Recruiting AI Implementation Requires Change Management

The GoHire Talks Interview Transcript with Kristina Tsys

[00:00:00] Jonathan Duarte: All right everyone. We have a fantastic guest today. All I’ve been talking about lately is recruiting AI, and I found Kristina who is going to share what she has done with her company in the recruiting space. And she’s not going rogue like most of you are thinking about or have done. She’ll explain out how she got.

[00:00:23] Jonathan Duarte: To building a recruiting AI system within the company, within the confines and with support from management. Kristina, give us a quick intro about yourself and how you got into recruiting.

[00:00:35] Kristina Tsys: Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you so much for having me here. So appreciate it. And I’ve been in recruitment for more than 11 years at this point.

[00:00:44] Kristina Tsys: I’m a technical and engineering recruiter at Fortive, so I’m hiring for technical science engineering product roles across 10 companies under this umbrella and mostly United States and Canada. Previously I was hired also globally. So right now I’m focused specifically on North America.

[00:01:02] Kristina Tsys: And yeah, so I own the full cycle. I act as a strategic partner to the hiring managers, bring a lot of data to the recruitment process, a lot of insights, do some coaching with the new hiring managers, and making sure we are making not just fast hiring decisions, but very meaningful decisions and bring, the right.

[00:01:21] Kristina Tsys: People and the best talent on the market. And for the past year, I was leading an AI implementation project within the talent acquisition team. So we improving the workflows, adoption, utilization hosting workshops for the team.

[00:01:35] Jonathan Duarte: And How many recruiters overall do you guys have? And then how many have you been leading with these, with the work groups

[00:01:42] Kristina Tsys: So our North American team includes around 15 recruiters. Also, we have a couple of people from Latin America, so I would say it’s a group of 15, 17 people.

[00:01:52] Kristina Tsys: And we have a small, like this project, we have three people at this point, and of course a lot of support from the leadership team. So the smaller group is three people. And I’m leading this group.

[00:02:04] Jonathan Duarte: So how we met was, I saw your post on LinkedIn two weeks ago now. So I guess it was middle of March, say March 15th or something. I’ll put a link to it in the podcast notes too so everyone could see. But the topic was that you had built this. Inside the company understanding your workflows, and we already know global company.

[00:02:30] Jonathan Duarte: I highly, you’re find a hard to find candidates. So there’s sourcing involved, then there’s, grueling interviews. These aren’t like high volume things it’s, there’s a lot of workflow processes, multiple businesses, multiple hiring managers. This is not a single workflow, this is multiple chains.

[00:02:52] Jonathan Duarte: Everyone’s doing it a little bit different, possibly even different tech stacks. Give me an idea of what, like how did you guys think about making the change or what was the impetus to start looking for, other solutions?

[00:03:09] Kristina Tsys: it started with my own passion about AI. In April last year we use Copilot.

[00:03:15] Kristina Tsys: We use all Microsoft solutions within the team. the Copilot was introduced. It was very soft introduction, and it was more like we have to learn by ourself how to use it, the best practices. there wasn’t like a formal training on this. I was playing a lot with this because I use AI for a number of years, and I’m so passionate about it.

[00:03:33] Kristina Tsys: It made my life so much easier. I realized there is so much potential and I just would like to share it with the team. So I started working with the leadership team, just to make sure we’re on the same page about it, how we’d like to utilize it. We would like to improve utilization rate adoption.

[00:03:48] Kristina Tsys: This has actually turned out to be the whole change management process because some people, they familiar with AI. They use AI. For a number of years, but some people they just start exploring and it can be some resistance. I feel like it’ll be applicable for any team, not just talent acquisition.

[00:04:07] Kristina Tsys: Yeah, so it was software introduction of Copilot and then I’ve noticed like we can use it better so we can utilize, there are so much potential. And then we started working on. To discover the options, what can it can do for us, and build the agents, build the workflows, and basically to make our life easier.

[00:04:28] Kristina Tsys: So as recruiters, we can be more focused on strategic work to be advisors to the hiring managers, not just to be focused on day-to-day operations and to chase all the day-today tasks. So we started leading our own workshops and at some point we just realized we wanted everyone to be on the same level about AI and to be comfortable.

