Finding and hiring great creative talent is getting harder every day due to record low levels of unemployment, the increasing demand for creative skills, and the expanding role of design. In this episode, we will look at a few of the trends taken from the new Design Trends Report I co-authored that affecting how we find, recruit, hire, and train the best creative people.
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Finding and hiring great creative talent is getting harder every day due to record low levels of unemployment, the increasing demand for creative skills, and the expanding role of design. In this episode, we will look at a few of the trends taken from the new Design Trends Report I co-authored that affecting how we find, recruit, hire, and train the best creative people.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode89
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
What's going on everybody, and welcome into the 89th episode of the crazy one podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is a show where we talk about how to help you be more creative, become a better leader, create more innovative work, grow a stronger career and a whole lot more. Now, as always, be sure to hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast platform to get the latest episodes whenever those come out. And while you're there, do me a favor, take just a couple seconds and leave a review to let people know what you think about the show. As always, you can listen to all the shows, get the show notes, get my list of the essential creative tools that I use, and even some crazy one propaganda head over to the crazy one. That's crazy and the number one.com. And as always, as we go through these shows, if you have any questions, you just want to keep up my adventures or get more content like this. You can always follow me on Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn. Well, hopefully this show will be a good one because this is one of those rare, super fun moments. This is the second time I'm recording it because Don't you just love it whenever You have that one application you use all the time. And it does those really fun, quirky things like, you know, whenever they update it, it does fun little things like it resets all your audio inputs, and you aren't too much of a dumb ass to remember to check them. So you record the entire show the first time with the microphone that is built into your computer that's sitting behind your monitor. So the resulting show whenever you go back to listen to it sounds like you did at the bottom of a well, Ah, good fun times. But that's not what we're here for today. We're here to talk about talent. And the reason I want to talk about talent is because I've talked before that one of the things that I love about my job is that it gives me the ability to work with such a huge variety of companies all over the world. I think if you follow me on social media for any amount of time, you've seen a sampling of some of the travels some of the work some of the companies that I've been working with. Now I'm I'm very aware as I'm doing this, that the exposure To all these different teams to the companies and the resulting perspectives that it generates, is a really rare thing, right? Because it gives me this perspective into what really works into what really doesn't. And the ability to start to see and spot some really interesting trends as they start to emerge in the industry. Now, the more I've been traveling this year, the more I've been thinking about, how do I want to share this information out, right, because it is such a rare thing, but it just seems so hypocritical, given what it is I do with this show to just hold on to it. So I started to think about this more and more, and I had the conversation with a gentleman I work with by the name of Adam fry, Pierce. And if you don't know Adam, fantastic. I actually knew him before I joined envision had a really great series of events. But for us right now, he runs the design Leadership Forum. It's a great series of meetups of sort of different events that we hold all over the world. This sort of let senior creative people sort of meet up and and share what's working and what their struggles And he and I were talking and kind of saying, look, you know, he's running a leadership forum, I'm kind of doing my coaching and teaching work and things like that. And like, how can we sort of share this work back and we came up with this idea that I think is going to be pretty interesting. So what we're going to do is a few times a year, we're thinking probably between three and four. We want to release what we're calling these design trend reports. And whenever we do it, each report is going to focus on a single subject, right or like a single theme. And we're going to try to ground that in some of the other work that we've done. So amazing colleague of mine, Leah Bewley, worked on something called the design frontier report wasn't it was an incredible, incredible look at what is just read the real current state of maturity around creativity and design and its impact on business going on today. And we said look, like let's ground it in that and let's pick a topic and let's start to really dig in on like, what are the things that we're seeing what are the things we're going or they're going on that we think are really interesting? And like their trends, right? These aren't things that are fully baked, these aren't things that you know, have become the way to do things yet. But in many cases, like those tend to be the ones we think are really interesting because like, this isn't about like a definitive outcome. There may be some best practices, there may be some problems. But these are things we really just feel like can start great conversations that can hopefully start to get people to uplevel much faster. And we also started to think about that, and we thought, you know, look, the best way to probably be able to do that, too, is to put some sort of recommendation, because not every trend is a good one, or it's not a great one. And so just sort of like you know, the best feedback model that I've ever used was really like a start stop continue model I talked about on the show before, with good reason, because I think it really works and we thought Look, why couldn't we apply a model like that to this trend report? So we did with with each one of these trends, as we said, Look we want to do is we want to come in and like if it's something we think is really good, that people should either start doing it or if you're already doing it, keep doing it. There are some of these ones we think are just sort of interesting. And we're not sure where they're going to go, maybe they're going to be the