The Hiring Playbook with David Bloxham

In this conversation, David discusses the intricacies of interviews in the cybersecurity field, particularly focusing on the balance between providing necessary information and safeguarding sensitive details. Drawing from his experience recruiting for MI5, he highlights the unique challenges faced in cyber interviews, where the stakes are high due to the potential for information to be exploited by malicious actors. David emphasizes the need for companies to rethink their approach to sharing information during the recruitment process to protect their systems and personnel.

Takeaways

• Even when you're in an interview, you have to consider what you're actually going to say.
• Recruiting for MI5 was always quite exciting.
• They could never send you a job spec, which is a unique challenge.
• A huge amount of companies should think about information security in interviews.
• In a cyber interview, you're giving out a lot of information.
• It's important to consider what questions are asked in the interview.
• Personal interests can be interesting information for bad actors.
• Companies need to be cautious about the information they share.
• Cyber interviews require careful consideration of information shared.
• The dynamics of cyber interviews are complex and require strategic thinking.

Sound Bites

• "They could never send you a job spec."
• "Companies should think about that now."
• "Information for someone nefarious or a bad actor."

Transcript

Francis Gorman (00:02.079)
Hi everyone, welcome to the Entropy podcast. I'm your host, Francis Gorman. If you're enjoying our content, please take a moment to like and follow the show wherever you get your podcast from. Today I'm joined by David Bloxham, the CEO of GCS Recruitment Specialists, where he's been a key player since 1996. David is passionate about recruitment, strategic leadership, and making a positive impact. He's also the host of the GCS Leader Series podcast, where he engages with industry taught leaders to share insights and

drive conversations around innovation and excellence. David, it's absolutely fantastic you have here with me today.

David (00:35.064)
Great to be here. Thanks, Francis.

Francis Gorman (00:38.274)
David, I know we've been talking for a while and I was on your podcast a while back. So thanks very much for having me on. I really enjoyed the experience and kind of one of the things that I wanted to dive in with you've been in the recruitment industry for a long time now. So you've seen all of the different shifts and ebbs and flows that have happened over the years. But in terms of cybersecurity, what shifts have you seen in demand for cybersecurity talent over the last few years? Has that changed or has it stayed steady?

David (01:07.874)
And I'd definitely say it's changed in terms of volume, and that volume has gone up. So just to give you an example, so GCS is a global technology recruiter. We've been going too many years now for me to even count Francis, over three decades now. But we made a decision to that it would be a good, for us, a good kind of business model for us to increase our cyber.

branding and create a division focused on it. And I guess because there has been a big surge for demand for cyber people, for obvious reasons, that is one of our fastest growing, if not the fastest growing kind of division. So, yeah, it is very much a hot topic in the world that we work in. And I think when we spoke before, Francis, you know, that's why I it be quite interesting.

to come on your podcast which is obviously much more heavily technical and knowledgeable than mine or whatsoever. Just to give people an understanding of the actual outline and what it looks like hiring for cyber at the moment because it's quite tough and it's quite tricky. It's definitely a candidate driven market.

Francis Gorman (02:29.122)
And I suppose on that David, I'm always fascinated with the peaks. So we've had a lot of cyber incidents this year in the retail sector in the UK. Has the pivot of that to be hire more security staff or has that been more, have companies been more cautious? Have you seen any sort of a reflection in the market as a result of those incidents?

David (02:52.076)
It's quite interesting because we always talk quite a lot and it is quite interesting to think about it. And we never want to be seen as, I guess you would call it ambulance chasers in this world of being a cyber recruiter. One, I don't think it reflects very well. Secondly, it's very, very difficult to do. So I'm sure you're a, you're a lead cyber professional, right? When, if, if and when something to happen, you're probably going to get a lot of calls from recruiters saying,

You know, you've just had a hack and would you like to hire some people? But I don't think that comes across very well. Like, would you agree with me, Francis? don't know. Yeah. Um, so I think for me that's, that's quite interesting. So what we see is, you know, there is a couple of instances and we work a lot with consultancies, um, and we hire and place quite a lot of contractors. So straight away within those organizations, you see the consultancies getting a lot more work.

