Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sunny, how are you?
[00:00:02] Speaker B: Hey. I'm doing fine.
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Good stuff. Well, firstly, Sunny, thank you so much for, for joining me on the Employer Bland podcast. Really, really good to see you today. And you're all the way over in, I was going to say Sunny Berlin. It's probably not so sunny. It's probably a little bit like we've got here in the UK, isn't it? the moment, actually.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Actually I'm lucky today because we have really clear blue sky. It's really cold, but it's really sunny. So yeah, it's the. The best side of Berlin in winter times.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: Oh God. That's when things are really good. The sun's shining, it's nearly Christmas time, the Christmas markets are out in full force where you are. So good times.
So Sanny, before we kick things off, would you be able to very briefly introduce yourself and give us a little bit of an insight to you and your job role?
[00:00:53] Speaker B: My name is Sang Yun park actually, but since kindergarten everybody calls me Sunny because Germans have difficulties to pronounce my name the right way. So it started when my best friend in kindergarten started to call me Sunny and somehow this established over the years and now everybody calls me Sunny and this is really good.
I am global expert in angular branding and talent attraction at kws.
KWS is one of the leading plant breeding companies and my role is to actually shape the perception of the KWS employer brand and position KWS as an employer of choice for potential candidates to attract them in a competitive market, but also to make them stay once they turn into employees.
Right. And actually I am marketeer by training. So I studied international marketing back then in the Netherlands and I started my first years of work experience in classic brand marketing. So I worked for Danone, the yogurt company and did marketing and advertising for kids. Because I was in the team of kids Actima, right? So we. We had to work on the pasta power of kids so that they pester their moms so that they buy the ectumer drinks for the kids.
But then.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: It definitely worked because my kids, especially my two eldest, used to pester my wife and I all of the time in the supermarkets. I had to interrupt you there, sorry. So you did a good job anyway, clearly.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: You know what, it was nice and fun. I learned a lot.
But I was really intrigued by the retail by the German food retail. Because back then and nowadays even more, they have the real power when it comes to who's who's becoming listed in the shelf and who not, right?
So also when I realized When I was in exchange with the salespeople, they were really complaining. Oh yeah, the retail, they are giving us a hard time. So I wanted to know what it is to be in that side of the business, right? And it was a coincidence that there was a marketing position in which is the second biggest food retailer in Germany. And I got the position there. And it was surprised because once I got there, they told me, yes, 50% is marketing and the other 50% is employer branding.
And I didn't know that until it was my very first day, right? So I said, okay, let's get into it, let's test it out, let's try it out.
And I fell in love with that part of marketing because employee branding is really the. The most or the closest to marketing in the HR world, right?
And I was really intrigued by that because it is, honestly speaking, less.
It's more authenticity.
And this is something what I really like. And so I sticked to that.
And the reason why I came to KWS in Berlin was just because of private reasons because my wife was already working and living here and we wanted to live together and I was looking for a job, right, And I didn't know anything about kws, right, because I have no clue about agriculture and so on, but it was the job description which caught my eye and I just gave it a shot. And since then, I'm. I'm here working for kws and I love the company, I love the brand. And yes, I'm really keen to re. To bring new people, to attract new talents to our company and make them stay because it is a good company and it's worth promoting it.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: Absolutely brilliant. Well, thank you so much for that, for that insight. That's. That's awesome. And before we get into, you know, because we've got a topic that we're both eager to. To dive into, but it'll be really nice and something we try and do on this podcast as much as possible and something I'm keen to understand more about you is just, you know, cutting beneath the surface of, I suppose the LinkedIn profile, you know, is. Sammy, you know, what, you know, a little bit about your background and your, your personal story and, you know, could you give us a little bit of a, you know, a timeline and a journey of kind of, you know, from whichever period you want to start in your life that, you know, from your, your younger years to where you are today and connecting some of those dots and how you've got to the point that you're at today.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: I am Korean I have Korean roots, but I was born and grew up here in Germany. And after my school education, I started in international marketing studies in the Netherlands.
And this is where I fell in love with brands. I loved brands all over my life. And we all are surrounded with brands, right?
And this study or my university study course was focusing really on B2C brands. Like all the brands we are just facing day in, day out. And this is also where I had my first years of working experience, right. So I worked for Danone, was in. In marketing for Aktimel Kits. So yeah, convincing kids to pester their moms to buy them the products.
And after that I just wanted to get to know the other side of this business, of this B2C business, because I just realized that especially in Germany, the retailers, they have the real power.
We have just a few retailers in Germany and they are really dictating the prices. They are dictating who is going to make the shelf space, right.
So yeah, it was a coincidence that I found a job at Revenue, which is the second biggest retailer in Germany. And yeah, I started a job there in the marketing department. And it was a surprise that I got to know on my first day that I will not only do marketing in general for forever, but also employer branding. And it was my very first contact point with employer branding. At that time I didn't really know what it is, but it sounded intriguing and sounded interesting. So I just gave it a shot.
And over the years I just realized this is way more fun than classic marketing, right? Because it's less bullshit, there's more authenticity. You let people sign viewport, put the people into a center of communication.
