Chris Hoyt, CXR 
In the world is Mark. Where’s Mark sitting right now? Geographically?

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 0:04
Yeah. So today I’m in London, in my apartment in North London. I’ve just got back from five weeks in the US. And I’m traveling a lot at the moment. So I think I know on the way back to London, I kind of have been at flights so far this year. So I’m really, really going for a new PB, and I’m back in New York and a few weeks, but today, you’ve got me in London.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:25
All right. Well, I want to talk about the flights. Do you think you can hit 36? By in the year? Or maybe you’re halfway through the year? You’re at 18?

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 0:33
Yeah, last year did 33. And I said this year, I really want to beat that. So yeah, the goal is 36 flights. But actually, I was at one of the recruitment conferences a couple of weeks ago. And I met some of the team from American Airlines. And they trump me when it comes to flights. They were averaging like two a week or something. Some of them were free figures for the year. So yeah, I’m not going to be doing that. But 36 I think I’ve got,

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:56
Look, I love the American Airlines people, I truly, truly do. But I mean, is are these work trips that you’re talking about with them, or are these the kind of the benefit trips that they kind of get to go on.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 1:07
So they were saying that on a Friday, so benefit trips on a Friday, they go to an airport, and then they spin the bottle. And wherever the bottle chooses is where they’re going for that weekend. And then they’ll just be on like the final call this to be able to get free flights wherever they go. This was the TA team at American Airlines. I won’t name in shame. But this was the TA team at American Airlines. So they certainly enjoy that benefit.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:31
The TA the TA team at American Airlines. Well, I we have to get to the bottom of this, the TA team and American Airlines Please spin the bottle for travel in an airport and then just off they go for their own time.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 1:45
Yeah, that’s what they do. Now for work, they claim they do a lot of travel to go to like university fairs and career fairs and all of that. But they they leverage the free flights on a weekend by playing spin the bottle for my weekend getaway. And they had some crazy stories. They had stories about like flying into New York to watch a concert and then flying back the same day. So I don’t want to say too much because they’re going to suddenly get hounded for climate change issues. But But yeah, that’s a great benefit. It’s a great club.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 2:13
Oh my gosh, that is a great, but I don’t think so I’m a million miler, most of those accrued in the last? Well, none in the last three years, right. But prior when we used to travel all the time, in like a five, five year window. So there was a period of time, I was doing a tremendous amount of flying. And predominantly and the employer I had at the time PepsiCo, American Airlines was the preferred airline. So I just have a ton of airlines with them. But I also have other airlines that I love. But like all my miles keep me predominantly, you know, I’m like whale here. Okay, here’s to us 20,000 miles. So you know, those are starting to run down. So I either need to get my American Airlines travel back up where it’s time to start, you know, working on my other mileage programs.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 3:05
Yeah, it’s funny how you do that. So I’ve committed to British Airways BA. And now they just locked me in because they got my points. I’m locked in on them. I’m on there like gold plan. So you get the lounges and all of that stuff. So the points programs in airlines are real. And what I was joking about at the event was I need to choose my US airline because obviously ba doesn’t fly into us. So do do America, and you do delta ed United were the three big ones that people were saying so. So that’s my next decision when it comes to flying. Yeah,

Chris Hoyt, CXR 3:34
I’ll have to figure it out. I don’t know that the big airlines I have a bad thing to say about any of them. I’m not crazy about the boarding process with Southwest Airlines. But I love the experience flying Southwest Airlines but I don’t have a bad word to say. So it’s tough for me. And southwest used to be my my airline of choice because this might be a little embarrassing. The free drink coupons like if you gave me a free drink coupon I would almost just fly anywhere you told me to go that’s not today. Now I need a little better than the free wine or beer on a plane but yeah.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 4:05
Well, the Bloody Mary on a plane is pretty iconic, so I can I can understand why. I’ve Arjuna

Chris Hoyt, CXR 4:11
just thinking about a plane plane level bloody very well, Mark we’re gonna we’re gonna we’re not talking about airlines. today. We’re talking. We’re talking about AI. Are you ready to jump in here to get started? Yeah, let’s do this. All right, here we go.

