The Changing State of Talent Acquisition
The Changing State of Talent Acquisition cuts through the noise in the crowded world of recruitment marketing, employer branding, workforce intelligence, and AI.
Hosted by Graham Thornton, President of Consulting & Growth at Talivity, this podcast brings you unfiltered conversations with industry founders, practitioners, and the occasional contrarian who's actually doing the work – not just selling you on it.
We're not here to hype the next big thing. We're here to help you separate signal from noise, understand what's actually working (and what's just well-marketed), and make smarter, data-backed decisions about your talent strategy.
You'll hear from TA leaders navigating real hiring challenges, founders building solutions worth paying attention to, and experts who see around corners before the rest of us catch up.
Whether you're navigating the AI arms race, trying to figure out your tech stack, or just trying to hire better people faster – this is the podcast for people who care more about ROI than buzzwords.
The Changing State of Talent Acquisition
#58: The Coming Storm – Interest Rates & Workforce Readiness in a Persistently Tight Labor Market
This week we welcome William Sims to the podcast. Before joining Lightcast as SVP of Professional Services, Williams held a number of leadership positions in talent acquisition and sales at Qualtrics, Jani-King Gulf Coast, and Career Builder, where he served as Director of Global Solutions Architects.
Topics include: the current state of the labor market, the connection between the labor market and interest rates, the role of the Fed, the near and far term prognosis of the labor market, the concept of workforce readiness, Gen Z attitudes towards employment, the trend towards “quick quits”, novel approaches to talent retention, the growth and evolution of people analytics roles in senior leadership, reactive vs. proactive mindsets, how public-private partnerships are attempting to address the skills gap, and the future of universities in a world where college degrees are becoming less valuable in the labor market
William Sims
SVP Professional Services, Lightcast
Welcome to the Changing State of Talent Acquisition, where your hosts, graham Thornton and Martin Credd, share their unfiltered takes on what's happening in the world of talent acquisition today. Each week brings new guests who share their stories on the tools, trends and technologies currently impacting the changing state of talent acquisition. Have feedback or want to join the show? Head on over to changestateio. And now on to this week's episode.
Speaker 2:All right and we're back with another episode of the Changing State of Talent Acquisition Podcast, really excited for our next guest, who I've known for a long time William Sims, svp of Professional Services at Lightcast. Mr Sims, we'd love for you to tell us, maybe first how did you get to Lightcast and tell us a little bit more about how you spend your days and who is Lightcast today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I'd be happy to, and I appreciate you guys letting me gab with you for a little while this afternoon, so Lightcast. In essence, we give companies a competitive advantage around people. We're a labor market analytics-based organization that provides software solutions, professional services solutions, consulting services, as well as data and APIs to organizations that want to get an external view of what's happening in the labor market around them. So that's us in a nutshell.
Speaker 2:And tell me a little bit more about you. What brought you to Lightcast?
Speaker 3:Me. What brought me to Lightcast? Oh, that's a windy road, but I had an old colleague that went over there as a new general manager for their enterprise-based business global enterprise business and he reached out and told me some of the work that they were doing and I said, look, if there's an opportunity that might open up, I'd be interested in joining the leadership team over there. And he said, yeah, let's come on board. We've got some work to do and so as we're trying to, you know the enterprise side of it is relatively newish to the Lightcast family as a whole, so they started off in kind of the educational and government space, been in kind of the enterprise side for a while, but it's still a younger part of their business. And so to be able to explain organizations, the good work that's being done for specifically our professional services team and the great consulting work that we do on a regular basis that's where my role comes into play is how do we amplify that and put a megaphone around that strong work? So it's been a fun journey so far.
