What do we really mean by “candidate quality” — and how do you measure it in a world where AI is everywhere?
That’s the challenge facing TA teams right now. CVs don’t tell you who’s capable. AI tools are levelling and distorting the playing field at the same time. And the old shortcuts - experience, education, polish - feel shakier than ever.
So what’s the path forward?
In this episode of TA Disruptors, Robert Newry sits down with Cath Possamai, Amazon’s Talent Acquisition Director for EMEA, APJC and LATAM, to explore how one of the world’s biggest employers is thinking about quality, fairness and automation — and how those three ideas must evolve together.
Cath shares grounded, clear-eyed advice on where tech adds value, where human judgment still matters, and what TA teams should watch out for as they redesign hiring processes in the age of AI.
⚙️ How to introduce automation without losing trust | Why every new tool needs to be evidence-led, not hype-led — and what it takes to win over hiring managers and candidates alike.
🎯 Why ‘candidate quality’ needs redefining | CVs and interview polish aren’t enough. Cath shares how Amazon is looking beyond background and focusing on what candidates can actually do.
⚖️ Fairness in the age of AI | AI use isn’t going away — but it’s not equally distributed either. Cath explains why fairness today means helping all candidates play on equal terms, not pretending AI doesn’t exist.
🚦 Designing processes that signal readiness | How Amazon is thinking about assessment design, not just for accuracy — but for confidence, inclusivity, and candidate clarity.
💬 Changing the conversation internally | Whether it’s hiring managers or senior leaders, Cath breaks down the messaging that gets people behind change — even in a high-stakes, high-volume environment.
This conversation is a must-listen for TA leaders rethinking quality, fairness, and process design in a world shaped by AI.
Whether you’re hiring at scale or rolling out automation for the first time, Cath’s insights offer a practical playbook — rooted in experience, not theory.
Robert: Welcome to the TA Disruptors podcast. I'm Robert Newry, Co-Founder and Chief Explorer at Arctic Shores, the task-based psychometric assessment company that helps organisations uncover potential and see more in people. And in this fourth series of the podcast, I'm focusing on the disruption in recruitment brought about by AI and how TA thought leaders are responding to this technological shift.
And I'm very excited, and I'm always excited when I have my guests on the podcast, but in particular today I have someone that I've known and respected for many years, Kath Possomai, Director of Talent Acquisition at Amazon, with global responsibility for retail and logistics businesses. A role that involves hiring 70,000 people across 40 countries. I think many of us who are in talent acquisition and listening to this can barely imagine what it must be like having to do that and support that size of organisation every year.
Hiring so many people across so many countries for a major global brand would indeed be a scary job role for many people, but not you, Kath. I know you have held a number of senior roles in different organisations, and cutting your teeth at the beginning, as it were, with Alexander Mann Solutions. But the area that I think that you probably become most well-known, perhaps, and we'll refer to this a little bit later in there, and certainly talked about, was your previous role as CEO of the Army Recruiting Group, which was an unusual organisation because it was a joint military-civilian one, managing 1,200 staff, covering all uh regular and reserve recruitment for the British Army.
And when you took it on, this was a struggling and much scrutinised partnership. think it's interesting when people go into roles that are in the public eye, and it completely changes the way that we are perceived and the way that we've got to communicate when suddenly you've got the media. Looking at you then when you're being asked to come in from the private sector to work with the public sector, and you've got a misalignment in terms of culture and the way that people expect to be organised. So I think that's a fascinating challenge about how you did that and how people do do that. But you not only turned around that organisation, but you led some really bold campaigns and some people listening will remember the Army snowflakes campaign.
I remember being asked by one of the brigadier generals about what I thought of the snowflake campaign without him actually saying to me whether he liked it or not. And I wasn't really quite sure what to answer on all of that one other than just give my honest opinion, which I thought was uh we need to reach out to young people and we'll come to this a bit later and we need to think about how we communicate the roles in organisations and break some of the traditional views of them. And I loved the Snowflake campaign for challenging thinking, and we'll come back to that. But it is worth stating for the record that campaign resulted in the Army hitting its recruitment target for the first time in many years. So congratulations to you for that.
Cath: Massive team effort.
Robert: Of course. But Cath, welcome to the TA disruptors podcast.
Cath: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation.
Robert: So let's start with this background that I just shared there about you transforming organisations, and being willing to challenge the status quo. Being willing to challenge the way that people think about recruitment, the way that we might attract talent and doing something so different. mean the British Army, all you can imagine about uh testosterone and strength and manliness, albeit you the army is now accepting women into it, but that's the image that people see of an army and then going to.
I can't imagine what it must have been like, going to the of the army group there saying you know what we're going to run a campaign using snowflakes as the driver for this. Very disruptive thinking, very counter-intuitive. So do you consider yourself a disruptor and a challenger or was this just something that came naturally to you as something you had to do in order to sort this challenge out?
