Rebecca Warren moderated a discussion on AI’s impact on recruiting teams, emphasizing the shift from task execution to orchestration. Esther Swaty and Cory Jaffe highlighted the need for recruiters to focus on strategic advisory roles, leveraging AI to automate manual tasks and enhance efficiency. They discussed the importance of data fluency, change leadership, and systems thinking. Cory stressed the need for a bias towards action and continuous innovation. Esther emphasized the importance of understanding human judgment and providing clear pathways for innovation. Both agreed on the necessity of restructuring roles to align with organizational outcomes and ensure TA adds strategic value.

Introduction and Housekeeping

• Rebecca Warren welcomes everyone to the March edition of the Talent Table, focusing on orchestration in recruiting teams.
• Rebecca provides housekeeping instructions, including using widgets, asking questions via Q&A, and exploring the resources section.
• Rebecca introduces herself as the host and moderator at Eightfold, focusing on talent center transformation.
• Rebecca introduces the speakers, Esther Swaty and Cory Jaffe, and asks them to introduce themselves.

Speaker Introductions

• Esther Swaty introduces herself as the VP of Organizational Strategy and Growth at Impellent Group, focusing on insights and future work strategy.
• Cory Jaffe introduces himself as the Senior Director of Talent at Checkr, leading global recruiting strategy and currently involved in an AI hackathon.
• Rebecca Warren shares her background at Eightfold and her role in talent center transformation.

Question of the Month: Decision Proud of Initially Doubted

• Rebecca asks the speakers to share a decision they are proud of that didn’t make sense at the time.
• Esther shares her experience of taking executive recruiting in-house, which initially seemed risky but ultimately saved the company money and improved culture fit.
• Rebecca shares her decision to take a position at a home shopping network, which was initially seen as a crazy choice but provided valuable learning experiences.
• Cory shares his experience of kicking off a global project without introducing team members initially, which led to a fun and effective team-building exercise.

Discussion on AI’s Impact on Recruiting

• Rebecca discusses the impact of AI on recruiting, emphasizing the shift from task execution to orchestration.
• Rebecca highlights the importance of judgment, context, business acumen, agility, and influence for recruiters.
• Esther and Cory agree that AI will change the nature of recruiting roles, with some roles disappearing and new roles being created.
• The conversation touches on the need for recruiters to become strategic advisors and the importance of data fluency and change leadership.

Operational Changes in Recruiting

• Rebecca asks about the most expensive work in TA today and how AI can streamline processes.
• Cory identifies requisition intake, approval routing, and assignment as areas ripe for automation.
• Esther emphasizes the need to clear recruiters’ plates of manual work to focus on high-value strategic tasks.
• The discussion includes the importance of redesigning processes to integrate new tools and technologies effectively.

Balancing Automation and Human Judgment

• Rebecca asks how leaders should structure teams to balance automation with human judgment.
• Cory suggests shifting recruiters’ mindsets to advisory roles, focusing on market intelligence and strategic partnerships.
• Esther highlights the need for training recruiters to become consultative and market-savvy.
• The conversation touches on the importance of data democracy and the role of recruiters in interpreting and augmenting data insights.

Adapting to Change and Building Trust

• Rebecca discusses the importance of bringing people along during the transition to AI-driven recruiting.
• Cory emphasizes the need for clear roadmaps, development opportunities, and a positive lens on change.
• Esther talks about the importance of creating a safe space for honest conversations and addressing concerns.
• The discussion includes the role of leadership in fostering trust and transparency during the transition.

Redesigning the Role of Recruiters

• Rebecca asks about the capabilities that will distinguish strategic TA leaders in the future.
• Cory highlights data fluency and change leadership as critical capabilities.
• Esther adds systems thinking and the ability to see patterns and translate them into business value.
• The conversation touches on the need for recruiters to become strategic thought partners and the importance of aligning talent strategy with business priorities.

Final Thoughts and Actionable Advice

• Rebecca asks for one piece of actionable advice for the audience.
• Esther advises understanding where human judgment is irreplaceable before automating.
• Cory emphasizes the importance of a bias towards action and moving quickly to see progress.
• Rebecca adds the need to plan for success and scale after starting an automation or AI project.

Here is the cleaned-up transcript. I have corrected the grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization without editing the format, names, or time stamps.

Rebecca Warren 0:01

Hey, hi, and hello, everyone. And welcome to our edition of the… our March edition of the Talent Table, where we’re going to talk about orchestration, not overload: what AI actually changes in recruiting teams. Now, before I get started, we’re going to do some housekeeping things. So if you want to do things, click the widgets at the bottom of your screen, poke around, see what happens, see what you find. If you want to ask things, pop your questions in the Q&A. We’ll answer as many as we can live, and anything we miss, we’ll try to follow up afterwards. If you want to read things, check out the resources section for articles, guides, and other—what I like to say—nerdy goodness to get your brain firing. And then if you want to register for things, click the link to sign up for next month’s Talent Table. Alright, so without further ado, we have done the housekeeping, and now we get to go to our fabulous speakers. Super excited to have Cory and Esther with us today. I am going to have them introduce themselves, and then I will do our question of the month. Before I do that, probably should tell you who I am. So, Rebecca Warren. I am the host and moderator of the Talent Table. I’ve been at Eightfold a little over five years now, and I sit in our marketing space under what we call Talent Center Transformation, where we focus on how to reform the talent life cycle through the lens of people and skills and talent, rather than jobs and org charts. Alright, I am going to pick someone on the screen just to get us started. So I’m going to go to Esther and then, Cory, you’re up after. Give us your intro and tell us all the things in like a really short amount of time. Got it?

Esther Swaty 1:44

Got it. Hi, everyone. I’m Esther Swaty, VP of Organizational Strategy and Growth at Impellam Group in the Americas. I focus on insights and future of work strategy, so really helping organizations to interpret signals and redesign the systems that support workforce teams. So, “nerdy goodness”—that totally resonates with me. All about that, Rebecca. And I’m really excited for us to talk today about how AI is changing the ways we work.

Rebecca Warren 2:12

Yes.

Cory Jaffe 2:14

Well, Rebecca, thanks for having me. Esther, really excited to sort of jump into things with you as well today. So Cory Jaffe, I’m the Senior Director of Talent at Checkr. So I lead all of our global recruiting strategy, hiring across all departments and divisions of the business. And this is actually a very timely event because we currently have an AI hackathon going on across the business—not just for the technology team, but actually for the entire business. So myself right now…

Rebecca Warren 2:42

Yeah, right now? Today?

