Water Break

[00:00:00] This week on the Recruitment Flex Apple announces Apple Intelligence. Are you still using Star Method to interview? Time to move on! Advice for using TikTok to attract talent. Tier F with my Dan Shelley starts right now. Welcome to the Recruitment Flex with Surgeon Shelley.

[00:00:25] I'm Surge and I'm Shelley and we talk all things recruitment starting right now. Oh, you and welcome to the Recruitment Flex Shelley As the world knows or maybe doesn't know. A lot of people are asking me what's going on with the water in Calgary.

[00:00:44] It looks very dystopian from the headlines that you read. Obviously we have water restrictions but you've been able to shower once a week, once a month? It was for the deal! Yeah, I don't know if the rest of the world realizes but we are under emergency orders

[00:01:05] And what that means is we can call in resources from other parts of Canada even the US actually because we are in a state of emergency. The water main that brings water into the city of Calgary but also surrounding communities It broke.

[00:01:21] And in the process of fixing it, they figured out there are other points that are inevitably going to break. So that means the entire city is in water restrictions. They're saying like shower with your children or don't wash your dishes. Only run your dishwasher once a week.

[00:01:42] It's okay if your hair is greasy. I honest to God heard that on the news this week. The mayor said that. She did! The mayor said, nobody's going to judge you if your clothes are dirty and your hair is greasy. I don't know about you, Surge but.

[00:01:57] I'll judge you a little bit just a little bit on that one. It's no big deal for me quite honestly because it's not like I've got little kids. I'm more thinking about how are you guys managing? We've been coping fine.

[00:02:12] We've been very hesitant in using a lot of water and like you said the girls are all taking about together that I'm using that water for our plants outside. So we really limited obviously when you have three children the only thing that is really hard to limit

[00:02:28] is the amount of laundry cycles that you have to go through and we've cut back. But in reality, I'm a normal day is not unusual to have a couple loads of laundry day.

[00:02:39] It might sound crazy to some people but wait till you have kids if you haven't gone through that. So that's been the only thing but I'm really disappointed, Shelley. This is a big deal.

[00:02:49] You think about one of Canada's major cities and on the city with the second most headquarters in Canada. And the basic necessity of water is in question because we are in serious threat of the tapstone dry, which is shocking.

[00:03:07] Because I pay taxes for a couple things and the one thing that I absolutely do need is infrastructure. The water, electricity. So if you can't get the main necessity where am I tax going? I know Shelley, I'm selling really libertarian but it just pisses me off.

[00:03:25] And now we have another three to four weeks potentially that's going to run over stampede. And if Calgary stampede is a massive event like a million people in flowing in the city and they're not going to use the water.

[00:03:39] Have you been on the stamping ground for a full day? Don't you want to shower after Shelley? Oh my gosh. So it's interesting.

[00:03:48] I think they're trying to calm the fears that the stampede needs to be cancelled because it would be the first time in a hundred plus years that they've ever cancelled it even with the floods of 2013. It's still went ahead.

[00:04:01] It was hell or high water, now it's hell or no water. So it's a big deal and you don't realize how much we take for granted until you're told like listen, you can't water your plants.

[00:04:14] Like I'm watching the flowers that I bought die because your neighbors will rat you out if they see you out watering your grass or something. Like everything is in major conservation mode because it is a legit threat that we have zero water. I could happen, right?

[00:04:31] So we have no choice to do these measures in place which I think the majority have. But that's where the concern you bring in a million. But let's see what happens, right? We have no control over it.

[00:04:42] We only have control what we can do and we'll do our best. Yes. We recently talked about different strikes going on into the traveling sector and the Canadian border service agency was supposed to go on strike but they resolved it.

[00:04:57] And they came to an agreement but then you got an email from Westjet which is second biggest airline in Canada and it looks like they're going on strike. What's going on there? Yeah, their mechanics are going on strike. It could be as soon as Thursday.

[00:05:13] So when the show airs it could be a non event that we're reporting on hopefully it is because it is just the Westjet mechanics. But thank God we're not traveling.

[00:05:24] I love how you said oh it's just a Westjet mechanics and the mechanics are very important to me when it comes to flying a plane. Yeah, that's what they want us more.

