39. Smarter, fairer, faster: How AI is redefining graduate hiring | James Uffindell

30:16But I think that might have been the reason. So when he told me I've been rejected from every heart of a medium, and he was brilliant. He turned out well. Yeah. Great. So in a way it might be the people who keep going are the ones you want, aren't they? The ones who don't get fed up and angry, but they'll just keep trying. Yeah, absolutely. They're the ones we all want. 100%. How do we identify them and flag them to those organisations? I mean, this is a challenge for us as people in this space that we share. I'm asking you for your ideas. Yeah, well, I think what you've given an example of there is a robust hiring process.

30:51Because I think the more you can systemise the hiring process and make it more scientific, which you did there, because it sounds like he might have been discounted by previous roles back in the day because of essentially a body language tick, the more you can actually make a systematic evidence-based hiring decision, which I think employers have made leaps and bounds in that, trying to get rid of things like unconscious bias just because somebody has a certain body language quality there you described. And what we see amongst the blue-trip employers we work with, because they're obviously pretty robust and successful organisations, is a scientific kind of hiring process.

31:33And back to kind of how they compete and get the best talents by casting their net wide super wide and not, for example, just going after graduates from certain universities or certain degree disciplines or certain backgrounds, they can then filter to find those needles in the haystack. So what are they looking for? You said resilience was second. Yeah. How can you have passion for an organization that you've never been into and you know so little about? I mean, is that a reasonable requirement? I think it is quite. How can I suddenly feel passion for Google? Yeah. I mean, they're one of your clients.

32:06So how do I feel that? Yeah, I guess being bought into the Google mission and the kind of culture fit and wanting to have that. So what's your advice to your... How do they develop their passion? Because, I mean, it takes a bit of time to feel passionate. Yeah, I guess knowing about the business, knowing what it's kind of trying to achieve, knowing about the mission of the business, the values. I know you have your values that read. And I think... So you're saying immerse. You're saying not just a bit of homework. You're saying immerse yourself in this. I think the more you can know the organisation, the culture you're joining, you think about culture being kind of how things are done around here.

32:40So you should ask AI, shouldn't you? Yeah, well, that might be... Tell me about the culture at Cougar. You must say that. Yeah, well, you should. It depends on the policy of the company. Well, some of these clients might have said, no, no, no, don't do that. But you've got to use what you can to find out what you can. Yeah, other qualities, what they're looking for is communication skills so interestingly with ai and a lot of hard skills becoming commoditized we're back to um back to soft skills in terms of how you can influence a team how you can lead how you can communicate so actually interestingly softer skills are becoming more important which is why our research shows that young people actually now more prone to wanting to go into the office so 58 of our bright now web members want to be in the office four days or more a week, which is up from 9 % last year.

33:28So offices are obviously incredible learning machines. And then also problem-solving skills is another thing that employers are really looking for in terms of top of the stack. Yeah, well, our research shows the same, that Gen Z want to be in the workplace. Yeah. And it's often the older people who have nicer homes. And it's a problem, right? Dogs to walk and all that sort of stuff. And it's very easy. Deliveries to receive. Yeah. They prefer working at home, which I find a bit unconvincing. I think they should show up and have a lot of people help the young people get started. I completely agree.

33:56And I think there's a moral argument to it, particularly for those people who've been lucky enough to go through that kind of dynamic office environments. And offices are, as I said, offices are great learning machines. And our research turns up, they show to learn from the older people in the organisation. And if they're not there and they're padding around later in their careers, if we've got nicer houses, there's actually kind of dog to walk, maybe a spouse, so kind of working from home. I think there is a moral responsibility to - very worried about all this because i i think you know a lot of those jobs are just being lined up to be automated or offshore yeah yeah because if you can pad around at home in croyd nor kingston you can also pad around at home in soweto or hungary somewhere and that's what's happening there all the jobs are being offshore well as you know and you you talk about you know we have a massive productivity gap in the uk um we're about 20 less productive than than um say that again About 20 % less production in terms of productivity, aren't we, than kind of mainland Europe?

