S1:Ep82 Future of Work Behind the Narrative: The Real Story of the Job Market Revolution in the AI Era

My amazing guest is Jim Boyd from Sydney, Australia - a global thought leader transforming how organizations attract, engage, and retain AI and data talent in the age of automation. Let’s dive into the Future of Work Behind the Narrative the unveil The Real Story of the Job Market Revolution in the AI Era.

Jim is the Founder & Principal Data & AI Talent Matchmaker at Cirrus Group Consulting, a company in Orange County, California, recognized on the Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Companies List 2025.

Cirrus Group Consulting specializes in AI/ML, Data, Cloud & Cybersecurity talent for the industries where precision and compliance matter most: Healthcare, Financial Services, and Consulting.

With deep expertise and over 25 years of experience across Cloud, Cyber, and Digital Transformation, Jim helps leading enterprises connect human potential with the technological capabilities driving the future of work.

Jim cares about the balance between automation and human creativity, and I’m excited to hear what companies, leaders, and professionals need to know to thrive in the most dynamic job market in history.

🔑 Key topics discussed

• The myth vs. reality behind “AI creates more jobs than it replaces”
• Hidden automation and the quiet disappearance of mid-level roles
• AI-driven recruitment and the evolution of talent acquisition
• Preserving fairness, empathy, and human judgment in hiring
• Redefining adaptability and resilience without burnout
• The new definition of “top talent” for the AI age
• Radical shifts in leadership, team structures, and human value by 2030
• One truth we must all unlearn to stay relevant
• One piece of advice for leaders and individuals adapting to the AI-dominated era

🔗 Connect with Jim on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-boyd-data-ai-recruiter/
🌏 Cirrus Group Consuilting on LinekdIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cirrus-group-consulting-inc/

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Human-Centered Stage
• 0:51 Introducing Jim And His Focus
• 2:44 Jim’s Journey Into AI Talent
• 4:18 The Jobs Narrative: Myth Vs Reality
• 6:16 Pilots, ROI, And Adoption Hype
• 8:42 What’s Quietly Being Automated
• 11:02 IT Roles, Entry-Level Squeeze
• 13:02 Regenerating Pathways For Juniors
• 15:26 How AI Is Changing Recruiting
• 17:36 Keeping Humans In The Loop
• 19:18 Fairness, Soft Skills, Work Trials
• 22:18 Building Adaptability And Curiosity
• 24:28 Resilience Without Burnout
• 26:31 The Tug-Of-War Over Remote Work
• 28:36 Hybrid Realities And Coordination
• 31:02 Redefining Top Talent For AI
• 33:40 Looking To 2030: Human-AI Pods
• 36:10 Will Humans Become Support Functions
• 38:30 Mindset, Opportunity, And Speed
• 40:22 Unlearning Status Quo Leadership
• 42:16 One Piece Of Career Advice
• 44:00 Closing Reflections And CTA

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Digital Transformation and AI for Humans with your host Amy. In this podcast, we delve into how technology intersects with leadership, innovation, and most importantly, the human spirit. Each episode features visionary leaders who understand that at the heart of success is the human touch, nurturing a winning mindset, fostering emotional intelligence, and building resilient teams. My amazing guest today is Jim Boyd from Sydney, Australia, a global thought leader transforming how organizations attract, engage, and retain AI and data talent in the age of automation. Let's dive into the future of work behind the narrative and unveil the real story of the job market revolution in the AI era. Jim is the founder and principal data and AI talent matchmaker at Sears Group Consulting, a company in Orange County, California, recognized on the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies List 2025. Sears Group Consultant specializes in AI, ML, data, cloud and cybersecurity talent for the industries where prestige and compliance matter most. Healthcare, financial services, and consulting. With deep expertise and over 25 years of experience across cloud, cyber, and digital transformation, Jim helps leading enterprises connect human potential with the technological capabilities driving the future of work. Jim cares about the balance between automation and human creativity. And I'm excited to hear what companies, leaders, and professionals need to know to thrive in the most dynamic job market in history. Welcome, Jim. I'm so happy to have you here in the studio.

SPEAKER_01: 1:58

Thank you, Emmy. Yeah, it's a very prevalent topic, and I'm looking forward to discussing it with you.

SPEAKER_00: 2:04

Let's start the conversation and transform not just our technologies, but our ways of thinking and leading. If you are interested in connecting or collaborating, you can find more information in the description. And don't forget to subscribe for more powerful episodes. If you are a leader, business owner, or investor ready to adapt, thrive, and lead with clarity, purpose, and wisdom in the era of AI, I would love to invite you to learn more about AI Game Changers Club, a global elite community for visionary trailblazers and change makers shaping the future. You can apply at AIGamechangers.club. Jim, to start with, I would love to hear more about you, about your journey, about your passions.

