What Skills Will Matter Most in an AI-Enabled World?

Sandy Chow  [00:00]

10 or 15 years ago, there were no jobs in social media. There were no jobs in content creation or influencing. No one could even dream of it. Right. And look at where we are now.

Darren Lancaster  [00:16]

Hello and welcome to The Talent Download podcast. I’m Darren Lancaster and I’m CEO of Amberjack. Today finds us in our new studio. Or should I say our remote studio. So it’s basically in our HQ in Newbury. And we’re delighted today to have Sandy Chow with us. She works for AustralianSuper. She is, and I want to get this right, the Organisation and Workforce Planning Lead. At AustralianSuper. It’s going to be a great conversation. I hope you enjoy the conversation as ever. And I’ll kick off, I guess, Sandy, and just hear a little bit about you talk to us about your experiences, where you’ve worked and how that come together, I guess, to be here today. Absolutely.

Sandy Chow  [00:56]

Thank you so much for inviting me. Hello, everyone. And as you say, my name is Sandy Chow. I currently work for AustralianSuper in the UK office based at King’s Cross. I am of Chinese descent. I was born in Hong Kong and I moved to the UK at the age of nine. Just up the road, so the area is very familiar.

Darren Lancaster  [01:19]

Very close. Yeah.

Sandy Chow  [01:20]

Very close. It’s very warm. And give me the fuzzy feeling. And so when I first got here, and I am also the first generation in my family to go to university, My career journey so far has been a wild ride. It’s been very untraditional and it’s definitely not linear. And I am super proud of it. And I think how it all came about is because I am naturally curious and I love learning. And what really drives me is the fact that as and when I can apply what I’ve learned into different contexts and environments, and that really gives me the kick in life, and which then leads me to be a natural problem solver. And that really helped shape me to be organisation development leader that I am today.

Darren Lancaster  [02:22]

Oh, awesome. And you’ve worked across structured corporates and agile tech companies. What core lens do you bring to organisational design which would be good to hear.

Sandy Chow  [02:32]

Yeah. No, thank you for that question. I think because I have a mixed experience in the regulated financial-services sector. And I did a stint in a tech startup. Well, I’ve seen both benefits and the costs and risks involved for being too structured and also the benefit it can bring when it comes to a more agile process and organisational design.

Darren Lancaster  [03:02]

n that example, how do when you think about agility and you think about those core concepts in the way in which you work, but speed has to be sometimes at the essence around it. Have you seen examples of that happening?

Sandy Chow  [03:20]

Yeah. The vivid example was while I spent my two years at the tech startup, specifically in the blockchaindustry, I never had previous experience in blockchain or tech, let alone startup before. I’ve always been in the comfort blanket of a corporate world where structure is key and my comfort blanket. And what I really learned from that environment is that speed is critical to success. And having processes and structures in place as too rigid and ultimately leads to talent doing things just for the sake of doing it, or because that’s how they are used to, or that’s how I was taught to do it really prevents innovation and creativity, to be able to solve problems on the spot and offer the best experience for your customers or your clients. When you’re in a startup environment, when resources are really limited and those kinds of comfort factors have a financial cost to it.

Darren Lancaster  [04:37]

Yeah, sure. And do you find, though sometimes having having policies and things around it become a blocker at all in some of the things that you do?

Sandy Chow  [04:47]

I have to be very careful what I say here, considering I have a Fellow of the CIPD and I’m also shadower on a committee. And. So I honestly see risk and compliance are my friends. Yeah. Following legislation and making sure that we follow policies and guidance from a risk and compliance perspective is the foundation of everything we do. We should, and how it should be. I see that as guardrails and the guardrails being put in place then will then lead to opportunities to create space for talent to flex their natural strength and opportunity for them to show how creative and innovative they can be when it comes to problem solving and in a way, seeing it from an HR perspective, that’s also a very powerful way to empower and keep your employees engaged.

Darren Lancaster  [05:50]

Yeah, sure. And I think when you have compliance, I think about the organisations I’ve worked with in and whilst they’ve always been within the talent space or I’ve always been in a ton outsourcing space, I’ve also had to deal with Sox compliance in different those different concepts based in an organisation. And it does shape you because currently I’m working for a private equity leader in business in Amberjack at the moment, and compliance is still massively important to it, but it doesn’t actually always operate the same way as the public listed. You have this a little bit more tolerance necessarily, but there’s there’s the ability to not have those real rigid guardrails necessarily around it. And sometimes I think that’s not such a bad thing around it. So it’s interesting. You can see it from a candidate’s perspective and journey of the way in which they build into it.

