The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Modern Recruiting, AI, and Talent Strategy
Welcome to The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Recruiting, AI, and Talent Strategy, a podcast for leaders building better hiring systems and stronger teams.
Hosted by James Mackey, the show features conversations with founders, CEOs, talent leaders, and recruiting experts on how great companies hire, scale, and adapt as technology changes the talent landscape.
Episodes cover talent acquisition strategy, recruiting operations, AI, automation, candidate experience, hiring analytics, and executive decision-making.
You will learn how to build scalable hiring systems, use AI and recruiting technology effectively, improve the hiring process, and make talent acquisition a competitive advantage.
Built for founders, executives, talent acquisition leaders, recruiters, and hiring teams.
Thank you to our sponsors, SecureVision and June, for making this show possible.
The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Modern Recruiting, AI, and Talent Strategy
EP 222: Inside Qonto's AI-Native Recruiting Stack
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Aurelien Drieu is Qonto's Head of Talent Acquisition. Over the past six years, he's helped scale the company from 200 to 1,700+ employees. In this conversation, he shares how his team uses AI to move faster without trading off on quality - from automating dashboards and building in-house agents that take on repetitive but high-leverage prep work (persona finalisation, interview grids, job descriptions, case studies) to note-taking, AI interviewing tests, and testing candidates' AI fluency during the interview process. The result: a 25% productivity gain between late 2025 and Q1 2026, and a clear point of view on why the next phase of recruiting won't be won by the most automated teams, but by those that pair automation with sharper human judgment.
Connect with host James Mackey on LinkedIn!
Thank you to our sponsor, SecureVision, for making this show possible!
Follow us:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/82436841/
SecureVision: #1 Rated Embedded Recruitment Firm on G2!
https://www.g2.com/products/securevision/reviews
Thanks for listening!
Welcome And Guest Setup
SPEAKER_02Hey everyone, welcome to the show. We got a fun episode today. We have Orre Leon Dreyu joining us. He is the head of talent acquisition over at Kanto. Welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Thank you for having me, James.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thanks for joining me today. I really, yeah, I enjoyed our prep call. I guess it was a better part of six weeks ago. Uh and remember, I don't know if you remember this, but you asked me what we were recording, and I told you, I was like, Yeah, what do you mean? We're recording right now. You just looked at me like, what? Uh, but anyways, man, we made it. We made it.
SPEAKER_00And I'm glad.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, me too. Um, so look, I mean, the the conversation today is gonna be like professionally focused. Uh, that said, let's I we still want to know kind of a brief backstory on you. So uh still want to start with where are you from, and and you can give us just a quick little backstory on uh on that real fast.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Uh so I'm French. I uh was born and raised in Paris, to be honest, very cliche, but it's true, it exists. Uh and I'm working within the the talent acquisition field, especially uh at Conto. Uh I joined the company six years and a half ago. Uh I'm 37, so it's been a while now. I'm working within the TTF field. Uh I was a headhunter uh right before Conto, uh, mostly focusing on uh hiring uh for different kinds of industries, but non-tech industries mostly. So I discovered the tech world and the talk ecos the tech ecosystem while joining Conto, so it was very new for me. Uh and I've always worked uh within the TA and talent acquisition and hiring field. And what is very funny uh is that I I decided to work uh within talent acquisition after I was doing fundraising in the streets, so I don't know if you have such a thing in the US, uh, but I was uh I was doing fundraising in the street, in the Parisian streets for uh Croix-Rouge Française, so French Red Cross. And I met a head hunter at that time. I I was pretty lost to be honest. I didn't know what I was about to do with my life. Um, and I met this guy, I don't even know who he is, I don't even remember who this guy is. Uh, and we ended up discussing like for uh maybe an hour, an hour and a half about what it were do what it was doing at the moment, and I found it extremely exciting and interesting, and I decided to do everything I can to work uh in that field. And here am I.
SPEAKER_02So you okay, so you've been there for uh about seven years at your current company, and yeah, in that time you've received uh several promotions, which is really cool and impressive. And you've yeah, um, you know, you've been
From Street Fundraising To Recruiting
SPEAKER_02with the company through pretty substantial growth. So maybe you could give our audience a lay of the land and where the company's at and and how long you've been, like what growth you've been part of over the past several years.
SPEAKER_00So maybe it would be relevant to to give a little bit more information about Conto. So Conto is a FinTech, European fintech, has been founded in France uh in 2016-2017. We have a very big European market at the moment. We have eight uh countries, eight different markets, nothing but Europe and Eurozone, which is very important. And we are focusing on uh B2B, so SMEs, SMBs. It's a business finance management solution, uh, something like that. So business account and financial tools. The aim is to revolution the banking world for uh the SMEs and SMBs. That said, I was lucky enough to join the company at the very beginning. We were only at that time 200 employees, FTEs, when I joined the company. Uh now we are uh 1700, so 1,700 people. And since I joined, I think we hired something like more than 3,000 people in six years and a half. And I was lucky enough uh to join this company. I decided to join it because the people I met throughout the hiring process were very, very impressive to me. And uh I didn't explicitly want to join a fintech, to be honest. I I decided to do so because of the people I met. And I think this is something extremely important in our culture and uh and uh and uh who is working at contour at the moment. And when I joined the HR team, we were, I think, around 10 people. Now we have a pretty big HR team uh in proportion to the the number of people who are who is working at Conto at the moment. Uh now we have 80 or 90 people working within the HR team. So it's huge. And uh focusing on the TA team, we were four recruiters or five, something like this. And now I'm so I'm responsible for uh the full uh talent acquisition topics. I'm I'm reporting directly to uh Sarah, our chief people officer, and I'm responsible for 25-ish recruiters team divided in three main verticals. So I I joined the company as a recruiter, as a talent acquisition manager, then I I uh got promoted first level lead, team lead, then uh senior team lead, and now I'm the head of talent acquisition.