next big thing, maybe they're going to totally flame out. So like, just watch them, keep an eye on them. And then there are some of these that we feel like, you know what, maybe we understand the intent behind it, but the way it's coming to life may not be the best. So for those, we probably recommend that maybe you stop it, or maybe you modify it. And so, you know, for us, it really was going about this. And so, for every trend, what we did was we would go through and say, Okay, look like what's the observation, what are we seeing, you know, then there's kind of like, what is the insight because just because what you're seeing doesn't necessarily always explain why something is happening. So it's like, okay, what's the insight that we feel like it's driving this? And then either kind of what are the problems and pitfalls? Or like, what are the best practices that we're seeing people do? And we felt like that's gonna be a good model. Now, just like anything else, we're gonna try it out. We're gonna see what works. We're gonna change some things. But we launched the first one this week, and the first one was focused on talent, because the number one conversation that we realize that we're both having is that so many people want to ask About, look, how do we find the best talent? How do we interview them? How do we keep them? How do we uplevel them? Like, there's just all these sorts of things, as well as the fact of like, you know, I get asked every I get emails probably almost daily at this point, from people who are trying to figure out their own career. They're trying to figure out what's going on in the industry. They're trying to figure out what's going on with them. They're trying to figure out what's gonna work and what's not. And so it's just sort of created this really, really interesting moment for a few different reasons. So what we did is we said, Look, we've got our own insights, but we want to go out and let's, let's talk to the people we're working with, like, let's talk with, you know, people at Google and Amazon and Bank of America. Let's talk to consultancies, like McKinsey or PwC. Let's talk to in house teams, you know, like indeed or USA, let's talk to agencies like frog and all these other ones to make sure we're getting a really good perspective. And out of that probably came 30 or 40 different trends. And we were like, Look, you know, some of these, we're just seeing once one or two places we don't feel like it's really a trend. And so we put a bunch of these together put it into its 100 Plus page document. And that sounds way more impressive than what it actually is. Because this is not like the single spaced, you know, whatever traditional academic document, it's meant to be a little bit easier reading than that. But what I want to do in today's episode is I just want to pull out, I think four of what I thought were probably one of the more interesting trends or insights from this report to be able to share it with you. And I would encourage you to if you can, like go and actually check out this report, like as always, I'm going to go through and I'll put it in the show notes, because that's usually the easiest place to go through and do it. But the other thing I would tell you to do is like Look, you're in front of your computer, and you want to be able to go and download it. You can head over go to envision app comm slash design, dash trends, dash report dash talent, I promise you we're working on our URL strategy, but for right now, that's the one we've got. So you can go through there to me it's quick and easy sign up and you can download and get the report. But you know, one of the For me was that talent? This is just such a fascinating moment. Because I think, you know, that's a lot of what recent episodes of the show have been about. It's what a lot of the conversations are about. Because I think whenever you look at creative teams, whenever you look at design teams, whenever you just look at companies in general, that really work, like talent is really what sets in many cases, these high maturity design teams and organizations apart from anybody else. And it's not just hiring smart people, right? It's the entire process they use, it's the way they treat them. It's the way they trust them. It's a lot of this stuff that we've talked about. But it's also because as we started to really look at talent, it's just it's a really interesting moment right now, because, you know, a lot of what we wanted to look at was we wanted to look at how do we find how do we grow and how do we keep people and a time whenever those things are, quite honestly becoming increasingly difficult. And that's happening for a few different reasons. I think one is just the economy, right? Like if you look at it right now, we're seeing probably have the lowest, you know, US unemployment rate in in history or we're definitely headed towards it. We're seeing one of the lowest global unemployment rates in, you know, decades. And the reality is that gives people a whole lot of options, right? Like there is just there's this unprecedented demand for creative talent right now. Like there's a recent report that was done at the in house creative industry report. And they said, there's actually 11% more in house creative jobs this year than there were last year. So I think that, you know, you're seeing this where you've got creative professionals and companies understand designs value like it and they never have before. And as a result, there is just this unprecedented demand for talent and people are going crazy. salaries are going crazy. Like, there's just a lot of that that's going on. And I think that's also being coupled with a moment where as creative people, we've started to realize our value more. But it's also in a moment and I spoke about this in the last episode. It's in a moment where we have this sort of crisis. Trust. People just don't trust working for companies the way that they used to. And for those that do, they are just increasingly dissatisfied. I recently saw a study in the Harvard Business Journal that said, 84% of people say that they are just quote unquote, coming to work. They're just going to get a paycheck. 