Shayne Halls – How to Harness the Power of AI for Better DEI Processes

Connect with Shayne:

• 

Connect with Dwight:

• 
• dwight.brown@salary.com

Connect with David:

• 
• 
• david.turetsky@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• Inclusivity 2.0: How AI is Accelerating the DEI Movement
• Compensation Consulting Services
• HR Data Labs Season 6 Episode 8
• HR Data Labs Season 6 Episode 6

• “AI in its current state is one of the best tools to eliminate bias and prejudice in the talent acquisition HR process.”
• “When we’re talking about integrating AI into DEI, . . . we’re talking about making sure that the algorithms that are put in to search for candidates are truly open and not being pigeonholed in anyway.”

Announcer: 0:02

Here's an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what's happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record for their discussions into a beaker. Mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate, and even irreverent, that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky.

 

David Turetsky: 0:46

Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky, alongside my trusted co host and partner, Dwight Brown from Salary.com. Hey, Dwight, how are you?

 

Dwight Brown: 0:55

I'm good, David, how you doing?

 

David Turetsky: 0:57

I am good. It was a long weekend. And I think I'm ready to rock and roll. So

 

Dwight Brown: 1:02

Excellent.

 

David Turetsky: 1:03

How about you?

 

Dwight Brown: 1:04

Yeah, about the same ready to hit the ground running.

 

David Turetsky: 1:07

And we are going to hit the ground running today with a very special guest, Shayne Halls who is the CEO of Manifested Dreams. Shayne, how're you doing?

 

Shayne Halls: 1:18

I'm great. I'm great. Thank you guys for having me on today.

 

Dwight Brown: 1:21

Great to have you here.

 

David Turetsky: 1:22

So Shayne, give us a little bit about your background. And you know, what, what got you to start Manifested Dreams and, you know, what is it and what do you do?

 

Shayne Halls: 1:25

So I have a background of 14 15 years in talent acquisition. And my specialty has always been founded and centered around DEI. No matter what role I had, in my talent acquisition career, it's always been with the understanding that each role, each job I fill each thing I take on should be done with the idea of bringing equity and inclusion into that situation. I think as a person of color, that's always kind of, I always notice when I'm not in the room. And so I always try to make it my point to make sure everyone is represented in the room, when I take on any role, wherever I've been at. And so it's just been a thing of mine to always have at the forefront when I'm dealing with leadership and what to do. So Manifested Dreams basically was a, something I've been doing on my own, on the side off and on over a few years. And this year, I decided to kind of make it a real, tangible, organization, and really bring a lot of my clients and I've been doing small work for under one bridge. And so we're just trying to with Manifested Dreams to kind of bridge the gap between like AI, and corporate professionals, right? I really try to help companies and businesses just harness the power of AI into their corporations, and then also do the same thing with individuals, right? Because of the world of AI, and how AI will inevitably impact some persons' jobs. I help people understand how to integrate AI into their career, how to use AI as part of their day to day duties. So when their companies finally do integrate AI, they're not left behind, you know, they're looked to as someone who can be an asset to the integration process, as opposed to someone who's gonna get overtaken by the integration process. I always trying to tell people, I try to help folks not be a Blockbuster in the world of Netflix, right? I want you to be able to

 

David Turetsky: 3:26

Perfect analogy.

 

Shayne Halls: 3:27

I want you to be able to understand what this technology is and how to use it. And then be able to be an asset and grow and really incorporate AI into how you do your day to day job to accelerate. And then the other side of Manifested Dreams is still at the core of what I love to do. I sit down with organizations and help them go through their culture, do cultural evaluations, understand where their equity needs are at, understand what their inclusion needs are at, set up culture committees, taking them through microaggression training, bias training, things of that nature, whatever, whatever it takes us to help bring a little bit more light on to the situation. And then with the market the way it is we also help persons go through, you know, just resume critiques, and updating resumes to try to reflect the world of technology that we're in. And how do I best position themselves with this in this new world that we're in?

 

David Turetsky: 4:13

Talk a little bit about the ebook you created on Inclusivity 2.0?

