AI Tools are Not as Fool Proof as You Think

Many companies large and small rely on automated intelligence for hiring, whether that be through the application process, assessment tools, or something else. What happens if we are not keeping up to date on the backend programming on these systems? Join me for an insightful conversation about the next wave of auditing rolling out with John Rood the founder and CEO of Proceptual. Website – https://proceptual.com/ 

 

Leighann Lovely  00:20

HR professionals, business owners and operations at all levels are struggling to figure out what needs to change. Our system has been shocked practices have been questioned, and conversations are finally happening. We all know there has been a huge shift in what people want. inclusion and diversity are common phrases. But often misunderstood generations are coming together more than ever on what's important. Mental health has been brought to the forefront of everyone's mind. Let's humanize these conversations. Let's talk about what's important for employees to be successful in life and at their job and how companies can create an environment to allow them to do both because successful people will make up a successful workforce. I'm Leighann Lovely. Let's get this conversation started.

 

Leighann Lovely  01:09

I've been looking forward to this conversation with John Rood. He is the founder and CEO of Proceptual. Proceptual provides compliance solutions for emerging regulations of automated decision making systems in HR and people operations. Proceptual is currently working with clients on compliance with New York's AI bias laws. Previously, John was founder of next step test preparation, which became the second largest provider of pre health and pre medical test props. John lives in Chicago, and is a graduate of Michigan State University and the University of Chicago. This is a hot topic, obviously, in the HR world, and I just really excited to talk with him. Because with less candidates, more companies than ever using applicant tracking systems, it's definitely something that needs to be talked about, with DEI being ever more important. So I'm, yeah, I'm very excited to welcome John.

 

Leighann Lovely  02:21

John, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm excited to have you.

 

John Rood  02:25

Hi, Leighann. It's my pleasure to be here. Good morning.

 

Leighann Lovely  02:27

Good morning. So why don't we Why don't we jump right in? Why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself?

 

John Rood  02:34

Sure, absolutely. So I'm, I'm an entrepreneur based in Chicago. And I'm running right now a company called perceptual and we're going to talk, I think, at length about what we do there. We provide compliance solutions for companies of all sizes that are looking to get compliant with emerging regulation around automated hiring systems, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Previous to that, I've been in the education industry for 10 years, where I built a company in test prep and pre health and pre medical. And before that, I would have been in management consulting and and that's been my path.

 

Leighann Lovely  03:12

Awesome. So Prorceptual. First, how did you come up with this name?

 

John Rood  03:21

Oh, my gosh. So I've been an entrepreneur for a long time. And I've tried my very best to learn what I'm good at and what I'm not good at. And two things that I'm bad at are naming companies and picking logos. So to be honest with you, I went on a really cool site that just has company names and has the URLs available. I saw a Proceptual it looked cool, it turns out, it means kind of a funky, little used math term. So it's kind of like, you know, kind of like techie kind of AI. So I snapped it up. Luckily, I then got the sense to hire a good marketing person. So we got new logo and everything but but kept the name which I like.

 

Leighann Lovely  03:59

Awesome. So tell me a little bit about, you know, how you came up with the idea to start this particular, you know, business and and why.

 

John Rood  04:10

Yeah, sure. So, I after I'd kind of gotten out of our last business, which we sold, I started to get really interested in artificial intelligence. And this was, you know, a year or two ago and it just kind of starting to get to get really big and I guess kind of like the mainstream of our of our consciousness and our media as a society. And I started looking more and more into, into kind of the world of what some people call AI safety or AI responsibility. Basically, the idea that with these new tools, we have to figure out ways to make this emerging technology work for us, as you know, basically as humans, as opposed to potentially against us. And so I started reading about that quite a bit and then saw, you know, there really hadn't been even as early as last year. Any Government regulation of artificial intelligence or machine learning, but I saw that that was about to change. And one of the places where I saw it was most susceptible or most needing really a regulation was in human resources and people operations. When we think about artificial intelligence, safety and responsibility, we think about, first of all, what are the contexts where it really matters. So, you know, if you had an artificial intelligence on, you know, in your, in your shopping algorithm, and it said, You like red shoes, but in fact, you like green shoes, like, who cares, that's not, that's not a big deal. But if someone does, or doesn't get a job, for, you know, for, for for the wrong reason, that's a huge deal, right. And we, as a society, you know, obviously in our government are trying to protect people, and make sure that companies do the right thing, and that there's fairness in our in our employment market. So I started to focus in there, and then started to see some of the regulations that are in effect, the first one being in New York, and I know, we'll talk about that probably at length, there'll be more regulations. And again, we'll talk about this in several other states, and then we expect there'll be some federal regulation in the next year, maybe 18 months. So I saw that, you know, this was a place where there was going to be a big need in the market. And, you know, given my experience running small to then medium sized businesses, I knew that, you know, everyone's working hard already. And when you're at, you know, a business with 100 or 200 employees, there's no compliance department, there's no general counsel, usually. And so when the HR leader gets into compliance regulation just plopped on on her desk. It's a it's a big issue, right? So I put our company together, to try to figure out, you know, how can we use both technology and smart people put together a suite of products that would help companies get compliant with these new laws as efficiently as possible?

