book like you just put out. Joel (2m 55s): Did you say this was an ego project and Lars wasn't hugged enough as a kid. Lars (3m 1s): Parents were pretty generous of hugs to be honest. Joel (3m 3s): So what was the Genesis of the book? Lars (3m 5s): The book really came from a lot of things that I had been working on before I actually signed the deal to write the book. You know, so the, you know, from, from the work in HR open source through, you know, the, my first book on Employer Branding For Dummies, through writing for fast company and Forbes and whoever else and the podcast, it was like, I had all these different things, these different channels, if you will, that were giving me insight into how the field of HR was evolving and what companies were doing that was different and unique. And so I had, you know, I'd been building all of these disparate connections, research writings, et cetera, before I kind of said, okay, you know what I need to, I want to package all of this in a way that tells more of a cohesive, you know, full story, rather than just focusing on a practice or an event or a person. Lars (4m 0s): And so in that sense, like a lot of the work I've been doing over the last five years was, you know, kind of foundational to the book. So when I, you know, set about to actually start writing the book, I, you know, the idea is a lot of the research, a lot of the connections and people that I knew I wanted the interview to go deeper. We're already in place. I wasn't starting from scratch, which was probably the only reason that the book got written during a pandemic. If I had to do that all from scratch, that would have been a little rough. Chad (4m 27s): So you're talking about key shifts from legacy HR to modern HR. What are some of those key shifts that you think are priority for HR and why the hell has it taken so long for us to do it in the first place? Lars (4m 40s): Yeah, I mean, so that last sentence assumes that everybody's done it and they haven't, you know, I think HR as a whole right now is kind of a spectrum. You know, you have some operators at the leading edge that are doing a lot of the practices that I spotlight in the book. You've got, you know, the other side of that spectrum and, you know, still old school personnel, transactional, yada yada. And then you're the bulk of the field is somewhere in the middle. And so, you know, for me, it was really about trying to shine a light on what, you know, interesting and progressive and modern HR looks like and do it in a really tangible way. So the book is full of case studies and practitioner spotlights and stories of people actually doing the work. Cause that's not me, kind of bringing that to life, really with the hope that that middle kind of tier of the industry can see some of those practices and be like, you know what, I can do that. Lars (5m 27s): Or I can do a version of that. And hopefully, you know, kind of move more people towards that more progressive approach to the field. Joel (5m 35s): And in writing a lot of books, talk about who you're writing this book for, and who's reading it. I, I feel like you're very central to sort of North America and your own experiences and contacts, but it has a very global vibe to me. Are you seeing a lot of buyers globally? And in what parts of the globe do you see action, and how does that stack up versus some of the other books that you've written? Lars (5m 57s): Yeah, I mean, so certainly the, there it's found a pretty large audience in the Media and part of that is, you know, I was able to spotlight different practitioners work there. You know, my publisher Kogan page is based out of London. I'm sure that helps, but I've also built a pretty sizable network in Europe and specifically in the UK. So when it came to launching the book, I kind of had that pre-built audience that was already, you know, interested in, you know, the story is, and kind of what would be covered North America would be next, you know, not as much in Latin America, you know, some in APAC, certainly the, the audience has been much broader than the employer branding book that I wrote a couple of years ago. Lars (6m 39s): You know, obviously that's a niche topic. I think it holds up and seasoned people, but it is a niche. Whereas this book, I think, applies to a much broader audience Chad (6m 47s): Dig into the employer brand space a little bit deeper just for a minute. Why does HR care now after not giving a shit for decades about employer brand? I mean, what is the major factor in why employers are caring more about brand today than they did two decades ago? Lars (7m 4s): Yeah, I mean, cause hiring is hard when you're, when you're competing for the same types of talent that everybody else is competing for. And you've gotta be able to find ways to differentiate yourselves and kind of the employee experience and what somebody is going to get out of working for your company, you know, beyond just being a recognizable brand. And I think that that shift probably happened right around 2011, you know, with the, you know, kind of ubiquity of social media and people leveraging, you know, Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook in different ways. And so, you know, employer branding has been around for awhile, but that was that kind of digital iteration and shift in employer brand is when companies started getting much more deliberate and thoughtful and specific. Lars (7m 47s): I mean, back then, it was like you threw the hashtag jobs on a tweet and you'd make hires off that. Like, I, you know, Twitter was our number four source of hire at NPR in 2011. I mean, it was crazy. So, but you know, now that would never happen because there's so much noise and everybody's doing it. Like we were, had a first mover advantage, then, you couldn't do that now, but it's, but yeah, I I'd think probably right around 2011 is when that shift happened. Chad (8m 13s): Isn't there also a layer of covering your own ass as well, because before Twitter, before Facebook, before LinkedIn, somebody had a bad experience with your organization, they told three people. Now they're telling 30,000. So I think there might be more of a reaction to that then, because they're trying to look for good people. Yeah. Lars (8m 35s): Yeah. I mean, I think it depends on how they look at it, right? Like, I mean, even back in the day, like pre 2010, you had fucked company. And that was, you know, that was a great site. You know, it didn't allow for individual reviews, but it, it certainly covered some of the, you know, shady aspects of companies and how they hire. I think if, if you look now, you know, companies, there's an offensive approach to social media and there's a defensive approach, right? Offensive, meaning actively using those channels to kind of convey what it's like to work at your organization and own the reality of it, right? Like the highs and the lows, like you, you know, good employer, branding shares both. And then there's defensive, which is like, how do we clean up last store? Like, how do we clean up Indeed or comparable, or some of the other sites out there where people are leaving negative reviews. Lars (9m 19s): Right. And that's, it's kind of backwards thinking, it's like, well, why don't you address the thing that led the person to write that review, rather than trying to clean up the reviews? So, so yeah, there's, there's, you can kind of look at it almost as an offense and defensive play. Joel (9m 33s): You talk in the book, the sort of the evolution of employer branding. And I'm curious your thoughts on how COVID is going to reframe employer branding from our perspective, it seemed like as soon as the virus and the pandemic hit, some of the first people were to go or be laid off for employer branding managers. So what is the future of employment branding look like as we come out of the pandemic? Lars (9m 57s): Yeah. I mean, look, I think it's what I hope it is and what I think it will be as somewhat of a resetting, you know, we employer branding, it became kind of an arms race as more and more companies were investing in employer brand managers and resources and budgets. And so, you know, we kind of defaulted to hyperbole and like looking at all the cool shit we've got and look at our, you know, we still sold ping pong tables. Now we sold three flavors of kombucha and you know, all these amazing office amenity is unlike no one really cared about that, but we didn't, you know, we still sold it thinking they might, but that never really truly was a differentiator for the majority of candidates. And so now we're at a place where obviously offices are irrelevant today, that will change. Lars (10m 39s): You know, people will be back in offices at some point, to some extent, it won't be the same, but you know what, we'll have physical spaces to go to for those of us that go into offices. But I think that we are the language I would like to see, start to shift, right. It's not about like, we're the best, we're the greatest. And like, let's find all the hype buzzwords and try to insert as many of them we can into our copy. It's, let's kind of recalibrate a bit, to like, what is the employee experience like here? What's differentiated and what will be interesting? And I think this will put more stress on employer brand is, as more companies that have employees, that have the ability to work remotely, choose to have either fully remote or hybrid structures, you know, and people can really work anywhere from anywhere. Lars (11m 25s): Work itself kind of becomes a bit of a commodity, right? People can easily move from one thing to the next. And so, you know, from a recruiting perspective, it's going to become even more important that you can convey and articulate a clear value prop about why somebody would want to do what they do at your company. When they, you know, have dozens of choices of top tier companies, they could do that same work from their same home without having to relocate. Right. Like, that's a huge difference than world we were in a year ago. Chad (11m 54s): So moving from ping pong tables to actually something that's meaningful. Lars (11m 59s): Yeah. How refreshing, right? Chad (12m 2s): Yeah. Yeah. So talking about the opportunity to scale, right. Because one of the things that we have to get ready for in recruiting in HR overall is scalability. So explain what you mean in the book by building for scale? Is that mainly predicated on internal mobility and tech, where does that go for you? Lars (12m 24s): Yeah, for me, the kind of lens through which I looked at that in the book was more about really building foundational elements of the kind of talent HR people strategy, however you want to frame it in the early days, so that as you scale and grow, you're building on processes that are designed to scale and grow. And, you know, historically we've been terrible at that, right? And it's not, it's not HR has fault. There's a variety of factors, but you know, companies that were in hyper-growth mode, it was like, okay, we just need to, you know, 80% of our HR and people, operations, budget resources are focused on recruiting. Like we're just trying to get people in the door. Lars (13m 5s): We need more people, people, people, and, you know, you're, you're growing and you're scaling off Excel sheets and, you know, all of these like random, you know, tools and systems that are taped together. And then you hit, you know, 200, 300, 400 people and you're, it's breaking. And then, and then you have to kind of go back retroactively and rip out all of that stuff, put in new systems, new tech, new approaches, new leadership in many cases. And so, you know, having to do that, once you've hit a critical size is massively disruptive to the business. And so the approach is more of like, okay, we know that we're going to be going through this growth trajectory. Yeah. We probably need to hire a head of people or a CPO earlier than we would have. Lars (13m 49s): We probably need to invest in a tech infrastructure built for a company that's 500 to a thousand people rather than 100 earlier. So that when we are at that stage, you know, we can still be building on that tech that's in place. So that that's really the kind of, you know, theme of the chapter. Chad (14m 6s): Isn't that kind of HRS fault though, because I mean, it's our job to be able to bring the business case. And one of the things that we're really bad at in HR and TA is to be able to demonstrate how scalability and what we're doing in our tech affects the actual bottom line either positively or negatively. So you say it's not HR's fault, but really shouldn't, we take responsibility and start taking accountability for these types of numbers so that we can have the bigger conversations with the C-suite. Lars (14m 36s): So I I'd say yes, but I'd put an asterisk by that. Cause I think if you look at a lot of startups, you know, thwey have an office manager who moves into an HR manager and the HR business partner who is now asked to run the whole team, like they're in those scenarios that I mentioning there, they had junior talent that they're scaling with. And so, you know, yes, you could say like, shouldn't, that person have said like, Hey, this is, but like, they don't know they haven't done that before. So I think, I think that is why you're starting