Revolutionising Recruitment: Bjarne Vibe on AI and Community Building

Welcome to More Than a CV, the podcast that goes beyond resumes and job titles to uncover the real stories behind hiring, culture and leadership in tech. I'm your host Sean Allen and in each episode I sit down with talent and technology leaders to explore how the building teams shape in culture and tackling the challenges of today's world of work. This podcast is brought to you by Biometric Talent, helping tech companies across the UK, Europe and the US build world class engineering and product teams. What are you scaling a startup of strengthening your leadership bench? Biometric Talent delivers talent that makes a real impact. Learn more at biometrictalan.com. Let's dive in. Welcome to The More Than a CV podcast. I'm delighted to be joined today by Bihani Vive. Bihani is head of talent acquisition with that north with over 10 years recruitment experience with Intellent. He's worked at major brands such as Zero North, Specs Avers, Wall and CBRE Global Works, play solutions. Welcome Bihani, how are you today? Apart from the patron name, Trion Danish. What the people don't know is we had like 10 takes before for Sean to pronounce my name indeed. He's not lying either. It was almost, Sean, thank you for having me. I know it's been a bit of a time in the running, but happy with your work. Yeah, no, thank you. It's always a pleasure to catch it with you and apologies to any, any dayings that I'm listening. I shared my honeymoon in Copenhagen and one of our friends his partner was Danish and she said, just don't even try and speak the language because everyone speaks perfect English and you're just a fandom trying, but being the the Brit that I am, I had to have a go at you today. So I sent that and I apologize to everybody. But it's actually the thing just sorry for coming in on the sideline. I know that's not the agent, but like that's actually the thing with like hiring people from from outside of Denmark because like people to do it. I don't speak the language as okay. Like made 99% of the companies that you're here in Copenhagen, like company language is English nobody speaks Danish, so I've no issue at all. It's fair and to be fair, my experience, everyone speaks better English than me. Sorry, I lose out of the way. The Yorkshire dialect. It doesn't help, especially when you've had a few Mackellers. But it's a pleasure. Pleasure to have you with this mate. I guess for anybody who doesn't know who you are, it'd be nice to hear a bit more about you and your career. Yeah, like perhaps you should, like I think for many in the recruitment industry, like it happened by chance from years well. I have a completely different background, like a blue call from many years. Have my certifications degree and start from then I did business school. I wanted to try something else. I ended up as a sales coach in a call center. The company was called Dong. It's not called Dong anymore, but it was called Dong bagging the true story. So I ended up in a call center there as a sales coach and we had an Excel agency helping us hire for a call center and had a good chat with them and actually ended up getting off of the job there. We had an inexperienced within CA. This is about 11 years ago. So I did agency for a while. Then I did hack my own company where I focused on the tell to customer support, customer service profiles and so on. Like, Nidik really worked where you're on Facebook groups and all of this, like Froggog getting into it. I think where my career shifted into more serious TA, so I just think was when I started as a spectator. I still see this day, I have no clue how they hired me and so on, but it must have been my boys' charm, but I got hired to be and was responsible for a franchise partner in Denmark. Then from there, step-to-step, went into management roles, more international roles and such. And like the last five years have been a step-between management and looking into international companies where I excel is to come in and have our existence set up that maybe doesn't work quite as well as it should come in and turn that, making that work and then leaving again. I think the last six years that's been doing like year, year and a half, coming in, like changing it and so on, making it work and then leaving again when the job's done. I'm happy to say my new role, I just transition into a new role at App North, that's enough to case here. Things work very well, so nothing needs to be mended, but it's really happy to be an actor, start up this week's, yeah, day five. So sorry for my boss for taking an hour off to do this in the middle of the first week. Well, congrats again on the new job and thank you for taking that time out to chat with me. I know with clearly caught you at the worst time, finishing a job and starting a new one every time we catch up. No worries at all. And I can add on just to, I've done like one of the interests I have with NCA's, like extremely passionate about like whole candidate experience and so on and how we as a community get better. So like last year, actually with two other very, very skilled people, started at the NCA community here, based from Copenhagen, we do like the eastern part and western part, but actually do five events a year, both online and in person. We