Sally Wynter | The Future of Job Hunting

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0:45Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. Welcome to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. Today I'm joined by returning guest Sally Winter. Sally came on the show three years ago when she just exited her first company, a CBD gin company. I asked her at the end of that episode what she was likely to do next. She highlighted the career system as being one that was broken. Of course I agree, it's one of the foundational reasons of why I set up Jimmy's jobs in the future.

1:22Sally has now launched a new venture to try and tackle this. It's called Hunch. it gets to learn applicants really well with its AI systems and provides them with up to 20 jobs a day. I think it could be really transformational because one of the challenges that young people have early on in their careers is they don't know the skills that they necessarily have for the workplace and they don't understand what jobs necessarily entail. Hunch looks to solve both of these problems. I think it's a really neat idea and it's a reason why I've become an investor in the company as well. On to today's episode.

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2:09Sally, welcome back to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. Not many guests come back for a second time. Sorry to hear that. Exactly. But this time you're doing something completely different. Tell us what you're working on. Yeah, I am working on something that two and a half years ago, I actually said I would be working on. So I was quite proud of that. It's a platform for young talent, job seekers, graduates, to find out about the world of work, find out what careers are out there, what pays well, and then how to land those jobs. And why is it called Hunch? It's having a hunch, kind of going after, I guess, fulfilling your potential, feeling that you've got an inkling that there's something out there for you, but not quite knowing what it is.

2:50You've got a hunch about a job. Yeah, not having the full picture, which I think is how most people... I mean, before, you know, we go into this, well, for lots of people, corporate spaces or other spaces, the world of work, people have no idea what it is to operate like day to day, how you present yourself, who you're talking to, who each person in the business is like, it's completely foreign territory. It's very much like a role playing thing that human beings in the capitalist world have to engage in and become an employee. And, you know, all those rules of the game, how you have to act, professionalism, all that stuff is very foreign to just being you, I guess.

3:29And so there's that weird dynamic. So you, I know primarily at the moment it's for graduates, right? So what does a graduate do? They're getting ready to graduate in the final year and they sign up for Hunch. And what is the process is there? the process on the platform um so we've got a uh we've spent 12 months basically training an ai a career obsessed agent it finds out about you um it kind of scrapes a lot of data from either your cv linkedin it asks you a bunch of questions about your motivations and then it starts to show uh basically give you matched roles so we bring the roles to you very different to a traditional job board where you i mean especially for people entering the world of work they don't know what job titles there are they're seeing a lot of irrelevant things so we only send you things that match you get to kind of swipe yes or no much like a sort of tinder style dating app and then we give you all the tools and the coaching to apply so that's cv optimization atf making sure it's ready for ats the system that she means a human can see your application uh bespoke cover letters but mostly also our ai coaches you in so it knows about about you it knows what you're looking at which is what's really dynamic about it it can see you're looking at an account manager job and it can be like okay so what do you think about this here's some experiences you told me you had that can help you get this role here's how to put your best foot forward and also it can kind of answer looking further forward because like it's all a mystery when you get that first role you're like what the hell does that mean what does the job title mean i don't know what half the words on the job description even mean and then what does it mean like what is it taking me towards so we try to like demystify that a bit and what kind of questions is it asking then because that's really interesting to kind of reveal most people's motivations because it's one of the big things i think that youngsters have going into the job market is you you don't know what you don't know to state the obvious um so what kind of questions is it asking them to sort of reveal that work type personality i suppose so i guess like one of the most useful things about the fact you can see the job you're let's do the job you're looking at example doesn't have to be that yeah you can say okay well this breaking down this job title it's actually very much to do with organization getting people together to do things on time you know delivering to lots of different people's needs that are you know is that something that appeals to you or you know is that a personality fit type and then it can you know it kind of prompts off conversations and if you go oh actually i'm quite introverted i wouldn't want to have to like deal with loads of people then it can start to steer you and open up other conversations so that's interesting and how how long does somebody have to use and play with it for right because that's one of the things i've found about using ai like it's amazing but it does also take quite a lot of time for it to learn about you well that's why our onboarding process which is quite quick but it's taking a lot of data that you've already got written down so you're not doubling up so cv and linkedin have a lot of that basic stuff and then um that's enough for us to go on with a few other questions on kind of matching and then our ai is uh it's like a rag model which basically means that it's learning as it goes the more you use it the better it becomes but i'd say like very early on it's a very it's completely personalized compared to all the other job like platforms that are out there so we've got that feedback very very clearly early on that people were like wow this already feels like revolutionary compared to what i've been using because it's so antiquated the market you know it's super old school um and what how do you hire i mean i when i was listening to our podcast again this morning i remember one of the startling things about your previous journey was you didn't hire anyone and you did it all on on your own but like this time you built like a small team right and like co-founders and so on how have you found that as an experience of being the the hiree very eye-opening um i think it's interesting to have gone through the hiring process as well i've got a couple people in my team on the marketing and comm side um uh a lot yeah it's really interesting question actually because there's lots and lots of insights um some things i guess i thought i already knew about but it was demonstrated like lots of people like not showing up like applying but not following through not replying to emails it's amazing if you look at how tough the market is but then how many how many people still don't email back when they're offered an interview or don't do the title like whatever it is is like that's still incredibly high and i'm sure behind that it's a complete mixture of reasons like confidence or lack of motivation but that was really interesting yeah and then um yeah i think just just just being sitting on the other side of the seat right which i hadn't done before and knowing i guess what the candidate doesn't usually know which is the person interviewing you like they want to get the best out of you yeah obviously for you just like oh my god i need to perform and impress this person um so i was trying to bring in i guess empathy and like making that person feel comfortable through through the process but yeah it was hard to hire took quite a few weeks we i this was way pre-product as well so we didn't have hunch to help with that process um but yeah no it took quite a few weeks which is almost bizarre when you look at how hard it is for young people to nail jobs and you know that they're applying for six seven eight hundred jobs sometimes just to get an interview you're like something's wrong here yeah it's still hard to hire kind of yeah but it is this like the funnel has got like so much longer and wider with it all right like um because it's just it's so much easier to apply for jobs now because you can do it in the day when you're working at home and like linkedin's made it incredibly easy where it's just like a couple of clicks to apply for things but yeah that sort of whereas previously you know you used to have if you wanted to apply for a job when i was sort of starting out 10 15 years ago you would have to do it in the evenings or weekends and so therefore you already kind of met a bit of a threshold as far as the employer was concerned of like okay well this person has taken probably half an hour at least to write this email in an evening at a weekend and send it in whereas now it's just become you know so much easier to kind of like you know linkedin easy apply click click and you put it forward why was it only evenings that you could just because if you were in a job already like you couldn't apply during the day because you know you had to be in the office right so like you know you couldn't be sort of sitting there drafting out your cv in the office or it might raise questions i was gonna say i don't know like what's that like 2010 i was like yeah you could have been getting away with more maybe i'm not sure that everyone else was playing by exactly maybe i was just too like model employee but um yeah and so i just think yeah it's interesting like it's easier than ever yeah right and that's a huge problem yeah and exactly that does not make it easier for people to find the right right work or right roles necessarily because they're almost scattergunning like you know and so on you talk about how people apply you know five six hundred applications and so on it's just sort of mad and ai is going to make it you know is has got the potential to make some of the problems even worse right obviously that's what you're kind of like working so absolutely yeah there's a there's ai companies out there all like auto-apply for thousands of jobs and And it's a huge issue because basically, obviously, if the threshold's really low, I mean, I think like LinkedIn's easy apply is one of the worst, like best and worst, definitely worst thing to be invented simply because if the threshold's really low, you're going to apply for like 10 things and maybe you're only actually interested in two of those jobs.