to see a shift in particularly in startups hiring that more seasoned HR leader earlier on, because they do know those things and they can push back and they can say, Hey, look, I've done this two, three, four times over. Lars (15m 17s): Here's what we need and when we need it. Right. So that I think, you know, yes, that is HRS responsibility, but all too often, they have a junior person in that role, that's just not equipped to, you know, they don't, they don't have that context, they don't have that direct experience to be able to steer the leadership team in that direction. Joel (15m 35s): A couple of things in the book, sort of going up a little bit back to employment, employer, branding that you talk about in the book that I want you to, to expand upon. One of them is sort of the ongoing performance reviews in the book. I think you talk about, they should be daily to some degree. And I think a lot of us agree that the yearly performance review is pretty broken. And the second thing I think that piggybacks off of that is managing burnout, which you talk about, which I think the work from home environment has sort of reframed what that looks like. So talk about the importance of those two things. Maybe some companies that are, that are doing it pretty uniquely. Lars (16m 9s): Yeah. I mean, I think in performance, you know, daily is probably a bit much, but I think, you know, whether it's quarterly or monthly or whatever the framing is, it's gotta be a cadence more than any like annual reviews or that's just a Relic of the past. It doesn't fit how we work. It doesn't fit how people want to be developed and coached and have expectations. Like, am I hitting the mark? Am I missing the mark? Like, what am I, what do I need to do better to, you know, to be excelling in my manager's eyes? And so that, you know, that I think is pretty clear. You know, one of the case studies I go into in the book is from Survey Monkey, which, you know, they, Becky Cantieri, Chief People Officer walked through like how they shifted from their annual review process to a quarterly review process. Lars (16m 50s): And it was received really well. And what was cool about them is they actually then gave away like all the templates they used in that shift. They open-sourced sourced all of that. So, that was one example. And I think, you know, burnout, especially kind of, you know, coming out of 2020 and like we're still in a pandemic, right? We're not over this yet. I think that every, every employee has been hit hard, but in different ways, by all the circumstances of the past year, right? Whether it's Covid, whether it's working from home, whether it's kids at home, whether it's, you know, the, the conversations around social inequity and black lives matter, like everybody has been impacted in multiple angles and multiple ways. And they're carrying that with them every day for a CPO specifically, or CHRO or whatever the title might be, if you've got a really unique burden of all of that, because they're going through that as an individual, they're going through that within the context of, you know, leading their executive team and helping guide all the decisions that they're having to make as an executive team for the direction of the business. Lars (17m 48s): And they're going that for, you know, their own HR team who is on the front lines in many cases of a lot of these very emotional situations that these employees are experiencing and all of their employees, and they can't talk to their peers like within the organization, they can't talk to their colleagues about what they're experiencing. So, you know, I've seen a lot of really robust CSRO peer networks kind of flourish of last year because people needed a place to go and like talk to people who actually understood what they were going through and could, you know, commiserate and console in some cases. But I think too often they were addressing their own needs last. And that really, I think, caused a spike in burnout that we're still carrying today. Chad (18m 30s): Yeah. And Joel, he loves, you know, having more empathetic managers and HR, those types of things, going back to. Joel (18m 38s): I've been burned out on Chad since 2007 so I'm trying to get some guidance on that. Lars (18m 44s): We have support networks to help you get through that, Buddy. Chad (18m 46s): But yeah, no kidding. So you talked about, you know, a little bit about black lives matter and I mean, there's, there's definitely a culture shift and not to mention there's a different, I guess you could say conversation about things you can talk about at work. Right. And things you can't talk about at work. I mean, things have changed over the past year plus in really moved the needle in so many different areas. So as you talk about culture, can you talk about what culture might look like or should look like in 2021, 2022 to try to get away from the past and how rigid and how sterile it has been. Lars (19m 22s): Yeah. I mean, you know, one of the shifts that I kind of described in the book specifically around the CSRO role or CPO role, but I think it applies much more broadly than that. It is this move from being infallible, right? This like buttoned up polished archetype, that would say the right things and, you know, always kind of, you know, just a super, highly polished. Chad (19m 45s): Right. Lars (19m 45s): And like, right. Not real, too vulnerable, you know, to people that are able to be more real and share some of their own struggles and just be more human. Right. I think that there's a couple of cases in the book of CHRs from, you know, talking about things from their own struggles, with infertility to mental health and thoughts of suicide to, you know, coming out and the office is as gay for the first time and, you know, and sharing those experiences with their employees and that those kinds of conversations barely ever happened, you know, even a couple of years ago. And now I think we're seeing more of it. And I think this whole notion of work and life and separation, like we've all been in each other's homes through Zoom. Lars (20m 29s): We all know more about our colleagues now than we probably ever did. Just kind of going through these circumstances together. And so I think culture is going to be, you know, much more real and open and honest then I think before it was very, it could be very manufactured in some companies, you know, and it could be very aspirational, right? Like this is who we want to be like, that's cool, but that's not at all who you are. I think people need to like, be more comfortable with who they are, maybe talk about who they aspire to be, but like have that rooted in their reality with more of a direction of where they hope to be. Chad (21m 6s): Now, do you think that we are feeling more comfortable with being uncomfortable since we've been so fucking uncomfortable over the last year and maybe that's, what's pushed a lot of this EMP empathy is that it's just being human and living and it's uncomfortable, but we're becoming more comfortable with providing that in and actually having this conversation. Lars (21m 27s): Yeah. I mean, I think we're having conversations now that we never had before. Right. Like, I can't meet this deadline. Like my three kids are home from school and I'm at my wit's end trying to teach them. And our wifi is cutting out and like, I'm sorry, I just, I can't do this. Like, you know, when did we in the construct of work, did we have people say like, Hey, I just, I can't meet this deadline for personal reasons. And like, have that be acceptable and not to say that's acceptable across the board. Like some managers are probably still dicks about that, but like that, you know, that those kinds of conversations like taking a mental health day, like a wellness day, like saying like I'm just the stress of everything is getting me. I just need to take today off, like before it was like, we'd have to hide her out in a sick day. Lars (22m 9s): Like, Oh, I've to go to the doctor. We'd have to make up some excuse. I think, that is certainly starting to change. And part of it is just going through this like massive, you know, humanity level event that we've all experienced that has kind of knocked down some of those veneers and walls we put up around us and has given them permission to do so in the context of kind of how companies and employers are looking at their employees. Joel (22m 36s): I think some of the support that people are turning to, you've mentioned a few times in this interview is open source and opening sort of the doors. One of the stories you give in the book is of a Coinbase. And for those playing Chad and Cheese, bingo, that's our crypto reference for the show, they used open source for their COVID response, basically allowing other companies to come in and see that. So a lot of our listeners probably aren't even aware of what open source is. So talk about that and maybe some other examples of how companies are leveraging that strategy. Lars (23m 10s): Yeah. I mean, so open-source broadly, it's a, it was a concept, you know, started in the software. The idea being, if you write a line of code that does X thing, why not give that away and upload that to a common repository that other people can then just use to do that X thing. And over time, other people will take that code. They'll make it faster or they'll make it more efficient. They'll make it better. And so you have, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of engineers, all optimizing lines of code that's available for anyone. And so it's, you know, it became the fundamental backbone, much of the modern web that we use. And so taking that kind of open practice approach and bringing it into HR, which, you know, historically we sucked at that. Lars (23m 50s): We were all about silos and hoarding our data. We wouldn't share anything. And so that started to shift around five years ago with the launch of HR Open Source and Google Rework and other platforms. And so I think if you look at it now, I mean, the Coinbase situations, a great example, like back in late February, they, they publish their internal kind of pandemic response plan. And you know, that event at that time at that scale was something that no HR practitioner alive had experienced. Right. It's just, we, you know, we haven't had anything like that in years, and so lots of people were looking, you know, CHROs and HR leaders. They're they're CEOs, executives are looking at them for guidance. Lars (24m 32s): Like, Hey, what do we do? How do we approach this? And doing that, there was no precedent. And there was no playbook having that Coinbase example. The way that it played out was exactly like open source software. So they publish theirs. I then created an open source doc that included that. And I began curating other resources and news and updates from companies and how they were responding. And then I encouraged other companies to say, Hey, look, if you're basing your own pandemic response on Coinbase's doc, then please consider uploading your version of that doc to this common document so that other practitioners could read it. And, you know, within a week or two, we had about a dozen or more companies that had all open-sourced their pandemic response plans. Chad (25m 16s): That's awesome. Lars (25m 16s): And I think that was really instrumental at that early stage when like we were, you know, the pressure on HR teams was massive. Nobody knew, you know, nobody knew for sure, like, Hey, this is the right way, this is how you handle X. Like we're all figuring it out. And so being able to see like, okay, Coinbase is doing it this way, like Sneak is doing it this way. Dashlane is doing it this way. I'm not going to do any of those things, exactly. But I'm going to build what I'm going to do off of all of those other things. It was invaluable. So to me, like, you know, the use case for Open Source was firmly established in my view, long before that, but that was kind of the moment where, you know, globally people all around the world were borrowing from that doc and then adding their own. And I think it was just a master case study in how open-source can work in HR. Chad (26m 0s): That is amazing. Well, the, the book is Redefining HR. That's Redefining HR, Transforming People, Teams to Drive Business Performance. That's from your buddy, Lars, Lars. We got to have you back. We didn't even get a chance to talk about DEI, AI and a bunch of other acronyms. But until then, until then. Joel (26m 22s): Yeah. Chad (26m 24s): You know me and then. Lars (26m 25s): Chad Huxtable. Chad (26m 27s): Where can people actually find this book? Where can people buy this book? Lars (26m 31s): Yeah. So just going to redefininghr.com. I make it easy. The links to the book, podcast, any other content and projects and whatever they come out of the Redefining HR umbrella. It's all there. Chad (26m 43s): If you're not listening to the podcast, definitely listen to the podcast. Lars, once again, man. Want to have you back soon? Lars (26m 49s): Yeah. Thanks guys. Thanks for having me on and I'll see you in four years! Joel (26m 52s): Alright Buddy. Chad (26m 52s): You got it Dude. Joel (26m 54s): Another one in the books. We out. Chad (26m 56s): We out. OUTRO (27m 51s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