actually have the next one next week where it's the new new paid transfer transfer. Oh, that's definitely paid transfer. You know what I mean, the pay, pay agenda, pay gap in the new EU regulations as much we're doing that. So we're about 600 to eight professionals across Denmark doing this. So I had a couple of fixtures in the news and so on and I have some of the best and most talented people in Denmark in this group and like just trying to take to an unleavened Denmark. Tell me more about that because you know, we know each other and I love the community aspects and have been involved in different ones over over the years over here in the UK, but tell me more about the community that you've seen. I don't want to say it by chance because we can't say created for the initial idea. We had Tina and Casper who did it a couple of years at Alexander's, well, it did a couple of years, but family life happens, job happens. So they actually didn't have the time to prioritize it. I completely get it because being in neck deep now, I can definitely see it's not just something we do a couple hours a week. And you know this with the community life, it takes time. You need to grow it and you need to maintain it. But Kauhlinen and Peniela are my two partners in crime to show and practice people with the NTA. So go to what they do. We actually ended up having a chat and say, hey, let's give this a chance because like there's really some great aspects in this and like unleavened possibilities in Denmark because nobody's really like got to the core. So you have head hunting communities, PNC communities and all this. And I think what triggered us the most within this is a lot of organizations, CTA being just a part of PNC, just being a part of HR and not the strategic part we actually need to be in an organization. So I think that's what triggered us the most and then from hand in initial chats to actually link in profile, the first event, second event, all this. That was a couple months. I think the last one last event we had before the one next week was AI and the effects of AI in the NTA is that she's going to take a job. Sorry, it's still room for most and all this and the matrix. And I think it's for me, it's important to say like my opinions are from that and what I believe is right around and how I do my job. What we need to do is as a community find out what's right for us as a community, what's right for you and your specific role at the couple of your act because what works for me doesn't necessarily work for you and vice versa. So I think that's that's if not the most important part, definitely one of the most important parts is we need to find out how we can as a TIA community strengthen what we actually do and be that strategic part instead of just being a part of PNC in your HR. I really like that. And it's important to have people to talk to like say to say so next I think take AI for example, the set almost such hype that everyone's trying to not fall behind and there's a bit of that band working kind of thing. And it's the same with any different new technology that comes out right? Everybody's sort of like wanting to look at it. But to your point, I imagine members of your group, some of them work for some global organizations, another much smaller and what they and what they do as organizations is going to vary vastly as well. So what they're looking at and how they use just technology within their own TIA stack will differ. So do you pull them together then in those events into people sort of share stories or sort of panel debates? How do those sort of events sort of work? Yeah, like the last event we had about AI just like a team to that we had Aaron who's an American who works in the lab. He actually flew over to join like in person event and then we had the modern from Ferric. That's a company that does AI. solutions when it comes to screening CVs and so on. Okay, you go. There's a such a JD. This is a candidate CV from that they create work questions. The AI suggests would be most relevant to ask the candidate. And then we had the early from from Sarah North, who's a marketing director, who lives in briefs AI, who was one of the first people in Denmark, who actually looked into AI, how can you use it? Maybe not so much in our TA related the setup of more. How can we have a AI actually make us better make things easier? I think my approach here is I don't use a I as how should put it? AI isn't right the right solution every time. And what I use AI for is to make my life easier. So honestly, for JD's for example, we have a template like who are we? What's our culture and all this and then I use AI like when we define the JD like from the specs from the higher manager like my add on and such. I use AI for that making sure it's still the same language that that we use. If it's creating TA decks and so on presentations, I use AI. But I would say I can live without AI. I could do my job fine and good without AI. It's just so nice to have it to say so much time. It makes my life a lot easier. But I do understand where people are coming from. I don't trust it is Chinese that call that's a common maybe don't understand that. But I do understand that I'm maybe not confident using AI in my everyday. I do understand that. And to some extent it may be candy because I