The Invisible Skyscrapers Podcast

Episode 16. How to recruit differently in a world with limited engineers

• Erika Hamilton • Season 1 • Episode 16

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Brad and Erika share their insights, lessons learned and their likes and dislikes when it comes to recruiting.

They also reflect on how contributing mindfully to the creation of a team and culture, has led to a range of positive outcomes, enjoyed by staff and clients alike.

Join the conversation over on H6's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hut-six

Brad:

Let's do it. Okay. Welcome to the Hut Six podcast, Invisible Skyscrapers. This is episode 16. I've actually got it right this time, but generally I say episodes 7,046 going on the world wide web and here today we've got, I won't say it, but we've got Erika who's in charge of our recruitment. Now everybody, there's about 400,000 more jobs in Australia than there are people. Most people I say that to, don't believe me, but it's actually the truth. So recruitment is a problem, and how do we recruit in a world with limited engineers or just slash people? How do we do it? Erika, here you go. Give me the big answer.

Erika:

Yeah, I think this is actually a really interesting question and I think there's a lot of different factors that come into this and I was actually talking to some people about this last night, in that I think there's a few different things in, I mean, we'll talk about in, in Australia,

Brad:

and it's not just about money. Let's get that off the table

Erika:

No. And, I think as a, from an employer side of thing, I look at, you know, and I've said the wrong numbers before, but Brad said the statistic before about 400,000 less people compared to jobs. And I read that the, ACS, who's a industry body in, cyber, said that 96% of ads for people who work in it, which again, is a very broad industry, require a bachelor degree, like as a minimum. When I read that last week, in Startup Daily, I kind of had a bit of, you know, pause because one out of our five engineers has a bachelor degree.

Brad:

well, that stops 96% of people. It's applying 96%

Erika:

of people from applying and I was talking about this last night in that we've got such an amazing team of, of engineers and always have. That I think that if someone's working, full time in, in a hospo job or any other job has their family a life and, and whatever else they've got going on. Plus they're perfecting a craft in an entirely different field, after hours, with their own time and research and everything that should be valued as the same as a bachelor degree, if not higher, because you actually care and you're actually interested in that role.

Brad:

I wonder why we don't have RPL in that space.

Erika:

Yeah and I, I look at our team and Luke, who's, a genius, he doesn't have a bachelor degree.

Brad:

he doesn't

Erika:

an organisation to pass him over, just because he doesn't have a piece of paper, I think is, you know, a complete waste.

Brad:

Yes.

Erika:

Like that's,

Brad:

I would agree.

Erika:

It doesn't doesn't factor in a holistic approach and, and segueing into how we recruit here at Hut Six, before we kind of go any further, we always do, a personality profile and we always do, a coding test. The test has changed a little bit over, over the years, but, we do that before even look at a resume, before we look at even like a name or, there's no kind of bias beyond anything. That as soon as you email me, I send, that straight back. Depending on what your outcome is, If you say you're a senior engineer, but the test says otherwise, then that's a different,

Brad:

But it doesn't mean we can't offer them a job either.

Erika:

We we can't offer them. Yeah. We can offer them something

Brad:

Something a bit lower maybe.

Erika:

I think it also comes into the scaling of staff in that it's quite hard to recruit in the engineering space, cause it's hard to know what makes someone a senior, what makes someone a mid and junior. I read another really good article talking about how as you start as a junior and it was written from the perspective that you do have a, a higher education of, of a bachelor degree or as a minimum, you come in with quite a high level of knowledge, but low experience and then ideally as you grow, that experience grows to become a senior and a you know,. People, people wanna be full stack and, and everything else. That experience should then out lie your knowledge because you've know enough from, other articles and research, but you've also got the experience to kind of back you up and you've got that experience there to help you then make critical thinking decisions of going, Well, this is how this stack should work. But we don't know if AWS is gonna fold in 10 years. Like we have no way knowing that.

Brad:

no.

