Episode 123

Sarang Bapat on Balancing Challenge and Support in Hiring Interview

TIM: We are live on the Objective Hiring Show today. We're joined by Sarang. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.

SARANG: Thank you, Tim. I'm Have the podcast.

TIM: Yeah. And we're excited to have you here. And for our viewers, for our listeners, I should say, you can't see us. Sarang got a beautiful background there. He's set up perfectly for the podcast. And we're ready to go. And where I love to start is just hearing a little bit more about the guest. Who are we speaking to today? Who is Sarang?

SARANG: Yeah. My name is Sarang Bapat. I am the current director of data governance at Mitsubishi Electric Train USA. It's otherwise called METUS, and before joining Mitsubishi Electric Train USA. A lot of my experience has been in the financial services space for about 25 years, working for large banks like USAA, Wells Fargo, Wachovia, SunTrust, or Truist. And the main focus all along has been corporate technology and data. Pretty much anywhere from the financial crime space to anti-money laundering to regulatory reporting to data management to data governance to data analytics. That has been the focus for 25 years. And as you can imagine for financial institutions, auditors and regulators are a big part of that equation, and as a result of that, I think the maturity of those sectors like finance and insurance and all that is high, mainly because of that regulatory focus. so a lot of experience in that, but my current role is more exciting to take because most of the time, if you see these technologies and all used It's mainly because regulators are after you to do things, whereas my current role is more truly offensive-focused. So, like improving customer experience, getting better campaigns, improving customer service, building digital communities, and those types of things. So I'm pretty excited about it and love to talk about the hiring and other aspects of the analytics space.

TIM: Excellent. And yes, the hiring is what we're all about here on the show. And I can imagine a big part of your history has been in hiring. in team building and finding the right talent. I'd love to drill down initially on the interview aspect of that, because I feel like for most companies, still the key evaluation tool they use is an interview. They might have tests as part of the process, skills tests, psychometric tests, but at the end of the day, a candidate is going to have to do what in 1, interviews to get the job. And sometimes companies do this. With a panel interview with lots of different interviewers. Sometimes it's just the hiring manager doing the interview themselves. Do you have any view of what the best method is? If we should just be relying on the hiring manager, we should be spreading out the pool across other interviews. What do you think about that?

SARANG: I think I like diverse perspectives when you're looking at a candidate. Hiring manager is definitely one aspect of it, but most of the time the people you are hiring for analytics roles and others are working with a lot of different stakeholders across the enterprise. So having a perspective from other stakeholders, those candidates are going to engage with or work on their problems and things like that. I think it's pretty important in my mind to have some of their opinions taken into account while hiring those candidates because the manager has set expectations, right? He knows what he's looking for. But at the end of the day, I think these folks are going to solve problems for other stakeholders in the organization. Having that perspective is vital. So I tend to get more feedback or a panel-type setup versus just one hiring manager or one or two technical people interviewing. I would like to get more perspective from other parts of the organization.

TIM: Yeah. So you get that broader perspective, not so myopic, not reliant on one person's opinion; it's a little bit of a broader base because. One person can only know so much, where I've seen it sometimes go downhill. If you have, let's say, a wide variety of interviewers, it's hard to keep everyone on the same page, and sometimes an interviewer might not necessarily know exactly what the brief is, especially if they've just been invited to the interview at the last minute and they're like, Oh, what's this role? Okay, cool. It's this role, yet who am I interviewing? Great. Got it. But they're looking for something else. So do you have any thoughts about how to keep people on the same page?

SARANG: Yeah, I do a little bit of meetings for the panel that I'm setting up precisely for the reason that you just mentioned, that if it is a last minute, people don't have time to actually review the candidate credentials and all that. Also, while doing or picking the panel, I think as you start to learn more, you do get the people who. are able to properly interview candidates and have some experience with it to get an objective understanding of what the capabilities are and how it will fit from a business perspective as well as the culture. But giving that upfront brief and a little bit of also setting the stage for what. Are we totally looking for this particular candidate? It kind of helps other stakeholders also to learn a little bit more about what I, as a hiring manager, am looking for and getting their perspective about.

TIM: Is there anything to ever be said for very carefully choosing who you want to be as the interviewers? Because you might have a stakeholder who's very difficult, who actually. You want to hire an analyst or a data scientist or someone who's going to challenge them and maybe rub them up the wrong way. Maybe they need a bit of that friction, a bit of that, what have you. And if they were part of the hiring process, they'd say no to that candidate.

