Max: Welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. I'm your host Max Armbruster and today I am delighted to welcome Katrina Collier. Katrina is the author of the Robot-Proof recruiter, which I think, it could be retitled-how to protect yourself against the chatbots or how to protect yourself against Talkpush, like the company I started. But that's just me being paranoid, perhaps. Katrina, welcome to the show.

Katrina: Thanks Max. I think that's the best introduction I've ever had. Please protect yourself from my business. That's not technically what's written in there. You know that. You've read half of it, maybe you've not gotten to your bit.

Max: So I read this book and it's a wonderful reminder to everybody that if you are working in recruitment, you're working in an extremely, I'm not gonna say tactile but extremely high touch human environments, which, if you list all the jobs in the world recruiter should be the last one to go almost, you know. The last one to be fully automated of the jobs that we operate today, like who wants to be hired by robots?  I mean I don't know anybody who would put their hands up. I've seen a couple of case studies here and there, but actually I don't think employers even want to showcase that, they're not that proud. 

Katrina:  I know we talked about this before we came on. It's just like this book is very much aimed at people who are recruiting people who are in demand. So my whole background is IT recruitment. All of the clients I've ever had have been in IT or health in general it's been a few other things obviously, it's always those people who are to recruit. However, there are examples for high volume there and one of those is Yodel who is a courier company in the UK and all they recruit is drivers. Therefore, actually they can automate it. There is a chatbot on their site that pops up and goes through the process of can you carry a 35 kilo box? no you can't, tell WordPress yes you can proceed through, and they can actually get someone through the application, because they realized their recruiters were on line nine to five and applicants were coming in at 11 o'clock at night. So in that respect when it's the same role, over and over and over and all you really need to know is that they've got to claim a driver's license no criminal record, and you know, they're gonna turn up. Actually you can, but really for the rest of us. Oh my gosh, put a human in please. 

Max: There is a recruiter and there is recruiters.

Katrina: Really and love it. Yeah, and actually if anyone's been following me on LinkedIn lately, I've started the college recruiter revolution which is because the clubhouse has appeared. It's just a conversation in the clubhouse. Yes, it's iPhone snobbery if you can't get on there. But the idea being that like please if you don't love this job that we do please leave the industry, because it's so important we play with people's lives. And I just think so often that's forgotten. Just like you said how we can automate when we play with someone's life which you know I take Max and I put him in the wrong job. He fails. Three months later is out the door. We're in the middle of a pandemic. What happens actually serious case of that someone last night we were on the kind recruiter revolution as I'm calling it was talking about the fact that actually he was hired, and then the person that hired him basically had a meltdown, and said I can't do this job I can't cope I can't bring on someone new right now I have to let you go. And he turned down two other jobs to take this job, has a pregnant wife at home and is now in the middle of a pandemic trying to get another job. And you're like, we can't do that stuff we,playing with people's lives. So that's the book was off the back of that please stop saying tech can do what we do, it cannot.

Max: Well taking your example. I would say this person was put in the wrong job because we didn't do all the checks and balances and the psychological assessment and if we had done that if we've done the psychological profiling we could have identified a risk and mapped it against a bell curve and said, spotted something that the individual recruiter might have missed. You can be more thorough when you have an endless battery of tests available to you and you could just plug as many as you'd like.

Katrina: Yeah. Or it could be that actually this is an experience, none of us have ever been through before, so no amount of testing would have said that particular team leader was going to meltdown when having to homeschool having to work remotely having to manage your team remotely having to, like you were saying, you're an extrovert you can't wait to get out. I'm an introvert. I'm very loud and by the way if anyone wants to argue the case with me, those that are listening that know me. No, she's not. No, I really am. But I'm really happy in these four walls. I'm missing traveling, but I'm not missing it that much that I could, I could do this for another year or two, but other people are melting down because they're missing. If they've got a close family bond they're missing that so, I don't know I agree, it could have helped. But I also think. Yeah, it's a really interesting example obviously but.

Max: I can continue on this example and to say, well, perhaps this person was hired because the recruiter at hand only had five or six profiles to choose from. And because you can only invest so much time in sourcing. But, if you really ramped up to your sourcing and you use. Let's say social media and increase the pool of candidates tenfold or a hundredfold, then you could have eliminated a much higher portion of ice because well.

Katrina: Oh sorry, this wasn't about the person that was hired. It was the team leader that melted down and let the person they hired go. So they hired them and let them go in three days. 

Max: Oh!

Katrina: But yeah, absolutely. I think I agree that we need to have a bigger pool of people that we recruit from, and we need to get the hell off LinkedIn. Like, everybody is on LinkedIn going after the same pool of people. Now, most regular people not recruitment, not sales not entrepreneurs not marketers. They're not on LinkedIn every day, like a message one of your mates on there who works outside the industry. Will they get a reply no but if you send them one somewhere else like messenger or WhatsApp, boom they reply. It's like, get off, go. I agree, get off and find for your high volume recruiters obviously you're like, oh my god, no more applications no. But for those that are seeking people who are in demand, please go. You know, go and ask the people in your business if you're in house, go and ask for candidates if you're an agency where are you, you know what social networks do you use. 

Max: One thing that really got under my skin with the whole AI wave was there was 2017-2018, when you had all of those movies that came out, like Her, and Ex-machina, and a few others like the western TV show in virtual reality. Anyway, I ate all that stuff up. I really loved it, as entertainment but in a span of just a few years. It went from people asking me, oh you're creating a robot that interviews people? What a stupid idea? like nobody will ever do that to like in literally two years people, the question went from that to. Oh that's cool, can you robot tell if the candidate is lying, can your robots, you know, the ...