[00:05:34] So we'll see it could all be resolved even in the next 24 48 hours but I've never had an email from an airline telling me that they potentially there's a strike coming.

[00:05:46] Something to be aware hopefully it doesn't last really long and someone called it the summer of this content when it comes to unions and we'll talk more about this in the future, but it seems to be high union activity across the country and we saw what's happened in the US as well with the UAW.

[00:06:03] The screen actors guild. So how about we move into the news? All right, all right. The first one I know you super geek out about and so I'll introduce the topic but when I listen to you talk about this, I feel smarter already.

[00:06:19] So the news report was that Apple intelligence is debuting the quiet AI army over at Apple is taking shape and there's a lot of things that they are doing.

[00:06:32] That are first. And I'm going to quote you, I think you said someone commented that Steve Jobs is probably rolling over in his grave about what's happening. Give us the 30,000 foot search. What is going on with this new Apple intelligence product?

[00:06:49] So you've heard of the Apple Keynotes which they usually announce a new product that's coming out. Everyone remembers the first time that the jobs came out and had the iPod.

[00:06:59] Then when he released the iPad and on and on right. And usually it's something that is pretty much market ready. So they're announcing it in a week after it's going to be in the store shelves or available on the App Store.

[00:07:13] It's a little bit of a different approach. There's a couple things to change. So obviously, they need to get in the AI game and first of all calling it Apple intelligence.

[00:07:24] I don't know if it's dumb or really smart but it's going to cause confusion because it's AI AI. Are they trying to brand AI? But some of the key things that they announced is they're partnering with OpenAI.

[00:07:38] And what's going to happen is you're going to have the ability to leverage OpenAI directly on the apps that you already use.

[00:07:46] I message is an example. It could actually type out the message for you based on the way you write and how you would write to that particular person.

[00:07:55] Like he will give you suggestions right from the start in your tone and style based on a text message or an I message that you receive.

[00:08:03] So also going to help you in all the tools that you use like Safari as far as your search ability is basically going to have an AI tool and pretty much everything used built in on your Apple phone.

[00:08:15] Which sounds great and I think it is great in a lot of ways where I'm surprised. And this is where the comment of Steve Jobs rolling in his grave came from.

[00:08:26] Apple has been known to have their own ecosystem and tightly control that ecosystem with their own products integrating OpenAI is a new thing for them.

[00:08:37] And obviously they felt that was easiest way to do it the least expensive but you're talking about a company with a hundred billion dollars in cash.

[00:08:46] But they must feel that they're behind and this is a way to catch up really quickly. And for the consumer it's going to have great benefits because OpenAI is a great product.

[00:08:56] I don't think anyone can argue if you use it in a daily basis you understand how great it is as far as a product if we're thinking about a tech product itself.

[00:09:06] So that's a big thing the other thing is finally fixing Siri leveraging OpenAI for Siri is about time Siri was released like 2014 and it's been horrible ever since no one really uses it leveraging the information and a large language model that OpenAI has just opens it up it makes it.

[00:09:26] It makes it work wow so. It's actually a really big move by Apple is exciting it's also genius because one of the challenges that Apple has had is people are skipping generations of iPhone.

[00:09:42] They're not improving enough that people are buying every single version they're winning two, three years for the next version.

[00:09:50] If you want this capability now you need to new iPhone because the chip size that you need to be able to run AI because Apple's doing a little bit differently. They're not running it on the cloud they're running it right on the device which is fantastic for privacy.

[00:10:08] But to do it you need way better chips hence you're going to need the latest versions of the iPhone as the chip improves. So brilliant in some ways because how many times you change your iPhone which version are you on right now?

[00:10:24] I'm not like you I'm not that fast with it.

[00:10:28] What I would say is could you please tell me who is the chip manufacturer and let's start investing now because if it's anything like NVIDIA right is NVIDIA the chip manufacturer for these for the new iPhones that's a good question I'm going to make that assumption that they're tied in there.

[00:10:47] Yeah, interesting and and thank you for the last bit there because I started feeling a little creeped out that it will follow my conversations and be able to mimic. How I would respond or help me to respond but knowing that it is on device processing that's reassuring.

