Rebecca Warren, Helen Castor, and Erin Matthew discussed the evolution of HR from talent acquisition to talent intelligence, emphasizing the importance of data-driven decisions. Helen, Director of Talent Intelligence at Soft Tech, highlighted her journey from talent acquisition to proactive data analysis, reducing time-to-fill metrics. Erin, Senior Talent Intelligence Researcher at Centene, shared his experience transitioning from sourcing to talent intelligence, using data to influence hiring decisions. They stressed the need for AI to enhance HR processes, improve internal mobility, and align talent strategies with organizational goals. Both speakers advised HR professionals to embrace data literacy, storytelling, and proactive insights to drive business outcomes.

Introduction and housekeeping

• Rebecca Warren opens the meeting, expressing surprise at how quickly the year has gone and introducing the topic of talent intelligence and data.
• Rebecca provides housekeeping details, including the use of widgets for resources, Q&A, and registration for next month’s talent table.
• Rebecca introduces the speakers: Helen Castor, Director of Talent Intelligence at Soft Tech, and Erin Matthew, Senior Talent Intelligence Researcher at Centene Corporation.
• Helen and Erin introduce themselves, sharing their backgrounds in talent acquisition and their recent transitions into talent intelligence roles.

Opening question and personal insights

• Rebecca poses the opening question: Would you rather always have to dress in colors that make you invisible in a crowd or in colors that make you impossible to ignore?
• Helen prefers bold colors, while Erin prefers muted colors to avoid unwanted attention.
• Rebecca shares her love for bold colors and fun shoes, showing a slide of herself at conferences.
• Rebecca expresses excitement about the topic and the transformation of their careers from talent acquisition to talent intelligence.

Defining talent intelligence

• Rebecca asks Helen and Erin to define talent intelligence.
• Helen emphasizes the importance of connecting workforce and market data to make smarter, faster people decisions.
• Erin highlights the need for context and storytelling to influence decision-making.
• Rebecca adds that talent intelligence involves collecting, connecting, and interpreting workforce and market data to drive organizational growth and individual development.

Transition to talent intelligence Roles

• Helen shares her journey from talent acquisition to talent intelligence, emphasizing the importance of data and proactive planning.
• Erin discusses his transition from sourcing to talent intelligence, highlighting the need for strategic data to influence hiring decisions.
• Both speakers emphasize the importance of moving from reactive analytics to proactive insights.

Impact of AI on talent intelligence

• Helen explains how AI is changing the game by allowing for proactive insights and reducing time to fulfill.
• Erin discusses the importance of human intelligence in conjunction with AI, using examples of how AI can provide valuable insights.
• Both speakers agree that AI is transforming HR and talent acquisition, making it essential to embrace and adapt to these changes.

Building data confidence and trust

• Helen and Erin discuss the importance of building data confidence within organizations.
• Helen emphasizes the need for action-oriented information and reducing time to fulfill.
• Erin highlights the role of human intelligence in validating AI-generated insights.
• Both speakers agree that trust and transparency are crucial for employees to embrace AI and talent intelligence.

Practical steps for implementing talent intelligence

• Helen advises starting with simple data points and telling a compelling story to promote action-oriented decisions.
• Erin suggests focusing on first-party data to identify trends and assess risks.
• Both speakers emphasize the importance of tying talent intelligence to organizational outcomes to gain C-suite buy-in.

Examples of talent intelligence impact

• Erin shares examples of the impact of talent intelligence, including a case where lack of talent intelligence led to hiring challenges in Mexico City.
• Helen discusses the importance of tying talent intelligence initiatives to organizational outcomes, such as reduced attrition and increased revenue.
• Both speakers highlight the need for data-driven talent initiatives to drive business success.

Final thoughts and actionable advice

• Helen advises understanding leaders’ questions and providing data-driven insights to open new opportunities for talent intelligence.
• Erin encourages HR professionals to explore new areas within talent acquisition and to start taking action without waiting for permission.
• Rebecca concludes the meeting, expressing excitement for future conversations and the evolution of talent intelligence.

Rebecca Warren 00:00
I can’t believe how quickly the year has gone. Feels like we just did a Talent Table last week. But here we are in September. Hang out with some wonderful folks. Here we’re going to be talking about from instinct to insight, how HR can lead with data. Super excited about this one. So before we get started, I’m going to have our speakers introduce themselves. So Helen, over to you.

Helen Castor 01:17
Great. Thank you. Rebecca, hello everyone. My name is Helen Castor, and I am the Director of Talent Intelligence at Softtek. I’m based in Houston, Texas. I spent the first 15 years of my career in talent acquisition, and later moved to talent intelligence, so I’m very excited to be here today and talk about talent and data. Thank you.

Erin Matthew 01:40
All right, and I am Erin Matthew. I am currently a senior talent intelligence researcher for Centene Corporation. If you’ve never heard of us before, we are a company that operates managed health care plans, so Medicare and Medicaid. And like Helen, I spent the first half of my career in talent acquisition, I was a sourcer through and through, and I very recently stepped into a talent intelligence role with Centene as of March this year. So I’m really enjoying the transition thus far.

Rebecca Warren 02:16
Amazing, all right, and I’m Rebecca Warren. I am with Eightfold AI. I’ve been here for five years. Crazy where the time has gone. I sit in Talent-centered Transformation, where our role is to support prospects and customers, understanding transformation through the lens of talent, as opposed to jobs or org charts. So our opening question, are you ready? Folks? Okay, here we go. So our opening question is, would you rather always have to dress in colors that make you invisible in a crowd or in colors that make you impossible to ignore?

