Episode 17

Tuan Sihan on the Success in Data Role Recruitment: Insights on Soft Skills, Personal Branding, and Effective Onboarding

TIM: Tuan, from your perspective, what do you think are the biggest challenges at the moment in recruiting data roles?

TUAN: I think with recruitment in general, again, as a hiring manager, there's two takes on it. Firstly, me as a hiring manager, myself, and as a career coach with, as a hiring manager, I think the biggest problem for me is trying to get the best candidate in a pool of thousands of candidates, potentially amazing candidates trying to find the best fit. Because if I try to niche down to a particular vertical, Say marketing specialist or a customer insight specialist. It's really difficult to find the right person, especially with the complex, just complicated structure, the complicated nature of data hiring in general. And as a career coach, I seen consistently, candidates with a lot of potential, oftentimes miss missing out on. Identifying or at least emphasizing on how much value they can add to a business or at least showcasing their primary skill sets. So those are the two things I think are the biggest challenges or potential obstacles that high as I face the hiring manager. And I'm pretty sure Canada's would also be feeling the same way of the exact two things I just mentioned.

TIM: That's a really interesting perspective you have because you're seeing things, as you say, from a hiring manager perspective, where you're getting those applications coming in, you're reading CVs, you're interviewing candidates, but then on the other side of the table, behind the scenes, you're coaching a different set of candidates, but a similar set, let's say. And so you must. So often see candidates who, Oh, they could have been an amazing, perfect fit for X role, but then you've seen their CV, you've seen maybe done a mock interview with them and you can see why they haven't gotten the role, and has that insight of doing that career coaching changed how you think about hiring? I'm interested now.

TUAN: I'd say yes it definitely did. Cause as a career coach, I've seen quite a lot of potential, like amazing candidates who just, we just had a little push. They're too busy focusing on technical skills on adding the skills that or improving the skills as data experts. They just miss out on the opportunity to showcase themselves again, to. Reiterate just to elaborate on how amazing they are as people. And oftentimes I see this not just with data people, but people in tech in general, where they get lost in in this rabbit hole of trying to show how amazing they are at SQL and Python and coding and making amazing JavaScript or JavaScript elements and components. But they're just not able to articulate that properly in an interview. And then in their CV, trying to explain to the business how much value they've added. So that's oftentimes a miscommunication or misalignment of doesn't necessarily reflect how amazing or how great a candidate is just because they're not able to. Explain it and in words or in the CVS, which I think oftentimes is the biggest difficulties candidates face in the modern hiring process.

TIM: And so for you, it's really not that they, Can't do the job that they can't add value that they haven't already contributed a lot in previous roles. It's just, they have not articulated that they haven't, they're not a market out there, a software engineer or a data analyst, and it's that lack of marketing or sales skills that's holding the majority back, you would say.

TUAN: Correct. No, definitely. I definitely agree with that because pretty much I'd say about so far, because I'm actually more recently I was hiring for my team as well, just as a data analyst, I saw an amazing pool of candidates, thousands of candidates, most of them were amazing. But again, in this modern market. I think both as a hiring manager, as a career coach, and as a mentor, I just feel like it's just not enough for you to just do things or learn, improve your technical skills, but also your soft skills and how you build a personal brand, how you explain people, explain to potential hiring managers, but potential hiring teams, what you've contributed, how your how you add value to the business. And also I feel like that's. That should be a more important skill when you're hiring for someone because any hard skill, any tool can be taught or learned, but the soft skills are, I think at least need to be earned and it comes with experience. And I personally think it's much more valuable than any tool that someone's proficient with.

TIM: I wonder then if people are maybe a bit misguided in the thought of saying, Oh I should just go and do another Udemy course in X tool, another, whatever. And just going down, as you said, that rabbit hole of more and more tools and technologies, isn't really going to add the value to the application. They think it is. And if there's a reframing and they go, you know what I should, all I should do is really just sit down and focus on what I've contributed already, articulating that in succinct terms, and then maybe doing a bit more communication types of things like going out and meeting strangers or doing like a public presentation. Maybe that would add a disproportionate. Additional value in quite a short period of time. What are your thoughts on that?

