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If you listened to the TA Leader interviews in Episode 619, you’d know that Recruiting Future recently collaborated with The Chad & Cheese podcast to host two face-to-face unconference-style events in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
On the day between the two events, we decided to combine podcast recording with tourism. What better way to do this than to use a campervan as a mobile recording studio and drive around the southeast of Scotland, taking in some of its world-famous coastal views? Well, that was the plan anyway.
Our plans took an unexpected turn as the weather had other ideas. But this led to some exciting impromptu discussions on AI and the future of work, sparked by a tour of a two-hundred-year-old whisky distillery, a flying visit to a seven-hundred-year-old castle, and a trip to the beach.
In this episode, we discuss:
• Is the resume dead?
• What’s going on with skills-based hiring
• The differences and similarities between talent acquisition in Scotland and talent acquisition in the US
• Attitudes to risk
• The tricky balance between robots and humans
• What does the long-term future look like
• Do we have the right attitude towards the future as an industry?
• AI is already taking TA jobs.
• Why smaller employers may have an advantage
• What happens when AI is just baked into everything?
• What is going to change in the next three years
Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Transcript:
Matt: Support for this special episode of Recruiting Future comes from Daxtra, Willow, Solutions Driven, Ashby, Gigged.AI, Poetry, and TAtech. Thanks to all of them for making our Scottish events possible and helping to facilitate the excellent conversations that created this episode of the podcast. So, the sponsors again, Daxtra, Willow, Solutions Driven, Ashby, Gigged.AI, Poetry, and TAtech.
[Recruiting Future theme]
Matt: Hi there, welcome to Episode 621 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. If you’ve listened to the TA Leader interviews in Episode 619, you’ll know that Recruiting Future recently collaborated with The Chad & Cheese Podcast to host two face-to-face unconference style events in Edinburgh and Glasgow. On the day between the two events, we decided to combine podcast recording with tourism. What better way to do this than to use a campervan as a mobile recording studio and drive around the southeast of Scotland, taking in some of its world-famous coastal views? Well, that was the plan anyway.
As it turned out, the weather had other plans for us. But a tour of a 200-year-old whisky distillery, a flying visit to a 700-year-old castle, and a trip to the beach sparked some unexpected but fascinating discussions on AI and the future of work.
Set the scene for us. Tell everyone where we are and what you’re doing right now.
Joel: We are at the, I’ll probably mispronounce, Glenkinchie Distillery. We are near Edinburgh. It’s a very rural scene, but not sort of Midwest rural. Think of hedgerows and think of stone walls from the 1200s and old houses with 80 chimneys sticking out of them. Lovely, lovely green backdrop. I feel like we’re going to be filming the latest episode of Downton Abbey or the next Harry Potter movie somewhere nearby.
Matt: We’ve been doing some whisky tasting. I’ve been driving, so I have takeaway. I can drink that later. And you’re currently doing– So, what are you drinking right now? Tell us. Talk us through.
Chad: I have a Sherry flight, so I have beautiful color, beautiful sweetness on the sherry side of the house. But then we’ve got this craziness of, I think I see smoke coming out of yours, Cheeseman. I’m not sure.
Joel: Yeah, I think Satan poured these himself. I went with the Smokey flight. And for those of you who’ve not indulged in the peaty, smoky scotches, you’re really missing out, I think, although that’s a personal choice.
Chad: Look at that color though,
Matt: Just to give some context. You’ve come from Glasgow this morning. We did True Glasgow yesterday, which was–
Chad: Be a train, much faster.
Matt: Absolutely. And then I picked you up in our crazy podcasting campervan-
Chad: Scooby Doo mystery machine.
Matt: -at Edinburgh. Joel made the wrong pickup point, so we had to go across town-
Chad: As usual.
Matt: -to get him.
Joel: Well, how many BrewDog can you have in one city within a two-mile radius?
Chad: Not only that, but he even told you, “This is the BrewDog to go to.” And you’re like, “I think I’m at the wrong BrewDog.”
