Getting Rid of the CV | Season 2, Episode 9 | Recruitment and Beyond Podcast

In this episode of Recruitment and Beyond, host Ewan Anderson is joined by Woody from Willo, a leading video interview platform revolutionizing the hiring process. 

With a five-year partnership between Eden Scott and Willo, this conversation delves into how video screening tools are reshaping recruitment, improving candidate experience, and helping businesses find top talent faster.

Key Discussion Topics:

• The evolution of Willow and its impact on recruitment over the last five years.
• How video interviewing bridges the gap between efficiency and human connection.
• The role of AI in hiring and the challenges of candidates misusing AI-generated CVs.
• The movement to eliminate the traditional CV and replace it with competency-based hiring.
• How video screening supports neurodiverse candidates and promotes inclusivity in recruitment.
• The future of HR technology and its role in reducing unconscious bias.

Key Takeaways:

• Candidate-Centric Hiring: Willow prioritizes a seamless and user-friendly experience for candidates, ensuring a fair and engaging process that allows them to showcase their true potential beyond a CV.
• Reducing Recruiter Admin by 50%: Companies like EDF have significantly cut down admin time, enabling recruiters to focus on meaningful candidate interactions.
• Higher Completion Rates, Better Talent Pools: Willow boasts a 90% completion rate for candidate screenings, unlocking access to talent that might be missed in traditional telephone interviews.
• Supporting Neurodiversity in Hiring: Video interviews give neurodiverse candidates the flexibility to present themselves in a comfortable environment, enhancing inclusivity.
• The End of the CV? With AI manipulating CVs and recruiters making snap judgments based on written applications, businesses are moving towards competency-based assessments.
• AI as a Recruitment Aid, Not a Replacement: AI can enhance efficiency but should not replace the human connection in hiring. Recruiters must educate candidates on ethical AI use.
• Future-Proofing Talent Acquisition: Companies that adopt flexible, technology-driven hiring processes will stay ahead, while those stuck in outdated methods risk falling behind.

Join us for this insightful discussion on how HR and recruitment are evolving in the digital age. Don’t forget to subscribe to Recruitment and Beyond and leave us a review – your feedback helps us continue delivering valuable content!

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Transcript

Ewan (00:05):

Hi, and welcome to the Recruitment and Beyond podcast. My name's Ewan Anderson. I'm the marketing director here at Eden Scott. This is your essential guide to navigating the ever-changing world of human resources and recruitment. We chat with industry leading figures to give you the inside track on growing and developing the very best teams. Hi, welcome back to the Recruitment and Beyond podcast. We are joined today by Woody from Willow. Woody is the co-founder of Willow, and yeah, great to have you along with you.

Woody (00:42):

Yeah, thanks for having me. Great to be here. Obviously you've been supporting us from the very beginning, pretty much. So five years of partnership.

Ewan (00:53):

Yes, I remember those days, right? Five years ago, sitting in the old office chatting away, so it was good. It is fantastic to see where Willow's got to and the trajectory that you're on, and that's kind of part of what we want to talk about today is just how Willow's its journey from where you were and to where you are now and what's in the future, but also just to get a handle on how video interviewing and what that looks like for companies now and how it can really help businesses to find the right talent and find it in the right way, I guess. So I think that's where we'll start, but it'd be great to get some insight from you in terms of what Willow does so our listeners get a real handle on what Willow is and how it can help their business.

Woody (01:35):

Yeah, sure. And look, I think what's really interesting is what you said straight from in the beginning there, which is how to find people in the right way. And really what Willow is, is we're a simple to use human first candidate screening tool essentially. And that means rather than you having to schedule loads of interviews, do lots of inconsistent telephone interviews or at the extreme other end, automate humans out of the process altogether, rather than using that technology, Willow really sits in the middle and keeps the candidate front and center by giving them a voice, whether that be video, audio, text, et cetera, and essentially creates this virtual interview or screening environment that ultimately gets candidates in front of recruiters quicker and enables them to really focus on that top talent and invest more time with them. Yeah,

Ewan (02:37):

And in terms of the evolution of the product, you guys, we've worked with you for a while and it's always been such a really easy to use system, but was that always the premise right from the very start, it was about the ease of use and integration for people to be able to use that system for their business?

