E370 Recruiting Community: Barb Hyman, The Necessity (or death?) of the Resumé.

Barb Hyman - founder & CEO of Sapia.ai - joins Chris Hoyt (he/him) this week. We love hearing her insights on ethical AI. This time she's leaning into the topic of resumés. Are they still necessary? What do they really tell you about a candidate? We're can't wait to see where this conversation leads.

E370 Recruiting Community: Barb Hyman, The Necessity (or death?) of the Resumé.

Barb Hyman - founder & CEO of Sapia.ai - joins Chris Hoyt (he/him) this week. We love hearing her insights on ethical AI. This time she's leaning into the topic of resumés. Are they still necessary? What do they really tell you about a candidate? We're can't wait to see where this conversation leads.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 
I think it is interesting because I do think it will be fascinating to see what what happens with the interview platform and the interview process with all of this technology, especially video. I don’t know, this is only slightly related. I know we mentioned automation and avatars. But did you see the pizza commercial? That came out that AI generated pizza and beer commercial? I should have queued it up for it’s it’s delightful and, and horrifying. It AI generated what it thought a beer commercial should be. And it gets the spirit of the commercial. Right. But it still hasn’t quite figured out how we drink and eat and like there’s a pizza. It’s just horrifying. I’ll have to pull the link up.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 0:40
Yeah, I would like to see it

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:42
Tryheir mouth goes way out here the hand off. It’s a nightmare fuel. Not my favorite dish that clearly hasn’t made it hasn’t made it to Australia yet.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 0:54
No, no, not yet. It normally takes things a couple of days.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:58
Maybe you could have better gate for content than we do. A filter on your browser.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 1:05
Tick tock is filtered depending on the audience. Maybe we’re seeing different things in Australia.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:10
It could be I have a ridiculous

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 1:14
Chinese paranoia coming through strongly. I would say though, I suspect you get a bit of that in America too.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:20
Yeah, my tick tock is still stand up comedians. And not so clearly there’s an algorithm that’s working to my no brainer scroll.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 1:30
Yeah, it’s some good Aussies. stand up comedians. Yeah, I don’t think to do it to us. Brilliant. Yeah.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:37
All right. Well, I wouldn’t be there in November. Yeah, we’ll be there in November. We’ll work something. Well, we have we have a lot to talk about and a little bit of time to do it. Are you ready to get started?

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 1:48
For sure.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:49
There we go. Okay, here we go.

CXR Announcer 1:52
Welcome to the CXR channel, our premier podcast for Talent Acquisition and Talent Management. Listen in as the CXR community discusses a wide range of topics focused on attracting, engaging and retaining the best talent, we’re glad you’re here.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 2:21
All right, welcome to another edition of recruiting community. I am Chris Hoyt, your host for the next 20 or 30 minutes or so this is a live stream today. So if you are joining us live on the link book, or the Facebook, the YouTube book, all the other social channels, go ahead and look for a little chat window, you can drop in any questions you might have for the guests today or for any of us who are on the show, you can talk to each other. So let us know that it’s working. Just drop a note in there. It’s also a great way we’ve seen a couple of folks who are on LinkedIn dropping in their their LinkedIn profiles. So that’s a really great way for you to do a little bit of networking. With the other folks that are attending today. I want to remind everybody that this is not a pay to play podcast, we don’t have any ads, or any sponsorship. This is just a little labor of love and show that we put together to talk with people that we think are doing cool stuff in the work and in the space. And so we want to draw a little bit of attention to that. I’ve got my my spirit animal with me today. Mr. Crispin, how are you?

Gerry Crispin, CXR 3:20
I’m wonderful. I’m almost recovered.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 3:23
That’s right. You just You just got back from a big trip.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 3:26
I did. 12 of us in Israel was for a week was amazing. And we saw professors and students and employers and startups and all kinds of stuff as well as you know, Masada, Jerusalem, etc. So yeah, I’m still processing. I haven’t quite figured it all out.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 3:46
Well, the good news is, Gerry, we’re setting up a short series of podcasts with some of the folks that you went on the trip to Israel with the governor in the delegation. And you can share with folks what’s what were the big aha takeaways.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 4:01
Yeah, very cool. I look forward to it.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 4:04
All right. Well, before before we jump in, I do want to share a little bit of work that’s been done. We’ve had quite a few people that have helped with this program, and it’s called Ta Talk Tank. And it is a result of the CXR Foundation, which is a nonprofit. For those who aren’t aware it’s CXR.foundation. Yes, it is a URL, believe it or not. But the idea here is that we are we are attempting to reinvent mentoring are reimagined coaching. And I hesitate to use the phrase just in time. But it is a brief sort of rapid fire approach. And I’ll walk the site through here. But Gerry, you’re a little more poetic than I am often in explaining some of some of these things. Do you want to share a little bit a little bit of a precis? Maybe an evaluation of sort of what what we’ve worked on and have propped up?

