Jim Schnyder Live on Shally's Alley

Oh my God, well, happy Friday! You are live on Shally's Alley. And hey, is today Good Friday?

It is, it's a good day.

Uh, it's a Good Friday and it's Good Friday, so happy Friday, happy Good Friday to y'all. Uh, I'm, I'm from the South, so we say y'all here all the time.

Y'all, I'm in. Yeah, I'm I'm in Texas, so I guess, yeah, same thing. I say y'all every—

sweet tea.

Yeah, that's right. I gotta have the sweet tea.

That's right. So excited for this episode. This is something I've been waiting to do for a while. Um, for, for a bit of color, my guest today, our guest today, your guest today on Shelly's Alley is none other than Jim Schneider, correctly spelled with the last name. Apparently I messed up his— I typed up his, his last name incorrectly before, but here we have him. I'm sure you know who he is, but in case you don't, he's been around the sourcing industry and speaking circuit for a while. You've probably seen his talks at different places like SourceCon and ERE and so on. But a little bit of a story between Jim and I. So Jim's history, he goes way back to, I think it was like Dell or something? No, actually, you were an MRI recruiter, weren't you?

I was, yeah. Management— good memory, man. Yeah, man.

Yeah, you were an MRI recruiter like way back in— I'm not gonna say the date, but then, um, you went into Dell, uh, Perot Systems. Yeah, yeah, Perot Systems at the time, right?

Because I worked for, I worked for Ross Perot and used to give, uh, I used to give tours of his, you know, like office and museum. Yeah.

So, oh, nice, nice. Yeah. Yeah, so I didn't know you back then, but this was like in the late '90s, um, and eventually you ended up at, uh, you ended up at a small company that makes, uh, beverages and snacks. I, I can't remember what it was called.

Yeah, a small, small company that, that has, you know, some small brands.

It's got like a blue logo. Yeah, something like that.

Like Pepsi, Frito-Lay, Quaker, Tropicana, Gatorade. You know, I used to—

yeah, and all, and so on and so on and so on. Passive company.

Yeah, man.

Um, and you were there for 15 years or something like that.

17, 17 years, man. Yeah.

And that is how we met, actually. So Jim and I met at a— I believe we first met at— on your campus, right?

Was that PepsiCo?

Yeah, it was.

Maybe it was in an event, I'm not sure.

No, it was a SourceCon. Was it a SourceCon in DC? The Spark.

Yeah, I think the first time we met was SourceCon DC where, uh, I think you were helping. I mean, I saw you present. I don't know if you were emceeing or part of the emcee. I remember that you were one of the people—

I was the emcee that time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The one and only time they ever allowed me to be on stage.

Yeah. And I remember that, uh, one of the people that I wanted to see, uh, and yeah, it was a lot of fun. That was the at the Spy Museum, smaller event. It was really a lot of fun to be able to get to see and get to meet everyone, having everyone be able to do like the SourceCon after dark was just right around the corner in a little bar.

Um, yeah, that was back in the day when we still—

oh yeah, like everybody, I think you and, uh, Eric Jaquith sat down and we all sat down.

We used to run it. Jake and I used to run it.

Yeah, yeah, it was.

And also the Sourcing Lab, do you remember that?

Uh, yeah, I do.

It was like, it was like, you know, just bring sourcing questions and stuff like that.

Yeah, well, I will never ever ever forget that, uh, you guys— I sat down with you guys at a table over some beers at SourceCon at after dark, and I remember it was at the time trying to take my LinkedIn second and third connections so I could have more people that I was associated with. This was obviously before LinkedIn Recruiter, but on LinkedIn was how to get more downstream connections. And I just remember that overnight, based on some of the things that we were all doing, I went from like having it increased by millions and it was just stunning to me. So yeah, the little tricks and the tips that you'll—

That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Sorry, I took us down a little.

No, that's cool. Because what I wanted to tell folks is is part of the reason, one of the main reasons why I was so excited to bring you on here is kind of like our long history. So there was this event where I was traveling around the country, putting on these full-day workshops. And back then, because I wanted to keep the cost down, I wanted to keep the cost of education down so that people could attend as individuals and not have to have a company sponsor them for these full-day trainings. The idea was to have a, uh, a, a participating employer with a large conference facility, large meeting room, be the host, and everybody that worked there, all the recruiters and TA people at that company, would be able to attend for free. But then they would allow outsiders to register and pay to, to come in. And so that way um, the cost was way down. I mean, it was like a— it was like $100 or something like that. So I reached out and, um, invited me to come to PepsiCo, which was a beautiful— I mean, this was like, it was like a, like a Model UN kind of, you know, everything. And, um, so this is the really impressive part. I— we didn't know each other, but you were like, yeah, come on, we'll organize that. You helped me with the whole thing. And then After the full day of, of training, you know, where we've got a couple of different speakers and everything, Jim comes up to me and he goes, hey man, uh, that was great. I learned a lot. I'm gonna send you— I recorded all of it.

I'm gonna say, I don't believe you. I still have it, but go ahead, right?

And I was like, you what? I was like, because this was that— remember, this was like early on. There wasn't a lot of ways that you— it wasn't easy for you to just like put up a webcam and stream it or whatever.

