Todd Raphael Live on Shally's Alley

All right, all right, everybody, welcome to Shelly's Alley. You are live. It's Friday, November 24th. This is the last Shelly's Alley of November, and believe it or not, we only have 5 weeks left in the year. I mean, in 5 weeks, 2023 will be over. So, um, yeah, whatever you wanted to do this year, you, you don't have that much more time left to do it. Welcome to today's episode. We have Todd Raphael. Todd and I go way back to, well, the beginning of time, let's just say, when they plugged in the internet. And, um, I was— I'm really happy I ran into Todd at an HR Tech and we had a chance to catch up because it's been a while since we last spoke. Uh, he's working with a company called Sky— I'm gonna pronounce this horribly. SkyHive, is that right?

Yeah, SkyHive.

SkyHive.

Yeah.

Which is a generative AI company.

Yeah. Involved in, in skills normalization. So it gets all of your systems working on the same skills language, whether it's a big company, that seems like government, school. Yeah.

That seems like a perfect match for, for large language models, doesn't it?

Yeah, and it's a very large, very large model. It's, um, we have the, the largest really database of job skills, pay, labor market data that there really is.

That there is.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, man, one of the things I've always wanted to do as a, as a sourcer and recruiter is normalize job titles because there's so many different, I don't know, interpretations I guess of job titles. Even when you think that there's a pretty standard one. And, you know, the interpretations vary widely. Like, there's not like really a recruiter job title. There's talent acquisition specialist, talent scout, uh, you know, so many different variations in every industry, within every industry.

So like Best Buy and The Container Store might have a job with the same name, but it's such a different experience at one place, right? You expect to sit down with a clipboard, the person who's working there, and scope out your closet for a while. And another place, it might be different. So yes, same job title, different context, a different company. Yeah.

And even sometimes the skills, you know, unless it's a specific technology like Oracle, you know, but the skills themselves can have lots of variations. So I think it's a great application. Well, for those of you who don't know Todd, you've probably heard the name Todd was with ERE for a good 15 years or so as the editor-in-chief. So Todd and I have over the years collaborated on a number of articles that were published and a few other things that were content-driven. But basically his, his claim to fame, and what I've always been really impressed with about Todd, is his complete immersion into our, our world as a, as, as a journalist, really. I mean, he's had his ear to the ground on what's going on with technology because he's had to create and organize the content for these companies. And then you were with Eightfold AI, I think, for a few years. Yeah. As well, doing again content. So I just, I really relish the opportunity to have Todd on the show and talk to us a little bit about what's going on in the industry, in the technology industry, in the recruiting industry, since he's essentially been the longest listener that I, that I can think of, and synthesizer of this information. So I hate to put you on the spot, but man, what, what is really happening today that is surprising? Around our space here, recruiting, talent acquisition?

I don't know about surprising. I'm actually, if I could destroy your question, maybe not surprising.

It's not surprising.

Um, seems to be a lot of startups, or AI startups related to mental health, which, uh, interesting. I don't want to say it's surprising because there's been so much focus on mental health, right, right, right, pandemic. Everyone's tired, everyone's exhausted, everyone's like, why am I so tired? So I've heard of a number of startups that are either public or kind of stealthy talking about like delivering AI information to people who have a mental health question or something like that. I think that's a big thing. There's a whole area about skills, like are we gonna measure people by their skills? Are we gonna hire people who maybe didn't afford, couldn't afford college or didn't go to college for some other reason?

Oh, right. Yeah. I've been following that debate.

Yeah.

And something around like the res— is it the resume kind of finally on its last legs? And people are looking at, you know, hiring based on essentially their ability, someone's abilities to, to pick up the skills rather than their experience having done that particular thing. Yeah.

Or like they've done that thing, but in this context that you've never thought about. Like we had a guy who was doing our, um, who was working on our, uh, our chimney, our fireplace, a fireplace inspector dude. And he was talking about the amount of time that he spends not in the fireplace, but doing like marketing, social media and stuff. And it was like crazy. It's like most of his time. So it was like, okay, you have like a fireplace inspector guy who's a chimney inspector, who's could possibly be, depending on if he needed a job, could possibly be ripe for some job that's called, you know, social media marketing person or something that's, that's not maybe reflected in the title of the job he does now.

Wow. Okay. So there's definitely some truth to that whole bridging the gap between the resume and, and your, and your skills. So what's going to replace the resume then?

Well, I don't know. I don't— I think that we're resume is not, not dead yet.

It's not dead yet. No, it's been dying for a while.

Unfortunately. Yeah.

Like maybe 80 years or something like that.