Sandy Chow  [06:40]

Yeah. And I also want to add this is going to sound crazy to most people, but I say it from the bottom of my heart. Sorry, I just covered the microphone there. I missed compliance. I missed policy when I went into tech startup. It was it was the total extreme of a regulated industry when I was in a tech startup. And because it’s a wild, wild West scenario there, I honestly felt more strongly than ever having guardrails in place. It really set the boundaries. And also, it’s the building block of building trust between leadership and talent.

Darren Lancaster  [07:21]

Yeah, yeah. No, I get that. So moving on to a different question, different topic I guess. How did your perspective shift when you moved from traditional corporates into blockchain startup, particularly around navigating macro change such as AI and technology?

Sandy Chow  [07:40]

Biggest lessons I learned through that transition, especially taking into consideration our current state of play in our in the world. What I’ve learned is the only guarantee in life right now is change, and it’s how you receive, welcome and embrace change can make or break a business and how and the opportunities that you can create for yourself.

Darren Lancaster  [08:14]

Yeah, sure. And I think from many extents, that’s the thing that young people entering the workplace have to have that ability to be resilient in there because change is coming and it will continue to come at pace, I think, particularly through the adoption of AI into the workplace. So you’re going to see that happening for you. Have you seen AI in terms of start to interact in different places that you’ve worked or been being used in good ways?

Sandy Chow  [08:52]

I have witnessed in several pockets of my journey so far of how AI is actually being helpful and people start receiving the benefit of it. I don’t think I am sharing anything your audience wouldn’t have already experienced themselves, but really, I see AI as a tool to be able to free up bandwidth from talent. And give you an example, what I mean by that is AI can create more time and space for how we currently perform our duties and perform our work. And with that newfound freedom or time, there is no reason for anyone to say that. Well, I can’t do that because I don’t have the time. Because by leaning into AI tools, you are making space for yourself to use the time that is freed up to go and do more. Seek out new opportunities and whether that is upskilling yourself, learning something new and add value to yourself. And therefore you can transfer the newfound skills and knowledge to another area that you can add value to the business or to your customers, or it may even enable a completely directional pivot to your existing career. Who knows?

Darren Lancaster  [10:16]

Yeah, and I agree. I think The concept of having the AI agent that’s in alongside you, working alongside you, providing that greater ability to do other things and research faster and quicker, is key basically, in the new world of work and the ability for individuals, it doesn’t really matter. I think, where you are within your working life because you have to adapt. It’s it’s quite well within early careers at the moment when you’re talking about it, because there’s all the fear and doom in terms of it’s going to eat away at all jobs when, in reality, that’s not what’s happening in the workplace. We manage thousands and thousands of jobs within that space every day, and we’re not seeing that decline. If anything, we’re seeing an increase and we’re seeing businesses that are thinking about, well, where are my future leaders? Where are those people in the future going to come from? And if I don’t hire when these entry level folk come in, then what’s going to happen? And what they are doing, though, is they’re reshaping the work in which they do, which is exactly to your point. They are thinking about, well, how the tasks you used to do as a lawyer when you first joined are changing because you don’t need to do as much research as previously was done that. So that can be done by an AI agent that can help you around it. And that’s that’s what’s got to change. I think it’s got to change within the workplace.

Sandy Chow  [11:47]

t’s it’s. So lovely to hear say that because as you were saying, those words, these images are popping into my head, I feel strongly about this because whatever we’re experiencing and feeling right now with AI adoption and new opportunities being created, it’s not new. We’ve seen it all before. Technological innovation is not new to humankind. And just thinking back to the last 10 or 15 years, or when I first started out in my career in early careers, is that 10 or 15 years ago, there were no jobs in social media. There were no jobs in content creation or influencing. No one could even dream of it. Right. And look at where we are now. These are considered traditional roles now because people are so used to it, and it’s all because of technology and tech that we never had before 20, 30 years ago. So with AI adoption now, this is what I am predicting. What your future with the space and opportunities is creating. It offers more opportunities for new roles being designed, which then leads to leaders, business leaders, employers to really think about their existing business processes reviews and audits, redesigning jobs, and also leading to what skills and competencies is critical to the business.