[00:11:07] Yeah and that's a big thing but I don't have the latest iPhone. I never do. I'm always a year to two years behind because there's not that much improvement, but now.

[00:11:17] If the capability is so much more and I'm missing out and there's a real reason why she got new version when it comes out.

[00:11:26] Probably will I can tell you there's probably more like me than not like me when it comes to their phone but let's jump into the next point.

[00:11:36] Okay, so in the news pretty big acquisition so bullhorn you know bullhorn really well and it's probably D E A T S for staff firm yeah staff is exactly they acquired.

[00:11:52] Text kernel and you might be wondering what the hell it's text kernel so text kernel is a company specialized in AI power solution for recruitment and talent management.

[00:12:04] So they do resume parsing semantic search and labor market insights basically they handle a lot of data and a to the 10 staff and companies use text kernel in Europe.

[00:12:16] So bullhorn acquiring text kernel makes sense the other thing though text kernel has like a weird history because they were acquired by career builder then they got spun out then they acquired sovereign which is fairly well known in this industry and acquired a couple of other companies.

[00:12:35] So now to get acquired by bullhorn and like oh. Wonder what this is all about and I think bullhorn is just trying to bring in the capabilities but if you're an ATS in the staffing world and relying on text kernel as far as your resume parser.

[00:12:52] Yeah, you should be looking around because you're similar to what we've talked about advertising agencies and programmatic and appcast buying a baird. You're giving all your data to your competitors. So what's your take on this acquisition.

[00:13:08] Interesting move to consolidate two giants one in Europe one in America because I don't know how well known bullhorn is outside of North America and I think as we've been talking a lot about lately.

[00:13:25] Big is the staffing industry there's a lot of money in the staffing industry according to bullhorn the global staffing industry is somewhere around 600 billion. More growth expected so I think in Canada we maybe don't see just what a huge industry sector it is.

[00:13:50] Just look at the UK it is the go to forced staffing and we see that in some of the other reports so to have a technology that's got that sourcing AI. And harnessing that as far as bull horns investment.

[00:14:07] Maybe it's the missing piece I don't know it's always interesting to see when two companies come together like this and is one brand going to dominate.

[00:14:18] Oh bull horn is way bigger than text kernel overall brand recognition yeah especially North America but researching a little bit bull horn is very big in the staffing world in Europe because there's an atheist and text kernel is not an atheist or a tool that ATSU to our state of we recently had Terry Baker from Daxra.

[00:14:39] And this is Daxra's competitor so when you listen to that episode in a couple of weeks he'll give you a really good idea of what industry they're in because stack choice almost identical to text kernel in some ways.

[00:14:52] Very shelly how we jump into the tip of the week sure your tip of the week is brought to by plumb revolutionary work for solutions provider plumb knows that when people flourish businesses thrive.

[00:15:07] Using science back insights their powerful new platform plumb thrive can enhance all your talent decisions across the employee journey making it possible to surface valuable skills quantify job fit and analyze your organizational culture in one simple to use tool.

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[00:15:33] So search the tip of the week is I want to start at the very top of the recruitment process and that is understanding the power of having a standard before you start recruiting.

[00:15:46] And that standard internally is how are the interviews going to go down who should be involved and how are we going to decide what constitutes a good answer who's going to be involved and why are they involved.

[00:16:02] And so the tip of the week is have a documented standard process that hiring managers are aware of and can follow easily and don't ever change it.

[00:16:14] Because all the technology in the world won't change what should be a good stable process and that is your interview and selection process. I agree with that tip and it's one that I've always used right.

[00:16:29] Agreement from the start from your main hiring managers that hey this is what we're going to do from a to z you all agree because you do not want your hiring managers dictating the hiring process every time.

[00:16:43] When that happens you know what happens and like balloons up to nine interviews because that hiring manager is nervous of making a bad hiring decision and if they feel that hey there's eight other people that interviewed them that thought it were great. It removes accountability on their own.

[00:17:00] Absolutely absolutely well let's jump into the recruiting insights brought to you by our friends at mid to. Shelley are you tired of the same old outsourcing woes well say hello to near shoring it's like outsourcing but closer and it won't make you pull your hair out.

