EP 49: AI in Recruiting - How Does It Work?

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Can you use AI to actually find a better job? That's one of the things that we're going to be talking about today on Everyday AI. Jordan I'm Jordan Wilson. I'm your host and we talk about everything in the world of AI here on this show. So helping you stay up to date everyday people to learn and leverage AI, there's always so much going on and you can spend countless hours a day trying to keep up with what's going on in the AI world and how it affects your job and your career, or you can spend a couple minutes with everyday AI. So before we talk about using AI in as, how recruiters are doing it and how job seekers can also use AI, let's first talk about what's going on in the world that's impacting your job, your career. So let's talk about it. So couple news pieces today. Runway just announced that they raised $141 million. So Runway, I think, is a huge company that not a lot of people are talking about. So when you think of generative AI, most people think of companies like OpenAI and ChatGPT or Google Bard or maybe image generators like Mid Journey or Dolly. But I think Runway is an underdog and I think that they're a powerhouse. So they are a generative AI for multiple media sources, but mainly video and creating movement in your images. It's a great tool that we're going to share about more in the newsletter. Next piece of news. Microsoft unveiled that it is releasing its first professional certificate for generative AI skills. So it's doing so via LinkedIn. So make sure that you check that one out in the newsletter if you are looking to get a professional certification for generative AI. Third, third piece of news before we talk about AI and recruiting. So there is a draft, the draft EU legislation kind of putting down the rules over how Europe is going to use generative AI. It's this close to passing. But now a lot of executives are starting to warn politicians and saying that it could hurt, it could hurt the European Union. So that's something I've always said, you know, at least here in the US I don't think that we're going to have rules as strict as the EU is and how they are trying to at least police, you know, the use of generative AI and, and what it can and can't be used for. So it's going to be interesting to see how this EU first kind of rule over AI rolls out and how it's going to affect other countries and how they look at AI and how they even govern AI. So that's it. If you want to check out more news and we do this every single weekday. Make sure you go to your everydayai.com Sign up for the free daily newsletter. We put a ton of work into it so you don't to be confused about what's going on in the world of AI and how it affects you. We do all of that work for you. So now I'm extremely excited. I don't think we've had a recruiter on the show yet. So this should hopefully be a treat whether you're a recruiter out there or you're a job seeker. So let me bring on to the show our guest for today we have Kyle Stock, who is a recruiter at Ozynga. Kyle, thank you for joining the show.

Jordan, thanks so much for having me. So super excited to be here.

Let's go. All right. We already have a couple of questions. So as a reminder, you know, we do this as a live stream, also as a podcast. So if you're listening on the podcast later, make sure to join us live 7:30am Central Standard Time and ask some questions. So we already have hello from Dallas, Nancy Hall, I believe your, your co worker, Kyle. Hello from Chicago. Hello. Long time no see. Great to have you back on the show. So if you do have a question, thank you. Feel free to drop it on at any time. Whether it's, you know, how recruiters can be using AI or just tips for job seekers, make sure to just go ahead and throw that comment in for Kyle. So let's talk about it right now. So before we even put on Kyle, our AI hat, let's just first talk about just the current landscape of, you know, jobs in general. Right. I think people are, you know, worried about AI and how it might impact their jobs. But even outside of that, there's obviously been a lot of layoffs going on across the country. Before we again talk about AI, what would your advice be to people maybe who have been hit with a layoff or they just really can't find that next job.

Yeah, you know, Jordan, the. So the landscape, you know, from my perspective is super, super interesting. So we have this, you know, this, this, I guess, phenomena going on where we have all these layoffs in certain industries, but we still seem to be at an employment or I would say in employee shortage, trying to find work as a recruiter, trying to find people to come and work for our company. And so yeah, my advice would be to a lot of these people that have been laid off is kind of just stay the course. We at Ozynga, hit me up. We're looking for people. But you know, in all seriousness, I would say stay the course. You know, attend any webinars you can in terms of, you know, interview prep and things like that. Grow your network as much as possible. I'm someone who is still fairly young in their career and I never really understood the power of a network until I began my career, kind of my corporate career. And it really is kind of this, this amazing tool that, that people can really use. So yeah, I would really say stay the course, expand your network, Things will come. And yes, that's really all I have.

