Episode 42

 James Yardley on AI and Networking Challenges in the Modern Age of Hiring

TIM: James Welcome to the Alupa Objective Hiring Show. Thanks for joining us.

JAMES: Thanks for having me.

TIM: James I'd love to start by getting your thoughts on a lay of the land of the current data hiring market. What are you seeing as the main characteristics? What are the main challenges, perhaps from the company side or the candidate side? I'd love to get that kind of overall picture from you.

JAMES: Yeah, it's a tough one, so I've actually recently gone through hiring a senior manager in the data landscape at my current role at CharityJob, and it was so different from any other hiring that I've had to do. It's what we call a recruiter-led market at the moment, so recruiters have the power; there are hundreds of applicants for every role. So it was actually really difficult in order to create the shortlist from all of those applications, and I think what's relevant for this conversation specifically is that the adoption of AI has actually hindered that process from my perspective. And I think when people are submitting applications now, it's all written by AI, typically the most used one, ChatGPT, if not people using some more up-to-date or niche ones, and I think that makes the hiring process even harder whilst candidates are thinking, Actually, this is going to make me stand out. It actually muddies the water, and you can't create a short list from the plethora of applications that you've got, and it makes it actually really difficult for a candidate to stick out until you meet them in person or until you've added another layer to your recruitment process. So that was the first time I've really had to hire a senior role with everybody trying to use AI to their benefit and not really seeing that benefit.

TIM: And so is part of the pattern then that Not only is there a higher volume of applicants, but is it also that the applicants are starting to look like each other and look like the job, and they all seem too good to be true, all seem to be perfect—is that the vibe you've been getting?

JAMES: That is exactly what's been happening, so every CV is overqualified, yet all of the candidates are applying, and then when you meet them in person and you talk to them about their skill sets, it's actually been embellished a little bit, or they don't have as much experience in that specific skill that their CV alluded to. And it actually makes it really difficult, and you put people through to a first-stage interview or a short test or wherever you are, and you're like, Okay, actually, have I left someone behind that was a top candidate? because my shortlist was actually a long list.

TIM: Yeah, so it's becoming even harder to spot the kind of diamond in the rough. Like, CVs were always, in my opinion, a pretty bad predictor of who was worth interviewing, but now it sounds like it's even worse because everyone's getting ChatGPT to optimize their CVs, which, by the sounds of it, means a little bit of hallucinations and lying and exaggeration.

JAMES: I think that is causing this little bit of distrust on the recruiter's side as well, so when you're actually in a recruiter-led market like we are at the moment, we're essentially seeing recruiters go, Do you know what? I'm not going to do this myself; I'm either going to work with a company and recruiters actually go Do you know what I need to change exactly what I need to do here because of this new challenging environment that we're in? they're in

TIM: Yeah, and you made a really good but subtle point there, which is it's not helping the hiring companies; it's not helping the candidates because what is the point of getting your foot in the door through exaggerating or even lying? Because you're going to become unstuck; nobody can fake their way through a technical interview or set of technical interviews; it's inevitable that you'll be caught out, and if not on the job anyway, which would be even worse. So you're only really wasting your own time.

JAMES: Wasting your own time and, unfortunately, wasting the company's time, like CharityJob itself, is a small organization. It's actually really impactful if we hired somebody who wasn't right for the role, and actually they didn't pass their probation. We had to go back through the recruitment process. Bigger organizations hiring for junior roles might have less impact. But yeah, specifically for us and the role that we were hiring, it was a really big risk, but luckily we found the right person in the end.

TIM: That's good to hear, and I'm interested then, so having encountered these challenges, ultimately you found a way through them and made a great hire by the stands, for which is awesome. How did you do that? Was it just you had to spend a lot more time; you just had to interview lots more candidates? You had to read more CVs; you just had to do more. Like, how did you actually combat these challenges?

