337. How to Hire with A.I. (Without Getting It Wrong) LIVE! With Kate Young and Ben Hawkes

17 Sep 2026 · 1 h 3 min · 32 chapters

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In short

Live panel on hiring with AI “without getting it wrong,” focused on small-business use, where AI helps (job analysis, job ads, interview questions) vs. where it can harm (candidate screening/scoring, bias, legal/data risks).

Guests

  • Kate Young, co-founder of Hiring Science Studio; assessment science since 2004; built hiring processes for FTSE 100 companies and government departments.
  • Ben Hawkes, co-founder of Hiring Science Studio; 25 years leading hiring/assessment transformation at complex global organizations; founder of TapNet (network of 80+ senior Fortune 500 AI leaders).

Key claims

  • Bad hires usually come from rushed decisions and poor processes, not the tool.
  • Don’t confuse CV fluency/polish with capability.
  • Avoid AI making final candidate decisions; use AI to standardize and structure human-led steps.
  • AI detection of AI-written CVs is unreliable; rely on evidence-based selection.
  • Have a candidate AI-use agreement; create an AI policy to prevent “shadow AI” and data/privacy breaches.
  • Be skeptical of “AI picks the best candidate, bias-free” marketing.

Notable examples

  • 6,000+ applications in 3 days for a tech role; candidates using AI to polish CVs and prep answers.
  • AI can generate standardized STAR interview questions and improve job descriptions, but should be reviewed by humans.
  • LLMs won’t say “I don’t know,” so they may invent tie-break reasons between candidates.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

Introducing the Guests and Topic

0:26 to 0:58

Introduction of guests Kate Young and Ben Hawkes and discussion on hiring challenges.

“Does your experience with AI sound a little like this?”

Introducing the Guests and Topic

1:03 to 2:52

Introduction of guests Kate Young and Ben Hawkes and discussion on hiring challenges.

“So a little bit of preamble, then we'll go into our, hey, well, Leah, I think we might be live.”

Understanding Bad Hires

2:58 to 5:30

Discussion on reasons behind bad hires and pressures faced by small businesses.

“My name is Leanne, I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist.”

The Role of AI in Hiring

5:30 to 7:55

Exploring how AI can aid in hiring and potential pitfalls.

“They seem to blame poor quality applications or rush decisions or just the pressure.”

Evaluating AI-Enhanced Applications

7:55 to 10:10

Strategies for distinguishing genuine candidates from AI-generated applications.

“I think that's a lot to do with it and you can't blame small business owners when they are currently probably inundated with CVs because people can now apply for many jobs at scale thanks to AI.”

The Pros and Cons of AI in Applications

10:10 to 12:20

Benefits of AI in CV polishing versus the challenges it presents.

“It's kind of that process and where AI can help and maybe where it can make problems a bit worse or speed them up.”

Policies on AI Usage in Hiring

12:20 to 14:01

Discussion on varying organizational policies regarding AI in applications.

“As I say, there's no easy way of doing it.”

The Challenge of Banning AI in Hiring

14:01 to 15:10

Explore the complexities of banning AI in candidate applications and why it may be impractical.

“You know, if everyone's got a Mercedes, then no one's got a Mercedes.”

Creating an Honesty Contract with Candidates

15:10 to 18:04

Learn about the concept of honesty contracts to manage AI use in hiring processes.

“about being able to perfectly detect and monitor that, it's simply not a good use of time.”

Rethinking CVs in the Age of AI

18:04 to 19:26

Understand how AI impacts the traditional resume and what to screen for instead.

“Yeah, it's not like AI has suddenly rendered CVs useless and broken them.”
Show all 32 chapters

Using AI for Job Analysis and Interview Preparation

19:26 to 21:46

Discover effective ways to utilize AI for job analysis and standardized interview questions.

“Are there any other examples you've seen of business owners using AI in a way that has been effective in a hiring decision?”

Using AI for Job Analysis and Interview Preparation

22:47 to 23:03

Discover effective ways to utilize AI for job analysis and standardized interview questions.

“Yes, I want to tell you about my new favorite podcast.”

Using AI for Job Analysis and Interview Preparation

23:07 to 23:35

Discover effective ways to utilize AI for job analysis and standardized interview questions.

“Yes, it's got shows that are under 30 minutes and I Digress helps eliminate complexity, complications and confusion in your business with frameworks and strategies that achieve scalable and sustainable success.”

AI Tools for Small Business Hiring

23:35 to 28:00

Explore various AI tools and methods for small business hiring and decision-making.

“Let's return to the scheduled programming.”

The Importance of Human Oversight in AI Recruitment

28:00 to 29:32

Understand the necessity of human review in AI-generated content for recruitment.

“we talk about human in the loop a lot with AI, and it's always important to have a human in the loop, having a person who is reviewing the output and the decisions before they go anywhere else.”

Developing AI Policies for Recruitment

29:32 to 31:35

Learn about the risks of using AI in recruitment without proper policies and controls.

“Just one interesting gotcha, if you start to ask LLMs to make decisions between candidates is they're a bit like your overly opinionated relative at dinner party.”

Shadow AI and Data Protection Risks

31:35 to 33:51

Explore the concept of shadow AI and the associated data protection risks in recruitment.

“But AI-based decision-making, there's the potential for legal challenges against that.”

The Ongoing Relevance of CVs

33:51 to 35:38

Discuss the current state and future potential of CVs in the hiring process.

“I think it's Robin Collins, if it's the same question I'm looking at.”

Exploring Creative Solutions in Hiring

35:38 to 37:38

Evaluate the implications of using video interviews and creative solutions in hiring.

“So that's, I think creative solutions, yes, but those creative solutions do have to be grounded in what is it that we're looking for?”

Practical Tips for Using AI in Hiring

37:38 to 41:20

Gain actionable strategies for leveraging AI effectively in the hiring process.

“Ask it to ask you the right questions to do this, or ask it how it can help.”

Understanding AI Data Management in Organizations

41:20 to 42:01

Clarify how data management works with AI tools like Google Workspace.

Understanding AI's Role in Hiring

42:01 to 43:40

Learn how AI can assist in job analysis and the importance of human oversight.

“Yes, my understanding of the Google Workspace contract is that Gemini has the same access to your data as your Google Docs and your spreadsheets and so on and so forth.”

Critical Considerations When Using AI

43:41 to 46:01

Discover key pitfalls to avoid when integrating AI into hiring processes.

“There is a lot, you may have noticed, there is a lot of hype around AI.”

The Value of Human Interaction in Hiring

46:02 to 46:59

Understand the necessity of human judgment in the recruitment process.

“you can't replace the human judgment element.”

Bias in AI vs. Human Bias

47:00 to 49:43

Explore how AI and human biases impact the hiring process and their implications.

“And if we're just putting all of this into LLMs and it's learning from us, then inherently AI is going to be biased.”