84% right. I mean, that is a shocking amount that is not a sustainable way of working or doing things. And so we have this incredible demand for talent. And you know, with a workforce that is not terribly engaged in a lot of cases. And I think that's also coupled with the old ways of working. The old ways of recruiting really just don't work on creative people the way that they used to write I think many companies are struggling, because those traditional recruiting methods don't appeal to a lot of today's creatives. And in many cases, I feel like once you are a part of the company, too many of them are moving too slowly to address really important issues like work life balance, career development, design, imposter syndrome, emotional trust, like a Lot of these sorts of things. And I think that the companies that are being unresponsive about that are causing a huge amount of frustration and as a result are seeing a huge amount of retention problems. But this is also for the fact that, you know, again, if you, if you whenever I talked about it in the past has looked at that design maturity report, one of the things was that we went out talk to 2200 different companies, and out of 2200 different companies, the thing that you saw was that 83% of those companies and those teams fell into the middle to bottom of design maturity. 83% are in the middle two, and that what that means is that many design leaders and many designers were hired on the promise that you know, the product or the organization was going to change that they were going to have impact. And I think those same people are realizing that what they were promising The interview was either unrealistic, it is untruthful, or that, you know, the companies that are stuck in these lower levels just aren't going to wake up and kind of let them have the impact. They want and so you know what, as a result, they're taking advantage of a very healthy job market and moving around. And I think we're absolutely seeing that we're in unprecedented numbers, people are moving around. And so that sort of sets the stage right. It's like whenever you look at that this interesting intersection of sort of a lagging company, culture mentality, a hot job market, and also just sort of this, this change in the way that we work sets the stage for kind of this really interesting moment. So we're going to talk about today is in four different kinds of areas. Right, I want to talk about sort of the changes that are going on in recruiting. I want to talk about the changes that are going on in the way people are interviewing. I want to talk about kind of the way people are thinking about and sort of looking and testing on culture, and then how this is all sort of laddering up to new way of working. Now, I think this is relevant and really important because like if you are a leader, if you're a hiring manager, if you're somebody that is trying to find more people on your team, this is obviously super relevant. But I think also if you're an individual contributor, if you are somebody that is just Sort of like you know, out there on your own, or you're an individual contributor and digital designer, a member of a team, I think this is really important because you need to understand the landscape of what's going on, to have a little bit of perspective that whenever you go in to do this whenever you want to go out and find a job to sort of understand the landscape of what's going on, and what you might face out there. So let's start with recruiting. Right, because I think one of the biggest changes is happening and how teams are recruiting talent and that's the thing right as we talk about all these increases in demand, right is created a workforce honestly and with a lot of creatives who just they've gotten honestly a little bit spoiled, right? Like they like to be catered to, they like to feel, you know, like they have a connection to the people they're going to go go work with and they want to know what they're getting into. And then many cases, that sort of old way of like, you know, you should just be happy you have a job because you have one is so old school and gone, right. And so as a result, this sort of idea that, oh, we want to hire somebody. So we're just going to put a job description up on our corporate website, or we're going to do it on LinkedIn or something. Like that, and people will come flocking is not working the way that it used to again. And if you look at other studies, you'll see that in many cases, the highest, you know, the best candidates often come from referrals, it comes from teams that are really invested in what to bring people they know I've heard about into their companies. But I think this is also sort of happening because I think we're seeing a change in recruiting because in many cases, the reality is, is that a lot of HR departments just simply have not matured quickly enough to be able to figure out how to find the best people how to land the best people how to get out there and compete in a very competitive market. And I think that, you know, that is a huge problem, especially when it comes to creatives, because just because it's, it's a different skill set. And I've seen this time and time again, where HR departments or recruiters or, you know, internal recruiters, external recruiters, they're passing on the wrong people. And they're, they're bringing people in who are the wrong people just because, you know, there needs to be much more of a conversation that is going on between HR and recruiting and the actual teams for what do they look for? What do they value, right like, it's Not that go out and check a box sort of thing. But I think that the best teams are also rethinking, recruiting because they realize that again, if the key to all of this is trust, that recruiting and the interview process is the first step in building that trust, because that was the thing as we talk to people, whenever they would walk away, or they would turn down a job opportunity, that is almost 100% of the time it would come back to was they felt like if this is the company on its best behavior, if this is the company really trying to impress me, if this is them, you know, saying, look, you know, we really want you to be a part of something, and this is the way they're acting. What on earth is it going to be like, whenever they hire me, right? Like, if this is the best it's gonna be, and it's downhill from here. That's going to be a real problem. And so we're starting to see teams act differently, right. I think one of them is just seeing them start to take a much more active role in the recruiting process, because for a lot of them, what we're seeing is this sort of like outreach is the new recruiting that actually going out and connecting with people being able to you know, having conversation with them to be able to, to really start to look at and build relationships with the people you want to work with, even if you don't have that spot that's open right now. Because I think like some of the best descriptions I heard were a lot of leaders would sort of think about this, almost like it was a sports franchise, right? Like you have the team that's on the field right now you have the team that you're going out there with. But as the team grows, as it evolves, as people are traded, or moved on, or do