HRE Moderator 00:02
Hello, and welcome to today’s webinar, how to get ready for recruiting and 2024. I have a few housekeeping notes before we begin. If you have any questions or technical concerns, please use the Q&A module on your screen. You can resize and minimize the different modules on your screen by using the options in the top right corner of each module. This event is being recorded and can be watched later demand using the same link. Attendees will receive the recording of today’s event. Look for that email within 24 hours post event. We encourage you to put your questions in the Q&A module throughout the event for our speakers to address. You can also use the reaction module and the menu at the bottom to relay items you may like or want to express an emotion to. And now I will pass the stage to Rebecca Warren, Director, Customer Success Eightfold AI.

Rebecca Warren 00:55
Hey, folks, so excited to see you today. Thanks for joining us, we are coming to you live. I am in Phoenix, Arizona. And I will pass it over to my partner Matt to introduce himself in just a second. So I am a customer success director at Eightfold, I lead a team that helps to support our clients in all things that they need, from solving problems to developing strategies. Super excited to chat with you today about what’s happening and 2024. So I’m going to shoot it on over to Matt to introduce himself and then we’ll get started.

Matthew Couret 01:32
Thanks, Rebecca. Hi, everyone. My name is Matthew Couret. I’m with Hudson RPO. I’m the Director of Client delivery here I oversee our total talent solutions across our customer portfolios, based out of Tampa, Florida, really excited to you know, be a part of the presentation today and excited to share just some market insights around you know what we’re seeing in our advising around your recruitment readiness for the year ahead.

Rebecca Warren 01:57
All right. So we want to start off, sorry, and I didn’t forward to our slide that introduced ourselves. So you can see us here. But I wanted to start off here with a poll. So you should see a poll on your screen right now, asking you what is the biggest challenge that you’re facing in recruiting today? So we’ve given you some options, they are not exhaustive. We have some ideas on what that might be. So is it skill shortages? Is it attracting the right candidates? Is it aligning staffing with strategic objectives? Managing D and I balancing permanent and contract staff? Or could it be succession planning for key roles or something else? We didn’t give you another option, but the right being either. But go ahead and choose the one that you feel most aligns with what you’re seeing today in recruiting. And I think both Matt and I have maybe a perspective on what we’re seeing. And we’ll be able to weigh in any of these right now, Matt, that you think if you had to make a guess which one is going to pop up as the top one?

Matthew Couret 03:12
You know, I must imagine that. You know, skill shortages in critical areas is going to continue to be, you know, one, one area that we see a lot of across your customer, Canvas. So I would imagine that’s something that’s still, you know, top of mind for many of the folks out there.

Rebecca Warren 03:30
Right. And I think it’s, that’s an interesting one, because it could be misaligned misalignment with hiring managers, or it could be skill shortages, right, like, what are the hiring managers saying they need as opposed to what do they actually need skill wise to do the job? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Looks like we’ve got quite a few folks weighing in. Let’s look and see what we have. Oh, Matt, you get a Fry’s skills shortage is in critical areas and attracting the right candidates. And I think the two of those really go together, right? Because what does the right candidate look like? What are you looking for? And then what are those skills that you need? That maybe we didn’t need in the past that you need today? All right. Well, thanks for that feedback. So I think that topics that we’ve prepared to talk about are probably spot on. And I maybe will give you some things to think about. So Well, let’s take a little bit of a look back. What’s been happening to get us to where we are, as we think about what’s going to happen in 2024. So let’s look at how we got here. Or even. There’s been a lot of stuff that’s happened in the last couple of years, when we were discussing what we wanted to talk about, and we said, hey, let’s do a look back to 2023. And then we realized we’re probably not giving enough context do we need to look back even a little further to see what’s happened in the last couple of years. So I won’t read this slide to you. But I wanted to see, Matt, are there any of these that you think really stick out that is made kind of a sweeping impact on what we must look forward to in the next year?

Matthew Couret 05:18
Yeah, I think, you know, in the, through the lens of recruitment readiness, right, and we’re talking about being prepared to go to market as individual companies to go out to hire, you can’t you can’t neglect, thinking about how, you know, any bit of layoffs or changes in the market dynamics related back to interest rates, and how, you know, inflation is impacted across the board. So there’s several inputs that we know have made significant impacts around hiring plans, how you know, how companies are thinking about hiring, what versus what their bottom line is, and etc. So those are the things that tend to stick out to me that those are most recent. But I mean, to your point, as you zoom out, it’s all you know, all of these have kind of dovetail together in succession. And I think the one thing we talked about, prior to the call going live, was that in every case, where we’ve seen, you know, kind of a downturn in market throughout history, they’ve gotten shorter and shorter, and the rebounds have come quicker. And so I think that, you know, as we look through the presentation moving forward, if there’s any optimism that we can tie back to some of these events that we’re looking at, is that, you know, we’re, you know, at a at a at a, you know, at a macro level, there have been decisions being made that helped to influence turnarounds quicker. And I think the most recent, you know, evidence of that, that we’ll look at is what happened between the pandemic, the rebound from that, how we reacted in that moment, the results of that, and now how, you know, what lessons learned? Are all companies and people taking from that, and how does that shape what hiring looks like moving forward?