Gerry Crispin, CXR 4:55
Absolutely. So the quick the quick answer to this, because somebody’s at my door. He is, is this is like a, you know, a one stop shop coffee, if you will a virtual coffee in which I can pick the brain of someone who could help me think about my next job, think about my career, or whose career I’d be fascinated to learn more about. And so that’s, that’s the powerful piece of this. And I’m hopeful that, you know, folks in our space will take advantage of it, as well as contribute to it by willing to be you know, have their brain picked, if you will, over a virtual coffee.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 5:37
Yeah, and I know we have some folks listening. But if you’re watching, I’ll show this. I want to show how easy this has been done. We’re pulling up a screenshare really quickly. This is this is it, it’s ta talk tank.com. It’s super simple. When you log in, you’re going to see any number of folks in here who have already started to jump in with a soft launch last week, you’ve got chief people, officers, head of people, you got some executive recruiters, directors, leaders, but the ability to just go in and quickly and easily decide if you want to be a mentor, or a mentee. So that’s sort of more of a coach piece, right. The and the idea here to Gerry’s point is that we’re really looking at, at trying to address those, those single conversations that you have that sort of change your direction, or change your mindset about your career, or your position or your momentum even so this is not a lengthy mentoring program. This is sort of a series of conversations that you can set up and do a little matchmaking for, in this instance here, and I’ll just walk you through it, I put it on a mentor mentee, you can easily see here, just put in your title, you’ve got some disciplines that you can select from various industries that you’re in location, you can paste in a little bit of about you, if you’ve got a CV or resume, we’re going to talk about that if you’ve got a CV or resume, you can upload those here. It’s not required, however, because rumor is they’re dying. But you can list in here also as a mentor, what you’re looking for. And there we go. And from a mentorship, what you want to get out of that if you’re going to mentor you can also listen list the number of mentees that you’re willing to take on and this is since I’m willing to connect with three, I do have a little bit of coaching experience there, I can click Continue. And then I get a list of folks here that I can immediately ping and connect with. So I can reach out directly so you can additionally do some search. So if I’m looking more for a head of maybe we have a few in here, head of people and talent, head of talent acquisition, that sort of thing. If I think of looking for more of a VP level, I can search by title you can see here Jen Tracy, we’ve got Joe Murphy, Rachel. So there’s a lot of really great stuff. There’s Mike Dwyer. So a lot of really great stuff in here. It’s a unique opportunity to go ahead and, and lean in to the community. So we encourage everybody to check that out. And again, it’s going to be TATalkTank.com It is free. It doesn’t cost anything and it was built. Alison Cruz, Susan Lamott, Liz Gilbert Konerko shaker and several others did this as volunteer work through the foundation. So I just want to encourage you to do that. Now with that. I want to go ahead and welcome to the show, not her first time on the show. But we’re gonna go ahead and bring in Barb. Barb, how are you?

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 8:16
I’m so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. And I’ve dressed in the palace of Australia, grinning,

Chris Hoyt, CXR 8:23
well done.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 8:27
As pointed out to me when I spoke to this morning, ma’am, you look ridiculous. What are you doing wearing that dress? And I said, you know, I was felt a bit Australian this morning.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 8:37
Well, I think you’ll look great. And we’re glad to have you on you are in Australia. So we appreciate I assume you are in Australia today. Yes.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 8:45
Well, actually, I’m in London right now. But generally I’m in Australia.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 8:49
Got it. Because in Australia, it would be 1112. One, it’d be two in the morning tomorrow

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 8:54
It would be two in the morning and I would not be looking this good.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 8:59
Well, Barb for those who have not met you, and who don’t know anything about you, why don’t you give us a quick escalator pitch like who is Barb Hyman? And why? Why should people be paying attention to what you have to say today.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 9:11
So I’m founder and CEO of zapier.ai. And I have a really unusual background for a founder. I’m neither a data scientist nor an engineer, and I’m female. So that makes me unique in this space. And I come from a HR background, a strategy background and a legal background. So I’ve been a bit of a career opportunist. And what we’ve been doing for the last five years out of Australia, but now working with clients globally, and spending a lot of my time in the US which is really exciting, is to bring humanity and dignity and equity to hiring. Something that I experienced when I was in HR and in talent is the lack of all of those aspects to the hiring process. And I’m delighted to say that we’re growing like gangbusters which is another Aussie term and hoping to bring this amazing technology to the US market this year in particular.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 10:07
Well, I’m excited about that. And I love the humanity, the equity, the dignity piece, can you can you talk a little bit about sort of that that item because I know the way that we sort of we sort of promoted the show is that we were going to talk about resumes. It’s not it’s not a sexy topic, unless you’re talking about the fact that