Helen Castor 02:58
Well, I think for me, I have come with all the color this morning, so I know the answer to that question, so for me, sure bring the color on.

Rebecca Warren 03:09
So, okay, great, Erin, what do you say?

Erin Matthew 03:16
So, personally, style wise, I do really like bold colors that are impossible to ignore. So you know, if I was in a close group of friends, I would dress that way. But I think if I had to choose, if it was in a crowd, I would be the colors that I would be invisible. Because I think that sometimes when I dress too bold, when I go out, it gives strange people a reason to come up and talk to me, and I’m like, no, go away. So that’s my reason.

Rebecca Warren 03:46
I love it. Okay, so you’re a little more muted. Just want to kind of hang under the radar a little bit. And I am much more on Helen’s side, I love colors, and I’m not afraid to be seen. I love fun shoes, and so there’s lots of things happening when I go out and I’m going to see y’all I do. I put together a picture. I never do this, so I don’t even know how to share a screen here, but I did put together a quick slide to show you how crazy I am. Let me see if I can share it. This might go off the rails, folks. Okay, can you see that? Yes, oh, wow. I just grabbed some pictures of me when I was actually at different conferences and events. So what do y’all think? Am I afraid of color?

Helen Castor 04:45
No, I think color is your middle name, for sure.

Rebecca Warren 04:49
I think it might be so okay, I’m going to stop sharing that. I’m going to figure out how to get back to the screen that we’re all on. But fun little, little sharing from my history. So okay, I am so excited about this topic, and I’m also really excited about having both of you on. I love every talent table that we do. I learned something. There’s all kinds of amazing things that happen. What I love about this one today is, not only are we talking about talent intelligence, which we haven’t spent a lot of time on, on the talent table, so I think that’s the a great topic for us to talk about, but all three of us have transformed ourselves from a career in talent acquisition and HR into other roles, right, moving into completely different positions from where maybe we all thought we were going to be. So I’m excited about the transformation, the things that we’ve learned. I think that makes us really interesting, because we have different perspectives, because we’ve done something else. So I’m excited for us to talk about this and to also show folks that there is a world outside of the role that you’re in today. There may be something down the road that, did any of you think that you were going to do either of you think you were going to be in talent intelligence when you started your careers?

Erin Matthew 06:14
No, I didn’t think I’d be in a talent acquisition period when I started my career. Fair.

Rebecca Warren 06:18
Same, same. So, okay, so let’s talk about this. We’re going to talk about a big shift in HR, right? We’re seeing increasing numbers of HR folks say you have to come to the table with data. It’s no longer about a gut, it’s no longer about a feeling. We have to be led with data to get to the insights that allow for smarter outcome. So I don’t think either of you are saying that you are data scientists or need to be data scientists, but we have to use the right tools and the right data to make confident, impactful choices for our business. So we’re going to talk about what that looks like, building data confidence inside of our organizations, and helping people feel comfortable with looking at data. Okay, so even if you’re not a numbers person, going forward, I think we’re all on the same page that data drives a smarter approach to HR. So let’s talk a little bit about why that’s happening, though. And before we even jump into that, I want to set what our baseline looks like, right? What is talent intelligence? I think I threw I threw up a post yesterday that I think I called it, where the messy data meets insights, and that’s not that is not a full on definition, right? So if we think about talent intelligence, I would love to know first, right? Is it the ability to collect, connect and interpret workforce and market data so you can make smarter, faster people decisions. I don’t know. Is that generic? Is that too many words? So I’m going to throw it on over to you, and maybe I’ll throw it over to Erin first. What is your definition of talent intelligence? And Helen, I want to know what you think as well.

Erin Matthew 08:18
Sure. Yeah, yeah. I think that it’s really being able to make the connection between what’s happening in the talent market to what’s actually happening inside of your own organization, and recognizing that, you know, talent intelligence is it’s a lot of things. It’s context and storytelling and having all those bits of information at the exact right time so you can figure out how to influence the right decisions.

Helen Castor 08:48
Yeah, I think that’s a great I love that. That’s great. Yeah, of what talent intelligence is, I mean, for me, it’s definitely bringing together data, insights, context, right? We want to be able to help our leaders make smarter, faster, more human, centered decisions about our talent, right? And it’s not just about dashboard and analytics. It’s about connecting the dots right between skills, capacity, market insights, because ultimately, what we want is to anticipate needs, right? We want to unlock potential. We want to drive organizational growth, individual development, so it’s all of those things. And again, it’s really looking to be proactive and unlocking those insights, versus just reactive. Of, hey, I have X amount of you know, certain this or that, so that’s really the big that’s really why the word intelligence is important behind the word talent.

Rebecca Warren 09:48
It totally makes sense. And for both of us, I do want to go into the way back machine a little bit. So we talked about coming from a TA background, now moving into talent intelligence, talent transformation. So Helen, you shared a story with me when we first initially talked about how you got into this role. So while Erin went from one company to another, you did the same thing inside your organization. So can you just give us a short 37 second kind of review of why you felt that this was important, and why you pushed for it, and now how you ended up in this role.