Erika:

But you've got the knowledge and the experience to go, We don't know what that unknown variable will look like, this is what we can do anyway to protect ourselves and you can put that lens on it, but how do you put that on a job ad? I don't know,

Brad:

No, you don't and the other thing, this is a slight digression, the other thing I would say about bachelor, uh, type degrees and stuff like that is I do actually think it stops people from learning more. And I actually think the reasons why we've got such geniuses working in our team is because they're not bachelor focused. They don't feel as though they've reached the pinnacle of what they're ever gonna achieve and unlike other industries where it's encouraged, like being a doctor, for example, encouraged to do that professional development.

Erika:

Well, you have to.

Brad:

Well, you have but, but in our industry often that's not encouraged.

Erika:

But I think even like if you were looking luxury learner industry, firms like Accenture and, JP Morgan and stuff who, who specialise in consulting. It's very much expected that once you've got your bachelor, you then do your masters, you do an honors and there is that path in a, in a consulting in other professional services firms. That path is kind of clear and outlined. So yeah, when we are recruiting it has been hard because there are so less few people for those jobs. But I think the main thing is like when we do recruit, we have these kind of holistic experiences. Not everyone likes the test. I've had, probably half a dozen people go back and say, I'm not doing a test. And I go, That's fair enough but we'd need to see a bit more of your previous work experience then, like we'd need to see quite extensive GitHub repository or we'd, you know, we need to see something, and I've had a few people who've then gone, Actually, I'm not gonna provide that, so thanks anyway.

Brad:

Oh, it's a bit of a red flag

Erika:

How can I give you a job if I don't know what you can do.

Brad:

Exactly.

Erika:

So it's probably not, um,

Brad:

and just so that anybody listening, the personality profiles is the standard DISC that a lot of people do. It's not necessarily pigeonhole people, but it's just to see where they fit within the current That's it. So that personalities will get along. I've had an experience of five perfectionists all on the same team, and that wasn't fun and not that you think perfectionist is what you want, it isn't necessarily what you want all the time.

Erika:

Well, adding on from that, I think a lot of the time people say, you know, we've got uh, Amy Hill starting, probably once this is already aired, joining our team and, I was talking to someone about it and they were like, Oh, do they get along with you and Brad? And I was like, Yes. And I'm like, Okay, great. Cause that's kind of the benchmark in hiring someone to work closely with Brad and myself, in a non-technical field, they'd wanna do that. That's a bit more important than where someone's been to uni, is more like their fit and also like the cultural add to a company. So I think if you only hire people who are the same or who have only the same personality profile, or the same experience, you are not really going anywhere.

Brad:

No and then if you hire somebody who has an abrasive attitude towards others, it's very, very difficult for them to be able to collaborate and work in a true agile sense.

Erika:

Mm.

Brad:

on a team, if they're got a very abrasive, standalone, lone wolf sort of attitude. That is very difficult in a team. So that's also a part of the recruitment too.

Erika:

Yeah and once we get through the personality profile and the, coding tests and I get all their information. We will often then go to interview and then at an interview that we then can ask those extra questions being like, these are things that have kind of come up on the, on the profile can you tell us an example of how you've reacted in a situation like this? And that's when you kind of get to hear the nuance and, you can kind of see if people have the, emotional intelligence or the, the self reflection to go, I do often struggle with, you know, not having defined work requirements. I find it really hard if it's not a, you know, cause we've had people work here who've really struggled without having a fully detailed recipe. Then we've had people who don't want that at all. So,

Brad:

Yeah.

Erika:

It's knowing what kind of strengths are there.

Brad:

Coming back to Amy's questions here, we sort of skipped across, a little bit of this. Would you say, in your role, Erika, when we've interviewed people together, have we had something that's completely caught us by surprise? Have we had any engineers that we've interviewed that we, or other positions where we, I can't think of anything at the moment. How it was different to previous recruiting experiences?

Erika:

The one that comes to mind is when I, Kirsty and I did the interviewing at 42.

Brad:

Yep.

Erika:

In March, 2022, we went to Adelaide for three days for the South Start conference, which was excellent and so we had a day and a half of of conference stuff, which was like full brain capacity and then from 2:00 PM till 6:00 PM on that Thursday, we interviewed eight people back to back. And I'd never led an interview before, so I usually would be in the corner of Brad's office just writing down and, and kind of going, Brad, you just missed a step or Brad can't offer someone a job in an

Brad:

Yeah, No, and why are talking salary when we haven't even got to that point yet.

