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Episode 200: Sabrina Maddock, CEO of recruitment agency Avanti Search and former Miss Australia!
224 Plays3 months ago
Sabrina Maddock is the founder and CEO of recruitment agency, Avanti Search. Prior to her recruitment career, Sabrina competed on The Apprentice, was Miss World Australia (placing third overall at Miss World 2006), and co-authored a book that landed on Malcolm Turnbull's prime ministerial reading list. She is also a diversity & inclusion consultant and a member of Mensa, and calls Sydney home.
Timestamps:
[1:40] What was the first of your many accolades?
[4:40} The MENSA test
[5:40} All about The Apprentice
[8:45] What happened after The Apprentice?
[12:05] When did you go out on your own in recruitment?
[15:45] What do you specialise in?
[17:50] What’s it like working with your husband?
[26:25] The Circle of Trust!
[30:15} Boyfriend memory
[32:50] A funny story about AI hiring
https://www.avantisearch.com.au/
https://linkedin.com/company/avantisearch
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Transcript
00:00:02
Speaker
The Entrepreneurial Journey podcast. We're talking business and building a culture that's kick ass. Where we make it happen, grab your seat, let's have a blast. At the Entrepreneurial Journey podcast.
00:00:22
Speaker
Thanks for listening, everybody. Did you know at Trichress we've built a kick-ass culture, coach and consultant program? So if you're a business coach or consultant and you're looking for something new, add to your toolbox or even escape the nine to five, join us at our next event. Links in the information on the podcast. See you there. Excellent. Okay, so welcome to the Entrepreneurial Journey podcast. I have Sabrina Maddock with me today. Hello, Sabrina. How are you? I'm very well. Thank you, Rebecca. How are you? Yeah, I'm really good. Thanks. Really good. Thank God the internet's working today. and It's been horrid all week. Tuesday was a write-off, but anyway, Thursday seems to be good. ah Sabrina, you're um an award-winning recruiter. You are a former Miss Australia.
00:01:13
Speaker
ah You have been on The Apprentice in Australia and you've won a variety of awards and you've written a book that ended on what, the reading list of a former Prime Minister of Australia? Is that right? That's right. Yes. Okay. Right. I'm exhausted just reading the list out. It sounds tiring. You're right, Rebecca.
00:01:37
Speaker
let's Let's begin at the beginning. What was the first of those and accolades that you won? It was Miss Australia. Ironically, that was my first ever paid gig. Would you believe that? And when I say paid, there was a very small allowance that you were given as Miss Australia because there was so much travel and charity work involved that if you were working, you'd just have to take the year off. Or if you were studying, you'd take you defer your studies for a year. So that was the very first of them. Wow. What was that like? I just can't imagine being involved in, I mean, beauty pageants are quite controversial. I don't find them controversial because if you want to enter one, nobody's forcing your arm or your back to enter one. So, you know, if you want to enter one, great. Fill your boots. What was it actually like? Such a mixed bag. I mean, 18 years ago, they were a little bit less controversial than they are yeah now. I think they were slightly more glamorous and um an appealing. However,
00:02:38
Speaker
It was a unique one for me in that I was the first Australian of non Anglo-Saxon descent to become a Miss Australia in quite some time. And I was born here. My parents um both migrated over when they married one another. My father is Lebanese. My mother is Indian. But I think that that unusual ethnic background meant that a lot of the focus the media placed when they interviewed me was on that dichotomy rather than my charity work or yeah or anything like that. So one of the things that I actually did um when I went to Miss World, and I actually placed third at Miss World, I was the first Australian in 20 years. yeah was And it was incredible. I'll talk to you about that experience. Miss World was just incredible. But when I came back having placed third,
00:03:24
Speaker
The first phone call I got from a journalist was about a Muslim sheikh that had made some really inappropriate comments about women being unclothed. And they were like, you come from a Muslim background, what's your take on this? And I'm like, I just came third at me. So I was like, what more can I do to please at the Australian media and have them talk to me as a representative of our country? you and So that's when I decided to sit ah the Mensa test. So, you know, you talk about the accolades and what order they came in. I was like, maybe if I presented as a really intelligent beauty queen, that would give them something else to talk about. um And it did actually diverted their attention for a little while, which was great. But yes, so i unusual for me. Yeah, the pageant world was not a simple, glamorous entry into the world of entertainment for me.