34:5320%. Yeah, in terms of it takes them about four days. It takes us about five days. So we have to work five days for them to work 25%, but they're not far off. Yeah. And then we know that Britain are the second biggest when it comes to remote work after Canada. And we also, the research is increasingly... It snows a lot in Canada. Yeah, yeah. That's kind of fair. But we also know that remote working overall seems to be less productive. Now, of course, we should have flexible working arrangements, and it's really beneficial for some sex society, for example, working parents. But it's getting the balance right.

35:30Yeah, I think there's every argument for flexibility, but you're right. I wouldn't disagree. And it makes those roles, I think, more jeopardy. Yeah. So your advice to young people is show up. Get into the office. I think absolutely get into the office, build those relationships, practice those soft skills, practice collaborating, learn from kind of senior people in the business, have those serendipitous conversations about your work. And that will help you get ahead. You've talked a lot about the companies you deal with. Yeah. You describe them as blue chip. I'm imagining sort of banks, consulting firms, technology companies, the sort of names that people would know.

36:10Yes. it's a certain type of person is it who wants to go to the best school and work in a big bank yeah and that's there are lots of people who don't want to do that or who would rather be in a smaller environment or work in a non-profit or do you cater for them yeah well the great thing about the bright network platform it's built as um to help young people connect with the world of work and one thing I love most about the model is that the platform caters for every undergraduate and student so even though the firms are using it to kind of engage the talent kind of that they want to hire if you're not 100 % sure what you want to do or you'll probably don't want to engage your career maybe until you've left university or you want to go and work for a startup all the advice and information on those kind of two key things for solving for going back to the problem i was trying to solve that i experienced as a founder is like what should i do with my life back to your point about what are the opportunities out there how do i match to a specific career and then secondly how do i guess ahead we still help you if you don't go and work at one of our clients much as i suppose you're doing it read well we have a lot of clients that are smaller organized i mean we're big organizations and small but i just think in my experience or just observing it's often you get a lot of good experience in a smaller organization organization where you may have to do a bit of everything absolutely and if you're just clocked if you become a specialist in a bigger one and that's good for early career development yeah absolutely and um most graduates will actually go and work for an sme um that's where the majority of them go and as napoleon said we're a nation of shopkeepers right we've got five million smes and they are the growth i don't think he meant that as a compliment i think he was shown to be foolish in his sneering.

37:59Yeah, yeah. I agree. He was definitely meaning it as a trip down, but the reality of us having lots of kind of small businesses is the case. So how do you see the landscape? I mean, you're using AI. Firstly, I mean, what do you use it for in your business? Because I'd like to understand that. And then how do you see it changing the landscape? So we brought AI into our business about four years ago, so pre-Chat GPT. I was very much onto our tech team, kind of reading articles about what was coming. So what did you use it for then? So what we bought it in for then, which is what we use it for now, is the matching.

38:33So in terms of the talent on the platform and how we match them to roles, when we introduced A-Long to the platform, it introduced our matching ability by about 10x, using the data I was describing earlier. So how did that actually improve the matching? Because there were matching software around for a long time. Yeah, so one of our core products is a personalized newsletter that every one of our members gets. So the roles we list in there, so the click-through rates when the matching was done by AI, which previously we were using humans to put these newsletters. So the AI would post different jobs to different individuals?

39:12It's completely personalized. It could mass-produce that as well, whereas before it would have been a slow process. So it mass-produces personalized communications with specific jobs that may be of interest to that individual but not that individual. So that's something that wouldn't have been easy to do before AI. No, 100%. So you're using it for that. And how did it improve your business? It improved the matching rate by 10x. So if you think about our job being we've got these 1.2 million members, we've got these 300 corporates and we're trying to more efficiently match them. So a use case might be a young person who has no idea they could go and work in a sector earning a huge salary um gets put it in front of them a role that they wouldn't even thought they were a good match for but actually um all the data suggests they could be a really good match for it and then they apply for that role they get the role the client's really happy because they've got a super great hire young person's really happy that creates obviously case study um so it becomes quite powerful but you don't necessarily track who's hired who we we we do we do we are able to kind of track to hire when do you use ai to do that we don't use ai to do that but we do use a data platform we built where um the employers can um see actually which of their young people come from bright network right and has your business grown as a result of this yeah absolutely well that's encouraging for people who want jobs so yeah so what so four years ago to now how's it grown well in terms of our kind of headcount we've probably gone from about um maybe about 40 something like that kind of four years ago to about roughly the headcount size about 100 now right yeah so but but those people wouldn't be doing that task no but our overall revenue was growing which has meant more more marketing people more kind of people to look after our clients yeah in other areas yeah so would you say that was a key decision a key moment for you doing that or were there other things that happened four years ago in terms of kind of powering our growth um yeah i think investment in technology um we've raised um venture capital and we've put a lot of that money into technology and that then has given us some more of a competitive edge in the market in terms of us becoming number one player in our very specific part of the of the jobs markets um and then other things we've done that has really kind of powered our growth has been um investing in bringing more students onto the platform so it's the bigger audience we have the more um so what do you how How do you do that?