JAMES: So I was quite lucky because I'm relatively new to charity jobs myself anyway, so once I'd outlined the strategy that we wanted to adopt, it was really like, okay, the first step is recruitment, and if it takes me seven hours a day to read through everybody's CVs, I will do that. Did I use AI in order to support summarizing those? Yeah, but that was only once it got past me as an initial review stage; however, it did take a huge amount of time, but I was quite lucky that I was given that time to do, and it was wild the amount of CVs that were exactly the same, exactly the same. You go and look on someone's LinkedIn, and they've either handwritten it or used a different AI to write that, and there's just not the synergy, and it's just really apparent during that initial CV review phase, so for us it was really when we got to initial in-person interviews that we could really start separating people. out

TIM: Yeah, James We were talking about the fact that candidates are exaggerating, embellishing, hallucinating, and lying, depending on how you want to frame it, on their CVs and the fact this is causing problems for companies and the candidates themselves because the candidates are ultimately going to come unstuck. They're either going to waste their time in an interview process that they're going to inevitably fail in, or I would say even worse, they get hired somehow, and then, oh my God, how are they going to pass probation? And there's this: it's like the ultimate lose-lose; when you have to let someone go, it's obviously terrible for them. It's unless you're a bit of a psychopath a pretty awful conversation to have with someone, and then there's, as you pointed out, like the opportunity costs to the organization, especially if you're small, and even the candidate who didn't get hired who should have; it's like it's such a disaster to make a bad hire, I think. And so you were mentioning the ways you've overcome these challenges in ultimately hiring a great person. You'd mentioned that a lot of it was just brute force, like you just had to do a lot of work; you committed to making it your top priority. Was there anything else that helped get you through this scenario?

JAMES: 100 percent so Uber, and we also required them to present that insight back to non-data-oriented stakeholders from around the business, because I've always stood for the fact that you can do the most beneficial piece of analysis, but if you can't communicate and embed it within a business, it was a complete waste of time.

TIM: for the stakeholders I guess that would be the ones that Canada, in their role, would typically work with, like their kind of stakeholders.

JAMES: So I think it's really important, like when you're hiring now and this reliance that we're going to have on actually the human impact of hiring, we can't rely on a lot of the automated efficient processes that have been previously sold to us as beneficial, so actually the business needs to invest its time in order to ensure that there isn't that opportunity cost further down the line of actually hiring someone that's not right for the role. Are you actually more efficient by spending the time up front? or hiring the wrong person I don't think that question has ever been greater.

TIM: Yeah, and I feel like the kind of regretted hire, if you haven't had one in your career, you probably underappreciate its impact, but after you've hired a few people who didn't work out, Oh my God, did you remember those forever, and I'm sure so today because, as I said, it doesn't work out for anyone in those scenarios. So you'd almost do anything to avoid that again, I would have thought.

JAMES: What exactly nobody wants to do when you're in another job interview process is like, What's this six-month gap that you've had on your CV? So it becomes, I think we're going to see it more basically.

TIM: You mentioned something earlier that I'm interested in, which is that you said for the candidates applying, so they're using ChatGPT or whatever tool to apply, they're getting increasingly homogenous and looking like each other, and in doing so they're not standing out, so the tools that they're using are preventing them from doing the thing that they actually want to do. I wonder if for candidates, then, maybe the automation is getting in the way for them as much as it might be for the companies as well. What do you think?

