Charlotte Business Buzz: Career Searching in the AI Age
Video interviews, automated resume screening, and artificial intelligence are quickly changing the career landscape.
To understand how UNC Charlotte is preparing students for this new environment, Jeffrey Jones, director of Executive Education and Continuing Education at the Belk College, recently sat down with Patrick Madsen, Executive Director of the Career Center at UNC Charlotte. The interview is for Charlotte Business Buzz, a new podcast mini-series presented by the Belk College and the Office of Industry and Government Partnerships.
While we were working at a distance here what innovative ways are you using to reach students and employers?
I got to tell you as the university was continuing to think about moving us online weeks and weeks – seems like years and years ago – our office had already planned out everything. So it was literally flipping the switch and turning our events – our panels and networking events and even our career fairs – virtual.
What we have found from our data over the years is that students are still into the technology aspect. Social media is a big thing, and one of the things that we realized quickly, too, was that students needed to kind of get over this the sudden surprise of the pandemic. So, we had to meet them where they were and make sure that they realized that you still need to engage, and that we’re still here for them.
So, we’ve seen a steady increase in usage in our office all along a lot of the virtual stuff that we’ve been putting together.
How has the search for employment opportunities changed for jobseekers?
When people are looking for job opportunities in this type of environment, they need to start to do a little more research on what industries are thriving, which industries are surviving, and which industries are having a little trouble. This helps them understand how they could build a better strategy to expand their opportunities, expand their targets as they continue to move forward with their careers.
So we think about that in terms of the expansion of the strategy but also making sure to double down on engaging in the process you know in a good economy, and sometimes you can just post for a job online and somebody’s gonna call you. These days, you have to do a little bit more informational interviewing and to do a lot more networking. You need to be a lot more engaging in continuing to learn and pick up new skills that are marketable to the employers that are out there.
What strategies are job seekers using for networking?
Networking has been done through LinkedIn a lot for the past five or seven years, and, in fact, there was a stat back in 2013 … that said 94% of all employers – all industries – use LinkedIn somewhere in their recruitment and talent pipelining process.
You can just imagine what it is today, and so we train our students, and we train our employers on how to properly use LinkedIn. To suss out the candidates that are out there and make sure that you’re making a good first impression and a good second impression to build that social capital as you will. So, when you’re thinking about this idea of how do I network, it’s pretty much the same as it has been for about five to seven years. It’s just a matter of again doubling down, making sure that students are presenting themselves professionally for the world they’re trying to go into and they’re remembering to help them understand what it is they’re after so that they can market themselves well.
What are employers doing differently to attract talent?
What I have been finding now is that employers who are successful in working with this University don’t treat it as a transactional process. [They’re looking] to integrate into the process of higher education, everything from partnering on research with a person or literally living on campus … all the way through engaging in an integrated approach to educating students.
Based on the data that we collect, we can help educate our employers on how students – your candidates – are viewing you as an employer. We can use that data to help employers learn how to shift their job description to be more attractive to students. We can help them understand what candidates are looking for. … They’re looking at the talent pipeline, but also looking at recruitment at the same exact time, and that’s kind of where the nexus of what a Career Center does. We become consultants if you will to make sure everybody’s connecting in an efficient manner.
“You need to be a lot more engaging in continuing to learn and pick up new skills that are marketable to the employers that are out there.”
Business leaders here in Charlotte have a lot of stress now and uncertainty. Why would you say they should be hiring an intern now?
One of the things that I’ve been hearing from industry for for a decade or more is that they’re missing out on the skilled talent. Where is the skilled talent?
And I say that right now during this situation, even though you’re a little nervous about hiring an intern or doing a micro-internship, gigternship or otherwise, now’s the time to build that skill talent that you’ve been looking for. So there’s a lot of students that are looking for opportunity. There’s a lot of people in our region looking for opportunity. We can look at upskilling.
We can look at creating new projects. We can look at creating new ways to develop these competencies in the talent pool so that when things do start to move back to the positive world, you have what it is you’re looking for, and you can immediately hire these great candidates into the roles that you might have. It’ll keep things moving quicker, and I think this is a good opportunity for our region, our economy for partnerships between higher education and industry to redesign the candidate-talent pipeline and the recruitment process so that it’s more. It’s got more social impact. It’s got more capital for what it is that we’re trying to get done as a region.
We’ve seen the rise of artificial intelligence used by companies to interview prospective employees. Can you tell us a little bit about this, and how job seekers might prepare for that experience?
What we believe is happening is that some types of jobs will have so many candidates that come in – thousands of candidates – that it’s literally impossible to review every single candidate in a screening interview to get them to the second stage or whatever it might be.
So, some of these larger companies are starting to look at AI as a way to suss out if you will those that should make it to the next round based on some of these subjective measures that they might be looking for. … What it does is the computer is gonna look at you, and it’s gonna listen for keywords that you tend to say or it’s gonna look at your body movements and start to collect information on those different things. Now you might think about it and say, “Well that’s just not fair. How am I supposed to prepare for that?” What we talked with students about is a couple of things.
One, it’s such a new sort of thing that you shouldn’t worry about it right now. Just be who you are. You can’t fake it. If you fake it too much, an employer is gonna figure it out at some point in the stage, and you won’t become that viable candidate.
We’ve done a lot of cool things around preparing for virtual interviews, and one of my favorite things that we do for students is we actually do a virtual background check. We use what’s called “big interview.” The students can answer one 30-second commercial-type of question.
Our staff will review everything from the background that you have in your virtual platform, what you’re wearing, your eye contact, how your body’s moving, all the way through your audio and video to make sure that you have the perfect setup so that you can do that networking online and feel comfortable and confident in what it is that you’re projecting through this digital era that we are we are now living through.
Are there any other tips that you would give folks about those types of interviews?
It comes down to the core of don’t sweat the small stuff. So, for example, we’ve seen all these stories. We’ve all experienced it ourselves, including the dog barking or the baby crying or somebody coming into the room and that just becomes part of our human nature. The first tip that I have is don’t worry about those so much.
Just maintain your focus, continue through the interview or networking situation or whatever it might be whether it’s somebody coming into your room or you see it online and just allow it to be a part of it.
The things that are in your control is making sure that the lighting is at a certain place where it shines on your face rather than your back.
For example, being to a window where it creates this silhouette if you will where people can’t see you clearly remember that not everybody’s technology is perfect. So for somebody like me, if you’ve met me in person, I tend to move around a lot. I tend to use my hands as I’m talking and doing it right now I have to kind of condense that a little bit that way you know the technology won’t shudder me around or make me look like I’m just moving around a little too much.
Note: The interview has been edited for clarity and space. The full interview is available through Charlotte Business Buzz.
About the Belk College of Business
The Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte is North Carolina’s urban research business school. Accredited by AACSB International, the Belk College of Business offers outstanding business education at the undergraduate and graduate levels, along with executive education. The Belk College has been educating future business leaders for nearly 50 years. With more than 4,600 students, almost 160 full-time faculty and staff, and more than 33,000 alumni, the Belk College is one of the Carolinas’ largest business schools.