[00:04:51] Kristina Tsys: So I decided to take a step back before we move forward with more complex subjects about building our own agents or to build more complex workflows. So we just reach out to the team. And how does it feel about AI? Do they feel comfortable? Do they use it on a daily basis or mostly like they use Chat GPT for their personal, life.

[00:05:12] Kristina Tsys: And we’ve learned that it was very different adoption rate across the team. We took a step back, I started working with a vendor directly with Microsoft team. So we started from the basics. So what is AI? What does Copilot, what can it do? So different options, step by step process.

[00:05:28] Kristina Tsys: And it’s not enough just to bring AI tool to the team, but adoption. And utilization when the team actually know how to use it, not afraid of it. And yeah, this is what makes difference.

[00:05:40] Jonathan Duarte: I swear this is like a textbook case. Now you could actually say, Hey, how do you adopt AI in a company?

[00:05:46] Jonathan Duarte: You could probably ask Claude or Chat GPT or Copilot, and they’re all gonna say this now, but a year ago there was no concept of this. So I taught how the recruiting AI function within the HR.com certification for CHROs and their certification process.

[00:06:05] Jonathan Duarte: And this is what I taught the same thing, which the first is you gotta find out where your users are. Like you just can’t dump something up. And I also say recruiting any kind of AI is not like implementing Workday. It’s not, it doesn’t have its own rules. It doesn’t have its own set of criteria.

[00:06:27] Jonathan Duarte: It’s completely, it’s just an abstract subject. So you have to find out, number one, what are our problems? And it sounds like you guys, Who’s doing it at all? Are you going home and opening the fridge and looking for a recipe or like, how are you using it to, complain about your boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife or whatever?

[00:06:49] Jonathan Duarte: If you’re using it in some way, let’s understand it so we could see where you are with it so you’re not scared of it. And then. Perfect example of this is I think why it was another really successful program. ’cause I’ve never heard anyone talk about this way either is So you did that and then you did the next thing is training, like abstract training.

[00:07:11] Jonathan Duarte: Not like what we’re gonna do. ’cause we don’t know exactly what we’re gonna do, but let’s talk about the tools, let’s talk about how we could use it and understand it. And then you take the next step. So once you raise the bar. Across the board, everyone’s on board. And the people who aren’t, they may leave that’s gonna be part of the workforce. We know that. But there’s gonna be those intuitive people who are gonna help raise the bar and bring it, because this is not like implementing an applicant tracking system in any way. There’s no existing processes. It’s bringing it all to the table.

[00:07:51] Jonathan Duarte: It sounds like you have a lot of experience doing this within Fortive as well, but from a management side you brought in leadership early, which was how do we level this up for everyone? There’s an opportunity. And we’re having these problems. Every hiring manager has their own workflow.

[00:08:09] Jonathan Duarte: Every applicant tracking system does it differently, but how do we do it across the company and do it in a way that we can future expand on it?

[00:08:19] Kristina Tsys: Yeah,

[00:08:19] Jonathan Duarte: and it sounds like you had those conversations before, anything really started, which is great.

[00:08:26] Kristina Tsys: Yeah, I have a great team and very grateful for the support from the leadership team.

[00:08:31] Kristina Tsys: ‘Cause also my point was not just to bring the tool and to tell you we will do this and this, but also about the benefits we’ll get from this, how much time we’ll save and how much. The efficiency will go up of our day-to-day work. So yeah, maybe We’ll need to dedicate some time to learn about AI tools Copilot specifically, but then down the road it’ll save us so much time, it’ll make us more strategic and the outcome will be better hiring decisions.

[00:09:00] Jonathan Duarte: Oh I love that too, because again, this is just like the checklist to have a project sponsored by. The executive team, you have to come up with hypothesis. You have to know what the problems are. You have to define them, and this isn’t a science project, although you work in for a company that deals with a lot of very logical people and executive teams are logical anyways.

[00:09:23] Jonathan Duarte: But you’re saying, we know we have these problems. We may not know. What our churn rate is. We may not know how long it takes to get like exact data. You don’t need exact data to start. You need a hypothesis and something that you can quantify and say, if we can do this, if we can do this, we can get this result.

[00:09:46] Jonathan Duarte: We’re not saying there’s another possible way that’s better than what we’re doing now. But as a business, we have to keep getting better or we’re just gonna die.