Yeah. You know, hopefully it will be things that are more scientific and more data-driven than say a job interview, which obviously, as you know better than I, has been studied to death and it's been found to be about as effective as a coin flip. But things like assessments that are valid, things like work samples, work trials, AI that can determine your potential, your capability, match you to your— based on your potential and your capability. Things that are— you've seen the list that I've seen that where it ranks what is an effective screening assessment device from most effective to least effective with, you know, some things at the top and some things very lightly correlated like personality tests and handwriting analysis. So hopefully we're starting to focus on the things that are higher on, on really validated. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So there, there's been some— I was speaking with, um, our LinkedIn, um, success manager, and she was, I guess, giving me a projection of what some of the things that they're going to launch on next year. And they also have some emphasis on, on the skills matching, like, um, I want to say it's, it's not ontologically based, but it's more like when people are looking for a job, they don't always interpret the job description the same way. And so LinkedIn is trying, is working on something that'll help, you know, if you're a job seeker, it'll help find jobs that are related to the skills that you have, so that it brings you opportunities that you may not have clicked on because the job, like you said, the job title is, you know, really different. At this job, I do this, but the same job title somewhere else, I'm not even qualified for that job, even though it's the same job title. So they're definitely getting into that. So it sounds like this, this whole matching of skills and abilities and going beyond the resumes is a big deal along with your, your notes on mental health. So those are some pretty big things, I'd say.

The way SkyHive sees it, at least, is even though SkyHive patented the making the generative AI that makes job descriptions, it's like you don't start with a job description. You kind of start with what skills do you have in your organization? What skills do you need? What is a skill as it relates to your organization? So we talk like, what's customer service in your organization? What's a product manager? So you start with kind of that, figuring out like, skills in your organization, what their definitions are, and then you can later generate an AI-driven job description. So at least that's how SkyHive sees that process. Architecture first, description later.

Right.

Yeah.

And so where does diversity fit into this? I know there's certainly a lot of attention on diversity now, including neurodiversity and things like that that really didn't get a whole lot of attention before, you know, it is— there's, there's definitely a broader definition now. But what does diversity have to do with all this?

Not only did it not get a lot of attention before, but I think neurodiversity was, uh, I can't think of the word, shunned, in the sense, right, in the sense that, yeah, um, you'd see advice given to managers and interviewers and HR people saying that you're supposed to like look at their eye contact and stuff and their handshaking and all this nonsense, like That's stuff that, you know, some of us don't— aren't good at. Like, we don't shake hands well, or we don't, like, uh, look in the face well enough, or whatever. And these are just— these have no correlation to your ability to do the job, right? Unless your, your job is to have staring contests on YouTube or something. But, um, yeah, that's kind of a niche job.

Yeah.

Um, what was your question? Oh, diversity.

Yeah, where does diversity fit into all this? Reality kind of diversity versus diversity reality versus what we talk about, right?

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of diversity at— when you look on like Fishbowl and Glassdoor and Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook and Yelp, you look at like how employees talk about diversity. They don't usually use that word. They just talk about their day and whatever's bothering them. If you look at what they say versus like how companies view diversity, it's so different. Companies will publish a graphic for Women's History Month or Women Something Month, Women in Construction or whatever. And not that those are bad things or something, but that's not really what most people talk about in their life is, oh, I wish I had a new graphic put out on LinkedIn by my company. It's more like, here's a picture of me, not my whole body, but picture of me using the breast pump in the closet when there's an empty office, which for some reason I can't use or something like that. That's the kind of stuff you see. Social media, real life, day-to-day things. I mean, that's diversity, you know, or someone will say, you know, my company has one annual brunch a year and they schedule it on Ramadan. The one time me as the Islamic employee can't eat is the one day they picked for that. And the company's like, I don't know, what do you want? We like, we got rid of Christmas. We called it Merry Winter or Merry Holidays. We moved the holiday party till March. But the employee's like, I didn't want that. Diversity is not like erasing someone else's Christmas. And then making me feel like a bad guy, like I'm against Christmas. Like, that's not what diversity is. Diversity is nothing like that.

That's a really good point.

There's a big gap between like employers, what they think they've accomplished and what employees think about on like a day-to-day basis. Or like, you have to stop me because I'll go on on this topic all day, but employers will—

Yeah, no, I totally get it.

Yeah, employers will be like, take your daughter to work day or take your kid to work day or have a Zoom event for your kids day. Which is nice, which is, those aren't bad things, but it's not really like, that's like so low on the list of things that anyone cares about. Like they care about like, are there meetings from 7 to 9 which prevent me from getting my kids to school or are there not? And if there are, no problem. But if those meetings could have been an email, I'm mad. If those meetings could have been at noon, I'm mad. That's what the employees think. So it's just so different than like take your kid to school day or work day.

Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. Cause I mean, I'm thinking about my own personal experience. And, you know, just feeling like— here, let me, let me, let me make this a comparison. So some employers, some organizations where I've been have observances of holidays all over the map. So they, like, are sort of trying to please everyone and observing all the holidays. But then it's still kind of awkward because they— you have to fight within your organization to figure out who's going to cover for those days and so on. So it makes it kind of weird. And then I've been with other employers where they basically say you have an allotment of holiday days you can choose to use for whichever your personal holidays are. So you get— I'll just throw something out— you get 5 personal holidays that you can use. There's of course federally mandated ones, right? Yeah, there's the national holidays, so that's one thing, but the 4 or 5 or whatever. But you also get your other— so if you don't celebrate Christmas, then you can work Christmas and take off during Ramadan, or take off during Hanukkah or Yom Kippur. If you don't celebrate, you know, if you celebrate Festivus, uh, that Seinfeld, you know, um, the, the Seinfeld, uh, holiday or whatever. Just use the holiday however you want. So like, there's these two extremes. There's the almost like mandated, we will have all of these holidays even, and then that will still— there's always going to be somebody that gets left out. Versus the other solution, which is like, we trust you and you have maturity as an employee, and if you abuse this privilege, we'll figure out what to do with it. But generally speaking, you're not going to abuse it. I think that's, that's, it's a very good perspective that I hadn't thought about before.

And kind of loop back, as we were talking about trends and screening, and then you were asking about diversity, sort of loop, kind of looping back to kind of put those two together. You know, what is, what is like real diversity? Like what are some ways to sort of, and to sort of, that's not BS or lip service. So like, and this is totally like old news, but still employment gaps, like employment gaps hit people who are having a kid or having elder care or they're They have a mother or father die, or they're taking care of their mother, father, taking care of the kid. Like employment gaps, like screening people out for employment gaps, making people feel like they've gotta fudge their LinkedIn profiles to cover up a gap. Like there's some bad person. Like that is a, that's a diversity issue. Yeah.

No kidding. Like you, for some reason are required to work every day of your life for your whole life.

Right, exactly.

What if you needed a break? What if you were personally ill? What if you, what if you had a time period when you battled cancer? And medical information is not something you wanna disclose in an interview.

Exactly. Exactly.

And at least classified as a diversity.

Heck yes. Yeah. So also like, like how work is done. Like sometimes, I don't know if you, if you've experienced this, but like if I call someone who's like a, a consultant or a CEO or someone who's kind of on their own, like a contractor.

Mm-hmm.

Sometimes they're like, or they're in the car, they're in the parking lot, they're walking their dog, they're with the kids in the van, and like, that's how I talk to them, it's fine. Like, they're always on the move. This happened to me two nights ago, woman in Maryland, I was doing this blog post for SkyHive about something, and it was 7:30 PM in Maryland, Loudoun County, Maryland, and that's when she talked to me, 7:30 PM, her dogs are barking, like, but if you talk, but if you kind of probe those people, That's actually one of the reasons why they're not going back to W-2 jobs.

That's why they're not in a— right.

Yes. Because like they're not allowed to work that way. So, so I think the way you work is a big diversity issue. Like, do you have to be at a computer sitting there or can you just be on the phone? Can you be on the go? Can you, can you be— so that's a big thing is like the work style and the way to accommodating your work style.

Yeah, that's a really good point.

Yeah.

Todd, that's amazing. Yeah.

If it's like 2:30 and you're like leaving early to pick up the kids and you're working at night, like, is that really like leaving early? Because like if you're working all the time, like long hours, but you happen to leave at 2:30 because you want to do the kids or the coaching or God knows what, you're still doing leaving early. That's just like your schedule. So, so a company has to think about like, are we just saying like you do your work and it's not really early, it's part of your day? Or like there's different really attitudes, I think, to work, right?

Yeah, if you're— if your kids are too far from the, the school to walk, or the, the bus doesn't take them there, you have to pick them up. And, and you have to pick them up— I mean, as, as, as a parent myself, you have to pick them up at that time. Like, if they're out of school at 3:30 and you're not, and you're late, there, there's all kinds of consequences. So you got to be there at 3:30. That doesn't mean you've left work That just means you went to go pick up your kids, maybe you dropped them off at home and you finished your day. What if you have to have—

maybe it's not a diversity issue, maybe you just choose to work, to train for a marathon between 3 and 5, or whatever the hell you want to do.

Or you have chemotherapy.

Yeah.

Or you have, you know, maybe you need to have Wednesdays off because that's the day that you get your treatment and you really don't want to work that day because you're not really up to the task and you just make up for it on Saturday, you know, whatever.

Like Ultimately, this kind of comes down to kind of what we talked about the outset. It's like, are you judged on skills? Are you judged on your potential?

Are you judged on your ability to do the job?