JAMES: I think the market has a little bit to do with this, where actually it's a numbers game, and everybody could apply for one role, but realistically that's not going to land unless you're like the top candidate, and it's really clear, so it's really difficult for a candidate, whether they're in a role currently or not in a role, to spend the time that they need to give every application 100%. So when we're talking about efficiencies, of course they want to save time where they can in order to hit the numbers required, whereas is that doing them a disservice straight away? And then other things that companies can do in order to better assess candidates, ie technical tests or video recordings or in-person meetings, whatever it is, that's all time from a candidate perspective. You cannot do that for 100 roles, so candidates are going to have to become a bit more picky in the ones that they actually want to invest that time into, and I don't think we've hit that sweet spot yet. We don't know specifically what tools work; we don't know what candidates find valuable. There are lots of companies out there that are offering tools, whereas actually Is there a benefit in maybe an accreditation or, like, a stamp of approval by a company to be like, We reviewed those SQL skills; we're a trusted source; here you go; you don't need to review it because we've done it, and this was the score on the test, for example? So the candidate only has to do it once rather than a hundred different times because all the applications are using different companies, and I think we need to be kind to candidates as well. Just because we're in a recruiter-led market, we need to make it so that we're creating the best match possible. So there's work to do on both sides.

TIM: Yeah, I'm struck now by an analogy that is in like outbound sales because it's the same kind of thing that's been happening over the past year or two, which is companies doing their outbound email campaigns are relying more and more on ChatGPT or tools built on top of ChatGPT or ChatGPT platforms. and so then as a result there's this flooding of the market of even more cold emails, which then makes the whole channel busier, and then all the emails are sending more and more like each other, so it is to the same bucket what we found actually was the polar opposite approach did work if you could come up with something that was like hyper personalized and very obviously not automated, then it actually had some chance to cut through Obviously, as you say, the problem is of volume. Like, you can do that for a few in the cases of a candidate; maybe you can do that for a handful of applications a day, but I wonder if the conversion rate would actually be worth it in some cases because if they're applying to a role with a thousand applicants or a hundred roles with a thousand applicants, they're stabbing in the dark. Maybe they're better off putting all their eggs in a few baskets, let's say, which might end up converting better.

JAMES: Exactly, and I don't think when a candidate is in the position to be applying for roles, they're thinking that way just because they can see on LinkedIn, for example, how many applicants this role has had. They're like, I need to be hitting those numbers myself. I want to land it. So we're creating an environment that isn't benefiting either side. And it's the state of AI everywhere; we don't know exactly how it wants us to use it in every industry, and in recruitment itself we're still learning, but we're just in this environment at the moment where it's not working on both sides.

TIM: I'm wondering if you were starting your career again right now, would you handle the job search differently? Would you go and start applying through job boards? Would you take a different tack to the one you did when you were beginning your career?

JAMES: I think beginning a career is interesting because what somebody is trying to evaluate really is aptitude: Can this person pick up the things we need them to do rather than do they have the specific experience? Granted, not a lot of like grad recruiters or entry-level recruiters think that way because they're like, They need to have a specific interest in this industry. Let's be realistic; they don't know that yet. But do they have the aptitude to pick up what they need to? How can We evaluate a plethora of candidates based on that aptitude skill, so it is a little bit different, and if I were changing how I landed my first role, it's an interesting question. Because I really went down the route of cause I came out of math, which is very broad, and actually you don't land in a specific pot if you went to do the industry is agnostic, but the skill set is pretty standard if you went and did, like, economics; probably you've got a trajectory already of what you're doing. Mine was quite broad, so I went down this route of, Do you know what? Let's throw it at the wall and see what sticks, which I was quite lucky for because I landed in a career that I loved, but I didn't know that at the time, so I guess it's a different way of recruiting because you're looking for different things from the candidate.

TIM: I was thinking about this myself recently, and I'm wondering whether part of the switch will be this kind of inbound pipeline of candidates getting hit by the kind of noise of AI and just the market conditions. As you say, maybe you want to flip that then and go to another channel. If I were a candidate now, I would probably be Relying on my networks, which came as a junior candidate, I wouldn't have the same networks as I do now, so it's a luxury, but I would probably be just thinking of, Okay, who would I like to get a job with? Who do I know there, or do I know someone who knows someone who's there? Like, I'd be trying to weasel my way in through the back door, basically, and try to nab a coffee chat with someone rather than going to find it out with another thousand people through an automated system or what have you.