00:04:15
Speaker
Goodness me. Honestly, can they just not be more creative? Really? I don't know what's behind that. Who trains these people? Anyway, lets let's not there's some very good ones out there. not Let's not tar them with the same brush. OK, so you got you did the Mensa test and you're super clever as well, which you already knew, but somehow you had to prove that to everybody who just assumed that you can't be drop-dead gorgeous and intelligent, like why not? yeah question rebecca I that there's this faulty logic that people, I mean not faulty at all actually, is the fact that people who are generally considered more attractive will get things easier in life and so I think that people equate that
00:05:01
Speaker
that easy path with I don't have to try as hard on the mental acuity side of things. They just think I probably don't have to work as hard at school. I'm not going to place a lot of um emphasis on learning and studying and all the rest of it, because I'll get things another way. And maybe that's where that that difference comes. Maybe. Yeah, maybe maybe that's it. Maybe that's it. OK, so then what came next? Was it the apprentice? Oh, you your picture has disappeared, Sabrina. Oh, no. Which is a real shame. There you You're back. Didn't you not talk about the internet gremlins? Did The Apprentice come next? Yes, The Apprentice was about three years after. So I returned to my studies in between and then I got approached by someone from a casting agency and they said, we loved you as Miss Australia. Like, would you consider going the very first season of Australian Apprentice? And I said, you know what? Yes, because this will show myself what I can do with the corporate space. it's
00:06:00
Speaker
complete departure from the entertainment world. And i again, God, that was interesting. So I have i have a hearing impairment. that's That's one of the reasons that I've done so much in the disability inclusion space in the last six or seven years. And they knew it, the producers knew it as I went into the big bad world of reality TV on The Apprentice. um And unfortunately, because I didn't disclose that on the show, I just told them behind the scenes, they did a lot of editing to make it look like I was stupid when I misheard things instead of that I would just miss hearing things.
00:06:36
Speaker
So from a being on the show perspective, it was incredibly eye-opening. I got to meet a lot of different you the top of their game entrepreneurs in Australia. I was ah the only project manager to win 100% of the challenges that I led. So there was a lot of, yes, Sabrina, well done. Like you can do this, you've got the goods. ah But then obviously in post-editing and watching the show, there was a lot of heartbreak for me. So that was the hard part. That's sad. and and I know people who've been on things like ah Dragon's Den here in the UK, Shark Tank in the US. What's it called in Australia, by the way?
00:07:15
Speaker
Shark Tank as well. Is it? Right. Okay. And and they they said it's just so edited. yes i I mean, you're just not seeing what really happened at all. And and it was years ago I i spoke to a couple of business partners and they'd been on Dragon's Den and they went, oh honestly, it's the biggest load of twaddle you've ever come across. They didn't use that word. They used a slightly stronger word. Did they say why? Yeah, because they said, look, and we did three hours of filming for like a four minute slot. Yes, yes, fair. that's um yeah And they picked up on, like you say, the mistakes they made, the things they couldn't remember, which were a tiny fraction of the whole presentation, presentation which actually went really, really well. Yeah. and
00:08:11
Speaker
and they And they just went, you know, and then I met a couple of guys who said, we used it. We knew we were not ever going to take any level of investment, but we had our websites set up to it cope with the massive influx of traffic. We just used it for exposure. I had more respect for them to turn the tables on the media. Yes, absolutely. They're like, well, we're on television. if People like the sound of the product. even if we stuffed up the presentation, um, they're going to come and purchase anyway. So yeah very clever, very clever. Definitely. Okay. So after the apprentice, what, what happened? What was the fallout from that? I realized that the corporate world was fascinating to me and I thought, yes, I definitely want to go down the brain speed beauty route if I had to pick one of the two. Um, I, I fell into a food technology sales roles. I was selling,
00:09:06
Speaker
marketing technology to restaurants and being a massive foodie. That was ah the the dream entry-level job because I got to eat at many of the restaurants that I was selling to and and got to know some of the best food in Sydney. Win-win. I don't think you can come have Lebanese and in Indian heritage without being a foodie. You are spot on. I will never be one of those people that can like restrict themselves diet wise or anything like that. I just love, love food. I have from a young age, very lucky that my mum is also an excellent cook. So yeah it's in the blood. You're absolutely right Rebecca.