And this is also what I really liked and this is why I sticked to that whole yeah.
Of my career. So I switched then from classic marketing to employer branding and then changed also now to cave as my current employer.
And I think in general, in general it is, yeah. More real talk what we do in empower branding. And that's why I really love it. Because you don't have to or you don't bend the truth like in classic marketing. Right. And this is something, yeah, I realized I don't like too much.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's such a good point. And I think like you articulated so well, like there are clearly so, so much crossover with traditional marketing, recruitment marketing, employer branding. There's lots of crossover and lots of kind of connected touch.
But you're right if, if the creeps in too much in employer branding, you know, which there are occasions where in, in places you See that happening, but it's, it's such a false economy because it gets found out and then it does, it never lands. It doesn't work. The people will not stick around if the truth isn't kind of woven in. And yeah, I think, I think there's a really interesting kind of element in there where there is and not in all forms of traditional marketing, but there can be huge elements of kind of almost like manipulation and you know, emotionally like massaging kind of people in a certain direction for an outcome. But I think like you articulated that that really doesn't land in employer branding. I think that's why it's, you know, it's, you know, I've been kind of magnetized towards it for many years now as well.
So Sunny, the topic that you and I are going to cover today is is there an over reliance on AI in employer branding and talent attraction and connect connected to that, you know, is AI eating our creativity, our confidence and our competence.
So it's quite a mouthful for a topic, but. But yeah, it gives us a good kind of lane to concentrate in. So if we kick off, you know, and if we look at AI as a crutch versus AI as an amplifier, because the first thing I'll caveat all of this with is that I'm a huge, which I'm, you know, I'd be confident enough to say, I'm sure you are.
And the vast majority of people listening to this are huge advocate of AI in the world and in our industry. But I think also we need to be cognizant to the fact that if we let it seep into the wrong places in the wrong areas, it could start really having a detrimental effect on our own personal working practices and also our industry.
So if we look at AI as a crutch versus AI as an amplifier, have you got any specific examples or thoughts that you'd like to kind of kick off with in that line?
[00:10:56] Speaker B: I think I would like to give a concrete example.
We at kws, we are, I think like many other employer brand teams, rather small, right? We are just three people, we are one team lead, two experts and we are responsible for more than 70 countries, right?
So we are always looking for tools or platforms, methods to help us being more productive, more efficient or even scale our work, right? And this is where AI now in the last few years become, became very, very tempting because with all the especially these big AI generative AI tools, it was so easy to create large content quantity in a very, very short time.
And I've did also my experiences with that. But my learning now after using it for several years now is fast and quantity of content is not always good content.
Yeah, yeah. And it's really important to have a at least general understanding of how these Gen AI models work to properly use it.
So there is definitely a risk of over reliance on AI and I think this risk can be reduced if you use those tools properly and if you have at least a basic understanding of how these tools work.
Right. So if I think there is a risk, but on the other side I think there's also a big opportunity and also in the upcoming years there will be so much more development that I can right now not foresee how it will go. But right now I would say if you have a good understanding or basic understanding of the platforms, how they kind of you, how they work, then there is a good chance to use it and not over rely on it to have a good balance at the end of the day.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think, I think looking at AI as a crutch, you know, definitely, you know, talking about my own experiences and certainly in the last six to 12 months because I think, you know, AI has been around way longer than that obviously. But I think this past year there's just been a, an incredible surge in certainly my own personal reliance and where I've seen AI infiltrate pretty much every part of workflow that I work with. But if I look at this podcast is a great example.
I knew that you and I wanted to talk about a particular topic. One of my first go tos was, was was Tap into Gen AI. It was ChatGPT in this instance, what we're going to be talking about, provide me with some ideas and some inspiration around these topics.
And I've, I've had to catch, and this was yesterday and I've had to catch myself kind of taking inspiration from that but not building, you know, and this goes in employer branding as well. But I just wanted to give you a, an isolated use case but not building the entire session or my thought process around those points that have been given to me because I think that's when you're looking at AI as a crutch in an isolated instance. Like that's when I feel like it can become really dangerous for me and my own creative thinking where I could very easily be like, okay, great, there's 10 points there. They're the 10 points I'm going to talk about.
And you know, there's a couple of bullet points, you know, per area and they're the things I'm going to dive into and I caught myself and I do this quite often. I'm sure many of us do. Listening, thinking. Okay, I'll take that as one repository. But I need to make sure there's the broader creative thinking going around and challenging those ideas because they are ideas but they're just, they're just a subset of ideas. And I, and so, so I think I've definitely, you know, come to have an over reliance on from an IDE mediation point of view. You know, am I leaning too heavily? Am I using the crutch too much for creative thinking?
And, but, but I think that's there's a balance, right? I think ultimately the tool is there at our disposal. I don't want the tool to go away.
I think it's about creating discipline, independent like discipline to make sure that we're being kind of sensible, how much we're leaning on, on the crutch. Have you found that you're kind of, Are you ever doing that? Is there ever an over reliance on.