SPEAKER_01: 2:52

Sure. Yeah, I guess the the quickest I can make it, I actually graduated college in mid-90s, and I was actually running, I was working for a restaurant as a manager. And all these business people kept coming in and sitting down and having these cool business-looking lunches. And I pretty quickly said, I want to be them. I want to, I want to come into a restaurant, talk business. And so I moved into sales, uh, pretty quickly got into IT sales in the late 90s. Uh and then only a few years later got into technology staffing and recruiting and got to do all those lunches where I was meeting with you know people who needed talent. And then I would go meet with talent and try to decide how to put those together. And here we are 25 years later, six years ago, I started my own company, Cirrus Group Consulting, with the idea that specialization matters. And so we do have technical disciplines that are you'd like to focus on. And uh two years ago, I moved to Sydney, Australia. So we now have staff and recruiting operations in the US and Australia, and we are dealing with a brave new world.

SPEAKER_00: 3:59

Exciting. It might be very appealing to live a certain lifestyle, and then it is absolutely admirable to see that you found your way to land your dreams into reality. Jim, the dominant message is that AI will create more jobs than it replaces. From your perspective, what is the truth behind this comforting narrative and what realities are we refusing to face?

SPEAKER_01: 4:34

Yeah, uh, I got a crystal ball over here. I'm just gonna grab it real quick, probably help us with our predictions. Let me let me ask you a quick question. You say dominant message. Where what do you mean by DOM? Let me understand your context.

SPEAKER_00: 4:48

I mean that I see it in many messages through the media, through the presentations, in the events, and through the narrative overall around AI and AI adoption, because it is important to have something to present together alongside with automation, with those uh agentic solutions, and that's what I mean with it. So, what is your take on it? And uh, I also wonder if you don't have the feeling that that is the domain message.

SPEAKER_01: 5:28

The reason I ask is I to some extent I think it it depends on where the information comes from. And so, you know, to me, it's been a quite a mixed message for every expert, and I and I try to follow it, and it's uh very germane to how we strategize and approach the market and and and try to help clients with with the talent, not just for today, but for months ahead, because you know, for really good talent, you want to be proactive. You know, but for every expert that says there's gonna be a negative impact on jobs, uh, right, and you see a lot of these guys, the the AI, you know, the large language model leaders talk about the impacts to white-collar jobs, right? And so you see that you see talk about kind of these, you know, these new IT jobs being being created. But what we've seen a lot of is also humans who've been replaced, and there's examples between IBM and Klarna and here in Australia, Combank, that replaced a lot of humans with AI and then brought those humans back. And so it's a really challenging thing to determine right now what's going to be replaced because the companies that are jumping ahead are are stepping back a little bit. And there's predictions on both sides. Uh, you probably a lot of people have seen the MIT study recently, which said that of you know, they interviewed, I don't know, a thousand companies, and 95% of generative AI pilots have failed to deliver measurable business impact on the PL, right? Not that they weren't successful, not that they're not doing cool things, adding value. There's no measurable impact on the PL yet.

SPEAKER_00: 7:01

With that report, there is one little problem because it depends on the definition. And yes, I saw that report, and not only I saw it, but I also ran a masterclass for the board members based on uh that news. Actually, I could at least partially disagree around the conclusions. Actually, the return on investment on those AI pilots should be measured in a little bit longer perspective because that short span is not enough, which means that it's a part of truth, but it's not all the truth. But at the same time, we saw the success rate across the digital transformation projects, and it wasn't different from this, right? And um, I believe that it's somewhere around 70 to 80 percent, actually, in reality.

SPEAKER_01: 8:00

Well, I'll I'll I'll tell you this. The the one of the cool things about owning a business is I've gotten into some business owner networks. The probably my biggest one is called Entrepreneurs Organization. It's about 108 business owners here in Sydney, and I was in the Orange County one. Every business owner that I talk to is investing heavily in AI. There is no you every every conference you go to, every everything, nobody is saying, I don't know, maybe it's a fad, let's let's sit back. Everyone is guns blazing and every conversation, so no one's deterred by any of like at this the MIT study, right? So I think everyone's going guns blazing, and maybe just to kind of try and decide, like, well, where it where is that expected impact? What these dominant messages tell us is it's the routine administrative functions, customer service functions. If it's repeatable, if it's administrative in nature, those will likely be replaced. And so that's that's what we hear, and that's that's that's the expectation at this point.

SPEAKER_00: 9:01

Great that you mentioned it. I'd like to dive a little bit deeper into those roles and functions which are quietly being automated, merged, or redefined. Why do you think these changes remain largely unseen by most people still, or do you have a different feeling around it?