Speaker 3:My background historically has been in talent acquisition, so I started off my career as a headhunter ran TA for a $3 billion business in Denver, worked at Career Builder for years and worked with large organizations, enterprise-based organizations, on how do you hire 100,000 people a year, how do you solve some of these people challenges within companies? And then was an executive for a professional services company here that focused actually a franchise-based cleaning company headquartered here in where I'm from Punch Tool, Louisiana and did that for quite a few years and then joined over here. So a little stint at Qualtrics in between there. So yeah, it's been a windy road to get there. But at the end of the day, the common thread I see throughout my background is how do you tie people back to business challenges within the organization?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, I absolutely love that and you know it's no secret for anyone that you know listens to the show. We are, you know, huge fans of Lightcast, using data good, clean data to make decisions. You know I think we've had Ron on for. You know some of our virtual, you know events also. You know. I think you know that background is a good setup point for the labor market. Even just recently it's been a pretty interesting time in the labor market. You see reports coming out every month. I suppose is when we're looking at unemployment numbers.
Speaker 2:I saw a post recently from Ron, one of your colleagues. He said the labor market has really just been giving the Fed fits. You know they want to drop the interest rate. They can't feel great about dropping interest rate until the labor market loosens a bit. So you know we're trying to create, you know, enough slack to absorb pay inflation, right. So I'm just curious, translate some of Ron's comments or thoughts here for our audience that might be a little less informed or deeply tied into what the labor market data we're looking for. What are some of the dynamics that contribute to the Fed making the decisions, at least as you interpret it? So you know what does Ron mean by that? Why, you know why are they hesitating to cut rates and so on?
Speaker 3:I think I don't know if you all listen to the news or read the news.
Speaker 3:I assume that you guys do I assume you're listening to it too, right? It seems like to me. For the last two years you've heard this like pounding drum of a recession is coming, a recession is coming, the recession is. I've never had more preamble to a recession that didn't happen than the last few years, and part of that is because there is this gap of talent in the labor market that has really provided this compression that didn't allow, I think, a lot of that to take place, and I think Ron's talking about that. And so, as the Fed has done its job to try to reduce inflation, that creeped up quite a bit in COVID and the time after that, they are waiting for the labor market to make some shifts and changes.
Speaker 3:But because of the expansion of organizations and the growth that's happening holistically and the reduction in the labor force, there is a tightness that has previously never really existed, and we've talked about the war on talent for the 20 plus years that I've been in talent acquisition space in some capacity, but now more than ever, the data is showing that in certain areas, in certain industries and many industries have felt this for a long time right, you think of truck drivers, you think of nursing shortages, but you are starting to see it in core parts of businesses holistically.
Speaker 3:So these kind of hourly jobs, $25 and under. There is a struggle within any organization that I talk to that they don't know what to do. Our business challenges are now being hindered because of our inability to hire and retain people at scale, and so that's. That part's not going to change. That's not going to change for quite a while. So we're kind of stuck now in this new talent acquisition world that previously didn't exist. So we have to come up with new ways of thinking. The Fed is now, I think, seeing some of that too, where they expected some changes within the labor market to happen, and although there has been reductions in technology companies specifically over time, there hasn't been any other major shoes that dropped in the last few years.
Speaker 4:Interesting. Let me try to restate this in stupid terms, for lack of a better word, just to make sure I'm following. I'm from South.
Speaker 3:Louisiana. Right, I'm a simpleton. I'm a labor economist. I don't play like Ron's on my team. These guys are. I'm working with brilliant people all day long. I bet they look at me like I've got two heads right. They're like what are you doing here? So I'm a simpleton. I got to break it down to simple facts. You're good, mark All right.
Speaker 4:So the Fed notoriously has raised the interest rate to curb inflation, been doing that for a while now.
Speaker 4:As Graham mentioned, they're kind of on the sidelines wanting to lower this. Everyone wants them to lower the interest rates because it makes everything more expensive Car loans, mortgages, et cetera and the labor market interacts with this. This is the piece. I just want to make sure I'm understanding correctly. So the labor market interacts with this, because in a tight labor market, which is to say in a market where there's a limited supply an undersupply, you might say, of labor, employers to compete for that talent have to pay more per hour or salary, whatever it is, and paying people more like that is a force that would actually increase inflation. And so when you say we're waiting for the labor market to loosen, we're waiting for a bigger supply of talent so we don't have to raise wages, which would then give the Fed more comfort in saying, yes, we can lower the interest rates now, that may have some uptick in inflation attached, but at least the labor market isn't also going to be contributing. Am I getting that right or am I totally off base there?