Rebecca Warren 07:03
Yeah, I think that I think that’s exactly right. And the way things have happened over the last couple of years really have brought us to this point for a lot of different reasons. One of the other things that we were chatting about is that it’s difficult now, it used to be pretty easy to separate work, from politics, from other issues. And I don’t know that we have that anymore. Right now, there’s a lot of things that come together that are affecting all together. So we talked about this slide, do we put politics on there? Do we put social justice and I feel like we have to, because all of that has driven the changes and the things that we’re seeing in the markets and, and what things look like going forward. So lots of different things that have brought us here. And I don’t know, I’m just looking at our list here, what we even haven’t put on here, we did talk about the pandemic but is the switch up to remote work to more technology, those kinds of things that we will talk about later on in the presentation, but didn’t even really make this slide, because those were trickle down things that have happened because of some of the bigger impacts. So lots of things have brought us here. And I think there’s a lot of great things I think to help us move forward. There’s a lot of challenges that we have out there as well. So we look at here, where 91% of 1000 HR and C suite leaders say that HR’s role has changed dramatically over the past five years and 41% of the same exact don’t think that these changes are going to slow down anytime soon. I think this is spot on. There’s there was in my network who made a post recently, that just totally made me laugh. Because when you think about what HR’s role is, it’s so different depending on the companies, and it looks so different from where it was, you know, even 10 years ago to today. And there was a post that she had put up saying, Why is somebody asking me as an HR leader, how to decorate my door, that’s appropriate, like, who cares, right, like, but some of the some of the HR spaces are focused on how do I appropriately decorate my door? And some are saying how do I prepare us for the challenges coming in the next five years? So there’s a big change in how HR is, is working focused what that attention looks like. I think we are going to continue to see changes in expectations of work in how the work gets done, why the work gets done. I feel like we’re probably asking better questions of HR than we have in the past. It feels to me like it’s less of a catch all of all of the things that somebody else doesn’t want to do, right. The terminators, the, the decorators the the, you know, potluck planners, and it feels like HR is moving into more of that stuff. A teaching space where we’re going to continue to see these changes, but also making sure that HR is prepared to handle those changes. Any thoughts on that? Before I flip to the next slide?

10:09
Yeah, I was just going to say I think the role has evolved, you know, in, in HR and talent acquisition are probably working closer than they ever have before. Pardon and parcel due to technology, you know, the advancements of AI, all the regulatory and compliance that’s, you know, being stood up as a result of that. So all of these are important things to consider. You know, when you think about, again, it through the lens of being prepared for next year, what does that mean for me? How does that impact not only who, you know who we want to hire, but does that how does that impact our current, you know, employee population as well?

Rebecca Warren 10:46
Right, right. And a lot of those changes are coming because of the disruption that’s happening, as we talked about with digital technology, what things are we looking to what things are we looking to do? What things are we looking to not do, when we look at 23% of jobs will be disrupted, in the next five years, 14 million fewer jobs, overall 83 million rolls potentially will disappear, a 69 million will emerge. I don’t know that that’s a bad thing. Because they think we’re learning how to be more effective, more, more focused with the work that we’re doing. But I do think that especially in our space, there’s going to be a lot of things that have changed. And we think about the jobs that were created just in the past three years, because of the pandemic. And some of the other things in the, in the workplace, and some of the jobs that are just going away, I think we’re going to continue to see this shift, and we have to be prepared to, to adjust.

Matthew Couret 11:45
Yeah, no, totally, I think there’s a huge emphasis being placed on productivity as it relates to, you know, the inclusion of additional tools and technology, and, you know, but I think a lot of customer or a lot of companies in general are still, you know, evaluating, you know, which are, you know, real and what’s just noise, right, I think there’s so much out there, that, you know, they kind of have to sort through and again, a lot of that can fall back on, you know, HR talent acquisition, you know, for their branded tools and technologies that they’re going to be, you know, see or get advertised to. And then there’s other parts of the business as well, whether you’re in marketing, sales, or otherwise. So there’s, if there’s one thing that we know for sure, is that there’s an abundance of things that are being stood up from a platform perspective that make a lot of big promises, but will take some time to do the due diligence to understand if they truly add that level of productivity that is being sought after?

Rebecca Warren 12:48
That’s a great call out. Yeah, I think that Goldman Sachs, I’m just looking at my notes here, has said that up to one in four current work tasks could be completely automated by AI, in the next two years, it’s kind of a crazy thing to think about. But then what does that mean for us being able to do the work that we actually like to do instead of doing some of those repetitive, you know, tasks that maybe don’t add as much value? Alright, so let’s take a look at what’s happening today. Where are we at? What are we seeing? You know, one of the things that we have continued to focus on here at eight fold with our clients, and hearing in the market is that it’s more important than ever, to make sure that all areas of the business are aligned, that you understand what your organization’s top priorities are, how does HR or TA fit into those objectives, making sure that the organization is all driving towards the right end goals with the right talent, skill sets, and focuses in mind. So if we as a as a function are not aligned to our organizational priorities, it’s going to be really hard, in my opinion, for folks to be able to be successful. What are those? What are those main things that we have to be paying attention to every day in order to get our jobs done? That that’s one of the number one things that we have to be focusing on? Are those top priorities, man, are you seeing that as well with your clients that there’s been a shift to say we have to be not just focused as a department, but we have to be focused as a full-on organization? Yeah,