JAMES: 100% It's a very interesting point. I actually went for a meet. I went when I was applying for a graduate role. It was a role that I didn't get, and 17 years later, I got an email only three weeks ago from the hiring manager for that role saying, My friend's son wants to get into data. Can you have a chat with them? What an amazing use of your network! Someone that you haven't spoken to for 17 years, but you're like, You know what? I'm going to reach out and see if they can help this person, and I think let's take a lesson from that: if that's going to work at a graduate level, why would that not work at a more senior level as well? Are the human relationships that exist within the recruitment process going to become even more important than they were before? And that network that you have, we all think LinkedIn cuts it off at 500-plus connections. Use them; use all of them.

TIM: Yes, and I think there's probably for the June more junior candidates listening to this, there's some nuance that I think is worth unpacking, so when we say, Yeah, network and build relationships and build connections, that does not equal finding a hiring manager, sending a generic CV in a shitty annoying connection message, and then bombing their email. That's not what we're talking about at all.

JAMES: not at

TIM: building meaningful relationships through time, mutual exchange of value, not in a very transactional I just need your help now.

JAMES: Exactly, and don't wait until you're looking for work. That relationship can be built a lot earlier on, and it can come through Auntie Sally or whoever it is. It doesn't matter where the connection comes from; if you can start building a relationship with someone who works in a relevant industry that you care about, see if anybody knows anyone. Use the Christmas parties that are upcoming, and we'll just go. Does anybody know anybody who works in data?

TIM: Yeah, if people remember, or maybe they're too young to remember the Kevin Bacon game, where you realize everyone on earth is within seven degrees of separation, then if you apply that to your local market, surely you're within two degrees of separation of probably anyone you would ever want to meet.

JAMES: Exactly.

TIM: And so maybe it's also about making an ask, like being brave enough to do a bit of outreach to send a targeted, crafted cold email or cold LinkedIn message and just get a coffee with someone. Like most people, I found in my experience that most people are happy to have a coffee with someone who's having a reasonable conversation and isn't coming in and doing a bait and switch like they're just having a reasonable conversation to build a relationship. Most people will do that, I think.

JAMES: Exactly, and also the candidate shouldn't think of it as someone's helping me out. That relationship has a potential to be a win. If somebody is recruiting a junior role, I don't need to go through this ridiculous hiring process. I already know the person; great, you've saved me three months.

TIM: Exactly, yeah, so it's knowing your value. You're not going there like cap in hand, like, "Oh, I have something to contribute. Maybe, as you say, maybe immediately, maybe over this period of years, who knows how these relationships pay off? And I feel like, yeah, if you go into them with the right mentality of not expecting anything, not viewing it transactionally, it's a long-term thing; something might happen. You might be able to help them; they might be able to help you, and then you can't be disappointed, and also it's the right frame of mind to view it as that.

JAMES: One of the big things that existed when I first started out was the introduction of the Silicon Milk Roundabout-like job fair here in the UK. I don't know whether it was a global thing or not, and my old company used to have a stand there, and we used to go, but the people that went to represent the organizations weren't hiring. So it's a really disjointed event, or specifically from my side, going not as a hiring manager, whereas I think those events, again, they can be the meet cute in order for those connections to occur if a hiring manager or someone who at some point might be hiring is there making connections with people who at some point may be looking for a job. It sounds a bit cliche, but it's like speed dating.