[00:09:56] Kristina Tsys: And from my standpoint, because I’m very involved in day-today operations, within the recruitment workflow, I see all the roadblocks, where we can be more efficient.

[00:10:05] Kristina Tsys: And continuous improvement is a big part of Fortive across all Fortive companies. That’s why it was great to work with the leadership team on this because they totally support when we would like to bring new ideas to support continuous improvement and to bring it to the team.

[00:10:19] Jonathan Duarte: So what were some of the early like hypotheses and things that you saw from the operation side that you knew, and I know you’ve been a recruiter for 11 years. So the way we were recruiting over the last 11 years, we all knew doesn’t really work or it works, it’s just not effective.

[00:10:39] Jonathan Duarte: So what were some of the things that you thought of and you pitched to the team and got buy off on.

[00:10:45] Kristina Tsys: So it was also very creative process because as you mentioned with AI, there is no like a set set book of rules. So you can be creative with prompting and what kind of output you would like to get.

[00:10:58] Kristina Tsys: From my experience, it really helped me a lot with day-to-day operations like. Taking notes from the intake meetings help with what is spending in my inbox so I don’t have to go through all my emails. So I build my own agents. So it’ll just summarize beginning of the day, end of the year, it’ll summarize what is spending, what it requires my attention, what is urgent, what can be weighed, so what’s my project looks like.

[00:11:21] Kristina Tsys: So all those updates, it helps me. It’s like getting your personal assistance that is available 24/7 And it’s all about also the art of prompting. So how you prompted? So we educated the team Also, how to build the prompts. We still work in process,

[00:11:35] Jonathan Duarte: Yeah.

[00:11:36] Kristina Tsys: We’ve hosted at this point specifically for Copilot, it was four workshops

[00:11:42] Kristina Tsys: But yeah, with Copilot it was step by step process. We, would like to give time back to the team so they can. Try to play with this to see how it works. And also, at some point I wanted also to challenge the team. Not just this is what you do, but also bring your key studies do you have any problem in mind you would like to solve or maybe a roadblock in your day-to-day life?

[00:12:02] Kristina Tsys: Bring it to us. Let’s brainstorm together and let’s find solution using the AI.

[00:12:08] Jonathan Duarte: I’ve heard other companies super excited about this whole space and exactly what you guys are doing. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but there’s so many things that seem to be working well for you guys, but everyone can emulate parts of it. If you can do the whole thing, great. But the other thing you’re doing with the workshops and the training and giving people time. To experiment. There’s a story about Starbucks because Starbucks early, did not have frappuccinos and ice blended drinks until one rogue employee, one time made one and gave it to a customer.

[00:12:46] Jonathan Duarte: I think the employee got initially reprimanded for going off because it’s cookie cutter, right? McDonald’s the same hamburger the same way no matter what country. They got reprimanded. But I think something happened in this specific case.

[00:13:03] Jonathan Duarte: They said maybe we should be listening to our employees. Not just mandating. So McDonald’s, there’s no room for, I’m going to make fries this different way today. That’s never gonna happen in the McDonald’s strategy. And it happens in a lot of companies if they don’t have that curiosity or allow that curiosity.

[00:13:26] Jonathan Duarte: And I think that’s critical in this. And again, because it’s, there’s no rules to it. It’s what you bring to it and it’s that curiosity. Like of trying a new tool.

[00:13:40] Jonathan Duarte: But you’re not trying from zero. And I think that’s where a lot of people got have been stopped over the last 18 months is they didn’t know how to start with say, Chat GPT, and they didn’t know.

[00:13:50] Jonathan Duarte: So they just kept their head down and they were doing, I was doing it too. My whole company, we were on Chat GPT. I already canceled the whole corporate contract. We moved to Claude all in the last week because I saw the difference and people were telling me the difference before, and then I was like that tool doesn’t work for me.

[00:14:08] Jonathan Duarte: But I was using the wrong size screwdriver because it’s the only tool I had until someone said, why don’t you try this other one?

[00:14:15] Kristina Tsys: I understand it’s a lot of tools. Chat GPT probably is the most popular because it just blew up at some point. But a lot of people just stick to Chat GPT, but so many great tools and you are right.