Speaker 3:That's how I understand it right.
Speaker 3:So I think, in looking at what they are hoping to see from the labor market, with the increase, they've increased interest rates, right, and the labor market hasn't really changed, and so that's really historically hasn't happened that way.
Speaker 3:And so I think these levers that they've used historically to kind of drive or change buyer perception or buyer appeal or buying power within people that are working is shifting and changing quite a bit, because for the first time in a long time, employees have a lot of power right, a lot of sway in where they can go, where they can work. I've got more options than I ever have before and for those of us that were living and working through the recession what 09, you know and stuff it doesn't feel like that at all and so it feels a lot, lot different. So I've got more options now as an employee almost one and a half jobs available for every unemployed person. There is a lot of slack still in the market that I think the Fed's going to have to figure out. All right, are there different tricks up my sleeve that I need to use? Or is it time to start decreasing the inflation numbers, which I think will happen? Probably Q3, q4.
Speaker 4:Yeah, increasing the inflation numbers, which I think will happen. Probably q3, you know, q4, yeah. So, um, continually my theme of maybe obvious questions. But is there any reason to think that it would change? Because, you know I, there's a lot of forces, of course, that affect the labor market. I'm sure you're more familiar with all of them than I am, but there's some big forces that are just kind of baked in like boomers, are retiring, you know, and that's definitely assume a huge part of why we're seeing a shortage. Do you? Is there any reason to think that we will get some slack in the labor market in the near term from your point of view?
Speaker 3:No, unless there's something catastrophic that happens Right and there. There could be seen that before, but I don't feel, as we sit right now, all the signs that we're looking at are pointing to this. Tightness in the labor market will continue for the next five to seven years and in fact, we'll get much worse. And so people and organizations that we're looking at and we call it workforce readiness, right, like, how ready are you for the changes in the workforce of the next three to five to seven years, and what are the factors that you can control and can't control? And Ron is a great example of this. He and I have been talking about it quite a bit in his global workforce readiness report that we have coming out in the next few months.
Speaker 3:But it really ties down to think of I'm from South Louisiana, right. So we've got hurricanes that come here. The hurricane is coming toward us. It's really, how prepared are you? And so we know that this is happening in the labor market. We know that this force is coming toward us that we can't stop. We can't go back 20 years and add more people to the market, right? So what are we going to do to prepare ourselves and our organization for this upcoming labor force and what it looks like and it looks very different too, by the way. So Gen Z isn't responding the way and they look at work differently than previous generations. So not only do you have these generational components, you have an overall just lack of people, and those factors are going to really change and drive, I think, what talent acquisition is moving into over the next few years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I want to kind of double tap into this. You know, workforce readiness piece, and you know, I think you maybe you don't you know share this article with me. You know, william, but like Moody's Studies, you know, send surveys out to executive CEOs every year and I think you said this year is the first time that of the top 10 concerns of CEOs and executives globally, maybe just in the US, seven of their 10 biggest concerns are all people-related. Am I missing that piece?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it might have been last year, graham, but no, absolutely. I think you're starting to see this in 10K's annual reports et cetera, where their strategy or top initiatives they are having an impact. People are being a part of those discussions. So it's not just oh, we want to grow internationally, we want to improve supply chain, we want to do typical business initiatives, which has driven these prioritizations for executives for years and years and years. You're starting to see people becoming a part of that conversation more so than ever before, and it makes sense, right when you think about the impacts of what COVID had within the business work from home strategies, lack of talent to even do certain projects. If you need to move product, if you need to hire a large hourly labor force, you're having severe issues on even serving or fulfilling your business imperatives and business initiatives Because you don't have the people that you have had. Historically, turnover still continues to be a big issue and that's generationally You're seeing higher turnover for newer generations big issue, and that's generationally you're seeing higher turnover for newer generations. So all of these different factors are starting to become not small challenges but big challenges.
