Joe: You know, there's a lot of different
forces I think that are impacting
recruiters' lives and, you know, they're
feeling like the tension and the
pressure. It's getting very competitive.
And of course a big part of that is the
unemployment rate is very low. You know,
there's a shift I think in the power
from the recruiter to the
candidate but I think a lot of this, and
you talk about this in the book, is being
driven by what you call like the
convergence of industries. Can you kind
of talk about that force that I don't
think that everyone's may be thinking
about?
Ben: Absolutely. So the the very first
story in the book, and it's got lots of
stories in there. I'm a storytelling guy.
The very first story in
there talks about how a couple years ago
Carnegie Mellon had one of the probably
the best robotics research teams in the
entire world. These people are at the
cutting edge of how robotics can work,
how they can be developed, how they can
affect us in our personal and working
lives all across. And then almost
overnight their whole entire team left.
They were hired away by a private company,
Uber, because they're trying to build a
self-driving fleet of cars. And the
thing is when Carnegie Mellon was
thinking about who might be kind of on
the radar to take that talent away from
them, they were thinking about MIT or some of the other top-shelf research
institutions. They weren't thinking about a
private company. So that's an example of
this industry convergence where industries
are hitting on each other, right? Every
company now, doesn't matter what you do,
if you sell pencils, we're a tech company.
The same kind of thing applies
there. I was talking to the head of talent
acquisition at Visa a couple years ago and
I mentioned financial services and she's like 'ehnt.'
"We're a tech company." 
I think that is an example of how
industry convergence is something that
recruiters need to be aware of because
your next best hire might not be from
the competitor, it might be from another
industry that's parallel to your's where
they're developing something similar,
similar kinds of things. So I
think it's really interesting kind of
look at the world and something that we need to be aware of.
Joe: Yeah I mean I know right in our backyard
here in D.C., Capital One, I've been to
their career site and they talk about,
you know, that they are a top 10 bank but
then it goes on to say they're like a
scientific laboratory that's on a
journey to be like a digital innovator
and like they're saying
like we are a tech company like that's
that's where they are and that's where they're going. You
know like there's the GE commercials
that have been out for a couple
years. Like they're a digital
company first that's also an industrial
company. You know?
Ben: So they actually,
they started that kind of transformation
of the company, right? GE did. They had the Owen commercials come
out with this kid gets a job with GE.
He's trying to explain to his family, for
everybody that doesn't know. He's trying to explain to his family, like "I got a job at GE!"
Oh, aren't they like a manufacturing company?
But you got your degree in software like
what's going on? Like what are you
thinking? And he's like no, they're a tech
company. It was like a way to kinda poke
fun at their history, their legacy,
to honor that but also to point the
light where they're going as a company.
And from what I've heard, based on those
commercials alone, their traffic to
their career site increased by a factor
of eight. People were coming to hear
about the jobs there because they're like wait 
I don't have to work on an assembly line to
go to GE now? I can be a technical, you
know, I can be a software engineer, I can
be like technical hire and be eligible to
work there? And so it was a good
opportunity for them to change that
narrative.
Joe: Thanks for watching this clip and make
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