Renata: My name is Renata Bernarde. I’m the host of the job hunting podcast. With me today, I’m interviewing Geoff Slade. He is a veteran of the job hunting podcast. This is his third interview, but he’s also a veteran of the recruitment world, both in Australia and overseas.
I would love for you if you’re on LinkedIn to check out both of our profiles and also our businesses. Jeff is the chairman and founder of the Slade group. He’s also the chairman of TransSearch Australia International Interchange Bench Yellow folder. And I could be missing lots of other amazing opportunities and roles that Jeff has had in the past.
So I will have a bio in the episode show notes when this live stream is made into a podcast and is part of the job hunting podcast archives. So we’re here today and thank you for joining us. We have a few people already sending questions and some that have sent questions in advance and we’re here today to follow a recipe from last year almost.
to the exact measures because we, this time in 2022 had a very similar live stream where we had Geoff talking about What was coming up his view on the job market for 2023, analyzing the year that was, so 2022 at that time, and now we’re going to test some of his assumptions for the year that is about to finish.
And again, check Geoff insights into the job market for 2024 for those of you who are looking for work next year and want to get some guidance from from him. Now, Geoff, I’d like to share with you some of the things that we discussed last year and test your memory here and see if we’ve done right by our listeners in terms of the things that we assumed for 2023.
So I don’t know if you remember, Jeff, but in, our previous conversation, you mentioned that 2022 had been a great year for your recruitment business and that you have never been as busy as you know, this time last year. So I’d like you to start by telling us how was 2023 in comparison to that amazing year of 2022?
Geoff: Well, thank you, Renata, and thank you for having me. And I’d like to say hello to those people who are watching or listening. Well, 23 has not been as good as last year. I can say that unequivocally. The good times rolled into the first two or three months of the year, but since then it’s all been well, not downhill, but on a bit of a decline.
And right now it’s getting more difficult pretty much by the week. Yeah, put that down to, you know, macroeconomic circumstances, the wars, the inflation we’re facing here in Australia and and around the world, all sorts of factors that I think impacting largely the confidence of employers to want to put people
Renata: on.
I get it. So it’s not just that things have eased off following the pandemic. Do you see 2023 as not so good year compared to pre pandemic years? Or has it flattened out and it’s now kind of normal?
Geoff: No, I think it’s slightly less than the pre pandemic years. Okay. And I’m not too confident about 2024, I have to say.
I’m a bit of a pessimist in that regard. Not, not totally. aNd I’m talking to, I guess, a largely Australian audience here. My view is that things will be substantially tougher next year than the year just gone. I’m not sure that they’ll be much tougher than they are right now. There is business out there, but it’s highly competitive and hard to get, and employers, and candidates are risk adverse.
So there’s not much confidence in finding the right people or the right people applying and finding the right employer. So, you know, every job we’re handling pretty much is a much slower process than it was six or 12 months ago. But the, I suppose the good side, the upside of that is that there’s, I think, an increase in contracting.
So and there’s an increase in flexibility in the workplace. Now, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I think, depends on your perspective and your hopes for, uh, earning the sort of living you’ve had in the past. yOu know, contracting jobs tend to be relatively short term, uh, you know when all things are considered.
I think things like quiet quitting and quiet hiring saw some people disengaged during the past year.
aNd I think there’s also been the corollary of that is that there’s been more upskilling uh, internally. So companies have been a bit more prepared to say, well, if we can’t find people outside, we’ll have to train them from within.
Yeah.
And think the other thing is that hybrid work, you know, which is now shifting to frontline employees. has caused less of a sense of belonging than there was there before. There’s still stress between some employers and staff over working from home. aNd I think there’s an erosion of social skills to an extent particularly with graduates who are not being prepared the same way they have been in the past.
Renata: Yes, I’ve noticed that as well, even with people our age, Geoff.
So it’s really interesting to see 2023, I think, was the first year where networking was back on, like there were no lockdowns, no reason why not to engage in events. I was invited to be a speaker of a couple of events that turned out to be webinars in the end because people didn’t want to show up.
And I know the organizers were pretty upset by it, you know, these are organizations, you know, professional associations or peak bodies and they prior to the pandemic were excellent at organizing networking opportunities for professionals and organizations. And now it was much harder to achieve the.
same level of engagement as before. And then you don’t have those water cooler conversations get that can open doors for job opportunities, right? Have you noticed that with your team as well in trying to engage clients and candidates?