SPEAKER_02Okay, yeah, that's that's perfect. Thank you. Uh that's that's very helpful. So there's there's a lot of things that we wanted to talk about uh today. Um just trying to think about like the the best place to start. I mean, it it sounds like right now, like let's just talk about like you know, one place I like to start is just asking people like what their obsession is for 2026, like the main problem or opportunity that you're just really dialed in on. So let's start there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so our obsession in 2026, I think it's common to every other company's it's AI first, and how we ensure as a TA team we hire as fast as the business needs and we maintain this speed and quality. Also, when it comes to hiring, uh, we've been exactly the same thing we've been doing over the past six years and a half, but now it's even more challenging because you you got AI and it brings a lot of things on the table. We we can discuss it a little bit later. But also now we are uh you run faster when you are 200 people versus when you are 1,700. So the thing is, how can we be as fast now as we were six years ago? And that's our obsession. But from a company perspective, it is an obsession, not only TA, it's directly linked to our culture. Does it answer your question?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it does. It does. So let's start with um, we'll get into AI, but let's let's start with when you think about increasing speed or velocity for your your TA motion in 2026. I mean, maybe that's incorporating AI, but it sounds like you do want to accelerate. When you think about solving for that, what comes to mind?
SPEAKER_00AI wise, so it's a very broad topic, to be honest. Because of course, as a team, uh, we need to make sure uh we use AI more and more, but not at every cost.
Scaling Conto Through Hypergrowth
SPEAKER_00Uh, it means we use it properly. So the aim is not to replace our brain, it's rather to augment ourselves and augment our brain. So making sure we are using AI for uh all the tasks, which doesn't bring a lot of quality from a hiring perspective, at least. So when it comes to writing job ads, writing case studies, uh scorecards, and interview guides, uh also improve the kind of material we are sharing with candidates on a daily basis when we are pitching uh equity and a lot of things, our companion policy, for instance. So it's as a team something very common, not only because we are TA, but just because we are a team working within a company. But when you are a TA, when you think about AI, what is extremely important is how you make sure you bring and you hire the right people who are AI fluent the way we expect, so we have kind of a consistency uh when it comes to what what point we want to reach and making sure these people we are about to hire will fit this culture, also when it comes to AI, right? Not only about our values, leadership principles, and so on and so forth. And especially now, because with AI, I think it's very easy or way easier now to pretend skills-wise until like maybe a few months ago what we were doing. So, all hiring all our hiring processes have a case study. So you cannot be hired at Conto without working on a case study. It was rather a take-home exercise until a few months ago, but with AI, everyone can pretend. Now we had to shape and to rethink our hiring process to avoid having this kind of uh uh people who will pretend, and then when they join a company, we realize without AI they are nothing. It's it's a shortcut, they are not nothing, but they are not as good as we could have expected after the hiring process. So there are two kinds of things very, very important and very challenging.
SPEAKER_02So when you when you think about implementing AI in into your uh systems this year, how are you currently leveraging it and what do you want to implement between before the end of the year?
SPEAKER_00Before the end of the year, so until even like three months ago, we were using a a French product, AI product called Dust. Um, I know Dust. Oh, you know Dust. It's very, very good to be honest. Uh we we started using AI from Dust and also from an AI note-taker tool, so uh free uh advertising, uh, for a product called MetaView, uh, which is I know MetaView.
SPEAKER_02So Sile, the uh CEO's been on the show, and also Reese, uh bachelor from but uh yeah, Sile. So MetaView, yeah, we've we've been talking about potentially uh partnering up with them on some events in the US market for my companies.
SPEAKER_00Uh they build great products and we are still using MetaView. It's very, very impressive, to be honest. Uh, so this not taking tool, AI note taker tool, uh, has been a game changer for us because it allows you to focus on what the candidate is saying instead of focusing on do I take notes properly? Do I miss something? Which is a game changer for uh time. Uh we were using dust, we created a uh AI sub-AI agent to help us on different kinds of tasks. And uh after we used a little bit of uh Chat GPT, of course, and now we are using Cloud and Notion AI because we are also using Notion a lot. So we are um going from Dust to Cloud at that time and Notion AI, and um same logic. The aim is to have kind of an AI agent library to give autonomy to everyone, but they have the right skills in their AI tools to use it properly and to go even faster without losing quality. And also when it comes to the ATS uh we are using, so uh I won't give any name uh here, uh, but but we are not very uh satisfied with our current ATS when it comes to AI features, and that's why we are exploring and benchmarking other ATS, but this is something we are focusing on 2026 because this is the biggest gap we are observing at the moment uh on our ATS when it comes to AI, and there are there are a lot of stuff as well. So we have tackled most of the tasks, uh, like the back-end tasks, not candidates' experience or candidates facing. Now we are um benchmarking more and more products for candidates-facing
2026 Goal: Speed With Quality
SPEAKER_00uh experience or tasks. For instance, um, we are testing several AI interviewer agents. I'm not very convinced at the moment, to be honest, because I'm very much into candidate experience and this kind of human touch we are known for. Uh, this is one of our strengths. And my my fear, my concern is that if we don't pick the right product, we might decrease or um impact negatively the kind of candidate experience we are offering on a daily basis. And we are, I think we are very good at at candidate experience at the moment. So I'm really careful with that.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's a good one. So I'll let's slow down on this one. I'm curious. Um, how many inbound applications do you guys get per month?