Cath: That's a really good question. I would say early in my career, not necessarily. I wouldn't have labelled myself as a disruptor. I think my parents would have a different view. I've definitely never been a rule follower. And in fact, I did when I was 17, 18, I did walk into Chelmsford Army Career Centre because I was interested in a military career. And my parents were like, you must be mad. You cannot follow orders.
Robert: Yes, and also very strange as a woman to be walking in at that time into an army centre.
Cath: The army's recruited women for very long time. It's not a recent thing, although they're trying to grow that much more significantly now. But now I'd always been interested in the military and in history and I thought it would be interesting to do a three-year short service commission. I thought that would be interesting between school and university, so I screwed up my courage and rang the doorbell. There's doorbells on army career centres because of security reasons. Yet another barrier to people who are worried and nervous. But I did go in and I was met with a male middle-aged sergeant who made me feel like I must be mad. Of course I wouldn't belong in the army. And I walked out kind of discouraged, disappointed, bit confused and literally completely dismissed all thoughts of an army career, which later was obviously really interesting because I ended up...
Robert: Yes, being able to challenge all of that.
Cath: Through a career in recruitment, ending up the opportunity to lead military recruiting. And one of the things I was very proud that I did in that period was to really change that and change the personnel who are in those Army Career Centers to young role model corporals um and really good commercial recruiters who understand how to relate to candidates and how to sell a career.
Robert: So was it that experience then that led you to going, you know, we can do better than this or it was just naturally you have you know, your approach to things is let's think about how we can do these things better, even if it means ruffling feathers. Yeah, I mean, I've definitely never been scared to challenge authority, point out there's different ways to do things. But I think that probably, yeah, I mean, it did come to the fore, most obviously, in that army role.
And it was challenging being generally the only female in the only civilian room uh with a room full of male generals who'd all worked together for years, probably 30 years together in the military, and being the voice, the person in the room to kind of hold the mirror up, being willing to hold up the mirror and say, look, look at this organisation, look how we need to do things differently if we really want to change. And I learned then the power of being willing to do that. And also something I've talked about a little bit around, if you're in environments like that and you are the one different, for whatever reason. If you can assume you're and act that way, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I realised I could choose to stand in the corner and feel excluded and feel different.
Robert: And almost confront and see it as a conflict rather than a...
Cath: nothing would get done. Or I could choose to assume that I was included and act like it, and I might be able to make a difference. That's an enormous credit to a lot of the really brilliant senior army officers I work with um who were willing to… be challenged and say, okay, yeah, we haven't thought of that. Maybe there's something in this. um And you talked about the Snowflake campaign. I had an incredible marketing team. That's not me. That's an incredible marketing team who produced those campaigns. um And then it did take every year in that Snowflake campaign particularly several rounds of going to lots and lots of different people in the military chain and right up to the Secretary of State for Defence. Secretary of State for Defence had to sign off those campaigns.
Robert: Because it was going to be in the public eye. People were going to say, what are you doing? What are you thinking? How is this really going to drive forward Army recruitment?
Cath: Massively high profile. And actually that campaign, I thought the fact that we deliberately in the posters had chosen to echo Kitchener and World War I was actually the point.
Robert: Your country needs you.
Cath: Yes, exactly. I thought at the time it was 2019, just after the 100-year celebration of World War I. I thought that was going to be the controversial point. I didn't see that snowflakes, me, me, me, millennials, selfie addicts, which were the headlines we used on those posters, were going to be controversial. I thought it was actually the format. But in the end, was, I was amazed at people misunderstanding. It was the fact we asked, we said snowflakes, your country needs you, that generated such an extreme reaction.
Robert: Because it was counterintuitive, I think that was, and that- We needed that, we needed to, all the previous campaigns were not generating the results. So you've got to do something different.
Cath: And appeal to a different audience who might not have considered, that was what it was about, to an audience who might not have considered joining, but to have another look.
Robert: And just on that point of being disruptive and transformative, so one of the elements is when you're in the room, and I really like that point about… your starting point on all of this is I'll feel included, but I will hold the mirror up. it does take um some real courage to do that. And because you realise when you do hold the mirror up, people may be thinking, are you doing that to challenge me? So there's an element of having to be charming about this and not being and respectful and respectful.
Cath: I think there's a there's a balance to strike which I was fortunate in being able to do this maybe it's because you know, I've always been interested in the military and I had a Not a reasonable knowledge and understanding I've never been in the army obviously but having that kind of respect for what's gone before and an understanding of why an organisation acts like it does and why the at the of it behave as they do and coming at it, really leading with curiosity and empathy, rather than just leading with, disagree with this.
Robert: Yes, I like that. its curiosity and empathy, asking why, and couldn't we do it in a different way? And I really like that. But there must have been an element, and I wonder what you took from this, but there must have been an element when you woke up in the morning and saw all those headlines and go, good grief. What have I unleashed here? Have I really done the right thing?