What are your thoughts on the future of sourcing as is it gonna all be automated? So I think that there is a place for automation. So a lot of what we do, so there's two parts to it Joel, part of it is automation. And we actually use that tool to help automate a lot of our social job postings. You know, what's the next great sourcing automation tool. I don't know.

TOPICS: - Internet Recruitment 2000 - From Rolodex to automation - The rise of Jobs2Web? : What ended up happening for me was I started gravitating toward wondering things like how could I automate group that does the hunting also sits in my organization and the way that we have used technology to automate He actually did this, but seeing what Doug did and how he built a platform to automate that. So you've had the systems that then could sort of automate and do more of that social stuff, but you

Steve Pemberton is Best Selling Author, Philanthropist, Acclaimed Speaker, and Senior Level Executive. He wasn't given a chance in the world; he proved them wrong. Steve's chance is now focused on change. In this interview we talk about the pace of change, the fluidity of change, scaling belief and purpose, the end state of remote work, the future of equity, who was responsible for getting companies through the pandemic, and more. Steve was not given a chance in the world and now he's changing it. Enjoy! TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions partners with our clients to build best-in-class inclusion programs and reach qualified, talented individuals with disabilities of every skill, education, and experience level. INTRO (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad (27s): Hey it's Chad. Whenever you have a chance to interview someone whose life has been turned into a movie, well, you make time for that interview. And we did with Steve Pemberton, currently CHRO at WorkHuman straight from Unleash America's expo floor we got Steve on the mic and to be truthful, most people have to get comfortable on the mic. Not Steve. He's funny, smart, genuine and one of the best interviews we have recorded to date. Now, we originally recorded this interview exclusively for the Unleashed Cast podcast, but it was too damn good not to share here. Chad (1m 10s): You can find more great interviews from the floor of Unleash America over at Unleashed Cast podcast. Let's join the conversation in progress. Steve (1m 21s): So 30 seconds or less, I walk across my college graduation stage. Nobody's there? Chad (1m 28s): Yeah. Steve (1m 29s): No family, nobody. I'm like, why the hell is this? Where's my mother, father? I go looking for them. When I find them, find siblings find this case file that's almost 300 pages long and in that case file was a prediction from a social worker who said that I was not going to have a chance in the world. So I titled that the book that I wrote for my children, that book became a bestseller, became a movie, became a curriculum that's taught in American schools. None of that I was trying to do. Joel (2m 1s): Yeah. And what's the movie called again for Steve (2m 2s): A Chance in the World. Chad (2m 5s): A Chance in the World. So you've got a great story, right? Why get into HR? Steve (2m 12s): Because that's what HR is about. Chad (2m 14s): Yeah, tell me about that. Steve (2m 15s): It's about people's stories. Chad (2m 16s): Yeah? Steve (2m 16s): I mean, I've always been fascinated. Well, because of my own journey, like I've always been fascinated by systems and people and in part, because both systems and people failed me. Chad (2m 28s): Yes. Steve (2m 29s): So how do systems and people that drive them? How do those two worlds intersect? And HR's probably the single best place to do that cuz every day you wake up trying to figure out where they're dealing with payroll or they're dealing with advancing people. You you're always wrestling with how systems enable people and how those people enable systems. Chad (2m 45s): So how hard is it to actually get the systems to work? Right? I mean, we're talking about one company right now, right? Steve (2m 52s): Yeah. Chad (2m 53s): How hard is it to get it just within your own organization? Steve (2m 56s): Oh! Chad (2m 56s): To get those to run, right. We're talking about equity, talking about transparency. We're talking about systems that have been broken forever. Steve (3m 4s): Yeah! Chad (3m 4s): Now we've got technology that should make this easier, but for some reason, for decades, it has not happened. So for you a leader, for just one company and we won't talk about clients or anything, just how do you harness this? How do you actually fix this? Steve (3m 20s): Well, change has been going on since the beginning of time. Right? If it hadn't, you know, we'd be running around with clubs chasing dinosaurs. Change has always happened. Chad (3m 28s): That's what Joel does on the weekends, by the way. Steve (3m 31s): Yeah. I'm gonna leave that alone. Leave Joel alone. But what's different for us to pace a change. Which is why I think it's so hard, cuz the minute that you think you have that system teed up, then there's could be a new federal regulation that comes down. Chad (3m 45s): Right. Steve (3m 46s): Something could happen around pay equity and so now you gotta revamp your systems all over again. We have a tendency to think that I've done that and I can move on and then something else emerges now you've gotta go back and it really frustrates people. Chad (3m 58s): Right. Right. Steve (3m 58s): And we're gonna have to accept the fact that change is happening so quickly. It's just gonna be a norm and you're gonna have to be constantly and relentlessly updating. And then I think the other, which is the subject of the panel, is how are those same systems enabling these softer or these perceptively softer things? Like culture. Chad (4m 19s): Yes. Steve (4m 19s): Like skills. Chad (4m 20s): Yeah. Steve (4m 20s): And I think technology is, might be our last best shot because as human beings, we keep getting this wrong. I mean, look at the broader society. Right? Look at what's happened. Chad (4m 30s): Yeah. Steve (4m 31s): Last 48 hours. Last two weeks. Chad (4m 31s): Yeah. Steve (4m 32s): Where do you turn? Where are the places you turn and what are the tools you turn to try and find some semblance of humanity. Chad (4m 40s): Yeah. Yeah. Joel (4m 42s): I wanna touch on your employer. WorkHuman. Steve (4m 44s): Yes. Joel (4m 44s): And your background, you've worked in a lot of big organizations. I heard Walgreens and some other, so what was it about WorkHuman, an HR company that appealed to you and that seems like an interesting dynamic to be an HR head in an HR related company. Steve (5m 0s): Yeah. Joel (5m 1s): Talk about that. Steve (5m 1s): That Joel, that to me is the cool part because one, the threshold is higher. When you run HR for a company that sells into HR, you'd better be damn good, because you have to have the credibility to walk into any prospect or any customer and say, so here is how I leverage in our case. Here's how I leverage our recognition platform. And I like that. I like the challenge of it was I tell my team all the time, we have to be what we sell and there's no greater credibility you have than to say, here's how we're leveraging and utilizing it. I also think my own career path, I was part of an organization in Walgreens, like 90% brand recognition, 250,000 people and it became, Joel (5m 40s): Yeah's kind of a big deal, big deal, Walgreens. Steve (5m 42s): But that was one of the problems. Is just too damn big. Joel (5m 45s): Really? Steve (5m 46s): And you're dealing with a very complex industry. That's healthcare. Chad (5m 49s): Yeah. Steve (5m 50s): So I wanted to do something that was faster moving and that was advancing a broader societal mission. I'd argue that healthcare is doing that too. Cuz without health, everything else, just a conversation. Joel (5m 60s): Yeah. Steve (6m 1s): But to know you wake up every day, seeing how a recognition moment changes somebody's life really spoke to me at a point in my career where I could kinda look around a landscape and say, all right, I'm gonna be fine. I have a job. Like what do I want do? Joel (6m 15s): Yeah. Steve (6m 17s): And to choose a company that was rapidly rising was, I needed to feel alive again. It felt like that. Like you need to be like alive again. Chad (6m 24s): Now do you feel since you're working for a tech company that you can actually scale what your belief is, what you know to do through that organization? Steve (6m 36s): Well, in my world you had better because if not, especially because of the pandemic, people gonna walk out on you. I think I think that's a dynamic that's changed. It's not about work life anymore. It's about life at work. Chad (6m 47s): Yeah. Steve (6m 47s): Because you know, we're sitting on screens and you know, you've got babies on laps and cats walking across the desk. Chad (6m 54s): Yeah. Steve (6m 54s): I mean, you, you saw windows, literally windows into people's lives. Yeah. And if you're not using technology to scale those human interactions, then those people are gonna say, Hey, you know, I like Joel, Joel's a great dude. And I like the company, but I want to go someplace where I'm awoken again and I'm doing something to broaden the world. That can't happen if you are just having these kind of one off conversations, which are nice and they're cool. But you wanna know that you are scaling that. And the last thing I'd say, and certainly this is true in the pandemic. I mean, people are hurting. I mean, you, you see this, what happened in Buffalo? What happened in Uvalde? Chad (7m 35s): Yeah. Steve (7m 35s): You know, our employees, aren't walking into WorkHuman and they're turning that off. They're not turning that off. They want a place to talk about it. Chad (7m 41s): Yeah. Steve (7m 41s): Even if they don't know what to say. So we have a parents that WorkHuman Slack channel and that just lit up yesterday. People didn't know where to go. They know who to talk about. They were using this technology platform just to have a conversation cuz we're a company made up predominantly of people who are parents of young children. So they're dropping their child off at the bus and holding onto their hand longer. My VP of HR said, dropped my daughter off of school, police presence there. Police presence wasn't there yesterday. Chad (8m 12s): Yeah. Steve (8m 12s): How are you having those conversations? Chad (8m 13s): Yeah. Steve (8m 13s): What are you talking about? Chad (8m 14s): Active shooter drills are happening and your kids are talking about it coming home. Yeah. Steve (8m 21s): Yeah. Yeah. Very different. Very different. Joel (8m 25s): We talk every week about the remote work question. Steve (8m 27s): Yeah. Joel (8m 28s): And some companies are, get your ass back to the office. Some are never come back again. Others are are hybrid. What was the internal discussion like at WorkHuman in regards to what you were gonna do after the pandemic? Steve (8m 41s): I mean, generally speaking, Joel, nobody knows. I mean they can say they know. The reality is that you don't know until you put it into practice. That's the reality of where you are. And so I see all, you know, the influences and talking heads say do X, Y or Z. I'm like, yeah. Okay. That's bovine skitology, you know what that is? Joel (8m 58s): Bullshit. Steve (8m 58s): That's right. You don't know. You don't know. Joel (8m 60s): Yeah. Steve (8m 60s): So for us, here's what we did, we went through these cycles. I think every company's doing and you're reading articles and you know what we did that really changed the dynamic. We went to our people and we said, rather than us throwing policies and practices down around remote working, tell me what it is you're looking for. And here's what came back to us. We are looking for fun. We're looking for fitness, we're looking for food and we're looking for some sense of family. So that's how I talk about it internally for us. But that's us. Right? That's what we are looking for. And then the other, I think is it's a critical factor is how people are being productive and efficient in their way and by function. Steve (9m 42s): So you're in sales, I'm in marketing, you're in IT. Our industries are working very differently. Good luck going to your CIO, your CTO and saying your people have to be in the office five days a week. Joel (9m 57s): Oh yeah. Steve (9m 57s): She's gonna say, well, I'm gonna lose 25, 30% of my workforce if you force that, on the other hand marketing, you might say, I've gotta have 'em at least two to three days. Somebody else in fulfillment might say, well, I can't fulfill things if they're not physically in the space. Joel (10m 11s): Yeah. Steve (10m 12s): And I think that's the shift that has to happen. So start looking at this one by asking your people what they're looking for and then put a functional lens over. And lastly you have to drive a message. Not everybody's gonna be working exactly the same way and you're gonna have to accept that. Joel (10m 28s): Yeah. Chad (10m 29s): Well we never have, I mean, seriously, we really never have. Steve (10m 32s): Fair point. Chad (10m 33s): We're now starting to see how much different we all are. The question is, and we've heard some companies and some vendors talking about, being able to provide amazing amounts of flexibility to their workers. So from the standpoint of, if I can work from home five days a week, I'll give up X, Y, or Z. Steve (10m 53s): Yes. Chad (10m 53s): So a little bit of pay, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Some time off, whatever it is. Steve (10m 60s): Right. Chad (11m 0s): Do you think that, that is something that a company can actually manage? And then if they can, how do you take a look at the equity conversation there? Because the individual, the employee is picking this, right? Steve (11m 14s): Yes. Chad (11m 14s): And it's a much harder to take a look at what equity actually means. Steve (11m 18s): Yeah. And how do you not wind up with two different kinds of companies as a result? Chad (11m 24s): Yeah. Steve (11m 25s): One that's remote and one that's. Well, I think the fulcrum is really the people leaders in that company specifically, they're the ones who are gonna have to develop new management muscle to deal with those changing realities. Otherwise, if you, you could have silos and legal wants to run it one way and finance wants to run it another and that's how you wind up with these inequities. So I think training people, leaders, and I get on biweekly calls without people leaders. It's like every other week, every Wednesday morning, I'm on with them. Chad (11m 60s): Yeah. Steve (12m 0s): And we're walking through all these things. Why, because it's still unfolding. We're still processing. We're still communicating, but I'm really clear in telling them you are going to have to manage