Woody (02:57):

Yeah, I think, well, no, I don't think I know the big focus for us was that we believed there were really two customers in the equation, and a lot of the predecessor businesses that did similar to what we do was really just focused on the recruiter and focused on how to almost discriminate candidates out the process, make it as hard as possible to make them fall over their own answers and basically catch them out. And it was like the aha gotcha kind of platform. We were more about let's focus on the first customer, which is the candidate, and actually make it an enjoyable experience going through a one-way video interview. And the way that you do that is you make it completely frictionless. You make it really simple. You make it so that the candidate can do unlimited retakes and all of this stuff. So that really started off the journey of simplicity was candidates want it simple.

(03:57):

And then we sort of realized again, or well consciously decided that we wanted the whole platform to just remain as simple as possible. My background was in recruitment, in recruitment agencies, so I knew things like hiring managers don't want to log into loads of different platforms and remember passwords just to view a candidate. The CV was rife. And the great thing about a CV is you can just fling it over in an email, somebody opens a CV and makes a judgment, and it's all of those kind of frictionless things. Again, that led us to go right, we've got to keep this user friendly, simple, easy to log into if we are ever going to challenge this idea that CVS should be relegated to a thing of the past, you've got to make your product as simple as opening a document and reviewing

Ewan (04:50):

It. Yeah, no, I mean, we talked the other week there just about the types of companies you're working with now, and obviously I think it's over five businesses that Will is working with now and the likes of EDF or NHS Scotland. What sort of feedback, I mean just as you touched on that, it's very much about making the platform as candidate friendly as possible. So what sort of feedback are you getting from these guys, from the candidates and from the companies?

Woody (05:18):

Yeah. Well, I mean it's not necessarily feedback from the candidates, but we ran a report literally today this morning on our completion rates and they're up to 90% completion rates. So if you've got 90% of the candidates that you're sending to this platform are actually completing it, that's a huge indicator that you're probably doing something right and also an amazing gateway for all of that talent that if you were relying on a telephone interview in the past, you'd probably only get through to 25% of them because of time restraints, schedules, all of that kind of stuff. So you're really opening the door for all of that talent to really have a voice again in that process, but removing that heavy lifting and that admin that gets in the way for recruiters. So that's really, if you think about the feedback that we get from our customers, EDF is a great example.

(06:18):

They calculated that they reduced the amount of recruiter admin by 50% in the process, which is huge. That's such a massive amount of time that they've then got back to ultimately make the candidate experience small personal for those that are going to progress basically. So yeah, that's the feedback that we get from candidates 8.6 out of 10, all of this wonderful stats, but the fact is that they're getting through the process, they're getting seen more, and therefore they're a lot happier with that scenario. And then from a recruiter perspective, shortlists are shorter and higher quality and they spend more time with the right people.

Ewan (07:01):

Yeah, I think that's, it isn't given people, and I guess this will go to talk about technology, but it's given people the opportunity to get away from some of the admin tasks that were labor intensive to really focus on, as you pointed out, spending more time doing what you want to do, which is spending time with the candidates, finding the right people, and engaging with 'em in a more, I suppose, more human basis. We talked a few weeks ago to Andy Williamson from Welcome Brain and he explained us how difficult it's for those that are neurodiverse in some of the recruitment processes. Does Willow, I suppose, is Willow a good opportunity for that to try and help that process?

