Brainfood Live On Air - Ep396 - The Employer Branding: the Reckoning - Automation vs Authenticy

0:05There's a friend of mine that basically told me that all of the sports guys, all the NBA people, all the people who play, you know, they always wear headphones, but they're all wired headphones now. And it's because they have top level medical advice to say, look, you can't be putting this Bluetooth stuff through your brain and thinking that's going to be okay. And I'm thinking, yeah, I need to go back to wired mic. There's no doubt about it. I also have weird, I have little ears, so I feel like it's hard. They don't stay in my ears. I don't know. But I've lost three pairs. So that's it. Yeah, I feel bad.

0:41Joe Shaker gave me my last pair of AirPods. Love you, Joe. And I left the case in the back of the seat in the plane and walked out with them in my ears. And I was like, I'm done. That's three pairs. Like, that's ridiculous. Yeah. Well, anyway, yes. Welcome everybody to Brain Food Live on Air, bringing it to you every Friday, no fail. How do you do your headphones, folks? Are you like over ear? Are you in ear? Or are you now going back to the wired headphones, which I understand is much better for your health? Because as Deb mentioned, the doctors are saying like we don't know what's going through our brains when we go with the wireless.

1:25and i've got to preserve whatever's in there that's left hung like seriously come on i'm with you deb um i said to a friend of mine the other day so i hit like maximum brain cells probably about 20 years ago um and since then it's just been like i'm trying to hold back tight it's like my brain cells are dying every day um so we just got to maintain as many as i can anyway uh guys uh um i just want to do a quick sound check make sure everyone here is okay folks who are watching this on Crowdcast, let us know whether the audio and visual is fine. You should see myself and Deb. How do you pronounce your second name?

2:01Is it Andrichuk? Andrichuk. Andrichuk, yeah. You should see Deb and myself on screen so let me know whether the audio and visual is fine. We are also broadcasting this live online on LinkedIn, on several LinkedIn's, definitely my LinkedIn. So if you can see and hear me on LinkedIn, let me know in the comment whether the audio is okay. And we should be good to go. Okay. Thank you, Lucinda. We'll take that single data point as an okay that it is okay. All right, Deb, a debut on Brain Food Live. So welcome to the show. Brilliant to have you on. You might as well introduce yourself. Who are you and what it is you do, Deb?

2:46So I am Deb Andertuck. I have been in the space of TA, recruitment marketing, employer branding, and now tech for the last, oh my God, over 25 years. And now I am working at the intersection of all the things that I've dabbled in. So AI, technology, you know, all things talent and all things candidate experience because I've joined Jovio. Yeah. Which is great. I've been here since December. It's almost eight months. Okay, fantastic. And it's really interesting because I love it when people from industry, so you're a director of talent, so you hit some really big corporate positions, didn't you?

3:32I did. I was at Lowe's and then I was at Sony Interactive Entertainment, which most people know it as PlayStation. Yeah, so massive sort of responsibilities there. And then moving vendor side, what would you say, what do you miss about TA and what don't you miss about TA? Let's start with that. I loved being in TA because of the stories, right? Like the really cool stories, you know, the candidate that you met four years ago and you stayed in contact with them and, you know, did all the things to try to get them into the organization. And then finally you got that role that was just like the perfect fit for them.

4:08And, you know, you got them to come on board. That is definitely what I miss the most. And what I don't miss is the bureaucracy and the red tape and the things that slow you down. And also, I'd say the inability to really do the employer branding job the right way. Because to me, it's not just about talking about what's great. It's also talking about what's not so great about an employer. Yeah, well, this is where we're going to talk about the authenticity piece in a minute. So it's going to be great to get your perspective on that. Moving on to Jovio. Jovio are our sponsors, by the way, today.

4:46So thank you, Jovio, jovio.com. Most people know Jovio probably as a programmatic advertising type of service, I think. But these days, expanding into all areas of talent attraction. What's your take on where Jovio are right now? And how does it speak to the EB problem, Deb? Yeah. One of the reasons why I joined, I'm sure you know this, that I worked at Monster a million years ago with Yaz and KJ and the team. So, you know, part of the allure was obviously to work with people that I love and trust. But I also saw this opportunity because being at the very top of the funnel for the last seven years, we've had this unique position to be able to observe, you know, candidate behavior and where they struggle, like where those bottlenecks are occurring in the hiring process.

5:41And, you know, watching watching candidates get frustrated and drop watching, you know, employers get frustrated because they're dumping more and more and more money on the top of the funnel and realizing that that's not going to get them where they need to be. we're able to take all those learnings now and really plug into where employers need help. And where that friction is, is where we're coming in with our agentic AI and we are smoothing out the process. We're making it easier. We're making it faster. But the best part is, is we're freeing up time, you know, for recruiters to do what they do best.

6:24you know, influence, advise, coach, you know, all the things that they want to do that they never get a chance to do. That's what excites me about being here. And obviously the best part is, is you're helping more people get jobs at scale. Yeah. And I think from your side of things as well, Deb, now you're on the vendor, you're going to see lots of different examples of different companies in closer to real time. So when you're working in a business, you can't see wood for tree sometimes because you're just locked in. You don't know what's happening outside of that particular institution. But now you kind of got the market overview and the swoop of it, which is fantastic.

7:02Which I also had at Shaker, you know, Shaker and the Arlen Group. But I think now it's just a different purview. Love it. Yeah. Fantastic. We're going to set the scene a little bit before we bring our guests on. And the topic of today is really about, you know, AI has this, It's turning into a double-edged sword in every use case, isn't it? When ChatGBT first came into play, what now, four years or so ago, it was like, oh my goodness, suddenly we can just like times 100%, 100x, should we say, the amount of content we can produce, all the copies going to be solved, we can even do design, video, everything.

7:45It felt like it was going to just maximally boost content production. which from an EB point of view, you know, that solves one of the main problems. How do you get your story out? Here's AI, it's going to solve it. And then, of course, we're now getting to the point where the trust in AI is going down, the trust in digital communication is going down. Everyone is becoming more skeptical. So the mood generally has become, I don't know whether that's true or not. And, you know, we may be producing more stuff out there, But it's kind of pinging off people because the fences are up. So how do we kind of make best use of artificial intelligence, the automation possibilities, but kind of bring back that trust that's been lost through over automation?

