How to Get an Analytics Job
Welcome to How to Get an Analytics Job, the podcast where you build the foundation for your dream career in analytics. The goal of this podcast is to tackle the shortcomings of modern education in the analytics space by giving you advice from those actively practicing the art and science of working with data.
Our guests have included data professionals from Google, Amazon, Home Depot, PlayStation, Nordstrom and Truist (just to name a few) spanning roles from entry level, to senior, manager, VP and even a few CEOs. This has enabled us to keep a close feel for the pulse of the analytics space.
How to Get an Analytics Job
How to Get an Analytics Job Podcast ep. 138 | Featuring Chris Casitore
Hello and welcome back to the how to Get an Analytics Job podcast. So we've got a very unique episode in that we're on campus here at Greensboro College and we actually just had a board meeting, and I'm sitting here with the chairman of the board of the business school, chris Cassatore, and we're going to be talking about quite a few things. So, number one we're going to get into the background, his background, specifically his affiliation with Greensboro College and also his experience hiring one of our students Right now. It's an interesting job market. By interesting, I mean it's pretty rough. So one of the core themes here is we're going to be talking about networking, which, I mean, this is a great story. So, chris, how are you doing today? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm doing all right. I love that we got to geek out on AI earlier today.
Speaker 2:Yes, that was a fun conversation. We had a. It was an amazing conversation. I feel like a dinosaur which is I'm sitting there going. Wow, when we're having a discussion at the board meeting of we can use co-pilot for this and that, and I'm sitting here going. I only thought a co-pilot was the guy who sat on the other side of the plane.
Speaker 1:Well, there's that one guy who called it autopilot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I thought that was pretty funny. Yeah, autopilot, co-pilot, whoever it is, it's just. Yeah, it was amazing. I, I know technology has come so far and you know we and what I do, we're in the people business, so we do a lot of one-on-one interaction with people and you know to sit there and and hear, you know, copilot can take everything and just turn it into something. It's just it's amazing.
Speaker 1:So I guess for the audience like what, what's your background? What are you doing?
Speaker 2:right now. So I am the vice president of sales for LGI homes. I oversee all sales operations for the state of South Carolina. We are the 14th largest builder in the country publicly traded on the NASDAQ. Our ticker symbol is LGIH Definitely a great time to go ahead and buy our stock right now.
Speaker 3:I would recommend it.
Speaker 2:But no, been with LGI for a little over six years now. Just celebrated six years working with them back in January the 2nd, so probably hands down, I have to say, the best company I've ever worked for in my entire life. That's awesome, and I worked for a pretty large company prior to. Came from the retail industry, worked for one company prior for about 15 years, on and off a little bit, and so I'm a little bit of a business retail junkie and nerd. Yeah, you know how we were talking about all the stuff around here. I get a little geeked out by some of that stuff. That's good, you know everyone talks about they got their own little nerdy stuff. I like to read the excerpts of earning reports from the retail side wow, so you get your finger like on the pulse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love this stuff like it's just, it's, you know, I I just get, I get nerded out by it. I just I feel so cool because you've learned a little bit about the consumer psychology of everything. You know who we are and all that sort of fun stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, I think there's something to that in that if you're genuinely interested in the work that you do every day, you're not going to just show up a little bit more. It's going to be like an exponential curve over 5, 10, 15 years right.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you dive in and, like I remember there was times I had a previous employer where I was looking at the clock going all right, when am I getting out of here? Right, a previous employer where I was looking at the clock going all right, when am I getting out of here? When am I done for the day? But I mean, the other night I was sitting in my office till about 8.30 and going, oh my God, we so you just got lost in the work. I got lost in the day and just like it, didn't even feel like it, and I'm just like man, I ate lunch at 11 and I didn't even know I was starving. I'm just going to go. This is I've had a great day. There's so much fun, it's fun work that we get to do Um, and you just get lost in it, you know. So it's it's, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:It sounds like you found a cheat code.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah, it's a. It's a rare circumstance that you get to find yourself with the right company at the right time and, um, yeah, I definitely found that with with LGI Homes, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1:All right, so I've been on the board, I think, for six, seven years. You've been on the board even longer than I have. Yeah, so what's your overall affiliation with Greensboro College?
