My friends Madeline Laurano, Kyle Lagunas, and I had a big conversation about all the recent generative AI announcements happening in our industry.
We are going to hear about so many more announcements coming the rest of the year, and we’ll try to keep everyone updated as they come in.
If you haven’t had a chance to go out and test ChatGPT go do it! It’s super simple to login into Open.Ai and get an account.
It struck me yesterday while I was on my 7th call of the week, where everyone wanted to talk about ChatGPT and Generative AI, that there is an opportunity here. And not the opportunity that everyone VC is running around like zombies trying to invest in any stupid idea that has “Chat” or
“GPT” in the title.
“Human connection is the luxury of the future.” – Tim Sackett, 2023
I’m sure this isn’t a new idea. I don’t know when or where, but I know I’ve heard others say similar things to this in the past. It just seemed to hit me today. This is even more true in our world at this moment.
I love tech. I love generative AI tech, like GPT. I’m a nerd for this stuff, playing around with it every day. More millionaires will be created in the next 18 months from GPT/Generative AI than at any other time in history because this tech will be so transformative to everything we do. I believe that.
I also believe this tech will do some harm. It will hurt some experiences. Those experiences will be faster and more efficient, but also, at the exact same time, feel less.
So, the “Zag” opportunity is first to understand those opportunities. Who will want or need human interaction or connection vs. AI/Robot connection? What will be the value of the human connection vs. that of the robots? I think in my world of HR and TA tech. There are a lot of these human opportunities. For some brands, not delivering a full AI experience and adding humans into the loop will be a competitive advantage.
I’m a Delta Diamond (humble road warrior brag), which only means I fly on Delta way more than the average person. Because of my flyer status, I get a special number to call when stuff goes wrong in my travel. Whenever I’ve reached that number, someone has picked up or called me back in minutes. My sons are like Delta Silvers, the lowest flyer status. I hear the stories of them waiting hours to hear from Delta when they need assistance.
Some might call that privilege and believe everyone should have that same level of access. Those people are wrong. I’m a top customer of Delta. I go out of my way to fly Delta because of my status. It’s super rare that I’ll fly another airline. Most fliers seek the cheapest ticket, and the service should match that desire. I’m loyal. My service should be elevated to reward my loyalty to the brain. My experience matters more than someone who isn’t loyal to the brand. Delta makes more money exponentially from me as a customer than most customers.
Many company executives will say that their employees and their future employees (their candidates) also deserve an elevated level of experience. That experience might include all kinds of efficiencies and AI allowing them to get what they need quickly. That experience also might include the hotline to a real person. A person who knows the brand well. Who understands the importance of your position as an employee or a candidate?
Even today, we live in a world where many times, it’s hard for us to speak to a real human when we actually need and want to speak to a real human. The “Zag” ensures that human connection can happen at the right exact moment when it is needed and wanted. It’s not about delivering a smart robot that can answer more questions.
I speak to executives all the time that will tell, almost to a person, that “our talent, our employees, are our most important assets.” Then they show me how they’ve jammed technology between the employee and a great experience, making it a not-so-great experience. Technology should be a conduit to a great experience. Often it’s replacing an average experience and making it a different but still average experience.
We need to keep asking ourselves what is uniquely human about our experience that we want to preserve and how AI can help us make that human connection even better. Even stronger. We have an amazing opportunity to be more human, but only if we design the world we want.
It seems like I keep having these Matrix-like experiences where I see the same thing repeatedly. The world has turned into a meme of an average housewife wearing their Lululemon crossbody fanny pack, Veja sneakers, or Ons (you pick), carrying your Stanley thermo cup, and driving your white SUV that looks like every other SUV.
We can make fun of this image because of how accurate it is. But really, we’ve all turned into this. My buddy KD makes fun of me for my propensity to buy shoes and clothes targeted to me on Instagram before he has the chance to buy them. IG knows if they target me, I’ll buy, and share with KD, who will cherry-pick the best buys after I try them!
If you look at sites like Pinterest, every kitchen looks the same. White cabinets, barn wood floors, and stainless steel appliances. The bedrooms all look the same. The bathrooms all look the same. Our houses, our vehicles, and our clothes all look the same. We have this desire to look like everyone else in every aspect of our lives. I’m no different.