Helen Castor 10:27
Yeah, it was really something interesting, interesting because, as leader of talent acquisition, you know, having the right people at the right time, you know, it’s always been an important thing, and I wanted to get away from just reading keywords in a resume and obviously having the right data to find out, hey, my client needs a skill set with Java. Where are people with Java, right? So I started compiling information about our internal talent, and by doing so, it really changed the conversation, because I was able to be more proactive with knowing, okay, I already know I’m going to need this. This is a common need that my client is requesting. Let me know everything that I can about our Java employees so we can then have them ready to go. And that really started that shift on building that date, you know, that data, information, and later putting it in a dashboard. So when people would ask me, Hey, I’m going to have this coming up, who do we have available? It’s very easy for me just to open up my dashboard and be able to look at that information. And once I started doing that, people started asking me, Hey, I want that dashboard. Can I have it? And it was something I just built for myself and my team, right? So that ended up expanding. There was some additional training that I wanted to get in data analytics and predictive modeling that Softtek helped me with, and by moving in that direction, growing in that direction, you know, now, you know, there is a whole talent area, talent function within our organization, and that has helped me continue to grow The intelligence capability.

Rebecca Warren 12:20
I love that. That’s amazing. And Erin for you as well. What made you decide to shift from TA that you never expected to be in anyway, into talent intelligence? Can you give us just a quick backstory on that as well?

Erin Matthew 12:35
Yeah, so I think that my shift into talent intelligence kind of happened by accident. I really didn’t understand that a lot of the work that I do now was so translatable from being a sorcerer for so many years. And I’ll admit, when I was interviewing for a talent intelligence position at my current company, I was kind of, I was kind of hesitant to even fully pursue it, because I had never held the title before, and I was questioning, am I qualified for this? But the more that I continued to talk with the leaders that I, you know, eventually, you know, join their team with, I started realizing I’ve been doing this work for 10 years, and I would say that I got really deep into it in my previous role, when I was with PayPal, before coming to Centene, and it was really out of necessity. I was working as a sorcerer for the executive recruiting team. And I realized that oftentimes I can bring high levels, you know, hiring leaders, as many candidates as possible, but oftentimes there’s a missing piece where they don’t feel empowered to make the hiring decision, and that missing piece was talent intelligence. For example, when I joined the executive recruiting team, it was right around when they had hired their very first Chief Design Officer at PayPal, and this was really significant, because design was often something that was kind of on the back burner for the company for years and years. A lot of the work was outsourced to agencies, and they were bringing it in house, and that necessitated hiring a lot of design executives. So what the my recruiting partner had told me was that in the five years prior to the Chief Design Officer joining at PayPal, she had filled maybe two design executive roles, and then suddenly we had to fill 15 of them to build out a really robust design department. And this was done so very obviously, without a holistic view of talent intelligence. And I think seeing the consequences in the absence of talent intelligence really kind of reinforces the importance of it. So, for example, we needed to hire all this design talent, but all of the design talent sat in San Francisco, and PayPal had closed their San Francisco office half a decade ago, and they had moved all their operations to San Jose. And while you may get the rare person that will make the two hour commute each way, it was very unlikely, and it was as simple as me taking the numbers that I would run for a simple search. You know, here’s the number of qualified people I found in San Jose, here’s the number that I found in San Francisco, and it’s 300% more in San Francisco. And then I would compare it to other locations across the country as well. And we had just implemented an RTO, which made this a lot more difficult. So, you know, it kind of reinforced a lot of things that people kind of just already knew, you know about the talent market within the Bay Area, but I think being able to package it and story tell it with, you know, great visuals and actual data that backs it up. Means a lot more than just saying, well, the talent isn’t there. I think that being able to actually be strategic about it really helped impact a lot of that, because I was able to get our Chief Design Officer to actually take the talent intelligence report that I just kind of put together out of necessity, and she brought it to the CEO, and we got four exceptions to let those executives work remotely in those locations. So that was pretty significant, right at the top level, at a pretty big company. So I think that it’s a lot more powerful than people realize. And I didn’t, you know, I was like, how am I making an impact like this, just as an executive sorcerer? And it kind of grew from there. So once I created that one report, my other recruiters that I was supporting started requesting similar things. They would say, hey, right, this is the challenge I’m having with this role. Can you validate it or dispel it? You know, based on what you find, what am I missing here? And then I would get requests like, Oh, we’ve got this, you know, executive that sits in India, and, you know, we’re thinking, do we promote her, or do we go with an outside hire for that, for this product team? And they just asked for a holistic report to figure out how difficult is it going to be to hire someone outside of this? So I provided simple things like numbers in terms of qualified talent for different locations where we had an office in India. Here were some sample profiles that I could find. These are our competitors that are also hiring executive product talent. This is what we’re competing against in terms of E commerce and within the payment space. So it really just kind of grew from there, because they saw it work once, and then they wanted to replicate that with their leaders, and it really helped establish a lot of credibility. So that’s the long answer of kind of how I haphazardly started really doing a lot of this work, and now it’s all I do.

Rebecca Warren 18:05
So yeah, and so in both cases, both you and Helen said, I don’t want to just show up in front of a hiring manager with, well, this is what I got. Here’s your pick, right? Like, here’s where they are, here’s what’s happening, and here’s where the organization is going. So that’s that next area that I want to jump into, is moving it from, and Helen, I think you mentioned this, right, moving from reactive analytics to proactive insight. So why is it now, is it critical for folks to not just keep things in that system of record and say, Well, this is the data we have, and this is what we know. Why is now the time for us to start thinking about AI and how it affects the marketplace, thinking about rising skills, waning skills, all of those things that we probably weren’t paying as much attention to even five years ago. What is driving that change right now? And why is talent intelligence critical in order to make great hiring decisions going forward, right?