Yeah, man.

Um, so I was like totally blown away by the generosity. And sure enough, I got back home and there was a CD or a DVD waiting for me, uh, of the entire event, professionally recorded by like some cameraman. I don't know if you were the cameraman or not, but it was like so really, really well done. And nobody had ever been that generous to me before. I mean, not only did you hope— not, not only did you put PepsiCo up to host the event, which made it possible for people to attend at very low cost and get, you know, a lot of benefit out of it. Remember, this is training, not a conference or no vendors. There was no sponsorship. It was just straight-up education. But then you also sent me the DVD, which I was like so blown away. So ever since then, Jim and I have chased each other around, gone, you know, our different ways and bumped into each other at events and conferences. And we seem to always have We seem to always agree on really important things and very, in a very friendly way, disagree on a few things that drive us both forward in, in a good way. So we're each other's kind of an advisor in, in some ways. But there's something I've been meaning to ask you. OK. How the hell did you get into recruiting? Because all I know is you were, you were at MRI. To be in MRI, like, back in the day— I don't know what it is now, but back in the day MRI was like the, you know, pinnacle of, uh, you know, solopreneurship if you owned an MRI franchise and you're in recruiting, right? So how did you even end up there?

Uh, I can give you this super, super long story. I'll give you the, the quick version of it. I, I'm kind of— back in the day was the exception to the rule. Uh, people were falling into recruiting as kind of back then as a second kind of a second world. You know, they had been in their current career, right? Yeah. Like a full second career that somebody had done.

They'd leave as an executive and go to an executive.

And then they would go to be an executive recruiter for the industry. I actually was one of the, one of the folks I actually did an internship in college, believe it or not. I, I had— there was a family friend that had a computer consulting firm. Believe it or not, this is back in I'll say it, it was back in '90, 1990, um, had a computer consulting firm around IBM System/38 and all this other stuff, like way back, System/36, and if I remember, 36, about bringing in consultants. And they knew I was pretty good about selling and all the other stuff, so they brought me in as a lead generation person in, in the summer as a student I ended up giving them so many leads that they were like— they also—

she—

this woman that I worked for was a top biller in the recruiting industry, but she had a secondary computer consulting firm. And she goes, you would be a good recruiter. And so her and another person in the office who was another top biller trained me for the summer. And it ended up that I ended up getting college credit for it. I ended up learning how to be a all of this in college. I learned how to be a recruiter. And then when I got out of college, it was pretty much— I knew what I wanted to do, right? And it was just— it made it real easy at that time. A lot of it was commit— it was really heavy on the commission side, right?

So, yeah, that's how I started.

Full desk, 100% commission. You went out, you—

you—

if you didn't— if you didn't fill jobs, you— you know, I think they had about a 90—

they didn't have to fire you because you just weren't making any money.

So exactly, you would starve. Yeah. And so they had a 90% washout rate and everything else. So either you, you survived, uh, or you left, kind of thing. So yeah, man, so that's how I got into it. And I was, I guess, one of the lucky ones.

Your first job out of college, basically?

First job out of college.

Although you were still working before that, but like right out of— you graduated. And so what's your education in?

Uh, business. So I was, I was looking at marketing, but I always knew I was sales, like in college. I was like, I always liked the recruiting piece because I was in a college fraternity and I was always the rush chairman that was bringing people in. And that's why I absolutely— when I was at PepsiCo, I loved doing college recruiting as well because, you know, it was just something that I had done from, from all my years in college too. But, uh, yeah, a lot of people don't know. I mean, when I was in college, I actually was a rep for Apple computers, um, you know. And yeah, so I had a little bit of a computer flair to it as well. Was kind of cool. I got to use an Apple, you know, one of the SEs, I think, back in the day while I was at college for free for being an Apple rep. But yeah, man. So I ended up— that's how I kind of ended up getting into it. It was just I always knew that it was one of those things that I had just been a natural, I guess, a natural at. And then, you know, I was one of the lucky ones to hit pacesetter my first full year as a recruiter.

Um, with non-MRI inductees, that's like the, you know, the internal award, performance award.

Yeah, they send you to Acapulco and, you know, full— yeah, whatever.

So President's Club or whatever.

Yeah, so, but it was fun. And then, uh, yeah, after a couple of years, then I decided that, you know, I wanted— I got recruited by— I got recruited actually internal by one of my key accounts and one of my big large accounts. And then that's, uh, no, actually I was in the healthcare world, but ended up coming into That's how I got into like the corporate side and really haven't looked back since. So it's been one where I've just loved doing that. Actually started as a healthcare recruiter.

Wow, I did not— that part I didn't know actually. So, you know, fast forward, you know, 17 years at PepsiCo, then you did a couple of other things. So now that I know the origin story, which I didn't know before, so as you've seen, you know, You were in recruiting even earlier than I was. I, I was not in recruiting in 1991, which I think is when you said you were at MRI. So you've seen— now granted, I did join at the time when it was, you know, there was no internet and stuff like that. So when I started, it was only a couple years later, but we both started pre-internet.

Sure.