Speaker 3:I was talking with somebody that ran data analytics for a large retailer and I said what are you concerned with right now? Is it turnover? He's like turnover. He laughed. He said I don't care about turnover, I care about quick quits. He's like turnover. He laughed. He said I don't care about turnover, I care about quick quits. He's like the amount of people leaving our organization.
Speaker 3:The first 90 days is what we determined when we did the math was an $800 million problem for our business.
Speaker 3:Yes, and all of a sudden the CEO got very involved and very interested in how do we solve these problems, and so the people part of our business.
Speaker 3:The thing that, graham, you and I have talked about for years now, saying that I believe strongly that people are what drives the business initiatives, not the other way around is becoming, I think, more so to the forefront within organizations. The exciting thing is it's establishing and building out this brand new division that really hasn't existed before, in a lot of different ways maybe in small buckets, maybe in pockets, but this data analytics and people analytics, tied in with technology and with software and with operations, is starting to become this job that is morphing and building out. And so organizations that we're working with, some of them, have 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 person teams solely focused on looking at the data around this holistically, and so I think there is a major push and movement in that area with HR organizations to have not only a seat at the table but to have the data and support that you would traditionally see with supply chain or with marketing or with sales.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know I think that's super interesting and you know I want to kind of stand this quick quits, I'm not going to try to say that one again. You know concept right, and so you know the way I, you know kind of see this playing out. You know I'm going to predict the future. This is a good exercise. You kind of saw this in the past too.
Speaker 2:Some of the smartest organizations that start to think about these pieces. They're getting very creative in how they're attempting to retain employees. And so in the past, looking back 10 years, 30 years, whatever it was, hey, how can we retain people so they're here forever and how can we develop our internal employees so they stay? And I think now executives are starting to recognize that, hey, you know what, if I could get someone to stay with us instead of six months, if I could get a call center employee to stay with us for 18 months instead, that is a huge revenue impact, a revenue driver for us to know that we have someone for an extra 12 months of profitability that we don't have to retrain, go hire, find new people. And so I think back to a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2:What Amazon was doing is at their warehouses.
Speaker 2:They said, hey, we know if we can similar thought, right, if we have someone that stays at a warehouse for 18 months instead of six, you know, we know that like we're not going to. You know, open a warehouse and you know Ponchatoula, louisiana, and wake up and you know, six months and everyone's going to move to Ponchatoula. There's a set number of people that are there. So how can you take advantage of extending the life cycle of an employee in a location where you know you're going to have an anchor right? And so I think what Amazon did is they do creative things like, hey, come work for us as a warehouse associate. We're going to partner with a leading vet tech company in the US and we're going to offer free training for the next 12 months as long as you're working here, so you can become a vet tech right. And you know it's kind of a shared you know shared cost model where, hey, if I'm trying to hire vet techs and, like you, can't find vet techs either, can I partner with.
Speaker 2:Amazon and know that I have a pipeline of people that you know are getting retrained and, you know, re-skilled in certain areas where there's demand. So I think I'm just waxing poetic, but I see this. I think we're seeing this play out and it's leading to a lot of organizations needing to be creative because we just don't have new people entering the labor force.
Speaker 3:I don't know if that's a question. I think you're right, grant. I haven't heard that example, but I think the creativity of not only partnering with organizations outside of your comfort zone or outside of your business to create opportunities that might not exist within not only career paths internally, but externally is a way to look at it, to figure out unique and different, differentiating ways to be attractive to this generation, who's going to care more about flexibility. It's going to care more about you know what's happening to me, how I feel, my mental state going into the workforce, et cetera, and what is my long-term advantages of being here. Long-term for them is not 20 years, right?
Speaker 3:And so we have to change our perspective of everything that we knew historically has got to start shifting a little bit, and if you're not looking out at that, it'll be a problem sooner rather than later.
