Why Applying To 100s Of Jobs Online Doesn't Work Anymore

0:00 All right. >> Hi everyone. >> Hey guys. Hey everybody. Welcome. How are we doing? We're going to make this interactive. Every time someone says AI, you have to take a drink. This is that's going to We're going to kill everybody. >> Yeah. >> All right. So, let's talk about this recruiting loop. I've heard it called a doom loop, but just for folks who might not know, give me a definition of what this Doom automated loop is.

0:28 I guess I'm the AI doom loop guy. Well, look, so you know, typically the job market has been sort of a pendulum. People think of it as like either there's like a tight labor market or, you know, a tight market for jobs and one side has the advantage. This is really the first time in anyone's memory where both sides are unhappy. And why is that the case? Basically, AI has taken over the job market. Candidates are applying to jobs automatically. They're auto applying to hundreds or even thousands of jobs. and their AIs are tailoring their resumes to look just like the job description, which means companies are inundated with lookalike applications. AI slop, the same things we all see in every other part of our lives. And so they respond, >> it's like recruiting, resume slop.

1:09 >> Yeah. So it's resume slop. And they respond by basically like using AI to sort of hammer that list back down and say, "Chat GBZ, give me a short list." And so that makes it harder to get seen. And so candidates have responded by sending out more applications leading to a higher filter. And so round we go. So basically everyone's using AI to sort of address their own little problem but in ways that have made the overall system worse not better.

1:31 >> Was we have machines applying for jobs and the machines hiring the machines. >> Yeah. The robots are talking to each other. >> Yes. >> Erin, what do you tell you you specialize in the humanity in that's another buzz word, right? Humanity in in resumes and applications. What do you tell your millions of of viewers about what's happening now? Yeah. So, I probably every single day have at least one kind of scammy like AI apply bot company reach out to me offering me money to promote them and I've turned them down every single time because I just vehemently disagree with this.

2:04 I think it's I mean this room knows it's clogging up the system. There's a bottleneck. It's just it's a waste of people's time and money. I don't think it's getting us to where we need to go yet. I think that eventually we can get there, but currently operating within this current system, like you say, if thousands and thousands of resumes are flooding the system and they're all Chat GBT and they all look the same, we're not getting anywhere. So now people are just having to circumvent computers and, you know, get jobs through networking.

2:28 So my number one piece of advice right now is to network. And people say, "Oh, well that favors people who already have connections and know how to talk to people." And I say, "Yeah, it really is unfair. Like we push is coming to shove here. we need to figure out a solution here because it's also not working for the people in this room. So, as much as I hear from job seekers how frustrated they are trying to get jobs and you know not not getting not hearing back or ghost jobs or whatever is going on, I also hear from recruiters saying, "Well, we can't find quality talent." So, it it's truly everybody's so frustrated right now.

2:56 >> Yeah. So, who's who what's a way to get hired well and what's a way to hire well in this current environment where it's just machines like basically just, you know, clogging the systems? Well, we, you know, serve thousands of companies that are hiring. And so what we've seen in kind of a positive response to the situation is thinking differently about the hiring process altogether. Hey, we're in the era of AI. Why do we still have rectangular white resumes, you know, that used to have to print out and put into an envelope when that's not what happens at all? Why do we have to gatekeep who gets an interview in a world where we can have automated conversations at scale? And so what we see our best customers doing these days is using the power of AI to transform the process altogether. As a as a quick example is we have customers who have automated the initial conversation. So when you apply to the job, very first thing that happens is you're invited to come have a 20-minute conversation with a voice AI agent and be interviewed. And what that does is it frees you up from the constraints of a resume. It doesn't matter what's on your resume. everyone can qualify for an interview and you can use that to showcase what you're about and people feel like that gives them a better chance to stand out on their own merits.

4:04 And for the companies, it gives them the opportunity to sift through that one or 2,000, you know, look alikes in your inbox and find the people that are real, that h have high intent to actually try to work at your company and they have the skills you need. So thinking about AI as just a problem is not really the way forward. But I think AI has the possibility to make hiring dramatically better if you think about it differently.

4:26 >> Yeah. And I think the difficult position that like Daniel and I are in me coming from the jobseker side and him with the ATS is that you can only do so much in a system that is still functioning the same way it's been functioning for the past 50 years. So you know Greenhouse can invent a new great system with AI. I can invent stupid fish which is a new AI system. But if the companies don't want to use it then it you know it doesn't work. So you need to kind of have this gradual change. And that's why I founded stupidfish. It's my new company and it's a way of helping people first get through the messy middle that we are in with AI and and misnavigating from ATS until you know what's next with AI and really helping people navigate that but also look into the future because what we do is we bring in data about people their resume their LinkedIn where they've worked all that stuff that stuff's easy that's data but then we understand their who they are their values their hidden skills their soft skills by interviewing them in depth and then eventually we can allow data to do what computers do best scan large amounts of data and then get people in the room quicker so they can talk to each other. but that again is down the road and I think that right now it's just about navigating the current space that we're in. It's very difficult.