Joel: Did I mention I’m on day four of debauchery?
Chad: Ah–
Matt: And, yeah, we’re doing a little tour today, [Chad laughs] so we’re going to do three recordings as we go around. And this is the distillery stop. But, yeah, so True Glasgow yesterday, we had around 50 people from the Scottish TA community come out and, yeah, it was a great afternoon, some great conversations, some lively discussion, a bit of debate and, yeah, really, really interesting.
Joel: So, let’s set the stage. This was what is known as an unconference.
Matt: That’s right.
Joel: Which means pretty much anything goes, which again if you add two Americans with 50 Scots, things are going to get a little crazy. So, we had some speakers who were TA leaders at companies that some people may know, may not know for the most part, yeah. The schedule is sort of fluid, as we found out, but each one has a certain topic, they discuss it, and it’s free for all of commentary questions. Chad and I were both running to the mic. I think I lost two or three pounds, which was good for me, running the mic to different folks, but just set the stage for what an unconference is. It’s not the PowerPoint presentation.
Matt: No, absolutely. It was half-an-hour sessions with a kind of a lead– [crosstalk].
Chad: And you’ve done true conferences before, right? And we were virgins.
Matt: Yeah, way back when Bill came up with the idea, Bill Boorman, should give him a name check.
Chad: Yeah.
Matt: Yeah. I’ve done a few of them before and this was a particularly good one. And I think it’s just, you pick a topic, you have someone who talks on that topic to start the track, and then you’ll discuss it. And I think there was some great opinions coming from the floor, a bit of debate. I mean, there were lots of topics that we discussed, but what were the sort of standout ones for you that came out of the conversation?
Joel: So, the classic, “The CV is dead,” or for our American friends, “The resume is dead.” We’ve been having that conversation for almost 20 years now. It’s still alive and kicking from what I can tell. So, some conversation around that. Obviously, automation was a topic point. I think every country, at least in the advanced world, is dealing with the automation questions. Who’s going to have a job who isn’t? I think there were some pressure points around. Yes, there will be fewer recruiters. However, there will be new jobs around, marketing, data analysts, data scientists that don’t exist today that are there because of recruiting.
And there was a little bit of a lively conversation around, do employee reviews, particularly Glassdoor still make a difference or still matter? But, yeah, a lot of lively conversation all around. But those were a few points that stuck out for me.
Matt: Yeah, I think the one that I’d add to that stuck out for me was the whole skills-based hiring conversation, very sort of typical of any event that we go to. Everyone wants to talk about it, but there was a bit of honesty in the room about how difficult it is and people are not making progress, the progress with it that perhaps they might claim externally. And a lot of debate about what it was, what it is and how it’s useful, but a real consensus that it is the way forward. There was no one who raised an objection to the direction of travel. There was a lot of talk about it’s a struggle to get there, where are we with this really, and what is it practical to do?
Chad: Yeah, I think it has to revolve around proof, and that’s the hard part, because you can get a resume that says you’re an expert in everything, but where’s the proof, right? Just because it’s on a piece of paper doesn’t mean that you and you might be able to talk around the issue, but can you perform and demonstrate that you can actually do that skill? And then back to “Will AI take our jobs?” I mean, this is all coming back to a job as literally a series of tasks. And what tasks can be taken and/or done better? Can you perform those tasks? So, when we’re talking about skills-based hiring, first and foremost is we have to understand that there has to be a normalization of the tasks that are performed first and foremost.
And then secondarily, what kind of quick and easy assessment and/or simulations can you pull together to prove that that person can do the job? And nobody talked about that yesterday, which blew my mind. I was sitting there as a dumb American wanting to just like jump out of my seat and say, “There’s no foundation for this,” right?
Matt: There was a little bit, actually, about the kind of things you could assess at interview. There was a little bit of discussion around that. I think it was when the mic had broken down, so maybe you didn’t hear it, but not a lot.
Joel: Some of the presentations were in English, some of them were loosely English. So, Chad may have missed.