11:14Yeah. And then it creates, you know, 10 or 100 times more applications for the company to deal with, which makes it harder for them to find the right talent. But even if they find the right talent, that talent isn't even necessarily that interesting because it was that easy to apply so i think the idea that it's just you know and there's incentive there because you know they're driving people onto the platform and if you make it harder like there'll be less people doing doing those applications but it's it's a broken system basically and it doesn't it's it's kind of damages both sides and that's where one of the things that you're sort of unique offerings right is it's going to be 20 rolls per day yeah and you can only save 10 and i think once one thing that's been really interesting is it's so demoralizing doing all of these applications and there's like there's no one to tell you you know that's you know here's how many you should be doing don't do too many so people like oh if i just keep going keep going then eventually i'll land a role and they sort of spray and pray and that's not very effective for the reasons we just discussed about low quality applications and intent and all of that sort of stuff but it's also just very demoralizing so the idea is we want to use ai for good to help people make fewer better quality applications and on the employer side as well if there isn't a good match there we're not showing it to people yeah so it's just it's it's fixing that issue um and how have you gone about building this so far like you say you've been kind of 12 months in research and development what have you been doing with that time uh largely the credit is going to our engineers so we've got an incredible kind of uh tech team who've been uh you know kind of working very hard on building something that's, I mean, honestly, what they've achieved is really amazing because, you know, immediately in some of our earliest reviews for our, like, first version, we've had people being like, oh, my God, the AI, like, versus LinkedIn, who do actually have, by the way, this thing that's like, you're looking at a job, blah, blah, blah, let us help you.

13:21It fails one in three times, so it doesn't even work a lot of the time, and then it's really basic. I mean, for the amount of stuff and, you know, multi-billion pound company, et cetera, it's amazing what we've pulled off a very small team in the space of a year and then on the kind of marketing and user side I've been creating lots of TikToks building up a WhatsApp active WhatsApp community of you know 1200 plus graduates just helping them with honestly like some of the things that they need help with is really basic I spoke to a couple of them who were like didn't know what companies were out there to apply for so every time I see a bus stop ad I'll google and see if they have some sort of graduate scheme i mean that's how lacking the market is at the at the early stage um and how have you gone about building that whatsapp community where have you got have you gone out and done your own bus ads or um so literally just tiktoks about the opportunities that are out there so i started around the start of the academic year last year yeah and very rapidly i was like okay so here's scheme going on here's what roles they're hiring from very big almost like job ads yeah on tiktok which is obviously where gen z is spending most of their time um and then filtering through those people who wanted more information helped to apply into the whatsapp group so quite a simple but very effective method for people who are job seeking and yeah and how have you found that because you do have a bit of background in tv as well beforehand right so this is like kind of mixing all the sally winter skills yeah a little bit uh tiktok was quite painful to get on to i've got to be honest yeah uh very uncomfortable um i was in tv yeah but i was always behind on the desk uh behind camera producing and things like that so uh yeah never yeah i'm a reluctant tick tocker um but you know what like it's been amazing to see a lot you know again now now we're on the other side of that act that like sort of hiring you know a year uh which sort of runs for guys around september all the way through to like may-ish yeah um and then sort of pauses for the summer i'm now thinking people oh i saw your video back in October and now I've gone through that long process I've actually just started a role which is like yeah it's really rewarding to hear that your output is actually doing something for someone and how is the grad market changing because I heard this interesting tale the other day about like how it used to be you know in your third year you get ready to kind of do applications but now that funnel is becoming longer as well in terms of people expecting you they're almost using the internships kind of like uh program as a funnel for that which was definitely happening when i was at university as well but it wasn't perhaps as explicit as that but like the big companies are now being much more yeah basically almost if you haven't got an internship in your first summer at university you're already kind of like falling behind the the curve in that sense honestly i was amazed to learn about like just how competitive this space is because me as a graduate i mean first of all i did english literature so basically i had no idea so i wasn't gonna swear that i wasn't sure um i had no idea whether like what i was gonna do um so you know i wasn't even thinking i think like most people aren't even thinking about career until they're at least in their third year but what i found is that if you want to be in these top companies especially in spaces like finance you know you like before you've even started uni basically in A-levels you need to be like okay what spring weeks am I applying for and spring weeks I hadn't even heard of until last year so spring weeks is like it's the funnel into the internship summer internship which in turn is the funnel into the grad scheme oh my word so it's gone even further so it's gone even further so basically the spring insight week is basically like a week of just like shadowing like going up and just work experience like being in the office meeting people from the company and then you get invites through to the internships and then as you say I don't think it's out there in the open but i know firsthand from speaking to people that yeah a lot of the grad scheme cases are reserved quietly for people that go into the internships but if you think about the kind of person that would know to apply for the spring intern week yeah yeah yeah it's again this comes back it's certain backgrounds families network etc which the masses don't have and so it's just it's compounding an issue of lack of social mobility and it's compounding all the way through to the companies and the good jobs and the well-paying careers you know and i think that's that's where my motivation comes from in being in this space.