Cath: I remember that day in January 2019 so clearly because we did a big launch in the M.O.D. We had Radio One there. We had American journalists there. Kenny Holmes came along to see and talk about it was on right. And my marketing director was interviewed on Radio One. And I was like, wow, this is great. And it got some really great initial reaction.
And I went home feeling really excited, and I put a post out on LinkedIn about how proud I was of the campaign. And then I got a, and I'd literally pretty much gone to sleep, and I got a phone call from our social media manager at about 11.30 at night saying, Cath, I think you need to see this.
And there's a military kind of chat banter, so-called banter channel called Fill Your Boots on Facebook. And they had taken the LinkedIn post, posted on Facebook and then the feed was full of about 500 really, really nasty trolling, personal abuse. I was astounded. So that was really shocking. And in the end, the M.O.D. had to get involved to get that taken down. But then obviously, you know, fast forward a couple of months, and we could see that the campaign had been enormously successful and it was great.
Robert: So it's about holding your nerve. And if you know that you've thought about it, done it for the right reasons and of you can't do that sort of thing unless you know that people are gonna support you. I think that's always the difficult thing when you are challenging the status quo, whether that be in talent acquisition or in any other role, is knowing whether are you on your own or are you gonna be supported on this?
Well, I think there's some really good lessons and I'm sure you've taken some of those into your new role uh within Amazon now. Not so new because you've been doing it uh for a while. One of the things that's been really clear in the last 12 months or so is the huge disruption just generally that's going on in talent acquisition and recruitment. Part of that has been just a very different economic cycle that we're in, but a lot around technology and the role of automation and the role of AI.
And a lot of people are now starting to… question and we're seeing a lot of posts around this about what's the value of a recruiter and in-house recruitment? Can we get AI to do all these things that traditionally recruiters thought that was part of their value? So how do you see this change and this arrival of automation and technology now in terms of what it means for the value of in-house recruitment?
Cath: I think it's a fascinating time, probably more fascinating than ever actually to be working in the world of recruiting. uh And no matter what happens with technological innovation, digitalisation, organisations are always going to need the right quantity and most particularly quality of people to be working for them. That's a given. The robots aren't going to replace everything.
Robert: Yes, that's right.
Cath: But know, the jobs will undoubtedly change. But we are always going to need people to fulfill them. And that means we're always going to need people to do the job of finding, selecting, engaging and bringing people into organisations.
Robert: Because that has to be a human-centric process.
Cath: Has to be human centric. I mean, would you accept a job if you'd only interacted with robots? I certainly wouldn't.
Robert: I wouldn't because I wouldn't know what you were going into.
Cath: Exactly. Exactly. So that human connection within recruitment is always going to remain critical. We actually did a piece of work in Amazon last year. We're very fortunate, we have a lot of scientists in house around what are the human moments in the recruitment process that we cannot touch and actually we should elevate and emphasise. So what are the human moments where the interaction with a recruiter and a candidate is going to make the real difference to that candidate to their likelihood to proceed in the process and eventually hopefully to join Amazon.
And so what we're trying to do with the technology is to make sure that we get rid of all the other stuff as much as possible, whether that's through automation or using AI, but really then give our recruiters the time and space to drive hard and focus their time on those seven human moments. It's called the Seven Human Moments and it's a great paper, unfortunately is proprietary so we can't publish.
But it is things like, I'll give you an example of one of the seven moments, is around...making sure that the candidate feels like someone is cheering them on and is advocating for them, and wants them to succeed. That's one of the really important human factors that a recruiter can do that a robot is never going to be able to do.
Robert: But it's interesting that you bring that out because I would not think that most candidates feel that most organisations think in that way, and I've spoken to many recently feel, that it's about barriers in their lack of feedback. It's not about how we support their success. It's more about hurdles for them to climb. That's, is that, is that has always, is that something that's new that's come about or is that just the way that, you know.
Cath: I think it's something we've known, but we haven't organisationally know it in terms of saying, right, we really identify this and we are going to systematically at scale, make sure that we go after this within the process. And I'm sure there are lots of recruiters in our teams right now who are doing this and are enabling their candidates to feel this way. But it's not something we've systemised.
Robert: Yes. And really brought out saying this is part of the fundamental way that you should be, we as Amazon or any recruiting organisation can make a difference.
Cath: And I would say, I think what's particularly interesting at the moment is that I think the onus is on TA to transform more rapidly than other functions as a result of AI. Because we need to be really clear about how the roles within our organisations are changing as a result of AI and therefore how the job descriptions effectively are changing, the skills we need are changing. We need to understand that so we are identifying the right candidates, selecting them accurately, in order to be bringing in the right talent to the organisation.