Helen Castor 19:16
Well, traditionally, you know, all of our talent data is set in systems of record, right? Which they’re important, right? But they’re focused on the past, who we hired, how much they get paid, what’s their structure, things like that. There wasn’t any foresight. And you know, today, with the whole accelerated disruption of AI, the context has changed, right? So now’s the moment for you know, to really move forward and again, have that forward thinking view, that proactive view, and really move to, instead of systems of record, to systems of intelligence, because that really is what allows us to connect data across platforms, right? Translate it into insights, use those insights to answer the strategic questions that our leaders are asking. For example, what are our skill gaps? You know, how do we redeploy people faster? How do we predict attrition? How do we build better pathways that retain top talent? So it’s about really elevating talent from just a compliance function to being a true growth driver for the organization, right?

Rebecca Warren 20:27
Well, and as we think about that and Erin, I’d want to get your perspectives too, like when you go to a hiring manager and say, Hey, trust my gut. This is the person you want to hire. How much more impactful is it to say, not only do I have data on why this person has transferable skills or why they’d be a good fit, but also thinking about what’s happening in the future, right? Thinking about those skills that are coming and those skills that are leaving, for instance, like we noticed, right? Prompt engineer, everybody was hiring a prompt engineer, and now very few folks are actually hiring prompt engineers, and that all changed within like, six to eight months. So if your hiring manager says, I need a prompt engineer, and you’re like, but do you? Do you really? And if you just question without the data, they’re going to be like, go find me this thing, right? So Erin, talk a little bit about that, about how that changes your conversation as well?

Erin Matthew 21:26
Yeah, I think that, you know, a lot of recruiters might be a little bit hesitant to engage in these conversations, because they’ll think I don’t have expensive tools to find this data to back things up. And I’ve definitely found that being able to research what other people are hiring for is a pretty powerful data point when we’re trying to influence hiring decisions. For example, one of the very first free talent intelligence tools that I started using back when I was with Max our Texas Technologies was Google Trends. You know, if you haven’t used it before, you can compare. You know, what are people searching for, what regions of the country are they searching for? And all of it is free. And I think, like, the most powerful thing was actually sharing my screen live and being like, Hey, listen, I know that you want to hire someone with this fancy, convoluted job title, but when I look at the job description, what I really just see is a DevOps engineer. You need to understand that this is what people are searching for, and this is your title. Here’s the number of hits we get with yours. Here’s what we get with a boring, generic title that is actually indicative of what the job is. So I think that being able to show them live impactful numbers right in front of their face is really something that’s powerful to be able to, you know, to really drive home the, you know, the impact of, you know, what we’re seeing in the market.

Rebecca Warren 23:02
So, for sure, for sure. Okay, so, so not so we’ve been talking about, like, bringing information to a hiring manager, saying, Hey, this is what you need to hire this person. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times in the past I have done that, like, pulled whatever information I had, but like, this is the person you need to talk to when I talk to them, they will do what you want them to do, even if the resume doesn’t look like it, even if when you look at their job title, it doesn’t seem to match right. So we’ve talked about ways that you can potentially bring data to those conversations. What about changing the conversations with our C suite leaders. You know, when we start tying the things that we’re doing to the outcomes that the business is trying to accomplish, that changes the conversation, right? That changes it from being a talent acquisition, talent acquisition specialist or a TA leader, whatever it changes it into now you’re part of the overall business, and you’re driving those things that are important, not just to your department, but to the entire business. So talk to me a little bit about how you feel. The conversation changes when you show up with data.

Erin Matthew 24:23
I mean, I can jump in there because, you know, very recently, having been in a sourcing role, I think that everybody in this industry can relate to the fact that oftentimes there’s the misconception that a source or is essentially an entry level function, an order taker, anything along those lines, but really the heart of the sorcerer role is research. It’s hunting. It’s looking for information. And I think that even now, more than ever, even if you’re in a sourcing role and have no intention to move into a pure talent intelligence role, it’s important that you’re able to go from a delivery person to someone that can execute on a strategy. And really, you know, we know a lot of the information just because we see it in front of our face with our research. You have to be able to package it in a way that is digestible to C-level executives, to be able to tell the story, so that they can see what you are seeing on the ground with your own eyes. So I think it’s being able to go from finder to forecaster, essentially. That’s what that’s really the transition that I think a lot of sourcers need to be able to make within their roles now more than ever.

Rebecca Warren 25:47
And Helen, you had to get your role approved all the way up to senior leaders and now created a whole department. So what kind of things were you sharing to say this is critical for our overall business strategy?

Helen Castor 25:59
Yeah, no. 100% I mean, having intelligence around our talent, right? We want to ultimately be able to promote internal mobility. We need to understand the skills of all of our employees. We need to have them registered in a system of talent intelligence, not just in some Excel, right? I mean, we need to be able to, again, connect those dots and really be able to enable our employees to grow right with development plans, career management plans, that they can see their growth in their future at Softek. So all of those things are important to have about our employees, because as we have that information, then, from an intelligence standpoint, we can say, hey, these people, if they follow this career management plan, in six months, they’ll be ready for these positions. And if we’re able to forecast what kind of skills, what kind of demand we’re going to have in the next three months and next six months, we can tie that to what our people are currently training. And, of course, anything that is AI related today, right? Anything on AI, artificial intelligence, on top of the standard programming skills that traditional programmers would have. I mean, all of that’s important so they can continue to grow and really bring value, ultimately, for our clients, our clients, because, again, as I mentioned, we’re a service, a talent services company, so it’s important that we have a talent ready organization to be able to deploy internally and externally to our clients.