Matt: Some of them were in Glaswegian.
Chad: So, I had to concentrate really hard sometimes.
Matt: Yeah. And I have a question for you as well. So, you’ve obviously not been to a recruitment unconference before, but you’ve been around to recruitment events in lots of different places, including London and RecFest and all that sort of stuff. What was the thing that struck you that was different about some of the issues in Scotland or the way that people were talking about the Scottish market?
Joel: I would say maybe just maturity of going down the road with the question of what are we going to do about upskilling, what are we going to do about automation, what are we going to do about these things? I think no matter where you go in the developed world, we’re all grappling with the same questions. There may be some companies and organizations in America that are further down the road of figuring all that out. Scotland and the UK may be a little less further down the road, but I think we’re all struggling with the same questions, and I think we owe a thanks, tongue in cheek, to COVID with work from home and work from anywhere, these questions were predominant anywhere you go in the developed world.
Chad: I think, I think we’re all having the same problems company by company. And I think this is why one of these get-togethers, these conferences are so important, especially these intimate setting conferences, because we can talk about actual execution of how to get from point A to point B or a concept of how to get there. In a lot of these bigger conferences, you get this very strategic outline which nobody can execute on. It’s almost impossible. We get a chance after that to go to the bar, have some snacks, and then literally talk to people about how you execute in doing these things. So, I don’t think that there’s a big difference. There used to be, I think, even pre-COVID, about a five-to-ten-year gap, depending from the American process and tech side of the house to Europe.
I think that is almost gone. I think it’s almost gone. We’re almost in the same place, except for programmatic advertising, where Europe is now starting to get programmatic advertising. But, yeah, at the end of the day, I think this is the thing that kind of warms my heart. We’re all in the same boat at this point. We really are.
Matt: Yeah, I think that’s a really good point because I think if you go back 15 years or so, when I first started going to conferences in the states, I went to learn stuff because there was a massive divide. But now we’ve all got the same technology. Everyone talks about what they’re doing on LinkedIn and socials that it doesn’t matter where you are. It’s a really interesting thing.
Chad: What was yours? What did you think? Because, I mean, you go to the US a lot now, so what’s the biggest difference you see when you’re hopping back and forth across the pond?
Matt: I think, in every country, there are differences in industry and skills and things like that. So, even across Scotland yesterday, we had lots of companies who are mainly employing people in call centers in Glasgow. Tomorrow, we’re going to Edinburgh, we’re going to have lots of financial services companies. We had a company yesterday who had building ships, some really different. So, I think you’ve got kind of different industries and that means different skill shortages and different approaches. I think the other main difference is it’s almost the attitude to risk. So, what I think about the US, and I know this is not a complete picture because this just comes from the people I’ve met at conferences who are-
Chad: Sure, sure.
Matt: -not perhaps indicative of the whole country. But there’s a sense that if a new technology comes along, you jump on board, you use it, you see if it works and then if it breaks, you kind of move on. And I think in Europe, there’s a sense of we’re going to wait and see whether it works first. We want case studies, we want proof, all those kinds of things. And I think what’s interesting now is there’s no time for that. This AI stuff is moving so quickly. You can’t sit back and wait for it to be perfect. And I think that’s a challenge. I think we saw that yesterday. I think we saw people–
Joel: I think it was real yesterday. You mentioned Glasgow and call centers, apparently, that’s a major industry. I mean that’s being automated more so than many other industries. So, I think even at a local level, Glasgow is dealing with what are we going to do with all these folks and call center jobs if AI takes all these opportunities?
Matt: Well, also, we’re at distillery today. We had a great tour of the warehouse. We saw 300 million pounds worth of whisky and tried some great stuff.
Chad: I fell in love, by the way.
Matt: You are?
Chad: I fell in love.
Matt: You fell in love with that?
Chad: Oh, I fell in love-
Matt: With that Cask of 988.
Chad: Oh, yes.
