Attracting Tech Talent in the Age of AI

0:08Katie Cormier: All righty, so welcome everyone to this episode of the Talent Fix. I'm delighted to be joined today by Katie Cormier, head of people at Edge Tier. Katie, welcome. Delighted to have you on board because you've got a really interesting background from a recruitment perspective in that you've owned your own recruitment company. And you're also working for Edge Tier, AI native business that I think has almost doubled headcount in the last two years. So welcome. Thanks for joining us. We're going to dive into today, attracting tech talent in the age of AI and how do we keep hiring human. But before we start, welcome, Katie.

0:45Katie Cormier: And if you'd like to give us a quick intro, that'll be great. Yeah, super. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the invite. Yeah, I do have a bit of a weird background and some entrepreneurial stints in there, but I've always been pretty much in recruitment. And that's kind of my that's been my baby forever. And then moved more into a people focus over the years and would still have that strong love for all things talent acquisition and recruitment. but yeah I had a bit of a stint on my own, I had my own agency for a couple of years and that was a bit of a Covid project I would say but yeah it was really good, it was a good experience to understand the other side and I really thought it was going to be exactly the same I'd always been in-house and moved to agency and and it was really more consulting and when I look back at it now I was doing some people consulting and talent acquisition as well but it's such a different game and I really miss being in-house so moved back in and and yeah I have been in kind of tech for the last, like solidly tech for the last kind of six, seven years, roughly.

2:16So, yeah, it's been a great journey to be on for sure.

2:19Katie Cormier: Okay. So now you're nice to all the recruiters that you deal with at Edge Tour, are you? I just have so much more empathy now, but I also know what good looks like. I'm like, I know you're in fucking quarters. You know the game. You know the game. Very good. Very good. Well, listen, so let's dive into it. So, I mean, in terms of kind of scaling a people function inside an AI startup, and really Edge Tear is a really interesting business, Irish business, AI native. And, you know, my understanding is Edge Tear provides data and insights to the customer support sector. But you hired like 60 people in your first 18 months.

2:56Katie Cormier: And largely you did that, I think, just pretty much on your own. So what was the biggest challenge you faced kind of attracting tech talent during that phase? Yeah, that was a wild time. When I look back at it now, every day was just so busy. I joined when we pretty much had a tiny sales team and a tiny technical team. and that was it and we have three founders who are fantastic and they're super people focused and so they knew when they got a round of funding at series a they said well it kind of makes sense to hire someone that's going to look after the kind of culture and people and hiring first so that's when I came in and yeah I mean the big push initially was just we need a lot of people very fast so that was the priority was was recruitment and but alongside that obviously was you know building out people function and the basic uh the basic bits along the way and just building the foundations now I was flying solo for the first six months I would say and then um we took on a coordinator so a talent acquisition coordinator and he was fantastic for that additional support doing most of the early stage stuff um but yeah I think you know at the time that we were hiring it was incredibly competitive and we had a little bit of an of an advantage because uh in some ways because we uh were you know an AI native company and people really wanted to work with that um over the last few years and but also we were operating a hybrid model and we weren't planning on changing that anytime soon and a lot of companies were looking to you know return everyone to work so that was definitely a help but we were also a very unknown brand and um there's the other side of it where you know not everyone wants to work in a startup not everyone should work in a startup either it takes a particular type of person yeah exactly so um So trying to kind of meander through that.

5:14Katie Cormier: Yeah. How do you determine if someone is suitable? Sorry to interrupt, Katie, but that's a really interesting point. And how do you determine if somebody is suitable to work in a startup or has to, you know, is going to fit, shall we say, in a startup environment? It's a very good question. I think there's so many pieces to it. You kind of you get that feeling from someone initially about when you talk about what they want to do and the type of work that they've done before. It's someone who typically is very self-driven and wants to be involved in a lot of different things. They don't like lots of red tape and guardrails.