your workforce differently than you have in the past. And we'll bring outside agencies will step through training, whatever's required. But for me in our executive team has this expectation you're just gonna get it. Without that I think you wind up with disparate processes and that's where the inequities come from and so people just start exiting on you. Joel (12m 29s): So speaking of inequities, I don't know if you saw our keynote with the commissioner of the EEOC yesterday, but we talked extensively about AI and hiring and how there are bias decisions being made through AI. Curious, are you sort of a sounding board for the products being made at WorkHuman and what kind of traps do you see companies falling into with sort of leaning on AI and, and sort of the trap doors to look for when bias does come into play, whether it's intentional or not? Chad (13m 3s): That's a good one. Steve (13m 4s): Yeah. So, because you still have no matter what you do, you're still gonna have human beings who are behind the AI in some way, shape or form determining algorithms. Right? Architecting, language. Chad (13m 15s): Training data. Steve (13m 17s): All of that. Chad (13m 19s): Oh yeah. Yeah. Steve (13m 21s): I think focusing on technology to preempt bias specifically is where I think the next evolution should go. Cuz right now all of the tools, that like chief diversity officers have, CHROs have, guys the damage has already been done. It's already been done. If you're doing an adverse impact analysis, for example, after you've had a reduction in workforce or you're dealing with a class action lawsuit from EEOC. Chad (13m 46s): Yeah. Steve (13m 47s): Damage has already been done. You already have a reputation out there. So I think leveraging AI specifically as you're going through performance reviews, as you're in our world, a recognition moment. Hey Joel, did you really mean to use this language in recognizing a woman for performance? You may not even be aware of it. My wife and daughter often remind me, I'm not the feminist I think I am. Chad (14m 9s): Yes. Steve (14m 10s): Right? I didn't know. But if it gets, if that mirror gets held up to me while it's happening, not after the fact, not after she's already left, not after she's already been offended. I think you can create a very different kind of language. What. Now the challenge I think, is shifting a lot of the DE&I practitioners shifting their mindset. They're not dealing in broader society today, they're not dealing with unconscious bias. A lot of the shit I see has conscious bias. Chad (14m 39s): Yeah. We're beyond unconscious. Steve (14m 40s): Yeah. This is not a matter of, you don't know better. #MeToo movement. Chad (14m 43s): Yeah. Steve (14m 43s): You know exactly what the hell you were doing. Joel (14m 46s): Yeah. Steve (14m 46s): So you're getting enabled. You still are, no matter what AI is built, you're still going to need people to make moral, ethical decisions when those behaviors emerge. On the hiring front I do think though, is where you've seen advancements specifically, so that you you're dealing with issues of names and how names are used in the search process. Are we being equitable and fair? And do we have corrective practices? Coming from a former Chief Diversity Officer until I feel. Chad (15m 15s): So, let's talk about Chief Diversity Officers. So many are out there and they're put on an island. They don't have funding. They don't have staff. They don't have any means of actually making real impact. Really they're just a figurehead that's there. Steve (15m 32s): Yeah. Chad (15m 32s): And we've seen that for years. Have you seen changes and where are, if we, if you have, where did those changes start? Did they start in the C-suite? Did it start grassroots or do you think it just hasn't changed? Steve (15m 45s): I don't think you've seen the seismic change that's required to reflect the times. I'll answer it that way. Remember the origins of the role of the CDO came from the early to mid nineties when companies found themselves in courtrooms getting sold for millions and millions of dollars. And so, you know what those boards went back and they said, well, we gotta stay outta courtroom. We gotta stay outta the news. So we're gonna hire somebody. Chad (16m 10s): Yeah. Steve (16m 11s): And that person's sole job and responsibilities to make sure we don't wind up in the courtroom again. So think what that anchor is. That anchor more Chad (16m 18s): Compliance. Steve (16m 18s): Yeah, exactly what it was. Chad (16m 19s): Yeah. Steve (16m 20s): In quasi PR, which is how you wind up with a single individual, no budget and a lot of external facing optics kind of things. Chad (16m 28s): Right. Steve (16m 28s): Well, when was the last time in any part of any organization that you said anything was of significance in value you put one person on it with no budget? Nowhere. So you're sending a message already about its value and importance. Now what's changed though, is demography. And that's always the disconnect for me. So how knowing that your customer bases are changing, who you're, serving's changing, like how can you continue to go down this path of the CDO in a role by themselves kinda like an ice cream cone, no ice cream in basically. Chad (16m 60s): Yeah. Yeah. Steve (17m 0s): So for a lot of companies though, and especially George Floyd, which is where I think you saw this real paradigm shift. Chad (17m 7s): Yes. Steve (17m 8s): So since may of 2020, which is when George Floyd was murdered, companies have dedicated 66 billion to eliminating disparities, in transportation, in housing. So that was a real paradigm shift. The business round table made up of 181 CEO said, you know, we have a broader societal responsibility because prior to that, they came from that Milton Friedman school of thought, which was, we don't have any responsibility other than generating a profit. Chad (17m 34s): Yeah. Steve (17m 34s): Drucker comes along a little bit later and says, no, you have a broader responsibility here. So when the business round table says, actually you're right. It's why you see Apple investing in homelessness. It's why, when we were at WorkHuman in Atlanta last year, we had our recognition moments and all the recognition moments that came through, went to three charities in the Atlanta area. In other words, we're saying as businesses, we are not gonna leave this government because by and large, our politics are not in a place where they seemingly can solve the challenges of our time. Chad (18m 4s): Yeah. Steve (18m 4s): So we have this quiet covenant, I think that's happening amongst businesses saying, we'll take it on. We're gonna get together cuz we have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, to society. We have performance metrics. We have urgency because we are held to the public markets and you're gonna see more and more companies who are gonna form partnerships like Bank of America does with Morehouse College and Spelman College in Atlanta. HBCU saying, we're gonna start centers for entrepreneurship. Chad (18m 33s): Yeah. Steve (18m 34s): We're gonna be focused on women in STEM disciplines. So that's why I have hope despite the fact, I think some things have not changed. Joel (18m 41s): It's looking more and more like we're headed into a recession. And in typical recessions, the rule book kind of gets thrown out, we Batten down the hatches and we survive the storm. What's your take on these DEI issues in regards to the economy and a downturn? What happens when that happens? And then when we come out of it, what's your view on what DEI looks like? Is it stronger after the storm or do we go back to more status quo? Steve (19m 9s): Well, typically the recession around those matters is always mental retraction. You know, when you perceive DEI as a nice thing to do in cost cutting time, it's the first thing to go because it's an optic in some cases, candidly or a kind of a nice to have. Joel (19m 24s): Yeah. Steve (19m 24s): But again, who's your customer base? Who are you serving? Who's your employee base? I can't, I'm sure this happened to both of you as well, I can't tell you a number of times. Probably most recently, a couple weeks ago from New England live in Chicago, big Dunkin' Donuts. That's my deal. Joel (19m 38s): Dunky's. Steve (19m 38s): Yes, man. I go to a Dunkin' Donuts, like five o'clock to grab a cup of coffee. Sign. We don't have staff here. Chad (19m 46s): Yeah. Steve (19m 46s): We don't have staff here. Chad (19m 48s): Yeah. Steve (19m 48s): Right. So this idea somehow that we can just kind of get through a recession and then we'll be able to, I don't think that's. We had better planned for it accordingly. I will say though, that the pandemic would've led you to believe that too. Right. Because okay. We're all in this moment, this first six weeks are we gonna be around? Are we gonna be relevant? Chad (20m 7s): Yeah. Steve (20m 7s): You imagine the hotel industry. Airlines industry. We know what they went through. I do think it requires from the early onset. Cuz see your point. You can con you can see, you can see the tides starting to go out vis a vis the recession. So you have to make a B line literally to your employee population, to your customer base and you have to have a very active plan. I'm not referring to kind corporate social responsibility. What your retention plan? Who's gonna be staffing any parts of your organization? It's gonna require that new leadership muscle. It's just not true about managing people through a pandemic, it's also managing through recessions. And it just seems like every damn week, man is just something else coming. Chad (20m 50s): Yes. Steve (20m 50s): Something else coming. You know, the other thing I would point out is that the pandemic really magnified this HR, you know, it's always a battle to prove your relevance to have a seat at the table. Joel (21m 0s): Yeah. Chad (21m 0s): Yeah. Steve (21m 0s): Like why are you relevant? Chad (21m 2s): Yeah. Yeah. Steve (21m 2s): And I would say the pandemic, I kind of walk around with my chest, pumped up, puffed up around WorkHuman and generally. You know why? We don't have anything to prove anymore because the responsibility for getting an organization through the pandemic fell on HR. Just like the last recession that was the test of the CFO. We were the ones who had to get people home if they were at a conference and you got a shelter in place order. We were the ones who said, let's get you the equipment so you can keep doing your job. Chad (21m 28s): Yeah. Steve (21m 28s): We were the ones who created programming when mental health began to raise its head. We were the ones designing vaccine and safety protocols. We came back to the office, we're the ones designing hybrid ways of working. Chad (21m 42s): The essential workers that are out there, man. Steve (21m 44s): Yes, yes. Chad (21m 44s): And they were finally titled essential workers and those people lifted up their chest came out. Steve (21m 45s): Yes. Chad (21m 46s): Because they knew that nothing happened without them. We saw a supply chain. Steve (21m 52s): Yes. Chad (21m 53s): Go down. Steve (21m 53s): Yes. Chad (21m 53s): Right? Steve (21m 54s): Absolutely. Absolutely. We gotta have a little bit more swag in HR. Chad (22m 0s): Yeah. Steve (22m 1s): To be honest. Chad (22m 1s): We do. We do. Okay. So last question, Steve. We're back. We're live. Steve (22m 5s): Yeah. Chad (22m 6s): We're here. How does it feel, man? Great. Steve (22m 10s): Yeah. I mean, I love technology. I'm a first adopter and just about damn near anything and the three of us could be on the screen, but you know, we can have a conversation since we're all bearded here, you know? I mean just stuff that we can talk about, laugh about. Chad (22m 26s): Yeah. Steve (22m 26s): Connect. Even though we're just meeting for the first time. Technology can't replace that. Chad (22m 32s): Right. Steve (22m 32s): So that feels great. And I also think the pandemic robbed us of community. Chad (22m 38s): Yeah. Steve (22m 38s): It really did. I mean, you just isolated your alone and it's just something about laughing, smiling, having a drink, catching up with your colleagues Joel (22m 46s): Or two or three drinks. Steve (22m 47s): Or depending on what's unfolding, four or five. Chad (22m 49s): In Vegas. Yeah. Steve (22m 50s): We need that. We need that. Joel (22m 52s): I'll let you out on this. You're obviously a thoughtful guy. What are what's on your reading list this summer? What are you watching? What, you know, what's filling your brain this summer? Steve (23m 4s): Yeah. So I'm gonna answer that probably differently. So I am a voracious, relentless reader. I am an author. I am actually writing my next book. So my time is usually spent reading and writing my next one. Joel (23m 18s): Nice. Steve (23m 19s): Trying to find the time to do that, getting the head space to do it. Joel (23m 22s): Yep. Steve (23m 22s): Love the written word. This one has always been a bit of a project, you know, one of that wishlist things, and I've just said, you know. Chad (23m 29s): Yeah. Steve (23m 29s): I'm gonna really sit down and do this this time around. Chad (23m 32s): Get a cabin in the woods and knock it out. Steve (23m 34s): Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But you gotta be in a space to write, you know, you gotta be in a space I think, to read as well and absorb kind of what your, the last one I read was the Song of Achilles. It's a great, great book, revisits the story of Achilles, but in a very, very different way, which I'd recommend everybody take a gander at. Chad (24m 0s): Like revisionist almost Malcolm Gladwell style? Steve (24m 4s): Yeah, exactly. Revisiting and basically imagining Achilles, still being the hero that he was, but understanding his journey in a very, very different way. And there's a real powerful narrative in there about DE and I. That's Chad (24m 17s): That's amazing, man. Pretty cool. Steve Pemberton, everybody. Steve, thank you so much for taking time, man. If people want to connect with you or find out more about what you're doing, where would you actually send them? Steve (24m 29s): Go to WorkHuman.com. You can find me on LinkedIn. I like catching up with folks and hearing what they're up to. You learned a lot from engaging and interacting with people, hear what's on their minds too. So easy to find on any of the social media platforms. Chad (24m 42s): Amen. Steve (24m 42s): Good hanging out with you guys too, man. Joel (24m 47s): Absolutely Man. Thank you, Steve. This was great. Chad, another one is in the can. Chad and Cheese (24m 54s): We out. Chad (24m 55s): Damn. That was good. Remember you can find more great interviews over at Unleashed Cast podcast. We out. OUTRO (24m 59s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. OUTRO (25m 46s): And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

