Steve Tiufekchiev live on Shally's Alley.

All right, everybody. Welcome to Shelly's Alley. We have an exciting show today. It's a topic that we have not covered on Shelly's Alley very much. In fact, my, my, uh, first and only guest on the topic of early career university recruiting was, um, another Steve. Hey, that— what's going on there? Steve Rothberg. Do you know Steve?

I know him very well.

Yeah, good friend of mine, uh, long time, you know, business, uh, associate in many, in many different ways. And he was on the show, uh, a while back. But oh my gosh, I think I just realized it's the last time that I had anybody with, you know, this specialty on the show. So really looking forward to it. Hi everybody, this is Shelly and you are officially live on Shelly's Alley. It is July 26th, the last episode of July and the first episode of the 2024 Olympics. Because for those of you that don't know, the Olympics actually kick off today. I don't know when the opening ceremonies are. Is there— maybe they're happening right now. Maybe that's why nobody's watching the show today. Sorry, Steve. But, uh, it does kick off today and it's gonna be kind of fun. There's a lot of new changes. Well, changes are new, right? So there's a lot of changes, a lot of new sports and things that are going on. So I kind of plan on peeping that, you know, over the weekend as much as I possibly can. But without further ado, I'd like to introduce folks to Steve Tufekcev. Tufekcev. I put the accent on the wrong place. Two-Face Jeff, all right. Or, uh, to his friends, Steve T. To his less, uh, less pronounceable, uh, friends, uh, Steve T. So Steve was introduced to me by, uh, a longtime friend and former guest, um, Maury, from a company that creates, uh, SparkPages and in advertising that is, you know, I guess at the forefront of the embedding of organic video, short-form organic video. And she said, you know, you know who you should have on the show next? You should have Steve. He's an expert in all things early career, college recruiting. So I reached out. Steve was working formerly with AMS and is now on his own doing some consulting. And we chatted a little bit online about topics. And Steve said, you know, there's some really important, I guess, changes or, you know, things that are happening in talent demographics in early talent. So I wanted to talk about that because basically, you might not be aware of it now, but that is actually your future. If you're a recruiter, if you're in talent acquisition, what Steve is observing now and what he's talking about is actually going to be all about you in the next few years as those people enter the workforce. So am I right, Steve?

Absolutely, absolutely. I, you know, it's one of those things where what happens now, uh, in, in early talent invariably follows into the workforce. It's just a matter of time, right? Um, so for example, I was speaking last year to a group of HR acquisition folks. And, you know, one of the epiphanies was everything we're doing around, for example, in DEI and the focus, 10 years from now, those folks will just go like, what were those folks thinking back in 2024, right? Because in their world, it's all about DEI, it's all about having folks. My son is constantly online talking to folks all over the world. His friends, when they come over, incredibly diverse.

So, you know, my son's friends too. That's it. I didn't, I didn't even register because we live in an area where there's a lot of, a lot of diversity as it is anyway. But now that you mentioned that, like, I remember his birthday party and it was like one of everything. I mean, it was, it was just a hot spot.

Yeah, it's, and so, you know, it's just one of those things where today everybody is sort of looking at it, but they're going to look back at us and go those old, you know, those old people, they were crazy because it's always been right. It's just so— again, that point is the things that happen now can be a little bit of a predictor as to what's coming down the pike. But I think the reason I thought this conversation could be valid is, um, about a year and a half ago I was doing some prep work and I came upon this term called the demographic cliff, and— or enrollment cliff is actually how it was first brought to my attention. And I was like, what, what is this? And so it's something that universities have been paying tremendous amount of attention to, and that is that the number of folks available to go to college, uh, have been declining relatively over the last few decades. If you just look at it from a slope, it's a different downward slope. Around 2008, we had the recession, 2008-2009. And one of the things that happened as a result of that was folks typically were not having as many babies for a lot of different reasons, right? It's expensive. And so what's the impact of that? Well, fast forward to today or 2025, we're going to begin to see this very steep downward slope in terms of the folks coming into the workforce. And so that's, that was something that universities were paying a lot of attention to because interestingly, in their world, where you've seen this, this general decline over the period of the last few decades and then now this acceleration, if you will, that has a tremendous impact. And one of the stats that caught my attention was that over 500 universities and colleges have closed over the last few years as a result of fewer folks being available to go into the early career space. So that's one thing.

Wait a minute. Say that again.

So 500? Yeah, it's, it's—

it sounds like a large number. Is that a large number or is it— is there a lot more schools than I realize?