Woody (07:40):

Well, speaking as a Neurodiverse individual who obviously created the tool with another Neurodiverse individual, I would say a hundred percent, yes, I'm dyslexic. CVS are rubbish. And to be frank, now I'm sure we'll get onto this, but most of them are written by AI anyway. If I was right, if I was applying for a job now, I would literally be leveraging AI for every single application that's written based regardless. So there's a massive debate going on there, but really what Willow nows neurodiverse individuals to do is in the comfort of their own environment, take a screening call, test, text, audio, whatever, without the pressures of somebody randomly calling you out of the blue,

(08:40):

Which puts massive strains on your cognitive capability. So I've got dyslexia, I've got a short-term memory problem. It's much better for me to plan when I'm going to do something in advance than somebody to ring me out of the blue and I've forgotten they were going to call me. If you've got a SD, for example, the time it takes for you to process a question is longer and think about the answer, that doesn't mean that the quality of your answer is any worse. It just means it takes longer. So absolutely being able to sit in your own room with the support that you may need as well. We've got plenty of individuals. I spoke to one of the TA lead at one of the team Taylor breakfasts, and we talked about the use of asynchronous video, and she said she loved it. She had a son that was autistic, and it basically meant that she was able to sit next to the son and guide him through the entire process, which imagine that if somebody called you for a telephone interview versus click on the button and do it when you are comfortable, it's totally different. So yeah, I truly believe from a neurodiversity perspective, we're offering different opportunities to people to get their best foot forward.

Ewan (10:03):

Brilliant. And actually just a slight as a follow on from that, because again, you and I talked about this quite early on in the journey. It's just about your blogs and some of the content on your website discussed this are in cultural fit, and also just the fear around potential biases that may be there because obviously from a CV point of view you could anonymize that and then you're looking at skills and you're looking at that sort of stuff, whether it's obviously video interviews, there can be whether they're subconscious or conscious biases that can come into that. So how does Willow deal with that situation and how do you get around that?

Woody (10:41):

Yeah, I guess the first thing I would challenge back is what skills can you confidently identify from a cv? Good

Ewan (10:48):

Point.

Woody (10:50):

You can redact as much as you want, but that person has written their own homework, not their own homework. And time is a terrible indicator of somebody's success within a role. And I guess what Willow allows individuals to do is tell the stories that you wouldn't typically write on a cv. I wouldn't write about the intricacies of starting a business whilst also trying to play hockey three times a week and representing whales at over 35 level has to drop that in.

Ewan (11:24):

Yeah, it's not easy to get that done a bit of paper, but drop it into the interview,

Woody (11:28):

Drop it into a video or a podcast. Exactly. But the point is the questions are more specific to the role and the answers are more specific to that individual, and it's giving you a competency level of insight into that person. Firstly, you're assessing the things that I think are going to be absolute gold dust for the future, which is the ability to communicate and have great soft skills, which you absolutely cannot see on a piece of paper. And then secondly, you also have the ability to really audit what that person said and hold them accountable to it. So I'm here as a real person giving you my answer. Once you've joined the organization, I can go back to that video or the audio and go, Hey, this is what you said here. You're not displaying these characteristics. What is it that we're missing? Or whatever it may be.

(12:21):

So that's point number two. And then point number three around biases. I totally agree, and I think within organizations, if you have somebody that's going to be proactively biased, they're going to be proactively biased, whether it's in the cv, the video, or when they meet 'em face to face. What we, I guess enable organizations to do is, firstly, you can have three different people, which I genuinely not based in any scientific knowledge that I can cite, but one of the best ways to have a really fair and equitable process is to have a panel of individuals assess each video and ensuring that that panel is diverse, very, very difficult to do that without causing a huge amount of anxiety for a candidate by putting three people in front of them or three interview stages or whatever it may be. Whereas you send somebody a video link, they record it, and then three people watch it. One of them watches it in the morning between a meeting, one of them watches it at lunch, one of them watches it in the evening. You've created a scenario where you can have a really equitable process,

Woody (13:34):

And then

Woody (13:35):

You can also go back and go, okay, here are the 10 people that you saw on video. These are the two people that you chose. Have you noticed anything about those individuals?