5:54They don't like a lot of bureaucracy. and we have a very flat structure even still. Our founders sit in the middle of the floor and anyone can talk to them at any time. So, you know, it's people who want to be part of building and not just operating. The people that kind of want to go outside of those

6:21Katie Cormier: immediate boundaries, yeah. And I mean, do you test for that or do you simply just ask them during the interview process? And that's how you determine. We do test for it. Yeah, we do test for it. We have specific sets of questions that we look at that will indicate whether this person would be a right fit. But we also ask them, you know, we look at their background as well. If they've only ever worked in very large multinationals, for example. They're coming from Google or Meta, potentially, you know, they wouldn't fit. Yeah. And that is the kind of tricky thing. when we were looking at hiring a lot of tech talent, especially, you know, our tech stack matches a lot of the tech stack in very large businesses.

7:02But how we do things here is very different to how they would do things there. So on paper, someone looked like they might've had the right skillset, but actually when we drilled down to it, culturally, they weren't going to work. It just wouldn't work in the environment that we were in and they wouldn't have enjoyed it either. we you know we we do things at a very fast pace um and we ship a lot of products very very quickly a lot of features very quickly um and yeah there's there's not it's it's not for everyone um and vice versa there's a lot of people that um would just love to work in somewhere that has more structure and constraints and processes and that is quite process heavy whereas especially in the earlier days we just weren't that at all and someone who enjoys the ambiguity and we test

7:55Katie Cormier: for ambiguity tolerance that's one of the things that we look for how do you test for that we test for it through kind of uh behavioral uh style questions in interviews that's kind of the primary the primary one that we would look at yeah okay okay so you're not using personality tests or psychometric tests it's more kind of interview based yeah and I don't really believe in them And that sounds, maybe that sounds a bit silly, especially with my background. I studied psychology, so I should be all on board with that. But to me, psychometric testing is, it's a bit too rigid and black and white.

8:33There's more nuance. And I think that if it's used in the right way where you can, you know, add it as a complement to support your interview process, sure use it but the way that a lot of companies use it it's you know rule in and rule out and I just think this is a bit more to it than that.

8:55Katie Cormier: Yeah no that's a good point and so just bringing it back to the question I mean that really the issue for you I think was you know you you had a lot of hires to do and you're an unknown brand in the marketplace and they sound like really big challenges. What's working for you right now when it comes to kind of standing out to candidates in a competitive market. And, you know, we know the market's still very competitive. You know, I spoke with a head of people yesterday and she said every candidate they offer has another offer. So how are you finding it at the moment or what's working for you right now?

9:30Katie Cormier: Yeah, that's true. I think we have definitely grown our presence. So we're a lot more active. Like our brand has evolved massively. We are more present in the market. people have seen us we're more visible we're we've also engaged with um a lot of the the communities that we would you know that kind of overlap with our tech stack so um you know we attend a lot of conferences we host a lot of things like that have helped build up that reputation over the years but I think that our overall offering still stands out and ultimately it does It's come down to, for a lot of people, you know, it's not kind of the black and white.

10:15Is this company offering more than the other? Because generally speaking, they're going to be very, very similar. The profiles that we're hiring for are at a more senior level now. And there is different things that those types of people look for. And we do have a very strong offering at that level. You know, there is a lot of exposure to different business areas that you wouldn't necessarily get in other types of businesses. The scale, you know, we're still relatively early days.

10:47Katie Cormier: You know, we've share options that we offer to employees and lots of other kind of nice benefits that go along with it, too. I think our culture is something that really stands out. And it's it sounds very biased coming from me. Yeah. but truthfully in every exit interview i ever do with with um every employee that's ever left the business has said the question i asked them is what's what's the thing that you'll miss the most and it's always number one people um you know we do have a really strong culture yeah yeah and you know consistently across surveys and everything the culture and people really stand out to people it's a genuinely nice place to work and I think people get that feeling when they're interviewing with us you know we are a bit more um down to earth we talk to people like they're people and have that kind of human element that you might not necessarily get in a more rigid uh interview process okay okay very good um and culture culture is so important right um so and and it's it's it's it's a it's a really positive sign that you're getting that feedback in the exit interview as well um so shifting gears slightly just to chat about ai of course um and i know you've been kind of posting lately about how you know ai is supposed to make hiring easier but actually it's just making it more difficult it's creating more noise um i was traveling in the middle east yesterday i sat down with a 70 government client and you know they had 100 jobs and they got 25 000 applications um so you know it's just creating a real headache for recruiters and recruiting teams.