Rebecca Warren 27:35
Okay, so what we’re talking about here with talent intelligence, we’ve thrown out some definitions. We’ve talked a little bit about how you’ve gotten into the role and why it’s important. So is it really just showing a report to a leader? Is it just taking some analytics or showing them a dashboard? Like, how does it turn into action? So talk about how you use that information. And I know Erin, you gave a couple of examples, how does that information turn into action for the organization helping people move forward, and what kind of influence does AI have on the information you’re able to generate?

Helen Castor 28:18
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think for us, I mean, one of the things that we really look to do again is elevate the dashboards that we’ve created. It’s not again just having descriptive information, it’s having action oriented information. For example, how long does it take to bring the first candidate to the table, right? How long does it take to have a technical interview or screen our candidates? You know, what can we do to decrease that time? Because ultimately we can decrease the time to be a candidate. We can decrease the time to have any technical interviews or client interviews, and ultimately we decrease the time to fulfill because that’s probably the number one most important API that any company has as far as recruiting goes. So we’re always looking to, where can we decrease that time to fulfill by breaking each part of the talent acquisition process into individual pieces, because then we can analyze how long did it take from point A to point B, point B to point C, and as we continue to reduce those time frames, we can pinpoint, hey, with this, in this particular toll gate, it’s taken managers from this particular area, you know, five days just to get, you know, time with the candidate and interview them. What can we do? Do we need to have additional interviews available? Do we need to invest in a platform that allows technical interviews to be done by AI? You know, there’s different things that open up different conversations, and we can take different actions by analyzing all those pieces along the way. So that’s really where we also are able to use AI for instance, there’s the agentic AIS, right? There’s now all these AI interviewers that can help a recruiter decrease the time to the first candidate, because with AI agents, they’re able to talk to people in the evenings, on the weekends, they don’t take a day off, right? And for the candidates, it’s very flexible. It’s easier to talk to, you know, an interviewer in the evenings or weekends. So all of those things we analyze to take into consideration where the bottleneck is, and what are some actions that we can help decrease those bottleneck times. Because ultimately, our goal is to get to you know, to reduce that time to fulfill.

Rebecca Warren 30:47
So Helen, tell me about what you had mentioned about what it does for internal folks, right? You want employees to be able to see that there are opportunities for them. How are you using that for actionable insights for employees who are now in your organization?

Helen Castor 31:05
Yeah, I think for employees, you know, one of the things before joining the talent organization, I was with the people team, and one of the things that we really analyzed was people that were potentially leaving the company. And one of the one of the reasons was lack of visibility on where they can grow. And now, with the talent intelligence platform that we have today, we actually gave it a name that’s very symbolic of who Softtek is, and that’s to thrive, right? We want to thrive in everything that we do. We want our people to thrive and grow with us here at soft tech, and the pathing is very clear. It’s not just hey, if you’re a Functional Tester, Junior today, you can grow into a Functional Tester proficient tomorrow, right? It’s not just having those lines that we as humans consider, hey, this is the next step, and this would be the next growth really using AI to enable them. Hey, because you have all of these skills as a Functional Tester Junior, by the way, you could also really fit with, you know, some opportunities that the Talent Team has, or some growth plans that the Talent Team has, or a whole other group, or maybe with finance, or maybe something in a completely different space that they would have never thought to consider, and that’s what AI really helps us unlock within our organization for our employees.

Rebecca Warren 32:33
Got it all right, Erin, what are your thoughts on all of that? I think we covered, like a whole bunch of stuff there.

Erin Matthew 32:40
Yeah. So when AI comes into play in order to gather talent intelligence as much as I love, you know, the numbers data, and using that power to impact decisions, I love human intelligence even more. And I think that oftentimes the human intelligence part of talent intelligence is often so understated and, you know, and underrated in that respect. So let me tell you what I mean by that. Any time that I’m given a high profile requisition where I need to do a lot of research in a very short amount of time to understand any potential pitfalls that I might see in filling this role, I have nearly perfected a very long prompt that I use for perplexity AI, which is my language model of choice. I essentially ask it to compose a talent market overview for whatever role it is at that time, to include insights like, what are the market trends that would affect the success of someone working in this role? What are the geo hotspots for this talent? Why would this role be difficult to fill? And then I always ask it to pull only from like peer reviewed health care publications or top five consulting firm white papers that covers such rules like this, and a lot of times, what it uncovers is important talking points that I can bring to the table at the very first conversation with the hiring leaders, and sometimes setting that stage often influences them to make quicker decisions in the future. So an example of that, I once had to gather some intelligence about how difficult it might be able to how difficult it would be for us to hire a chief data officer if ours were to suddenly leave our company, you know, what would the challenges be? And one of the insights that was derived from the language model, which I will say this with a caveat, is to make sure that you are independently validating whatever it is sending out. Go into that you know, go into that you know, source. Make sure it’s a credible one, and make sure that that’s what it actually said. So I always say that with the caveat, because I can’t emphasize how much human oversight is still desperately needed when using AI. But one of the interesting points that I brought up is that, historically, Chief Data Officers have one of the lowest average tenures of any executives. And how many times do we bring candidates to the table and a hiring leader will say they were there six months. I don’t want to talk to them. So if they go in with that expectation, knowing that that is commonplace for a certain role, it’s going to make their mindset shift a little bit every time when you plant those pieces of human intelligence in there, and you know, you can even go into the reasons why a lot of times companies don’t have a cohesive strategy around data, and that can be really frustrating for somebody in a role like that. So I think that that also brings up talking points that our talent advisors need to have if they’re talking to these people. If you know that oftentimes it’s a frustration that a company doesn’t have a cohesive data strategy, then we better be really informed on what our strategy is, so that we can communicate that to them if they’re considering working for us. So again, I love the human intelligence part of that. And you know that’s something that you can get from social listening online, that you can also use AI for. And of course, don’t forget to get that kind of information from your recruiters that are talking with candidates every day. Word of mouth is still a very powerful thing, even in the age of AI.