Matthew Couret 14:34
there’s got to be alignment, top to bottom, right. Everybody’s This is probably one of the most, again, critical times that there’s alignment across department, across company across culture and work because at the end of the day, that you know, everyone at every, you know, position within the company has to be able to execute against, you know, what their role and duty is, and I think you Again, I’m just pointing back to the last few years, there was a lot of initiative to grow, grow for the sake of growing, you know, to capture market share. And I think, you know, a lot of companies have pulled back and learn that, you know, that needs more, you know that that approach needs a lot more diligence, you know, from understanding what you know, what the expected outcomes are going to be, as a result of those, you know, that hiring movement. And now, you know, I think that that’s probably going to serve everyone great moving forward. But in order to make best use of that, you have to have alignment, you know, organizationally, cross across the entire company.

Rebecca Warren 15:39
Right, exactly right. And we also have to know with those priorities, what are those skills that we’re going to need to be able to execute not just today, but in the future? So we’re going to switch to another poll for you? How confident are you in your organization’s ability to assess an employee’s potential beyond what you see on a resume? We hear a lot about focusing on skills and becoming a skills-based organization, what’s your skills taxonomy. But before we can talk about making sure that we have the right skills, we have to see, are we good at assessing what those skills are? I think a lot of folks are, are used to looking at a resume or a background or a profile, and maybe not as much as looking at not just the work that somebody can do, but maybe the things that you haven’t even seen yet, like what what’s behind the curtain there? So we talk about that confidence, how confident are you in your organization’s ability, not just your own personal ability to assess that potential? Uber confident, all the way down to very doubtful that Where do you think we’re going to land on this?

Matthew Couret 16:56
Oh, man, let’s see if I can go to for two, I would say, again, just with most companies that we that, that I’ve had the pleasure of working with, I think most feel somewhat confident, right? You know, that when it comes to the way the talent, their talent acquisition teams go about, you know, what, from all the way from their sourcing strategy through that evaluation process, I think that they’ve, they feel pretty confident in the ability to assess beyond just what’s on a resume when they go through those processes. But I can tell you that, you know, as we go, you know, as we kind of peel the onion back, you know, from a solutions perspective, when we kind of get down into the, you know, the details of those motions. You know, we tend to find, you know, some blind spots around those areas.

Rebecca Warren 17:46
Yeah, yeah. Because when we’re thinking about this, we’re not just looking and then we have to look further than just keywords. Right? Can’t be just the buzzwords, it’s got to be what does that depth look like? Okay, so I think I think you’ve got it right, that’s somewhat confident, kind of right in that middle space. What I find super interesting about this is that very, very small number at that top, right, we’ve got 7% of the folks here, feel very confident that the organization gets that skills, focused. ability. It’s kind of interesting. But I think in order for us to be successful in the future, we’ve got to look beyond just the surface. And I think that’s where we’ve landed up till now is really looking at that bit above the surface, right? This is what we see, this is what we know, this is what we can prove. Here’s where it’s been, you know, showcased on LinkedIn, or my buddy used to work with this person, and they say they’ve done X. There’s so much underneath the surface that goes into what talent looks like. So what are those adjacent skills? What is their potential? What do they want to do? What are they capabilities? What does it look like, in comparison to other candidates that are out there? Right? Where can we find folks that maybe we haven’t been looking, right? That talent, rediscovery may be somebody who wasn’t quite ready for a role a couple of years ago, but might be now or what somebody has done maybe in their off hours, right? If they’re, maybe they’re a coach for a team or something that they’ve done that showcases different skills. We’ve got to look beyond just that surface in order to find the future talent that we need to take our businesses forward. So less about keywords and more about looking at a holistic view of what talent looks like. Matt, let me ask you a question. Didn’t hear if we think about this, I’d love to get your perspective on how you think AI and technology helps us to get past just looking at that top third of the iceberg.

Matthew Couret 20:14
Yeah, so I think, you know, and I’ll just use eightfold as an example. As a platform, as a platform, right, one of the one of the key things that we find is really helpful with that is, because it’s powered by, you know, an anonymized, you know, set of keywords found across, you know, I think a billion, a billion different profiles, is that it has the ability to make inferential, you know, connections about, you know, a profile of somebody that that a recruiter on one of our teams might be looking at, that they themselves as an individual don’t have the index to do, right. So, you know, we’ve all got a limited, you know, number so called off understand, you know, of connections between one word to another, and one environment to another. And I think when we think about technology, from that perspective, you know, just talking on sourcing alone, you have the ability to understand, you know, who ranks or who might be a great fit, who’s not obvious, right? I think another great example is that we work with a lot of organizations today, who I think really want to be able to better assess their existing employee population and where they might fit across the company. But, you know, learning and development has been a pretty, you know, static way of kind of, like building up skills within an organization, I think, where the gap has really been as around that assessment piece and understanding, you know, building a career path based on that. I think many of the companies that that we’ve worked with, you know, do a great job, you know, we help them hire some incredible people. But career paths continue to be one area that it needs the most work because, you know, individuals are hired within the roles that they need the work done, but there’s not always enough, you know, foresight about what, you know, what that level of attainment looks like beyond that. So I think, I think that AI is going to play a part in helping to build some of those career trajectories and opportunities and open up blind spots where, you know, people might be able to say, hey, I have interest in working in these key areas. Where am I short?

