Last week I attended my first face to face HR and Recruiting Technology conference for two and half years. UNLEASH America took place in Las Vegas and was an incredible mix of great content and the opportunity to meet the really innovative technology vendors in our space.
One of the most interesting keynote sessions was a panel debate on the ethics and legal responsibility for using AI in recruiting. The panel was hosted by my fellow podcasters, Joel Cheesman and Chad Sowash of The Chad & Cheese show, so I caught up with them afterwards on the expo floor to find out more and get their views on the future of the industry.
In the interview, we discuss:
• The return of face to face conferences and events
• AI and The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
• What the future might look like
Interview transcript:
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Matt Alder (1m 5s):
Hi there. This is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 439 of the Recruiting Future Podcast. Last week, I attended my first face-to-face HR and Recruiting Technology conference for two and half years. UNLEASH America took place in Las Vegas and was an incredible mix of great content and the opportunity to meet really innovative technology vendors in our space. One of the most interesting keynote sessions was a panel debate on the ethics and legal responsibility for using AI in recruiting. The panel was hosted by my fellow podcasters, Joel Cheesman and Chad Sowash of The Chad and Cheese show, do I caught up with them afterwards on the expo floor to find out more and get their views on the future of the industry.
Matt Alder (1m 54s):
For anyone who’s listening, it’s happy hour at UNLEASH. They’ve run out of Corona, which is a serious issue.
Joel Cheesman (2m 1s):
Who’s better at happy hour? The Brits or the Americans?
Matt Alder (2m 2s):
Now, that’s a whole conversation with that.
Joel Cheesman (2m 4s):
Is that a whole conversion?
Matt Alder (2m 5s):
Yes.
Chad Sowash (2m 5s):
He always says that. Matt’s like, “I’ve got a podcast for that.”
Matt Alder (2m 6s):
I don’t have one about happy hour, but maybe I should have one.
Chad Sowash (2m 10s):
You should.
Joel Cheesman (2m 11s):
Happy hour with that British guy.
Matt Alder (2m 12s):
Yes, absolutely. Anyway, we’re here at UNLEASH. It’s happy hour. Everyone’s got a beer. Just watched an excellent panel with Chad and Cheese onstage talking to the US government, which is not something I expected to see. We’re currently sitting in front of their big, very pink sign, and they have their own lounge area here. This is obviously you.
Joel Cheesman (2m 31s):
It’s the pod bit.
Matt Alder (2m 32s):
Guys, it’s a pleasure to have you on this very impromptu show.
Joel Cheesman (2m 35s):
It’s a pleasure to be here.
Matt Alder (2m 36s):
Just invented. First question, live events. Are they bad? What do we think?
Chad Sowash (2m 40s):
Dude, Joel and I, earlier this month, were in Belgium for a house of HRs, and we were astonished by the energy, not just from us, because Belgium beer, give me a break, but from everybody. We thought there’d be like 150 people. There were 400 plus. It was ecstatic, it was electric, and then we come in here today and I thought Joel was going to faint because he was so excited to be back in like an expo hall.
Joel Cheesman (3m 8s):
Well, first it’s Vegas and have that be a little excited to be in Vegas.
Matt Alder (3m 12s):
That’s true.
Joel Cheesman (3m 14s):
Yes, the house of HR was more of a straight conference as opposed to an expo, which this is mostly expo with sessions sprinkled in. If you’ve been to the Only Show in Paris, which I’m assuming some of your listeners have, you know the energy, but yes, it’s been two plus years since I’ve walked into an expo hall. In 2019, I would have said to myself, “I hope I never see another expo hall in my life.”
Chad Sowash (3m 37s):
That’s because we were on 20 stages.
Joel Cheesman (3m 38s):
I was so sick of expo halls, booths, magicians, mimes, and whatever. Chad’s right, we walked in and it was like big ones in the front, the lights, the energy, the salespeople ready to pitch you their product. I was geeked.
Chad Sowash (3m 52s):
He was down.
Joel Cheesman (3m 53s):
I’m still geeked.
Chad Sowash (3m 55s):
Absolutely.
Joel Cheesman (3m 55s):
It’s great to be back. I missed your world.
Matt Alder (3m 56s):
Absolutely. I think it really underlines because we’ve been doing this virtually for a couple of years with zoom and all the very good technology that people have invented to try and replicate this, but I think that this really underlines just how important face-to-face is in terms of human interaction, meeting people, chanting cancers, and all that stuff. Do you think that we are heading to a hybrid world in terms of events? Is the online stuff staying?