This also extends to our professional lives.
I’ve been saying this for years, but employment branding professionals and agencies are basically just reproducing more of the same. There is very little differentiation from one employment brand to the next. Oh wait, you mean you are also an employer of choice?! How can that be!? You have great benefits, care about your employees, and are building an inclusive culture that values differences! As long as those differences match our differences, making us all the same.
I used to think the only unique employment brands were unicorn companies (Google, Tesla, etc.), but even those brands are all the same now.
We basically offer the same benefits, same work environment, same compensation, and same jobs. The only thing that actually might be unique is some micro-cultures hidden within the broader corporate culture, which is basically the same as almost every other culture. We offer average jobs, in average companies, for ordinary people. Yes, your people are ordinary because that’s exactly what you recruit. You definitely don’t recruit out-of-the-ordinary people. They would never make it through your hiring process!
By the way, I don’t have a problem with ordinary and average. We went through an entire generation who is desperate to think they’re unique butterflies, but by all of them being unique butterflies, it made them all average and ordinary. In the corporate world, we love the ordinary, and we hate outliers.
Generative AI will compound this issue, not make it better. ChatPGT and the like will push us further down the average and ordinary rabbit hole. Creatives will use AI to do their creative work, which will create the same thing repeatedly but faster. AI will learn what we like and produce more of it but in different colors and flavors. Original thought will become mass-produced thought.
How do we get out of the age of average?
Embrace the weirdos. Listen to the crazy ideas and actually try some of them. Tell your candidates and employees the truth. No, the real truth. Be willing to take some criticism over the stuff you tried that failed. As an employer, you are gaining nothing by being like everyone else. Be someone no one is. Some will hate you. Some will love you. Most won’t pay attention. Your goal as an employer isn’t to attract everyone. It’s only to attract the few folks who you truly want and who want you in return.
Does their crazy match your crazy?
We work so hard to try and hide our crazy. Then we are shocked when someone opts out of working for us and turns over. The best work cultures filter in and out with the same ferocity. If you welcome everyone into your work you’ll also be showing a lot of people the door at some point.
I’ve been on the road and super busy over the last few weeks and haven’t written anything in a minute. So, hold on tight. I have some stuff floating around in my brain that needs to get out!
It’s conference season, and I’m hitting a bunch of them. So far, one thing everyone wants to talk about is ChatGPT and Generative AI. You guys know I like to educate you on this stuff, so GPT and Generative AI are basically the same thing. GPT is the OpenAI generative AI large language model, which is basically owned by Microsoft at this point. Google has Bard as their generative AI, and while they are built to be similar, Google is currently behind Microsoft by a lot. We all expect them to catch up.
One of the biggest issues around generative AI is there are a lot of ethical issues with the use of AI. From folks being concerned with bias in AI to the elimination of jobs that humans currently do to the spread of false news and ideas that seem very real.
“Tim, AI has bias! I read an article in the New York Times! Didn’t you see the lawsuit against HireVue?” It’s one thing I hear in the HR community a lot. Most folks, who don’t really understand AI, love to believe AI is biased! It’s kind of funny when you actually explain to them the reality. Currently, no one is using Generative AI (ChatGPT) in their HR Tech stack. Many are using “Conversational AI” in their stack, which is like old-school chatbots went to college and got smarter. Conversational AI is AI with guardrails. All the responses are built purposely so you actually know anything the bot might answer. This type of AI is incapable of being racist.
So, where does the biased/racist talk come from?
Early machine learning models. Machine learning has been the big buzzword in HR tech over the last 5-7 years or so. Some of the first tech companies to build ML into their tech had some backfires. For the record, the Hirevue thing was one of these issues while testing the potential of using facial recognition as a way to determine if any facial attributes could be used as a potential attribute in helping a company select the best talent. Turned out the machine learning model actually had a really hard time deciphering dark faces over light faces. It was quickly found out and shut down and never used again. But people still pull that one example from five years ago as the only example of AI being biased.