For example, if gen AI was to crash for 24 hours, would you feel a sense of anxiety?
[00:16:02] Speaker B: It would definitely give me anxiety, but for other reasons. But I'm totally with you. I agree totally with you. So there is definitely a risk of AI becoming a crutch, but this is really happening I guess when we start using it as a full replacement of ourselves and of our critical thinking and let AI do everything. Right.
But in my opinion we should use it more as an amplifier of the human brain, of the human, let's say human power and try to think about use cases where we can facilitate this sheer power of analytic, yeah, analytics and these kind of things to boost ourselves.
So I, I personally think that we should use AI, but the, the final decision or the strategic thinking and the strategy behind things should remain with the human being. Right? And this is also how I personally now how I personally use it. I have my kind of dialing in process, I would call it how I use and to what extent of reliance I use in AI. And I have also made my experiences where I just relied 100% on AI, especially in the beginnings of my, of my usage. Right. But then I also made my experiences that okay, not everything, what AI gives me as an output is the truth and is really making sense. Right. And this is where I started also to dialing it back and I was definitely using it as a crutch for a certain amount of time. But then I realized, okay, no, it's not the best way to Use it.
The most important parts of decisions and thinking should remain with me or with the human. And that's why I also start to dial it back a bit. And now I have found my sweet spot of use cases where I use AI and where not.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Yeah, okay, I totally understand that and I think I'm certainly working towards that place as well where it's creative, particularly in our industry, where I think free expressive creative thinking is like, for me is the nucleus of the work that we do. And I think the more that is plugged into AI, you know, the thing that I try and move away from is, is everything looking the same? You know, everything looking the same is like, you know, that is a really bad place for us to head towards.
And I think that with an over reliance on the crutch that can be AI, that's potentially where you could be headed. So I'm with you. I think that independent, you know, free creative expression is super important. So on that, so on the amplification of AI and using it for, you know, things that, you know, you can see huge efficiencies from, but it won't eat into your own creative thinking. Have you got any examples of where you use it in your role as an amplifier?
[00:19:26] Speaker B: So one of the very recent examples I can mention is that we right now are in the process of relaunching our evp, our employer value proposition. Right. Because our current one is now a few years old and it's time to kind of renew it to check if everything is still up to date.
And in our analysis phase, we identified really quite a lot of external reports and studies which we wanted to bring into, into our external analysis phase.
And if I had to go through all that reports, do my summaries, my notes, and then get my key lessons and key learnings out of that, it would have taken me, I don't know, two weeks. Right.
But in our company at KWS, we use Copilot.
And I just took all the PDFs and all the URLs, I posted them into one post and gave them a good prompt and saying, hey, do a, just read through all those studies, all those reports, give me a summary of all of those different reports and give me the key learnings out of it. It took me, I don't know, I think 15 minutes for the prompting and that's one, one minute because I had this deep thinking mode on. It took me one or two minutes for the AI to go through this and then I had my results. Right.
And this is where I see One of the huge benefits of these big generative AI platforms in kind of screening through material, loads of material, and then giving you short summaries. And if you then find interesting points out of these summaries, you can then again go into a deep dive into that specific one and look for more information on that.
But really, yeah, big amounts of data, dialing it down to summaries and get the key messages out is I think, one of the huge advantages. And this is something I use on a regular basis.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's a really good and clear example. Do you think Sani. So using that EVP example, there'll be many practitioners out there that are maybe putting together an evp, you know, same use, case example.
There must be a, sometimes an overwhelming kind of, you know, feeling to lean into AI gen AI, whether it's Copilot, Gemini, ChatGPT, whatever, to start crafting huge bulks of that EVP itself. Do you think there's an argument to say that it's really important to be as expressive and as creative and as, you know, as free as possible to put that EVP together?
[00:22:15] Speaker B: But.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: But then let you know elements of, of AI start helping you decipher parts of what you created, because otherwise, you know, you could. There is an argument to say you could then have AI upon layer of AI upon layer of AI and this thing could get lost. So do you think at its core foundation, it's important to make sure there's, you know, there's. There's kind of free, creative, human led, you know, input, its core foundation before you let AI kind of, you know, touch it too much?
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a good point. Of course it's tempting to let AI do the creativity for you, but I am of the opinion that here, when it comes to evp, it's really the core foundation of your employer brand.
And when it comes to that, the main messages and the main layers of the EVP should remain or should be decided by the human being, especially because we know best what the brand stands for and can do the combinations with, okay, what is our company value? What is our company culture? And then cross it with the needs and expectations candidates have and the promises we can give. Right. And I guess, yes, you could maybe with many iterations, come to a similar point, but when it comes to those strategic topics, I think it's better that we, as experts of the brand do the, yeah, do the foundation layer of the evp. And then if we have our, let's say, our claims or our E messages Ready? Then we can use AI to get a broader variety of the things we want to say. But the what should be.
The what should be remain with us.
So what do we want to say? And then if we want to have some creative varieties of how we want to say this. What? Yeah. Then we can use AI to amplify again our resources to get more varieties and more choice maybe out of this.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: Yeah, really good point.