8:31Have you got a thought on this, Deb? Yeah, I mean, to me, it just seems simple. It's all about communication. I think the reason why the trust is eroded is because there's no context that's ever set. with job seekers. I mean, I've never seen a job posting that clearly describes what's going to happen if I am going to be AI interviewed. Just tell them. Be open, be honest, and tell them why. Tell a job seeker why you're doing it. I think that is the most important part. And I think if a job seeker understands that, you're actually going to get an opportunity to speak your mind and share your experience because you're going to go through an AI interviewer or you're going to get to go through a chat to apply experience.

9:20Isn't that better than never being seen? Because we all know there is no possible human way to get through 40 ,000 resumes in a month. And there are companies that are staring down that obstacle today. I saw when I was at Sony, like you know the amount of resumes we could get in 24 hours there's there's absolutely no way you can get through all of them i think with sort of big consumer facing brands as well that's a very sensitive situation uh not sensitive situation i say it's a very familiar situation because you're going to get flooded um and every time but i do wonder whether we should tell pick tell candidates that a little bit more because they they may not see this you know they just see a another brand I've just applied to this brand that's supposed to care about its consumers and I've just heard nothing, then they're going to kick off.

10:16I play media though too. I mean, Hung, think about it. The media loves to create all that spin and drama and that's why it drives me nuts that candidates truly believe that everyone's ATSs will automatically knock them out. yeah and we know that's not happening there there is a a media need to construct a narrative there's no doubt about that because they are themselves um creating products stories of products um and those products need to be sold um and they need to demonstrate roi in those products and oftentimes the the kind of messy reality the unclean narrative um they're the ones that don't necessarily fly because most consumers these days want to hear simple stories um so so we're all kind of you know contributing a little bit uh to the disinformation universe that we're in um but uh but yeah let's bring on our guests here and we'll figure out what they've got to say as well um we've got steve ward we've got alex ho got lucinda thomas as well uh guys i need you all get your mics off, sort of off mute, should I say.

11:28I don't know why sort of Crowdcast does this, but it defaults everyone to mute and we need to stop that. So, okay, we have a couple of people here, which is great. We have Steve Ward, of course. Steve, what do you see? Why don't you quickly introduce yourself? Who are you? What it is you do? Hello, everyone. I'm Steve Ward. I've been around the space of recruiting for years and employer branding for about the last 15 years. as both a bit of in-house, a bit of agency as well, places like Universal and Blackbridge. And in the last year, I went self-employed, ran a community called Employer Branding Club for about the last six years, and now turned it into a global platform of employer branding professionals, big community.

12:13Just went live literally 10 days ago, which means I'm working 24 hours a day. But that's what I do right now. And taking an OUB club around the world, ultimately went around Europe this year with it and next year later this year America APAC and everywhere so I'm going to travel more than you will I hope you do mate um get yourself out and about we need the world needs more Steve Ward um so I've just shared Steve's LinkedIn on the on the chat there make sure you connect with him Alex wonderful to see you again here on the show um can you quickly introduce yourself Alex who are you what it is you do yeah yeah definitely well Well, I've been a pleasure to be with all of you here.

12:51Some legends in the space. So yeah, Alex, sir, I've been in the employer branding game for about nine years. Currently the head of employer brand at GoDaddy.com. And I also run a community. So hoping to work with Steve here somewhere in the near future called Common Thread. Definitely not as, you know, not busting stuff out like Steve. Like Steve has been everywhere. I've been following all his stuff. So huge congratulations there. But yeah, feel free to reach out if you need anything, anyone. Yeah, fantastic stuff. Alex is LinkedIn also on the chat stream. And we have Lucinda here as well. Lucinda, wonderful to see you again.

13:30Always a pleasure. Why don't you introduce yourself, Lucinda? Who are you? What is it you do? Of course. Thanks for having me, Hung. I am Lucinda Thomas. I have spent my entire career across the talent space. My most recent role was at National Grid as the Director and Head of Recruitment Strategy, Capability and Employer Branding. I'm currently on an advisory board for the Global Employer Brand Exchange, which is an event we're building for the community in Madrid on November 3rd. So a little plug there. We might share the link. So any of the employee branding specialists that are interested, please come along.

14:04And, yeah, really excited for the conversation today. And, yes, congratulations, Steve. I've been getting your emails. I have signed up. so good to know it's all for god's sake steve shut up no never actually steve we're going to start right there because starting a community and being you know trying to get people to go to stuff trying to get people to sign just stuff is itself a thing that you eat is an eb challenge isn't it because every company has has their 500 000 records of candidates uh you got to try and keep them up to date you gotta sort of how do you measure um keeping them up to date without being intrusive and now of course with automation around you can actually crank it up and make sure people get hit with things but it turns out you know maybe people don't get hit with things don't like to get hit with things so much what have you learned so far on how to sort of judge this um like keep the comms high but also not so intrusive is there a technique that um people need to learn I haven't nailed it yet.

15:07It's all a little bit too new to me, for me, but I think the simple starting point is value over volume. Nobody should send anything out into the world unless it has some sort of value or a reason or a purpose or a logical reason for being. There's no point having noise. And I joke about the fact there must be just so much noise, but the point is it's like you just don't want to create noise. Noise alone is not enough. You have to provide value. the more you provide value, the more people want to engage and get involved. So I think that's a simple starting point. If it gives them something that they need, that they need feeding, that they're hungry for, then I think you're in the right direction.