CXR Announcer 4:25
Welcome to the CXR channel. Our premier podcasts 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 4:55
all right, this is just one of those days and I can already tell with with Mark this This is going to be one of those where you just love what you do. And this, it’s going to be a fun, fun 2030 minutes or so to sort of talk about it. So, welcome to the recruiting community podcast, I’m excited to have you back. If you’re a first time listener, I don’t know what to tell you buckle up. If you have been here before, you know, you can crank the speed on your treadmill, add a couple of more flights on your Stairmaster or turn that knob down there at the bottom. If you’re on your peloton, we’re not going to be here very long. So you are going to enjoy the ride. Usually, we will do these weekly and we’ll do them live. This one’s a little bit pre recorded, I guess it’s pre recorded wouldn’t be a little bit. It’s totally pre recorded. But it’s going to come out a little bit early because the Mark and I are out and doing some more traveling next week. But it’ll be great for you to dial in there. If there is a chat window to the right, because we do we do run the stream out on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, I think there’s a couple of others, you can put a question in there, and we’ll follow up with you. So if you got a question for Mark, you’ve got one for myself, when this airs out on LinkedIn, drop it in there. And if you’re so inclined, and if you’re on the move, if you’re in transition, I want to encourage you go ahead and drop in your LinkedIn profile, great opportunity, do a little bit of networking, a little exposure for yourself, I will do one plug. Before we bring Mark back in, I want to remind everybody TATalkTank.com is live we’ve got over 70 leaders in there and folks looking to be mentors, I’ll put a link up on the screen if you’re watching this that are going to actually mentor or be mentored or both. You can do that when you sign up on there it is totally free. The CXR Foundation put that together as a passion project to help ta folks in our space at all levels. There are some tremendous folks in there, we’ve had some tremendous partnerships and relationships built around that platform real links is the platform, it’s actually built on sand Davies donated that and the time that it takes to sort of put that piece together and stand it up, we’ve had several people that have leaned all the way in to get that off the ground. So if you or someone that you know, is looking to have sort of one of those conversations, that just matter. It’s like a rapid fire mentor program we’ve put together. It’s not a big formal program. It’s the connection that takes place and the spirit behind it. If I’m being really candid, if you if you’ve ever sat and had a conversation with someone that gave you an aha moment that made you just sort of rethink the direction you were moving in, not not necessarily your career, but maybe some work or even at a project level. This is what we’re going after. And we’ve kept it super simple. It’s t a talk tank.com. Again, it’s free, I highly encourage you to check it out. Now in that same vein, I’m going to tell you, we don’t have sponsors, you don’t pay to be on the show. This is a labor of love. This is my time cut out to give to you. These are our guests cutting time out for them to come in here and talk about their expertise. So if you’ve got somebody on this show you’re listening to, it’s because we think they have something cool to say that’s worth being hurt. They didn’t pay to be here. So we’re super excited to bring in today. I’m just gonna stop talking and go ahead and bring him in. Mark. There he is. Welcome back to the show.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 8:06
Thank you so much for having me, Chris. It’s awesome to be here, man. Really appreciate it.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 8:10
Good. Good to have you thought maybe I was going to talk the whole 20 minutes by myself.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 8:15
That was a moment that there was a moment

Chris Hoyt, CXR 8:17
100% I could do it all by myself if I needed to. Mark for those who haven’t had the pleasure meeting you. Why don’t Why don’t you kind of fill us in? Who is Mark? What does he do? Give us the escalator pitch mark, why do we care to listen to you? What do you why should we be paying attention to what you have to say today?

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 8:33
Yeah, well, I’ll try my hardest. And let’s see if someone sticks around for the next 60 seconds to listen. So yeah, so my name is Mark. I’m the co founder and CEO at Hackajob. I’ve spent the last eight, almost nine years of my life now working on Hackajob with an amazing co founder and awesome team. Which basically means I’ve spent every waking moment of my 20s Thinking about technical recruitment and tech hiring. So at this point, I feel like I’ve got some some interesting views. But always more interestingly, we sit on a ton of data. And I’m always interested in sharing that data and using that data to spark a conversation or to inform a conversation. So yeah, that’s a little bit about me, my background and hopefully some of the Insight I’ll be able to share with today.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 9:23
Alright, so I love that mark. So and for those who may not know and I know we don’t bring anybody into pitch any project, but I do think it should be clear. why don’t why don’t you tell the the listeners and the watchers what what is Hackaob? What does Hackajob do?

