#161: Creator-led Hiring: the Future of Work - with Katie Fortunato
47m 50s
In this episode, Brian McIntylty interviews Katie Fortinado, a talent tech innovator, about how AI is reshaping hiring and the role of creators in this shift. Katie emphasizes that AI now screens candidates before human recruiters, making early application and personal outreach to hiring managers critical. She shares her journey from acting to entrepreneurship, highlighting the importance of a "dream life" over a "dream job," using the Ikigai framework to balance passion, skill, and market demand. Katie co-founded Higher Innovations, which has connected over 25 million people to jobs, and JobStream, a platform where creators use trusted recommendations to help followers find work and earn performance-based income. She notes that traditional job boards are plagued by fraud and fake listings, while creators can leverage their audiences to provide authentic job content and build independent businesses. Katie advises creators to bet on themselves, use AI tools, and avoid over-reliance on corporate employment. The conversation underscores how creators can monetize their influence by offering career guidance, tapping into the growing trend of fractional hiring and virtual assistants for small teams. Ultimately, Katie sees this as a new renaissance for individual entrepreneurs, empowered by AI and social media to create sustainable careers.
Well, if I told you the next time you apply for a job, a human might not even look at your resume. AI is now screening candidates, ranking applications, and deciding who moves forward before a recruiter even steps in. The rules of getting hired are changing fast. Today's guest, Katie Fortinado, is building a technology behind that shift. Katie helped co-found higher innovations, a company that has helped connect over 25 million people to jobs and generates more than 200 million in revenue. She launched Televity, one of the fastest growing communities for honor leaders, and more recently created JobStream, a platform for reimagining how people discover work in the age of AI and social media. But here's what makes the conversation even more interesting. Katie believes that creators, yes, YouTubers, course creators, influencers are becoming powerful players in how people get hired. She's building platforms where trusted recommendations can drive real career opportunities and even generate performance-based income. So in this episode, we're diving into how AI is reshaping hiring, what most people misunderstand about job screenings and how creators can tap into this shift without burning out their audience. Do you ever hear the expression like early bird gets the worm? It's true with job applications like you want to be the first person applying in. And I hear into you if you're sending a **** on you nail who the hiring manager is. They will respond because they're not getting many messages like that. You're already standing out. Welcome to the creators' adventure, where we interview creators from around the world hearing their stories about growing a business. Hey everyone, I'm Brian McIntylty, the founder of Pieds Platform. Let's get into it. Hey Katie, welcome to the show. Hey Brian, thanks for having me. First question is what would you say is the biggest thing that either you do or are doing that has helped you to achieve the freedom to do what you enjoy? Oh well, I think early on in my 20s, I had this this revelation that I was in pursuit of the dream job and quickly realized that the thing that I thought I wanted to be when I grew up was not the thing I wanted to be when I grew up because I was grown up and not loving it. And what shifted for me was the mindset of it's not the dream job, it's the dream life because I'm a multifaceted person and I have lots of interests. I wouldn't call myself a polymith, but I do love to learn new things. So putting myself into a box of this is your dream job and this is your path and this is the journey you're going to be on felt like suffocating to me. And I learned that about myself probably in my early 20s and said, all right, well, I just want to let's just go on the first thing I like to do. Let's find a new job where it's tangential to what I wanted to do using a skill that I'm good at. And at the time, it was for me, it was event planning and it was any all things entertainment. It used to be an actress and it was about building on things that I learned about myself and my mindset really shifted and it's not the dream job, it's the dream life. So whatever that means for each individual is totally different, different careers, different gigs, different ways to patch together to make ends meet. So for me, I try to live by that. Have you ever heard of Eiki Guy? Yeah. Yeah. Eiki Guy is a framework that I teach kids actually who say like, I don't know what I want to do when I grow up or I don't know what job is for me. And it's where you think about what is your passion, what is achievable and what's what is someone actually going to pay for and what are you good at doing? There are three different things. When you find the trifecta of all of those things when they converge, that's what I mean by dream life. Yeah. You articulated that really well and I think that is such a great point because it made me think about getting out of high school in how I put so much thought into what I want to do. And I feel like I can relate to you in a bit because what I thought was my passion and the dream job at first is not what I'm doing now. As those watching can probably