Darren Lancaster  [13:21]

It’s interesting what you say, because there’s a really good example in terms of, whether it was social media within marketing departments and those types of aspects. I always I always think about it really easily and walking down a shopping mall, enter into Westfield, you think about how many places will fix these things, these smartphones. Now there’s like this whole career that’s basically been created out of something that just purely didn’t exist, a little bit older, but it didn’t. It just wasn’t there. You didn’t necessarily have a phone, you certainly didn’t have a smartphone. And yet a whole career has been built out. I think it is slight change. Where we stand at the moment is if you think about the analogy of a calculator and how that adoption came through technology, it’s a very long time before everyone had it. Everyone was wary of a calculator, like everyone’s going to lose their mathematical knowledge in terms of what they do. But the reality was you just did more complex problems and you got more advanced within the way in which you looked upon it. But the adoption was so much slower because technology was actually the rollout phase took like over ten years to get to, but I think it did. To understand from your perspective, because it’s something that I’ve been talking a lot within the organisation, is how do we have to think about skilling up the workforce within AI for the future? I’d be interested to hear what you think.

Sandy Chow  [14:36]

Yeah. In order for me to answer that question, I’m going to take us back a few steps. Yeah. If I see the question as, well, how do we identify the critical skills to your business, and assess which skills we should be going out to hire talent for. You really need to understand what are you trying to achieve? What’s the end goal? What’s the desired outcome? And then you review your existing process, your business operating model, and have a good understanding on which steps of your existing process can be automated. So you can lean into AI technology. Which elements of the process is critical to have human interface and interaction into it, to benefit your customers, to achieve business success? And with that, you can then break down, as I mentioned previously, look at how your organisation was designed, which jobs are really critical? Do you need to upskill? What are the key competencies your business needs? Can you look at your existing pool of talent? Have they got the learning agility to basically pick up new skills and apply them into a different context and setting?

Darren Lancaster  [15:58]

What do you think the workforce is like coming out of whether it’s colleges, universities, schools? What do you think? Do you think they have that? Do you think that ability?

Sandy Chow  [16:08]

I think. From what I’ve heard and seen from what I’ve been exposed to recently, we have got the basic skill set. The components are there. It’s just about reshuffling the order and the priorities and what’s what’s what the focus should be. For example, we know that AI can do better accuracy and provide more efficiency when it comes to data processing research, taking away the need for more time consuming tasks. And repetitive tasks. But the critical part, especially from an early talent perspective, is the skills of commercial awareness. How familiar they are, and how much do they understand the business that they’re working in? What makes what drives business success? And then put that into context to really have the ability to analyze the outcome, the output of AI tools, and critically assess whether or not the output from the tools is appropriate for the context, and if not, to be able to create prompts or using their own judgment to put it into a business context and then achieve a business success. And what’s what I’ve also witnessed is a key opportunity for more time and investment in training from our early talent through the education system is communications, because without communication skills, you won’t be able to build trust. And trust is a fundamental human behavior.

Darren Lancaster  [18:00]

And it you were talking about a moment ago as well. You feel like that’s almost reshaping the way in which you’ll you’ll have to think about organisations to think about the way in which we’re taking people on.

Sandy Chow  [18:13]

Yeah, absolutely. I honestly do believe the AI tools leaning into AI tools create space for organisations to create high-performing team environments, because it is helping organisations who choose to lean into it to create more time and help them to reassess what they can use that time for. How can they use that time differently to achieve competitive advantage over time? Tom, Tom, Dick and Harry next door?

Darren Lancaster  [18:46]

Yeah, sure. And I think it’s, I was I was looking at this the other day and thinking about and this is specific to the UK. It does happen on a global basis as well in terms of the youth unemployment numbers being, extremely high at the moment around it and you think, particularly, we’re recording this the moment in July, in July 26th. And, we’ve got to change again within the Labour government. It’s all changed across the cabinet. You’ve see people coming in and I read this morning we’re going to keep bus fares at £2 and things like that around it. But then I I think that’s quite a small chat. Everything’s welcome. But that’s quite a small change around it. I think that Chris and I was rethinking about almost the German system that operates well, and the way in which, even from their ability, from an apprenticeship level to really link that into the school system, but then think about that across each of the individual layers of jobs, whereas I think sometimes in the UK were a bit linear in terms of, is that job and in that job follows that path. We do the apprenticeship levy, but we do it 50. I think it’s 54% or something like that. Or take the apprenticeship levy are actually in existing jobs already. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s just I’m my thought and process is, is how I’ve got five kids and I took all the time around. But it’s like, how do we get those into the workplace? How do we really think that through how we need to think a bit differently? I think particularly for a UK perspective, and it links into what you’re saying there about how you link that through. Yeah.

