Episode 106

Robert Lamb on Building Lasting Organizations, Embracing Human Connection and Development in Hiring

TIM: We are live on the Objective Hiring Show with Rob. Rob, thank you so much for joining us today.

ROBERT: My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Tim.

TIM: It's our pleasure. And I'd love to start with just hearing a little bit about yourself, just so our audience can learn a little bit about who they're listening to today.

ROBERT: Oh, wow. The deadly tell me about yourself question. So I am Canadian. I'll start with that. I often have people ask me what part of the states I'm from, and I usually let them know that I'm from the northern part, which is called Canada. We are a family, or I am part of a family of very international people. So this is the eighth major city or eighth country that we've lived in as a family. The vast majority of my career has been in high scale, high growth, and sort of high complexity talent roles, whether that's across talent acquisition. Opening new markets, expansion, whatever. And we're now currently based in Dubai, where I am the head of TA for a company called Kareem, which is an everything app based in the Middle East.

TIM: Wonderful intro. Yeah. Kareem, would it be fair to say it's the equivalent of an Uber or a Grab-style app?

ROBERT: Yeah, I think that's a really good analogy for a lot of people who may or may not have heard of Kareem: it started as a ride-hailing business. Really Straightforward was acquired by Uber and more recently raised money and has really expanded the service offering from ride hailing into financial services, remittances, for example, grocery, food, et cetera. So it is very similar to if you're based in the U.S. or you're based in Australia, something similar to Uber.

TIM: And yeah, I'd noticed you'd lived in quite a lot of really interesting cities, places like San Francisco and Hong Kong. My beloved Sydney, you're now in Dubai. I know this might be like asking who your favorite child is, but is one of those cities really, does that pull on your heartstrings, the one that's really close to your heart?

ROBERT: Yeah, absolutely. So I have two answers to this question. So first I always wonder where the question comes from. Like it was coming to me as an individual, like you by yourself living in a country. For me, I really enjoyed the time that I had in Japan. Like again, as an individual, that was before I had two amazing little kids. I think then your mindset changes when you have kids. to something that's entirely different in terms of what's important to you, etc. If you were to ask me what was my favorite place for having two little people, it's a more complicated question without stating the obvious. I think that obviously our time in Australia was unbelievable. We were at Bondi. We had this amazing access to the beach, the outdoors, and the food. It was awesome, right? It's just an unbelievable part of the world. But then I also think there are certain parts of Southeast Asia that are unbelievably cool if you have a family. I really enjoyed my time in Singapore and Hong Kong as well. Depends on what stage of life you're at, but I loved Japan. But if I had to account for my whole family, I'd probably choose a different part of Southeast Asia.

TIM: And you're not headed back to the Canadian winter anytime soon, I gather?

ROBERT: I have a strange desire to go back to Canada for the winter. I think it's part of being Canadian, and you miss outdoor sports. I miss cross-country skiing. I miss—I really miss just the physicality of snow. I know that sounds a little bit strange, but shoveling your driveway and all these things that seem really silly. I have a strange longing for this, so maybe one day we'll go back to Canada, but it's not on the. It's not on the list right now.

TIM: Not on the near-term roadmap, it's fair to say. One thing we, I think, haven't talked about enough on this podcast yet, but something that has such a profound impact on hiring to segue not so smoothly into hiring, is the quality of the interviewers themselves and how much impact that has on hiring accuracy and actually hiring the right person, because it's something that is glossed over a lot. You must have seen quite a lot of different interviewers in your time, including some who were just doing it for the first time. And we're figuring out as they went along in your mind, what's the difference between, let's say, a first-time interviewer who doesn't really know what they're doing and someone who's, wow, they are amazing.

ROBERT: I think it's development. I think it's development. I think this might be a bit of a theme that we get stuck on here in a good way, but I think great interviewers are created to a large extent, right? There are some tangible skills that you come to the table with: some innate curiosity, some genuine interest in other people, listening skills, et cetera. But one of the biggest gaps that I've seen over the years, and one of the places that I've really tried to insert myself in organizations, is developing interviewer quality. So I think it's developed. I think if you're an organization or if you're a leader. And if you want to build a business that outlives you, you have to develop your people, right? One of the values that we work with here is this idea of being responsible for our communities or building a lasting institution. When we develop our people, when we invest particularly in our leaders. You have this huge ability for a ripple effect. If I do, so you and I work together, Tim, and I'm like, okay, cool. Tim likes to really hang out and understand deeply. What do you want to be great at? What matters to you? What is the thing that you're passionate about being today or tomorrow? What's the job you want to retire from? Like, we get a holistic understanding of who you want to become as a person. And then we spend time amplifying those things. We start to go, Hey, cool. Like we're going to focus on skills. We're going to focus on competencies, and then we're going to give you some experiences to help practice those things. When we do that really well. Things get better. It sounds a bit stupid, right? But you'd be amazed how few companies make any investment in their people in terms of development. So great interviewers are a function of hard work, consistency, and doing the work to be great at interviewing. And if an organization gives people space and time and a bit of investment, that doesn't have to be monetary, they place some value on it. You can create great interviewers. The impact. is a far better ability to attract great people for your company, retain great people, and drive the efficacy of your hiring process. So you have to make sure you invest in your interviewers because they are literally the face of your brand.