don't know enough about it. When Facebook came out back in the day, I was like, I'm not going to use that the same with Instagram. I'm not going to use that. Don't have that Facebook Instagram. But like it's the one it's new. You have no clue what it is. It's dangerous. So I think it's it's more be actually coming into a community and say, okay, getting people's experiencing. Okay, it actually works for me. I'm using for this, this and this. How do I like? Could you use it like had you tried like do you want me to show you how it works and stuff like that? I think that would be the first. Well, like that's really really nice structure of the event. One, some great different sort of speakers coming in, which give different perspectives. But I think as well, it's kind of that somebody given a real life case study of how they've been using it and why the benefits, the challenges, I think often with new stuff is in it. You go to a vet, some events and it's either, you know, I've used this for a very specific problem. So well, so that's great. I can't really relate it back to me or everyone's in the same boat of trying to explore it, but no one's kind of got there yet. So you can like kind of want to see someone who's been using it longer. So I can learn from, you know, what's worked, what hasn't worked. And I'm similar to you. I think it makes some jobs easier, but you still have to send to check everything, right? You can't just put anything through and hope it's going to be right. Like, because it, you know, the way it works, it might turn out something slightly different to what you're actually actually after. I think one, one of the big debates as well is, oh, it's so obvious that candidate used AI to write this application or, or if you can actually only, if we were actually asking for an application, but that's one of the big debates in the Danish Tia community as well, that like your complete dinosaur, if you're in your process, still ask me for a CV, I've got to be an application like you have completely off the mark here. The debate about our candidate using AI is that cheating. I'm like, why would it be cheating like more and more companies are using AI in their everyday life? I would say mastering using AI, it's such a benefit, a good attribute in my opinion, compared to somebody who comes in and say, oh, I actually even don't know how to turn on the computer. Like, I'd rather have somebody being full on like, I live, brief AI instead of somebody. I don't even know how to spell chapter, even to your Gemini. So it's, but again, it varies from workplace to workplace and precision of course, but like it's here to stay. It's, I have in my opinion, using it correctly, I'm not only relying on AI, but as you say, sense check. Yeah, I think I've seen an interesting point about the CV. I need to come to Denmark to come to all these events now because I feel like I could just sit there and watch a great debate between people. But someone using it for the CV is not bad thing, right? Unless you leave in all the massive dashes and loads of emojis and you'd be like, it's a bit lazy, but yeah, it's seven rocket ships after your name and so on. Yeah, but it's no different to me asking you to look over my CV and give me some pointers right here. You're just using a tool to help you do that. Like you say, it's how that person's using it and that's a good thing if they're using it in the right way, right? And like it's, we obviously had a lot with AI, but also one of the things that came into that debate is by like, do we actually use AI for unbiased, including, and it's just, there are many people that are very, very focused on saying, hey, unbiased, our high rings and all this. And like we don't want a CV, we don't want an application. Like we wanted to answer these five questions because if you answer five questions, we know precisely who you are. And like I know I'm making a bit of fun of it, but the people out there that are so passionate about this is the only way of working like no CVs, no applications like we do case-based hiring process. If we do questions and a lot of it, I'm like, I applaud you. If that works for you, do it, do more it like no point in doing anything else. If that works for you, where I can get a bit, I'm sorry for the people listening here that I know, I kind of feel I'm speaking about them, but where I get a little bit annoyed is, if I don't do it like them, that small tiny group that does that, and I'm not saying they're wrong, again, that it works for them, it's right, it's right for them, so do it. But the mentality can be a little bit at the moment that if you're not doing it like this, these first moveers, outbreakers and all that, like you're getting left behind your sort of dinosaur and your soul school and it's a bad experience for candidates. And like, if it works for you, like do it, I'm going to do what works for me. It's the same like if you're going to do an interview, interview candidate the way you do it and the way I do it, a consumer is going to be different, the way I do it works for me because that fits my personality, the way I do my job, the same way it does for you. So I'm like, let's build each other up instead and say, hey, awesome, it works for you. I'm so happy you found what works for you and your company. I wish I'd broken