AI, Recruiting, Remote Work, Personal Development- Dave Fox

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Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast. Today we're going to talk about artificial intelligence and HR with Dave. Dave is a top AI recruitment expert and personal development coach who transforms the way companies hire and nurture talent. Don't we all need that? Welcome Dave. Hey how's it going? What to be here? Excited to talk about HR and AI. I love it. One in two I always like to start with tell me a little bit about how you got into HR and now AI give us

a little bit of your story. So it's interesting so I'm in the staffing and recruiting space so I've been in the space since 2012. I actually it's very interesting story. It's it's a lot about sales right so I had done sales all through college and I ended up after I graduated college going to New York and I worked at a nonprofit organization and I was just like I am not a nonprofit

person. Love the mission will help fund it but I'm a business person so I wanted to get back in the sales and I found an ad on Craigslist so I always make the joke when I went into the interview they didn't kill me which was great. It wasn't like some clauses somewhere but it was a company that was coming over to the United States from Europe and I was one of the first people on the team so that's how I got into the staffing and recruiting HR will. That's amazing isn't that life

right? Yes. Everybody has a story on how we ended up places or who we marry or how we ended up in states. I love it. I always like to hear people story and so getting right into it let's talk about how AI is transforming HR and really basic tasks that used to be so difficult to complete. Tell us a little bit from your

perspective how how it's working now. So I think it's really really interesting AI in hiring is going to continue to change everything like we're seeing it we're seeing it on both sides of the spectrum candidates now like your resume can be done very very quickly and it used to be something that people would take a long time to do but with Chad G.P.T. you can do so many things very very quick and the other area where I'm seeing a lot of it is currently on the recruiting side

the sourcing of talent. It's just it's getting really good for people to be able to source talent quickly. We're seeing it both in internal companies we're seeing it across the entire staffing and recruiting sector so it's pretty exciting to see for sure. I love it now are these companies using any specific tools are they're just making their own GPT and going with it? Well it's interesting that you say that about making your own GPT because that's actually something that I

just completed today for my company. I think every company should have their own GPT because if you have one place that knows everything about your company that you are constantly updating and all that it's amazing because you just talk to

them they can tell you anything. I was I was actually playing around with the one that I built today and I was using it to like I just finished it today so it's so funny that you said that because literally I finished it today but I was testing it out I was like role play a sales call with me based on our like sales procedure that we use and it knows exactly what it's doing it knows how we objection handle and all these different things so it was really cool to see and

do that and with the GPT the newest one the 40 you can actually talk to it so it's really cool. Yeah I I keep saying I'm gonna make a GPT it's on the list so your motivating me I'm putting it back on my list it keeps moving down the priority list but now I know how simple to do it like there's a way that you

could do it that's very fast. Okay. Knowledge on your company right and that's the piece that feels overwhelming it's like I have to get all of this knowledge into one place to do this so this is what I did I literally went into chat GPT and this was my prompt I said you are an expert in putting together knowledge bases for GPT's your job is to interview me and find out everything that you need to know about my company and then put together the knowledge base that I can then

download and create a GPT from and that's how I did it and it was really really easy because I was just simply in an interview it was almost like doing this it's asking me questions is talking to me and I put on the voice mode so I'm just literally having this conversation and then when we're done I have my my knowledge base for my GPT. That's amazing our our listeners are gonna love

that. I wanted to you said something at the beginning that made me think of something you know AI is great right I love am a big fan of AI but I'm

also hearing from people that are currently looking that they feel like some of the AI tools that are scanning resumes are scanning them out where otherwise they would have been a top candidate for some of these roles are you seeing that

on your end as well? I think it depends but there's always been these kind of like black boxes and companies submissions that are searching for things in resumes so I wouldn't say this is necessarily new but you need to know that when you're submitting your job they're your resume to a position you can't submit the same resume at every single job because that job is looking that your resumes customized