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, it definitely just seems like employers in general got used to a world where there was almost always a glut of labor and now organizations are being forced, sometimes against their will, to say wait, we have to do things differently. We do need a people analytics function that we take seriously. We can't just assume there's going to be a constant supply that we can kind of put through a revolving door here in terms of filling open seats. Which I think brings us to this topic of people analytics. Obviously, we've been on the periphery of that since the beginning here, but I want to just zoom in on this idea of people analytics as a business function. Not surprisingly, given what I just said, I think people analytics has become more common to have senior leaders, director levels and higher, say, even VPs, that are labeled people analytics in a way that we didn't necessarily see 15 or 20 years ago, and it makes perfect sense given the challenges we're seeing in the labor market. And yet I think there are some interesting wrinkles here.
Speaker 4:There was this study by one model recently. It was a segmentation analysis and in it they did a survey of all the people that are director levels plus in people analytics and discovered that some 80 plus percent of them didn't just have a title that was people analytics. It was people analytics and something else. So you can think of examples like a VP of ops and people analytics or VP of tech and people analytics comp strategy. You can imagine other peripheral fields. I'm just curious what you make of that. I mean, is that a sign Like is the fact that senior leaders in people analytics are not simply focused exclusively on what we might call people analytics a sign that this business function has not yet reached maturity? Or do you see the fact that these roles are kind of hybrid roles in some of these other ways that I was just talking about as a just inevitable part of people analytics because it serves some of those other functions?
Speaker 3:Interesting question and actually I was with one model team this last week in Atlanta and Richard, who's kind of driving some of that work and Richard, who's kind of driving some of that work, really spoke to it. Well, look, these roles are morphing, and they're morphing because of the impact to the bottom line of organizations of what this function can do for the business, and so part of that is just a natural maturity of shifting and changing their impact in the orgs. Let's say technology, for example. It's great People analytics teams historically and even now, oftentimes are request driven. So a business leader has a request hey, what's happening in this specific market for this? And they will be very reactive to what's needed in the business. The shift, I believe, is coming to be a more proactive stance of what are the things that we're seeing in the marketplace, what are trends, what do we need to be careful of, and then what are the different tools that we have or levers that we can change within our business to do that. Technology is a great example of how that role would morph. So if I'm in charge of analytics but I'm not in charge of our technology strategy around people, it really can limit what I'm looking at, and so that might be something like Lightcast, for example, of who owns that Lightcast account.
Speaker 3:A lot of times it falls in a talent acquisition. Should it fall under people analytics? Sometimes it's vice versa. So being involved in kind of compensation strategy or technology or even operations within a business makes sense, I think.
Speaker 3:As this role continues to change, I think the direct line of it can change too of who this person can report to. You're seeing that vary now within organizations quite a bit, whether it reports to like a COO or into operations CFO in some circumstances, instead of just traditionally HR. So the role I think, will continue to change and morph as its impact within organizations. You know, and the practitioners of it continue to build their credibility within companies which are doing it at great scale, of how they can change and move things that have happened. I mean, historically, and y'all know this, people in HR sometimes just kind of slipped and fell into HR right, but what we're seeing is more statisticians in the people analytics side, people that have been trained and gone to school for this type of work are really playing a key role and a key driver into how the people side of the business is going to perform.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to talk about this kind of reactive versus proactive sort of mindset. You know, you know, one example I think about, you know, on our, on our recruitment marketing side, is, you know, we see a lot of organizations that are very reactive when they need to hire, right, and what that means is it is just arguably more expensive, right. And so, you know, we talk about being more proactive there. It's like, hey, if you're, you know, a restaurant, right, or a retail store, like, maybe you don't want to wait for your you know your line cook to leave before you start advertising. Or if you're a retail store, maybe you don't want to wait until you have three retail sales openings before you start advertising. And it sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but it isn't always For companies that are like, hey, we're trying to save on advertising, that's why we're waiting until we have an opening.