Speaker 2:So I'm a graduate of Greensboro College, graduated class of 08, graduated with a business management major. With a business management major, I played lacrosse here for three years. I came here, I transferred into Greensboro College after my freshman year. I mean, I love the place. I've always been coming back ever since I graduated, come back for lacrosse games every now and again and just love the vibe of what campus brings. You know, it's a small school right downtown. It is just. It feels like home. Every time I come back it's just like man, all the memories keep coming back of I lived over there.
Speaker 2:That was my dorm room. Yeah, yeah, I remember studying for a final. Now, it's funny, upstairs in the library I'm like where's all the books, where's everything? When you walk in the library on the left-hand side, where now this is the collaboration area, I remember cramming for my exams there. I remember just marketing and taking calculus. My God, this is going to be brutal. So, yeah, so it was. Uh, I love it here. Um, I ended up getting on the board. Um, this was I want to say.
Speaker 2:This is about my 10th year on the board I've been uh, chairing the board now, for I believe this is my third year, so that's awesome, yeah a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:All right, so I feel like this is probably one of the coolest things we can talk about is all right, so graduated in 08, gone off into the business world. Now it's kind of come back around full circle in that you actually hired a GC graduate, so you want to just kind of tell us about that story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So, um, you know, I, every time I come to campus for a board meeting, I always end up speaking to a couple of classes, and one thing I always leave everyone with is my contact information. If you ever have a question, you need help with a resume, an interview, whatever it is, maybe just some interviewing techniques, some advice you can call me, I will answer you, send me an email, a text message. I will reach out to you, we'll strike up a conversation and I'll help you any way I can. Well, this student reached out to me and said hey, I would love some of your time. And I said, okay, well, when are you available? He said, how about right now? And I was like now works, let's do it. And so we struck up a conversation.
Speaker 2:This was his sophomore year, and so I've seen him grow from a sophomore. I made a promise to him. I said, hey, when you graduate, I will come to your graduation. Sure enough, last year got to watch him or well, technically, this year, last school year, got to watch him graduate. It was really cool and we hired him straight out, the one thing that we really looked for with him and I actually talked about this with one of the classes earlier today that I spoke to was the one thing that GC has is a blue-collar mentality. Right, the people here are blue-collar in mindset and work ethic. Right, they're the people who are going to take their lunch pail to work and their hard hat and just grind and get after it.
Speaker 1:Right, they're not the I call it the pinkies up atmosphere.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, there's not a lot of trust funds running around. You know, and everyone works hard, and that's the one thing that I look for as a hiring manager is you give me someone with the right attitude, the right character and the right work ethic we can work with. That I can teach you how to do the other stuff. I can't teach you how to be a hard worker and have a good attitude. I can't teach you how to do any of that.
Speaker 1:So that's more just kind of characters kind of what you can't teach character. It's like something you kind of it's instilling you right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like um. It's either you got it or don't. You don't right. So just like a um, an athlete there's a lot of athletes here on campus.
Speaker 2:We can't. I can't teach someone how to be tall. I can't teach you how to be fast. I can maybe increase your speed, but I can't teach you how to just be fast to begin with. I I can maybe help you get incrementally quicker, but I'm not going to teach how to be super fast. So you either got it or you don't Gotcha. Yeah. So we look for just the hard workers, right? We? You know, we look for people. We build an organization on character, not characters, and there's a big difference between. So you either have you got to have character, not characters, and there's a big difference between. So you either have you got to have character right, and there's a lot of people who act like characters, right A bunch of chuckleheads Like they're method acting or they're playing a role.
Speaker 1:Like I'm in my villain era, so to speak. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And. But the character is what are you doing when no one's watching you? Right, I'm not a micromanager. I'm never going to stand over your shoulder and say, john, what are you doing today? How did you do With the Elon Musk email that's going around? What did you do this week? Right, send me the five things. I'm going to watch your work. Your work is going to speak for itself, Right.