Cory Jaffe 2:44

Started yesterday. So myself and my account leadership team, once I sign off from this, I’ll be jumping back into that today. So it’s very exciting.

Rebecca Warren 2:53

Well, thanks for taking a break to join us for this today. And I’m sorry if I cut off the rest of your introduction. What else do you want to tell us?

Cory Jaffe 3:00

Oh, no, that was about it. Just excited to be here and chat a little more with you both. It’s just a really top-of-mind topic to people in this space now, and just excited to jump in.

Rebecca Warren 3:11

Alright. Well, no matter where you are in the world, we are excited to get going. We all have our beverages here. I’m with my sparkling water. I think everybody else is staying hydrated, so that’s a pretty glass… coffee. Okay, there we go. Alright, so the question of the month. So what I like to do is just have a little fun. We ask a question that may or may not pertain to the topic. So my question of the month today, and it doesn’t matter who starts, is: what is a decision that you’re proud of that didn’t make sense at the time? And I will tell you that I come up with these questions without having an answer in mind. So it took me a while to actually figure out how I would answer this. So I know you guys have had a minute to think about it, but who wants to start and say a decision that you’re proud of that, at the time, you were like, “I’m not sure if that makes sense”?

Cory Jaffe 4:06

Okay, I think I could answer you. Okay. Okay, yeah. So this is a great question. Actually, really like this. So to me, it was pre-my previous company, to take executive recruiting in-house. So our team, the team that I used to run, had been significantly reduced. So we were a bit, like, understaffed. I’d say everybody was a little bit stretched. We’d just switched our ATS system as well. So there’s a lot going on just from, like, a day-to-day functionality of how the team was working, ramping on a new system. You know, and it had slowed some of our hiring velocity. At the same time, though, we had two of our C-staff roles open up. So previously, we’d always used exec search firms. You know, we were about a billion-dollar-in-revenue company, so you typically target search firms for those. I had a pretty good relationship with the CEO and just, you know, offered a proposal to him to take executive recruiting in-house. Ended up being really successful, saved the business a lot of money. Also, I think, like, internal talent teams a lot of times have a better target when it comes to, like, culture fit for the business and that. So it’s one of the things that really did not make any sense at the time. But after we got through it, after we showed some success with it, we ended up owning that program moving forward and was quite proud.

Rebecca Warren 5:25

I love that. Well, and there’s something about working with executives: you understand more about the broader business goals. You get just a different viewpoint when you pull that into your… into your purview. So sounds like it was a great experiment.

Esther Swaty 5:42

That’s awesome. Yeah, for me, it would be… recently, we kicked off a global project, and it was a team that had never worked together. And we went through kind of our first meeting, and it was vision-setting and everything, and I realized at the end, we hadn’t introduced people to each other. Like, what’s wrong with us? It’s kind of critical they’re working together. So what I encouraged us to do, and I was given the leeway, is, how about we kind of do a survey of our team, and not just their job titles, but what are their hidden superpowers? What are, you know, their areas of expertise that may have been historical that they can bring into the project? So we were able to do that. We were able to analyze the team’s superpowers so we got a collective grid of intelligence. And then we also created personal project diamonds. So everybody now can introduce themselves on any new project and say, “Hey, this is my superpower. This is my area of expertise. This is where I have ownership and authority.” And so it was a lot of fun. It was a new thing. We had to build a framework for it, but it was a way to move away from the job titles and the hierarchy and really set the scene for “let’s co-design how we move forward.”

Rebecca Warren 6:57

Well, and taking an “oops, forgot to do this” to a winning strategy that they can take forward. I think both of you have great examples of things that you’re like, “I’m not sure if we should do that,” or “Why didn’t we do that?” and now both turned into great examples. So I love that. And mine, as I thought about it, was taking a position that everyone said I was crazy for taking. So, home shopping is a space that not a lot of folks know about. But when I was in Minnesota, we had the third-largest home shopping network in the country in Minnesota, and they were struggling. There were a lot of things going on. And I was like, you know, got offered the role, and I was like, “I think I’m going to do it.” And I talked to some people who were like, “That place is crazy. There’s no way you should do it. That’s horrible.” And I was like, “Oh, but I kind of like bringing a little bit of calm to the chaos.” And I learned a ton. Like, it was so cool to actually see what live TV looks like, hiring hosts, getting a chance to be in their screen tests. Like, when you think about these hosts, they don’t have scripts, right? They have their little earphone, and they have to talk extemporaneously about anything. So doing the screen tests where we’re like, “Okay,” and we would literally say, like, you know, “Sell us this bottle of water. Sell us this, not the pen, but, you know, tell us and describe it on air.” And that business moves so fast. So, like, they can tell real-time analytics, like, if this thing isn’t moving in two minutes and they don’t have phone calls and emails, they’re like, “Okay, switch to the next thing.” Like, it’s so interesting. So at the time, it felt crazy, but I got a chance to do stuff there that I never would have had a chance to do any place else. I learned a ton. I worked with really smart leaders. Unfortunately, the company didn’t survive, but it was very, very eye-opening and really gave me a great understanding of a whole different business world. And if you watch… what’s the home shopping movie that’s out now? It was on… I think it was the one about QVC, where she was selling mops. I can’t think of it. And somebody can throw it in the chat, help me. But that is actually what it looks like. It really is that crazy and that busy and that hectic. But it was super cool. So that’s my…

Esther Swaty 9:14

So cool, and so much about agility, which feels like you can use in any role.

Rebecca Warren 9:20

Yes, before that became a buzzword, that was absolutely what I was doing. Yes. Okay, “Joy.” The movie was called “Joy.” Thank you, Jenny. I appreciate your help. Somebody’s out there.

Cory Jaffe 9:32

And then I have to ask, Rebecca, did you ever get a chance to be a presenter yourself?