Do you think with all of this Saniya, there could be an illusion of efficiency?
So all of us are able to now do way more work than we could have, you know, thought even possible, you know, two, three years ago. You know, we've got a huge to do list. We can, we can essentially outsource that to do list now and the work can get done.
You know, how much input we actually have on that to do list is as much or as little as you basically, you know, want to kind of contribute to that. But with that in mind, is, do you feel like there can be an illusion of efficiency around the work that we do in employer branding with the input of AI?
[00:25:29] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. And I also have, I made some experiences with that where I thought in the beginning, yes, AI will boost my efficiency from 0 to 80%. Right.
But this is also where I realized that it is really important to take the effort and take the time to prompt properly, to give the AI models an extensive prompt rather than just hacking in some things because you have not so much time and you need quickly some output. Right? And this is where I had a lot of losses in efficiency because I just quickly prompted something, said, okay, AI, give me, give me an ideation of my next links and LinkedIn post like, like this. Yeah. And then of course it was very, very generic. It sounded and looked like many, many other things and posts you might see nowadays on LinkedIn, for example, because I guess people are over relying on that.
And this is where I realize, okay, when, when it comes to prompting AI, it is really important to give as much context as, as possible, as much of background information as possible to get a good result which you can really use and where you do not need 3, 4, 5 further re prompts or RE briefings of that prompt to get to the point where you are kind of happy and you can move on with that. Right? And absolutely.
[00:27:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: Now I've also have my learnings. I've also attended some trainings and seminars to get a deeper understanding of all these AI models. And now it makes, it's easier for me to use this efficiency boost because I know how to prompt.
I know what kind of elements are needed to get a good result or good output of my prompt.
So now I would say I can facilitate these AI tools that they help me with my efficiency. But there were times where it was quite the opposite because I needed to prompt four, five, six times. And every time I was not happy with the result.
So I had to redo it again. Redo it. And so at the end, I was losing time and I was losing efficiency. So it's really about, are you good to use these tools, yes or no?
[00:28:01] Speaker A: Yeah, good point. I also think there's the, the point of connecting efficiency and, and volume of work with outcomes. And I think they can often, they can often become disconnected. An example of that being AI with some really smart prompt engineering can obviously create, you know, in, in minutes, seconds, can create 20 different versions of a job advert for you.
Are any of those moving the needle with engagement, and are they moving engagement in the direction that you need engagement to move?
So getting, getting the work done and the volume of work done and being busy is one thing, but I think there can often be a disconnect with but what, but why are we doing all of this work? You know, what is the, what's the metric? What is the, what is the, what is, what is the metric that we are connecting that, that workload with? And I think that's probably quite important, isn't it, to remember, of course, we can do way more in much shorter periods of time, but if it's not moving the needle, going back to, well, maybe sometimes we need to be doing work a little bit differently and not as much, but more considered to make sure we get the outcomes that we're looking for.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: Yeah, true. And I think when it comes to that, it's really important to keep the uniqueness of your employer brand.
And you have to really dive deep into the brand itself and identify what kind of topics, what kind of tonality, what kind of, maybe even wording do you define as part of your brand, Right. And what of those assets and elements are really relevant to the audience or to the target group, and then you can try to incorporate that with the power of, let's say, volume of AI. And if you are able to cross those things that you both incorporate the uniqueness of what makes your brand unique and the power of, let's say, quantity you can generate with AI, then you might be able to move the needle.
But if it's just relying on the creativity and the volume, the sheer volume of content and AI can generate you have the risk that it stays generous and it's not close enough to your actual brand and then you lose also the authenticity and the relevance towards the target group. Right. So at the end of the day, in this sheer volume of content which is out there, you want to stand out.
And the reason how you can stand out is you have to be consistent with as, as a brand. You have to be really consistent as a brand and how you want to be perceived by your target groups and everything that helps keeping that identity with the help of AI.
Yeah, I'm happy to take it, but if not, if that's not the case, I would rather skip the AI have less content or less output, but more relevant one or more which is closer to what the actual brand is.
So this is, I guess the most important thing, that you stay authentic, that you stay true to your brand identity, what you as a brand stand for, and then use AI to kind of do the.
Do the last mile or do the additional things which comes on top. But the basic foundation of what the brand is. This is super important.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a really good point. And what I'm hearing there as well, Sunny, is, you know, use AI to those lens, but also as the custodian, you custodian of an employer brand that understands it better than any AI on the planet.
You know, don't be afraid to get the advice, get the work in, but also push it back whenever you feel is the right time to do that. Don't always take it as verbatim, that must be right. We will execute that. It's, you know, treat it as a conversation with someone that you can agree with or sometimes disagree with.
[00:32:36] Speaker B: True, definitely. And the good thing is, I mean the funny thing is, in our company, as I said, maybe we are using copilot, right.
And I really see the generative AI tools as a co pilot, not as the actual pilot, because the actual pilot should be the human being. Right. And I personally use copilot as a co pilot. He can give me advice and give me kind of a way to navigate, but if I take this route copilot suggests me to take is at the end of the day my decision. And I'm really happy to take that decision.