17:53You know, it's trying to level the playing field just a bit because a lot of people out there, they just don't know. Don't know. Don't know. They don't know what you don't know. It's not even a level playing field in some ways because you can't even see the pitch that other people are playing on. Like, you know, just to run with that metaphor. Why do you study English literature? I was good at it. That's such a classic response. I was good at it. And I was good, basically, I was, I had a like, I was very bad at school. my attendance was shocking but the one thing i could turn up to and even like even sometimes get you know 98 100 in my work having not even read the book it was english lit so um why do you think that is that's quite a i don't know i don't want to say good good bullshit

18:40okay yeah the stories i mean yeah i mean i'm i think having had a shoot you know a lot of my success and things helped massively by the sort of following up on linkedin in the network because i'm i um you know i'm a good writer i guess i write from the heart that comes very naturally to me yeah um and so i guess something in in that i just had a good talent natural talent for writing and obviously you don't it's kind of like it's interpretive you know it's it's all about making an argument or like describing something it's like you don't have to have it on facts and figures so much i mean you know in chemistry if you it's either right or wrong you can't um you can't really get and also i didn't know i wasn't even sure i wanted to go to university to be honest in fact i took a year out to work and i was still like oh i don't know about this and someone was like well you know when you're in your 40s you're going for that senior management role uh is that the difference between you and the next candidate might be a university degree which even at 19 i was like that sounds like bollocks but like yeah in the back of your head you're like well and i was like i don't want to go when i'm older because they sell you the university experience which again it's not it's it's yeah not everyone has but it's definitely the safe choice though isn't it i think that's the thing it's like it's the do this because society tells you to do it but then you know it's now you're loaded with a load more debt as well i don't know i went to university i had an amazing time university i think is incredibly important for certain walks of life but yeah it is interesting just how much it's a different ballgame now though because um the university degree obviously like back when a relatively a handful of people used to go to university even like the 80s and 90s it was some it was an accolade it was like oh he's got a degree like that's when it mattered you versus the other guy and i can't tell you how far away we are from that having been a truth you know even when i came out of university it was like and now i'd say yeah it's worse than ever because also especially since not only has it gone down but employers are like we just want work experience and if you don't have work experience your degree doesn't really mean a lot and so and again this coaching isn't coming through from the universities either but also what's what's interesting about it was i'm not going to do this now but i was about to ask you where you went to university as well but it's like literally the only reason i'm asking that is to kind of like make a judgment and like therefore you have your own ranking in your head about like yeah and that used to drive me crazy as well because i feel like the pathway through well i'm not sure how much i don't i still yeah this still happens definitely apply if you went to a good uni yeah a good uni it's like that immediately like puts a level play it makes an assumption basically if you went to a good uni you're smarter and brighter with more potential you're going to be a bit higher and that's just like categorically not true but also it again it leans into that bias that's carried through the system because yes there's obviously there's more diversity now in terms of who gets into those top unis but it's you know still overwhelmingly a certain type of person and so it's yeah it's it's very tricky like i'm not saying there's a perfect system out there there's always going to be some sort of bias but um yeah that was one of the things that bothered me the most um and yeah you and I both very keen on social mobility and assignment the mission of it all etc what are some I don't want to ask you kind of like for the best graduate schemes but obviously you spent a lot of time sort of looking at them making these tiktoks and so on what's what's interesting out there like who's doing interesting things doing it in a bit of a different way like what are some of these what were some of your most successful videos um i don't think i have a good answer for this because all my all my videos have been like on the big grad schemes so far i mean i think there's challenges in different space because it's been super like general but there must be a couple that stick out right of like even just the way they were presented or just grad schemes not crisis grad schemes but how are they trying to attract graduates and so on What do they do?

22:52Like, because, you know, there is a bit of... I'm being slightly facetious. I mean, like, I think the companies that stand up, if you look at Gen Z as a group of job seekers, they are very, they're very motivated by, you know, they're very passionate about kind of impact and things like DEI and things like that. They want to see that businesses are actually doing something. I think they're quite disillusioned, to be honest, with everything that they've grown up with, which is like everything from the financial crisis all the way through to COVID. And they've had a very, very difficult run. And so I think companies that are acknowledging, you know, kind of having space for like mental health days and some flexibility and stuff like, they very much expect that.