Speaker 1:Which we were talking off air about promotions and you know some companies. They need to post jobs publicly. I guess it depends on regulations, maybe around size, but you were saying that once you get the job, how you show up to that is your interview for your potential promotion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, every day you show up to work, it's your interview to keep your job or get promoted for the next job, and I think we all lose sight of that. Instead of just saying I've been here six years, I'm owed this.
Speaker 1:Well, you're not owed anything. That's an entitlement Correct.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're not owed anything. You are owed the opportunity because you were accepted on for the role. What you do with that opportunity, well, that's up to you, right? Um, but no, we just we look for people with good character, good ethical behavior, you know, and those are the people who fit well within our organization and intend to thrive. And right now we actually have two greensboro college graduates who work in our organization outside of myself. Oh, that's awesome, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I think it's interesting how things have changed, because back two or three years ago, specifically in the analytics space, it was booming Like you could get a job so easily. Oh yeah, you just go do one-click apply on LinkedIn. You hit 100, 200. I mean, they take five seconds to do that.
Speaker 1:And it seems like the market has constricted somewhat to where I mean I guess I'll share my personal experience. Back around nine, ten months ago I was on the job market. I applied to 196 jobs, got interviews at five companies and got two offers. So those numbers are not great. I mean let's, let's just round that up to 200. I mean that's what. A 2.5 application to interview, yeah, and I mean the 40 I guess is decent, but think about how much I had to push to get that out there, versus when you build relationships and you nurture them over time, like I mean we rj bear, who's on the board? He's the uh what's? I think his role is like head of sales and business analytics at contour. Yeah, he's, he's up there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know his.
Speaker 1:He's got a really cushy nice title, but two years well-earned title, by the way but two years ago he introduced me to a guy by the name martin who is the vp of an it for a construction company.
Speaker 1:We kept in context, I kept trying to get them to come and work with my students and like carve out a project. But I mean we kept up through email. We've gone to lunch a few times. Turns out they're looking to hire their first business analyst and I'm now in the third round of interviews for them, which I mean think about the, I mean from your perspective as a hiring manager. I mean they went through a recruiting firm, I think, to get the other person. But then this other candidate, the two that they're looking at, you know one is a known quantity and has been honest and has been, you know, trying to help you. Um, it feels and I don't want to like, who knows, maybe the other candidate is just a better fit and they need to go with their best interest. But by quartering these kind of of opportunities, I feel like you're kind of stacking the deck in your favor yeah, yeah, a lot of companies will like we call it.
Speaker 2:We minimize risk, right. So when we are able to recruit the individual recruit, like, if I go out and I find someone and I have an interaction, whether I'm I'm buying a car or I'm buying a piece of real estate or whatever it is that I'm I'm because we're all consumers at the end of the day of something, right, when I'm out there buying something and if I have a great interaction and I go, my God, I'm buying something because of this individual. I may be paying more for that bottle of water, but because that person did such a great job of building a connection with me, I'm now buying a water that may cost 10% more than somewhere else, right. So networking is has been very beneficial for a lot of us. Right, and building that connection and I think that's kind of where we're heading here is, you know, we we minimize risk when we network and find the right people.
Speaker 2:Because I minimize risk when we network and find the right people, um, because I I get to know, like the, the gentleman that we hired um from gc just last. I know his work ethic, I know his character, right, and that right there, if, if I was interviewing you or craig or anybody else. I have to. I'm taking a gamble, right, taking a gamble on what your your intentions are, what your character is. I'm I'm doing references on you and I'm asking you questions during the interview to get to know who you are, cause I know I can teach you how to do anything, but I need to figure out who you are as an individual and, from a sales perspective, what I buy from you, right, and do I want to work with you every single day. So that's what we look for. This guy checked all the boxes for us. He's a little green, right, he's never done real estate before, but that's fine. He doesn't come with some of the extra baggage that we have to reprogram him and teach him Right.