Rebecca Warren 9:38

Presenter? That’s a great question. They did ask me. They wanted me to do some hand modeling, and then there was an opportunity for me to do it, and I was like, “I…” It was intimidating watching these amazing folks get up there and just be able to speak. Like, I could do a TED Talk, I think, but selling something that I didn’t really, you know, have a deep expertise in… they were amazing. So, thank you for that. I was happy hiring them and then staying connected to them. So, okay. So this is great. I think that would be actually fun for us to continue to talk about jobs where we’ve learned things or did different things. But we have to talk about our topic because that’s what we promised folks who have joined us. So, okay, so we’re talking about what’s happening in the TA space. And Cory, you’re talking about hackathons. We’re talking about shifting ground, what’s happening with AI, and how do we not get overwhelmed by all of the things that are happening right now. So let’s just be honest: there’s a lot of noise out there in the TA space. And a lot of it is around AI. Is it going to replace recruiters? And some of it is hype. But I mean, we have to… let’s be truth-tellers here, right? Like, some of it is real. So some recruiting roles will disappear. They will go away. They will be eliminated. And in some cases, that work is going to be consolidated. Now, some recruiters who operate transactionally are really going to struggle, and efficiency gains that we see with AI do not go unnoticed. So… but what I want to say here is that this is not the collapse of TA. It’s not imploding, going into the sun. It’s a reframing. So TA, in that context, cannot look the same and survive, right? The bar is moving. So our industry is shifting from task execution to orchestration, from managing steps in a process to guiding systems that can source and schedule and screen and analyze at scale. Now, as AI absorbs some of that coordination and those heavy workflows, the differentiator is no longer activity. I have to tell you, I have measured teams on activity and have been measured on activity in the TA space. But that’s not going to be the case going forward. It’s going to be judgment, and context, and business acumen, and agility, and influence. And so the recruiters, in my opinion, who thrive are not going to be the busiest. They’re going to be the most strategic. They’re going to be the most credible with leaders, and they’re going to be capable of translating labor market signals into hiring decisions, right? Seeing around the corner. So some roles, yes, are going to shrink, and some are going to disappear. Others are going to expand. New roles are going to be created, and the shape of TA absolutely is going to change. So it’s really not about “is it going to disappear?” It’s about “what does evolution look like?” So before I even ask a question, I would love to get your reactions. What do y’all think about that?

Esther Swaty 12:56

I’ll go first. So what you said definitely resonates. I think we’ve heard a lot about context engineers, because AI pilots fail, and when I think about humans and the unique value that they can bring to the table, it is critical that we start to help them clear their plates of the manual work and identify what the strategic work looks like and what their most valuable work looks like. And I think that’s a challenge. I think when you’ve been measured on activity, and that’s the blueprint for success, and all of a sudden the blueprint is changing, there has to be coaching and guidance on how to make that shift. It may not be natural for people, but I think that is where organizations really need to step in and not just push a technology, but push a new way of working and show people how to do it.

Cory Jaffe 13:47

Yeah, no, 100% agree with that. And that’s where, sort of, my lens coming into it too… you know, like Checkr. Checkr is an AI company, but it’s also an HR tech company. So it’s… we’re sort of living it from both sides. Not only are we trying to, you know, innovate and move things forward within the industry, build tools for people to hire quicker, and again, sort of streamline their processes and utilize AI in their hiring; we also, as a team, then have to build our team perspective around “how are we innovating our team at the same time that we’re trying to do it from an industry perspective?” So yeah, I think it’s just critical to really make sure that you build the right approach to it and really start to disseminate it down into your team members so they understand that they need to start looking at how they’re working and changing their ways of working.

Rebecca Warren 14:36

Yeah, well, and because, you know, I’ve been in this space for a long time—longer than I care to mention—but that was some of the value that recruiters brought, was their ability to coordinate meetings and schedules and, you know, get back and forth with the candidates. And some of that… I mean, that really was like, “This is what I bring to the table.” So we’re telling people that what their desk looks like needs to be different. It doesn’t mean that what they started with wasn’t good. It just means that, “Okay, now it’s time to move on.” So I do think there’s some stress with saying, “Hey, you’re taking away the thing that really, you know, made me good at this job,” or “several of the things that made me good.” So, okay, so let’s talk about that. So for years, right, TA teams have just absorbed all of that work: the scheduling… I mean, how many recruiting coordinators did I have at General Mills? There were so many recruiting coordinators, right? Because it was the scheduling, and the follow-ups, and the status, and the reporting, and the assessments, and the paperwork, and the onboarding—all of that stuff, right? Recruiting did a lot of operational things and managing a lot of process. So as AI compresses that, TA leaders now have an opportunity to rethink how we are set up. So let’s talk about from an operating model perspective: where… and Cory, maybe you have a quick answer on this one. Like, where is the most expensive work-about-work happening in TA today? Yeah.

Cory Jaffe 16:13

So I think from our perspective and what we’re experiencing day to day, one of the most expensive drags we’re currently having is, like, right at the top of the funnel. So everything, when it comes from, you know, requisition intake to the approval routing, to the assignment. There are so many different people touching all those different business processes. There’s a lot of thought that goes into it. When it comes to, like, again, “Who am I assigning this to? What is their specialty? You know, their partnerships with the hiring leaders.” There are ways to really automate all of that, and that’s one of the main areas we’re starting to look into now. So something that could take anywhere from, like, 24 to 48 to 72 hours, we want to get it down to a few minutes. So we’re starting to look at different ways to utilize AI to already sort of build in some of the framework and the structure when it comes to all those different touch points, and then have it move more quickly to the funnel, so we could actually be doing the work of recruiting and not just doing the administrative sort of business process piece of it.

Rebecca Warren 17:13

Right. Which makes a big difference for the candidates as well. Yeah. 100%. Alright. Esther, any thoughts on that?

Esther Swaty 17:22

Yeah, I agree. I think it’s the coordination that’s masquerading as recruiting. It’s really… it’s not, you know, it’s all this manual work that they’re doing, whether it’s interview scheduling, chasing statuses, getting updates and feedback. But it doesn’t necessarily… it’s not their most high-value work. And I think that’s where they’re challenged right now. Versus really getting a strong intake call and really understanding what a hiring manager wants, as well as really knowing a candidate—those are high-value human touchpoints. And it feels like our teams are really compressing sometimes those touchpoints when those are the areas where they could be getting more signals and intelligence about the market and really give the company a competitive edge.

Rebecca Warren 18:13

Yeah. So I love that. And what… so to summarize, I think what both of you have said is that recruiting often isn’t slowed by the hiring process; it’s slowed by explaining the hiring process, or the mechanics of the hiring process. Because there are so many times, like, you’ve got to explain to the hiring manager, “Hey, this is why I sent you this candidate.” Or you’ve got to follow up on the scheduling. Or you’re trying to unpack this particular process for someone. So when we can get the work-about-the-work out of the way, it makes a big difference in experience for not only the recruiting team and the hiring managers as well as the candidates. So I love that “coordination is masking as recruiting,” which is totally right. So, okay, so this… this was an interesting question, and I was thinking about this one too. It was kind of fun to put together ones that aren’t the typical, “Well, if you just eliminated scheduling, what would the desk look like?” Right? Like… so what signals tell a TA leader that the function is either over-coordinated or under-designed? It’s kind of a fun question. So what do y’all think about that? What signals should we be looking for to see if we are over-coordinated or under-designed?