Woody (13:49):

And

Woody (13:50):

What was the difference between their answers and the other eight that you thought these people aren't going to be right. So you can even use it as a training tool to kind of uncover that unconsciously.

Ewan (13:59):

Yeah, no, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah, I mean I think that's the thing, isn't it? I think the reality is that bias, whether it's conscious or unconscious, is there anyway. So actually using a tool like Willow to try and find that out and help your organization on a larger scale to try and avoid that, it's a really valuable tool for that. I think we're going to go do a quick break and we'll be back after this. I'm interested around this cv, getting rid of the cv. So just talk to me, I know that you and have talked about this in the press and you've talked about this in your blogs and so on, and getting rid of the cv. So tell me how do we do that and what does the future look like without it?

Woody (14:44):

That's a great question. The future's bright. Bright, the future's CV less good. Look, we have a big, big passion for it because we just see it every single day of the week that organizations that rely upon CVS are relying upon their own opinion of a piece of paper that somebody's either chuck through AI or have written themselves and embellished Business Insider did a survey of job seekers and 75% of them admitted to lying on their cv. So it just isn't an accurate representation of an individual point number one, so it is inaccurate. Secondly, unless you redact all of the information and you're left with the skills that somebody's lied about, it's also based on a lot of bias because looking as a recruiter in seven and a half seconds, I'm looking at the name, I'm looking at where they went to school, where they live now, where they last worked. If any of those things don't resonate with me in seven and a half seconds or worse, I used to work somewhere and I thought it was horrible, or the individual lives in an area that I unconsciously or consciously deemed to be not suitable or whatever,

(16:11):

I've made a decision on that individual without even thinking about their skills or their potential. And then third and finally it is the fact that, and this is something we're hearing every single day now, is that paper-based or text-based applications are just being manipulated by AI nonstop. So yeah, they're the three main reasons why we think it should be left behind what the future looks like. Was the other part of your question, I mean, everybody talks about skills based and that kind of stuff. Call it what you want. I think it's quality skills, competencies and behaviors

Ewan (16:56):

Basically. And

Woody (16:57):

Throughout each part of your process, I believe without a cv, you can do a better job of understanding those four core things that are going to determine whether somebody's good for your role or not.

Ewan (17:11):

But I guess that's the question. Is it a case of using something like Willow? Is it a case of a combination of a different factors? If you're working for NHS Scotland or as you say EDF, what is the process for people engaging? Because as a candidate, I suppose the worry is some people are very good at writing, very good at their CV drafted and they see that as an opportunity. There's still, as you mentioned before, the requirement to sift through a number of applications. Some will be right, some won't be right. And the four points you touched on there, we hear that a lot. It's so much more about who the person is rather than necessarily the skills they have written down on a cv. So I totally take that point, but I guess just trying to understand that process. Is it a combination of different factors rather than just relying solely on one written piece of paper, as you say, that could be AI manipulated. Now,

Woody (18:08):

So I run a workshop on this where, and the reality is that it should be different for each role, which I think is where the complexity, and I'm reticent to say apathy, but it kind of is apathy or resistance is a better word. I think most people that probably listen to this podcast

(18:33):

Probably don't want to rely on CVS anymore, but the friction comes when they go, hello, hiring manager, I'm not sending you a CV of this person. That's the big blocker big. So the workshop focuses on three things. Firstly, winning the hearts and minds of at least one hiring manager who's willing to be your first follower, your champion in the attraction phase, and really understanding what skills and qualities and behaviors are we actually looking for. Then screening, and I think this is where a lot of people get stuck is at scale. People think they need to be a yes or a no,

Woody (19:14):

Which

Woody (19:15):

Is just not true. They need to be directionally yes or a no. They need to be, they're worth investing more time in or we're not investing more time in,

(19:25):