41:42I mean, I'm just interested in anyone who's starting a business who wants to sort of create a network. It's quite hard to do, isn't it? I mean, there are not many social networks. No, building it from scratch and the kind of cold start problem. What did you do? Well, so initially I had access to my database of students from my previous business. That kind of was like the catalyst. And then it was a lot of getting out on campus, getting into universities, building relationships. So literally pounding the pavement. Yeah, absolutely. We used to give out mugs, actually, which is a great kind of story.

42:13Although, you know, if someone signed up, they got a Bright Network mug or they hadn't really thought through the logistics of casting around all these mugs around campus. That was quite a big operational experience. And then we also kind of do relationships with societies. But now we've got to a point in terms of our audience where, because we're the number one, because the product is so good for young people, it creates kind of a self-fulfilling process. One of my young graduate colleagues thought we should have done one of your internships. Oh, great. okay she found it she said it was very good excellent and she said it was really it gave her a bit of confidence and it made and it also ticked off a box that was required great well they're allowed to put on their cv and then yeah the syllabus as well as yeah so i think that was she thought it was very good great one please do that intervention on your part right now members everywhere yeah so you go to bright network if you want to do an internship and it's easy to do yeah absolutely yeah but it doesn't cost the member completely free it's all free for the members um and uh yeah we're trying to solve those two problems what should i do with my life and and how do i get ahead okay so ai you've found helpful in your business but i suppose it's interesting in that example you described it's sort of doing a job that a person wasn't actually able to do before in your case i mean it must be in other businesses doing jobs that people were able to do before i mean you're saying you're sort of seeing that yeah absolutely so where do you think this is headed because you know you want to place graduates into jobs you're using ai you're probably looking at other ways to use AI where's it headed from here because 2025 I think will be thought of as the year of AI the year it became mainstream widely deployed everyone using it really some better than others where's it going next well the tech community seems pretty kind of split on is AI a good thing or a bad thing personally I think it's going to have a hugely and it's already having a hugely transformative of impact on society.

44:06And I think, yeah, I think insidiously it's going to be taking kind of jobs that we might not see all the time because essentially it's making kind of people kind of more productive. And if you think about, like, for example, like junior technology roles or marketeer roles, arguably you do need kind of less of these people. So the emphasis is on the young group to stay competitive. ultimately kind of for us great organizations are always going to want to hire great entry-level talents and our job is to make sure that you know our mission in terms of building the workforce of tomorrow is to make sure that talent is aware of how far it can go and the opportunities out there so yeah we're moving to potentially a very disruptive time and you've got to make sure that young people are equipped for this yeah that's a good point i mean that being equipped for this is an interesting question.

45:00How do we equip people for something that's so hard to foretell? I think coming back to obviously we can do kind of the basic things like encourage them to use AI and maybe even start building into the syllabus etc. But I think it's this idea of this kind of growth mindset which is one of the three values of our business is how do you kind of handle change and being able to adapt to new environments. We need as much as the country and if you think about our position as a country and where we are we need to be showing as much resilience as possible and adapting to the kind of changes that are coming.

45:35So you said growth mindset was one of your values, I just wonder what the other two are? Yeah, so will to win in terms of being competitive and wanting to be the best and that's hopefully kind of done well for us in terms of becoming number one in the market. And then the final one is trusted to deliver um the idea of like we are trusted by our client partners to deliver every year they um pay us to do a job and we do that job and we uh so when they when they subscribe with you is what i'm saying what is the job that they expect you to do because generate high quality applications just through these mailings yeah so that people keep coming into there yeah and various other things on our on our tech platform as well and um and then hire great talents and then using this again the following year because it's a very cyclical business and is it is it very seasonal yes yes it's a very very seasonal business so when is it super busy um so typically applications are open from very roughly period kind of september to january for third year second year first year internships um so quite a small window and some of those are very specific in terms of kind of they might only be like a month window when they're eight which again I had no idea when I was at university when I was working the pub.