TIM: Yes. And if they don't really know what they're doing, it can all go downhill pretty quickly. In so many different ways. I'm just thinking back to the first interviews I ever did as an interviewer, the first people I hired. I can tell you I did not get off to a good start in my hiring journey because I was making it up as I went along. Using first principles only got me so far. I can remember the first two people I interviewed and hired. I made one very fatal error, which maybe was less so as an interviewer, more so as a hiring manager. And that was that we overhyped the role. And so we told these people who are coming in as a commercial analyst, Oh, we've got lots of great data. There are lots of opportunities to do this and that, but realistically, we were living in Excel hell. This was 12 years ago now, whereas as an analyst, it was not an attractive environment to come into. You were mainly going to do a lot of manual reporting. It was quite tedious. And yeah, once we'd automated that, which might've taken months, then you had an interesting role, but we didn't pitch it that way. We weren't transparent enough. We strung them along a little bit. The first person lasted one week; the second person lasted two days. So it was a brutal introduction and how not to do it. Are there certain things that, yeah, strike you? If you think back to those, oh, this person has never had any coaching on training or any coaching or training at all as an interviewer. Is there anything that, yeah, really sticks out in your mind with those kinds of people?

ROBERT: There's a few, there's a few different ways to attack this. And I'm trying to think, you use the sort of framing of first principles. I think first, We have to understand the value of the other human being. We have to care, right? This person has taken time out of their day to hang out with you and to listen to you. They may have taken a few hours to prepare. They probably researched your website. The other thing that people often forget is that Changing jobs is one of the most stressful things that people do, along with, I don't know, moving, buying their first house. These are big life events for a lot of people. Now, of course, we are seeing a higher rate and scale of change in the workforce, but there's a level of compassion that has to be applied to interviewing. And you know yourself, people are super nervous first; we have to genuinely care. We have to have a level of care for that candidate, particularly if they're a good candidate. The commercial reality is if we don't create a great environment, those people get jobs somewhere else. So we got to try to, this sounds maybe a little bit cheesy, but we have to help people feel felt. Okay, like I see you're nervous; help people relax; help build connection. That's really critical in today's age, where most of the hiring process will eventually be taken up by some kind of large language model or some kind of AI-enabled thing. What do we have left? We have human connection; that's it. So let's just get good at it, please. So I think that's one thing that is foundational to every great interviewer: this ability to build a connection with the other person and have a genuine care for the person on the other side of the screen, the other side of the table, or whatever it is. Because you can remember when you were there, and you want to treat people like you probably wish you were treated. So that's probably foundational. The other thing, maybe if we categorize this into three buckets, the other thing you start to see Is the interviewer prepared? You know yourself; I'm sure you've seen this. Person shows up; they're not sure what they're interviewing for. They're not sure about your background. They haven't looked at your, I don't know, your LinkedIn profile, your resume, or however your details have been presented. And then, they add insult to injury by not really having any questions ready. Okay, hey, you worked at Microsoft. Okay, great, that must have been good. And then it just becomes, what am I doing here? So there's a level of respect that we have to have for the process and we have to have for the individual. And if you are an owner of a business unit, or if you are a founder, you owe it to yourself to prepare because, Tim, as you called out, making a bad hire lasts for two days or two weeks or two months. Think about the time you've wasted, but also think about the gigantic disruption you've caused in that person's life. Where they might have left a good job, maybe they had to drive to a different place. Maybe it's a lot. So the second thing I think is you have to have respect for preparation and the process. Know why you're there. And then I think, last but not least, it's important to think, and this is maybe what we should have front-loaded with: Is there any planning? So it sounds a little bit silly, but in the current world, with all these tech companies laying all these people off, really poor workforce planning, and really poor financial management, without stating the obvious, have you validated this job is actually needed? And we see it so often, years and years, that tech companies have been doing this, where we build, make all this money, and we, okay. Pump this thing up. And then we go and we cut thousands of people or hundreds of people or dozens of people's jobs. And I think that there has to be a level of accountability on behalf of the hiring manager. You're responsible for your financial planning, your budgeting, et cetera. You should own that. And on behalf of the organization, you should be a lot better prepared before you have that impact on somebody's life. There should be a level of accountability and responsibility, which I think is. Missed the vast majority of the time. So those are probably my three things that bubble up.