Not this person is definitely right for the job. So in that scenario, in screening, you're talking about your basic knockout questions, logistics to work, all of that stuff that you can ask at a top level. And then it's, okay, well what's the quality or the underlying quality that I can screen at high level? So it might be I want to do a psychometric, it might be that I want to do a task-based assessment, it something like Arctic Shores for example. It might be that you want see the person's personality and how they communicate, therefore, and Willow would be amazing. It might be that you have the resource to do telephone interviews and that's what you want to do, but absolutely having something that anchors to the skills that you've got, but you can see as an overarching or underpinning skill that goes, yes, this person's worth investing more time in. And then the last part is, and I've seen some brilliant videos on LinkedIn recently, I dunno if you've seen them too, of an individual basically doing a mock of a competency-based interview where the person walks in or joins the video call and she goes, oh, I see you went to Bury University. That's amazing. And it's like the reality of a competency based interview.

(20:48):

And it's so true. If you can immediately connect with somebody on that basis, you are like, right, yeah, this is the best candidate ever. And it's just human nature.

Woody (20:59):

So

Woody (21:01):

In that element, what are the things you do need to understand in depth? So yes, spend 30 minutes getting to know the individual cultural fit standard competency questions, but then spend the other 30 minutes setting them a task that's going to tell you way more about their ability to deliver than any question about how they used to do things would.

Ewan (21:24):

That's interesting. Yeah, I mean, I guess it is a big leap of faith for people, but on the flip side, the technology is there because just thinking of processes, I'm thinking of how you get through that, but the technology is there Now that says exactly as you've just said there, there's some core things that we need in terms of right to work and so on that some companies require. And then after that, why not have five questions, put them on something like Willow and really get and go through them and screen them as quickly or as well as you need to, and then you're onto the next stage where it is an interview. So you're almost removing the need for the cv. It's a good point, yeah, I mean, absolutely is it, but I do suspect it'll take a leap of faith because it is a huge change, isn't it? It's a massive change to see, actually, we're not going to rely on something we've used for

Woody (22:13):

Since 1482 when Leonardo DaVinci created the cv. So

Ewan (22:20):

It

Woody (22:21):

Is fairly entrenched, I would say after. Yes,

Ewan (22:25):

No, absolutely. And I guess just as a follow on, I guess from that, I mean, we talked again a few weeks ago about the introduction of ai, and you've mentioned it in terms of the cv, but in terms of the whole hiring process, and obviously there's a fear element to the introduction of ai, but where do you see that as part of that process, AI is in a positive way rather than a negative way of people using it to write their CV and will be using the AI to develop the product going forward?

Woody (22:56):

Yeah, it's a great question, and I've just come back to candidates first. The challenge with AI in the candidate market right now is it's uneducated use of ai. So if somebody will take a job description and say, write a CV with this, then it becomes fabricated information. Whereas if you can use it to augment and heighten what you are good at, just highlight what you are actually good at, then great use AI all the time. But what's happening that we are seeing is candidates straight out of university are just copy and pasting questions into chat GBT, and then copying and pasting the answer into a text-based answer, and then every question is the same. And they don't realize that that's not going to get them a job because you can so clearly see they've used ai, every question and answer looks the same. So I definitely think there's a lot of work to be done from that perspective.

(23:58):

How do we use AI to actually give candidates a better way of showing you how amazing they are? There definitely is a benefit to that. And then on the other side, again, from a recruiter perspective, so Willow absolutely is leveraging AI through Willow Intelligence, which is part of the platform. And the whole point of Willow intelligence is to get you to the information that you need at a level of confidence that you can make a decision on hiring. So we believe that recruitment should be human-centric. You should get the information that you need so that you as a human can connect with that individual and make your own decision, but with the confidence of the information that's been gleaned from an AI tool like Willow Intelligence. And I think the best tools out there will realize that over the next 18 months, there's going to be this battle between candidates that aren't using ai, right, and recruiters that potentially automating too much decision. And then at the end of it, they're going to clash and everybody's going to have hired people that can't do jobs or they're going to have removed humans from the recruitment process altogether and start getting really bad candidate feedback or whatever. I think we'll start to get this sort of equilibrium of, okay, recruitment is still about finding and connecting people to people, people not about AI assessing ai. And then we'll end up in a good place.