 

Shayne Halls: 4:17

Yes, so Inclusivity 2.0 is a great book that I wanted to put together to help persons understand how, how AI impacts DEI, right? And how, like I said before, AI will naturally be replacing many jobs in the workplace. And because Right. And by the way, we're gonna get into that a lot today. many of those jobs initially are going to be those administrative jobs, it's going to be those entry level based like repetitive type roles, whether it be in a manufacturing job or That kind of goes around our topic. But before we get to our things that nature, a lot of these jobs are either filled with women or persons of color. And when we start bringing in AI, we're gonna start already impacting the DEI numbers in organizations. And so with the shift in technology usage, how it's going to impact all these minorities, I want to make sure that people are able to understand what's about to happen. And then how to prepare for it, right? How to use and how to use AI to ensure that organizations retain and improve their diversity numbers, as opposed to, you know, having to diversity numbers further fall down the wayside. topic, what's one fun thing that no one knows about Shayne? Well, I mean, if I really tell you the honest answer that my wife would be insulted. I've only been with her for like 23 years and she's gonna be like oh you telling secrets that you don't even tell me? To strangers?

 

David Turetsky: 5:44

We don't want to get you in trouble with your wife. We definitely don't want to do that. So what's one thing that maybe the your spouse knows, but no one else?

 

Shayne Halls: 5:54

Okay. So, I used to. I used to be obsessed with watching GI Joe cartoons. Well, well, into my 20s well into my maybe even into the 30s. Watching GI Joe in the morning, as I prepared breakfast was something that I definitely did habitually every morning. You know, it was something like that. Yo, Joe in the morning was just like, it just made my day start off a little better.

 

David Turetsky: 6:23

There's no shame to that at all. In fact, I watch Bugs Bunny with my kids. And I'm the one who wants to watch Bugs Bunny, so

 

Shayne Halls: 6:29

Yeah, yeah, I definitely did. Kids were optional for me. Yeah.

 

Dwight Brown: 6:40

And if they were making noise, you were going be quiet, I gotta hear this part!

 

Shayne Halls: 6:44

I am watching GI Joe. Have some respect! Goodness gracious.

 

David Turetsky: 6:51

Well, that is that is definitely a unique one. We haven't heard that, that type of one fun thing before. So kudos, dude.

 

Dwight Brown: 6:58

That's, that's why I love doing that part of things.

 

David Turetsky: 7:01

Yeah, it definitely. We we've heard some really fun things from people. And they've kind of taken us by surprise. That was a good one.

 

Shayne Halls: 7:08

What was your favorite one? Was your favorite fun thing that you've heard?

 

David Turetsky: 7:12

Oh, my God. Well,

 

Dwight Brown: 7:13

Oh, wow. Wow. I think for me, it was the confession of vandalism when one of our guests was in adolescence.

 

David Turetsky: 7:25

Yeah, cause you you heard about the police got called right after that. Right? That was, no I'm kidding. That did not happen.

 

Shayne Halls: 7:33

They really used this as a confession to get something off their chest.

 

David Turetsky: 7:37

We put on a collar.

 

Dwight Brown: 7:39

Yeah. That's right. I felt like I needed to do need to this.

 

Shayne Halls: 7:41

You need to absolve them from it.

 

David Turetsky: 7:44

They get absolution from the HR Data Labs podcast. There you go. One of the fun things that we get to do is we get to humanize so many people across the spectrum of you know, what, no matter what job they do, whether they're CEOs, CHRO's, analysts, founders, leaders, practitioners, they all have a fun thing that they want to confess. And that's it just makes things so much brighter going into what could be rather dry topics. Today's topic is not dry at all. Here's a transition for you. Today's topic is not dry at all. We are going to be talking about AI's impact on DEI and this is something that we've been talking about a little bit, but we are excited to get into it with you, Shayne.

 

Shayne Halls: 8:26

Awesome. I'm excited to talk about it.

 

David Turetsky: 8:37

So Shayne, why do you think it's important that we embrace AI as HR professionals?