Or are you judged on some other thing? Another big, by the way, another big diversity thing, of course, this has been talked about in the media a ton, is like return to the office. And I think it was today there was an article in the New York Times about how, well, there's been a few, Fortune, I think, or Forbes, but anyhow, There's been a few articles this week again about this lawsuits from people with disabilities about returning to the office, but also about people who are returning to the office. And some people are like, oh, it's so nice to have the energy back and the camaraderie. And other people are like, I don't know, I never fit in here in the first place. Like, I know you guys were talking about some TV show I never even watched.

I used to fit in when I was working from home. Now I'm like alienated because I don't fit in at the office.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is not to say that return to work is bad or that work is bad in the office or work from home.

I'm not—

it's not really like good or bad, but it is a diversity issue just because of the data showing that more people who are working mothers or caregivers prefer to work at home than those who are not. So it's just people with disabilities, you know, have extremely high unemployment rates, and work from home was a boon to them. So it's just— it's not so much a positive and negative in general, but it is something to consider.

It's a shift. Yeah, it's a change in how we I think it's a change in the nature of work. It's a change in the perception of work. You know, you have jobs that absolutely cannot be done unless you go into the office. During the middle of the pandemic, I worked with a company that had been, I mean, literally not the minute, but during the beginning of the pandemic when things really were the quarantine and all that other craziness, before companies had even figured out the whole work-from-home thing, they were just like, you gotta go home. I worked with a company that was deemed to be or determined to be essential because what they did basically enabled the movement of money. And doesn't matter whether you're working from home or not, or whether you're working or not, money's got to go somewhere. You know, it goes from here to there. And this company was— if I chose to, I could go to the office because this organization was deemed an essential service. I didn't have to because fortunately I have an office job, but there were plenty of people who had to physically go in for a multitude of reasons. Like, for example, they manufacture something. Yeah, you can't do that from home. Or they did— I remember security, and not necessarily cybersecurity because that's a little bit different, but this is like the, the I'll just spill the beans. This organization had mainframes, okay? And I know that that's not very common anymore, but it's actually a completely, uh, it's, it's a huge advantage for this organization because mainframes are so impenetrable, they're so much faster, they can handle so many more transactions. Although everybody's like, oh, the cloud, the cloud, the cloud. Yeah, the machines that these organizations have can handle all of the digital transactions in the world, and we're talking about trillions of transactions per hour. You can't do that with them with a Windows desktop, right? But these machines are in an office building or not a data center, and somebody's physically got to be there. Yeah, they cannot work from home even though that's a digital worker. So there's all these, and then of course don't get me started on, um, hospitality servers, restaurants, all these other things. So there's reasons why some jobs You have to be there, but if you're working in that job, then you know that that's the, that's the rule, right? It's a job that requires you to physically be there.

There's this hardware store about 5 miles away, Ace Hardware, and they, they just closed down, or temporarily or permanently closed down, but anyhow. And, um, so sometimes I go in there and they're like, if you ask for something, they don't know where that thing is. But during the— there was one time I called on on the phone and asked for something, and the lady on the phone knew where the thing was, but as it turned out, she was working from home. But she was nice. Yeah, but she knew where—

but knew the store so well.

Yeah, so it's like even the job that you're sure you need someone in person maybe doesn't always—

doesn't always, right? And she's clearly competent enough to be able to do her job, or at least part of it, um, you know. Maybe there's other ways, but so, but what I'm getting to though is, is I think I'm in 100% alignment with you because it's essentially making accommodations, right? So making accommodations for someone who is physically disabled, like, um, they are in a wheelchair in an employment situation, means being able to have an elevator, an access ramp, etc. Making accommodations for someone who is visually impaired or blind means being able to provide them with software applications or whatever so they can do their job. But making accommodations for someone who is a working parent or someone who is a neurodiverse, you know, someone who is uncomfortable around other people, that's still an accommodation, and it may not fall under a protected class. But what's changed, I think what's changing is that we're beginning to recognize that We should be making accommodations for everybody as appropriate, right? In other words, everyone has a way that they like to work, and if they're doing a good job, there's no reason why we shouldn't have a way to manage that. If you want, if you can, and you want to work from home, and you're able to work from home, and you're successful working from home, you should be able to. But if you want to go to the office because you work better in the office, then you should be able to. I don't think it should be up to the employer to say you have to work in the office even though the job doesn't require you to. You see what I mean? Like, they're saying you have to even though the job doesn't require it, just because of what I, what I'm hearing from, um, people out there, you know, in, in the whole return to what we're talking about, the return to work thing, is that they are being, uh, they're being passed up for promotion or they're being passed up for raises because they decided not to go back to the office. And it's almost kind of like a rever— like a— it's pun— it seems punitive, right? They could easily do their job working from home, and they have been for the last 3 years. But now the employer has decided that they have to work from the office.

But why, right?

What's the reasoning?