SPEAKER_00Uh average, so since beginning of the year, so we are uh more or less mid-May. I think we've received between 35 and 40,000 applications. So maybe a little bit less. I'd say over 2020k or over 20,000 applications, 2020,000 divided by five months, essentially. Yeah, and and on uh no, so it's so roughly 4,000 a month-ish, or yeah, yeah. I would say between five and seven thousand a month.
SPEAKER_02Oh five and seven.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02So the reason I ask is I so I actually one of my companies is uh an AI interviewer, and uh so we can have like a pretty um interesting conversation here. So I'm gonna ask some questions for you real fast.
SPEAKER_00So it's a commercial cool mill.
SPEAKER_02No, no, dude. I just uh but this is like we could get a little bit more in depth here. Um so so yeah, I'm not pitching, but I it's it's like it's very relevant to our conversation. Um but yeah, I mean like so. If you're doing five to seven thousand, like when I'm as I'm building that company, which is very early stage, we're gonna actually be announcing this, but as of I haven't even like everyone at my team know because we're gonna celebrate later, but I'll I'll uh they're probably gonna overhear me. Um, but we officially signed Task Rabbit, uh, which is a pretty big company in the US market to move forward with June. And we're gonna be hopefully making some other announcements very quick uh shortly on some other big customers. So very excited about that. We kick off with them on Friday. A lot of companies, a lot of companies that we're talking to are getting to between 10 to 20 percent of their inbound applicants, and roughly like 80 percent they're not even getting to.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think it's even less for us, to be honest, right?
SPEAKER_02I mean, so like you know, like that's like a huge problem, and so I think what what we're seeing in the market right now, just so you know, is like a lot of companies last year and even still now are like hesitant to move forward with like these AI interviewers, but candidate feedback is starting to come back, and it's not even unique to June, frankly. I'd love to say it is, but the average like candidate review like rating is like 4.5 out of five star. And maybe that's also because we're in the tech industry, but it's like these companies are not getting to 80% of the profiles that are applying, and like maybe there's a low hit rate in terms of how many folks they can hire from that, but there's like a couple, there's a few good hires in there that companies aren't getting to so we are seeing greater adoption. Like, I would I would just say, like, I started building June like 18 months ago, and in the past like month and a half, our pipeline has exploded, like in terms of companies like starting to adopt this type of technology, so it's just interesting, but you know, it's like I think every recruiting leader is it has your exact concern. It's like from a candidate experience branding perspective, like, is is this gonna hurt my business? Yeah, um, but yeah, I mean, it's just interesting, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely. Uh for the recalled in 2025, uh, 50% of our recruitments came from inbound. So this is really we we cannot avoid. Wow. 25% ish were from outbound, and 25% uh came from referrals. So efficient, yeah, but it doesn't mean uh we'll stick to these kind of figures in 2026. My concern with inbound, uh, which is absolutely precious to all companies, to be honest, we will never uh uh want inbound to reach uh zero or ten percent. Uh this is not our objective. However, I think this is a mix when you have so many people to hire in a very short period of time. Of course, the shortcut is to lean on inbound. But when you lean on inbound too much, in the end you hire the best people out of those who came to you. You didn't hire the best people you reached out to. So it doesn't mean the people we have hired through inbound are not good enough. Absolutely not. But maybe, and we'll never know, maybe we could have hired uh even better people thanks to outbound. But when you don't have enough time to focus on outbound and headhunting, because you have so much inbound, you need to sort out like thousands of resumes. So, to be honest, this is an assumption, but that's my point of view. It doesn't mean I'm right.
Where AI Actually Helps Recruiters
SPEAKER_02No, it dude, I think I I think you're right, and I think most talent leaders agree with you. And like I think I think that's why more people are automating it because it's like the senior the senior recruiters can focus on strategic outbound sourcing, and we can get to all the applicants same day and give them the same day response, filter through, do high-level match ratings, create short lists, and even like the tech that's coming out now with the AI interviews, like you can they can help move stages and they can also like set up and do the scheduling too. So it's it's getting pretty like early last year. The tech kind of was lacking, frankly. Like it was it was not, but it's getting like companies are starting to get that get that down. Uh well, it's interesting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, what we're doing also to allow recruiters to rather lean on outbound than inbound. So you have many things to discuss here. Our choice, our opinion at Conto is within my team, we have three main verticals. So two verticals, uh focusing. So we just divided the the departments we we have, and we have one sub-TA team working on tech data and product hiring globally, one vertical working on uh growth, operations, and corporate departments. So they are recruited, they are recruiting for these departments, and we have a third smaller vertical. It's like the the the in the internal executive search team, because the way you hire executive profile is absolutely not the same kind of skills you need as a recruiter, uh, compared with when you have to hire like very a lot of positions or recording positions. So, thanks to that, we isolated the exec topic, and then we allowed um uh the other times working on maybe junior, intermediate, senior, or even very senior but not exec uh recruiters to have more uh time working on outbound. However, you you have also like different skills within the TA team. Some recruiters really love outbound because they know how to do it. Uh they know what kind of uh sourcing message works well depending on each position. Some of other some others TA are not very comfortable with this option. So it's not only a black or white situation, you know what I mean? Yeah, so I as a TA leader, uh, you have to make sure everyone is uh uh constantly learning, especially on outbound. But for inbound, the I think the challenge at the moment, you have two things from what I think. You have the screening phase, so AI can help you definitely. My concern, I don't know how AI how much AI is mature on that on that point, but knowing how fast AI improves, I'm not concerned. If it's not mature now, maybe it will be more major in two weeks from now. It's it's it's scary and exciting at the same time. Yeah, for sure. But for the screening phase, my concern is that AI uh maybe is not as efficient as the human eye, especially when you know very well your company. And sometimes, even though you don't have the right keywords on the resume, maybe you know someone who worked. Uh I don't know, this candidate worked at a specific company and you know this company very well, and you can like ref check these candidates. But AI cannot know that something you will know a little bit more. Maybe you can also uh uh build your AI product according to that to make sure they are uh the the product will be even better, but this is still a challenge to me, to be honest, and I'm a little bit afraid of um uh not seeing the right candidates only because the AI is leaning on the keyword, because resumes are not always uh the best resumes ever.