Francis Gorman (03:25.095)
I wouldn't disagree with you, David.

David (03:48.51)
and you see them taking on a lot more contractors to kind of try and shut this down. So I think that, you know, in the case of, you know, incidents, major or minor ones that you know about or not, the hiring happens on a kind of short-term reactionary basis. I guess for me, that would be, is that the right way to hire?

you know, is that the right way to deal with it? And should you be hiring ahead of the game and preparing yourself for what seems to be pretty, you know, pretty likely is going to happen to everyone at some point.

Francis Gorman (04:23.758)
I wouldn't disagree with that at all. And I suppose just to pull in that thread a bit, if I'm a CISO in an organization now, and know, that proactive versus that reactive hiring, what do CISOs or senior leaders constantly underestimate when they're building their teams? What skills and capabilities do they need to look for in terms of the human?

David (04:44.376)
Well, I think, you know, for me, like one of the things we've spoken about and I talked a lot about on my kind of podcast itself with regards to cyber leaders is there's obviously a lot of skill sets and it's very, very easy to kind of go down the, the skillset CV resume basis. Like this ticks a lot of the boxes, but I do think that, you know, we talk a lot about, you know, cyber being a

know, humans being the weakest link, you know, in terms of, you know, so I think there's quite a lot of psychology within, within the, the aspects of, of hiring for, for cyber professionals. And sometimes people don't look at that. I think they're very much more so I could speak to someone, I could have a kind of human conversation with someone. I think this is a really good person for the culture. Someone that can really communicate with other people within the teams. Some of that can really kind of roll out ethics and roll out kind of programs.

but maybe their CV doesn't look quite as good as X person. So it's important for me as the agent or for a talent person to try and put forward that human. And I think sometimes particularly technology-based managers very much focus around hard skills and maybe don't think enough about the soft skills that can help to build culture, that can help to build diversity, but also can probably give you a more kind of resilient.

in a cyber structure because you've got lots of different types of people thinking in different types of ways.

Francis Gorman (06:11.936)
absolutely agree with you on the soft skills. think they're one of the most important aspects that any cyber professional can bring to the table. You know, you can be the most technically brilliant mind in the entire company, but if you can't articulate in simple business terms, you know, it's not really something that can add value. So yeah, the soft skills are super important. The ability to write clear outcomes and the ability to be able to communicate clear outcomes is so, so important from my perspective, especially when you're dealing with

executives or senior management that are not technical and need to be able to translate what you're saying in terms of risk into something tangible for them. So that is super important.

David (06:53.996)
Yeah, another thing I think I find is really looking at things like industry experience. I guess that's holding quite high standards. We've spoken there before about, and this is another reason why you shouldn't be so reactionary in your hiring. You should be proactive ahead of the game in your hiring because generally then people's standards go down and they don't always look for the best match. So I would say that, you know,

While when we talk about the volume of cyber, one of reasons why the volume of cyber has gone up is because it is industry agnostic. It doesn't care what industry you're in.

and every industry needs it, even if the industry isn't particularly doing well at the moment. So it's not like they're investing loads of money in XXX, you know, everybody needs it. So everybody's hiring for it. Obviously for an agent at Francis, that's absolutely fantastic, right? You know, but for the hiring community, that's very, very difficult. But I think if you're doing this in a reactive post-incident situation, then you're probably...

doing it with less quality. And if you are, then you're going to drop certain levels of quality. And I do think, and we've seen great examples of people with industry experience, people, if you're hiring for financial services, people coming from similar types of backgrounds, it works in all kinds of areas, particularly in cyber, because then people know what threats are, then people know.

how the business works, what the models are, what the structures are, what the regulations are. And that's something that we really, really try to qualify into our roles and a good agent or talent professional would do. What are the non-essentials? What are the soft skills? What are the industry sectors, the types of projects, et cetera, et cetera, that you need?