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 9:38
Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve effectively built a suite of software products that help predominantly enterprise companies scale their technology teams. So we’ve got a two sided marketplace products, where we actually flip the process. So rather than candidates applying to jobs companies actually applied to the engineer, which creates this really magical candidate experience like completely sold span for than for engineers, which then in turns credits really engaged talent pool, which is amazing for internal recruiters that get like an 85% reply rate. And then we’ve got a technical assessment product, an employer brand product. And it’s all underpinned with some really powerful insight platform that looks at a lot of DNI data as well. So predominately focused on on helping companies scale tech teams, UK HQ, but just launched in the US about about nine months ago now, hence why I’m spending a lot more of my time stateside, which is a lot of fun.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 10:34
Okay, so you’re in that tech space. So you’re having a lot of the same conversations, I think a lot of leaders are having a lot of vendors are having the space around AI and generative AI. And I think just recently, we saw the guy that nobody likes his name rhymes with Schmidt, Elon Musk, talking about how it’s just so terrible, and the sky is falling, if we let it get out of control doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that he wasn’t allowed to lead that effort. But the point being like everyone’s talking about AI is going to take all the jobs. And there is a little bit of scuttlebutt in the recruiting industry that says recruiters jobs are done. They’re just dunzo. Like, that’s it, here, come here come the machines, they’re gonna take our jobs. But Mark, you have a little bit of a different opinion on that.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 11:20
Yeah, so I’ve long held this view, because the latest AI wave is very exciting and captured the imagination, imagination of the public, probably more than I’ve seen any product in my career in the last 10 years. But there’s been a lot of advancement in AI over the last eight years since we’ve been working on Hackajob, and we’ve leveraged it for a long time. And the mantra I’ve always had is Intuit AI, hiring AI, which at the rate of development could well happen in our careers, humans are going to be essential in the hiring process. And especially in the opera in the field that we operate in, which is, you know, Senior Technical hiring, these are very hard to fill roles. And I think sometimes, you know, us pa professionals that live breathe talent acquisition recruitment, can forget that actually changing jobs is a really big deal for people, you know, we spend a significant amount of our time at work. And, you know, if you’re in permanent employment, maybe you’re only changing jobs every two or three years. And therefore, if I’m a, you know, senior software engineer, or a senior data scientist, and I’ve taken the decision that I’m actually going to start looking for a new job or exploring opportunities, having a human at the other side of that phone, being able to guide me through the process, which I think is what elite internal recruiters do, coach me through the process, you know, soundly on the opportunity, and ultimately try and close me on it at the end, I think is an essential part of delivering an exceptional candidate experience. So I think there’s a ton of things that AI are going to improve in the hiring process, and I think make the recruiters job different. But I don’t think it’s going to replace them entirely.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 12:53
So I mean, I’m loving this. So we’re talking about and I love the fact Mark, you did a little play, there was subtle, you’re keeping the human and human resources, right. That’s the lie. It’s an old line. But I think I think the watcher sort of holds. I am curious, if AI is hiring AI, are they going to put pay, like pay ranges within the AI postings? Are they is there going to be fair, fair compensation and no bias? Will they like will AI be bias of other AI? Too soon?

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 13:22
I think that, okay, that’s what I’ve through that logic, right. So I’m sure we’re going to talk about bias. So what matters is the data set that you’re training these models on, which is inherently biased, and we’ll get to I’m sure wherever AI should take decisions in the hiring process, which I’d be terrified open files and employer

Chris Hoyt, CXR 13:40
laws now, right that have come out. We’re seeing more of you just had a tremendous amount right in your backyard. We’ve had one state that did such a shitty job that has delivered a version sort of a version of that, that I think there were like seven iteration. So there is some of that already happening.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 13:57
Yeah, totally. And, and look, I think their AI can be fantastic in identifying talent that potentially you would have missed, right? So something that we’re thinking a lot about is skill, taxonomies, and how you think about relationships between different skills. And there’s a lot of models that you can build off the back of that, that is really interesting, which when you then layer in, you know, the challenge of BNI, which is often about increasing top of funnel, you know, there’s some really interesting ways it can do that, where I’d be really skeptical or, quite frankly, scared as an employer is if I’m using AI to take the final hiring decision, when there have been some horror stories, both in our fields with one of the very, very big tech companies who, I won’t say who, but they run with Shammas on or something like that. You know, they, you know, had an example where, you know, they were using AI to take home decisions and ended up being very biased and they had to reverse a lot of that, and is our example so I think this is Really interesting applications of AI, in actually time identification and pipelining, and all of that. But I’d be very anxious about using AI to take final hiring decisions.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 15:09
Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, some will argue that AI is could eliminate the bias, right. And hiring by making it by making it purely data driven, which I think is what you’re kind of saying, but but others are warning to your point that AI can also sort of perpetuate, or maybe even blow out maybe an amplify existing biases. Now, do you have thoughts a little more specifically on how AI might impact bias and hiring and how it could be used responsibly to maybe mitigate that risk?