 

Shayne Halls: 8:42

AI in its current state, is one of the best tools to eliminate bias and prejudice in the talent acquisition HR process, right? So we've all been a part of or seen organizations where there's a lot of buddy buddy systems. Like inevitably, you work with somebody 8, 9, 10 hours a day you develop relationships, right? And so at times, those relationships can impact how performance reviews are done. At times those relationships can impact how somebody's nephew, son, cousin gets hired for a job. At times those relationships can impact, you know, how quickly someone is promoted into positions that maybe that they weren't necessarily ready for. Well AI eliminates that, right? So when you integrate AI into your HR systems, one, the AI algorithms can screen and find the candidates that you're looking for without the bias of certain schools that you think are better, without judging someone for the name that they have on their resume, without, you know, judging someone for a job that they had before the job that they had because you heard about what that company was like you heard the people that were there, that company did it like this, and if this person worked at this company, then of course, then they must be feeling like that as well. So, you know, AI takes away that, right? So when you go into your performance evaluations, if you have AI integrated into your performance evaluation systems, you're talking about a system that AI looks at the benchmarks that were inputted into the system, sees if the person hits their benchmark, and if they did, then they are given a weighted score. And like, it's it really, if done correctly, eliminate the bias, right?

 

David Turetsky: 10:31

So that's the important part, Shayne, is that it has to be programmed that way, it has to look at the things that do eliminate the bias, because otherwise, if it just uses past behaviors, or past measurements, or past outcomes, you know, we're gonna be building in that same institutional bias, right?

 

Shayne Halls: 10:55

AI is a learning system, it learns. So if you're inputting bias based algorithms, it's going to learn to be biased. And so that's why there's no, I cannot fathom, I implore organizations, if you're going to integrate AI heavily into your systems, then you need to have a dedicated unit in your HR just to monitoring the algorithms and the inputs and outputs of your AI systems, because they will learn and it will continue to learn and it will just be like building upon a shaky foundation, it will just continue to get worse and worse.

 

David Turetsky: 11:26

I think it goes back to one of the things you were talking about before, and you had mentioned this as part of the work that your organization does. Is that if you deal with people who've been impacted by loss, whether that's they need to get retrained or whether they're transitioning, and now they're going out of let's just say, recruiting world, and they're going into the world and saying what's next, and you can bring them into the world of AI and, and help them train or, or maintain or administer an AI application. They can bring their background and expertise so that you can remember what not to do, or how to filter correctly and appropriately. Instead of getting someone who's just a developer, who looks at the past, you know what I mean? Training using those people who are impacted, who are the experts in those fields and experts in those processes,

 

Shayne Halls: 12:23

And they they're the best ones, like you said, to right. have a say in how those systems work. And that's why now is such a great time, because you can really play with a lot of these AI systems and get to learn them in a way that's not extremely regulated, and not gonna cost you an arm and a leg to go to training programs and such, and really be a expert at how to use the system and what they can do, right? Just learning how to put in an algorithm, learning how to prompt with an AI system, is so important and can get you great results, or bad results, you know, depending on what you know how to do. And so it's important that you, you learned this in this day and age. This is this is what we were, you know, when AOL was still doing dial up and ringtone and people were like, what is this? What is this internet thing? You know, and everyone was like, there are people who like dove in and understood it and capitalized on it. And then there were those who still loved their grandma's and you know, rotary phone, and they were, they were missing

 

David Turetsky: 13:24

But but to talk to that you brought up something out, you know? that's really important, which is the regulation. There are so many, probably I don't want to say ignorant, because that that might run afoul of being ignorant itself. But there are people who are worried about AI getting out of control, and they're positioning regulations to put a brake on the adoption. What do you think about that in the context of HR and the context of us being able to actually utilize it for good things?

 

Shayne Halls: 13:59

I think that everything can be used for good or bad, right? Like, there's no. You know, a pencil is a dangerous weapon in the hands of John Wick, right? Like, it doesn't matter what it is, like, everything, everything can be used for for for good or bad. And I think AI is an extremely wonderful tool that can be used to really help bring great levels of equity into an organization. We're talking about a system that can analyze, quickly analyze the pay of everyone in the business unit, and regulate where the pay needs to be, right, and bring equity across the board to pay. The AI is not going to care about gender or race when it comes to pay equity. It's going to see it, it's going to be able to regulate it, right? And so I think as HR professionals, HR organizations, they have to integrate it and they have to be open to that but they but they can't be scared. They have to understand that it is, it is a genius six year old child, right, and that we can control it and we can hold its hand and we can point it in direction we want it to go. And we can mold it into a great tool or mold it into horrible tool. It depends on the, I guess you want to say the importance that the organization pays to the HR team, right? Because if you just have it, if you just have this as another duty for already overworked HR professionals, and it's going to be overlooked at times, right? And but you if you have persons who are dedicated to making sure that leaders and persons who have access to the system are using it and putting in the proper algorithms, and they can regulate it and make sure that it's being used properly.