23:39And I think there is also this thing of companies that are demanding all the time in the office and them not like having got used to flexibility working from home. So there's definitely some conflict there. but I would say companies that are like providing an environment where there's lots of training and safety and like openness as well so you can talk about things that maybe traditionally in an office 10 years ago you wouldn't be able to and the other thing is they don't sign up to like just all the kind of corporate rules and regulations of how to go about things you know dressing up in like suits and all of that kind of stuff I think it's just not you know it's not been something that they've it's just a weird time to have entered the market with covid i think and having started and gone to university also remotely for a lot of them as well so what do you because i what do you think is happening in the jobs market more generally right because i've got this pretty sort of negative view about what's going on um and it's part of the combination of you know some of the government policies but also geopolitical trump tariffs all of that like just piles more uncertainty and then also the ability that AI is doing a lot of these entry-level roles, right?

24:50What's your diagnosis of the situation? I mean, who can, right? There's so many different factors going on and the economic downturn, the NI changes, like there's just so many contributing factors. And then as you say, I think every business out there is like, we need to use more AI. We need to use more AI. and ultimately what is you know i don't think it's necessarily like by design but what does ai do a lot of what it does is those administrative tasks the sort of the the more basic tasks that someone would get their foot in the door by doing yeah and so you know we've seen clana um say oh we're not hiring any i'm not sure it was any talent but certainly no new early early stage talent and then they've backtracked on that.

25:42And so I think you're going to see lots of companies. We've seen an article recently about the big four cutting between 11%, I think 30 % of their graduate and apprentice roles. And it's, you know, I think we are heading towards a crisis because I think if companies continue to go, right, how can we improve our bottom line? How can we please our shareholders, more profits, et cetera? and they go, there needs to be almost, there needs to be some accountability to the fact that these are private businesses and they are for profit, sure. There needs to be some accountability to the societies that they operate in, aka training young talent, which shouldn't just be about their own gain.

26:27It should be about like, you know, training young talent, helping society, you know, get ahead and have that initiation into the world of work. because where are we going towards here? If no one young gets trained up in any kind of roles, then eventually there's no funnel into medium and senior management, which is just bizarre. So someone needs to, I don't know how I have a solution for that, but I do think that there's, I thought for many years actually that business needs to look at profit as more than just financial profit. They need to think about how are we, what are we doing for the human race?

27:04what are we doing for communities that we operate in and the clients that we serve in a bigger way i think what's interesting right is that like since the 80s you've had this kind of like big sort of like de-industrialization of work etc and what we might be about and that's kind of effective blue-collar workers uh more than anything and what we might be about to see is kind of like the de-knowledgeification of work, if that's even a word that I just kind of like made up, but the de-knowledge base being eroded. And I just think there could be like a white collar sort of revolt, et cetera. Like, I think it's kind of fascinating.

27:50What do you think if, you know, because you're a little bit into your kind of career now and so on, and it's like shifted a long way already. Are you a fan of Jimmy's Jobs of the Future? Hi, I'm Sonny, one of the producers behind the show. And we don't just make this podcast, we produce some of the best business content out there, working with global brands and founders. Over the past year, we've flown around the world and demand keeps growing. And with four prime ministers trusting us with their appearances on this show, you're in safe hands. So if you're already in the market for a podcast or standout business content, why not start with us?

28:25drop me a line at sunny at boxlight.io try our podcast calculator or book a meeting at boxlight.io that's boxlight.io now back to jimmy what skills and what do you think you'd be trying to focus on if you were sort of graduating today or if you're in your very early 20s um ai ai if you because that's the thing that i think is is potentially you know gen z is ai native they you know my niece is like 16 chat gbt is her google yeah she doesn't google anything and that's that's becoming more and more commonplace so i think that that yeah if i was going in today and the advice that i give is like understand it's difficult again because i haven't been in the world of work but studying what businesses are using ai for what they should be using ai for and if you can walk into an interview and be like i can save your company xyz because here's i'm really familiar with these tools and i know that they would you know fix this this and this business need or whatever then that i think that's the number one biggest thing that you you know that would be an absolute 100 % higher because there's so many businesses out there that are like we need to use ai but we're terrified of it like we don't know where to start it's overwhelmed there's new releases every few months the capability is you know going sky high but we haven't even done the most basic processes so it's like a huge undertaking and so i agree i mean that's the biggest opportunity of young people right is like and actually whilst the job market is really tough at the moment if you can master or at least get to grips with ai more then actually you're able to go into an organization and probably help it quite a lot and that you've almost got like possibly the first kind of like they're almost potential generation that can leapfrog the people above them because they're able to kind of come in and be able to like this is the way you can do it that you're basically having that almost now for the first time in 20 years probably since the internet kind really took hold and I do think that's quite um quite an opportunity for young people which sometimes gets yeah and then of course there's a thing that doesn't get talked about that much which is all the vocational things which are you know uh which a lot people are like well that's AI is not going to replace you know plumbing and all these other jobs which is which is very true um uh so yeah I mean you know it's it's always a bit more doom and gloom I think than it is on the ground there are still tons of jobs but like for sure it's difficult i mean you have to be you have to become you have to be right now a professional at job seeking right so like doing the application ticking the boxes isn't going to cut it you need to go above and beyond you need to stand out you need to email the the director the managers you need to connect with everyone on linkedin you need to like follow up again you know everything needs to be done um that's the only way that you're you're going to come out of the thousand applications for each job that you're going for finding a job is a job is a job in itself it's an unpaid you know a bit like kind of um women taking care of children in the home it's a it's unpaid labor it's literally becoming that because i know so many people that are job hunting for almost a job you know nine to five role each week for at least you know two or three days worth which is yeah it's uh it's it's crazy to be honest let's talk a little bit about personality in work because one of the things that i think there is in danger of happening with ai is that we all become a lot more kind of formulaic we're all able to write brilliant cvs etc and all of that and basically just raises the stakes and how you stand out is going to become even more important and i think whilst we've done a bit of linkedin bashing in this uh potential jimmy still's partner um is the um is that actually like having a personality having a bit of personal brand is like increasingly important i think you've been very good at kind of building it on linkedin etc and i can totally see why and how you've kind of like transferred to doing this for hunch as well um but yeah talk to us about the kind of reflections on building a personal brand um very uncomfortable i think you have to be a you know only one percent of people post on linkedin so you have to be that one percent you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable um and then i'd say it's putting out the bits of personality or the bits about you which are interesting because i think there's there's this there's this a lot of a lot of linkedin content which people which is kind of gives it a bad rep especially actually amongst gen z um is that kind of like it's nice to have been awarded this award my you know i mean with with my work i am and it's like you'd never talk to a mate like that so when i'm talking to people about personal brown i'm always saying like talk when you're like getting really like het up about a subject and you're talking passionately about it to a friend that's maybe minus the swear words that's how that's how you should be talking on linkedin you should be talking about things that really bug you you should be showing passion and not afraid to just like keep it professional which i think is one of the things that people worry about the most easy to say i'm an entrepreneur i don't necessarily have like a boss that's like looking down over me but um yeah i think it's someone said this to me the other day he's a reasonably successful on tiktok he's like take the two weirdest things about you that like don't necessarily match he's like ex rugby player and he he does like book talk so he like reads books and gets kids into reading that's an interesting like thing that you think oh i remember that so if you think about all the people i guess that you see on social media what are the things about them you know that you remember and that's the things that you should be putting across i don't know maybe you like canoeing and like knitting or you know whatever it is it doesn't have to be that like interesting it just has to be different right because no one remembers companies people remember people and so you have to put across your personality whatever that is it just has to be different it doesn't have to be on paper like you're really cool and you know you'll go yacht sailing in miami every weekend or whatever like it doesn't have to be on paper like knitting on canoes i mean that would stand if you wrote that on top of a cv right like it probably would sort of like i mean i would follow that channel knitting on canoes like i don't know it's just it's just putting across people like to see people who are either angry about stuff or really passionate about stuff.