46:48So our ability to tell students when to apply for certain roles. And that's the tip I'll give to any student listening to this is really think about when employers are advertising vacancies. And then they review the campaigns typically in kind of the first kind of half of the year. And then they will book in their campaigns the following year. So the kind of classic milk round season in terms of timing, it's been elongated and kind of messed around and has changed a little bit. but it's still it's still really there in terms of architecture so do Cumbria still show up on campus and so on yeah so they still go out on campus they still do that yeah absolutely but the great thing the Bright Network platform has enabled is by putting all students in the same place it's made those kind of things a lot more efficient I think we do a big event every year called Bright Network Festival which has about 4 ,000 come to it oh great that sounds like a good event to attend you should come along and have a look I will I will invite me where is it you should come and do it it's the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre directly opposite Westminster to have about 4 ,000 come along.

47:46And yeah, we'd love to kind of have you there if you want to come and do a how to be a successful entrepreneur talk or whatever you want to talk about. That's very kind. I might take you up on that. That'd be great. So one of the motivations I understand behind you sort of setting up the business in this way was to try and make things fairer in the job market, particularly for people with what are described as protected characteristics, but people from minority groups or people with disabilities. What have you done to make that happen? So this is where the AI and data and tech gets really interesting because through that you can create kind of better matching.

48:28So 60 % of people from ethnic minority backgrounds still believe that their backgrounds are older than back. 40 % from social mobility backgrounds believe their backgrounds are older than back. So by coming back to the tap on the shoulder and putting the right opportunities in front of whatever your background, not just because you're at a certain university, it allows the max machine to work a lot more efficiently. So these people feel this even if they're at these high-end universities? Yeah. They don't feel because they've got to Cambridge that... No, and imposter syndrome is a huge thing as well.

49:03It's still an issue. Yeah, absolutely. So they might have come from a family that no one had been to university. Yeah, first-generation university or... And they still feel that this is holding them there. Yeah, there's still a perception of that. So what we try to do... Is there a truth in that? So the data doesn't suggest so. So it's more perception than reality. Yeah, absolutely. So the big thing there... The important thing to know is not true. Yeah, absolutely. Like firms want the best and brightest. Well, I certainly do. Yeah, it's irrelevant, right? Absolutely, completely. I'm so disappointed that people are still feeling that.

49:35Yeah, there is that perception. So we also run kind of super targeted events. For example, We do Black Talent in banking events. We do Proud to Be events. We do neurodiverse leaders events. So looking and really trying to give specific help to people to create a quality of opportunity and giving them the advice and information they need to succeed ensures that they have fair access. Yeah. I mean, one of the other... I've observed some changes is that some companies have sort of reigned in their graduate programs because they want to make sure they recruit people from a whole range of backgrounds.

50:15Military or, yeah. Yeah, and they thought that people from universities were sort of of a certain type. And so they might not take as many or they might not do it in the same way. Are they wrong to do that now? Well, the reality is that students at university are incredibly diverse in terms of... That's what I'm wondering. Yeah, absolutely. Before, when I was at university, they were not. Yeah, and now they are. So does that change the thinking a bit? I think firms should be as inclusive as possible and reaching out to as wide a candidate pool as possible, be that on university or encouraging returners to work after paternity or maternity, et cetera.

51:00So, yeah, having a broad reach as possible, however you want to do that, then having a very systematic, organised recruitment process gives you a competitive advantage. So go broad, get out to as many applicants as possible, and then make sure your recruitment process is as robust as possible. So do you anonymise people? No. So you don't do that? Some people argue that's what should be... Because we're generating applications for the firms, some firms will then be you know kind of like of scrap cbs for example that's been something that's kind of been a bit of a phenomenon not looking at academics um so yeah there is there is um some movements like that happening in the market but is that i've heard that too but they never seem to last very long when people say i want to know what well i guess it depends how well hr has trained the training is that a bad thing to know that though i mean it's part of your sort of life journey isn't Yeah.