Francis Gorman (08:46.47)
Let's talk a little bit about remote work. COVID kind of changed the game in terms of the expectations that employees have in remote work. What has the nuances been to it? I read only this morning Adam Grant had a post out around the dissatisfaction of the worker being pulled back into the office and the benefits are being degraded in terms of their loyalty or how much they're willing to give because now they're spending three or four hours sitting in traffic and know...

someone has to do more childcare or not at home to cook the dinner or whatever it is. there's that human side, but from a company, what's the challenges? Is there a change from your perspective in the security risk profile? Like you've got a global operation of recruiters in many different countries. I'm not sure what your model is, you a hybrid or you're a remote? From a CEO perspective, what are the challenges? And then from the recruitment and human side, is there a match there?

David (09:44.45)
Yeah, so from a CEO perspective, we did go fully hybrid during COVID and then slowly but surely we've moved back to being in the office four days a week. Why have we done that? I think that sales, which is generally what recruitment is, is a very collaborative and, you know, field based role, right? So it's, you know, potentially quite different to being a cyber professional.

But you need to be surrounded by people, you need to be collaborating with people, you need that energy of the sale. And it's really, important. And so, you know, we've done that slowly but surely over that period of time. Obviously, there's always a little bit of pushback on it. Sometimes there's quite a lot of pushback on it. But I think the in our industry has moved in that direction. So it seems to be the direction of travel. And I think that's the same for most sales organizations, you know, you know,

you want to be around people. So yeah, that's what we've driven. And I do feel that it allows people to collaborate better, to work together better in teams, to train people, to induct people, to create a culture much better than you can in a video sort of sense. I guess when it comes to technology, what we see is a lot of major organizations driving return to office.

the big tech companies, the banks, et cetera, et A lot of smaller organizations either not having the will, the desire to do it, but also what you have to understand is, what anyone understands is obviously by creating hybrid in a skill short environment, by creating hybrid roles, you know, or work from home roles, remote roles, you've immediately given yourself a wider pool to

take from and actually, know, in a skills short market where salaries are going, you might have given yourself a better cost of people. I think people do factor that in, you know, can get more people at better cost rather than asking, so if you're hiring in Dublin, for instance, Francis, and you said they have to come to the office four days a week, then you have to hire people in Dublin and people in Dublin are more expensive.

David (12:02.316)
expensive than people in Sligo or something. I'm kind of making up names here, but you know what I mean. So that seems to me to have been less, less prevalent, less pushed. I do think that remote work has definitely changed the profile in terms of, you know, the culture, the types of people. You know, we both probably worked from home during COVID and that was...

really strange situation wasn't it and then when you come back it feels very odd and then after all it feels very normal and then it feels really odd to work from home. actually in in Florida this week actually Frances and so I'm visiting our Florida office so you talk to us being a global business but I think I think it's actually kind of one degree or something isn't it in Ireland today. It's 28 degrees where I am.

Francis Gorman (12:53.356)
It's absolutely freezing here, David.

David (12:56.078)
So the joys, the joys of having a global business and they work from home on Wednesdays. I'm actually kind of working from suburban Orlando at the moment. I could switch my screen now so you can see the blue skies and the sun, but I think everyone would be a bit jealous of me. So obviously that gives you a lot of, you know, really, really great positives.

We have seen obviously a lot of in terms of types of requirements when it comes to IAM, access management, obviously cloud security, all the things that you need to run a hybrid business. Those become so incredibly important. I never quite know, you know, is it more secure to have everyone working from home because people are more secure on their own systems or is it more secure in the office? Because you still go into the office and use the same equipment and go into the wifi, don't you? You know, I...

I'm not a technology person, but I don't know which is people are usually quite secure in their homes. So yeah, we've seen huge rises in the types of requirement that companies are looking for to facilitate application security, cloud security, different access management tools, XXX, because this change has happened. So again, you know.

I think that having people in the office is great for culture, but it also has a lot of positives to having a remote-based work, but it definitely, definitely changes the hiring profile.