SARANG: Yeah, I think I have a little bit of counterintuitive. The thought around that is I think you need some of those interviewers. Because have you worked at a place where everybody agrees with you all the time? No, it doesn't happen like that. So you do need that challenging stakeholder that is going to challenge you. And an interview is a little bit of a. A test drive for that kind of situation where people challenge your point of views. And you have to explain that in a fashion and communicate it in a fashion that you can; elaborate on what your point of view is. I do encourage some of those stakeholders to be part of the panel. One of the things that I definitely look for is somebody who It's not that everybody has good interviewing skills in terms of what exactly to ask and things of that nature. Those types of resources I wouldn't necessarily pick for my panel because it doesn't get me what I'm looking for out of the questions or the feedback that I'm getting. But of stakeholders, I think I would get one or, at least, 20 percent of the panel with that mindset.

TIM: And you mentioned something critical there, which is, yeah, the interviewer quality, which must dictate the quality of the interview so much. Now, have you ever seen any like first-time interviewers? And then seeing a really experienced interviewer. And if so, what are they, almost like common mistakes? The first time interview would do, or is there some obvious tell, like I can see this person has never interviewed anyone in their life, or can you even almost, can you almost remember back to when you did your first interview perhaps? And maybe what the difference is between your skills then and now.

SARANG: Yeah. I think you can pretty much tell because if somebody is asking you literally what you have given in the resume, you read that, and you're reading me back to some of those questions. I can tell that, other than what I presented to you, you're not asking any kind of a little bit more double-clicking questions into what my experience is or if there are any follow-up questions to what I'm telling you, so I think a lot of times, like once somebody asks, you know, Can you tell me what you did on this project? and I have described that project in my resume, and then the whole thing stops there. He goes to the next question, but the experienced interviewer asks if there's anything okay. Then how did you do that? Or did you face any of these other issues, or did you normally see? Did you fail at something, or the follow-up questions and digging deeper into those experiences is a mark of an experienced interviewer? Whereas for first-time interviewers, you can tell it's a very surface interview, I would

TIM: Yes. Yes. You suddenly reminded me of. Someone we had on the show a few months ago was Charles Shaw, and he described his interviewing practice, which he said was all he's done for 20 years: he would just ask the candidate one question, and he was normally interviewing econometricians or statisticians. So he'd normally ask them something like, What happens if the interest rate goes down? What impact does that have? And what he described was looking for like level one, two, and three. Depth of thought. And so level one, he'd expect like a superficial answer of, okay, if interest rates go down, X, Y, and Z happen. Okay, cool. But then what happens? Then what happens? Then what happens?

SARANG: Right.

TIM: He thought if he could get down to a level three question and the candidate could still answer it, then for him, that was like, great job. But I could see how then in that framework an inexperienced interviewer would only cover level one. You'd never go beyond that. Yes. And what about even yourself? I'm sure it was a long time ago that you did your first interview as an interviewer. Can you remember the difference between your skills then and now?

SARANG: Yeah. The first time, I usually used to be pretty nervous about giving the interview. So it was my first time. I was in a different country. I'm not, and this was, I have never worked in India before. So I've worked for the first time ever in my professional life here in the States. And I didn't know how it was going to go, how, or what questions would be asked. I was a little unsure of how my accent would be perceived. Would they understand me clearly and all that? So initially those were my concerns, but what I realized is, luckily, the interview panel was pretty well experienced, and they were making me pretty comfortable right off the bat in the interview and all that. In that sense, it went pretty well, and they were encouraging it along the way because they realized I'm nervous. I'm going to ask the first couple of questions. They are like, You can see you're a little bit nervous, but as they walk me through a little bit more questions, leading questions a little bit, I started to get comfortable after the first 10 minutes or so.

TIM: Yes, and I feel like that's one of the first challenges in interviewing: can we just make the candidate relaxed? Because without that, you can't really understand who they are. They're too tense and nervous. They've got this kind of guard and facade up. Do you have any way that you do that? Any way you can help the candidate relax?