Erika:

Yeah.

Brad:

Exactly.

Erika:

So that was usually my experience with interviewing, but then Brad was like, No, you can go pick some 42 cadets for us, off you go, and so I did. That was really hard because you kind of only had, we had enough questions to kind of talk for 15 minutes and you might have had a really engaging conversation with someone, but it's coming up to 28 minutes in and, you must leave the bathroom and your phone's going off and you're like, I, I wanna keep going. But it's quite hemmed in, and 42 was great because that was an excellent example of people with very varied backgrounds. So we were interviewing people who were social workers, graphic designers, who were nurses, who like all these different, who were, electrical engineers, which is kind of like the magic kind of engineering I think. And all these different people with very different backgrounds and levels of experience. So that was hard cause we had like preset questions

Brad:

what did you learn from it though?

Erika:

Um, like

Brad:

at those gold posts and going, they're cemented in the ground, you can't move them. So what was the takeaway you got from that?

Erika:

The main takeaway that I found was that we had, some really key questions that people couldn't sell themselves in because we did just with 42, we did the same testing we usually do anyway. when you would ask some interview questions, people just kind of turn on the sale and they start pitching and selling themselves and like, I don't really care about that. I kind of wanna see what's underneath and so we had a couple really good questions that we asked as a benchmark and that kind of stopped all of that in its tracks and then we could kind of see people's true colors, which, resulted the answers resulted in, in the people that we did choose, because those were genuine answers with integrity. And that's we were looking for. And there were other things. I paid a much more attention to body language and people's behaviour in the interview too. Which we've touched on before, which I think is a bit easier to do, especially when you're in person. Because being an Alice, we often interview you on, on Zoom, whereas you can kind of see if people are late or you know, their phones kind of going off the whole time. You can see that and go, Are we not that important, do you like, Is this Yeah. Yeah.

Brad:

But I, but I also think that of recent experiences of the interviews you and I have done together recently, where that in person experience translated to the zooms?

Erika:

Yeah.

Brad:

Because we actually had a couple cases where people, either did it in a location that was really awkward, they weren't giving us a proper attention or they hadn't researched stuff. So even on that level, I felt there was actually a couple, that straight up, and I think COVID'S brought this into sharp reflection where your etiquette on video chats now is a thing now. You know, like I've been on board meetings where you're looking at the top of someone's forehead you're going like, seriously fix it.

Erika:

Yeah.

Brad:

Like, nobody wants to look at your shiny patch.

Erika:

Yeah.

Brad:

I sort of feel as though that that now comes into play, you know, like sitting across desks like we are right now.

Erika:

Mm-hmm.

Brad:

You and I had an interview where we went straight afterwards, we just went No. And it wasn't, the person was terrible.

Erika:

Yeah.

Brad:

It wasn't what they said. It was the way they conducted themselves or the location are in and the fact that they hadn't given it a serious enough thought. Like a proper interview.

Erika:

Yeah and I think coming even further back from that, I think the way, cause people often deal with me first and I, I think, not saying that I'm the most important person in the room, but I think the way that people then treat the person dealing with the recruitment process is also like a really good testament. Cause there's been people who I've sent and like I send a really big email with like, you need to do all of this by this date, whatever. And people, Don't get back to me or come back with me with half stuff, or send me like six or seven emails with everything. I kind of go, you know, you're kind of already being interviewed, from this email process. You've made it quite,

Brad:

and the fact that you've gotta chase them.

Erika:

Yeah. I'm like, why am I chasing you? Yeah.

Brad:

Yeah, exactly.

Erika:

I mean, there's a labour shortage of course, but yeah, that, that kind of sets me off.

Brad:

But I think that's an interesting point about the labour shortage too, is the fact that people already go into that situation going, Well, I don't need this job.