[00:17:18] Picture this top notch IT talent from Latin America many Latin American IT professionals have strong English language skills and even live in the same time zone so no more midnight conference calls howlin.

[00:17:32] Plus Latin America's growing tech ecosystem strong educational institutions and a pool of skilled IT professionals make it the perfect region for recruiting talent. I have the perfect company that does this and companies name is metova they have local experts who handle everything from recruiting to HR support.

[00:17:53] So why settle for the same old outsourcing blues when you can have the near shoring party with metova. Look them up at metova.com and let's get the fiesta started.

[00:18:07] So recruiting insights search what I thought was super outdated even 20 years ago I thought it was outdated but just tagging on my tip of the week is this whole notion of using the star method as part of your interview guide.

[00:18:27] I thought it was dead. I thought it was long dead. In fact, it is not so it turns out that this star method or sometimes referred to as behavioral interviews behavioral descriptive. I thought that went out back in the 90s but I guess it's still alive.

[00:18:43] Apparently it does. So news flash for you everybody out there in T.A. land. It has the lowest predictive validity of any type of interview. It does not cover functional knowledge gaps and what I have been saying for years is that it begs for fabrication.

[00:19:05] It's all in how you ask the question. And so this study is proof that you need to find something else. You need to figure out an interview method that is going to be effective, repeatable and directly relevant to the job that you're hiring for.

[00:19:27] So the star method is this kind of like cut and paste right? And over time it mutates and then it just keeps getting worse. There's a better way. Search there is a better way.

[00:19:39] Yeah and it's definitely not a best practice because if you're looking at the predictive value of it at point 32. Literally you're better off not interviewing and just hiring or not hiring based on whatever because it's actually going to be more accurate. But Shelley, you've done so many interviews.

[00:20:00] This is definitely a skill set that you have. What should companies do? What method of interviewing should you encourage? It's so simple. Maybe it's simple to me because you're right. It's my geek out moment because I have interviewed well over 10,000 people in my career.

[00:20:17] How many 10,000? I've never heard well over. Okay. Interviews absolutely. Absolutely. I have in my career. I know. I'm just making fun of Shelley. I know you're making fun of me. Okay. Keep on going. Sorry. To me it's super simple.

[00:20:34] If you've got a job description you've got a job ad. Your interview should be questions based on what are the things you asked for in the job description. The in the job description you need to be able to oversee corporate governance.

[00:20:48] So then ask a specific question about corporate governance. Oh, even better if you have agreement on what's a good answer. Yes. Because I've never done the job but as a recruiter,

[00:21:02] I need to understand what are the things that I need to hear to ensure that this person is actually done what they said they've done. So there's no trick questions. Listen, we've got the job description. We provided it to you. We posted it on our career site.

[00:21:19] That is the job you applied for. So then ask them questions just based on what you're needing. You know, it's when you get into these, you know, tell me about a time where there was a conflict. Are you kidding me?

[00:21:35] Really, if that doesn't beg for fabrication anyways, sorry, I digress. It's really simple. You build your questions based on the job description and you only ask questions based on what you're asking for. Thank you for that.

[00:21:50] And I think one of the most daunting tasks for a new talent acquisition manager coming into is how we revamp our interview process. How is it now? What should they do? New TA manager was the first thing they should look at when they're building out during to view.

[00:22:07] It's really easy. It's called the power of one. Just start. Do the first one. When you look at the library of interview guides and reference checks, I'm not saying throw it all out, but you probably could. And especially if you realize that you've ingrained this,

[00:22:29] lather rinse repeat with your interview guides and you know what we asked this five years ago, we're still going to keep asking how fast can you type. Seriously, it's actually on the interview guide. And so just do the one in front of you right now.

[00:22:46] But you don't have to go back and rewrite all your interview guides. But it also means like communicate with your managers as to why this is more effective. And it's easy if you start with the start.

[00:22:59] Every time you do it intake, you ask them then what are the top three things that this candidate must have and how will we know? Really good advice, Shelley. I think it's something that we all struggle with when it comes to coming into a new organization,

[00:23:16] because a lot of hiring managers have their own way that they think they should be hiring just based on their past behavior. So, this creates some structure around it. I want to jump into the next recruiting insight, Shelley.