TIM: Yeah, I immediately thought of a company in Sydney, 2023, I think that evaporated overnight and the day that they went bankrupt, they had 40 live rolls on LinkedIn. So the people who joined the company that day and their first email they received was a See, lock the door on your way out kind of thing. That is shocking, isn't it?

ROBERT: It is. And again, it's probably not the point of the conversation. However, I'm constantly struck by the lack of accountability that large organizations have for people. And I think this thinking for me is starting to erode any kind of trust in the workforce. So I think that's a particularly challenging space: as an organization, how do you develop trust? And you should so how do you make that part of your ethos or have part of your values?

TIM: That is so important. And I feel like it's. being eroded alarmingly quickly in hiring specifically. If I just look at the general LinkedIn narrative, it's candidates saying, Oh, are these jobs even real? Are you just, is the bot screening out my CV? The ATS is screwing me. The AI is screwing me. You've asked me to do a 10-hour take-home project without meeting me. And then there's companies saying I've got a thousand applications. I reached out to a bunch of them that didn't even respond. Are these applications written with AI? Is the candidate cheating in an interview? It's just like this kind of weird battle where there's going to be no winners if it keeps going this way with that lack of trust.

ROBERT: Agree, and it's a two-way street, right? Like you have organizations posting all these jobs, not getting through all the applications, and you've got these poor recruiters, and I'm biased obviously, but behind the scenes working their butts off. They're trying their best to get through the resumes. They're trying their best to send all these emails, whether they're rejection or not, but they're just trying to communicate. They're genuinely doing their best, but to your point, if you look at your average application volume, In some cases, you're getting 800 or 1000 applications per job, right? Now for the person on the street, that might not sound like a lot because they're like, That's your whole job, right? But the problem is if you look at an organization in hypergrowth, that recruiter might have anywhere from 15 to 60 jobs open, right? Again, depending on how you design your teams and how you think about capacity. Now let's say we go on the low end of the spectrum. Like Tim, you're sitting at your desk; you have 15 jobs open. You've got 15,000 resumes to go through. Okay. Again, for the layperson, they might be like, Yeah, but it's your whole job. Just get through the resumes. But then you have things like you have hiring managers that you are chasing you. So there might be your 50 slacks a day or a hundred slacks a day, or there are 10 emails, or, I remember at Uber, I used to have people who lined up behind my desk. Like, I'd be sitting there, and I'd turn around. And I'd have five hiring managers standing in a lineup. And I'd be like, are you guys okay? Can I help you? What is happening? And then you have, on top of that, business as usual. People have to eat, people have to sleep, and they've got meetings. The scale and complexity are very hard. And coming back to your point, candidates just got lost in that process; the experience gets lost, people get angry, and people feel like no one cares. And I, from my teams, can only speak for them, right? But it's the furthest thing from the truth. We just try so hard to try to create a good experience for people, but the scale pressure. Complexity is very hard on the T.A. side. Now, the other challenge that you called out is if I'm a candidate, we had an instance recently where I guess we have lots of instances where people are using AI to just do mass applications, right? Like also not great because you're like, one, like you're just spraying your details all over the place. AI makes mistakes. Who knows what you're like? You know what? Your resume is sprayed in the wrong place based on a hallucination, like that's not good. And so we're seeing just this incredible volume of activity, which isn't good activity. So can we focus on doing the right things? Not all the things. And so the volume and chaos, I think, are increasing incrementally as we all learn the role that we want AI to play in this whole process. Yeah.

TIM: Yeah, and I have sympathy for candidates because they're looking at the, it's this kind of vicious circle. They look at LinkedIn, and they go, Oh wow, a thousand applicants already in a day. Are you joking me? I thought I had to apply to, I don't know, 50 applications, 50 roles to get five interviews. Now I have to apply to 500 to get five. Therefore, I'll use the same spray and pray technique as everyone else. And so it goes on and on until most of the applications are almost spam like from the perspective of the company anyway. I know people obviously get desperate, and they just think, If it's almost costless to apply, I may as well throw my hat into the ring; even if I've got a one in a thousand chance, I may as well. Maybe that's the step; there needs to be some kind of sensible barrier to apply. Some kind of manual human efforts. I don't know. What do you think?