Cory Jaffe 19:39

Esther, do you want to go on this one, or I’ll let you go.

Esther Swaty 19:41

You’re in the thick of it day to day.

Cory Jaffe 19:44

Yeah. So I think there’s a few clear ones. One… one of the big ones that we’re focused on currently when it comes to, like, the tools we use optimizing different workflows to free up recruiters’ time to be more strategic is really like… they spend a lot of time in just status meetings or, like, update meetings. They spend a lot of time trying to sort of, like, manually manipulate data because each different hiring leader or requisition will have different asks and just sort of different angles that we want to look at it through. So I think that’s where our processes are a little bit too clunky. The tools we’re using really aren’t optimizing the way we need them to be. And it does lead to, sort of like, some time sucks and some wasted work, where, again, if your tools are sort of integrated better, if you have more dynamic dashboards that allow people to slice data and look at it in different ways that’s more customizable, it just gives you a chance to be more strategic, you know, sort of look into how you want to partner with the hiring manager, but not spend all of your time like doing the work of that work, essentially.

Rebecca Warren 20:52

You know, I really like that. When you think about… we tend to, a lot of times, use meetings as the system, right? “We’re just going to meet about this. We’re going to meet about this.” And then how many times have we said, “That could have been an email,” or “That should be a workflow,” right? So exactly what you said, Cory, is: how do we take and make a process? Here’s the dashboard. Here’s the information. Here’s the way that should work. And get rid of some of those meetings, because that’s that… under-designed… over/under-designed is that if you’re using your meetings as the way to actually get the work done, the meeting shouldn’t drive the work, right? The meeting should be more innovation and more exciting, and, you know, kind of things like that. How do you turn those meetings into emails and workflows? Yeah, that’s great. Sorry, and I hope I didn’t cut you off. Were there other ones that you wanted to add to that one, Cory?

Cory Jaffe 21:45

No, no. I think I was gonna let Esther jump in. I thought she was about…

Esther Swaty 21:49

I think that’s a core organizational trend. It’s the introducing new tools, but not redesigning the process. And our teams who are wearing badges of busyness versus, like, what happens if they were able to come to a meeting that is actually a strategic meeting versus just a busy meeting, and how do we clear those things? So I love what you’re saying about process redesign and setting up workflows. I think that is where often, especially with the amount of AI tools in the market, I don’t know how often we’re really pausing to blueprint our current process and see how we can make it better with the tool, versus just plugging in a tool. I think that that’s where we have a challenge right now.

Cory Jaffe 22:34

Yeah, for sure. That’s one of the pieces we’re starting to realize, like, at this point, how we’ve sort of evolved as a TA team. Data is sort of that connective tissue that, again, it can give us the insights as a hiring leader. It can give our senior leaders insights how the entire function is performing. And if that is… you know, we want to be able to access that as friction-free as possible. And you know, again, that’s where you’re looking at the tooling you have. You have to look and partner with the subject matter experts and technology experts within your business to really optimize some of that. Most people in the TA space, again, they’re not engineers, they’re not data engineers, they’re not as nuanced in some of those analytical tools. So it’s like you have to set that sort of environment up from… in the right way, from the beginning. And once you’ve done that, then I think you start to see the gains of being able to deliver more of that strategy to the business without sort of being bogged down in just manual tasks.

Rebecca Warren 23:36

And you know what’s gold in there, Cory, is talking about… like, my question which y’all answered, so I’m not going to ask it, because my question that we hadn’t talked about was, “Should recruiters be project managers?” Because that’s kind of what it feels like. But Cory, what you said is, “We need to make the data the tissue, the glue in between, and not the recruiter.” So the recruiter shouldn’t have to manage all the process. Let the data tell the story and then orchestrate what happens around that, instead of the recruiters being the one being that connective tissue and everything else being ancillary or flowing through your recruiters. Yeah, I think…

Esther Swaty 24:20

We should also give… I think it should be data democracy, because sometimes the data is missing some of the context, and the recruiters need to augment the context that is in a dashboard. So I think that is… that is where we have to be careful of “the dashboard doesn’t tell everything.” And if we truly have expert recruiters who are talking every day with candidates and engaging with the data and learning how to analyze the data, then we can use their expertise to innovate, as Cory is talking about. And I think sometimes the data has been very siloed, and only maybe senior leadership is looking at it. But why are we not training our teams to interpret that data and to own their part of the business?

Cory Jaffe 25:06

Yeah, and that’s where with AI now you can… you can, you know, like you give the recruiter that opportunity to just go in and query and prompt and sort of ask their own questions. And they’re able to develop those insights, and that is even part of their journey on to being more strategic and really understanding how to, you know, establish themselves as a thought partner to the hiring leader and to the business, as opposed to, again, just sort of task-taking and running through requisition after requisition. 100%.

Rebecca Warren 25:38

And I think that leads right into where we wanted to go. So both of you, thank you for calling that out, because the data can’t tell the story in a vacuum, right? So data has speed and scale and consistency, but it doesn’t have lived experience, and judgment, and understanding of culture, and all of the other things that go into the space. So as we see a lot of this transactional work move out of recruiting, those moments that require humans to be involved become more rare, but also more critical. So let’s talk about that now, about the challenge of designing systems where AI amplifies human judgment without replacing it, or without us spending too much time depending on AI and not paying attention to some of the other signals we should be watching. So how are we balancing automation with context? And how do we ensure that teams are leveraging insights responsibly? You both just said that. And how do we maintain the quality of the candidate experience while taking away some of that manual work? And so let’s talk about what that looks like. So how should leaders structure teams to take advantage of that split, right? Taking that transactional and data-heavy work to AI, and then what does that look like for humans? So where… where are you thinking that leaders should be restructuring teams to take full advantage of that split?

Cory Jaffe 27:15

Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, from my perspective, it’s like I want to shift the mindset of my recruiters to more like… give them the ability to have more advisory depth in their roles. So like, where are they… where are they prioritizing their time? So are they understanding the business at a more fundamental level, and then the specific road maps with the teams they’re partnering with? Also, you know, making sure that they understand the market… understanding they’re sort of like building their own market intelligence as well. Where are they going to have to make trade-offs? And then as you scale your team and you scale the business… again, there’s like, you know, for example. So Checkr, a lot of our tech stack is heavy on Ruby on Rails and Python. As we expand globally, making sure we’re being strategic long in advance of targeting other areas in the world that we see, you know, a greater amount of those skill sets and a greater amount of that technical talent. So again, we’re doing market mapping. We’re looking at market intelligence when it comes to competitors. We’re also just acting much more as an advisor to our hiring leaders in the business.