tell, I like music, but I'm running this software platform here now. And I realize that while I love music, I love playing music, making music, what that would look like as a job. In almost any case, was not actually my dream life. And it would kind of like box me in as you were saying and not being able to do some of the other things. Like if I was in a band and I had to go on tour, I'm always I always have to do that. I can't go and don't have time for other things or if I'm having to produce music or something, it's just there's a lot of things where it would be actually limiting even though I was doing a thing that I enjoyed. And so yeah, I put I feel like a lot of thought into it at that time in my life when I feel it was not as common for my peers to be doing the same. They were kind of just like, Oh, I'll see what happens. I'll go through things. But I feel it's really valuable that I did that. And I feel like exactly what you're saying that it's if you go through that process, it will help lead you to that that the Eekie guy and what you're looking for. It sounds like it was a very organic way of finding your way. Yeah, yeah, thanks. So yeah, I'm curious because for you, you also started as an actor, a producer, writer turned into this world of building building these tech talent or talent tech platforms. So when you founded a higher innovations, what was like the problem you were trying to solve with at the time? What problem I was looking at was okay, well, advertising is one problem in a very long litany of things that these companies have problems with in their people and talent departments. So what are their adjacent problems? Can we solve for them? And looking at what AI was doing three years ago, we said, well, what can we build ourselves innovating? Like what kind of things do we need to incubate new technologies? We need to be testing and developing in the on that cutting edge or like how else does this company grow? And it also can be through mergers and acquisitions or strategic partnerships. And like we just launched one with workday, for example, like I look at how we grow, but how we continue to solve the problem, which is the people problem because companies ultimately cannot grow without the right talent. I don't know if you found that in your business, Brian, but hiring is the number one challenging thing for all businesses. That's not what I think that's a fact. And you should see the amount of money people are paying to solve those problems, right? And advertising jobs is not always the way. It's it's it starts at the core of what is this employer? What is their employer value proposition? Like why do people want to come and work here? And getting to that core is like where the real work is. It's hard to unravel. Like it's hard to fix overnight. So yeah, I think it's the number one challenge. I mean, I'd love to hear if that resonates for you at all. It does for me. Yeah, definitely. You teams. So definitely. Yeah, I think I would say like for those listening or watching this, if you're not ready yet to hire somebody or or that doesn't that doesn't feel like where you're at yet, I would encourage you to like still pay attention here because Katie has like done so much that she's going to share a lot with you no matter what. So if you are ready to hire or thinking about this, I think you'll learn about that. I think you'll learn about just like you've been able to help connect over 25 million people to jobs. And so like what does it take to even to grow a business like that? And also about like some other things that you as a creator can do to grow your own business. But back to what you're saying is definitely I've realized the importance in hiring and like spending time in that. And we're a small team. We're a bootstrap company. And so we have to make the right decisions in who we hire I think. And it's like I have an example that like I know talking to a friend before who's a founder. He was hired pretty quickly. And it's because he wasn't putting the effort into everything of like what are you actually asking people to do the actual listing of the job and everything and explaining it and attracting the right people. And then also going through and reviewing it and making sure that the you're spending time looking through those applications, talking with the people and trying to make sure that they're the right fit before they start working. And yeah he wasn't really doing that. He kind of had to mindset that like oh I all I have to do is hire people and then they will fix whatever problems there are. But you have to hire the right people. True. It's hard to do. But so relevant like the bootstrapping thing that is the creator pranor way as well. And it's thinking about like when I think about creators it's not so different than how they're thinking about their engagement strategy with their followers or their audience. And they are the brand you know and that's the same with an employer. The employer is the brand and it has a direct correlation on the consumer impact as well. Who are your followers? Why are they following you? What value do you bring to them as a creator? When I think when an unlock with creators from what in us working with them with one of our companies is they get to the point of hiring and they are their control freaks. They are so selective and so careful about who they're bringing in. As they should be it's so personal it's your social media channels, it's your network, it's your people, their data you know you know how to get in touch with these people.