SPEAKER_01: 9:23

Yeah, right. So good, let's get back to the dominant message. The dominant message was exactly that that task-based, redundant administrative functions will be automated. They can be automated yesterday, and that that would impact a lot of people. And we have seen some of that, right? Salesforce.com is probably the largest public example. They eliminated 4,000 customer service jobs with their AI bots. And so you see examples of that. But on the flip side, we've looked at like large BPOs, business process outsorters, global companies, their business hasn't been tremendously impacted. And you haven't seen a lot of that happen. And I'll I'll share a little story with you. Uh, I've met with another business owner a couple of days ago, and he runs about a 2,000-person uh outsourcing offshore kind of company. And he's got every skill set out of that 2,000 you can imagine from data entry, virtual assistance, finance, accounting, back office, legal, all the way up to IT. What do you think in the last 12 months has been what skill sets you think have been impacted in what way?

SPEAKER_00: 10:28

You tell me.

SPEAKER_01: 10:30

I'll tell you. So he he thought those just like we said, those those virtual assistant jobs and and data admin and and would be affected, they're actually up. This is a conversation three days ago. So his his number one data entry has been the most in-demand skill set over the last 12 months. Virtual assistants have all increased, but his IT, his IT uh placements have decreased. It's the only category it's decreased. So that was a very interesting observation. That same evening, I met a guy who runs a software development shop, uh good-sized software development uh company, and he has completely automated his software development process. So, from requirements to production, there are no humans that need to be involved except for the humans that sit on top and manage the process. We call those AI orchestrators. So the, you know, the people at the front of the AI train to understand it, build it, and put these systems together seem to be doing well. But on the IT side, we are seeing some impact. And if you dive a little bit further, there's plenty of examples like Microsoft has 30 to 40 percent of their code. I think Google's is very similar. Code developed by AIBOPs now. So it's a little bit of the mixed bag. We haven't seen a lot of layoffs, but new hires are being impacted. So it's just, I don't know if we're just early days, but that the IT part is definitely being hit. The administrative side, I think everybody thinks it's coming, but we haven't seen evidence of it yet. But there is one cohort that has been very severely impacted, and that's junior level, entry-level people on the white-collar side, mostly in um economics, uh, software development, and marketing, they have their jobs are down 15 plus percent year just year over year. So where we're really kind of seeing it is IT, I guess, is is one, but the the white-collar professionals coming out of college ready to go into an entry-level job, that hiring is greatly being reduced.

SPEAKER_00: 12:37

How do you see the regeneration solution to that problem? Because I see it on my end as well around me that the junior level is impacted, and uh those who are still in the universities or in schools, they are worried about their future, and it's truly difficult for them to decide what's next. Some are quitting uh their educational path and jumping into the job market as fast as possible to find that solution. Some others are just frustrated and lose motivation.

SPEAKER_01: 13:14

Yeah, I mean, this this is having quite a ripple effect throughout the labor market worldwide. My daughter, I have an 18-year-old daughter. She graduated high school here in Australia a a week ago and she's taking exams now, her final exams, which will help her go to college. And I'm not sure what the best method is. I will tell you, let me share this. I've been in IT recruiting for 25 years. When I started, and my first clients were the big consulting companies, Deloitte was number one. If you didn't have a college degree, they would not talk to you. Like, like you just you would go over here to get a job and the elite level IT jobs, you have to have a college degree. In the last, I would say, at least eight years. I haven't had one client across maybe a thousand placements ask or care if anybody has a college degree. It relates to technology engineers, cloud, cyber data, software. So, where is the value of a college degree? I'm not 100% certain. Mark Cuban had a piece he put out recently. He's a businessman shark tank personality in the US. And it's you've got to get embedded in AI and you have to understand how it helps companies, right? Like coming in and say you can build content, email, research kind of bots is table stakes now. Everybody has to do that. But you may be thinking about that MIT study, and it's probably not accurate, like you said. You have to, as college kids, you need to understand how does AI impact companies? How can it really drive value? How can you bring fresh ideas to a company? But it's they're getting they're getting hit. I mean, a lot of people hope that it's short-sighted because who are the workers of tomorrow? You know, the the and uh we might get into this later, but the the expected team of tomorrow are are pods, they're human-led AI team pods. And if you don't build the humans now for that, I don't, you know, I don't know who what what humans will fill those pods in the future, but they need to study AI.

SPEAKER_00: 15:20

That's a great question. And uh I'm wondering exactly the same thing. Jim, recruitment itself is undergoing major transformation, as you just mentioned, but how is AI reshaping the recruiter's role and the applicant's role? And what implications does that have for the future of hiring?