different things like that, we start to need to get to people that we can call up, and the people who are going to be ready to jump in and sort of come up to the major leagues. And in many cases, the ability to have that, you know, those sort of relationships in place becomes super, super important. I've even gotten in multiple cases, mass emails that would be sent out from one design leader to 30 or 40. People who would say, Look, I've got these three open jobs. I think you're all amazing. If you're interested in this, you know, let me know, which is sort of, I don't know what I mean. It took me back a little bit whenever it's just like so transparent of like, Here's 30 or 40 names and here's three jobs and it's like Okay, great, let's have a conversation and do it out in the open. But again, it's, it sort of takes you back because it's just so refreshing because it's sort of transparent. And it's a conversation and it's directly from the person who you would work from. And that human connection goes such a long way. And so I think, you know, you are starting to really see this outreach as the new recruiting becoming an incredibly powerful trend. But I think you're also starting to see a rethink of how do teams tell their stories. And in many cases, as we talk about recruiting, one of the places where that story gets told a lot is through job descriptions, right? Because again, there still is that sort of thing where, you know, for a bunch of people that may be where they start to learn about your team or the role or things like that. And what you're seeing teams do is start to invest in those in very different ways. Because what they're adding into them isn't just the same old like corporate buzzword bingo, like, I mean, you know, you don't have a fun experiment, go onto LinkedIn, go into the job section, go and like look at the first three or four jobs that recommend that you're recommended to you and just sort of click through them and watch how even if the jobs are doing And even if the companies are different, man, don't they all just sound sort of generically the same. And I think the good ones, the ones that really jump out are the companies that are going in. And they're putting in things that are really transparent, right? They're putting in, what are the business goals that we're going to try to solve for? They're putting in, what does success actually going to look like for this role that it you know, this is what if you do these sorts of things, you're going to be successful here, and also starting to put in as much as they can, the story of what their team is doing, and to try to add transparency to this so that people really understand what's going on. Because I think, you know, there is a huge part of that, that there's nothing worse than getting hired into a job and spending the first few weeks of it figuring out what is the gap between what you thought the job was and what it actually is, and like, how much did they lie to you again, if we're trying to build trust, not a great way to start. But then you see other things right, like a real rethink, of what is the interview process for creatives really looking like right because like once you reach out to those people once you think you found them That's such like just the first date, really. And just like anything on the way to getting married, there are so many places where it can go wrong. And you know, there's some really interesting trends that we're seeing here. Like I'm seeing things like portfolios are actually starting to die. And they're being replaced by teams who want to see either real products. They want to see real files, or they want to see real talent in action, right, like they are. Because here's the reason why is because companies want to see real creativity, because and I know this has happened to me. So I've got a lot of empathy for this. Too many leaders and too many companies have been burned too many times by people who are great storytellers. But when the rubber meets the road, and when you ask them to actually produce on what they say they can do, they fall flat. Right? And I think that this is why you're starting to see this shift in the industry. Because we're at a place where you just, you know, getting a bad hire is a really, really bad thing missing on who that person And is on getting somebody in who you know, talks a great game but can't deliver is a huge problem. No, I know, this is also a topic as we go through this that in many cases, elicit some very, very strong emotions out of people, because I posted about this on social media, these are turned into these sort of like fire threads that are probably akin to doing something as brilliant as like, Yo, I don't know, starting a conversation on Twitter about if designers should code and just pull the pin on that hand grenade and roll it across the floor and watch it explode all over the place. But I think there's a reality in here. And I think there's a reckoning on both sides that needs to happen here. Because the reality is, and again, this is based on my personal experience as well. I have talked with people who went to the best schools who worked at agencies or companies that I really, really idealized. And man, if they would get in there and the stuff they would talk about, I would get so excited about working for them. And I would get so enthused about like what you know, could actually be, but whenever you would ask them to solve a simple problem whenever you would ask them to actually put those skills on display. The thing that you would often find is that they could not fall off a boat and hit water. And that's kind of the problem, right is that, you know, the people who are the good storytellers who can't deliver are sort of spoiling it for the rest of us. And so I think that that is leading to a number of different changes. Because I think, you know, ultimately, what teams are starting to prioritize more is to understand candidates create a process to look at their chemistry with the team, right, and to sort of get a first hand look on if your skills are real. Now, one of the first ways that I've seen this manifest, and this has happened for a little while now, but I think it's it's growing in popularity, is through tests. And this can take a lot of different forms. I think that the worst version of it are in the like, take home, hey, redesign part of our app, give us your sketch file or something like that. Let us look through it. Because I mean, if I ask you to do that, I think you know, look, they're just gonna ask you to be a production resource. Not a fan of that. I think there are other ones that have done it where you know, and I think the reason why tests have become so Like firebrand, because there are a lot of