Francis Gorman (14:26.738)
does it and it's interesting for me that the most bizarre change from remote work was the hiring process in and of itself you know and the ethics of what do you wear to a remote interview i've interviewed some people i swear to god they must have been in their pajamas like that took a bit of getting used to but yeah no look it's it's

David (14:33.398)
Mmm, yeah.

I know. Yeah. I know. That's cool. That's cool with the kids these days, though, Francis. They just wear pyjamas all the time. I've got three teenage daughters, so they're always in pyjamas. It's really interesting you say that, actually, because obviously for all businesses, agencies, COVID was a really, really tough time. If you think about how the recruitment

to work before, like we would send someone to an interview with you, you would like them, then maybe another interview, then you'd offer them a job and we never even thought about working from home or whatever. And when COVID came, immediately they couldn't do the interview anymore. So, you know, we were totally flummoxed. It like, don't really know how we're actually gonna run our business. Like, it doesn't make sense.

But it's very, I mean, talk about technology is very, you know, in security and that sort of thing is so quick how quickly these different systems, which are now so prevalent now, so Teams or Zoom or whatever, just came in so quickly. And now, you know, we as agents, you as technology professionals couldn't imagine a world without them.

Francis Gorman (15:57.39)
we wouldn't be able to work without them, suppose. And I suppose you wouldn't be able to have a global operation without them either because you wouldn't be able to have that connectivity and that, I suppose, camaraderie with your colleagues and that you can get facilitated through technology. I suppose speaking of technology, AI is something we're going to have to touch on. We can't leave this conversation without having a conversation about AI. one of the things that...

that I found really interesting about AI. I had a guest on recently, Paul Boudreau was his name. And we were talking about the job as well. I think David, we touched on this the other day when we were chatting as well. And I was saying, I'm looking online and people are sending out 60, 70, 80 CPEs with no response. Like what's going on? And he started laughing and he said, blame the fax machine. And I was like, what do you mean blame the fax machine? said, well, before that, you when you wrote your letter, you probably hand delivered it and you someone opened it and read it you got that human connection.

Then the facts came and you could disperse it a bit quicker. Then email came and you could disperse to many people all at once. And it was great. And then said, then AI came along and now AI writes your CV. It reads the job post. It sends the CV in for you. Two AIs meet in the hallway, have a coffee and decide you're a good fit for the job based in your CV. And then some guy lands in front of you and he doesn't match the CV at all. So I suppose that's where recruitment and the recruitment agency almost becomes.

a key factor for the human vetting phase now that people are wasting hours and hours on, I suppose, not fit candidates.

David (17:28.257)
It's a real problem. And firstly, in terms of volume that you just spoke about, obviously one of the services that we provide, and I don't know if AI can provide it, because obviously if you don't trust a CV. So the first thing to say is I think it's almost like the death of the CV, AI. Everybody, why would anyone write their own CV now?

You almost want to see a handwritten CV, for instance, which you still could probably do on AI, right? But if I ever received a handwritten CV now, then I would know it was entirely done by you. If every other CV must have been copilot or GPT or using one of the tools because it produces a great CV. So that's the depth of CV. Not in terms of people aren't using it anymore, but just in terms of this being a good example of

are you a good candidate because every CV will be perfect and perfectly written in a very similar style and we see that. But for instance I put a job ad out, a promoted job for GCS, it's quite a good job, know, it's seen me a position within our business. We're looking for an SOW consultancy lead if anyone's interested. But I got 173 responses, okay.

David (18:49.07)
Out of that we found some fantastic candidates and I was doing the job myself because of senior positions I thought well I won't I'll leave it it'll be me and the candidate not kind of stretch out with different people but 176 responses and out of that I basically chose to interview six now that's really good for a you know that is a good number but

I was getting some really amazing responses. If I've been trying to place a VP at a major bank or a head of practice for McKinsey or something like that, you know, then I'd be really happy, but I wasn't, but just fantastic candidates. So it's really important to kind of go back to them. But what I think is important there is that we as agents filter a lot out. You know, we filter a lot out. And like you just said,

I mean, America, it's an actual real problem now that there is a huge amount of like fake candidates. We have to constantly check, speak to people, make sure that it's the right person turning up, IDs, that sort of thing. I think this is quite something for America, but usually what happens here will happen there.