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 10:25
I can make it very sexy.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 10:29
That’s why we’re here.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 10:31
Let me just briefly touch on why I think those aspects of the experience matter so much as you know, you’re probably as exhausted as I am by all the discussion around candidate experience and how little has changed. For most people, you still have to put in a resume or you do a video interview or you sit a multichoice experience. I don’t know how in anyone’s world that is an experience. And I think the time is well overdue for a consumer experience in the recruitment world, because ultimately, it’s about people. So to create something where people feel like they get to share their story of who they are and their words and their time and learn from that. That’s impairment, that’s dignity. So that’s what our technology does. I’m going to share with you my three reasons for why the resume needs to die. Do you want me to go straight into that, Chris?

Chris Hoyt, CXR 11:21
Yeah, well, yeah, let’s do it. Let’s jump in. Because I think I have, I think I have an idea. We haven’t prepped this. But I think for sure, I think for sure, you’re gonna you’re gonna bring up items, we’re going to talk a little bit about maybe the rise of alternative assessment methods, because I think employers are increasingly using other methods to evaluate candidates like skills tests, or project based assessments, which is a whole nother whole nother hot button for me. I mean, is that is that sort of where we’re leaning?

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 11:51
Well, I think first, you know, in the US, I’m really struck by how much attachment there is still to the resume way more than what I see in Australia. And I’m curious about why that is the case. Right? So as an ex consultant, I like to approach things from a first principles, spaces and a rational basis. So my three reasons. And you can challenge me on this. The first is that in a world of GPT, for the resumes now completely redundant, because jerry can go online in the next five minutes and create a beautiful resume for any job he likes. And it’ll get through those passes. And it will certainly get through the human who’s doing the screening. So anything which relies on resumes is now useless as a data set. That’s my first provocation. I like to be provocative. The second is that if you think about resumes as a record of their candidate, right, that’s ultimately what it is. It’s a record of who that candidate supposedly is based on their experience, their degree, etc, is you’re all looking at the same record. Right? And bizarrely, LinkedIn is really the same thing. It’s just another resume in a digital form. And how is that going to give you a competitive edge, to discover talent, and to assess talent that your competitors don’t have? It’s kind of crazy to all rely on exactly the same piece of information to source and screen candidates, what you’re doing is you’re just driving up the price of that talent. From a supply and demand perspective, you’re all looking at the same person, recruiters are looking at it with the same lens. All you’re going to be doing is competing for the same talent and paying more for that talent. This skill is something that Peter Thiel identified years ago, and I’m not necessarily a fan of Peter Thiel. But in this I think he was brilliant, which is how do you find undiscovered talent. That means you can’t be looking at the resume, because everyone’s looking at the resume on LinkedIn. And that’s what you have to do right now in this world where, frankly, most jobs and new jobs like what is a prompt engineer? Are the resumes for prompt engineer, how are you going to discover that skill set? So I think it’s irrational from an economic perspective to be looking at the same reference point, the same data as the whole universe when you’re looking for talent. But the third more powerful one, I believe, is that it’s just a very inferior set of data from which to make any kind of screening decisions. So you know, we talk about hallucination with GPT that it makes shit up, right? I can swear because I’m an Aussie we were pretty low key over there. And you do that as well. When you’re looking at a resume. I’m looking at Chris’s resume, and it tells me Oh, he’s had three jobs in two years or he’s a Job Hopper. He’s not going to be reliable. I’m not going to hire him. Or I’m looking at Gerry’s racing mind. It’s telling me that he went to yo he must be incredibly smart. Brilliant. Definitely move him through to

Chris Hoyt, CXR 14:37
Why am I the job hopper and Gerry.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 14:41
Thank you very much.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 14:43
I don’t know to be

Gerry Crispin, CXR 14:45
anywhere along the line they might. They might infer my age from set from when I graduated from wherever.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 14:54
With wisdom, right, then wisdom,

Gerry Crispin, CXR 14:58
not in our culture.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 15:03
So we’re reading between the lines, right? Because there’s really not that much there. And we’re relying on these heuristics to infer what you know that you’re reliable, that you’re smart, that you’re gonna work well with others that you’re a leader, it just feels so sub optimal as a dataset with which to make any kind of decision. That’s my theory.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 15:25
What I what I love BB is is that that third reason, it’s just an inferior dataset. And, and fundamentally, we’re all searching for a better data set, I would argue that the job description and the resume are not records of reality. They are marketing, ploys, if you will, one by the candidate, and the other by the company, to attract and engage. And they are both inferior datasets. Not very few companies are willing to tell me what the job really is, fundamentally, until I’ve gotten excited about, you know, taking whatever you’re willing to offer me for it.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 16:12
Gerry, who wants to read them? How many recruiters do you know, read through the whole resume?