by automation by 2030! Can't miss is automation. sfx (6m 9s): Shall we play a game? Melanie (6m 31s): No, I think automate, automate, right? I think Joel is right with regard to automation. able to automate them.

If we finally start to re-engineer our processes and enter into the age of automation. But if they're bogged down with a lot of administrative tasks that could be automated. Yeah, sure. Chloe (23m 53s): I mean, I also think like one great example is like automate your, where your jobs are You know, create, you know, put some automation around that, use some programmatic. I think, you know, that is a form of automation and that's definitely, that'll take the guesswork out

You know, it's just that somebody hasn't yet created an application for it, but they can all be automated It's sort of the main theme of what we do and recruiting and automation and AI, it's sort of a scary

And it's so much more, it's really automating all the buying and selling of advertising. the streamlining, this advertising, which is a huge time commitment if you're not doing it through automation

It’s a must-read for anyone in the recruiting industry, where robotics, automation and AI are set to We're already seeing automation taking jobs. And curious how you think automation will impact them. And I believe that ultimately, education, like every other profession, is going to be automated. #Automation #Robots #Dystopia #Workforce #Education #Economy #TAtech #Nexxt

my first business was building an applicant tracking system online around an ATS, one of the first automated recruiting, or in your case, not recruiting, recruiting, or do they opt in for technological solutions like automation were saying, Hey, I've unearthed a diamond in the rough, but now someone has to call them well, in automation Automation can do it for them. Curious about your, take on all that?