ROBERT: Yeah. I think you're onto something. Often I'm really privileged in that. I get people who will approach me and say, Hey, like, I'm going through this, what you're describing, right? I'm going to change jobs, or I'm at a job, or I want to make a career transition, or whatever. And they'll say, Can you, can we get time? Let's just talk through this. And one of the things that I enjoy the most about my job is any kind of mentorship and coaching that I get to do. Because it's a massive point of privilege. I think it's one of the biggest compliments that you can receive as a person for another person to put their trust in you and ask for your advice. So I take it very seriously. And I spend a lot of time prepping and making sure that I really am able to hear people properly. And so to this question, I think the first thing is. And the question I like to ask people is, Before you start applying for all the jobs, right? Because everybody panics, and they go, I'm going to go to whatever. You're in Australia. I'm going to go to Sikh, or I'm going to go to whatever, right? And you start applying. I don't know. What are you doing? Like the first question we like to work through with people is what's your vision for your career? Let's just pause for a sec. Step back. Like we've got some time. Where do you want to go? Where do you want to be? When you look back on your career, and you don't have to be a super intense career person, but you should at least have an idea of the stuff that gives you some energy. So what do you do when you look back in 10 years, 5 years, or whatever it is? When you retire, it doesn't matter. What do you want to tell people about it? If I'm going to be like, oh, Tim's going to ask me about my career when I'm 60. What do I want to be really proud of? What do I want to be excited about? I think that reflection is really important before we move to action. And so we say, okay, cool. I want to help people. I want to have an impact, whatever it is. So I think that's step one. What is your vision? And that can be anything. It could be creative. It can be athletic. It doesn't matter. Just have the thinking happen. The next thing that I spend a lot of time on with people is once we have a rough picture, it doesn't have to be laser sharp. Then what are your values? People never think about this, right? You're going to go work. I'm going to go work with you all day, Tim. And we're going to sit beside each other, and what happens is if you have an entirely different value set from me, there's nothing wrong with that, of course, but we're always going to be at a friction point, right? Because the things that I believe in that are really important to me, whatever those things are, I'm totally different from you. We're never, it's just not going to be great. So there's two things to think about here as you build diverse teams. That's important, and they have different value sets because, of course, the point of diversity is friction, right? With no friction. We don't get any cool stuff when we think about sustainability, and when we create the sustainable sustainability and careers, we have to have some kind of value alignment because you can't just be at odds with everybody every day. It sucks. We've all had jobs like that where you're like, What am I doing here? I don't get it. What's going on with these people? So the second thing I spend a lot of time on is let's really define and work through together. What do you value? What are your values? And it's such a cool experience for people. Cause they're like, I never thought about this stuff before, but yeah, the people I really gravitate towards have these similar things that they really care about. Step two. The third thing that we really try to do then is say, Okay, cool, so now we know where you want to go. And now you roughly know what the environment you want to be in to get there is, right? It's more likely if you have value alignment, you get there more quickly. The other thing that's cool about value alignment is, let's say you're in a role in a company or with a group of people, however you choose to work, and you're really values aligned. But you don't have some kind of weird little technical skill to progress into this next job, right? Or whatever the next tier is of your career. If your values are aligned, you've built those really deep relationships. It's more likely that those people are going to invest in you to get you there. So you build sustainability, and you build, like, kind of this camaraderie or connection. The next thing that we think about, the final piece, is, Okay, cool. So now we know where you want to go. Now we know what you value. What organizations can align to those things? Every company on the planet has a values page that says, Here's what we believe in. We really hope companies try to live those values. But you feel like you've really increased the odds of the person if they know where they want to go. They know what the environment looks like, and they can find that place, which is a value alignment from there. Again, I don't think applying for jobs makes a lot of sense. There are too many applications; recruiters are so stressed. It's like literally taking your most important asset, your resume, which, let's be clear, is a sales document, and just throwing it in a box and crossing your fingers. Like that essentially is what's happening out there today, which doesn't sound very good to me. I wouldn't do it. But instead, I think a more effective way to do it is if you really have a tangible, saleable asset yourself, find somebody in your network. Everybody's connected, right? Jump on LinkedIn. Do you know anybody who works at this list of companies that you've created? And you don't have to; don't pressure anybody. Just say, Hey, I want to learn about the company. I don't want to; I don't sell you anything. Can I buy you a cup of coffee? I just want to know what it's like to work at X company. What are the people like? And through that learning experience, a couple of things happen. First, you start to connect more with people who are values aligned with you. There's value in that. You're going to have a great conversation. You're like, Cool, I hung out with Tim. There's no job, but at least I had good coffee and a good chat. So that's, there's a level of wellness in creating that experience. Now, the cool thing that happens is as I build relationships, I hang out with Tim, no job, but yeah, he's a cool guy. What always happens and I do this all the time is you'll go, Hey, Rob yeah, I'm really sorry. There's no job at my company right now that fits. I think you would be great if there was something, but have you talked to this other guy or girl? Because I feel like you would connect with them. Do you want to? Can I introduce you? And I know this sounds silly, but it happens every time, and you go, Oh cool. Yeah, I know. I don't know them, but can I go? Can you make the introduction? You go meet that person. They're always like, There's like this maze, and you end up with something great. And if you think about this, if you were a consultant and you had your top-of-funnel diagram, you've got to inject those great conversations, those values-aligned conversations at the top of the funnel, and you've got to do a lot of them, but hey, everybody likes to have a great cup of coffee or tea or water or whatever you like to drink. The more you do that. Not only are you building a kind of a cool community to support your journey and something good will come out of that, because you're injecting good energy into the universe. Something comes out at the bottom that will be really good. And so it's more about, I think, to your question, it's not about pray and spray; it's about really values-aligned conversations that ultimately take you towards this thing. That gets you where you want to go, but you have to do those first steps first. What's your vision? What are your values, and then start having the conversations?