Gerry Crispin, CXR 16:19
In large companies, there is no such thing as a resume and hasn’t been for many years. Because fundamentally, what what’s been required is that you fill out a form, not supply a resume. So I, I would think that the problem is, is that when a candidate, in fact does have a resume, nobody, nobody has ever read it, it really, even if they’ve uploaded it, because all of it has been put into fields, but it’s still a bad data set is the point. Because it really just doesn’t talk about the complete person and their capabilities in relation to that.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 17:03
I mean, I’d love to see the data on how many companies I’m sure the ATS is, and the HRA S has have this data on how many resumes are being uploaded every day. I still when I

Gerry Crispin, CXR 17:17
And actually read them, you know? I would my hypothesis is that, nope, no recruiter actually reads the resume, they might in fact get to that for you know, a very small percentage.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 17:32
Okay, so let’s, why don’t we boil it, why don’t we boil it down a little bit. So what we’re talking about is taking out all the adjectives and explaining all the work that someone has done, and and literally bullet pointing very factually, where someone has been. Because if you do anything more than that without a formal assessment, right, isn’t it just still a marketing material?

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 17:58
Yeah, I mean, I don’t think that means anything, either. Yeah. Right. Because there’s plenty of research that says that what you’ve done in the past, it’s not necessarily predictive of success in the future. It’s independent IO style. For now, it’s also a heuristic that what you’ve done before means you’re going to be successful now. Well, but I said, yeah,

Chris Hoyt, CXR 18:24
Yeah, sorry. I was just gonna say, but I think then it comes back. Is there a growing trend towards skills based hiring? Yes, right, where employers are prioritizing a candidate’s skills over maybe formal education. But in order for an organization to embrace that, I mean, we’re talking about, we’re talking about a further investment in, in that talent, aren’t we like, if I’m bringing you in? And because of the skills you have now versus the education? I think you have, I still have to continue that investment somehow. Like, I still have to,

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 18:56
What do you mean by skills when you use that word? What do you mean by skills?

Chris Hoyt, CXR 19:01
If I’m telling you that I have proven marketing, and I give you a little track record of my successful marketing campaigns, and how I can maybe do internal sales of a program, or maybe I’ve driven adoption for something or increased engagement. I mean, I recognize that those can be argued that they are subjective, but what like, what are we saying we throw those out and replace those with?

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 19:30
So here’s how I used to think about it when I was in HR and the training that I used to lead with our people, leaders, which is when you’re putting someone into a role, whether it’s internal or external, I think there are three dimensions that matter to a successful decision. One is, as an individual, do they have the capabilities to do what’s required? And for I believe, 80% of hiring. That happens in the US it’s volume hiring. So what you’ve done before it doesn’t really matter, these are entry level right? rolls. The second thing that matters is then if you’re working as part of a team is, Are you the right person for this team? And that doesn’t necessarily mean that your same as you know, me, too. It requires the hiring manager to really look and say, Do I want another Gerry? You know, I’ve got three Gerry’s already? Do I really want another person who’s imbued with wisdom, and thoughtfulness and critical thinking, Maybe I want Chris is like the personality, right? I need to, I need to kind of jig it up a bit. And but you need to think about that from a team dynamic, right? Like, that’s really important to as a hiring manager to be thoughtful about what’s the what’s the right portfolio,

Chris Hoyt, CXR 20:38
Then where we’re looking? If I’m if I’m not looking at, what are you giving me instead?

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 20:45
And I think that’s the first thing is you start with what are we trying to solve for here we’re trying to solve for how do we make the best decision around the individual, the team and the culture? And then I walk back and I say, Well, what are you looking for? When you’re doing that? If it’s a job that doesn’t require any hard skills, then it’s really about? Do you actually have the propensity, the aptitude to be able to do this job, I’m hiring you into a, you know, warehouse, forklift driver? Are you going to be reliable, you’re going to work well with others, you’re going to be incredibly obsessed about safety, right? Those are attributes that you can discover through different ways there is traditional assessment, then there’s a safer way through a scalable interview. On the team side as a hiring manager, it’s giving them something not a resume that gives insight into you to make the best portfolio decision, right? Is this the right person with the right temperament? For this particular team? Do I want another person like that? From a company culture perspective, I think that’s the one that is the most biased when those decisions are made. Because think about the number of people that have been rejected when they say, you’re just not a good culture fit. That’s like a cop out in Australian terms around not being clear about what you’re looking for. So yeah, culture can be DNA, right? Every company has a set of values, what’s the values that you’re aspiring to? Or what’s the culture that you’re aspiring to? And let’s break that out into a profile? You know, we’re looking for smart people who are inspiring to others who can look around corners, take people with them, like it’s, it’s definable. But I just don’t see that recruiters and talent leaders are thinking hard enough about what do we really want, when we’re making this decision. So spending too much time processing, screening resumes, pushing people through a funnel, rather than automate all of that, and use your intelligence, you know, use your advisory skills to really thought partner with the leader around solving for individual team and company,

Gerry Crispin, CXR 22:44
But different though, than what might exist today?