Speaker 1:That's actually an interesting point I heard years ago of one way of reframing lack of experience is hey, I don't have any bad habits, so yeah, and there is a. You know, before I got into analytics I sold insurance door to door. So being able to persuade and influence people is really, really valuable. Yeah, and I think, specifically in the analytics space, a lot of people kind of want to just sit in like the the back room code in darkness and it's not really uh. Well, number one that's not really realistic. But then also, too, you've got to interview, you gotta. You can't go and talk to a computer screen and get a job Like it's just not, it doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2:No, no, and we do our first interaction with someone when we are looking to interview. Well, when we interview them, we are doing it via Zoom, but we're doing it face-to-face. It's not the AI-generated questions that we're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess a little side tangent here. I guess a little side tangent here. I didn't realize that HR companies are doing AI screening now, where the AI asks you questions specifically about your resume and then you respond in a video recording which man back. I think this was nine years ago when I interviewed for my internship at Volvo. I had to do just a screen recording, which was so awkward. Yeah, but it sounds like the same thing, but it's just like an extra layer of sophistication.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it takes the humanization out of it, right yeah, we're in this big digital world right now and I know that we're looking to be efficient with everything, but we still can't forget the human connection that we right we have to have, right.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, it is a legitimate problem though in the recruitment, hr, whatever you have it space and that I saw. I saw a LinkedIn post about um. Mr Beast was hiring a video editor. He made a LinkedIn post or a LinkedIn job posting. Guess how many people applied for it. I've got to assume millions, 35,000. Okay, which I mean is less than millions, but still, how do you go through 35,000 applications Right, like that is an insurmountable task if you want to just do it through human labor. So that's kind of where AI is definitely solving the problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I could see AI helps us out with that, because one of the things that will disqualify you with us is spelling errors on your resume with us. So that's kind of how we can start to weed out, because it's the attention to detail, right? Yeah, um, around 1% of the people who apply for our organization ever get hired on. I mean, we are extremely selective about who we hire. We take the best of what is out there, right, and so whether we have to go find them or they come to us, we're hunting every day for the best of the best and we're not going to lower our bar for anybody, just to the best you know we're. And we're not gonna lower our bar for anybody just to say, well, we need, we need a body. We're not just gonna go hire a body, we're gonna hire the right person, you know and um, because otherwise we're just gonna see our quality go down, we're gonna see our, our customer experience go down, and that's not that. It's extremely damaging to an organization that's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I definitely haven't really thought about, you know, the hiring market as far as the aspect of like risk mitigation from the hiring person's standpoint. But you're right, I mean, like you don't, you don't know these people. I mean so, getting to know them a little bit, you can kind of, you know, get like a gut feeling of, yes, this is a good fit, or, you know, this person seems a little bit shady, I can't put my finger on it, but Well, think about it, right?
Speaker 2:So if you're hiring just for let's just call it a manager, right? Okay, and let's just say you know a manager mid-level manager is going to make $80,000 in a salary, right? Well, they're in charge of a few other people, so that one decision. And let's say they have three people that report directly to them, right? So that person is not just an $80,000 salary, you now have the salaries of the others in in jeopardy at the moment, because if this person's a bad apple, this one manager is a bad apple, is going to infect everybody else, just ruin the overall culture of that department.
Speaker 2:Now I've got to, I'd have to replace the manager. I have to replace each individual that reported directly to them, and that's just salary. Now I've got new training expense. I have benefits that I've been paying for with these individuals. That's money, that's capital, that's going out. The window.
Speaker 1:You've got the opportunity. Cost the sales that you're missing out on.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, yeah, I mean so we can dive into the analytics on that and how much it costs. It's a headache, it's. That is the exponential one, right? A migraine, yeah, I mean, buy stock in Excedrin, you know, but it is um it, it really is just you have one bad hire, especially, especially as a manager. Um it, it can really cost an organization just a lot, a lot Gotcha. I mean we're talking millions of dollars, I mean in the real estate market, right, yeah, just by one individual. And I tell every manager who's looking, going into management, I spoke to the management class earlier today and I said, well, why do you guys want to become managers? Why do you want to?
Speaker 3:do this.
Speaker 2:And they're like oh well, you know, like helping da-da-da-da. I'm like that's great, that's all good and well, but what you really need to be thinking about is you are the topic of conversation at every dinner table for every one of your employees. Ah, that's true. Yeah, because everything you do or don't do is going to be brought up, because, you know, think about when you get home from work and you sit down and you're having supper with your partner and just going, hey, how was work today? Oh my god, chris, he did this and oh my god, john did that.