The reality is machine learning learns human preferences. So, when you say your AI is racist, all you’re saying is you, yourself, are racist. It learned your behavior and mirrored it back to you! That’s the funny part! Think of AI as a baby. A baby that can learn a lightning-fast speed. But if you teach your baby bad things, it’s going to grow up and do bad things! Unless the folks who build the AI actually build in guardrails and audits to constantly check that the AI is learning and producing the “right” things. Which is currently the situation. If fact, to Hirevue’s credit, from their early learning, they are leading the industry in building ethical AI policies and third-party to ensure their AI is as biased-free as possible.
Here’s the reality in 2023.
I’m way less concerned with my AI being biased than I am of Jim the hiring manager making the final selection of each hire! I can actually audit and control my AI’s bias. I can not do that with Jim! Goddamn, you Jim!
I actually was on a panel recently with an AI professor from Stanford who said, regarding bias in AI, that in reality, every time you add a human into your process, you add bias. But when you add AI into your process, you eliminate bias by comparison. That made my head turn! Because we love to think the opposite. For some reason, we have a lot of pundits in our industry trying to scare people away from AI in HR. I’m not saying anyone just blindly go forward with AI in HR. Go into it with eyes wide open, but don’t go into it with fear of what AI was five years ago.
I’m fascinated by where and when we’ll see massive usage of generative AI in HR. It’s going to take some time because most HR leaders and legal teams aren’t really excited about using a tool where they have no idea what the response might be to a candidate or an employee! But, I do think we’ll continue to see massive adoption of conversational AI within our tech stacks because there is much less legal risk and, as I mentioned very little risk of bias.
Do we still have ethical issues in AI? Yes. Generative AI is very new, and there is so much we don’t know yet. The use cases are massive, and we’ll begin to see, almost immediately, tech companies testing this in certain parts of your processes to help automate tactical things. The one major ethical issue we’ll have is when we start asking models like GPT questions, and we get answers, and we don’t really know how those answers were gathered or who had an influence on those answers behind the scenes. Because if someone behind the scenes in OpenAI manipulated the AI to answer a question in a certain way over another, we now have to question every answer and who’s pulling the strings behind the curtain.
It’s exciting to think of the possibilities, but we still have a ton to learn. More to come. I’ve got this AI bug now, and I think it’s going to dominate our space for a while!
I was asked at a conference recently to give one word on how HR can make a difference in 2023.
What was my word?
What do you think? Hat or no hat?
On episode 116 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Madeline Laurano, Jessica Lee, and Tim Sackett come together to discuss their favorite Super Bowl commercials, Chat GPT, and how you can utilize AI to be a better leader.
Listen below and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (iTunes) and follow (Spotify)!
:30 – JLee had Chat GPT write an intro for this episode! It didn’t do a good job the first time, so she had it do a second pass to make it funnier.
2:00 – The crew didn’t think the Super Bowl commercials of 2023 were too exciting. Madeline and JLee’s favorite was the Clueless one, and Tim shouted out the Workday and Dunkin commercials
7:30 – Another podcast, another convo about Chat GPT and AI. Microsoft Bing is trying to become the top browser again, and JLee is on a waitlist to use the program.
10:00 – Tim’s 2023 keynote is all about the future of recruiting with AI. He thinks that the only limit of what AI can do in TA is the limit of our imaginations.
14:15 – Tim speaks to the importance of narration with AI. With AI, you have to be the expert on your topic, but you don’t have to produce anymore.
17:00 – Madeline thinks another area that AI will completely change is travel. Imagine traveling and having the whole trip planned by AI.
20:00 – Madeline is surprised that we haven’t seen more people talking about AI and Chat GPT in the TA space. She thinks some people may feel threatened by the topic.
23:45 – JLee runs through examples of how to use AI to help handle a tough situation with an emotional employee.
27:00 – JLee talks about how being open and not intimidated by AI can allow you to use it as leverage and become better. She uses a Teams tool that critiques how she speaks on calls and helps her improve the words she chooses.
31:00 – Tim thinks that Microsoft is the winner of the future of HR tech.