Erika:

Yeah. Yeah, and I saw, um, I don't have TikTok because I've.... need I just ban myself because it's too addictive. But, a friend sent me one the other day and of, this woman on there who applies for a new job every week with no intention of actually taking it just to go through the interview process to practice. And I'm like, That's a really great idea, but you kind of, you know, being really, like oh,

Brad:

steam coming outta my ears of

Erika:

I'm like, you can get a mentor and you can do some research or you can network and meet other people and talk to them, or do some practice at home. Like, I had to prep for an interview and I was practicing, with my partner and my housemate and everything else. You don't need to kind of like.... Recruiting is very expensive for a company and you really don't need to do that. And I think, and this woman was American. But I think the world is too small because

Brad:

Well, you and I, you and I had an example of that only just recently where afterwards we both reflect on the fact we felt that that person was never gonna take the job. It was just the fishing expedition.

Erika:

Yeah and we're relatively small firm, but I think this applies across the board in that recruitment's expensive and as you get to people who have quite a high talent and, and the salary, ends up being quite high. The recruitment cost is also very high.

Brad:

Well I look at how much we've spent in six months and that's as much as we've spent in six months is what we've spent in probably the previous three years and look, and it's not to dissuade anybody listening to this, that we are hard asses in this space, but it is difficult when you invest a lot of time and emotional energy into the process. And it's not taken as seriously on the other end

Erika:

Yeah and thinking about like everything we've ever advertised for has been a part of a company restructure or been part of a client's project or it's, it's been a, as an intention, we're not just kind of going, we just need an engineer just because we need an engineer.

Brad:

Exactly.

Erika:

And we always have an ad running for an engineer and analyst, or we've got, we've always got a presence there. Because you never know if someone's, you know, and Stuart and Ross applied for roles with us, when we didn't need anyone.

Brad:

No.

Erika:

And they're incredible hires. So we've always got an ad up anyway, just in case. But I think, people will restructure organisations and, and try and build out a new team and if you're kind of stringing someone along for months at a time, you've then impacted that company's bottom line and their growth and direction and other people. And I think, I think it's really inconsiderate

Brad:

Yeah. And, and just, on the other side of the fence with the media business, I've actually employed people who were, there was no job and there was no actual channel for that type of work. But I've actually employed people purely based upon what they do in their, their off time and looking at what they do in their off time. So I think that's really important, and I would say to most people out there, if you're looking for good jobs, always try and manage your brand a bit. Before you apply. Because I've actually not hired people based upon, a t-shirt they might have been wearing on a Facebook page.

Erika:

Yep. Yeah.

Brad:

and just gone, No, I don't need that here.

Erika:

Yeah and I was talking about, I mean, this bit as a whole other episode, but I was talking last night about how, with social media and everything now that, with parents posting like all these photos of their children, just like in the bath and whatever. I'm like, All right, cool. So your kid, John is gonna apply for a job when he's 35 to be, you know, six figure salary. I'm gonna do my background check. I can see his whole life. Like I can see him at two covered in spaghetti and I can see him, you know? Yeah. But then see him with his MBA and everything. I'm like, That's,

Brad:

Yeah. Yeah.

Erika:

Like, yeah. There's a whole remit to it all.

Brad:

Before you've interviewed somebody, what did you wish you'd known prior to stepping into, I mean, you mentioned 42 and how you felt like there was goal posts there, you had a specific job to do and you were going down rabbit holes that you were enjoying. What did you sort of prior experience or things you'd known before you got into the doing the 42 style of things?

Erika:

It's felt a bit hard with us interviewing in the last couple years because, we have, I mean not the whole time, but there have been points where we've been quite desperate for people or been quite desperate for something to work. So you're kind of wanting them to pick you, instead of you wanting to pick them. It's quite a conscious step to flip the script like, I'm interviewing them, they are also interviewing us. So our culture needs to be good enough to attract them, but we also need to see value and see an alignment with our values with them to make this, as a synergy, work.

Brad:

Yeah, cause that scarcity mindset can also mean that you end up with a lot of trouble.