to that. Now two years ago that's a pain like I'm gonna have to go you're telling me that I have to change it every single thing but now if you have a job that you're applying for you're a candidate what I would be doing is I would take your resume put that into chat GPT take the job description put that into GPT and I would say make me a new resume based on this job description using the resume that you already have as a template and boom you have your new resume so that that should

be easy to do right now but you should not be putting the same resume for every job. Yeah I agree I think that's it because the jobs need to be tailor resumes to be tailor the keywords and the job so the employer knows what you're looking for so I love that you mentioned that I want to switch gears on you a little bit and talk a little bit about so the person gets the job I understand now that you're using advanced analytics to understand employees performance and how they are

actually engaged at work. Oh my goodness yeah you can do that there is so it's interesting I run a completely remote company but we also we have a morning meeting that's every single morning and we zoom there is a plug-in called read AI and this is a fantastic thing to use in general because I'm a person that I want to constantly be getting better I you have to be that way as an entrepreneur because if you're not growing your diet so read AI any meeting that I

would get into I invite my read AI and obviously it's it's can be in our morning meeting it's not there all the time but if I want it to be it can be and it will tell you the level of engagement because it's able to like use computer vision to say are we engaged right now in this conversation which I think we would probably give us a high score but sometimes you know you're in remote meetings and people can't see that you have another screen up and you're actually like

checking your stock portfolio which I so funny I was once sharing my screen at work in a meeting and I did share my stock portfolio and I made a trade not real-life like I was sharing my screen and then I just you know made light a bit later but we've all been there right so I can tell how engaged your people are which is which is important and it can also grade you on like what type of language we're using we're using inclusive language or excru like all these

different things. That's interesting I I would say I'm like you Dave I would be multitasking sharing the screen taking a call doing a trade like and so it's it's a good now like once a company has that data so Melissa wasn't engaged how are companies using that data to make decisions after they have it okay we've been on 15 calls Melissa wasn't engaged what what are employees doing with the

data do you have any insights you could share. I don't know like how many companies are actually like utilizing this like this I think like it's really good for remote like I said but I I don't know how they're using it what I would say is if I'm using that and I saw somebody was consistently not engaged everybody's gonna be disengaged at some point because we live in a world full of distractions that are constantly constantly there right everything's a distraction so I can't

fault somebody for for being disengaged from time to time if it's a constant thing then it just it tells you that you know maybe they're not engaged in what they're doing and you as a leadership this is not an indicator that oh there's a problem with that is a problem with you as leadership keeping your people

engaged right and as leaders we need to take that responsibility. Yeah absolutely I think it's sometimes having those tough discussions and using data to make decisions and wanted to ask you how focused GTS is helping companies fill gaps with top talent because talent and cost of talent right now is so high it's soaring people are having a hard time getting what they're looking for keeping

talent paying on the salary so how is talked to me a little bit about that. So we work specifically in two areas of technology when I started focused GTS I was like I want to be finding talent where there is a differential between supply and demand. A lot of demand short supply and when we become experts in those areas there is a value to that because when you're in high demand you don't just talk to anybody you want to talk to somebody that understands your value that

understands the economics of that talent market that you're in. So that is the way that we've set ourselves up and what this means is it's put us in a position that when someone comes to us for a role in AI or us you know there's a specific implementation of a certain martyck product and they need somebody to be involved in that from the architecture side or the development side whatever it is we have this vast network and can provide talent within 24 to 48 hours and

nobody else can provide talent that fast because most people look at things differently and they're like oh I don't want to be in a tightly defined market I want this blue ocean where I can go after all the fish but that doesn't really work because as we all know when you're the jack of all trades you're the master of

no. So that's how we work at focus. I love it. I want to talk a little bit about HR and development plans or ongoing learning so a lot of times I hear just from people to manage people that their people don't feel like they're growing or they're learning or they're staying in a role and the world is shifting so I want to talk a little bit about continuous learning and upskilling and how companies can use some of the tools on the market to train their people but at

the same time retain their people so sometimes I know if we train our people too much and they get too many certifications and of leaving and going to another company but how do you balance and juggle that while still making sure you're you know developing people. I think it's a risk that you're always going to