No, it's a large number. And it has to do again with this overall decline in the number of folks available. So, you know, one of the articles that I was reading as I was preparing for this was saying that in some cases universities have been building dormitories and now are having to sell those dormitories laboratories because they can't staff them with, with students, right? They, they— there's always a lag, and they were building for X demand, and that demand has waned. So demographic cliff, enrollment cliff, however you want to term it, its first, if you will, footprint has been in, in the academic world, and it's had lots of ramifications. But the other thing to think about is it's not just about the numbers of people. So, well, actually, let's put some numbers to that. So the estimates are that if you look at over the period of 2025 to 2030, you're looking at about 500,000 to 600,000 fewer folks being available to come into the workforce, or I'm sorry, into early education or early talent, right? So about 100,000 fewer every year coming in. So that's the available pool. But what was interesting to me was it wasn't just about the available. Think about the other aspect, which is what we see happening now in terms of the news, you know, the protests and so forth. So people begin to rethink where I'm going to go to school. And so I think there's a number of factors that will actually make that issue much greater than it is. So one, folks are looking at the cost of education saying, you know, I'm not going to get that return that I thought. Parents are looking at it. So where folks were originally thinking about going to school, uh, is going to change. They'll look at for example, possibly local universities or state universities, right? So there's a change in the demographic of where people were going to go to school versus they're now choosing to go to school for a variety of different factors. But also think about the cost of education. So for example, I'm in Northern Virginia and you've got plenty of places here all paying $20 or more per hour. And folks are saying, well, I can work, save up money. So that's going to impact again, the decision about who goes to school. On top of that, you have the trades becoming very appealing. There's been a double-digit increase in the number of folks thinking about going into the trades because trades now are offering six figures. They only take typically a year to a year and a half to get trained up for those trades. So I have a multiple different number of, uh, you know, let's call them distractions that are all whittling away at this $600,000 number. So I think the problem that we're going to see is as big, if not bigger, than what folks were— had been projecting. Because back when they were looking at this, they were looking just at pure numbers. But my opinion is you're looking at the distractions which are whittling away at that aggregate, which will mean even fewer folks. So admissions, to translate this in, is really worried about this as an issue, admissions from a college perspective. So what does it have to do with the workforce? Well, obviously everything that happens in early talent eventually finds its way into the workforce. And you're going to start seeing these trends. And for example, where recruiters are recruiting at universities, that's going to change elements, right? So that's kind of the first, I think, thing to really get people's attention. And at least when I was speaking to folks about a year ago, they weren't really aware of this demographic cliff.

They weren't even aware that there was an issue, but I wasn't aware of it. And I have Um, you know, I mean, and I've been in situations where we recruit people from colleges and with college degrees up until very recently. Um, and right now, you know, this— it's— I'm, I'm just— I'm, I'm, I'm shocked at what you're saying because I don't think I even realized how big the impact is. All three— I've got, I've got 3 current clients right now simultaneously for my consulting practice, and all 3 of them absolutely require college degrees. I mean, one of them is in a medical field where, you know, they have to have like not just a degree but also have, you know, internships and, uh, and things like that. Another one is in, um, an area of, uh, national security and sciences where, you know, these people not just degrees but PhDs and Um, so, and I'm thinking, wow, it's already pretty hard to get these folks. If, if only a fraction of what you're talking about is true, it's going to get a lot harder. And I don't even know if you're considering the impact of the population cliff, which is— so you've got fewer people and also fewer people going to school. It's like a double whammy, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, this is not a phenomenon that's unique to to the US. The world itself is just, from a population perspective, is getting older. As a matter of fact, just about every developed country and others, it's a concern. And you've heard folks like Musk talk about it, where the population is getting older in some countries, whether it's China, Russia, and other Japan, for example, it's incredibly problematic. So everybody's kind of worried about it. Now, of course, we've got things like AI and other areas which could change drastically what we now know in terms of how we get things done. But for the moment, everybody's kind of worried about this. But taking it back home for a second, you bring something up which I think is really interesting. So let's call this a supply side, which is the demand or the talent that's available. Interestingly, if you look at unemployment over the last 20 years, which I looked at, I said, hey, what would it look like if we look at unemployment over the last 20 years. And with the exception of some blips, you've seen unemployment go down consistently over those 20 years, which when you think about it is kind of counterintuitive. So it's counterintuitive, right? You would think that with all the productivity gains we've had across the spectrum, there would be more unemployment, right? We've been more productive, so therefore there's less people needed. But because in general, you've seen this sort of decline in the aggregate number of folks, to me, it was kind of interesting just to see that, oh, no wonder unemployment is on a downward trend because there's just fewer bodies. And so that is then, I think, what could be the end of what I would call talent abundance to now talent scarcity. It's not just about bodies. It's about bodies with the right skills. And something you bring up is, yeah, there are people who still require degrees for very good reasons. But quite a number of employers have opted to go outside of that and start looking really at skills and skills transfer.

Yeah, no, I totally get that. Look, I mean, you know, computer science and programming, yes, it's good to have strong fundamentals, but you, you know, in computer science, but you can get— you can take courses and get strong fundamentals without necessitating a degree. So what comes into question in my mind isn't the validity of a degree, but the validity of what's called the general education, or in other words, the preparatory. So for me, the first 2 years of college, which honestly, it's fundamental knowledge that I really should know, I need to know, but it didn't prepare me for a profession. It wasn't until the last 3 years of college that I really learned things that I apply in business. But, so the argument is, if we just focus on education that is coursework that teaches you the skills that you need to do the job, what's being left behind? Are we gonna not be preparing people for, you know, basic stuff? Like, I don't know, I can't even imagine physics, chemistry, like, Imagine someone who has a computer science degree, also has some basic physics and chemistry, but if they only go to classes and don't get a degree, they don't have that other stuff. So what's missing?