TUAN: No, that's, you actually started to touch on a great point there. I think that's. Yeah. That is exactly where i'm getting at because like I said, it's much more important now to have your own personal brand and explain What you've done and basically emphasize on the impact you've done on whatever previous projects you've worked on whether it could be a on your company, it could be your personal project Your its thesis and whatever it is as to why you did that. I'm pretty sure there's always a reason as to why you did it. And if you i've seen a lot of people especially aspiring data analysts where they're able to they're not able to Explain the value of the project or their worth. So I've seen people get on tens and hundreds of certificates from Udemy from Coursera, whatever it is, but they're not able to use it I don't care if you're able to have You 5, 000 different variations of the, of, examples of amazing window functions, unless you're able to implement it and show me what value that's added into the business and to my team. So I think that's something that we need to emphasize as hiring as job seekers and hiring managers to, to, just pass on that feedback to candidates whenever we see. And that I think is the biggest. point that candidates miss when they apply for jobs.

TIM: I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on why you think they go down that rabbit hole. Is it the case of it's easier? Like I can just do another Udemy course. That's comfortable. I can do that in my bedroom. It's another tool, similar to a tool I already know. I've feel like I'm achieving something. Whereas the harder thing to do would be get out of my comfort zone and do something that I know I should, but I'm not good at. Have you seen what is the barrier to them not going down that other path, do you think?

TIM: Yeah, it's like treading water. You you feel like you're busy and you're very tired, but you're not necessarily going anywhere. You could probably say the same for anything, isn't it? Oh, my goal is to save money. People. Unless you sit down and think about exactly how you're going to save money and the mechanics of it and plan it out, you're inevitably, sorry, going to fail. So maybe it's the same with, yeah, your career, you should have a conscious effort. And yeah, maybe it's the sort of thing that is so important that people undervalue it, isn't it? They must like what could be more important than the, that your career where you spend most of your waking hours for 50 years, like without having that conscious plan, you're probably not doing yourself justice,

TUAN: No, exactly. Exactly. I that's very well said, Tim. It's just that I think one of the reasons people do that is because again, because the lack of information, they just don't know a roadmap. I think an approach I'd like to advise of for all aspiring data nerds is try to imagine yourself in that role already. Try to just, what would be the output? What would be the deliverables? What is, what would you do if you did get that job? If you get your dream job, if you, land a data analyst role at H&M at Google, at Meta or wherever it is, just try to imagine what you would be doing. You wouldn't be spending hours and hours of learning new things. You would be building new things so you can deliver, impress your managers, impress your team. I think That's a better mindset, my perspective to have within job seekers so they can make the most out of their time and they learn along the way. And I think there's a lot of trial and error person. I feel that's much more that's much more applicable than just learning different things and learning new things and just not just theoretically understanding how they work, but not applying them in practice.

TIM: And so by the sense of it, you'd recommend kind of side projects. Let's say you're a young data person, young data nerd, as you might say, who maybe doesn't feel like they're getting the opportunities to get their foot in the door. It sounds like you would recommend at least build something themselves and put together something that's helpful for themselves. Build a little application, build a dashboard, something like that. Is what you recommend that approach?

TUAN: 100%. 100%. Yes, definitely. Almost a hundred percent of the time. That's exactly what I say. So when people come to me saying, I don't have a job, I don't know why I don't really know where I can start. I they always say, I have these courses. I've done so many courses. I have a master's, but I, as a hiring manager, don't really care what you've studied. Because I don't know what impact that has on me. So you might study, you might spend thousands of hours studying something, but you might be terrible. You haven't built your first dashboard. So I, as a vision, I can't really envision you in my team because I don't want you to study it anymore. I want you to put any much work. I'd rather you learn how to improve your skillset as part of my team while you're doing stuff than just. Spending hours, watching tutorials, trying to understand how things work. Just theoretically, just because of the side projects that are showcased in a portfolio, in a resume and wherever, whatever form they have. Because more recently, I keep advising and I keep seeing as a pattern, as an emerging pattern. Which is quite positive is a LinkedIn trying to express their projects, whatever they've learned on LinkedIn is I think an amazing way to showcase their talent or skills or what they completed in their recent experience. So I think starting off with that, with whatever. They have to show is the best way to start their journey in becoming a data expert.