Geoff: Yeah, I have noticed it with my own people. And what is an interesting observation I’ve pushed to.
have people come back to the office, perhaps from two days a week to three to four. And it’s interesting, but even my management team don’t want to come back into the office five days a week. And I’m not prepared to mandate that because, you know, good people are hard to find and we can’t afford to lose them, our company or any other.
But, do think there’s a loss of productivity. I think there’s a loss of, you know, if you look at the Australian GDP over the last five years, it’s going down year by year. Where does that leave us in five or 10 years time? I think it’s, it’s It’s going to be a difficult situation. And I think the other thing that young people particularly are not able to learn when they come into an organization is, are things like influencing skills, stakeholder engagement, resilience, you know, they’re all things that they need to learn if they’re going to advance in their careers.
And you know, I think they’re the sorts of skills that you don’t learn at home.
Renata: Yes, yes. We have a question here. And Geoff, normally I don’t say who is asking a question because they are job seekers and I try to keep everybody anonymous. But this person is a thought leader in his space. His name is Victor Pert and I Okay.
I’m sure you’ve heard of him, Jeff.
And he’s asking us what makes Jeff optimistic about the Australian job market for 2024? Now, before you answer that people, you should all follow Victor Curtin. If you’re interested in optimism and the science and positive psychology research around that, topic.
So Jeff, we’ve been very pessimistic here. Let’s try to elevate the conversation and address our friend, Victor. Victor’s concerned about optimism. What are you optimistic for 2024? What’s the silver lining?
Geoff: Well, as I’ve just said, I’m not very optimistic, unfortunately. I know Victor and I admire his optimism.
aNd I, I’d like to regard myself as pretty, pretty optimistic person and, and one who very much subscribes to the theory of if it’s going to be, it’s up to me. sO I do remain optimistic from that point of view with people who are prepared to go out there and make things happen. And I think it’s within us all to be able to do that, but some people do it more easily than others.
Some people do it better than others. And I think, you know, there is reason for optimism with those who are prepared to, actually do the things that need to be done in order to either get a job or to perform in a job. Yeah. There’s every reason to be optimistic because. As I said before, the job market is, not very active in terms of candidates availability.
And so good candidates are hard to come by. And if you can prove that you can add value to an organization, either in the interview process or when you get on board. Then I think there’s every reason to be optimistic.
Renata: Yes. Yes, absolutely. And I think I will answer Victor’s question as well. He’s thanking us for the introduction.
You’re welcome, Victor.
I think that when times are challenging, whoever is more strategic and intentional about their steps. race. So you have to have much more of an understanding of yourself, of your skills and the requirements of the role, not just about yourself and what you can bring to the role, but what they’re actually asking the person to do when they take up that role.
So I think being more strategic and intentional about the steps you take in during the recruitment process and how you engage with people really makes a difference in a tougher market.
Geoff: Don’t you think that that applies, you know, right across the board, not only in terms of finding a job. Yes. You know, I’m finding that in my business, we’re having to be much more strategic in the way we go about doing business than ever before.
Yes.
Renata: And Jeff, how do you do that? Last year we discussed this and you were very passionate about the need to be ready for disruption, right? And I think I don’t know if you agree with me. I haven’t been in this business of coaching for this for so long. But every year is completely different from the other, since I started, I started in 2019.
You know doing this pretty much getting ready to launch my business. And every single year since then has been completely different. from the year before. It’s very hard for me to plan to be strategic when everything is changing so much. And I was wondering if you wanted to go back to that need to be ready for disruption.
And I remember you mentioned that job titles 10 years from now don’t even exist yet and how important it is to be fluent in technologies that are coming up this year. We’ve had ChatGPT just invading the recruitment world. I know I teach people how to use it, and I was just wondering, you know, what is your reflection about 2024 in terms of that disruption, both from, you know, the economy, the wars, but also technology and how it’s used in recruitment.
Geoff: Well, I think it’ll just continue to evolve and and probably get quicker and quicker in terms of the way it’s coming at us, you know in a way, I’m thankful that I’m at the end of my career Renata, I’ve only been in this game for 56 years, but I think, you know, life is going to get Somewhat tougher in this country for everyone.