Choosing the Right AI Tool for Hiring

49:44 to 51:48

Learn practical tips for selecting AI tools that minimize bias.

“There's loads of reasons for us to be inconsistent.”

Transparency and Expertise in AI Vendors

51:49 to 56:00

Recognize the importance of vendor transparency and expertise in AI tools.

“Yes, so that transparency is really important.”

Optimizing the Hiring Process with AI

56:09 to 57:22

Learn how to streamline interviews and save costs in hiring with AI.

“And there instead they're doing an interview, so you meet the hiring manager, you meet their manager, and then maybe you meet the CEO if it's kind of a 100-person business for argument's sake.”

Key Takeaways for Busy Leaders

57:22 to 58:59

Discover essential tips for effective recruitment from experts.

Defining Job Needs

58:59 to 59:33

Understanding job requirements is crucial for successful hiring.

“especially that£14 ,000 back in the business of a cost of a bad hire?”

The Importance of Being Human

59:33 to 1:00:07

Maintaining human connection in hiring is vital, even with AI tools.

“And for me, ironically, in a discussion about AI, my one thing would be be human.”

Closing Thoughts and Future Episodes

1:00:07 to 1:02:24

A recap of key discussion points and a preview of upcoming episodes.

“I know people listening will want to learn more about you, more about your work.”
Hear the part that matters, and keep it.Open this episode in VO. Double tap your headphones to save a moment as you listen.
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:01Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work. What you're about to hear is from one of our recent LinkedIn lives, a live panel discussion where we dig into the big questions shaping modern work. If you'd like to join us for the next one, just search for Leanne Elliott, that's me, on LinkedIn and hit follow. We announced them there first and we obviously launched them there first. Right, let's go into it after a quick message from our lovely sponsors. Does your experience with AI sound a little like this? You prompt for 20 minutes, the output is polished, is confident, and is completely flipping useless.

0:39Well, that's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business. But you know what does know something about your business? HubSpot. HubSpot's AI. It works with your actual customer data. Every interaction, every signal your team has generated over time. So instead of prompting and hoping, you ask once and ship it. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

1:08So a little bit of preamble, then we'll go into our, hey, well, Leah, I think we might be live. Amazing. We will give it a minute or so for anybody who is able to watch live to join us. If you're not watching this live, comment below, say hello. and then we will not comment in real time because that'll be the future. We can't do that now, but we'll definitely comment. I'd also make sure if you've got any questions that you want to put in the comments, put them in. I will do my best to try and find those questions, but I'm using Restream. I never know where they are. I've got my phone in front of me.

1:41It's not quite sexy technology, but it's effective. So I think it's fine. We usually ask where people are dialing in from. Kate, where are you in the world today?

1:51Kate Young:Oh, I'm in the deeply exciting Guilford in Surrey, Leanne. I can think of no interesting facts about it whatsoever but it's very pleasant we have hills and we have fast line to London so all good where was the UK office based? was that Guildford? which UK office? oh no that was Slough oh harsh no no no wow offended so many people in one comment no one wrote a poem about bombing Guildford either well I tell you what we'll move on and I'll see if I can offend Ben as well. Ben, where are you calling in from? I'm in sunny downtown Shrewsbury. Oh, beautiful. Love Shrewsbury. We have some good friends.

2:35Got married there. Beautiful place. Yeah, I got here about 30 years ago and never saw a reason to leave. So I'm still here. Nice. Brilliant. Well, I can confirm we are live. I can see us on the telly, which is always good news. So welcome everybody to Truth Lies and Work Live. We are the awarding podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture and we of course brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist. My name is Al, I'm a business owner and together we help you to simplify the science of work and create amazing workplace cultures.

3:10So today's episode starts with a bit of an uncomfortable number. The average bad hire costs a small business close to £14 ,000. And when small business owners are asked why it went wrong, most don't blame the tools, they blame rushed decisions or poor quality applications. So the question isn't really, should you use AI to hire? It's whether AI actually fixes that problem, or just makes the same mistakes, probably a little bit faster. Yeah, our first guest is Kate Young, co-founder of the Hiring Science Studio. Kate's been in assessment science since 2004 and has built hiring processes for FTSE.

3:52FTSE. FTSE 100 companies and government departments. High top secret work she cannot talk about. She'll have to kill you. And she's seen this from both the vendor side and the independent side. So, Kate, welcome, welcome.

4:04Kate Young:Thank you very much for having me here today. And joining Kate is Ben Hawkes, also co-founder of the Hiring Science Studio. Ben spent 25 years leading hiring and assessment transformation at very complex global organizations. And he's a founder of TapNet, a network of over 80 senior Fortune 500 ton AI leaders. Ben, great to have you with us. Thank you very much. Good to see you. I feel like we should just get right into it, Al, because I know you've been really looking forward to this one as well, haven't you, my little AI lover? For context, I'm the biggest nerd anyway. And I installed Hermes for the first time about eight weeks ago on a VPN, a VPN, VPS.

4:46And then I moved it to my Mac Mini. And honestly, it's been my best friend ever since. So I am a huge fan of AI, which is also kind of weird because obviously being with Leanne, who's obviously into people and the whole podcast, People and Culture, there's sometimes a little bit of friction there. So it is interesting. But hopefully you two are going to be able to help us solve that friction. Leigh. Yes, I should point out as well that Kate and I, I think if you listen to, Kate has been on the show before we listened to her episode. You will know that we bundled over job analysis. So fair warning, the geek level on this episode is probably going to be very, very high between my level of things like job analysis and our collective appreciation of what AI can maybe help small businesses with.

5:24So strap in. Let's get started. Kate, I want to start with you. When small business owners are asked why bad hires went wrong, why it didn't work out, they don't seem to necessarily blame the tools or the method. They seem to blame poor quality applications or rush decisions or just the pressure. Have you seen that? Does that surprise you in any way?

5:52Kate Young:It doesn't surprise me. I think small business owners are obviously under a lot of pressure to do lots of different jobs. and hiring is one of them. I probably said this on the last podcast because it's one of my favorite kind of soundbites, but I am firmly of the view that hiring for most people is a bit like driving in that we all believe we're above average drivers and most of us, and hiring is the same, most of us believe we're above average hirers. And so I think it's easy when you're running a small business and you're under pressure, perhaps not to kind of question what you're doing, question your process, really think it through critically and operate a little bit more on gut instinct because we do tend to trust ourselves.

6:33Kate Young:We do tend to believe we make good decisions about people. And so perhaps that kind of critical thinking about why it went wrong and what could have been put in process at the start isn't necessarily happening through no fault of small businesses own. I mean, I run a small business and I'm very good at questioning things like tax and accounting because I know nothing about them and I'll sit there and critique it and think it through. But other stuff, I just trust myself. I think hiring is probably like that for a lot of small businesses. And you know you've said when we were having that conversation that AI isn't necessarily a problem for small businesses to use in a hiring process but the bad hiring practice might be.