Rebecca Warren 22:41
Right, right. Yeah. And so when we look at some of the data that goes around skills focused organizations, and where are they looking at to what you’re saying, being able to retain those top performers, because it’s not just what can I do today? But where do I want to go? What can I do in the future, and it may be jobs that don’t actually even exist at the time, right? Like, but if you’re looking at the skills, you’re looking at what somebody has the potential to do, it’s a lot easier than for you to be able to say, Oh, well, they could be a fit in this particular group in this particular department, where that might not have crossed your radar if you were just looking at just a profile. So being able to place that talent more effectively, being able to be more innovative, because we’re looking at what skills somebody brings to the table as opposed to what job title or what their resume looks like. And that reputation of a great place to work, when I talk to folks about their organizations, and where are they moving people? And how are they thinking about succession planning, talent reviews? Where do people want to go? When it also starts switching to an employee led process where folks feel like they have a say, in their career, here are the skills I have here, the projects I want to be involved in here, the things I want to do, when the employees have the ability to focus on those things, as opposed to just saying, Okay, well, I’m going to put you in this box, and then you move to this box, it makes a big difference in how people feel, in terms of their excitement about coming to work every day, and also what that future might look like, it doesn’t feel so scary when you say, Hey, I’ve got a defined set of skills that I know are going to get me potentially to that next level and my employer is paying attention to that. Yeah,

Matthew Couret 24:27
I think anytime that a company can demonstrate that and point to it within the organization that somebody is unable either to move, you know, from one area of the business to another, you know, due to a skills, you know, increase on their own right, I think that’s going to really, you know, because I think a lot of companies you know, proudly go out and say hey, I you know, we have the ability for people to move into different roles but actually seeing it, not just you know, telling me but showing me, I think that means everything to an individual and earns a lot a lot of credit. ability across the employee population. Right?

Rebecca Warren 25:04
Yeah. And so I have an example that I’ve put up here of candidate personas that I’ve used in the past in a restaurant organization. And what is interesting about looking at personas instead of just a resume or a profile, is it gives you an opportunity to see what other skills somebody might have that might fit. So if you don’t have an AI platform or a tool to help you do this, you can still do your skills based, hiring more of a manual way. If you put together these personas to help you understand in different parts of somebody’s career, what those skills are that potential that they bring to the table, you’re going to then be able to mix up what your hiring looks like, in it also helps you with your hiring managers bring some additional information to them. Like here’s why a diverse slate is better if we only hire Terry’s on the right, right, the most experienced folks, your groups are going to look probably pretty similar, especially if you’re starting to look for similar backgrounds, similar companies that folks have come from similar lengths of experience. But when you look at the skills of what maybe a Jordan can bring to the table doesn’t have a lot of restaurant background, but has been involved in maybe some of those leadership experiences, and has that drive and that potential, what is that going to do to bring into your organization, different skills, different focuses, and also then allow you to build out an organization that has more diversity of background thoughts, and allows you to fill in those gaps inside of your organization, instead of having tried to figure out okay, now I’ve got these great big gaps. And how do I feel that, or you don’t have an ability to move somebody into the next role? Because everybody looks the same? And are at the same level of their career? Have you met? Have you had anyone that you’ve worked with us that personas and think about doing it the manual way, but able to shift what that organization looks like, but getting different profiles in the mix? Yeah,

Matthew Couret 27:08
so I think this is an area we coach on quite a bit, right. So whether they have a, you know, an actual like platform in place to help with this. But we spend a lot of time talking about this subject, in particular when we talk about any need within a customer organization. And as we dive into those requirements, right, we talk about the work shift and allocation, it says, Well, you could be aimed at an eight-year person today, who is who has completed X, Y and Z. But what if you have a really strong six-year person who is an 85%? Match? You know, could we shift some of that workload around the team, right to be able to bring in somebody who, you know, again, is that 85% matches in budget rather than having to go over budget and potentially, you know, upset the applecart by having to pay more right across a team that’s already at a specific level of comp. Yeah. So you know, those are all things we take into consideration as we kind of coached through comp roll task, you know, everything that’s associated within that, and I think this is a great example of, you know, especially from a when working directly with those hiring teams or lines of business to say, this is a this is a great visual to understand, you know, what can you get, you know, what can you get from somebody based on what their background or persona is. And this also allows them to highlight what training areas, you know, would you want to segment, you know, based on the persona that you hire? Yeah. And I think, I think that opens the door to that shift that we’re talking about in terms of, you know, more skills-based hiring, you know, in recognition of opportunities for growth.