And one of the things that really disturbs me about younger people coming into the industry, into our industry, at least, and I imagine it’s the same in, in many others, is that, the building of relationships. Is almost, non existent in terms of one of the things they think they have to do. They believe they can build relationships if they’re at all interested in doing that on the telephone or via email.
That’s just not possible. And I would urge people who are in the job market to wherever possible get involved in networking. Get involved in getting to see as many people as they can, talking to as many people as they can, understanding how the world goes round and with the world changing every year, as you just said , they have to be on top of that.
And I, despair when I see young people come into my business and they want to sit behind their desk. and just communicate via telephone or email. Hmm.
Renata: Yeah. Yeah. There’s so much that you learn from observation a real life observation in body language as well, in terms of your ability to read the room and read people’s Ability to do their jobs, you know, by, by how their body language answers the questions you’re asking them.
It’s not just what’s coming out of their mouth, right?
Geoff: And just as importantly, what are the questions they are asking? Exactly. I’ve said to my people here for many years, quite often when I’m doing an interview for a job, not quite often, almost every time, I would judge someone’s ability and ability to meet the specification of the client.
Okay. Because they, most of their clients put enormous importance on communication skills and presentation skills. Yes. It’s a given that you, if you’ve got a degree that you can think we can see what you’ve done with your experience and your career. But it’s the way you communicate that is really important.
And I am flabbergasted at the number of people when I say to them, I’ve told them about the job, I’ve told them about the company. And I said to them, so what questions do you have for me? And they say, Oh, I don’t have any. I would immediately rule them out on that basis alone. Yes.
Renata: Now, I, I always insist for, you know, as you know, my clientele for my private clients are usually 40 and above.
They’re usually senior executives or expert professionals and usually when they apply for roles, there is a sentence at the bottom of the job ad that says reach out to, let’s say, Geoff Slade for a confidential conversation, right? And I insist that they have to do that prior to sending their applications, and I cannot tell you how often people are reluctant to do that.
Even after working with me for a few months, they will still try to send their job applications without having their conversation. Am I being correct in insisting that my clients reach out prior to sending?
Geoff: Well, it’s certainly advantageous. There’s no question. Aside from anything else, they really want to know as much as possible before they’re interviewed, about what it is they’re looking to be interviewed for and who, and if possible, who it’s with, or at least what sort of culture might exist.
in that organization. You know, the, curiosity factor I think is enormous. You need to be curious if you’re going to get what you want.
Renata: Yes. And usually people tell me they don’t know what to say. They don’t know what to ask. I say, well, then you’re not ready to apply for the job. Probably. You know, there are just so many things I can think of that you could ask.
You know, the latest annual report, more information about the role, the candidates package or the position description, or, you know, some guidance about the selection criteria. I mean, there’s like endless amount of information that you don’t have about that role.
Geoff: I’m sure you’ve touched on all those things too.
Renata: I do. And now people are getting this for free on the podcast, which is great. It’s a pity they’re so shy. Yes. Now look, have a few questions here that I think are very much related to what we’re talking about. And I’d like to, ask you this. a few things that we discussed last year are now sort of turning out to be true.
Not saying that Australia is going into a recession, but we didn’t foresee it last year, but now we’re kind of thinking that maybe this could be an option. Yes.
Geoff: I think it’s 50 50. 50
Renata: 50. Yeah, it’s better to be prepared, right?
Then we have another conversation that we had last year that’s very dear to my heart and it’s about the jobs expanding above and beyond metropolitan areas in regional areas and coastal towns.
Do you think that with the shrinking of the job market, there’s a shrinking of those opportunities as well? I’m not seeing that. I’m actually seeing jobs still advertised in regional towns and coastal towns. What do you think? Do you think that there is an opportunity here for people to consider a sea change or a tree change?
Geoff: I do. There’s always going to be less competition in regional towns than there is in the big smoke. And not only that, I think the government is trying to encourage people to move to regional cities, you know, Ballarat, Geelong, places like that. I Think you know, cost of living is not as great as it is in the city.
tHe cost of property is not as great as in the city. So there’s a lot of reasons why one would consider looking at least at regional opportunities. Yes. But one of the things you have to do as a candidate is actually learn how to market yourself. You know, the jobs aren’t going to come to you if they don’t know about you.
So you do need to do something about that. Yeah. And. Yeah. one of the ways to do that, I think, again, along the lines of what you just mentioned a couple of minutes ago, if I was looking for a job and I thought there was a company in a regional town that could utilize my skills, I would call the CEO of that company.