Chris Hoyt, CXR 22:49
Yeah, but yes, but I think but if I don’t have a resume, okay. And I don’t have an assessment results, like a portfolio to look at that as a result of someone going through some sort of alternative assessment. Regardless of who the platform is. I don’t I don’t have the ability to find and and create a bench outside of a LinkedIn or outside of another an alternative platform, depending on the level right of jobs or the jobs. And what I get is the workers profile. So that’s just what there is.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 23:23
Yeah, I agree. So I believe that what you need is true, comprehensive, objective intelligence about that individual, which does not sit in a resume. So how are you going to get that? Right? Pick your choice of assessment. You know, if you think back to the olden days of Amazon, McKinsey, or BCG, we all hide in the same way, which is we run these structured interviews, where Gerry and Chris get asked the same questions by four or five people for calibration for equity. They’re measured against the rubric. Like that’s the, you know, that’s the certainly from an IO perspective, that scene is now the most predictive, and the fairest way to do it. And out of that comes some kind of profile. Safety is effectively scale that through science and through chat. That’s what we’ve built. That’s our formula. And we think that’s a better way to assess. We don’t like to use assess, because we’re effectively interviewing people in a way that is untimed and safe and comfortable and empowering. And most people have a negative connotation with assessment because they’re mostly terrible. It’s not a video, but you know, you have to design a journey, right, that gives you the objective data, to empower and equip the decision makers to make the right decision. And it’s definitely not a resume.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 24:42
you’re building reliability into an approach to how we interact, if you will, that that can be replicable and and come up with some of the same conclusions. And and and When you can have high reliability and how you approach it, can you can you get to some level of predictability?

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 25:10
Consistency, huge. I think the challenge with humans, having those conversations, you know, the limitations of what we did at BCG was it, I can’t help myself, I’m really going to connect with that person who just looks just like me in terms of their experience, because that’s what I think has been successful. And so how do you interrupt that human part? There’s definitely a need for the human, but it’s at the far end, not at the front end. But I think Gerry, it’s about data, right? You know, you can get a job at a bank, using a resume, you’ll never get a loan from a bank using a resume, but they’re still decisions of risk. How is it that every other sector has managed to de risk really critical decisions by relying on objective data? And, you know, not necessarily removing humans from the whole process, but certainly disintermediating their subjectivity as early on in the process as possible.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 26:08
So Barb, what percentage would you would you say of employers pick your market? Or pick your niche? And your function? What percentage of employers do you think are taking a new look at that process, and maybe pushing to the side swiping a little bit left on, you know, online profiles and resumes and, and leaning in on, you know, these, these new wave of assessments?

