with Jodi Brandstetter, HR consultant, Amazon bestselling author, and certified expert in both Design Thinking and Human Design.
What do empathy, design thinking, and AI have to do with staffing and recruiting? More than you might think. In this episode, we’re joined by Jodi Brandstetter—HR consultant, Amazon bestselling author, and certified expert in both Design Thinking and Human Design. Jodi helps organizations create smarter, more human-centered talent strategies and is passionate about using AI to cut out the noise so we can focus on what matters: people.
We explore how to hire like a human and work like a machine—without losing your edge. From applying design thinking to improve hiring and retention, to integrating AI to help enhance, not compromise, the human touch, this conversation is packed with practical insights for recruiters and hiring managers seeking to evolve their talent acquisition practices.
Rob Geist: We’re starting this episode with a question. What do empathy, design thinking, and AI have to do with staffing and recruiting? Turns out, more than you’d think. In this episode, we’re talking about how to hire like a human and work like a machine without losing your edge.
Casey Wagonfield: Welcome back to another episode of Staffing Made Simple, where we talk about practical strategies, real-world recruiting, and how to stand out in a crowded market. I’m Casey Wagon Field, a 15-year staffing vet, senior sales executive at Simple VMS, dad, husband, and occasional karaoke aficionado who still thinks he’s got a shot at being discovered.
Rob Geist: And I’m Rob, your co-host, the Senior Vice President of Growth with Simple VMS. I’m also a proud, but sometimes sad, Cleveland Browns fan.
Casey Wagonfield: It’s all right. The law of averages will kick in eventually, Rob. And our guest today is Jodi Brandstetter. She’s an HR consultant and Amazon bestselling author, and someone who’s been certified in both Design Thinking and Human Design.
She works with companies in all types of industries to build smarter, more human-focused talent strategies, and she’s passionate about using AI to streamline the junk work so we can focus on what matters most – people. Today, she’s going to talk with us about applying design thinking and how we can hire and retain talent, something that is of great value to both hiring managers and recruiters.
And we’ll dive into how AI can be used to add efficiency to these processes without losing that ever-important human touch.
Rob Geist: Hey Jodi, welcome to Staffing Made Simple. We’re excited to learn about some things that are brand new to us and how they impact the staffing world.
Jodi Brandstetter: I am excited to be here. I started in the staffing world, so it’s like going back to the day, I guess.
Casey Wagonfield: You’re one of the few that made it out, I guess. But let’s start from the top because, like Rob mentioned, this is new to us. So, human-centered talent acquisition, what does that mean to you? Maybe you can explain it to somebody who isn’t familiar with that.
Jodi Brandstetter: So, human-centered talent acquisition is really where you focus on the humans in the process versus the process itself.
So, you have to really be mindful of the individuals that you’re working with, and that’s not just the candidates, that’s your hiring managers, that’s the recruiters, that’s whoever is a part of that process, really being mindful of what that process is for them and creating a process that works for everyone.
Rob Geist: So, you’re certified in design thinking, which, honestly something people may have heard of, but we don’t know what that means. Can you break it down for us?
Jodi Brandstetter: Absolutely. So, design thinking is a methodology to help solve challenges in business, and what it does is it looks at the business lens as well as the people lens when solving that problem.
So, to me, it’s like the no-brainer methodology for HR staffing. Anything people-related, you should be using design thinking. It is step by step, where you take a challenge, and you take the lens of who’s the person that I’m trying to solve this challenge for?
So, you use empathy observation to really get to know them and what they need. And then you use ideation to explore different ideas. So, brainstorming ideas to solve that problem. You then create a prototype. You don’t want to just go and create the process immediately after this. You want to test it out, get feedback.
And then once you implement whatever process, or however you’re solving that challenge, you then iterate. You don’t keep it stagnant. We should not be using 1985 staffing processes today, right? We should have always been iterating them, always involving and changing. And so that’s one of the big pieces design thinking does is make us think about how can we continue to improve something, instead of just letting it stay stagnant.