Well, I think that's— yeah, I know, absolutely. I think that's the debate that, that people are going to have for some time, because if you look at higher education, it's always been about, uh, developing not just skills but that rounded ability, most importantly to the ability to think. Over time, you could find any number of employers who I think would say we've gotten away from a lot of that, where we have folks who have a lot of knowledge about specific things, but they may not have some of the core requirements, ability to think, to problem solve, right, to communicate and so forth. So I think a lot of those could be a topic in and of itself, but ultimately, if we get back to sort of to this root cause, it's just there's a feeder problem into the academic system But something that is simultaneously going on. So let's look at supply side going down, right? Chips and Science Act. I don't know if you're familiar with that. It's part of the investment act that was passed by this administration as an incredible or will have an incredible impact on this problem as well. So part of the Science and Technology Act is the repatriation of all of the semiconductor manufacturing of that back into the US, which I think is a fantastic move. And so you're looking now at these very, very sophisticated technologies being brought back to the US. And why is that important? Because they are incredible consumers of talent, specifically in the STEM area. So if you plot that, you've got supply going down and demand going through the roof to the tune of— so they're estimating conservatively about 1 million to 1.4 million, I think it is, net new jobs by 2025. 30 coming in, in the STEM arena. And why is that important? Because if you look at the academic system in the US, it can only produce an average of about 100,000, uh, call them advanced degrees on an annual basis, right? So currently—

hold on, run that by me. We only have 100,000 college graduates a year, uh, advanced degrees.

So those are the ones that are typically going to go Yeah, well, master's and PhD, right? Advanced degrees.

That's pretty low though.

Well, it is, but it is what it is. And that's one of the reasons, you know, that's always been the case. Yeah, we bring talent in from abroad to some extent. Right. But this is a net new increase of $100K on an annual basis, mind you, just in one area. So you're adding $100,000 net new demand in this area called STEM on top of everything else we've already going on. Now, what's also important, I think, is these semiconductor plants are incredibly, incredibly complex from a technology perspective. In fact, the machines that are typically utilized there run into the hundreds of millions and even half a billion dollars, very expensive tech. So this is something that's going to transform over the next anywhere from 5 to 15 years because these plants take a while to build up. But again, you plot that against the demand or the supply side. And I think to me at least, it begs the question if 2021 or 2022 in hindsight would look like cakewalk from a hiring perspective, because now you have this incredible demand coming in from a whole new area. And I think much of the industry, unless you're in semiconductor, and you're fighting those battles, it's kind of asleep at that. And again, why is that important? Well, I was talking to the folks in banking and they're like, well, you know, we're finance, right? No, they're actually tech companies that happen to be in the financial industries. So anyone in the space, I think, is going to be impacted by this demand issue that's now coming into play, all of which, by the way, is going to be spinning up in that '25, '30 timeframe. So it is a little bit of a recipe for a perfect storm. In this area. The other thing to keep in mind is all these plants and manufacturers come back to the US is think of all the feeder organizations, the feeder technologies, the feeder ecosystem, right? Even things like trades. So your plumbers, your electricians, all of those who are building these things are also going to be impacted. So I think we're in for an interesting time and all of it traces back to this early talent because those folks are now being prepped, if you will. And will be hitting the marketplace in the next 4, 5, 6 years. So interesting times for sure.

So many questions, so many questions. Um, um, here's, here's my— I, I'm—

it's—

this is— I'm shocked and I'm just sort of recovering from that. Um, but I want to cover something from a few minutes ago, and then I have another one, another really pressing question that just came up. Um, What, what is your definition? You're an expert in the field. How would you define or distinguish education, i.e., a university degree versus training?

Well, I mean, to me, it's always about the end goal, right? What are you looking for? I think training is going to be much more about skills and very specific skills versus an education, which traditionally has been thought of as providing skills, but also a well or well-rounded capabilities. So in the classical sense, I think if you're looking at an education, you might be in the camp of wanting a degree based on what you've always done in the past, right? So starting it from, we typically have used a degree to try to measure certain elements, right? We look at that degree or we make assumptions about that degree because it brings elements of well-roundedness, all of which, by the way, could be questioned. But that's how it's traditionally been looked at versus training, which is about solving the short-term need, a short-term gap or an upcoming area. So that's where training would come in.

We have long-term, short-term. I'm getting one side of this is Education is long-term, it's preparing you for the future. We don't know what's gonna happen. It's not about the immediate skills. Yes, there's some skills, but it's long-term scope, long-term perspective. Shorter-term, more immediate is training. You get some training when you go to college, you get some education when you go to trade schools, but the overall objective is a little bit different. Now, what about the— What about the question— I guess follow-up to that— what about the question of what do we do when we just have training and we're not preparing them for the future? So in other words, here, here's my fear, is, um, I've got, I've got two kids. One of them is definitely going to go to school, I mean, uh, university, wants to be a PhD. Uh, wants to, you know, get into literally rocket science. You know how sometimes people say, oh, I want to be a rocket scientist? He actually wants to be like, he wants to do it.