Yeah, there's this huge amount of fake candidates, know, phishing emails that we get, you know, wrong profiles, etc, etc. And we know we have to deal with it on a day to day basis. so AI is increasing the volume, decreasing the trust and making any form of filtering.

incredibly more important but also much more difficult. know, I, when I started in 96, would never have thought, is this a real human being that I'm speaking to?

Francis Gorman (20:36.94)
That is an unbelievable problem to have. It's a real problem because we're seeing North Korean assets infiltrating organizations to commit espionage now. It's reported on it. It's in the public domain. People who have been recruited as somebody they are not with skills and competencies that they don't have with the purpose of exfiltrating data from organizations. like how...

David (20:40.588)
Yeah.

David (20:48.27)
Hmm.

David (21:02.676)
Even when you're in an interview, Francis, even when you're an interview, right? Like you turn up for the interview and if you're not the person that you say you are, you know, again, as cyber professionals, I guess you have to kind of consider what you're actually going to say in the interview because you'll give it, you have to give people information in an interview or a job spec.

because otherwise they don't really know. I used to recruit for MI5 back in the day for a while. It was always quite exciting. But they could never send you a job spec. also, nobody could. They had to sign an India and they couldn't say what questions were asked in the interview. But I guess a huge amount of companies should think about that now because particularly in a cyber interview, you're giving out quite a lot of information about the systems, the projects.

you know, what you want the person to do, how many people there are working there, your personal interests, sex, which is all quite interesting information for someone nefarious or a bad actor.

Francis Gorman (22:01.422)
So reconnaissance by interview. It's a new, it's a new trip we need to add to the trip matrix, David.

David (22:06.657)
I think so. I think so. never asked. I wouldn't know where it's happened before. But yeah, one of the reasons why we always worry about fake candidates is because we think it's other agencies or people, different companies trying to find that information to kind of get the job so they can send CVs, right? But there is a much bigger, there are much bigger forces at play, but it could be even more, you know, nefarious than

that kind of, it might have GCS a little bit.

Francis Gorman (22:37.646)
It's amazing. Yeah, that's a no good right there. That's a, God, I'm have to change, out of your questions.

David (22:46.23)
I'd love to tell you what the company does, what we use and all that sort of stuff but I don't think I trust you. I don't even know if you're real person so I can't say anything.

Francis Gorman (22:55.598)
I'm gonna start it off, you tell me what I do and see how good you are with your open source.

David (22:57.698)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And if you know too much, then I know that there's something wrong. yeah, yeah. And I think it's an important thing to think about. Again, that goes back to what we were saying, you know, that face to face trust, collaboration, you know, being together. You know, even with things like cyber, like don't click on that link, don't do this. If you're sat next to someone.

you can turn around to them and say, do you think I should click this link? What do you reckon about this email I've just received? It's a much better system than sitting there on your own and talking to the dog about it or something like that. People in offices, I think, will be more secure.

Francis Gorman (23:41.902)
I suppose that's the CEO in you David. That's a good plug for back to the office.

David (23:46.796)
That's right. Yeah, yeah, Totally, totally. Yeah, yeah. Then I, yeah, I don't know. I just think, and also in an interview, I guess, you you should probably meet someone face to face before you hire them. You know, particularly for a cyber role, I think, you you need to make sure they are, you know, real and they are what they say they are because...

As we all know, it's so easy to fake videos, but it's very, very difficult to fake a face-to-face meeting.

Francis Gorman (24:17.806)
It is, and I think that not only is it hard to fake it, but you need to understand the essence of the person. Are you going to be a good fit in this organization? Can you communicate with me on a level that I can work with going forward, et cetera? So the human aspect, I don't think is going anywhere fast. And I suppose that leads me on to ask, you scale GCS up to a global operation. I'm always interested in leadership and the lessons that

David (24:26.243)
Hmm.