SPEAKER_01: 15:44

Yeah, well, we're seeing some pretty interesting changes, right? And if you just walk it through a process, it is now easier than ever for an applicant to apply to a job. You can do one applies, easy applies on LinkedIn and other platforms. And then when you send your resume, you can ask your AI, your large language model, to modify your resume for that job. And so companies are getting hundreds or thousands of resumes very quickly when they post a job, and they all look kind of good at the jobs, right? It's like all these resumes line up pretty well. And so, what have the companies done? They have hired AI tools to weed through the applicants and the resumes coming in, and now they've extended that to AI interviewing tools. And so you've got a you know, machines of some sort presenting the candidates to companies, companies using the machines to weed through resumes, even set up you know, interview questions, and then the machines will judge how effective you are at the job before presenting you uh to a to a hiring manager. And because I'm doing this research, there are a lot of tools for interviewers as they're taking an interview. They can have a private screen over here listening to the questions in real time and suggest answers based on Amazon Star method or what have you. And so the machines are distorting the process quite a bit, I think. Uh, and now the biggest worry for a lot of my clients are deepfakes. Are the people they're talking to on a video screen, even is that real a person? That's who they're they're trying to hire. So that that's been a big disruption. We spent a lot of time and energy trying to really understand who we're talking to, what's their background, what's their impact, what do they bring that's unique? But we're we're advising a lot of our clients to go back to face-to-face interviews, even if you got to put somebody on an airplane. So we're seeing a stronger appetite for that, and and I hope that's a trend that we'll see going forward.

SPEAKER_00: 17:42

Interesting. But how do you personally feel about the human in the loop and the fact that now today it is AI versus AI, which of another conversation I've had on this podcast when we were talking about cybersecurity, and it was called AI versus AI, but basically that's what we're seeing today, and HR and recruitment, it's basically from humans to humans. So, how do you see this?

SPEAKER_01: 18:17

Yeah, and and we we spend a lot of time and energy on AI tools, and we have a lot of tools, and I can't wait to tie them together, but we have a lot of tools that will take job description and notes and create search plans for us and will help us find candidates, will help us with our messaging to candidates, will help us with our interview coordination, but that's where it stops. That's where we have humans get involved, and you know, it's a two-way street, and then maybe this is lost. You know, we need to qualify people for our clients. We need to make sure both hard skills and soft skills, and I don't I don't think the computers have figured out soft skill evaluation yet. So, number one, there's an element, I think, of gauging somebody that the human that the machines can't do, just their personality, their energy level, their interests, what have you, that translates into soft skills. But what you want really, you know, like a lot of people apply for jobs and they get jobs that way, but a lot of people don't, right? There's a lot of passive candidates. And so for candidates who are good at what they do and a lot are, and they're already in a job, you have to convince them that they need to consider to make a change. And so that piece, the the soft skills evaluation, the the building the relationship with a candidate and getting them to understand, you know, that this could make sense for them to consider a MOOC when they're not necessarily unhappy, those are very human-centric things. And I and I think we're we hope to continue doing that.

SPEAKER_00: 19:43

Speaking about the soft skills, as algorithms increasingly determine who gets noticed or hired, how can we preserve uh fairness, empathy, and human judgment in this decision-making cycle?

SPEAKER_01: 20:01

Yeah, we're fighting that battle, aren't we? You know, uh one thing maybe it's important to mention because I there are a lot of people, I have a I know a lot of people I talk to them every day looking for jobs. And we there's a discussion around LinkedIn. LinkedIn is now the world's largest basically resume database, but it wasn't designed that way, right? It was a social business professional networking site. And so if you compare it to traditional job boards like monster.com, career builder, indeed, seek is big here in Australia. Everybody has all their credentials there, like everything they're working on. And but on in on LinkedIn, you might not. You might have your job title, a quick tiny blurb about the company, and nothing else. If you're interested in a job, or if you're interested in what else is out there, you need to update your LinkedIn profile with the details of skills you're doing and the impacts you're driving at that organization. So just a quick aside, but share this with a lot of people on a regular basis. Um, you know, uh, how do we give this? And it's it's interesting, right? Because we also had behavioral assessments are out there now, and they were a big thing. Some years ago, I was hiring salespeople and it had to pass the behavioral test, and so few did. We started just hiring anybody that passed the behavioral accession, whether we liked them or not. We were just like, okay, well, this thing goes. That didn't work out there, though. And so to some extent, these these artificial intelligence resume interviewers, maybe maybe that's a trend that will pass a little bit back to humans like the behavioral assessments did. But I, you know, I hope as we get back to more human-centric, that we we get back to more face-to-face interviews and people you know getting to know each other. And and probably the biggest thing that we suggest to our clients during an interview process is what we call the work simulation. And so before we hire, before most of our clients hire someone, we ask them to have them spend several hours a day doing that job where they can watch. If it's software, you know, it's technology related, you can dive in and configure, set up code. You know, for us, we have recruiters, we watch them do searches, we have salespeople, we watch them, you know, and reach out and craft messages and deal with objections over a little period of time. And so it's that those things I think, you know, more face-to-face time and then more real work simulation. It's hard to make a decision if somebody is going to be good at a job based upon the semantics and and voice tones of how they respond to questions. So those are things we can't put over.