people. It's a very vulnerable place to be in and you know those higher decisions should be taken very seriously. I see a lot of people doing like virtual assistants with their creator businesses and a new trend that I'm seeing that corporate Natalie, I don't know if you follow her at all, but she's kind of like the voice of the creators in the work world and she started a virtual assistant, it's basically like staffing agency for influencers and creators. What I found is so interesting, all of the people they have full-time jobs, but then they have these side hustle virtual assistant jobs and I'm just like well that makes sense like maybe they're in their marketing position, their full-time job, they have a few extra hours. I mean I only have time for really one job so I don't understand it myself, but there's ways to like hire people in fractional ways where you're not like taking on so much of investing in this person, training them and then they don't work out. So I mean we're seeing that fractional kind of, I don't know what virtual assistant, frankly, for creators is something that I see all the time now. I don't know if you've hired what her experience did, but they also get full-time jobs. Yeah definitely I've seen that. Yeah and I want to touch on right before we hit record you mentioned kind of what you saw as something kind of creators like overlook with their their audience and their own potential with things and how they can actually generate revenue. I think it's a challenge for creators that they've got these ideas they're building this audience and then yeah they are kind of unknowingly doing things where they are leaving money on the table. So can you share a little bit about that? Real quick Brian here you know me as the host for this podcast, but what you might not know is I'm also the founder of Heights platform. It's an online platform that over 10,000 creators have used to build their online courses, communities and digital product businesses. We recently added some awesome updates to Heights AI to help you turn your idea into a viable business. Heights AI can build entire product offers, review your content and even coach you on how to grow. You can try it for free for 30 days, links in the description, now back to the podcast. Yes, so I have a friend. She's a former journalist. She worked for all several of the major networks and her craft like you and I, Brian, was the craft. It was the artistry of being a journalist reporting on this story. An amazing ability to tell the story. Her whole career has spent building followerships for the ABCs of the world and that's great, but her career is at the mercy of the major media company who is out there with the shareholders interest as their whole purpose is create shareholder value and that is their core purpose. These companies get views, whatever it means that we have to do to get those views and talent looks on the outside, it looks disposable to me. Like how you know, look at some of the journalists who have left their, their anchor positions and it's like, well, how could they do that? It's like you work your whole life to get to that level and then what? And so I think what is interesting is this new wave of entrepreneurship. I like to call it creator entrepreneurship because it's taking that network, that audience, that following, that voice that people trust that as a creator, you have built and built your whole life and that is your network and they follow you everywhere you go on social media. They buy the products that you recommend. That can be your empire too. And so the trend that I'm seeing is not only are journalists or creators like starting off on their own and creating their own businesses. I mean, we do see that the number of LLCs that have been established over the past year is at a record high. Interestingly, it's a lot of women as well, which tells us something else about women in the workplace. But definitely, yeah, I mean, I could share a real quick that like half of our customers are women definitely. So it's not like it's like dominated by a man or anything like that. That that's amazing. Like the creator economy is probably 80% women the last the women the last I checked. So that makes perfect sense. But it's an amazing career that offers flexibility, sustainability, control, independence. And I guess the trend that we're seeing is like everybody's starting a newsletter. And I used to say that as a joke, but like now it's really true. And you see people, you know, like Joanna Stern from she's a tech journalist from the Wall Street Journal left to start her own digital business and newsletter. And she brought her whole following with her. Are they still subscribers to the Wall Street Journal? Sure. I'm sure they are. But how how empowering to like take your influence and you're creating your own destiny, you've got your own network now. You've got your own business that can thrive and monetize and make money. So, you know, we also hopped on the newsletter train. The what I've noticed of newsletters is people talk if they're of a professional mindset of a creator, you know, they're not just pushing products, but they're talking about their careers or get ready for a day in the life of a nurse with me or get ready for work with me. They're already talking about their careers. And what we found is so many creators are like scraping the internet for job listings. And the job listings were fake, lead to phantom postings on the job boards. Right now, there is just a very high level of deep fake and fraud with things like bot activity and even cyber terrorists who are applying into jobs. Like this, this is major. And we noticed there's an easy way. Like people love job content because we all need a job, right? And as a creator, you can only recommend so many products. And also your followers have to be able to buy the products. And the way they do that is they have some sense of like financial economic stability. And right now, the headlines say every day thousands of layoffs at Amazon, A.I. is coming for your jobs. There are no more entry level white collar positions. True, true, and