Erika:

There's a lot of, like glorification and like pedestooling of, certain types of industries and I feel that software and, and IT or tech or tech's, probably a better word to say is kind of coming into that. It's quite a glamorous field and the conditions and, and pay offered by many companies is quite glamorous. That kind of sets things up for the person applying for the role to think either that, you know, this is the fit because of all this beautiful, glossy marketing. But I was talking to a Founder of, quite a big startup of about a hundred, 150 to 200 staff, which is we're we're a team of eight, like that's massive and spread across the world. And, to him, I was like,"Oh, can you find any people?" And he's like,"No, like we pay people to submit their resume, like da, da, all this sort of stuff". I was like,"Oh yeah. Wow". I'm like,"So what's it like working, like, working on your code? Like if you, are you, if you're paying, you know, lots of money and doing all this stuff, is it pretty good?" And he's like,"Yeah, no", he's like,"The code coverage or the testing and everything is, is not great, but I'm kind of paying people enough that they just have to deal with it and they have to get it done and they should know what to do to make it better, and this is what we've got to deal with",

Brad:

I suppose compromise, isn't it?

Erika:

Yeah.

Brad:

That's the thing. Like if you've got those salaries, Cause we've seen it where people, people have moved on to other roles and very big salaries, but the compromise you have in that space is that you have to accept the way it is.

Erika:

Yeah,

Brad:

yeah,

Erika:

yeah, which I think is perfectly fine. But I think from a recruitment standpoint, I've never been tempted to do that because it's also dishonest and, um, don't like dishonesty and think that's really, and as we've, I mean as everyone kind of like, you can't hide in your code and I think we very much believe that. So your culture is, super important.

Brad:

Your culture is super important and it is super important that you have the right fit. Cause I don't know necessarily, as management, you don't necessarily see the problems that you've created by hiring somebody, but your team does. And your team suffers, with a bad hire. You know, But also the person suffers too if they've come into an environment which they don't fit in either as you mentioned before, it is absolutely a two-way street. And you touched on being desperate. I think that's another point is that, we often get so desperate in these positions that we'll give somebody a go and all it does is make that person feel devalued because they can't do the job.

Erika:

Yeah.

Brad:

Yeah, or, they're being employed at a much higher scale than they should be.

Erika:

Yeah.

Brad:

And then therefore they lose that job. So it has a knock on effect, for everybody, for us, for the person. I think that's, it's very diff a very difficult thing and having to be the person that has two orange chairs that, are affectionately known as the firing chairs, in my office, it is a very, very difficult thing when you have it. Yeah. I hate it. I absolutely hate it when you're in that position, that person just doesn't fit.

Erika:

Yeah. Just for a little bit of, connection, I actually wrote a blog about how to get a job with us and what the recruitment process is like. So Amy can link it. But, probably my thing that I learned a bit too late, which I learned at South Start, was the question that I always ask that Brad can't answer. That is, describe yourself without any labels, in two sentences and labels include everything from, you know, if you are, a mother, a father, a daughter, a sister, a parent, a you know, a teacher, a university graduate. You have to describe yourself without using labels, which is really hard. So it's interesting and the reason I ask it, is you see what people's values are and it cuts through everything.

Brad:

I think it's a terrible question. I'm not just No, no. I think it's a great question, but I can't answer it. That's certainly one of the things. Now, seeing that we got up to how far we've got in this, one of the things that we've certainly tackled recently is, uh, full-time, part-time and contractor, of what we employ. Now, I would answer that in is we try to fit in with what a person, if we found a really good hire and somebody who's amazing is gonna fit the team

Erika:

Mm.

Brad:

We generally don't let that stand in our way, do we?

Erika:

No. You just kind of make it work, I guess.

Brad:

Yeah.

Erika:

It's all about you just make it work because when they are here, it, there's a benefit added to the team and then when they're not, here and people who are working part-time or, or at a different, compared to full-time. Cause our team is, is majority full-time. I've seen in, in my experience, usually have, something else going on. That might be a personal family matter, or it may be additional study, It may be, a really big commitment to, a charity or, a volunteering role, and that kind of thing also fills their time, which they've then got the, emotional maturity to kind of go, I can't work 40 hours a week and also give my a hundred percent to this. Can we compromise? And I think that's, that's even when people ask and have the, confidence in the vulnerability, go through the interviewing process and still ask that question. Because you can still get shut down.