Casey Wagonfield: And I’m surprised, Jodi, I mean, truly this is a topic that’s new to us, but that I don’t hear this more from staffing agencies, because, in a nutshell, it’s a problem-solving approach that focuses on people first, right? And that’s the business that they’re in. One of the things that I liked, that might help break it down for people, is this: imagine building a bridge.
You go stand in the shoes of the people that are crossing the river where they’re going to build the bridge. You sketch 10 different bridge ideas, you test two of them and then build the one that makes the most sense.
Jodi Brandstetter: Yeah, dead on. But I will say that design thinking is very much a focused methodology.
That’s how people create apps, for example. So, we’re kind of taking an IT methodology and really flipping it to an HR, talent-specific one. But I was using design thinking methods my whole career. I just didn’t know there was a word for it, right? So, to give you an example of one of the odd ones that I did, which is a mashup, brainstorming.
So, you take a completely different idea or area, and then you mash it into what you’re trying to solve. And so, I was sitting with my recruiting team, we were trying to find sourcing strategies, and I thought about the Red’s caravan.
So, they go to all these different cities that have large Reds fans, and they meet them where they live. And so, my team took that idea and said, let’s meet our candidates where they live.
So, this was in Western New York, where there are more cows than people, so we didn’t have tons of resources. So instead of begging them to come to our office, we then went to their hometown, sat there in their libraries or wherever they would let us sit, to try to tell them about our organization. We did that just very naturally, without even realizing that that was an actual design thinking method of brainstorming.
Rob Geist: So now that we have design thinking defined, can you talk a little bit about how staffing agencies and talent acquisition can incorporate it to attract and retain talent?
Jodi Brandstetter: The first thing is empathy observation. Knowing your candidate and your client.
So being able to create a candidate persona or a client persona where you’re trying to figure out, okay, what motivates them? If we go on the candidate side, what motivates them to be in their role? Why would they come to your organization?
Just getting in their head to understand how you would maybe sell the opportunity to them, and then you’re taking it to the next level of looking at, okay, well, what’s their background like? What job titles have they worked in? What companies have they worked in? What’s their education? What skillset do they have? And, all of a sudden, you’re building that picture of what they bring, which is a great way to create sourcing strings.
And then you start thinking about, well, where are they? Where can I find them? Where can I find them online? Where can I find them in colleges, universities, or education. Where can I find them on the streets?
And then you start building ideas on where you can locate them. And, then from there, you start thinking about, okay, so I found them. I don’t know. Let’s just go with LinkedIn. How do I engage them on LinkedIn? Because there are so many different ways you can engage them on LinkedIn, but what’s the best way?
Well, if you understand the candidate, you’re going to know the best way to connect with them. And that’s where you start building that sourcing strategy on how you’re going to source those candidates. So that’s one very simplistic way to put design thinking into the process.
But if you’re on the sales side of staffing, wouldn’t it be cool to do that for your clients too? Like, who’s your ideal client? Why would they want to work with you? What’s going to motivate them to come and use your recruiters?
Where do they sit? Where do they hang out? How can I engage them? I mean, it can work on both sides of the fence, which is really exciting.
And then the other piece with this is the empathy. Okay, how do I communicate with them through the process? How am I going to keep them engaged? We don’t want anyone to ghost us. We don’t want to lose that candidate right before we’re going to place them. So, we have to find the way to communicate with them that’s going to work best for them. So, it really is a great way to know the candidate, know the client, and then that will help you with your process.
Casey Wagonfield: And is that something you’d say is ongoing with every interview a staffing agency does—that they’re taking those types of notes each time? Hey, this is somebody I really want to work with. This is how we found him. You’re compiling that information. And maybe another option would be a temporary staffing agency has thousands of people on assignment.
How do they benchmark that? Do we pull our top 50 people and interview them and find out where we found them? What’s important to them? Would that be a good start for an agency?
Jodi Brandstetter: The more data you can get, the better. The more information you have on your candidates or your clients is really going to help you understand how to customize that approach to them.