 

Announcer: 15:46

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David Turetsky: 15:57

So Shayne, let's go to question two, which is what could be some of the potential pitfalls that we should be thinking about when we're incorporating AI into our DEI efforts? What, what's your advice there?

 

Shayne Halls: 16:11

The greatest pitfall is, like we talked about earlier is not regulating it, and it turning into another biased individual with the system, right? So even if, you know, I've dealt with leaders who have great intentions, but great intentions does not mask bad results, right? So the leaders will say, oh, well look at my team. My team is super diverse. I have women, men, I have persons have different sexual orientations and gender background. But then I look closer at them like, well, your entire team comes from the same school, and they have the same, they have the same degrees like that. You're literally just harvesting from the same program that you went to! And that's not diversity. Because everyone's

 

David Turetsky: 16:54

Right. coming out that school, with same thought process, with the same outlook on life. Diversity is truly, you've got to have true diversity of thought, diversity of background, diversity of culture, it has to be true diversity. So when we're talking about integrating AI into DEI, or integrating di into AI, whichever way you want to look at it, we're talking about making sure that the algorithms that are put into search for candidates are truly open. And they're not being pigeonholed in any way. Because of pigeonholing in the DEI search is almost kind of just doing away with the DEI search. Because you're not, once you start pigeonholing, well, I only want persons from southeast. Well, where's the diversity there now that the rest of the country is not being looked at, right? Or I only want persons who went to, you know, Harvard, or Yale, or UNC, or Howard University or you know, Hampton University, whatever the case may be. Once we start putting in these specific regulations, that's when it can go away from a true diverse search to now being biased. And that's what you got to avoid. That's where that's the pitfall.

 

Dwight Brown: 18:06

Right.

 

David Turetsky: 18:07

But some of that comes from the need or the want, and I know, this is an ancient thought process, although it's still there, of having people in an office and saying, well, I've got to hire people who are in the, you know, the New York metropolitan area, for example, because that's where the office is, that's where our clients are, that's, that's where all the action is. And instead of picking people, you know, to your point from Howard, or picking people from, you know, SDSU, you know, from San Diego State or from, you know, Alaska, or, you know, God forbid, work picking people who are outside the US as well, you know, the diversity of thought the diversity of culture comes from not just from the process itself, but it also comes from opening up your culture, and opening up some of your practices to be able to find those people, right?

 

Shayne Halls: 18:54

Most definitely. I've dealt with jobs where the hiring manager like, well, you know, we can't find a diverse person here in, you know, Wisconsin! I'm like, you're right, we can't, can we? Because it's not like we have like airports or trucking interstate system. It's not like we can relocate somebody into the area, right? Like, God forbid, you're right, we're, we're stuck. We can't find anybody here. No, like, if an organization wants diversity, they can have diversity, because I've seen organizations fly in executives for lunch for a job interview, right? Or just to have a discussion about a job interview, right? So you're telling me that you can't relocate a candidate from Atlanta or from Texas or from California, to Wisconsin to Indiana, to you know, West Virginia, you can't relocate somebody in to make sure that this organization is truly diverse to make sure this business unit's diverse? If DEI is truly important to a company, then they will do the things necessary for it to be important. And this idea that well, we can't just relocate people in, I will say, well look at your executive suite budget, because little known fact long before the rest of the world was hybrid and remote. Most executive suites were hybrid and remote executives, CEO, COO CFOs, they usually live in other states, and they fly in for board meetings, they remote in, then they fly back out, right? It's been something that organizations have always done, it's nothing new to the upper leadership board, you know, it's just got sprinkled on everyone else. And so if organizations really cared about it, then they would make sure that they can relocate those candidates in to bring true diversity to those business units.