That's great. That's great advice just for any job seekers, whether, you know, you've been recently laid off trying to get your first job or your next job. Great advice there, Kyle. So, you know, you, you mentioned something outside of your network. You said there's amazing tools out there. So one amazing is AI. You know, there's generative AI that can help people. So before we talk about it on the job seeker side, how do you see, you know, just the recruiting industry using these generative AI tools, you know, like, you know, text to image, kind of like what we were talking about. Or, you know, probably more prominently, you know, tools like Google Bard or Chat GPT. How can recruiters use those to even improve their performance?

Yeah, so, man, there are just, I mean, kind of, like I said, so many tools out there, I'm still discovering new ones every day. In, in, you know, disclaimer. I am by no means, you know, an AI genius or savant. I am just someone who really likes to kind of see what the computer can come up with. So, but anyways, you know, I think recruiters will, will definitely be using AI in the way that kind of, we're using it right now. So, you know, we're using it to kind of create cold, cold emails. And for those of you that don't know what it is, a cold email is, you know, if we're going after a passive candidate, someone who's not, you know, necessarily looking for a job, we can use Bard or ChatGPT to kind of create this, this message, you know, that would really be written in any tone that we want and it can be written in the style of the recruiter. And it seems to have really great benefits. We use it for text campaigns. I've used it for LinkedIn posts. I see Rex Jamison is commenting. I've tried to get some LinkedIn posts past him, but he knows they're written by AI. But we definitely use it for a lot of different things. Kind of what I mentioned to Jordan earlier is just I think that this could really kind of grant talent teams and HR in general, a more strategic way of thinking and way of operating. So kind of this thought of where are we going instead of where are we at now? So just kind of being part of the future and kind of going that way with AI, I think recruiters will find it very useful. Whether you're a recruiter at a recruitment agency or a corporate recruiter for a company, whatever. I think that AI and generative. Generative AI in specific could really get rid of some monotonous tasks for you.

So. Yeah, yeah. And speaking of that, because, you know, Kyle, you just talked about a variety of ways that, that recruiters can use, you know, generative AI to improve in their workflow. But maybe what's the one most impactful way that you've used generative AI to help in your workflow? And maybe if you can just briefly talk about what that process is like without the AI and then how much improved or how much different it is with it.

Sure, yeah. So I would say the biggest impact I've seen that we've used even on our team would be so we have these, these fairly large job descriptions at Ozynga. You know, it's, it's, it's a thing that, you know, legal department needs and our HR compliance team needs. But we feel that, you know, the candidate doesn't really need to see that until maybe they're hired. So we, we feel that what they're seeing on a job posting should be a, you know, more of a job advertisement. So really what, what we've been doing is taking these long, you know, job descriptions and throwing them into a generative AI, whether it's chat, GPT or Bard. I prefer Bard, but anyways, so we, we throw it in there. And depending on the role, I usually say, you know, to the AI, give me a fun job description that's pretty concise. And then I, I kind of leave it general like that at first to see what it comes up with. And then it's really kind of this give and take between the AI. It's, it's. I'm, man, I'm, I'm, I'm hesitant to say it's an art form, but it's really like this, this working with the AI to kind of whittle it down. So recruiters out there, this is not a tool where you can just hit enter and then copy and paste what it gives you. There was a webinar I attended to in March and the guy said if you put crap in, you're going to get crap out. So you have to know what you're putting in. You have to talk with the AI and kind of whittle it down to your desired response. And so without AI, what, what we would do is really, you know, kind of just use our creativeness and try to come up with a, a job ad that, I mean, in, in transparency, it's, it's pretty comparable to AI. It just took, you know, more time. You know, I would be running it by, you know, my manager and then running it by our VP and then making all these changes and, you know, things like that. Whereas now it's. It's pretty much AI does it? Yeah, we make sure everybody on the team likes it and we post it. Yeah.