I work on the theory that it’s always easier to work down the organization than up. Same as if I’m selling my services here to an organization, I would try and start with the CEO. Yes. He might say to me, look, you’re talking to the wrong person. You don’t talk to the chief human resources officer or the chief people and culture person, but what is to be lost by trying to talk to the CEO to ascertain whether there might be some interest in yours or my skills and experience.
So if you’re contemplating that it’s worth, you’ve got to do your homework. That’s the reality. Yes, if someone comes into into me for a general discussion about what opportunities are there for me, even in the city, I would say to them, I want you to go and, you know, utilize Google to find the companies that you think you could bring value to, given your background, experience and qualifications, identify those companies, identify who the key people are in those companies, and either I will talk to them about you if you you.
You know if I think that I can do something for you, or you should talk to them directly.
Renata: Mm hmm. Yeah. No, that’s
Geoff: absolutely right. There’s no excuse for not doing that, other than the fact that you might be shy about making those conversations work.
Renata: True. Yeah. And in, in that regards, like if you’re interested, if you’re listening and you’re interested in, exploring regional lifestyles, we have quite a selection of episodes for you to listen to where I interviewed people both in Australia and overseas in the U.
S. SoSo you will find a link to those episodes in the thorough notes.
Geoff, the one one question that we got very early on when we started advertising the live stream was one that’s very dear to my heart as well.
And that’s something we’ve discussed before.
But I’m always trying to understand more and more as to why things take so long. So last year we discussed this. You mentioned that recruitment processes are taking longer because everybody’s working from home and it’s hard to What’s your experiment? Catch people when you need them and, you know, candidates are working from home.
The, your clients are working from home. I have seen clients of mine go through recruitment processes this year that have taken six months. For jobs that are not super senior, like they’re normal management jobs. They’re not senior executive roles. What’s going on? Why is it taking so long for the recruitment process to go
Geoff: ahead?
Well, I think one of the reasons is that people… Indecisive.
They’re scared to make a decision that might be wrong. And so they do everything to sort of ensure that they’re making the right decision. Understandable. You know, it just delays the whole process. And quite often, you know, if it’s an HR person that’s handling the project, that can come from the CEO too.
It can, because there’s such volatility in the market. Lots of companies are reliant on winning the next big contract or, whatever. And they know they have to have people in place in order to deliver on that contract if they do win it. But they can’t be sure they’re going to win it and therefore they keep deferring, hoping they’ll get the message that they have won.
And then they can act quickly in order to bring somebody on board. But you know, the poor old candidates left sitting there often for weeks or months on end. So Yes. As is the poor old recruitment consultant who’s trying to manage this process. Yes. And it, it, it is very frustrating. Yes. But generally that decision making is driven by the corporate, or the companies, not the individual.
It’s not often that the individual, unless he’s been, he or she has been mucked around for weeks or months on end. It’s not often that they would delay the process once the offer is made. Yes. Generally speaking. A decision can happen within a matter of hours or days. Everything has slowed down because people are not going to make decisions, I think.
Yes. They’re protecting their Renata, if you’d like me to put it more subtly.
Renata: Yes. You know, one of the things that I’ve always appreciated working with your teams, you know, I’ve worked with Slade and TransSearch as a candidate in the past, and I was never left waiting by them, and that has, to my mental health as a candidate looking for work.
That is priceless. But I have to say that not every recruiter works like that. And I have clients at the moment that haven’t heard back for months and then all of a sudden it’s back on again, you know, and they have already sort of moved on and considered that role is, you know, a rejection and no, still going and it’s been three months, four months.
What can candidates do? Follow up with recruiters in a way that is not considered stalking, you know, because that’s the hard thing for them. They don’t want to be annoying, but they also have no idea what’s going on. What would you recommend?
Geoff: I’d recommend that they stay in touch every couple of weeks, but not more than that.
Renata: Okay. That’s a good rule of thumb. I agree with that.
Geoff: to be frank, I mean, recruiters should be staying in touch with their candidates every couple of weeks too.
Renata: if they’re not experienced recruiters, they’re probably just as embarrassed as the candidates.