15:48Value over volume, that's a really great quote. I think we'd all intuitively want to lean into it, but suddenly everybody who's watching this would think, yeah, but sometimes you've got no value to give, right? I mean, you're just not chumming it all out. It's not a place to be when we get to that. Yeah. So what do we do with that, Alex? I mean, listen, I mean, my value is coming in three weeks' time. I've got a big report, but do I just wait? Or is there something I can do that isn't intrusive, isn't annoying, you know, whilst the big thing is going to get launched at people? Yeah, I mean, there's always – you're always going to be able to find some sort of value with anything that you've uh you're you mean like in terms of like what you like as an individual or for a company in terms of what you could put out there yeah like you know steve's made made the point that you know what you should always give value i'm making the counterpoint to say sometimes you haven't got value to give um in which case what do you do like you stay silent or is there something you can give i think there's something something you can do.

16:55I mean, I think there's like just a lot of great things that you and Deb mentioned at the top of the hour, right? Just like your thoughts on just AI automation, TA space, EB, where everything is going. Because if you stay silent for the entire time, I mean, with, you know, with your socials and everything, I think you're, you're almost kind of doing yourself a disservice. So I do think with Steve, like you can always, there's a lot of value there. I mean, there's times where maybe I feel I don't have a big project or big blog coming out there, but i can still put something out into the the linkedin universe or twitterverse right and i think that's going to still keep things going it keeps my personal brand out there it keeps people wherever okay i'm still keeping an eye and an ear to the uh the streets and on what's going on so yeah that's it i mean maybe the pb stuff is actually quite heavily linked with eb in a way you know there's there's maybe lessons we can draw from from the pair of them um lucinda i bring you in on this um what is your take on you know the value versus volume concept um we kind of you know what's your feeling on what to do um have you got a some thoughts to share well i talk about it from like a company perspective and it's one you grapple with because you don't want to give too much when people don't care and make them disinterested in your business or what you're doing or just come across as if you're not someone, somewhere that someone wants to work.

18:20So we, whatever I've worked, I feel like an always on campaign from, for whatever perspective, whether it's highlighting values, highlighting maybe one of the workplaces, don't oversaturate with like things like day in the lives, save that kind of content for actual on recruitment campaigns and specific live roles. But I think there is value in keeping people in touch with your business, if there's any big projects happening, any big announcements happening, like that stuff does feel relative. So I think it's just determining what the value is for the business, what you want to get out of it, and if it's a really important story to tell.

18:55But the ones around values and culture, that's always going to be important to some point. So we were constantly pushing that kind of content out just to keep the businesses in front of mind, I guess you could say. Yeah, interesting. Deb, what are your thoughts on this? I mean, I'll declare it now. I'm a bit of a quantity merchant, as anybody who follows me sort of would know. So quality, yeah, it's great, but it's a like to have as far as I'm concerned. You know, more is better simply because you've got to just keep front of mind. Now, is that right or wrong, Deb? What's your thoughts? I don't think that more is always better.

19:33Sometimes it's the only way to get there. I mean, I did work at Lowe's during COVID and in 2021, we hired 325 ,000 people. So it was purely a volume play. But I will say what made it a little bit better is that we did implement automation while I was there. We went through a huge TA transformation. And I think what was interesting about that is that I learned that candidates don't really care who screens them. What they really care about is, you know, what kind of experience you offer them. And so I know that there's all these, you know, reports out there saying that everyone hates automation.

20:19But I don't I don't believe that because I saw the opposite of that. And I do think that that is value to the candidate. You're not wasting their time, right? You're allowing them to go through a process where they can screen in or screen out. And then I think the other piece about talking about the socials and all of that, what I found to be truly valuable to candidates is when you could align all of your content to what your brand colors are and your values and what your mission is. if you were just putting it out just for the sake of putting it out, unless it was a dog, a dog post, you know, dog being in Lowe's, I never felt like it really resonated with anyone.

21:02I was like, why, you know? Yeah, I get it. This is why I'd never be a successful EV person. You know, I just crank the big gun out there all the time. But I get it. You've got to look after your brand. Okay, AI and how it's impacting EB. Deb's kind of led us to this, which is the first big point that we want to try and reach, which is artificial intelligence. Now we're getting pretty much into the idea that screening candidates via the resume AI screening is becoming something that is almost mainstream. I think candidates now might expect to be interacting with a bot first instead of a human being.

21:46There may even be deeper screening going forward, scheduling may be done by AI agents. All of this is happening. How do we make sure that this enhances the employer brand rather than deters it? Because, again, you don't need to look too far on the internet to see people being really hacked off with kind of what they perceive as an over-automated experience. Any thoughts on how we do that? We keep the automation, but we make sure that the EV is enhanced and not detracted from. Open for anybody to respond to that. So I think the automation is great, right? I think we all agree that's something that we need.

22:27But I think you've got to have some human Q &A there to keep everything intact. Because if not, I think it's pretty easy because ultimately AI is taught by us, right? So then if we're not really QAing that, then there's going to be a lot of bias that's part of that. So, I mean, does that make the process better? if you screen over, like Deb described earlier at Etsy, thousands of Afghans, that's impossible to handle on your own with a very lean and mean TA team. But if you're automating that, if you have human ability to QA check that too, then you avoid any sort of bias, which would cause major issues.

23:03Excellent. Anybody else, any thoughts on this? Go ahead, Steve. Yeah, just a thought, because I think what we're talking about is the point of transaction at the moment, the point of whether I'm going to be choosing a job, screening through in or out of a job process, talking to a barber. There's a whole bunch of stuff before that, which impacts our willingness to be comfortable with the environment in which we set ourselves up for, like the point at which we're ready to interact with a brand. And before, I always think if we start with AI, we've got a problem. If our first point of engagement with a brand is AI, we've got an issue because there's a problem.

23:51The two words always spring to mind with me, one that you've covered a lot already in the subject, one which is trust. So the trust thing is very important. The trust isn't just a word we throw around now. Trust is something that is fundamental in society. Now, we live in a world where we're told not to trust anything. We're told not to trust our leaders, our politicians, our business leaders, the people who put a sign on the door to say they're selling something. We're taught not to trust. So people are walking into a world with an element of low trust anyway. And then the other part of AI is deception, which is a really strong word.