Esther Swaty 28:25

Sure, Cory, you’re speaking my language. Those are all things I’m passionate about, too. I think the advisory and consultative… one thing that we’ve recognized is we have to train our recruiters on what that looks like. They don’t all come from a Deloitte and Accenture. You know, they haven’t necessarily been consultants. They haven’t necessarily had to learn about diplomacy and politics in organizations, you know, as they’re figuring out what these signals mean. And then what Cory said about market mapping and insights—I lead our Insights Lab at Impellam Group, and what we’ve done recently is we’ve aligned all of our teams by sector, so whether it’s life sciences or retail. And now what we’re starting to do is we’re arming them with a business intelligence and like a business analyst, to help them start to get the research and insights they need about their market. So it’s true, they need to know about their market. They need to know about what skills are popping and skills are challenging right now, because LinkedIn Talent Insights doesn’t show you a skill level. It shows you, you know, job groups and job titles. So we’re using something like Horsefly in order to start seeing where skill signals are coming out. And I think that is really a whole training, though, Cory, of like… they don’t automatically know how to turn market research into a story for a hiring manager or candidate. We are fundamentally having to do those foundational trainings about, you know, elevating your storytelling and various things like that to help them become those advisors we want them to be, because the blueprint has changed, the job description for them has changed, and we need to arm them with the tools for it.

Cory Jaffe 30:09

Yeah, love that. 100% agree.

Rebecca Warren 30:13

Okay, so I’m going to ask a question about that, because I think there are two schools of thought, right? Should the recruiting team go deep, right? So you’re talking about, “Hey, really get embedded in this particular area, this sector. Understand this from top to bottom.” Or should recruiters go wide? And should they go across a swath of saying, “Hey, we’re going to work across all of these groups and do a particular process or task or conversation”? Like, I would love to hear your opinions on… and it can be both, right? But if you… if you were thinking about this, should this be “TA should go deep” or “should they go wide”?

Cory Jaffe 30:57

Yeah, that’s a good one. I do think it is context-based. And I do think as… because teams are becoming a bit more, you know, like they’re not as scaled as they used to be, you have less people overall supporting the TA function. So I think they need to be able to go deep and wide. But that being said, I think you need to be able to work with them and build playbooks for each of your different organizations within the business so they have the tools and everything they need at the ready, and the content that they need at the ready to quickly, sort of like… if they get pushed into a different organization that they’re supporting, learn and get themselves scaled up quickly to support that team. So again, I think some of it is just building the overall foundation and structure within the function itself, and then making sure you’re arming the recruiters with easy access to the information they need so they can sort of learn up quick, support hiring teams, and if they have to shift, you know, shift very quickly. You have people who will go out, you know, go out on leaves, go out on extended vacations, and you need to be able to have that cross-functional support amongst the team. So I guess, yeah, I don’t mean…

Esther Swaty 32:10

I love the term “neo-generalist.” So it’s not a specialist or a generalist. It’s someone who deep dives into an area, becomes obsessed, learns everything they can, and then they do that in another area. And I think what Cory… what we’re talking about here is behaviors. It’s not necessarily expertise. If someone has a growth mindset, curiosity, agility, ability to deal with ambiguity, and they love to learn, then you can drop them anywhere. But if you train them somewhere very strong of like, “Here’s your blueprint, here’s how we learn about this market,” etc., then they’ll be able to work with any group, as Cory mentioned. But they need to have strong training in order to be able to have that agility in the future. Like, they need to have a baseline, and we have to benchmark our teams around their capabilities and get them all to that baseline.

Rebecca Warren 33:08

Right. Because we’re shifting, like what we’ve talked about. We’re going from activity of number of tasks completed to moving towards that judgment, and advisory, and strategic thinking. And I will say, I don’t think we do our teams any favors when we put them in this very narrow box of saying, “This is how we do it. It has to be done this way. Blah, blah, blah,” right? I have always led my teams with the idea of, “Here’s where we’re going to start, and here’s the outcome that we need to get to. And if the middle is a little squidgy, that’s okay.” It’s alright for us to figure out the process as long as we know where we’re going, and give people the opportunity to learn, to try it, to fail, to restart. So that, I think, is what’s going to get to that agility piece of saying, “I can go learn about the steel business, and I also can go learn about the food business, and I also understand transportation,” because you’re agile and you’re understanding how those things work together. You’re not, “Here is… here is the one way to do it and the way to make it happen. And if you go off of this, you’re going to get punished.”

Esther Swaty 34:18

Wholeheartedly agree. I think that our teams should be able to co-design with us. I don’t think the future… you know, if I think about the book Humanocracy, it’s about a more level playing field and less hierarchy, more of “recognize that, yes, recognize the expertise and talents of your team members and let them co-design.” But in our organization, we’re also talking heavily about 80/20. You’ve got to standardize so you can scale. Even though I hate boxes, I recognize like, “Hey, okay, we’ll standardize.” But then you don’t stop there. If I think about when I used to work at Seattle Children’s Hospital, it was “you standardize and then you continuously improve in a circle,” right? I think that’s where operational excellence has gotten stuck, because it’s not been excellent. It’s not innovated. It’s not continuously improved. And so I hear what you’re saying, Rebecca, about like, it doesn’t have to be this one way, and it should always be changing, because the market is so uncertain, and we need our people to be able to flex to take advantage of the market, right?

Rebecca Warren 35:22

Right, right. Okay, so as we think about this… we’ve been talking high level, right? We’ve been saying very objectively like, “Yeah, some recruiters’ work is going to change, and some positions will be eliminated,” and certainly not doing that in a cavalier fashion, but we haven’t really delved into how does that make people feel, right? So let’s talk a little bit about how can we bring people along when, at the same time, they’re afraid for their job, they’re nervous about this as a career. How are we thinking about giving assurances in an uncertain world to recruiters who we’re asking to pivot, and change, and measure differently, and think differently? So Cory, tell me some of the things that have been going through your head as you’ve tackled this. And I’m sure it’s an ongoing thing that you’re continually thinking about.