00:09:43
Speaker
um Yeah, so I i was in food technology sales, I ended up doing well enough that the the guys that ran the business said, we'd like you to start training salespeople and you said we'd like you to start ah and hiring a sales team. And in doing so, I started to interview candidates. And in the interview process, some of the candidates which were coming through a recruitment agency, complimented my interview style to the recruiters and the recruiters actually picked up the phone to me and said, Hey, Sabrina, we know you're in sales, but Recruitment is sales. You're a good interviewer. Would you consider shifting into recruitment? And I was like, God, it didn't even occur to me. Like, I'll come in and meet you guys and say hello and understand what it's all about. um And they won me over. So I jumped ship to try the big bad world of recruitment. And 11 years on, here we are. It worked.
00:10:32
Speaker
You're still there. Well done. You know, I started my career in recruitment. No way. How does one start their career in recruitment? I feel like everyone falls into it at some point. but Well, do you know, I would think I'm one of the few people who actually applied for a job in recruitment. Wow. Yeah. it It was back in the day when People still had newspaper ads, so that's how long ago it was. and But I had been working, when I graduated, I worked for a bunch of management consultants for the British Railways. And I loved what they did, and they had the word consultant in their job title. Yes, which sounds so fancy and sophisticated, doesn't it? I ah so i want to be one of those. I want to be a consultant of some kind at the age of 21. I thought this sounded amazing. So I saw the job for recruitment consultant and I only applied because it had the word consultant in it. I love that so much. And then they met you and they were like, she's a brave sunshine. She speaks beautifully. She's intelligent. Win, win, win. Let's get her in.
00:11:37
Speaker
Well, I couldn't believe they were going to pay me to talk on the phone all day. but right That's literally what I spend my teen years doing, just talking on the phone and you're going to pay me. Okay then. And fast forward to now, we're still speaking to each other professionally Rebecca, we're still doing it. I know. I know. I don't know about you, but I have to have honey in my herbal tea because I talk so much. Yes. Yes. I'm a milk and honey girl, so I get it. Yeah. So you talked to recruitment like Dr. Water. And then when did you go out on your own? Two and a half years ago. and So it was the pandemic had just started to ease up. Companies had just started hiring again.
00:12:20
Speaker
I was in a very high pressure job as the global head of talent for the second biggest wine company in the world. wow And I had staff in the UK and staff in Australia. So I was basically working double shifts. I was working Aussie hours to look after my Aussie team. I was then on until about 11pm my time to look after the UK. go And my husband, who was also a recruiter at the time, he was my boyfriend, was he a fiancée? No, he was just my boyfriend at the time. He was sitting there, an agency recruiter, making money, hand over fist, doing half the work that I was. yeah And I'm looking at him, Rebecca, going, God, I miss agency days. You know, I started my recruitment career as a
00:12:58
Speaker
Thanks for listening, everybody. Did you know at Trichress we've built a kick-ass culture, coach and consultant program? So if you're a business coach or consultant and you're looking for something new, add to your toolbox or even escape the nine to five, join us at our next event. Links in the information on the podcast. See you there. ah recruitment agent did really well that first year and then I was internal for a good nine years. And I'm like, why am I still internal? Why am I killing myself in this thankless job for half the money that he makes? And could just smell that change in the air in terms of the hiring climate where people were suddenly able to hire freely again, you know, all the restrictions were lifting. So i I took the plunge, I decided to quit my job, start the business as a one man band. um And with a real focus on
00:13:49
Speaker
Look, I've been an internal partner for nine years. Now, surely that can be the point of difference. I'm not just a typical salesy recruitment agent. yeah And thankfully it's done extremely well. and And guess who my most recent hire is? Your husband. Yes, yes, indeed. I did my research and went, oh, hi. Exactly right. So it's a two man band now. That's great. I love that. It's amazing. and And it is, it's a great, I loved, I was in it for 15 years. I really, really enjoyed it until the point I didn't enjoy it anymore. And that, you know, it was for a huge variety of reasons. And what did you give it to afterwards?
00:14:33
Speaker
coaching and consulting. okay sos and Which is what you do best now. yeah yes yeah Because I grew ah my own recruitment business and then realised that actually the bit I enjoyed most was nurturing the talent in my own team. And they get really excited when they left and set up on their own, or left and did something amazing. I thought, I'm not really going to be able to build a great business if I just built them. They just leave. They're sending them off to spread their wings away from us. But that was the bit I really enjoyed the most. I thought, right, I need to do that bit for a living.