people out there who took advantage of this. And I think, you know, the people who are mad about it 100% should be, because I've seen stories. And I've talked to people who have gone in for interview processes, who were asked to do creative work, who turned it into the company, who did not get the job, but then oddly, watch that work, appear and launch several months later. Now, if you're going to go through, and you're going to use the interview process to say, hey, let's find a new person, but hey, let's get a bunch of free work along the way as well. That is bullshit. And your team should get blacklisted for doing that. Because if you're going to take advantage of people, and that's the way you want to operate, I got no sympathy for you, because I think that is bullshit. And I'll be super clear about that. But I think that the balance has to come. Where on the one hand, No, you do not take advantage of people. But on the other hand, you know, there is something about needing to see how people work. And I think the best teams that do this with tests, I think they're transparent in saying that they're going to do it. I think they're transparent and what the ask is going To be, I think if it is something that is a, you know, large amount of work if it is something that they feel like could be used that they compensate people or they will have them sign something that legally says they will not use that that the property of that work is the individual designers, I think, or they are smart in running tests that are either hypothetical or greatly exaggerated problems, so that any conflict gets taken out of the mix. The example that I use was that whenever I was at city we had one that I really liked, what we would ask people to do would be to come in and to redesign like the homepage of our app, and maybe one other screen, but you had to do it using only emojis. The reason why we did that, obviously, one, we are never going to launch an app with emojis. And to what I'm most interested in in the interview process is seeing somebody's creativity, seeing how they think, and asking somebody to do that. You could see systems thinking you could see creativity. And you could see it done in a way where you knew they didn't have a reference point, right? Like we sort of felt like that was important that this wasn't like, Oh, this was something you've done before. So you could just sort of call on that. That. And again, I think what you would see is a lot of people get super, super excited about it. Now, I'll also speak to the other half of this coin, right, because there's a lot of people and I've had designers who have walked out of that process. I've seen other people who get very mad about it. I've seen people who actually harass companies because of the acid test, they are so fired up about that they will actually discourage candidates from any conversation with them because they think it's Bs, right? And in many cases, I've had conversations with people and what they will tell me is that their portfolio, their experience, what they have done should be enough, they should not have to prove themselves, because if they say they can do it, they can do it. Okay. I understand that to a very, very thin point, right? Because to me, I have personally never taken a job where I wasn't asked to prove that I could do the skills that I said I could do. And I never had a problem proving it because I could do it. Now here again, in my experience, the people who walk out the people who have Have these temper tantrums that people who say my portfolio should be enough? Or either misinformed because I do think then there's been a number of people I've talked to that they never thought about the other side of the equation that companies are getting burned by people who are good storytellers. And they say, you know what, I understand it. And now I understand where you're coming from, and I get it. But there's still other people who will continue to say that their portfolio and their skills should be enough. And here's what I'm going to say is that, in my experience, and this is just my experience, so no, this is not going to hold true 100% of the time, but the vast majority of the time, the people who say that have exaggerated their portfolios, and the skills that they have, either the role that they had was not what it was the thing that they said they can deliver, they actually can't. And so again, what they're doing is running scared because they don't want to have to actually put up and would rather shut up and go away, or if they do have the skills. The other thing that I found is that they are either a diva or a rock star or somebody who honestly I would not want on my team because of their need for that sort of energy. Individuals spotlight is so great, they are not going to do well on my team. And in either case, I think that sort of attitude is going to lead you to a very, very frustrating, very, very limiting career of just sort of having that arrogance of like, my work is good enough. And if I say it's good enough, it should be good enough. There is too much competition and too much talent out there to be able to do that and get away with it. And that's why I said even the best creatives, I know, the people who I envy are still more than happy to prove that they can do it. And I think out of that has, you know, and I think like testing can be good, but I think it can be controversial. And I've started to see another trend emerge out of this, that I think is really interesting. And it's sort of a middle ground. And the middle ground is that there are teams that are asking people to bring in their work files, bring the sketch file, bring in a studio file, like bring in something for a project you've worked on, because I think that they realize is that and look, I know that some companies are like, Look, we want to look at the app that launched. I think it is naive to think that you know, the state that an app is in is the way it was intended to be or the way there was designed that there weren't some sort of problems or there wasn't. And that, you know, because again, there's never been an app that I've launched. And I was like, This is 100% the way I wanted it to be. Is it the reality of what it is? And is there something to be said for that? Absolutely. But I do think that the working files approach is very interesting. Because if you think about it, if I ask somebody to bring in a file that will say you've worked on could be copied, it could be a design file could be some code, like it could be like, just one of the artifacts of what it is that you do. And I asked you to walk me through it. I think within a few sentences, you're gonna have a real good sense of what somebody's role was that because if I'm