Speaker 2:Craig couldn't work the soundboard, for anything like this was horrible. Just kidding, craig, you're doing a great job. Yeah, craig's the gold star hire yeah, he has not, has not cost us anything. So, um, but when you think about it, right that you are the topic of conversation at every dinner table and you are directly affecting every single person, every mouth at that dinner table. So it's you. You have to wear it with a, with a badge of honor, and also know that you are responsible to these people, right? You're responsible to help guide them to their success. They've got to go out and do it right and you've got to be willing to care more about their success than you do your own, because as long as you help all of them, at the end of the day you're going to get every goal that you could have ever imagined.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay, All right. So I feel like we've discussed kind of the the what's at stake? Hiring a person. Do you mind kind of getting into like how do you think about structuring an interview? Or do you have any questions that are kind of like, if they get this wrong, they're, they're out pretty much? I got it Like. For example, one of the questions that I got hit with in an analytics interview and this was kind of the knockout question was is it better to be good and on time or late and perfect, so like?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean it's, it's not really, there's not a correct, right answer, but for that organization it shows you how you think Correct and it you know. If, if you were working in the government you know maybe you'd go one side, but working in merchandising you'd go a different way, sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for us, and I'll just speak for me. You know, what I look for is first, how do you show up to the interview? Are you on time, right, are you? How are you dressed for the day? Right, you're here for a job interview, right? Yeah, you can't be. We're not. We're not on a you know, the sports bar grabbing a beer? Right, we are. We are. One of the last interviews I had someone actually showed up in a hawaiian shirt and some that's funny, yeah, and some sit there going, all right, well, I know the answer to this you are not moving forward. Yeah, we're all in agreement that we're not moving forward, but, um, we still give the, the gentleman, the, the respect of the interview and yeah, yeah, all that sort of fun stuff.
Speaker 2:But, it's like a walking red flag. Yeah, I'm just like you understand you're. You are the one asking us for a job. We are not asking you to come, right? I didn't come to your luau and say, hey, do you want to come work for our company? You came to us for a job, right? You know how do you communicate and one of the things that we also we have our admins at the front of the office. They're our office managers. They're the first face of the organization that any one of our customers see. They're the first face of the organization that any one of our customers see. I want to know, and the first question I'm going to ask our office managers is hey, how did they talk to you?
Speaker 1:It's like going on a date and it's like they treat the waiter bad.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, it's like a subtle sign of character, like what you were talking about earlier, like, are you going to talk to these people like they're beneath you, Because I don't care who you are, we are all. We all put our pants on one leg at a time, right, you know, we are all just normal people. Um, we all want to be happy, but I don't want you being a jerk to anybody in our team, because that is a that's a non-negotiable for us. You, we are going to support each other through the ins and outs, the ups and downs, and if you're not treating anybody with respect, especially on a day of a job interview, right like I, I can already tell your your social awareness is like or emotional intelligence is has completely left the building.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and I guess so in your space. It's, you know, salesfocused right. So like those are very, very important I think in the analytics sector. Being a little bit less socially dialed in, you can kind of get away with that, although if it's so bad that it's like you're a pain to work with, like that's probably going to disqualify, they're going to step that out, probably within the first. I mean it's I don't think it's as swiftly as a hawaiian t-shirt, but it's within the first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a few minutes yeah, I mean, you still show up very respectful, right, um, with a suit and tie, if you have it, or sport coat and button up. Look presentable, right? You're looking for a job, right? And then, as far as analytics, you may not have to communicate a whole lot, right? Like, on the sales side, we are doing nothing but talking all day. On the analytics side, it's going to be a little bit different, right?
Speaker 2:You may want to know how do you structure your day, how do you stay focused in on what you have to do? How quick can you break everything down? But then I also want to know how can you communicate to the rest of us what the data is showing, right? Because, like, if I need you to break down, you know a balance sheet for me. I mean, there's a whole bunch of numbers. Hey, how do we increase revenue? How can we decrease cost? Right, where, where are some of our red flags? And you can tell me, but I need you to to tell me concisely what that is right. So you still have to communicate, not maybe not as much, but still need you to communicate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean there's definitely the critical thinking, the business acumen, the technical skills, but like all of that's kind of lost if you fumble and can't explain it Correct In a way that's coherent and also concise. I feel, like a lot of people. You know, like we've started doing some mock interviews and you know I always throw tell me about yourself as like the starter kind of icebreaker question. You know some people will ramble for like 10 minutes and you got to cut them off. Um, I mean, they're not looking for, like you know it was a cold winter morning.