7:09What type of evidence have you seen of that?

7:13Kate Young:I mean everything is kind of at this stage is anecdotal because I don't think there's a lot of people kind of going out to market and really querying how much small businesses are using for hiring. There's a lot of kind of bigger studies that look at something called, it's called shadow AI. And that describes a phenomenon, rather, when somebody's using an AI tool in any size business, but it's very likely to be happening in small businesses because they haven't got kind of the mandate resources. An AI tool to do something and that AI tool, either the tool hasn't been signed off by the business or the process they're using it for hasn't been signed off by the business.

7:48Kate Young:And again, small businesses are resource constrained um so let's say you're a small business of sort of 50 50 60 people you're their head of hr and you've also got another kind of couple of jobs along the side of that um it's going to be understandably incredibly tempting to start dropping cvs into chat gpt or whatever and going find me the ones with the best change management skills or whatever um it's it's compelling we're time poor um and we all want to get better at our jobs and do that you know so we use the tools available to us unfortunately the minute you do that you've started to run into kind of a whole world of potential pain that kind of starts with data privacy and ends with potential bad decision making over here and ben from your perspective in terms of the implementation as kate was saying you know we didn't have time is often a reason people might use things like like chat gpt is that kind of the root cause of what goes wrong kind of that time pressure or is it a symptom of something else?

8:46I think that's a lot to do with it and you can't blame small business owners when they are currently probably inundated with CVs because people can now apply for many jobs at scale thanks to AI. So business owners are then having to sift through instead of 10 or 20 CVs, possibly 100. So the temptation is obviously there to put those into AI and say, help choose the best candidates. And we can't really blame them for that. Once you understand how AI works with a load of CVs, you might have second thoughts about that. But it's not just that. It's also the longstanding stuff about often we've been hiring on gut feel.

9:26A lot of people do that. Or we use interview techniques, interview questions that aren't as effective as they could be. and regardless of whether ai is in the picture or not the reason we we make bad hires is because yes time pressure but also not knowing how to make good hires in the in the right way and that can involve a mixture of interviews of the right type it could involve some assessments could be some work sample tests the whole range of tools that are available to help make sure you get the right higher and to do that in a timely manner because that is a huge pressure. And that's what I think we'd really like to kind of walk business owners and leaders through today.

10:11It's kind of that process and where AI can help and maybe where it can make problems a bit worse or speed them up. So let's start at the beginning with applications because there's a lot of applications landing in people's inboxes right now. We were talking to somebody who works in big tech yesterday, They had a job live for three days and it got over 6 ,000 applications. And he was saying as well that candidates you can see are using AI to write the CVs, to prep the answers. He's not even convinced that every application is a real person. How do business owners tell that apart anymore from something that's been generated by AI that might be a bot or is a genuine candidate?

10:54Kate Young:Go on, Ben. this is one we're doing it when we're doing a lot of work on i wish i could say there's an easy answer that you could say this cv is definitely ai definitely not um we're in a bit of an arms race with with candidates i don't blame candidates for using ai to improve their application or improve their their cv because the tools are there the tools are available and they they do a good job of polishing that cv it puts then employers in a difficult position because now we've got all these great looking CV saying the right words that are reflecting the wording of the job description. So how do you differentiate between them?

11:33And I think a key thing is to not mistake fluency for capability. So unless the AI is adding fictitious stuff to the CV, it's polishing it, it's making it more fluent, and that can be very attractive. but instead we need to make sure when we're reviewing cbs that we are looking for those things that we've always looked for the right experience the right job history track record the right education qualifications those are very important and when we're reviewing cbs we shouldn't be swayed by this one looks great or really matches a job description they've literally got every keyword in there well there's a reason why they've got every keyword in there it's because So, a lot of it is going back to the basics of looking for what evidence do we need that this person can do the job and it will be their job history.

12:29As I say, there's no easy way of doing it. And you can drop CVs into AI text detection engines, and you might have some success. But as those detection engines get better, then that gets built into the AI that is then generating and refining CVs. And we've been working on that ourselves, that the better the AI gets at detecting, well, we just take those rules and use them to make CVs or fake candidates to see how well those detection methods work. And they don't. I would suggest not overly relying on AI detection, but accept that there's a lot of candidates, perhaps even the majority who are using it, but always go back to the basics of what is it that we're actually looking for?

13:21What skills, knowledge, behaviours does this candidate need to do the job?

13:27Kate Young:it's not all bad news though for small business owners on that front because one of the really positive things about and there are positives about people using ai to polish their cvs is it removes the noise if everybody's cvs polished actually in theory if they're not fabricating it leaves small business owners free to focus on the content of that cv rather than getting distracted about who has the best looking or the most typo free cv so So it's actually kind of removing a source of noise and potentially giving more opportunities to people to present themselves in the best way to small businesses.

14:00That's such a good point as well, because if everyone's got a microphone, then nobody's got a microphone. You know, if everyone's got a Mercedes, then no one's got a Mercedes. So is the solution then to try and ban AI on the candidate side, or is that just a ridiculous route to try and go down?

14:17Kate Young:I think you can no more do that than ban the internet, to be honest. It did sound like a bit of a question that I was going to get shouted at for asking. But do people ban it or try and ban it? They do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all clients have got different approach. All clients, all organizations rather, I mean, have got different approaches. Some will outright say you may not use AI at any point in your application. Some will actively encourage the use of it. Some will say you can use it in part X, but not part Y. I'm talking, to be honest, mainly about larger businesses who tend to already have these policies.

14:54Kate Young:The chance our smaller businesses have thought much, much less about what their candidate AI policy is because they've got 101 other things to think about. And I think any small business owner listening who tries to ban AI in their applications or hiring processes on a hiding to nothing, because unless they know something the rest of us don't about being able to perfectly detect and monitor that, it's simply not a good use of time. But one thing that does help to manage candidates' use of AI is simply putting that up front and having a contract, an agreement with them. And we see many large employers are doing that, and smaller ones can as well, where when a candidate is applying, you're explaining this is how you can use AI in the process, and this is how we don't want you to use the AI.

15:41And the candidates can sign that as an honesty contract. Now, is it 100 % foolproof? Of course not. but it does make clear to candidates because it can be ambiguous it makes it clear to candidates where they can use ai where they where they can't there will always be some who circumvent that and and write rough shot in with their with their with their ai but at least by making it clear and having that commitment from the candidate it does reduce the likelihood of candidates using AI in ways that you don't want. And there's good empirical research to support that. It's not a palacea. It's not the only solution, but it's part of the solution.

16:24Can I ask a question then as a business owner? Part of when I used to recruit, I'd be looking for the good looking resume CVs, the ones that were polished, the ones that were clear, easy to read. I'd be looking for those. Now, as we've said, now everyone's got AI. Everyone's CV can look fantastic. So what should we be screening for?