TIM: Thinking about it now, and you touched on this earlier, which is for the course providers. Yeah, if you get into their rabbit hole, you're up against a company that's trying to sell you more courses. It's trying to take you on this journey through their courses, which by the way, teach you stuff. Like not even having a go at the course providers. I've taken lots of courses back in the day and they're really helpful, but you're in this. this journey that they've created for you and you're suddenly stuck in this wave. Almost. I feel like similar for universities. Like think of the power of universities in their marketing and branding and positioning where they've convinced you to spend, I don't know, in some countries, 100, 000 a year to do this degree. That's going to be like your panacea to get a job. But then They finish and they get into the real world where, as you say, the average hiring manager would have a similar perspective to you where there's such a big disconnect between studying at university and actually doing a job. And there's this like huge chasm in between where you need to actually do something practical and apply any of those learnings that you spent years on. And so I feel like people just need to. Switch on to who's marketing to them and who's selling the what and realize what hiring managers actually are after. Speaking of that, so you, as a hiring manager, you mentioned that maybe the technical skills are a little bit more easily teachable. You'd rather hire someone with the stronger, softer skills to a certain extent can you talk a little bit about that and some of the candidates you've hired previously and maybe how you've helped upskill them?

TUAN: No, definitely. Definitely. Cause I think I'm not sure if my team would be watching this right now, but in this podcast, but I feel like. My success has been much greater when I hire people just because of their personality. And again, that doesn't mean they're just random people who just have great personality. It's just people who are ambitious, people who have a vision or a goal towards data, towards their data careers, trying to achieve or accomplish something. People who are, people have this, Desire this endless hunger to accomplish stuff, just to keep growing their career and just the curiosity, asking the right questions, trying to learn, just being proactive. There's a lot of things that need to come from within, which can't really be taught. You can't teach that in a classroom. Cause again, I'm not really a. I'm not really bashing down on on education, because I am very grateful for the education I've received, and frankly speaking I don't really have a master's degree, but I think I just have a bachelor's degree, but, it's, Again, it was very helpful, but I think I learned a lot more from these little courses that we just trashed on earlier and more on the side projects and the personal branding aspect of things. So whereas my people have hired my success rate in terms of satisfaction as a hiring manager, as a team and all those stakeholders, it's always been from people who are willing to learn people who are people who know what they want in their career. People who, and you might, I'm not sure if you believe this, but people who in my current team, the best data analysts that I would consider, they've never built a dashboard before they came, joined my team. And once they came in, they learned how to do that because again, these are all skills that you can teach them. And they just were ambitious. This is, I want this, what I want in my career. That doesn't mean they're not. Yeah. They have no idea. I'm just running random people. That's just because they were able to articulate, able to showcase their skillset, that they were interested and passionate about. And also to our point on projects earlier, I've seen these people take the initiative to do courses, create their own side projects that doesn't necessarily have to relate to what I'm giving them in their work. So if I was a hiring manager for a retail store, I don't necessarily, and I'm hiring for a client retention success manager or client retention analyst. So I wouldn't necessarily be looking at the same exact experience. I would ideally look for someone who has some similar experience in the retail space and has done something similar to stock or inventory management, trying to understand our demands, our supplies, and also trying to understand more about What customers want at given at particular times. And yeah, so as long as they have relevant experience, that doesn't necessarily need to correlate with work experience, because again, my team have never been, had have data experience for joining my team. And I think they're the best. Whereas people who've joined with prior experience in data, they oftentimes, they just take the opportunity for granted. And it's just that from my experience, at least, they I feel like a person who has, who's mastered the technical skills with a slight lack or slight decline in their interest, oftentimes don't really perform well. As even as a career coach, I feel like People who reach out to me saying, just give me a job and they're not really proactive in taking the initiative. They're just not passionate. I tend to avoid them. With all due respect, I'm happy to take their take some, say, have them on board as clients. But I'd rather not because any organization, I just don't personally, I just don't think they're ready and any organization that would be hiring them would need to make sure that someone who has my stamp or someone who has my recommendation or referral has this ability to deliver. So that's my end goal. So I think someone, it doesn't necessarily matter how much extensive experience they've had. It's more, They're able to deliver. And I think that's best showcase with the soft skills and how they communicate, how they present, how they just their charm and charisma in terms of learnability, coachability and adaptability with an organization.