Speaker 1:You know, they're not, it's. It's not like a autobiography, it's like okay, I mean, don't read your resume line by line, but frame it up in a way that like what's relevant here.
Speaker 2:Give me a good elevator speech Real quick. Who are you? Tell me a little bit about you, I mean and that's also to get the candidate nice and comfortable and loose, right, because we're all. Right, I think every company leads with that the way. I don't think that's yeah, I think everyone does. Hey, just tell me a little bit about you, just so we can all take a breath well, yeah, I, I usually tell my general.
Speaker 1:actually, I would love to get your your input on this. My advice is usually it's roughly three sentences what you've been doing, what you are currently doing and what you want to do, and like plug it into the company, um, and, and maybe like it could be one or two sentences or three, but it's like you want it pretty concise, sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's. I mean, that's right on par for what it should be. Yeah, you don't want to get too. I mean, if you're 15 minutes in and we're sitting here having a conversation about you know who are you? I'm probably lost, and I don't even know if you found who you are. Yet, right, you may have to be that senior. At the end of when, at the end of graduation, I'm going away for a while, I gotta go find myself, because it just took you 15 minutes to answer. Well, tell me a little bit about you you know Well.
Speaker 1:There's also, too, there's an opportunity within that question, uh, to make some emotional bits. You know what I mean when I say that. I think so, so almost like conversational hooks, like like some things that are relevant. You know, like we talked about ai, you know well, in the future, I'm really interested in seeing, kind of, where the intersect goes as far as ai and analytics. That's where I want to go in the future. Where do you see it? By the way?
Speaker 1:I'm interested to hear your thoughts see that I'm going to get a little meta here. That was a perfect segue of an emotional bit. Yeah, so you mentioned a topic and then they ask about it yeah, where do I? So I've been doing some research on. I should have brought this up in the board meeting. But, um, so have you?
Speaker 1:Are you guys using dynamic, uh sales, microsoft's dynamic crm system? No, so the newest iteration of microsoft crm system has embedded ai. So, like, it will take notes on your calls with clients. It will also take details about them and then, when certain criteria is met, it will draft an email and say hey, you should send this email to x person because x relevant. You know the tariffs have been lifted and it can also help you create content that you can share with them. As far as like, yeah, so that's where I think ai and analytics are going. Is it's it's not only just giving insights and then pushing it off to the decision makers? Is that some of it is going to be automatic? So you set up the system where certain criteria is met.
Speaker 1:Oh, our stock, our, our wood, our wood stock has dipped below 86%. Time to automatically queue an order to the warehouse to order more of that. So I think that's where it's going. Where it's less reactive, I'm not. Hey, mr Vice President, what are you focused on today? Oh, cutting costs. All right, I'm gonna go dig in the data and find you something. It's much more proactive, interesting. I mean, I could be off like. This is where this is. What I'm seeing is the state of where it is now. Yeah, I don't know how I haven't, I haven't actually gotten to do an implementation or work with a company that is on that level of sophistication, but I mean, how does that hit you?
Speaker 2:you know, as far as, like a I mean I think it's awesome because my whole thought into ai when I was coming out was the terminator right.
Speaker 1:I mean we may be there. Rj was talking about moore's law. Yeah, it's. We don't even know what's going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and when I think it was Gabe who was making a mention of there was these two AI botches talking to each other and they like damn near exploded because oh yeah, they just started talking in like yeah, I was like see, this is the part that just freaks me out.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:This is where I'm the dinosaur of the group and I'm just like. You know. I'm at the end of the day, I'm a people person. I wanted to sit, have a conversation with you. Let's get the, let's get the um, the computers and everything's throw them out. Let's get a pen and a piece of paper and let's figure this thing out together. You know and it's one of the things we talked about today during the meeting was how do we take ai, still use it, but still have the ability to have a conversation like how, how do we not dumb it down for somebody?
