Bootcamp for SMEs with The Leadership Agency

Jamie:

Yes, I think right now there are 2 sorts of channels with AI skill sets. If it’s an AI organization building AI tech to go to market, they’re looking for technical skills. But, in general, for the material impact leaders and executives are looking for with AI frameworks and enhancing business practices and efficiency, more recently there’s more of a mindset or skill set around agility, transformation, and continuous improvement. They might consider what things were done in terms of adoption or business transformation that includes AI. A lot of it is still focused on leadership, mindset, and philosophy. 

Mark:

It’s very interesting that there’s a significant uptick of interest in AI with general job postings across all industries and sectors. 

It’s also important for small businesses to think about privacy and data security with large language models. Know how to use critical thinking to ask good questions, setting the context and perspective you want to pursue from the machine. Ensure the right kind of policies and protocols are in place. These can bring significant wins. 

Jamie:

There are experts and agencies in the business, like me, that think Gen AI will unlock information. Traditionally, 80% of businesses are brands you’ve never heard of. We typically rely on consumer brand experience. Recruitment is a double-sided marketplace. There are candidates and companies - someone is looking for a job and someone is hiring. The practice of the business of recruitment is not a linear path to success. 

On the candidate side, AI can unlock opportunities and potential in terms of access to information. It’ll help candidates understand the important things that potential executives, investors, or the product market are looking for. The pillars of people and culture will continually become more accessible. In the hiring side of recruitment, they typically rely on the competitive landscape - who their talent, product, or solution competitors are. 

There may also be an impact on how we work and how recruiter agencies continue to leverage and incorporate to stay at the forefront of the changing environment. It may change how we deal with the increased use of GenAI for people who are sending us their resumes, which include more fictional information about their experience. 

Jamie:

I’ve seen this in different components of the recruitment practice. If a job posting is powered by AI, an hour later there can be 300 applicants. This begs the question of whether 300 applicants organically found that posting or if AI is prompting the job posting to those who aren’t qualified or relevant. 

There’s not a simple answer to AI changing the workforce. It can help boost engagement to job postings but also lower the accuracy of relevant audiences. 

At the end of the day, we’re humans hiring humans. The practice of recruitment, hiring, and the future of work’s standard practices shouldn’t be moving too far away from the alignment. Understand the role you’re hiring for, identify someone’s experience to know how to interview right, and do the research on your end. Recruitment is never going to be easy. Anything can be disrupted, but the human-based practices in the business of recruitment can’t be removed.

Jamie:

There is an expectation with digital transformation for businesses to transform and incorporate AI with all their employees. There’s a concern with digital transformation and the expectation for continuous improvement and a way forward. In the regulatory environment, there are considerations of the ethical uses and certain levels of efficiency and augmentation. There isn’t a clear answer to that yet, but the industry is working at it together. 

It goes back to the application of candidates. It’s getting easier to identify people who use GenAI well or not. People are getting better at identifying the right use and the right efficiency of AI-generated content. It’s a matter of time before we start to see what the right balance is. 

Mark: 

A speaker at a conference I attended was a best-selling author. She said she would never use AI to write her content but would use it as an antagonist to challenge and clarify her thought process to improve it. As a society, we’re going to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Those who do will be able to differentiate themselves with the appropriate use of Gen AI. 

Guest:

A big challenge as a business leader is being in a technical space. AI-generated solutions still have to be vetted and identified as correct in the scope of a specific environment.  

Most of our coding is done in a specific context that we make additions to. If the AI doesn’t understand the correct context of the previous code and the ideologies that were there, it won’t write the same kind of code that is easily readable and maintainable; it will look disjointed. It’s similar to writing a book - if you attach an AI-generated paragraph to the middle of a page, it will lack flow and won’t look like it’s written properly. 

AI can have a lot of value in the small tasks of your day like summarizing documents. But, you would have to decide it the time is worth spent cleaning up AI-generated proposals or not. 

Jamie:

AI can create efficiencies. But, in considering the actual benefit, what is being done with the extra time? What are the ramifications if it’s not done correctly? There’s an opportunity cost to think about. 

Mark:

GenAI can help with getting started on mundane tasks, like generating leading questions on a task. This can reduce prep time by at least a half. However, you wouldn’t take the first output as is. Just like reviewing a new intern’s work that’s submitted to you, it’s important to review the information. Output hallucination can be improved through proper prompting. Asking the questions in the right way and iterating on those questions can increase accuracy.