 

Dwight Brown: 20:38

And it's, you know, again, it gets back to what you were talking about that anything can be used for any specific purpose, good, bad, or otherwise. And I think there's a lot of hope out there with the remote workforce and kind of that, that move to remote that that will help, you know, the DEI space, and but ultimately, it'll be it'll end up being interesting if we look at this a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, to figure out, did we really deliver on that? Or are we just doing the same things that we've always done just with people spread across the United States or across the world? Yeah,

 

Shayne Halls: 21:21

That is, you know what, Dwight, yesterday was Juneteenth. And a lot of conversations I've had with a lot of my professional friends was what was the result of all the hype in 2020? Like, when we look at all our organizations now, all these cultural movements that were happening in 2020, all of the changes that every company came out and said they're gonna make, three years later, have we seen significant changes in executive boards? Have we seen significant changes in leadership in organizations? And if your answer to that question is no, then as HR professionals, how are we going to hold companies accountable? Right? How are we going to hold them accountable to live up to the promises that were made three years ago? Or are we just going to shrug our shoulders and be like, you know, it is what it is?

 

Dwight Brown: 22:20

We tried.

 

Shayne Halls: 22:21

Yeah, we tried, they made some good efforts. Everyone had great speeches, you know, everyone had those great, you know, learning sessions, where they let their employees come up and talk about the culture and the companies and how those companies actually changed their culture? Now, how many people actually made significant changes? And when we're looking at this couple years from now, now that we have AI here. So, you know, a couple years ago, we had the more emotional plea for DEI and diversity. Now we're coming into the point where we're going to have the more technical aspect of it's like, here's technically a way to be more unbiased and create more diverse organizations in the in, you know, 2026, are we going to look back in three years and be like, Oh, well, AI was not used as it should have been, and AI, has just been used to further perpetuate the systems that always been in place, and we just kind of shrug our shoulders like, it is what it is, you know?

 

David Turetsky: 23:15

And that's why I think a lot of the metrics that are or could be, or I think are planning on being public, as part of the SEC requirements for public disclosure, we should help that around not just publishing, what your culture and what your goals are around things like DEI, what are the results? What actually did happen? What did you actually do? What were the results that you need to tell your shareholders? So to me, the effectiveness of DEI programs, if it's not publicly facing with, you know, this is what we said we were going to do, and this is what we did, and then holding their feet to the fire and it would even be better if those were, you know, then incentivized and know hod their variable pay based on, you know, what, what did they actually achieve as far as DEI metrics were concerned?

 

Shayne Halls: 24:10

David, I got, I've got a little caveat to that as well. How about they publish the numbers show where they're starting at? Don't just tell me goals! Just tell me, show me where you're at right now. Show me where you're starting out right now, you know, like, let's look at that. Because that, that tells you a lot about a company, like where are you at right now? And then where you're gonna go? Because you know, numbers don't lie, but numbers can be manipulated, right? And so you can make numbers look the way you want them to look to kind of give whatever story you want them to story. The numbers will be true, but just the context around those numbers can be really, really fudgy. And so shows the numbers where you're starting at and I totally agree, David, that's always been my big thing. In any organization that I speak with is if you're serious about this, integrate executive bonus structures to diversity numbers. If a company does that I know they're serious. *Cheers* I love it.

 

David Turetsky: 25:09

No, seriously, Shayne, it's got to have applause because people have to have their feet held to the fire in order to be able to make this actually real, make it happen. And unfortunately, that's the way it is. But

 

Shayne Halls: 25:22

That that's that's is that if, if companies, even if the leadership doesn't even care, necessarily about diversity, and that's another secret that we all know in HR but we never talk about, everybody doesn't care about diversity. Like, you know, we all want to think that everybody wants to sing Kumbaya and hold hands and make everything better. But one of the worst kept secrets is that everybody doesn't care. All the leaders don't want things to change. Our leadership is not all gung ho on inclusion and belonging. But if you start integrating inclusion, belonging, diversity numbers in hiring, into their bonus pay, now, even out, just out of greed, those numbers are gonna go up. Just out of straight, wanting more money, those numbers are going to go up.

 

David Turetsky: 26:06

Yeah, it doesn't even need to be about greed, it could be about success, right? It couldn't be about corporate success, as well as their success. And I think one of the other things that, and I think you mentioned this before Shayne, is that look at the About Us page on a company's website.