34:54So whatever it is that does that for you. I know. It's funny. So I did a post last week about the AI job, big four, dropping between 11 % and 30%, which you were mentioning earlier. And I just fired off a thing about it. And I was just like, I think it should be front page news. It was like page nine of CEM. And I was like, we are storing up a massive, massive problem. And that was basically all I said. and what's interesting about it, A, I managed to spell from page wrong, but it's the post that has taken off most in the last two months that I've done. And it's kind of like... You've probably spent the least time on it, right?

35:31Oh, massively, yeah, yeah. It's like, ugh, hit send. I mean, I've worked with lots of founders and business people in the past to do ghostwriting for them and help them with their LinkedIn, and so it's very much the story. it's like and also the more they're like oh say i'm not too comfortable with that can we like make it more safe it's like yeah you can but no one will sit here like you want that toe that's the thing that ai is the worst for is it makes everyone into this like m dash like it's a certain tone it's a voice it's not your voice and so yes it makes people who are terrified and they can't start maybe they won't ever start posting so it raises it gives them an ability which is great i also think that there's something interesting that people aren't discussing which is people whose English isn't a first language for them, they depend on it a lot to kind of get the grammar right and put things out of notice.

36:25So it's very powerful in that sense. But yeah, it's when you get really passionate and you just put it off into the ether because people can feel that passion. And also the one thing you did as well, because I remember that post, is you had an image and you put very little text. Well, people make the mistake of putting an image with lots of text or a video and then loads of text. It's like, which one do I look at? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that's a fair point on that, actually. Yeah, it's funny how it kind of works. But yeah, how have you found doing some of the, I mean, I know you sort of had a bit in between jobs or in between founding empires, but how did you find the sort of ghostwriting for founders and so on?

37:07Because I think it's one of those things, it's really, well, I get pitched people all the time to do it, and yeah, I just don't, yeah i find it quite hard to subcontract that out i love telling people stories i think everyone thinks they don't have a story but when i listen to someone it's it's all actually weirdly like you realize this with respect to me and you look at your career you're like oh it's all intrinsically linked but like i'll listen i used to do video editing and stuff and some directing and stuff but and i would know when i was listening to the filming being done i was like oh that's the bit I'll edit later.