12:32Katie Cormier: What are you seeing on the ground? Very much that, yeah. Volume became a really big focus point. Earlier in this year, I would say, probably all throughout last year, we were doing a lot of hiring last year, and earlier in the year we had a lot more roles. We don't have a huge amount of roles open at the moment. you know summertime is a little bit quieter it's something that we had an issue with we were getting thousands of applications for um for a handful of jobs you know hundreds each and it's very hard to cut through the noise especially when cvs are all looking the same these days applications all look the same these days so cv cv swap yeah every cv kind of looks identical so yeah how do you how do you manage that how do you yeah how do you know what tools do you use to to help with that it's it's it's one of the things that we leaned into our ats to support so we use a system called ashby um which is great they're always releasing new features especially to combat and support this sort of ai push one of the key things that they do is they pull out kind of keywords that um or like key pieces that might be an indicator that this person um or this this application you know either fits or doesn't fit and it kind of highlights it as you're reading through um but also it is it detects where there is fraud signals as well which we've had a huge amount more than we've ever had is fraudulent applications and candidates which whole other topic but uh it's harder to cut through the noise and we introduced application forms um a couple of years ago actually and it's something that works really well for us so uh it weeds in and weeds out the right people uh someone who wants to you know spend a few minutes to actually think about their answers you can tell a hundred percent when when someone a human has written the answers to those questions and when an AI bot has done it it's very obvious give us some of the tricks that give it away or the tips for you I think everyone can kind of recognize AI generated content these days yeah yeah there's a very specific kind of cadence it's so that you know it's the way that it's structured yeah robust is a big tell word for me yeah anyone who's like robust in an answer yeah yeah and also i think um it just all sounds a bit generic yeah you know and then when you've read lots of them they all kind of have the same answers as well and the whole point behind it is we ask people to tell us something about themselves that we wouldn't know from their cv or you know a big challenge that um they overcame or something like that we want to get to know the human the person that's a big part of it um and it's always really obvious when uh when a human hasn't thought about it and put that into words and we want to continue to build on the culture that we've created which is great human beings um to work with and you know we're not going to be sitting beside robots every day in in our office So we want to know who you really are, the good and the bad.

16:10It's what a balanced person is.

16:12Katie Cormier: Yeah. So you're trying to get to know the person throughout the application process, basically. Yeah. So where do you think AI adds value in recruitment for you? I think automations in general, in terms of the small tasks. So we have, you know, indicators all over our ATS that kind of highlight, oh, this candidate applied for a job six months ago. They got to the final stage. Would you like to talk to them again? Open that door up again? which is amazing because you could, you know, they might not actually meet the criteria that you're thinking that you might do a Boolean search for in your ATS, but they've been resurfaced because of AI.

17:01So little things like that, other automations for like small daily tasks are really, really helpful. But our rule is, you know, humans need to be interacting with humans. And so communication should always be person to person. We have scheduling automation for interviews. We have task automation. So we send out take home tasks for candidates that make it through to further stages. And all those triggers are really, really helpful. and even you know when we're doing kind of an intake meeting with with managers when we're sitting down with them and really getting all the information you know we have a note taker on that in that interview and pulling through some of the pieces that you didn't get to write down fast enough or that you might have missed or overlooked has been really really great and that and also interview interviewing notes as well we have note takers on our interview and interviews now.

18:07So that's really helpful. It definitely speeds up the process and that we don't have to chase hiring managers anymore because we have some notes already in the system.