Right. So using it as a sparing's partner, as a co pilot, this is. These are the use cases, I think for the foreseeable future. In my case it makes sense, but as I said, it's really difficult to foresee how AI will change and develop over time or over the next years.
Maybe they will be able to, to think like a human being? I'm not sure, but I think for the, for the time being or for now, the human has still an advantage when it comes to that.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I would absolutely agree.
So on the point of AI enhancing the work, but without replacing independent thinking, you know, I've got a few thoughts around this and you know, one use case that I have experienced very recently has been around data and reporting, interpreting data and patterns and trends and commentary that can sit alongside that that can help, potentially help. Whether you take the advice or not. And action. The advice or not is as an independent thinker, I think down to you, but sparking more connections with data as an example on it could be career site performance, it could be job ad metrics performance, engagement data, traffic source, demographic data, all of this type of stuff that many of us have got access to droves and droves of data.
But I think so often there's so much there, there's so many graphs, there are so many numbers, it's very difficult to kind of decipher what's important to me, what's not important to me, what's working really well, what's not working so well.
And can something help me connect a few dots to figure out where we can get some quick wins out of making some slight pivots left or some slight pivots right?
And one thing I found recently is taking lots of data from campaigns, from engagement, whatever it may be, feeding AI with some really good prompting, but getting some rich commentary back on. You might want to consider this stuff, you might want to look at that stuff. This stuff might not be working very well. That seems to be working really well.
I'd advise doubling down on that, but getting the commentary in and then as an independent thinker, figuring out, okay, what do I want to take, what do I want to throw away, what do we want to action, what do we want to sit on?
For me personally, that's been super useful, you know, using it in that capacity. But if you've got any examples of AI enhancing the work but enabling you to remain as an independent thinker at the same time.
[00:36:09] Speaker B: Yes, I think, yes.
I also have a similar, similar approach of that. And it was really having loads of data in forms of, I think I mentioned already, but in forms of reports and kind of studies. Right, which, which is really difficult to go through. And also if you have, let's say 10 different reports in front of you with, I don't know, 50 to 100 pages each, and you go through all of Them I'm very confident that I'm not able to recall everything I, I experience through by reading after the third right or fourth. And with these AI models they can really handle a lot of data. So you just throw everything in, say hey, I need summaries, I need an extraction of that and give me an overview in a table format. And it gives you just that. And it's perfect for those.
And it's also going to that direction of connecting the dots. Right.
But what you also said, I can relate. We haven't used this kind of use case in our company yet.
But just this week I've started to map for us an overview of the whole end to end process from hire to retire, where I just mapped the whole life cycle from a candidate to the person leaving our company. And I just started to, to point out on what kind of touch point or part of the life cycle we might have, which KPI from what platform.
And this is just the pre work of what you just mentioned, just making up everything, looking okay, where do we have what kind of data from which platform? And the next step for me would be then to see, okay, how can we bring those data together.
And I guess, and I assume for that I will also try to use AI to, to give me a suggestion to bring those different data points from different platforms to a. Yes. Yeah. To a, to, to a good overview or to a dashboard even. Right.
But I'm not there yet, so I cannot tell you if it worked out or not. But I'm very confident that it will be a support.
[00:38:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I'd love to hear about the progress that you make with that project as well by the way. Because, because I think that's something that seems to be like fundamentally missing in our industry where you know, amazing employer branding work gets done, people are engaged, you know that they don't necessarily, you know, apply for vacancies there and then, but at some point they do, at some point they're onboarded into the company if they're lucky enough to get the job and then they go and performing in their job and then they stay with the company sometimes for many years. I think there's, there's so often a cutoff point with the employer brand and the impact of the employer brand.
Once that person is typically like three or four months into a job, it's like it's completely forgotten about that all of this amazing work was done to help that potential high performer go and flourish in their, in their long term career. And I think as the industry evolved as, as the tooling evolves, I think, to be able to keep those touch points somehow. And I don't know how, by the way, because it's a huge problem to solve. But, you know, if you could all of a sudden start linking these high performers in a business that have been there five years to where their initial touch points were with that brand, I think that's when people start taking our business function so much more seriously as well. Because I think connecting those dots, I think is important. I don't know what you think about that.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: No, it's true. I totally agree. And it's oftentimes that I see and I perceive HR in general and employee branding is most of the times also part of hr.
They're seen as a cost center. Right.
So HR functions are not a value driver, but they are a cost center. We provide, reproduce costs.
But I've had some interesting conversations with others in the industry saying, hey, we have to change the perception of HR in general from a cost center to a profit center. So how does our work contribute to the profit of a company?
And if we manage to do that, we change the whole perception of HR also including employee branding in an organization.
And the most powerful tool we can do that with is, in my opinion, data to just prove what impact we have on the value or on the profit.
And I guess with AI and with different platforms and tools there are in the market, it is becoming more easy to do that, to prove that HR or employee brand is contributing to the profit at the end of the day. Right. And this is the ultimate goal.
Yeah. Are we there at kws? I think not yet, but we are on our way.