Speaker 2:you know what I mean actually, I don't know what you were so like we were talking about how, um, um, when we rely too much on ai, right, right, we're losing the actual employee. That person now becomes redundant. How do we not have so many redundancies? But how do we use it to be efficient in what we're doing? Like I forget who was making the mention earlier today of they use Copilot to go ahead notes, and you know, that way they can be more interactive in the conversation and more engaged rather than going right.
Speaker 1:What did you say again yeah, because if I'm, if I'm running a note, I pulled out a, my audition is right here it's.
Speaker 2:It's not on you and, like you know, maybe ideating or actively listening and you're able to make more of a connection that way and it's more a more memorable experience for the person who's sitting across from you. Right and that's where I think ai can be extremely helpful for us, right is, hey, give me the recap of the conversation with john. How did it know any task items that I need from that? And then boom, here you go. This is what I know, what I need to do, and I just was solely focused on what you had to say and listening and understanding what you had to say, versus listening to think about how I got to make a note and how I'm going to respond to you. But I'm truly having a conversation with John about to you. But I'm truly having a conversation with John about hey, this is, you know, we're talking about analytics or sales or whatever it may be, right? So it just it's. It's really interesting, um, scary at the same time.
Speaker 1:I was going to say yeah, that could happen, or yeah, or it could be a desolation.
Speaker 2:I hope not that one.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, so the AI stuff is, is is interesting. Um, I feel like there is a wide gap between what is like talked about and theorized and what is boots on the ground being applied right now. And I mean we were talking about the student use case in my case studies, business analytics class. Like the scale of the content that we can create is just. I mean, it would take like A graphic designer, producer, video editor, like hours upon hours and it's like we're going to sit down here and record for an hour and then we could leverage Riverside's AI and just chop that up into I don't know 20 posts. That's a whole month's worth of content to put on the social media calendar right there. That's scary.
Speaker 2:That's scary, cool, cool, but not like I mean it's just it's so like my brain just doesn't compute that stuff, you know really, yeah, like I'm like, wow, that is like I when we're seeing the studio earlier today, I'm like this is so cool, tell me about this yeah, you did look like a kid in a candy shop when we got in here and you were like the lights.
Speaker 1:What does that?
Speaker 2:button do, can it play music, shoot fireworks? And Craig's like yeah, we can shoot fireworks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's got the like da-dun-tsh big little button that he can push whenever, yeah, I was like you know streamers or something, but you know, maybe next time, yeah, really it. How technology and this whole digital world that we're in, um and where I've I think it could be helpful for um, our company, is we're able to to track consumer engagement right and see how we are interacting with customers. You know, back in the day, you think you know when I, when I graduated not that long ago, by the way, it was not that long 2008. I'm still 39. I'm a young guy. Was it this century? Yeah, I was talking to one of the classes. I was like, just guys. No, I'm still pretty young. Right, I know the gray hair is going to fool you, but I'm still pretty young.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my sister got a shirt for Christmas from her daughter that said be patient, I was born last century.
Speaker 2:I tell my kids I'm older than Google, and they're like, no, and I'm like, no, really I'm older than Google, but no, we're able to. Like you think, years ago, when I graduated, if I wanted to talk, like if I needed to find out information about something, I'd have to call and find out about it. Now we've got a supercomputer right here, you know, and we are able to just really get into. You know, hey, you can. The consumer now is so educated on everything. Right, they know everything there is to know. And we think about, you know, greensboroboro college. There's this prospective students. They know everything there is to know about greensboro before they even step on campus, right, and so, like, when we're touring here with my daughter earlier, it's, she knows a whole lot about the school already, a lot of stuff that she's already done research on. I'm like I don't even know about that stuff. I'm like where did you learn that? So I looked it up. I'm like, all right, so, yeah, you know, we're in this digital world where we can, we're able to find everything right.