Yeah.

And I mean, he's got the, you know, he's got the aptitude for it and everything and interest and passion in it. Um, and the other one couldn't care less. Like, if, if she didn't even finish high school, she would be quite— she like, do I really have to? Um, and she is just as gifted as he is in— my son is in, in math and logic and science, uh, and, you know, she's just as deeply intellectual but in the creative arts. Both of them, I'm sure, will have a good future because he's going to get into— I mean, you were just talking about the, the gap. He's going to be one of those few people with a PhD, and there's not a lot of them, so you'll be fine. She is so creative and so, so talented and so good, um, and I'm, you know, everybody says that about their kids I'm not just saying that. She really had like a portfolio. Um, to give you an idea, she won, uh, honors for the entire high school. She was the one honors for the entire high school for graphic design.

That's awesome.

She won multiple like poster competitions, things like that. So I don't know, both of these are talents. Um, neither of them necessarily are going to need some of the life skills that I needed. You know, but both of them are going to have this direction. What happens for everybody that doesn't have that direction? I didn't have that. I went, I went to school and I ended up changing my, my degree halfway through, which cost me a whole year and a lot of money and stuff like that. So what happens with, with those people? And, and do we get the— do we get left behind? Do we just not— like, we're undecided until we bump into a trade and try that for a while and then bump into another trade and try that for a while? Like, what's that look like?

I, I don't know. I'm not an expert in that field, so I don't want to do anything other than say my, my own just opinion is that it's going to be different for different people, right? I, you know, I'm in a similar situation. I've got 3 kids, 3, 3 different, you know, kids. One went on to become, um, a lawyer, so he definitely went the advanced education route. One is in the trades, um, in construction, and doing very well. He's debt-free and has a good amount of money saved up. Um, and secondly, um, my last one is kind of the one that's trying to figure it out. The way I'd answer the question is I don't know that college necessarily helps you do any of those things in terms of figuring things out.

No, he wants to be— so he's going to do that because, yeah, he wants to be a rock scientist. She doesn't really care. She'll— if we send her to school to learn arts, she'll it'll be fine. But, you know, so neither one of— my concern is that I think I kind of got lucky in that regard, but I don't think I was lucky in that regard. And what are we going to do with this generation if every year there's 2 million college graduates? Every year, yeah, 2 million people graduate with an undergraduate degree or, you know, bachelor's of some kind. Every year, 100,000 of them fewer year over year. I'm— and that's why I got so shocked, because I was doing the math in my head. If there's 2 million every year, how many years is it going to take before there aren't any?

I, I don't know that there wouldn't be any. It's just going to be a change in terms of what we've been used to, right? So that's kind of like always, what have we done and how did, how did we achieve our outcomes and where are we now going?

So we have 2 million every year Each year there'll be 100,000 less, 100,000 less.

Well, keep in mind it's only for the next 5 to 6 years.

I was gonna say, within 20 years it'll be like no school though, right?

Yeah, no, no, no, this was a— this was the dip. That's why they call it enrollment cliff, or it's not going to be something ever. Okay, yeah, in, in some cases, some— we even argue that we've had a little bit of a recovery in terms of birth rates over— I think it was 2021 or 2022 during COVID So we don't want to extrapolate way out.

It's birthrate related, though. This drop in education is not just population.

Correct. No, I think originally the Roman cliff was termed that way. But as I started to look at it, I started to see different challenges and what are called distractions to the early predictions because we didn't have trades coming into the picture 5 or 6 years ago the way they have today. But why is that? Largely, it's because folks are second-guessing the cost of education. So coming back to your, you know, the question you raised, back in my day, an education was, I think, all in, $700 or $800 a semester. Might even be a year, right? It was cheap, relatively speaking. So you could use education as a way to find yourself, is my point. Today, that's a very, very expensive way to try to find yourself, if that's what's going on, right?

For those individuals, it isn't in other countries. Uh, there are countries where it's provided by the state. There are countries where education is considered a you know, right instead of a privilege. Um, and there are places where the— I don't, I don't know the actual— you're the expert, but I'm imagining there are places where the percentage of people with a college degree— I think here it's like 25%. Yeah, I'm sure there's places where it's like 50, 60, 70% of people with a college degree. Are they also seeing this, or is that different there?