TIM: That is a devastating set of suggestions for anyone listening that is, yeah, so well thought through and articulated. I, if I think back now to. My career or maybe other people who haven't necessarily followed that approach, I guess it's, they probably get stuck in a few areas. One is lacking leverage because you're like, I'm in a job; I need to leave right now. Oh my God, get me out of here.

ROBERT: Yeah.

TIM: By which point you don't have that kind of long-run, calm, meditative vision where I think, okay, I'm going to carefully do this research to make these people see if there's like an element of urgency where you really just have to get a job. Which is, I think, a bit trickier. But maybe just sometimes a lack of longer-term thinking in general. So maybe if you, at the start of this current job, thought of it and said, Okay, I'm going to do this job for a couple of years, but I'm already going to be planting the seeds of the next few years of my life. I've got a bit of runway now to do that. I'm not about to hop jobs. Maybe that's just a general lack of long-term planning. Maybe also actually, if I think about it, a lack of willingness to reach out to people, especially, I think, if you're in a technical field. The last thing you'd automatically think of doing is, Oh, I'd love to have a coffee with an interesting random stranger once a week. You probably wouldn't think of that. You'd think, oh, I should do some more Udemy courses on Python or whatever. So it's probably out of an introvert's comfort zone, I would have thought.

ROBERT: It is. I agree. That's a really important point. So I think the people who tend to gravitate to these ideas sometimes are really introverted, right? But I think that the nice thing, if I speak for myself, is that I'm not an extrovert in any way, shape, or form, but the thought of just having a conversation with one person doesn't freak me out. And particularly if we share maybe a job path or, like, a skill set, it doesn't freak me out. And most things do. And I think to your point, you're spot on, so what should people do about it? Do it now. It doesn't matter where you're at. Maybe you're not looking for a job. Okay, cool. Maybe you are, but what is the harm in sitting back and saying, Okay, what am I doing here? What do I really want to get out of this life, right? It's like that whole memento mori thing, right? This doesn't last forever, right? Have a bit of a thought about what's important. Then, I think defining your values, regardless of where you're at in your life, is having a list in front of you that goes, Here are the things that really matter to me. Should inform how you show up every day. And it's such a weird thing that we don't spend time on. Like what? What matters to us doing that work and saying, Yeah, you know what? This does matter to me. Yeah, I'm going to index more on doing these types of things because they genuinely matter to me. I think it helps us be better people. And so look, if you're not looking for a job, good times; that's great. Like, you don't have to go through that stressful, high-anxiety experience, but why not learn more about yourself in terms of where you want to go and what you value and do it today? Like, easy, just get a pen.

TIM: It's one of those things; it's saving money or going to the gym. Yeah, you might not have done it well in the past, but the best time to start is now; it doesn't matter what's happened previously. You also reminded me of when I first started Aluba, actually, back in 2019. Before chopping a line of code or anything like that, I just reached out to about 50 hiring managers in analytics in Sydney and Melbourne. I'd have coffee with them. They were more than happy to have coffee, chat about hiring, and chat about how they did things; they weren't selling them anything. I was just doing good research, connecting, and building those networks. And what I found amazing was how many of them would spontaneously offer to help in some way. Like I haven't asked them to help. They're like, Oh, you should, like you said, speak to X, Y, Z, or I'll loop you into this conversation. Or there's this event happening. People are pretty friendly on average, and they're happy to help. If you don't give them some hard sell or you give them some bait and switch where you said you're going to have coffee and then you turn up trying to flog them something. If you're a reasonable person, people will be quite friendly in return.