37:42So I can listen to someone saying, I don't know, talking about themselves and their bits. And I'll be like, I intuitively know that's the bit. That's the bit people will connect with. I have like this weird connection with other human beings where I'm like, this is what people buy into. And that's, that's my superpower. So I get a big kick out of helping people to tell the stories they don't know they have. And I'm very good at it. So that helps because I like seeing it blow up and being able to make people happy and do the things they do. and that's everything from like I don't know I helped a guy who was like he'd had an amazing project up in the north uh around Leeds and he basically you know puts food surplus food into good use war zones and schools and all this and he did a post saying you know it's it's uh the bit it's it's closing down because our landlord doubled or tripled our rents and business rates and we're about to collapse and I was like oh my god this guy needs help so I got together hour wrote the post uh i think he raised like 40 grand in 24 hours and managed to get his location back so i just i like helping people i like it that's that's the thing for me yeah um that's interesting and you're basically going to be doing that for younger people now right that's part of the whole thing just helping them tell their story and like how to put themselves across yeah um um i think it's it's so important i mean it's why like you know i'm investing in it and whatever and so on as well i'm just so passionate about it and i think that you just don't know what you don't know in those early parts of your kind of career and therefore you end up making decisions about it from kind of like a point of weakness which is a real shame because people are just desperate to get a job and like get on with their kind of career and it's difficult to explore things as well when you don't really know what you want to go so hard to explore things so that's super interesting because we live in an age where there's more information than ever right but if you look at like if i type in how to become a x i don't know product manager at google i'm sure like sure i can find some roots but the thing is people like you might have gone to the same school university but you might be completely different to someone else that you know whatever on paper looks similar for you but your ambitions the things you hate the things you're motivated by are completely different and that's why i think it's such a difficult thing to solve yeah um and yeah you can't i think like some of the people i speak to they go on linkedin and they just look at like okay i'd like to be in this industry it's first of all it's this much jargon in it so it's like what the hell does any of this stuff mean like in english and every industry does that to kind of every industry does that put its own barriers yeah about it i think yeah i mean i I used to work in like broadcast news at ITV and there was all these like acronyms they were all different from BBC was different from ITV was different from another broadcaster and so yeah I think that we need almost like a giant so the thing is because everyone's different there isn't no there isn't one path and there's also not something to say that just because you're on path A you couldn't be on path B like journalism which I was in before really similar to entrepreneurship has anyone written about that if you google it probably not because in a sense you have to get really obsessed about something go really deep dive and then you might move on to something else that's very similar to entrepreneurship very similar kind of personality qualities i guess that's probably not out there so what you almost need is a giant map of 10 or 11 examples of individual routes so someone can see themselves and be like oh well i was quite interested in i don't know i was quite good at english literature at school and this guy's gone do x and so maybe i could do that and that's that's what we need we need a giant map basically you can be able to just explore i agree we should we should create that but i i think one of the it is interesting about the particularly the switch to journal the switch to entrepreneurship because i do think until people do it it's very difficult to kind of like test it like there have been some good friends of mine who've been journalists as well and like haven't been able it really does take a sort of certain type of kind of like characteristics to to do it i think and it's just yeah the journalism or the entrepreneurship or the entrepreneurship i mean yeah i mean journalism as well like there are definitely transferable skills of journalism to entrepreneurship like as there probably are in almost any any kind of work that's the thing it's also so general like detail orientated okay great like english literature is detail orientated it's like it's voting on a perfect thing and like really deciphering multiple meanings from that thing or like and honing down and making an argument now those same skills lean obviously into journalism that's like more of an established route but they also lean into tech because having that that emotional intelligence i guess that i have and sitting down with loads of you know kind of our target demographic way before we built the app and going like understanding who they are what their motivations are what their fears are that interviewing process that was something that i didn't think oh okay that's a transferable skill into tech and that understanding your users is one of the most fundamental things in tech whereas when you think tech you think coding yeah completely what's your vision for hunch 10 years time what would you like to achieve with this um big question so much i mean the space as it is it's what's tricky about it is there's so many things to solve so you think there's career discovery there's putting your putting your best foot forward um there's the interview there's just so many you know and then there's supporting uh those young people once they're in so i think kind of we've obviously we've built for a lot of that the vision ahead is having more like data points on really understanding an individual right because Right now we're reliant on like CVs and very much like 2D pictures of, I understand you because you went to X university or you worked at S company.

43:42And so I'll form my opinions based on that. But obviously we've now got the tech and we are building the tech as well to understand someone who someone is in a much more intricate, multifactorial way in terms of their motivations. How much do they, how deep is their curiosity? How much do they show up to do certain things? There's so much more things that kind of we are building out the tech to be able to track. So we can go and say, we can tell you so much more about, you know, Claire or whoever it is. We can tell you how, you know, what she thinks about, what she's interested in, you know, kind of what her ambitions are.

44:16So much more of a wholly rounded profile, I guess, than what we have now. And I think that's really important because you break down all of the stuff, all the stuff around CVs, the applications, the rounds. they just want to know that that person at the core of it is a cultural fit with the company yeah it's going to show up can and wants to be and is motivated to train and learn new skills and then obviously further on the market has certain skills already fair enough but that's all of these layers all of this stuff yeah it's just trying to get to that and it's doing a very bad job at it but the the ability we have now with with models with ai there's there's so much more of a opportunity for us to know the canada in deeper ways than ever before and therefore the matching with what companies needs and all of this like stuff in between should be able to be reduced down to almost nothing basically yeah it's interesting when you talk about that because i'm like yeah there's an argument that hunch will know the person better than they might know themselves which feels a little dystopian but actually at the start of your career you probably need somebody that that kind of does that i'll tell you one of the problems i think i might run into ai at some point though is this is just running like you know sort of um my own business is that it's going to remember stuff and i just it's going to be like interesting in terms of like when that stuff is no longer important it's still going to rank that quite like highly and i just it was when you were talking about some of like things about what people want from work and whatever it's like well they sort of you know oh i want it to be sustainable environment i'm worried tell ai this one basically it's just never going to forget it and your views on that stuff yeah it it can it can change with different priorities it's almost like you're going to need like a quarterly review with your with your ai where it's sort of go over what you want to achieve etc uh and that type of thing.