I— they have the same demographic challenges. Exactly. More so because, as I said a little bit earlier, the world itself in terms of population is aging out. I think there's only 1 or 2 countries in the world that actually have a net positive population gain. Most countries, all of the developed world included, are all seeing a net decrease in the amount of— the birth rate is not a sustainable level. It's not sustaining it. So everyone is sort of facing this. But again, keep in mind, we've got technologies that come into play that will potentially impact some of that. But all we can look at is in the next, let's say, 5, maybe 10 years, what's the impact? And that's kind of where this demographic lift sort of kicks in. I think the other thing around that from a college perspective is think about at least when I— well, I took my son a few years ago to where I was working, company, called Yellow, and I had him talk to folks, right? And he said, you know, Dad, it was really cool, but everyone I talked to wasn't doing what their degree was, right? So even though a lot of people go to college to get a degree, oftentimes they're not actually in the field they want to get a degree for. So that— so it begs that question, right? If you're going to go to college, the degree can be effective in many ways beyond just training you for a specific area. And I always come back to, to you. I think you made this point. It's about an education. It's about thinking. That doesn't mean you can't get it just in college. There are other ways to replicate getting people to be thoughtful, to get them to be problem solvers. You can introduce that in their training. It's just that we've always looked at college and early talent and going that direction. But we're now beginning to see there's alternative paths for folks that may not have been as attractive or didn't exist a few years ago simply because the dynamics have changed. When you're paying $150,000 a year for an education, um, or, you know, thereabouts, that's a very different dynamic than if you're looking at something that is a fraction of that. So it has an impact on what people decide to do in terms of their, uh, career prep, if you will. Wow. Okay.

So it's never too late to go back to school. You know, I mean, there was a time where I contemplated going back and studying. I've always been very passionate about two areas, two academic areas, which are physics and semiotics, study of the origin of communication. So not symbolism. Symbolism is a Cardiosematics. These are really deep intellectual pursuits that have very little— I mean, physics has probably more practicality, but the part of physics I was interested in is not the kind of physics you get a job in. It's the kind of physics where you end up staying at the university and teaching as a professor. So very pure, you know, pure academics.

Yeah.

Um, and I just never did, but I was interested in it. You know, it's really never too late. You, you know, you can go back and get your college degree when you're in your 50s or whatever and have a whole nother career. So is this cliff just kind of a temporary thing and we'll go, oops, we actually do need people to go to college and then we'll start going back to college and we'll just see a shift in undergraduate admissions being more towards the 30s than the 20s or what?

I think you could argue any of those are possibilities. But if you look at, for example, let's just stay in manufacturing for a second. Manufacturing as a, as a whole has changed significantly over the last few decades, and one of the big impacts is you need fewer people, right? You get a lot of automation. But if you talk to anybody in a manufacturing plant, what they'll tell you is, yes, we need overall fewer people, but the people we do have have to be highly trained, highly skilled, right? Right. And so what I think in general we're seeing as, you know, an overall economy is the need for very skilled workers. Not to say that they shouldn't be educated as well, but skilled is where it's at because the technology involved in doing just about anything— think of, you know, even working with AI and, you know, getting into using ChatGPT— there's a certain element of, so just knowledge. All these areas are becoming much more focused in terms of what they require from a skills perspective because also the lifespan is a lot shorter. So on the one hand, you have from an employment perspective the need for skilled talent, however you want to define it, whatever area. And that's not going to change. And if anything, it's going to continue to accelerate. So skilled workers and their lives, the problem. So you now have a need for skilled but also numbers. And those two things are whether you're talking about early talent and the amount of people going to early into education or just people coming into the workforce, those are trends that are not going away. That's why I come back to— I think we're done with an abundance of talent we talked about earlier, right? We're now in this age of scarcity. And, you know, some people would argue the issues with immigration, letting folks come up with— you know, those are ways to try to address this because there is this, this gap. So all of— I guess the way I'd sum it up is is the recruiting challenges that we've been seeing, or seeing over the last few years, aren't going away despite even some of the softening in the economy. The moment the economy, you know, revs up, you're going to see that again we're back to where we started, which is there's just fewer people available, fewer people in skills area, and some of it resides from an early talent perspective, but not all of it. And we're just seeing the impact because of this, this this flip, which was a hit, right? Think of it as a short-term hit to the overall employment market. We'll see a recovery. But as a trend, it's not— it doesn't appear to be going away. In other words, people are just having fewer, fewer babies around the world. Right.

So we're all back to the same issue is just less population, less people interested in higher education, more in the trades. So overall, it's kind of a pinch on both sides. But I'm not hearing doom and gloom. I'm hearing, you know, on the positive side for my people, for our people, a lot of people lost their job in recruitment and talent acquisition, you know, with this weird economic hiccup that we've been in. So, you know, I guess what I'm saying is, hey, have a little hope. Things are gonna get harder, to recruit. So people are going to get harder to recruit, so you're going to get your job back, you know, you're going to have a job because it's getting— it's getting more difficult for those two reasons. Um, it's, I guess, the silver lining, right? Yeah.