Maintaining a platform with decades of unused features, or multiple features providing the same end to a means, or a pile of feature dropdowns leading to a totally unusable system is leading indicators you possibly reside in "Feature Hell". A well-designed, user-friendly ATS is a little like trying to find Sasquatch. It apparently exists, but really hard to find. Well, lucky for you, Chad & Cheese have nabbed Bigfoot, metaphorically that is. Meet Lital Sherman, Head of Experience Design at PageUp, who agreed to sit down with the boys for a few and chat applicant tracking design dos and don'ts. Dig into testing, mobile, and feature hell with us, won't you? Matching candidates to jobs shouldn't be Hell either, which is why you need Sovren as your parsing and matching partner. Visit Sovren.com, tell them Chad & Cheese sent you and to send us more bourbon. We're almost out! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions connects jobseekers with disabilities with employers who value diversity and inclusion. INTRO (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (19s): Oh yeah. Good day, mate. We have another Australian on the line because, well, God damn it, that's happy hour in the U S and Chad and I are fully drunk. Welcome everybody to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel Cheeseman joined as always by my companion partner. Handmade, homemade Chad Sowash. Chad (41s): Hello! Joel (42s): Today is Lital Sherman Head of Experience Design at PageUp a popular applicant tracking system because they're well-known for their design out there and Australia. Let's all welcome to the show. Good to have you. Chad (56s): Now that, that is one heck of a title, head of experience design I wouldn't even know who the hell you report to at that point. Are you floating out there? Who do you report to? Lital (1m 9s): That is really a good question. So I report to the CIO and hello by the way guys. And basically our department called the product, right? So the CIO is not the Chief Product Officer. He is the CIO, so he managed product, design, and engineering. So all of us were work together. And the good thing about it is that I think traditionally design is they reported into marketing or into product. So head of PR, head of design or design managers were reporting into the head of product, but at Page Up, Head of Product, Head of Design and Head of Technology are all kind of equal. Lital (1m 52s): So we have equal voice. And, you know, we argue a lot every day, which is awesome. Joel (1m 57s): Lovely, lovely. Lital (1m 59s): And as an Israeli, I always win. Chad (2m 2s): Take it by force. Always taking it by force. Lital (2m 9s): Just joking. Chad (2m 10s): And that is interesting because it sounds like you have to be in a, more of a collaborative model in that kind of a setup. Lital (2m 16s): Exactly. Yes. Yes. So we actually done kind of is our restructure transformation about a year and a half ago. And what we've done, there is really kind of to change the way our product development teams are working, the way they're working, the way they solve problem to customers and also the structure of those teams. So every team is being led by what we call the three amigo or the trio is probably a more known term, which is, Chad (2m 47s): I love it! Lital (2m 48s): No I'm serious, which is a Senior Product Manager, a Senior UX Designer and a Senior Tech Lead. So they are leading the teams one of them obviously have their own responsibilities, but together they basically make all this strategic decisions for the team then to operate on those things. Chad (3m 8s): Have you seen that movie though, the Three Amigos, do you know what the reference was? Lital (3m 15s): I don't know. I'm not sure. Joel (3m 18s): She's much younger than you are by the way Chad. Lital (3m 22s): I'm not sure. Joel (3m 23s): So Lital, your background is not, you know, rooted in HR. You've worked in consumer sites and sort of traditional sexier design projects. I got to know what was your first impression? I can't think of anything less sexy than an applicant tracking system. Like what was your first impression? What was the hook that got you into this industry? Like talk about that. Cause I'm mesmerized. Lital (3m 51s): Yes. Well, I have to say, I haven't seen ATS that is sexy or good looking or has a delightful experience. So yes, that is not, but for me, honestly, I will choose a role because of the culture of the company, way more because of the product itself. And I love going into, you know, challenging roles when you see that something is actually not so great. And I really have a really great impact that I can, you know, support the company. Joel (4m 25s): Yeah. Were there a few, Oh my God. Moments, like in terms of design when you looked at these ATS and said, I cannot believe that you're doing this, this and this. Absolutely. Is there a one or two that stand out? Lital (4m 37s): Because, you know, as a job seeker in the past, probably the apply. So the application system for candidates is just horrific with every ATS that I've seen, ever. And I applied for a lot of jobs in the past when I was looking for jobs, but also I applied for jobs just to see how competitors are operating. And they're all pretty crappy, you know, and that's really tactical with the candidate experience. How can we make it better? Why do we need all this information, that we ask for candidates? How can we make it just easier for people to use and apply quickly to a job? When, you know, usually when someone is looking for a job, they will apply to 20, 30, a hundred jobs sometime, how can we just make it a little bit better? Lital (5m 22s): But for me, I really, it was a really good opportunity to join a company that is working on something completely new. I like my challenges and I like moving around the industries. I don't like to stay in one industry and say, Oh, I know everything here, learning new stuff. And B2B was also new to me. So, you know, working with businesses, it is the way more challenging than working with consumers, but I love it. It's interesting. It is honestly interesting. Chad (5m 50s): Basic expectations and HR, are just HR, talent acquisition, the actual recruiting process. There they are met because it's not quick. It always asks me to create an account when there's no reason I need to create a goddamned account, it doesn't ask me for the same info or it does. It continues to ask me for the same info over and over and over. It takes 10 to 20 minutes and it sends me into a black hole. So the, the whole experience like defies the gravity of just basic expectations. So I can see why this would be kind of like an allure to you because there are so much that you could fix. Chad (6m 34s): There are so many challenges, but the question is, why is it that way in the first place? Lital (6m 39s): Well, I can tell you what, just from what I know. So traditionally, you know, those businesses exist for many, many years and businesses. Like most businesses are being, you know, developed and managed by engineers and sorry, I love engineers, but to be honest, they don't really care about experiences or they don't have the knowledge to design a good experience. Most, most companies, you know, they start especially B2B, adding more and more and more and more and more features because clients are requesting those features. So they have a backlog and a list of all the features that all those, you know, let's say 20 customers at the beginning are requesting and I get what they do that right? Chad (7m 21s): To make money? Lital (7m 22s): Yeah, exactly. And they want to sell it because you know, it's okay, they'll pay for it. Also, let's just add another feature and another feature and another feature and another feature. And sometime you will have, you know, three ways to do the same task. It's just confusing. And then a user will see the system and like, okay, I don't know what I need to do now, do I need to use this feature or this feature, you know, to complete the same test. So this is a lot to know what we call a feature hell or experience rot. When you basically have no idea, what is the next step that you need to do, which is crazy. Now PageUp, like, you know, other ATSs exists for the company exist for 22 years, the ATS exists for something like 17 years. Lital (8m 6s): So, you know, of course we have a lot of kind of tech death and legacy systems that, you know, people added more and more features over time. My job with my team is really to fix it. So to find those opportunities of where we see the most value for customers or for the users, what can we change or remove or add, you know, whatever feature or we just completely redesigned the experience to give them a much better experience, because it's really all about the experience, right? If people are not using the system because they want to use the system, okay. Chad (8m 42s): Some companies that are pliable and they'll allow that, but this accumulation of all of these, these features or these questions are just this big ball of a massive years of condensing features into a which creates just a horrible experience overall. It's like going into a room where you just go ahead and just throw everything instead of organizing it or getting rid of stuff. Right? So we become feature hoarders. The question is, do you talk to companies, company by company to try to help them with their actual design? Or is this more of a strategic effort from the top down to create a better experience for all organizations? Chad (9m 28s): And then how do you manage that from a client standpoint? Lital (9m 32s): Yeah. So what do I do? I work more with a team on the strategy. So, you know, we identify those opportunities and sit, and then we say, okay, we'll really need to fix it to all of our customers. Like we have about 400 plus customers. We can't work with each one of them individually and design their own experience because, you know, it's not sustainable. It's not going to work. So for us, for the product design team is really about identifying those opportunities and obviously giving some flexibility to the clients so they can, you know, bring their own templates, create their own workflow, whatever they want to do within the boundaries that we are giving them. Lital (10m 15s): Now, of course not every customer will be happy when you change a feature. That's just to given people don't like changes, so we need to work with them on that. And this is where we work with our customer success managers, our account executive, our support team and so on. So they can support those, those clients and take them through the journey of this is what we change, this is the reason why we changed it, give it a go, give us your feedback. So we work a lot with customers in my team, but it's more about interviewing them, really understanding, you know, their needs, their expectations. We adopted what we call jobs to be done. I didn't know if you ever heard about that, but this is a way to discover and really understand, you know, the core job that the customers are trying to get done when they're using a product or assist them or a service. Lital (11m 8s): And they'll just say yes to every feature request. And obviously in our industry, customers will request features all the time because this is what they think they need. And, but sometimes the feature that they're asking for is not really the best solution for the problem. So we are there to identify where the problem is and to identify the top problems for the majority of our clients, and then to solve it in the best way possible. Joel (11m 37s): You talk about feedback from clients, and that's obviously an important piece of it. I'm curious about the testing side of things, because I think most companies or ATSs in general in terms of testing, you know, maybe they give it to a couple of people in the office or the engineers kind of QA. But I think the best way to do it is to actually have people that are really, you know, 30,000 feet away from the product and bring them in and say, okay, how do you do this and do this and give them instruction, talk about how you test new features and new designs before you roll them out to the public. Lital (12m 12s): Yes. So we do what we call usability testing. So usability testing is really bringing people and, you know, the users that we expect to use a system and share the prototype. So it's all about prototype. It's not coded yet, the solution is not coded cause once it's coded, it's really hard to change it and you basically give them a task. You don't tell them what to do, you just tell them, okay, well, you know, change the status of five candidates from this to this, go ahead, show me how you do that. You also tell them, obviously that everything that they do is absolutely a great, and we're not testing them, we're testing our solution and please explain to us what you do. Lital (12m 53s): So really want to understand their thinking and they're habits of how they complete tasks. So this is one thing, and also we have that, you know, what we call alpha release and beta release when we put solutions in front of a subset of users and we basically tell them, okay, go ahead, have a play with that and tell us what you think. So we have there, kind of a window for them to give us their feedback. And this is really helpful because sometimes what we think and what we, you know, working at PageUp. So it doesn't matter who you are and to your point before when we test it internally and for