hiring a designer, if you could walk me through the error states, if you can walk me through the evolution of things, even just looking at the way your file is organized is all really, really informative and interesting. And I think you get a really good sense of what people's skills are. Now again, here again, are there problems here? Of course, right? Like No, not everyone has the ability to show files or has files from other projects. Some of them are confidential, some of them, you know, they're not gonna be able to do that. So I think you can't say you have to do So we're going to exclude you. And I think also, it doesn't necessarily give you a complete picture of who somebody is. Because I think as with all these trends, these are things that we're starting to see emerge, but they have not been refined, they have not been to the place where like, Okay, great, this really works all the time. But the working files, one was one that I thought was really kind of interesting. Now, the other part of the interview process that I started to see a lot more is that, you know, there are a lot of these companies, understandably, who realize that just your straight skills, right, like the applications, you know, or the experience you have is just part of the equation, that it's really about people who have the smarts, but I think there's also some hearts, right, like they want a cultural fit there as well. Because culture matters and the character of people you hire matters in two different ways, right? Because I think one, if you have a good culture, people gravitate towards culture. And I think that in many cases, you know, a lot of teams make these mistakes where they go out and hire these really great creatives and they bring them in to really crap cultures. And I think, you know, if you follow me on Twitter, things like that, you'll know like I have an insane amount of respect for Rachel Koba, who's the head of design over at Bank America, I think she's one of the smartest best leaders who is out there in the way that she's kind of approaches these problems. And she, you know, had a quote in the report, which I'm sure I'm gonna screw up, which I'm sure she'll make funny about because he didn't get it exactly right. But the spirit of it is, she said, like, Look, the way she thinks about is you can't be like a really successful unicorn hunter and go out and hire this amazing talent, if you're gonna bring him into like this broken and really bad culture, cuz they're not going to stay. But I think, you know, what you are starting to see is that, you know, people are starting to realize more when you're gonna hire somebody, culture matters. But I think also the candidates are starting to really look at this a lot more to be able to say, look, you know, I'm going to spend a lot of time with these people. And this is gonna be something that really matters. And if I want to get satisfaction out of my work, I want to start paying attention to this more. And, you know, one of the I think this was one of the trends that had sort of like the stop, don't keep doing it on it, because one of the things that we've seen is like an attempt to understand that people will be a good fit. Some teams are turning to techniques that aren't the best way to vet them and one of the ones around This is the introduction of social engineering into the job interview process. And that's where people are really pretty much deliberately creating situations to test the kind of the emotional or cultural fit of somebody. One of the examples that I got is a company I went and visited with and they they told me about in their interview process, what they would do is, you know, they would do the phone screens, and it'd be somebody that they think would be a good fit. And they'd have come into the office, and they would sort of show them around and walk them around and show them everything. And they would make sure that at some point during that process, before they sat down for the in person interview, what they do is they'd walk them through the kitchen, and they'd make sure that whenever they left from there, they had some kind of drink, right, like a soda, a glass of water or a cup of coffee or something. And at the end of the interview, what they would do is that they would watch to see if that person would offer or would actually take the glass back to the kitchen. Right. And so like you'd think, well, that alone that sort of informative and interesting enough, but I think they took it too far. Because what they did is they had a rule where they would say Well actually, they wouldn't hire the person if they didn't at least offer or take the cup back, right? Because that was just too bad of a cultural sign. And then they knew that they weren't thoughtful enough and they weren't going to fit in. see other teams who would deliberately put trash on the floor and see if somebody pick it up or do different things like this, right? And the reason why I had said, Look, I feel like this is just a really bad trend is because you're putting way too much weight on on a scenario that isn't really a test to somebody's character, right? I think maybe you were talking you walk by the trash. You didn't see it. He really caught up in the conversation, you forgot to take the cup back, right? I mean, there's a lot of situations where I think I would have failed that and would just have completely blown it and, and so here's one of those ones where like, again, I get I get the observation, I get the insight of wanting to find people that have this balance. But for me, what you're going to do in terms of really hurting your diversity and really hurting diversity of people, of race, of gender, of sexual orientation of just even thought is really bad. And I think it's the same sort of thing you have to be careful with, even whenever you sort of do this thing about, you know, really getting people to even, like recommend other people. Right, we talked about outreaches. And recruiting, I think there's a danger there too, where, you know, if if we're going to say, and I've seen some teams who will even give quotas and say, Okay, look, enough outreach works really well, you have to reach out to X number of your friends. Could that work? Sure. Is there also a real danger there, that you are going to really hurt your diversity, you're going to really hurt your mental diversity really going to hurt your workforce diversity, like all those things, because you're going to be reaching out to people who look like you who act like you who think like you are oriented the way that you do. And that as a result, like, you know, yeah, you're gonna have your friends there, but you're not gonna have the best work and you're not gonna have the best team that you