TIM: I would have thought the main devil's advocate to this approach of hiring junior people with a high potential not necessarily the experience or skills yet, but high potential, good cultural fit, good personality, seem to be proactive and motivated, want to learn. The main devil's advocate to this approach would be someone has to teach them. At the end of the day because they're coming in so fresh and junior and if I think back to when I was first My first job as an intern at PwC, I vividly remember scrolling through a spreadsheet without knowing how to freeze the panes at the top, like you freeze the top row. And my mentor came out, or my buddy came over and said what are you doing? He showed me how to freeze the panes. So scrolling through like hundreds of thousands of records, having to go back up the top again to see what the column headers were. That's one tiny subskill of a million things I learned in my first few years of data. So I was probably, looking back now, catastrophically unproductive because of my lack of skills. Someone has to teach these people skills or they have to be amazing self learners. Is there not then some big learning curve that you have where They're not as productive as if you hired someone who already had a FUSE experience.

TUAN: That's a very good question. And I've often had this question asked by my senior managers as well. Before I hired them and. As proven people who had this experience proved me right. But unfortunately, but that's a great question. And personally, my take is just to give you on the impact or outcome. The people that have a hired with no experience have now come to a level within the span of a little over a year. Now they've come to a level where I'm very much confident to hire a team to report to them and have them as serious analysts with managing their own teams. So that's how much I trust and I've seen them deliver. And with regards to your point on teaching or training them, firstly, I have this program where I have this structured approach where I show them the career roadmap I mentioned to you earlier as to what I would want them to learn. And that's my take on it. I'm not sure how many hiring managers usually have this. Because. I have an idea pretty much anytime I hire someone. I have an idea of what I want them to achieve. I, it doesn't have to be as specific as possible, but to a certain extent, I think about 80 percent of their task. I, as a hiring manager need to know what I would expect out of someone I'm hiring before I even think of having the post op. So once I have that up, once I, I know this is the kind of hiring, I tend to prepare learning materials. This could be YouTube videos. It could be me providing a document on these are the data sources. This is how the schema is built. And this is, these are the tools I want you to be proficient in here, your licenses for Tableau, your Salesforce, whatever tools we use internally, and here's how you, here's how you learn step one, two, three, four. So it's a matter of me as a team leader or just representative of my team, trying to make sure that person has all the context. Before they even start delivering. So that's my take on it. So once I give them the material, I say, go through these, ideally before they start, which again, I don't expect them to go through everything end to end, but I've seen most of the people that I've hired do go through them thoroughly and they're very much ready before they start because of their, again, enthusiasm. And once they are in, I usually spend no more than two hours a day. For throughout the first week to explain to them sit down with them. What did you learn? What do you do and for the first two weeks might approach us try to build sample work essentially these are all Relevant or equivalent to their side projects that they would be doing Building in their experiences before joining the organization. So I would give them my own little projects. That's that doesn't have to be end to end deliverables that stakeholders would be looking at, or they would be, that would be impacting the entire business. These are just projects. I would want them to create and deliver to me because I just want to see where they get at. So by the end of the second week, I would be able to articulate what desk the strengths are. And try to understand why they think in a particular way, because currently I know a group of people I like to, I see individual members of my team who are skilled in different things. For example, two of my top performers, my data analysts are amazing at what they do. Again, one of the people who haven't been data analysts before they joined my team. One of them is really great at factual information, showcasing the data, saying that amazing. This is what the data is. Oh, this is the key that you need to look at. These are the thresholds that are breached. Here are my insights on what we've went through today. Whereas the other person is much more creative, much more. show money with their work. So they know they don't need to emphasize all the KPIs. They can say, these are the KPIs you need to look at that. This is how it impacts the business. And this is a prettier way of looking at it. So that's much more digestible for people. And because I know there's trends that this is an example, right? So I can just. Oftentimes what I do is I make sure, again, this depends on the project. I make them work together. So you show your kids your creativity and you showcase your factual view on it. So you can factual take an approach on it. So together you guys can come up with another project, help finish another project together where you're able to deliver the best result. And oftentimes collaboration is the greatest factor in delivering the best projects that I've delivered so far in my team. So that's the best approach. And in terms of training now, thankfully, my team's come to a position where they can train the rest, any new hiring new hire that I have in my team. So that's a privilege that I have right now. And even the people who've passed, moved on to another organization that were in my team, they were, I'm still in touch with them. And they, one thing that they mentioned is the fact that the onboarding process, despite. I'm completely, I believe that reason, for a reasonable level, a lot of the companies or hiring managers don't have a proper hiring process because, or onboarding process, because they just can't afford to do cause they might say, I just want you to come in, you'll have your knowledge and you need to do it. Whereas I think the best approach, the people who have left, or have said was, we really liked the way that you articulate, you had this prepared and you were able to deliver, you were able to train us on Even when you're not around, especially because I personally like to hop around within the meeting, within my office with other stakeholders. So I don't necessarily have the entire day to just train people. So that's the approach I like to take with coaching and learnability. And with regards to your experience at PwC, I hope you know how to freeze a pain now. Yeah,