24:27But the association of AI and deception is really, really tied together. My kids, I might have a 16-year-old and 19-year-old who don't believe anything they read on that. The first thing is this is probably AI. And it could be true, but they still think it's AI because they're so used to this world now of like not believing. So what you've got, so that's the environment we're operating in. So therefore, there has to be a mechanism called employer branding before AI. So it's employer branding before AI. Like how do you build value and trust before you get to the moment where then you say, thanks for coming through our door.

25:01We've weaved you in. We've told you some great stuff about us. We've given you a story, an ideal that makes, that demonstrates what a great place this is to work. We're going to welcome, now you're here, just let you know there's an A and a B and a C to the process to get through the door. We just, we need to kind of deal with that kind of thing first. Is that okay? Boom, in you go. Start with the AI, the trust element starts with a slightly grumpy path of like, what, my first engagement with a company isn't with a human or a real story or a real process or a real thing or a real response. It's going to be AI.

25:36And that's when, so there's the trust versus deception thing about we're giving something and building brand and building value pre the point of application, I think is the important factor. And ironically, that comes back to value over volume, because I think the more we create volume in that process, the greater, the more dissenting voices there are going to be. yeah i love that steve so basically i mean again i wonder whether anybody's done any research on you know what is the percentage of companies that have actually explicitly stated uh what their process is um and you know what ai may be used for i suspect it's not a majority is it um i think most companies probably just have a career site and say apply here and then it's a mystery as to what happens after that application whereas some addendum there to say look it's a four-stage process this is how it looks boom boom boom I mean these days anybody could I dare say vibe code that page and get it up there but um I'm actually seeing it more in the process though around setting up front where the AI is being used and what it's being used for because I think a lot of businesses are getting challenged now if this if a candidate is seeing it hasn't been told about it and don't understand where it's being used and how they're marked against it.

26:53So I've actually seen it coming up a lot, particularly on job ads of where AI is used and what it's used for. And I think it's just to make sure businesses are covering their trail and not getting people coming for them when they start the process, which I think transparent is always going to be best. But the funny thing, the flip side of this, I don't think a lot of businesses know how they're using their AI correctly either. So it's hard for them to set up front what they're doing with it, because businesses are still navigating that themselves. Yeah, you've got to have it explainable and most people can't explain it.

27:24And that's not because they're incompetent. It's because a lot of the LLMs are black boxes. We can't explain because we've just accepted that it's been delivered to us and it gives us the right quote-unquote answers. But there's a few community members. Well, a few community members have done experiments like this. I think Martin Redstone, I think, didn't he do quite an interesting experiment? where he had a bunch of cvs uh uh reviewed by llms different sort of llms they came out with different results then he put the same cvs into the same llms and the same llms actually produced different order of results as well so so what is going on there um like we've just accepted the outcomes uh but we haven't seen the nose we don't see what recommend that what ai does not recommend therefore we're not able to really judge whether that's good or bad.

28:16So yeah, explainability I think is a tough problem for us. But legislation is changing, isn't it? I don't know what's happening in the US, but EU AI Act came into force, I think started this month, I believe. And explainability and the ability to talk through having an audit trail, I think that might be forcing a few of those things, Lucinda, on the job ads. Is that happening in the US? What's the latest and greatest with regards to the legislative pressure to explain how AI is being used?

28:52Great question there. Nothing major that I've seen, but I know we always follow your lead. Obviously, you guys help us out with getting USB-C ports on our iPhones because of the bohemian rules. But then I can say... All hail a mighty EU. Oh, yes, yes. Yes, clear favoritism there. But I would say, you know, for us, at least at GoDaddy, like we follow more of the global trend. So we've been very upfront with where AI is being used. We have a Kenny Experience page that is dedicated to that to let you know, hey, this is how we know you're going to use AI. We welcome you the opportunity to do so. But we will use some of return and just try to be as open as possible about that.

29:31But also, I'm not aware, you know, I try to keep an eye on stuff. I don't think I'm far tuned into the game as much as you are, Hong or Steve. but nothing major that I've seen recently. Yeah. I would say it's more around what I've seen is more diligence, more of that due diligence put into the vetting process. Everyone's got an AI governance board now from the employer side. And there is, I believe, the need for vendors to be able to showcase their ISO certifications. The 402001, that one is all about ethical AI. And it's one that's really difficult to get. And I know at Jovio, it's one that we do talk about that with our clients a lot so that they understand that we're not being reckless over here and just plugging in AI wherever we think that we can make a buck.

30:31It really is all about how do we do a better job, give a better experience to candidates and make it more fair. I mean, everyone talks about the bias that AI brings. What about the bias that humans bring? I mean, humans are much more biased, you know, so I don't know. I get really frustrated when I hear the whole AI is biased comment because I, I mean, witnessing TA teams higher at scale, like there's nothing more biased than a human being. Like get on a phone, on a phone call or on a video call with someone and, you know, you see a coffee cup and it's your alma mater. And the next thing you know, that person is getting hired, right?

31:16We hire people we like. yeah i think that's when we talk about this we're talking about the same issues we've always talked about like canada experience quality of candice but it's just the playground has changed so we're and the reason we're sitting on these calls doing this is because we care right so we care about how it comes out the other side regardless of whether it's 2020 or the pizza or the pizza thing that that paul was talking about and you know no matter what year it is that we're doing we care about it so we want to get it right but the same issues exist and therefore the my only argument back to that deb is it's not solving the problem it's just moving the problem of bias or moving the problem of pork and of experience or moving the poor problem of ghosting into a new zone into a whole new zone and what's fundamentally therefore got to change is not the ai or the the mechanism it's the people behind it working out how do we build a structure that gives the best experience gives the best perception that sets the right expectations that leaves an impression that makes me go i feel comfortable i feel good about this i feel good about that brand that's what we've got so the ai i don't think the ai is the problem i don't think i think we're the problem sometimes in the way in what we choose and what we select and what we get sold and what we say no to to work out what is going to work in our ecosystem because brand is ultimately driven by those perceptions expectations and experiences and therefore i think we have to think of that every time we choose an ai product or every time we implement an ai solution or or process or workflow we have to go does it improve the candidate experience does it do we is our brand better as a consequence are people going to come back because we did this etc and then it's a good idea if there's any way it's going to make it sticky or in any way we look at it and go hang on this might not be ethical as soon as we say that we drop it as soon as that moment hump comes where it's kind of like I think there could be a problem here dump it because there'll be another one that maybe you can just look at it a little bit better or another solution or another idea and I think that's where we raced I used I got grumpy about AI up until about six months ago because we were running through this door like so fast we were tripping over all the the hemp pumps in the carpet and over the tables and all that because we weren't stopping to check what we're doing because people say you've got to do it you've got to do it I think now we're starting to get to that world we're a little bit more thoughtful about our decision making but I still think we're not there yet yeah I agree with that and I do think there are a lot of situations where you've got an executive leadership team you know speaking to a talent team and saying hey you need you need to plug AI in somewhere in your process.