SPEAKER_00: 22:38

I hope so too. Because actually, today technologies are prevailing, but we need to take a step back and think about the meaning, the context, and uh about how we want to proceed in this new AI-dominated world. So, in your view, what truly defines adaptability in today's fast-changing market and how can professionals build it in a meaningful, sustainable way?

SPEAKER_01: 23:10

No, I think where we get excited about a candidate, where we see our clients get excited about a candidate, is if they're curious. And that's it's hard to fake. Where so I think being in and where that hits the road is when you're in an in an inner in a job interview, if you ask really good questions and they respond and you ask a really good follow-up question, you look like you're paying attention, you look curious. And so I think that is a is probably and people are nervous in interviews, and and you know, sometimes they they think they have to answer questions, and uh it varies quite a bit, but you have to be curious, you have to to to constantly, I think, research this, stay plugged in, there's no shortage of information out there. You have the LLMs summarize it for you and give it to you. But you have to you have to stay up on current trends, especially in an industry that you might want to go into. You know, the the the solutions are are uh I think a little little industry-centric, or at least how they're designed are industry-centric. But ask ask questions when you're when you're in an interview and and the whole way through and plan ahead. Don't just, you know, that's a big piece.

SPEAKER_00: 24:20

That's a great advice. Thank you for sharing. Jim, many people feel overwhelmed by the pace of transformation. How can individuals and organizations navigate this constant challenge and build resilience without glorifying burnout?

SPEAKER_01: 24:40

When you figure it out, can you can you let me know? I uh find myself a little a little stressed with trying to look around the corner and think about what's next for us and what are my bigger competitors, where are they? And it it's hard to to let it go. You know, I I think for for individuals, there you there's a a realization that how you've worked before, what you've done is likely going to change. And I and I think for a lot of people that that gets into how they value themselves and how they perceive themselves as productive. And so I think organizations need to really think about the the messaging that you know we're going to change. You're valuable, you know our business, you, you know, you're you're intributing memory, you have passion and energy for the organization, and you're and you're you know, you believe in in the cause and you you fight hard, whatever. But when this change comes and people are, you know, it's changing left and right, and and what you used to do and what you were valued for, what you spent your time doing, and how you felt busy could all change. And so I really think that it's change management, and that's there's lots of studies that say the the issue with AI is really the change management. That's the bottleneck, is just bringing humans along with the new mindset, a new way of thinking, and you know, new way of valuing your own productivity.

SPEAKER_00: 26:02

Exactly. I couldn't agree more. And I thought as well, when you are talking about bringing people back, bringing uh talents back. We've been working from home for so many years, and the trends are changing and shifting. So remote workers need to come back to the offices, and the situation looks differently across the globe. So, what is the trend you are seeing in your part of the world?

SPEAKER_01: 26:31

It is it is a big tug of war right now. And you're talking about like remote work versus versus in office versus, yeah. You know, we all are probably aware that most companies want some level of it office back, right? Organizations, uh government organizations. And I think it uh from where I said it it makes sense. Uh, we we we've got it, we've got some teens, we're spread around the the globe, and there are some challenges with communication and collaboration and mentoring and other things that we have to account for, and I think we do a pretty good job, but I get the value of bringing people in person, and so you see that trend, but I will tell you, and I'm still surprised to this day, the number of candidates that put their foot down and no, they are not going into an office, and that's softened. We definitely see more people over time saying, Yeah, okay, I've been unemployed for X number of times, I've interviewed this much. I uh okay, I give up. I'll go into an office. I don't we don't know how long that'll last for, but the candidates are surprisingly dug in. They they do not they're they've adjusted their life, they've adjusted many things, and uh this tub of war is ongoing. The the employers are slowly getting more people back to an office. Um, but then you you know we we hear complaints, we follow up with every candidate, and you know the story. I showed up and my I don't have a desk. I gotta find a desk. So I spent an hour, some period of time looking where to set up. And then one of the two of my teammates weren't there, so we had to go somewhere and get them on a video call because they were critical. So I go to an office, I look for a place to be, I fight traffic, somebody's not here, anyways. We got to get on a video call to go home and actually get my work done. And so I'll just say that the the battle continues and and I'm still surprised at how Doug had handed itself.