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so this is like this is something that's interesting. So there's some companies like MetaView, and there's even like part companies that I we have very close partnerships with, like uh with Jem, which I probably have the tightest partnership with, that they're doing like AI resume matching. And my my concern with like the like AI resume matching is that anybody can put any keywords. That's why in like it's so in like there's also people are like they're punching in their resume into AI along with the job description and saying, like, hey, make my job description tailored to this job. And I actually was speaking with um a TA leader like a week ago who's actually local in Northern Virginia, which is outside the DC market where I am, and she said that she knows that candidates are putting their resumes into AI to uh alter for the JD because she'll she'll resume matching services will come back saying people are 100% match.
SPEAKER_00It's you so you ask AI to review AI.
SPEAKER_02Right. So like that's why I like AI interviewing versus resume matching because like I agree the like the resume matching it's like I don't know I just find it to be less I agree.
SPEAKER_00That's why that's why I I I for now at least and until the AI is creating product is is way better. Resume matching like yeah yeah resume matching or whatever but I think and that's why I prefer first to focus on AI interviewing tool rather than like resume matching. Yeah uh because and and so far it takes time but uh if we got like a hundred K resume in one year all of them would be reviewed by the human eye.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Which is even better from a candidate perspective I think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah yeah for sure I mean like if you can get like humans reviewing like the most relevant people like that's ultimately like the the the what we're we're targeting. Like we were doing um so like with Taskrabbit for instance on like the AI interview in front they're getting uh and I've already discussed with them like we're allowed to discuss this publicly um so that's actually part of our agreement you know we were like hey I'll give you guys a discount if we could like talk about you guys um but yeah so they're they're getting like 3,000 app like applicants a month in the US market and by implementing June they're getting an additional 230 hours of productivity a month which is like one and a half full-time recruiters because when you factor in all the time it would take to manage all the inbounds and all that kind of stuff because there's like literally 80% of people they literally cannot get to like they're just not able to engage with like yeah so it's kind of it's kind of interesting like when I'm looking at the AI landscape of okay you have resume matching you have uh you know AI sourcing which I would love to talk about in a minute actually um yeah but the resume matching you have AI sourcing you have AI interviewing you have AI note takers uh like what MetaView can do or like a bright hire can do I suppose uh definitely yeah medieview
Inbound Flood And AI Interviewing
SPEAKER_02has more and more features as well uh no but what I really want uh the AI to bring is uh a good way for us to uh to not to make decision uh for us but to help us make decisions I think that's the kind of the razzle blade we're on at the moment and it's very difficult to find the right balance that's the challenging thing to me at least as a TA team yeah yeah finding the right balance is tough and that's it's like I I think the way that I'm I'm sort of thinking about it is like I want my recruiters uh for instance because I also run an RPO firm like I want my recruiters focused on the relationships exactly like like the relationships the hiring managers like driving alignment with the team making sure we're have the right profile that's stage appropriate which I know is something you're working on right now like offers like all in outbound sourcing like I I want them like doing that the you know so and and yeah and the more you partner with your IRA manager the more referbles you can get as well yeah for sure it's not always possible but it's like the more I can back channel and get references not even just like the ref like well first off with references I always require references from previous direct managers so they have to be somebody who actually manage them uh but I also like to go through my network and to see like sure who who do we know that's like the same the same uh there's and this is actually kind of a good segue into um to sourcing like AI functionalities and there and there's like two companies that um right now that I'm kind of looking at so Jim has some pretty cool AI sourcing and then in the US market I don't know how big these guys are in Europe but uh juice box do you have you you guys heard of juice box maybe only by name but I'm not sure I discuss with some companies using it at the moment. Well so like so so they're actually somewhat like competitive at the moment um and so uh we're but I I I recently did a demo of of juice box and I use Jim internally for my RPO firm. So it's like I've kind of been able to get a sense for both products and basically what they're doing is they're helping companies d-leverage off of uh LinkedIn recruiters so like you can just run your searches within these AI sourcing and it'll pull LinkedIn but it's also going to pull from like GitHub or other tools uh for like technical engineers so you can literally just create all your lists within juice box or within gym and you can do your outreach campaigns with yeah so it's kind of interesting because everybody's sort of fed up with the LinkedIn monopoly yeah you know and we're all just kind of stuck with I'll say it like yeah you know we're all fed up yeah yeah I'm gonna get blacklisted now they're gonna kick my ass off um but yeah I so I I'm curious like for like are you guys thinking about like AI sourcing tech yet or like what are your thoughts uh uh unfortunately no uh because we haven't found yet a very powerful product we we've been testing a few uh we've tested a few but so far the the tests were not very satisfying to be honest and and and it's a pity and it's a shame because when we'll find something very relevant this is something you uh you cannot avoid because it will be just like the not taking tool not taker tool was a game changer this one will be an even more powerful one uh but I agree with you the I think the the AI features on LinkedIn is very disappointing to be honest because they have gold into their hands they could do something extremely what are they not even doing like strategic acquisitions like why aren't they it's like they don't even yeah so to be better one wise there are two kinds of things the how much AI can help you identify and source the relevant people aligned with your persona and then when it comes to referrals like to have a product able to screen and and to scrap uh your uh all the the network the LinkedIn network uh of the people working in your current company and to make connections uh maybe you should ask this guy yeah you know this kind of stuff I