TIM: And yeah, I guess the tricky thing for candidates is to have the foresight to do an investment. It's just like any other investment, isn't it? It's like going to the gym, eating healthy, or whatever. You don't see a return immediately, but it compounds through time, and then you do. So if you're in the throes of needing a job right now, yeah, it's hard to then push a sort of long-term networking game. fair enough, but yeah, if you do this early enough in your career, it will pay dividends. I'll give you a couple of interesting examples: the investors in my company, the last the founders of the last company I worked for, so I was only able to get investment in my business because I like to think I turned up for four years and did a good job. It was competent; it wasn't an asshole. I did my best for their business. Their business was successful. They invested in mine, so you could look at that as lucky or something, but the seeds were sown over day after day of being a reasonable person. I was speaking to another leader in England recently who said he hadn't really had an interview in a decade. The last two roles he'd gotten were coffee chats in a McDonald's, and he was remarking about how funny it was that sometimes the more senior the hiring process gets, the simpler it is, even though the risk is so much higher, the salary is so much higher, but I guess it's becoming at that level so relationship-driven. and I wonder whether junior candidates might look at that story and go Oh, this guy was lucky; he bypassed the system or whatever. No, he was competent for 20 years. He built relationships. In his industry, he became an expert, became well known, put in the extra mile, and then it paid off. And they don't see the hard work that goes into that. I don't think

JAMES: 100 percent, and I can hold my hands up; two of my roles have been through previous working relationships, and that person who's put interest in you, they're like, I know that you did it there; can you come and do it over here? And it's that; it is such an amazing way to get a job, basically, because you already have that connection; you already have that trust, and you can just hit the ground running. So again, that is just like efficiency from a business perspective.

TIM: Yep, some good lessons there for the junior candidates: keep your head down, keep working hard, and build relationships over the long run. Even if they don't pay off immediately, yeah You're nothing without your networks. I think at some level, whether that's your family, your friends, or business connections, we all need a helping hand at some point.

JAMES: We do, and unfortunately the world has gone digital, right? So the generations who are coming up now, like graduating, they probably started uni in COVID; they weren't creating relationships with other people; they were pretty much isolated, so we also need to take into account who these people are. And if those events don't exist or the opportunities don't exist, that is an industry opportunity. I think who is basically solving that problem is that a lot of relationships are forged online as well, so even just sitting and having a chat like we are having a cup of tea, whatever it is, it doesn't have to be this huge challenge. Nobody gets taught how to network, which is an insane mishap. I think in any education system, as we're readying school leavers, as we're readying graduates to leave, it's cool; these are your opportunities to go and meet some people; this is a conversation starter and things like that, and I just think we do a disservice in allowing that bridge to be built. between education and professional careers

TIM: Yeah, I did six years of business school, and there's not a single mention of networking or building relationships in business, nothing ever, which is pretty shocking now that I think about it.

JAMES: and as my first role outside of university, even though I left within a year and a half, they were like, Yeah, but you're so good for the culture here, and it was like, I literally went around, and I spoke to every single person. Was that part of my job description? No. Did the business see value in it? Yes. It's just getting out and speaking to teams that you don't necessarily work with, and it is awkward at the beginning. You, but we're human, like we're made to converse with each other.

TIM: Yes, yes, indeed we are. I'd like to switch gears a little bit now and hear a little bit about a charity job, and you could paint a picture of that organization and where it sits in this ecosystem because I think it's a really interesting product that you guys have.

JAMES: Yeah, sure, so CharityJob is a niche job board that predominantly works in the UK market, and we focus on the charity and nonprofit industry, so we are very niche in terms of comparing us to the big job boards out there, like Indeed, etc. Our job, essentially, what we pride ourselves on, is building those relationships between the charity industry and people that want to work in the charity industry. But not only that; it's providing we have blogs that work for candidates and for recruiters, and what we're trying to do is educate on both parts what the benefits of working in the charity sector are and, from a charity perspective, what can you offer to bring high-quality candidates into what has typically been seen as an underpaid sector? And it's, yeah, we're trying to evolve both sides of the coin at the same time, essentially.