Sandy Chow  [20:24]

I think to add on to that, throughout my career so far, what I’ve learned about the X factor from our apprenticeship. Cohort coming through the pipeline, what really makes them stand out is the commerciality and the drive to succeed. I see that as something unique to any young talent who has the entrepreneurial mindset. And, taking back to myself, back to 10 or 15 years ago when apprenticeship levy was new and everyone was considering, oh, what’s the difference between graduate, from university and apprenticeship and opportunities that are available for them? And at that point of my career, the type of students that were successful in early careers programs that doesn’t come through the apprenticeship route are folks who are entrepreneurial minded. So to give you a real-life example. Please, whoever’s listening, don’t shoot me saying.

Darren Lancaster  [21:39]

I’m sure no longer than down a camera on everyone.

Sandy Chow  [21:43]

Everyone coming through an early careers programme is great. Everyone’s a fantastic talent. But yes, I may have a favourite. And those are folks who’ve been through social, entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial student communities, such as Enactus or Bright Network. Those guys come up with the extra X factor for me. They are so much more commercially aware. They are very driven to and very ambitious, and they will be very agile with the resources they have and the skills they have. They are very aware of what they can bring to the table and their tenacity tenacity is highly admirable at that stage of their early careers. And now that 10 or 15 years down the line, they’ll be coming. Some wonderful leaders in the industry that I have crossed paths with give you a real example. I was in New York the other week. I met someone who I recruited as an intern, when I first met him ten, 15 years ago when I recruited him from university, he was, he came across as a very studious bookworm, dare I say. And now he’s working in M&A for JPMorgan and absolutely killing it in his field and arena. So, yeah, I can’t say I think I strongly believe the entrepreneurial skills is critical to early success moving forward, especially when we’re reshaping the landscape and expectations of our early careers offerings.

Darren Lancaster  [23:28]

And just. Talking about reshaping and integrating. Do you, in your experience, in what you’re doing, if you’ve seen tech change that perspective in the way in which we hire and bring people on this? I mean, there’s so many tools in terms of what can be available, but you go through practically sometimes. What helps you.

Sandy Chow  [23:48]

Yeah, yeah, I think I mean, one of my learnings from hearing and witnessing one of my colleagues are experiencing is that not to use tech to fight tech. I think that opens up so many cans of worms when it comes to risk and compliance. And ultimately, I feel that the time used to think about what tech should I use to combat candidates applying via AI and potentially increasing application volume tenfold of application coming in. Think more creatively with the solutions. I heard Claire and Katrina came to talk to you from an earlier episode, how they basically moved the element of human interaction further up their recruitment process from an attraction perspective. They go out to the community, they reach out to folks and get a better understanding and put that face to face interaction up front so they can see in real life, this is a real human being, and they can assess in person what their strengths are, and then you can then take them on from there, talk to them, share with them about what you can offer them, and then put them through the process, that model of way and ways of working. It’s not new again to recruitment. We see it and that’s how US campus recruitment recruitment has always worked. They put the human element up front. When I was working in the US, I saw a massive queue of student holding CVs, waiting at the Uber store at the careers fair, and the line was two laps around the sports hall. When I say sports hall in US, it’s basically Wembley Stadium. Yeah. And what they’re doing there is not just talking to the recruiter and just handing in the CV. No, they’re doing an interview on the spot and that’s the first interaction they had with Uber. So I think there is something in there for us to learn from, adding that human element much more upfront in the overall process from early careers.

Darren Lancaster  [26:11]

I was talking to a bank the other day in terms of their overall process, and this was a hiring manager. So he saw at the end of the process and funnel, and his general view was the quality of candidates that were coming through to him at that stage had been far too much automation and improved into it, that when he was getting to that point, he was like, this person is probably not really not right in the organisation. So the human aspect of the process had been lost. But what you mentioned in the US because listeners of the podcast on UK, Australia focus your experiences in the US is much difference. Is there in overall process and the way in which it works in our markets?

Sandy Chow  [26:51]

I think the fundamental elements of the end to end process is very similar. Like I mentioned before, there is possibly certain steps are reshuffled in the pipeline, but ultimately the way the fundamental steps are the same. However, just referring back to what I said earlier, the tweaks that I had to adapt and consider is the cultural differences and also the regulations part the law and regulation parts in the US. Depending on the different states, they have their own laws and regulations with regards to pay and also pay transparency, including advertising pay in the job adverts up front. And that’s just just one example. And then the cultural differences are that. Then I find that our US colleagues are much more straight talking. And also these students and Africans that I meet at campus, they are a lot more ambitious and outspoken, courageous and very good at the elevator pitch and be. Able to. Make them cells, which I’ve always find good on them. I wish I’ll focus in the UK can be more like them.