SARANG: I do. And I think one of the things is diving right into the interview, right? If somebody comes to your interviewing page and the first question is to write a resume and start asking questions. Instead, I would ask a little bit more about them. Where are they from? How was the trip coming here? Did they find everything? Okay. How are things going? Do they need anything before the interview? Do you want a cup of coffee, or do you want something? Just want to make sure you are relaxed and comfortable before we get rolling. So automatically, the first three or four questions are meant to make them more comfortable and relaxed, and then get into the real interview questions and all that. And I think the. I feel like sometimes the tone of the interviewer also matters, right? If you come out as a daunting executive or somebody who has, right off the bat, you can tell they don't have time. They want, don't want to be here. It's And be done with it. I think the candidates are going to be pretty scared. I'm already interviewing a VP or the director or whoever. And it feels like they're in a rush to do something. They don't know whether they really want to do this or not. So that kind of tells us we don't want that kind of experience for anyone.

TIM: Yes. And as you started talking about that, I was having all these flashbacks of interviews I had as a candidate early on in my career, many of which were dreadful. I have to say it in different ways. I can quickly share a few examples. I can remember going for a, like, a scholarship at the biggest company from my local town, like a steelworks, a steel company. And I remember after about five minutes, there were two interviewers. One of them, their mobile phone rang, and we're in a tiny room that could not be, it's like as big as a bedroom, not even that. And he answered his phone and just started having a full conversation with the person on their, on his phone while the other interviewer kept asking me questions. I can't concentrate with this. What's going on? Which is what I thought. I didn't say that because I was 18. I didn't have the, maybe didn't have the balls to say that, but I didn't get that internship or that scholarship, unfortunately. I'm sure partly because I couldn't deal with that situation. Effectively, I can remember another interview with an investment bank, and this was quite a while ago now. Maybe they don't do this anymore, but they used to do pressure test interviews where they would be deliberately aggressive and confrontational. And I can remember the lady interviewing me who did the exact opposite of what you described, which is. I got in; she was already sitting down waiting for me. No eye contact, no smile, no How are you? Sit down, she said. And then she's like, Oh, tell me the most impressive thing you've ever done. And I was describing something to her, which I thought was reasonably impressive. And I got to the end, and she said, That doesn't impress me at all. Yeah, I feel like hiring has hopefully improved since then. And part of our job is, in most scenarios, I think, unless we're hiring a spy or something, to make the candidate feel relaxed and chilled out so we can get the most out of them.

SARANG: Absolutely. Of late, I have also noticed most of these interviews are remote the first time. And there are like, it may be like a last stage, might be bringing them on-site in some instances and all that, but, and like how we started talking here, not every time, but even the basic connection is good. And it's for no fault of anybody. Is it just that sometimes the candidates just don't have the right connection and all that? I always instead of getting. Making them uncomfortable. If the connection isn't good, it's all right to try it in another 10 minutes, 15. If not, we can definitely reschedule. There is nothing, no fault of anyone's, right in that instance. It's like we can reschedule that if the connection isn't good; we need that for us to really be able to hear you and be able to talk through it. That's another way of making candidates comfortable. It also speaks to who you are and even the company values for that matter. If that person is going to work here, they're like, am I going to be a little bit more into a culture where that's acceptable to do some of these things, mistakes may happen, or is it more okay for that to happen? It's an allow me to fail kind of thing. And this kind of starts to indicate that you're a little bit more comfortable doing these things. You are more human in that aspect, right? So I think that's important.

TIM: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I suddenly remembered a really interesting bit of research I heard recently. Which I think could be really useful in hiring, interviewing in particular, face to face. Not so applicable online, where we have this digital world, but face to face. Apparently they've done some analysis where if two people are staring at each other like this, at a 180-degree angle, versus standing at like a 90-degree angle. The stuff going on in our brain is completely different. I think the analysis they did was especially if it's two males looking at each other, because historically the only time you were three meters away staring at another man's face. One of you is about to attack the other, so it brings up almost like a fight-or-flight scenario, which, of course, you would want to avoid in an interview if you want to make the candidate relax. So one tip that I would have if I were now going back to face interviews is I just sit at a side, like at a 90 degree angle to the candidate. It might be a little bit of neck movement, but I think it's less confrontational than just looking front one-on-one. Do you think that would work? Have you tried that yourself?

SARANG: That is interesting. I have not heard that, but that is interesting research. Actually. I never thought of it that way. Until you mentioned it, usually either a. how we are sitting, literally, like looking at it, or it's a conference room. So you are usually like, the candidate is on one side, your panel is on the other, or something like that. But that's interesting. I would keep that in mind. I'm actually interviewing somebody tomorrow. So I might take that advantage.