And I personally have the feeling that in general, empire branding is.
The development of employee branding is very much comparable to the classic marketing. But classic marketing is ahead, I would say, 10 to 15 years maybe. So it is like the same development but kind of in a.
Yeah. In a different time shift. Right.
[00:41:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:54] Speaker B: So where we are right now thinking more about data using retention, more and more these kind of things are topics which were already present and relevant in marketing in classic brand marketing 10 to 15 years ago. So there are parallels. Right. And so this is something very interesting to see that there are these parallel developments which are just later in HR than in classic marketing.
[00:42:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I would agree. I'd agree entirely.
Another example I think of, yeah, AI enhancing the work, but not necessarily removing independent thinking is, you know, I've seen and you know, in my own line of work as well, the ability to, you know, personalize experiences at scale I think is is something AI and automation generally is, is, is, is having a massive impact with so curating these experiences for different talent audiences with independent creative thinking, super important, obviously with hints of AI thrown in there, of course, because it always will be, but with as much independent thinking as possible, but then running engines that make sure the right experiences are being delivered to the right people at the right times in the right places. And I think AI has been a beautiful enabler for that, hasn't it?
[00:43:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. And you see this also with LinkedIn for example, they have changed their metrics for categorizing the profiles going into a more skilled based.
Yeah, skilled based measuring of people. And this is in all our sessions we have with LinkedIn where they tell us, where they inform us about news, about changes of the algorithms and so on. They focus now since I think like since one, one and a half years that they are focusing more and more on skills rather than on job descriptions or on the experience that someone have. They are really going on that. And I guess my assumption is it's also connected to the AI development as well because you see so many tools now out there in the market where they match potential candidates with the jobs and vacancies you have. They score, they give you different scores for the different candidates and help you to, let's say free screen people before you actually have to do it as a recruiter. And I think this is also one of the biggest, yeah, powerful benefits of AI. Right. And I guess there are also some ATS systems in the market or add ons to those ATS systems where you have a talent pool in your ATS system and based on the skills and based on the experiences they, they mention in their profiles in their CVs, the platform or the, the tool can really give them a match score to the vacancy you have and then you can really screen your whole talent pool if you have a vacancy very easily and very quick.
[00:45:17] Speaker A: Right.
[00:45:17] Speaker B: And see, okay, these are the top three profiles in your talent pool matching this vacancy the best. Right. And gives saves up space and saves up time for the recruiters.
[00:45:30] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a really good point.
Do you think that it could pose problems in a way Sani where you know, looking at my historic like going years gone by, search background, sort of more agency search background like you begin very quickly to realize that there are, there are talent audiences that behave in very, very different ways. So you've got, you know, active, keeping it super sort of high level. You've got the active job seekers who they will apply for the jobs. They're really happy to go through those screening questions with that LinkedIn and other platforms in place to help like filter out relevance and that type of thing.
But then you have talent pools over here that require proactive, like nurturing, like they will not be prepared to run through a list of 15 questions because they're not actively looking for a job. They need to be wooed into a process.
And you know, I think there's so much efficiency around AI driven attraction and assessment that companies that haven't got their eye on the ball with how different audiences respond to different experiences could be neglecting really high quality talent because a lot of that talent just isn't prepared to kind of jump over one hurdle, let alone four hurdles before they get, they get a conversation. So have you got any thoughts around that on like different audiences, different experiences? It's there. I don't think there is a one shoe fits all approach. Always is there?
[00:47:10] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's a very good point. I think when it comes to having a human connection or the, the emotional connection with a human being, this is where we need to make the human to human connection. And I think especially those who are not actively looking for a new job, as you said, it's really difficult to kind of persuade them to, hey, we are a company you should be looking at, not your current employee. You should be, you should be moving, you should be coming to us. Right. And in my opinion this is really difficult to do with an AI system because you need to sometimes even read between the lines and get this, or sense this kind of emotional level the other counterpart has. And this, I think emotional intelligence is something an AI doesn't have, let's say yet.
Right. And for that, especially when it comes to active sourcing. Yes. The pre screening of potential profiles can be done maybe by AI if you give the right criteria. Right. But the contact, the, the discussion, the conversation I guess should remain also with the human being, with the recruiter to have that.
Yeah, real human conversation where you'll be able to react to kind of. Yeah. To emotions and to, to these kind of feelings as well.
[00:48:38] Speaker A: It's a really good point. And I saw something yesterday on LinkedIn. I don't know if you saw the same article, but you know, Stephen Bartlett, the Diary of a CEO host.
So his, his company or one of his main companies, Stephen.com is grown into this huge media organization. Anyway, they're looking for an internal head of talent. Okay. And it's a job vacancy that is for obvious reasons Created an enormous kind of amount of activity on. And I was reading the thread on the, the job role was posted on LinkedIn.
Stephen's commented it's kind of, you know, it's got, you know, tens of thousands of, you know, of engagements and that type of thing. But I, I read into the comments and anybody interested, so, so I think in it, that's a very isolated example, okay. Because you don't, you don't generate that kind of interest out of thin air for any normal company. There's obviously a lot of interest around him as an individual and anything he's involved in.