think this is the two main things uh where ai could definitely help so so check this out so juice box and I don't I don't know if Jim does this but juice box just released um a feature where it's like it's like uh network recruiting so when you they you create like it gives you a short list of like 200 people that fit your criteria and then all of your your employees in the company uh attach like their LinkedIn profiles so it's able to see who's connected but it's also like it does it gives a confidence score because obviously we're all connected with people that we don't know and so what it does is it like for instance if it's a high confidence score it'll say they went to university together they worked at two of the same companies together you know then they're like okay high confidence they actually might know each other versus like if they're just connected but there's no overlap in the companies they worked for or at the same they didn't work at the same companies at the same time or they didn't go to college together then it's gonna give it a low confidence score so like you can through juice box you can actually like okay see who's connected and reach out to the employee juice books in one in one word yeah dude I mean if you want I can introduce you to their CEO um yeah yeah yeah of course uh and same same way I'm being curious to see if Jim has that feature too I can also introduce you over there if you want but anyways it's just interesting because like they're they're going like that layer deeper on like the AI sourcing to it's like hey let's create short lists let's see who we can back channel from let's give you a confidence score and you can reach out to the employee and ask for intros and that's like doing that manually would just take freaking forever or it will take like weeks and if you multiply by the number of jobs you have to hire for uh it's a it's a decade. Yeah so if you can do it in one hour or two days instead of uh three months frankly speaking uh I think it's worth the cost yeah it's like so that's actually so for my RPO firm like one thing I've tasked my team with like over the past week it's like all right guys for sourcing I want us to figure out how do we how do we build pipeline twice as fast with twice as many candidates in half the time like it in the same level of quality and even more right yeah of course of course I I just like to me it's like and I don't know if that's 100% possible but I'm like that's the goal try to figure this out and let's see if it's not yet I think it will be soon enough because I don't want like I don't want my recruit like even so the first thing is like okay let me automate inbound that's like relatively easy then it's like okay how do we like for sourcing how do we make that motion as efficient as possible so then again it's like our recruiters can focus on like deep qualification relationship man hiring manager alignment and feedback like so it's I sourcing is like the next thing I'm trying to tackle and and I'm curious how do you make sure you're hiring people with the right ai fluency skills yeah so
Outbound Sourcing And Team Specialization
SPEAKER_02that's something that it's not to turn the interview no no no yeah dude I I like that please yeah I mean that's something that like I I am starting to think about more honestly it's I it's it's not it's not something I've really dived into yet. I do have a a friend who just started he just started a company called the NOAA AI and they're doing AI certifications they're hired by for like talent acquisition leaders and then the town acquisition leaders like will send out saying hey we need you to complete XYZ coursework or nice complete some certification so I'm like that could be interesting like sure he's he's very early stages uh right now I think he's got 10 to 20 employees uh so I might I might look into that but I mean I think it could also just be like I mean you you probably know way more about this than I do but I would assume like sort of like how we give technical tests to engineers maybe we just start doing stuff like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah what how are you guys doing that uh uh for the record I I saw a very interesting article from uh zapier uh it seems from what I remember they have this kind of label internally like ai fluent or whatever and they are using when they hire people but I uh don't get me wrong I'm not sure about that I don't want to uh I saw some post uh that they they made about like they're doing and I found it extremely interesting so everything is happening at the same time so you need to find that's that's what is very exciting but and and very uh exhausting at the same time and both both are linked obviously uh so you need to pick your battle my next battle will be uh and is uh currently how we make sure we hire the the right uh people with the right ai fluency skills so at the moment I think it comes uh from the case study first especially when you are hiring developers software engineers because when you are doing a live code exercise rather than a uh take-home exercise it changes everything because you see how much uh the this person is able to work I would say under pressure don't get me wrong the the interview exercise is always more stressful than a uh like a random day working in a company um but this is extremely important because you can do kind of this ping-pong game uh you you can uh give feedback real time and and ask questions live and so on. So I think it's extremely important but we explicitly throughout the hiring process tell people meaning candidates we are explicitly expecting them to use AI for the case study because let's avoid having the elephant in the room of course everyone will use it. Okay so we want them to tell us how they use AI why what for and and why did they decide in the end to send that meaning to keep this part AI uh send them and maybe uh uh deleted other stuff so to to understand how they think how they work with AI and how if they work it with it properly at least uh from what we we want uh from what we expect and and uh how they play uh uh with ai and uh in the end the outcome must also be linked to their uh decision making power and ability yeah so this is the of co of course it depends on the on the teams uh when you are hiring software engineers or when you are hiring uh designers or brand managers it's not the same so it's on every hiring manager's shoulder to think about that but it's also very extremely important and difficult to ask some hiring manager who are maybe at that precise moment not even very strong on AI to assess the AI fluency of the candidates. Right. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02So it's extremely challenging so okay so I I have a lot of questions here and this is actually I'd love to slow down on this topic because believe it or not I don't think like I've I've we've had a lot of brilliant TA leaders on on the show uh including the companies we've talked about we've had juice box CEO Jim CEO we've had uh metaview CEO we've had Zapier's uh uh VP of uh talent acquisition um so it's like you know we're operating in this ecosystem but you know what's kind of wild man is like this is the first conversation that we've had on the show where somebody's bringing up like hey we're testing people for AI fluency and like that's sort of my obsession for this year. So that's a standout uh for you by the way so just like I think that's amazing and you're definitely ahead of the curve. Um so you guys are your company's very lucky to have somebody in your role thinking that way.