TIM: do. Alt W F is the quick key. So that's entrenched in my brain 14 years later from when I used to be a spreadsheet monkey. So yeah, you've just basically articulated the fact that, okay, you hire these relatively junior people. But it's not like they come in and just, you go, here you go. You figure it out. You have a very, you've thought through this in a lot of detail, very clear onboarding plan. It's, an investment for you in them. And you've invested in people who you know are going to stick around because they're so motivated. Maybe they haven't been given an opportunity before as well. So it's almost like you can justify the investment, on that front as well, because you're going to get a bit of longevity out of them. And as you say, now you've reached a point where. There's that next layer where now you don't have to be involved in everything because now you've trained them up and they've grown in terms of their skills to be able to do that next stage, which is amazing.

TUAN: no, definitely. It's definitely a privilege. And I'm very grateful for my team and it's been it's been a great journey so far. I look forward to more of that as well.

TIM: What about your thoughts on a very different approach? So you just outlined an approach where you focus disproportionately on the softer skills, on the people's behavioral traits, on their motivation to learn. On how keen they are and how coachable they are and how much they could learn, not necessarily having the experience, not necessarily having the current technical skills that they need, expecting that they can learn in a guided way to achieve those skills. What about a very different approach, which would be, okay, let's measure everything in the hiring process. Cause a lot of the things you're talking about, maybe aren't that measurable. Like you've inferred them and intuitively, Gotten to the bottom of them through interviews and whatnot. What about another approach where it's no, we're going to measure stuff. We're going to go, we're going to measure skills in a test. We're going to measure a personality. We're going to measure IQ. We're going to get into a interview and ask everyone the same question and then score them against each imagine the polar opposite approach. What do you think about that? Why do you think that maybe doesn't work? Why wouldn't you use that yourself?

TUAN: Yeah, I'm this could be an unpopular opinion, but I just hate them. I really think they are potentially the worst way of identifying the best candidate you can hire. And I might be slightly biased because during my job seeking time myself, I've filled quite a few of those. Pre built generic tests to no avail. So if you're requesting a candidate to fill in, to spend half an hour, I've seen some of them go up to about two hours of time and some of them even was, they spend days doing on a take home assignment or a project just to get no feedback or just not being, that doesn't really translate to how amazing they are at their work. I think, especially with something like the IQ tests or. The logical test that I see I personally, especially in this current modern era, I just don't think that's applicable anymore. And it's just not a great measure. And it always depends on the person's. Attitude, again, coming back to the soft skills, the attitude, the way they're able to showcase their skills, their personality, their, the energy that they bring in, which can't really be measured by any of these generic tests. So I'm, again, I'm just not he's a fan of them and because of the, what I just mentioned, and it's just that I don't think it's the best way to measure someone's talent and promise that they,

TIM: What about in these kind of screening stages? So a lot of the things you've mentioned would probably come across in the interview process. Once you actually meet someone, you really get to understand who they are. In your coaching business, clearly part of your role there is to help them articulate that on a CV or have a body of work that's public that they can show to the employer. But at the moment yourself, how do you do that screening step? Given some of the things you're most interested in would be, pretty hard to figure out based on the CV.

