0:01 This past week, I had a chance to attend
0:03 Recrefest here in Nashville, which is a
0:05 conference of recruiting and talent
0:07 acquisition. It's basically a an
0:09 industry event where a bunch of
0:11 recruiters, talent acquisition folks,
0:13 and companies get together and talk
0:15 about where things are heading in the
0:16 market. I like to attend this every year
0:18 to get an idea of how hiring is
0:20 evolving, looking for emerging trends,
0:21 and of course, sharing them directly
0:23 with you so you can stay one step ahead
0:25 of the competition. So, if this kind of
0:26 content interests you, make sure you hit
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0:31 don't miss any future content. So the
0:32 lay of this thing is basically there's a
0:34 bunch of keynote speakers, a bunch of
0:36 breakout rooms and a bunch of vendors.
0:38 So it's like talent acquisition
0:40 companies um a lot of ATS or applicant
0:42 tracking system companies are there a
0:45 lot of emerging technology and then um
0:47 you know some major employers. My
0:48 overall impressions this year versus
0:50 last year is that the that the
0:52 conference attendance actually seemed
0:54 pretty light. A lot of the major
0:56 employers that were there last year like
1:00 Indeed and uh like Greenhouse ATS
1:02 systems, a few few big companies were
1:04 actually not in attendance this year.
1:05 They didn't they didn't have a booth.
1:06 They didn't have any sponsorship or
1:07 anything. So I thought that that was
1:09 really interesting and there there
1:11 seemed to be my guess was probably 30
1:14 maybe even 40% less people than years
1:16 previous. So I don't know if this is an
1:18 indication of companies scaling back on
1:20 hiring activities and really not trying
1:22 to be a big presence in the market. In
1:24 fact, most of the vendors were pretty
1:26 small. A lot of them were startup type
1:28 companies that were trying to solve
1:29 similar things. And I think that that
1:32 was the first major trend that I saw. So
1:35 less people, less overall participation.
1:36 Companies are not sending their people
1:38 to these things as much, which might be
1:41 an indication of corporate spend, but a
1:43 lot of the companies that were there in
1:44 particular, I'm talking about vendors
1:46 and some of the pres presenters, the
1:49 talk of the town was AI. And I'm sure
1:51 that's of no surprise to just about
1:54 anybody. It seems like every single
1:57 product that's coming out now has an AI
1:59 label slapped on it. And the problems
2:01 that they're all trying to solve seem to
2:04 me to be very repetitive and redundant.
2:06 And I didn't see a whole lot of
2:08 innovation. So I don't know if this is
2:11 an indicator, a positive indicator or a
2:13 neutral or a negative indicator. But
2:14 basically what I saw is these vendors
2:16 trying to replace recruiters with AI
2:18 automation, which is kind of an
2:20 interesting target audience because
2:22 they're they're trying to market their
2:24 services to talent acquisition. So more
2:25 and more companies are starting to
2:27 embrace AI as part of their talent
2:29 acquisition strategy. So expect to see
2:32 more outreach done by a robot,
2:35 potentially first round interviews done
2:37 by robots or these, you know, one-way
2:38 interviews. So I think we're going to
2:40 see an increase in that. And then the
2:43 candidate sourcing is increasingly being
2:45 done by AI. Used to not be this way, but
2:48 now they're increasingly doing a lot of
2:49 the sourcing and a lot of unfortunately
2:51 a lot of the ranking. Now there's a
2:54 two-edged sword here with the ranking of
2:56 a candidate in AI. Suppose you have a
2:58 thousand applications. A recruiter is
2:59 not going to make it through all
3:01 thousand applications. They may only get
3:03 through a 100red or 200 of them till
3:05 they find a slate of candidates that
3:06 they like and then they're going to go
3:08 and screen them and then submit the ones
3:10 that they like best to the hiring teams.
3:12 The rest of the candidates are basically
3:14 in a holding pattern until those first
3:15 group of candidates move through their
3:16 process because the recruiters got to go
3:19 move on to other roles.