So I think— so recruitment is always going to be challenged because of the supply issue right now. Interestingly enough, we chat a little bit before we're on the call, so I'm looking at a couple of different, um, clients that I'm talking to, different opportunities out there. And, and I think what folks have to be aware of is that recruitment is not ever going to be the way it used to be for a lot of different reasons. One is it's just challenging because there are fewer bodies, but there's another element that I think we have to be cognizant of, and that is the tech that we're seeing come on to the stage of, you know, just incorporating AI is absolutely mind-blowing. And I think people would have to have their head in the sand to argue that it's not going to impact recruiting, because recruiting in many cases is very task-focused. It's very— you know, there are elements of that extremely laborious that nobody really wants to do anyway. But that the tech that's coming online is going to impact, and it's going to impact individuals that are traditionally in that early role, um, to a large extent. So what I might My sort of opinion on that is yes, recruiting will definitely be there. Yes, there will be a tremendous need for very good recruiters, very skilled recruiters, but there may be less of a need for the earlier, if you will, inexperienced, because the tech will fill that gap. So I'm currently talking to an organization that's really in startup mode that estimates we could see reductions in elements of what I would call junior recruiting staff, easily double digits, because the tech is so sophisticated and so capable that it fills that, that current need where early recruiters would have it. Right. So, you know, my point is just to say you can't be asleep at the wheel and think we'll be back to the way we were because it's changing. Right.

But the change You know, people are always afraid of change. Change is always, um, a chance to reinvent, and you can reinvent yourself in the field. You don't have to leave the field, just pick up different skills, learn, do something different, right? Uh, so, you know, it's— I'm— that's not the part that scares me. The part that scared me— not anymore— but the part that scared me was when so many people were, were just being let go, many of them for for apparently no reason. And it was just very like— what's the word I'm looking for? Very knee-jerk. It was like, it was not planned. It was almost like the diametrically opposite reaction to COVID. You know, when COVID hit, companies that wanted to do the right thing kept their staff and didn't want to lay anybody off because it was the right thing to do. And then, you know, Fast forward now, it's like those very same companies were like, man, we got to get rid of everybody. And again, it was very knee-jerk. You know, both of those were not the best decision.

And I think part of that is, uh, that's the history of recruiting overall. I totally agree. One of the reasons I got out of, you know, early talent recruiting is because, you know, here's an interesting observation. Prior to COVID, um, and and sort of the realization of talent actually is important. Early talent recruiting was always the first one to be cut. If there was a recession on the horizon, there were, you know, storm clouds, early talent was the one that would get cut. And you'd see these tremendous like cycles. And it was terrible, right? Especially if you see your friends and coworkers going through that. What's interesting about the period we're in now, post-COVID, is colleges and universities at the career fair level, which is always a good barometer of what's going on, have not seen reductions in the amount of companies coming to campus. And I should say, well, they've seen some, but like little, right?

But fortunately fewer than the reduction in—

right. We saw this post-COVID when universities opened up, you saw this tremendous demand for employers coming on campus. I mean, it was Schools had waiting lists for companies to come in. And since then, going into 2024, there's been some decrease, but still above levels that historically— and that's, that to me is fascinating because it's like, wait a second, that was always the first area that gets cut. And so you have to ask that question, why is that? And I think what companies have discovered is if they cut that, if they cut in that early talent, they pay a huge price downstream because to rev that back up is expensive, but also think about a student who is getting value from that conversation on campus, right? That interaction, that is how they're forming their opinion. If you cut that, you first of all cut that lifeline, and students will be the first one to tell you, Shelly, that if you're doing remote recruiting versus on campus, they will always go, unless you're a big name, to the people, the one that's come on campus, right? That's how they establish the relationship. So companies have sort of learned that lesson. But in general, the cycle of recruiting has always had these ups and downs. So I think that it will look differently. There will be the need for very, what I would call, experienced recruiters who have that sophistication to have conversations with the candidates. It's just at the lower layers where it's all about very brief conversations, you know, a lot of task-oriented stuff. That's where the impact will be. And by the way, a lot of this will happen on the staffing side. You know, the organizations that, that the bread and butter is, and frankly cost is associated with that, that entry-level talent. But on the corporate side, you probably aren't going to see as much of that, frankly, because it's a lot harder. They don't have the kind of numbers, the volume to justify it. But my point is just that keep your— as a recruiter, someone's interested in talent, um, keep your eyes open, keep up with the tech technology, see what's going on, look at the different tools that are out there, and be conversant in them. Be, you know, nobody should be writing a job description today, I think, without ChatGPT or some version of it. You need to know how to do it, and you need to be looking at these tools to help you be better at doing your job in recruiting.

All right, well, I'm, um, not sure I would go quite that far. There's definitely some Uh, well, there's been a bit of, let's just say, compression, if you will, in the models. Um, but you know, it may just be temporary. So, you know, you're probably right.

When you say compression, what do you mean by compression?

So I don't want to dive into this too much because it's not the topic, but because of the facility of this generated content, there's been a lot of generated content, which is then used for modeling. So essentially, you have a— you're at first, these language models were recycling material that already existed, but all of that, most of that was written by humans. Now these models are recycling material that was recycled, and it won't be very soon, you know, shortly, in, in a matter of months, uh, less than a year, we're looking at the possibility of the collapse of these models because they're going to be producing recycled material from recycled material.