However, you started pre— like even before they— that there were, you know, dial-up computers and stuff like that. These were still mainframes and and stuff like that. So where, where did, where did recruiting kind of come from in your history of it? Like, where, where did it come from, and what can we learn from how its origin story to where it's going, right? Like, I spend 30 years of recruiting history into like a timeline or a storyline, right?

So in terms of like, where do I see, or where have I seen it, like the progression, more like what's changed and what hasn't? Yeah, what's changed is the speed of how quickly you can get information. You know, what's changed is, you know, for anybody that's never heard of this term that's out there in the past, is being resourceful and having to do these things called ruse calls in order to get information on people. Being able to look up anything on the internet and just not even— today, not even have to pick up the phone in order to get information.

Access to—

just stunning. Yeah, exactly. Just to see just the amount of information that's out there that you used to have to be very, very resourceful to be able to find and get. Right. So I think, you know, just the lay of the land, you know, shall we? And you know this, that I mean, when we— when I started, it was seriously a thing of cards, like a Rolodex kind of thing. I mean, yeah, you have your— and like you had your 5-folder method, which was your folder of floppy disks. Exactly. You had your 5-folder method of who you would to follow up with and all the other stuff. And, you know, at that time it was the fax machine, you know, that you would— you were like sending out candidates.

Remember when cut and paste literally meant scissors and glue?

You are correct. And I've done that many a time, you know, and taping and making things look like your, your, your sheet that you would put on the front, your presentation sheet. You could like put a little bit of like signature and other stuff on there. But, you know, there were all the little tricks about, you know, like If you knew that there was a job that you wanted, like you could feed the fax machine with all sorts of stuff, you know, so that nobody other than you could get through. You know, you didn't want the competitors to be able to get stuff in there. You'd send like this big long file of just, you know, nothing.

But so what hasn't changed? So speed, speed, speed of access to information. But what hasn't changed?

What hasn't changed, I think, is that what I like to say is for the right people, the talent advisor, being able to show that you are so valuable to the process that there's no way that you could be replaced by a bot or automation, right? That you bring a consultative or a consultant kind of point of view of the process, and you definitely are showing yourself as someone that is an expert in what you do, adds value, and can quickly help be the guide for the hiring manager through the process.

So, so really the advisory part of it, the value-add part of it hasn't changed. It's just been reformatted, I guess. Right?

Exactly. That's, that's the thing that, that I would say. I mean, obviously the things that are still out there, you know, Things about the process that don't change is the outreach and the engagement, the sell, the sizzle, or making sure someone is interested in the opportunity, the interview, the feedback, you know, and then just the offer. And, you know, there is that pivot of where you can influence someone on helping them make the decision on an offer or not. I think that, you know, the other thing that I see is that I think there's a lost art to the art of the intake meeting. That I think is a—

man, that's one thing you and I agree on so much. Intake meeting is so broken. Tell me a little bit more about that. So why, why— and I'm going to be very specific here— why are recruiters so sure that they do intakes correctly, and they're so wrong? I mean, they— every recruiter I talk to, it's like, oh yeah, we do intake meetings. I do great intake meetings. But they don't. Right.

Why is that? I think it's because people believe that there's so much information that they have done research and they know what the ins and the outs of the jobs are without having that specific conversation. One of the things that I have to say about my training with management recruiters way back in the day that really helped me was it was really the art of the intake because that's where you're selling your services. I mean, back in the day, I was getting— everybody else was doing cut rates, and I was getting 30% of the first year.

Yeah, my intake— I don't know if yours included this, but my intake was almost like, uh, like, to borrow from the old sales training, feature-benefit-trial-close. Exactly. It was literally like, so if I brought you— so you're looking for somebody with 10 years of DBA experience. So if I brought you someone that has 9 years of DBA experience, you wouldn't even look at them? Well, I would still look at them, but okay, so if I got you somebody with 9 years and this, you'd be ready to sign right away? Yeah. So like trial close, trial close.

Exactly.

And that's how I used to go through it. But I see so many recruiters that just like are literally scribbling down notes on what the hiring manager says.

Yeah.

But very often, um, the— not to get into a political conversation here, but the hiring manager tells you what they want. This is a wishlist, right? Right. Forget the job description. Job descriptions have, have devolved into this, into this garbage where nobody wants to write them. So they just recycle the old one and copy 3 different ones and merge them into one, or they add stuff to the job description that was things that that person learned on the job. But forget that, all that stuff. Just literally the conversation with the hiring manager. Hiring managers tell you what they would like to have. Yeah, but that doesn't translate into whether or not someone has that and how that person identifies what they know. Like, the hiring manager says, I want this, this, and this, but the, but the candidate doesn't say, I do that, that, and that.

Yep.

So why are we still— why are we so stuck on, like, not just not really doing a thorough job? Is it because we want to get to the chase? Is it because of time? Is it because there is a lack of confidence? Is it—

I, you know, I would say unfortunately that a lot of people are— it's a lack of time. I think it's also people are always looking for, is there something that I might be able to shortcut? Or they believe that they know, right? And it's the one that gets cut. I know that there was a, there was a point in time that was not fun when I was at PepsiCo where we had a little bit of turnover and I was carrying 125 recs at one time. These were internal and external. And at that moment, we were— you were doing stuff just to stay afloat. And I mean, it was, it was not a fun time at all. You know, we always say that if you, you know, when you're a sourcer or recruiter, you want to keep it at like 30, less than 30 recs. Sometimes the ideal is—

in healthcare, you know, if you're recruiting nurses, you need— you have 300 recs.