00:15:13
Speaker
and and And so I ended up a coach and now I train other coaches and consultants because again, I just love seeing people succeed and thrive. and And in recruitment, you kind of do, but you don't, you see them start off in that way and you probably- That's right. You don't often see the end game unless you're a niche specialist that continue recruits in that vertical and then three years on in their career, like, okay, time to move you on to the next role. But yeah, most recruiters don't get to see that progress. No, they don't and that's the bit I really enjoy. Okay, so what what do you specialise in? who Who do you tooth for? Two things. So the the main specialty is what I call corporate. It's a broad term that basically describes anyone who works inside of an office. So whether it's your phone of house, your sales, marketing, finance teams, all the way through to the executives that lead the business.
00:16:05
Speaker
The second vertical, which was we've had a lot of so success with, it was a side hustle to begin with, but it's become a real second main vertical, is healthcare care because there is such a shortage of healthcare professionals in Australia. um I'll give you an example. Podiatry is one of the fields that we recruit and there were something like 40 podiatry graduates in all of Australia last year. four zero So it has become a real, yeah, just a hub of need in terms of managers that are looking for allied health professionals and we're starting to help out a lot in that space.
00:16:38
Speaker
Wow. yeah So you in Australia are experiencing what we're experiencing here in the UK. We can't get the people in the systems trained fast enough. um And I guess that's why Australia is pinching all our nurses and teachers and stuff. I don't blame you and I don't blame the people for going. It sounds lovely living in Australia, although one too many kind of things that want to kill you for mine. Yes, yes, that's very true. we have I think it's something like 18 out of 20 most deadly snakes in the world. You're selling it to me Sabrina.
00:17:19
Speaker
um yeah We did have something like 30 straight days of sunshine last month though. So that's a selling point. You know, I've been to the UK five times. I know what the weather can be like over there. It's not fun. No, it it is grim. And I think if you're young, a young professional, I think it's an absolutely fantastic place to really get on making mark and you can have a much better standard of living over there than you can here. Yeah, no, absolutely. Okay, so what's it like working with your husband?
00:17:54
Speaker
It is challenging and amazing at the same time because there there's a lot of undercurrent that can just go unspoken between us because we know each other so well. So if you use, we change my tone of voice with a client or a candidate before I've even gotten off the phone, he'll be like, this happened, didn't it? And I'm like, yes, how could you tell? And he's like, I just heard that your voice shift. um But then there's also that, I think it's that typical male-female thing where woman has opened up a business, very successful in his own right, husband has joined the business. Woman is now trying to say, please do things my way. This is my brand and my polish and my particular presentation. And he's like, but I've been a recruiter for 11 years as well. I'm going to do it my way. So there's that that clash, you know, that husband to wife clash where we're like,
00:18:40
Speaker
How can we just see eye to eye on the execution of the polish? He does his way, I do my way. But I mean, it's, it's quibbly, it's small things. You know what I mean? In terms of the general direction of values that we have, thankfully very aligned. Otherwise I never would have brought him into the company. yeah Yeah. As long as the values are shared and aligned, you find everything else, as you say, will work its way out in the wash. Definitely. Where where are you going to take it Sabrina? What are the plans for the business? it's It's an unusual one. I'm part of a business networking group called the Club of United Business here in Australia. And we had a ah networking circle recently where everyone around the table said the same thing. well What's their vision for the business? Where are they going to take their own company? And the first six people in front of me all said expansion, scaling up you know growth, expansion, scaling up growth. And it came to me and I was like,
00:19:31
Speaker
lifestyle? Am I allowed to say lifestyle? And the group leader was like, yes, of course, finally a lifestyle business. And I said, yes, like truly that the whole point of not having hired reams of staff under me, even when I had too much demand to cope with, was because I didn't want to tie myself back into that routine of the nine to five and leading others and having to be in the office all the time. And I just cherish the flexibility and autonomy that came with running my own show. um To give you an example, I traveled eight out of 12 months last year and was yeah and managed to work for half of it. So that to me is just invaluable. You cannot put a price tag on it. And I'll take that and perhaps smaller earnings, but really making the most of those earnings over a huge, profitable, multi-franchise recruitment conglomerate. Does that make sense? ah It makes perfect sense. Had that option
00:20:28
Speaker
been open to me, I think I might still be in recruitment. yeah We closed the business in 2008. So really nobody was doing Zoom. Nobody was doing, there were one or two people who might've done, I mean, we didn't even have cloud servers. We still had physical servers. So yeah if you work from home, you had to be able to log into the server in the office and things like that. So it was fiddly and awkward and there were security risks and things like that. So, but i I got to the point, I hear you, are I mean, our our model for bringing coaches on is is an event which is called the Escape 95 because that's the thing that I resented most about my own business was that I had to be there nine to five and it was my business. is like I was like, I don't like being anywhere. How are my slaves to my freaking business right now? Yes, I get it, I get it.