Brad:

Yeah and I find some of the best people that have ever worked in both companies have been from that space where they have, far more important things than work to do. And that work is satisfies a part of their soul, but not all of it and I don't know, I would, I would suggest anyone listening to this, that if you've got lots of interests in other spaces, it just makes you even better re recruitment value. That's what I've seen. Everybody that's got that, seems to be, excel at what we do. Now anybody that knows Erika or knows our companies, knows that we have a very detailed probation induction, and it's all based in Confluence, like, which is like a wiki if you don't know what confluence is. Um, process. And we were only discussing this about somebody this morning, about, process. One of the most important things I think in the recruitment process to engage people, which most companies don't do, is onboarding. If quickly touch on that.

Erika:

Yeah. I mean, and this probably should be a whole other episode and I think, bellette bellette, particularly has always had a really thorough onboarding process established. With HutSix it's still, a work in progress. But it's kind of making sure that people are aware of kind of everything that there is to know about a company within those first couple of weeks and not only like within that, but it's all kind of documented so that, that information, because it's, I saw this thing, it's like your first like month or so at a new company feels like you're a new character in season seven of a show. just feel like you're not really meant to be there, and it just feels really awkward, and you don't really know. And

Brad:

not, and you could, you could get killed

Erika:

off Yeah, you killed off at any second. Like it's just bit. Like, you know, it's just a bit cringe. So when you're in that kind of bit and you're trying to like gauge the vibe of everyone and, and particularly with us to

Brad:

the T-Rex when you're sitting on the toilet.

Erika:

Yeah and, but like particularly with us, cause our team is all remote, it's harder, like we have a 10 minute stand up in the morning and one hour of sprint planning a fortnight. But otherwise, you, you can't really get the vibe of someone.

Brad:

No. No, you can't.

Erika:

So you kind of, I mean, hopefully you've got the emotional intelligence to go'I kind of can't ask that person that same question for the fourth time'. Ideally it's written down and so confluence is where we do that and having all that kind of material there and, and acknowledging that it is always growing, and it's not something that is just gonna be done and tied up in a bow. It's a growing thing that has to be constantly maintained, which is a, a burden and also a blessing at the same time. But I think that's also really important to kind of give that people that time, even with probation meetings, if someone's going really great. Not kind of cutting the meeting at five minutes, like still spending the allocated, you know, hour, hour and a half

Brad:

Anyone listening to this that's just a slight dig at me. Cause I'm kind of nothing to see here. Let's just move on. But what Erika is saying is completely correct.

Erika:

Yeah, well cause you still, especially if you don't see that person quite often

Brad:

Yeah.

Erika:

You still wanna need to prioritise that time and, and talk to them. I think that kind of stuff is super important.

Brad:

Yeah. That onboarding process in bellette came from actually, Kate Merry, who is an early childhood teacher. Who used all the scaffolding principles for young children, which sounds a bit odd. I know it sounds odd, but it was a scaffolding principles of support. In that process.

Erika:

Um there is no mandatory wiggles.

Brad:

No, no, no, no. There's no wiggles in that process. But you know, that was right back in the dim darks and you know, even really before the internet was a thing and all these other things, it was a very new way of looking at things, without being condescending, you know, patronising and all those sorts of things. I think that that's actually held us in good stead and, you know, you discover problems too. In that process, know, when somebody has to be told six times, in a month, the same thing. And it,

Erika:

it's definitely, there's definitely a fine line between documentation of that kind and, and basically telling someone how to do their job when you know, probably more in bellette than HutSix, where you've been to uni, you've had extensive experience and you've been employed because you can do the job and then we come in and say just how use Adobe and this like, no, it's more that this process is about; how we save files, how we set up containers, how we set up our AWS accounts. This is how we do it, and we do it because of this reason. Another company will do it different way because of different reason, but this is why

Brad:

we, well, times have changed too. There was a time when we used to basically, tell people what time to sit down at their desk and all those things. So in, in early days, onboarding, that's what we did. We don't do that anymore. Yeah.

Erika:

Yeah, and I think like having that kind of, I know it's very like woo woo, but this is how I talk. But having that kind of like energy that tomorrow will be better than day before it, and this is how we're gonna make it that way and constantly trying to move forward that kind of, hopefully reverberates and then you become, you know, you become an employer of choice. It becomes quite easy to recruit, and it is my dream to never have to put a seek ad up ever again. That's my goal, that I have in, in my, vision, and that's what I'm working backwards from to be.