16:48Kate Young:Depends what job you're hiring for. Fair point. Classic psychologist, it depends. Yeah. Well, I mean, Leanne, in defense, we could take this down the job analysis route at this point, wouldn't we? We could. Well, figure out the job you're hiring for, do your job analysis, break down what are the skills, knowledge and attributes that you need, do that in the most robust way possible, and then hire against that. And that's actually a great potential use of AI for small businesses because one thing it can be genuinely helpful for is bringing together a lot of kind of source material, notes, whatever you've got that tells you how the job is done, including getting it to interview you.

17:28Kate Young:That's a nice way. So you can have your favorite AI say, interview me about this job. Ask me lots of questions about what this person is going to do day to day. And that's a great way of collecting lots of information fast and then potentially distilling out knowledge, skills and abilities. Now, is it going to be perfect? Absolutely not. There are some very well built, robust AI job analysis products out there that have been tested and beaten up and monitored. But if used judiciously with a decent level of human review to help you bring source information together, I think that's a great use of AI to start to think about what am I hiring from.

18:03Kate Young:to answer your original question, Al, which I was paying attention to. I just went around the houses there. Thank you. Thank you. Any thoughts, Ben? Yeah, it's not like AI has suddenly rendered CVs useless and broken them. CVs were always of limited use. Yeah, they're, of course, a very important part of the process, but no one hires on the basis of CV alone. And I think we should bear that in mind. so that when we are selecting people, yes, they might have a good-looking CV, they might tick all the boxes, but then what do you do next? Well, perhaps invite them to take some sort of online assessment.

18:44Now, whether online assessments are immune from AI use, that's a different discussion. But CV is one form of evidence, quite a narrow form of evidence, looking for ways for candidates to demonstrate that evidence, whether it's through interview and it might just be a short phone interview or something more detailed or through online assessment. There's multiple ways to get the candidate to demonstrate those skills outside of purely the CV. As I say, the CV is not suddenly broken. It's always been a bit dodgy. It has always felt like that, just that first indication that somebody could be suitable for the job and everything that comes after it is is kind of the the real um focus of things i i loved what you were saying here about how um chat gbt or claude could actually be really good at helping us kind of condense this analyze information to into a kind of a job analysis type exercise to pick out those kind of knowledge skills and abilities and i and i that seems like a safe place for me for small businesses to use ai in in hiring particularly they don't have any kind of in-house HR or people in culture.

19:59Are there any other examples you've seen of business owners using AI in a way that has been effective in a hiring decision?

20:08Kate Young:It's quite good at interview questions. It knows all the formats. It knows the classic ones we as Oxikes use, Leanne, style, situation, task, action, results. There we go. I can remember them. And if you give it the skills, abilities, competencies you want to measure it will do a good job of coming up with some pretty robust interview questions for you. It'll save you a job, but also because they're there printed in front of you, it means then you're going to use those questions for every candidate. You're not walking in the interview busy after your last meeting going, ah, what am I going to ask?

20:39Kate Young:It's there. You can, you know, standardize it across candidates. And suddenly your hiring process has got a lot more robust and fair with just some quite simple steps. I think it's probably, it's better than me at writing interview questions these days. Definitely one of its shining star cases, I would say, Ben. Yep. And AI is excellent at polishing what you've written, what you drafted. That might be for a job description or a job ad or any materials like that. Kate and I use Grammarly. She's a reluctant adopter of that because it's excellent at taking my just word salad that I can dump in there and say, here, turn this into some paragraphs that make sense.

21:24And that is a handy tool to have. That's a time saver. I'm not getting AI to generate it. I'm getting AI to put my thoughts in order. And that can be useful for if you're drafting job descriptions or, as Kate said, interview questions or ads. And another great way of using the AI is, rather than telling it to do the job analysis, Ask the AI to ask you the right questions. So I want to write a job description for this role. ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, ask me the right questions that you need to gather the information. And then as it's got that information from you, it can then compile that into a document rather than relying on the AI's knowledge of the job.

22:14Get it to act as an expert, as if you've got a fancy HR or recruitment director sat with you asking me the right questions. And AI can do a good job with that. And then the information that it's basing, its draft, job description, or job add-on is information that's come from you. And that's a great way of using it because you're not asking it to make decisions. You're asking it to compile information from you. Welcome to the break. Yes, my favorite part of the show. These two idiots have stopped talking. Yes, I want to tell you about my new favorite podcast. No, that's a lie. It's my old favorite podcast.

22:57I've been on this one for a while. Didn't know where that was going. It is called I Digress. It is hosted by Troy Sandidge and it is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Yes, it's got shows that are under 30 minutes and I Digress helps eliminate complexity, complications and confusion in your business with frameworks and strategies that achieve scalable and sustainable success. At least that's what it says here. And if you do want to hear a really personal story, go to episode 136. This is Troy's honest account of fatherhood, killing hustle culture, and what really matters when you stop performing and start living with intention.

23:32Listen to I Digress wherever you get your podcasts. That concludes the break. Let's return to the scheduled programming. Back to the studio.

Read the full transcript

23:45there's a great by the way if anyone's listening and they're like and a small business and they're like well okay well i might not be able to go off and and find some set experts i've got the budget for that there is a great skill for claude and open ai called grill me by matt pocock i'll put a link in the show notes i use it all the time i invoke the skill and it basically keeps asking questions and it also does in a visual ask question tool things you can tap on things um it is really good so i'm sorry question is somebody who isn't quite as familiar with prompt engineering as you are. I'm not prompt engineering.

24:14I'm sorry, what? What do you mean? What do you tell it? You basically just load the skill up. You load the skill into Clawed. What do you mean load the skill? We don't need to go into that right now. No, but I've made people listening right now. You can go into Clawed desktop app and you can add a skill, which is basically a markdown file. And what this does is it's like a, God, I see Ben looking and both of them looking deep into my soul going, go on now, get yourself out of this one. Really what I wanted to say was there's a great skill. Claude's got it. It can grill you and get all the cool information out of you.

24:47This is why I don't say this. I say too much of these things. Lee, carry on. No, I think it's useful. You could probably just ask Claude as well. Can you explain that to you like how to do it? Can I just say install grill me by Matt Pocock? Sorry. Before we get back to the interview, I do need to say this because I know I'll be upset when we watch this back. Currently on LinkedIn, we're kind of squished in so you can't really see me in you. Aha. Is that something we can... Wow. We can play with the power of my stream deck. Let's see if we can do that. If I can fix that, it'll be 30 seconds. It will be.

25:18It will be. He'll shout at me afterwards if he knew that I knew. So anyway, sorry, Ben, Kate. It feels like from what you've said so far, using Genitive AI could be really useful for helping business owners and leaders with the process. So with the job analysis, with putting a job description together, with creating a clear list of knowledge, skills and abilities, creating standardized interview questions. I guess my next question is where does this benefit start to disappear?