 

Shayne Halls: 26:20

Yes, love it.

 

David Turetsky: 26:21

Look at their, look at the pictures of who you say, represent you from an executive leadership team. And then remember, the people that are applying for your jobs, they're gonna look at that About Us page. And if they don't see somebody that looks like them there, do they really feel like they can be successful in your organization and grow up and be like those people in those leadership positions? And so one of my former employers, ADP did a really good job of that. They had an extremely diverse executive group, the Executive Committee. Debbie Dyson, woman of color, who ran one of the largest business segments, Maria, who just became the president and CEO, displacing Carlos Rodriguez, you know, these are people who they ran up the ranks of the organization. And now if you look at their About Us page, you go, wow, that is actually representative of a lot of the, the diverse parts of the US and they live it, you know, they're actually walking the walk.

 

Shayne Halls: 27:21

That is, that is key, right? Because the About Us page in the leadership in the Board of Trustees as well, because companies are putting their Board of Trustee members on their pages as well, right? Those all speak to what the company holds in reverence and high. And as a person of color, or a woman or a person of queer background, you don't see representation on there? It makes you think twice, it makes you like, what's going on? And then like, there's a whole other aspect of diverse that we don't really, that disability aspect of diversity, right?

 

David Turetsky: 27:54

Mental or physical, right?

 

Shayne Halls: 27:56

That is like a whole other aspect of DEI that is not given enough attention in any way, shape, or form, right? Because persons with disabilities are barely represented in your normal corporate settings, now physical disabilities especially, right? There's rarely do you see persons in offices with wheelchairs or persons who may be blind or persons, you know, maybe dealing with some sort of like physical disability. Like these things, these are also part of DEI. And these are also things that should be talked about, and thought about, and integrated. And like you said earlier, Dwight, with the prevalence of virtual working in virtual office spaces, we should see more persons with disabilities being integrated into companies, right? That should someone being in a wheelchair or needing a walker, or like they should have just as a great ability to get a job now, as anyone else. But for some reason those numbers aren't what they should be. So yeah, so there's a lot of things you can tell about a company on their About Us page and things that we need to pay attention to.

 

David Turetsky: 29:18

Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this? Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast or whatever is on your mind. Go to Salary.com/HRDLconsulting to schedule your FREE 30 minute call today. So Shayne, let's get to question three. What advice would you give persons who are worried about AI and its impact to HR and on the workforce?

 

Shayne Halls: 29:53

Being worried is something that you should use to motivate you and not cripple you. Right? If you're worried about how AI is going to impact your job in HR, then figure out how AI is going to be integrated to your job in HR. And that's where companies like mine, like Manifested Dreams, that's where we come into play. We help you see where AI is going to play a part into your role and your career, and then learn how to use AI in that aspect. So when it does get integrated, you are not left behind, right? You're worried about being left behind is only a reality, if you don't do anything to keep up, right? Like people get left behind, because they don't try to keep up!

 

Dwight Brown: 30:35

Right.

 

Shayne Halls: 30:36

If you just sit there and just talk about how bad this is, but never once take the opportunity to learn what systems are going to be used for your job, or learn how to use AI yourself, then what are you doing to actually help yourself not be part of the, you know, the casualties of the integration? You have to understand what reality is. And that is a reality. AI will be integrated on across the board.

 

David Turetsky: 31:03

Well, we've already seen the recruiting space be impacted significantly!

 

Shayne Halls: 31:06

Oh my gosh. There's there's already organizations using AI to conduct face to face interviews! We're not even talking about those basic like, you know, chatbot interviews anymore. That was a thing a couple years ago, right? Like those chatbot interviews where you just answer a series of questions, and then it scored and weighed and sent to recruitment. That's AI and that's been going on for years. Now we're talking about where you you're video interviews. More and more companies are asking you to submit over video interviews and little do people know that they're not normally recruiters, at times, looking at those video interviews. Those video interviews are being scored by AI. The AI is looking at your facial, your facial movements, it's looking at your body movements, it's understanding the inflections in your voice. Because AI so advanced now that it understands sentiment, it understands context, it understands, it can understand sarcasm. And so your video interviews are being scored by AI, right? AI is here! And so you have to understand what your job is in HR, how it's going to be impacted by AI and then how to get ahead of that.