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 15:40
Yeah, so I think it ultimately comes down to who is taking the final hiring decision. If it’s a human taking the hiring decision, we are inherently bias creatures. And therefore, we need to be incredibly mindful of that and go for all of the right training and rigor and all of that, that we’re very aware of in our space. I think where the risk in AI is, if you’re using it to recommend candidates to take decisions on candidates, and your AI model that you’re using is trained on a biased data set. So let’s just say for example, in the world of technology, we know that gender representation is very poor. In the last survey I read, there’s like 9% of software engineers, globally a female. Therefore, the if you’re going to train a model on that data set, it is inherently going to be skewed to characteristics of people that are represented in that dataset, which in this instance, would be 91%. Male. So therefore, if we do a better job of creating more female software engineers over the next 510 years, but you’re using a model that was trained on a data set that was 91%, male, it is going to be biased to those females entering, you know, that talent pool. So I think that’s where we need to be very, very mindful is, all of this AI innovation, all of the LLM ‘s that are being built, fundamentally come back to the training data set that these models are being built on, right. And that’s where companies really need to understand the vendors they’re using, or if they’re building it in house, you know, how they think about that data set, if they’re using it to take decisions?

Chris Hoyt, CXR 17:05
Well, I mean, it’s all it’s doing is, is recruiting or in a more generic sense, making decisions based on how you’ve taught it to make decisions. So if you’re using examples that are even, you know, this level of biases you’re not even aware of, you’re still incorporating it into that machine learning.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 17:23
Yeah totally. And by the way, all these MLMs are trying to replicate the human brain. And by the way, as internal recruiters, oh, my screens gone black, this is great, because this is like I still, I still don’t know what happened that my screen just went black.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 17:42
The machines are coming mark, they hear you in the mission.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 17:46
That’s it, Bill Gates is not happier saying that I just said, I’m joking. I’m a big fan. So yeah, like these MLMs are trying to replicate the human brain and a lot of like, the way it’s structured, etc. But if you think about an internal recruiter and how we screen TVs, we’re also inherently biased. You know, we’ve got pattern recognition that we follow, we look at company logos that we know, universities or colleges that we know. So bias is a big problem, whether you’re using humans or machines in this process. Like I said, I’m really excited about where you can use machines in the process to identify talent, that the human would not be able to process that level of data to identify in first place. Yeah. And that’s why I’m excited. Well, it’s a volume game

Chris Hoyt, CXR 18:25
too. I think also right to headcount a numbers game, but so let’s pivot on what you just said in regards to that, that either EQ, if you will, so. So I think as AI becomes more advanced, right gets better, it is becoming more capable of understanding and evaluating human traits, like love to point creativity, or emotional intelligence, or maybe maybe even leadership potential. So how do you see those developments, right, that evolution affecting the role of real life flesh and blood recruiters that that are running that hiring process?