Francis Gorman (24:46.254)
people learn along the journey when you look back. You started in 96, we're in 2025 now and the cusp of 26. What's the hardest leadership lessons you've learned over that period of time or even the shifts in how you've had to operate?

David (24:59.726)
But it was interesting you just mentioned about the facts there because that was one of the first lessons I had to ever learn, which ages me, is that how to use the facts. And to this day, I hate facts machines. just hate them. Fortunately, they don't really exist anymore. For any of our, any of your kind of listeners who want to kind of go back, it's a terrible thing. So that was probably the lesson I learned how to send faxes on my first day that I hated. I think for me, those kind of leadership lessons that I've got is...

You know, I think we all know that we have positive traits and areas for improvement, right? So for me, it'll be things like hard work. I think I'm quite innovative, very customer focused. I can be quite charismatic on a good day, if you know what I mean. But I have my weaknesses, which would be, I'm a bad loser. Sometimes I, you know, have a lack of empathy, you know, quite

passionate can sometimes spill over into anger xxx the thing I've learned in leadership and I've learned this from different people and obviously mentors is that those as you as you move up in the organization and become more of a leader those Negative traits have a bigger effect You know particularly in you know, the sort of kind of the traits I've just said so people will really really worry

if you don't seem like you're positive and controlled and calm, you know, and it could work in other ways, right? You know, if you're not a hard worker, people will really, really, you know, think, well, if I don't work very hard, so I'm not going to work very hard. So it always kind of has this effect kind of going forward. So I think it's really important to know yourself very well, you know, to know what you're good at and accentuate those things and also kind of work on yourself.

And I think it's also really, really important to surround yourself with a great team that you trust, are ambitious for the business and for themselves, that you like, that you can kind of get on with and really hold tight to that. you probably again, Francis, have worked in good teams and when you work in good teams with people that you love and that you like and that you know are there for you, that's priceless, know, it is priceless. And you've got to be very, very careful.

David (27:23.374)
and very, very focused on making sure you've got a great team around you. If you have a great team, it's easy to be a great leader.

Francis Gorman (27:31.886)
I think that self-awareness is a very good point. I remember a few years back, I got sent on a leadership development course and we had to this role play where, you know, there was a scenario and a couple of coaches were in the room and I had to sell an idea of a strategy to them. You know, at the end of it, they bring it back in and they give you feedback and they said communication was spot on, very clear, very driven your task, but lacked all sense of empathy.

And I said, said, said, I said, took, took, took, took me back. And I went home to my wife and I said, I said, you know, they told me I have no empathy. And she goes, I could have told you that you wouldn't have to pay me to do it. yeah, so now I'm more aware of it. I'm more aware.

David (27:58.638)
You sound like me Francis, that would be my feedback too.

David (28:10.862)
Yeah, don't have to pay the thousands of pounds to find that out. Totally. I think it's a difficult one to deal with. Because I always think your strengths and your weaknesses kind of, you know, kind of balance each other out. Your strengths are your weaknesses. But empathy is a hard one because you really, really have to think about it. If it's not in your muscle memory to really understand.

you people, then yeah, as a leader, have to, you have to really think about it. I'm probably painting myself as a complete ogre now. I'm quite a nice person, but yeah, you know.

Francis Gorman (28:54.54)
Look, I think it comes with the territory. You're so focused on what's next and let's get the job done that you may not just take that minute to say, and how was your weekend or how was your day? So I do check myself on that now. Maybe I've gone too far the other way. Maybe I'm being too nice and not getting enough done. we'll have to. So it is. David, want to talk about, so when we talk about leadership.

David (29:03.491)
Mm.

