Ep 670: Jeff Taylor: Rethinking Hiring for the AI Age

It feels like Recruiting has come a long way since the days of help-wanted ads in newspapers, but are we genuinely innovating or just consistently repackaging outdated ways of doing things? For well over a century, versions of the resume and job ad have been the foundation of hiring, but as technology and work itself move on at an ever-increasing pace, it's clear these tools weren't designed for the world we are now in. So, can we finally move beyond them to build a solid foundation for an AI-powered approach?

My guest on Episode 670 is one of the original pioneers of online recruiting, Jeff Taylor, the founder of Monster.com, or the MonsterBoard as it was known back in 1994. Jeff built Monster during the infancy of the internet when the rest of the industry was still faxing resumes and placing ever more expensive ads in the newspapers. He introduced the world to online job postings and the resume database, which, very much to his surprise and increasing alarm, are still core tenets of recruiting 30 years later.

Jeff is now back in the industry and is launching a new business later in the year. In our conversation, we discuss the need for innovation and reinvention in recruiting to harness AI and address complex challenges employers now face.

In the interview, we discuss:

Jeff and Monster's back story and what recruiting was like in 1994

The early days of the internet and what helped Monster to scale to 100 million registered resumes

Resumes and job postings have barely changed in over 100 years, and why this is now a big problem.

How AI is reshaping recruitment without addressing its foundational inadequacies

How employers are losing control of their own job postings

Looking at the whole person and the growing importance of the personal brand

What the future of hiring looks like when we put people, not processes, at the centre

What's next for Jeff

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