25:53Kate Young:I think we both have the same answer. We could both in unison just say the decision, but I'll try and be a bit more nuanced. There are lots of products on the market that are used by big business, just call them AI hiring products for argument's sake, that will do your scoring and evaluation of an interview, of a CV, perhaps a work sample task. Now, those products, the better ones at least, have been robustly beaten up before they've gone anywhere near candidate data. They've been tested, they're monitored for fairness, they've been put through a whole bunch of studies that nerds like Ben and I will conduct.

26:33Kate Young:And in that case, using AI for scoring your interview or other kind of output can genuinely be a marked improvement if a whole list of conditions are met, which we have in PowerPoint if anyone's interested. However, as a small business owner, you do not have access to all of the many resources that are needed to make sure that AI can robustly score an interview output. I honestly wouldn't put it anywhere near it if you've not got the right framework that you've tested and monitored and beaten up at that point it's over to you it's your job to do the scoring as a human being there's not to say you can't ask it to suggest a format for how you might sort of do your ticking and crossing so you stick to a good process but I wouldn't have it anywhere near the scoring personally Ben yeah absolutely agree with that that it's better to ask the AI how do I select between these candidates than to ask the ai to select between the candidates because then it can give you a process give you some rigor and you make that that decision because as kate says you don't as a small business owner you don't have the benefit as of large organizations where you've had 10 000 100 000 candidates take uh an assessment that has been powered by ai and you've got all this great data to support the decision.

27:51You don't, but use it as a tool to help you make the right decision by it telling you how to do that. The other place that goes wrong is, we talk about human in the loop a lot with AI, and it's always important to have a human in the loop, having a person who is reviewing the output and the decisions before they go anywhere else. the danger is because ai creates content that looks great and is so fluent you might just take that output and go yep that's great and and send it out could be a job advert job description could be an email could be anything you've got to treat ai as a at best a a first draft machine you've got to review what it comes up with not just because it might hallucinate yeah i mean that still happens.

28:44But because you do still need to humanize this, it's getting increasingly the case that people can spot AI writing or AI content. And if someone is sending me something that is completely AI generated, I can see that they've had no role in editing it or reviewing it or condensing it, then that's a big turn off. Because it means that that cognitive effort has now been pushed to me to review this and figure out whether it's worthwhile or not. So always be that human in the loop. Don't just let the AI generate stuff and then you think, yeah, that's fine and send it out.

29:32Kate Young:Just one interesting gotcha, if you start to ask LLMs to make decisions between candidates is they're a bit like your overly opinionated relative at dinner party. They won't say, I don't know. They're literally told not to say, I don't know. The point is to answer your question. So an LLM will force a tie break between two CVs or two near identical candidates, and it will give you a spurious reason for doing so. It's a very good reason to stay away from that. Can I ask a quick question around policies? Because I think there's plenty of data out They're showing that businesses are using AI for recruitment.

30:09I suspect, like myself back in the day, they won't have any kind of policy for it whatsoever. And I know, I'm pretty sure you're going to tell me that that's a big risk, but is it just a, I should have one, or is it really actually going to bite me in the backside?

30:27It is a huge risk for lots of reasons. One is that you need some sort of quality control on how people are using AI and using the outputs of AI, because AI can produce nonsense. And you need to make sure that people are using it in the right way. You want to be able to explain to people how they can use it and how they're not allowed to use it. Lots of bigger organizations have almost like a traffic light model, that it's okay to use it for this. You can use it for this, but be very careful. And there are some things you cannot use it for. And that can be helpful. But the risks are enormous. When you've got two examples, so if you're using it, you're uploading CVs to chat GPT to select candidates, then there's a risk of a legal challenge there that you're having the AI make decisions for you.

31:27I'm not going to get into the details of the EU AI Act, which is coming into force next year. But AI-based decision-making, there's the potential for legal challenges against that. So making sure your employees are not using it in that way is important. The other thing is if you've got people using AI and they're uploading information, employee information, candidate information, Are you sure you know where that's going? Now, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Google, those are probably pretty secure. But what about all these other models that people are using that are hosted who knows where? There's a data protection issue, and no organization wants to see their data ingested by an AI and then suddenly popping up in answers next year because some employee uploaded a bunch of PDFs they shouldn't have done, and that's got ingested into the knowledge base, the corpus of the AI.

32:35Those are just two of the risks. but at the very least having guidance where employees understand what they can and cannot use is is helpful um kate i don't know whether you want to jump in and talk about shadow ai use because i know that's something we've been looking at a lot recently um i mean i think it

32:54Kate Young:probably all comes under the same thing it's if you're going to have an ai policy it's to state what you can use it for but also what tools you can use so typically in in small businesses shadow AI use is going to be people going, oh, I don't like Copilot that I've been told I can use with my Microsoft suite or Gemini if they're Google workspace like us. So get their phone and they start putting things into Claude or whatever. And suddenly, because Claude's not within the organization's licensing and privacy controls, and you've got a case of shadow AI use where you've started to put your hiring data or whatever into a whole external AI and you're in breach of And I think because we've kind of this sort of work-life blurring we all have with our devices, our laptops and our mobiles and so on and so forth, it's really easy to quite innocently start tapping away on an external AI tool with some sensitive hiring data.

33:44Kate Young:And before you know it, you're very much in breach of any policy that might exist. Lee, can we just stop for a quick question we've got here from someone? It just says LinkedIn user. So that's potentially their full name. I think it's Robin Collins, if it's the same question I'm looking at. Are CDs defunct given all the reasons you're just speaking about? What was the name, sorry? Robin Collins. Robin. Okay. Guys, have you got any thoughts on that quickly before we move on? They're not quick thoughts. Fair enough. I did constrain that a little bit. Have you got any thoughts on that? Short answer, no.

34:21Long answer, no. But yes, they are still a useful indicator. They are a document that shows career history, education. But they've always been of limited use. But no, they're not entirely defunct yet.

34:45Kate Young:I spoke to a provider the other day. and if the market goes this way CVs could have a little bit of a renaissance and what they're producing is something that rather than taking kind of a traditional reference it takes the parts of a CV and auto contacts the line managers for verification before then passing that forward to a hiring manager because like I said the biggest issue of CV is it isn't polish if everyone's polished then it's it's irrelevant but it's verifying what's on there so i think if we start to move towards that sort of world with sort of pre-verified cvs they could they could become useful again interesting it's all cyclical isn't it lee yeah i i it it's so interesting isn't it i guess one one thing i'm thinking of some of the the entrepreneurs are so creative aren't they all trying to solution everything i'm i can imagine some business owners thinking well i'll just get people are sending videos then i know it won't be ai um even though you can probably do that now as well can't you somehow i don't know is solutions like that something that is a good thing or is that equally problematic in in other ways ben it's a whole new set of problems but it can be a solution for for some roles i won't get into detail about the video but yes video deep faking essentially is a challenge.