So, I would definitely do that. And what’s really cool is that, if you were talking to Jodi in like, I don’t know, 2020, my head would’ve been spinning, going, oh my God, how am I going to get this data in a space that I’m going to be able to learn from it? Now, my head doesn’t spin because I know AI’s going to help me with that.
Now I’m going to have, I have all this data. I’m going to pull it into ChatGPT or whatever, and it’s going to spit out the common themes and threads that are going to help me understand who my candidate is.
Casey Wagonfield: I love that, and I think that’s an underused tool, ChatGPT. I use it daily. We had an actual sales call yesterday, talking about how you can plug in what you do and what the pain points of your customers are, and ChatGPT will do the work for you.
But I did want to touch on the candidate experience in general, because I think that’s where good TA teams and good staffing agencies stand out when they give that good experience. I came from 15 years in staffing, and I would tell people to offer somebody a bottle of water when they walk in the door. It’s 25 cents.
There are no other agencies that are doing that. It’s a tiny little thing that just makes their experience different. Is it going to get them to accept the job? Maybe not. Probably not. But they’re going to remember that small thing that you did for them. So, from putting in an application to a company or an agency to onboarding, what do you think is broken now?
And how can agencies or talent acquisition teams fix it?
Jodi Brandstetter: So, what’s broken is the communication piece of the process. Every time I talk to a candidate, they’re always complaining about not getting feedback, not knowing where they are in the process. But at the same time, as a recruiter, my communication isn’t always great with the candidate either. When I desperately want my candidate to return my call, that’s when they don’t return my call, right? So, it goes both ways. Communication in the process is broken. And when I started looking at design thinking, I did my own little challenge on design thinking, on communication within the hiring process.
What I was focused on was: How should we communicate at the end of each step? And what I learned from that was they didn’t care about those steps in the process. If you want to email them, if you want to call them, they’re just happy if you let them know.
But what agitated them and what made them not want to stay in a process was that they didn’t get those updates in between the steps. So, they wanted the recruiter to call them and say, “I’m still waiting on feedback from the hiring manager. So, you’re still in the process.”
Candidates would stay in the process longer if you just communicated with them in between the steps of the process. And so that’s a very simple fix that we can make as recruiters. It’s literally just putting something on our calendar to remind us to update our candidates throughout the process, even if it’s a no update, right? You can create an email signature that says, I don’t have an update yet, but we’ll let you know in two days.
Just doing that can improve the candidate experience and keep them moving forward. Stacy Zar, who’s one of my favorite recruiters, has a Friday afternoon idea where her team literally goes through their stack of pending candidates and responds to them and lets them know what’s going on, if there’s an update or not.
They all grab a beer, and they enjoy calling and emailing, and texting their candidates. What’s so amazing about that is your candidate won’t panic over the weekend and start applying to other jobs.
Casey Wagonfield: And, coming from staffing, recruiters will ghost people. Three weeks have gone by, and that person’s probably been ghosted by other agencies. So, their thought process is, “Well, I better keep applying, right? Somebody’s going to hire me.”
And, to your point, I’ve seen many clients go out the back door because you’re not communicating, but your competitors are. So, they’re giving them the opportunity.
Rob Geist: What could a staffing agency do tomorrow to make the candidate experience more human without buying new tech or doing a full stack overhaul?
Jodi Brandstetter: I think the first thing is doing the candidate persona. Very simplistic. You don’t need technology for it; you just need a template.
And I have a free template. If someone needs it, they can use mine if they want, or they can go to ChatGPT, and they can do it for you. But that is a super easy transition, and it’s a powerful tool that you can also share with your clients to show them how you’re being mindful in the process and focused on their ideal candidate.
I think it’s a sales, as well as a recruiting tool, when you’re using a candidate persona. That would be the first simplistic piece. And then the other one would be looking at how you communicate and building a process on how you want to communicate so that you’re keeping that touchpoint alive, which again, you don’t need new tech.