46:13And it's very interesting thinking about it like that. Yeah. I think, I mean, you can kind of build that in though. I mean, there's ranking and systems where you can be like, okay. I mean, there's probably also studies on, you know, okay, if so-and-so is really important now in 18 months, statistically, how important is it supposed to be? And there's obviously the data points you can continue to feed in. And so, but yeah, I think, yeah, it's amazing the rate at which AI is just every month you're just like yeah being blown away by the next for the next thing what have you used it for lately in your kind of like personal life in my personal life I'm sorry when you said that I was just thinking like so many people now are using it as like therapists yeah yeah which I don't count myself in for but yeah there's been so many funny skits around that um i think for me it's very useful um and here's the interesting thing so it's very useful for brainstorming i would say yeah and also building out like basic structures of ideas for content so yeah i'll and again like ai is only really as good as you prompting it but then you also need and this is why i think like ais will replace all the jobs etc because you still need someone that knows what good is to assess for now whether the ai has captured that or not and so i will use it sometimes to the base of posts or like okay i want to talk about xyz put the words for me when i'm on a slower brain brain day or just to like get ahead um and so yeah i think it's just very useful at making tasks faster and slicker but as you say because so many people are relying on it it's just copying and pasting out what it what the output is you know there's the ai sludge era that we're in which is um yeah ai slot right yeah and people are going nuts about it because on linkedin for example like there's so many every day i see a protest and the funny thing is i know some of them have written by ai like there's too many posts on here everything's ai and i've also had the quite funny that the people who were like loyal mdash users who are now like i have had to stop using mdashes because everyone thinks it's chat gbt like i was using it for decades before this and it's like that is a weird thing the mdash thing though because even if you prompt chat gbt to not use it it still uses it yeah it's a weird like AI like no we're actually in control yeah yeah I haven't used it for much in my sort of like personal life lately I think I'm asking you because I might get some interesting tips or something their research tool is really good that's what I would say so looking into like really detailed long research tasks around for example like it can scrape the deep research tool for example can scrape like i don't know give me the top 50 graduate schemes in consulting and the opening dates and the closing dates and the salaries and things like that so it's very good at like organizing lots of data and bringing in you're like oh wow this would have taken me days of really laborious tasks yeah yeah i did ask it the other day to do like top sort of 50 employers in the uk and it was nuts how quick it kind of chucked that back out did you use the deep research or just regular yeah it's good isn't it yeah like the research is definitely and the thing is as well it's like it's only 10 or 15 minutes now but it's going to be able to run for longer before we know it and already can in some places anyway and it's just going to be you know imagine what you could do if you could put it on for like seven eight hours to find this stuff imagine what would be in just 12 months time yeah one of the interesting things i think that people have said this kind of a rhetoric that gets spoken about a lot is like um oh ai knows us better than ourselves and i'm like i don't think people know themselves very well yeah i really don't think people i think people are experiencing like their version of maybe 10 of who they are but actually only when you ask people like who do you think i am that's like a very big learning experience and i honestly just don't think people know themselves very well I think like we are the stories that we tell us ourselves.

50:42And yeah, I think it's an interesting concept that people were freaked out by. And I'm like, how much do you really know about who you are? Like on paper? Yeah. You know, those bits, but. That's a really good point. I don't think people know themselves that well. I think most people were governed by like a lot of anxiety, insecurities, like ambitions and things. but like i mean there's who you are is largely like who are you to other people how do you come across and i think self-awareness generally is really really poor i actually i mean one of the things that fascinates me is the kind of like changing nature of status right and like how status has changed and this is one of my views of why there'll always be jobs while there'll always be work because it's one of the fastest ways that you can kind of like navigate somebody your kind of like status in the social hierarchy i just think that's why people will always want to work and humans will kind of create work for ourselves because of that but i'd be interested in you because you're like a bit younger and like basically every generation comes into the workplace and slightly redefines itself against the generation that went before right like that is just the way that generations and cultures shift um but what's yeah what what are the things that you found that really matter to you like also you know you had an exit in your 20s as well yeah so like that was obviously like big stakes market but etc but also yeah what then was like okay what drives sally then well it's interesting what you just said there about how every generation will go into work and we'll create jobs for ourselves around status i think intrinsically humans want to come together with other human beings, like that is like the core life experience and build things, building things gives you a sense of achievement.

52:35Now that I'm not just talking in terms of entrepreneurship, I'm talking about like, you're at work, you're doing tasks, you're building towards something. There's a mission, there's a gathering of people. I mean, like what is even work? What is work? What's the difference between work and I don't know, journaling? Yeah. Is it money? Like it's an activity that you're doing. yeah like you know i mean it's like it's even the definition in our minds of like what's work versus not work well i don't want to be working well what is work you know fine you're getting paid for it and things like that or maybe you're not maybe it's volunteering work like but there's this interesting differential in our brains between like it's categorizing it's choosing to see something in one category and something in another category yeah i think that's really interesting but fundamentally it's people want purpose they want to come together with other human beings exchange ideas and build stuff you know that's what we are as a species i think we like to build stuff and that gives us a sense of achievement and discovery and we are curious you know um so yeah it's uh it's interesting from for me i think i'm very much zoning on that is the people those interactions with other human beings like learning things having that that desire i think to elevate ourselves and like always be kind of changing growing i think that's that's what's fascinating on the ground and also just seeing what happens when you get lots of different people together there's not i guess just you know cohesively building there's also conflict different ideas of how something should be done there's how you navigate communication you know there's so many interesting dynamics and almost all of them come from people to people interactions yeah i i know it's true i i do think that and this may be one of the big things that changes but where the word work originate originates from is french and it's like to press and like that's the sort of like you know the old to kind of press things and it's just the the language that we use around work is very kind of like i just think it's stuck in historical it's quite negative i think it's quite it's quite negative something you have to do that you don't necessarily want to do there's some yeah hesitate like there's some like oh i have to i don't really want to compensation like i think like being used as a phrase and like yeah even the open ai guys talk about like their tc their total compensation i think you know being compensating for the loss of time a lot of time yeah yeah right like but also it's like one of the things i always think it's funny when you like football commentators are like when a player has worked really hard on any given day they're like oh they've put a shift in like it's that kind of like oh you know it must be if it's really hard it's work and work is something that is slightly negative it's like a sacrifice basically of some kind but obviously there's also on the reverse of like whether you do something you love you never work a day in your life and so there's this interesting psychological piece about what is when does it become work and why yeah i mean i can give you lots of answers why work is viewed negatively and that's largely because most people have to work to live yeah which is like a horrendous state to exist in to be honest i mean especially if you're really up against it and you're in that system where you have almost no control but you're just having to go in to be alive to pay to be alive to eat to have a roof over your head yeah and so that I mean, obviously where the negative connotations come around that word, but obviously work can also be work is a massive part of self-esteem, by the way, huge part of self-esteem, responsibility, achievement.