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 26:35
Not enough. It’s my it’s my, my again, my second provocation is, you know, I think and look, I feel like we’ve probably had this conversation in the past. But coming back to first principles for any head of TA and looking at what are we trying to solve for here? What is the business problem that we need to meet? And we’re living in a world now where everyone is talking about automation, the product productivity, uplift from automation? Now is the moment you know, you’ve never had we thought it was with COVID. to reimagine and transform HR and recruitment now more than ever, because your every CEO on board is saying, Gerry, what are you doing in HR and with ta because we have more people in ta than we do in any other part of HR? Surely, you’re thinking about automation. And so if you’re not hearing that message, then there’s something wrong with your board. And if you aren’t hearing that message, then how are you responding to that? Right. So that’s one opportunity, I would say, I’ve got a window right now, to be a fast follower, to be a leader and reimagine the way we do things because my board has given me permission to do that. And then the second thing is, well, what really matters does, tapping into undiscovered talent matter more, because we’re operating in a market where there just aren’t enough people with the skills and we need to train them myself. So it’s more about aptitude doesn’t matter, that the experience is incredible, because we’re air b&b. And everything we do, in our experience needs to be incredible. So you know, I think not enough of these conversations happen about what’s really important for us as a business. You know, to give you an example, we started to work with Quantas, who brought us in to replace a well known video player four years ago. And the reason they did that is Quantas’s is amazing track record of moving executives around at the C suite level. So the new CEO used to be the CFO, then she was something else in something else. So the Head of Customer for Quantas, which is a really successful brand, the most trusted consumer brand in Australia, the Head of Customer became the CHRO. And she just walked in and said, What are we doing here? Like we are running this as if these people aren’t consumers, they’re all people who want to be on a flight, or a potential consumer, yet we’re treating them. You know, as a third class citizen, this needs to change only when that happened, did the TA team sort of start to look at the way they were doing things and say, Okay, what would a candidate first consumer first experience look like? Then you go through COVID. And suddenly, it takes four months to get a plane in the air once it’s been out in the desert. And what you have to do faster than ever is build capacity. So that forces, a rethink of how you, you know, what your hiring process looks like, you know, these are the really interesting problems to solve in TA and I just would love to see more ta leaders really look into the business and understand what’s most important, and let’s design the process run that I think there’s too much buy an ATS buy a CRM buy this right. And like that, to me is just leading to a world of companies being overstocked. And they don’t actually get the outcomes, right, like what is the ROI of having an ATS and a CRM and an HRIS can you quantify that value to the business? That’s the question I asked don’t by us, because you just want another tool, you know, identify how you really measure success in your tech stack the tech stack before you layer on another, you know another.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 30:02
it isn’t it isn’t important call out that I think organizations are hungry to do this differently. I think Scotiabank is another one up in Canada who based in Canada, who who removed if I’m remembering this right, somebody correct me if I’m getting it wrong, but if who removed the resumes for college hiring, and for early career hiring, they just did away with that process. And they said they wouldn’t take, they wouldn’t take any anymore. I don’t think they’re using a product like Sapia, but they are hungry to get away from that. That’s an I’ll just that tired delivery, right, have a LinkedIn profile, or, indeed profile or you know, just a resume that’s been uploaded, and then manually typed it right to the different system. So I do think there’s a hunger to do it differently. And your perspective is just great.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 30:52
I don’t understand why every campus recruiter is looking at a resume, like, why would you ever use a resume for that hiring? Right? It just doesn’t make any sense. Like I saw something that Code Signal did about a year ago, which I thought was so clever, they put out a leaderboard of here are the universities or the colleges were great engineering talent exists, and it didn’t have any memory of the obvious, you know, players on there. And like that’s undiscovered talent, that’s saying, Look beyond the degree and really understand someone’s skills. And that’s a goldmine of talent out there. So, I

Chris Hoyt, CXR 31:29
Well I think, I think the pandemic, one of the most positive things that came out of the pandemic was diversifying college recruiting, like the the impact that that had on forcing, you know, recruiting teams and leaders to long no longer go to their 12 favorite schools, because the board goes there, or the CEO goes, went there or whatever. And really break that out. It saved organizations, millions of dollars. And some of them saw the most diverse cohorts ever come in, through those internships. So it does that collision of necessity. And circumstance, I think does often push us to do some things quite differently, that can have a really positive impact. But I wonder,

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 32:13
You’re just fishing in the same pool? You know,

Chris Hoyt, CXR 32:17
I push it back to what will force us to make that turn around that corner and get away from resumes? Will it be an innovative assessment platform that will scale? Will it be LinkedIn deciding to completely reinvent how their how their profiles are sort of maybe maybe delivered? Or they incorporate something there will It will just be some ta leader saying, Hey, fuck it, and that’s enough. Like we’re just we’re not doing that anymore. We’re doing it this way.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 32:42
So what do I think is the imperative in the world right now that drives people to say banish the resume? It’s the fact that there just aren’t enough people with the qualifications that you think you’re going to find in that resume? You know, US is what 3%, three and a half percent unemployment. And even though everyone is catastrophizing, that Chet GPT is going to destroy jobs, nothing’s really changing. People are going to be employed in new jobs. And that is the reality of, you know, tech disruption. It says that initial fear that everyone you know, is, it sort of overwhelmed by but then we just find new ways to think about talent is, so you have to look for potential and train it yourself. Like, I definitely think the old adage, again, I from my BCG days was we hired for values, and we trained for skills. And they had people from every discipline imaginable, right, that was part of their secret sauce, right? You can be a music major, maybe you don’t have a degree. I mean, the other thing in the US I heard recently, correct me if I’m wrong, is that only 25% of people have college degrees? So does that mean you’re missing out on just a vast amount of talent? Because what are you gonna put on the resume if you don’t have the college degree? So you know, there are 900 million people on LinkedIn, there are 2 billion workers in the world. That’s a huge talent pool that people aren’t tapping into. So you got to look beyond your traditional data sources, the resume LinkedIn and think, what do I really want? And how can I cost effectively, you know, reach the universe of talent. That gives me that before anyone else sees that talent, right? That’s that’s the secret power for organizations right now. Can I go into Ethiopia and source my next 100,000 Cloud security engineers? Because they’re an incredibly educated country, they speak good English. And I’ll skill them up, right, you’re not going to find them in the US, you’ll be paying top dollar. So