Cory Jaffe 36:25

It is, because this space is just moving so quickly. And I think some of what Esther was just talking about… again, I think you have to really, like, identify the roadmap. So like, make them understand where we’re starting, where we’re ending, and set that roadmap for them and show them the ability to train and develop along that roadmap. So again, you’re going to be upskilling them in multiple different ways. You’re going to be giving them access to new tools and technologies that are going to enhance their abilities within their career. So I think from a development perspective, you really need to focus on, one, making sure that they understand they’re going to receive the development they need to be successful in their role. But then two, they’re looking at their position. They’re looking at their place in the business. They’re understanding that they’re becoming more of that strategic advisor. And I think all those things lead towards like, just building your skill set that allows you to not only diversify how you work within the business and who you support within the business, but then also just yourself within your career. So again, they have to look at… look at how it’s advantageous for them, and not just like, “I need to keep up, or there’s a chance I can be replaced if I don’t keep up.” So it’s again, to me, it’s just… you really have to understand it from a positive lens. And that’s where we’re trying to, like again, make sure that we’re giving people the resources and the tools to make sure they can make the jump they need to how they will be working, you know, in the next three months, six months, 12 months.

Rebecca Warren 37:55

Well, and what Esther said, and I’m sure you have some things to tack on there, but when you talk about “we’re all in this together, it’s all changing together.” It’s not like we’ve got… I mean, that’s a lot of what we talk about, is that we need to shift from being the knowledge expert to the curious learner. And we’re all learning the same… you know, in the same way, maybe not the same things, but at the same time. So we need to be better about turning on that learning, not saying, “Hey, as a leader, I know all the things, and as an employee, I’m going to tell you all the things.” It’s more about “How are we learning together, and how are we sharing that knowledge, and how are we building that team together?” So Esther, that was what you had said. Anything else you want to add to that?

Esther Swaty 38:39

I really like what you said there about learning together. That’s something, you know… our leadership team has been going through executive coaching. And what we’re doing is putting ourselves in the mix. We’re being vulnerable about when we’re uncomfortable with the change and with the speed. We’re having to have honest conversations, so it creates a safe space for people to share their concerns. I think our Head of People, Mel Lewis, recently said that her team member said, “It’s great you’re sharing all this information, but are we listening? You haven’t been listening.” And so I think that our people need a place to speak and to share. Someone used to call me a “disagreeable giver,” which is, you know, I care a lot about the organization, and so I might look like a point of friction, but I’m actually trying to make what we’re doing better by… and I’m honest. And so I think that sometimes our people, who may feel a bit resistant, if we sat with them for a minute and understand what are their concerns, that might not only help them to move with more speed, but it also might improve our processes, because those people are trying to make something better also. And I think that’s where, if we can just hold space for them, which is hard when we’re moving so much… but that’s where it’s like, “Okay, take away the busy meetings, and let’s have honest meetings. Let’s have, you know, true candor and feedback, hold space for that,” instead of just the meetings about the meetings. Like, we need to have a different level of meetings now.

Rebecca Warren 40:09

And I think… I think acknowledging, too, that that makes everybody uncomfortable, right? In some cases, as an employee, I want to know that my leader has all the answers. And sometimes I have to be okay with, “Oh, wait, they don’t know either,” right? And that’s okay. That trust and transparency is huge. And Esther, I wrote down that you’re a disagreeable giver. Is that… is that like the new form of “devil’s advocate”? Like, that’s just a better way to say it? I don’t know. I was just like, that’s a great way to think about it.

Esther Swaty 40:39

And I can’t remember the name later, but it was definitely… I had to look it up. And I was like, “Is this a good thing, or is this a bad thing?”

Rebecca Warren 40:46

But I do think it’s good. We do have to question and ask and dig in a little bit more. And it’s not “you’re not being a hater,” right? You’re just saying, “Well, let’s think about this.” I think we need to continue to employ our critical thinking and say, “How are we going to maximize this? How do we make this better? How do we think about things in different ways?” So… so let’s… let’s talk about that a little bit more when we think about what is changing in recruiting. And so we used to, you know, when we first started out, we had, you know, recruiters who, you know, did maybe everything. You know, we used to talk about in an agency, you were, you know, “full desk,” or if you only did one piece of it, right? Recruiters have had a lot of things on their plate over the years. And as the work changes, and especially as we become more—not just data-driven, but more—we have more insights into the data, and we understand more about what it’s telling us… how are we thinking about the roles, right? Like, I was listening to a podcast recently about Recruiting Ops becoming… and a lot of our customers that we work with have Recruiting Ops leaders. That wasn’t a thing when I was leading TA. Like, I had the management of the ATS, and I had background checks, and I had relo… like, I had all of the things on my plate as a TA leader. What are y’all thinking about how maybe the roles need to change, or how the work needs to function differently? Is it adding Recruiting Ops? Is it getting rid of, you know, or absorbing sourcing into something else? Is it separating functions out? Or does it become a little bit more kind of peanut butter? Yeah.

Cory Jaffe 42:31

I mean, from my vantage, TA Operations is something that is critical to the success of the function overall. I just think again, there’s so many different tools and technologies out there, and you always want to stay on top of them. So you need somebody who is that subject matter expert who could come in and, like, again, always be operating with what we refer… you know, what we say is a growth mindset. So they’re… they’re, you know, demoing new tools. They’re providing feedback and proposals to the business. They’re understanding how the current tools are working, and if they’re being optimized or not. And those spread across not only like your applicant tracking system, but the information system and everything else. And then making sure that we have the right, like, HR tech support within the business to make sure those are all integrated and talking to each other in the most seamless way. So to me, Operations is something that is really critical. It just helps continue to… continue to innovate, drive the function forward. And that’s something that, yeah, we’ve been heavily focused on. I guess what I would say when it comes to the sourcing piece, I’m almost on the opposite side of it to me. There’s so many good sourcing tools that have developed recently, and like, even AI sourcing tools… there’s a host of them are out there. We’ve demoed a few. We use, you know, there’s one or two that we use currently in-house, primarily. And I think you can sort of fold a bit of that depending upon… again, depending upon the scale of the organization, you can start to fold that into the recruiter’s day-to-day. They can sort of like have that in the background providing profiles for them, you know, and sort of like, again, giving them their sort of top-ranked profiles, be able to sort of view that quickly, and then start to move the top people through the funnel. So again, I think for me, sourcing is something that can sort of like be folded into the day-to-day full cycle recruiter’s workload. Operations is something you stand up to really help continue to drive and innovate the function.

Esther Swaty 44:21

So okay, I am 100% behind you on Ops. I think Ops is underappreciated in every function, to be frank: Sales Ops, Marketing Ops, Recruiting Ops. We’re in such a world where everything is moving so quickly. There are so many new tools. Who’s scanning the market for them? Who is bringing that information back? Who is listening to the front lines and then going back to leadership and saying, “Hey, this is happening in multiple spaces. I’m seeing a pattern and a signal to drive innovation”? I think that the expectation for that to be done off the side of somebody’s desk is not realistic. I think there really has to be a focus on it. And when we’re talking about work redesign and leveraging AI tools and maximizing, you know, human strategic value, that is… that’s a critical role for me.