I mean, Earl, I think maybe there are a lot of practices that have been around so long that it's it's like their second nature. Like job interviews, it's like the same thing. It's like, why are we asking these questions? Why are we like— yeah, person has this like— why do you have to have a firm incredible track record as a head football coach, then you drag them in and you're like, I don't know, their interview didn't go very well. It's like, wait, what? This guy's like offensive coordinator on a football team that's the best offense for 10 straight years And you don't want to hire him because the interview didn't go well? Like, that's the criteria?

One interview, right? One interview.

Right, right. Um, it's like a, there was, not to get off on politics because I certainly don't want to, but, uh, presidential debates. Like, it's so funny how someone could be, it doesn't matter what party, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, that's nothing to do with it, but they could be a governor for 4 years, 8 years, 12 years, and then they get in a debate and they're terrible, or the reverse, bad governor, good debate. It's like, and then you start judging them by the debate and it's like, I don't really care how this person—

that's not the only thing they're going to do. They're not debating for a living.

No. Who thought of this? And obviously the reason why I would— I think the reason why it's done is one major reason, because it's always been done. That's, uh, that seems to be—

we don't have a better way or we don't know another way. Yeah, maybe we do have better ways, but we don't know them. So that's interesting as, as we start I want to connect back to the skills, diversity and skills conversation. As we start looking into the future of work, you know, and I'm talking about 10 years from now, Robert Kurzweil said the singularity would happen by whatever, 2047 or something like that. So we're, we're, we're looking to a world where humans and machines and computers will will actually be coworkers, right? Colleagues, essentially. In that setting, we're going to have to accommodate for employer— sorry, for employees or for workers that are not— that don't conform to our current definition of a person. You see what I mean?

Because they're not.

Because they're not, right? I mean, we sort of kind of give corporations the identity of a person. A corporation is a person in a way, in the eyes of the law and things like that. At some point, we're going to have to give these entities a similar label, not from a— not because we have to label things, although humans are very, very dependent on categorization, but Because there's, there's, they're going to be doing a job. So for example, the, um, the, there's the company where I work. You can be an employee that is a person. You can be an employee that is a W-2, full-time, part-time, all that other stuff. You can also be an employee under the system access, like access to the drives, access to that, that is a contractor of two classes. You could be a vendor, which means your employer is the, is the responsible party and you work for them. Or you can be an independent contractor, which means you're the— let's say you're a marketing professional and, and you are contracting to do marketing and you're the person that has access.

Yeah.

And then there's a fifth category now, and that fifth category is AI. Oh my God, we have a category for an entity that has permissions, logins, passwords, access to different components of the system that specifically are for automation because it's a technology company and a lot of things are automated. It used to be you would use Shelly's credentials to log in to run whatever program, but now, well, Shelly doesn't really— it's not Shelly, it's, it's, it's a, it's Microsoft that has some sort of Azure— I'm not saying that right— Azure program that essentially logs in to your systems and translates them from English to French.

Yeah.

And it's the login is for that entity, you see what I mean? So how far are we from, from a future where that's an employee?

It just shows how important it is what information goes into that person's head. Yeah, you know, like what data is put in there because of what they have access to, what they don't have access to. Yeah, what they've been trained on. Yeah, how they—

exactly. And does it matter whether they work from home, right? I mean, you know, so at some point we're going to have to make these accommodations for, for everyone, and I think that the answer to diversity is connected to the answer to skills.

Yeah.

So what is it that, you know, you said start with what is customer service at your company? OK. But is there, is there a possible database of skills? I mean, can we even arrive at a true, I don't know, dictionary is not the right word. And the reason dictionary is not the right word is because I remember watching this movie about the dictionary and how they— it sounds a lot more boring than it really is— how they came up with the first English dictionary. And it was a battle of wits and a battle of really smart people who all had these different opinions about what should or shouldn't be considered a word that would be allowed into the Oxford Dictionary, if it was about the Oxford Dictionary, right? Because that made it an official word. Well, if we had a hard time establishing words for a dictionary, how are we gonna do that with skills?

First of all, you just kind of ruined it because my kids always ask me like, why did they name this word that? And I'm like, they didn't name a word. Words happen kind of over time organically. Like words happen. There's not a person who sat in a room and named things, but you just told me the opposite. So now I feel like—

Well, the people that sat in the room took the words that were created by all of us.

Yeah.

And created definitions for them. So what was, what would that, what those people did wasn't the word, it was the definition.

Well, and so back to your, your question or your thought is the definition of skills. Yes. In Skyhive's case, it's, it's, it's dynamic and it's real time. So like, oh, okay. Yeah. So if you're like a, if you, if the skill is called, a vaccine researcher or something, or, um, that's— let's go with, um, immunotherapy. Immunotherapy is the skill. And then, um, today, let's say at one point in time, that skill may be based on immunotherapy, uh, drugs or something. And another point of time, that skill may be based on some other stuff vaccines that becomes added as a catalyst as a second thing to that immunotherapy drug. So you've got like this skill now involves something else. So it's like you could have a skill and that skill changes over time and that's fed to a company.