Ewan (25:33):

I think there's definitely a transitional journey we have to go on here because I was at an event about AI and ethics, and one of the suggestions was that humans are still in control of this process and they need to be. How long that lasts, I don't know. But ai, from an AI point of view, it still requires that human interaction. And we had LinkedIn in here doing a bit of update for our team on AI and how to use it. And it still requires the human interaction. It still requires you to use it effectively. And I think that touches on what you were just saying there about it's a good tool, it can enhance what you're doing, but you can't be the tool that does everything for you. It's not there to, as you say, write a cv that's bespoke for that job because once you get into the job in a couple of weeks, it'll be very easy to work out that you have no idea what's involved in that role. Exactly. And you'll be moving on. So it is the use of ai. I think you're absolutely right. The correct use of AI can make a massive difference to everybody, but I think it's going to take a bit of a clash and a bit of getting a lot of mistakes made along the way, isn't it? But it is there to benefit. So I guess,

Woody (26:41):

Yeah, and I think look, in future, the rate of change within AI is so monumental that it probably will replace a lot of the recruitment process because if you go into education, but this is the problem is all of these things are interconnected. So I as a human being go into education, I pass some exams, that exam gives you a score. It doesn't tell you about my capability to perform in the workforce. Whereas imagine a world in the future where I go to school to learn things that I can actually use on my day to day, and I come out with a score that's relevant to a certain role that's been assessed by ai, and that AI automatically matches me to 10 different organizations where I could deliver amazing things. But that is such, that's like such an unbelievable thought miles and miles away that right now humans have to use the tool to save time, but still make decisions and connect with people.

Ewan (27:51):

Yeah, as I say, I think it is there for good, but I think it can definitely make some mistakes. It's not perfect is it? But it's growing so quickly, it's developing so quickly that it's actually going to be a phenomenal help in the future. And you guys, I not sure you guys use it for just tailoring some questions and specific questions to ask as part of competency-based, I guess, questions on your system. Is that a case of it continually learning about these questions as well and developing the questions that you're looking for?

Woody (28:23):

So Willow intelligence is very much in the sort of beta early phase. The ambition is to be able to ingest data from things like the job descriptions, the decisions that have been made in the past, all of that kind of stuff. And then suggest, so at the moment we just suggest competency questions based on things that have probably not been talked about from a candidate perspective. Again, the whole point of what we want to do is ensure that candidates have the best opportunity to put their very best foot forward and show you what you're capable of. When in reality, recruitment is really hard to do that because you can't sit behind somebody for a day and see how they work at full efficiency, which would be the ideal solution.

(29:15):

So yeah, we suggest questions that you can ask. We're building out different templates of assessments that you'll basically be able to take off the shelf and then change to whatever you want 'em to be with our AI assistance. The idea being again, that we just get better information about each candidate that comes through the process. And also the whole idea of having an AI summary of the candidate with some questions for the hiring manager at the bottom is to try and engage hiring managers with this whole idea that you don't need a cv. What you need is a question that relates to something earlier in the process, not I've got your CV on the telephone interview, you were asked how you worked at X, and now you're in front of me and I'm a hiring manager, not a recruiter. So I don't know what question to ask. Oh, I see you worked at X. Tell me about your time there. For candidates, it's really frustrating telling somebody the same thing again and again and again, even if they're different people.

Ewan (30:23):

Yeah, yeah, no, that's absolutely fair. And in terms of security, I appreciate you guys will be, this will be top of the list, but just in terms of people thinking about using the system, I presume there's lots of data in there, there's lots of information you're keeping on people, and security is top of the list, I would imagine, in terms of cybersecurity.