could and you're gonna propagate a lot of really long standing really big problems, especially in the technology sector, where it's like, they're just few too many white guys going around, and not enough other kind of people and other genders and other orientations that are represented there. So here again, I think, you know, that's why for me, even this kind of social engineering, I get it right, like, you know, but I think I would much more recommend that you would develop something either like an emotional or a cultural value scorecard, where you can ask about, you know, what are you these are the things that matter to your team and to your company, have a conversation around those things? How do you think the person did? What were their answers? How do you write them down and compare them against each other? And just to be more explicit and be more transparent about it? Because again, if this is about trust, what does it say? Whenever you're sort of like trying to trick somebody into an answer and then judge their entire interview in the entire process, but if they took a cut back or not, right, I mean, like, it just it feels too, disproportionate. It doesn't feel like it's right. So I think like, those are those sort of trends where it like, again, I get where it's coming from, but the way that we're expressing it just shouldn't it should not be the way that we do it. And I think a lot of this also comes down to the fact that you know, a lot of the drivers that we really have seen in this report and a lot of what we're seeing going on in industry right now is just the way that we are working The way that we want to work is fundamentally changing. And in many cases, I think the struggles that we're seeing is because companies are really struggling to keep up with that or just flat out candidly don't understand it. And you know, some of the trends that we've seen are things like, you know, what they'll describe as the gig economy and the gig economy are that there's a lot of people out there right now, who candidly just don't think that working for one company, is the way they want to live, they don't, and comes back to that word, again, they just don't trust that that company has their best interest in heart, they just feel like, you know, they don't want to be there long term, that the way that they want to work in the constraints that they want to put on them just aren't really very good or very realistic for them. And so the gig economy is that there's a lot of people who just simply go from gig to gig, and they'll take you know, kind of either going through freelance or going through short term contract or just kind of like saying, Okay, look, you know, we want to just kind of figure out and work differently. And you know, an interesting subset of this as you started to see a totally different model emerge in the ad agency space where there are Companies like group of humans, or you'll see people like the former chief creative officer at Coke, James Somerville, has just started a new group. And what they do is they say, look like we have this, this small kind of Central group of leadership. And then what we're going to do is just kind of curate this, this different talent. As we look at the client, as we look at the project, as we look at the skill set that we need, we're just going to pull in the best people we need, you know, ad hoc to be able to do that. Are there pros and cons to doing that? Sure. But I think we're also at a time where that's a much more viable business model than what it's been in the past. I think like, even if you go way back as somebody like, you know, me whenever you were, I was a beta tester in behance, like behance originally was founded in one of the things that looked at was to try to rethink the agency model and be able to kind of figure out how to distribute work like this a little bit differently. I think it just took a little bit more time for us to get here. But you're starting to see this effect, like the gig economy come down to trust and different ways of working. You're starting to see the rise in digital nomads and then these are the the realization that technology has freed everyone from their desk, right like You do not have to work in an office, you do not have to work in the traditional ways to be successful. And for a lot of people, there's just no going back from that. There's a class here, because I think, you know, for, again, for a lot of companies, they just fundamentally think that you know, for you to be productive, and for you to be working, you have to be sitting in an office. And there's a lot of design leaders and things like that, whose brains sort of melt even if where I'm at now, envision, it's like, We're nearly 1000 people, no offices, and they just don't understand how you can be creative, right? I think, you know, for in our case, we have a big advantage because when you're 100% remote, that makes it a hell of a lot easier than if some people are remote and some people aren't, but that these are now really viable ways of working. And I think again, I've seen numbers that like 74% of teams by 2025 are going to have at least you know, a good part of their team is going to be remote. And you're starting to see this because people just like they want a better work life balance, right. And they want to rethink these traditional work constructs. They want to be able to do things different And so, you know, that's why I said, we're at this really interesting intersection, where there's this huge demand, there's a lot more options that are going on out there, there are these new ways of working. And you know, there's a lot of, you know, in house teams and things like that they're starting to value design. So, you know, again, that's driving a big lift in the jobs. But, you know, it is just the fact that we need to start fundamentally rethinking what creativity is, because in many cases, for so many teams, the reason why I see them struggling, or they struggle with remote workers, is because they're trying to impose these long standing increasingly archaic ways of working onto teams that have very different dynamics and very different ways of working. I think that's why you're starting to see like the death of the file, right? Like that idea of like, oh, there's desktop file, and I work on this one thing is dying, right. It's been dying for a while, if you think about, you know, Google Sheets and Google Docs and things like that. We're very used to it. But in design tools, you're starting to see much more cloud based, much more collaborative, a much bigger emphasis on what's going on with that because again, this is a fundamental reason Structure The way that we're working, reflecting a more global nature of the workforce