David (29:09.786)
That's right yeah, speak, Let's shake things up,

Francis Gorman (29:24.238)
and decision-making. When you scale up to a global operation, how do you keep the culture and that ethic and how do you keep the decision-making sharp when you're so dispersed across the globe? As the CEO, I'm assuming different time zones, different cultures, different ethnicities, different people, and they're all in this mesh that makes up GCS Global. How do you manage the ebbs and flows there that you keep everything sharp and succinct and you keep progressing and moving forward as the times change?

David (29:45.848)
Mm.

David (29:53.838)
Well, one of the things that's quite fortunate is you do need to kind of see people face to face every now and then. So I do get to go and visit our US office or our kind of international offices. So you do get to get, still get a bit of international travel. And I think that's really, really important. You know, I haven't been here for a year and a half. I've spoken to the people every day on Teams and et cetera, et cetera. But you have to go and, you know, really get to know people and spend a bit of time with them.

because otherwise it does become too remote. But I think, you know, we spoke about remote working there and when you've got a global business you can't help but be remote from each other. You know, when we say get everyone in the office, we don't get everyone in the same offices, they're in different offices. So the things that we tend to do as a business is very much constant communication.

you know, making sure that everyone's aware on teams or channels or email or whatever of what's happening in the business, about driving kind of cross global working, different work streams across internationally is what it's location based. And I think that's really, really important. You have to set that up and you have to, you have to live that yourself, you know? I love speaking to people within the business, not just my direct reports. And I don't...

just do it because I am telling someone off or, you know, having, you know, some man strategy chat, just call them up. So how's it going? You know, I think that's really, really important to have that. And I always use this ivory tower CEO. Um, do you to do my, you know, staff intro? I specifically say to them, I am not an ivory tower CEO, like you can call me, you can ask me a question and I will ask you a question.

I think people like that, been told people like that because, know, and maybe it's size of business, but some, some people say, I can't believe that like the CEO just called me, you know, that's mad. You know, but I think it's good. And you know, it's something I like to kind of promote. And the reason I do this, the other thing I think is really, really important is how do you create culture? You create culture by I believe leading from the front and loving it, loving your job.

David (32:10.582)
loving what you do and being passionate about it. And therefore you're passionate about people gamifying the job, talking about a job, going on podcasts, talking about how great GCS is and all that sort of thing. You know, it's, really, really important that you are there leading from the front and, and doing it and living it and being in that culture. I think that that communication and culture and

you know, driving it and meeting people and seeing that as a really important part of your job is one of the reasons why you can create a global business. Because as the CEO, it's your job to bring everything together under one culture and one thing. One thing I will say on it, and this is interesting being out in the US is it is particularly in a sales organization, there's you need to be aware of things you can't manage over time zones. So it is

There is only a four hour window really between like East coast and like Europe, West coast and Europe and even less window as you go to Wisconsin, San Francisco and California. We've got people now working in Australia and there's really no window. So you need to know that you trust those people, that you have touchstones with those people, but you also have to give them those independence because otherwise that doesn't work either. know, if they're waiting to speak to you all day to make a decision.

then you haven't got an agile business. So yeah, you've worked in big corporates before and that's always a struggle, isn't it? Kind of with the time zones and the further people get away of actually kind of interacting with them in any meaningful way.

Francis Gorman (33:44.494)
It's all trust based really isn't it? It's the trust that someone can get on with the job and you know get it done when everyone else is in bed and if there's a problem they'll make sure you know in a timely fashion but you might be picking up on it for a couple hours you know so yeah it comes with the game. Before we finish up I suppose I can't let you go without asking you how do you spot a trend and what's coming next so we've obviously had AI, we've had cloud before that.

What do you see is emerging? Is it still AI for the next couple of years? Is there something else taking over? What's the market telling you?