Darren Lancaster  [28:20]

Yeah, it’s a cultural thing, isn’t it? I think ultimately it’s it’s an interesting aspect of what what makes you great in one nation, is be so different in it in another, the way the British can queue and things like that, very unusual into other countries, even even just going over the channel in terms of, continental Europe and things. But it’s just that cultural change around it. But a very interesting, interesting aspect regarding it. So and. I know your, your lover of. Books, podcasts, things like that that happen. Any recommendations for people to listen. In and. Read at the moment.

Sandy Chow  [28:57]

And I’ve had three. I came from her with.

Darren Lancaster  [29:03]

Free said, yeah, go, let’s go.

Sandy Chow  [29:04]

And the first one is the High Performance Podcast with Jake Humphrey. Yeah, the one I listened most recently that I absolutely loved and enjoyed was the interview with Andy Wilman, one of the producers for Top Gear and then The Grand Tour. And what I love about it is because it is literally giving me another real life example of how the critical elements that make a high performing team, and he spoke about it so vividly. And ultimately it boils down to the less process, the less controls in place, the more creativity that you’re offering your talent to really flex their natural strength to show you what they can achieve. And they are likely to achieve things that is beyond your imagination. So just offer them the freedom. Of course, within appropriate guardrails. And the second podcast that I have really enjoyed listening to and can learn a lot from recently is Mel Robbins’ Let Them Theory. And what I took away from that is that in a high-performing team environment, trust is critical. There is really no space for micromanagement. So therefore you have to really release control. And how do you change your own mindset to enable you to do that? Ultimately, you let everyone do what they need to do. And most importantly, the follow up is what can you do within your control? So let them do x, Y, and z. But let me do A, B, and C.

Darren Lancaster  [30:53]

Excellent.

Sandy Chow  [30:54]

And then the final.

Darren Lancaster  [30:54]

One I was going to say with. And the final one’s got a slightly.

Sandy Chow  [30:59]

Controversial title. Okay. I think it’s Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson. I think that’s the author, but ultimately.

Darren Lancaster  [31:11]

I you’ve known a few of those. No comments, no comments.

Sandy Chow  [31:16]

But what I learned from that is ultimately it’s different communication styles, and especially when I’m trying to build trust and also foster a high-performing team environment, is that I need to really flex my communication style to the person and audience. And I think that standard marketing 101, something that I’m familiar with from my attraction and employer branding days. So those are my three current podcasts and books at the moment.

Darren Lancaster  [31:45]

I think it’s excellent. As well, and I. Do genuinely believe, I think is in. A world. A world of change so much. Those resources around podcasts, books, audiobooks, etc. Can really help and bring people up to speed relatively, quickly. And there’s so many a book I read recently from is by LinkedIn co-founder, which is Co-Intelligence, and Wharton professor Ethan Mollick. Fabulous. If you’re just thinking about how work is going to transform in AI can give you a lot of the basics in terms of way the theory may play out from their perspective. And of course, they should be at the relatively sharp end in so many other books. So I’m glad we asked that question as well. But moving on from that is the one thing listeners should do differently next week. From your perspective, what are you. What. What do you think?

Sandy Chow  [32:42]

If there’s just one thing? I’ll start it. Do an honest audit with your existing business process to identify where the opportunities are to automate, to achieve efficiency, which parts are critical to have human interaction, and then review your entire business process from there to achieve your desired outcomes.

Darren Lancaster  [33:08]

And I guess based building upon that is, is this it’s very hard to have a crystal ball, and particularly at this time, to say what’s needed. But you think there is I think you touched on it earlier and some of the things. But just to recap on that, the skills that graduates. People entering the workplace are going to need and things that they that will be important for them to take on board.

Sandy Chow  [33:36]

Yeah. Off the top of my head, there are three important ones. Number one, know the business. That’s where it’s unique to you, and you can really stand out from the person next to you. Number two: agility, your willingness, willingness to learn and also the ability to put what you learn into practice in different contexts. And number three is tenacity to succeed when you face setbacks or failures pick yourself up, go again. It’s all about trial and error and learning by doing at the moment and the speed, you can pick yourself up and learn from your lessons on how not to do things or do things differently. Next time, we’ll give you the advantage over someone who rests on their laurels and does not embrace change as you.