Brad:

And i, I would say that our onboarding has evolved from the prehistoric times of back then to now where we do have a very, very seamless system. And we do have a way of, and we were only discussing that this morning, of onboarding someone remotely as well, which is, as you touched on before, is a whole different kettle fish.

Erika:

Yeah.

Brad:

To actually having somebody sitting chained to a desk, eight to five. Whereas now we've got time zones, we've got part-time, we've got contractors, we've got all of those things. Yeah. Everything's cloud based now. There's no, no service physically being used. So there's a whole different, you know, back from, say, 25 years ago, the, the environment is completely different So those same rules don't apply. Those same ideas don't. Some of them do, but some of most of them don't.

Erika:

So, Yeah. Yeah. Always time sheets, no matter where you are,

Brad:

Yeah, exactly. Time logs, get your sorted. Yeah. So

Erika:

I think that's important because like treating the people right within the team and then I actually think, people when they wanna move on, I think as well, something that people don't talk about in the recruitment stage.

Brad:

Mm-hmm.

Erika:

in that. You know, if you've got, if you've got a culture where people feel supported and they're, they're learning and they kind of go,"You know what? I'm growing faster than you are, I need to try something different".

Brad:

Yeah.

Erika:

And having that conversation and being open to that and going, If you wanna come back, like, you know, we can work, let's work with you through, we work with people through their resume before and they're getting their portfolio sorted and everything else, and help introducing people to other people who might be better fit. Having the kind of confidence as a company to go, It's okay if you wanna leave, we wanna be part of trying to set you up and maybe they do come back, maybe they don't. But that's the right thing too, to understand when someone's growing beyond what you can provide or when someone's life is changed from what you can provide

Brad:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Erika:

And kind of being grown up to go, If you want, we're here to help you. If not, we fully support you.

Brad:

Yeah. And, and being a small firm, there are some things we can't do. There really just is, and people looking towards, depending, if you're listening to this and you're working for a firm that's really, really big or really, really small or somewhere in the middle, sometimes those firms can't provide what you want.

Erika:

Yeah.

Brad:

And you need to, um, in that recruitment process, and I don't think, unless somebody sat in one of my orange chairs, I don't think there's anybody that I haven't tried to help, for the next stage of what they wanna do.

Erika:

Mm-hmm,

Brad:

Mm-hmm or recommend them to somebody or whatever. So just my last question, which is on here, How do you think recruitment will change in the future?

Erika:

The future?

Brad:

you know, like, you know, like back the future, Michael J. Fox and all that.

Erika:

I think I think, I mean, I have some political views about the current shortage and the lack of empowering women to be employed gainfully. But I think as, it will eventually swap. It will eventually get to the point where there is not a massive major labour shortage and it, it will change because it, it has to change. It's been like this before and it will, it will change. This is the way life is. I think we will go back to a space with, there are ideally not more people than there are jobs because that's, that leads to disadvantage for, for people. But I think we will get to a point where a lot of the smoke and mirrors around tech companies of having all this kind of, you know, Massages and you're getting paid 400 grand a year to do one job all the time. I think that will change and I think the expectations will come back on the engineer to go, how are you different from someone else? Like what are you actually bring? Like I think it will become a bit more, what do you actually bring to the table? and you know, why can't you feed yourself? Like why do I have to feed you at work? That shouldn't be the only thing keeping you at a company.

Brad:

That's an interesting point. Cause I think it's relates to old tech you talk about industrialised tech. So say newspapers for example: newspapers had the rivers of gold. They had classifieds. And I think tech is in the exactly the same place where those economies of scale just didn't exist. You can pay anybody what you like, to get the best person and I think that that rivers of gold idea- where you've got VCs coming in and Angel Investors and all the rest of it just pouring money down these chutes. I actually think that'll change

Erika:

Yeah.