So that's interesting because we need to do that fast. And we need to do it at the same time as we are transforming ourselves and using AI ourselves and transforming our own roles. So I do think, I would say this, I'm a TA leader, but being in TA is one of the most challenging places to be in an organisation at the moment.
Robert: I haven't heard that before and I like that, that TA should be considering itself as the part of the organisation that has to change and transform fastest because of the way that businesses are reorganising themselves, new skills and enabling the rest of the business. And I don't think necessarily TA has always felt that they have had the remit to do that because traditionally it has been hiring managers come along, here's a job requisition, I need that person as fast as possible, as cheap as possible, quickly as possible and at the highest quality, things that often are in conflict.
But the role of TA has literally just been to fulfill a job requisition. Whereas what you're saying now is actually we need to be more strategic in TA around that. We need to anticipate how the organisation's changing and the skills we're going to need. And we need to therefore, adjust our recruitment process for that too. And we'll come to that in a second.
Cath: Yeah, I think we will. I mean, I think being really clear about what does quality look like in a very objective way in which we can circle that back into our process, so that we are having better chance of hiring the right quality is a huge focus for us.
Robert: And just on that note then, have you changed or are you changing your thinking about what quality of hire means and how we find it?
Cath: Well, I think because of the changes AI will make to the workforce and to the roles, that will inevitably lead to kind of evolution in what quality looks like. We have a very strong metrics approach. Amazon's famous for its approach with data. And we do measure quality very carefully. uh And we do a bunch of experiments just to check what inputs in our recruiting process are likely to drive the best quality outputs. So, you know, and in terms of how we measure that quality, obviously we look at attrition, voluntary and involuntary in the kind of first six to 12 months, which we think is a can be a recruiting factor.
But we also have a hiring manager survey that measures how the hiring manager rates the quality of their hire at three months and at six months. Recognising that is open to a little bit a little bit of subjectivity around that. by the hiring manager, because obviously if the hiring manager helped you, then the hiring manager's gonna think they're good. So there is a little bit of uh health warning, which we're well aware of around that, but it's the best.
Robert: Better than nothing.
Cath: And then we also look very closely at um the talent review metrics that we have. And we do talent reviews twice a year on Amazon. And so we look at the ratings of our hires through their talent reviews. And then we are circling that back into our process in terms of what methodology do we use to hire these people who are the best performers, who are the most likely to succeed. And there are some other kind of more objective measures around things like software development engineers. You can have other quantitative metrics that you look at to measure their success. So we also look at that in terms of our highest performing.
Robert: So a bunch of uh different bits of data, which is important around all of this, because it's never one thing. You've talked about the seven human touch points, and I really like that. That's the starting point of all this, because a lot of the time I hear people looking at introducing automation and technology for, oh, we've just got to improve and optimise things for an efficiency and the effectiveness piece, the quality of higher, the human touch, is almost pushed to one side in this drive for efficiency.
So how have you been looking at and you're able to share any examples of how you've used technology or you are thinking of using technology to drive those bits in between the seven human touch points?
Cath: Sure. We are having, I mean, the challenge, think one of our biggest challenges is prioritisation.
Robert: Yes, so much you could do.
Cath: There is so much we could do. And I think we may be not wholly unique, but I think possibly unique in Amazon in that we develop all of our HR and recruiting tech in-house.
Robert: Yes, that is unusual that you have access, don't you? Do you have a certain amount of developer hours or something you can get?
Cath: And it's very, very... The tech teams are situated extraordinarily close to the teams that they serve. My peers are a couple of recruiting leaders and then tech leaders, data leaders. And the conversations are, okay, well, what do you want?
Robert: So you're part of a squad almost there.
Cath: Yeah, my boss's leadership team consists of tech, data and recruiting leaders. And as a group, we are there to figure out.
Robert: Tech, data and recruiting leaders. Wow, that's an interesting combination of skills and perspectives.
Cath: And we have, you know, more than 200 software development engineers dedicated to developing tech for TA. Which is, you know, a huge privilege. So the challenge is, yeah, we could do all sorts of things. So figuring out what we do and in what order is part of our challenge. And then we have some really healthy debates because, you know, just because we can doesn't mean we should is something I have said a few times. uh But it's great because we have what we should be having those really healthy debates because that's what drives out, you know, the right answer. And I'll give you good example. One is around robot interviewers.
Robert: Right, which is a hot topic at the moment.
Cath: On screen, you're interviewed by what looks like a person, but it's an AI robot, effectively. And there's been all sorts of stuff all over TikTok, some real horror stories of those. I'm sure you've seen it. Our tech team are massively excited about the potential of this and they're working really hard and the product is great.
If they were left to their own devices as tech leaders, they'd probably get rid of the humans entirely. But the recruiters amongst us are saying, hang on, hang on, hang on. Because the interview is one of the critical points to my point around humans, where you build empathy, understanding, connection with candidates. So we want to be really thoughtful about where we deploy this.