Speaker 2:And what we found is the opposite is true, all right. Or you know you're more proactive You're, you know, keeping the lights on. You know you're always, you know, have a presence in the market. Your time to hire, your cost per hire, you know, drops pretty significantly. And so, you know, I'm kind of wondering. And? C. We know these things will improve. Can you kind of crystallize on the people analytics side, what does a proactive people analytics strategy maybe look like? Or give us one example that, hey, if we're looking to become a more proactive people analytics function, what does that look like? What are some of the metrics or things that we should be thinking about as we're building this?
Speaker 3:out. I think. Just to expand on your example, graham, I'll give you one where a critical role within a business that I worked with knew they turned over. Let's say there was 30 people in this specific segment and they knew they had to hire about eight a year and that had been fairly consistent for the last few years, and so that would be due to promotion or due to people leaving the organization. The challenge was they didn't have a bench of talent to move into those positions that they felt really confident in, so they ended up hiring almost of that eight. They would hire six of those folks externally, and to hire externally they needed somebody in a similar role to make a lateral type move. So all of a sudden compensation creep, you're hiring in at the higher part of that band and you're also paying relocation for a lot of these folks, especially during the time when we did the study and so paying relocation. So we figured it was on average per person it was about a hundred to $200,000 difference for those six people they had to hire externally. And so the goal was how do we build a bench of talent for these folks that we can prepare and maybe we spend some money or add an extra headcount or two. So we have this bench ready. But how can we build a rotational program internally so that when this job opens up and we know one will at some point we have people ready that are trained, that know our business, know our nomenclature, know our organization, know our tools, know our software? So we don't really miss a step In this organization.
Speaker 3:These people were running $100 million businesses internally, and so to have two months delay or to have a coworker add that to their plate, you knew there was going to be loss.
Speaker 3:You were going to lose revenue, you were going to lose inventory. It's just the nature of the beast. Mistakes were going to happen. And so to have this kind of bench that you were building ahead of the hiring need or ahead of the hiring curve and training those folks on a rotational basis not only got the teams excited for like, all right, this is going to set me up for success when I was in this role, it was going to save the company money long-term, and so it's to have this longer tail view of how do I prepare my organization, especially my people, leaders, with the best qualified talent that I can, might cost a little bit upfront, but doing that cost analysis of what is the lost costs and some of those are hard, hard costs and some of them are soft costs. But looking at that data set, I think more often than not you will find nuances within organizations of how they can be better prepared for those critical roles in their business.
Speaker 4:This reminds me, I think, of the old adage I'm probably going to butcher this, but something like dig the well before you're thirsty, and I think it's just worth emphasizing how this is really a great thing for our industry.
Speaker 4:Unfortunately, it's a difficult way of learning the lesson.
Speaker 4:Organizations are being forced to do something that they arguably should have done long ago, even when there was a labor market glut. But here we are we're in a shortage and you wouldn't have a well and not pay attention to how much water's in it and just say, oh, so one day you wake up and no water comes out of it and you say, oh, we better do something about that. The smart approach is to pay attention to how much water's in it and realize, oh, we're burning through this much water a day and we can predict that in two months we're going to have no water in the well, so we better do something about it, and I think that's what you're talking about. I think it's a little unfortunate that it's required a kind of an economic crisis in a way, at least in terms of the labor market, to force this, but I hope and I'm optimistic about it, I hope maybe you are too that this will result in some kind of enduring changes to HR functions and how we think in terms of being more proactive versus just reactive.