SPEAKER_00I'm not the only one but thank you. Yeah no it's but it's I would spread the world they obviously have uh the right person uh in the seat so um I you know I'm curious like when it like when it comes to this have you already implemented this like they're already doing the case studies now or no for now this is in our brain we haven't implemented concrete stuff but this is on the table and we need to we need to have something very operational and and and strong enough uh also to maintain the candidate experience because we don't want this to uh have a negative impact on the candidate experience because it's crucial so so far it's rather we pitch it but it's very difficult to materialize everything and to onboard all hiring managers I guess like in the in the short term we could just you could just ask people like have you built your own like that's what we are doing and that's like what we're doing.
SPEAKER_02I mean I don't know if this is like because I know people would probably kind of BS it but you could just be like hey can you do a share screen and show me like no but most of the time this is this is what we target.
SPEAKER_00So have you ever built something have you ever built an AI agent? Yes okay show me and do share sometimes yeah share your screen and and even sometimes at the uh uh the HR interview so first step of the process and and it's not only about the the the the live case study it's from the very beginning because you cannot pretend if you say yes and if you lie okay show me maybe or what for or how did you make sure over the past six months um you you improve your daily basis or you avoid uh as much pain in your daily work as you could thanks to AI why so you have many many questions you can ask to spot yeah I would like the liars I think it's like so one of the things that I'm like a huge advocate of like not doing very much is I think sometimes recruiters coach candidates too much on what to expect.
SPEAKER_02And I'm I'm like it's a balancing act but like I specifically tell my recruit like for people that I'm hiring like don't like tell them what I'm gonna talk to them about. Like I want to to hear like organic answers on the floor I know every interview is different. I'm just saying I think sometimes we coach people too much as recruiters.
SPEAKER_00I agree but I think if you find the right balance it's fair
AI Sourcing Tools Beyond LinkedIn
SPEAKER_00because yeah but like I think it's just and it's very difficult and it's subjective as well so if you can if you tell someone we will ask you some questions about AI rather than you must share your screen show us what you've built there is a difference so you feel a little bit prepared but you don't have the answer. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02Yeah I I hear you man I hear you I I just like you know it'd be kind of cool I I think so this is actually this is super interesting because now I'm thinking about how to implement this like for all my my customers and and internally this is awesome. I think I think what like you're right though I think because you can't really necessarily trust in terms of you want to standardize it across the organization for it to be reviewed by hiring managers that are gonna have different levels of fluency and technical capabilities. So it's like it could be part of the recruiter screen uh which takes more time but like I'm also kind of a huge advocate like there's been times where the rec i the recruiter interviews is actually I've I've done it in two interviews where somebody speaks with a recruiter twice uh and then we get more in depth in the second call I don't know if it would be that but like I I think that it should be done within the TA team personally.
SPEAKER_00Yeah and you know what I'm thinking out loud but maybe isn't it interesting to have uh to add a step in the hiring process just AI focus interview.
SPEAKER_02Yeah it should be diluted throughout the process but if you need to to to dig uh specifically into AI and what they are doing and if you think it's worth it uh it's it's worth it depending also on the uh the job uh specificities uh because uh for a brand manager versus a back end uh it's uh uh concretely not exactly the same level of AI fluency you can expect but still uh but since AI will have so much impact on all kinds of jobs this is something if uh we TA leaders uh uh don't ask explicitly our teams TA teams and hiring managers uh uh not to ask questions about AI and not only about do you use AI yes or no good or bad we are doing a strong mistake we are making a strong mistake yeah yeah this is um I I kind of like I mean I don't know if this is too much coaching but you could you could also yeah and I would have to think about the right amount of like context to share with Cams ahead of time but yeah I do think that having them like being able to prove that they can figure it out how to build like their own agents even if like hypothetically they haven't in the past that honestly matters less to me than their capabilities of learning it and doing it fast.
SPEAKER_00It can be also automation you put in place. It can be a lot of stuff it's not only about AI agent at least and maybe sometimes unfortunately depending on the company you are working uh for maybe the company didn't uh give you the right ai tools but in your private life you were so curious yeah you created your own app for yeah it's not oh I I don't want candidates to be uh we don't want I don't want us to be biased uh because sometimes you don't have uh equal chances as employees so that's why it's not only about did you create AI but maybe no I didn't have access to all the tools but still my idea would like to do that and I I managed to do some automations and so on even in my in my private I guess I would also like and and I don't know as you said like there's a kind of a balancing act in coaching I guess like if somebody hadn't done something like that then I would say like all right put something together in a few days and show it to me and it's like kind of irrelevant how they get there.