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 19:07
So I think this space is evolving very quickly. So it’s gonna be all redundant in six months time. But I think from what you see today, I think every knowledge worker will have a copilot, and that copilot is going to be one of these other lens that are trained on different datasets that when you’re interviewing a candidate in real time might prompt you to say, Hang on, you should dig into that question a little bit more deeper, or, you know, I’ve listened to this whole interview, and this is my conclusion, how does it vary? First, your conclusion. And when we’re sourcing talent, it’s going to be the same. And when we’re scheduling interviews, it’s going to be the same. And I think every knowledge worker is going to have one of these co pilots, person assistants, whatever you want to call that will fundamentally make them so much more effective at the job. So I believe that a team enabled of the right technology in the TA well might manage three or five times the volume of requisitions that their previous team did, because of this efficiency they can get from a cope Buy that style model.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 20:01
Yeah, I do think and you mentioned a Bill Gates or I think we were talking to somebody in the greenroom, I do think it was Bill Gates who had said recently that the the first, the first company to nail the assistant, the personal assistant aspect of it, and I don’t remember where he said it, but was going to be the one to win that that was going to be the that was going to be the organization that sort of wins the AI race.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 20:24
So a lot of this is not my idea. So I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts this weekend, which is called the Odin show, which is like for for VCs discussing this. And, and they were having this exact debate and obviously like to chat GPT bards, I think Mustapha from Deep Mind is trying to build one, they are going for the super system like that is going to be your all in one. Anything that you want, you just put up that and it sorts that out. And the debate that we’re having is, is it going to be a super assistant? Or is it going to be very specific vertical assistance? And actually, you flip the model completely. And David Freeburg, one of the hosts of the podcast gave this example where as the human becomes the node on the network, and then we dip into the network, and we want to use our different verbs and assistance. Because ultimately, what do we really want to give up all of our data to one of the super assistants? Like we’ve seen what happened on social media? Do we want to keep giving away data? Or instead, am I gonna have a vertical System for Travel, you know, that, you know, when I need to travel, I’m gonna go to that assistant. And then for recruitment, when I’m doing my recruitment job, we’re gonna go to that assistant, versus, you know, something else. Now, there’s going to be obviously lots of debates on both sides. But I think that’s going to be really interesting to see is the verticalization versus

Chris Hoyt, CXR 21:34
so I’m laughing market. I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because so this is kind of an interesting, so he so European saying, Do we really want to give them all of our data? And then the Americans and I’m like, Shut up and take my data, like it makes make my job easier. I think

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 21:53
I’ve grown up in a GDPR. World, Chris, what can I say? I’m haunted by this point. I’m calling to fire.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 21:59
Oh, I think well, it’s tough. I mean, it is an interesting sort of interesting place to be. And I guess, I mean, it’s such a lazy response. But I guess, where do we like we’ll see. Like this?

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 22:13
Yes, I think it was so early in this. And you know, it’s evolving so quickly. Like I said, it’s really captured the imagination. We’re actually running an AI hackathon this weekend with a business in the UK called Mind Stone, because it’s so exciting. Like, we just want to see, you know, what are the different things that people are going to build in a week and it’s not recruitment focus, it’s just interesting right now. So if I had to bet I, the super assistant is a bit like the the Jarvis Ironman Northstar, where we want to get to right, we get to this, like, genuine AI, that is so good. I think we’re probably going to go through quite a lot of iterations to get there. And I wouldn’t be surprised in the meantime, if the vertical players end up doing really well. And vertical players are all going to be data. And they’re going to be the ones that have got the best data set. Like the ideas. And the travel examples are probably the best examples right now of the booking.com, and Expedia, etc, which are all fundamentally powered from a data source. Like they don’t own the data, they provide a really great UI layer on top, and actually is all the value going to go down to the data layer to provide these really great vertical assistance. So if I had to be a betting person, I would gamble that over the next 1224 36 months, we’re going to see very, very good vertical assistance. Whilst the likes of chat, GBT, Google’s Bard, etc, keep going for the super system.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 23:32
Yeah, and you raise it, you raise a really interesting point about the beta, excuse me the data to because some of the vendors that I’ve spoken to who’ve gotten these new GPT solutions, right, I’m not talking about all the ones at the events who say, We’re the first ever to have chat GPT baked in, we exclusively can do this with AI. I’m talking to folks who are trying to build something out like an assistant or like a, like a recruiting AI solution. The ones I’ve spoken to have their own servers of data that they have scraped, and they’ve pulled in. But that is a tremendous, tremendous thing to store and, and collect and update, especially when you’re talking about being useful to recruiters. Because we need all the data, we need all the people’s data, and it has to be current. And by the way, I’ve got a million people in my ATS I need their data to and it needs to be updated. Please can you make that updated for me also. So it will be really interesting, at least from my perspective to see who wins that because is it mark? Is it a race of data not necessarily the evolution of AI but the race of being able to serve that data up? Well have it great but habit answer.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 24:41
The first winner of this is the chip makers because they’re the ones that are setting the chips, the GPUs that are training all these models. So if you’re an invidious step shareholder at the start this year, congratulations. Oh.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 24:55
And in a video goes through the roof.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 24:57
Right so they’re the winners right now. I think that the the trend is that these large language models are getting smaller and smaller and smaller in like memory size and therefore be able to be trained in more cost effective ways than they have done before. I’m interested in like the concept of like, whether it’s vertical language models or small language models that are using very specific inheritance recruitment data, to then train their models and make recommendations, I’m certain and look, we’re very excited about the data that we’ve got, because we’ve generated a lot of first party data in the last eight years, that somebody is going to do something really exciting in our space by using first party data to build a really great recommendation engine. And I think that’s what it’s going to be the unlock that. And I think the other innovation that’s happened is that the UI layer, you know, one of the magical experiences with one of these assistants, bar GPT, etc, is the interaction, we’ve turned the UX of the Internet into a dialogue with a computer. And it makes sense, like, how long Chris, have we been talking about chatbots in recruitment, you know, and just been terrible. They’ve just been terrible. But now we can actually have a dialogue with the computer. So I think there’s a UI innovation at the dialogue level. And then I think the datasets are going to be what’s really interesting to see what ends up getting built in this space,