You can use Microsoft Outlook and have email signatures with various updates that you can just literally use and send very quickly. Or if you have an applicant tracking system and you have ways to communicate, you can select 10 people and tell them, “You’re still in the process. I have no update.”
It doesn’t have to be super personalized; you just need to communicate it. So, I think there are a lot of things you could be doing with your systems today that will help build those pieces. And the last thing is, if you just listen more would be great too.
Just listen to that client. Listen to that candidate. Understand what they’re looking for to help them move forward in the right way with the position that they’re looking at.
Rob Geist: I think that’s something that we can all do better, even if we’re great listeners. We can all strive to listen better, regardless of whether we’re in sales, recruiting, or operations. It’s just something that is a lost art.
So we talked about the recruitment process. Once someone’s placed, how could a staffing agency continue to create a positive human experience during the onboarding, when they’re on assignment, and follow up through that lifecycle.
Jodi Brandstetter: So, when you’re in the hiring process with a candidate, it’s about getting to know them better. Getting to know what they like, what they don’t like, just building that relationship with them. And if you do that, then when they’re getting onboarded, you can gift them things that they like.
So, if you know they like Diet Coke, you can send them a 12-pack of Diet Coke and say, “I hope you have a great day.” I used to love taking my placement candidates to lunch, and I usually waited till about two weeks of being in their new role. And I would go take them to lunch and celebrate and then ask them how things are going and see if I can help them.
Maybe they’re struggling with some communication that I can help them with. Maybe they can help me by telling me what other positions are open at that client, and I can start reaching out to them. Or they might have a friend who’s like, “Man, Jodi did an awesome job for me. I’m referring my friend to you.”
And all of a sudden, now I have that relationship, and I can continue to build that relationship even after they were placed. So, stay old school and keep letting your recruiters have lunch with their new hires if they can. And if they’re virtual, have a virtual lunch. Send Uber Eats to their house and get on a Zoom call and have lunch and celebrate those successes with them.
And then just continue that follow-up. Use your tools to do reminder follow-ups and check in with them. So that they remember you and they continue thinking about you, and what you could be doing for them or for others? I have a candidate I placed at least 15 years ago, and on his work anniversary, he sends me a thank you through LinkedIn every year.
Rob Geist: This sounds like it relates so much to sales. Are people doing this on both sides in staffing agencies?
Jodi Brandstetter: That’s what we used to do. I think that your recruiter is your sales force, so if you don’t include them in those activities, it’s a disservice to you and your organization.
You’ve got to think about it through the lens of the recruiter. What does the recruiter want? How can you ensure they’re motivated and excited to be a part of this process? I would be working hand in hand with the recruiter if I were a business development person with placements.
Casey Wagonfield: I know we’re going to touch on AI, but that could be another thing to stay in touch with them, right? Using AI to keep that recurring cadence with them. and you’re right. I think all of that just leads to referrals.
And I think that’s the best way for an agency to grow, is through referrals, right? By giving people a good application process, a good onboarding process, and going the extra mile, you are only going to trickle down and help your branding and your retention rates.
Rob Geist: It’s all these non-measurable things, right? All these little things that salespeople and recruiters do that add up over time, but there’s no way to tell. It’s kind of the secret sauce of why some people are successful.
Jodi Brandstetter: A hundred percent, but you know, you can track it if you keep that data, right?
If you keep those lunch meetings as a KPI, and then all of a sudden you remember that you placed so and so, you had that lunch. So, you can go back and say that it could have been part of the lunch conversation. So, you can track them, but yeah, it’s not going to be instant gratification.
It’s not going to be, oh, they refer someone tomorrow. It might be three months, six months, or a year down the road. But as long as you can tie it back to that activity, then it can be tracked.
Casey Wagonfield: I know you mentioned, once somebody’s placed, some things you can do to make sure that experience is good through their onboarding and on assignment.
But where does human design come into play with that once they’re already placed? And how can it help staffing leaders or recruiters better understand how they show up and connect with them?