TIM: Yeah, I'd love to.

SARANG: Face to face tomorrow.

TIM: Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. I'd love you to try and let me know because I haven't validated this in an interview context, like they were just talking about it in general. And the context the researchers had, I remember now, was that—and this is maybe also good for one-on-ones, actually with your team. It is a lot of men, and this is maybe a slightly masculine thing, but a lot of men would bond with each other, but while they're side by side, like they're going for a walk, or, I don't know, at the gym together, it's quite rare, even if you have a good friend to sit there and stare at them, even over coffee or a beer; it just seems slightly unusual. So the more side by side, or at least 90 degrees, we can get, maybe the more relaxed we'll be in interviewing; who knows?

SARANG: Interesting.

TIM: Also with interviews, I think. There's a conversation to be had around what role data plays in that. And actually, I have a really interesting book here by a guest of ours called Tiankai Feng. It's called Humanizing Data Strategy, just to give him a little plug. I interviewed him a few months ago, and he's got a diagram on page 16 of his book. And it's like a spectrum of intuitive experience based on one side to, like, data-driven on the other. And I often think of hiring in that context as well. In particular for interviews, you might have some in Australia; we used to call it a pub test interview, where you just went for a beer with someone and saw if you liked them. So that's like on the intuition end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum would be, here's the question we're going to ask every interview, every candidate, sorry. Here's how we're going to score them. We're going to score them across every single one. We get to the end of the interview; you have a scorecard and numbers. So yeah, a data-driven versus an intuition-based approach. Where do you fit on that spectrum as an interviewer? Do you have any strong feelings about whether we should have more data-driven or more kind of intuition-based interviews?

SARANG: I'm to have some sort of a balance around how I would look at both the dimensions. And partly because unless I'm really tuned into my intuition on what I'm looking for, my decisions could get more feelings-driven or not in the right mind per se at times. On the one hand, I think most of the roles have a very set skill set that you definitely want to make sure the candidate has a variation of the mastery to talk through. But you definitely have a set of things that you get the feel from the projects they have done or the way they are communicating on that front. But the other aspect of, like, a culture fit or how they would fit in a certain situation or, from their brand perspective, what you get the sense of, and all those, I think those are more intuition-based. How do you know when you meet somebody for the first time? Did you think you would? That person would fit in here. Just as a casual thing to say, yeah, I like, when you say out of these four candidates, these two seem like they would exactly fit in our culture. The other two, maybe they were, and to our earlier conversation, maybe they were a little bit nervous at this point. So not that it's against them, like initially, because you're meeting them for the first time. But that's why I feel the dimensions are good, but I do want that to be. Apply in a little bit more balanced fashion. I wouldn't go all the way candidate by candidate; just drive by my intuition. But then on the other side, I do want to ask some different questions. I want to ask something, and because of how we are doing based on what you are asking, I'm answering, and I'm having some thoughts in my mind, and I will ask you more questions, or you'd ask me other things. That's how it should flow. So that experience would be different for different candidates. I would have a broad set of questions, but not exactly those four. I will ask everyone and then give the marks to everyone. I don't think it works like that, at least for me; that's not my interviewing style.

TIM: You mentioned cultural fit there, which is such a key component. I'd say most companies hiring philosophies are trying to find not only someone with the right skills but also someone who they feel like could fit into the culture of the business. I wanted to throw a kind of devil's advocate at you, which I was thinking of recently. So I was lucky enough at the end of last year to travel to some very different places in Sydney. So I managed to go to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, Bangkok in Thailand, and Berlin in Germany. Three drastically different places from each other and here. And it was really great. And what I noticed was once I got to these places, it became immediately apparent how people behaved there and maybe how my normal way of behaving was slightly different. So, as a couple of examples, I rocked up at the airport in Riyadh, and my friend who lives there picked me up, and I had, like, gym shorts on. I don't ask for gym shorts because it was hot, and he's why we don't need to see your long skinny legs. Can you put some pants on because it's very unusual for anyone to walk around in public with shorts in Riyadh? So I went and put some pants on. That was fine. I adapted to the culture. It was not a problem. In Bangkok also, if you go and buy a coffee from a store or something like that, you don't just grab your coffee and walk off. There's a little, Krapom Kwa, a little bow, and there's an extra moment of thanks that you would give each other that is normal. That isn't normal in Australia. Again, I just figured that out and just started doing it naturally because I was there. The point I'm trying to make is, do we maybe not give enough credit to candidates for actually being able to adapt to a new culture, even if during the interview process they seem, they seem very different from who we have here? Is there not a sense that actually people can change those little things quite easily?