true. So people are living in this sense of fear and anxiety. And I think that is also fueling this next generation of creator,preneurs where they're saying, all right, why I'm going to I'm going to take ownership. This is going to be my business now. So I went on a little bit of a tangent there because all these things are interconnected. Yeah, no, definitely. I think I've seen through things in the media, through things in the creator business, through people who have traditional careers and are not entrepreneurs that because they have this influence that basically allows them to either have their own business or be hired by the next company because of that influence. And the another company wants to take advantage of that or something in some way. But what is so interesting and what's got like flipped on its head in the past, I guess few years, especially as everyone says, Oh, if you're an entrepreneur, that's risky. And to me, what feels risky is having a traditional job where you haven't built that audience in that following because as you said, like that talent can be seen as disposable by these companies. But if you're an entrepreneur and you've built this following, you have this asset like nobody can fire you and there's there's companies and people and everyone who wants to be involved and because you have that audience. Totally. Bet on yourself every time. And you know, and what I always love about creatives like you Brian is like learning those instruments is really hard work. And I'm sure you know how to play more than one. And that is hard work. And if you can do that, then you can you can be successful at creating your own success and independence too. So I don't know. I I'm really glad to see that people are having this new like entrepreneurial. What is it? Just revolution, inspiration. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like with because of AI, it's like a new renaissance actually of that the individual entrepreneurs are now empowered because the limitations you had before, well, I need to raise money. I need to be able to hire people right away. Now you have AI to help you with that. And now you have social media to be able to reach not only a large number of people, but even the right people because of these algorithms and things. So I'm curious. So you have this other company job stream. What does a creator driven job recommendation actually look like in practice and how does that work? Can you describe more of like what you were getting to there before? Sure. So this is a new category for creators. It's a new, I call it a new vertical of influencers. These are career creators. And what that means is,
two things. They've built their careers as creators, two, they are now helping others do the same, and the same as in building careers. So the traditional way of finding a job just doesn't work anymore. I don't know if you've tried to do that lately, but like going to a job board, applying to a job, you're not even sure is this a real company. Like even on LinkedIn, they've made it so easy that you can apply to any job, and it doesn't matter if you have the skills or you're qualified, they've just made it so easy. Yeah, well I can say from the from the opposite perspective, it's somebody hiring. We just hired somebody recently, and the landscape continues to change more and more that yes, you can apply so easily. So there's just all these applicants that it's like, I can't believe why would a person even like go through the trouble of clicking reply because this is clicking apply because there's just no relation to anything they've ever done or even seem interested in to what this career actually is. And then also, yeah, I feel like I've always been curious like, what are the percentage of job listings out there that are even real? That's exactly what's happening, Brian. It's it's concerning employers don't know what to do about it, job secrets don't know what to do about it, but the part that like we play is making sure that we're working with employers that we're vetting that they have real intent to hire somebody. And we know that because they're actively promoting the jobs they're invested in the marketing behind the jobs and they really need someone to come to work. And that comes across in the job description as well. So that's how we vet our exclusive job network. And then what we do is forget AI slop like we are human vetting every single link. And we're making sure this link is going directly to the employers page. Not to a job board for all the reasons that you just shared is we're trying to let's just get directly to the source of truth. It creates a better experience for both. And it's not to say that you apply to a job and you get the job. That is that is one piece of information in getting that job. If it's your dream job, it's good information. You read the job description. You're looking for who does this job report into is this a new department is this a new customer segment that I know something about. There are clues that as a job seeker you need to look into and then use a platform like LinkedIn to figure out, do I know anybody there who in my personal network could introduce me to someone who works at this company. Or can I find the hiring manager on LinkedIn and send a cold email and I guarantee you if you're sending a cold email and you nail who the hiring manager is, they will respond because they're not getting many messages like that at all. In fact, they don't even see all the people who apply. So you're already standing out. And then not only that brand like I would love to hear like how you found your new hire because what is true today is referrals are the number one path of people getting hired. And so that's what job stream helps bring access to which is like we're going to post the job to our network and they weren't expecting they weren't expecting to see this job. But because I recommended it, they're going to say, oh wow, that's I got to trust that that's a job and I'm going to go apply to that. And we're giving the real time access to those jobs like the minute that they get published so that they can