ROBERT: Oh, yeah, it's such a cool thing. You get such good energy from sitting down and asking people and being curious and saying, Tim, I got this idea. I'm not sure about it, but I really want to know what what do you think? And it's massively complimentary to have the respect for someone else to say, I know you're a smart person. I know I'm not perfect. So take the ego and put it in this little box on the shelf and just leave it there for five minutes and go, I don't know everything. What can we learn? It's just such an important thing to do in your life. So I couldn't agree more. Just go do it.

TIM: And it's interesting also, thinking about it now, the analogy between a candidate's job search process and a company's candidate search process, which is that often both of them fail at step zero, which is defining what we want and what we're looking for, which is what you're saying on both sides.

ROBERT: Exactly. Exactly. Beautifully put. I think that's exactly right. So when you think about recruitment processes, or even if you don't have using recruiter, like company job hiring processes, we go technical. We feel very comfortable with black and white binary. Yes, they do. This and they don't do that. Okay. Great. There's no magic in that. Okay. Of course the person can either do their ABCs or not. There's no skill, but I think where the real skill comes in and when we create really highly connected leadership teams and really highly connected businesses, that's the real, like, when you see businesses that are truly magical, where you're like, Whoa, this is cool. Like you walk in, you can feel really good energy. People are doing really innovative high order work. That's when you have connection and that coming back to your point is really about not so much hard skills, but much more about value alignment. And I think that's the work that organizations miss out on. Cause they're like, as you said, Oh, we just need we're behind on our roadmap. We just need an awesome, I don't know, software engineer too, by the 17th of this month; go just get one. And you're like, yeah, of course. Like I get it, but let's, to your point, step back just a little bit. Does this make sense? Let's talk about a person who jumps in, maybe it's a software engineer, one, maybe it's an architect. I don't know, but hire somebody who's awesome in terms of what they bring to the energy of this business. Of course, they still have to be technically competent before we just go. It's the specific job. It's boring. It's not dynamic.

TIM: Yes, and I agree with you. I also think, though, part of the challenge in actually doing this in practice is once we move away from, let's say, I don't know the technical skills, which are pretty reasonably measurable. We get into things that are a bit more subjective, a little bit more vague for want of a better term, which then makes it harder to evaluate in a consistent way. Arguably. How do you think about measuring values? How do you think about measuring soft skills? Is that mainly around competency-based interviews and those kinds of things?

ROBERT: So it goes back to your first question. How are we developing our interviewers? So if we're not, you have one major problem to solve right away. Let's get great at assessment. And the way I think about that is as much as possible, let's try to productize things. Like we should create repeatable processes so that it isn't just contingent all on human skill, right? Because human skill takes a long time to develop. Like, I get that. Can it be expensive? Can be time-consuming? Sure. Do the right thing by your people. Again, that comes back to values again. Just do the right thing by people. And one of those things is helping them be great at what they do. Not rocket science, because it obviously serves a commercial purpose. If you're great at hiring, you're going to bring great people into the organization, and the organization will be more successful. So the first thing, invest in your hiring. The second thing is, and again, you can see this one theme that's coming through our conversation is people are busy, right? I don't have time to do this. I'm in a hurry. Everybody's busy. I get it. But again, everything comes down to opportunity cost. You can do this, or you can't. You make the call. Of course, you can go get a coffee, or you can sit and do work. Like, I know those are hard decisions, but if you want to have great interviewers, sorry, you're going to have to. Make some trade-offs; develop the human, right? Do the work. Similarly, when we think of hiring jobs and opportunity cost, you can develop clear technical specifications of what the person has to do. You can develop a clear, values-based specification of how that person shows up. You can do it. It's not even hard. You have to choose to do it, right? If you choose, so the technical assessment if we're talking about tech based rules, software engineering, et cetera, reasonably straightforward, we've got great tools out there, CodeSignal, Codility, et cetera, they work, they, Olupa, they work well, right? Okay, do we need to reinvent the wheel? No. Now, to your point, where it gets a bit more challenging, I think, for people who are a little more uncomfortable, is when it comes to values-based, because it is more qualitative, right? But you have to ask yourself, really, is it? So if we develop a values based model, or a competency based model, both of which are qualitative, we can go through each individual value and each individual competency, and we can say, great, and this looks like this. person shares the example; they can share a tangible example; they can share how it impacted the organization. Okay, like, that's pretty tight. But again, coming back to your original question, which is spot on, if we don't, if we don't develop our interviewers to understand what, how to identify what good looks like on that competency or that value, okay, it's going to be harder to define. Now the other thing that we've done a lot of work on is we love, like, we've been loving playing with AI, and so one of the things you're challenged by is, let's say you're an interviewer and you don't, you can't really ask questions and take notes. This is a thing people really struggle with. Oh, I didn't take any notes. I was listening to Tim. Sorry, or they take notes, and they're almost entirely nonsensical. Or they're just a mess, totally common, right? One of the things we've built through Cross is the coolest group of people I work with, and we've been building, doing basic prompt engineering to take big blocks of interviewer notes, decipher the interviewer notes, and restructure them into something that we know is much more tangible. And so what we're trying to do is enable, so of course you can develop, but you also have to enable what people are busy. How do we understand what the challenges are, and then how do we give them tools to make, okay, we'll take that off your plate? If it. is better. There are so many ways that we can automate day-to-day tasks now and make it so much better to increase the efficacy of what we're doing. Get your people; make sure they're happy. And if they are, they'll create really cool stuff and make your life easier. And I think it all starts to come together in a much better outcome.