SARANG: I think so. I think they do. I feel like Tim, on individual experiences that we have, right? So when I'm interviewing somebody, I know from my experience that I adapted to this U.S. culture. Over time. I had a totally different experience in India. The culture was totally different here. It is entirely different. And now I go back. It looks a little strange. So is it?

TIM: So you've changed?

SARANG: So much here that after 30 years, it's this culture a lot better than that culture, that kind of thing. But I think everybody adopts; everybody learns how to, yeah. What works in that culture, what surroundings are, what people are appreciating, and how to do those kinds of things. and in some instances, that's why the feedback mechanism is there too, right? If you get somebody and they're not as familiar with those aspects, that's when you can correct those as long as some of these things are like during an interview, you catch that they're not making sense or their styles are totally different. And think about it like this: even in the northern parts of the United States and the southern United States. It's very different, so that part is very relaxed comparatively, easygoing, whereas if you are in New York City or Washington, DC, it's a very fast-paced culture. So yes, but I think people do adopt. I believe if you give them the right opportunity and time, people adopt pretty well.

TIM: I think so. And I also feel like sometimes the way cultural fit is implemented is at odds with diversity, certainly diversity of thought and mindset. Because. To me, they could almost be opposites. Like, we want everyone to fit into this mold, but at the same time, we want diversity. And so just as a quick example, you can imagine communication style drastically varying depending on the country someone's from. As a quick example, having been in Holland recently, Dutch people are very direct compared to Australians. I'd say if a Dutch person was interviewing in Australia, the interviewer might go, Wow, they're a bit abrasive. They're almost slightly rude. Whereas if an Australian was interviewing Holland, maybe they'd be like, Can you just say what you mean? Like, you're very waffly. Just get to the point, and so I feel like sometimes having this cultural fit idea is Preventing us hiring different candidates. Do you see that as well?

SARANG: I do. And I think you based on what you said, something triggered in my mind was, how in the U.S., in our business schools, there is a big. Topic about how you give feedback. There is always this hamburger feedback where you start soft, then your meat is in the middle, and then you end soft. And at the end of it, if you are coming from Germany or if you are coming from India, they're like, What the feedback? Because I didn't get it, I didn't get it. Was it like, I didn't do this right? Or what exactly was it? It's in their mind, maybe a little bit more sugarcoated, right? It's like a soft at the beginning, soft at the end. And you're providing the feedback tough in the middle. Whereas they're not used to that. They're like, Give me straight. This is not right or wrong. And that's it. There is, it's a very clear message. There is no end, covering that up with a little bit more optimistic or inspiring point of view going forward. But that's the difference, right? It's a cultural difference, like how we operate. So I think I see diversity and a little bit of a difference in culture as a sort of a balance. I think it's good to have those different teammates with different backgrounds in our team; it benefits us. It's I know a lot of our third-party partners are in India usually. And then here we have the US team, and they see a little bit of a difference, like how they are a very analytical, process-oriented. But then they talk fast. They are very deep into the technical things right off the bat. And our businesspeople don't quite understand what they're saying sometimes because of the technical aspects. Whereas our leads here are a lot more US culturally aware. So they're like, okay, before diving into your real technical thing, you need to start a little slower in the English version of what we're trying to do. And then slowly get into what you're really trying to say, because they are not living and breathing this every day like you do. So they don't know what you're saying. And on top of that, you're, they're not able to understand the accent a little bit. But I think they do really good work. Technically, they do, which otherwise here we sometimes lack finding those types of candidates. So you need both; you do need different cultures, and that makes it a better product in the end. I think,

TIM: I think so. And speaking of diversity of perspective and mindset, I feel like one way you can achieve that in hiring sometimes is to get someone from outside the industry, at least someone who's never worked in the industry, who has domain experience and skills and analytics, but it's just going to come with some kind of fresh perspective. What do you think about this? Is that a pro? Is it a con? Is there, like, a longer onboarding process you might have to have for someone who's coming fresh in the industry? How do you think about hiring from outside your industry?

SARANG: I think junior to up until middle-level candidates. I probably, de facto, look for people from all industries, irrespective of the industry I'm in.