Rebecca Warren 36:33
Yeah, for sure. Helen, anything you want to add before I shift a little bit?

Helen Castor 36:39
No, I think on that point. I mean, I think it’s great. I think that’s a very important caveat that Erin mentioned, right? Just making sure what the AI is giving us, you know, it’s credible sources to stop something that, you know, it’s a weird hallucination, yeah, hallucination or something dark web type thing. So I think that that is just so key. So that part of that, you know, having that human element is key. So I appreciate Erin mentioning that.

Rebecca Warren 37:10
Agree. I do go back into mine. I was doing some stuff yesterday in Gen AI, and I asked it, I’m like, bring this up. We had just talked about it, right? Like, it was up there, and all of a sudden it created something completely new. I’m like, Dude, that’s wrong. Where did you get that from? Right? Like, and my bad, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, come on, you know, I know that’s not right, so I’ll do that too. Like, did you just make that up? So, Erin, what you said too, about only give me something that is credible. Make sure that it has, as you said, peer reviewed. Make sure that you’re not creating quotes for me. Only use information that actually exists in real life. I love hallucinations. I actually think that it’s pretty amazing, like they just created something out of the blue that didn’t exist. But you have to know what’s a hallucination that can inspire creativity and what’s a fact that you can quote. So I do think that’s fair. So let’s, let’s dig into that a little bit, right? So AI is not just disrupting HR tech, right? It’s accelerating across every piece of every organization, innovation reshaping how talent comes into an organization, how they move in an organization, how data is viewed and gathered and applied. So what are you seeing? And I’d love to your perspective on the organizations that you’re working for, but also if you have a larger perspective, either folks you’re talking to, or what you’re seeing in the market, how are you seeing organizations embrace or deny this shift? And then I have a follow up question, but what are you seeing in your organizations? And what are you seeing across the world, in terms of embracing talent intelligence.

Erin Matthew 39:11
So I think that there is still a large amount of hesitancy around AI, and you would be amazed at how many people still are not well versed in just how to write a prompt. But here’s the thing is, I get it, if I am being very, very honest, I don’t really like AI that much. I think it’s going to do far more harm than good to our world. But just because that’s how I feel about it, it’s not an excuse to just say, Well, I’m not going to have anything to do with it, because I do still recognize that, you know, the genie is out of the bottle. It’s not going back. This is something that you’re going to have to be proficient in, whether you like it or not. So those two things can coexist. And I think that it’s resolving those two things within organizations that lead to a bottleneck of, you know, the larger workforce, not driving proficiency within that area. If that makes sense.

Rebecca Warren 40:09
What I like about what you said there, you know. So you don’t love it, right, but you’re moving past the fear right, that we call that courage, right, that you’re saying, Hey, I don’t, I don’t know what this is, but I’m going to dig into it, right? And so I think education is part of that. You can say, hey, I love this piece of AI. This makes my job so much easier. I’m not as interested, or I’m not as on board with this. How this works, right? Maybe AI interviewer, you’re like, all in I totally get how it works, but maybe you’re saying I’m not ready to agentic AI my whole entire world, right? I like what you’re saying about moving past the fear. Like, I don’t know what this is. I’m not sure if I like it, but I’m going to dig into it and figure it out. Because in your roles, data and information matter more than just saying it’s scary. I don’t want to do it. I don’t like it, right? So I like how you said that.

Helen Castor 41:13
Yeah, yeah. AI can be scary for a lot of people, right? Because ultimately, it’s changed. It’s something different. It’s something that, you know, has never, that was never thought of to really transform the day to day life of a recruiter or, you know, to enable and, you know, mobility or things like that, and then organization. So it can be scary, and I’m on the complete opposite spectrum of what Erin mentioned. I love AI. I’m all about AI. Yes, I understand that there could potentially be harm from everything that’s been unleashed. But as Erin, as you mentioned, the genie is out of the bottle, right? So it’s now, how can we make the best of it and make the best use of it and embrace it? Because ultimately, you know, it’s either embrace or get left behind.