Rebecca Warren 28:52
Yeah, so I think that leads us right into this talent wheel that we talked about, you know, we started off talking about organizational plans and aligning people with business strategies, what we talk about when you look at skills as opposed to a job description, when you look at what somebody brings to the table, instead of trying to cookie cutter folks into a business strategy, now you’re aligning people with what the work looks like, what individual things do they bring to the table that helps you get those business priorities accomplished. So we look at this talent wheel, you could actually come in anywhere on this wheel to help get this process of moving when you’re looking at a skills-based organization. It may be coming in with organizational plans and then saying, Okay, now we’re going to benchmark analyze, develop and engage. It could be, hey, we’re really going to focus on engaging talent, understand where they’re at what they want to do, and then move into that wheel. It doesn’t actually even have to go in that particular Order is it, it can maybe be a little bit less circular. But when we look at aligning skills and aligning people with business strategies, there are some steps that you have to take in order to get people aligned to that. And so I think moving to a skills-based strategy not only helps you in terms of being prepared for the future, but it also allows you to have a lot of data around what does somebody bring to the table? What do you need? How are you going to develop that and drive that forward? Instead of trying to look at just a resume or an X number of years of experience or X number of companies that they’ve worked at?

Matthew Couret 30:48
Yeah. Yeah. I think these are key critical activities, from an HR and talent perspective to, you know, every year are taking inventory against those areas, right? What are the org plans? How are we going about engaging talent, both internally and externally? From a talent acquisition perspective? What is our, you know, a talent development strategy across our people? You know, how do we go about analyzing the skills of our people in our organization today? Is that done only when we conduct, you know, annual reviews? Is that the only opportunity we take to kind of evaluate where we are from a skills-based perspective? And then competitive benchmarking, you know, how are we doing that? Are we doing that against our peer group? Are we doing that against, you know, Market to Market? So I think those are absolutely critical to conduct.

Rebecca Warren 31:42
Yeah, absolutely. Well, so now let’s talk about if what talent intelligence not just AI or machine learning or automation, let’s talk about talent, intelligence as a category. What has that done? To get us to this point, and how are we going to potentially use talent intelligence to take us forward? So I have another poll for us. Yay. I would love to hear how you all feel about AI’s role in talent acquisition and maybe even a broader just in, in talent in general. So talent acquisition, talent management? How do you feel about AI’s role in TA and HR? Are you excited? Do you feel it’s going to be a game changer? Feeling sort of optimistic, thinks that there are some benefits? Neutral, like, hey, we’ll see where it can come in, in the most, you know, in the least intrusive way. skeptical? Not sure. And concerned, pretty sure the world is going to turn into Skynet in the next couple of years. So Where are you along that list? Man, I’m going to throw it to you and see if we get your predictive skills three times now.

Matthew Couret 33:00
So, you know, again, I’ve been on a few panels and talking with customers and caviars, I think there again, there’s an optimistic sentiment about its benefits. I think, again, most of our most of the organizations I speak to holistically are looking at it from a task-oriented perspective today, okay. And that the, you know, a lot of the gains are or expectations upon AI are to, you know, push productivity, push efficiency gains, which net out right, in some cases, into, you know, fewer hands performing more work. But there are, you know, there are third order, you know, effects, right, tied back to those things that, you know, maybe aren’t at, in, you know, dead in front of focus. But I think that that’s kind of where people, you know, are at today, especially since, you know, you think about, you know, open AI was announced, you know, brought to public in February, people started interacting to the platform, and I think we’ve never had this much adoption of a piece of technology openly since, you know, the Googles and Yahoo’s of the world.

Rebecca Warren 34:14
Yes, exactly. So fast and how that happened. All right. Let’s see where we’re at. Okay, Matt, you are just spot on. You have your finger on the pulse of our group today. So well done. Yeah, I do think and that’s where I talk about it too. I do think that that optimism is the right place to be at it. I think AI machine learning those things are a game changer. But we also have to make sure that they’re being looked at in the right way using AI for good, allowing us to do the things we love to do taking the stuff off of our plate that maybe isn’t as productive or isn’t as exciting working We automate, where can we use AI to make our jobs better, we’re never going to get rid of the human element of the human element, it’s just not a thing. And so we talk about inside of eight-fold. And shoe is our CEO, that AI empowers machines and humans each to do what they do best. So together, it allows humans to perform a task faster and better. And it also teaches the AI to become smarter. So together, it’s faster and better than doing it just individually. I really think that even just as a thought starter, right, I’ll give an example of a chat GPT Yes, I have written a silly poem to my husband about cats, and golf clubs and music. And he was less impressed that I was, but you know, we’ve used it for those silly things. But I’ve also used it to help me create things. For instance, I was really stuck. And we’re creating an internal charter for our customer success team. And I was super stuck, I just couldn’t come up with what that that summary should look like. So I threw a whole bunch of stuff into the into the chat GPT string, and it spit out something that at least got my mind started. I didn’t copy it directly. But it got me starting to think about different ways maybe to put ideas together, which we’ve always done, right, we’ve spent a lot of time going out and doing Google searches. My philosophy is also don’t recreate the wheel. So who else has put a job description or a job ad out there, that’s better than what I can do to get that thought started. Right. But doing this here, within, you know, a minute, I was able to move forward, I wasn’t stuck, because I had an opportunity to have something else spark my brain consolidating all of that information, more than if I had just gone out and done a couple of random Google searches. Yeah, it’s a true it’s a true exercise in crowdsourcing, but driven at the individual level. Right?