Speaker 3:No, I agree, I agree with that. I think you're absolutely right. Look, the good news is organizations now have more information and more data around people than they ever had before. I mean, it used to just be a turnover statistic, time to fill. I mean these kind of basic metrics that most talent acquisition teams have used for years and years. You're starting to see depths of data in and around these statistics that I can show you by location, by market, by you know each one of our functional groups what's happening and give you a realistic view and even a purview of what's to come over the next. You know six to 12 months and using predictive analytics and preparing the teams accordingly, and so I think there is a shift that's taking place, and I'm really excited that it's happening within this function, because there's a lot of great people, really smart, talented folks, that have been pushing this change for a long period of time, and I think you're right, the business has caught up with the need.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's great. And you know we're also seeing, you know, forget about, you know, just businesses that are, you know, recognizing that they need to do something different. You know, I think I saw it's probably in the Lightcast blog you know you're doing something, you know, more recently, with the state of Texas right around. Hey, how do we help people into Texas recognize where there's opportunities for them to develop new skills based on expected demand in the market? Am I kind of paraphrasing in the right manner? William, tell us a little bit more about this Texas piece, right, closing the skills gap in Texas, and how you're working with the state instead of just working with companies who are hiring.
Speaker 3:Yeah, in partnership with University of Texas school system, some work with Coursera government in Texas.
Speaker 3:You know we're looking at how do we tie these things together.
Speaker 3:I mean, these are large problems right to try to solve and to try to tackle, but there's excitement there, I think, from every front of like how do we make sure that our educational system is guiding toward those skills of tomorrow and that organizations are aligned and see that alignment?
Speaker 3:That's very clear, and so I think in Texas they're really looking at how can we ensure that we're providing the best curriculum that we possibly can and aligning that to the employers of choice that are getting on board of this skills-based curriculum to really align that the educational side of it is tied and pulled through with.
Speaker 3:How are we training and getting these folks ready for the labor force? And so, as we're helping them look at what does future state look like, as we're looking at what's coming in the next three, five, seven years and what are the skills that are going to be necessary for tomorrow, knowing that there's going to be gaps in the market, how can we help prepare these folks and prepare this curriculum in a way that's going to get people excited about what's to come, and so you might think you're going in a career in X, but when you start seeing some of the data sets and even in professional services, of all places where you could go with your career, you're seeing folks that are younger in their career or leaving college start to find opportunities that they might not even exist before they started school.
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, I think it's just a good reminder that people analytics I mean, we think of it in terms of serving a business's needs, but it can also be used to serve the talent's needs or prospective employees' needs. You know, and you bring up a good example with this education piece. I guess you know this is a natural segue into a topic that we've talked about before on the podcast, but I'd love to get your perspective. You know, skills-based hiring, of course, has become very popular. It's kind of in vogue lately, for good reasons. Along with that is a conversation about the value of college degrees.
Speaker 4:You know the time has passed when you could go get a bachelor's degree and that would serve you well for 30 years or 40 years in a career. What's much more typical these days is that, yes, you get a certain foundation of skills, but people are re-skilling to use industry drug multiple times in their careers, sometimes three or four times, making pivots, adding to their skill set so they can be attractive to employers. All of that is sort of the stage, and the question I suppose is do you think that this trend towards skills-based hiring is going to continue to erode the perceived value or ROI of a four-year college degree, because the reality is they're getting more and more expensive. Everyone knows that Students are saddled with debt. Obviously that's not good. And then what's even the return on it if you just spent $150,000 on a college education and you can't deliver any value to a business? So do you think that college degrees are going to continue to wane in that way, or are you expecting they'll have some durability?
Speaker 3:That's a great question. It's a big question. My opinion is, I think colleges are starting to recognize the risk and, as organizations, have tried to figure out what parameters they can change and move the needle on to hire the talent that they need within their business. They've dropped some of those parameters that historically have been in place, such as college degree, such as years of experience, such as I can train you on the skills in the next three to six months and have you ready to work within my organization versus hiring somebody who's done the exact same job to make a lateral move. So organizations are doing it out of necessity. I think you'll find colleges are going to start changing and I think the Texas example is a great one are really leaning into how do we not just rest on our laurels, but how do we change our curriculum to better suit the needs of our students, to prepare them and find them better at jobs than maybe we have historically, or equal jobs than what we've done historically. And so I think colleges and universities and I'm actually partnering with my local university here and the Dean of the College of Business for an economic forum that's coming up and I asked her specifically and there's this perception in the market and I think it's one that's not valid of this new generation is kind of lazy, right? I think many of you have heard that or they don't want to work, they don't want to do this. And I talked to her and I said look, I would be willing to bet that the students that you have graduating now are some of the smartest, brightest, more determined, hardworking students than you've ever had. She's like you're absolutely right, it's like, but this perception is that they're lazy. It's like they're not lazy. They view the labor market, they view the workforce and they view jobs differently than any generation has before them. And so, as this generational shift happens that this new generation is looking at the workforce or the work differently than any generation before it, you're starting to find the skills-based organizations and skills taxonomies being built into educational curriculum. That'll change the design but also career pathing for individuals. So will it ever go away or will it change? I hope not.