Darren Lancaster  [34:29]

I agree. I think one of the aspects I I picked up, I think it was this week, last week was in the interview process when I, when I was going for interviews, it was when I was starting out. It was really important. You did a lot of research based upon the company that you were joining, and gain as deep an understanding as you can. And to be quite frank, that’s quite easy to do now with the tools available to give you that information about the organisation, what’s happening currently. And it was interesting that that was, very much within the interview process, even if it was like a video interview at the initial stage. But that was seen as a key criteria of people actually understanding what they’re going from. So in the ability or the world in which we live in, which is, click and apply, very easy to do, very easy to get into the process regarding it. I think if people are listening, if you’re if you’re a candidate that’s going for a role, this is an important aspect. And remember, I think if you’re if you’re a mum and dad or guardian or things like that, it’s just to make sure some of those sometimes those basics around what you’re actually applying for. And I know it’s difficult out there because I’ve got I’ve got kids that are in that process that are doing that, but that aspect of it is quite key.

Sandy Chow  [35:44]

Yeah. And if I can just clarify. That point a little bit, more advice to any students listening or parents listening, reinforcing what we’ve discussed so far, the human element into this research part. Anyone can read website. Anyone can find information about a job or a company online. When I say being commercially aware, it’s going above and beyond on what you can read on the website or on paper. Go and speak to the people working there. Ask them what is it they do? How do they get there and what real challenges they’re facing. When I was working at EY in the graduate recruitment team, we were out on campus teaching commerciality. We were out teaching folks, read how to read Financial Times, keep up to date with current affairs and be able to use what you’re reading and put it into context, into the job, your dream job on who you want to work for. What does the news of, let’s say, I mean, this week we have a new prime minister. What does that mean to that business, to the job that you’re working for that is going above and beyond, of just reading what’s available on the website and the job description.

Darren Lancaster  [36:56]

So on the reverse, a little bit on. That. On that. Any advice you give to early careers managers? I mean, you talk to lots of them. I see you at conferences where we’re talking. To loads of folk. And things. And anything you’d. would.

Sandy Chow  [37:11]

Again, without sounding like a broken record, I would suggest to them, think I’d have a rethink. How are you on how you’re currently doing things? Are you doing things because you’ve historically been doing it? Can you spot opportunities to do things differently to better the candidate experience, and therefore better the outcome and results of what you’ve already achieved? Because you could continuously improve and build on your previous success? That’s not to say that, oh, I was doing things wrong or that previous approaches were wrong, but he’s just having that high performance team mentality of continuous improvement, looking for ways to continually improve outcomess. And that’s how you can make yourself stand out over your competitors.

Darren Lancaster  [38:01]

Right. Well, thank you for all of all of those answers. Bit of fun. Now always finish the podcast with a quick-fire round You can answer in one word or a few. You got answering one word can answering to or a few. But let’s try so nice and easy first. And I’m going to I’m going to be looking at just my notes through this. Coffee or tea. Tea Sydney or Melbourne.

Sandy Chow  [38:25]

I want to say Sydney if I’ve never been to Australia. So I want. To.

Darren Lancaster  [38:29]

Stick with Sydney. Okay. Early bird or night owl?

Sandy Chow  [38:32]

Early bird.

Darren Lancaster  [38:35]

Slack or email?

Sandy Chow  [38:37]

Slack.

Darren Lancaster  [38:39]

The best hire is made on gut or data. AI: threat or tool? Remote, hybrid or in-person.

Sandy Chow  [38:55]

Hybrid.

Darren Lancaster  [38:56]

Hybrid. You’re going to say in person how social? Yeah. And most overused word in HR right now.

Sandy Chow  [39:02]

Oh, this is a tricky one. You’re putting me on the spot. Risk.

Darren Lancaster  [39:07]

Risk. Okay. You got to finish this sentence for me. The corporate world needs more of trust. Okay? The startup world needs more of.

Sandy Chow  [39:17]

Regulation.

Darren Lancaster  [39:19]

Yeah, probably underrated trait in a graduate.

Sandy Chow  [39:22]

Honestly.

Darren Lancaster  [39:23]

Okay, we’re finished with it. So finishing with this one. The future of early careers? Bright. Yeah. Well, listen, Sandy, I appreciate you talking to me today. I hope everyone enjoyed listening to it. We’ll soon be back with the next episode, but it’s been an absolute delight.

Sandy Chow  [39:40]

Thank you so much Darren.