Robert: When and how.
Cath: Yes, when and how and where. Yes, it's going to be an enormous game changer in terms of allowing us to more accurately and fairly assess many more people than we could do if we… And totally consistently and remove bias. So it is exciting, but there's also a point of, okay, where and when and how and why. So we're being very, very thoughtful about that.
Robert: I think it'd be really interesting for people around this to understand, first of all, how do you prioritise? Why did you prioritise that? And then how are you being thoughtful about it? Because it's the challenge always around this is, oh, this is the shiny thing that everybody's talking about, let's do that. And you're in danger of breaching your seven human touch points because surely the telephone interview, which is largely, I assume, what a robotic interview or a computer-based interview is going to replace, that was one of the human touch points now. So how…
How are you, first of all, why did you prioritise that? And then secondly, how did you ensure that it still delivered on the principles of making it human-centric and fair and it didn't just become a tech experiment?
Cath: Great questions. I wouldn't say that's one of the things we're doing. I wouldn't say we necessarily prioritise that over anything else. There's a whole bunch of other things. So for example, one would be around at face-to-face interview stage as it was called in the old days. Now it tends to be on the screen for a lot of the time. Although we are also doing a bit of a return to face-to-face interviewing in some areas as well. We do a panel. So, there's, depending on the level you're coming in at, it's between four and six interviews that you'll have in a very short space of time. And we are really rigorous around capturing the notes and the evidence in those interviews. And then there is a debrief at the end, which is chaired by a bar raiser
Robert: Oh yes, that's right, it's an Amazon term of ah is this person coming into the organisation going to raise the bar as it were in the team?
Cath: Absolutely, so on the panel there will be the hiring manager and there will be a bar raiser and then there'll be a number of other interviewers and we're using AI to try and remove, that's a huge amount of human effort if you think about because we require really detailed notes from every interviewer using AI to summarise those notes and to help draw out the key pieces of evidence to support the bar raiser in chairing that conversation is something that...
Robert: Brilliant. Huge value.
Cath: Enormous value. So yeah, and that's not going away. We're very clear that the humans have to make the decision. You can use the AI to do the heavy lifting in terms of the administrative work, but the humans have to make that decision. And you know, the bar raising program is an enormous investment by Amazon in terms of the time that it takes.
But again, we know that people who are hired involving a bar raiser are higher quality. We've done the experiments over the years. So it's important and we're committed to it. And in terms of the other question around the AI interviewing.
Robert: Sorry, we'll come back to the... Because it does link to the AI bit on this, which is... So I get the way that you prioritise it. How is it going to add value? How is it going to save recruiters time to enable them to do the things that they're best at, which is creating that chemistry and that link and supporting candidates. So I get the recording of notes. The bit that I'm not quite so sure about is this idea of replacing the panel with a robot, or have I misunderstood what you're doing?
Cath: But earlier in the process is where we would use the…
Robert: Right, you would use just the initial screen. Do you have the right to work or?
Cath: Yeah, I mean, probably a little bit more than that. More than the basic questions. But we have so many in certain, and this isn't true of every geography, of course, and every job, but in certain geographies and job codes, we have thousands and thousands of applications. And unless you have some way of automating the actual page selection, are not going to get the best candidates. So what we're trying to do through that kind of automation is to very quickly, right at the front end of the funnel, take it from big to very narrow. Very narrow immediately. So the people who we have recruited spending human time and effort on are the ones who are much, we know from all our data, are more likely to succeed in Amazon and in getting through the process.
Robert: I really like that. And I've often talked about, we used to think, and you would have known that from Alexander Mann and Capitar days of this, we used to think of the recruitment funnel a bit like a bucket. That it went through phases and at the bottom you made your hires. But now, and particularly with such a strong brand name like Amazon, but generally I'm hearing that the recruitment volumes are just going crazy. So it's got to be a bit more like a… cocktail glass, is exactly like a martini glass.
Cath: You've got to go very, very wide and then immediately narrow, whereas exactly to your point before a funnel would look like that.
Robert: It would. And we have to rethink. that's where automation and AI can come in. value.
Cath: Can really level the playing field in terms of giving everyone access, but allowing organisations to make sure that they are quickly identifying those who are most likely to be successful.
Robert: Yes. And how do you at Amazon, because it'd be the same for a lot of TA leaders here, they're all sitting there thinking, yeah, I've got this massive top of the funnel volume problem. In your case, you have excited tech leaders coming on saying, oh, I've seen these AI robotic interviewers and I think they'll be amazing for other TA leaders, it'll be they went to a conference and somebody came along with an AI avatar, and it sounds all amazing. But the worry for a lot of people is that while you might get the efficiency piece, you might equally introduce bias at scale too. So how do you ensure that by introducing this new tech that sounds absolutely amazing, that you don't have unintended consequences around this?