Rebecca Warren 37:02
Correct. That’s exactly why I would say just from a, you know, from a talent acquisition perspective, I mean, some of the unintended consequences that we’ve seen from, you know, the chat GPT is of the world and other, you know, learn language model, you know, applications that are out there, it’s like, yeah, it’s great. We can certainly see from a recruiter perspective, for example, the opportunity to have efficiency gains, and you know, whether it’s working on job descriptions, working on outreach messages and campaigns and all the things that go into the job function of talent acquisition, and, but the unintended consequence is that, hey, all candidates now have the same capability to, you know, enhance their resumes. Also, we’ve seen evidence of candidates being able to work with certain pieces of AI to mass apply to roles, right. So now, you know, the old the old question being, if everyone has it, no one has it, right? It does. It does impact, you know, talent acquisition, to have to think differently about, you know, what tools? And what resources do we align, to be able to better take on that type of recruiting environment, right, that talent acquisition environment. And so how, you know, recruiters have to be much, much, much more skilled up in terms of their, you know, how they understand technology, how they work with technology, you know, their ability to assess has to be at an even greater level. So, you know, that those are some of the, you know, unintended consequences that we’re seeing as a result of, you know, that that human and AI kind of relationship.

Rebecca Warren 38:44
Yeah, and that I think goes to the point is that it’s never going to be one or the other. We are going to continue to automate to drive our learnings to help create processes that make our lives easier, but it will never be all AI or all of us going forward it I just don’t think it I just don’t think that’s the thing, right? We’re never going to go back to saying, hey, go ahead and mail me your resume. Go ahead and fax it to me, right, we’re not going to go back to that we’re going to continue to use the pieces that are in place we’ve got ATS is we’ve got CRMs we’ve got great technology that helps us do our job better. So we’re not going to go backwards. But I do think there does have there has to be that that middle, right? That those collaborative relationships that that ability to discern, this feels real, this feels like it was pulled directly from a chat GVT search, right? Like recruiters are going to continue to have to develop those relationships. We’re going to have to continue to stay connected to our employees ask good questions and use it in a way that helps us be better As opposed to takes us down a dark path.

Matthew Couret 40:03
Yeah, the skills of a recruiter from intuition to Detective capability just the technology is not there yet.

Rebecca Warren 40:13
Yeah, well, and I think it continues to push us then, as well in the TA and the HR space is to continue to think about, you know, what, what do we actually need, what is on a resume, how important is a resume those conversations, things are changing so quickly, that if we only depend on a system to sort for us, I think we’re doing ourselves a disservice. But if we’re only depending on our ability to use our gut, I think we’re doing ourselves a disservice. So how do you put those pieces together? And especially if we look at here, these skilled trends are changing so quickly. So if we think about hiring for a data scientist in 2010, as opposed to hiring for a data scientist in 2020, like if we look at the skills that used to be top of mind for everyone, and now what’s happening looking even 10 years later, it’s a very different way to recruit, we can’t just focus on keywords or on what a background looks like, looking at those changes, you have to be aware of the market, you have to stay connected to people, you have to be having those conversations, but also continuing to research and seeing what’s out there. I have an example here of a company that we work with, that was looking for folks in a in the gaming industry, and saying, Okay, this is a small space, and there’s a lot of competition for the talent. And what they were able to do was start looking in a different industry and ended up actually pulling folks out of the dental industry, because of the same skill sets using 3d mapping, some of the other technologies were very similar. So pulling people from different industries are also looking at completely different. A different skill set stack, looking at the work differently, makes a big difference for recruiters to be able to fill those gaps, but also be able to bring the data to show why this person is a good fit, instead of just saying just trust me, you want to talk to them. That’s on this one man.

Matthew Couret 42:31
Yeah, I just think that, again, as we think about the types of opportunities that exist across organizations, you know, this slide really does show you just, you know, what’s changed, right, in terms of, you know, whether it’s technology, or just the role itself, right, all of these things evolve. And I think what that does is it really challenges hiring managers to understand, you know, what’s most relevant today in that role, versus what it was, you know, maybe even when they began their career around that space, and you know, how you know, how to get there. And I think everybody has to think a little bit more broadly about, you know, where the right person might come from. So the example you talked about moving from, you know, an industry that, you know, has similar technology, you know, landscape, but completely different focus, will, you know, if there’s a shortage or a very tight labor pool around that skill set, you know, the onus then becomes the company to understand, well, how can I leverage that skill set, even if it’s from outside my vertical industry. And that’s, you know, we, we see this a lot, and we talk through because not every company, or industry is aware of another industry that is also using the same types of technology maybe just a little bit differently. And there might be a very small learning curve to overcome in order to really make use of talented folks from outside the core industry that you belong to. Yeah,