00:21:23
Speaker
I actually quite like if I want to start at 10, I'll start at 10. And if I don't want to start until midday, I won't start until midday and I'll still get the work done. That's it. I find myself so much more productive because A, obviously you're going to work harder for yourself, but B, yeah I'm doing it at my pace and my pace is extremely efficient and productive when I'm turning on at the right moments and then switching off and taking my rest when it suits me. Yeah, absolutely. So what was the book you wrote?
00:21:54
Speaker
It was a co-authorship of an anthology called Growing Up Muslim, Coming of Age in Australia. And so i my chapter was the mishmash Muslim, because even though I was brought up Muslim, and I'm doing it in quotation marks, I know you can't see me on camera, but doing quotation marks, I was brought up Muslim um by my Lebanese Muslim father. He also said to me, Sabrina, it treated as a guideline. God is not going to judge you on which direction you pray in or if you wash five times a day or if you do or don't eat pork. He's going to judge you on your interactions with other people, how generous you are of spirit and with what you have. um And so i I was brought up not really practicing Islam. I was just Muslim by name, if that makes sense.
00:22:41
Speaker
yeah and was very moderate. I would raise a glass of champagne on my 16th birthday, for example, where that was supremely found on by others in the family. And therefore, I was the mishmash Muslim that then became a beauty queen, which is, again, hugely, but like a big no-no in the I'm dancing around on stage in a swimsuit. Absolutely not, right? But, you know, to be fair, to be very fair to the Islamic community in Australia, not once did I receive any form of criticism or backlash. You know, no religious leaders got up and said, what the hell is she doing? Get her off the stage. She's an embarrassment. Nothing at all. Although I did have um some journalists use me as a scapegoat in that sense, where they would write an article saying that the Islamic community have said bad things about me and quote me as you know having so having said that they've said it and oh just awful, awful things.
00:23:31
Speaker
But no, thankfully I never actually experienced any of it myself. I think your father has some very solid and sound advice for anybody of any belief system or of no belief system at all. And I think that's when you pare back all religious systems, that's all they're telling you to do. Everything else is I think has been And I'm putting it in brackets now, man-made. You know, all the other laws are totally made up. Probably going to get cancelled seven billion times over for saying something like that. But anyway, they don't care. We don't have any sponsors. I think that's actually a really
00:24:15
Speaker
normal and popular opinion. I mean, just by by nature, ritual is something that man has created in order to embody some sort of emotion or spirit or connection to the greater. And religious practice is all about ritual. What do you think? Pray? What do you say when you try to connect with the other world, right? It's all about that. man-made connection point that we're trying to find um sits a better yeah to better ourselves. But I agree with you. I think that at its heart, all religion really teaches that the true bettering of yourself is in conduct and your behavior and your actions. Yeah. not the It's not the ritual and it's not, you know, the out packaging of the human being is relevant. It's what's on the inside that really, really counts. Very, very true.
00:25:04
Speaker
and how that inside comes out in in the real world and how you interact with each other. That's the only thing that matters. and And for some reason we've kind of overcomplicated things. I think i think humans do quite like to overcomplicate things. Yes, you're not wrong. I don't know why. like why Why do we have to overcome? It's really simple. We're just trying to do our own thing here. Please don't try and force anybody else to do what you do because they just don't want to do it.
00:25:44
Speaker
I agree. There's this weird primitive innate thing that humans do where the more alike somebody is to us, the more we, of course, innately trust them because we're like, oh, this is a predictable creature. They're a lot like me, therefore they'll probably behave in similar ways to me, therefore less of a threat, less unpredictable. um But what that means is that anyone who is other is treated as threatening and unpredictable and therefore they try to change them and make them as much like me as possible um in order to remove the threat. So it's just this weird primitive response we have and you'd really have to check yourself, I think, if you're starting to behave or thinking that way and go, hang on, just because they're different, does that mean that they have to be a threat or that they have to be like me in order to be safe and okay? No. There's actually a really good um exercise that we do.