34:03And I think the problem is that most TA teams skip the whole audit piece. So they're not auditing. I mean, think about how many TA leaders you talk to and you ask them, have you ever applied to your own job? And I guarantee you half of them have not. So they don't even know what the process feels like. They've never gone through the process. They've never done, you know, a ride along with their recruiters to see what it looks like on that side either. Or, you know, they probably never consulted the hiring managers to find out what they think. I mean, it's just that whole 360 that you need to do, that evaluation piece that needs to happen before you ever even think about plugging AI in.

34:46You know, it's understanding, you know, what your house looks like before you bring the decorator in is the way I look at it. I love that analogy, Deb. Fantastic stuff. Folks, a quick one for the, actually, no, we'll ask that a bit later. I want to talk about personalization. Because for a long time, employer branding was all about, hey, you know, don't give people the boilerplate. They don't want to see sort of a dear sir, dear madam type of messaging. Let's just, you know, at least address people by their first name. Now we've got AI in the picture. Suddenly we can be kind of a much more sophisticated with the sort of messaging that we could communicate.

35:32However, isn't that deceptive, as Steve said? Like, isn't the concept of personalization at scale fundamentally deceptive? And is that something that is going to ultimately breach trust? Steve, shaking your head, which I'm going to definitely come to you in a sec, but I want to give someone else a chance to step into that provocation. I accept I've put in a provocation. But is personalization at scale itself an oxymoron? Lucinda Thomas. It's interesting because it's a little bit subjective on what's your personal preference, right? Like if I had something that was specifically targeted at me and it was speaking to my soul, I would be invested in that.

36:17Whereas some people might think, oh God, that's too much. That's not where I want to be. I don't trust this place anymore. So to be honest, it's subjective. Like it depends on the brand, how personalized it's going to be. Yeah, it's an interesting one because I'm trying to put myself in the shoes. but it would probably depend on the brand and what they were trying to say to me to be honest yeah very interesting i've got a feeling that for me um i would like it but distrust it at the same time so in other words you might actually like something you don't trust you know like some of your mates possibly um anyway um no um all my mates i trust them massively um some of them i don't like so it's all good um no debbie let's bring to you bring deb bring you in on this personalization of scale like can we can we is that dishonest i i think it's dishonest if you're not um you know injecting your brand your beliefs all those things into the messing if you're just letting the ai create you know these glossy messages that I don't know that it's deceptive as much as it is.

37:32It's kind of boring, right? Like everybody is starting to sound, it just like candidates are sounding the same, all the companies sound the same too. So to me, that overly slick message is not going to resonate. I'm going to feel like I'm being marketed to and nobody wants that. Yeah, I think so. And there's a feature with ai comms generally that it does tend to be a bit more vanilla um as you go through uh simply because um you know i guess it what ai ultimately wants to try and get things right and it doesn't necessarily take a marginal position um because it you know theoretically is not right um so so yeah it's interesting alex herr your thoughts on this personalization of scale like is it is it something we should even try and do is it ethical um i think do we try to do it i think companies are already doing this on their own uh but it is yeah i get it yeah first like what lucinda said i mean i think it's subjective right one person may love it the other person may hate it but i think deb was hitting on something good too and to add on to that that uh i think ultimately like you have to have some sort of personalization and part of that and i think you know maybe that's where the brands, comms, and EB teams come together.

38:46And okay, you drop in your brand guidelines. You drop in the lingo that you would use. Because if we're getting emails as candidates applying to some of these brands, and that's where, go back to Deb, what she said too. Go back and apply and see what you're getting. If you're putting AI in motion, test it out. See what the responses are from your chatbots, from the emails that are going through. And if you're okay with that, if your comms and legal team say, hey, that's actually great, we're okay with that, you're probably going in a better direction. But if your AI is tuning that into something different and it does not match what you would remotely say, you got a bit of a problem.

39:18You will be turning off people then. I'm also more scared about like, you know, going out to LLMs and typing in. I actually did this the other day. You guys should you guys should do this for this role. Just plug in to an LLM. What are the 10 top companies that you would avoid going to work for and why? It is frightening. But you can't prevent any of whatever comes. And by the way, I did this for enterprise sales. The companies that came up are the ones that you would think that everybody wants to work for. And I also had the LLM site tell me, like, give me the quotations and give me the, you know, cite it so that I can go out and look.

40:06We can't control what people are saying on Reddit. That's what we should be afraid of. No, and that's definitely something we're going to talk about in a minute, Deb, because how do we then, because one of the impacts of AI with EB is that it's basically escaped the walls of where it sits. And suddenly, any comment might end up in the training data. Do we need to start thinking about how to kind of manipulate that? Is that a bad term? But it's a right term, isn't it? Let's be honest. Okay, Steve Ward, you were shaking your head because you were beginning of this. So tell me about why you were doing that.

40:50Because it was about 2008. So we're going back 18 years ago. I sat in a room with a guy called Roger Warner who ran a digital PR agency down near where I am in Hayworth Heath in Sussex. And he showed me how Virgin, one of his clients was virgin records and virgin uh the the virgin records the the music production company not the retail company and and led into things like virgin media and radio and he showed me personalization scale in 2008 in a in a digital environment where everybody had different needs and i thought the idea that we're all different we all had different but we're in groups of difference.