Rebecca Warren 44:08
100% I love that. So thinking about different industries, and also thinking about different roles, what are those skills overlap, you can see here, we’re looking at what we used to look at for a systems analyst. And now we’re calling it a cloud engineer. Where are those skill sets that overlap? Maybe if you’re looking in the future, you know, you’re going to need more cloud engineers, maybe you’re not quite there yet. You are still functioning more on that systems analyst space. But what could you look at in terms of a background to say, hey, we’re going to get someone there, whether it’s an internal person saying, hey, here are the areas where your overlap your skills, really connect with that future roll. Here are the areas we want to get you upskilled on over the next, you know, six to 12 months to make sure that you’re ready to move into that space to make sure that we as an organization are ready to move in or if you’re hiring somebody externally thinking about hiring for the cloud engineer role, but not at 100%, because that’s sometimes not even an option, right? Sometimes the technology hasn’t been out long enough for anyone to have a significant length of experience in it. But if you hire somebody who’s got that 70 to 80%, of what you need, and then you can continue to enhance and train and help them learn, they’re getting something out of moving into that role, and you are as well. So trying to find the perfect fit sometimes actually trips us up, as opposed to saying, Hey, what are those transferable skills that come over from that role? And then what do we need to do to enhance this person’s career, help them develop into the areas that we need, but that they also want to that they also want to move into? Yeah, I would agree. And then, here’s another example just to show you if we were to look at someone sourcing a marketing role, or these are some of the things that are important in this marketing role, excuse me, I’ve got a tickle. Okay. So we’re looking at this communications role. What you can do, too, is if you’re thinking about Okay, so we’ve got another Oh, wait, my slides not advancing, there we go. So we’ve got a marketing role that we’re looking to hire for somebody who’s got a community management background and has some of these cool things. These two things are a little bit different. But what kind of things align, what are the things that make these two roles interesting and bringing somebody with maybe a different background into that marketing space, that might actually make you more broad, might allow you to move into other areas that you didn’t have a background in the past, and AI can connect these dots so much faster than we can. So if you weren’t able to say, Hey, I’m open on a couple of these different pieces, AI says, Hey, we’re going to infer that this social net, this community management role, might actually work really well for a communications position in marketing? What are those? What are those skills that connect? And how do we start looking at the, the profiles differently, not just on keywords, or titles or backgrounds? But looking at what are those things that come together that might actually make this communications role? A little bit of a different flavor, which is a good thing? In my opinion. Yeah,

Matthew Couret 47:26
I would tell you that the skill mapping exercise that AI can help with today, is almost invaluable, because it just broadens you know, the actual scope of people that might qualify and really enhance certain, you know, roles that you have on, you know, you have on your on your desk today to hire for because especially when you talk about that diversity of thought, when you bring people from, you know, outside what the tunnel, you know, tunnel vision might look at in terms of candidates, you know, you really enhance what somebody can you know, how the role can be performed, but also what they bring to the organization?

Rebecca Warren 48:05
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so we’re going to wrap this little section here about talent, intelligence, Matt, and I have four ideas to keep us moving forward. When we think about it which is such a weird thing to say it instead of TA right, or TM or HR. But here’s some things that we want you to think about. So the first thing is developing those skills and outcome-based talent strategies, looking at what are we solving for as an organization, not just hiring a position, hiring a filling a job? But looking at those broader outcome-based strategies? What are we trying to solve for? What’s the organization trying to do? How do we get there in a way that maybe looks differently, but aligns to the business goals that is there really going to help you keep your organization moving forward? Looking at Dei, and so diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, looking at that in all parts of your organization, it doesn’t just belong once you hire, it doesn’t just live when you hire somebody. How do you put that into your strategies to attract folks? How do you put that into your hiring processes? How do you continue to focus on inclusion and belonging and diversity of thoughts, backgrounds, profiles, lifestyles, all of those pieces embedding that in your organization tells a story to not only the candidates that you’re looking to attract, but all the way through your organization’s policies, processes. When it’s embedded as opposed to being a project, your organization looks completely different. So we’re going to encourage you to do that as well. Create talent pools and connection plans. Matt, I want to flip this one over to you talk to us a little bit about why having connection regular connections and talent pools makes a difference in you being able to find the right talent at the right time?

Matthew Couret 50:08
Yeah, I think I think always consistently kind of keeping, especially if you have a pretty large and robust, existing candidate base, right. So for the amount of time your company is put into going out and sourcing individual candidates, I think it’s really critical to always have a system in place that is consistently kind of either checking in with those individuals, because you know, there’s always a constant, you know, open lead within your organization, and to see where people kind of fit in. So just having an approach that makes use of and leverages all that hard work that was performed to attract talent, and, you know, people aren’t static, they change over time. So it’s important to understand, you know, where they are today, in there, you know, personal journey, because, you know, as we said before, you know, someone may not be a fit one day, but in six 912 18 months, you know, they might be, you know, the right fit for where your organization is today. Again, I think that from a talent, you know, it’s an acquisition perspective, always creating, maintaining those talent pools is always going to, you know, help support any type of hiring strategy that you have going forward. I think that’s, you know, instead of having to go out to market fresh every single time, having a good place to start is super important.