Speaker 2:And the one thing that we we may lose sight of is how is the customer interacting with us, right? Are they? Are they calling us? Are they looking at us on the internet? You know where on the internet? Where. Where on the internet, where on social media. How long and this is where you guys come into play right Is how often are they watching a video? How long are they watching a video for what video is giving that spike? Right, we were talking about this earlier. You look at a long-form conversation that we're having right now. How many people have turned this thing off already? Yeah, since conversation like we're having right now how many people?
Speaker 2:have turned this thing off already, which, yeah, since I'm on here, probably a lot. But when, when do you see spikes and what's interesting to people? Right, and all this analytic stuff, and we can use ai to kind of break it all down and find out what's, you know, really big and important to somebody, and that's how we can just be extremely effective and send the brightest people after that consumer who's in it for that specific thing. Well, it's.
Speaker 1:It's what you're talking about. Sounds like social listening, which Craig you, we literally worked on an in your. So Craig was. Craig was in my capstone course last semester last year and we worked on a social listening project. But Craig explain last year and we worked on a social listening project, but Craig explain what do we do on that project?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was really cool. The people we were working for it was a nonprofit and they're trying to raise money, so this is like we need exposure and we had this social listening tool that would let us see. We could write up a query and see every single tweet on Twitter that has anything to do with this topic and every single tweet on Instagram or post on Instagram that has to do with this topic. How many times did this hashtag get used? Is this topic really big on Tik TOK, but nobody's talking about it on Instagram, and so it was super cool to see, because the platforms are different. It's not just like all the social medias are just the same thing. They actually have their own deal. Like Twitter is long form text. A lot of the stuff that's really successful is people writing threads and then on TikTok it's seven second videos. It's like a snapshot of your attention.
Speaker 3:Yeah, very different To get somebody's attention on there, but then on YouTube a lot of people are making 15 minute on there, but then on YouTube a lot of people are making 15-minute, 20-minute long, almost like mini-documentary videos. So the amount of attention span and how you're going to capture that audience is completely different from platform to platform. It's really interesting, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. Also thanks, craig. I just wanted to plug Craig and his brilliance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Craig. Shout out to Craig. This is where the fireworks go off.
Speaker 1:Thank you, brilliance. Yeah, craig, you're shout out to craig, this is where the fireworks go. Yeah, especially, uh, because, yeah, I mean the social listening aspect is. I mean, it's creepy a little bit like we're listening, like I don't know, have you?
Speaker 2:seen that show succession where we were talking shows earlier.
Speaker 1:I'm sitting here going, wow, I haven't seen anything well, there was a scene where, like, they work for this major media, collaborate and and they're coming up with slogans and they're like, how about we're listening? And they're like, well, we are listening through their devices. So maybe we should avoid that. It was just a funny little skit right there, but, chris, this has been awesome. Do you have any, I guess, to kind of close out the podcast. Do you have any like parting advice for anybody? I mean, it doesn't have to necessarily be those looking to get an analytics job, but just in general.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it can be used for analytics. It can be used for anything. Go find the job that no one really wants to go do, right, that is, everyone wants to do the easy thing, right? No one wants to do the hard job. No one wants to put in, you know, 13 hour days and I get it, nor do I. But if you want to that we, when we look at people who retire early, right, right. What we don't see, we see oh, they've made a good amount of money, they were good savers, good investors, or they just got lucky. Your mom and dad took care of them, right, a lot of times. What we don't see is someone like myself who's putting a 13-, 14-hour days, years at a time, right, doing the hard job. And go do that and you'll have a job for life. It'll be easy to get hired. You will become indispensable to an organization. You will absolutely prove your worth 10 times over and everyone will say we need to have John or Craig, we got. We got to have Craig.
Speaker 1:We got to have Craig John David's old now and we need craig, so we need the up-and-comer yeah, we need craig, and you know they'll say, man, we, we can't lose craig.
Speaker 2:Craig is important to us. So, um, yeah, just go find the hard job, do that and you'll be all right awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, chris, thank you so much. This has been a blast this is my pleasure.
Speaker 2:I've had so much fun. Craig, you've done a great job. Thank you, yep. Great job. This has been, uh, it's been pretty awesome. You've done a great job. Thank you, yep Great job this has been.
Speaker 1:it's been pretty awesome. You guys have a great setup here. Awesome, that felt smooth, right.