Speaker 3:I think there's a lot of value and importance in a four-year education as well as a trade school as well as a two-year education.
Speaker 3:There's value in the rigor that's necessary to go through that process and program. I think it can expand your mind in learning different areas that you wouldn't necessarily study. I mean, there's a lot of pros to doing that, networking being one of them that can help you long-term in your career. But I do think employers are going to lead the way in what's needed or necessary in the market, and there's no doubt about it. You don't need a college degree to make money anymore, and there's tons of studies about trade professionals and the need for trade professionals, and when you have to stop talking about that, those are professions and they are not only good professions. There's a lot of opportunity in those specific ranks, and so I think for years that had been almost downgraded a little bit about what you could do in your life and in your career, and you're starting to see a resurgence in some of those areas of opportunity for folks that don't decide to go a four year route.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's great and, like you know, we talk all the time about, you know, trade schools and you know, and other areas of we'll call it career pathing or just learning. You know, I think we're also going to see a big shift, you know, remove colleges from the equation. Just our opportunity to educate, to self-educate, right, or educate ourselves through even stuff like podcasts, right, we have so much more access to learn and to learning materials that I just think you know, just did not exist 50 years ago. I mean, I think, like you know, I talked to my dad, right. Like he gives me books still and I'm like I can have this book read to me, right, while I go for a run. Like what am I going to carry around a book for?
Speaker 2:Like I to listen to a podcast and in an hour someone tells me like, hey, you want to hear a little bit more about Ted Turner and how he started his company. I don't have to read a book, I can have someone read it to me while I'm on a run. Our opportunity to learn is absolutely unparalleled. I think there's just people that aren't. We're just not used to it. It's new, it's just people that aren't.
Speaker 3:We're just not used to it. It's new, it's new, it's still new, and I think it's it's, you'll see it, more so with this upcoming generation, because they've been born with a phone in their pocket, and so to have that much access to that much information I mean, youtube's number one search is DIY, right? So, like to your point, like I can do anything that I want, I can learn how to do whatever I want on a video of an expert telling me how to do it Instantaneously. Not tomorrow, I don't have to wait a week, it doesn't have to come in the mail. It's not a VHS tape to age me a little bit, right, so it is instantaneous from my phone of somebody showing me how to do it. And that access to information and education is kind of changing the game, I think, and really level setting what anybody has access to across the board.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think that's great. Well, I think that's a very logical place for us to put a pin in this episode. I'll ask one last easy question. So where can people find you online?
Speaker 3:Last easy question so where can people find you online On the internet?
Speaker 2:Yeah, go to my AOL chat room.
Speaker 3:We'll link it. Yeah, all you have to do is go to altavistacom. No, linkedin's the easiest way. Yeah, william Sims on LinkedIn, you can find me there. This is the easiest way to find me. Sims on LinkedIn, you can find me there. This is the easiest way to find me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we'll also link to the Lightcast blog some incredible content coming out of there as well. You know all the time too Well, this has been great. William, Really appreciate you spending time with us today and, yeah, thanks for a fantastic conversation. Appreciate it, guys. All right, Thanks for tuning in. As always, head on over to changestateio or shoot us a note on all the social media. We'd love to hear from you and we'll check you guys next week.