Jodi Brandstetter: So, let me explain what human design is. I call it my fufu. It is a self-discovery system that combines elements of astrology, the kabbalah, the chakra system, and quantum physics. And it reveals the person’s unique energy type, strengths, decision-making, and life purpose.
So, this is outside of design thinking. A lot of people would say it’s similar to like a personality assessment, but it uses very old philosophies that have been out there. It is a valuable tool when you’re looking at hiring, onboarding, and retaining talent.
It helps you understand how someone naturally operates, how they naturally communicate, and how they make decisions. So, when you understand that, you’re going to be able to work with that person in a better way. Everyone has their own strengths, their own communication styles, but if you’re a specific type in human design, there are some commonalities amongst each other.
There are a couple of different ways that you can utilize human design when you’re in this place. One is personal alignment, and that’s really understanding who that person is, how to build a relationship, how to set boundaries, and how they’re going to make decisions.
So, it’s making sure that you’re in line with how they want to work. Communication style is big, so everyone processes and expresses information differently. So being able to understand that, I’m a generator, and so I’m someone who can work to the bone,
But I’m an emotional generator, which means that everything I do, I have to use my emotional way to make decisions. And so, guess what? If you ask me for a Bix decision today, I’m not going to answer it today. It might take me three to five days to give you an answer.
And that’s okay because that’s how I make my decisions. So, understanding that is going to help you understand why maybe one of your employees isn’t giving you a yes or no answer immediately. And then it also helps with team dynamics, because everyone has different ways of dealing with teams.
So, as a generator, everyone loves me because I’m the doer in the world, but there’s this other group called projectors who are more leaders and direct the world. They can’t work all day. It doesn’t happen for them. But they can gift us with amazing ideas and be able to direct us in the right way. So, if you understand that about your team, you may not get so frustrated with a projector because now you know that they don’t have the work energy to be able to do a 12-hour day.
And so maybe you should work with them differently. So, it just helps you be self-aware, and it really helps with empathy.
Casey Wagonfield: When you use Human Design and go through the whole process, is it similar to tools like Predictive Index or others that show you someone’s personality, and in these scenarios, here’s how you can approach them?
Jodi Brandstetter: So, it gives you a chart, and in the chart, it gives you all kinds of information about someone. I’m going to just break it down as simply as I can, just so you can understand the five types. Karen Curry Parker is the person who gave me this idea.
I always like to tell people where I get things, so they don’t think I own this stuff. But if you think of a play, a generator would be the individuals who are getting the set ready to go. They’re getting everything going.
Then you would have a manifester, who is the producer of the play. They have the idea, and they’re able to share that idea and get that idea created. So, that’s a manifester. They’re the directors. They’re directing the play. They’re showing the actors how to do what they want them to do on stage.
And then you have reflectors, which is a very small percentage. 1%, 5% of this world are reflectors, and they’re the audience.
They are able to absorb every other person and understand what they’re doing. They’re there to experience the world. And so, each one has a different way to respond, how they make decisions, how they communicate, and so it makes it, really interesting once you start to learn this and understand who everyone is.
And there are free ways to get your human design chart online. You can just put free human design chart. What you need is your birth date, the time of birth, and where you were born. And as long as you have those three things, then it will actually pull a chart for you.
And a lot of times the chart feels overwhelming. You can hire a consultant, and they’ll read your chart for you and give you that experience, which is absolutely wonderful. And that’s how I learned about it and decided to become a Certified Human Design consultant. But you can also just put it in ChatGPT, and it’ll give you some basic information as well.
Rob Geist: You talk about it as a science, but everything you just said just kind of moved my inner hippie.
So, it’s kind of like an art. So, in staffing and talent acquisition, we talk about the candidate experience a lot. How do we make it less of a buzzword and more of a reality and priority?
Jodi Brandstetter: I think we just think of it as the golden rule.
How do we want others to treat us? And let’s do that for them. We have such an impact on people’s lives when we are in the staffing world. We help them make very large decisions about where they’re going to be, how much money they’re going to make, which impacts where they can live and how their families can thrive.