take when you're investing in giving people things. The other thing is if you're trying to really develop people personally I think and it's interesting because at Focus GTS we have our like final value is the pursuit of knowledge and what

we mean by that is that we are growing and developing personally and profess. So when you give something people completely for free I think oftentimes they don't value it but you also want to give them a taste to experience things that they don't know are out there right so what we do is we bring in personal development people and stuff to help develop and train our people and help them feel like they're growing, personally and professionally but then we also tell them like we

want them to invest in it so if they are doing like like let's say someone wants to go to a personal development conference in some way I know that if they develop personally they're gonna get better at their job so we'll let them do that without it coming out of their vacation, which is a way that we're able to be like hey we're gonna invest in you but we want you to have some skin in the game too and we bring in people to give you a taste of what this is but at the end of

the day you don't value what you don't pay for so if you're willing to invest in that and realize that the best investment you can make is in you I'm not gonna make

you use your vacation time for that. I love that that is such a wise wise nugget is investing in yourself is the best investment is so so true whatever that is and whatever your goals are you're right and this is I want you to know too like I am a person in the last six years I might my wife and I have spent over half a million dollars on personal development so I'm not a person that talks to talk like I've gone all in on that and I know that you people are capped at their level of

personal development. I love that I I'm a big believer in personal development I'm constantly I would I would say that I'm like curious George the little monkey and always trying to learn new things and figure out things and and be better and so I'm wondering if I dare hit this subject I know this is a hot hot hot topic right now the hybrid verse in office discussion I know there's a lot going on right now in the world on employees not wanting to make big commutes from you know

Manhattan area DC here in Texas there's a lot of traffic people are moving to these cities there you know 15 mile drive could be an hour to two hours and so people really aren't wanting to drive to an office for an hour to two one way and an hour back the other so can you share a little bit about just this hybrid in office discussion that's going on right now so since I started my company I've done it all right before covid we were all in the office and since we're in Florida we

were back in the office in March of 2020 2020 so we were back in the office fast I think it was towards the end of March of 2020 we were back in the office so but we came back with a hybrid model and the hybrid model ended up being three days in the office and two days remote I think that what I've realized is that the future really is going to be more remote models because work can get done but here's the issue and this is why people like like I just asked and I might keep coming

back to this but this is why people developing personally is so so important because you can only develop personally if you're aware of what you need to change and a lot of times there's some people that just don't work well at home because they get so easily distracted there's a lot of distractions at home you know like you walk by the kitchen you're like this is under place and then you want to like fix this or that and it's easy to procrastane you know your puppy is cute there's

so many different things that get can distract you at home but if that is you you need to fix that because you don't want to be a person that can only perform in the office when you are not in the office eyes are on you more you need to show the results so you can't just like you know sit at home and do nothing and think that you're going to get paid for that's going to be one completely unfulfilling because deep down inside people know that they're basically stealing right when

they're doing that so you can't do that and if you realize that you're a person that's easily distracted you need to figure out a way to fix it and oftentimes I think it comes to the homework environment like if your phone is constantly distracting you like put it a little ways out of reach and be like look I'm going to focus for X amount of time because when we live in a world that's full of distractions focus becomes a superpower most people are distracted if you can

even focus you know better than half the people you're already in the upper echelon because anything that you focus on is what you're going to need to put all your energy in to complete something yeah well said I would agree I think the world is kind of moving towards the remote model and people are saying okay if you're going to pay me less I want to work from home if you're going to pay me more I'll come to the office so I see a lot of this kind of in negotiations

right now and you touched on another really good point focus you know with so many things in the world just moving moving moving moving I want to talk a little bit about Gen Z Gen Alpha how they're working as opposed to baby boomers and can you share some insights on your experience with these different kind of generations and how they're working in remote and hybrid environments I I found that Gen Z tends to actually do pretty good in remote but it's also because