5:27 >> How'd you pick the name stupid fish? >> So, there's this quote by Albert Einstein where he says, "Everybody's a genius, but if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it'll live its whole life believing that it's stupid." So, my whole idea is that everybody has an ocean out there, but we just have a lot of fish trying to climb trees. And with the onset of AI, we have new job titles coming in and new skills in demand. And so my whole thing is using technology to help connect people to jobs that they're the perfect fit for.

5:49 >> Wow, that was much deeper than I thought. That was very good. Daniel, you mentioned the like an AI voice interview. >> Yeah. >> Like to me that sounds kind of dystopian. >> Like it just tell me like what does the AI do and how does one ace an AI interview? And I'm sure people are going to like have voice AIs interviewing with the voice AI. >> Yeah, you know, it's interest. An interesting point and you know lots of people worry about AI as if you know feeling dystopian or you know is it going to be fair am you know am I going to like it. We surveyed thousands of job seekers on their attitudes about these technologies and what we saw was there are three very specific things that job seekers care about. Number one they want the conversation to feel naturalistic. Too often we've been on the phone trying to shell shout representative at the airline and like it's just when the when the thing interrupts you or it's like stilted or robotic or there's like a weird puppet talking to you. People hate that. They want it to feel natural. Second is they want some transparency and control. It's got to be candidacentric and too often we saw like there was a generation of these AI interviewing products that like wouldn't tell the candidate they were going to talk to an AI. Okay? They would send them an email saying we want to offer you an interview. And they'd say great. They'd get on and they realized only afterwards they're talking to AI.

7:06 no ability to opt out and so you got to be recognize that the jobseker has an important role you got to be candidatecentric from that standpoint and then it has to drive an explainable decision if it's just like a black box where chat GV is going to decide your fate people hate that rightly so but if there is an explainable rubric built on a core of structured hiring where there's like a scorecard a rubric a valid assessment methodology then everyone can have a little bit of faith in that so those are really the three tenants and what we found is although there is a huge amount of distrust trust and worry about AI and these and these voice experiences and other things. When you deliver an experience like that, people really respond well. We see over 90% of job seekers using our technology give it an excellent rating. And so I do think that when the choice is would you love to have a great conversation with a hiring manager or talk to an AI, people say I don't want to talk to the AI, I want to talk to the person. That's not the choice. The choice is do you want to put your resume in a black hole and never get looked at which 93% of job applications never get looked at or do you want to have a chance to tell your story and when it's put that way and the experience is good people like it and we've had a lot of conversation great conversations this morning about the qualities that job seekers want and kind of the job qualities that I'm sorry qualities the hiring person wants and someone looking for the job. What will these AI interviews or in general what are that first hurdle? What are they screening for? What what what do they want to find out? Is it experience? Is it attitude? Is it EQ? Is it more rudimentary?

8:33 >> You know, I was at LinkedIn's I had their talent connect their big annual conference last last week here in New York. And on the main stage, their CEO talked about the rapidly changing skills environment. and he pointed out according to their data that the skills listed in job descriptions in aggregate across LinkedIn that companies are looking for have changed about twice as fast as the skills that people say they have on their own LinkedIn profiles in aggregate. So what that means is that the skills people are looking for in this AI era is like changing super super fast and obviously the talent isn't keeping up. So companies are really feeling that strain. I think that in a world where technology is changing so fast, it's less about like the specific you know what we used to call hard skills like the specific tool or technology that you know because none of us knew you know clawed code a year ago and we don't know what they're going to come up with next week. and it's much more about the like durable skills like are you able to learn fast? Are you able to power through adversity, be inventive, be a great teammate, be a good leader, and like tools come and go, technologies come and go. And I think more and more that's the kind of AI workforce of the future. Oh, >> I have a question. You have millions of followers and fans, I'm sure between the comments and the DMs you get must you must have a great kind of pulse on what the marketplace is for people looking for jobs right now. What are you hearing? What are the themes? And what what should people in this room know?

9:58 and you know kind of what is the fears, the hopes, what's what's happening out there. >> Yeah, my finger is definitely on the pulse. All I do all day is DM job seekers all over the country, you know, from all industries and they're definitely extremely frustrated. I'm hearing people who say, "I have a master's degree. I've never had a problem getting a job and I can't even get an interview right now." So, they just can't break through. They feel like their resume is getting sucked into a black hole. So, then they're desperate.