David (34:20.302)
Well, the way I learn is by speaking to my consultants, by going on as many client meetings as possible, by listening to interesting podcasts. It's just like this entropy one, you know, I've heard about Francis, it seems to be really good, you know. And actually it's one of the reasons why the Illusory is because you get to speak to such interesting people who are...

engaged and talking. it's about building those, going to the exhibitions, building a network, listening to podcasts, listening to people, talking to people, picking up on new strings. You know, when we spoke, obviously, Francis, you talked about quantum, you know, and we are now starting to see, you know, quantum computing coming in and companies starting to invest in that as well. So you can kind of always see it. How you spot a trend is by

identifying that there is increasing numbers of, this is from a recruiter perspective, there's increasing numbers of requirements for it. And there are more requirements for it than there are people. So that will be one of our sales pitches. We will find you the people that difficult to find. Usually the people that are difficult to find are the ones that have the newfangled skills that nobody else has got.

no one else has trained up on. That's where we come in. That's what we always talk to our businesses about. So as soon as you start seeing that in a pattern, then that's a trend for us. It's quite interesting in terms of LinkedIn. We worked for the software a few years ago called RDK. And when you try to put in a software, unless a certain amount of people put in as a skill in LinkedIn, you can't add it as a skill in LinkedIn.

I think it has to be 100 people. So it's quite a good learn. So, you know, as soon as you start to see it appear in a skill, then you know it's moving forward. But I do think that as recruiters and probably as, you know, technology professionals, you have to kind of see what's coming. When it comes to AI, I think we're at the tip of the iceberg, both in terms of how this will change working culture, but also in terms of the types of roles that are coming.

David (36:34.05)
You know, we've seen a lot in the last two, three years, it's been difficult for our business, very much an engineering focus, software engineering focused business, that it changed the way coding was done. There was less coding jobs almost immediately, which was bad for us. Now there's huge amounts of investment in AI and cyber kind of almost like related, like brother and sister or something. And that has obviously helped our business to kind of push forward, but...

I think we're just touching the AI, you know, top of the AI ice, but we do not know what's going to happen in next two, three years and it will drive businesses. My thoughts on AI is that I don't think while it enhances jobs and this seems very cool, I don't think anyone's really got great business benefit off it yet.

but there's a lot of opportunity and a lot of investment going in, so you'd hope that someone is going to really, really get kind of benefit off it. So I think it will change jobs. I think it will change the types of jobs and those are the trends that we're predicting. This will, in two years time, the jobs that we're working on will be very different to the ones we're working on.

Francis Gorman (37:44.606)
It's very true. I had current at tradies on this week on the on the podcast and I asked him, will I take my job because it replaces me or because the boom bursts? And he said the latter.

David (37:55.832)
Yeah, I don't think I would be amazed if people start to AI cyber, but that would be mad in my opinion. I'm not obviously the CEO, you know, giving the defense of your own company and your own data to AI.

One, think would be illegal, unethical, but secondly, like mad. You you need like, yes, use AI tools to defend your premises and all that sort of thing, but you need human beings to kind of work that out. But I don't, you know, I'm always quite a positive person. I think it will enhance business as opposed to reduce jobs. You know, it will change jobs. And like I said, I don't, it's not that good yet.

Maybe in the next few years, it will be better. So can go back to the bubble. I don't think the bubble will burst because they haven't really achieved anything yet. You know, so like keep investing because there's some great things and we're seeing a lot of work in biotech and see defense is different type of thing. There's a lot of work in defense, a lot of work in financial investments, that sort of thing. so I do think that there are areas where it's starting to have real prevalence, but it's not, it's not finished article yet.

So I don't think there can be a bubble blowing up because no one actually knows the actual answer of is this going to help us yet.

Francis Gorman (39:16.494)
It's not.

Francis Gorman (39:24.59)
Please do give me the strapline for this episode. David Bloxman says, you would be mad to replace cybersecurity with AI.

David (39:30.51)
100 % 100 % I would I would I would I would be very very surprised you know there's always got to be someone with their hand on the tiller saying this is this is not right we need to do this and it can't be a robot

Francis Gorman (39:50.307)
So look David, thanks very much for coming on today. It was a real privilege to have you on the show and I really enjoyed the conversation

David (39:57.198)
Thanks, Francis. Thanks very much for inviting me.

Francis Gorman (39:59.598)
Thank you.