51:57You're saying on one hand, these clients want students from these top universities. And then on the other, they can't see this. Well, no. So I just think they want students from the top universities. I think there is a... Isn't that the product here, partly? I think things have changed. So some firms would just go to top universities. And now they're able to kind of target all universities with platforms like Bright Network because they're able to get kind of broader access in terms of all those candidates being on the platform. I do think academics can obviously show something and if you've got a first from It shows how good you are at academics Well it can show certain things but it can show in terms of But certain jobs, if you're going to be a doctor or something, it's pretty important There's a vocational angle and good academics can be a signal of cognitive speed and ability for example, but what you want to make sure is that you're giving fair access to say for example there's a student who grew up on a council estate as the first generation to go to university and then maybe they haven't gone to a top tier university because maybe they weren't encouraged by their school to apply to a top tier university.

53:05Through the Luxe Bright Network they can still then access top employers and making sure they get a fair advantage. And importantly I'm thinking the top employer can access them. 100%. Because you want those people in your organisation because they'll bring a lot with them. Yeah absolutely, they bring the kind of hunger and the drive and arguably, well a candidate like that has actually proved a greater distance traveled than a student who's gone to a top private school got the top grades and gone to a top university yeah they haven't had any setbacks no no back to our point yeah yeah the resilient back to resilience is still to be uh still to be found yeah one thing i'd say that you said that the companies you know said passion for the company and resilience were the top two when i did a huge piece of research i mean it's more than 12 years ago now, asking companies what they were looking for in terms of mindset qualities.

53:55The thing that came top always was integrity and trustworthiness. You don't want to hire a crook. You want people to show up on time. Is that not still the case? And they don't talk about that in schools and colleges. Values is obviously critically important. Personal values. So you don't go and say to someone in the job interview, I'm not a crook. No. So how do you come across as someone who's honest and upright? Because that's what they want. Yeah, absolutely. It's not something that they, I guess, would come out generally through the graduate recruitment process in terms of looking for what is the composition of someone's character.

54:41And I think they're hopefully maybe taking people at face value more. I think this is where probation period is coming, because you obviously only know what an individual is really like until they've started. Yeah, I mean, you can be, and people change as well. So it's so important, I think, the sort of integrity aspect. Yes. So we developed the 3G mindset. Okay, what was it? Well, I'll tell you in our book, The Put Your Mindset to Work, which was written years ago. First G was good. Yeah. And that was integrity and kindness. So two types of good. the second g was grit yeah as in resilience and persistence which you've absolutely settled on and stuff and the third g what was um global which was open growth mindset could have been growth um and those were the three things that we sort of summarized they were looking i think they're great i would say you should write a book we already you've already done it maybe we should do a sequel yeah but i think that but i remember and this book was prompted at the time by someone saying at a conference i was at they were asked from they were from some skills body from the government you know what skills will most be in demand in 10 years time so we're talking like now back 10 years ago and i was sitting there thinking well i've no idea what skills will be most in development i mean i didn't know i was going to be working podcast producers but i do know what sort of people i want to hire in 10 years time and they have these qualities and these characteristics yeah these fundamental kind of you're doing the same in a sense yeah these fundamental underlying kind of causes values characteristics because um they're they kind of last forever right character is everything and so yeah back to kind of change being the only constants yeah those fundamental underlying qualities are often what makes my performance yeah yeah i think that's potentially yeah the one constant that doesn't change yeah oh yeah so um is there anything you'd like to add about how your business is going to evolve from here into the future?

56:35Do you have any ambitious plans or some initiatives coming out you want to share? Because I'm intrigued. Yes, so continuing to invest in our technology is the number one focus because that thing continues to give us an edge in the market. We're also working on some quite interesting technology at the moment that looks at how employers can handle kind of mass applications and AI. So we've got some interesting stuff in the pipeline there that allows candidates and employers to think about how they use AI when it comes to the application process. So that's quite interesting. Our tech hub is based up in Edinburgh.

57:14So we've got some interesting kind of work happening there, which is exciting. So do you do that in-house? Yeah, all of our technology is done in-house. Right. In Edinburgh? Yeah, in Edinburgh. That's interesting. Is there a sort of tech, Silicon Glen is it called? Yeah. We had had our tech hub in London, but we found it incredibly competitive to hire talents and to get the right people. Our CTO at the time, funnily enough, located to Edinburgh. We thought it would be really interesting to build a tech hub up there. It's actually worked really, really well in terms of the phenomenal talent up there and building a great technology.