Yeah, exactly.

And in retail, it depends on the job, on the industry. But so you're saying is like literally we just got so short on time that we Just started it. Like, just, just get to the recruiting without even—

most definitely.

Yeah.

But this is when you didn't have tons and tons of automation back in the day, right? Now with automation, you can shortcut things and you can have certain other things.

But one of the things that I replace the intake call, it's never going to replace—

no, no, no, no, no. One of the things that I actually would do is I would say, hey, I've got these things on a form that I could ask you if I really, really wanted. But one of the things that I would do is take a totally different approach. I had this thing that I called my 4x4 And I'll go through just like things I always wanted to know from the hiring manager. And this was my, my management recruiters training back in the day. I wanted to know the— it was establish the urgency. I wanted to know the urgency of the job. How quick are you willing to move? And I would make sure that they knew because I was getting paid to do this, that if they were not going to be— if this wasn't going to be priority one, that if I sent a candidate, we're going to look at them, I would put them down on the stack. So they knew if they— if I called, they would, they would get it back. The other is I'm like, I wanted to know about how are you as a hiring manager? I want to know what's your style?

Yes.

How do you work?

How do I sell you? I know how to sell the job. I know how to sell the company. How do I sell you?

Exactly. And I wanted to know about the short-term and long-term job opportunities, not just like what's the real short-term and long-term. I wanted to really know about the boss. And then the other is I also asked about the environment. I wanted to know Okay, tell me about like the job and the chair that the person's gonna— and this is pre-COVID, of course, where, you know, not everybody was virtual, but you wanted to know, you're sitting in the chair, what's the environment like for the individual? But also what's the team like? Do they hang out after work? Do they all get together? I would use if that person was like, they would say to me, like, I'm looking for, I really don't feel like I'm listened or I don't have a connection with my boss or I got passed over for a job. I would then be able to say, hey, this manager does this, this, they believe in this, they've got a team that does this, they sometimes go out after work, and they're like, oh, I feel like I could be at home there. So it's kind of like those would be the questions I would make sure I asked that were more about the kind of softer skills as opposed to like, right.

And then also, yeah, what, what are some of the hard skills, but also what are the different alternatives and stuff like that? I got so many examples of bad intakes. So maybe you like this. I used to think about it as, and when I, when I do training nowadays, this is how I teach teach it. A large, medium, and small concept, right? The large concept is, for the intake, the large concept is how do I sell the company? Yeah, right. So why is— why should anybody want to work here instead of every other company that they could go work at? The medium concept was the job. Why is this a job somebody would want over another job? Right? How do I connect this person to the company's success? What is the job's contribution to that success so I can sell the job? But the small concept is, tell me about this person's daily, like, who are they going to interact with? What's your management style? What's the team style? How does this team— and those things often, I get asked about during the call with the candidate, that if I had not done this in the intake, I would not be able to answer those questions. They ask me that a lot, and I think it happens frequently enough. So I wonder why recruiters don't— or I don't know what they say, actually. I honestly don't know. Because if a candidate says, "What's it like day-to-day working for this person?" and you never ask those questions, how are you supposed to answer that? So what do you do if you don't have that? You say, "Well, I don't know. That doesn't sound great." Yeah. You know, or do you just punt? "Well, let's ask the manager that," when, you know, maybe that's what they do. I don't know.

Yeah. Well, I think that, you know, some of the things that we were also talking about there is the lost art, not only of the intake, but also of kind of like, I think people are moving so fast that the art of the, you know, the ABCs, you always be closing the trial close.

Yeah.

I mean, that's one thing that I have to say that over my career that I think was the one single item that I learned to do quite well that I think would, would make it to where I could tell if the person was going to accept the job or not before an offer was even made. It was like after the interview, I don't know, you want me to go into tactically about how we would do that really quick, or do you want to just kind of—

If you can give us a snippet of that, that'd be great. It's a great takeaway for folks, I think.

Yeah, snippet, snippet was immediately when the person walked out of the interview, I had this thing that would come out of my mouth. It was pretty much all the same. It was like, hey, Shelly, you just came out of the interview. I don't have any feedback, but based on what you just heard, How did— I just want to know how it go. And I would want—

you would get the candidate side of it.

I would get the candidate side of it immediately and I would want to go, hey, how did it go? If I did— if I heard anything other than good, I would, I would probe a little bit. But then I would say, okay, I haven't had a chance other than just talking to you right now. I want to know. And here's my trial close is that if they came, if the team came back to me and said you were the person for the job and they want to make you an offer, take money out of the picture here at the moment and assume that's right. If an offer was made to you and the money was right, given what you just heard about that job, is that something you would accept? And I would shut up. And based on the answer to that question, if I heard, yeah, I know then that it is one, they're sold on the job, two, I just have to work on the money. And then I've got really kind of the first verbal kind of close that you first try to close.