TIM: Because

SARANG: From my perspective, it is a fresher set of eyes. The mindset isn't so much. You know exactly what you do all the time, and you look at certain things a certain way. And that's all I say; that's all I do. If I'm doing the modeling around loan processing or something like different touchpoints across the loan process and getting my sentiment analysis and all that, I have a very set way of knowing, okay, my servicing group is not that good. I focus more on those, their numbers and details, and all that. But you might miss out on some other things on the website traffic or some other processes that may be contributing to that or others because you know so much about that process, and you think the same way every day. So your mind is a little bit more biased over certain processes in your supply chain. But if I bring somebody. from, like, the healthcare industry, for example, in finance, they're good in analytics, but they have no background in finance, but you're like, okay, you know what? We want to improve this process. What do you think about that? Go learn that. Come back with totally different ideas to say, Why don't we do these things? Like, how are these correlating? They're like, We never looked at it or thought of it that way. So I think people from different industries. up until like mid-junior to middle-level candidates. I encourage that for the leadership roles and other things. I think there are very set expectations on what you're expecting out of a leader. And there is a comparative or smaller time to achieve what you want that leader to do. In that case, I think. I tend to want to have somebody who has done this before and has experience in that space because that, in some ways, goes well across the stakeholder base, whether it's a board or whether it is another leadership team or our customer base and all that. I think a little bit more known name around that. I think that does help getting that credibility early on and that experience. Thanks. in the leadership level that I think matters. So going away from hiring somebody way different from different industries, I'm a little bit hesitant on that one.

TIM: What about the bigger picture now? Like, when companies are hiring their data talent, are there really common mistakes you'd see them make? And if so, how could they avoid them?

SARANG: Yeah, I think a lot of times there's a lot of confusion around something in the analytics space; you immediately have to hire a data scientist. And a lot of times what you're really needing is a data analyst. And then you end up hiring a data scientist. You don't have enough for him or her to do. They get bored. You're like, I'm not sure why I hired this person. He's an expensive resource. You don't have the right kind of work for them to give because you weren't clear to begin with what you're looking for. So I think that's one mistake. I see people jumping to say, What's the next thing that I'm seeing in the industry? I heard that there are a lot of data scientists out there. I'm like, there are a lot of data scientists, but does your work require one? That's a very valid question to ask first because you could do it with the analyst, and we don't need a scientist. We are not there yet to do a lot of analysis and algorithms and LLMs and all that. Agent AI and all that. We are not there; we are at the beginning. You can do without. that now. Eventually you might be needing a scientist. The other thing I see is much laser focus on thinking about technical pieces of the talent and saying, Okay. PhD in that or master's in that and do this and that, and the direct assumption on that is going to be great technically. And that's great. The other part is how do they adapt to communications and stakeholder engagement, which is a big part of success in our industry, right? And also what I have noticed is our candidates who have done PhDs or master's and all that in these programs normally struggle quite a bit in the corporate environment because the data is never clean. And it's, there is a ton of 50 percent of their time goes in literally cleaning it up, talking to people, why it is not good, and then your real work of, if you get a chance to actually run the big models and all, whereas what they have done in schools is they get a very clean data set, and then you come up with the insights. Not how the corporate world is, right? You know that team, right? When you get in there, you have a legacy. You have a hundred-year-old company. The data was never meant to be done for the AI and for the analytics and all that; we just collected the data. And now we are running all kinds of analytics on 50 years worth of data or 40 years worth of claims. All that is good, but data isn't as good. So you spend, turn off your time and. These guys get frustrated with that. The, like, who come from the universities, but that's where it's a little bit of a misnomer or the mistakes that companies make to say, Let's just get a PhD candidate who did this. And that's great, but not relying on real-world problem-solving or actually, like, communication, stakeholder engagement, those kinds of things. Those are the things that I commonly see that people make mistakes on.