it's hard to say it's because a lot of people say that generation is in title and they might feel like they're entitled the word remote but like if they're if they're gonna bring the results I don't really care like you can work you can work for them I don't know it's it's been interesting because I see the frustrations that people have with Gen Z I'm a millennial but people say I'm like a Gen X but I think like I totally see the frustrations because you're dealing

with I think the biggest challenge that people have if I was to try to like put some meat on what the actual issue is the people have with like the new generations I think they are programmed that things should be instant and I don't think that's their fault because they've grown up in a day and age where they've had cell phones and you know if you want to get in touch with someone that was incident when I grew up I had to like dial a phone to get in touch with someone

when I was out you couldn't get in touch with me it was very very different than it is now you know like Mike Ways Amazon bringing packages the same day everything's instant so if everything is instant in your life that you've encountered up to the point that you now have a job and a job is supposed to produce success why would you not think that success should be instant two and that creates the issue I also think that a lot of times people have this

belief that they are going to love what they do and they should love what they do and then they get into their job and they encounter some resistance and start being uncomfortable and you should be uncomfortable because that means that you're growing but they encounter some resistance and are uncomfortable and maybe this isn't for me and then they go do something else and they end up repeating that pattern so many times so these are some of the challenges that I

see and I don't necessarily think it's their fault but I think when they're aware of why those patterns are happening then they're like okay I get it oh okay I'm feeling like this should be instant it shouldn't be it's a process you

know and and that's just not explained to people. Yeah I agree I think we're a world of instant everything right I see a lot of new drugs on the market to take off all the weight right away and we can order a pen to our front door in minutes and everything's delivered and so I think you know we're all getting used to this like we need it now today without a lot of the work as well so I definitely agree I think there's a lot of that right now and I think I might

further complicate that because that takes the speed at which we're moving it

makes it even fast. 100% I really I definitely agree I think you know and in our home if I need a good cookie recipe without a certain ingredient at the chat GPT we use it all the time instead of looking up recipes and scrolling through which ones are better than the other it makes it so easy to get access to the things we need so I absolutely agree I want to talk a little bit about leadership and you know kind of what you were saying about self-development I

know emotional intelligence is a big buzzword right now in teaching people about emotional intelligence right so I want to talk a little bit about emotional intelligence and AI and how kind of those two intersect and what to look for maybe layering on the hybrid environment on top of that as well because it's it's harder right yeah yeah definitely what specifically do you want to know in this thing you know just like in the world of you know being emotional intelligence

being aware right understanding like when we're behind a computer all day we don't see video where people don't have their video on it's harder to really connect with them and understand you know maybe if they're having a bad day or if they're you know where they are right and if we're in front of them you know we can use all of our senses when we're behind a computer it's hard to you know really understand that behind the camera they have kids running around and things are

on fire and so you know how do we layer in kind of emotional intelligence you know that let's work together collaborate as an employee with artificial intelligence is there anything people can use with AI to help them you know maybe grow their emotional intelligence well I think there are there are a lot of things right because we're constantly leaving clues about our personality and who we are so yeah and I think I think what's even better is as you begin to

have more data on this it's going to get more powerful but like I'll give you an example of AI helping navigate some of those waters if you are going into a meeting with someone you could you could probably take the resume or their linked in profile and feed that into AI chat GPT and be like give me some based on this give me some information about this person's personality because there's an AI tool that actually are you familiar with the disc profile oh yeah absolutely

there's an AI tool that can give you someone's disc profile based on their link did yeah so this is actually one of the areas where you know because in the AI camp there's the there's the like this is going to be create like in a heaven on earth type scenario and then you have the other camp that's like this is going to destroy humanity that's that's part of it because if you think about when when humans interact with each other of really good emotionally intelligent

personal person is doing the same thing right they're using data based on like body language and stuff to tell what's going on or verbal communication all those cues along with what the person is saying but imagine a human can only analyze how many data you know a fixed amount whereas AI can manage almost you know unlimited as long as there's the compute power to do that so I think that's one of the areas where the camp that's afraid of AI realizes like