And if they said, well, then you'd be able to get down to that, whatever that one thing is that they— exactly, you know, like, then you could address it.

Overcoming the objections.

Yeah, which, whatever that objection being on, well, I didn't know if I— I don't know if I like team, I don't know if I like the company, I don't know if they brought it, whatever. But you can address it, whereas that would come up way later, um, in just a bad— in bad timing. That's really valuable feedback. So all of this is, is, is the human touch. You lately have been—

so yeah, so I'm preaching, I'm preaching the human touch, and then I'm talking about ways to automate everything.

And so here's the funny thing is, so now Jim's company, Recruiting Advisors, is a, an actual consulting firm. And I say consulting firm, actual consulting firm, because to distinguish it from consulting firms where they put people to work on a contract basis, right? Like your company doesn't doesn't place contract recruiters on site, which is like a pseudo, you know, your company actually is a, you are advisors, and specifically in technology, and even more specifically, um, when the technology is, it, it touches or revolves around, um, a CRM, I don't know if CRM or ATS tool called the Avature. Yeah, right. So People who use— companies who use Aventure have all these tech needs that are in the Aventure ecosystem that are not necessarily just Aventure, and that's what you work on. And so lately you and I have been talking a lot about generative AI. In fact, you're speaking at SourceCon with Gail Houston. Yeah, in the spring, literally in a couple of weeks. Yeah, and your topic is generative AI. So Moving from where we came from to where we're going, do you see that generative AI is a transition point where we're going through this and we're going to figure it out and then evolve into something else? Or do you feel like generative AI is an actual destination? Let me clarify that. The internet wasn't something that we just went through on our way to something else. But social media was something that we went through on our way to something else. The internet was a permanent change to recruiting. You're, like you said, the availability, the speed of information, and the vastness of information. But social media was just a blip on the radar because, and the name of it specifically tells you why, social media, right? We used to have print media, then television, media, but nobody talks about print media. Nobody talks about television media. Why? Because it's everywhere, right? So the same thing with social media. Social media used to be a thing, but we evolved past it, and now social media isn't social media anymore. It's just media. It's part of everything. Generative AI, is it internet or social media? Um, is it a fundamental shift, or is it like something that we're learning and we'll—

yeah, I think that— well, let's just use the term machine learning, right? Yeah. And AI. Machine learning and AI have been around since 1966. Yeah, I mean, in the '90s and earlier. I mean, I was working in ATS systems back in, hell, '95 and all the other stuff where you were doing skill-based matches when with ATS systems back, you know, back then with like Resumex and other systems. I'll throw out some old names, man. But the thing is, is that I don't think we've seen these LLMs, the models that have the ability to learn as fast and go back and forth with you. I think that that's the, that's the element here that has the ability for this to be such a shift in the marketplace. Right. Just because it is, it is such a game changer for the industry being able to have it. But to your point, from like when social media came out and you had all these different channels and all these different abilities to do different things, it really feels this. It does feel the same in a lot of different things. I don't want to, I don't want to say, you know, generative AI is just the social media of media, right? But in a way, I do believe that there are some similarities in the way that I'm seeing the industry take to it of when we saw social media come into place as well. Everybody is all over it. Everybody is, is trying to figure out, but the government hasn't caught up with these are all the rules, the regulations, and it's kind of Wild West at the moment until everybody gets right, you know. So it's just, I think we're gonna—

I think it's not a, it's not a phase that we're going through which will eventually settle and it'll just be one of the tools in our arsenal. You're saying that this is truly fundamentally changing the face of our industry?

I, I believe it's a combination of, of everything, but I, I do believe that as these models, you know, as you know, I think that what ChatGPT-5 is slated to come out later in the year, um, and, and I think we know, I think that Sora and everything else that if you guys aren't familiar with the, the video portion. There's going to be so many different ways that you can leverage generative AI that it is going to do so many different things. Because if it can recognize an image and it can act upon that image, what does that mean for resumes? What does that mean for everything else? Obviously, everything, you know, you could take a paper resume and ask it to make a decision. I guess, Charlie, in a long-winded way that I do see it as being a very significant—

A fundamental shift. Yeah. Okay. Most definitely. As opposed to just something that we're going through and eventually it'll evolve because I've talked to a lot of people about— I've had some really great minds in generative AI, machine learning, even a guy that actually wrote the book on it and stuff like that on the show. And there's a lot of talk about the capabilities and what's coming up with like ChatGPT-5 and the evolution of it. But it all boils down to it's a computing power, it's a processing power question, right? So the way that what we're doing, these logic trees and these large language models and the shortest distance between two points and all that stuff, been around since the '60s. What hasn't been around is the ability to compute fast enough to be able to do it because it's a lot of computational power. What's changed is accidentally this GPU, the graphics processor, became the default. These chips that were dedicated to just image processing became a really good way to process the computing power. But they're just designed for video. They really weren't designed for this. So now what we're starting to see are chips designed for language processing.

That's right.

