Jeff Talyor– Founder Boomband/Monster.com

Ashlie Collins
Hello and welcome to Hire We Go, where we’re chatting all things talent acquisition transformation. Whether you’re an HR vet or someone who’s simply fascinated by how to find, attract and engage talent, you are most certainly in the right place. I’m your host as always and Director of Solutions here at Joveo, Ashley Collins. And joining us today is Jeff Taylor, founder and CEO of Boom Band, formerly of a tiny little business you might have heard of by the name of Monster.

I’m Monster alum here, so shouting that one out. It’s like meeting a legend, you know? I think it was my first job out of school. I was 21 when I joined. So this is a serendipitous moment, to say the least.

Jeff T
Yeah, thank you for your service.

Jeff T
That’s amazing. Yeah, it’s interesting. There was a point where we had 10,000 employees and I think the average age was probably still in the 20s.

Ashlie Collins
Yeah, it’s a good company. And thank you so much for joining us, Jeff. I think the first question for you today, what’s one thing that talent teams are still doing that actively makes hiring harder?

Jeff T
So I think I would do it in two parts. I think one is taking in resumes and all the resumes look very similar, and classically, you would have 10 % of the resumes would be qualified and you’d have to work through the process for those. Now with AI and this sort of rounding of the edges, you maybe have 50%, 60 % of the resumes that look like they’re qualified. But yet we keep doing the same machine.

The other side of it is that from a job posting perspective, that we’re still posting announcements out into the world and any company that’s growing is getting a thousand responses. And so the idea then is if we look at quality, the quality has gone down dramatically. So maybe 95, 97% of the resumes that are coming through are such low quality that this idea of announcing out in the marketplace probably has to give way to a new style of recruiting, which is more outbound.

Ashlie Collins
Yeah, absolutely. And what’s a signal that most leaders are ignoring right now but shouldn’t be?

Jeff T
So I think the thing that I looked at is I have a quote that I picked up out in the world that was like, “disruption is of our own craving.” And what I love about this is that if you look back at disruption, it’s really easy to look at. But if you’re looking at it in the world, it’s really hard to experience forward what disruption is. so I’ve been talking about this and you know, some aspects of it is like move fast and break things, which is like this kind of motto that people use out there. But at the same time, it’s it’s go slow and forge things. And I think there’s this conflict in the market right now. So I think this is a signal that everything is going to change. And people are saying, I’m so burnt out of talking about AI and whatever. And the reality is, I think all of our jobs are are going to change. AI is eating tasks.

And if you do a pie chart of your experience, what you do in your job, and if 30, 40% of that could be done by AI, you can figure that not only is your job gonna change, but the jobs around you are gonna change

Ashlie Collins
Yeah, absolutely. And we talk a lot about this in our work internally and I was like AI is not an excuse to do less. It frees up the mundane so that you can work harder on more complex and more challenging things. And so it’s fascinating to think through what that actually looks like with that mind space freed up. What can you, the human, really do?

Jeff T
Yeah, can I just play with this for a minute? I think it’s really important. There’s this expression from last fall that AI won’t take your job, but somebody that knows AI will. I think that that has a, OK, I’ll just learn AI and it’ll be fine. And then there’s a McKinsey study that has been out now probably for about a year that said by 2030 that we’re going to be 30% more productive.

And so there’s another scenario where you’re saying, okay, fine, I’m going to be able to shed some things that I don’t really like doing and I can be more human. The reality is we’re already seeing in the marketplace that companies are laying off and not because their profits are in the right place, but they’re using AI as at least one of the reasons and they’re using this idea of efficiency as a reason to do layoffs. And so I think that this is not a time to relax into this AI disruption. I think this is a time to really plan for it. And if we had a longer podcast, we can start talking about, okay, what are all the different things? But I think face it, realize that you need to be part of the solution working with this as opposed to ignoring it.

Ashlie Collins
Yeah.

Ashlie Collins
Yeah, absolutely. And what’s one practice that you would double down on in 2026, even if it’s super unpopular?

Jeff T
So I think one of the things I would do is really look at your employees. I know Joveo has some tools in this area. Boom Band has some tools in this area. This idea that you don’t really have a profile on your employees. You don’t have any sort of information other than, in most cases, other than their resume when they came on board. And think about in your jobs how much you change.
And I think upskilling is going to be a huge important part of what we do.

We think about benefits, we think about your 401k and sort of longer term benefits. But if you think about most employees aren’t going to stay more than three years, four years, the idea of a 401k is no longer motivating. The idea of having a flexible work schedule, being able to get trained in your job at your company are things that would make you stay. And one of things I’ve been talking about is you want to be a company that people are excited about being from.

Because if they’re excited about being from that company, they’ll tell their friends, yeah, this is a great place to work. Go have your three years of experience there. And we have to realize that we’re going to have to change our benefits. We’re going have to change our approach to employees. And so understanding more about them, so building out that profile of each of your existing employees and starting to think about where do they want to go next and help them get there.

Ashlie Collins
Yeah.

Ashlie Collins
Yeah, and I love that you mentioned upskilling because I think it’s something that we don’t talk about enough and also very passionate about reskilling, especially in the face of the changes that that AI are making and really thinking about how can we round that person out to be viable for the skills that they’re going to need, you know, two, three years from now, not just to be successful in their role today, even if it’s an entirely different job that doesn’t exist yet. So I think this is something we should all pay a lot more attention to, both from upskilling and reskilling the workforce.

Jeff T
Yeah. I don’t think people really know what to do. Right. And I think one of the things that I’ve suggested is just do projects within your organization and bring together disparate teams and let the teams start to be part of the creative process. And what you find out is you’re upskilling across departments. You’re you’re having people bring their personal understanding of A.I. into the workplace. I think what you’re doing is you’re starting to kind of

Ashlie Collins
Yeah.

Jeff T
retrain that mindset of it’s not top down, here’s where we’re going in 2026. It’s going to be bottom up, middle up saying, okay, these are the things we can do with the tools that we have in our organizations. And hey, I have an idea and start to draw out the employee base to be part of your strength in your organization instead of just those top down messages, which I think are really falling on deaf ears today.

Ashlie Collins
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for your time today and for sharing your experience and knowledge with us. It’s been a fantastic conversation. And thank you all so much for tuning in with us yet again. Hope everyone has a great day.