41:32We have categories and groups of difference depending on our music preferences, our things, what we look for, our behaviours, etc. So back in 2007, 2008, there was a digital personalisation programme that existed way before AI that just looked at, I like things like this, so therefore Virgin feeds me content, more content of this kind of thing, the things that I like and doesn't go. And Spotify's done it for years. We actually live in a world of personalisation. some of it is brilliant and some of it is absolutely crap and and and the where it's brilliant is using the consumer marketing place we usually get fed things that suit our space suit our mind suit our thoughts all that kind of stuff we're worried about it too much in talent acquisition we're worried about its impact too much whereas we shouldn't be the categorization shouldn't just be our job it should be our expertise our category our areas of interest are I mean I was there right at the start with Adam who's absent today clearly but like with Canada ID and that was like 10 11 years ago when Adam came up the concept of personalization in recruitment and marketing recruiting marketing etc to be able to create paths of individual relevance to create a greater bond and connection with an organization I think it exists and I think it exists perfectly well without an LLM having to get involved in a process because we chose methods and routes where it clearly, clearly works.

43:03You see organisations doing this really, really well. So I think it's fine. I think I get the point about the elements of kind of, if it's kind of going, hey, hon, good to see you again. And here's your, you know, you know what's kind of like, it's just got to be real. It's got to be, I go back to value right at the start again i want to be delivered stuff that is relevant to me i don't want to be delivered something that is irrelevant to me and if you increase any form of relevance to me i'm i'm in i'm in i'm i'm on your page it might not you know and i may just apply for a job with you do you know what uh steve i think you're probably right on that i'm just now reminding ads as well you know random ads that insert in your feed and stuff it's annoying until it's not because and it's not annoying when you actually yeah i actually wanted that deal uh yeah you go ahead and like try that thing on TikTok.

43:50It's loads of behaviours. And this is the challenge, to your point about LLM, the problem with LLM, it's trying to do everything to please us. It's trying to find middle ground. It's trying to find, it often misreads the room. I think that's one of the simple things I always say about LLM. It's often tone deaf. It doesn't read a room because it has no empathy. It has no ethics. It has no human thought. It can only take raw numbers, data, words, blah, blah, and then combine those things. the understanding of the behaviours and choices is something that's existed before AI based on our options, our opt-ins, our choices, the things that we buy, the things that we don't buy, the things we engage with, the things we don't engage with.

44:31So I think I don't know whether it's an AI conversation. I think it's actually just a good quality recruitment engagement conversation. I just think people have struggled with it, really affecting it really, really well through the years. But that's my thoughts on that. I think it's fine. I'd like personalization at scale. it's funny now that i'm thinking as well it's kind of like we've had talent pools for years and years and years and you kind of put in your preferences so then you're getting content oh you you've liked this role have you looked at this one like that actually has been around a long time so and people signed up to that for a reason because they wanted that in particular content this is just people getting it when they haven't signed up for it almost yeah yeah and i think you mentioned netflix lucinda is a great example in the chat like those are the environments where it's good tell you what it's terrible i'm sorry for anybody who's in the room who works for them linkedin indeed etc absolutely bloody awful like no terrible matches wrong content wrong job matches wrong the stuff i get sent from indeed sorry indeed if you're in the room but like it's dreadful it's not related to me at all it's a terrible match and that's where we get it wrong honestly you're an oddball on it i mean no disrespect um i am very weird you're very you are an odd person when it comes to linkedin because you're an entrepreneur that's set up your own thing i think that that confuses basically you know what they are i mean they basically are going to serve content to someone who wants to be an employee um and i think basically you may have been saying we get the wrong stuff but we're not really their audience i would say But anyway, we have to move on.

46:13I want to talk about authenticity because we hear this term a lot, how to be authentic. And yeah, I'm kind of thinking like, again, is it an oxymoronic to scale authenticity? Like, what does that mean to you? Maybe I'm just lacking the intellectual toolkit to get my head around that. I'm certainly lacking the career toolkit to get around that. Scaling authenticity. How do we do that? I've actually created a poll on this very question. So I'm going to direct everyone's attention to the right-hand side of your screen. And I want you to just vote on this poll. How do you scale authenticity, folks?

46:53I've got a number of those options there. By no means comprehensive. but give it a vote if any of those things kind of resonate with you and if not then let me know in the comments what your thoughts are for the people who are watching this on LinkedIn and can't see the poll I'll read it out to you and then you can see the options how do you scale authenticity that is the question options are radical transparency so I guess this means just be very very open more than it's comfortable to be open with all of your stuff. That means live stream rather than podcast. That means open town hall. People can just chime in and talk to the staff.

47:34That kind of behavior. Stuff that marketing and comms generally don't like because you're going to let your employees loose with the market. Two, educate your employees on how to use LinkedIn. I'm reminded of the Cisco case study a couple of years ago or so ago where whoever it was, I forget who the name of that individual leader was, but they just simply trained everybody on how to use LinkedIn. Turned out like most of their employees outside of recruitment did not know how to use LinkedIn, didn't even know how to post on it. And suddenly they started posting on LinkedIn as normal sort of workers, so to say, and that boosted their EB massively simply because it was normal people doing it rather than EB folks.

48:14Okay, three, hire more on marketing talent traction. like invest more in the team folks like basics like maybe having a lack of capacity uh is causing us a problem here um four increase the ceo public profile are we in founder-led marketing these days does it help if your ceo is out there and being very visible um and you know answering questions doing customer support on on on x um you know talking about what's going on in the business It's off the cuff without a screen, just getting that person out there and not having a filthy conversation. Is that something that's going to help? Let's see your votes, folks.

48:55Get them in there. And if anybody who wants to make comments elsewhere, please do make those comments. Okay, open to everyone here. How do you scale authenticity? Deb and Dreechuk, your thoughts? You know, who did this really well? Nathan Heatherly and his team at and Kara Umashankar at Lowe's did this at scale and so much better than anyone I've ever seen do this before. Because what they did is they just went out what you said, Hunga, went out, educated everyone on how to use LinkedIn, how to use Facebook and TikTok, all the social. And, you know, kudos to Lowe's for letting employees, you know, be ambassadors.