Brad:

And it's starting to,

Erika:

I think the way recruitment will change is, the actual industry changing. I think as we get to a stage where, because you know, if your job is a task, you can be automated, and a lot of what happens in tech is a task based and you know, depending on the field or whatever you, you can be automated outta that task. But if you have the ability to critically think and have a level of emotional intelligence and you can communicate with people and you can be a part of making that automation better. Then you have a job. I think if your job, if you are showing up and you're just doing one thing all day, I think your job will change dramatically and you probably won't have a part in it, but I think it will become, I hope anyway, that more interviewing and recruitment will be less,"You must have a bachelor degree". You must, you know, like I've seen ads, people need to have 15 years of Kubernetes experience and Kubernetes has only been around for like 10 years. All this kind of stuff and it will kind of go, you know, this is a complex problem of this is the problem that you presented. Here's 15 minutes. Think about it. How would you solve that? and then present it back. I think, I hope we get to that kind of stage of recruitment and people, people are kind of looked at for more than their background or their uni and everything else and, and their problem solving I think, which I think we aren't kind of putting enough emphasis on that in this next kind of generation of school leavers and people changing careers. I think there is not enough support in that space.

Brad:

No. So that, would you say that directly relates back to eq? If we're gonna wrap it on and wrap it up. In a bow right now.

Erika:

Yeah. What's emotional?

Brad:

That's the emotional quotient. That's like you say, you've got your intelligence and you've got, you know, if you've got a high

Erika:

the ability to say you don't know what something means.

Brad:

Yeah, exactly. So, it's that, you know, you're talking about problem solving, but the ability to walk in someone else's shoes.

Erika:

Absolutely.

Brad:

Has a

Erika:

And I think of, you know, Ryan, who's been on like, probably like episode one, wasn't he? He's incredibly talented and gifted as an engineer, but most of his job now is talking. He spends like one hour a day actually doing any coding. The rest of it is actually explaining what he's, what the software he is working on is actually doing and getting problems and requests from clients and going, actually, if we did it that way, it's gonna cost this, or then you'll have that problem, da da da, da. Instead of like, Yep, done. And then you'll do it and then it'll break. It's that ability to kind of, and that's I think what makes you stand out and, and add value. How you recruit to find people like that, I think is, I think that question idea is a good idea. I don't think that personality profile and testing will go away, but yeah, I hope that recruitment process just becomes a little bit easier for people and that kind of, I'd like to get a, I wanna get to a world where I don't need to have a resume. Like you don't wanna have a written resume because what you've done in like the horse is already dashed. Like what you've done in the past does not predict future performance.

Brad:

No, no, no and I sort of look at resumes a bit like a profit and loss. That was yesterday. Whereas what you want from people is their cash flow.

Erika:

Yeah. You can't really gauge, I mean like I'm really good at writing emails, telling people to go get stuffed without them realising I'm telling them to go get stuffed and I learned that from a previous job. But you can't really put that on a resume. It's only until you actually have to do it and you go, Oh, you actually can tell someone what they're doing is inappropriate, but they're not offended by it, and then they're part of you to get to the solution without anyone yelling at anyone, and they're still gonna pay their invoice. Like how do you put that on a resume?

Brad:

Yep. So, big shout out to Louise at 42 because this is an area that she really leans on. Soft skills.

Erika:

Yeah,

Brad:

So we might wrap it up there.

Erika:

Yeah.

Brad:

If anybody wants to talk to Louise at 42, give her a call. She's actually top person to have a chat to about this space cause hard skills are one thing, but soft skills are certainly us and we've touched on that. And I think the soft skills goes across the board for onboarding. When you're applying for a job, when you, when we are interviewing, our soft skills come into play. When you work in a job, soft skills come into play. So I think that's, maybe there's a, somehow they're gonna be able to do with AI. How good are your soft skills?

Erika:

Yeah, probably not, but, um, yeah, probably not. But, you know, I don't think it can be automated,

Brad:

No, I don't think so either. Anyway, we'll leave it right there. We went across the whole gamut of things. It's episode 16 or episodes 7,000 or whatever it's gonna be, in the Invisible Skyscrapers. I'm Brad, the CEO and

Erika:

I'm Erika

Brad:

Okay.

Erika:

The, I'm Erika Hamilton, the COO of Hut Six.

Brad:

Thank you.

Head Shot

Brad Bellette

Host
Head Shot

Erika Hamilton

Co-host