Matt: Yeah. But coming back to the cask thing, one of the most important things about whisky is the barrels. The barrels that it’s matured in. And we were talking about the process, and the barrels are principally now reconditioned and made by robots. And the kind of the artisan job of making the barrel-
Chad: It blew my mind.
Matt: -is just down to the finishings. The humans are now only doing that kind of finishing part of it. So, automation is everywhere, even in the classic craft of making Scottish whisky.
Joel: And does that impact how you feel about the whisky that you drink, knowing that it was made by robots or human beings or does it matter? Obviously, I think I speak for a lot of people, that I want my booze made by an 80-year-old man in a kilt.
[laughter]
Joel: Yeah. I mean, like, I want the story. I want to feel that, that human connection.
Chad: That’s going to go away, though.
Matt: Obviously, we’re talking about something that is mass produced. I mean, this is a lovely old distillery, but it’s owned by Diageo a big global company. But I think it’s that balance between the ability to come to places like this and see how it’s made and there’s obviously technology in that. But there’s also a really deep human aspect to this in terms of, how it’s history, nut also, in terms of the decisions that are made about how things are mixed or how things happen and the robots are just quite dumb in this case.
Joel: Well, the question is, and we talked about this on the way back, is because there will be more robots. Do you think that her Majesty’s or his Majesty’s tax is going to get higher [Matt laughs] because they’re going to be less people that you can tax to be able to act? I mean, there’s got to be a balancing, there’s got to be a square to this, right? Yeah.
Matt: I think that’s the thing. And that was one of the conversations yesterday about you already have AI eating up what was seen as traditional entry level jobs for people’s career, working in banks, working in call centers, and all the stories of the CEO’s who kind of made their way up through the corporate ladder. And it’s just like, where do these people start? So, I think there’s some really interesting decisions that someone’s going to have to make about work.
Joel: That was a great point because there’s always the conversation of, well, the best of the best are still going to have a job. The ones that are menial will not, however, the future cream of the crop, the 24, 25-year-old, how did they get a start? And I think the popular sentiment was they need to be really good at one thing. They need to be the best hammer to add to a toolbox. And when they’re in the toolbox, they need to learn more of tools of the trade.
Chad: And that so hard as a kid,-
Joel: -so hard-
Chad: -to be able to choose-
Joel: -just mentally not even just skills wise.
Chad: I mean even, even at 25, right? Because you’re still literally, especially a guy, you’re a kid, your frontal lobe isn’t even totally formed yet. [laughs] So, I mean, it’s so hard. So, the question is, and Matt talked about this earlier, is that a lot of these companies can’t wait to adopt AI because they can’t worry about the risk they just have to go all in. The same thing’s going to happen for the workforce and kids. They’re going to have to go all in. They’re going to have to pick something. And that to me feels very dystopian, does it not?
Matt: Yeah, I think it’s going to be an interesting time and I think there are just lots of very big questions to answer. And I’m not sure the governments that we currently have set up to think like that or think that far ahead. So, yes, interesting. So, before we wrap this one, tell us about the 1988 whisky that we tried.
Joel: I’m not sure I ever envisioned me making enough money to even try a whisky from 1988. I mean, that was a special treat to be on a tour.
Chad: A scotch yes.
Joel: And actually, have something for my young youth.
Matt: Back when Rick Astley was in the charts the first time around.
Joel: Just amazing. So smooth. I don’t even know how to explain it. I mean, the color was amazing, the viscosity.
Chad: It was lighter than I thought it would be.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Because we had an odor. Yes. Is that the one?
Matt: That’s it. I’ve still got it because I’m driving.
Chad: So, it’s actually darker than I thought it was. It was smooth.
Joel: Yeah. Even if you don’t like whisky, I think you would really like-
Chad: It was smooth.
Joel: -what it was, 1988 Scott.
Matt: So, on that note, we’re going to finish up. We’re going back in time. We’re now going to go to a castle that was built in the 14th century and became a ruin before America was even a thing.
Joel: Quite a while before America was a thing.