SPEAKER_00: 28:27

What is your personal take on it? How would you like to see the future?

SPEAKER_01: 28:34

Uh, you know, I I Oh wow, great question. I I like hybrid. You know, I I think my company, we're we're fully remote, but we anytime we can, we get together and people leave. So I'm in, you know, most of my company's in the U.S. I'm I moved to Australia not that long ago. When I go back to the US two, three times a year, we get together and people come away energized. And they and they send me a note. Man, it's great seeing you, great hanging out with people. And so I think there is an energy and a bonding that is valuable to being in person, but I wouldn't want to do it five days a week. I get in a car every day. I I guess hybrid's the way to go, but but traffic is is the number one battle, right? Hybrid during rush hour seems to lose a lot of its value if you got to go during rush hour. So, some better coordination around you got we want this group of people in the office. You pick a time, pick, pick what's optimal, come in, you know, share your energy and go home and be productive, I guess.

SPEAKER_00: 29:35

Exactly. I've even heard about those stories from the big corps where people come to the office, and uh some people are still uh working remotely that day or overall, and then they are taking different rooms and they are spread across the office, even those who are physically in the office during the same meeting. So they arrive. In it virtually, but they are not sitting in the same room, which means so that erodes.

SPEAKER_01: 30:07

I mean, that uh that erodes confidence, trust in the whole process instantly. If it's not thought out, if it's more of a let's get everybody in here, we'll figure it out. The people who are sitting in rush hour, having to go spend more on gas, have to arrange daycare pickups, whatever it is, they're they're already on edge. And if it doesn't go smooth, that's that's just a trigger point they need to it has to be really well thought out for this backlash.

SPEAKER_00: 30:37

Totally. Jim, if you were to redefine what top talent means for the AI age, what qualities or mindset would now matter most?

SPEAKER_01: 30:51

And I hear this a lot. It's it's just flexibility, it's it's adaptability, uh resilience. And then it feels cliche, I guess, but uh we've talked to some of our clients say, okay, well, you're moving into AI, like what and this is probably the hardest part of the labor market on a lot of fronts, and especially in IT. And and probably why hiring is, and to some extent, why hiring is reduced is because companies, leaders aren't sure exactly who they're going to need six and 12 months from now. And I don't think it's ever been so uncertain because they don't know where the automation and the machines, what they'll achieve. And so that's that's repressing hiring. And so understanding AI in any particular function is helpful. You know, understanding how it drives impacts is more helpful. Like we said, you know, that some of the basic stuff is table stakes now. So really kind of paying attention and thinking through because companies are busy, right? If you're not working, if you're a junior person or you're not working, you have the time. And I know you got to send out resumes and apply to jobs, that's busy, but you have time to really explore how these tools are helping someone's competitors that you're interviewing with. Those companies are busy, you know, trying to figure it out and still run a business. So that stuff is all really helpful. But what we keep hearing is bring people in who have a proven adaptability. You can't say it, you got to point to it and say, this changed, and here's how I pivoted and still helped the cause, right? So there's a skills component to to adapting and changing and learning kind of something new and becoming affected at it. And there's a mental, emotional component to it as well. And so tying those together to come in and having a proven track record, and if you know, look back in your own track record, but that flexibility, adaptability, and and you know, being curious. You know, I guess we're we're coming back to some same themes, but you know, that that's what we look for here, right? We I tomorrow sides or I interviewed a few salespeople recently, and one lady in particular had watched one of my a couple of my podcasts and quotes from things that that I had done and and feedback from some of our clients on random sites. And she brought that up throughout the interview. And I was blown away by the research she did. And she told me at the end of her interview she had written that in a large language mile and took her a few minutes to pull it down, and she just had to read it. Right. And so I was like, well, if that's how you operate for an interview, I'm pretty confident that that type of mental you know embracement of the technology is what I'm going to get. And she got the offer.

SPEAKER_00: 33:38

That's amazing. Jim, it's about time to take back your crystal ball because we are going to look into 2030. What radical shifts do you foresee in how companies hire structured teams and measure human value? And what invisible trends are already setting the stage when we're looking towards 2030?