Rebecca Warren 45:13

Yeah. Okay, I’m watching time. It’s flying by. But I have one more question I want to talk about on this topic, and then we’ll flip to another one. But we talked earlier about we want recruiting now to be known as that strategic arm, right? Become advisors, become strategic thought partners. Like that’s… I think that’s always been the goal, but it’s actually really never been realistic because nobody has the time. So as we think about that layer, right? If it’s going to an Ops team, or it’s being automated, or whatever that looks like, and we’re taking away a lot of that work, and we’re asking recruiters, talent… and talent acquisition professionals to switch gears… what about on the flip side? What about from the business perspective? How do we talk about the change in the role? Right? They’re no longer order-takers. They’re no longer showing up, doing the req intake, and 12 days later producing a slate of candidates, right? They’re saying, “Hey, we want to come to your business meetings, and we want to spend time with your HR business partners, and we want to understand what’s happening.” I’m guessing the business probably was like, “Hey, stay out of my weeds,” right? Like… so how are y’all thinking about the change for the leaders as well? Saying, “Hey, this is going to be a person embedded in your business to help you see around the corners. Think about not just hiring for today, but hiring for tomorrow, and what positions are, you know, being sunset and which ones are coming.” What are we all thinking about changing the shape of the relationship with the business, not just from a TA perspective, but also from those leaders?

Cory Jaffe 47:00

That’s a good question. I mean, I think that’s one that will happen a little bit more slowly, but you need to be explicit in how you approach it. I think providing some of the roadmap for your team, and then how your team is going to be affecting their team, is really critical. So like, being able to really come with, you know, bring insights to them, make them understand that you’ve done the market mapping, you’ve sort of built the market intelligence that you need to be that strategic partner and start to engage in those conversations. You know, be prepared coming to meetings, offering thoughtful insights that, again, start to like… position yourself in that way. To me, that is… I agree, that’s one of the chasms, if you will, of where a TA team can sort of really start to insert themselves in the business in that fashion. And again, I think it happens sort of like on the day-to-day basis or in different places, but to really, like, have the entire business look at it from that perspective, I think there’s a lot of work you need to do with the senior leadership within the business as well, too, to make them understand where you can continue to deliver impact at scale and quickly. So again, I think that is probably one of the big pieces. As we look towards being really like inserting ourselves as more strategic advisors, that’s one of the big pieces where, like, the work that goes into it is just critical to get that buy-in.

Esther Swaty 48:27

I agree. I feel what we’ve been training our teams on is you have to elevate every conversation, every touchpoint. It shouldn’t be a forced situation. You should start showing up differently to conversations, as Cory mentioned. Do your research, bring the insights. We recently did a training with Corporate Visions, and they talk about a DIQ: Data, Insight, Question. So really bring… bring the data, bring your insight (so your unique perspective), and then ask the business a question, a thought-provoking one that can help set you up to be a co-designer and a partner. I think that is where we have to slow down. We’ve got to alleviate some of the busyness so that our people can think strategically. And they also, like anyone, can pretty much use ChatGPT and Claude to pull some insights, you know, from top analysts, top consulting companies. It doesn’t take that long, but it is a discipline and a muscle that has to be built in our teams to not just go meeting to meeting to meeting, but to put breaks between so that they show up with insight and intelligence and really elevate the value they bring.

Cory Jaffe 49:38

Yeah. How many times… I mean, again, you just… you get so busy you’re on back-to-back meetings. How many times do you step into a meeting like, “What is this meeting about? Am I prepared for it?” Essentially, you’re just walking in, okay, you know what the topic is going to be, but you didn’t have time to sit there and really, like, dig in and do some preparation and put some really thoughtful approaches behind what you’re going to be discussing as a team, and us being able to offer those proper insights.

Rebecca Warren 50:07

So… yeah. Okay, so I’m going to switch to one more question, and then we’re going to do our wrap-up. So I am going to do my best not to interrupt anyone, but I do want to make sure that we get all of the insights packed into this time. So as we think about this movement and redesigning what the contract with our organization looks like… we… as we’ve said this whole time, and I have tons of notes that y’all have said, little wisdom nuggets about how we have to switch the conversations. We have to lean in differently. We have to, you know, equip our teams and equip the business. Now, if we think about that, a lot of times, that contract in the past has seemed to be between TA and the hiring manager, right? The hiring manager says, “I need X,” and the recruiter goes out and finds X and brings it back. And, you know, that gets done whether it takes a little bit of time or a lot of time, right? Like, that tends to be the process that we’ve seen. Now, of course, we know that there’s comp and ben and leveling and all that kind of stuff in there, but what we, I think, need to think about now is not just the task-taker or even conducting between the hiring manager and the recruiter, but it needs to be how TA is connected to and driving those organizational outcomes, right? Aligning the talent strategy with the business priorities. And I ask our customers, and I say, “What if every single hire that you make could directly map to an organizational outcome?” Not a lot of folks are doing that today. So if we start thinking about we have to broaden TA’s role, we also have to broaden the scope and the impact in the business. So that’s how we’re going to continue to move TA into a very proactive, strategic thought leader. So I’m going to ask a question here. I gotta… Oh, there’s too many questions. I have to pick just one. Okay, so what… Okay, I’m going to come at it from a TA leadership lens here. So what capabilities do you think will distinguish strategic TA leaders over the next couple of years, both in influencing the business and managing the AI augmentation? Does that question make sense? It’s probably kind of broad. I kind of put it together between four questions that I wanted to ask.

Cory Jaffe 52:48

Yes, no. I think… I think that makes a lot of sense. And again, so we’ve touched on this a few times, but I think again, like data fluency is critical, and not just like, you know, having dashboards, but knowing what questions to ask the data and when that data may be misleading. So I think you need to be able to, like, really do that at a foundational level. And then I think one of the biggest things we’re touching on right now is just the pace of change, and thus sort of like how that folds into change leadership. So, you know, the function is going to continue to keep shifting. Leaders are going to be, you know, coming and going. So you have to, like, again, have that framework, have that foundation built in how you’re going to communicate and manage that change leadership within the business. To me, that’s critical to sort of maintaining the momentum you need to keep evolving and innovating as a team. So I think change leadership and to me… and data, are two of the critical pieces that you need to focus on from a foundational level that allow you to get to that stage.