Geez. Speaking.

Speaking.

Everyone on the team, Ozynga is showing up strong today. So a couple comments I want to throw up here. You know, Nancy saying great to see Ozynga recru having this important conversation. Lauren, thank you for your comment. Ozinga represents. You mentioned Rex here. Yeah, network. He's saying yes, network as much as possible. Renee, thank you for the comment. Just saying Kyle's giving some great concrete advice. Another comment, Nancy saying learning Jordan's PPP approach is a game changer. Thank you, Nancy. Yeah. If, if you want more info, just drop a ppp. I'll send it to you. So let's, let's talk this. That was a lot of questions, comments. I just wanted to make sure we got those on the screen. So one thing that's really interesting, Kyle, is I think some people think of using AI as a robotic process. Right. But one thing I noticed that you said is you're putting in something and saying, make this more creative, you know, so have you seen maybe results that you weren't expecting when you were using AI? Is it almost making it, you know, more like job descriptions for, for you or for Ozynga, more relatable, more personable. And the same thing with the cold email. Right? Like more personalized. So are you actually getting those kind of results out of it?

Yeah, yeah, you know, I, I am. And you know, it's funny you mentioned that there's this kind of robotic aspect that people think that it is. So yeah, I guess to kind of put a long story short, so last week we had our kind of our big HR department meeting and you know, I had the opportunity to present to the HR department about AI and so I played a little game with them. I said, is it AI or is it Akai being me? And there was, there was a cold email on there and they kind of had to decipher was it AI or was it me? And everybody pretty much thought that it was me just given the, maybe the warmness and the human touch. But it really was, it was written by Bard. And so just being surprised at, you know, even without me kind of coaching AI and saying here's some of my writing and write a, you know, write a cold email in my style, it's still able to kind of have this human humanness, this, this human nature. Not to scare anybody, robots aren't taking over. But you know, it, it is, it is super interesting, super surprising that I can fool, I, I can fool some people.

So man, I love. Yeah, if you're doing it correctly, you, you, I, I tell people this all the time. I teach people this. Yes, you can have, you know, these different, you know, GPT powered or bar. Right. Just like you. Question here from Scott. So, you know, how are small businesses using AI to find job seekers? So in this case, you know, we'll say, you know, more in a corporate recruiting role, you know. So Kyle, you talked about kind of on the outreach side and the job posting, but maybe how do you use it past that or you know, in the process once maybe you've identified people.

Yeah, yeah, so, so even with that, you know, if we identify people, like I said, text campaigns are huge. If we've identified, I don't know, let's say kind of this, this candidate pool of maybe three candidates, you know, we'll send them a text campaign, you know, kind of just asking them some questions or, or even just using it for the monotonous task of setting up interviews. And then really, really from there it kind of takes on a, you know, a more human approach. We, we kind of handle it from there, you know, in, in terms of, of really kind of moving forward with candidates. I would not say that we use AI. I, I personally, I don't know if it's a hot take, but this is kind of where the, the human touch I, I think needs to come in. You know, I think this is where we should not use AI. So up to this point, let's say we have a candidate that's being scheduled for an interview. We've used AI to recruit them. We've used AI to even maybe screen their resume and see if they're a fit for the job. This is kind of where the, the human connection comes in. So as a recruiter, you know, it's, it's, it's my job to really hone in on the character and, and kind of who this person is. The resume is all good, but you know, at the end of the day, this is like a real human being. It's, they're not a piece of paper. Will they fit for our company? I think humans will always need to be able to make that decision rather than AI. That's, I mean, so at Ozynga we have this really unique culture and I think it's because of this human deduction of, you know, really choosing their candidates or their new hires rather than that AI. And you know, personally, I don't, I don't see that part ever going away.