Copies of copies of copies of copies, right?

And, you know, you, you can take a bunch of tires and shred them up and make a, uh, you know, I don't know, AstroTurf, but then you can't shred the AstroTurf and make another AstroTurf and shred that AstroTurf. There's a, there's a functional limit to that. Um, so it's just, it's, it's a day— there's a danger zone that people are completely ignoring because of the, the euphoria of, you know, these models being able to do your job for for you?

Well, no, I wouldn't disagree. And I'd say that therein lies the sort of the rational approach to it. And my point simply is to say, if you're a recruiter and you're thinking about a job description, you know, if we look at that, you didn't create it from scratch. You should take a look, use the tech, help it write, obviously use your, what we'll call, common sense and expertise. But these— there's a lot of tech there that can cut down the amount of workload that should just like manufacturing, right? Exactly, exactly.

That's, that's That's manufacturing jobs, uh, shrank because of the development of robotics and automation, but those jobs ended up going, you know. So let's face it, the stuff that you don't really want to do because it's unsafe, tedious, mind-numbing, boring, um, yeah, some people lost their jobs, but in the long term, those people have other jobs that are probably not as dangerous and less mind-numbing.

So, you know, it balances itself, if you will. Yeah, absolutely. You know, before we leave this topic, I think the other thing that could really be interesting is that we're now also beginning to see this generation, the college students, have access to tech that changes the landscape for employers, right? So, last time I checked, like, Lazy Apply for example, where you can apply to 1,000 jobs a week. This is kind of how Maury and I, our mutual friend, we were talking about certain things, and it had to do with the fact that people can apply to a lot of jobs in a very short period of time, which has a huge impact from the standpoint of recruiters trying to figure out who should they talk to, right? And these students are typically very early adopters of this tech. So, you know, there's, there's also this element of this generation being very tech savvy has access to these tools, and now we start having an impact on the recruiter. So like, where does this all lead? I think we're— you're— this could be another topic down the road, but, um, the U.S. has been very slow to adopt assessments as a rule. I, I think we're going to start seeing a pendulum shift to really incorporating more of assessments to help mitigate some of this noise factor that's coming through. Because let's face it, if you're a student who's applying to 1,000 jobs a week that you really haven't put any time to, the techs are doing it for you. That creates this huge workload, which back to what you were saying earlier, you know, we saw this reduction in teams, but we see the volume going up again. We have these, these incredible changes in what used to be the case, and now we need to come up with all new kinds of solutions. So recruiting is going to continue to be this evolving landscape. It's going to require different approaches, different ways of dealing with it. Whether it's early talent or otherwise, but you can kind of see the trends start on the early talent side because like I said, they're very savvy in using these tools and creating the new paradigms that folks are having to get used to. And by the way, when I looked at this a year ago and asked the question, what technology is dealing with this big load of noise coming in? The answer was no one really seems to have a good answer for it.

Okay.

All these applications coming in and the ATS world wasn't built for that. And then how do you deal with 1,000, 2,000 apps overnight when you're used to 100 or 150?

So there's also two sides to that equation as well. I totally understand what you're saying, and I've seen that firsthand, even with jobs that have pretty strict requirements like computer science degrees and things like that. But then there's also lots of jobs that have zero applicants.

Yeah.

So, you know, those companies would, would love to have too many applicants, but they don't.

Well, conclude and say I've got one company I'm working with, uh, very interesting. They are, they are looking at bringing an assessment-based approach, which is not what we would look at as true assessment, but let's call it a mini, right? And overlaying that with AI-enabled profile information to help solve that problem, because at least at the early talent level, students are very enamored by the big names, whether it's Google or Marriott or eBay, you know, take your pick. But But 80% or more of the companies that come to campus are not those big enterprise organizations, and yet the students often don't know about those or don't seek them out. So what one of the clients I'm talking to is interested in doing is overlaying incredibly powerful AI with profile information to help drive their interest in that direction, so that those individuals that are thinking about where do they want to spend the next 5 years, you know, their early careers, They're gonna have much better intelligence, much better approaches to try to help with that. Because again, the old model was just walk up to someone, have a conversation with them, figure it out. We live in an age of tech that can help with that. So my point is simply that we're going to start seeing some interesting applications of tech to help drive students to great opportunities, just they didn't know about them.

That's a really good point. Yeah. So there's a lot to think about, a lot to prepare ourselves for here. It looks like we have to prepare ourselves by learning in the industry learning new skills, learning about assessments because we have too many applicants, learning about sourcing because if we have too few applicants. But, you know, overall, I think this conversation has left me with a feeling that there's hope for our industry, recruiting industry, where, you know, it's not as bad as it is, as everybody thought it was, which is easy to get into that negative spiral considering many of us, myself included, didn't really understand why we were all getting laid off, um, only to see our job posted again. Like, you just got laid off because they're downsizing, and then you see your job posted. It's like, well, that was my job. So that's confusing, right? Um, I'm way better off, by the way. So personally, I— thanks for letting me go because I'm making a lot more money and having a lot more fun.