SPEAKER_02The idea is like if they can get there in a few days however they got there they got there and it proves that they can do it. So it's like I don't care what resource they leverage to get there.
SPEAKER_00I just want to know if they could like and yeah and are they data oriented enough to be able to share the improvement okay I was there I reached that point because of that. And the way you think and the mindset is totally different. And I agree with you I think the TAM so it also depends on your company point of view and and culture regarding their vision of talent acquisition. I know in some companies unfortunately talent acquisition managers are seen as CV providers unfortunately at Conto we are very lucky we are lucky enough to have a strong voice within the company and uh we are in charge of diffusing when it comes to AI in talent acquisition to to coach our manager and and to to onboard them on that matter. And I think it should come from the TA team otherwise you will you won't be consistent and you will have different level of uh consistency and and uh uh in each team I think it's very important.
SPEAKER_02I I think the data aspect is something that like people thinking in in terms of outcomes and metrics is something that's challenging across the board it's it's actually something I'm up leveling uh my RPO team to do it's it's like even like as recruiters like there's I think recruiters are really good at saying hey this is the blocker this it's too hard to schedule or it's too you know we don't have like people aren't in the comp range or whatever. But it's like I I think where a lot of folks struggle is actually putting together like the data not only around like like quantifying it but also quantifying the impact like it's it's it's so huge. It's like it's different saying like hey you know we're behind on XYZ roll Because I was working on these roles that were put on hold, saying little stuff like it's like just saying, look, 30 to percent of my time in the past quarter has been working on roles that have put on hold. And that's hurt in my productivity on the priority rules. By I've been able to get out X amount less messages, I've been able to screen X amount less people, and we're extending our time to Phil by 20 plus days because of all the changes we're making to the hiring plan. So it's like it quantifies impact. It's hard to get people that like think
Measuring Real AI Fluency In Hiring
SPEAKER_02like that. Yeah, yeah, I agree.
SPEAKER_00But it depends also on your job. As a TA, you have like how many people did I hire over the past three months? When you are working on brand, it's maybe a little bit more difficult. When you are writing uh a line of codes, maybe it's easier to I don't know. Yeah, not an expert of uh of everything, of course. Uh so I agree with you, but at least the mindset if you try to measure it, it shows something. Yeah, find find a way to measure it, you know what I mean? Exactly. Even if you fail, at least you test and you are able to say, I tested that and this, but I I I I can't find the right model at the moment.
SPEAKER_02But this is exactly it. Like, but the motion is like, look, like I the data is in and often like a lot of roles in business, like the data is imperfect. Like you you try to collect as much data as you can, and then you you sort of have to operate with some assumptions and you kind of have to place a bet. And you're right though, like I think getting a feedback from a candidate saying, like, well, this is it's hard to track this type of attribution for this aspect of the role or whatever else. Like, well, then we explain to me why. And if you can explain to me why it's hard to do that, either they're right or they're wrong. And if they're right, that's gonna prove to you that they they have like to some extent a data-oriented mindset as well. I think I think it's like there's this big focus on AI this year, but at the end of the day, like you could argue like one lens to look at businesses, it's just transferring data, like that's literally all like everything is. So it's the quality of AI is only gonna be as good as the quality of the data that you're giving it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I agree with you. I I fully agree with you.
SPEAKER_02I think that data fluency is like, you know, in that analytical mindset kind of goes hand in hand with ability to execute AI systems.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely. Definitely, and that's why it's not a black or white thing. Uh, and you need to find the right uh the right uh analy the right uh model to analyze everything and to assess everything. And and that that's why also our job, recruiters, uh, is even more interesting now. But it's not only about uh uh sorting out CVs or sourcing candidates and then uh interviewing and and and and setting up uh uh like other interviews. Uh and I'm glad AI uh arrived, uh even though it seems scary uh some at some point, but I think it brings so much stuff when you are using it properly and you are it makes you think differently, and it's a total other world, new world. Of course, there is like some or some negative impact on many aspects, but but still it's it's exciting, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's it's a very exciting time. It's honestly by far the most exciting time to have ever been in TA. Like, I'll I'll be honest, like, I the like AI over the past couple of years has sort of reignited a passion that I feel like I was sort of losing in talent acquisition because it's just like the tech was so stale, yeah. And like you saw all this innovation and money being invested into like revenue-based tools, and then with TA, we were still dealing with these like cruddy ATS systems that you you know that you're just sort of like you feel stuck with. It's like, okay, we're trying to create automation with and then you end up like trying to use the an applicant tracking system in a way it wasn't designed for by creating your own custom stuff, and it's like it was just kind of it was just very uh underwhelming, but now the things that we can do, it's just like it's so much more interesting.
SPEAKER_00It's yeah, it's very exciting.
SPEAKER_02So I don't know, it's it's cool. I I you know, I I would love to just um you know maybe zoom out a little bit, uh uh and talk to you just as a as a talent acquisition leader, somebody who's been you know very successful, worked for one of the most successful scale-up organizations in Europe, uh several promotions over the past few years. For the as other talent acquisition leaders are tuning in that want to be the best version of themselves, the best professional possible, uh as successful as possible in their roles. What would you say is like your top takeaways uh when it comes to being successful as a head of TA for a scale-up organization?
SPEAKER_00That's a very interesting question. Uh I would say we've just talked about it. It means so AI is something we can't avoid. So be curious. Uh I think you should think each time you are working on a specific task, you should think about how AI could help me make even better decisions even faster while keeping the right level of fairness, quality, and candidate experience.
SPEAKER_02This is perfectly said. That was perfectly said.