49:38Go out and start following a couple of Lowe's people and you're going to start your entire feed will start getting flooded with content from Lowe's. It's unbelievable. Even their store employees are on LinkedIn and pushing personalized content out. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. unbelievable. I think they also did a good job of showing some of the warts too, right? Like I always say that you can't just come out with unblemished skin all the time. You got to show some of those warts to be real. And I thought they did a really good job of doing that. That happens as a result of just losing the controls a little bit, doesn't it, Deb?

50:17Like you've got to just trust the people a little bit more and let them go. So definitely great case study and worth checking out. But I think that goes into this idea of just training everyone to be a bit more prominent don't assume just because you know how you does LinkedIn uh that yeah you know your CS team knows how to do that they may they may not have even thought about it uh Steve Ward how you scale authenticity um the biggest scale in our organization are the humans that work in it there are quite a lot of them um so therefore it's a good starting point uh just another shout out on the whole training thing by the way Phil Santan Phil Smith who was at Santander now about about media did a talk at one of my ev clubs two years ago so how he trained his people to do exactly that as well deb it was like brilliant and they're a financial services organization they're a bank so they're not allowed to post uh bank content so he trained them to post life content and work in the and the people content by the way just as a and that's actually massive as a part of what i'm going to refer to because i think the challenge alex said as well I'm sure he'll cover it in a second.

51:23Employee advocacy is one of the biggest topics right now in employer brand. It's something that everybody's strived to achieve. How easy is it dependent on the organisation you're in and its com structure and all those sort of things. But ultimately, the most authentic voice will always come from your people. I definitely not the CEO. Absolutely sack the idea of the CEO being the front of you. So given everything we just talked about at the start, about nobody, we're taught not to trust leaders. So therefore, just get them out of the way. I tried this terribly a few years ago by putting a leader because I thought she was the best leader in the, I thought she was well-known industry.

52:01She was the reason why nobody wanted to join. And so I think the reality is the CEO has a divisive identity because they're responsible for money as well as profile. So therefore, the human person, the person I might sit next to, The person will have the same struggles as me as I get up and have my nine o 'clock coffee on a Monday morning. Those are the people that do it. Methods training. I'll leave Alex to maybe share a couple of other methods, but any form of good employee advocacy using a good platform where AI helps the employee do it at speed. with care, with group, where they can look after the ums and the ahs and all the things that everybody feels really worried about when they do a personal post or an advocacy post of some kind.

52:49Those things have all been solved with really good technology like vouch and things like that these days. So I think it's got to be employees. It has to be employees, but in a mechanism that allows it to freely happen. But I'll let maybe Alex, because I know he mentioned employee advocacy there. I'll probably let him chat more on that from his perspective. Yeah, so go ahead, Alex. Yeah, yeah. Gosh, a million plus ones to that, Steve. I mean, I think it's employee advocacy to me is the best way to get it out there. And then with the technology you have, if you're giving folks like integrations inside of Teams or Slack where the barrier of entry is super low, but also providing them with either some automated options or encourage them to actually write their own message on their own, just, you know, some guardrails, use the proper hashtags and all that, give them images, videos that they can share.

53:38I mean, I think that's the best way to do that. And then, you know, as you do that, using whatever, if you're using a companion or something to create that stuff to, you know, you can ingrain them and teach them even better there. And then, you know, to your point, Deb, I mean, Lowe's here in the States did a phenomenal job at that really strong campaign. And even on the other side of the pond, Bolt, I believe, in the Eastern EMEA, had a phenomenal campaign and they've talked about for years to the point where I don't live over there and I'm well aware of what they're doing. Right. So always reference that success story.

54:09And I mean, you know, we've done the same thing here at GoDaddy, but I mean, that it's that. And then actually giving freedom to what you mentioned earlier, Hung, like natural influencers. That's something that we did here as well. And it's like, hey, do whatever you're going to do. We see that you have a strong network. I'm just going to tell you, hey, let me give you a tracking link to go back, do your thing. and it just you know for us doing that you know just gave us some really really positive results resolved and then you know some folks who came through the pipeline but also they were just doing their thing on their own you know without a lot of hand-holding but trusting your ambassadors and they're going to be the most authentic people but also i think the ceo is good here and there but if you run into a steve situation where they don't want to work for you because the ceo it's going to backfire very good guys uh just looking at the poll it does look indeed that no one's voting for the increased CEO profile.

55:00So I think it's generally a consensus view here, which is great stuff. Okay, Lucinda Thomas, it seems that we're reaching a consensus on this. I mean, what's your view on this? You worked at National Grid, big organization. Was that ever a lever that you pulled, you know, getting employees to be a bit more visible online? Yes, definitely. And yeah, echo what everyone said around employee advocacy is key. I think scaling is an interesting question to have with authenticity because if it's helping people that already want to post, that's definitely authentic. If you're pushing people to post because you've got these automations and you're making it easy for them, does that necessarily mean that they want to post still?

55:42So I think the authentic stories are already out there and doing their thing, which is amazing. That's true authenticity to me. They haven't been told to do it. They're going and doing this regardless. but we did definitely leverage tools like Culture HQ, which is similar to Vouch, which really helped employees put their stories together, whether it was in video format or helping write content, just so that they had the tools and we could put in our employee branding guidelines, et cetera, just to make it easier for them. And it also helped us tap the right people to say there was a particular role that we needed covered.

56:14You could send that link to them directly and then we could scale it that way because it was directly linked back to business objectives. But yeah, I think fundamentally, like I've been an avid poster on LinkedIn since day dot. And that's just who I am as a person. So I think anything that I'm posting is authentic. And there is a lot of those people out there. I think if you're scaling it, just checking yourself that you're not controlling that scale too much, that it has actually just lost its authenticity. Yeah, I totally get what you're saying as well, Lucinda. Very interesting observation.