00:26:31
Speaker
in When we talk about recruitment and how to make it more diverse and inclusive with leaders, and it's called the circle of trust. and We basically asked leaders to write down six names, the six people that they are closest to in the whole wide world who are not family or significant other. okay and Once they write those six names down on a piece of paper, but give them about five or six categories that they have to tick off next to. And it will be things like their education, their age, their ethnicity, their gender. And if it's the same as yours, tick, tick, tick. And what they find is that as they go through their circle of trust, their six closest people, there are a lot of ticks on that page. There's a lot of similarities there.
00:27:17
Speaker
And what we say to the hiring managers or the leaders at this point is now you can see that the people that you trust just in your personal life away from the professional sphere are mostly a lot like you. And what that means when you go into the hiring space is that people you would trust without even knowing why, you know, we talk about gut instinct, I just liked them or I just didn't like them. It's going to be people that share things that are similar to you. That's just how your brain operates. Yeah. um And so we have to try and break you of that cognitive bias, that that misconception that you probably don't even realise you're doing.
00:27:50
Speaker
A really handy exercise. That's a great exercise and and I think the thing to point out is it doesn't make them bad people, it just makes them human beings. No, absolutely. That's just our our basic psychology, so it's about mastering it. Yeah. yeah One of the things, and years ago they changed how they auditioned people for orchestras. And this was a number of years ago and they started doing blind auditions so that um all the and the auditioners could do was hear the person play the instrument. They couldn't see them. They didn't know their name. They didn't know anything about them. It was just on their scale. And the number of women that were hired just shot up because
00:28:38
Speaker
people weren't seeing them, they were just hearing them. So that that unconscious bias comes in because most of the people, the orchestral leaders were were men. Now again, it doesn't make them bad people, but it just comes back to your point. And I am wondering, I'm really wondering whether there's a way in recruitment we can introduce that kind of equivalent where we can't Certainly for the the initial stages of the interview process, probably not the final one because you really do want to look somebody in the eye and work out whether you can work with them. and But whether in the initial stages there is something about just getting the skills
00:29:22
Speaker
and the behaviours and the attitudes without knowing anything else about the individual. And I don't know how you do it. yes Maybe you do, Sabrina, maybe you've already thought of it, but I think there's something in that. I think the the easy one, that the one that's almost a mirror for the orchestra scenario that you just gave, is de-identified resumes. So recruiters will ask the managers ahead of time, if you really want to have an inclusive process, do you consent to us removing names and education, so university that they went to, et cetera, anything that can really pick but you know the the address that they live at, therefore, are they in an affluent suburb or not, that kind of thing, yep off the resume so that you can only see their experience. um And that started to gain a lot in popularity because
00:30:11
Speaker
younger folk, people that are from different backgrounds, genders, are starting to get hired more. i remember I remember when I was young, my very first boyfriend, when he finished university, went out into the workforce. he had He was actually Arab. He's the ah the only um Muslim guy that I dated when I was younger. And he was applying for pharmacy jobs and with his normal name, which is a very easily identified Middle Eastern and name. um And the second he decided to anglicise his name, he started to get interview callbacks, whereas he got none some of them from the same places he'd already applied to with the exact same CV, just with an anglicised name instead.
00:30:54
Speaker
So it is a sad but true thing that that de-identification of a CV can be quite useful for making the process more inclusive. um The other thing that you talked about, Rebecca, which is skills-based hiring, just identifying the skill rather than the experience and and the rest of it has become such a hot topic in recruitment and everyone's scrambling to figure out how do we focus purely on this one aspect of an individual. um Some software is starting to allow for, I guess, more distance between the manager and the person so that they can focus purely on the content of what an individual says. So I'll give you an example. um There's now video interviewing software where
00:31:33
Speaker
the The candidate can look at the question that's being provided on screen from this prompt. They will then record their answer to the screen. And rather than having the video watched by the manager, the manager will just get a transcript of their answer. And so it takes away yeah takes away the visual intonation. But can you imagine then how much is lost because you can't see or hear that person and so much of who we are as professionals is made up of the way we so we sound and look, right? The way we respond to each other, the way we read verbal signals.