It certainly does. Yeah. Specifically with immunotherapy, the first generation of immunotherapy was a drug that was, um, adding molecules to try to create more T cells, like for example, with metastatic melanoma. And so the drug was about adding chemicals to your body. And then there was a discovery that it doesn't matter how much of that stuff you add, the body was essentially regulating it because the body was saying, "Hey, this stuff isn't supposed to be here. We're supposed to tell the body how much to make." And so the second generation of immunotherapy flipped the script completely And what's now immunodeblab or whatever, I don't know the name of it, is the opposite of it. It's an inhibitor. So instead of adding to the T cells, it's inhibiting the blocking of T cells. So what it's doing is it's telling the body to not stop its own production. And therefore, if it's on production, it doesn't object to it. So that's a huge reversal. I mean, it's 180-degree difference from molecule creation to inhibiting enzymes, which is exactly what I'm talking about.

And that's about as much as about T cells as I could get into. But, but that's exactly what I'm saying, is that you could have a skill— to kind of answer your question a few minutes ago— is that, that it alters over time. And so it's not really like frozen in time. Yeah, not just the world changing, but a company itself changes. So, you know, You could have a company that's a fossil fuel-based company that skill is called, um, I don't know, geologist. Say it again.

Geologist.

Geologist. And so one day that geologist skill, the various skills that, that comprise geologists, are like fossil fuel oriented. And then 10 years later, that geologist, half those skills are fossil fuel origin and half of them are about putting the carbon away or whatever, decarbonization. So yeah, so it's changing.

So whose job then is it? And I don't mean the person, but like who, what entity's job is it to monitor, regulate, update, you know, keep this? Because I'm having a hard, this is a big concept, Tob, and I'm having a hard time kind of fitting it in my head. We're not talking about one company's jobs. We're not talking about one company's skills. We're talking about the world skills. We're not even talking about one country. So essentially, this skills catalog is international. It's global. Whose job is it then to regulate it, store it, update it, manage it? I mean, where does, where does that responsibility belong?

Probably, uh, we probably— there will be a number of webinars on that topic alone. Um, uh, we're involved in helping— Skype's involved in helping, uh, advise governments, really, governments, right, on how to, uh, on, you know, making sure it's ethical AI, which, um, is obviously important. You know, what goes into the AI is what comes out of the AI, which within companies, within a government, within—

Right, so a company has its own rules, but it has to abide by the rules of the government. Now the government—

So there's some information people who are making sure that the skills reflect the reality of what's needed in their organization. What they might get from a vendor may be 95% accurate, and they gotta check to make sure that 5%, on that 5%, if it says, you know, the skills involved in Charlie's mechanical engineering job are this, They might need to, you know, make sure that that reflects, give it a reality test. So I think there are multiple people, multiple people involved, whether it's technology companies, whether it's the in-house companies, whether it's the governments, or whether it's a nonprofit organization.

Or a standards body of some kind. Yeah, exactly. That's what I was thinking. That third point is what I was thinking, because, you know, a sovereign nation has the right to determine what is legal or, um, ethical. You know, governments may not dictate morality, but they can dictate legality, and they can to some degree have a huge effect on ethics by enforcing certain things, morality aside, right? So you have— there are sovereign nations whose government system is in direct opposition to the morality of their people, which is weird, but it happens. So if you have an organization, a government that has the absolute rule of law, and they determine that the skill is this, um, that can run counter to your corporation that tries to do business in that area. So there has to be— is there like, what is the minimal— have you guys arrived at what is the minimal component? Like the— I'm thinking Lego building blocks. What is the minimal component of this ontology of skills? Is it a, is it a definition? Is it like a, like in the dictionary? Is it the definition of the skill? So, uh, for example, math, right? So this job requires math, vocabulary, etc. So what is the smallest piece that is the component that builds a skill? A skill is complex. Engineering is complex. It has math, it has, you know, What is the smallest piece? Do you know yet?

Uh, the smallest piece that a skill is made up of?

Yeah, that you can standardize like a Lego building block, right? Like you have 2x2s, 4x4s, 6x6s. You know, that Lego block is the smallest piece.

Yeah, I don't know. We, we, um We call it quantum labor analysis, which is, uh, okay, yeah, which is small. So, um, breaking this skill into its, its tiniest parts. Um, I don't know that it— how small it is.

Take the human body for example, okay? The human body is an organ that's comprised of other organs. One of the biggest organs is the skin. The skin is comprised of several types of skin. Those are comprised by cells. Cells are comprised by molecules. Molecules are comprised by atoms. Atoms are comprised by electrons, right? So at some point, going to the— going to quantum, going all the way to quantum, that's what made me think about this, is you have top and bottom quarks, you have quark quarks. So quarks now are— quarks and muons are now the smallest component, right? So is there going to be a quark and muon database of skills?