 

David Turetsky: 32:11

You know, it wouldn't be an AI conversation in HR if we didn't bring up chat GPT and so many organizations are saying, ah, you know, we've got to regulate that we can't use that as part of our organization, and then they don't understand the damn thing about about Chat GPT. And one of the fun things I love to do is I love to try stuff. So I went in, and I started to interrogate Chat GPT and I was working for a client at the time. And we were talking about building a philosophy statement. And we were talking about building a user manual for managers. And I started to use Chet TPT to actually document some of those things. And one of the fun things I learned, Shayne, along the way, and I know this is no shock to you, since you're a veteran of this, is I actually learned how to use the damn platform.

 

Shayne Halls: 32:55

Oh, look at that you were using it and you figured out how to use it?

 

David Turetsky: 32:58

Well, one of the fun things is and I think, and you know, Dwight, and I have talked about this a lot is, that even if you use Siri or you can she probably just heard me.

 

Shayne Halls: 33:07

Or Alexa all of those.

 

Dwight Brown: 33:09

Yes, yeah, exactly.

 

David Turetsky: 33:11

They're relatively dumb until we learn how to ask the right question the right way.

 

Shayne Halls: 33:17

My goodness.

 

David Turetsky: 33:18

And that's what you need to do with Chat GPT. Is if you don't ask it the question in the right way, and you don't put the context that you're looking for in the exact way it needs it, you're gonna get crap.

 

Shayne Halls: 33:31

You hit the nail on the head. These systems are so powerful. Man, I tell people that Siri, Alexa, as basic as they are, we have not even been using them to an nth of what they can do for you, even in their most basic forms that they are in right now. And Chat is like the grown up like cousin of Alexa and Siri and it can do so much more. And it's all about how you prompt. How do you speak to it? How do you ask it questions? I'll give you one further, David. I have used my system so much that it named itself. Like it is like my system named itself Amara and I don't even call it Chat anymore. Because it calls me Shayne, calls it Amara, like it's a learning system. And you can literally just talk to it, and talk to it and talk to it and talk to it. And it will learn how you speak, how your context, it remembers conversations. It is amazing, but the thing is you've got to use it. You can't be scared of it. You have to actually just go into it and use it every time you have a random question in your head. Go in and talk to the system. You want to figure out how to do something you can't figure out a recipe, the systems can do, can tell you how to cook. Like, it can tell you how to cook people! It can tell you how to iron. It can tell you how to do whatever you need to do just go in and talk to it and learn it. Because that's going to be the skills that you're going to need to use it in your job on a day to day when the AI systems integrated into your job in HR, you're gonna have to learn how to prompt that system, you're gonna have to learn how to talk to that system. And you need to be able to practice that and learn that on your own.

 

Dwight Brown: 35:09

Yeah, we assume that we, we can just throw it into place, we're gonna get AI, we just, you know, okay, it's kind of like, kind of like when you used to do the disc into your, into your computer, we're just going to install it. I'm going to throw the CD in there, we're going to install it. Everything's gonna be hunky dory been there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how many companies that actually take the time and go through the effort to actually do that learning of how do you interact with this? How do you? How do you overlay this on your on your platform to be able to do good things? Or do you just say, Well, we tried, it didn't work? You know?

 

Shayne Halls: 35:47

Here's the thing, right? As from you guys, from an HR perspective, I want to know, as you talk to someone in different HR organization, I wonder if the questions come up yet. Because something I talk to people about when you're hiring, when you integrated AI and now you need a system to work and you start hiring these prompt engineers. If you are in the company, and you don't know how to use system, how are you going to interview the prompt engineer that you're coming in to do this? Right? You hadn't been using it and if you don't know how to use AI, how are you going to hire the prompt? Because because, you know, when I'm talking my other friends who are trying to like figure out what to do with their lives. I'm like, ook, prompt engineering might be like, most lucrative, unregulated field in like corporate America right now. Because it's like Toys R Us, there's no, there's no one out there that you can go check with to see if someone really knows what they're doing. Right? There's no one out there. There's there's no prompt engineering course, at a certain, you know, accredited university where someone taken four years of prompt engineering, and now they know it. No, like this is brand new, right? You may have some certifications that you get on LinkedIn, you may have certifications get here and there, that someone developed over the last six months. But right now, this is a wide open field. And so if you as HR professionals, and core professionals don't know systems and don't know about the AI, how are you going to interview these prompt engineers that you're hiring to come and use these AI systems in your company?