TIM: Your first example really resonated with me, and it made me immediately think of my first hiring mistake, which was almost 10 years ago now. So they were the first people I'd ever hired. So I was a senior analyst. I was hiring some analysts, and I was living in what I call Excel hell. So this is a company that didn't even have a data warehouse that had seven different companies that acquired over 40 years. And so each month there was this ridiculous process to somehow combine together eight different reports out of eight different ERP systems in eight different countries into one Excel report for a CEO. It was just a ludicrous experience of Excel hell, which I wanted to escape from. So I wanted to hire someone to take care of this so I could do some actual analytics. And of course, we would need to automate this process and chip away at it so it wasn't so tedious. But yeah, I was looking in some sense to hospital pass this problem to a new analyst. I hired someone, and in pitching the role, a mistake I made was to oversell it. So I've got some amazing data, like untapped potentials, all these things we're not looking at, which was true, but I didn't really mention that. Yeah, but for the first three or four months, you're going to be doing bullshit in Excel, maybe writing some VBA code. And so the first candidate got in; they lasted one week and quit. I then went back to the drawing board. Restart the whole hiring process; went through the whole search again for a month and hired someone else. They quit on day two. All Okay, so my first two hires quit within a week because I oversold the role because it was the equivalent of, We need a data scientist, and we really need an analyst for me. It was like we need an analyst, but they need to realize the first three or four months are just automatics and basic reporting. Then they can do some analysis. And so what I learned was to be more honest and more transparent and not to overhype any role.

SARANG: Absolutely.

TIM: And have you experienced that yourself, either when you've gone for jobs maybe, and you've seen the job description and you've had the first interview and you're like, hold on, this does not seem like the same job?

SARANG: It does sometimes. And I think of what you were mentioning a lot of times; it's when people start telling you about a ton of stuff that you would be doing, and they're excited about showing you different things you could do and all that, but when you start to see your, not only reporting, it's records management, it's privacy, it's data sharing agreements, it's all of that in one role, and they sell that as if this is going to be like the greatest role. I'm like, I have done these things before. These are a lot of things, and there is a ton of stuff in here you're packing and telling me all this. That tells me what you're not saying and what I'm interpreting is in crisis. They have no idea what to do with all this stuff. The first answer that came to mind is to open this role and just dump all of these things on this candidate and just sell that role better. And you can see that from experience. But, if I had been 10 years ago or even 5 or 8 years ago, I think I would have been excited about that. But when, to your point, maybe gone there and maybe quit in a month, it's I can't take all these things that you're saying. And it's not really all that gory that you made it sound to me.

TIM: Yeah, experience is so valuable, isn't it? The first few jobs I had in my career were bizarre in different ways and not necessarily good. And if I knew now, if I went for the equivalent interview, I would be out of there in five minutes. I'd be like, No, thank you. See you later. You can deal with this yourself. One thing we haven't spoken much about yet is large language models and AI in hiring. And I feel like there's such a huge upside to using this amazing technology in a space that has been almost untouched for 20 or 30 years. I don't know if you can remember the first job you applied for, but I feel like the process is pretty much the same now as it was 15 years ago for me. And I think AI could be a great screening tool, could be an interviewer potentially, or an interview helper. How do you currently view AI in hiring? Have you started to use any tools? Have you started to see anything out there? Yeah. What are your overall thoughts on AI in hiring?

SARANG: We haven't really totally gone. out and use an AI tool for hiring per se yet. We do have a place where the initial filters are set on what we get fed into our system. Give an example. We opened a couple of data analyst stores last year, and of the positions, we got 500 resumes. And it would be just impossible for any hiring manager to even read through those. Forget spending time and all. So the initial candidate matching rules and other things that we have added. help in getting that to a little bit more manageable volume that you can do. and I think it's a little bit better for candidate matching and also the candidate experience, because I apply for a job, and I don't mind that they didn't think I might, I'm not the right fit for the job. I would mind if I knew about it in three months instead of two weeks or a week. Because if we do this kind of automatically, it is sending the workflow out to say it's not matching; we are, and that's fine. People keep applying, and that's perfectly great. But I think that explains it becoming like a better candidate experience. The candidate matching is better immediately, letting them know what's going on. Great. Those things. But that, I think, is using out of 500; we got to 10. And those 10 are reviewed by other people, and by the time it comes to a panel, it's actually three or four. But that process is manual, so it is not completely AI. It is more used in an automated fashion for filtering. And then use the manual aspects to go from there.

TIM: Yeah, I completely agree on the upside on the feedback because it's not only the delay in getting the feedback. Still, a lot of people would apply for a job and never hear back. Not even after three months, but literally never, which is dreadful.

SARANG: It is.