Oh, I’m
Geoff: sure they are. Probably more embarrassed, to be frank. And relying on meeting their targets in order to you know take home as much as they can,
because most recruiters are on commission on retainer and commission schemes. And if you’re not getting the jobs filled, you’re not making any commission. And therefore you’re probably. Not earning as much as you’d like to be or that you thought you might be.
Renata: Okay. And then the followup question that I received that I really liked as well, I don’t think we’ve discussed this, at least not on the podcast.
I think we have discussed this in the past when you attended our group coaching sessions, the question here is about dealing with a difficult interviewer. And I hear that more and more from my clients.
And I think it has to do with the fact that interviews now are mostly held online via Zoom or Teams.
And it allows for more bad behavior to occur when they’re held online. I think it’s twofold. I think, you know, I’d like to get your views, but I think some people just don’t understand the new business etiquette of being online. And others just have bad technology, you know, at home and, and things just sort of accidents, technological accidents keep happening.
And it just puts the poor candidate into a headspin. been as to what’s going on.
So a few examples that I’ve had from my clients they’re being interviewed by somebody who doesn’t have their cameras on. They’ve been interviewed by people that are not looking at the camera. They seem to be looking down the entire time and, or looking sideways.
If the camera, you know, is not really forward facing, it’s just. It’s very awkward for a candidate who’s very anxious about an interview to go through an experience like that. And yeah, do you have any guidance? Do you guide your clients as well as to how to interview candidates online?
Geoff: Unfortunately, I think the recruitment industry has attracted over the years a lot of people into the industry who have never been really trained well as interviewers.
And many of them don’t know the right questions to ask. You know, I talked before about candidates not asking questions. I think there are plenty of interviewers in recruitment companies who don’t really understand what sort of process should be undertaken. And to exacerbate that, I think one of the the big issues beyond the recruiter is that line managers.
in organizations have almost no training at all in interview technique.
The HR people might well have some, but the line managers virtually do not, in my experience, have any. This is not the case in every situation, but in most. But to answer that question, I actually asked my, a couple of my senior people here what their thoughts were, because I don’t interview that many people these days.
So let me give you their response because I thought it was quite interesting. Okay. I will read it to you. Their view was oftentimes difficult questions are questions that perhaps aren’t entirely clear or structured very well. So candidates should not be afraid to ask for clarification or additional context from the interviewer.
This is always better than winging it and hoping your answer is what the interviewer is looking for. If you need additional time to gather your thoughts, tell the interviewer you need a few moments to consider how you can frame your answer. With regards to qualifications, rightly or wrongly so, many hiring managers or interviewers tend to focus on your practical commercial experience.
So lead with that where you can and where possible tie in how your qualifications might complement the example of the practical experience you’ve provided. Perfect.
Renata: They’re right. And it’s interesting because I think it goes both ways, it’s the fact that the interviewer may not have been trained or is experienced in, in running interviews and recruitment processes, but the candidates are also not very good storytellers, and they know this.
Most people are. Very open about the fact that they don’t know how to talk about themselves. So by not making their, the initial questions very interesting, they may lose the attention of their audience, the panel that’s interviewing them. And starting from that commercial point, I think is really important because unfortunately, most people don’t start there.
They start with the baseline, what I call the baseline, you know, saying that they’re great problem solvers, that they’re great, you know servant leaders, and they enjoy managing people and all the things that I, in my view. their baseline. Every, you’re only there, you know, because, because this is the baseline.
What’s your competitive advantage? You know, and that’s the commerciality of your background. It may not be what the recruiter wants, but gosh, they will be way more interested in hearing. For example, the fact that you’ve been, you know, a senior commercial officer for a large organization and you’ve managed this sort of P& L, this sort of budget, this sort of scale of business, whatever it may be, it’s better than not giving those metrics up front.
Geoff: It’s interesting you say that because I think most commercial managers in most organizations are not very good storytellers either. Yeah. And in a way, in a way. Looking back on my 50 odd years in the business, I reckon one of the reasons I’ve survived and perhaps done reasonably well is that I push my clients to get the story behind their organizations and I can then relate that story to potential candidates and that’s what garners their interest.
And the other thing I think that candidates have to consider these days, particularly. Is that if you can quantify what you’ve done as opposed to talk about the qualitative aspects of who you are and, you know, I’m a good problem solver. What does that mean? If you can say I’ve taken my division of this company from five people and a turnover of 800, 000 to 15 people and a turnover of three and a half million over the last five years.