Chad Sowash (4m 27s):
Yes, I don’t know. I think we need to start looking at online as content because everybody’s trying to do like live shows. It’s like, no, this is going to be like on demand. You should be recording this. It should be more Netflixy. It should be something that you can binge, you can go through. You can get your recruiters on or your staff on to actually watch. I think what we tried to do with online was just emulate what we did in the real world and it’s not the same. I think we know that now.
Matt Alder (4m 59s):
Yes, absolutely. Now, I was talking about the panel that you’ve just done. It’s such a fascinating topic. It was all about AI. You had someone from the US government onstage. It was very impressive, and someone running talent acquisition. It was a great combination. Tell us about the panel. Why that topic, why now, and what did you learn from doing it?
Joel Cheesman (5m 20s):
Well, for one, every booth in this show has either AI in the name, in the booth, in the collateral pieces, or the PowerPoint that’s in permanent rotation in the booth. AI is on top of everyone’s mind. It’s on everyone’s shopping list and there are risks in buying AI in America as well as Europe. We felt it was really important to say, “Look, AI is great. Everyone’s touting it. Everyone’s shouting it from the mountain tops, but let’s be careful. Let’s not discriminate. Let’s have a big tent to let everybody in and make sure that technology isn’t keeping people out.” What better guests to bring on the show then the commissioner of the EOC to come on with us and talk about these issues and provide some clarity to questions that employers have these days.
Chad Sowash (6m 9s):
Everybody is either slapping AI on everything from a platform standpoint, but they’re also slapping DEI on every platform that’s out there. As Joel talks about bias, it’s like, “Okay, let’s talk about what could perspectively happen at scale and to be able to have a practitioner and also somebody from the EOC. Keith is not your normal government employee or spokesman. He literally wants to get out there in and talk to the crowds about these perspective dangers, and provide guidance, and then also help them understand what enforcement looks like, which is the carrot or the stick.
Matt Alder (6m 48s):
Did you see the keynote this morning or are you busy podcasting? It was Mark Blythe, academic. I think he’s professor of international political economics or something like that. First of all, he was Scottish and it’s brilliant to see someone Scottish opening an American company.
Joel Cheesman (7m 10s):
I sense a little bias in your love for this guy as an EU resident.
Matt Alder (7m 13s):
Report me to the EOC immediately. He was very funny, but, interestingly, he was really underlining what’s actually changed, what the pandemic has actually changed, what the next 10 years looks like for the industry. There was a positive message in terms of it being a massive opportunity for TA and HR, but as you would imagine, lots of negatives, lots of challenges, and things like that. We find ourselves such a disruptive time with everything that’s going on. I know that you guys are very close to the industry in terms of who you talked to what you do. What’d you think is going to happen?
Matt Alder (7m 54s):
How is the world that we’re going through now? We have wars, economic crisis, inflation, and all these things. How’s that affecting our industry and how’s that going to shape the next few years? It’s not a small question, obviously. Yes. I don’t have to think long on this one
Joel Cheesman (8m 10s):
Subdivided by
Chad Sowash (8m 11s):
You take a look at the landscape today. We know that everything is bloated, it’s inflated, and there’s going to be some type of a pop, some type of a bubble burst. I think this is incredibly important for employers right now to be able to take a look at automation so that, first and foremost, they’re keeping their recruiters happy. The recruiters aren’t doing all this crazy “administrivia”. Allow the system and the process to do that and then allow your recruiters to do what they really enjoy doing, which is working with people. That’s not what they’ve done for the past decade or so.
Chad Sowash (8m 52s):
This is a great way for us to step into the age of automatic automation and not say that it’s going to take jobs because everybody who says that, I think they’re just fear-mongering to be quite frank.
Joel Cheesman (9m 9s):
Chad and I are really old and we’ve been through two cycles.
Chad Sowash (9m 12s):
Speak for yourself.
Joel Cheesman (9m 13s):
You’re a day older than me. Okay, so we’ve been through two of these and this one is similar, but also very different. I’ll speak to what I think is different because I think it’s the most relevant. What’s different is the number of diverse companies trying to solve a myriad of problems. In 2008, when the world came to an end, everyone was mostly a job board or an ATS. That was about it. Today, we have so many different technologies, so many smaller companies that are more agile, companies that have raised a ton of money and can outlast whatever the downturn is. What I think you’re going to see is companies that do suffer, those are going to be done by the apex predators and they’ll be gone.
Joel Cheesman (10m 0s):
The other thing that’ll happen is if you’re not best in breed, you’re going to lose and you’re going to get gobbled up or go out of business. Let’s look at conversational AI for a second. I’m famous on our show for calling Paradox the apex predator, right? If you can’t provide a conversational AI product on par with Paradox in this environment, you’re going to lose. The buyer is now going to go with best of breed because they know they’re going to be in business, they’re going to survive the downturn. What are going to see at the end of this is companies that were strong today are going to be stronger at the end of it.