TIM: And yeah, companies are drowning in resumes. It's all manual. Of course, things fall through the cracks. Like, it's only natural. The other big angle, I think, which is really exciting, is the bias. The fact that there's so much existing bias on humans reviewing resumes manually, resumes that include someone's name, where they went to school, their religion, and sometimes their photo. And we can get rid of all of that in theory, at least to have a more objective screening tool, do you think as well?

SARANG: Yeah, I think so. I think you made a good point on the bias part of it because that's the other thing—that there is no real place for that, right? It's like the talent and all the other skills that you're looking for in a position. That automatically weeds out that aspect and gives you the most matched set of skills. Resumes to your role really, so I think I'm looking forward to that technology getting better because one of the things I will hope is if you actually are something that I feel like, the filters normally look for the keywords in the resume. And I would like to change that to, instead of looking for the keywords, I would like to say train an algorithm to look for more like a, if I'm saying I want Tableau and Python, and in the skills in the resume, those two words are there, you are in or either you're out, I would like it to detect to say, Hey, a little bit more of a skill-based thing on Tableau and Python. So what did you do with those things? And do you see those? And if not, those two words, can they be equivalent to maybe click view or it's not Python, but it's R ? Whatever it is, but of just the keywords, it's like skill-based checking on those resumes because yes, I have it, but I haven't done anything with it that doesn't help me any, but that candidate would be in just based on the keyword filter, and other people have done something in a different language that is really a skill that they use, and I could train somebody comparatively easily between click and tableau, but it never reached me. Because my filter was on those two words, and it just was either in or out. So I would like to avoid those types of things and make that little bit more of a better skill-based candidate matching algorithm versus just the keywords. would

TIM: Yes,

SARANG: the quality.

TIM: A hundred percent. And I feel like then maybe part of the challenge in this matching will be that we're going to need something better. In terms of data quality, a resume on one side and better quality in terms of data than a job description on the other side, both of which aren't really that helpful, but we need to unlock some new data, perhaps. Yeah, do we need to? Descriptions are not clear either. So that definitely is another thing that needs to be worked on, and we need to make sure we are very clear about what those are. Another thing I feel could be useful with the AI is how they're like when you watch the NFL game or a cricket game, or you have the. Pre-commentary, then you have the actual event, and you have the post-commentary, right? So, like, when we talked about pre-interview, what we can do with the agents and all that to get a better candidate in. after if with the privacy regulations and all that, but if I feed a transcript of the interview to an engine, it listens to what all went on. And based on the experiences and all that, if he matches that to say, Yes, that is a data engineer rating and a current market compensation for this interview that you just did, that would be awesome to not have to guess. And you actually have a real good intelligence around it, matching close to 75 percent to 80 percent of what the real market price is based on what he heard and not just the resume, but like an actual interview transcript or something; that would be awesome. Yes, that would be awesome. And I feel like that's exactly where we're going. And I personally can't wait to see the improvements in HR tech in the next couple of years using large language models, because I think it could be radically different. If we had this conversation again in two years compared to now, I feel like things could be drastically different for the better.

SARANG: I agree. I agree.

TIM: So if you could ask our next guest one question about hiring, what would you ask them?

SARANG: I think one of the things that I want to ask is how do you get information from the candidate that tells you how that candidate would look at the same job in a different way? every day because you are hiring a data scientist or a data analyst. Broadly, he is going to do similar things on a day-to-day basis. The challenge becomes, what kind of method that candidate is going to use or think about to make that job interesting on a regular basis. So he is going to get long-term success in the role because we see people getting bored pretty quickly. People market is pretty hot. So chances of people leaving. And all, you kind of risk that. So flight risk is always at the back of our minds. So it's like how a certain person thinks about keeping this role interesting on a regular basis with the new challenges. What are their thoughts about that topic? Because that gives you a little, if you say, if it's a blank stare and you don't hear anything, I don't know, it's a little tricky, but if you start to get some answers to say, I look at the problem in a different way, or "I upscale these models from A to B in a different way, or I want to learn that, or I want to do this. So you start to see that excitement or energy, and it's like you get some sort of an indication of how that might go. So I would, that's the question I would ask. I struggle with that myself.

TIM: That's a great question. And I don't think it's something we've discussed yet on the show. So I'm really looking forward to asking whoever our first guest is next week and seeing what they say. So I think it's been a great conversation today. I've really enjoyed talking with you. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing all your thoughts, experience, and wisdom with us.

SARANG: I appreciate it. Thank you, Tim. It was enjoyable.