 

Leighann Lovely  06:58

That's awesome. And it you know, as soon as you say, like, AI, we've all seen the movies of, you know, artificial intelligence taking over the world, right. I mean, Terminator, Terminator, and, you know, the newer ones coming out, you know, even kid versions of these movies coming out where, you know, our our artificial intelligence is taking over the world. And, and it's, it's true that it's a scary thing in the sense that we create these systems, and then how, and who is making sure that these systems are being fair to us humans? Right? How do we know that the information that we're putting in is being accurately governed? I mean, we Yeah, well, I'm assuming that we, you know, there's a bunch of little buttons that are being clicked of, Hey, make sure that you check this make sure that you check. But really, at the end of the day, how do we truly know, and then with the changing laws on a continuous, you know, continuing basis, who's going into these systems and saying, Oh, wait, I got to uncheck this box, or recheck this box, or does this box even exist? Right?

 

John Rood  08:12

Right. Yeah, there's, there's a lot to unpack there. And we can, you know, there's, there's kind of a set of discussions around automated systems generally. And then there's kind of a set in in specifically to, you know, HR and people leadership. In my, in my mind, I think what you said is exactly right, there has to be ways for us as a society, and then specifically, you know, us as HR and business leaders to think through, when we ask an automated system to do something, we have to make sure, first of all, that the inputs that are going into that system are the right inputs, and then we have to know what's going on in that system. So to break that down a little bit. If we have, you know, let's say we have, we have company X, and, you know, Company X has historically only hired, you know, hired disproportionate numbers of men or disproportionate numbers of a certain ethnic group. If we put that data into a machine, the machine doesn't know, it doesn't really have a preconceived notion of what that data means, but it will spit out the results it spits out, have a high risk of replicating that bias that went in. And a great example of this, this happened. This is famously happened at Amazon, several years ago, where basically they fed the Fed an algorithm, all the resumes of successful software engineers and you know, this is their logic makes sense. And basically they said, Let's see who's successful Amazon will put their background into machine and then it can spit out the the people that are that are applying for those positions that we think will be most successful. What they didn't realize was that disproportionately at that time, and maybe still now, I don't know but but at that time, Amazon hired lots lots more men in software engineering roles. So the algorithm sees that, even in a in one of the big challenges around this issue is, even if you scrape that information, right, so even if you put these resumes in, and don't tell people what what gender people are, the machines can figure it out, right? So they figure it out with things that are like highly correlated with gender can be highly correlated with race. And so the results that is puts out in the recommendations that it makes tends to replicate those biases. And those are that's like one one very big, probably the biggest sort of example in the screening process for, for people operations of some of the dangers that we're trying to, to solve for.

 

Leighann Lovely  10:36

Interesting. So because, wow, because it's so highly intelligent, it's able to actually predict the possibly the race and the gender of the individual based on the data that you're entering. And therefore the system becomes bias without us even knowing, because we are humans, putting the information into the system.

 

John Rood  10:57

Right? That's exactly right. And you know, the system itself, think about, think about the example of of race. Even if we strip racial or ethnic signifiers out of the data we put in which most companies weren't right, that's not right. No one's trying to create bias results, right. So we don't put that data in, right? If the machine takes things like zip code, which are highly correlated with race, or surnames, which are highly correlated with race, and says, Well, from from now on, you know, we've had more success hiring people from this set of zip codes, and it outputs that, and then it turns out that that's, you know, you know, a fancy schmancy neighborhood with, you know, only wealthy people in it. That's a really bad result. Right. So those are the kinds of things that we're that we're we're trying to solve. You know, and importantly, again, it's not that the people creating these algorithms are doing that on purpose. It's just that that could happen. And those are the things that we have to be aware of. And, you know, importantly, our government, both at the federal and the state level, starting to look into that in a lot of detail.

 

Leighann Lovely  11:58

Interest. Oh, my gosh, that. Wow. Is? So where do you even begin? I mean, how do you even? Yeah,

 