be the first in. Yes, true with job applications like you want to be the first person applying in or you want to be the top 20 you will get seen. It's everyone else who doesn't. But again, I think it's like creating direct access to job opportunity. That's what creators bring now to the recruitment world through job stream and it helps them it helps them support their audience. Creators are already grinding to figure out, you know, what content is going to increase my engagement thus increase the amount of brand partnership deals I get without the engagement you don't get the brand partnership deals. So what we found is like job content is an amazing value add to your audience and now to your business it's a new revenue stream so. It also refreshes every day so if you're in that content grind and you get stuck on what should I post today or you know how many times can I post my favorite hair clip before it gets stale with my audience. It's the job content is always new and always fresh. Yeah, yeah, so it's really interesting because I think what you're describing is really like win win all around and when I first heard of this and before talking with you, I thought like, okay, this is something that maybe this is a way that creators can generate some additional revenue outside of like sponsorships or or course or product sales, but it doesn't really apply to everyone. But now I'm seeing more clearly like where does apply so like let's say you are a like I know we have course creators who are selling like how to become like a professional writer or how to become like how to deal with stakeholders in a career of like UX design. And so if that's your product then you're trying to help people in their careers and if you can then promote a company that say like hey this company is looking for this like position then you can get paid for that from job stream right and then at the same time it's not like an head to your audience because you're providing value to your audience because they may be looking for that next career so you can actually create content that's definitely providing value to your audience. While at the same time generating some extra income for you. It's that is an amazing use case of a career creator who's successful on job stream and you know the product that they're selling is their expertise the digital package the how to do this. Imagine that that client comes back and says hey I took your course I did everything you suggested I followed all the steps and I still can't find a job now what and that person is going to feel better if you can say well I have this exclusive network of jobs that is only for my clients and sign up for this email I'm going to send you the jobs they're going to be fresh and hopefully like there is another job. Stream for you to go and find what you're looking for and this is how I can support you and it's taking that service but the going the last mile for them. We see a lot of career creators who are career executive coaches job coaches that kind of thing so it's really applicable. Yeah so I'm curious about how those like job streams roll in that actually work like what does the process look like because if I was a creator I would be concerned that well look are these jobs actually going to be relevant or do I have to find. Of the companies that are currently hiring that are relevant to my audience what happens there. You know it's funny we had a co working session the other day and we had two types of create we had a bunch of creators but there were two types on the call and one was oh I'm a creator and I do all my own content I do all of the graphics the imagery and like that's the work man like I'm doing the creating. The other guy says how can I automate this as quickly as possible to make as much money as possible and everyone kind of went oh and then he goes I'm working on this project in Ecuador I'm just trying to buy kids like try to get them fresh clean water to drink and I've noticed like this is a way for me to earn passive income while I'm over there helping. So everybody has their purpose for job stream and so my point is like how does it work it works if you want to be the hands on creator and design you know storyboards around jobs you want to design beautiful creative that's going to convert to clicks and applies by all means do so and we have all the AI tools embedded to help you do that the second is like you want the done for you version the the one that starts just sending. Job alerts to your audience for you so you don't have to carry the content yourself we have that to and it just depends on like what fits and what we see a great starting point is you know how you asked how it works but like first of all there's like a little bit of a vetting process like if you're somebody who has a following you got respectable content and you are professionally minded anyway like you'll probably be accepted. If you're already creating job content and spending hours like scraping the internet or finding random job listings from job boards you're not getting paid like this is easy for you like you're already creating that content not getting paid so that's how it works like you'd come to our platform and do the same thing knowing that you've got like the trusted real link version and then if you're someone who has a newsletter or a LinkedIn or an Instagram or a YouTube whatever channel of choice. Is your preference you can start testing the links and saying you know Brian like you shared with me that a lot of your audience or creators they might also be really good at social media they might be digital marketers usually those things are you know adjacent you know maybe you would pull all of the social media listings and say here are some listings I source for my network just apply here and that's that's the best way to get started is just like a few at a time and then what has what has been happening is like