us, it's absolutely amazing and awesome. It really doesn't mean that the user will like it or will understand what we're trying to do. Joel (13m 35s): You triggered something and I didn't even think about like, so you're testing for both the customer side as well as the job seeker side, correct? Yes. What percentage is which, which is more important, is it equally distributed on the customer side? Like, do you randomly select customers to test? Talk about that process. Lital (13m 53s): You know, we have different what we call archetypes also of customers. So it's not just about the industry, but also those people themselves, what are their roles and what are their jobs to be done? So we have the recruiter, we have the hiring manager, we have the supervisor, we have the buyer as well. We are doing discovery with all of them, and it depends on what we're trying to achieve. So with a buyer, obviously we want to see if someone will buy our new product. For example, we have some features or some solutions that are just for hiring managers, for example. So I don't want to get the feedback from the super user on what they think their hiring managers need. Lital (14m 33s): I want to get the perspective of the actual hiring manager and they rarely use the system. So for them to use a new feature or an existing feature is much harder than someone that is in the system on a day-to-day basis. And their expectation will be completely different. They want something super quick. They just want to complete the task as soon as they can, they don't want to go somewhere and start thinking, okay, okay, why do I need to do here? So that will be different as well. So with the percentage and everything, it totally depends on the feature that we, or the product or, you know, what the problems that we're trying to solve if it's around the hiring managers. So we will recruit hiring managers to, you know, for interview and usability test. Lital (15m 16s): And if it's for recorders, we'll do it for the recorders. If it's for candidates, we'll do it for candidates and so on. Sovren (15m 22s): You already know that Sovren makes the world's best resume CV parser, but did you know that Sovren also makes the world's best AI matching engine? Only Sovren's AI matching engine goes beyond the buzzwords. With Sovren you control how the engine thinks with every match the Sovren engine tells you what matched and exactly how each matching document was scored. And if you don't agree with the way it's scored the matches, you can simply move some sliders to tell it, to score the matches your way. No other engine on earth gives you that combination of insight and control. With Sovren, matching isn't some frustrating "black box, trust us, it's magic, one shot deal" like all the others. No, with Sovren, matching is completely understandable, completely controllable, and actually kind of fun. Sovren ~ software so human you'll want to take it to dinner. Chad (16m 24s): It's show time. So when you're talking about getting into feature hell, which is the years and years of piling features on top of features, and you have recruiters like a handful of recruiters who say they like certain features, and then obviously the sales people have these anecdotal instances in which, Hey, you can't take that feature away because my client or our clients will leave us. And that scares the shit out of everybody because that's that's revenue. Do you guys do any type of internal, I guess I would say analytics on the usage of all of these features to be able to demonstrate internally and externally why you're making certain changes? Chad (17m 6s): Not just because you wanted to, but from a usability standpoint, it just made sense. Lital (17m 12s): Yes, yes, absolutely. So we use data in pretty much everything. We will use the kind of product usage data, the customer satisfaction on different experiences and also the qualitative data that is more about the interviews that we do. And we do interviews all the time with customers. We do what we call ongoing or continuous discovery. So we always want to reach out to customers and to have one-on-one interview with them. And this will be my team doing that. So the, the designers or our UX research in the team will do that. And it's really more about understanding why. All right. So it's all about the why, why are you trying to do something? Lital (17m 52s): Why are you trying to, you know, change Chad (17m 55s): To understand the problem is really the key, right? Lital (17m 58s): Exactly. Yeah. And, and you know what I said before that, if, for example, you have three different features that are doing the same thing. You want to look at the data and understand which one of those features is being mostly used. And also why, why, why the other features are not being used. And if they're not being used, maybe because, you know, one customer requested in the past, but then, you know, you have two customers using it. So we don't want to keep it there. Why? Because you need to maintain the future. And also it create, you know, the future hell. So how can we remove this feature? And if you have someone, you know, scream and say, no, we can't do that. So, you know, we just need to have a conversation and we work really well in collaboration and say, okay, let's reach out to the customer and see if we can change their behavior and move them from this feature to another feature? Lital (18m 49s): Yeah. And it happens a lot, like, you know, changing experiences is not easy, but, but it can be done. Joel (18m 54s): Well, we see a ton of fluff in branding, you know? So does it, does a system really need to be cosmetically appealing to be more delightful or to provide a much better experience? Lital (19m 9s): It will be nice for it to be, you know, pretty, but I don't think that's the most important thing. It should be functional. It should be easy. It should be, it should make sense. I need to go slower and say, okay, this is exactly what I need to do here. Whatever amount of steps that I need to take, but I know exactly, you know, what are the steps that I need to take and what is the experience? And I need to say that when I completed a task, I want to get something from this system, right? Like a confirmation, a success match message or something yet, your task has been completed. Great, awesome. That's what I need. Joel (19m 44s): So what's more important to be intuitive or to be beautiful? Lital (19m 48s): Oh, intuitive, by far. Beauty is a delight, you know, add to experience this, but it's really all about the usability of, you know, of the experience, of the feature. Joel (20m 3s): And lucky for me, I'm both. Alright Lital, you mentioned data, and I'm curious about sort of the variety of platforms that are being used to search for jobs. And we talk to a lot of people that, that highlight mobile as a way that a lot of job seekers, and I assume customers as well are interacting with the site. So talk about design for mobile. What sort of focuses do you have? Are you looking at watch design and wearables? And most importantly, when is the PageUp virtual reality product coming to market? Chad (20m 40s): Never. Lital (20m 41s): To your last question, you know, so-and-so in any day now. But with wearable, no, we're not doing that yet. You know, that's kind of a gimmick, but I don't know if it's really relevant to watch. We do. However, with mobile, yes. We design mobile first with every, you know, new feature, new products that we're designing now, it always has to be responsive, mobile, friendly, accessible, usable. We have a design system, we have guidelines. We have all, we have all of that. So we don't need to think about any new feature, you know, to re-design it from scratch. We already have all those components in a library. Lital (21m 23s): So basically a designer or a developer can just grab those components from the design system and just create something that will be just, you know, great. Joel (21m 34s): What kind of traffic numbers are we seeing on mobile versus desktop? And I know you have a variety of customers. You have a lot of colleges, I know that you work with here in the States. So that's certainly a, a unique audience, I assume much younger in terms of searching for jobs in many cases. So data-wise, what are you seeing in terms of mobile versus others? And as far as I can see, you don't have a native mobile presence. So there's no iOS app, no Android app was at a decision based on data, or is that something that'll be coming for the customer side of things? Lital (22m 8s): We have two apps for the learning and performance models that we have, but we don't have for the recruitment, I would say with the admins, so recruiters. And so, and that the vast majority are doing it on a desktop. So, you know, it's kind of a complicated system. It will be very difficult to, you know, to do what they need to do on their mobile. And also I would expect that most HR people will have a computer so they can, that they can work with. It will be more for the candidates, but that's a tricky question for you, the numbers. Lital (22m 48s): And honestly, I have to say that I'm not sure, but it is increasing that, you know, more and more candidates obviously are applying via the mobile and looking at offers, accepting offers, reviewing them and so on a buttons. Chad (23m 0s): Well, on the high volume side of the house, I would assume that, and I'm not sure if PageUp is working with a bunch of high volume types of customers or not, but I would assume, and we're seeing this at least here in the States that not just for the candidates, because they really need to get through the application process fast, but also for those managers who are looking to hire having mobile apps to make their process much quicker as well. Do you guys work with high volume that much, or is it really just more steady corporates, white collar types of positions that you guys are, or at least designing for. Lital (23m 41s): We have a mix? So we do have high volume, let's say, especially in retail and so on. And that's exactly right. We have, you know, store managers, for example, they don't necessarily have a computer. So they usually use tablets or their mobile phone. So everything with the hiring managers, so hiring manager experience will be slightly different mostly than the recruiter experience. So everything that we do is mobile friendly and mobile first, but I would say that it's, especially, we do it for hiring managers and candidates. Chad (24m 18s): Okay. So quick question, I'm always hearing that experience equals speed. So if you have speed, then you have great experience. Is that the case? Is that, is that something that you think about in design is always speed or is it really case by case? Lital (24m 36s): So I don't agree with the statement. I don't think that speed and experienced are equal. I think it totally depends on what you're trying to achieve here. And also, what do you mean by speed? So speed of the system performance of the system. Yes. Sure. Yep. You want to, you want it to be, to be quick and fast, but to know from someone that is using the system, I would say, overall, if you look at, the ultimate job to be done, yeah, you want to be quicker and more efficient in your decision-making when you know, you choose a candidate and hire them and so on, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you need to, you know, to complete a task in three steps. That's, you know, you can't do that and I disagree with this rule, cause I heard that like, everything needs to be three to three steps. Lital (25m 23s): Sometimes something will be, you know, five or seven steps, but it will be better because you added a step that just makes sense! Because you need to do, you know, to drive them, to add an additional layer of whatever. You know, you want to go here or you want to go there, or you want to give them those options. You want to be very clear and I think this is more important. You want it to be usable. You want it to be easy and clear on exactly what you're doing and when you use those complicated systems, sometime you will just get lost. You're not sure, like, okay, I've never seen this screen before in my life. What do I need to do here? You know, I'm not sure about it. Lital (26m 4s): Being able to complete a task in whatever time that you need to complete the task, that's much more important than speed. And sometimes, you know, people need to review applicant applications, and you know, it will take them days to do that. So it's more about the ease of use, than anything else. Chad (26m 20s): It's all about the flow. Lital (26m 22s): Exactly. Joel (26m 23s): Lital Sherman, everybody from PageUp, let's all for our listeners who want to learn more about you or PageUp, where do they go? Lital (26m 32s): So if you want to learn about PageUp, visit our website PageUpPeople.com. And if you want to learn about me, I'm on LinkedIn Lital Sherman in Australia. I'm the only one in Australia, very happy about that. So yeah. Feel free to reach out to me and say, Hello! Chad (26m 50s): Excellent. Thanks for coming on. Joel (26m 51s): Put one on the Bar-b! Fosters, we out. Chad (26m 53s): We out. Lital (26m 54s): Thanks guys. OUTRO (27m 13s): This has been the Chad and Cheese podcast, subscribe on iTunes, Google play or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a single show and be sure to check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more visit Chadandcheese.com. Oh yeah. You're welcome.