Joel Cheesman (10m 44s):
Companies that are weak are going to be either gobbled up or disappear. Companies that have the money that can outlast, it will obviously outlast it. At the end of day, we’ll have a healthier environment of good companies that survive and should have survived and will thrive in the future. The cycle will repeat itself. We’ll have more new technology come in, more startups, and more money come into the space.
Matt Alder (11m 4s):
I just want to end by talking about your podcast because there may be some people listening to this podcast who don’t listen to the Chad and Cheese.
Chad Sowash (11m 15s):
Oh, shut your mouth.
Matt Alder (11m 17s):
I said there may be. Look back over the last year or so. This is a horrible question to ask because if someone asked me, it’d be really annoying, but who’s been your favorite guest over the last 12 months? Your favorite two guests for you’re most interesting guest?
Joel Cheesman (11m 35s):
Over the last year?
Matt Alder (11m 36s):
Yes, over the last year.
Chad Sowash (11m 37s):
Wow, that’s hard. I got to look at our guests.
Joel Cheesman (11m 40s):
Chad’s looking at the archives.
Matt Alder (11m 41s):
I can’t remember who I had on.
Chad Sowash (11m 42s):
We do three shows a week, so it’s hard.
Joel Cheesman (11m 45s):
Something you wouldn’t be familiar with, Matt.
Matt Alder (11m 47s):
I don’t three shows a week but you know what? This week, I’m doing three shows.
Joel Cheesman (11m 52s):
I’m trying to get you upset.
Matt Alder (11m 54s):
Oh, okay. I don’t get upset.
Chad Sowash (11m 55s):
He’s always trying.
Matt Alder (11m 55s):
Yes, I’m doing three shows this week.
Joel Cheesman (11m 55s):
I’ll make it easy and say Keith Sondra Ling, commissioner of the EOC, has been our best and favorite guest over the last year. That was a big get for us and he’s great. He’s awesome.
Chad Sowash (12m 8s):
Yes, yes. I don’t know. Man, it’s just a hard question. I think we’ve had a ton of amazing guests. The thing that we’ve tried to focus on is getting more females on. I think Cindy O’young who’s just on.
Joel Cheesman (12m 22s):
She’s my next stop. CHRO of a Robinhood.
Chad Sowash (12m 24s):
She was amazing. Just much like you, Matt, we try our damnedest to get a lot of those voices that aren’t being heard out there. Right now, you probably get as many as I do. I get like 10 to 20 requests a day and those are generally not great speakers. We spent a lot of time going out and looking for those individuals. I think one like Cindy, we lucked out getting her.
Joel Cheesman (13m 5s):
It’s like picking your favorite child.
Matt Alder (13m 7s):
Yes, I know. It’s a really unfair question because people ask me that question and I can’t answer it. I thought I’d ask it to you just to get some revenge on the universe.
Joel Cheesman (13m 18s):
It’s a lazy question.
Matt Alder (13m 19s):
Final question. Again, another lazy, but
Chad Sowash (13m 32s):
Really, to me, just how excited I was to be able to be back. Seriously, probably the first two hours, we did nothing, but greet people, listeners, friends. It was like a reunion. To me, I knew that it was going to be exciting. I knew there was going to be some energy, but there was just so much more than I expected.
Joel Cheesman (13m 58s):
Yes, I’d agree. Our day mostly outside of the keynote and the final session was reconnecting with friends that we have not done so in two years. I’ll echo my co-host’s sentiments that just the level of excitement, the attendance, the amount of money that vendors are putting in to having nice booths and presentations was great. I didn’t know what to expect. We’d been to UNLEASH in Paris, which is epic. The US show is not on that level. Although, I think, it’s getting there. It’s getting step by step closer to that. To have this in America, knowing what UNLEASH in Paris is and see that it’s getting on par with what we see in Paris was really exciting for me.
Matt Alder (14m 47s):
Absolutely. I think, the whole thing really illustrates how important these face-to-face shows are in terms of moving the industry forward, people-making connections, and just some of the great conversations that we’ve had.
Joel Cheesman (14m 59s):
Amen.
Matt Alder (14m 59s):
Joe, Chad, thank you very much for talking to me. We out.
Joel Cheesman (15m 1s):
We out
Matt Alder (15m 1s):
My thanks to Chad and Cheese and everyone at UNLEASH. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for Recruiting Future. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com. On that site, you can also subscribe to the mailing list to get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks so much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