evolving into this, do it for me, newsletter concept where it's just like jobs are getting sent to your community every day. I think that's really interesting because I remember back when I was before I had this software business, I was doing more of web design and web application development. So I'd be looking for clients to work with, not really careers, but clients to work with our company. And I remember there are a number of people in the space where they would have a newsletter. And then as part of the value of that newsletter, they would go around and find like, so here's some potential clients or here's some potential job listings. And then that would be part of the value of receiving their newsletter. And so if you are a creator who in some way the information of coaching the membership, whatever you're offering is trying to teach people of how they can find customers or careers, you might be doing something like that already. And if you're not, you could, but now you can do it easier because they can essentially partner with you guys and be able to actually, instead of spending time to add that value, they can actually just make money and add that value without having to spend the time. Is that kind of the right way of thinking? That's the right way of thinking. And we're doing the hard vetting for you. We're checking the links. We know that their real employers, you know, trust is our value proposition. And that's important because if you're sharing this with your audience, like we need to make sure that it's legitimate, right? And so yeah, I think if you're already doing it, that's easy. What we've also started to see is like, if you're a traditional influencer and you're on these affiliate platforms, like Chaut Myr, LTK, what's happening right now? And this is February 17th, but consumer spending is down. We've had week over week headlines of people losing their jobs, things like interest rates, and you know, what is happening around AI is creating an angst in people and everyone's anxious about their job security. So what's happened on anybody who's part of these affiliate programs is their spending has gone down because people are not buying as many consumer goods anymore. So when we think about job stream, it's like jobs are the backbone to everything a creator has to be you know, to be able to say like I was successful because people started buying the products that I was recommending. They trusted me. And if they're not buying products because they don't have the income, it makes it like this, this job stream supports the whole ecosystem is what I'm saying. It's like, you know, you can't influence the hair clips and the lip glosses to people who don't have the income to buy them. So and then we did a shocking survey that creators, we asked how much of your content is meant to give back to your followers. It was like in the single digits percentage, meaning the majority like 90, 97% of content that creators create is for their own businesses benefit and not their audiences benefit. So it's one impact layer that creators have that's like, I'm going to support my audience. I want to see them succeed because when they succeed, I succeed. So it's a very purpose driven platform. And that's also why we keep it free. Like we want it to be free so that people can have this kind of access as people who are job seekers should. So that's um, you know, if you're not giving back to your followers and you're asking and looking for the ways, it can satisfy that as well. Yeah, yeah, well, I think that's so important because one of the reasons I think a lot of people get involved in this like info product space is because they not only want to have somewhere to make an income as entrepreneurs, but they want to have a positive impact. And I've always thought like if I was going to be involved with anyone who like would want to sponsor my content or something like that, um, like I want it to be something that I feel is truly a value to my customers or is going to align with all of that. And I think it's important in any way in your business for that to be the case because you don't want to really put effort to it into it in the long term. Eventually, people are going to burn out if all they're doing is just making this content to try to generate money or something for themselves, but not also feeling that they're making some kind of positive impact. Absolutely. It's um, and what's like so inspiring about this next generation is, and just like looking at like the higher innovations, just view of who our clients are, is employers are saying that the number one thing people are looking for when they want to come to work is it's not salary, it's not where you live, it's not remote versus hybrid, it's what is the social impact? What is the bigger purpose? Like what is this company contributing to the world? So as a creator, I mean, how amazing you have this opportunity to create that for yourself without having to go through the big red tape of an organization. But it's really nice that the next generation is thinking this way. I mean, we all should be thinking this way, but it's going to force a lot of that kind of goodwill and positive impact, good for business building, which is I think a wonderful thing. Yeah, yeah, that's true. I'd like to talk a little bit about AI, especially like for the creators where their businesses around helping others somehow either get customers or advance in their career in some way. How are companies actually using AI to like screen and select candidates or like in what way do you see AI being involved right now? From the creators point of view or the employers point of view. From the employers point of view, I guess just so the creator who's trying to help their own audience, like they can understand what employers are actually doing. Yeah, so what employers are doing with AI is using it for things like creating the job description. And they're using it as a productivity hack. So creating the job description is one thing. If you're a talent acquisition manager, you may have spent hours going back and forth with your stakeholders on that. It's a huge operational piece that's lifted. As for how is AI being used in the tech stack? It's usually it's in the sorting after people have already applied to the job. You can cut down the candidates from 100 people to