reasons why I ask, obviously it's incredibly important because if you put your numbers out there, you automatically How does tech automation, whatever come into play when you guys are recruiting? the name of the person, the school, the things that aren't necessarily important or they'll have an automated What exactly are you guys doing from an automation standpoint or are you not doing anything in regards

Is the future of recruiting entirely automated? Is it more of the same? Some think it's a hybrid. The new way Vissage, you automatically push from UHS, the jobs that don't have enough qualified candidates know, the better way with some very large employers that are <inaudible> with, we've got what we call automated The job is automatically pushed to us for supplemental sourcing. external or whatever they do, as you see through your integrations, that they don't have enough, then it automatically

And then there's a drag and drop interface that they can use to engage with those people with an automated decided that we wanted to given everything that was going on, we decided we wanted to start small on an atomic

cumbersome or impossible for a human to do at the speed at the amount of data that we would need process automation So I think when we break the world down into what are we augmenting or automating with process efficiency companies would kill me that I called them that the conversational layer, the scheduling, the scheduling automation contingent talent is a permanent talent in snap of the finger and oppressive the button having that automatically

Look, I grew up in this industry, I had a company before this, we built robotic automation systems for And automation is huge, especially manufacturing, so why switch over to the human elements? So we originally started, like I said, we were like a on-demand app for automation experts, like Uber for automation experts is the idea. Essentially recruiting automation for manufacturing companies, which is a far cry from on-demand automation

You know, and in the case of the automation, that's working is things like a job distribution engine I mean, it's very basic automation and it's automation that we've had forever, but it's also automation I mean, I think the job distribution stuff, I think the automated sourcing and matching stuff is more And I think there's going to be parts that we're going to be able to automate. And that type of automation can work or hire email, hire email, whatever text message, you can automate

We try to create every, like we to create human to human experiences, just we use automation to scale So you mentioned automation, drip campaigns triggers like your solution has a lot of automation, which Ty (18m 19s): And then, and we've got playbooks that make it easy to sort of roll out these automation Now it sounds like you do have automation kind of baked in, is that correct? Ty (20m 2s): Yeah. We have some, we have some basic automation, baked in. Yeah.

- ZipRecruiter commercial blitzkrieg - Vendor Experience - Why Ryan Reynolds needs TaskRabbit - Automation I'm curious if automation in the scheduling of interviews is something that you're using? But I have a good idea of what automation tools that I like to use. Joel: So we're seeing a lot in terms of automation and I think the high frequency stuff that you guys #IKEA #Automation #recruiting #vendor #ZipRecruiter #Glassdoor #Indeed #Events #TaskRabbit

Or should I say if you love automation, call centers and workforce training, this one's for you? Automation, Chad. That's right we got more automation commentary news. This isn't Chipotle's first four way into automation investment. Automate the ordering, the whatever food coming out. Now I think some brands will suffer from automation.

, about how, you know, really repetitious recruiting tasks will be automated, searching for candidates interviewing, you know, prescreening, how all that will be automated in your world or where you're coming from is automation sort of, it seems like that would be extra gas for a capitalist, right? They're talking about the impact that automation is going to have on the future of work and their contention So a percent we like from a personal experience, the more that I can automate or, you know, sort of outsource

Or do you automatically just kind of like spin that into how it either positively or negatively impacts Because I can put some automation in there. We talk a lot about chat` bots, automation, text recruiting, picking up the phone and talking like, what honestly, this is, this is where I struggle because there is part of me that would love to find a way to automate That's a human thing, but what I'll do look at it from a strategy standpoint, what can I automate to

So I think the pandemic not only pushed enterprise organizations to reinvest in tech for automation and And I assume it will continue as we automate more and more and provide tech and unplug these solutions So this startup has raised 3 million in seed funding to automate the reference checking process. Reference checks seems even if it's automated seems really antiquated. You can also get a report for free, which I assume they're automating.

And not to mention if LinkedIn doesn't go to video before your applicant tracking system automatically

What is RM automation? What does candidate nurture really mean? What is a true talent pipeline? Joel (58s): And on today's show, we're digging into a little recruitment brand automation. Adam (3m 51s): And I'm very passionate about marketing automation as well. Julie (4m 31s): What is, what is recruitment marketing automation? Adam (4m 33s): Great question. of process of marketing automation, which is not about the transaction.

Thus far, I feel that automated hiring has been really a wild, wild West. It's really anybody can create an automated hiring program, and we've seen this. Why do we not have regulations to curb misuse of automated hiring? Many things in automation are great. It's gonna be automated as well.

And when that question is asked at the initial stage of the application, then candidates were automatically Am I automatically saying yes, because it's a felony or am I simply evaluating what that felony was, So to your point, if I need to hire people to hang dry wall, do I automatically reject every person with