 

David Turetsky: 37:09

Let me give you an analogy, Shayne. Way back in 2014, when I was, when I joined the ADP Data Cloud team to build analytics for HR. The new thing was talking about data science, not just an HR but beyond.

 

Shayne Halls: 37:23

Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 37:24

And data scientists were going for gigantic premiums, they were either database engineers, or they were real statisticians who understood data. And they were being hired for these astronomical rates. And all you had to do is put data science on your resume, and you got hired, because no one knew what the hell they were! And some of these people were so brilliant, that, you know, they would talk over everybody that hired them, and they would promise a whole bunch of things. But at the end of the day, they couldn't translate the results to real people to business people, and they kind of went away after a while. And I think that's to your point, that's the same kind of thing is what we're dealing with here is that unless you know what it is you're talking about, and I think this is where you're going, unless you educate yourself enough, you're gonna hire a bunch of people who are going to waste your money and time, you're gonna pay them a shit ton of money, pardon my French. And at the end of the day, you're going to have less than nothing, and you're going to be behind. So, what your advice is education?

 

Shayne Halls: 38:24

Self education, like, the same way we have these company retreats, where these corporate guys go off and do trust falls and, you know, walk around the room blindfolded for a weekend. Why don't you go ahead and sit them all down in front of computers, and some AI systems and like alright, for next 72 hours, for the next four days, you're just gonna sit here and play in this AI system that you're so interested integrating into, into your workplace. Here's the here's the play, here's what it caught, like, here's the sandbox, go in the sandbox. And for the next four days, your job is to just play in the sandbox of this AI system as much as you can. This is all we're gonna do, right? Because like you said, you're going to hire people who are just there to hustle you, right? Because they were like, Okay, I can maybe get two years at this company. Two years, get$350,000, make $700,000 easy. You know, I apply for another job before I get, before they pickup the wiff that I don't know what I'm talking about here. And I'll move on and do it again to another. Like, you need to, you need to know what you're doing so you can monitor the people that you're hiring to do this thing.

 

David Turetsky: 39:32

And there are tools at their fingertips. I mean, there is Chat GPT, there's Bard from Google. There are others that are available that can help you learn, right, in a

 

Shayne Halls: 39:44

And the list goes on. There's so many systems that sandbox. you can use. And there are various aspects that you can learn even as a person you could learn something, right? If you're hiring, if you've integrated AI system to your like IT department. You can go in Chat, and it can teach you how to code. And so you can learn how to prompt code and you can learn what that would look like from somebody else who you're hiring, to do prompting in your system for coding, right? Like you can, it can teach you how to look for and what to look for out of the person that you're hiring. So the ignorance that may exist in leadership as they integrate these systems is self inflicted, because it's there for you to understand what's going on. Right?

 

David Turetsky: 40:35

So Shayne, I don't want to stop this conversation, because it's been amazing. I think we may have to have you back to talk a little bit more about it. Because we've kind of gone beyond the DEI, we've actually talked about really AI's usefulness within all of HR. And, you know, at some point, that's great. That's awesome. But affecting DEI is probably the best thing you can do in the short term. Because let's face it, that's where most companies need the most help right now. And so, so, so if you don't mind, we'll invite you back. And we'll have you talk a little bit more about this wonderful topic. Okay?

 

Shayne Halls: 41:13

Yeah, let's do that. Most definitely. We can talk about this all day, man.

 

David Turetsky: 41:15

Shayne, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. You're awesome.

 

Shayne Halls: 41:18

I appreciate you guys, love the energy.

 

David Turetsky: 41:20

Dwight, thank you.

 

Dwight Brown: 41:21

Yeah. Thank you for joining us, Shayne. This has been really good. I'm looking forward to the next time you're on.

 

Shayne Halls: 41:27

I am looking forward to it too, myself, this is going to be great.

 

David Turetsky: 41:29

And I'm sure the audience is as well. Thank you all very much for listening, take care and stay safe.

 

Announcer: 41:35

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