And we're starting— so GPT-5 and all these others is an exponential, you know, I don't even— maybe logarithmic evolution because there's going to be so many more chips available that are faster and more powerful, which means that it's still the same language processing, but at a much bigger scale. And that's where the machines start approximating some form of consciousness.

Yeah.

Right. But it's still dependent on what the information that we give it, the training, the dataset and everything. So I think that the question that's going to haunt us all has to do with ethics. With how we actually, what we allow the system to do. So what you were talking about just now is called prescriptive as opposed to predictive. We've used data analysis, statistics, you know, math models for many, many, many years to predict what might happen. You know, if you take a piece of data and the data shows that every year you double in speed, then you can predict the next year will double in speed. Yeah, right. But what's new is these technologies are now able to give advice, not on what's likely going to happen based on the pattern that's being recognized, but actually saying, here's what you should do. In my mind, that is both the benefit because They can recognize patterns that we as humans just don't have the capacity to process all this data. But it's also the risk, because once you have a machine saying, here's what you should do, and you're not questioning where that comes from, the opportunity for huge mistakes.

Yeah. Well, I think that what you're seeing is that there is so much of almost like a— we'll call it the old school space race, you know, where everyone is trying to be the first one to be able to do something. And to your point, you have to be very careful as well that you're not turning on something that would enable it to be sentient, right? You don't want the ability for it to— and I keep saying it, you know, kind of the technology to just— the technology to really have feelings. Things and be able to do that because there's things like, I don't know if you've heard about, Gail and I are presenting this at SourceCon, which is there's something called Devin. I don't know if you've heard about Devin yet, but there's a guy that's a developer and he said, I'm going to make a custom GPT that is named Devin and I'm going to put it out and you can, it is a software developer in a box, right? And you can You can ask it questions, you can give it code, it will correct the code and it will send it out. This guy went out on Reddit and said, hey, I'm taking orders for— I'm going to be— let me know if you want help with your, uh, any software design, right? And he put this Devin, um, chat, you know, a Devin GPT, yeah, chatbot basically out there. Devin is, is put together with not only the ability to have a smart dialog. It has its own browser so it can look up things. It can correct your, your code, make changes, make recommendations, and send it back to you. A guy put it out on Reddit and it actually figured out a way to make money. So it was, it was smart enough to know that it could make money based on all the other stuff. So, but check it out if you haven't seen it yet. Devin is, is really kind of one of those things where you're taking exactly what you talked about, you're taking the ability for it to be an independent kind of, almost kind of a consultant. And that's where they're saying it, you know, it's just stunning.

But is it— so I don't know if this— I haven't seen it. So is it— is the idea that this has all of the knowledge of Devin's brain, and so therefore it can create new ideas based on that knowledge, just like Devin would? Or is it just a large index that's going to answer questions that have been asked before?

I think, um, not so much a large— it's off of, you know, GPT-4, if I remember correctly. I'm not positive, um, on the back end and how it was trained and everything, but, um, everything that I do know is that it's it's been able to go out and make— it's been able to look at the code and be able to make some changes to it based on some of the things that it's interpreted. I don't know if it was actually trained as when he put it in as the custom GPT and if he fed it tons of info and here's how we coded and here's how we do it.

Right. Like, is it Devin's brain or is it just already available? You know, like ChatGPT.

So, you know, I'm not positive on that one. I'm going to have to do more research. You now got me to where I'm going to have to to go back and it was one of those things that I saw and I was like, holy crap, I got to talk about this. Let me, I'll do some more research and I'll probably just talk about that from the stage. So if anybody is, when it comes to that slide, I'll share how it was educated. I'll share that with you a little bit.

Because, you know, Robert Kurzweil was talking about the singularity many years ago and kind of the idea, very sci-fi idea of being able to live forever because you can download your brain into a chatbot that essentially is you. It sounds like we're getting pretty close to that.

Yeah.

Which is a creepy way for me to segue into the other question I wanted to ask you. What are you doing with Hey Gen? I talked about that before. I'm combining the chatbot text with Hey Gen in my mind thinking, can you all of a sudden have a video chat with fake dev Devin or fake Shelly? Or like, what are you doing with HeyGen? Is that what—

HeyGen is a video tool that really a lot of people have used. It's kind of known for being— having the ability of creating avatars. You can actually create your own avatar that is a replica of you. Okay. Plus, so what I'm— I done a couple of times. This may be in my presentation for SourceCon as well. Fake Jim may make an appearance or two in the— but more or less what HeyGen allows you to do is record a quick 30-minute video of you, or pardon me, 30-second video of you presenting. Say like here, me, I did mine right sitting like I am right now.

It looks like you.

It looks like me, it is me, my mannerisms, everything else that I do. And then you record a voice track that then becomes the vocal track. And so then what you do is you have the ability of putting in a text prompt of what your script is, and it will then take your voice, script it to that, and then it applies the video clone to where you have a video doing the things that—

right.

Yeah. And that's, that's— it's some scary stuff, man, because I showed it to my parents.

They thought it was you.