One door opens, another one usually will.

Three doors. Yeah, one door closed, three doors open. But, um, it was pretty disheartening for, for a while there, and I think this is a good encouraging conversation. Before, before we finish though, there's two questions that I ask everybody that comes on the show, and I think with you the first of those is, is really important. Um, normally I ask for you to leave the audience with something to think about, a question that requires some deep thought. Not, not a pitch, or, you know, not a thought or an idea, but an actual question that requires them to come up with something. But I'm going to narrow the field a little bit for you, if you don't mind. Um, I'd love to hear from you how you think we should prepare ourselves in the industry for the next 5 years, given this demographic change.

It's a great question, one that I was not prepared for. So give me one or two ideas.

It doesn't have to be— I don't need the whole answer, but, you know, I think, I think what should we think about? How about that? Yeah, what should we think about in preparing ourselves?

I think two things. One, as, as professionals, as an industry, you need to be better at educating leadership to not do these things that cause knee-jerk reactions, because oftentimes We as a profession don't help leadership understand the impact of their decisions, so they just do what they do. That's the first step, is be well-versed in your metrics, not just the standard ones, being able to help people understand these. Okay, correct. Right. And there's a lot of stuff out there. I happen to be a fan of Dr. Sullivan, and he's got some great things about the impact of metrics. I think the second thing is to educate leadership about these demographic changes that are occurring. I mean, that's the first step, is to say to leadership, look, before, before you, for example, cut down on your recruiting, especially in terms of early talent, think about what's happening from 5 years from now. How do you want to be prepared? Do you want to be prepared? We know these things are coming. We know this demographic cliff is really at our doorstep. And universities, as I said, you know, they've impacted— 500 schools closed, Kenner. So take a moment, do a little bit of research, look into it, and then have that conversation with leadership. And they may, again, like many others, put their head in the sand, but they can't come back and say, nobody told me. So I think that would be my counsel is just to say this phenomenon is here and it's going to have ripple effects for at least the next 5 years, probably the next decade. And that's probably a good wake-up call because if you're prepared, The way I put it is we're all on the same train. We all see the same train wreck coming. It's a matter of getting to the back of the train, be better prepared. So when the impact— at least hopefully, because we're in the back, we prepare for it— we'll have less of that impact. That's the analogy that I would use. But we can't get off this, this track. We're all on the same track. Okay, so it's gonna happen.

How can you let your leadership know so that they can't say that they didn't know? Right?

Just help them understand the demographic changes. I don't know that any recruiter or recruiting manager is tight. Now, I think HR sometimes is, but the recruiting leaders need to go in and say, demographically, we have some challenges. You know, it's not just the US, it's worldwide. This is why it's so hard. So let's not make these knee-jerk reactions because we get a short-term hit. It's like a sugar high, right? We're going to have a long-term problem, right? Yeah.

Um, all right, and then the, the last question should be a little bit easier, which is how I discovered covered you. And that is, who should be my next guest?

Personally, who should be your next guest? I would say I'll leave it at someone in the area of assessments. And I think there's like, there's a couple of folks that come to mind. Because I think that—

drop some names, I'll reach out. That's great. I like that. So just drop a couple of names and I'll reach out. They may not agree to it.

but yeah, no, I honestly have to go back and do a bit of research for you as to who those names would be because I just, off the top of my head, don't have. But the reason why I say that is because, you know, again, we're always used to what we've done. Assessments have changed dramatically. I do believe that the recruiting industry could benefit by more data being part of the decision. You know, let's face it, recruiting as a function hasn't changed that much from how we evaluate people. And so the rest of the world has caught on to it. The US is coming on to it. So I'll get you some names. And there's some really fascinating things happening in the world of assessments that could be insightful and enlightening.

Definitely.

All right, take that.

That's a good one. I like that. Thank you, Steve, so much for being on.

My pleasure. Thanks for asking me to be again with your—

uh, yeah, absolutely. Good luck with your new consulting gig. I'd love to, um, I hate planning out this far. I'm very spontaneous. I hate planning out this far, but I'd love to like come back and have this conversation in a year once the proverbial sewage has hit the fan, you know, because it sounds like this is like right now we're in the summer of this happening. So this coming year is going to be the big, you know, did it actually happen? We'll have to come back to this next summer and see how it went.

I just had a call with admissions folks on, uh, was it Wednesday, right? Um, and this is a problem that is keeping them up at night. So maybe it's somebody from admissions or somebody who's in that part of it, right? Yeah. Um, but yeah, no, I would love to, love to, and enjoy the show.

Absolutely. Yeah, thanks a lot for being on the show. And everybody, uh, tune in, uh, next up we are going to be having, uh, Matthew McKinney is our next guest. By the way, if you know anybody that wants to be on the show, please direct them to our website and they can just Google Shally's Alley, and they can, uh, put in a request to be on the show. I'd love to have you. Or if you're interested, send me a note. You know how to find me. I'm not hiding. But until next week, thank you very much.