and a lot of other things that are going on. But here's the bottom line I'm gonna leave you with on this right is because I think, in a lot of ways, is we look at talent and a lot of ways as you think about it for the team that you're going to grow the team that you were a part of, or for, as an individual, the next team that you want to be a part of the thing that you need to start to look for. And the thing that we all need to start to recognize and invest in, is that going forward, we need to focus on cultural and emotional innovation, which with the same velocity with the same investment and with the same fervor that we have been putting into product innovation, because that's the thing, right is that, you know, whenever you go out and you work with these teams that people feel like are really innovating, they are doing things that are really different. The thing that I can tell you is like they aren't hiring people that are just that much smarter than everybody else, right. Like it's just it's not that simple. In many cases, what it is, is that the way that they find those people the way that they hire those people and more than anything, the way that they trust those people in the way They let those people work is fundamentally different. And that's the thing is that what they're doing is they're hiring smart people and they're trusting them to do their job. And so then they feel like they have a home then they want to perform, then they feel like they have skin in the game, then they're not that 84% who are just quote unquote, showing up to work every day. Because to me that like that, that is the depth of anything like because whenever I feel that way, that's whenever I'm gone, right? Because Because I, I only I'm constantly driven by this thought that I only have so many hours on this earth, I only have so many projects and so many ideas or something, and I am not going to waste them on people who don't give a shit about me. I'm not going to waste them on companies that don't appreciate what is going on. And if there are other people that are out there, I just need to go find where they are. So that again, I can become a part of something that I really care about. And again, I think I am not alone in doing that. And I think a lot of people who did not think that way, are really starting to come around to it. But it is just this fundamental shift. And like I said, it just we're being valued very, very differently than what we were before. But again, I think, you know, as with most things we saw some growing and learning to do. But I think that it is this really, really interesting moment. So I think that, you know, that's like I said, I would encourage, like, go out and download the report, I'd love to hear from you about, you know, what's in there. Is it useful? Was the format good? Did you like it? Like, you know, are there other things that you think we should be looking at or doing, I'd also love to hear from people if like, in because this is the first installment, we're going to moving on to another topic that we're working on that we're looking at probably for February, March launch window, hopefully. And I think like for there, if you've got these things, you're like, Look, I'm doing this thing. And I feel like it's really working because you know, these topics around talent, around collaboration, around leadership around design, these are the things that we're gonna keep going back to and talking about, because these are the things that matter the most, and they're going to be the most dynamic. But if you have those things, you're like, Look, I feel like I'm doing something really interesting man reach out to me because I'd love to hear about I'd love to have a conversation to just understand what's going on. And what are you doing? And where are you seeing and, and like I said, I think we're all in this together. And that's really my intent with this is to take these sort of things and share them. And like I said before, it's not meant to be go to all these things. It is meant to be to think about them, to look at them to discuss them with your team to discuss them with other people and say, Hey, do we feel like this is something we could take advantage of? Or Hey, is this something we're doing? Or Hey, is this something we should stop doing? Because that's the thing, right is that time and time again, the theme on the show comes back to the fact that like the talent you have the way you treat them, the way you support them, the way you look at creativity, that's what's gonna make all the difference. And so, like I said, I'm gonna put a link to the report in the show notes. And as always, like you can find the show notes you can find those links, related articles, all that stuff I have to do just head over to the crazy one calm, it's that crazy, the number one.com and you can find all that there. As always remember, like, Look whenever you're on your favorite pod class Cod. Yeah. See, this is What happens when you record a show for the second time when you're on your favorite podcast platform? Haha. Make sure you hit subscribe whenever you're there. So you get the latest episodes whenever those come out. And please do me a favor like take just a couple of minutes leave a review because it really does help the show. As always, like if you think this is great, you think this is full of crap. There's something you want to talk about, right? Like, you know, reach out to me on social media, you can either like the show on Facebook, just find The Crazy One podcast there. Reach out Twitter and LinkedIn are probably the best I know some people reach out on on Instagram, their notification system is just leaves a lot to be desired. And sometimes I will miss messages for weeks at a time because I just forget to hit that little request thing in there. But like reach out I'll get back to as soon as I can. If you don't hear from me in one medium, try another one. You can always go to the website do it that way. But like reach out because I think this is at its best when it's a conversation. As always, everybody down illegal wants me to remind you that the views here are just my own. They don't represent any of my current or former employers. These are just my own thoughts. And finally, I say it every time because I mean it every time but thank you for your time. I know that time is truly the only lecture Any of us have was incredibly humbled. You want to spend any of it listening to me. So go on, think about this stuff. Take a look at these trends. See what you think about it. Like I said, maybe do a few things differently. Maybe start a few things, maybe stop a few things. Maybe just have a few good conversations along the way. And as always, while you're doing it, stay crazy.