Cath: That's a great question. And I think all organisations using AI in any way, shape or form should be worrying about that. We do have extraordinarily rigorous, as you'd expect, AI governance in Amazon. And there is an AI governance forum that examines everything we do, backed up by a lot of… psychologists, lawyers, everyone.
Robert: So every idea has to go to that panel.
Cath: really super cautious about testing it to make sure that we aren't doing that. Yes. Yeah, we're very, very aware and alive to the risk. And obviously, we're being very careful in terms of how we develop AI for the recruiting process in a global company where we might have very different regulatory environments globally. There may be things we can do in America with AI in the future that we won't be able to do in Europe in AI. So we are being very, very thoughtful about how we take that forward.
Robert: And so you have a whole governance to support you on that. And I think that's probably not true of many organisations, tends to be the AI governance tends to be data protection officer leader who's trying to do all of those things. So that's something really important for organisations around all that, get that.
And then there must be an element too of how do you upscale your team to get familiar with AI too? Because it's changing so fast and there seem to be so many new developments. How do you go about that with your team?
Cath: Great question. We've really encouraged, and this is… generally in Amazon, we're really encouraging people to play with it. So we'll do, we'll organise hackathons, AI hackathons. We get the AI wiz kids from AWS to come and talk to teams about, demonstrate, show us how it works. We are fortunate, mean, AWS has something called the Machine Learning University, which is, I think they offer some stuff externally for sure, but internally there's a lot of courses that you can just go on and do. So I did GenAI for Leaders recently.
Robert: Really? Okay, and what did that involve?
Cath: It was about six hours of virtual, self-led learning, mainly videos and then tests at the end. But I learned masses. um And there's lots of courses like that that recruiters can log on and do, anyone can do. And then we also aren't neglecting the kind of human moments pieces that I talked about. So we have, you know, we've got an internal L&D team for TA and there's a… big focus on a program we call Talent Advisors and that's all about enhancing business acumen. Influencing through data.
How do you really work as a talent advisor to the business and sure we amp up those human skills. But one of the things I really like is because we're in Amazon, we're really lucky, so we've got AWS, something called Party Rock, is an internal. Party Rock.
Robert: Party Rock?
Cath: yes, built on AWS's Bedrock is their AI platform.
And Party Rock's an internal platform that allows us to play and build apps. So my team has been building all sorts of apps. And actually the one I mentioned around summarising all of the interview feedback was developed by one of my junior recruiters in Party Rock. uh And what we do is we have something called the Recruiting AI Hub globally, where any app that one of our team develops is posted in there and then we watch.
Robert: Oh, and then other people can then see.
Cath: And then we watch adoption. um And the things that get really used by the recruiters and rated highly, and we ask people to rate them as well, then we're then putting into our ATS because we can, because we want it all ourselves. can then put it into the product roadmap. So Damla, Damla Sena, she's listening, is the lady who developed that app and that got so much usage in the AI hub that it's now being made kind of a native uh product in our ATS.
Robert: Brilliant, because that, it's part upskilling but it's part experimentation and we've never really given TA the right the budget to experiment and the only way you're really going to make improvements is and an IT know this and we've always accepted that IT can have a budget for having to experiment and learn about things because that's the only way they can keep on top of all the changes and we're not really given TA the right to do that. Whereas it sounds in Amazon, you have. You've done it through hackathons, you've done it through learning, you've done it through giving the opportunity to experiment in a safe area to kind of develop something on that. That sounds a great way to do it. I mean, obviously you have the benefit of this incredible resource, but the moral of the story is you have to experiment.
Cath: You have to play. Experiment, try. That's the only way to learn. And do it carefully and thoughtfully because as we all know, AI can come up with all sorts of made-ups. Hallucinations, as they are technically called. learned from my course. But yeah, so be cautious, but definitely play.
Yeah, because I think that's always been the worry, hasn't it? And I don't know how you do this playing in a safe area. I assume that anything that goes into your AI hub… the example you mentioned from Damla on this one, also has to go through the AI governance piece too. There's always that gatekeeper.
Robert: And I think that's, you need to set up a safe environment that still got the governance in there rather than it going completely wild.
Robert: Cath: Thank you. I think that's a really useful insight and way that organisations can think about this. One of the other areas that a lot of people talk about AI and the impact of AI is going to be around what do we do for our earlycareers talent, the talent that we're bringing into the organisation. The CEO of Anthropic said the other day said 50 % of uh entry level roles are now going to be done by AI. And so we're not going to need all these young people coming in that we've so carefully built systems and processes and training programs to support the future of development of our organisations.
And I know, because you were an advisor to the Institute of Student Employers, and so that early careers element of the working organisation is important to you. How do you see some of the challenges that AI is going to bring about for these roles that now they can be done. A lot of these things can be done by AI.