TIM: And maybe for people listening who are contemplating roles in the charity sector, are there typical I don't want to. I don't want to. Use the word perk but typical upsides or typical motivations that people would have to join someone or an organization in the charitable sector that perhaps they could be thinking about

JAMES: It's a very interesting question. I don't think the charity sector has caught up yet with the fact that they have this huge opportunity to pull people that haven't previously worked in the charity sector by offering what is the second most important variable after salary: flexible working nowadays. And actually, what is a huge overhead for a charity? An office. So can we offer better hybrid or flexible working to people in order to draw them into that sector? We aren't a charity ourselves; we work to support the charity industry, but some of the applications that I had for the role that I was hiring for were like, I live 10 minutes down the road, and I've got a newborn, and I'd rather spend time with my newborn than commuting into a financial services office. and it's we had that's the sort of opportunity that you have to pull great candidates in

TIM: And it's funny that I would have said maybe two years ago that it wasn't going to be differentiated, but now it's feeling like it will be again because there's this kind of return-to-office mandate going on in a lot of cities and a lot of countries, and yeah, if you don't have to schlep it into London every day, that's a pretty big benefit I would have thought.

JAMES: Exactly. I think there are pros and cons. We're not talking about offering fully remote work, but if you're a very small charity, say you've got five employees, you have the opportunity to be like, Do you know what? We can work around how you want to work as well. There are five people that only need to have a conversation that generally doesn't happen in the private sector, especially in London; they're usually like significantly larger organizations, so not only do you get the benefit of working for a good cause, but do you know what this is going to work for my life as well?

TIM: And what about in terms of the platform? So you've got this kind of marketplace. What are some of the main metrics you already look at, or maybe some of the metrics that you're planning to really drill down on in understanding how the marketplace is functioning?

JAMES: It's a very good question, so data at charity jobs has very much previously been in a business support capacity. There hasn't really been much strategic thinking and optimization around it, so we're only really unlocking now how we want to be defining those metrics around quality previously and where we currently are with measurement is a really important metric that levels all job boards: clicks on apply. very basic: how many people are showing intent to apply for that job, whether they do or not? That's fine; it also allows for job boards that link out to partner websites because they have their own ATS. You then have a bottom-of-funnel KPI, which is an application because you're linking off to somewhere where we can't track it. The richer part of the process, though, is going all the way down to application, which we do have visibility of on charity jobs for the recruiters that choose to quick apply, and that allows us really to optimize all the way up from the top of the funnel to who is relevant to who is actually going to apply. and when we're talking about the benefits of machine learning or LLM usage or using AI in order to optimize that matching capability Understanding what a positive journey looks like is really important if we know that actually your CV matches this, but it doesn't meet a specific criteria that we have identified as a huge preference for you. You're not going to go through the application. If somebody has outlined a really long recruitment process that's in the job description and we know that you're a broad applicant rather than a niche applicant, you're not going to go through the application, so what is the point in us driving the click on apply if it's not going to actually work for the recruiter in the end? So there's loads of benefits to having visibility of the full funnel, and we're really trying to unlock that now, and that's the point of the data strategy.

TIM: And you mentioned just briefly there the kind of matching logic. I would have thought with large language models there's a pretty big scope for improving what used to be quite a difficult process to match candidates because you'd often have unstructured data on at least one side of it. You had a CV; you had a job description effect on both sides. But now with large language models able to extract instructions from unstructured data and put it into structured data, I feel like that matching could end up being a lot simpler than it has been. What do you think?

JAMES: Yeah, exactly, so there's two sides to that: one is actually taking the rich information that exists within people's applications and CVs. We need to be conscious of explicit consent in order to analyze that to use in anything that we build. We're not at the point of building that yet, but we're very conscious that we need to be thinking of it. only like a couple of months ago LinkedIn decided to stop using UK candidate data within that AI because it's really private information, and it allows really clear profiles of candidates, not as individuals but as accounts, anonymized accounts, and then the other side is during the relationship that the candidate has with charity jobs, can we do anything to more explicitly extract structured data? So we don't need to review something as private as a CV, and actually you've told us what you want, so we can now go and match that, but we can collect information from a plethora of different areas in order to build a profile around the explicit points that you're providing rather than us just taking from your profile. So we're also thinking about how we can optimize everything from a candidate privacy perspective but also a recruiter matching capability.