man if you have an AI that can like know your disc profile and all of the like imagine like all the different things that it can potentially use data points to be able to know exactly what's going on with you that thing could probably manipulate you pretty good right so that that's where that's where I think that camp is concerned yeah and I think you know the disc profile your strengths finder all these tools are clues right and I think you know sometimes the

people can be different given where they are in their life and where they're trying to change and so I I don't think it's it's just and I'll be all this is who this person is today based on their LinkedIn profile but I do think the like you said using AI to give you clues about who you're dealing with can help you in a lot of ways understand them from maybe you're trying to date them or maybe you're trying to get a job from them and they're a hiring manager or so it gives you

clues and then you have to go investigate the data if the data is correct. You mentioned dating I'm not sure if you heard but like the the owner of one of the swipe apps I don't know I've never used but said that they think that the future of dating will be like your AI meeting this potential matches AI and seeing hey are you compatible and yep like that's a crazy different world.

Yeah so true or or yeah I've talked on the podcast previously about this just using AI when you're on a date and and you know the the girl across from you is you you know using the tool she's not really like into you vibing like giving you strategies on how to make her more interested and so I have heard some of it. Yeah it's amazing. I want to touch on I wanted to save time for one of the things that I love talking about is culture. I think right now a lot of companies going

back to the hybrid and remote work is you know it's sometimes easier to create culture when you're all around each other you can have you know lunch in learns and get together in the office and do different things. Hybrid creates a little bit more of a difficulty with creating an inclusive culture. I wanted to kind of get your perspective on you know how can AI help better culture and help companies keep in retain you know employees and keep happy employees.

Yeah I think I think which really important especially with the remote teams is you need to have some sort of in-person connection and it's funny that you mentioned that right now because we're actually doing our first retreat for our company this weekend. Focus CTS first annual retreat which is really exciting where we've brought everybody together from wherever they are but I think the thing that a lot of people get stuck on is like ideas around how to keep that culture with that.

That's another place where AI is really good like generating ideas.

If you give it context and let it know what you're really trying to do like this is the type of culture we have but this is some of the barriers that we're dealing with because we are hybrid or we are remote or whatever it is it can generate a lot of ideas and if they're not good you can always get more like like you could probably ask ask you for a thousand ideas and you would get a thousand ideas so like the possibilities now are really endless if you're looking for ideas and ideation ideation

ideation process around this I would definitely be using AI in that way because culture is the better off of the company.

I love it I think it's huge right to keep and retain talent I see just people aren't staying at companies as long as you know 20 years their whole career I know my you know my uncle worked at HP as entire career from you know end of high school through college his whole career he stayed the whole time and I don't see that happening as much people are typically staying a year to three years and jumping so I know you know from those that are staying a lot of time it's culture and mission and

vision and feeling inclusive and included and opportunities for advancement

and so I do think I'm excited for your first retreat you're gonna have to tell me how it goes congratulations because it's important right to connect face to face with people and meet and get to know each other outside of just the regular day-to-day job yeah definitely I want I want to just kind of enclosing any final thoughts or things that we didn't cover on today day that you want to share with our listeners yeah I mean I think I think the biggest

takeaway that people need to know right now is the world's gonna look very different than it does today very fast things are moving at an exorbitant speed I was talking to someone today and I was like man like we're planning this but like and this is even an aggressive time frame but like next week things keep completely changed and that is just that's just how fast technology is moving right now AI is going to massively impact the world

and if you are not utilizing it or learning about it right now you're getting behind the good thing is we're early enough in this in this cycle that like right now if you were to compare to the dot com thing this is like getting in early when the internet was getting started but the problem is like early is going to be a lot shorter of a time period because this is moving so fast so like now is the time don't wait on this because

it's going to it's going to change everything yeah absolutely well said Dave thank you so much for being here you shared so many good nuggets of wisdom with our listeners I know they'll get great value out of it definitely check out their business their company connect with Dave that's the executive connect podcast you you you you you you you you you [BLANK_AUDIO]