[00:23:28] And this is one of my favorite topics is talking about TikTok, because there's been a lot of discussion. It will tick-tock being banned and I know it's still on the radar. But in the meantime, should you be leveraging TikTok as part of your not only recruiting

[00:23:45] efforts, but also your employment brand efforts and a couple of data points from this article I want to point out. It shows that 91% of TA professional surveyed you some type of social media. I'm going to make an assumption here.

[00:24:03] I think it's a fair assumption that the majority of those think that using social media for hiring is copying and pasting their job on LinkedIn and saying we're hiring. So, I don't know if that many are actually using social media at the next level in a concerted strategy.

[00:24:23] But let's make the assumption if you're not here are some tips that you should leverage. And I want to have a little bit of a discussion on your overall thoughts coming from the corporate side. So how do you use it?

[00:24:33] I think the most critical thing is almost leave it in your employees' hands. There is a lot of examples out there. There was one example a couple years ago of a paint mixer at Shroom Williams just doing incredible things.

[00:24:47] And it brought so much attention to the Shroom William brand, even though they didn't meet their branding guidelines. They eventually fired that guy and that guy went to a competitor and is still killing it. So it gives you an example of what creates virality on TikTok.

[00:25:03] It's very authentic overall. So encouraging your employees to test things out, to try it out. I'm not saying you need to release everything but leave it in their hands on a creative side with some guardrails.

[00:25:16] The more you put and the striker the guardrails around it, the less chance is going to be authentic content that people actually want to watch or increase any type of virality or at least interest. What's your take?

[00:25:29] We've argued about this in the past and I wasn't sure which side of the fence you were on. What companies are concerned about is employees doing things that reflect negatively on their brand. Right?

[00:25:43] Surge I'm dating myself a little bit here, but going back to 2012 when I was at NMAX and our new grad students engineering summer program and they just videotape. What does it mean to be a summer student?

[00:26:01] It's not all parties and don't at every morning, but what are you actually working on? And we did not give them any restrictions.

[00:26:10] We're just like, be authentic and share what does a day look like because there's this perception that if you're an engineering summer student that you're going to be photocopying all day. True story if you're working in HR, that's probably what they're going to make you do.

[00:26:27] Not so engineering and it absolutely worked wonderfully because it was authentic. And I think that's the key message here is if you really want to capture this huge demographic and they're all about quick and visual, right? Like it's how fast your brain processes video versus reading something, right?

[00:26:50] And I absolutely agree. Ask people to share what their day-to-day work is like. That's pretty straightforward. Get employees to advocate for your brand and the more authentic the better, like our sure-win Williams guy.

[00:27:07] He did it because it's a super cool thing to watch and that is colors and mixing paint. Wow. Yeah. And he was really good at what he did and I've seen other videos that was a young guy that worked at one of the big pizza chains.

[00:27:21] And he was showing himself building pizzas. It was amazing, you know, effort, like his amount of detail. It just represented the brand so well. Yeah.

[00:27:32] And people thought it was cool just how he did it but that is the type of content that you should encourage if they want to, right? It's one of those things you can't force it. They have to want to do that type of content for you.

[00:27:43] But the one point I want to make clear here, this is not exactly a conversion channel and a lot of people are trying to think how many applicants am I going to get from it? Think about it as a brand exercise.

[00:27:55] The way to showcase what it is to work and win in your organization. If you take that approach and not concern about how many applications did I get from that one video, it's obviously a much bigger longer played than that. But we'll see if it gets banned.

[00:28:11] I actually haven't noticed the news when it's going on without it if it's still in the process I'm assuming so, but I want to go to the next article you found and I thought it was really interesting.

[00:28:21] Was that the majority of employers plan on increasing head count instead of decreasing. The stat was 55% of employers worldwide plan to increase head count over the next two years due to AI advancement. So, interesting. Do you buy that?

[00:28:41] I do and I think I've always felt that these are jobs that will be created because of new capabilities. And so there's certain industry sectors like energy utilities and the IT sectors that just seems super obvious.

[00:28:57] Super obvious to me that the way the work was being done before can be sunset. And there is new roles, new ways of working that are emerging.