That gives the recruiter something to work with, and it also gives the client something to work with when they meet you. Yes. I’ve interestingly got a, a, a candidate at the moment that I’m working with who wants to go and work in New York. Mm hmm. Now, this gentleman’s on a very big salary package. He has built a big business from around a dozen people up to over 300 people.
And I asked him, I said to him, You need to give me some statistics on, on what you’ve achieved. How did you, firstly, strategically, what decisions did you make that enabled you to do this? Secondly, quantify it for me. he came back to me after I’d asked him this with a very nice piece out of the newspaper. that talked about his sporting interests and how successful he’d been at the sport that he was involved in. Nothing to do with what he’d done in his business.
Renata: I can’t
Geoff: do anything for you. I’m not going to, I’m not going to ring up the top firms in your industry in New York and say, I’ve got someone you need to meet.
Who’s got a great interest in this particular sport. They just tell me to jump in the lake.
Renata: Yes. Oh, I love that. So I want to say two things about that, Geoff. You and I worked on a short program called Research Your Career, which is still available on my website. I want to do it again next year. So maybe we should talk offline about this because I have some people doing it at the moment and they have emailed me and a couple of them said, Oh, you know, I loved it, but you talk a lot about the pandemic because we recorded it during the pandemic, as you will remember.
And our program is. really my whole philosophy, you know, in a nutshell. I mean, the whole philosophy is actually the bigger one, the group coaching program, but it’s a lot about storytelling. I’m getting comments here about storytelling and I want to reiterate how important that is. And that is.
Something that if you pre load, if you do before you go into, you know, the job market, if you understand how to talk about yourself, it makes the entire recruitment process so much more enjoyable for everybody. Yourself, most of all, like if you’re a candidate and you know how to talk about yourself and you’re not Scared of questions like tell me about yourself.
Why did you leave your job? What are your weaknesses? What questions do you have for us? You know those questions that are the the bookends of of the Process and they’re so important and usually people just practice for the star behavioral questions in the middle and they forget the first impressions and the end of interview a tale, you know, how important it is to engage well on those bookends.
So, People log in to reset your career and they don’t really understand Until they’re halfway through and they’re like, oh, I love this. This is so good And it’s basically just social sciences more than recruitment. It’s really, you know Linguistics and all of that. So I would really encourage people to go have a look the other thing I was going to say is I hope that you send this episode to your Candidate who wants to go to New York because I want to lead into another conversation here, New York.
I have clients in New York, Geoff, it’s the most amazing competitive job market I’ve ever worked with alongside my clients. It’s just, you look at the job. And in an hour, there will be like hundreds of people that have applied for that role. It’s just insane. And I’m talking here about senior financial roles, marketing roles.
If you’re young in New York, it’s even worse, but I’m talking 500 people applying
Geoff: for a role and from all over America and from all over America, because they’re so mobile.
Renata: Yes. Yes. And I’m, I’m delighted to say that my clients resumes and job applications are converting. So they are getting interviews.
And once you go through that qualification process, then you have all the qualification processes to go through interviewing well and so forth. But a lot of them, they came to me after they had tested. And this is not just in New York, it’s all over America and I’m seeing Australian clients also doing this.
They test those apps that review your resumes. You know, you run the resume through the app and then it gives you a score and they can’t make heads or tails of it. They don’t. Don’t get interviewed and then they reach out to me and then we redo their resumes and then it works. So and that’s leading into AI, artificial intelligence, because of course those apps that review resumes, it’s not the human eye reviewing it, it’s the AI reviewing it.
And even though I’m a big champion and advocate for using AI, Chat2BT was down today and it wasvery stressful for some of my clients and you know, but, but it’s still not a hundred percent safe to be running your resumes and your job applications on AI alone. And expecting it to give you a job.
It won’t, you need to curate it, to proofread it and add your final touches to, the final draft that it spits out. What does it mean for recruiters that job seekers are using things like chat, TBT to write their job applications, their cover letters, and their resumes. All right.
Is. Are you noticing a difference? Is your team noticing a difference in how job applications are being written
Geoff: now? We’ve seen very little of it so far.
Renata: Really? Hmm. Interesting. Wow. Okay. That’s a competitive advantage for my clients. Because we are using it a lot. And I’ve, done, I mean, as you know, I told you this before, your episode that we recorded this time last year was, Most listened to episode up until the one I did with chat to BT and then chat to BT beat you Jeff And that’s what we’re trying to do here today.