56:21You know that that's what you get and identity as well. Like I think not just through business, but, you know, the things that we do very much like define us, our sense of ourselves. and so um you know that's also tough i think as an entrepreneur is your your identity is very much tied into what you're working on especially since you don't clock out it's on your mind 24 7 you're you're dreaming about it you're thinking about it you're just living in it really and so you know i mean do we have a lot of identity outside of work like i think we we do and we don't um maybe that's just coming from a workaholic but you know it's i think in the uk we are one of the first questions we asked each other is oh hi what's your name or what do you do yeah you know we are that kind of society but i think it's weird there's something interesting you say there as well about identity as well because i think we end up sort of like and the point you were saying about not knowing ourselves as well because i think we almost subcontract our identity out through different things so like my identity has definitely changed since having kids and a family and whatever that's like but again it's like it's it's through something else that i now have an identity as a dad of daughters and like that is part of it and then it's also you know we sort of contract it out for our football teams as well the university that we attended we go around looking at all these different like status markers but it's not just you know we're not very clear at explaining what we are it's easier than trying to bear your art like bear into your soul like who am i deep down it's so much easier like well i'm a dad and i like football and i'm exactly a consultant you know like and also our identities are very uh fluid so it's like when you're i'm assuming when you're at work you're you know sorry when you're at home for example being a dad you're not talking to your children as a work person with you know you know proper terminology so we very much like inhabit different identities depending on who we're with which very much means your identity is almost it's a project you're projecting it out depending on actually who what they what the person exteriorly needs from you there was one there was another thing i want to talk about so the only thing my kids been excited about work-wise is the fact that we're doing this partnership with mcdonald's and they know that i'm gonna go work in mcdonald's for a day and they just think this is the most exciting actually yeah yeah that was my first job exactly right and i'm when i listen to that this morning so what did working mcdonald's kind of like teach you um it taught me oh god it taught me a lot actually yeah um i think i was 16 possibly 17 i remember because i was still doing my studies and so i'd work i don't know a couple shifts a week i think it taught me about my place in the world um how fortunate i was like i don't come from a uh you know privileged background in the uk but by god like more globally and there was lots of staff members from different parts of the world like wow I mean having English as a first language wow the privileges that that brings you so I found it quite grounding and it also taught me you know a bit of humility I guess because you know you are dealing with lots of customers who will treat you like crap I mean you're you're just a McDonald's worker you're seen as like a you know a kind of disposable asset that people can you know shout out or whatever and you're I don't know, like it was, it just, I don't know, it taught me hard work.

59:47It taught me not to have an ego as well. Because I think there's a lot of people like, I would never, you know. And I think it's really important not to have, I'm too good for this and that. Because in that way, again, like you said, something about latching on to different things. I think people latch on to ego and they tell themselves it's about status. But actually it's about fear of being in uncomfortable situations. It's about fear of what other people think. and so yeah i'm very proud to have done a very basic job like that because it taught me lots of lots of bits and bobs yeah you cannot always tell if somebody has worked in hospitality but you can always tell when they have not i think like it's a real thing you can see when you're out for dinner with people and whatever you think you've never worked in hospitality you see the way you're treating people like that is a really good point you think it teaches like empathy and things like that or like patience i mean like really important skills actually because you know as as therapists will kind of talk about everyone wants to be seen and so actually i think having those skills to make someone feel seen heard comfortable like cared about yeah you know sure there's lots of ceos that go around working their way up to the ranks being absolute monsters and blah blah but I actually think the power is in empathetic leadership, helping people to lift them up ultimately so yeah hospitality is great, I was in food and drink and so yeah, there's something about It's amazing to sit in that chair and talk about therapy in one form or another I think it's really interesting and what you're doing is almost like, it's not quite career therapy is it but it's helping people on their careers Yeah, I mean, it's giving them the space to ask stupid questions and stuff.

1:01:33And I think, like, again, you know, knowledge is power. Understanding what's out there. Understanding who you can be. And that coaching bit of, like, you're allowed to do this, by the way. Like, it's not, like, growing up, for example, you know, I didn't know. I think I didn't know that you could work at Google, first of all. Like, just feel like it's like, okay. It prompted me, you know, it'd be very coders or whatever. But on, like, a self-esteem and confidence level, did I think I was allowed to ever work in places like that like no so there's also that thing of like giving permission that like you know you're just as good as anyone else you can go out there and like you can be in the spaces that you're not necessarily there's a really good point about asking stupid questions and you can do that with AI and this kind of amazing kind of careers tool you're building in Hunch but yeah that's important those early stages cool well Sally thank you very much for coming on Jimmy's Jobs of the Future again we're definitely going to get you back on like to hear about that was a very broad chat it got quite deep it did i was exactly what i ended up having last time as well but uh yeah no i think that was really um that was really good and yeah but like you say like you know i'm investing in hunch and whatever like and i'm really excited about it i think it's like a big opportunity so i have to get you back on you can tell us about the journey where do you think you'd like to be by the end of this year with hunch i'd love to have made a big dent well i think like we're pausing for the summer but like the next academic year I think we've got some huge university partnerships.

1:02:58We've just worked with our first pilot employer. And so I'd love to have sort of like 40, 50 of those running by next year. Yeah. So yeah, it's, yeah. We're really excited to start kind of just seeing it in motion and seeing and having people come to us more and more and more. I think we've had like 20 already just being like, thank you for giving me a, you know, an opportunity for guiding me and helping me get to something that's now really fulfilling and building my identity. Exactly brilliant sorry thanks so much. Thank you very much.

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