Rebecca Warren 53:51

And I just wrote an article that I threw out on LinkedIn. I think I put it up a couple of days ago. It’s about the difference between data literacy and data fluency. So like… you used the word, Cory, you used the word—and I don’t think you read my article, but I think that’s right. So I think that’s right. It’s thinking about, what does it mean to be fluent? Because that’s what ties to the organizational outcomes, right? You’re thinking about that first, and then you’re driving your AI. You’re driving your tech because of the outcomes of the business, what’s going to help the business win, as opposed to thinking “what’s going to make my hiring manager happy?” That’s where I think you might have to pull in the “Estherism” of being a disagreeable giver, of asking questions and maybe poking holes in things. So Esther, I’ll flip it to you for your opinion on that, and then we’re going to do our closing question. Awesome.

Esther Swaty 54:44

Well, I won’t take credit for that. It was Adam Grant who coined that term. But yeah, Cory, I totally agree with what Cory said about change. I think one of my favorite words right now is “antifragility.” And it’s really… it’s not resilient, which bounces back to the baseline, but it’s when shock makes us stronger. And I think that’s what we need to build into our teams, because there’s a lot of change fatigue right now. There’s a lot of people who are wondering, “When is the uncertainty going to end?” And I don’t know if it ever will. I think we’re going to constantly need to be managing change and becoming antifragile. The other thing I would add that I think ties to the data fluency is really systems thinking and looking for patterns. I think our teams need to be able to see that. They need to have that data and think about, “How does it translate to all of these different areas, and what does that mean for the business and organization?” We do a lot of research through AlphaSense right now to really look at organizational goals and map our team’s work to that, and then work our way through stakeholders to really make sure we are impacting those organization goals.

Rebecca Warren 56:00

Yeah, for sure. And I’ll throw in something here, and then we’ll do our last question. Because I think in there, there was a couple of questions that had come in about, “How do we make sure that we are adding impact and adding value and making sure that we’re tied to the right things?” And I think that comes overall when we think about AI, or, as we said, data… what… when we think about that strategy. I’ll throw this out here, and we can certainly talk about this offline because we’re going to run out of time. But the idea that you have to build in what that strategy looks like, right? You have to understand, “What are we solving for?” So one of the questions came in was like, “Well, how do you know that you’re not just layering AI on a bad process?” Right? And so I totally agree, because one of the things I’ve talked about is you just gotta blow it all up and start over again. Now, maybe that’s not realistic, or you just can’t say, “Okay, we’re decimating the TA team today; tomorrow we’re going to build something new.” It doesn’t really work like that. So you’re going to have to restructure and rebuild and reorganize and have those conversations, which are all really critical. And when we think about doing that… when we think about tying again to that outcome, that TA strategy that helps us tie to that outcome, and then say, “Okay, now we’re going to put a placeholder for an AI Ethics Council or a use case review team”—like, something that says, “Hey, we’re going to pay attention to the data. We’re going to pay attention to who’s doing what and why and how. How does that work with regulations? How does that work with risk?” Pulling in, you know, a team that is diverse—not just IT and legal and HR, but looking at end-users, and looking at the C-suite, and looking at… across a whole bunch of different positions to give feedback onto how we’re using the data. “How are we thinking about it? What are we looking at?” And then looking at strategically doing those pilots, but making sure you understand what those pilots are for. So I would love to stay connected to what you’re learning in your hackathon that you’re doing right now, Cory, because I think that’s a lot of it, right? A hackathon is basically like a really little baby project, little pilot, right? And… but then you have to decide, “What am I going to do with the pilot if it works? What do I do if it doesn’t work? What do I do if it sort of works?” Right? So I think there’s a lot of things that we can put in place to help kind of frame where we want to go and how we make sure that TA is adding value, not just adding noise. So I’ll stop and give you guys a second to think about that, and then I’ll do my last little question. We’re going to be one minute overtime.

Cory Jaffe 58:29

Sorry, y’all. Yeah, to me, I think you touched on again how we think about it as a bias towards action. So we all know that there’s multiple areas within the org and the team where there’s sort of drag. There’s too much work being done about work. But you just have to make a decision, address it, pick one of those areas—whether it’s your requisition routing, status reporting, interview scheduling—and then just put time into it, work on an automation. Again, sometimes you’re going to fail. Sometimes you’re going to have to re-tinker and sort of rejigger things to make it work. But just start doing it. Have a bias towards action, and from there, you’re going to start to see progress. So to me, that’s just… put the time in. Put the time in.

Esther Swaty 59:11

So yeah, I told one of our teams yesterday we didn’t want their great idea to go into a presentation graveyard. We want to activate it. And it is the responsibility… if ideas come forward, we need to have a way to activate them, and our teams will get frustrated if they feel like they’re being heard but nothing’s being done. So I think providing clear pathways for innovation is critical.

Rebecca Warren 59:37

Alright, so this was a great conversation. I say this every month: I can’t believe how fast time goes because we have such great speakers. So y’all have given me pages of nuggets to talk about, so I’m going to give you just one, like, 30-second last question to answer. So what’s one piece of actionable advice you’d give to our audience who want to start orchestrating rather than just operating? And maybe you’ve already said it… maybe it’s “just start.” I don’t know. I won’t put words in your mouth. But Esther, go ahead and kick us off. What’s one piece of actionable advice?

Esther Swaty 1:00:13

I’ll say, map before you automate. Understand where the human judgment is irreplaceable.

Rebecca Warren 1:00:21

Look at that. Short, sweet nugget. Writing it down. Okay.

Cory Jaffe 1:00:26

And I feel like I did on my last one, but again, I think it’s just be biased towards action. So yeah, move… move quickly, try new things, tinker. And like… again, you’ll find your way towards progress. And before you know it, you’ll have completed an entire automation for one aspect of the team and the org, and you’ll see progress.

Rebecca Warren 1:00:49

And I’ll tie those both together. I absolutely agree that you have to have a plan before you start adding AI or automating. I think a bias towards action… my number one strength on my StrengthsFinder is “Activator.” So Cory, I’m all about that: let’s just get started, and we’ll figure out where we go. I also think that we do need to make sure that we’re thinking about that plan after you start, right? Like, you don’t have to have it figured out what it looks like, but “what are we going to do if this works? How are we going to scale it? How are we going to think about not just having one piece that we now have, you know, moved into the business, but we don’t actually have an opportunity to scale it?” We haven’t thought about what to do next. So think about… I’m going to put this together: bias towards action. Get started, but think about what you’re trying to do. And then think about what you’re going to do if it works, if it doesn’t, or if it sort of works. Alright. Appreciate you all. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been our March Talent Table, where we’re talking about orchestration. And we look forward to seeing you next month. Have a great rest of your day, evening, night, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for joining. Thank you both.