58:01Yeah, it's a great city, isn't it? Absolutely. We did that. We put a tech team in Sligo in the west of Ireland. Did you really? Is it still there? Yeah. People love living there and working there. There's a very good tech college not far away, which people graduate from and join us. Do they? Fantastic. How have you got up there? Only about 20, but it's good. They do really good work. So I think that's quite interesting because there's a great gravitational pull of in Silicon Valley, I suppose. But there are other ways of approaching tech, especially if you're a smaller business or a startup entrepreneur.

58:37Yeah, you've got to be agile and we've got about 15 up there now, so it's worked really well. I wish you continuing success with that. Thank you. I appreciate that. Look forward to seeing how the business evolved. Now, I've got two questions that I always ask at the end, James. And the first question, there's a clue on the wall, is what gets you up on a Monday morning? Yeah, a lot of Mondays, yeah. I think for me it's the mission in the business and unleashing the talent of our Bright Network members. And the wonderful thing we get in testimonials, having kind of had our members sign up when they're 18 at Landon University and then get these incredible jobs, is just seeing how far they can go.

59:14And I think everybody can probably go further than they think they can with the right support and help. And I had that support and help when I was at school. I had this incredible teacher who encouraged me to apply to a top university. So I think it's the mission for me, unleashing kind of the talent on Bright Network to go far. You said something interesting, or just caught my attention, everyone can go further than they think they can. Yeah. So you're saying we've got sort of hidden potential. I think so. Or hidden from ourselves. Yeah. I like that idea. it yeah and i think it's the power of having somebody believe in you so bright network are big things like believing in our members backing them being on their side again much like that kind of older brother or sister and we think about kind of having you must have had a nice older brother yeah not every relationship is like that technically i was only child so i don't know but yeah you have a utopian view of brothers and sisters but um so but i know what you mean yeah and that's kind of like someone on your side yeah absolutely and that's where they're cheering you on absolutely with mentoring almost like the difference between kind of mentoring with a capital m and a little m you can have kind of like you know proper kind of mentors with a capital m you know you meet up with that and then kind of like trying to help you develop and you have mentors with a little m who are like you know you're learning from in the office or seeing seeing stuff so having somebody believe in you.

1:00:29And again, if you think about how we try and power more social mobility about what works in these kind of, again, these kind of wealthy, well-connected families is they've got somebody believing in them, often these kids and gunning for them. And we try and do that on Bright Network for every one of our members. So yeah, that's what gets me out of bed every morning. That's great. And my last question, where do you see yourself in five years time? In five years time, kind of building Bright Network, the business is growing, developing, we've got a lot of opportunities in the business and the big things are alumni so once our members get their first job we've created this kind of hyper-personalized network of talents who know us know bright network we've in terms of being trusted to deliver we've delivered greater results for them they've gone and got their first job so you know that's an interesting kind of growth opportunity for us as well so yeah and kind of overseas is also an interesting opportunity for us as well.

1:01:26I was wondering that. You mentioned you might be going into, well, you're opening in Germany. Yeah, we opened Germany two years ago. Two years ago. Have you got any other countries you're looking at? Just that so far. So you're taking it cautious one at a time. Yeah, we're learning about international and how to do it. And we picked Germany because it was where our clients asked us to go. So we spoke to our clients. Oh, I see. They wanted to hire them. They wanted Germany. Yeah. Not America. They did want America as well. And the reason we didn't go for America first was because it's a significant amount of capital to launch well in America.

1:01:59And so we wanted to learn about international first. So that could be next. Yeah, yeah. America could be next. Well, I wish you every success with that. Thank you very much. I'll have to get you back in five years' time and see how it's going. Yeah, brilliant. Well, I really enjoyed it. Thanks very much. So bye. Thank you for coming to talk with me. Absolute pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, James, for joining me on All About Business. I'm your host James Reid Chairman and CEO of Reid a family-run recruitment and philanthropy company If you'd like to find out more about Reid James Uffindal and Bright Network all links are in the show notes See you next time