Cath: Interesting actually, Matt Garman, who's the AWS chief exec about three weeks ago, I think, was on a podcast saying, and there was a few news stories run about this saying, if you get rid of all your junior people and replace them with AI, you're an idiot.
Robert: Really? okay,
Cath: So I might be paraphrasing, but basically it's the dumbest thing he's ever heard or something he said. So I think that you are getting different perspectives from some of the tech leaders and thought leaders, is interesting. I do think it's a really interesting challenge because it is true, undoubtedly, that a lot of roles that would traditionally be entry-level can be replaced by AI and done by AI. But if we are not, I suppose there's two imperatives for me. One is if you do not employ people in junior roles, how do they get to be mid-level and senior? And a good example is software development engineers in Amazon.
We recruit at the moment thousands globally of software development engineers, SDE1s as we call them as their graduate strain to the company. And now a lot of their role could be done by AI, but if we don't recruit SDE2s in that volume, how do we get the SDE2s and the SDE3s, who the more senior, for the future? So there's part of a, need those people to come through and learn in order to, I suppose, future-proof the organisation, is one level. And then there's also a really important, kind of social imperative around this as well.
If we do not employ our young people coming out of university or coming out of schools, then what? have a huge, society has a massive issue. So I think both those things are really important and organisations need to think carefully about those. There's also, I think it's always true, and we don't really know what this looks like yet because we're so in the early days, but AI will transform jobs. There will be other entry-level jobs that AI creates.
We just might not know what those are yet. So I think there's a lot of kind of doom, doom-filled speculation. But I also think we will find a path through it. But we do have to, think employers and governments need to think very carefully about how we incentivise the right actions in order to make sure we don't end up with a social issue. And I've got kids who are 16 and 20.
Robert: You want to know that they're coming into something where they're gonna learn the skills. is coming over the horizon for them.
Cath: So it's top of mind for me for both personal and professional reasons.
Robert: So we've got to find a way of addressing this and part of it is also thinking that… what we want people to do when they start their career and learn the skills they're gonna need for the future is going to be different from what we did in the past. Because in the past it was always about, you need to cut your teeth in doing the boring tasks before you get to the interesting ones because you have to learn in that way and build up.
I always think it's interesting the difference between tacit knowledge and learn knowledge on all of this and what an academic education gives you is very much specific learn skills, but then you've got to acquire the tacit knowledge, which is what experience gives you. And so we just have to think about, okay, well, the tacit, the learned knowledge we used to have from education around that, critical thinking, problem solving, some of those things will still be relevant in there but also education needs to shift a bit as well to prepare the young people coming in to these roles because the roles they're going to be doing will be different and they need to be prepared in a way where they're using technology quickly to augment the value that they can provide and pick up the tacit knowledge.
So what's your thought about that as to, know, it's one thing we've got to do and it's another of, well, how do we then ensure that they're giving and getting the value from that?
Cath: This is really top of mind for me. think, and I, yeah, it's a real hot topic and we have to get better at it look at the education system, there's lots of stuff written about this, but you know, the education system is, you know, was formed in about the 1850s and it hasn't really changed a lot since what we're teaching in schools and universities is mostly not what employers need.
But it's really hard. You can't just blame the education system and blame government. everybody's got to evolve. Yeah, everyone's got to evolve. And employers also, I think, have an enormous role to play in this. And it's twofold. One is making sure that we are leaning in in terms of showing kids what careers can look like in the future and how that physics lesson might relate to a job in the future. So part of making that really obvious and helping people understand the career options, and there was a really interesting OECD report published earlier this year, which I was involved with, which Amazon sponsored, and career aspirations for 15-year-olds, and they looked at hundreds of thousands of 15-year-olds across multiple countries, have not evolved since 2000. So in 25 years, what 15-year-olds think they want to do hasn't really changed, despite all the technology.
Everything that's changed. It's still doctor, lawyer, engineer. It's the kind of so-called professional occupations. But the number of kids who think they're going to do those jobs vastly exceeds the number of roles that are available also, often, the educational level that those kids are likely to attain. Yet we have an enormous gap in terms of trades.
People don't want to be plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, but actually… those are always going to be jobs that we need. There's so they're showing that there's a gap for those. And then obviously there's all the jobs that we don't know yet.
Robert: Well, there's going be data technicians. mean, there's all sorts of new roles.
Cath: All sorts of roles will arrive. So uh a kind of allowing kids to understand the vast array of roles that are out there that may be open to them, what that, what their own kind of educational level and attainment and interests are going to suit them for. And also they're making sure that they understand that it's likely to change all the time. And actually what they look at now may not be what they get to when they get there. But being resilient, open to change, willing to learn, all of those soft, so-called soft skills are massively critical because that's what actually is going to set them up for success.