But you've, you've clearly now got these thousands and thousands of people being funneled into one recruitment process, one attraction funnel. And the comment after comment after comment I was reading is that I did the initial culture assessment and I've been rejected. Okay. And I know and know of many of the people in these comments.
Super high caliber, high performing people. Rejected, rejected. Haven't spoken to a human. Rejected, rejected, rejected. And it just reminded me that, and by the way, this isn't a criticism of Stephen Bartlett or Stephen.com this is a recruitment process. AI driven or automation. Who knows if it's AI, but there's heavy amount of automation in there.
But I was seeing a scale, quite a lot of damage being done to an employer brand in that moment where they've got an opportunity to do something incredible with that employer brand and develop it even beyond the huge, you know, the scope of the opportunity that they already have because it's huge. But from the get go, there's so much negativity surrounding that application process and as a knock on effect, the employer brand, that again, it reminded me that you just need to be really careful about the efficiencies that you choose in your process.
And automation and AI is an amazing tool. But just be really careful because especially at scale, you can make some big mistakes.
I feel as well. I don't know if you agree.
[00:51:17] Speaker B: Yeah, no, definitely, I totally agree with that. And applying for job at a company is something very emotional. And it's also something where people or candidates put a lot of hope in it, right? Because if I apply for a job, my hope and my goal is to actually get that job. And if I apply, I apply because I generally think I have a fair chance to get the job. My qualities match that profile, right?
And the higher the match, the more or the higher the hopes, right? Normally. But if you then get, in the worst case, you sent the application, you receive the, the mail of ACKNOWLEDGMENT yes, thank you. We have received your application and one minute, one minute after that say, okay, sorry, you're out. Because of ABC reasons, it makes you doubt. Right. And this is something where AI and or automation can make a huge damage to your employer brand.
Because with those kind of things, you kind of feed into the anxiety people have that companies might use algorithms, automation or AI bots to just filter people out.
And I guess right now still the majority of people will think if, when it comes to sorting out people, it will be fair. Yeah, let's say fair. More fair if a real human being is doing that. Because a real human being will see if your CV is not a straight line but has some kind of corners here and there, they will still might be, they might still be interested and say, hey, it's not a straight line, but it sounds interesting, I will still get in touch and ask for that. Right.
Whereas the perception is if an AI bot on automation screens that application and it's not abc, all in the right, in the right order, he will be or she will be sorted out directly. So there is this kind of fear and anxiety that, yeah, the computer, the AI, the automation will do that. And it's not because it's not human, it's not emotional. Right.
And I've seen also a lot of those articles about the fear of candidates that they will be sorted out automatically because of maybe one wrong question or wrong, one wrong answer and.
[00:53:52] Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah, yeah. And I also think there's something particularly like, unsettling about.
And I'm not disagreeing with it, I just, I just find it an interesting point, but without speaking to a human or having a conversation with someone being rejected for culture, cultural reasons, you potentially aren't a good culture fit for this business.
I find that unsettling to like be rejected for that reason without there being any form of contact with a human.
Because as you and I both know is, you know, is there even such a thing as a culture fit first and foremost? Like, you'd like to think that your unique attributes kind of add to a culture as opposed to needing to fit into a very, very rigid box. But yeah, I find that like, but again, we're all being offered these efficiencies in a box. You know, use this and it will save you money, it will save you time, it will make things quicker, it will let you perform at a higher level. I think it's just probably a lesson in just take everything with a pinch of salt, road test things internally, thoroughly.
And if, if 1520 of your employees, if you're lucky enough to have that many employees, don't like the process and think that the outside world might reject the process or really not get on with it, listen to those signals. So introducing AI and automations, but don't necessarily unleash it on the world without doing a lot of internal interrogation probably at that point.
[00:55:30] Speaker B: Definitely. And in my opinion, it should be always in HR and employer branding. It should be always about the person, about the human being. So the human should be always in the center of everything and all the decisions. When it comes to incorporating technology which, which will not put the human centric approach on the highest level, you should really be very critical if you want to pursue with that. And for me it's also this whole AI and automation topic. Yes, you can gain efficiencies if you use these automated screening processes. Right.
But there is at the same time a very, very high risk that you will damage your employer brand.
And then you have to just decide, okay, what's more important?
Right. Is it more important to have the positive employer brand, to have that kind of perception of that you are, yeah, taking care of the human being or are you really kind of process driven and you want to be as efficient as possible? And then at the end of the day a company or a manager decision and then you will see and you will also learn where the focus of your company is. Right. And I'm really proud to say that we, in our company, all the applications are really screened by, by real people, by real human being. Of course, they are really fighting and battling because the other side. So the candidates are also using more and more AI to kind of send out masses of AI generated applications. So our employee, our recruiters are having a bit of a hard time, I have to say, because of the masses of applications they have to screen. But yes, it's, I think, yeah, I'm very proud to say that we are screening every application by a human being.