the formula and found out precisely what works for me, but I'm so happy for you, but that doesn't mean because this works for you, it's going to work for me. Yeah, now I agree, and I think, yeah, I look at it and go, just different roles. You have different approaches to things. And I think, like you say, it may work for them and it may feel they're moving forward and past what's been done before, but let's not forget, we've still got application processes where you need to sign up to an ATS and put in your employment and education history that's already on your CV. So that still exists. And then you've got people trying to go over here and like you say, it may work for them because of the roles that are higher in the company there, but I was at a event last year. It's similar, not an unbiased hiring, but a similar thing of how different things work and it was about sort of feedback and just the age of, I think last couple years candidates may be not getting the feedback they deserve. But then someone came up and worked for a large company where at a certain peak period, they could have 100,000 applications, so therefore not everybody's going to hear back, right? Because they're higher in 20,000 people. And I was like, I never looked at it like that because the roles I deal with are going to have that number, so I'm looking at it entirely in my lane. And I guess similar to those people that are doing the five questions, skills based hiring whatever it may be, they're looking at it from their perspective and maybe don't understand the challenge you or someone else would face and how you need to approach that. Yeah. Like we, I actually did, when it was a Serenov, not as I said, D5 at AdNorf, we actually have a TA event next week. I'm flying to Helsinki to do a two-way event with the rest of the team. So it's some of the things we're going to look into the next week, but like what we did at Serenov is we had a default rejection template. Obviously, if we interviewed them and so on, like it was an in-person rejection, never, like hope there's nobody out there rejecting people, you interviewed by email, like shame on you if that's the case. But that's going to be one snippet on it. Yeah. We had a default tip plate, rejection template, where it actually said, like if we would like some person out of feedback, feedback, always more than welcome to reach out. And the thing was, and I can't remember those exact data now because like didn't steal data from all workplaces and I can't remember. But it was on the 2%, if not on the 1%, the applicants who actually reached out actually after saying, hey, I would actually like some person out of feedback, but if those who did over 80% were on the 30. Oh, really interesting. That's what stood out to us when we did it like over 80% of the applicants who actually wanted a person out of feedback. under the age of 30. So what age group is Gen Z? I'm terrible because I'm just old now. But it sounds like it's moving that way, is it? You know, when we break things up and look at yeah, you know, how the work was 13 to 29. So yeah, so about right? Yeah. So, but the so case that there's like what the different the different groups, millennials, boomers, Gen Z, etc, like the how in the workplace, what we value and what we want is evolving and changing, right? So that's interesting to spot that trend. Yeah, and like for me, I think I see that's a positive that I can't really actually want to personalize feedback from each and all, say, hey, the cheapest employer brand you can do is have interactions with the with candidates and such like the cheapest and best employer brand you can do it all. That's that's given the candidate a good candidate experience. But then having a chance to give a five minute cultural candidate who didn't get the job, just to explain, hey, the reason why you didn't get the job was because APNC and hey, while I have you, I know that you can ask a hundred people, get a hundred different opinions on how a CV or God forbid, again, applications should look like, but like in my opinion, this isn't this like it takes five minutes, but it makes a different makes a complete difference. I have a, I don't want to say I got many, but I have what's called a pinned post on my LinkedIn profile, where I actually had a candidate who posted about, it's the first time they ever tried that and like, at that time, I was at Cironaup, what the yarn and Cironaup would do, and like we can't even experience, like it's amazing, they've tried that before. Like I can get a hundred bad reviews and say, "Diana, you're shit at your job." That one, like that makes up for all of it. So it's really a small thing that makes the big difference. Yeah, I think the way you're looking at those leading with the empathy, right? And I think we can sometimes forget that one we're busy and things are busy, especially if you teams are small, we can quite easily start to try to just move everything as long as quickly as possible, but as you say, those five minutes are probably more significant than five minutes you put into a project elsewhere, right? Yeah, I'm precise. And again, being brutally honest, not trying to paint any pink pictures or anything, but like it's not every week I get back to candidates, because even though it's a priority, and it is a