Rebecca Warren 51:32
Yeah. And so then talk to us on the next one to why AI machine learning automation. Why do we want to focus on this? I think we’ve,

Matthew Couret 51:43
I think we’ve talked about it a lot. But I, I really see a lot of value. And we talk to customers about this, that having a strategy that employs using, you know, some sort of automated artificial intelligence, machine learning automation that allows recruiters not only to be able to go out to market, right, and, you know, surface, the best people but also to, to, you know, again, create engagement that can reach at a mass level. So it doesn’t, you know, you’re not going one by one by one by one. But you’re effectively creating, you know, candidate engagement or prospect engagement on an on an automated level that can communicate things that are exciting about your company, opportunities that are out there, and things that are specific to the individual talent pools that we talked about, that can bring more people to you, thus than necessarily having to go out and getting. Absolutely.

Rebecca Warren 52:42
All right, so we are coming to the tail end of our presentation, we’ve got just a couple more thoughts, we’re going to look ahead, and Matt and I are going to look into our crystal ball, and to give you some of our ideas of what we think 2024 is going to bring. But before we do that, we want to know what you think. So looking ahead, what do you think will be the most impactful recruiting trends next year? And we have not given you all of the choices? But we’ve put a couple of things out there. So we would love to hear from you our last poll of this webinar here. What do you think is going to be the most impactful recruiting trends is in AI driven recruitment technologies, remote work strategies, diversity and inclusion initiatives, skill-based hiring approaches or innovative candidate experiences? What do y’all think? All right, Matt. Okay. Do your do your work again, what’s the right answer? Where do you think folks are going to land?

Matthew Couret 53:39
I think I think most organizations are all exploring, right, AI driven requirement technologies. And as I said before, I think there is a lot of very interesting application out there. And just like we just saw in the past year, where many companies were, you know, going through, you know, an organizational fitness exercise, right, you know, do we have the right people? Do we have enough of the right people, that attention is now turned towards, hey, what pieces of technology, you know, not even just within HR and talent acquisition, but across organization to say that we are supported internally and then from a customer spec perspective, externally. So I think you’re going to find that AI driven recruitment technologies is going to probably be one of the most impactful recruiting trends next year, followed up, I think, by you know, skills-based hiring approaches just based on how people you know, how organizations are looking to evaluate talent.

Rebecca Warren 54:38
Okay, and those are the top two, Matt, you are with, I love it. Okay. So we’re going to flip to our four thoughts, for 2020 for your predictions. We’ll come back this time next year, maybe and see if we are correct. So the first one that we think is going to happen in 2024 organizations are going to hire or rehire more deliberately. I think we are going to stop seeing the crazy trends and the roller coasters, I think orgs are going to be more focused on looking at what do we need to bring to the, to the future? What, what kind of skills do we need? I think there’s going to be a more deliberate approach from companies as opposed to the continued seesaw. Hopefully, it’s going to also tie back to looking at your internal folks, and where can you deploy them? How can you look at your external hiring to be more focused and really bring the long-term effects to your org? I think that’s I think that’s where we’re going to land from an external hiring perspective. And, Matt, talk to us a little bit about this one. So talent attraction will slowly start to focus more on skills, you think we’re going to be there by the end of 2024?

Matthew Couret 55:59
Yeah, I tend to believe that, you know, talent acquisition groups are going to leverage, you know, multiple systems to evaluate talent, and really looking at, you know, right off the back of deliberate hiring, right, that the evaluation process for candidates will probably extend a little bit, because companies, you know, are in a position to be a bit more diligent and thorough in that evaluation process. Again, depending on the nature of the customer, the industry and what areas of your business are going to support. But I think the way in which talent attraction is, you know, changing is driven primarily through technology and through focus, right. And because of skills, I mean, it’s just, it’s, it’s headed in that direction.

Rebecca Warren 56:50
Yeah. And I think flowing into that one, hybrid work arrangements are going to affect talent attraction, I think they’re going to continue to cause friction, I don’t know that there’s a lot more to say about that, we’re going to see what happens with hybrid work arrangements coming in the next year. We’d love to hear you all, as you work through that over the next year, as well. And then our last one here and talking about career development, shifting to individualized AR machine live in drone driven learning plans, I can see a lot of organizations working to customize or individualized career paths or plans based on what an employee wants to look at, as opposed to a top-down driven strategy of saying, Here’s your person, this person is going to go in this spot this spot this spot. So in my estimation, I think we are going to be seeing more of an employee driven career pathing process as opposed to just a top down nine box. Matt, I’ll let you weigh in on this, and then we’re going to wrap it up.

Matthew Couret 57:56
Yeah, I’ll quickly just say I think this is a huge opportunity for companies from an enablement perspective, I think that there are going to be platforms and technology that do a great job at understanding what the current, you know, skills based environment looks like from an employee population perspective, and then being able to turn that around and into that, that, you know, career pathing strategy that’s driven by technology. And I think that that is going to add a lot of, you know, good return at the employee level as well as for the company. I think both are going to benefit greatly from, you know, well implemented strategies around that.

Rebecca Warren 58:34
I love that. All right, we have reached the end of our webinar. I am going to shoot this back to Amber Lee to wrap us up.

HRE Moderator 58:43
Thank you for attending today’s webinar, you may disconnect and have a lovely rest of your day.