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Yeah, yeah, I, I love how, you know, you're talking about the unique culture at Ozynga. You know, you have great, like, even, even in here, you know, you have great team support. And I also have to throw out something random. Ozynga has the best swag around. So shout out to Ozynga's marketing department. You know, one of my friends is always showing, you know, all these, because he's in the industry, all these cool things that Ozynga sends out. So yes, Nancy just, just left a comment writing A job ad on her own, 30 minutes. Chat GBT 5 minutes. Great. Simple way to show the power of it. So we have a former guest here, Peter. Shout out Peter, long question, but saying in a similar, in a similar vein of cold emails by recruiters, do you think that people, so now talking job seekers will begin to use AI to apply jobs, to streamline their time so they don't have to sit there and, you know, customize resumes and cover letters? So, yeah, we haven't even started to dig into that. But what's your take on Peter's question there?

Yeah, yeah, Peter, thanks for the question, man. So, yeah, I really do think that people will begin if they're not doing it already. You know, there are just loads and loads of AI platforms out there that people don't even know about that are, you know, creating resumes that are, you know, just submitting them to jobs that, you know, and, and I think that that's kind of the essence of Peter's question. So, long story short, Peter, yes, I do think people will begin to use AI in the last sentence. You would imagine it will make a, you know, a software that we use. So I'm super happy you brought that up, Peter. So we, we currently don't use one, but there are companies out there that do in kind of a current event, you know, New York kind of just banned or actually it's going into effect next week. New York will not allow companies to use this software to kind of screen these resumes. And so it's, it's, it's super interesting kind of what's going on in the, in the legal world with this or I should say the political world. But yeah, absolutely, yeah.

One, one other thing because, you know, I did want to kind of open the show on this, so I did want to talk to it. So, you know, from, from your perspective as a recruiter, you know, you just kind of touched this. Scratch the surface with, with Peter's question. But how, on the flip side, you know, maybe aside from just, you know, using ChatGPT, because I think, you know, most are barred. Because I think most job seekers, you know, are probably already doing that to maybe improve their resume. But maybe what are some other ways that job seekers, you know, can, can. Can use AI to get their foot in the door. So, you know, what are some of those kind of secrets maybe from a recruiter that you can share with job seekers?

Yeah, yeah. So this, you know, so to everybody, this is, this is like top secret. This does not leave this room.

We're definitely not streaming this live. You know.

So, so as a recruiter, we use something called programmatic advertising. And so this is a form of AI that we use to come at job seekers wherever they may be kind of living on the Internet. So, and, and so, yeah, I mean, like I said before, it is AI so the AI kind of comes in to the budget, so I'm not going to get into that and, and kind of where the most, the most responses are. But as a job seeker, I would really, really encourage you. If you're, you know, if you're on a, if you're on Amazon or if you're on another website, any website, and you see an ad for a company that's saying we're hiring, that is because the recruiters have placed that ad there to try to get you to, to click on it. So if you really are hurting for work or even if you're just open to other employment, go ahead and click on those ads, explore kind of what they have. So it's really not AI per se, but it's kind of, it's kind of this, this trade secret, you know, that, that I want, you know, people usually see ads and they don't want to click on them and whatever, so I would really encourage you to click on it because those are there for you. Yeah, you know, we're trying to recruit you, so definitely click on it.

That's, that's a great, that's a great, a great, you know, insight there. Kyle. What, what, what other pieces of advice maybe for job seekers using AI so maybe even you have a great way that, you know, because it will probably make your job easier to get, you know, more tailored resumes and cover letters. But maybe what are some other pieces of advice you have for job seekers, you know, using AI to get their foot in the door with, with a recruiter.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, obviously the way we use AI with cold emails, you can use the same. I cannot tell you how many times, you know, we've hired candidates, or I should say we, we've hired co workers at Ozinga just because they just happen to reach out to a recruiter that still goes a really long way. And you know, if you don't know what to write, you don't know kind of how to open it up or whatever. You know, use, use AI. But again, you know, don't, don't just hit enter and then copy and paste what the response is. Make sure, read it through, make sure that it is the desired response. And you know, I'm as, as, as big as AI is and as big as AI can be, I think, you know, I, I still, this, this, this human connection, this human, this humanness of just reaching out and just kind of appealing to human nature, you know. Hey, hey Kyle. You know, I'm looking for work. Do you guys have anything open that goes such a long way? And if you're doing that to a bunch of recruiters, use AI to kind of write your email in any way or even text or even, even a phone call script. If you're not the best, you know, public speaker or talking to new people makes you nervous. AI can write you a script so you have something to go off of when you're talking to a recruiter.