priority, because again, like the best employer brand, the value you can get at all, it does also take time and I try to bulk it up. So I do like four or five in one go if it's possible, but it's not every week being completely honest and I would like to have the opportunity to do it on a weekly basis, but like, it's poking in an hour and a half, maybe on a Friday, that would be nice, but life happens, right? But people are me taking our right, you're diary on a Friday, and one more time. Sorry to anyone. Sorry to anyone who went into her back, it's my fault to just blame me. But no, that's interesting. Are you seeing that conversation then in your community around? Is that more and more? You mentioned the unbiased hiring, but are you seeing that sort of personalization as well? Big topics in the UK at the moment, but if you take the TA market, and just the market in general, it's quite tough, and I do, you do speak to candidates and they're quite openly share the good experiences that have had underbat. I think it's a little bit like glass door and trust pile when it's not for hiring, but in all this only here, the bad stories and such, and I think being like the Oracle of TA put myself on that pedestal, I think what it all comes down to is misalignment in expectations. I also posted something on LinkedIn almost this last summer that I rejected a candidate, I think after three hours and 20 minutes, I can't take any boxes and always a financial position based on site in Copenhagen. They were based in Bulgaria, didn't have any financial background, limited English skills, I didn't take any boxes. Three hours and 27 minutes after I rejected them, got a very angry email, I was lying and fuck you, I don't know what the person did for fun. I actually put it out on LinkedIn when viral, I think it had about 300,000 views and about 400 comments and so on, and it was within a TA community, like obviously you know the candidate isn't relevant, just reject them and others were like, oh it's so lack of respect, why would you do that so quickly and so on? I'm not saying what's right and wrong, but my approach is candidates, most of them, I'm a majority of them spend a lot of time like creating CVs, applications, researching a company, all this, so if you're applying, hopefully apply for a role at the company, I mean like I respect the work you put in it, so I don't want you to wait a month if I know you're not relevant for the job, I'd rather come back and say hey, I reject you, if you want some personalized feedback, reach out, I'll get back to you hopefully within a week and say hey, like this, this and this, like I really appreciate you taking the time, but like you didn't hit the mark on identification, but like next time you have a number now and you're email always please feel free to reach out, but like maybe I'm very black and white and maybe I'm just a little bit dumb, I don't know, but I can't see why we should wait a month rejecting candidate, I don't know why, but again I do respect people who have that opinion and that's the way they work, it works for them, but for me and like Speed is King and I respect for the candidate, I don't want them to go and in the unknown, when I know they're not going to be proceeding the process. I think there's that bit of just certain expectations, I think if you know there's going to be a delay, you can put that into your process whether that's on the advert itself, whether that's on the application received email, you know, like like appreciate you've applied, you know for this requirement, we'll be looking at CVs, week commencing, whatever, you'll hear back from the send, so you can set those tones for where there are delays, but I'm kind of like you, you kind of just want to, I think it's just because I'm one of those people that with main box, if I can't get it clear, I don't like it and it's kind of the same with applications, the more it bulks up, the more you've got, that's going to be a much bigger job, so if you can keep on top, you can move people through, but at the same time, you sometimes get people to apply the outright for the role that they apply for, but you know there's another role coming out that'd be grateful, and you confront for it as well, and get them while they're interested, can't you? Precisely, precisely. And at the same time, like this is going to sound very romantic and corny and so on, but like this is the pitch I did when I got hired at Cironorth and also with Ad North, I wanted to candidate even though they didn't get hired, I still want my big dream is every candidate I ain't sacked with that didn't get to job as set with the feeling afterwards, so fuck, I didn't get to job like I really want to work at that company, I really want to work with Beyond it like that's what I want to do, like this soak me so good at this position and this company, that's what I want to do, like that's the dream having every candidate with set with that feeling that's a long way to go, but that's the dream. Yeah, now it's like you say, it's your employer brand and even if you're not successful, if you're left impressed whether the got rejected from the often had a conversation with you for feedback, I've gone through however many stages of the process, if they leave as ambassador's almost of your organisation, you know, then