We’re trying to beat chat to BT’s episode One that we’re recording today that means that you are not seeing yet people using chat2BT. Do you think it’s because they’re not using or it’s because they’re using it so well, you can’t tell?
Geoff: I think it’s because they’re not using it so far in Australia that very much.
Good. But I do think that whether they use it or not,
the only way you’re going to really hit the mark in terms of a response to an advertisement or. However, you get to learn about the job company is to actually do some homework about both those things, wherever you, wherever you possibly can, you know, whether it’s talking to a recruiter, tell me more about the job, tell me more about the company.
So I can put in a. an application that actually is on the money and not just another application. Yes. Do some homework on the company. Try and find out what it is that what sort of people it is that they hire. If you know anyone that works at that company, talk to them about what sort of people the company hires.
What do they think the the hot buttons that might, you might be able to address in your application? Yes. You can put anything into, into chat GPT, but if it’s not relevant to the job or the company, you’re probably not going to get very far.
Renata: No, no, no. No, you’re right. And I think a lot of people don’t know how to use it.
Yes. And. If you prompt it well, you can actually… I’ll tell you what I have learned, Jeff and, and I think that goes to everybody that’s listening. If you prompt it well, it educates you. Okay, so prior to chat2BT, I gamified job application for my clients. So that’s my IP, I make a game out of it, and that game takes away the emotions that you have about your experience in your work and your, that sometimes clouds your judgment as to how to apply for a role because you can’t be rational, you’re too emotional, you can’t remove anything from your resume, your resume ends up being six pages long or more and your cover letter is too long, you know what I mean?
Like it’s very hard for you to be pragmatic about it. By using chat2BT well, if you know how to prompt it, it educates the job seeker as to what The position is actually asking for because it’s a logical tool. So it reads the job ad and it points out what it’s asking and then it reads your resume.
And I’ve been able now to create create with my clients. Prompts on LinkedIn uh, sorry, on ChatTBT that gives my client a score if they’re going to be successful or not, if they apply for the
Geoff: role. And have they been successful so far? Yes.
Renata: So you know, ChatTBT will then analyze their resumes that we, prompt, we copy paste into the tool and the, the job application item by item.
In the selection criteria, the dot points giving my clients a score saying, yes, you’re, you’re good. You should apply. You’re good for this role. Or, you know, if you decide to apply, you will have to make a strong case about X, Y, and Z, you know, things that are missing out. It’s really interesting.
I
Geoff: wonder about it, Renata, I’ve got to say, because the point you made about taking out the emotion.
Emotion is a very powerful thing. Yes. And I think it can be used to your advantage as much as your disadvantage. If you take it out all together, are they really getting a feel for who you are as a person? Yes,
Renata: you add it back on Jeff, you have to add it back on, I 100 percent agree. Yeah, 100 percent agree.
It’s the art of persuasion from Aristotle’s that we’ve been using for 2000 years. We don’t just make decisions with logic, we make decisions with logic and emotions. That’s every single TED talk. It’s every single good argument out there, but it starts with the commerciality that your team has conveyed in the, the answer to the question that you read out to us.
And then it needs to, to have a human component, an emotional component, right, to the way you answer questions. That’s a good storytelling there. You’re right.
Geoff: I’ll tell you another little story. I don’t know whether you saw this in the Australian about a month ago. There was an article on a woman called Nanette Carroll, Nanette Carroll I first came across about 20 years ago, maybe even longer.
And I was opening an office in Brisbane at the time, and we’d advertised for a consultant and this woman wrote to me and she said I hope you won’t hold this against me, but I’m living in a convent with three, I’ve got three children under five. My husband has left me. And I’d like to be considered for this job.
And for some reason I interviewed her, I don’t know quite why. Maybe it tugged at the heart strings a bit. And we got down to a short list and the final short list was her and a woman who the year before had been Miss Australia.
And I chose this woman out of the convent and she turned out to be probably one of, if not the best employee I’ve ever had. Wow. She went on after I sold my business in 1987. She went on to, uh, actually buy the Brisbane end of the business that I’d sold when the company pulled out of Australia and turned it into such a force that she was Telstra Businesswoman of the Year in Queensland.