SPEAKER_01: 34:02

Yeah, crystal ball sure would be helpful. You know, I actually have a couple of friends who are selling their businesses because they're in a good, they have some good momentum and they're so nervous about what the future holds, they're just gonna use the momentum they have now and look for a buyer because there's a little bit of angst around what does the future hold. Uh and I think, you know, for someone like me that watches podcasts and whatever, I am kind of curious. I think quantum computing will be online by 23rd. And so if we think we're seeing interesting changes now, you bring the parallel computing power of quantum computing, and and it's a whole new universe, right? So I find it very hard to think through, but I'll tell you the trends that we're hearing from our clients, and and I I think I probably touched on it earlier. It's these these human AI pods. And so specifically, what we're seeing is what we call the AI at Orchestrators, and it's it's building within an individual unit that then ties to the organization, right? That's that's the holy grail. But within an individual business unit, if it's software development, if it's you know code deployments, if it's cybersecurity, as you mentioned before, you know, could there's a lot of work going on around data these days. But it's it's the human that builds the pod, you know, with with the AI bots, and then brings the humans in, creates that structure. And what we're seeing is very senior people onshore, if you will, locally on, you know, local in-country humans at the top of that pod. Then it goes to level folks, and we're seeing a mix of that between onshore and offshore. And so we're starting to actually see the offshore pick up a little bit there because they're supported then by the agents, by the AI agents, right? And so that pod is what we're seeing. And I think that's a big deal to try and understand if you're in how to augment what you like. We talk about knowing AI, and it's there's some cool parlor tricks with AI, but really understanding how it drives an impact. You know, if you're if you're a software developer, how can it build code? How can it build code better? And then what do you do? You should have cycles, and what are you doing with your cycles? And a lot of what we see is expectations for enhanced creativity, right? So let the machines do build the code, you know, build the integrations. You know, we're on we're tech central, we're tech, we're more on the tech side. But then you have to be creative into well, first of all, you have to babysit to make sure it's it's working properly and safe, and you're following governance and safety guardrails. But what's next? Right? The the interesting thing, I think there's a lot of comparisons with this to to the internet. And the internet took a little while, but it did change things, and there was a lot of you know money invested and not all of it worked out. But it took a period of time. But once you were there, then you made incremental tweaks. The interesting thought now is this is not let me become an AI-centric company, and then from there it's incremental tweaks. It might continue to be pre-sizable changes as you go, and so you you just have to think forward that.

SPEAKER_00: 37:14

Do you think there is a risk that human function can become a support function to the AI solution? Because sometimes I feel how we present it and how we architect it, that humans are not going to have so many opportunities to apply their creativity and everything else through the process. And they are more going to be into governance and just checking the boxes around whole the system.

SPEAKER_01: 37:50

Yeah, that's a that's a great question. I I don't know. I'll just use my own personal experience. I I post a lot of content and I create strategies for our company and competitive analysis and and and you name it. And you can fall into a trap where you just let the AI, you know, you just say, Well, like, you do me a f you know, tell me what my you know, top 150, whatever my top competitors are, what are their their goals, look at their public statements and their whatever out there, and and and and boil that down for me into some key whatever. And you can just take that. And but first of all, they still hallucinate, so we're we're safe until they stop hallucinating, right? But you can take that and and it's a tiny bit lazy, right? Versus really stepping back and thinking, you know, maybe from a prompt engineering per perspective, is what do I really want to achieve here? What what's most important? Because you can you can slide into this, it's just throw an easy prompt at it. And so I I don't know your answer, but I I still think today, you know, late October, that when you when you have the time to be creative, the the human creativity, I think, is still superior. Obviously, you build better relationships. So I hope I hope we still meet with other humans, we still set the the creative tone and we we control that, but you probably more clever than I am. Are you how worried are you that we're going towards a terminator?

SPEAKER_00: 39:26

I see that uh there are definitely two ways forward, and um those who are involved in the processes, they are invested more or less to the one or to the other type of uh outcome. But at the same time, I believe, strongly believe, that we all have to make up our mind about how we want personally to see the future and then keep going accordingly.

SPEAKER_01: 39:58

Jeff Bezos just did an interview and he said, How can you not be excited? Right? Well, a lot of people aren't, but I guess a lot of people are. So to your point, a mindset is probably a big deal that you know this can enable us to do more. And I think that's a healthier mindset.

SPEAKER_00: 40:17

We're living in exciting times, definitely. And the opportunities AI is representing are absolutely mind-blowing. So we just need to figure out who we are and what we want out of it and how we want to navigate this new space. But as you mentioned, quantum computing is going to boost this game. So we are just on the edge to reshuffling many things we took for granted and re-entering yet another new space and a new game.

SPEAKER_01: 40:56

Yeah, so far we have a pretty good you know, humans have a pretty good history of adapting, and and you can go industrial revolution by you know to industrial revolution, this this being the fourth, I believe. So we we've adapted and we've come out on the other side. Um, this one is the fastest one by a landslide. And so it's it's it's catching, you know, that's I think relative anxiety is how fast it's it's moving. And there's a lot of interesting predictions out there. But you know, we we all across the board, you see, we see people who are very good at their jobs and and and understand the technology take on cooler functions and take on more senior level oversight, strategic functions. And so there is that opportunity. I guess there'll be smaller of them, and that's the stress.