They thought it was me. Um, I've, I've— it's— I had a presentation. If, if you've never— I, you know, if you're going to see it at some point, I presented at, uh, Outbound RecruitCon. It's a, a conference. It's— if you go Outbound RecruitCon, it's from HireEasy, but it's a, a conference. If it's out on YouTube. I actually started off with, hey, sorry, I'm having some problems with my camera. Hang on just a moment. And then I played my fake Jim video to start. And it was like, it's like, hey, thanks. Look, I appreciate the opportunity for being on today. And then I'm like, you know, you can do deepfakes with generative AI, just like I'm doing right now. I did not appear in this video. And, you know, I still have people that talk about that video freaking them out too much.

So yeah, how weird would it be if you had a, uh, like a chat like this where there's like you, Jim, on the top screen and then fake Jim on the bottom and you're talking to each other?

I, I may— when I, when I, when I do that, I will, uh, credit it back to you for giving me the idea for doing that.

That just sounds so bizarre. Are.

Yeah, well, what I'm, what I'm doing—

and I frequently argue with myself, but I don't know if I would actually be able to face myself in an argument.

Yeah, so let me, uh, not to, not to tease my, uh, my SourceCon presentation too much, but I am actually— this morning, I actually— I still am on a black shirt from under it. Um, I did a side-by-side of fake Jim versus real Jim. Oh, and to see if the audience is going to even be able to tell the difference between the two. And it's so, so that's kind of scary.

And, but I wanted to—

but hang on, one thing to your point about how you say that generative AI allows you to almost have that moment frozen in time. My Hey Gen video is me frozen in time that talks like me, speaks with me. That's me at a certain age. So, you know, that's one thing to think about that's interesting as we go forward, that to your point, there could be that opportunity.

How long did it take you to train the avatar?

I was done in 10 minutes.

Like it records you doing some things?

Yeah, I just, I had to record a video where I said a track that they tell you to read and then, then it said, record a 30-second video of you just talking. And I just talked and I used my hands like I normally do. I look around, you know, and it copied me pretty well.

That's so—

it's some scary stuff. So that— and that's one of the things I see about the future is that, you know, video calls, voice calls. That's why you hear grandparents that people are using code words to let them know that it's you if they're asking, like a kid or somebody like a grandchild is asking for for money from grandma. It sounds exactly like them. It might look exactly like them. It's some scary stuff that can come down. So friend or foe, man, you just— yeah.

Let's talk about practical stuff. So you're, you're in the business solving problems for companies that are working with technology like Avature, and they're asking you to help them solve these problems. If you could remove the, the name of the software, right? So forget that it's Avature, forget that it's Greenhouse, whatever. What are the companies asking you to solve for? What are the things that they're saying, we would— we need to do this with insert company, insert vendor name here? Yeah, that they're asking you about.

Um, I'll go in reverse order of like the the, on the generative AI front, a lot of what we're hearing people ask for is the creation of jobs, like, like not creation of jobs, but the job descriptions that might be able to be served up so that they have the capability of being able to look at them and, and, you know, move that along faster. Second thing is I've got with a lot of people are interested in taking that job description then and being able to build out quick drip campaigns that might be used not so much personalized for the candidate, but for that campaign. The other one that I'm seeing is where they want it personalized for the individual for that campaign to where you can blend those things together. And another piece that I'm seeing is the, the candidate summary. So When I was on the outside, we talked a lot about MRI. One of the biggest pains was you would do all this presenting, you talk to the candidate, presenting your candidate, you'd always write this. I'd spend like 15, 20 minutes writing this nice little summary about the candidate. I'm going to show at SourceCon how we're doing it in click of a button and it's done in seconds. So that's the generative AI. On the other thing, we have, we have one client that is interested in talking to CEO of the company of how can we do the potential of some sort of robo recruiting, right? It's kind of our, our phrase for that, with on-ramps and off-ramps for when you need— like, if we think about it as like being a highway with toll, the toll tags and the toll booths, you can just go from there, taking the whole like chatbot recruiting chatbot, um, yep, you know, to the next, to like not just to answer questions but actually recruit.

Got it.

Yeah, most definitely. And then be able to take it to where you've got the— if you want a white glove, a certain part of the process, you can. But yeah, man, it is one where I would definitely say that it's, uh, um, that's some of the things that I see. The other, the other is, you know, on the CRM side, I see a lot of people that are wanting to leverage CRM for, you know, not just the outreach but also the, the back and the forth the personalized touch that you can have with the individual. Competitive intelligence is really, really big. Communication to know what's going on. The other is, is also I'm seeing a little bit of a trend where people are wanting to own more of the data as opposed to being so dependent upon LinkedIn. Right. You know, so that's another piece that I'm kind of seeing out there just because LinkedIn seems to be taking a lot more things away from being more public. People are, you know, which only can mean one thing— they own it, price goes up, right? So, but there you go. Don't know if that was kind of what you were, you were kind of—

yeah, yeah, I wanted to see kind of what, what things people are wanting to do. Like, what's— yeah, you know, there's what's possible. Yep. There's, there's though, you know, and you and I as, as idea generators. We can come up with all these ideas of things that we want to do, but then there's, you know, there's what's possible, that there's what's realistic, and then there's what's being asked for, right? Like, you know, yeah, we can come up with something that's possible that nobody's ever going to want to do or not going to do yet or not even thinking about. Then we can also do things right now that are realistic but nobody wants because they're not necessary. Um, so I'm interested in, you know, what are, what are companies thinking about that they really need to do?