Chris Hoyt, CXR 26:07
I’m going to throw a little bit of a curveball at you. Because it’s only slightly rated. I’ve always had a theory that two things have really driven the evolution on online, right, like from the internet standpoint, and maybe it’s a little bit different now. But over the last number of decades, it’s been pornography, right? And video games, from how packets get handled online internet streams packets for anybody who’s listening, kids at home, right? The speed of the Internet, the usability, right? The UX of the website, and how things get managed, and how you download and how that like the priorities. It has driven evolution in that space. On the video game fracks, I’m not touching the porn front. But on the video games, I saw a video the other day. There’s plenty of AI on the other side, but we’re gonna stick in the video game piece for this work. I’ve watched a short video where the player rolls up to to an NPC. Right? So non non playing character. So this is an in game character, not a real person on the other end, and ask the question, unrelated to the quest, or the mission that they’re on, and has just a conversation, an AI driven conversation with this character doesn’t have anything to do with the game. That dynamic I think this AI revolution that we’re seeing will have ripples that we can’t even begin to predict in the space everywhere. And I think that that same when the aha moment I had was like, wow, I could sit for 45 minutes and have a conversation with this guy and his his you know, waffle stand in this video game, and go nowhere, just burn time all day, and still have a great time. The AHA moment is oh my god, there’s there’s gonna be 50 things we haven’t even imagined in the TA space that are coming with this AI innovation. So

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 27:59
100% Yeah. And I think this is why it’s so exciting. You know, like, you know, I’ve been doing this for eight years. And I’m like, Wow, I’m more energized than I ever have been, and challenging our product teams more than I ever have done. Because I’m like, yeah, maybe we should fundamentally reimagine what sourcing could look like what interaction could look like, what interviewing could look like, and, you know, to go between the video games and pornography, that interaction, the video game is so good, I’m terrified. What’s going to happen with like dating? Are people just going to end up having like AI, husbands and AI wives, and they never need to get out into the real world and date again, because these interactions are so good. They’re so human. It’s going to be really interesting. My aha moment was when I was at one of the conference’s that last week. And, and the person was talking about some of the prompts that are getting created for video, and I don’t want my laptop keeps closing downstair apologies. And it’s because it’s like you said, it’s not going to be edited. And I know that it’s just my computer. And so you know, what’s getting created in the AI images and AI video? And, and what triggered in my mind was, how often do you sit in front of Netflix and scroll for 1520 25 minutes trying to find something to watch. And actually, we could get to a point where content is created on a one to one basis. And I could be like, I want to watch a movie like Moneyball, but make it about football, or soccer, as you guys call it. And I want man united to feature and I want us to end up winning at the ends, right? And it might just create me a one on one movie like that. And it’s like, wow, now you’ve just completely reimagined Hollywood and what it means to be a movie producer or video artist or whatever. So I’m with you, man. I think it’s going to be incredibly, incredibly exciting to see what gets built over the coming months and years.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 29:41
Yeah, I think you’re 100% I think you’re spot on. The innovation is going by the way I call it football now. I just finished season three a deadline. So it’s football. I get it. I’m on board. I’m all on board. But I think you’re 100% right with the AIP we can’t even imagine how it will change sourcing how it will change interviewing, how it will change who we interview and I think Mark I even read something The other day that there are 1000s of people on a waitlist for an AI girlfriend. No way I boyfriends, which is kind of odd, but an AI girlfriend. So I mean, this changes, this changes everything as we go forward. So I think it’s so important to get legislature on board to get we mentioned full full circle, right? We come all the way back, we talked about, you know, their legislators or their their government officials making laws about AI who can’t even operate their own phones efficiently. So we’re in a weird place, we’re in kind of a scary place, but at the same time, like, Man, I’m excited. I’m kind of pumped for what this means.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 30:34
Yeah, absolutely. And the regulation is going to be important. The UK have just done surprisingly well. They’ve just appointed one of the best tech entrepreneurs of the last decade to run the AI task force here, which every now and then I’m like, well, we maybe do know what we’re doing in this country occasionally, possibly. So that was awesome. But you’re right, that we need sensible governance, we need sensible legislation. But it needs to be designed by people that deeply understand this space and don’t have the wrong incentives. Because if you let big tech regulate this, well, they’re going to put up so many hurdles that no new entrants can come in. So we’ve got to be very, very mindful of that. But we’ve got to find the right regulation and the right controls, because as excited as we are, Chris, there’s also going to be some horror stories in our world about AI, how AI is used over the coming months and years for sure. So you know, I think that taking that slightly cautious approach is going to be important for for end customers and companies.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 31:28
Yeah, I think you’re 100% Mark. Look, we asked this of all the guests that we actually enjoy having on. So I’m gonna go ahead and ask you, if you are going to write a book today, man, what would the title of that book be?