I’m in San Francisco this week at SHRM Tech 2023. This is SHRM’s first time holding a technology-specific conference in the US market. They have had a SHRM Tech conference in India for a few years. My session will be talking about the most disruptive HR technologies currently in the market and those coming in the near future.
Honestly, it feels like I could spend the entire time just talking about ChatGPT (generative AI), as that seems to be the topic of conversation everywhere in the tech industry, regardless of your function. Generative AI and the large language model AI will impact all technology, including every part of HR.
But generative AI isn’t the only disruptive technology in the HR space. Since HR is overly laggard as tech consumers, it’ll take a lot of organizations some time before they even adopt a lot of the artificial technology that will hit the market first. Also, many organizations will have to really work through the ethical side of using AI across their people technology stack.
What other technologies are currently disruptive in the HR industry:
Yes, ChatGPT will change how we work in HR. There is so much to come on this. But we also have so much great technology available to us that is proven that we don’t use, that we also should not be forgetting about.
I’ll be at SHRM Talent in Orlando and SHRM Annual in Las Vegas this year. Let me know if you’ll be attending and I would love to catch up and meet live!
Well, at least if you’re under 30 and live in Hungary!
Like many wealthy countries around the world, there is a baby shortage! Countries like Japan have been fighting this issue for decades. For others, like America, this is a recent dilemma that most still don’t know or understand. Hungary has known about their problem for a few years and has tried a couple of policies to encourage women to have more babies.
The first policy they attempted was to eliminate income taxes, for life, for women once they had four children. Yep, 4! As you can imagine, that wasn’t super popular. Also, they found that it takes a while to have four children! The new policy states that if a Hungarian woman has a baby before the woman turns 30, she will now be exempt from income taxes for life. That seems like a very aggressive policy!
The new policy just got approved in Hungary, so there isn’t a lot of data on the impact, but I’m guessing there will be many women and families who will take part. The estimated savings is about 17-20% more take-home pay for the women not paying income taxes.
Should the US have a similar policy?
We have a major baby problem in the US, and as Japan did two decades ago, we are mostly ignoring we have a problem. Young people are having fewer babies and waiting longer to have babies. The human replacement rate in the US is 2.1 to stay even with the current population. The US is currently at 1.7 and trending downward.
Why is a shrinking population a problem? Aren’t we overpopulated? It seems like fewer people would mean more for everyone else!? The thought being, “Fewer people would be more jobs and resources for those of us here.”
The problem is the math doesn’t work that way. Fewer people mean fewer workers. Fewer workers mean less productivity. Less productivity means less of everything. Japan’s economy has been flat to negative for two straight decades. Imagine being in a recession for twenty-plus years!?
The US needs both a baby policy and new immigration policies. We can not grow as a country with a negative replacement rate.
What could a US baby policy look like?
Here’s where it gets fun. I think Hungary, while aggressive, misses a ton.
One of the major issues that women and families have about having a child or multiple children is childcare. Hungary’s assumption is women will have a baby and then go right back to work to get that extra money. But in reality, the extra money will be eaten up by childcare. So, the truth is there isn’t any economic advantage.
To make a policy work, it has to work for both sides. The country needs more babies, and families need better economics that make sense and don’t burden them with crazy financial debt. The current cost to raise one child to the age of 18 in the US runs around $310,000, or $17,000 per year. That seems light as I know many families who pay way more than $17,000 a year just in daycare! And this doesn’t include college, which can run in the hundreds of thousands. Basically, you’re looking at $500,000 per kid. Who the hell wants that!?
Here are some things I would add to a US baby policy:
I know, how will we pay for this? I don’t know, maybe we buy one less nuclear fighter jet that costs $25B. The amount of government waste is colossal, I’m sure we’ll figure it out.
On episode 115 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Madeline Laurano, Jessica Lee and Tim Sackett come together to discuss Ted Lasso, the everchanging recruiter experience, and Tim’s experience with the Michigan State shooting.
Listen below and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (iTunes) and follow (Spotify)!
1:45 – Ted Lasso season 3 is on the horizon! The crew gives their prediction for the new season coming in March.