[music]
Matt: Hi, it’s Matt, and we will be back to the interview very shortly. In several decades of working in this industry, I’ve never seen a time of greater disruption and change. And we really are still only at the beginning. With technology advancing as quickly as it is now, there’s a tendency to believe that we have no control over the future. This is wrong, and I passionately believe that this is the precise time when we should be inventing the future. I want to see talent acquisition thrive, and I want recruiting to be transformational in getting everyone into the right job for them with the right skills at the right time. So, I’ve built a course to help and it’s called Trendspotting. Trendspotting is an on demand digital course that examines the forces driving change and assesses the emerging trends in talent acquisition.
It also teaches a simple but robust model to help you understand, plan for influence, and invent the future. Trendspotting is for everyone in talent acquisition. It will help you future proof your career, create future-focused talent acquisition strategies, and build your influence within your business. I’ve split Trendspotting into nine short lessons to easily fit into the flow of your busy day. The feedback from the TA leaders who’ve taken the course so far has been amazing. You can find out more by going to mattalder.me/course. That’s mattalder.me/course.
[music]
Matt: Okay, so we had to give the castle a skip on the grounds of appalling weather, fog obliterating the views, and also two American whisky fans who I’m not quite sure I would trust with a 14th century spiral staircase.
Chad: [laughs] It’s on a ledge.
Joel: Correct. It is on ledge– [crosstalk]
Matt: It is on the edge of a cliff. I’m now introducing everyone to the traditional British summertime activity, but it can be done outside of summer of going to a beach in the rain and sit in your car, looking out the window. So, we’re in North Berwick, which is where I live. I can’t believe I brought you both to my hometown. I am still quite scared.
Joel: It is beautiful.
Matt: We are staring at the beach and the weather is typically Scottish, I would say typically Scottish.
Joel: I didn’t know rain to go in that many different directions.
Chad: Yeah.
Matt: That’s why we have this amazing van and we’re not sitting on the beach.
Chad: I can barely see this humongous rock that looks like it goes up at least, I don’t know, 100 meters at least.
Matt: The benefit of people who can’t see the rock, we can’t see it very well, particularly. It’s the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth, very famous, has a prison on it, and it’s the home to the biggest European Gannet Colony in the world. So, it’s covered in birds. So, if you could see it’s actually completely white at this time of year because of all the birds nesting on it, like hundreds of thousands of them. So, the distillery, which we finally escaped from, although I think if we’d stayed there any longer, you two would probably be working there. And we were talking about True Glasgow, which obviously was yesterday. Tomorrow we’ve got True Edinburgh if we manage to make it out of North Berwick, that is, which I’m sure we will.
I’m just going to shut the window a little bit, because the rain is coming. It’s coming in at me. So, are you interested in terms of what we could talk about, because the view is impeded here. We can just see fog. And it’s quite ironic, because I brought you here for the views, but one of the things we talked about yesterday was what the future looks like for talent acquisition and how far we can see into the future. So, I thought it’d be good to talk about that sitting here, where we can’t even see into the next road. We’ve all been in this space for a long time. We’ve seen lots of things happen, we’ve seen lots of cycles, we’ve seen technologies come and go and all that sort of stuff. What’s going to happen now?
Can we predict the future? We’ve got this AI thing going on. We’ve got all kinds of disruption around talent acquisition and work and things like that. What’s going to happen next? Can we tell?
Joel: Well, most of us are trying to learn how to spell AI before we’re actually trying to figure out what the future holds. And sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but we really don’t quite know what’s going to happen now. That said, I feel like there is agreement with most people that there will be fewer recruiting jobs, particularly around things like scheduling, sourcing, basic interviewing. That’s very AI susceptible. However, there will be new jobs like we spoke about previously. So, there will be new jobs that don’t even exist today that will come about in the future. But unfortunately for me, there is no crystal ball. We really don’t quite know. Chad is more enlightened than I am. Maybe he has a better answer and a better crystal ball than I do.