even 85% or 90% of the qualified people. And that's like the magic of AI comes with a caveat. What's happening is we talked about AI on the job seeker side and what people are doing is vibe coding their resumes to perfectly match the job description. Well, guess what? The AI on the other side, the bot talking to the bot is already eliminating all of those deep fakes. So that's not a winning strategy for anybody. But the systems are looking for it. But so are the hiring managers, the hiring manager looking for it. AI in the hiring funnel is this is a very challenging moment in time. I think what we're seeing our clients experiencing is people who come to the interview. They get past the AI screening process. They come to the interview. An AI is present there. And they're answering every question with a perfectly smart chat GPT up on the screen in the background. It barely looks like they're reading it from anything. And so that's happening as well. So employers are responding to that by going really, really deep on references, referrals, doing things like skills-based testing, especially if you're in a hard skilled role like you're in engineering or something like you might be asked to do a code test or a test in real time. So AI is having this impact on how we're qualifying candidates. And that's really what's happening. My prediction is we're going to get to a, you know, when you go to the airport and you see clear and it's like clear sees your eyes. It's going to be that for applying to a job. But there's going to be some like blockchain track record of your track record. And it's going to have everything from your digital media presence because that's the first thing people are looking at when you apply to a job, believe it or not. They go straight to your LinkedIn and then they go to your social media and then they look at your qualifications. This is not what I think. This is true. So this is changing the way employers see candidates and what they're looking for are real people with the real experience they say they do. And I think blockchain represents a very future state of like how we can actually evaluate all kinds of job candidates. Yeah, it's something that's actually verifiable. Yeah, so my experience in our last hire here is that we've had in the past like we would get thousands of applications because we say this is a remote role for anywhere. And so it's just too much to even go through. And as you said, also this is value in applying early because yet probably the last few hundred applications of each role we just don't even get to see because it's just so much.
But this time what we did is we had people submit a video alongside their application just as we said 30 seconds just like tell us why you're interested. And I could not believe how many people you could tell are reading the script that Chatchy B.T. told them to like answer for this thing. And the applicants hopefully they can begin to realize that if they do that so did everybody else do the same thing. And so they're saying the same thing essentially in their video and the purpose of the videos too because we don't have this blockchain solution is to verify they are a real human and have these real skills or experience. I love that you brought that up if nothing else to Brian like the video interview aspect weeds out anybody who's not serious about getting a job. So already you've brought your pool down to the people who are most highest intent. They want to work for this position and that is the work right finding the job is the full time job. And I think what you're doing is great. It's like the next step is the deep vetting that happens on the reference checks and you know you're not you don't want the person whose arms length you want to get into like what was the client relationship like with this person or what was two steps below or two steps above this person who made it impact to the entire team. Like those are the references you want to be giving to as you're if you're a job seeker. Yeah. All right. I've got a couple like real quick questions to kind of wrap this up. So a few few things we're going to go through. I guess maybe three or four questions and just kind of interesting to hear what's your your quick take on each one of them. First would be do you think are we moving to a world where social feeds replace job boards? Yes. I'm building it. But more so. I think we can I elaborate on this one? Yes. Sure. I think I think it's going to come down to that intent signal. In a world where AI can give you a database to everything and everyone easily like I don't even know why we pay for this anymore chat GPT does it. What matters is being at the right place at the right time. If you have an intent signal on a job seeker and you've got this job that becomes available it's a perfect match at the right opportunity at the right place at the right time. So that's what I think is going to happen. I think that's going to happen in environment that starts with socials but then goes into these other cloud based like contained data centers. Yeah. Interesting. Next is do you think that do you think resumes are dead in the era of AI job screening? Yes. I've always thought resumes are dead. I think it's a two dimensional way to look at a candidate who is three dimensional. So I'd love to see that evolve. I'd love to see it evolve into like looking at the whole person and their skills and not just what they've done. And what do you think is like the most obvious mistake that people would make when they're applying for jobs that AI is just going to immediately filter them out? Next obvious mistake is making your resume and background look like it's a fit for the job. I think it's really good to express your unique experience and authentic self. I think that's what employers are ultimately looking for at the end of the day. And is AI making hiring more fair or more biased? I think it's just adding more work. I see the bias. I see the fairness. I don't know if I have an answer on that. Yeah. I guess I see it could go either way. It depends on maybe the intent of the company or who's hiring. I think that's