Woody (30:44):

Yeah, I mean last year we got ISO 27,001 certified, which is awesome. We are further enhancing our security. So yeah, absolutely. In terms of the data that we store, like under PII and stuff like that, it's not actually that much, but obviously what we are storing is people's stories, which are just as precious to them. So yeah, we take it incredibly seriously to make sure we're a solid platform.

Ewan (31:20):

So going forward then, what's next for Willow? What are the plans and where do you see yourselves in a five years time?

Woody (31:28):

Five years time? Five

Ewan (31:30):

Years? A

Woody (31:31):

Long time. Such a long time. How about five weeks?

Ewan (31:36):

I said that and then after our conversation about, yeah, I thought that's just too long. Where do you see yourself in the future?

Woody (31:44):

Where I see Willow in the future is relatively straightforward. I think we want to continue to enhance the candidate journey to give recruiters access to the top talent as quickly as possible, whatever that means. I think we will go deeper into other aspects of the hiring cycle, whether that's through partnerships or whether that's stuff that we do ourselves. And ultimately, yeah, you will see my face talking about ridding the world of the cv, probably too much to be frank. And anybody that is interested in finding out more about the CB three movement, there's a whole website dedicated to it called CB three.me, and we run free workshops for TA organizations to basically build that CBP process and how you can engage with your hiring managers. So I think you'll just see the business as a whole keep moving towards that motion of how can we remove this antiquated piece of, not even technology, but paper and instead give candidates a better voice and give recruiters better talent quicker.

Ewan (33:06):

Yeah, brilliant. And we tend to finish just often with three top tips for our listeners just so that they can make the best use of whether it's the tool or whatever we're talking about that day. So from your point of view, in terms of, I guess in terms of technology for HR and recruitment, what are your top three tips? I appreciate one of em might be to get rid of the cv, top cv, maybe two others then.

Woody (33:28):

Yeah, so definitely look at how you can engage a hiring manager to get rid of the CV by running a proof of concept that is properly measured and really shows the outcomes because that it's going to be one brave individual within your organization that turns around and goes, yeah, I'm willing to give this a go and then taking it from there. Second thing that I would absolutely advise any TA professional to think about at the moment is how you are educating your candidate market around the use of ai. Because we've talked about that before. I saw, again, I saw a really interesting LinkedIn post, I didn't get a response, but they decided that a candidate had cheated by using ai. And I asked the question, well, did you tell them they couldn't use ai? Because if you didn't, you are the fool, not them. They're just using the technology available. It's like doing a mass test with a calculator and then being told at the end, by the way, you're not allowed to use a calculator. You've failed. And I just find that that's the problem that we are facing right now is nobody's telling candidates how to use it properly.

(34:41):

So that's the second thing that I would say, which is a big, big bit of work. And then I think the third thing really is kind of linked to those two things. The future of TA is really focused on talent planning and talent mapping within the organization. It's being an advisor as opposed to just an out and out recruiter. And I think what organizations like yours have done amazingly is not just being a CV throwing organization and instead building and understanding the best practices within recruitment to get the best talent. And that's the difference between who is going to stay in their TA roles and who's going to really love and understand the human part of recruitment and those that are going to get replaced by simple admin tasks that are just used by ai. So yeah, that would be my third bit of, I dunno if any of that's any good.

Ewan (35:45):

No, really. Excellent. Listen, thank you very much for your time today, Woody. It's been excellent. It's been really good chatting and area. I'm really interested in terms of technology and how it's going to impact the industry and what we do and how we make a better experience for our candidates and our customers. So thank you very much for your time and yeah, we'll catch up again soon. You're very welcome.

Woody (36:05):

Cheers, you, thanks for having me on.

Ewan (36:13):

Thanks for listening to the Recruitment and Beyond podcast. Hopefully there was plenty of insight for you to take back to your teams, so don't forget to subscribe and never miss an episode. And if you can leave us a review, we really appreciate all the feedback and support we get. It makes a massive difference.