00:32:09
Speaker
um If Rebecca was on screen with me here rolling her eyes as I speak and I don't respond to that in an interview, Rebecca might be like, gee, she's really poor at social cues. I don't think I'm going to be hiring Sabrina any time soon. um But if you're just reading my words, you might take a punt on me. So it can it can go both ways. I myself am not a fan of AI in the recruitment process. Oh, no. And I'll tell you why. Yeah. Because if If people are using AI to generate their own CVs, AI are reading those CVs, yeah and the person that turns up on day one in the business is nothing like the person you think you're going to get. It's so true. Do you want to hear a funny one that I've i've seen AI use for recently? Same sort of thing. They're a candidate in an application process, but the the application process is for winning a business award. So I'm talking about small businesses in a small business award ah competition.
00:33:10
Speaker
And all the applications that they have to write, they're asked all sorts of questions about their their profit lines and some of the innovative things they're doing as businesses and sustainability practices and what have you. They're just using AI to generate their responses. And the the written application just reads like the most generic piece of, was it twaddle? Was that your word earlier, Rebecca? But that's that's how it's playing out. They're actually just going, oh, AI, you write my award application for me. Hopefully it'll get me somewhere.
00:33:46
Speaker
Rebecca, you've done it. You've done it for me. You're frozen. I could see a little, oh, she's offline. Oh, no. Okay, I'm just gonna stay on the call and hopefully, here she is, here she is. That's okay, I sold you it on and gave the full answer to that question, so hopefully, hopefully it's an uninterrupted answer, but I'm happy to do it again just for your reaction, if you would love it. Okay. All right. So we were talking about, I guess I said, one of the unusual ways that I've seen AI applied, sorry, one of the unusual ways that I've seen AI applied recently is I was judging a small business championship awards. And a lot of the applicants are now using AI to write their applications.
00:34:33
Speaker
So all of the questions like, what's one of the most um clever things you've done in regards to sustainability? Or what are some of the employee benefits that you give to your staff or whatever to try and win the award? And they just type the questions in for AI and AI spits out the response. We saw a couple of applications where they were like for like answers written by the same bloody robot. So yes, that it it can be hugely detrimental. As soon as we see that, we obviously throw out the application and that's it. You've discounted yourself before you've begun. Oh, I love this question. I think it would be honest, ethical, humorous, and direct. Yeah. Yeah. I think the ethical part is really important because you could be very honest, direct, and humorous and be a total shark at the same time. um But my whole brand is about
00:35:29
Speaker
I will look after you. I will make sure you are taken care of. I will not do you dirty. I am not one of those shonky recruiters that's just going to make you regret working with me down the line. um Ethics have to come first. Yeah.
00:35:46
Speaker
Oh, I love that. Yes, I love that. Yeah.
00:35:59
Speaker
Yes. Their whole life, their whole career, their family could be affected by it. Like, yeah, I'm with you, Rebecca. That's wonderful. Don't play God. Recruiters who are listening, do not play God.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yes. Yes.
00:36:31
Speaker
Aww.
00:36:43
Speaker
Agree? Agree? Yeah.
00:37:06
Speaker
I think mine is to break stereotypes and misconceptions. You know, I'm a woman of colour that came from a very minority, what's considered to be quite a fanatical religion, who now is agnostic, who has two types of disability, um is as clever as I am, beautiful, if you can call that a thing. I hate saying things like that. As women, we're taught not to talk positively about ourselves, but why shouldn't I? Why not, right? Yeah, yeah. But when you look at that combination of things, I think people do struggle. And and on top of that, I'm a ah a total geek. You know, I love board games. I play Dungeons and Dragons and just a total nerd. um And it's hard for people to reconcile all of those things. So, yeah, maybe it's to just to break down those prejudices and stereotypes that people have and help them see people in a new way.
00:38:07
Speaker
Oh, God, me too. I love a book. I love a book. It's one of my favorite things, reading. I did a lot of that when I was traveling last year. God, it was like coming home, you know, when you can really spend time with a good book. I think I read a beautiful out of office from you, um saying that you were on the beaches and ah in Spain, was it? Yeah, reading a good book. Yeah. I love that.
00:38:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:40
Speaker
yeah
00:38:57
Speaker
Thank you so much, Rebecca. The same to you. Thank you for having me.
00:39:06
Speaker
inter Interviewing Richard Palmer is a bit of a whirlwind. ah He wants to keep politics out of the workplace. He's launched with his co-founder and HR business ah consultancy and practice that supports organisations to have fair play at work. ah We get a little bit political or try to not get political in this podcast because we want to keep it out of the workplace. and Really interesting. They've had exposure on GB news. and It's business that's going places and we got hold of Richard just six weeks into launching the business. Have a listen.