TIM: Yes. And AI is one of those things that can change everything or is changing everything profoundly. It's not, like, a marginal tweak around the sides. It's that we had this or we didn't have this, and now we do. It's that level of difference. I think there are so many applications of it in hiring in particular to solve some of these. Almost endemic issues that we've had for so long, to your point before around overworked T8, overworked and underappreciated T8 teams, are yeah, it's not that they want to ghost candidates or that they're deliberately not providing feedback in most markets. It's just a function of, Oh my God, I've got a thousand things to do. Of course, things slip through the cracks, or you can only do so many things in a day. So surely things like, yeah, providing feedback to candidates is one that we could do with AI. You've mentioned the interview use case, but arguably the screening use case as well. Like currently, if you're going to screen based on a CV at the moment, you get back a yes or a no, maybe, but if we're going to have AI screening of a CV, it could clearly give some feedback to the candidate. You didn't get to the next role or next stage because of X, Y, and Z. Do you see things going in that direction?

ROBERT: Oh, yeah, 100%. So the AI thing is a gigantic conversation. So I don't want to jump way too far back. But I think one of the things we have to start with before any conversation about AI is what is the operating framework organizations are creating around it? So how are we creating an ethical model? For this new employee that we have, that's the new carbon friend that we have. And then what is that? And every organization will be different, but I think where we're seeing, or where I see colleagues or founders that I'm in touch with go wrong is. They just start using it, and you're like, I get it. It's exciting. But stop, let's talk. What is the framework by which we interact with this new colleague? And I do think that you'll start to see the ethics of AI evolve very quickly because essentially you're going to have to start thinking about this as my employee, like this is another brain or another series of thoughts that are being presented to me, which are influencing my decisions. How should that happen? We should be really mindful of that, I think, before we jump in headfirst. That then informs the role of AI in insights, like from a data and analytics perspective, like, how many AI insights am I using to drive strategy, to drive hiring decisions, I don't know, to do my grocery shopping, whatever, right? There have to be some guardrails. And again, that'll be different for every organization. But I hate to keep going on about this. We have to invest in leadership development. This is a space that no one has any skills in, right? Nobody knows how to lead organizations that are AI-enabled. It's brand new or new-ish, right? So one of the things I have to call out, and I really hope that people hear this, is that. There's probably, there's two critical success factors in my mind. First, we have to have leaders who have the ability to connect deeply and effectively with others, right? That's important because if we play that forward, what's the future of humans? I think the only future of humans that we end up having is going to be the ability to connect with other humans. It's to listen to you and go, Oh, I understand how you feel. I think that's all you're going to be left with. Which is fine with me. But if we have people that lack that skill, I don't see a future. I think that becomes really hard, and it adds unneeded friction to organizations. So foundationally given the rate of change ahead of us, right? Like we're, this is going to accelerate if anything. We need leaders who really spike on communication. learning and connection. So those are my kind of three buckets at their core. Then they have to have integrity, fairness, and accountability. So you have to start to define the leader of the future. I think from there you can develop a competency in Gen AI as a tool, right? But I think we're missing it. We're jumping into AI, and we're saying, Hold on, do we have the right human factors to enable AI? I think it's a way we need to think about it, and we need to think about it pretty quick. Once you get those in place, then. What's the role in hiring? That'll be different for every organization and every hiring leader. But let's get the human factors right first because they're the ones that are influencing the output of Gen AI in the first place.