TUAN: That's a great question, actually, because I am very hands on with my hiring process regardless of how much less time I have, I try to spend as much time as I can with. Getting the best candidates. And like you said, it's not that easy to vet the best candidates through this, the CV process, which is a huge reason I'm not a huge fan of the ATS, the AI recruiting industry, or that methodology where if I'm have more hands on, I'm able to see what actually is best. So that I've seen a lot of people. Go on both sides of this take where you would be biased or you're very much unbiased. So I would like to say I'm unbiased with that. That helps me be unbiased unless I come across as a really, a red flag from their app or from their CV. Because one thing I look at personally is their LinkedIn profile. When I see a candidate, a promising candidate or sometimes you just know because the way they Again, presents themselves a personal brand. They like to build around it. I like to just go to the CV, see what they've done. Again, it comes down to the role, the, in the main expertise I'm looking from this role. So I'm trying to understand, If they'll be able to tackle on all the projects, the problems I'm showing them, I'm giving them and the head their way. So usually that's the best way for me to, the best approach I like to take is start with a CV. If I'm interested, I move on to the LinkedIn profile. When I see someone. who took the effort to build their own brand to be able, that doesn't mean they have to post content, five, five posts a day. It could be maybe like once a month or once even a year. Sometimes I've looked at amazing profiles who haven't even posted anything, but just the way they've presented themselves there, the brand they've built for themselves, just customize everything though, their way of presenting themselves as experts, as people who can get these things done is very underrated and such an essential, such an integral part of the whole hiring process, which oftentimes is overlooked, especially with the inclusion of AI. So I think that's the best way to do that. So once I do that, I just reach out to them and say, hi, thank you for applying. I'm interested. I saw X thing in your profile that really stood out to me. I'd love to know more. Let's share an interview. And then that's how it goes. So that to me has worked on this. And I think that's the, again, personally, that's the best approach for me. I know it's just not applicable across the board for everyone, but that's just my personal take on this.

TIM: then your process would be designed to hire people who yeah, have some ability to market themselves and to already pitch their achievements and projects. Is that because once they're in your business, that is a skill you need them to have, because I could imagine how that process would filter out. People are amazing at their job, but just don't talk about it basically.

TUAN: firstly, yes, I think that's something I would want them, whoever I hired to have as a skill because they would be pitching their product, essentially their deliverables to the stakeholders as to why this is important. Dashboard is going to save your business. This machine learning model is going to save millions from your operations team is what I need them to be able to sell. So if they're able to sell themselves as a product, as a, the best solution designer ever, I think they'll do it, selling a product that they built from scratch is going to be very much simple, simpler for them because just because They are the products that you're trying to sell in the first initial stages. So I think that's definitely as a whole, now that you mentioned, I think that's something I would want for them to communicate or deliver a message. I want them to deliver to the stakeholders. But on top of that, I just think if they're able to do that as a person, they will be able to convince, not just convince, but explain how their impact, how their work translated to the impact done made to the business. And also a specific level of accountability. So that's the, that's my take on this. So far that's going quite well. Again, very proud of that achievement and accomplishment in my. Professional career.

TIM: One thing that struck me talking to other people recently is if things like Chachapiti and Claude are now able to produce. Code that's good enough, or just needs a bit of a tweak without a human needing to write it. Do you think then that these data roles will be progressing more towards the way you currently see them, which is actually way more softer skills because the technical skills almost are going to be taken care of by AI and you'll need a lesser level of technical skills and more of the softer skills that you are focusing on at the moment.

TUAN: Yo, that's a very, that's an excellent point that you brought up Tim. So I think, yes, I think that's a great. That's a huge part of it, but personally, I have been, I have had this mindset even before the AI boom, AI bubble, but I have had all, always had this mindset, but now that with the increasing use or dependence on AI, personally, firstly, I just try not to encourage the use of AI within my team. But of course there are some, sometimes I just think it's so much more efficient if you use it, whereas I just want to make sure they're not entirely reliant on it. On the other hand. With the use of AI, all of these things are, so people always think you can replace a human with this AI. But if you think about it, especially with data or software tech roles, the people who build these AI and machine animals are humans at the day. So these are data experts, these software engineers, these are the people who build all those AI models. So I don't think they in particular need to be scared of it at some point. They would be using that to, to make their work more efficient. So rather than being scared of them, the AI solutions replacing their job, I always advocate to make use of it to make your life so much simpler, because I'm pretty sure you've seen some of the glitches, some of the fails that they such activity or quote have had. And I don't think it's nearly ready yet, at least to take over. Because again, at the end of the day, there's always going to be a human at some point of the development, the cycle of the development cycle of the product of the AI product,

TIM: Yeah, I feel like at the moment, as, as long as using these tools for a domain that you're already an expert in, probably it saves you a lot of time. I feel like the difficulty is using it for something you know nothing about because you're not really in a position to validate its output. And it looks superficially like it's great, but 10 percent of it might be bullshit.