Rebecca Warren 42:07
We talk about that a lot too, and you’ll see that in a lot of the blogs that I put out, in the stuff that I put out on LinkedIn, too. It’s not just I’m not ready now to be an early adopter. It it every day that you wait, right? Ai, is the slowest that it’s ever been today, right? It will never be this slow again. And it’s not just, you know, one, step two, step three, step four, step it’s compounding the growth and the way that it moves, right? We look at the scale doing this, when you’re sitting back here saying we’re not quite ready. We’re gonna move in the middle of the field. You’re not just falling behind. You’re gonna be in a space where you may not be able to catch up if you don’t at least start dipping your toes in the water. So, so let’s, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about ways that folks can dip their toes in the water, right? Like, I don’t know of any organization that right now is saying we are going from a complete analog organization to ripping the band aid off, and now tomorrow, we are going to be fully agentic AI workflows. And, you know, changing, nobody’s doing that, as far as I know, right? I mean, it takes time to figure out where we go, how we get there. The thing that I continue to hear from the readings and the research that I do, as well as folks that we’re talking to, is that trust and that transparency that your organization has the employees best interest at heart, is the way to start, right? If your employees don’t trust that you’re doing the right things for them, they’re absolutely not going to embrace going into that strange, scary AI world, right? And that transparency of saying we don’t have it all figured out, there is no way for anybody to have it figured out. You know, you can make all the plans you want, and you think about where we were six months ago to where we are today, those plans don’t always stick right. Positions, change, skills, change, needs change, and it’s changing faster than ever. So let’s talk about where folks can dip their toe in the water, right? Like it may be the first way to think about that. What would you say if folks are starting to think about maybe creating a talent intelligence function or adding that into their day to day? Erin, you were doing it before you actually knew what the name was. And Helen, you were doing that as well. So what would you say is give me two or three data literacy skills. And we didn’t even jump into that. That’s a whole other thing about what the difference is between data aware, data literate, data focused, however. We want to do that. But what would you say are two or three most essential data literacy skills for HR professionals? What would they do if they dip their toe in the water when it comes to talent intelligence, right?

Helen Castor 45:04
Well, I think one of the things is starting with, you know, the information that’s in front of us, right? We can start with the simple things of how many of x, how many of y, where are they located? Where, you know, things that are very simple that it’s just gathering information, right? But then we need to transform that into telling a story we have. Every time we gather a data point, it’s not just, oh, it’s nice to have it looks nice on a dashboard. The question always has to be, so what data point do I have this data point? So what? What am I going to do with it? What outcome am I going to tie to it? What story do I need to tell a leader so they can take a decision, if we just start with something that it’s really not simple, because it sounds simple, but it’s really not to really have something that can tell a story that’s compelling, that would promote a leader to take action, because once you’re being able to connect the dots, tell a story, promote an action oriented decision by a leader, you’re really moving more into prescriptive analytics, and that’s where things get interesting, because now We’re focused on outcomes, not just outputs. And those are two very different things, but that’s what I would recommend for people, is to start with something that you feel for a leader. What are the questions the leaders ask you the most you know? What are they always trying? What is their pain point? Where are they always trying to solve and help them with data that tells him a story and promotes an action, versus just, hey, we have five Java people in Houston. Okay, right. Here’s an interesting report, right? Exactly. Then the question automatically becomes, okay, so what? But that’s what we want to move away from. So that would be one way to kind of dip your toe into the whole intelligence function.

Rebecca Warren 47:02
Love it, Erin, what do you think?

Erin Matthew 47:07
Yeah, and yeah and, I think, you know, kind of going along the lines of what Helen said, there’s a lot of value just in your own first party data, right? You know, there’s a lot of stories that can be told right there. And it’s really about taking it from Okay, here’s how many people left the company this past month, and being able to say, hey, here’s a trend that I noticed with this specific team. Here’s where we might have a retention risk. And I think that starting with just a few simple examples like that, can be really impactful with hiring leaders, to be able to drive strategic decisions, and to be able to assess risks before they actually happen within your own workplace. So I would say, start from the very beginning with first party data and see where you can go from there.

Rebecca Warren 48:00
Yeah, I like that thinking about, what do we already have in-house that we can make decisions from? What can we show you that we’ve already uncovered or that we already have access to? And I like what you said. I’ve got pages of notes here. I like what you said about going. It’s not just output, it’s focused on outcomes, right? So showing that value right away, of here’s what we know, here’s what we learned, here’s what we’re going to do with it, right? Okay, so if you have an example, I think it would be helpful for folks to hear if you successfully demonstrated the ROI of a data, data driven talent initiative, whether it’s TA or TM, connecting those HR things that you’ve learned, the metrics, the intelligence that you’ve had to revenue or innovation or customer satisfaction, Do either of you have a story to tell about what you produce or what you learned from talent intelligence that helped to drive towards that outcome?

Erin Matthew 49:15
I still feel like I have more examples than anything of you know what happens when you don’t have talent intelligence? I know that I mentioned, you know that the previous example at PayPal when you know, we hired a Chief Design Officer to build out a whole department without considering a location strategy, there was another example that came to mind when they wanted to do a major hiring push for moving a lot of the software engineering and product roles to Mexico City, thinking that it was just, you know, common knowledge that if we move our jobs to Mexico, it’s going to be a cheaper cost of labor when it turned out to be the exact opposite, they didn’t realize that Mexico City is basically the Silicon Valley of Mexico, right? And a lot of the most skilled people that we wanted to hire were getting paid American salaries of what you would get in San Francisco. And then there were also a lot of human intelligence aspects that were also not researched to be taken into consideration being a tech company in the US, it’s not unusual that you would see things like pay for performance culture, where a large part of your salary is through RS use. That is not something that is valued in the workforce in Mexico. They want a higher base salary. They don’t care about RS use. So it made us it made it really difficult to position ourselves competitively, you know, against other tech companies that actually understood that before entering the market, because a lot of the SF companies were also moving jobs to Mexico City, but they did so, understanding that we’re going to have to change our comp structure fundamentally to be in this market, it’s going to have to be more base salary heavy than It does with RS use.