TIM: You mentioned earlier in the call you have children; how old are they, may I ask?

ROBERT: I have a two and a half and a five and a half.

TIM: Okay, so young kids, if you had to advise them on whether to put, I know this is always simple to ask these binary questions, if they had to invest all their effort in learning better people skills or learning AI skills, which do you think will end up being more valuable for them when they join the workforce in, let's say, 15 to 20 years? If

ROBERT: I think about this sequentially. This is not going to be the answer that you want. But first I would say if you think about a learning trajectory, first, they have to learn humans because if we think positively, hopefully in the future, there's still some left, right? Okay, so you have to learn to interact and hang out because when we think of the core of the human, I love this saying: you have to put your oxygen mask on first, right? So if you create a person or you create a person who can't function, then they can't work with AI anyway. It's irrelevant. So for me and for my kids, it's about creating good, strong people. Full stop. Step one. From that, I think the logical progression of understanding humans is an innate ability to solve problems. So we can't get through this sort of human life unless we can solve problems, right? You're asking me a question. That's a problem. I got to solve it, right? If I can't do that, you're in trouble, right? So I think that that foundational skill of human interaction then fuels our ability to solve problems effectively. Because, human interaction is very complex, right? Then the third thing I think is once we understand humans, how we, how they behave, what's important, and how to take care of ourselves and others, then we start thinking about, okay, these, there's a whole series of complex problems there. I've got some experience. I feel pretty good. Then if we think about AI, AI then amplifies those skills in the current context, right? It'll probably change tomorrow. But the way I think about this is AI gives us a five x, a 10 x, a hundred x multiplier on the skills we have. So therefore, basic math: if the skills we have are higher, therefore the multiplier is higher. So I would index on developing the human first with it, this idea that in the future. They will be amplified through some sort of third-party intelligence.

TIM: If you could ask our next guest one question about hiring, what would you choose to ask them?

ROBERT: How do you demonstrate compassion in your hiring process?

TIM: That's a great question. And one that, as you say, we're going to have to think maybe more and more about as we start to chip away and automate more and more things, it will be very easy to have it feel uncompassionate or discompassionate without that human element being present. Some would say already in the current scenario, maybe some companies processes are lacking a bit of compassion. So that's a great one. How do you think about this yourself?

ROBERT: That it's the ultimate differentiator. That if we play this forward, AI is going to go right. If you're still questioning if AI is going to be a thing, ask who got you to work this morning or who chose your playlist or who suggested the last video you watched. Like, you can question how much agency you have. I would say not very much; just go with it. It's cool, right? Whatever it's gone, let it go. So I think that's really important. Just throw your hands up and go. It's cool. The most important thing and the biggest differentiator then is how do you help a human feel human? Because it's going away. People are feeling like numbers. They're getting processed. They're getting made redundant. People are consistently being told they don't matter, and that sucks. So if you're building a business or if you deal with people, the skill that I see being negated is helping other people feel like they matter. And if you're trying to build an employer brand, or if you're trying to build a company, if you can do that, you're going to suddenly be differentiated because people will gravitate towards it. It's a basic human need. And if we miss it, we have a problem, but those people who are able to capitalize on it will have a distinct advantage.

TIM: Yeah, I agree completely, and I wonder whether as we go down, like, there's a clear trend with lots of AI tools to make them personalized. Oh, we're personalizing outreach, blah, blah, blah. And we're getting into this kind of uncanny valley of is it AI or is it human-generated, which is not really compassion. It's a little bit fake. You're pretending to be something that you're not. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with picking up the phone or going and actually checking someone's hand and having a coffee with them in real life. It's going to go a long way in a super digital world.

ROBERT: Totally. Absolutely. And it's so important, like there's such a correlation with wellness and spending time with other people, even if you are introverted. So why not get good at it? And to your point, there's just so much great coffee to be drunk. Why not do it with someone else? And the more we can do that as individuals, the more we can do that as teams. If you're running a team or leading a team, or if you're building an organization, I can't, and I hope that never goes out of style. And I do hope that we emphasize how important it is to give a shit about other people, because I think that's a skill that seems to be fading currently a little bit.

TIM: Yeah. Amen to that. Rob, thank you so much for joining us today, giving us all your detailed thoughts, wisdom insights, really appreciated it. And I'm sure our audience has as well.

ROBERT: Absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me, Tim.