3:22 What this AI sourcing at least this is
3:23 what these companies are telling us what
3:25 they're promising is that this new
3:27 technology will actively scan all
3:29 applicants. So you'll in theory get seen
3:32 but probably not by human eyes. And then
3:35 they would pre-screen. In some cases
3:36 you'd actually have an interview with
3:38 them. So everybody would get an
3:40 interview which again I don't know if I
3:42 like that or not but nonetheless
3:43 everybody would get an interview and
3:46 then you would get submitted or at least
3:48 put into a certain bucket. So the AI is
3:51 not making a decision per se, but rather
3:53 it's assigning a ranking, a weight, so
3:56 to speak, for you based on what the job
3:57 position is is looking for, what the
3:59 what the company has put out as a as a
4:02 requirement. The recruiters can then
4:03 look at the candidates who are flagged
4:05 as a higher ranking and then that's in
4:06 theory where they would start their
4:09 recruiting efforts. So that's a lot of
4:12 what I heard in the AI space is mainly
4:14 that component. Otherwise, the
4:17 innovation just really wasn't there. I
4:18 didn't see anything that was new and
4:20 earthshattering. In fact, it just seemed
4:22 to be repackaging of the same AI tools
4:23 I've been hearing about for the last 2
4:26 or 3 years. So, I wonder if we're
4:28 hitting kind of a on the bell curve, the
4:30 kind of a peak of the bell curve of AI
4:32 slop and companies just throwing
4:34 everything out, throwing an AI wrapper
4:36 on on on something and then kind of
4:39 having it become irrelevant. And I I
4:42 feel like a lot of the companies, so you
4:44 had you had the vendors who were kind of
4:45 pushing all this stuff, but a lot of the
4:46 companies themselves, the actual
4:49 companies were hiring people, didn't
4:51 really seem to be pushing the AI thing
4:52 as much. And there was some discussion
4:55 around how AI would work in the hiring
4:57 process and whether or not companies
4:59 minded if if candidates used it. And I
5:00 think that that was another big theme
5:03 that came out of this is companies
5:06 aren't necessarily didn't seem like they
5:08 were caring all that much if you used an
5:12 AI generated resume for example so long
5:14 as it was still authentic that you
5:17 weren't just putting in fake information
5:19 spitting out fake information back and
5:21 it wasn't the same as everybody else's
5:23 because that's the one thing that I was
5:27 I learned is that their ability to check
5:29 and track what's going on in their
5:31 applicant pool is actually pretty
5:33 limited. They don't have great detection
5:35 tools. And I actually asked that
5:37 question very specifically. Can you tell
5:41 if a resume is generated by AI or if the
5:44 application is generated by AI? And the
5:46 overall consensus for multiple companies
5:48 that I spoke to and some applicant
5:50 tracking companies is that they actually
5:52 don't have great detection tools to
5:54 date. There are some companies that are
5:56 trying to figure that that out. But when
5:58 I asked them to kind of explain how
6:01 their algorithm looked at résumés and
6:03 determined certain things, suppose you
6:05 applied for a job without using AI, but
6:07 the system still thinks that you did and
6:08 assigned you a certain status or a
6:10 certain rating, maybe a little
6:14 suspicious application profile setting.
6:15 You could likely discriminate. I feel
6:17 like this opens up a lot of a big can of
6:19 worms. And so some of these companies
6:21 hadn't really thought through that very
6:24 well. And I'm I'm curious if larger
6:26 companies will become more sophisticated
6:28 with that and what the potential legal
6:30 implications are. So I wasn't really
6:33 hearing a clear
6:35 guidance from the companies on whether
6:38 or not they use AI detection tools. In
6:40 in fact, I was hearing that there wasn't
6:42 really much that they could do to even
6:44 detect it. Kind of all boiled back to
6:46 the eyeball test. It was very obvious to
6:48 a lot of the hiring managers when
6:50 somebody would use an AI tool to help
6:52 them with their process. And it was
6:54 probably more so around like AI
6:57 interviewing, this uh the roboticness of
6:59 somebody looking off screen. That was
7:00 one of the things that came up. If
7:01 you're looking off screen and reading
7:03 off of prompts and these kind of like
7:05 auto automated AI tools that help you
7:07 with interviewing, that was something
7:09 that was very specifically called out
7:11 and pretty much unanimously if they if
7:13 they they almost always knew when you
7:16 were doing that. And if you would do
7:17 that, you would be immediately
7:19 disqualified. But it didn't seem like
7:21 they had as much an issue with the AI
7:23 generated resume. So, so long as what
7:25 was on the resume was still accurate.
7:27 So, that was good news. Uh, as far as I
7:29 was concerned,
7:30 one of the other things that they were
7:31 having an issue with is company fraud.