Chris Hoyt, CXR 34:30
I think that’s the that, but that’s where I think the intersection is. And I just don’t know that the majority of employers are making that that training investment on the back end of the hire.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 34:44
Right, because the ready made talent is not there anymore. Right. And roles are changing so quickly. So you know, I’d love to see some analysis from Burning Glass or from LinkedIn around what roles have come up in the last six months that didn’t exist. Just six months ago, you know, we’re living in such a dynamic world of technology changing the way we do things that there are new roles, they’re going to be created all the time, you know, Agile coach. I mean, anyone could be an Agile coach, if they got the right profile, you don’t have to have Agile coach on your resume. It’s a set of temperaments. Right? That didn’t exist 10 years ago, prompt engineer didn’t exist three months ago. So I think instead of being obsessed about the title, the racing may think harder about what do they need to do? Like, what would that intrinsic capability look like? And how do we get them from here to here? You know, it’s, I think it’s much more build your own talent, but hire for the right. aptitude, which is in any one and everyone, right? It’s not just in people like Gerry who went to Yale.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 35:50
Do I get to be to kind of be the smart guy. Now, if I’m on the top of the screen, can I go to Yale?

Gerry Crispin, CXR 35:56
I do, I do love this. And the conversation, this conversation has been going on for 100 years. 100 years, that that fundamentally the balance of, of how we hire and how we develop what that what that should look like in terms of our investment, should we be investing in hiring people who can do the job today, or hiring people that we can develop, to do the kinds of jobs and be more agile so that as the job changes, they change as well, in terms of their abilities, it is an important decision to make. And a lot of leaders in a lot of corporations fundamentally have made bad decisions about that about the weighting of that investment. And I love the fact that that a lot of TA leaders recognize the importance of doing that, but may not have the resources they need to upskill their bosses as well as themselves in order to get there. I do think it’s a it’s a continuing struggle to accomplish that. And I love the fact that one of the things that we do is try to identify those people who are making efforts to move the needle and give them more visibility, so that their colleagues and peers might be inspired to move that in that direction. I mean, it’s it’s, it’s why we’re having this conversation right now. That that hopefully it inspires somebody to be able to say, maybe there’s better questions I should be asking, right, get to the next level.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 37:40
And I totally agree with you. And I did let the 100 years ago line slide and did let that go. But But I think it’s important to call out that this is not a TA decision. Right? Also, this is not just a matter of saying, Oh, we’re just going to hire X, and we’re not going to use, you know, resumes anymore. This is a cultural shift in an organization where maybe even historically, hiring managers have said, I don’t want potential, I want productivity. Now, I want them hitting the ground and running. And I don’t want to have to hire somebody and wait, you know, 30 days, 60 days, six months until they’re ready to go. And I think that is a huge shift, and a mental and cultural shift in a lot of organizations that don’t maybe have the resources coming out of the pandemic, to kickoff training programs, or to invest in those resources, or even the foresight to see that is the right direction for the organization.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 38:34
But it’s also I think, you know, Chris, like, look at me, I’m in sales, but I don’t have sales anywhere on my resume. Right? No one would hire me in a head of sales role, yet. I’m kind of doing pretty well, you know, just saying. So, you know, I think here’s a radical idea, right? So much of recruitment, and HR is asymmetrical, it doesn’t allow the individual to own their own career, to discover their own potential to know their own power. And, to me, that is something that’s going to change radically with the power of AI. Both what we’re doing, you know, powered also amplified by the likes of chat, GBT. What, imagine a world where every single employee, and every candidate actually knows their power. I know that I’m really great at these things. I’ve learned that through a conversation with chat, and I’m gonna go into Jerry and I’m gonna say so myself on that. Right, the resume is there because it’s a data point, but it is overly relied on. And we’ve all agreed that it’s, you know, highly inferior, and potentially biased. But if you can put knowledge and power in the hands of the individual and the whole of the humanity starts to really know themselves, you know, Navarro, who are harare’s talks about this. He said, In a world of AI knowing more about you, what you need to do is build self awareness. That’s what our technology does because we help people learn and That’s intelligent chat. It’s not a, you know, simple Chatbot. But if everyone knew their power and their potential, you know, a lot of this would go away, like, what’s the point of inventing in a talent marketplace, if you don’t actually know what you’re capable of right?