I would kind of go back to some of the things we were talking about, like what's, what's important. How big is the database? What's been trained on? Is it in real time? Is it like current? Uh, does it reflect, you know, just your own company organization's data? Does it reflect many organizations' data? Like, those are the things that probably make it—

uh, your companies, governments. I see. Yeah, no, I, I—

the light bulb, because there are a lot, there are a lot of As you know, there's a lot of been a lot of AI, um, databases, trials, and whatnot that reflect like who's a high performer at that company. And then it ends up being not very valid because that company reflects its limited database. Um, there's been AI models that reflect who applied for a job at that company, who are the highest performers or highest, um, applicants who applied for the job. Again, uh, biased database. So it's like How big is your database? Where's the data come from? How has it been checked for bias? How has it been built? Is it in real time to reflect, you know, the reality of today? I think those are the kinds of questions that are most important.

Those are really big questions. Yeah. And I can see how that framework would help you define it for the situation that you're in, right? So if you're a government trying to find it, you answer those questions and you can create a construct. If you're a corporation, you can use those questions to define a construct. I believe if you're an individual, you could also— so I could somehow— I haven't thought about this because you just introduced it to me, but I haven't thought about it. However, I can imagine that using those, using those building blocks that you just described, I could create— I can construct a Shelly skill.

We've been working with people in Kenya and Ghana— sorry, Kenya and Ghana— who, um, have really not who have skills but who hadn't thought about it and really had—

right, to translate—

how to translate and how they could be working for like Cisco or whoever, 25,000 miles away on the other side of the world with these skills.

Um, ultimate transferability.

Yeah, I mean, some of them were like, they're going to graduate high school and they go like work in a— on the farm, and, and that's fine too, but but in cases where that, that wasn't possible or they, or they didn't want to or whatever, people are not even thinking about the word skills and realizing how many skills they have and how, you know, a musical, a music skill for really good example, I think.

Yeah. Musicality, right?

Yeah.

Is a music is a, is tangential to like what math, visual creativity, auditory creativity, mathematical ability. Right. So are there actually defined skills pathways? Like, or is there, is there a list of defined careers yet? You know what I mean? Like, if you go to the, if you go to the, like, the LinkedIn's of the world, the, they call them functions, I think, like accounting, sales, marketing, whatever is it Is there a list like that or not quite?

It's what we do for schools and for companies. So for a school—

Oh, you build it. Oh, gotcha.

You may be graduating or a graduate and you say, this is what my experience is or this is what I'm doing now and this is what I'd like to be. For an organization, we do the same thing. So I'm a graphic designer, I'd like to be a graphic design director. And then the AI gives you a career path and it shows what courses or what projects or what mentors you need.

That's awesome.

To go from like point A to point B. And sort of, so it's like, what are my skills now? What are the skills that I need? And where's the gap? And how do I fill that gap?

That is cool.

Yeah.

Wow. I'm fascinated. That's really good. How long has the company been around?

A handful of years. It depends if you count, you know, the garage time with, you know, the car running, but Like 5 years.

I mean, I just, I'm impressed because this just seems like almost the, if there's a better fit for large language models, I can't imagine. This is like one of the best things that you could do with large language models is interpret these, define these clusters of skills, I guess, or abilities or probably not using the right language. So where— all right, so we talked about diversity, we talked about skills, we talked about how they connected, and we, and we know that you have, uh, as much experience in the industry as I do. Where do you see things going? You know what, you— I asked you before what has changed that surprised you, and you essentially said the opposite is what's, what surprised you is that it hasn't changed much. Will there be a change? So where are things going that will you predict will really kind of shake things up in, uh, in the talent— yeah, recruiting, talent acquisition. Yeah.

As opposed to just like talent, human resources in general?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the big HR picture would be a lot bigger because it would have a lot more components, right?

So just specifically recruiting, I do think people will be measured more on their skills. I mean, I don't think it's the— I don't think it's— it's not the panacea in the sense that you don't want someone to be discouraged from going to college or going to a good college if that could help them, thinking that they can just do another thing. And that will be the same. It might be the same, but it might not be. So I, I don't want to claim that like the skills revolution is like the panacea, but I do think it's gonna— I think it's happening and it's gonna happen. I've seen it. You've seen so many states like dominoes falling where they're getting rid of degree requirements. And you're seeing companies like Domino's getting rid of degree requirements. You're seeing companies do internal studies showing that their employees who went to better colleges are not necessarily better performers, and their people who did not go to college at all are not necessarily worse performers. So I do think it's like a real thing, not something that just technology vendors are talking about, although there are plenty of those things that happen out there.