4:00 – Madeline and Tim did a roundtable recently about recruiter experience. Tim doesn’t think it matters anymore and JLee asks Tim to define it.
8:00 – Madeline mentions that a lot of people don’t know what recruiters do. Tim says that recruiting is the job that everyone thinks they can do.
9:15 – Tim says that when he was running TA at larger companies, senior leadership felt very comfortable giving advice to him about how to recruit, even though their advice was unfounded.
12:00 – JLee and Tim talk about how being a recruiter isn’t one of the hardest jobs that one could have. There are a lot of other jobs that require a lot out of the people who hold those positions.
15:30 – Madeline brings up a study they did at Disney where they found that the most important position at all of the Disney parks was the street sweepers.
18:30 – Tim’s opinion is that Chat GPT is going to change the landscape of everything in TA & recruiting. He says that the only thing that can’t be replaced by AI is the real conversation a recruiter has with a candidate.
21:30 – Madeline mentions a company who measures their recruiter productivity by getting them to “inbox zero”. She says she could never be a recruiter if this is a standard she was held to.
24:00 – Tim and JLee say they’d never judge one of the people they manage by the number of emails in their inbox. JLee judges people by the battery level of their devices.
27:30 – Tim’s son goes to Michigan State and he runs a business in Lansing. He talks about his experience with and the aftermath of the shooting that happened on campus recently.
36:15 – Madeline asks Tim what he did about closing his business in the aftermath. Tim said that his Teams work groups were very active around the time of the shooting
I have a new #1 question I get asked by Talent Acquisition Leaders! My old number one question was, “Which ATS should we be using?” That stood the test of time for almost a decade! But I now have a new number one.
“How should we be measuring success in Talent Acquisition?”
That question comes in a lot of versions:
I like using “Measures of Success” terminology primarily because of how I want to live my life. I never want our metrics, analytics, and data to be used as a hammer to obtain performance. I want to hire people who want to be successful in what they decide to do in life. Once they make that decision, I want to treat them like adults and help them obtain that success. I use data to help them track outcomes and measures of success to lead them on this journey.
Does that sound like a load of B.S. hustle culture or what?! LOL!
But, honestly, I genuinely believe in this philosophy, even though it’s sometimes hard to follow.
If a recruiter wants to be successful, I know there is a specific set of measures that will help them be successful if they follow the process, use the technology, and are diligent in their follow-up. They don’t have to work over 40 hours per week. They just have to work the 40 hours they work.
Every company could have a varied set of metrics that will make them successful. Most will have some similarities, but the actual numbers within the measures will be uniquely yours.
Inbox Zero is a measure a few TA Teams are using as a measure of success.
First off, I don’t necessarily believe that “Inbox Zero” has a high correlation to TA Team or Individual success, but herein lies the problem with measuring the success of TA teams today. The measures most of us use, suck! Time to fill = awful, zero correlation, you should be fired as a leader. (Editor’s note: Okay, Tim, breathe in, we know you’ll die on this hill.)
I find about 90% of TA Leaders work to build measures of success that look good without really having any real impact on actual recruiting success in their organization. That hurts, I know, but it’s true. Inbox Zero is just another sexy attempt at measuring sh*t with little accountability to success, but you can actually measure it, so it must be important. (sarcasm alert)
Just because you “can” measure it, doesn’t mean you “should” measure it.
Okay, what the hell is “Inbox Zero”?
It’s basically what it sounds like.
As a recruiting measure, some brilliant TA lead believes if every recruiter ended their day with zero emails in their inbox, they must be more successful than someone who didn’t end their day with email in their inbox.
There is some science behind inbox zero, although not a measure of recruiting success, just life success. It was developed in 2006, and here are the tenets of this email management strategy:
The reality is we are addicted to data that we can measure that is clean. We love “time to fill” because we can accurately measure it. We like things like Inbox Zero because we can accurately measure it. We can show the business the black-and-white numbers we are confident in. No matter if they actually matter or not!
Inbox Zero is a time management strategy. The hope is if you can manage your inbox well, you’ll be a better recruiter. It’s a hope. That is all it is. It’s not a measure of success for talent acquisition. That being said, I need to manage my inbox better!