36:10So if we think that CVs have lost a lot of value because they can be polished with AI, wait till you hear about video interviews where you've got some very believable candidates who aren't actually candidates that are AI instead. So that's, I think creative solutions, yes, but those creative solutions do have to be grounded in what is it that we're looking for? We're not looking for, for many roles, we're not looking for audition tapes. We just want what evidence is there that this person can do the job. And that can be very different for different types of jobs. For some of them, you may want to look at the Canada's LinkedIn profiles and read their posts and get into more, see more information there about the projects that they've done.

37:01For others, it might be to prove their skills on some assessment, either remotely or in person. So it very much depends on the job. Now, video interviews are definitely a thing. And I don't think that the majority of candidates are yet AI-powered. But there's a risk there. So video interviews definitely still have their place. And interviews generally, because that gives you a chance then to probe what's on the CV, to ask those questions, to verify it, as well as to get further information. So ironically, it's an old school solution here is just to speak to the person.

37:47can we get onto a little bit of the a little bit of the of the strategies here so i'm guessing like what i'd love to hear is someone's listening to this and going great okay i now need to start using ai properly for hiring what are some not necessarily some simple or quick wins but what can i actually do like do you have like a list of things go off and do these things and things will be better for you

38:15Kate Young:i think you were working through this yesterday ben things things that you can you can do with with ai so you're you're thinking of what what people could do straight away is that what you're yeah it's really it's a bad question it's a badly worded question i think it's a good question it's probably something that i would if i was listening to this i'd be like cool this sounds brilliant but what i'll do tomorrow i need to go and find a new project manager so how do i what do i what's the first one two three four five things i do that's great well sign up for for um jacobt or gemini or claude or microsoft copilot whichever whichever you might um you might have and the simplest thing to do is say to ai hey i'm recruiting for a project manager what you suggest and it should and it probably will set out exactly how you can do that.

39:10Ask it to ask you the right questions to do this, or ask it how it can help. And if you ask it how it will help, it'll give you a list of these things that it can do. And you can say, okay, yeah, let's start off with a job description. How do we do that? And at no point is the AI making decisions or even necessarily drafting stuff for you it's helping you through that process it's giving you clarity about what what you need to do it's acting as a little hr or recruitment advisor in a in a box and so asking what it can do for you is a great place to start and then have it yeah draft the the job description ask it where should i post this job what are some great places to advertise this and the ai is pretty good at doing the research for you and suggesting sites where you might want to advertise this job or post it you want to post that job on on linkedin sure have the have the ai make a draft of that of that job of that job posting and literally all you need to do is okay well here's the here's the job can you write me a job posting for for linkedin and it'll do it it's like magic and then you can review that and um and edit that and then when you've got the you've got these applicants coming in and we know what it's like on linkedin you might have 100 200 applicants you could ask the eye out the ai what's the best way to review these not giving the ai all the cvs but asking it for what's the most efficient way of of of doing this um so it can act as a it can draft content for you, but it can act as an advisor as well.

40:54And that's extremely useful. It's almost like getting just-in-time training that, I need to do this. How do I do it? And the AI is there telling you how to do it. Not always perfect. Absolutely not always perfect. So you do need your own common sense, but it enables you to do things quickly without having to go to the internet and find out how do I write a job description if the AI is right there to to help you and to hold your hand so that's probably the the the one piece of advice I've had is ask the AI to ask you the right questions can I quickly add to that I would say also ask it to be

41:35Kate Young:adversarial because what I observe with small business owners hiring and they do it with busy people best of intent um but i mean quite often they're hiring their own image or they'll think lean lean was brilliant in that role how do i find another lean and they'll sort of fall into these small kind of traps and biases and so asking the ai and you can tell it say act like an occupational psychologist who's got 20 years of experience in assessment and selection and when i say something or go off piste or suggest a criteria that's not in line with best practice tell me um and by giving it that permission and telling it to sort of beat you up a little bit it you will it will catch the most common gotchas not quite like having a real ox psych there of course but it's basically free and it will get some of them okay you mentioned shadow ai i think was the phrase you used wasn't it yep so imagine that i'm a small business and i've got a google workspace paid account and i've got gemini as part of that can i automatically assume that if I upload something to there, it's staying in my organization.

42:39Kate Young:Yes, my understanding of the Google Workspace contract is that Gemini has the same access to your data as your Google Docs and your spreadsheets and so on and so forth. So it is completely gated within your organization. I would urge any listeners to check their own policies, but that is the basis of the Google Workspace agreement. Well, that'd be different if I uploaded it to ChatGPT or Claude because there's no such agreement in place? Yes. I mean, there's different tiers, and Ben knows a little bit more about this, but so with sort of Claude Pro, it mandates your data is not used for training, but there are still certain ways your data can leak back is the wrong term.

43:16Kate Young:So for example, if you give feedback on its outputs, for example, then some of that is passed back. So the absolute safest thing is to do whatever you've got locked within your organization, which is typically going to be Gemini or co-pilot although lots more organizations are getting flawed enterprise licenses now whatever they're called i i really enjoy that i feel like i was i was like making notes as you were both talking that we i kind of feel we've got five things that we're kind of saying to to business owners and leaders go for it and that's in terms of kind of a little job analysis putting together a job description sometimes advertising strategy and what the actual job advert looks like advice around cv screening like how to approach it not do it interview questions and helping you put those together some standardized interview questions and the last one you said Kate was supporting with with avoiding bias and making sure we're kind of adhering to best practice if they're the five things that you're like small businesses crack on go for it good for you have fun is there one or two you're like no absolutely not don't even think about it have it made the decision put any PII personally identifying information into an external AI go on Ben what's the third well I think yeah don't let it make decisions about candidates or or employees is important my my second one would be don't ever let the AI generated content don't never release that without reviewing it you've always got to be that human in the loop and the The third one would be don't believe the hype.

45:10There is a lot, you may have noticed, there is a lot of hype around AI. And if people are making claims about AI systems that can then find the best candidate for you out of a thousand of them and come up with a short list and it's bias-free, well, the old maxim, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. is something to bear in mind. So be wary of the hype around AI. If you're not treating it with enthusiasm and skepticism, then be concerned. That's what you should see from anyone involved in AI. Enthusiasm, but skepticism as well. Love that. Love that. Verify. Trust, but verify. We'll do the way around.

45:59Absolutely. It just feels like it's all summed up by you can't replace the human judgment element. in selection and assessment. Is that fair? I think that's very true. And perhaps the ironic impact of AI is that there's going to be more and more value placed on that human one-to-one interaction because that's the only authentic, genuine thing that we can be sure of. So I think candidates still want to be speaking to a human being. They understand, for the most part, that AI and technology is needed. But what do they value? It's not being selected by AI. What they value is contact with a real human.