SPEAKER_00This is the spine of everything we are doing at uh in uh within the the TA field, I would say. So this is extremely important. You are not avoiding AI. Uh then I think candidate experience is absolutely crucial and uh very, very challenging stuff to do is uh uh whatever the number of people you have to hire every month, from five to fifty, whatever. Every candidate you should do everything in your hiring model to be sure, like candidates do not even think about the fact you are also dealing with dozens of candidates in parallel. So every candidate must feel. I'm not saying we are doing things perfectly, not at all. We receive bad reviews quite a few times. Uh, we are not doing things perfectly, but still, this is our motto or our goal, our North Star. We want every candidate to feel special, uh, even though we are dealing with hundreds of candidates, uh, talking about the 25 ish recruiters in the team at the same time. So this is the most challenging stuff we have to do. Same level of quality, candidates, experience-wise, uh, whatever the number of people you have to hire. For instance, since May, June, um uh May 1st, sorry, we have hired so far 36 or 37 people. We receive from these people uh between four and five uh out of score, uh a score of five. So the custom the candidate satisfaction uh survey, uh all of them uh ranked us like between 4.2 and 4.8 out of five. And sometimes we always receive very good score from candidates we've just KO'd. And I think the way also you KO people, this is the the the other thing I'll hey.
SPEAKER_02So KO, sorry, what do you mean?
SPEAKER_00Sorry, when you when you reject someone, okay, got it. When you tell someone we we won't continue with replication, not especially at the uh the the the screening, uh the resume screening phase, but only maybe after three, five, four interviews. It is very difficult to receive a very good score, even though you tell someone I don't want to. So this is also a crucial thing to work on, and I'm pretty proud uh of the team because they are very good at many, many, many things, but especially at uh telling people in the end we won't pursue with your obligation, and then the candidates still say, Okay, I understand, thank you for the pro for the hiring process.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, I think that that's that's that's critical. Um, that's something that actually, yeah, I I talked to my team about too.
Candidate Experience And Operating Rhythm
SPEAKER_02Like we um at one of our customers there's actually somebody that we we passed on two years ago, this on the RPO business. Uh, and then this person happened to reapply two years later, and we ended up hiring customer ended up hiring her because it the the skill set aligned, the role profile had changed. So I think that that speaks a lot to the process. The other thing that's always nice to see is like the boomerang hires, as like you do you guys use that term in in France? You know that one.
SPEAKER_00I understand it, but we don't use it that often.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. So it's like when people leave and then they come back to your company.
SPEAKER_00Ah, the boo uh, we call it the boomerang employee.
SPEAKER_02Boomerang, yeah. Hire oh, sorry, employee, uh hire, yeah. But anyway, I always I feel I feel like that's always like a good sign of like of culture too.
SPEAKER_00It's it's uh yeah, and we have more and more. That's a good sign.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it always feels really special when when something like that happens.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you know what? I think high volume recruiting isn't isn't just about doing more of the same, uh it's a different discipline. The companies that fail at it are the ones that don't even realize they've crossed the line until it's already broken. So the I think the the the recruiting leaders, the the TA leaders that succeed know how to standardize, specialize their team, never stop training their AR managers, because quality isn't isn't just a product of good intentions and scale. It's the result of different systems, rituals, and daily discipline. And I think this is something very important to keep in mind. You need to have the right cockpit to visualize where you stand at that specific moment to have the right countermeasure. You need to have the good rituals with your team, the right checkpoints to make sure we are doing things properly with different kinds of candidates. It's exhausting. It doesn't mean you have to do like micromanagement, it doesn't mean you you need to uh listen to every kind of interviews your your talent managers, uh talent acquisition managers are doing, or hiring managers are doing. It's not only about having the right systems and rituals and discipline. To me, that's that's everything.
SPEAKER_02I I agree. It's very well said. There's been a lot of really good uh advice here. It's just before we we finish up today, uh I just have like I I guess is there any other top takeaways you wanted to mention, or do you feel like you covered the ones that matter?
SPEAKER_00We we could we could talk for hours, but I think for for that specific tune, I think we covered more or less uh everything else.
SPEAKER_02So then one more question for you. When you think about your own development over the next few years, what do you and and I this might be similar to what we've discussed, but how do you want to continue to develop? How do you think about being the best version of yourself professionally over the next few years? Like, where do you want to end up three years from now, essentially?
SPEAKER_00Maybe in three years from now, I will still be at Koto because I really love this company. But all jokes aside, or it's not a joke, but you know what I mean? Yeah, I know I think the next step for me, what would be very exciting because repeating the same kind of experience, meaning joining early stage startup, scaling and so on, it won't be with the same people. And the reason why I I love Kanto so much is also because of the people I'm working with. So I think what I would like to do next is to um do, I don't have, I don't really like this kind of word, but do some kind of consulting and working hand in hand with other companies, maybe as a head-unter, but not only as a very close advisor when it comes to TA at scaling phase, and share some advice and insights from my very humble and own expertise and experience, uh, to make sure they don't do the same, maybe not mistake, because mistakes are very important. You learn a lot from this, from it, but at least to help them figure it out what they really needs regarding uh their culture and what point they want to reach. I think that would be the best next step for me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I think you'd be really good at that. Thank you. It's already been a very insightful conversation. So um, well, hey, I thank you so much for joining me on the show today. I've had a lot, a lot of fun talking shop with you and learning from you, frankly. Uh has been really cool. So thank you. Yeah, man. This was a great episode. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