So, if we think about the impact that we’re making, we should make sure that the candidate experience is there. We need to make sure that we’re having honest conversations with our candidates, telling them the good, the bad, the ugly about opportunities, making sure they’re really thinking about this decision, because it’s a huge decision I have made. I have picked jobs that were not good jobs for me. Take that experience and say, “I don’t want that to happen to a candidate. I don’t want someone to get stuck in a job and hate it. I want them to enjoy it.”
So, it is the golden rule, in my opinion.
Casey Wagonfield: I’ve never understood when you’re in staffing and you make money by placing people, why you would give somebody a bad experience. That should be your top priority is giving candidates a good experience, so they tell their friends, and we get more clients.
But I want to shift gears for a second and talk about AI, because it’s a hot topic right now, especially in staffing. And I know you’re somebody who thoughtfully embraces it. But what role do you see AI playing in the future of staffing and recruiting?
Jodi Brandstetter: So first off, AI, first and foremost, is a tool. It is an extension to us, as an employee of an organization.
The first thing is looking at it to figure out how to fix some of those mundane, boring tasks that really don’t help us push the needle forward. So, scheduling interviews or providing those updates that are important, but don’t have to be fully customized and personalized.
So, really looking at it in that capacity and then looking at it on the analytical side, how can AI help us with our data to help improve what we’re doing every day? Those would be the two key pieces. I think we have to focus on those first and then kind of build upon that.
Casey Wagonfield: Yeah. I like how you talk about using AI to handle busy tasks, right? So, your recruiters and salespeople can focus on revenue-generating activities.
Jodi Brandstetter: A hundred percent! As a recruiter, I should be on the phone. I should be in front of my candidates. I should be talking to them, explaining to them why they should consider this role, getting their background and experience, and helping them successfully land that position. Like all of that should be a recruiter and their voice and who they are.
But if I have to do the scheduling, or even some of the sourcing, being able to look at resumes that were AI-sourced for me, to get to the point where I find good candidates, all of that’s getting me closer to the candidate and talking to the candidate and being a part of the process with the candidate.
Yeah, it’s a big piece that’s going to help us thrive. But recruiters have to be willing to not do the mundane anymore. And sometimes I think we like doing the mundane tasks, the easy tasks. So, it’s pushing us out of our comfort zones in some ways.
Casey Wagonfield: And now you can talk to somebody, not knowing you’re even talking to an AI agent. You think that threatens recruiters and the number of recruiters that a company hires?
Rob Geist: This is kind of near and dear to my heart, because every time AI comes up, I’m a relationship person—I like to think I’m irreplaceable, right? And I always say, I think we’re going to land somewhere in the middle between full AI and automation and where we are today. Hopefully, the human touch will still be part of all that.
How can an agency use AI and still make sure they’re maintaining that human touch? Because, at the end of the day, there are probably recruits that you may or may not get because of a lack of a human touch.
Jodi Brandstetter: Oh, a hundred percent. I think that AI can customize and personalize our approach to continue to build that relationship. So, just to give you one example, I can create an avatar that looks just like me and talks just like me, which is so scary.
But at the same time, if I’m in an organization, and I want my CEO to welcome every single one of my new hires, and I want him to say their name and where they’re working and all that, I can now do that with an avatar, without asking my CEO to record hours upon hours of content for me. So I just customized something and increased my human approach to that new hire.
But that doesn’t mean that every single human interaction’s going to be an avatar. It’s just that I was able to take a very specific point in a process and customize it in a way that would impact that onboarding, without impacting my CEO, having to spend tons of time on camera.
So, there are things that you can do with AI that’ll actually help your personalized approach with humans still being a part of it. Being able to create a very thoughtful email that takes that person into consideration using AI, it’s helping me be more personable without me having to figure that out in a way that’s going to take more of my time, energy, and effort.
Whereas I’m more excited about being on camera with them and talking to them. My email isn’t my high approach need. Being face-to-face with that candidate is where I want to be…me and not an avatar or a bot or an agent. But again, I’m not going to just send that email to Casey without reading it first and confirming that that’s what I want to say. But those are the things that we could be doing with AI today and still have human connection and interaction.