[00:29:11] Well, it counters pretty much every major fan companies basically reducing head counts and attributing the advancement of AI is you can have less people. So, a couple things. I agree completely it's going to create a new subset of jobs, a large subset of jobs.

[00:29:30] But there is going to be that period that those jobs are not going to be created as quickly as there's jobs,

[00:29:38] the advancement with the advance of AI. I think we're going to go through phase of probably five to seven year where it's going to be a net loss.

[00:29:47] We're seeing that right now and if I look at the research that I've looked at, that is the only article that I've seen anywhere. And it's in the nature of our magazine which probably wants to be very promising.

[00:30:01] But if you look at other articles out there, most CEOs are saying absolutely we want to reduce head count. If we can have AI do a lot of things that we have challenges in finding those folks did make sense right?

[00:30:15] So I think we're going to end up that the net gain is going to counter the loss of jobs, but I don't see that happening next five years and not to be pessimistic, but I think the advancement of AI.

[00:30:28] This is the biggest thing we've seen since mobile phones and I would say potentially bigger, it's potentially bigger than the internet being built which you think in context how do we live before the internet? How did we do business?

[00:30:41] I still can't understand the concept of going to a desk with a typewriter and a phone. I've never lived through that. What did you do all day you typed and you call people is how did Shelley tell me how did they wound?

[00:30:56] Let me say this search. Of course, when you look at this survey, this is an adecco group survey and Oxford economics. So yeah, good credible source. And of course, 41% expect to have fewer employees because they're looking at the way work is done today.

[00:31:11] And they're looking at the number of people. It takes to do the work that they're doing today. Now even if you look 12 months from now, you're right. The net effect, but the article that I found was saying, they plan to increase head count.

[00:31:26] It doesn't cancel out those roles that will become redundant and that was just my whole point. There's going to be roles that even if you take part of your job that used to take up say 60% of your time, AI is now going to find a more efficient way.

[00:31:41] So I think the challenge is for executives and TA executives or CHROs to look at how they're going to redistribute their current skill sets.

[00:31:52] And that's tough because if you are having to re-look at the way work gets done because of AI, it will be tough and it will always result in having to do workforce reductions, which is nothing new.

[00:32:06] If we look at the last five years like before AI was always happening, it's just seems to be the fall guy. I feel like AI is the fall guy.

[00:32:15] It is a dramatic impact too. If you look at the reality of what AI can do even at a basic level, men, there are some dramatic improvements that we've never seen in efficiencies. The amount of just basic things that we've done in the past that are done now in seconds that took us four hours before.

[00:32:34] So a lot more efficient, it's going to take a while for all the ducks to line up in a row and we understand what this means to the greater economy. So yes there will be industries that will gain. I would say my prediction is next couple years where you see a lot more that lose until that shift starts to happen. What the key roles and the re-skilling to your point is going to be absolutely critical here.

[00:32:58] And then, oh, Shelley I'm done talking for today. I just want to talk about recruiting anymore now getting always love talking about recruitment but I know.

[00:33:09] Let's go see if the water main is fixed now so I can go take a shower eventually. So if you see me in the streets stay away.

[00:33:18] I'm kidding. Another great episode search. Thank you always great to talk and to learn and hopefully the audience can always take away just that one nugget of something that they can say they didn't know before. There you go. Thank you. Thank you. Our. Why?

[00:33:34] Shelley, let's face it. Taxing candidates is the easiest way to hire quicker today but your cell phone doesn't connect to your ATS. You're sharing your personal number with strangers as pretty scary right? Shelley and it's not even legally compliant.

[00:33:58] This is where our friends at RecTex come in. They've created simple yet powerful text recruiting software that works with your ATS plus it's designed by recruiters for recruiters. So you know it works to learn more and book a demo visit www.

[00:34:16] www.ct.com. Mention the recruitment flex and get 10% off annual plans. Do you love news about LinkedIn indeed Google and just about every other recruitment tech company out there? Hell yeah I'm Chad. I'm cheese.

[00:34:32] We're the Chad and G's podcast all the latest recruiting news and insights are on our show dripping in snark and attitude subscribe today wherever you listen to your podcasts we out.