Chad: I have to say is, I have no clue. But at the end of the day, this is the most exciting time we’ve ever had in this space. Even back in the days where, when you and I, Joel, were doing this and Matt was doing this very, very early, it was exciting because it was new territory. We have not stopped new territory, right? We might have had like a little slow down here and there, but we’re getting ready to go into a time when the tech velocity is just increasingly chaotic and crazy and fast. So, it’s going to make it fun, but it’s also going to make it incredibly disruptive. I think we can view different areas of which we know where the disruption is going to happen first.
And that’s going to happen definitely on the high-volume side of the house, and then it’s going to start to make its way into other positions, I think it’s funny, because a lot of companies are talking about, well, you can use these different large language models and you can choose and they can help you out. But really what’s happening is you’re training the large language models for tomorrow. So, as we’re talking about these technologies, whether it’s AI, whatever the hell you want to call it, doesn’t matter. We’re training the future whether we like it or not, and we just have to be ready for that. It’s just exciting for me.
Joel: What’s amazing to me is when you and I, Chad and I started the podcast seven years ago, we were actually concerned that we would be able to do a weekly show on enough news in our industry. Well, holy hell, there’s more news than we can shake a stick at. And that wasn’t the case back in the day, 20, 25 years ago. You had a few job boards that mattered. You had a few ATS things, vertical search was a big deal. Social media, I mean, I’m humbled and I feel bad for the consumer who has to try to meddle through this when we live it every day and have a hard time keeping up with all the changes that are happening on a global level, on a quicker level and it’s incredibly challenging. We’re always talking about something which makes for a good podcast.
Matt: Do you think that the industry’s got the right mindset? Because it struck me particularly yesterday in some of the conversations. When we talk about AI, we tend to talk about AI as it is right now. So, people look at some of the shortcomings of ChatGPT and the things it can’t do, and they look at that and say, that’ll never do my job. But actually, this is about thinking about where AI is going to be in six months’ time, in twelve months’ time. And I think if you look at some of the not even predictions, actually look at the technology they’re building, it’s kind of a different level. So, do you think people’s heads in the right space for the change that’s happening?
Chad: Talent acquisition has never been on the bleeding edge of technology in the first place. But then you take a look at the American mindset where we think quarter by quarter and we can’t think that way strategically. And then also process methodology ways moving forward, because again, tech is moving way too fast, it’s learning too fast. And if you think you kind of like scoff at ChatGPT because it doesn’t give you something that’s perfect today, write something, and I guarantee you, your shit’s not perfect either. I mean, it’s evolving so quickly. I think we’re naive to think that if we can’t be using these platforms to literally augment a large piece of the work that we do. Yeah, hopefully TA understands that. I’m not sure that they do.
Matt: And I think also there’s this whole thing about, “Is it going to take jobs? What’s going to happen?” And I think, again, someone pointed out in the event yesterday, it’s already taking jobs. So, copyright jobs in recruitment, marketing, the really high-end creative stuff is still there, but the things where people are just writing, kind of rewriting job posts, making them a little bit better and all that sort of stuff, that’s definitely gone to AI. So, it’s dying.
Chad: It’s blended into our platforms like our podcasting platforms like Riverside, where it will take the transcript, it will then go ahead and augment into a synopsis and provide, I mean, just so much data-
Joel: For a videographer.
Chad: -automatically. Yeah.
Joel: Copywriter.
Chad: It’s ridiculous.
Joel: You know what, we’re old enough to appreciate history, and when Google gained prominence, there were people who understood SEO and understood how to leverage it as an advertising platform. And then it just became ubiquitous and we moved on from that. And then we had social media and people learned like, “Oh, I can source on Twitter, and I know how to use Alta Vista to find a needle in a haystack, and that PHP developer that no one else can. And today, I feel like we’re in a place where people really know ChatGPT or some of the tools really well. And we’ll probably see a phase where companies will leverage that in a degree that we’ve never seen before and it will just become a ubiquitous tool and we’ll move on to the next thing.