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 31:40
Yeah, then this is the hard question for a guy that hasn’t done a load a podcast and it feels like a very podcast question. So there’s two that came to mind. So I’m a gut instinct for this, this sort of this sort of question. So the first one comes to mind is obsessive by nature.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 31:56
Okay, provocative.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 31:59
We very obsessive person, like when I get into something, I’m all in so like, Hackajob and tech recruitment, red wine, and Man United is basically my life like that is the things I’m obsessive about. So that is the first thing that came to mind. I

Chris Hoyt, CXR 32:13
I love your team. Your red wine, not so much.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 32:18
Some Napa Valley cup SAVs we’ll take some Italian board over we’ll say we’ll mix it up. Don’t know what the book would be about. You just asked for the title. So there’s the title. The second one that comes I was relentless. That’s my favorite word is relentless. So again, I have no idea what the book could be about but that’d be my title.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 32:35
I love it. Well look present company excluded. Mark who gets the first signed copy

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 32:43
Ferguson, the greatest sports coach of all time, so he’s Man United, like iconic manager managed us for over 30 years won everything there is to win the Best Sports Coach of all time, better than any of your NFL legends or anything like that. So first time copy is going to Scitex Ferguson.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 32:59
I love it. I love it. Mark. I want to thank you so much. You’re busy, busy guy. I want to thank you for dialing in giving us your time. Much much gratitude. My man.

Mark Chaffey, Hackajob 33:08
Chris, thank you so much. Dude, this has been a lot of fun, man. Appreciate it.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 33:11
This is fun. Don’t go anywhere. We’ll put you in the greenroom. Hang out, hang out for me. Well, yeah. All right, there he goes. Thanks so much. All right, Mark Chaffey look. Really quickly. Just a reminder, I’ll even put it up on the screen. cxr.org/events. So we had a lot of stuff going on. We went back to live meetings in person meetings this year, we’ve got over 100 virtual meetings that are taking place, we’ve got monthly lectures that are going on at CXR. Super excited about those. We got some coming up. We just just did one on culture in the workplace. If you’re a CXR member, you can go ahead and get in and watch those back a full year. I think we’re at we’re at now almost two years of these monthly lectures. They are phenomenal. So check out past events. You can check out all that stuff in the library. You can also check out CXR.works/events, and you can see what’s going on within your community. With that. I’m gonna let everybody go have a fantastic week and watch out for the robots.

CXR Announcer 34:04
Thanks for listening to the CXR channel. Please subscribe to CXR on your favorite podcast resource and leave us a review while you’re at it. Learn more about CXR at our website CXR.works facebook.com and twitter.com/CareerXroads and on Instagram @CareerXroads. We’ll catch you next time.