Gerry Crispin, CXR 40:13
I absolutely agree with Barb. We’re we’re not providing the candidates. And the individuals with that information, we’re providing employers with the information that supposedly they think they need. But I absolutely agree with you if there’s a shift in how technology is providing more value, if you will, to the individual’s capability to understand themselves, and and empower them to take action around that. It will shift dramatically, the balance of power.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 40:53
I love the vision.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 40:56
Gerry, that’s what we do. So my goal is all about, you know, the individual learning and growing and I think HR is too patriarchal, I think it’s too much trying to curate people’s journeys, if you can put the power in the hands of the individuals, so many of those systems, you don’t really need, right, and it’s, it’s always on it’s learning, it’s, you know, people really trust this way more than they trust this right? Trust what’s on their phone, it’s kind of scary. But if you can help people learn and know who they are, like, that’s going to transform your life, not just the job that you’re gonna go for,

Gerry Crispin, CXR 41:34
And how to use it. I mean, it’s, it’s more than having the information, it’s also understanding the implications of how to use it. And I do agree that most many of them not many, but some of the new tools like yours are, are put the conclusions that you draw from them are put in the hands of the individuals who’ve, who’ve experienced that. And that’s, that’s powerful. 20 years ago, I can’t think of a single assessment, in which the candidate actually learned something, it was primarily the employer. That was given the data and it’s fair, the rest was prevented. But now, there is much more openness and transparency around around the conclusions that one would draw from, from the data that’s collected. That’s powerful.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 42:31
Just rhubarb, I mean, given the state of things today, if you were gonna, you know, we asked us of everybody before we close out if you were gonna write a book, on where we’re at today, and the stance that you’re taking, what would the title of that of that book be?

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 42:50
You didn’t brief me on this, Chris. So okay, I think I, I you get you’re gonna, you’re gonna be underwhelmed by this. I know, I think I’d say something like, HR 3.0. Really, truly lean in. Right. Be curious about what what you could be doing? You know, and I think I’d say take, you know, put the human first, maybe that would be the title with Put the human first,

Chris Hoyt, CXR 43:22
human first. Right. Okay. And who gets the first signed copy of your newly written book?

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 43:28
Well, definitely you because, you know, you

Chris Hoyt, CXR 43:32
Can’t give it to us.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 43:38
I think you asking me that genuinely.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 43:40
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 43:42
So you know, so this is what I think I think that if I sat across Sasha Adela, right. And I said such what difference would it make to the power of GPT? For if it actually truly understood the person on the other end? Would that make it a more compelling experience? Would that make it something that is really in my control? So I would give it to him? Because I think that’s what’s missing about GPD for it, it’s past the universe of content online, doesn’t understand the individual and to really impact the individual’s life. You need to know them and they need to know themselves so that’s what I would be offering up to him. In case you’re listening Sasha Adela.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 44:23
It comes down to know yourself. Yeah. That experience, definitely

Barb Hyman, Sapia.ai 44:31
Tentative title.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 44:33
All right, wonderful. Well, Bob, don’t go anywhere. Don’t hang up. We’re gonna put you in the greenroom for just a second. We’re going to show events page that we’ve got coming up. We got some stuff head. They want encourage some folks to join us for but I’m going to put you in the greenroom. So just hang out for just a minute with you. All right, as much gratitude. Thank you so much for giving us your time today. We really appreciate you dialing in from London. All right, Mr. Crispin. I do want to share this really quickly. We’ve got we’ll put us in the side. Are there I guess today, a couple of things coming up. You obviously saw Barb just now we did that presentation. Pretty exciting about that. But we do have some meetings coming up on May 10. We’ve got the EU pay transparency piece. Gerry, I know you are superduper passionate about this, you want to give a quick 22nd overview of what to expect for that meeting?

Gerry Crispin, CXR 45:18
Well, I hope that we can come to some agreements around what a baseline might be around pay transparency the there are, you know, 49 out of 50 states that have made a play for pieces of that. And the issue is what what does our industry what does our profession really think is a baseline below which you are not really recruiting? You are in effect, abusing the relationships with candidates and above which there may be many paths to competitive ways of doing things. So competitive practices. So I just think that we have to have a conversation that says this is this is a stake in the ground. And and we should be living up to the spirit of it, not just the compliance issue.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 46:11
Because I’m looking forward to that we have quite a few people that are dialed into that. So that’s going to be fun. We also have Andrew Flowers coming back, he has become sort of a quarterly fixture with Recrutomics season do a recruiting economics discussion for us. That’s also this week on the 11th. We’ve got the book club, where we’re talking about essentialism, we’re wrapping up that book, I’m actually surprised I’m enjoying that book more than I thought it would. So there’s still time. It’s not a super long books, if you haven’t read it yet. That is 100% open to everybody. And then we have Empower HR coming up on the 16th. And that is the hr.com event that’s going to be in Phoenix. If you’re still interested to go on that and you haven’t signed up for that yet. Let us know we’re happy to help make that a reality for you. We do think that’s going to be really interesting event. We’re excited about Matt Charney and Deb McGrath and folks sort of putting that on. So we’re super excited to help out where we can for that. All right, anything else we should talk about quickly before we go Gerry?

Gerry Crispin, CXR 47:10
No.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 47:11
Oh well, then I guess that’s the end. We’ll say good night.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 47:13
Good night.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 47:14
We’ll see everybody next week.

CXR Announcer 47:18
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