right. I think it's making me personally as employer, not want to post anymore job postings to the job boards. What's the authentic human connection here? That comes down more to the vibe check than it does on what's your skills on paper. So on the show, I'd like to have every guest ask a question to the audience. If you could ask our audience anything, whether something you're curious about or want to think everybody thinking about, what would that be? What I would like to know is from the creator community is what is the creator, pranore business look like in 10 years? And if you're somebody who is a parent, has a family, what is this job look like for the next generation? And where does one start to get experience? Because I think about how creating is there's a whole new way of entrepreneurs and that's amazing. But many people who are in that position already had job experience from somewhere else or some perspective. And how is the next generation going to? How are they going to thrive? How are they going to succeed? Yeah, the interesting thing to think about. I think about that personally with my daughter, what is it going to look like for her when she grows up? I would say my answer to that right now is just that you have to learn to create and whatever way that is, whatever way that will be, to become good at the skill of creating. And what that looks like 10 years from now may be different than it is now, maybe completely different. But being able to be kind of in tune with your own imagination and express your ideas to the world is what you need to learn. Oh my gosh, does it start with your piano lessons when you're four? Yeah, I think so. Cool. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Katie. Before we get going, where else can people find you online? Well, they can connect with me on LinkedIn, Katie Clark, for Chinato. And for creators who are interested in job stream, there's an application process, but I would love for them to use your code Brian and the name of your podcast. And then we'll know that there are screening people who are already creators who were basically referred by you and coming. And we will make sure that there's set up with no charge or anything like that. But that's getjobstreme.com. Okay. Awesome. That sounds great. And to be clear for everybody here, like this is not a sponsored thing. Like we're not getting paid for that. But it sounds like that that's going to help you know that this is a real audience of real creators. Oh, you've already vetted them. They're in. Exactly. Cool. All right. Well, Katie, thank you so much. Thank you, Brian. Thanks for having me. I'd like to take a moment to invite you to join our free community of over 5,000 creators at creatorclim.com. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, check out the Height's Platform YouTube channel every Tuesday at 9am U.S. Central. To get notified when new episodes release, join our newsletter at thecreatorsadventure.com. Until then, keep learning and I'll see you in the next episode.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
AI is transforming hiring by screening and ranking candidates before human involvement, making early application and direct outreach to hiring managers crucial.
Katie Fortinado co-founded Higher Innovations, connecting over 25 million people to jobs, and created JobStream, a platform leveraging creator-driven recommendations for career opportunities.
The "dream life" mindset—focusing on passion, skill, and market demand—is more effective than pursuing a single "dream job."
Creators (YouTubers, influencers) are becoming key players in hiring by using trusted recommendations to drive career opportunities and generate performance-based income.
Job listings often involve fraud and "phantom postings," and creators can address this by sharing authentic job content and building their own entrepreneurial empires.
Summary:
In this episode, Brian McIntylty interviews Katie Fortinado, a talent tech innovator, about how AI is reshaping hiring and the role of creators in this shift. Katie emphasizes that AI now screens candidates before human recruiters, making early application and personal outreach to hiring managers critical. She shares her journey from acting to entrepreneurship, highlighting the importance of a "dream life" over a "dream job," using the Ikigai framework to balance passion, skill, and market demand.
Katie co-founded Higher Innovations, which has connected over 25 million people to jobs, and JobStream, a platform where creators use trusted recommendations to help followers find work and earn performance-based income. She notes that traditional job boards are plagued by fraud and fake listings, while creators can leverage their audiences to provide authentic job content and build independent businesses. Katie advises creators to bet on themselves, use AI tools, and avoid over-reliance on corporate employment.
The conversation underscores how creators can monetize their influence by offering career guidance, tapping into the growing trend of fractional hiring and virtual assistants for small teams. Ultimately, Katie sees this as a new renaissance for individual entrepreneurs, empowered by AI and social media to create sustainable careers.
FAQs
Shift from seeking a 'dream job' to building a 'dream life' by combining passion, skills, what people will pay for, and what you're good at.
AI now screens resumes, ranks candidates, and decides who moves forward before a recruiter reviews applications.
It addressed the 'people problem'—helping companies grow by finding the right talent and improving their employer value proposition.
Creators have trusted audiences that follow them; they can recommend jobs and even earn performance-based income through platforms like JobStream.
A career creator is someone who has built their career as a creator and now helps others build careers, often using their influence to recommend job opportunities.
Creators can share job listings, career advice, or recommendations because followers seek financial stability and trust their insights.
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