Again, a big change that's going to happen then, you think, is the sort of the, the removal of that stigma of, um, or the label of your, your capabilities based on your background.

It's not just say— once, once again, not to say that college isn't beneficial, probably also—

no, the college could teach you the skills that you need.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

So it's about the skills, not about the college.

In fact, some people say that college isn't actually— there's another, again, another good webinar for another time, but some people say that college is not actually about skills. It's about getting an education for education's sake and learning how to learn and all that kind of stuff.

Okay, I can see that. Learning how to learn. And I mean, learning is a skill, so yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I mean, I, some people say, uh, college is not job training for them. College, they believe, is not not job preparation.

Doesn't prepare you for a job, it prepares you for—

that's a tough sell for a parent who's spending a fortune on it to say it's not— to say that my kid could major in, in anything and that it doesn't have to be job training. That's, that's kind of a tough sell when you're spending an absolute fortune on college, right?

Yeah, that would be a lot easier to swallow if it was not as expensive.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow. OK. Well, I always ask my guests 2 questions when we get to, you know, to the wrap-up. The first of those is, do you have a thought that you would like to provoke our audience with? And so this is something that a lot of folks will watch the recording as opposed to the live show, especially over the rebroadcast, which will be like more convenient for people that are not at work. Right, that, you know, people that are at work now will be more convenient when they're not. So I always like to give them something to think about. Not, not an answer, not a statement, not a, you know, not a point of view, but a question. So what would you like people who listen to the show to think about, really chew on?

Interesting. I'd say, are you spending your day, your hours, your time, your reading, your listening, your internet time, radio, TV, movies, are you like spending your time around like everyone who thinks the same as you? Or are you spending a little bit of your time on like publications that don't agree with view?

Wow. Other points of view, possibly opposing, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, I like that. That's really cool.

I had to think of it on the spot there.

So no, that's the whole point. It's, it's, it's what's on your mind, right? No, I think it's— that's great. Are you, are you doing in, in and acting like everyone else in your circle, or are you open to learning something new? Which, yeah, you could define that a lot of different ways, but it's pretty clear. I get it. Last question then, who should be our next guest?

Ooh, that's another, another tough one. Another tough one.

Doesn't mean they'll accept, but you know, who do you think we should invite?

Um, Adam Grant is kind of— is interesting dude. I don't know if you're familiar with him.

No, um, I don't think I know him.

Yeah, Adam Grant is a professor, and I'm kind of forgetting right now if he was at Stanford or UCLA or what. Um, it's a lot interesting, but there you go.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right. Anyone else?

It's a guy I've heard speak. Oh my God, I'm gonna botch his name. The Navy SEAL.

Oh, the book that he wrote, the book about the team of teams. Jocko.

Oh no, no, sorry, Jocko. I totally butchered his name, I think. And he's a lot of interesting stuff to say about teams and leadership. He talks about things like, um, in the military you don't measure— you don't always measure outcomes. You want to measure effort. Like, you want to measure how well you helped others. You want to— you want to measure, uh, all that matters is like your unit. So like individual success isn't really like a measurement necessarily. It's kind of— we've kind of over-indexed on that and under-indexed on effort.

Interesting.

Because there's only so much one person can control. They can just get up, they can do the job, they can do their best. They can't like—

they can't do everything.

Yeah, so he thought— that's just one example, as I recall, that he talks about. But that's one interesting, uh, that's fascinating.

Yeah, I— there was somebody who did write, um, this sounds exactly like what I was talking about, but I don't know if he— if Jaco wrote a book or not. There was a, um, a book called Team of Teams. Let me see if I can look it up real quick. Yeah, the Team of Teams: New Rules Engagement for a Complex World. And it was written by Stanley McChrystal. And it was about transformational leadership. And it's kind of like a framework for businesses to use more responsive teams. And so, I mean, you know, imagine what Jacque was describing— accountability for the team as opposed to the individual— combined with how the McChrystal's book is about the organization of teams in a less structured hierarchical— so rather than, you know, president, vice president, and all that, he's talking about more the way that special teams operate with a little bit more independence, but still within the certain rules of engagement. And it's a kind of a new way of managing teams. Those two things combined would be pretty powerful. Yeah. I haven't heard of Jocko, but now I will. Wow, thanks, man. Appreciate it. And thank you so much for coming out on Black Friday instead of doing all the shopping that I'm sure you're supposed to be doing right now.

There, unfortunately, there are some others who are doing it on my behalf.

Unfortunately. Yep, I hear that. No, I actually, uh, we, we did, we did some of us, uh, our shopping already online, so, uh, I think we'll be all right for now. But I do appreciate you coming out and hanging out with us.

You had me. Thanks.

Yeah, all right, we'll keep in touch. Thanks, Todd.

Thanks.

All right, everybody, that concludes Shelly's Alley. So, uh, we'll see you next week, and be kind to each other.