[00:57:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great thing to stand by I think as well because I've got a feeling as we see things play out, certainly moving into next year, it will be an advantage to shout about that, that you get human interaction in, in the early stages of your process.
And I think more and more candidates will be, you know, rejecting the routes where they know that the first one, two potentially three stages, you know, could be automated. And although there's huge efficiencies around that, the long term employer brand damage that could be done, we probably don't know yet, but it's it could be quite significant.
So, Sandy, we've got to the kind of last chapter of our, of our conversation, so I wanted to explore, you know, how can we stay authentic when AI is generating so much content for us?
And I know, look, authenticity is, it's a real cliche word in our industry that gets thrown around way too much. But it's something that, you know, you know, it is obviously something that's so important in our industry.
So, yeah, how can we retain authenticity in an age of AI and mass content?
[00:58:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I think in my opinion it's important to somehow cut through the buzz, right?
Because many, many people, many companies, many brands are using more and more AI generated content.
And at some point, if it is not used wisely, it's kind of generic and it becomes very similar at some point.
And you can really stand out if you highlight what makes you, your brand, your company, your culture, unique.
And I think the first thing is highlighting the real human being.
Putting your employees, for example, in the center of communication.
You can add, when it comes to what they say, you can use the systems of AI to kind of fine tune scripts, fine tune messages, whatever, but putting real, real human beings in the forefront, this can be helpful. And also incorporating as many of real unique brand elements like tonality, wording, design elements etc as possible makes it, I think at the end of the day more authentic and more unique. And that thus also makes you stand out of the crowd.
[01:00:12] Speaker A: Yeah, such a good point. And, and I think in, in the same kind of lane to that is, you know, if, if I look at isolated scenarios of content creation two, three years ago, you know, one employee voice video, let's say it's three minutes long, it's personal story content, or it's the day in the life of content or job description content, whatever it may be. But you've got a three minute piece of content there. Two years ago.
I think we're now at a stage with AI where you can, if you take that authentic content now, you can repurpose it and use it in so many different ways with the help of AI so it retains its authenticity because it's a real piece of content. Like that is a real thing that's been produced. But with AI now we can cut that into 10 different clips, or we can cut it into images with voiceovers, we can turn it into a blog, we can turn it into, you know, part of a white paper that goes onto your career site or whatever. But I think in my own experiences, the real power of this is taking that Authentic like fuel that you've always been, you know, creating or you've always had sight on creating, but always keeping that as the nucleus of the fuel, but taking that into an engine that can do, you know, to do so much more, you know, for you as opposed to using AI at this core nucleus part of the process. Like I think I'm holding it as principle at the moment to make sure this is real, but let's take this somewhere and let's do some cool stuff with it.
[01:01:56] Speaker B: That's true. In addition, I would also say in order to achieve that also in the, in the organization where we have also more and more of these employee generated content out there, because this is currently, right now, I think the most powerful tool, right, to, to show authenticity is to show real employees. And when it comes to that, I think it's also very important to, to create that AI literacy within the organization.
Now that you enable the organization, the employees to make use of AI tools in a proper way that they can keep the authenticity and not over generically kind of. Yeah, yeah. Create similar content which is just right off the AI. Tony, you just can spot, okay, this was made by AI, right?
[01:02:51] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:02:51] Speaker B: And it's, I think it will get more and more important to use AI to an extent where the authentic authenticity is still real, you see, that is authentic content, but which is amplified or enhanced by AI. Right?
[01:03:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Such a good point. Yeah. And I suppose Sammy, if you do decide to use AI, you know, as a core vehicle for content, just being really transparent about that as well goes a long way, doesn't it? So don't try and hide behind it. The avatar or whatever it might be or, or the voice can be really obvious. But as long as you feel it provides value and an authentic message to the audience, you know, just be really honest about whether the fact that it's a real human voice or whether it's, it's an avatar or whatever it might be. But I think just that that level of honesty, you know, exchange between company and audience, that's, that's probably quite a powerful thing as well, isn't it? In, in the world we're moving into.
[01:03:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And I guess when it comes to transparency in comparison to AI or in combination with AI, it's a point where we as an organization, like we in general in society haven't found the right balance yet, I guess. I think when it comes to images, there are some credibility watermarks right now coming up which are getting more and more important, but I think there is not a standard yet. But I guess with all the content now coming up and with especially image and video content which looks so real that it's really difficult to spot if it's made by AI or not, I think we will have many, many discussions in the foreseeable future how to make this kind of real AI co content visible in a transparent way. And I think these are discussions we will have to make in the near future now.
Yeah.
[01:04:55] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
Sanny, it's been so good talking to you. I really appreciate you you taking the time out, especially this time of year because let's face can get pretty busy trying to cram two or three weeks into into four or five. So it's been really, really nice talking to you and thank you for joining me on, on the Employer Bland podcast.
[01:05:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I was, I'm very happy to be part of that. It was, it was an experience. It was fun and it was great chat, great conversations and yeah, looking forward.
[01:05:28] Speaker A: Good stuff. Thank you so much, Sunny, and take care.
[01:05:33] Speaker B: Thank you very much.