And then she had, and her three sons all grew up to be very successful. One of them, this might jog some people’s memories if they saw that article, one of them was the COO for Richard Branson. Wow.
And that’s where I think emotion can play a part.
Renata: Yes. Yes, it can. Yes. No, it’s absolutely right. Sometimes emotions gets in a way and that’s my last question to you today Yeah, and i’ll tell you when because it’s the another question that we got here.
That I want to ask for your opinion as As you probably know, we’ve discussed this before candidates get really emotional when trying to explain a few things about their careers, usually why they left the organization or why they’re currently unemployed.
Yep. And most recently I’m finding it more and more common for candidates to be very upset about gaps in employment. Because the pandemic generated so much gap in some people’s employment history when they didn’t have that before. I think for some people, they’ve always had that. But others, you know, it was during the pandemic was the first time that they really found it hard to find employment.
And then they found employments for short periods of times, and they feel like there’s a lot of little opportunities and contracts that they’ve done, and they feel very self conscious about that. What do you think recruiters think about that patchiness and the, you know, the fact that they are currently unemployed?
What goes through a recruitment, recruiter’s mind when the candidates are answering these questions? Well, first
Geoff: of all, the recruiter has to find out what’s behind the gaps. But from a candidate’s point of view, I think honesty is always the best policy. I think more often than not, there’s always a legitimate reason for a gap in the CV, particularly these days.
When I started in this business, if you hadn’t worked somewhere for 20 years, you were regarded as unstable. Now, if you’ve worked somewhere for 20 years, they think so fixed in your ways. You’re not worth hiring. Yeah. So I’d like to think that any good recruiter will look at their candidate situation with a human lens.
So I think have an, have an open discussion with the recruiter. I think it’s the only way and, and to. Tell them what’s actually happened in those gaps. Normally the, I mean, I don’t think we pay that much attention to them, frankly. I mean, you have, you have to ask what happened here. Why have you not worked in the last 18 months or, you know, in a six month period, five years ago, why, why didn’t you work?
There’s usually a legitimately good reason. And I think the advantage that candidates have today. Is that the job market is very tolerant of people’s lives that, you know, they understand that things happen. Yes. You know, I had to stay home for 12 months because my mother got cancer. Issues like that wouldn’t even be regarded as a problem for a moment from a recruitment or a recruiter’s point of view, or it shouldn’t be.
Renata: Yes.
Geoff: But be honest, but be diplomatic. And I think what you have to do is give the recruiter good reasons that they can then discuss with their client because the client will ask the questions, even if the recruiter hasn’t. And there’s nothing more embarrassing for a recruiter than having a client say, well, what hap what did they do between here and here?
And you don’t have the answer.
Renata: Yes. Yes. I think practicing for those answers, especially if they are personal and emotional, is very important. It’s, and, and avoiding them not thinking about them and then being confronted with those emotions during an interview is the worst thing that can happen. So. Practicing before the interview is, really important in thinking about them and coming to terms with what has happened.
It’s so interesting. I often I really enjoy watching documentaries about sports people and, and celebrities that go through failure and or, or become so successful that they are extremely unhappy about things. And we often don’t think about our, the analogies to our own lives, right? You can’t have a, you know, I mean, 56 years in the business, Geoff, has it always been successful?
No.
Geoff: I’ve been, I’ve been about to go broke so many times it’s not funny Renata. There you
Renata: go. Exactly, I mean we never see that do we?
Geoff: Fortunately I’ve had nice bank managers who’ve looked after me.
Renata: Oh see, there you go. And I think that that’s, that’s the message that I’d like to leave everybody with is that, you know, that we often don’t see the ups and downs and, and we focus on people’s successes and we look up to, to people and we don’t realize that they got there through ups and downs and challenges and, opportunities and networks and connections and vulnerability.
And honesty.
So thank you so much, Jeff, for always being open to a good chat. I think the next one will be just you and I having a coffee on calling street. I’ll ring you and we can organize that. That will be fun.
Geoff: Sounds good, Renata. All right. And you, and for all your listeners, I hope you have a very nice Christmas break and Good luck in the new year.
Renata: Thank you, Geoff. Thank you so much. You too. And I’ll see you again next year.
Geoff: Thank you. Thank you. You might not. I think I’m getting close to retirement, Renata. You have to find a replacement for me then. All right. Goodbye, everyone.