7:34 That was kind one of the big big topics
7:36 um on some of the breakout sessions was
7:39 people applying for jobs and they're not
7:41 who they say they are. And a lot of
7:42 times this is going to be around
7:44 immigration so around you know visas
7:46 etc. But a lot of people basically
7:50 gaming the system. So there are some
7:51 companies who are looking more and more
7:54 into detection tools for fraud which is
7:57 not necessarily the same as AI like
7:59 using AI on your on your on your um uh
8:03 applications but rather creating fake
8:05 profiles altogether to defraud
8:06 companies. That's apparently becoming a
8:09 much bigger thing. So that was another
8:13 major push by several corporations to
8:15 try to combat this fraud issue that's
8:16 coming up. I also found there's more and
8:18 more companies moving toward more of an
8:20 emphasis of the soft skills versus
8:24 technical skills in that the technical
8:25 skills can be assessed through an
8:27 assessment process. You know, there's
8:28 there's usually assessment there, but
8:30 really where companies seem to be moving
8:32 is putting more emphasis onto soft
8:36 skills. The good news is about this is
8:38 softskll interviewing is something that
8:40 you can learn and you can master. And so
8:41 when I was listening to them talking
8:44 about the problems and how they're
8:46 approaching it through basically just
8:48 behavior-based interviewing, they're
8:52 starting to become much more focused on
8:54 the soft skills versus the technical
8:55 skills. So I thought that that was a
8:57 positive. But it operates under the
8:59 assumption that you already have the
9:00 technical skills in place. So you may
9:03 expect to have a technical assessment on
9:05 some level, but as you get into speaking
9:08 with humans, you're likely going to be
9:10 really focused on the soft side of
9:11 things. Another big issue that was
9:13 discussed is the aging workforce. And I
9:14 think that this is something that
9:16 companies are struggling to deal with with
9:17 with
9:19 the baby boomer generation is in mass
9:21 moving out of the workplace. And in
9:23 fact, even some Gen Xers are starting to
9:25 re get to retirement age. And there's a
9:27 big bubble of people who are leaving the
9:29 workforce with not as many people
9:32 replacing them. Now, they also this kind
9:33 of this big picture is you're you're
9:35 replacing a lot of these entry-level
9:39 jobs with automation and and AI and
9:42 basically eliminating. So, the the Gen Z
9:44 generation is finding it very difficult
9:47 to get a footing in jobs. At the same
9:49 time, companies are complaining that or
9:52 were worrying about not having enough
9:53 bench strength. So, there are some
9:55 companies out there thinking about this
9:57 problem because we're going to have a
9:59 very real labor shortage. Now, I think
10:01 the labor market is going to look
10:03 different than it did a few years ago. I
10:05 think as automation comes in, and that's
10:06 one of the things that they identified
10:08 with the Gen Z group is that they're
10:11 more quick to use automation and tools.
10:13 But what we're seeing is a mass exodus
10:15 of a bigger generation moving out of the
10:17 market and leaving a void. Now, it's
10:19 going to be really fascinating to see
10:22 how companies manage this if they're
10:23 laying off everybody and they're making
10:25 it so hard to get entry- level jobs
10:27 because there's going to be no bench
10:28 strength. So, I think that's something
10:30 to pay close attention to as we go
10:32 forward. Will we see an increase in the
10:35 number of entry-level positions to start
10:37 building bench strength even though
10:38 these are the exact roles that companies
10:40 are targeting for AI? And one of the
10:42 last themes that I found is that
10:43 companies are starting to look
10:45 increasingly at other ways to source
10:48 candidates and the potential that
10:51 LinkedIn is starting to mature. It's
10:53 it's actually a matured company back in
10:55 2022. It reached its peak of users and
10:56 it seems to be heading in a little bit
10:59 of a directionless future. So look for
11:01 companies to increasingly be sourcing
11:03 candidates outside of LinkedIn. So you
11:04 should start asking yourself that
11:07 question, where can I be found if not on
11:09 LinkedIn? and we'll be talking more
11:11 about that on this channel as well. So,
11:12 these are some of the major trends
11:13 coming out of the talent acquisition
11:15 industry as a whole. And I think if we
11:16 know this, we can use it to our
11:18 advantage to start positioning ourselves
11:21 for tomorrow. Again, I didn't hear any
11:24 major changes. In fact, I felt like last
11:26 year there was a bigger push for AI than
11:28 it is this year. And this year, it seems
11:30 like, I hate to say this, but it seems
11:31 like a lot of the bottom feeders are
11:33 just jumping on the bandwagon with AI,
11:35 slapping AI on the names of their
11:37 products and throwing AI tools in that
11:40 really don't add any bonafide value. And
11:42 I think that that's probably in general
11:43 what we're seeing with the AI market as
11:46 a whole. I wonder if we're we've hit a
11:48 point of inflection and are these AI
11:50 tools as revolutionary as ones promised?
11:51 As of right now, I'm just not seeing it.
11:53 I wonder if we're in a bubble and things
11:55 could change. But I will keep paying
11:57 attention to the market. As always,