56:44The tooling here might give you kind of a sense that, OK, I can mobilize this army of people to post. but at what point are you becoming a press scanger um and you know people then reluctantly share stuff and that's just demoralizing isn't it so um yeah really really good folks we are running rapidly out of time i just realized where we're at um it's very important by the way before we go off air that we don't stop the conversation on brain food live like we have to come off air of course uh but the conversation should never stop um and the way in which we continue conversations of this type is very straightforward.

57:19You simply make sure you connect with everyone else who's watching this show. So now is the time where you just grab your LinkedIn URL, share it in the chat stream if you're watching this on Crowdcast. If you're watching this on any of the LinkedIn, just do the same. Grab your LinkedIn URL, put it in as a comment, and then just connect with everyone else who's done the same. Bottom line is you walk away with 20 people that you didn't know before that care about this topic and might have some thoughts to share with you on it. So go ahead and take the conversation offline and make sure you continue the chat.

57:51Okay, we've got to finish off with the final question. AI transforming everybody's job. We get it. How is it transforming employer branding? Do you, the panelists, have any thoughts on this? And I want to think about how is it transforming EB as a distinct identity? So for instance, there was once upon a time EB wasn't a distinct identity. It was just part of recruitment, right? And then suddenly everyone thought, actually, we'd do well to specialize a bunch of folks doing this. And then it popped out as an independent thing. Does AI create more diversification that way? Or does it fold EB back into a more generalist TA?

58:29So at an organizational level and at an individual level, what are the skills that we would really ideally be looking to recruit if we had a vacancy in your EB team? Like, what are we looking for? Or is it different from what it was five years ago? So two questions, really. Number one, what happens at the departmental level with EB? And two, what are the skills at the individual level? Let's go with you, Alex, to begin with. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I think it makes it even better than before. Definitely a true must-have versus a super secret niche type of a position. But skill-wise, I would still look for all the same skills for someone who can do with corporate marketing, content marketing, manage everything, but also someone who obviously now knows their AI, where they can get in there and automate some stuff, but I think it's highly valuable.

59:25Yeah. So basically confident EB still there. And I guess you're saying there's not a huge amount of change in this sort of type of person. We just need someone who's AI friendly at the very least, like someone who isn't sort of alien to it. So Deb, Andrew Chirk, what are your thoughts on those two questions? Yeah, I think the first thing that I think about is the fact that you need to make sure that the people that you're hiring have good judgment, because that's going to be a critical job going forward. You're that human in the loop. And I've always said this to my kids, just because you can doesn't mean that you should.

1:00:10And so I think it takes that human to be able to come in and be able to discern, is this something we should be applying AI to or is it not? I mean, that is going to be key going forward. I think it's also going to require someone who has more of that operational mindset and even like a PM type mindset, because now not only are you coordinating your staff and all the things that are going on with your content calendar, but now you've got agents working for you, too. So someone who can kind of think big picture and see everything that's going on and understand, you know, what makes sense for a human to plug in versus the AI.

1:00:53I think that's going to be a really critical skill going forward. Yeah, human judgment. A lot of people are talking about this. This is probably going to be a brain food live on a later point. How do we even assess human judgment? Like, do we make a judgment on that? I mean, that's basically a problem, isn't it? All right, Steve Ward, where are we departmentally with EB in the future? And what would you look for if you were in charge of a function? What kind of skills? I think it's already evolved. I think this year has been a massive year of movement away from outwardly facing employer brand and more towards inwardly facing employer brands.

1:01:33The amount of people whose roles have moved from being global head of employer brand to global head of employer brand and employee engagement or internal communications or so because really and this is full circle stuff because it starts with authenticity so if we start to understand the people better our story with more authentic as we go outside so i think we've seen this a lot it's a big shift already i think it means we're joining eb closer to the hr and communications functions and away from the talent acquisition functions a little bit um a little bit of a separation there in many examples um that i'm seeing across global organizations so i don't know i think we go i think we're already moving and i think it's a good move as well by the way because it's more sustainable for eb to stay close to the people and to the hr than it is to a slightly more kind of erratic end of the the market like talent acquisition which is dependent on hiring yeah eb it's a ta it's just too volatile isn't it it's it's always been boom or bust simply because most companies are not always grinding forward and hiring tons of people.

1:02:34And EB shouldn't be a bit robust yet. Yeah, exactly right. Okay, Lucinda Thomas, your final view on this, departmentally where we're at and skills-wise where we're at. Yeah, I agree with Steve. We're definitely on the journey. And I know from my experience, I was looking definitely more content specialists. I think that definitely needs to be embedded further. But data specialists, I think we're being more strategic now. where EB isn't just the front shiny window, but we're more calculated than maybe the business recognises. We're more strategic about what we're putting out there, when, why, and making sure it leaks back to business objectives.

1:03:09I think historically we've had to prove that point, but I think we're there now. So it's like evolving that, overlaying the AI, but keeping it authentic as well in the back end. So, yeah, I think we're on the journey and skill-wise, yeah, that engineered, data-driven background just to make sure that what we're doing is adding value directly linked to business outcomes. Yeah, very interesting. And Morgan Law on LinkedIn there saying, how are we measuring EB in terms of these days? And I don't know, mate. Maybe that's another conversation we need to have. But okay, we have to let it go because over time, I hope you've enjoyed the show, folks, and got some value from it.

1:03:48I certainly did. Hugely educational for me. Leads with me to thank our wonderful panelists for sharing their wisdom with us. So Steve Ward, great to see you, sir. Thank you so much for jumping in. Alex, thanks for getting up early as well and chiming in with us. Lucinda, great to see you. Thank you so much for coming in and joining the show with your debut. Brilliant to have you. And Deb, thanks for being co-pilot with me today. Brilliant to have this conversation and great to have your insights and questions here as well. Okay, that's it for us this week. I hope you have a good weekend. we'll be back next week we're going to be talking about state of AI readiness do you know how ready your business is if not then you're going to find out how far behind you are next Friday okay that's about it everyone have a good weekend we'll see you next week thanks see you see you everyone thank you