10:20 So, they use these auto apply and it's just this horrible situation that I'm really really trying to solve for. but, you know, requires us all working together. And then I'm seeing a lot of the market AI is changing things so quickly that people actually don't realize how much their job has changed. So they continue looking for a job the same way they did 5 years ago, but the job has changed. And so it they're using old skills, old resume to look for something that's that's different now. you know, maybe somebody in sales ops is having trouble finding a sales ops job, but if they type in go to market engineer, you know, the rebranding of sales ops, they'll suddenly start to find, you know, so I'm trying to help people figure out new roles, new ways to articulate their skills because sometimes they have the skills and the market is demanding them, but they can't get through because the online hiring process is broken and the economy is changed and the skills that are demanded in the market is changed.

11:07 On top of that, we have a low, higher, low fire, yeah, market right now. So it's it's just extraordinarily difficult especially with the the new generations coming in. >> You we were saying Daniel was saying both sides of the aren't happy. If both of you had like a magic wand that could fix one thing, what would it be? What would it be just to get us on that right path to kind of make it better for everybody?

11:29 >> You know, I think the sense of helplessness that you feel is because as a job seeker today, there's like nothing productive you can really do to give yourself a better chance. You can send out more spam. doesn't really help. And so I think the answer has to involve giving job seekers something more productive to do, a better way to showcase what they're about and to find jobs. And they get it that like the more effort you put in, it's going to be it might be challenging. It might be competitive to get a job, but they want the system to work fairly and like being able to put in more effort and help with a better chance of getting a job.

12:00 That's the unlock, I think. >> So these almost like taking trial runs or projects or almost like home like homework. Well, there I mean, you know, I think there's a bunch of ways to imagine that. I think what we're trying to do is give job seekers tools to again better express themselves and and showcase what's what what they're capable of beyond the resume, which has, by the way, never been a great way to show what you're about. And it's only gotten worse. I think if they had a way to have conversations with their own personal agentic job search partner as well as to talk to companies and really navigate that process more holistically more humanly I think you know companies would uncover diamonds in the rough people would have a better time getting the right job and generally we would think the system while competitive works and that's what's missing today.

12:47 >> Yeah. Yeah. I would wave my magic wand and get rid of rums forever. I think it's abs I mean you agree right we make resumes the exact same way we did 50 years ago we open up a PDF and we type and it's not even a standardized document for goodness sake it's ridiculous that we still do things this way and we have self-driving cars so I would rather have people build an extremely in-depth profile through conversational AI and I think you need to pair that with verification verification is a big issue right now you know you've people working remote jobs who aren't who they say they are or they have skills that they don't really have in real life and verification is a big problem. So I think we need to see increased verification of skills and then we need to see increased like recommendations and referrals to validate the soft skills that they have and then this large you know profile which recruiters maybe chat with and say hey do they have this skill and it tells them if they do or not and then you move to the interview stage. I think the fact that we have resumes that people are still tailoring it's just it's got to be a thing of the past.

13:42 >> So what replaces I mean I guess both of you are are are poking at it nudging at it. What would replace a resume? It sounds like it would be series of interviews or you said like more of a showcase of what would in a perfect world what replaces the resume. >> Yeah, like I think a professional brand is more important than ever being able to network and articulate yourself and kind of talk about yourself as a as a freelancer or as a a business a vendor.

14:04 I always tell people apply for a job like you're a vendor. and I do think that video can play a massive massive role. I think just jumping right to that interview stage. I hear from my, you know, followers so that they don't love, you know, things like Higher View. I don't know if anybody from Higherview is here, but the fact that they have that countdown like we have right here, and you got to finish the question before the countdown's over, that's just no, nobody likes that.

14:27 >> I mean, look, I think imagine you had your own personal job search agent that knew you really well, that followed you in your career, and could really understand what makes you tick, what are your growth areas you're looking for in your next, when might you be looking for a job, how might you try to get a job? Like job seekers are at such a disadvantage because they don't look for jobs that often like giving them some real advice, giving them a real partner that can go out there and represent them and help them tell their story. Like a resume just can't do that. Absolutely.

14:54 >> So I I think yeah, imagine a world where if you're a programmer, it can talk about the kinds of things that you're really good at. It can understand, you know, the types of problems you like to solve and and tell that story to the right company. Like I think there's a ton of possibility. Sure, AI can create problems. It can hallucinate. It can magnify bias. We need to manage those risks. But I think it also holds a tremendous promise to make hiring radically better, more fair, more human, more efficient, better. And I think if we chase that dream instead, we can get somewhere really cool. Absolutely.

15:24 >> Daniel Aaron, thank you so much. >> Thank you. Thank you all. >> Thank you.