[00:14:26] Kristina Tsys: So the most important is to find the right tool and Copilot for us why we move forward with Copilot, because it’s integrated to your calendar outlook. So it’s possibilities are endless. So again, very creative process. You just run no limits how you can use it. There are some limitations from the technical side, how about the implementation and how it’s integrated across the company.

[00:14:49] Kristina Tsys: But you’re right, it’s all about to find the right tool. And also we train employees to be mindful about it. What kind of information they feed to the AI. So Copilot, it’s our internal license, so it’s a part of our, company

[00:15:02] Jonathan Duarte: you are already paying for it. Yep.

[00:15:04] Kristina Tsys: With Chat GPT I know people still use Chat GPT at work, but also we educate people that.

[00:15:09] Kristina Tsys: Be mindful what you, especially in HR, we work with a lot of sensitive information. Yeah. And just be mindful what information you give to Chat GPT, for example, because it’s not part of our ecosystem. But with Copilot we have the full license. It’s amazing what it can do for us. And it was all going back to your point, it’s all about the right tool for your work.

[00:15:29] Jonathan Duarte: All right, so now we talked about the high level stuff. We don’t have too much time and if people really love this thing, I gotta ask Kristina to come back because what I want to do is really get it an nitty gritty, It’s almost like this is gonna be the teaser one because we could talk about it all day, but overall, if we look at from recruiting, especially in your market where you’ve got global, lots of different systems, you’ve got a disparate team.

[00:15:54] Jonathan Duarte: I’m sure you guys are all remote and maybe some close by to and in office. And then you’ve got loads of different tech stacks. Then if you look at from sourcing on one end to engagement, to getting to the job posting, to the pre-screen, to the interview, to offer an onboard if you took those nine steps where did you guys focus and today, where are you guys?

[00:16:21] Jonathan Duarte: Process is very different for every type of solution and every hiring manager and every role. But if you look across those like nine, where have you guys had the biggest impact on it so far, and where do you think you might be able to go, over the course of the next, year or 24 months?

[00:16:36] Jonathan Duarte: And I know that’s a heck of a long time in AI standards.

[00:16:39] Kristina Tsys: Yeah it’s a great one. I would say first it help with day-to-day operations. When I talk to the candidates, it’ll help to structure the notes, when I talk to the managers about the new role.

[00:16:49] Kristina Tsys: So it helps to also, to catch all the small details so I can be present and actually, focus on our conversation versus typing all the notes when I talk to the team.

[00:17:00] Jonathan Duarte: so that’s the intake meeting with the, hiring manager. And then when you’re interviewing or prescreening a candidate, you’re also doing note taker.

[00:17:07] Jonathan Duarte: And do you use Copilot specifically? Do you create your own agents within it to do that?

[00:17:12] Kristina Tsys: So this is a buildin option, so we can use recording when we have a meeting. But also what the agents, so we’ve built multiple agents, depends, What’s your strategy? What’s your goal? So my favorite one probably will be strategic sourcing agent.

[00:17:27] Kristina Tsys: It’s when based on my conversation with the manager, so I can pull out the market data, I can pull out the insights. Of course, we use other tools like LinkedIn Insights, but also it’ll gather even more information from the open sources. Strategic sourcing it will help me to analyze competitors.

[00:17:44] Kristina Tsys: There are some layoffs on the market so we can, consider those people who are available right now, or it helps with the search. So it will help to create the whole search for you. We can upload multiple resumes and based on the job description, based on my conversation, I can prompt it.

[00:18:01] Kristina Tsys: It will give me the best match. But also it’s, a very interesting time to hire right now because a lot of perfect resumes, so probably it can be a separate conversation about people and candidates are also using AI and that’s why I’m always saying. AI won’t replace recruiters, but recruiters who use AI will replace recruiters who don’t.

[00:18:20] Kristina Tsys: So we need this human touch. In the recruitment process, but it helps really to speed up the process. It saves me a lot of time on sourcing. So intake notes, screening, also have a separate agent. It creates all the workflow for me for the day. So every day will pull out all my notes from my inbox, from my calendar what can I expect from today?

[00:18:39] Kristina Tsys: So what is important? What can wait? So it’s really. Sky’s the limit. You can build your agents, and it will really depends what kind of support and depends on your strategy.