Rebecca Warren 51:19
Makes sense. Makes sense, yeah.

Helen Castor 51:22
And from my side, I would say, you know, one of the things going to the different conferences, right? HR, tag, Gartner, all those different conferences, that’s one aspect that they always talk about. How are you able to convince the C-level to give you certain funds? How do you show ROI for trying to get certain platforms, certain tools that are really going to enable growth at your organization. And one of the key topics that they always talk about, and that has also helped me here at Softtek, is just really tying the ROI to different organizational outcomes, you know, what are? What is the organization striving for? Is it increased revenue? Is it reduced attrition? Is it increased mobility? Is it enhanced growth of our employees? So if you can tie any tool that you’re looking to invest into those organizational outcomes and show Hey, by being able to acquire this platform or this software. We’re going to reduce attrition by X percent, we’re going to increase mobility by percent. We’re going to increase revenue by X number of dollars. You can tie it to that, then you really have the attention of the C suite. Otherwise, if it’s just, well, it’s going to be nice to have because it’s going to help me with this or that. I mean, that’s great, but again, it’s not compelling enough for someone at the C level to really look at that. So the recommendation that I would have is to always tie it to what the organization is looking to achieve. And if you can do that, then more likely than not you will have success in acquiring the tools that you need to grow your team.

Rebecca Warren 53:08
That totally makes sense. Yes, and that was actually what I was going to ask. So, well done, Erin. I was going to say, like, how do you build that business case? How do you get the buy-in? So you talked about that. I think what we’re going to start seeing more of is, you know, we have gone from very generic metrics that we’ve looked at right based on what our what we used to have to do to prove the value of an ATS right, like it is that time to fill. And I actually, like you use the word telling you said time to fulfill, I actually just think it just sounds so much different than saying time to fill, right? Yeah, it feels like a bigger picture. But we went from, you know, time to fill a number of candidates and the funnel and all of those things, we’re seeing a huge shift, and I’ve been talking about this for a while, moving what our success criteria looks like, from just general metrics to what does that impact look like? We’re starting to see a lot of that. What you know is that we’re focusing on efficiency, we’re focusing on productivity, we’re focusing on some other things. But what does that impact look like? It’s not, it’s not necessarily an easy thing for us to define, because you hire somebody in the door. So for talent acquisition, it feels like checking if my job is done, that person has started, but we need to make sure that that chain goes all the way through, right? So they’ve started. Now they’re in the organization. How are we helping them drive outcomes? How are we helping them deliver that impact? What does that look like? Is it influencing revenue? Is it driving innovation? Is it something that’s a little bit more tangible, like customer satisfaction? But what does that look like? So we’re starting to see, and I’m guessing it will be much more tied to the information that comes from talent intelligence and what those learnings are to say what that impact is, right? If we would have hired Erin, you said this, what’s the cause of, what’s, what’s the cost of not doing it, if we would have hired somebody as a prompt engineer, we would have found, in six months that the rule actually would have been eliminated or changed, or we found that’s not what we needed, so we hired somebody who had, you know, engineering acts, who was able to not only do what we needed them to do today, but also to drive them into what that next role looks like, which at the time we hadn’t even defined. But I think we’re going to start seeing the talent intelligence information helping us drive impact, and I’m excited to see where we are even next year. Maybe we do this one again next year and see what we’ve learned. So okay, we’ve got just a few minutes left here, and I always like to end with if you could walk away only telling folks in the audience one thing, if you could leave them with one actionable thing. And we talked about it a little bit on how to dip your toe in the water. But if they could do one thing tomorrow, what would you tell them to do? What’s your one piece of advice to leave folks with?

Helen Castor 56:10
My advice is to really hear your leaders, understand what they’re asking for. What is the number one question they ask you, and if you’re able to help them with data and storytelling around that number one question, it will open up a whole new world to intelligence and insights at their organization. But that would be my one piece of advice.

Rebecca Warren 56:38
And Erin, before you jump in. Helen, I wonder, if you do it that way, does the question change? Does looking actually change when you actually dig in and give them context and give them the storytelling? I wonder if it’s a little different when you broaden what that scope looks like?

Helen Castor 56:55
Oh, absolutely, because what’s going to happen is once you help them with insights and be able to connect the dots on what their question really is. Guess what? You’re going to have question number two.

Rebecca Warren 57:15
Thank you. Okay, Erin, what’s your final parting thought?

Erin Matthew 57:19
I would say that your job title and your job description is not the be all and end all of you. You know, if you want to be more than that, the sky’s the limit . That’s one thing that I would like to say from experience. You know, if you, if you are a source or now, and you want to explore other areas within the discipline of talent acquisition, all you have to do is start doing it. You don’t always need to ask for permission before doing any of that.

Rebecca Warren 57:52
I love it. My phrase that I use all the time is my resume is a list of things I never want to do again because I’ve already done them. I want to do something new, right? So I love that. Okay, so ask the question, and then continue to ask the question. I hear from Helen and Erin, you’re like you are not defined by your job title or your job description. Start putting your feelers out if you want to do something different. Take that firstly. I love it. Okay, folks, we are out of time. This has been a fabulous conversation. I honestly would love to have y’all back, maybe in a year, to see what’s changed. I’m guessing we’ll have a very different set of conversations here. So Erin and Helen, thank you so much for your time and for the September edition of the Talent Table.