18:21Katie Cormier: Perfect, perfect. And just on the interview scheduling automation, how does that work? What does that do for you? So there's two options. you can do direct scheduling which is a candidate it can select from um from a calendar so it pulls the calendars of all the interviewers and it finds times that are that are suitable um which is great but sometimes when a human's not looking at that uh it might override a block that someone has had for a reason. So the other option that we use is an availability scheduler. So candidates submit their availability on a calendar and the AI agent on the other side looks at the calendar and suggests slots to us as the recruiters.

19:21And we then make the human decision, oh, actually that person's on lunch at that time. we're not going to book over that uh they need a break or they're actually just coming out of a board meeting at that time and they'll probably need some headspace exactly yeah so we are able to make those decisions then and that's really really helpful great and um i like your rule that

19:43Katie Cormier: every every final stage candidate gets a phone call and and offered offered feedback um you know where did that come come from and why do you think that's so important it's it's just the bare minimum I think it's so basic and I think I'm always really surprised um more so disappointed to hear when companies don't have that as as the foundational rule um I think it should be just a given but it kind of goes back to my earlier days in in recruitment when I was running assessment centers for huge drive um hiring a lot of a lot of the same types of roles at once so we would meet we'd have assessment center days where we'd have two sessions a morning and an afternoon they'd run back to back with maybe you know 30 40 minutes in between to turn it over and um you're dealing with so many different people all day there's no ai there's no nothing and this goes back to you know probably about nearly 10 years ago now and we were actually doing things by pen and paper at that point.

20:51So it was one of those times where you just couldn't hide from the person that's sitting in front of you and you have to make decisions fast. And you also get to see what that decision means to the person. And you don't often get that privilege when you're kind of in the modern recruitment process now because everything is done digitally. and so you don't really get that feeling of you know who this person really is and what it really means to them and seeing that feedback and and that decision being made and I had a couple of times when you know I had to tell someone they didn't get the job on the day and they didn't take it well and and it puts things into perspective of you know we're not just going through a process and you know it's not black and white that these are real people on the other side and they have real feelings and um you know they've probably told their their family you know god i'm so excited about this job that i'm going for and this is my dream job and then they go off and it didn't work out for them um yeah and that's a gut punch i think so always keeping the person in mind and making sure that you have that human connection with them and it's not just a generic can responsive you know unfortunately who decided to go another way by email it's it's it's the least

22:17Katie Cormier: we can do absolutely and it brings it back to what we were chatting about earlier about the employer brand and your reputation and you know how important that is in the market because potentially there there might be a candidate today but potentially they might might be a candidate tomorrow as well or a customer yeah or a customer indeed yeah exactly so okay so look we're we're nearing the end Katie and it's been a great chat so far like what is the biggest challenge you're you're facing at the moment with your current vacancies oh it's probably actually goes back to what you were saying earlier candidates are the the pool that we're looking in at the moment is on the more senior end and that's the end where it is it's competitive and there are some really great companies hiring at the moment and candidates have other offers on the table so when you want really good talent you need to move fast and especially at the moment when you know summertime is a difficult time to hire when you've different people off and coordinating but um yeah I think it's it's moving quickly when you see the right person and um making decisions a little bit quicker I think is is probably the the key thing that we're trying to do at the moment um I think on the other end of it we don't have more junior vacancies but whenever we have had them the volume is just really really significant um so they're they're nearly opposite ends we're more bespoke on the on the senior end where we actively headhunt and we don't rely on inbound almost at all um um but yeah we need to move fast and we meet the right person brilliant well look i think actually that's a great way to finish uh great advice uh for companies in tech space hiring and certainly something that we'd agree with and we'd advocate our clients to do as well.

24:21Katie Cormier: So look, thanks so much for your time today, Katie, and really appreciate it. It's been a great chat and thanks for sharing your insights. And thanks to everyone for listening. Please check us out where you get your podcasts. Thanks Barry for having me.

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