Algorithm ‘n’ blues

Algorithm ‘n’ blues

In this tech-saturated age, it’s easy to forget that not every worker is armed with a laptop, flat white and a handlebar moustache. Demand for blue collar workers has soared like a high-flying kite, and this week we share some blue sky thinking on how recruiters can secure talent in non-office roles.

How a quality candidate experience can attract ‘blue collar’ talent

For this week’s Scaling Stories podcast we spoke with Sean Behr, CEO of Fountain, the high-volume hiring platform that empowers companies with an hourly workforce to streamline and scale their recruiting operations across the globe.

In a world where the perfect candidate is often idealised as a straight-out-of-Harvard MBA grad who speaks 17 languages and plays the clarinet, it was refreshing to hear Sean’s perspective on the value of candidates in the wider workforce.

Fountain’s mission, according to Sean, is “to open opportunities for the global workforce. That’s why we exist.”

“Our specific focus is the blue collar, grey collar, hourly worker. The frontline worker, right?”

Sean makes the point that blue collar workers – from delivery drivers to nursing staff and call centre operators – “really power our economies around the world”.

“I think what we’ve all learned over the last couple of years is how critical hiring and retaining and finding the right people for your business is.”

Sean challenges the orthodoxy that says CVs are always the best indicator of a candidate’s qualities.

“If you’re hiring somebody to stock shelves in a retail store, someone’s CV is probably a lot less valuable,” he says. “In fact, you could argue it’s sort of counterproductive.”

Therefore, Sean argues, “having the right technology to hire those people is really critical”.

Sean illustrates the point by explaining how for certain roles, it’s a question of volume, rather than finding that rare needle in a haystack.

“When you’re hiring a marketing person or a finance person or a salesperson, you’re typically hiring one really perfect person for your organisation. You’re looking for the best possible fit for your organisation. When you’re hiring 400 warehouse workers across the country, it’s a different game.”

Indeed, if you’re hiring at this sort of scale, it makes sense to review the quality of your candidate experience.

“Whoever does really great engagement, [and] who really gives you a great experience – but does it quickly – probably has the competitive edge,” Sean says.

We’ve previously covered how credentials aren’t everything, and in our discussion, Sean shares some sage advice on how talented candidates can really shine.

“Become known as the person who solves the biggest problems,” Sean says. “If you become known as the best problem solver, you will never have to work on a resume ever again in your life.”

Finally, Sean reflects on what has been “a crazy couple of years” for recruiting.

“You know, going back over the last three years, you could argue recruiters were the least important people in 2020, the most important people in 2021, pretty important in 2022, and yet to be determined in 2023.”

For more insights from talent leaders and HR heroes, hop over to our Scaling Stories podcast page.

The talent shortage rumbles on

Anyone who’s tried to find a plumber lately might as well start a plumbing apprenticeship – you’ll fix that leaking pipe more quickly than waiting for a tradesperson (who’s probably booked until the mid-2030s).

Part of the explanation for the talent shortage seems to be that millions of people are, well, already in a job…

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The AI arms race

Nowhere is the talent gold rush more apparent than in the ever-spiralling-descent into AI-induced madness.

You can now earn up to $20m a year as a top AI engineer, and in general, spending in this area has gone into overdrive. Just look at some of the headcount figures for AI employees at top tech companies.

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Meanwhile, Meta appear to have put all their eggs in the AI basket, while according to CompTIA, employer job postings for tech positions rose by 76,546 month over month in March to a total of 316,000.

Notably, the top five global companies for R&D spending (and 14 of the top 25) are American.

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And here is the global context. As you can see, everything Britain touches turns to gold.

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A cautionary tale on culture

Before we all jump on the AI bandwagon, let’s remember there’s ‘doing AI well’, and there’s short-termist thinking that sees the robot revolution as the perfect excuse to slash costs (and damage company culture).

To be sure, there are some professions which feel like they’re dangling by an earth wire.

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Furthermore, some bosses are doing everything possible to cast themselves as the next Bond villain.

For example, the CEO of SHRM, the largest professional HR society in the United States, “gleefully outsourced an employee’s job to India because she dared to ask to work remotely”, reports this Inc piece by Ryan Golden.

Not only was it a deeply cynical move, the idea of simply offshoring a key function and expecting no drop in performance simply misunderstands the relationship between HR and culture.

“ Because the purpose of HR is to be the people experts, that means understanding the culture of the people you work with,” Ryan writes.

“While it's certainly possible to learn a new culture, it's not easy.”

Even the biggest companies struggle with culture

The United States has rolled out the red carpet to TSMC, the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer who are investing $40 billion in computer chip production at a new (and growing) facility in Arizona.?

But as Dan Wang tweets, there is no shortcut to profitability when there are cultural crosswires to overcome first.

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Setting up a semiconductor factory on the other side of the world is no easy feat, and spare a thought for the HR teams who’ll have to figure out ways to bridge the cultural chasm.

Doubts about dynamism

In the corporate world, there is also ample evidence that chucking money against the wall doesn’t mean that everything will automatically stick. Just ask Chelsea Football Club.

This Wall Street Journal piece outlines how Big Tech chews up innovators who become less inventive when they join.

“Big companies of every sort tend to give their employees incentives to be cautious rather than bold, to pursue overly complicated solutions rather than simple ones, and to seek promotions over serving the customer.”

There are even reports of Meta and Salesforce employees who are literally paid to do nothing.

And in a world where some ‘overemployed’ hustlers are schooling their employers by getting robots to do the hard graft – reports Vice – perhaps we need to be cautious about throwing our full weight behind technological solutions to what should be human HR challenges.

The backlash begins

While technology should never be a lazy substitute for human hiring, that doesn’t mean we should just stick our fingers in our ears, shout ‘la la la’ and hope AI goes away. But that’s exactly what some lawmakers are doing.

You may have seen that New York City is set to enforce new restrictions on the use of AI in hiring.

Meanwhile, France and Germany’s response to ChatGPT is seemingly to pull the plug and pretend the whole thing never happened.

“This is what terminal cultural decline looks like,” tweeted David Galbraith. “Not with a bang but a bureaucracy.”

What does it mean for recruiting?

No recruiter should be a Sir Spamalot, firing off automated messages left, right and centre. And far too often, that’s how modern recruiting is beginning to feel.

However, far from entering a new dystopian hellscape, is there an opportunity for AI-driven digital recruiting to make hiring more human?

On Twitter, Brett Adcock is offering a crock of gold to anyone who comes up with an AI trained digital recruiter.

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And shout out to Jeremy Bushaw who brought to our attention the 2023 Recruiting Innovations Bullseye from Gartner. It shows that automated social network sourcing is at the cutting edge for Sourcing and Lead Generation.

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We’ve definitely not heard the last of AI and its impact on hiring and HR, so watch this space for more spicy takes and diagrams galore.

Things you might have missed

  • Rajamma Krishnamurthy, Principal Software Engineer and Microsoft Digital AI leader, discusses how generative AI will transform the employee experience at Microsoft.
  • “Race-preferential admissions aren’t providing opportunity, but only a mirage of opportunity,” reports Alison Somin in The Hill following new research on affirmative action in admissions.
  • ‘Are meetings making you less productive?’ asks this Stack Overflow blog piece.
  • On LinkedIn, Dr Dieter Veldsman shared a visual by Sam Parker and the Visual Capitalist Team on how the monthly minimum wage varies across the world.

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Recruiting fail

They say an elephant never forgets. But could an elephant write a better application form than this?

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Until next time

Thanks for reading! We’ll be back next week, so keep smashing F5 on that keyboard until the next Intrro newsletter drops.

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