Yeah, well, you and I have been doing this long enough that, you know, you come up with an idea, you implement it one way in a certain piece of tech, and then like you see new technology come along and you're like, oh my gosh, I can take that.

I could have done that, right?

Exactly. So like where I see it is, you know, there was a tool that I was using inside Connector way back at, you know, from John Bryant and video interviewing, right? That was personalized videos to individuals. And it did take time to do those personal interviews or personal videos to individuals where you could say their name, you could say something about them, and you could say something specific, but you would have to record that video and then have it ready. Imagine if you could just have the text that records that. And that's where, like, my HeyGen video could, like, rifle out those, and I could have personalized videos to each individual with personalized items to them that could help in the outreach to individuals. I don't think we're there yet, but man, I don't think we're far.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, I wanted to make sure that we ended up not going over time because I know your time is— literally, your time is money.

My time is money.

There's always two questions. Yeah, yours and mine both. There's always two questions I like to end the show with. Um, and being here, I, I— this may be one of many times that you appear on the show. Being your first time, I got to make sure and I ask you both. The first question is, who should be our next guest?

Um, I know that if I ever launched a podcast or anything, I know there'd be one person that I would always try to get, and that would be— and I don't know if you've had them on the show before, but Jerry Crispin would be a person that I, I just— he's one of those guys that you sit down and, you know, you have these great deep conversations with. So I don't know, Jerry.

You know what, I— no, I have not had them on. I had Joe. All right, um, and I'm sitting here like kicking myself because Jerry and I go way back. I mean, we go way back to like the early double O's, you know. Sure, 2002. I know him well. I mean, if I called him, he would answer my call. Sure. Never occurred to me to invite him to the show because I just didn't think that would be, um, something he would want to do. But I, I have to ask. Yeah, you never know. I just never thought I would, you know, like, hey, do you want to be on my tiny little show? Like, you know, you're like me calling Bill Gates. I'll be like, hey Bill, you want to be on my show? Like such a, such a big name, such a, such a celebrity. Um, but you know what, it's his choice whether or not he wants to be.

Yeah, definitely.

Absolutely. I'm gonna reach out to him.

It's a great— I think what you, you know what, Gretzky, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, right?

So yeah, yeah. And I just never even took the shot because I never did that. Not because I thought I would miss, but because I just didn't think it would, you know, like why would he want to be on the show? But that's really good one. Oh my God, I can't believe I just kicked—

No worries.

I'm gonna totally have to give you credit for that.

Yeah, I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of his as well.

Me too. And you know what, the whole fireside chat format that this is is perfect for him. Yeah, that's why I was like, that's his natural habitat. Exactly. In fact, I may have learned this habitat from him. Yeah, um, over the years. So the other question is this: a lot of folks watch this, listen to it over the weekend because they can't appear, you know, they can't come online during this time. And so, you know, as I wish more of them participated in the chat, but in lieu of being able to have people here chatting and asking questions, I like to leave them with something that they can think about deeply. So my question to you is, what is a deep thought that you want them to think about? Not— I don't want you to preach or give advice or anything. Literally ask them to think for themselves and, and, and ask themselves, what question do you think our audience should be asking themselves?

Yeah, I, I would say there's a couple things that I would say to this. One is I would make sure that why, if they're not doing the intakes and they're not doing the trial close, are they shortcutting themselves? Um, and the, the importance of hearing and you know, if they want to go back in this podcast just to listen to those pieces, you want to make sure that you're adding value so you can't be replaced by GPT. You know, there's got to be things that are definitely in there. So man, that would be the thing that I would say is how to make sure that you're adding value in the process, man. I mean, you've got to make sure that that you're doing that.

So turning that into a question.

Yeah.

How are you adding value so you don't get replaced? I like that.

Yeah. I mean, because you really have to think about it, that there is a new emerging trend in the industry that is— it's like design by dialogue. And the whole thing is, is that you look at the process and you try to find different spots that you you are able to design your new processes based on where there's dialogue back and forth with an individual that can or may not be replaced by automation. And you have to make sure that there are pieces within that design to where you can't be replaced. So yeah, that would be the one thing that I would say. That's awesome.

It's a really good question.

Yeah, man.

Well, buddy, thanks a lot. I can't wait to see you on stage at SourceCon. Too bad I'm not going to be there, but I wish I was. And I think we, you know, let's make this a little bit more of a repeat habit as opposed to waiting 2 or 3 years between connecting as we usually do. You know, when you've known each other for 20 years, it's kind of easy to do that. But let's stay more in touch. And for those of you that are out there listening, thank you so much for giving us your time and attention today here on Shelly's Alley. Wish you a great weekend. See you next Friday. If you're wondering who our next guest is going to be. It will be Patrick Moran, someone that you might actually have heard of. He's in the middle of building a sourcing team from scratch. Imagine that, coming out of the pandemic and economic uncertainty and actually starting to build a sourcing team right now. That's kind of like, whoa. So he's coming on next week. Until then, be kind to yourselves. Bye, everybody.