46:48And so absolutely, you're right that that human touch is still very much and needs to be part of the process. brilliant um i'm noticing we're having more more people join us now which is is lovely welcome and if you do have a question or comment do leave it in the comments we will we will get to it okay i want to ask you about when i first started hearing about ai being used in in recruitment i remember reading something and i can't remember where but it was something like the concern was because the majority of recruitment selection assessment processes are already biased because there's lots of people not doing things by best practice.

47:28And if we're just putting all of this into LLMs and it's learning from us, then inherently AI is going to be biased. Is that massively oversimplified? Is there any evidence of that? What's happening there?

47:42Kate Young:That is probably an oversimplification, yes. So hiring has always been full of bias, absolutely. You know, we know that certain groups of people have always got the best jobs over the years. And those, you know, typically might be people who identify as white, are privately educated, so on and so forth. Those people enjoy advantages on the jobs market through no fault of their own. We know that there's really well-documented biases in hiring. You know, the affiliation bias when you spot something in someone else that reminds you of them. Same school, same hobby, whatever, same bag. It doesn't matter.

48:20Kate Young:But that triggers a very kind of warm tribal feeling in us and encourages us to make a positive evaluation of that person on a really unconscious level. Now, AI on the face of it doesn't suffer from those biases per se because we've given it a set of criteria and it should, in theory, score against those criteria. But actually, what we're finding more and more is it's got its own different set of biases. So, for example, it does suffer from affiliation bias. So if you have a CV and you've made that CV with ChatGPT and it's being scored by ChatGPT, ChatGPT will prefer the ChatGPT CV over the Claude or the Gemini or the CoPilot CV, which is kind of nuts when you think about it.

49:04Kate Young:But there's quite a well-documented study that found that relatively recently. And the other thing is LLMs typically prefer fluency, polish and people who talk more. and those are the same people who would have been traditionally rewarded in interviews they're more you know they speak better they perhaps speak the queen's english they're grammatically correct they're confident they talk more so we're seeing some of those same biases but manifesting in in really different ways but i guess the hopeful point in all of this is broadly speaking when an ai tool is biased it's biased in a relatively consistent way so humans are quite inconsistent Sometimes we're biased because we're hungry or we're cross or it's the end of the day and we're cognitively overloaded.

49:47Kate Young:There's loads of reasons for us to be inconsistent. If you look at a bunch of data from an AI hiring system, you can generally find and capture that bias and think about what you're going to do with it. Do you adjust your prompts and your guardrails? So my kind of conclusion is if people are on it, if people are monitoring and checking and thinking, then we can kind of grab those biases and code them out over time. But it requires a lot of hard work. And otherwise, we will, as I kind of went through, we'll just sort of encode a different set of biases. Can I ask, which is kind of a follow-on from that?

50:22So now, it might be a bit of a revelation, I think, for some people. It certainly was for me when I first heard you say this, Kate, was that we think AI has got biases, but actually humans have also got biases. So you're going, cool, okay, now I understand that, but how do I actually choose a tool which has got the least amount of bias? How do I, you've said to me all the options I've got here and I'm like, cool, I understand all this, but I just want something practical. Like, tell us a bit about how you choose a tool when you're looking at these ads. You say most things look too good to be true.

50:51Yes, most of them do and most of them are. But what is actually something we can trust as a business owner?

50:59Kate Young:I think as a small business owner, it's hard because realistically, an AI tool that's been properly audited for bias. So that can be an external audit run by an external company if you're looking for a quality sign, or it could be the AI provider themselves has done that analysis to how it performs with different groups, you know, do men and women score equally, and they're willing to share it with you. Typically, as a small business owner, you're unlikely to have the budget to access that kind of robust tool. AI hiring tools are designed to be bought by big businesses. So I think then we come really back to Ben's excellent advice on small businesses and how to use it to take you through a very structured process which doesn't really answer your question but I think that's probably the answer for small businesses.

51:45I think that's a great thing and maybe you can build on this Ben but I'm not sure that many business owners would know that actually there are kind of independent studies happening to check kind of the accuracy reliability bias of these AI tools so if an organization either doesn't have this or isn't willing to share that? Is that a fairly big red flag, Ben? Yes, so that transparency is really important. So if you're speaking to any vendor, if they can explain what's happening under the hood, under the bonnet of their tool, that's great. If they're being very protective, saying, oh, this is patented technology, we can't explain it, or we can't disclose it, then that's a concern.

52:35So if they can't explain how it works to you, there might be various reasons for that, then I'll tend to want to walk away. Another sign is there's a lot of startups out there that have created assessment or HR technology tools in general. and what i'd be looking for from a vendor is what's their what's their pedigree and also who's involved in it if it's a bunch of data scientists no offense to data scientists they'll have a a very competent very analytical tool but without um hr expertise or occupational or industrial organizational psychology then are they sure the right decisions are are being made so in looking at vendors, I'd be looking at who's been involved in building these systems.

53:31What's the track record? Also looking at what are the client list as well to give you some reassurance. I think you can de-risk choosing a new vendor by not picking one that has just launched in the last couple of months. I mean, there's a case to use those sometimes, but to use more established ones with a client list, ones who are willing to provide a technical manual for the assessment, or even know what a technical manual needs to include from an occupational psychologist point of view. Those are the things I'd be looking for, is their willingness to be open, their ability to explain what's happening, and they're not talking about AI mumbo-jumbo, but instead are understanding what their product does and understanding the need of you as a potential client to ask those questions.

54:32Kate Young:And if you do get your hands on a technical manual, if it's really, really boring with pages and pages of numbers, it's probably good. A technical manual doesn't have pretty pictures in it and nice stories about it and photos of happy users. It's got pages of stats in it. quick quick service evaluation and i think that's actually good advice for for a business leader choosing any kind of of tool or intervention whether it be around employee engagement or well-being or or recruitment yeah people should be transparent about the process and the science and the data that sits sits behind you have beef with with some very large organizations in the engagement world but that's just me one thing i will say sorry just one thing i will say is that the ai and selecting products selecting vendors is very very complicated um and it's okay to as a small business owner to ask for help from a peer or someone you know who does understand it because this is extremely complicated i wouldn't expect most people to be able to ask the right questions of vendors and if that's the case try and find someone who can help you do that not doing it on your on your own there is a lot of good expertise out there and probably friends colleagues will have some of that that expertise so yeah use lean on others and use their expertise okay ben let's think about like business is tough as it is your small business so is this something that we are as business owners generally spending money on in the recruitment process that we could stop spending money on and start diverting that money to some kind of ai solution i put you properly on the spot the biggest um source of wasted money i see in hiring processes is endless interviews so typically a small business hasn't bought a psychometric or they've one of the ones that shall not be named.

56:39Kate Young:And there instead they're doing an interview, so you meet the hiring manager, you meet their manager, and then maybe you meet the CEO if it's kind of a 100-person business for argument's sake. And an interview is expensive. It's expensive. You're taking someone out of their day job to meet someone, evaluate. Maybe you're doing 10 interviews per role, and it's literally the time is money piece. So instead, the solution there, rather than doing multiple interviews that probably aren't really adding much, is to make sure you're doing one or two that are really good in the first place. And the way to make them really good is that job analysis, that structured process, and to follow the principles from the off.