Not knowing how to do X or Y or learn the Kings of England from 1066, for example. But it's all the other skills that will enable them to be successful once they do get into the world of work. And I think, you know, employers, so that's one thing is showing what careers are there and helping kids there. And the second thing for employers is really kind of leaning into the curriculum in terms of, look, if we want certain skills, then we got to be willing to help schools, universities, colleges produce that really lean into
Robert: And not just advise, actually lean into it and intervene and support.
Cath: And a good example in India actually is we need uh in Amazon in India, part of our of account management, vendor management teams, we need people with multilingual European language skills, but also obviously they need some kind of account management, account management skills. And we are finding that universities are churning out very capable linguists, but they didn't have the kind of account management skills we were looking for. And so in the last year or so, we've started to work with universities on language courses and in the last semester, actually going in and teaching actually going in and teaching, being part of the curriculum. Around account management and then we're recruiting those graduates as they come out.
So, I mean that's a very specific example but there is opportunity, I think for employers generally to do so much more along those lines.
Robert: Because we've never thought about it in that way. It's always been schools, universities, they have to prepare. We as employers give indications of the kind of skills that we might be looking for, but we largely left it up to them to go and work out what was the curriculum. It's very different thinking to say actually the level of change is so fast, the societal impact of this change is so significant that we can't just leave the education system to figure it out we actually have to be more involved.
Cath: We should really see it as a kind permeable membrane between educational employers, I think. think the more you can kind of blur that barrier and have feedback both ways and interventions both ways, the better the outcomes will be for everyone.
Robert: Yes. And I think that's going to be so important as to how particularly large employers, because you know, the likes of Amazon have a, can have a huge impact in leading the way of how we deal with this transformation. And I often get slightly frustrated that we seem to assume that the government has to sort these things out. And actually government is slow and we know for very obvious reasons and private organisations can move faster and can contribute,and should think about how they contribute.
It's great to hear that. Well, a lot of really good thoughts about transformation, technology, how TA teams need to change, how they go about it, some really good thoughts and advice there. And I wonder now, having gone through the career that you've had and starting with an RPO, then going to Capita and now with Amazon and the sort of fast pace of change that's going on now.
What would you say to your younger self about things that now that you've learned that actually that would have been incredibly useful if I'd had somebody share that with me? Share that with me.
Cath: There's a few things I've done a few school presentations on career advice to my younger self. So there's a few things. I think authenticity, the power of authenticity is really important. So being comfortable, you're being yourself, not trying to pretend to be. Being comfortable in your own skin, not trying to pretend to be someone else. Particularly as I stepped into leadership roles, I initially felt that… you know, needed to project a kind of sense of gravitas and of knowing everything. You know, which I didn't feel. never, I've never felt any sense of gravitas ever.
Robert: Yes. Well, we all have that kind of imposter syndrome.
Cath: And it's ridiculous. You don't, you don't need to do that. You just need to be authentic and open and honest. And as soon as I kind of relaxed and let go of this feeling like I needed to be serious and know everything, I became much more effective as a leader. uh And particularly that point about thinking you need to know everything. You really don't.
In fact, I say this to a lot of some people I mentor about when you're a leader, you've got to be really clear on what your job is and on what your job isn't. And almost what your job isn't is more important because you are not there to know the absolute detail of everything your team does.
Robert: And we have, I don't know how we've ended up in this, but we have the sort of, expected of our politicians, we expected of our leaders that somehow they're meant to be on top of absolutely everything, which you can't.
Cath: No, you can't. And of course, you know, if there's a big decision to be made or something goes wrong, then you get into the detail call it dive deep in Amazon. But you cannot possibly know everything and you shouldn't need to. And if you do, then you are undoubtedly getting in the way of your middle senior managers because you are cramping them. actually devolving responsibility as much as possible. You retain the accountability because if it goes wrong, it sits with you and that's fine. But you devolve the responsibility and you trust your team. And generally, you get much better results.
And it also means that actually you can scale yourself much better. Because if you're not needing to be in every decision in every meeting, then you can be doing the things that you should be doing as a recruiter.
Robert: And it will have the biggest impact.
Cath: Which is making sure the right resources are in place, making sure there's a real clarity around the strategic vision and where you're going as a team. Protecting your team from the noise that inevitably comes from above and around them. That's the role of a leader. It is not to know the microlevel detail of everything that you do. So I think if I'd known that a lot earlier in my career, I could have been more effective earlier.
Robert: Yes, I think those two things, you know, on their own authenticity, being prepared to step back from the detail because in the early parts of your career, it's all about the detail of trying to prove your capability. You're very much in the weeds of it all because that's your role in the end. And sometimes you can carry that legacy with you and not let go and you don't know when and how to let go unless somebody tells you some future AI robot self that might help you in your career development.
Cath, it's been fascinating talking to you, lots of really good insights and lots of great thoughts. And thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. me. I've enjoyed the conversation.
Cath: Thanks, Robert.
Robert: Thank you.