But the people who really understand it, as we’ve seen in the past, are the people who are going to thrive in the future. So, if you’re not learning, understanding, playing with the tools, the software that can help you do your job better, you’re going to be left behind and you’re going to be doing something else in five years.
Chad: Okay, so let’s go back to those days and take a look at Boolean. In Boolean, you could create a spreadsheet of Boolean strings that you could share and they would be good for years, right?
Matt: Yeah.
Chad: That’s not what’s going to happen with prompt engineering, which is literally the new Boolean strings, right? So, we can’t do business like we used to.
Matt: I agree. And I think that prompt engineering as we now know, it just won’t be a thing because all of this and AI is just being baked into everything that we do. And I think one of the, again, questions someone raised yesterday was, “Well, what about the employers who can’t afford to invest in AI?” And I think the answer to that is like, “It’s just there. It’s going to be in all the tools that you already use.”
Chad: And that’s the thing that, and again, we can’t think of the way that we used to do business. And yes, you had to pay x amount to be able to use Salesforce or HubSpot or what have you, and they were enterprise licenses. This is all going to be transactional and AI is going to be a part of all these different models and it’s going to be affordable. And that’s the biggest issue. I really believe that a lot of these major organizations, they do not embrace AI or they don’t embrace these different large language models. You’re going to see smaller companies do it much faster because there’s low risk, they’re much more nimble, it’s going to be much cheaper for them because from a transactional standpoint, it’s not going to cost as much and they’re going to be able to just literally leapfrog companies quickly. We saw OpenAI leapfrog Google, nobody knew who OpenAI was, right? I think that’s like the first company we’re going to see do that in this segment.
Joel: And I’m interested to see the leapfrog that OpenAI, the jumping the leapfrog that they did there. You and I both advise a lot of startups, and there are two primary hurdles for startups selling their products. One is the noise. There’s just so many products. How do I make sense of any of them? Like what do I need to use? And cutting through that clutter is incredibly difficult. The second thing I think, which would surprise a lot of people, is that there’s a fear factor that if I buy your product, I’m going to be out of a job in 12 months. So, I’m not going to buy your product, which is very counterintuitive to advancing humanity and these services.
So, to your point that it’s going to be the startup that says, “Yeah, we don’t care about that,” like we’re going to buy these products? And do we see further leapfrogging of established businesses in our space because they have customer bases that they push back too much on new technologies. I think a lot of people would be surprised that risk has a lot to do with a lack of adoption with some of these services and solutions.
Matt: So, I have a final question for you, because we need to leave to get back to Edinburgh soon. So, make a prediction for me. So, if we were having this conversation again in three years’ time, we were doing another tour of Scotland in another van, what would be talking about then? How much is it going to change in the next three years?
Joel: I think the speed at which change is happening is probably going to get faster, believe it or not. I mean, I think all the companies that have become unicorns over the past five years are companies that were supposed to go IPO or public recently are going to, I don’t want to say fade away, but those promising futures are going to go by the wayside for a lot of them. I think ATSs are being commoditized. I think a lot of the platforms are being commoditized where maybe there’s a few that really matter on a global level. And the tools that we use maybe are tools that everybody uses in every profession. And we’re talking less about businesses that focus specifically on recruiting and just focus on all the businesses and all the tools that everyone has and how they use them to recruit better and be better employers.
Chad: Yeah, I think the last thing you talked about is convergence. So, convergence of all of these different platforms that can actually provide better process methodologies, process efficiencies, those types of things. So, we’re going to see a lot of companies who have not been in the recruitment space get into the recruitment space, and they’re going to do it faster, they’re going to do it better, and there’s just going to be convergence. Instead of having these point solutions that are nothing but recruitment oriented, we’re going to see ones that actually just go ahead and span different industries.
Matt: Thank you very much.
Matt: My thanks to Chad and Joel and everyone who made our Scottish adventures possible. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also subscribe to our YouTube channel by going to mattalder.tv. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com. On that site, you can also subscribe to our newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast, and get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time, and I hope you’ll join me.
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