SPEAKER_00: 41:46

Definitely. There are new opportunities, of course, as long as you are creative and uh ambitious and know what you want, you're going to get there. Jim, what is one truth about work success or leadership that we all need to unlearn to stay relevant and truly human in this AI era?

SPEAKER_01: 42:06

You touched on it earlier. I'll I'll say a couple of things. I I think one is that just understanding that what you've done, what makes you good at what you do, where you find your personal value, may change and it may be somewhat taken away from you, and we will have to adapt as a group. And so we'll all go through it together, right? And some pockets ahead of others. But I think I think one thing is it's to not let that impact your value and your worth and know that that is part of our evolution. We will find what's next and we will learn how to code, you know, we'll work with the technology. And the big thing we hear are the pods or AI with humans, with very savvy humans, and that that is that's what we hear most companies well. I think the the other interesting thing that we're starting to see is what you could call, and you hear this word a lot, the democratization of decision making. Within organizations, typically it was your leadership that had most of the information, most of the experience, most of the understanding. And so we big decisions waited and moved up a chain to then be passed back down. And what I think we're starting to see is people at all levels can have really good information and a really good system to leverage that information to make decisions at their individual levels. And so as companies look to compete in the future, really allowing taking the decision making and really spreading it down across a swath of workers is probably going to be a shift for companies, but for speed to market and you know, all the regular competitive stuff, that's probably a sizable change that will affect everybody and maybe a lot of people for the good to say, all right, well, I'm more empowered now to make these decisions because I have the data, I have the history, you know, I have everything at my fingertips. I can make this, you know, bigger decisions.

SPEAKER_00: 44:04

So, what is the unlearning part in it?

SPEAKER_01: 44:07

Uh I I think on the worker side, you need to unlearn your attachment of value to what you currently know. On the on the leadership side and then the organization side, you need to unlearn a dependence on on a slower decision process, on a more approval-based, not on the bureaucratic right word, but you know, a leadership-based decision process. You need to unlearn the reliance on other leaders to make decisions and learn how to let people leverage that, put the data at their fingertips that you're going to use anyways, let them make decisions.

SPEAKER_00: 44:44

If you could offer one piece of advice to professionals navigating this AI-driven job market revolution, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01: 44:54

I've heard so much, I've I've listened so much. And in trying to think about these things, I go out and I talk to people. Go to a lot of conferences and I and I go to events, and I'm uh I'm an extrovert by nature. But you know, there's all the learning AI. Again, Mark Cuban was out just recently. He's got kids in college or whatever. And he's like, in your private time, build an AMI stack and spend several hours a week just getting comfortable operating in that mode and and and building your life, you know, automating your life around it. So that's probably one of them. But as I've gotten out and talked to people and reconnect with people, I guess I think if I could give a piece of advice, it's don't let the technology isolate you. Right? It's like stay plugged in, stay involved, still meet people. There's you know, humans, and you look at happiness studies, human connection is generally far and away the number one. Of all the things that can make you happy, security and food and uh passion, purpose, human connections, trusted human connections are generally number one. So I would say don't let it isolate you. Get out there, build relationships. Even if you're remote, you go into the office on occasion and take people out to lunch or what have you, your vendors, your clients. Keep the human connection.

SPEAKER_00: 46:17

I truly love your advice. This is brilliant. Don't let technologies be isolated, and human centricity is still our most important thing to protect. So thank you so much, Jim, for being with us today and for sharing your wisdom, your experience, and your vision into the future. Truly appreciate it. I enjoyed our conversation.

SPEAKER_01: 46:45

Thank you. And it is quite a challenge to figure out. And so uh look forward to watching more of your podcasts so I can learn more.

SPEAKER_00: 46:58

You were brave, and my questions were not the easiest ones. So I truly appreciate your courage to be open to this conversation. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01: 47:10

Yeah. All right. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 47:12

Thank you for joining us on digital transformation and the other humans. I am Amy, and it was enriching to share this time with you. Remember, the core of any transformation lies in our human nature, how we think, feel, and connect with others. It is about enhancing our emotional intelligence, embracing the winning mindset, and leading with empathy and insight. Subscribe and stay tuned for more episodes where we uncover the latest trends in digital business and explore the human side of technology and leadership. If this conversation resonated with you and you are a visionary leader, business owner, or investor ready to shape what's next, consider joining the AI Game Changes Club. You will find more information in the description below. Until next time, keep noture in your mind, foster in your connections, and lead in with heart.