TIM: It sounds like exciting times then because there's so much upside to using data in this kind of platform, and then at the same time, the changes and developments in AI are happening at the perfect time that it sounds like you can have an exciting couple of years on your hands here.

JAMES: Exactly, there's a lot of opportunity. We are just trying to marry optimizing for both the recruiter and the candidate. We don't want to just create products that allow us to sell more because of the challenges that we've already spoken about around actually it's hard for candidates as well in terms of the adoption of AI. And then the other side of it is constantly keeping an eye on governance around AI. We're a small company; we can't go and dive straight in at the deep end, spending money on the adoption of something that eventually doesn't come to fruition or drive any ROI, so we also have to be very conscious. And at the forefront of everything is the protection of our users data.

TIM: You mentioned that sort of slightly interesting awkward position you sit in where you're between these two different parties. We have the same conundrum at Alooba, where we have the candidates as test takers and the companies asking the candidates to take the tests, and yeah, so often you'll get into that kind of gray subjective area where it's not quite clear on the best way to go forward. So a quick example would be on our platform there's a way that candidates, after they've taken a test, can get immediate feedback on how they've done, which As a candidate who has someone who's gone to a lot of jobs, like anyone else, and hasn't gotten feedback that was like a big thing for us, let's make sure we just don't ghost them if they're going to spend half an hour doing a test. Let's make sure they get something out of it even if they don't get the job, and so we tried to then make that page as insightful as possible, giving particular breakdowns on where they did well and where they didn't do so well, trying to soften the blow as well as we went. Yeah, aggressive in our language if they did particularly poorly, trying to give us some tips on how to improve certain things, but then sometimes companies don't want to have that on for one reason or another. They sometimes want to be a bit more coy with the feedback. they want to maybe Only deliver that on a delayed basis, so yeah, it's funny how you have so many of these features, maybe from one perspective, and a bug from another, almost like depending on your viewpoint. And it's, yeah, sometimes so awkward sitting in the middle between You Two different users or two different parties So I'm excited to see how you guys will balance that out.

JAMES: Yeah, you guys too, as well as you say it's a similar challenge. There was one thing that I was going to say, though: the interesting thing about tests specifically, and I haven't done any of the Alooba tests at the moment, and you probably are not going to want to include this in anything, but I'm doing an MBA at the moment, and one of my electives was statistics, and I have come from a statistics and maths background, so I was like, Cool, great elective; I'm going to do really well here. It's been my lowest mark so far because the questions that they were asking were so broad, and statistics is not broad that it can sometimes also come down to the way the individual has been taught, and specifically if we're reviewing people earlier on in their career, they only have a small reference window in order to answer specific questions unless it's really explicit, so we need to be conscious of that bias as well that might exist, so that's something that I witnessed within my MBA itself.

TIM: I've got a final question for you, James. I'd love to know if you have a hiring hero or at least someone who you've learned a lot about hiring from, maybe you've been inspired by, and if you don't or can't think of someone in particular, maybe what characteristics with this almost superhero path do you think

JAMES: so I do have a sort of hero I guess an anti hero sort of person in mind so in one of my previous companies I actually Moved up to quite a senior role quite quickly which meant I had to do quite a lot of hiring and lucky for me everybody that I ended up hiring turned out great as somebody else came in as a peer of that level pretty much about 40 to 50 percent of the people that they were hiring weren't getting through their probation and instead of turning around and going Oh I didn't have the quality candidates it was like I wasn't doing quality recruitment and I think the idea of looking at yourself in that process is more valuable than blaming it on the candidates that you're receiving and it's like what can I do in order to maybe better evaluate the skill sets so that I can make a better decision, and this person learned very quickly that they needed to change the way that they were doing that recruitment, and as far as I'm aware, that problem was resolved, and I think that is just key. No one's perfect at anything, especially since we've spoken about the pros and cons of humans doing the full process. AI is part of the process, and it's about just going, How can I make sure that I have the best possible person coming into this role as possible, both during the recruitment process and even from an onboarding perspective, because that could have been how someone fell down as well? and it's a lot on you as a hiring manager as well as it being on the candidates.