[00:18:51] Jonathan Duarte: All right, so it sounds like, we got from intake to sourcing to daily operations, your own agents. What was your first actual agent that you created?

[00:19:03] Jonathan Duarte: Or was it somebody else on the team what was that creative that incentive, because I think that’s, that seed.

[00:19:09] Jonathan Duarte: And I got the bug ’cause I can’t tell you how many, I connected 15 of my applications to Claude over the weekend.

[00:19:17] Kristina Tsys: Wow.

[00:19:18] Jonathan Duarte: Yeah, I told you before I went super deep and it’s insane. I’m trying to come up for a breath, but now I’m like, and then you just get me more excited. So yeah, maybe I’ll connect a whole bunch more, but, so what was your first, the seed agent that you created?

[00:19:34] Kristina Tsys: I started with my own challenge, because I’m hiring across 10 different companies. So each company, different product, different solutions, but also is different onboarding process for each product, a different background check for each company.

[00:19:48] Kristina Tsys: So every time when I have a hire and I need to finalize it or when I talk to the candidate. I need to talk about benefits or they have questions about the onboarding process. So previously, I had to go through multiple documents and I had to pull out, while I’m on the phone. So it was my challenge.

[00:20:04] Kristina Tsys: I feel like we can do it in a more efficient way. So my first agent I created it was onboarding. Onboarding agent. Yeah, so when I uploaded all the documents, all the policies across all 10 companies, and I could just, while I’m on the phone, I will ask my agent, so what’s, the background check process for this company or what the benefits package or what the vacation policy for this company, because it’s so much information is changing, so it’s important to keep it up to date, but it saved a lot of time.

[00:20:35] Jonathan Duarte: Alright. I’m gonna ask everyone who watches this and listens to this. If you wanna hear more, we’re gonna invite Kristina back You have to choose something like this.

[00:20:45] Jonathan Duarte: Like it’s something that, takes you personal time and has nothing to do with your company.

[00:20:52] Kristina Tsys: Exactly.

[00:20:52] Jonathan Duarte: It’s not about the other workflows all, it’s not about your applicant tracking system. It’s not about your HRIS system and what it can and can’t do. It’s what’s that one thing that frustrates you that you have to go look for and figure out, but if you could just put into a little search window.

[00:21:10] Jonathan Duarte: And it’s all right there. And up to date, yes. You have to do a little maintenance. But that one thing is the seed. Yeah, that’s the seed to start. ’cause once you get that, the next one becomes a bigger plant and then a bigger plant. And then you have a redwood tree, and then you have a redwood forest.

[00:21:28] Jonathan Duarte: It’s not about the company automating your job. It’s about you figuring out a way to get that stuff that’s frustrating you.

[00:21:37] Jonathan Duarte: Done faster. And if you can do that, then. Everything’s gonna open up and it’s going to be frustrating. It’s not gonna be super simple. You’re not gonna just be able to type in and it’s done.

[00:21:48] Kristina Tsys: Yeah,

[00:21:48] Jonathan Duarte: it takes some time. But it’s like riding a bike. Once you do it, you don’t forget how to ride a bike. It’s a different bike, between a little kids’, BMX bike and a mountain bike, they’re different bikes and you’re gonna ride ’em different.

[00:22:01] Jonathan Duarte: And then trying to get on a triathlon bike, that’s, flat and they’re different. But it’s the same principle.

[00:22:08] Kristina Tsys: Exactly.

[00:22:08] Jonathan Duarte: And that’s why I encourage people to jump in and do, and Kristina, this has been so amazing. I’ll put your LinkedIn contact in a link to your LinkedIn post. But how else can other people reach out to you?

[00:22:21] Kristina Tsys: Yeah, so we’ll be happy to connect and to talk more about it and to share my experience and also to learn from other people. So I believe in collaboration and to learn from others. So this is what helps, to explore new ideas.

[00:22:33] Kristina Tsys: Yeah, please share my contact details. We’d love to connect on LinkedIn and keep this conversation going.

[00:22:39] Jonathan Duarte: Thank you so much. Thanks again for being on the show.

[00:22:42] Kristina Tsys: Thank you for having me.

[00:22:44] Jonathan Duarte: Bye. Bye.

Guest: Kristina Tsys — Technical & Engineering Recruiter at Fortive | AI Implementation Lead for Talent Acquisition