Yeah, that's great. And I think even to that point, Kyle, is people just using it to improve. So maybe getting your original. Get you as a human out there, get it in and have AI to improve it. I don't think we have any other questions that we've gotten to, but I do have one more for you, Kyle, that maybe we can end the show on. And thank you again for all the comments. Renee. Just saying such great advice for job seekers. Nancy, again, if AI helps recruiters find the right candidates faster and better, it's a win, win for everyone. Agree. Leah, thank you for your comment. So thank you to everyone who's, who's tuned in. But maybe, maybe let's, let's end here, Kyle. So obviously both parties, you know, recruiters, there's great use cases for AI. You know, we talked a little bit, job seekers, you know, how they can use it, you know, moving forward. How do you see this playing out on both sides? Because I think at Ozynga, I think you guys are actually, you know, ahead of most other, you know, companies and how you're using it. So you know, maybe if you can give kind of both sides advice on how, you know, we can still use AI to get better results, but to still keep that human element. What's, what's that one big takeaway that you have?

Yeah, so, so the one big takeaway I, I would have would be, well, most importantly, I would say don't shy away from, from AI. This is something that's, that's kind of here to stay. I read an article the other day that's. Oh hey, that's actually my wife. Thanks, Jen. I read an article the other day, you know, that said that this is as, this is as important to kind of the world as kind of the Internet was. So this is as big of a For lack of a better term kind of production that is coming out. So I would say don't shy away from, from using it if you're, if you're afraid to use it, I would say, you know, learn, take classes. LinkedIn learning is great for that. There's so many webinars, Jordan is such a great resource when it comes to this. And you know, I would say probably as it goes down the line, you know, companies are probably still going to use it for, you know, screening resumes. Candidates are still going to be using it to create resumes. And so as, as a recruiter, I kind of still stand by my, my words of it is great that you can, you know, have a, you know, an AI, generative AI to create your resume. But still, you know, I, I'm looking for that, that person with, with great character that really likes to, that, that really loves people that really loves their work in that, you know, that is just something that I cannot get rid of. No matter how hard people try, AI cannot feel. So, you know, we're still after that person that, you know, is, is just, you know, this person of kind of utmost character. And I know that there are so many people out there and again, you know, in terms of the layoffs in, you know, people looking for jobs, I would say, you know, in addition to stay the course that, you know, use, use AI to your benefit. Like I said, write a resume if you want to. I mean even you see as a recruiter some of these people that use indeed to make their resumes, that's, you know, that's a form of AI. You put in your information, indeed spits out a resume and then, you know, then it's done. And so yeah, that, that's really, that's really all I got. Jordan.

It's no, that, that was so much. I think you just hit on so many different valuable aspects, you know, all across the board from people in hr recruiting, talent acquisition to, to job seekers and people just even trying to network. I think you had so many great, you know, tangible takeaways for people on how to use AI. So Kyle, thank you so much for joining the Everyday AI show. You just were wealth of resources for people out there. Thank you.

Thanks Jordan, I appreciate it.

All right, so if you weren't able to type notes fast enough and weren't recording us in AI and having us summarize it, don't worry. We are going to recap and share some of the highlights of the conversation today and more about Ozynga as well. So make sure you go to your everyday AI.com Sign up for our daily newsletter Again. We do this Monday through Friday podcast live stream. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time on Everyday AI. Thank you.

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