TIM: Yeah, so great suggestion there to have that sense of humility and reflection to really think about how things have been going and, yeah, seeing how you can improve. I'll share one quick anecdote myself, actually: the first two people I ever hired when I was pretty junior—this was 10 years ago—both left within one week. So that was my introduction to hiring, and now I run a hiring-related software company from the biggest mistakes and biggest fails. Great things can come if you think about it and try to figure out what you did wrong and how to do better the next time, so it's a great lesson there.

JAMES: 100% and I have done that myself as well. I hired certain people, and it hasn't worked out for whatever reason, or I've gone into a role, and it hasn't worked out for what reason, so it works on both sides of the coin, and yeah, I think the takeaway is humility in all of it, like you say, in every part, both from a candidate and a recruiter perspective. Do you have a hero?

TIM: Oh wow, I'm asking the questions, not answering them. A great flip! Do I have your honor? Yes, I do, actually. Yeah, a heroic company, that's for sure. In the past we've worked a little bit with GetYourGuide, who are based in Berlin, and what really impressed me about them was how transparent they were with really important information that candidates would inevitably want to ask in that first interview. They package all this together proactively in PDFs and Excel spreadsheets and what have you, and this is down to really granular things like exactly what the value of the share options or share appreciation rights is and who is in my team, so LinkedIn profile links. What are my performance metrics? What is our team working on right now? What are the team's KPIs? What is the day in the life of someone in this role? And so they did such a great job at packaging that together and putting it to the front of the process, which then meant candidates could opt in or out with so much more information at their fingertips. and a side benefit that might not be obvious is that because they were so proactive with sharing this information, it de-risks it for candidates, so a lot of the problem with hiring processes is that the candidates don't know how long they go for; they don't know how long they're being strung along. Is this five interviews? Is this two? What's this interview about? What's this test about? By just sharing all that up front, what the process was, and then they'd already had basically all of their questions asked immediately—or answered, I should say, immediately—and so that was just such a great way of doing that, and Steven Rose was the recruiter there at GetYourGuide who put a lot of that content together. So yeah, my hiring hero would be GetYourGuide and Steven Rose in particular.

JAMES: Yes, it's a good example. It alludes to if you give people information, it causes them to be inquisitive and ask more deeper or relevant questions, which is just helpful. Like, that's the point of data, right? If you give people data, they shouldn't just accept it and walk away. They should ask questions of that data, and you've just mentioned how that works exactly the same in recruitment as well.

TIM: Yeah, you can get it as you say. It's if you've already been given the basic answers, you can dig deeper; you can get past the superficial in that first call. You're not asking how much the salary is or where I work; they're like all the basics. You can get to, like, date three on date one; you can really get into the details of are we going to be married or not. Let's get into it.

JAMES: Every company should do that, so one thing that we do is allow companies to create an organization profile on our platform to allow candidates to get a better understanding of the company as a whole. They should be providing that information 100%. It's a great idea.

TIM: And again, it's one of those things that's a win because candidates can opt in and out. The last thing you want is to string a candidate along for three weeks only to find out they need more salary because you haven't told them the salary until the final interview. Okay.

JAMES: Oh yeah. sides of the coin, so you can put the salary in the roll, and then you end up offering it to somebody, and they go, Oh no, I will only accept this, and it's, We were explicit at the beginning in order that so trust on both sides.

TIM: Transparency and trust are a winning formula for pretty much any relationship. I think that's a great place to leave it, James. It's only for me to say thank you so much for sharing your insights today.

JAMES: Thank you so much, Tim.