TUAN: correct. Correct. A hundred percent. I definitely agree with that, which is why another reason is when I said about earlier about having the domain knowledge, domain expertise, I think that's when this comes into play, especially because I try to focus more, just give a chance to people who are more junior They may not have the expertise, the technical expertise. So they might just when Chat GPT does a generic code or a query, so they might just randomly just use it, but because of the contextual. The context that they have on the business, in the industry, in the domain or vertical, they'll be able to, just implement that mindset, that attitude or that knowledge onto it to say whether or not the output is exactly what they want. So I think that's something that they will be able to make use of as this AI technology keeps growing in the future.

TIM: What about thinking about someone who's maybe stepping into a data hiring manager shoes for the first time? So perhaps. Some of these people you've trained as data analysts, they're going to become the senior data analysts. Maybe in a couple of years they'll be managing a data team. What advice would you have for a first time data manager when it comes to hiring data people?

TUAN: that's a great question, Tim, because what I have experienced, it's all my clients have now. Turn mentees who have done a really great job and their careers to now progress to become a hiring manager themselves. So one of the advice that one of the things that I advise them on is just don't forget where you came from because things that you might consider common sense may not be too much that common to a new start for a fresh starter. Like how you mentioned about the PWC when you started off as an intern, if your mentor just said, Oh, this is common sense. You're supposed to know that because I don't like you. I'm going to, Fire you right now. We probably wouldn't be having this conversation now. So I think it's always this mentality of there's no Stupid questions. There's always Curiosity just encouraging curiosity just trying to say I like that perspective. This is how it doesn't this is how it works This is how it should work. This is why it works is the ability to translate it, to communicate that it's always important. And often hiring managers forget that because they expect the person that they hired to have this information magically because just because they've been too hands on with their product. So I think just trying to zoom out a bit, trying to focus on, on, on the product from a different perspective, trying to understand, Oh yeah, this person is just a beginner. So I need to focus more on what I expect out of them as a beginner. So once they're able to come in, I can provide them more context. They can expand on their knowledge and Do an amazing job within the business is something I like to advocate to them. And again, this is subjective within the industry. Cause I've seen some industries like healthcare, very conscious of what experience someone has during their hire. So again, that's applicable to most of the easily about 90, 95 percent of the industries out there. So that's my advice to new hiring managers.

TIM: Presumably also you would advocate this kind of structured onboarding approach that you've come up with rather than just hiring people and saying, there you go. Have at it thinking through an onboarding approach, even if it's a lot of investment in time, it sounds like it would be very valuable in the long run.

TUAN: Correct. No, definitely. Definitely. That's another thing I keep mentioning to these people is because to these people, Potential hiring managers is because the duration you take to build the first document or onboarding document is quite extensive, but once you have it in place, it's, you pretty much use the same thing again, the same process again. So it's not really automated, but it's a repetitive process. So you can just use the same documents, same instruction manuals over and over again. So if you believe your team is going to grow even more as you grow in the business, either you and the business grows, It's always more sensible for you to have this sort of a instruction guide. So you're able to use that. So that saves a lot of time in the longer run. So it just adds up in the longer run. So that's, it's more sustainable. And on top of that is that I feel like. Like I said earlier, as a hiring manager, it's always important for you to know what you expect out of this person, even before you hire them. So that way, when that person comes on board, you would know what things you guys would need to look into together rather than you telling them, I want you to find the problem and I also want you to give the solution. So that's not usually the best approach when it comes to hiring from what I've seen with other hiring managers.

TIM: I think the documentation also helps because if you just communicate stuff verbally, how much does someone really retain? I don't know, 20, 30%. For me, it would be lower. Like I, I learn a lot more by looking at words than I do by listening. So having something to go back to again and again. Obviously it's going to save a lot of time in the long run, even if it's painful to begin with, to think about everything and putting it into that wiki. It does pay dividends, doesn't it?