you've done your job well because they might be recommending other people to you, as well, so not only will they look to try again in the future, they'll push up the people your way, right off the experience. Agreed, and like I think just quickly looking back to before, like with the negative stories on LinkedIn and such, like I think you never got to read a bit because in the end of the day it's people's feelings that I heard, like obviously when you feel you're the right candidate for a job, like and you get a rejection or the process wasn't the way you wanted it to be and like I've tried this myself when I applied for roles back in the day, like I had actually three people that I knew it goes me, I had two where the one that goes to me for a month and a half because of a family emergency and then I found out it was one of my former colleagues who got hired for the job two weeks before I actually got word back that oh, family emergency, I happened looked into the role, I was like just say that is like I dropped a ball some time, like the least thing you can do is just be honest about it. Yeah, it goes a long way, well you get built even if you drop the ball you build credibility with someone if you're honest don't you because you that transparency, that transparency, I think doing that in the workplace as well would be good. Fair point. I think so in terms of just sort of looping background and so you've got your event next week so when when's that happening because who knows who might be able to get this podcast out next week so yeah it's on the 12th at 3 pm Danish time and it's an hour and a half it's actually online, the thing is it's going to be in Danish we have Lucas Per Octopersity who's going to be doing the webinar fun fact actually an all friend of mine back from the tillical days like 15 years ago [BLANK_AUDIO] out his own company looking into the paid. I can say that word I tried now, but like the paid gap and so on and doing very well has a lot of good collaborations with the big payroll vendors and so on. So he's doing really good. So please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, Chandakosation 10 market, still the name of the proven LinkedIn. I'll try to get back it to you within a week or plenty of our Caldingwood do so, but they're always welcome to reshard and also if if you see this podcast and think behind what the hell are you talking about? You've been talking how do you ask for half an hour like you're awesome, welcome to reshard, I would love to have a debate. Perfect. Well I'll make sure all the links are in the in the show notes as well. When we put it live so it's easy for people to ease if the people to find safe to say if the webinar is in Danish, I will not be there giving a cap for an actual name unless you want me to show up and barris myself and leave. We could use a six foot three-year JSON memora from Yorkshire to come in and join us so please feel free. Well I'm the six foot two version from Wish so it's a little bit of disappointed in once the package arrives, but I appreciate it. But I will make sure all of that is in there and if people do want to chat to you more or like say get a debate, we'll make sure we've got your your LinkedIn. Please do. The one thing I always say like I don't know what I don't know, so teach me. So I'd rather be wrong and you show me why I'm wrong and I could say hey I was actually wrong, thank you for that. So please do I'm always offered a good debate. So you can't be meaning a debate to you now, you're too nice and humble. I think obviously you're in your new job as well so I think we should definitely get your back once you've had chance to settle and deliver a load more amazing stuff and maybe had a fair few more of your events as well because I'm sure there'll be some hot topics that keep coming up throughout the year with your community in there. But from me just a massive thank you mate and fingers crossed for football this year, we're either going to be in good or bad moods. Yeah, everybody knows that age year if it's going to win the league this year, I get everybody. I'm going to come back in the summer and be very happy or very disappointed. I was going to get a shirt when we last spoke but there were full price so I was hoping to make them a January sale, true Yorkshire style. I'll make sure I get one so next time I'll speak here, I'll I'll be on brand. Oh, it's just showing really appreciate and thank you for having me on the it's always a pleasure so weird thank you for that. Yeah, no thank you for joining me and congrats again on the new gig and thank you to your boss for not blocking you from chatting to me for an hour today. I'll make sure to pass it on. Well, so I'll catch you soon, buddy. Yeah, just see you soon. Bye. Bye, bye. That's a wrap for this episode of more than a CV. Thanks for tuning in and being part of the conversation. If you enjoyed today's discussion, follow the show and why not leave us a review. It helps us reach more people and keep bringing you fresh perspectives from across the tech and talent world. This podcast is about more than hiring, it's about challenging the norm, breaking down barriers and building workplaces where people and ideas can thrive. Until next time, keep questioning, keep learning and remember you're always more than a CV.