Casey Wagonfield: For agencies that are overwhelmed by it and are thinking, “Hey, we’ve got to embrace AI.” Where should they start? What’s a safe first step for them to start moving the needle?
Jodi Brandstetter: So, the first thing they need to do is pick one issue or one challenge that they have that they would like to consider AI for. So just one piece. So, it could be sourcing. Once you made that decision, then pick one tool to help you with it.
Don’t go crazy. Don’t go and try five different tools. That’s overwhelming and too much. Pick one tool that you want to try, and then test it out. Do three positions that you usually recruit for and see how it works. and then be able to gather information and say, is it benefiting or is it not benefiting us? You do not need to be using 20 different AI tools immediately. Just use one.
The other thing you can do, which is really simplistic, is to look at your current tech stack and see if it already has AI that maybe you’re not using today, and then talk to your vendor and say, “Can you train my team on how to use this AI tool that’s embedded in our applicant tracking system in our CRM system?”
So, either look internally to see what you have already or pick one challenge, one tool, and see how it goes.
Casey Wagonfield: Yeah, and I think that’s something, you’re right, that people overlook. They don’t know if they have the capability, or maybe their tool has a capability.
I mean, in staffing, you’d get a big order in the office, we’d be like, “Well, we’re going to put a bunch of yard signs out.” No, why don’t you use the AI that scours the million people in the database that are already there, who could be open for work? Work smarter and not harder.
Jodi Brandstetter: Well, go to ChatGPT and ask, “Would a yard sign work for this job in this location for this type of candidate?”
It might still be the right option. And that’s the one thing I would say, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. If you’re going to have a sourcing strategy, have a strategy that might have some AI in it, you might want to do some online pieces, you might want to go to colleges, universities to build that pipeline.
And grassroots is still very important. That’s your employee referral program.
There are so many different ways to attract the right candidates, but if you don’t think about the person and ensure that that’s where they’re at, it’s never going to work. It’s always going to fail.
Rob Geist: So, in this world of buzzwords and tech and terminology, for somebody who’s overwhelmed by all this, what’s something that they can do to modernize their approach without completely changing everything?
Jodi Brandstetter: I would look at your current tech stack and just see if you’re using it to the fullest.
I would then start to learn more about AI. There are a lot of different places where you can get AI knowledge.
There are many amazing newsletters about AI just to learn about it. So, the one I get is Neuron, and Neuron also has free ChatGPT training. It’s an online training portal so you can learn how to really utilize ChatGPT.
So, I would just really be starting to gather information if you need to see how AI could address it. And then I would look at the AI that you’re interested in and try free trials so you can test it out. I would also talk to the AI vendors, make sure that they’re using responsible AI, which means that they’re testing their algorithms to make sure there are no biases that are consistently happening.
And then, start advocating for your organization on how AI is going to improve your processes.
Casey Wagonfield: Well, to sum it all up, we’ve talked about a lot of things, human-centered recruiting, design thinking, smart use of AI – all those things working together. what’s one takeaway that you’d hope staffing pros listening today get from this conversation?
Jodi Brandstetter: That communication is the most important piece of the process, so start using it.
Rob Geist: Well, Jodi, thanks a lot. If you’re listening and thinking, “Yeah, I need to rethink my candidate experience, or you’re curious about using AI without becoming a robot, this episode was for you.”
Casey Wagonfield: Absolutely. And a huge thanks to Jodi Brandstetter for dropping some awesome insight on us. Jodi, where can people find and connect with you?
Jodi Brandstetter: My favorite social media is LinkedIn, so just put in Jodi and then Brandstetter. And if you didn’t put a lot of t’s in it, you didn’t spell it correctly.
So good luck with that. And my website is JodiBrandstetter.com.
Rob Geist: Thanks, Jodi. And thanks to our listeners. Don’t forget to check us out at our website, simplevms.com.
Until next time, stay human, work smart, and like we like to say over here: Keep it simple.
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