TUAN: 100 percent certainly, because I think I'm even worse than you are because I'm more of a hands on learner. So I like to take it a step further, which is why I had this hands on element to it. Because not everyone's the same. Everyone has a different learning pattern and learning style. So as long as a hiring manager or just a manager or team lead yourself, once you know what someone's strengths are, how you can handle them, It's a psychological trick to it. But at the same time, as a manager, it's, I would presume it's your responsibility to make sure you know what someone's strengths are and you help them make the most out of it within their role. Cause again, no two individuals will be the same at pretty much any stage in life. So that's something that they need to keep in mind when they make the hire.

TIM: and even the way you phrase it there as a good framing, because you didn't say help them fix their weaknesses. You were saying help them capitalize on their strengths and get the most out of what they already have. I think we sometimes overlook that.

TUAN: No, yeah, certainly. Cause I think. Weaknesses is quite subjective because you might have people who might think of all of their strengths as weaknesses and others who say, I have zero weaknesses with just when they just have flaws all over their work and just data sources, just misaligning and giving the incorrect data. So it's just subjective and it's all, again, we're all a work in progress. So as long as we're able to keep improving ourselves by 1 percent every day, it's it's, all that matters.

TIM: Yeah, that compounds to a very large amount in the long run. As a final question, if if you had a magic wand, how would you improve hiring?

TUAN: Yes. That's one of the most exciting things of hiring as a whole. You just wish everyone has the ability to showcase their personal brand has the potential as without even having the conversation, I'm able to see what they're able to do. Cause again, that's just not possible, which. I think the best way to evaluate someone's input or potential is by seeing how well they can articulate, how well they can elaborate or explain, showcase their work, their value, without them even talking to me. So I think currently the closest thing to that is one, their LinkedIn profile, and two, their portfolio. So I think that two weeks about it, especially with data rules. Let's talk about the portfolio where it's very generic, very, unfortunately, nerdy. So I think whether it's your LinkedIn or your portfolio, always sprinkling in a lot of the charisma, a lot of the charm, a lot of the personality is always ideal because you can always hire someone who's super proficient in Tableau or Python, but it's very rare to find someone who's able to do that. have the enthusiasm, this curiosity. So once you're able to show that personality on that, again, that doesn't have to be fake or generated personality. It should just come from within. So that's just what I wish everyone did more of just able to, if I could, wave a magic wand and have this feature where I will see everyone's personality and charm what they capable of doing. Within one window. That's, I think it's the ideal world of hiring data experts.

TIM: Yeah, that's a great insight and vision for the future. I wonder whether then in hiring, it's almost like we're missing a lot of data about the person because it's not really necessarily available. Maybe they haven't created it. Maybe they don't have that public footprint that you mentioned. And then. A lot of companies at the moment would also struggle to deal with, Oh, I've got a thousand applications. I can't really go and look at this person's GitHub and their LinkedIn and their YouTube and the, what have you. Maybe then AI and large language models, which are very good at consuming unstructured data sets, maybe there's going to be a tool in the next couple of years, which can say, Hey give me all the public information, this person, give me some kind of nice summary, articulate all these things without the candidate needing to do anything. Because it's just out there consuming this information. And then maybe we'd have a much more holistic picture of the candidate rather than just a CV or a test score.

TUAN: No, a hundred percent. I love that. That's again, that's the ideal world. I think that's what, that's the direction we're heading towards. Unfortunately, we're not there yet. And I believe we're a long way off, especially with, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the phrase keyword stuffing, where Canada, because of the use of AI, they just stuff all the keywords as it can. And also on top of that, they have incident where they just copy the entire job description, put in their resume and just hide it from plain sight. And the AI just says, this is your a hundred percent, your best candidate. You found your ideal candidate, your magician. And when, just to see that there, yeah. They're just smart about it, but smart about the application, but just nothing to do with. The kind of person you would want in your team. So that's the unfortunate truth right now. I think we're far away from it, but I, in the direction we're heading towards, I definitely think that's possible. And hopefully within the next three, three, four years, we'll probably get that hope. And again, we're hoping on the best or the hoping the best things happen and we're able to streamline the entire process to make the hiring process a little less painful.