57:15Kate Young:And then when you make that repeatable, you make that habit in your small business, you've genuinely got an efficient hiring process. Nice. Any other thoughts? I don't have much to add to that because, yeah, that interview cycle, I've seen companies that have put candidates through over a dozen interviews for a role and you've you've got to have some diminishing returns after interview five or six side of thought so use the ai to help you plan that interview sonical what should you be asking for at this interview or or that interview and given the job description the ai will will help you come up with it with an efficient process so give a line on interviews and just spending it's it's you want to be respectful of the candidate's time as well so you want to make it efficient you want every part of that contact you have with the candidate to be useful as as optimal as as possible so you owe it to the candidate and for your for your own time to to make that process efficient and hey i can help you do that not by taking over the process by helping you plan it this is great this is great lee we're getting to the top of the hour is there any other question you think one last question needs to be asked i think you've given so many grateful hints and tips genuinely brilliant advice for for people listening so i i guess my question is if there is just one thing you wanted a really rushed busy under pressure leader business owner listening just one takeaway you wanted them to to really cling to to to make hiring or recruitment better for everybody, especially that£14 ,000 back in the business of a cost of a bad hire?

59:03What's the one tip that would kind of be your go-to? Kate, can I start with you?

59:10Kate Young:This is going to sound really basic and repetitive. So I have terrible hedging languages, which, by the way, LLMs hate. Don't put hedging language if you're applying, hate it. But I think it's defining what you actually need the person to do in the job because it's the part that gets skipped most often in small businesses because people think they instinctively know and they truly, truly don't. Beautiful. Ben? And for me, ironically, in a discussion about AI, my one thing would be be human. And that means being the person who reviews the AI draft and make sure that it's what you want, not what the AI is generating.

59:50Be human in the sense of having contact with candidates because they value that as well. So to not lose sight, despite all these shiny things and the bells and whistles AI give us, that, yeah, simply to be human. Amazing. Thank you both so much. I know people listening will want to learn more about you, more about your work. Where's the best place for them to go?

1:00:16Kate Young:www.thehiringsciencestudio.com or either of our LinkedIn's or the Hiring Science Studio page. And do please go ahead, add us, reach out. We talk to small businesses and AI startups all the time. We always learn something from you. Brilliant. Thank you. Well, if you're watching back on LinkedIn, obviously you'll see Kate and Ben tagged in the event. If you are listening on the regular audio podcast, all the links will be in the show notes. Kate, Ben, thank you so much. It's been genuinely really, really interesting and helpful. If people do have questions afterwards, as Kate said, they're happy to be contacted.

1:00:52did you can leave a comment um on spotify if that's where you listen to podcasts you can leave it on the linkedin event or you can also access their profiles and and get in touch directly al any final thoughts before we we leave these lovely lovely people no i really enjoyed this i'm i'm a massive fan of ai as you know but also it's really interesting because the end balances me out and goes have you thought about this side of it and you've just given me another thing to think about and i did love the fact that both of you went yeah human in the loop and that seemed to be the most important four words you said over the whole thing was just don't don't just get clawed vibe code vibe code you're at your pretty you're at your hiring just gets you know keep a human in the loop so that was great so thank you so so much for your time thank you very much amazing everyone thank you so so much we will be back next tuesday with another occupational psychologist we can't get enough of them we're back with nicole williams she'll be joining us um on our on our news roundup and leading our Truth or Lies to look out for that and our Thursday episodes continue with incredible guests.

1:01:56We've got such a great lineup. Al and I actually sat this morning and worked out our entire schedule through till January the 7th. That's how committed we are to bring you great stuff. So do definitely subscribe. Follow Truth or Lies and Work on Instagram. Come find us on Instagram. You can actually. You can. I don't promote that very much. And I'm on LinkedIn. I might get like shadow banned on LinkedIn now. I'm actually the competitor. But anyway, yeah, follow, subscribe. we love it when you get in touch as well so yeah I think that's it we'll see you next week see you later bye bye

1:02:28that's it for this one thank you so much for listening if you would like to connect with any of our panelists you'll find all of their details in the show notes if you'd like to be a future guest on one of our LinkedIn lives we would love to hear from you drop us an email at podcast at truthliesandwork.com and if you enjoyed this please do leave us a review it genuinely helps more people find the show see you soon

From the publisher

A bad hire costs a small business close to £14,000. Yet when recruitment goes wrong, business owners rarely blame technology. Instead, they blame rushed decisions, poor judgement, and a sudden flood of generic, AI-generated applications.

So, does A.I. actually improve recruitment, or does it just make the same hiring mistakes faster?

In this LIVE Thursday episode, hosts Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott sit down with assessment science experts Kate Young and Ben Hawkes, co-founders of The Hiring Science Studio. Together, they break down how small businesses can safely navigate AI in hiring, spot hidden algorithmic bias, and protect their bottom line.

What We Cover

The Real Cost of Bad Hires
Why small business owners rush interviews and end up paying the ultimate financial price.

The AI Application Flood
How candidates use ChatGPT to polish CVs, and what business owners should actually screen for instead.

Where AI Earns Its Place
Sensible, low-risk uses of AI that save time without sacrificing human quality.

5 To-Dos & 3 To-Never-Dos
The ultimate rules for using AI in small business recruitment.

Auditing Your Process
How to perform a quick, realistic check on your existing hiring tools without needing an expensive compliance team.

Guests

Kate Young
Co-founder of The Hiring Science Studio. Former Head of People Science at Sapia.ai, with over 20 years of experience designing hiring processes for FTSE 100 companies and UK government departments.
Website: https://www.thehiringsciencestudio.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-young-1359483/

Ben Hawkes
Co-founder of The Hiring Science Studio and founder of TAPnet. Expert in recruitment governance and transforming global talent assessment.
Website: https://www.thehiringsciencestudio.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benhawkes/

Connect with Al & Leanne

– LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/truthlieswork

– Al Elliott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thisisalelliott

– Leanne Elliott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meetleanne

– Email: hello@truthliesandwork.com

– Book a call: https://savvycal.com/meetleanne/chat

Mental health support

UK & ROI — Samaritans Call 116 123 or visit https://www.samaritans.org

UK — Mind Call 0300 123 3393 or visit https://www.mind.org.uk

US — Suicide & Crisis Lifeline Call or text 988 or visit https://988lifeline.org

Australia — Lifeline Call 13 11 14 or visit https://www.lifeline.org.au

Global helplines

https://findahelpline.com

More from Truth, Lies and Work

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337. How to Hire with A.I. (Without Getting It Wrong) LIVE! With Kate Young and Ben HawkesTruth, Lies and Work · 1 h 3 min
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