John Rood  12:13

Yeah, great question. So I thought about that problem a lot, obviously. And here's what here's, here's my thought process, we kind of created what what our what our company is trying to do. So I've been around HR and people operations for a long time, both in you know, running those operations at midsize companies. I'm on the board of a company here in Chicago that does corporate training. So I've seen a lot of I've seen a lot of stuff. And what I see is everyone, I shouldn't say everyone, almost everyone wants to do the right thing, right? Almost everyone in the HR world wants to hire the right person, meet that meet our diversity, inclusion goals, and just need help doing it. So the way that I think about it is, first of all, we take that as a as a given. And also, secondly, we want to figure out how to do it at scale and how to do it in a standardized way. So, you know, I think it's possible, I could have said, you know, let's think about like really grandiose plan to make everything perfect, I'm gonna go around to companies and be like, Hey, you shouldn't do this. It's the right thing to do. And certainly, we would get some uptake on this, but people are busy, right? And so it's hard to go and say like, here's the thing that you don't have to do. It's gonna be expensive. Let's do it. So the way I thought about it instead is the government is doing a lot of work on this right. And again, both the state the federal and federal levels. So what what we're doing is basically going regulation by regulation, and creating the right solutions to help companies comply with those. So our first regulation is coming up in New York City. Technically, it's in effect today. But they've decided not to enforce this new law until April 15. We'll have a second law in Colorado, which is more related to data privacy, but we're both kind of cover some of the same issues in employment, that's gonna go into effect during the summer, then we expect that we'll have regulations in California, probably this year, most likely Washington, DC this year. And then the you know, the big kahuna of this is the Federal Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, which you know, everyone in HR is very concerned with them and what they're doing, has identified the issue of bias and automated hiring tools is one of their top three priorities for the upcoming year. And we just on Tuesday, we're recording this on on a Thursday. So two days, two days ago, EEOC held a full day of public testimony and discussions around this issue. So a very long answer to your really good question. Like how do we how do we start doing this? Well, the government is is is gonna basically do it for companies, whether we like it or not. And, you know, what I'm trying to put together is those solutions to make that streamlined, to make sure that you know, HR leaders are already working 60 hours a week, don't Don't have to wade through, you know, 35 pages of of guidance on this stuff, we're gonna put that all together for them.

 

Leighann Lovely  15:07

So in layman's terms, basically any company that is using, and right now you mentioned New York, and Colorado, any companies in those states that are using an applicant tracking systems, so as an example items or to Leo, you know, two of the ones that come to my mind are going to start as of April 15, you said it's going to be enforced in both of those states or just New York, just in New York City, okay, just in New York City are going to start being audited to make sure that they are following a new regulation that is coming out by the EEOC, making sure that they are following certain guidelines around how that information comes in and make sure that it is more than not taking certain things into account such as race, or gender, or, and more equal to all applicants who are coming in. Because as of right now, the EEOC is is concerned that those systems could be biased in some way?

 

John Rood  16:16

Yeah, let me let me break that down a little bit. And I think that one of the one of the most challenging things about this this year and in this market is that every state is going to do it a little bit differently until we do have federal guidance. So let's start with let's start with this New York regulation. So this is for for those of you who want to look it up at home. This is it's called local law 144 of 2021. It's a New York City ordinance. So it's not even New York State's New York City, but obviously, that's a very large market. It covers every company of any size, which I was surprised about when I first heard about it, that uses what they call our sorry, that is so any company of any size that hires people in New York City, right. So it doesn't doesn't necessarily have to be based in New York City. In theory, if you're, you know, a California company, and you have, you know, 1000 employees, and you have one in New York, in theory, this, this pertains to you, although there'll be an enforcement question down the road. But here's what the here's the law entails. So companies that use what the law calls automated employment decision tools, have to get an I have to do a couple of things. But let's break down first, what that what those automated tools mean, the law defines it as, in a couple of ways. So the first way is, when there is a machine or algorithm that's making part of the decisions, the employment funnel, that's a system that that will require compliance. So for example, and the biggest example, by far is going to be resume resume screening. If you you know, you post a job, you get 500 applicants, your ATS, or the job board or you know, whatever, whatever software it is, is going to just show the hiring manager, the top 50, or the top 100. Right. So clearly, lots of those resumes are being screened out. Sometimes we know why sometimes you don't know why. But that's a place where you know, if the computer is making that decision, as opposed to the person, that tool is going to be under the law. We'll also see use cases, which will be covered under the law in the assessment world. So anytime you are giving candidates a score, or anytime that you were that you were using an assessment to rank order candidates, that's going to fall into law as well. There's exceptions there, there's always some nuance, but you know, for example, if we give someone you know, Myers Briggs, there's no reason to think that ENTJ is better than I, you know, INTJ or whatever. But if you were using that, and then saying, Hey, we're only going to take the ease and out the eyes, then there's a compliance issue, right. So if a if a if a company is using those tools, the law requires a couple things. The first and by far the most most challenging is there has to be an independent third party audit of the results of those systems. So interestingly, we're not auditing in this situation for this law, the inputs are what's happening in, you know, kind of in the black box of the computer, we're just looking at the outputs for this law. So we're generating a report that basically says, you know, let's say we did a hiring screen, and we're going to break down how many applicants were successful in that process by men and women, and then by the five racial or ethnic categories that are defined by the EEOC separately. And we have to say, you know, if you if you advanced 80% of your Asian women through this hiring process, but you only advanced you know, 20% of your you know, if you're Latino men, for example, that's a problem right? So those that's the information that we have to output. Companies have to put it on their website. Companies have to do some note application requirements that the systems are in use, and then companies will be in compliance with that law. And again, like you mentioned, Colorado, California, those will be different. Those will be very different.

 

Leighann Lovely  20:10

Right? So okay, so lot there. So in the law is stating that you have to have a third party do this. So there is no way around of hiring somebody, you know, to come in and be a compliance manager for this, it has to be a third party. So there's, there's no way around actually hiring somebody to come in and do this for you. Which means that I mean, this is something that companies are now going to have to budget for.

 

John Rood  20:38

Yeah, absolutely. So there's two ways there's that the independence of the auditor is defined in the law. First of all, the vendor itself cannot simply conduct an audit on its own systems, and then give it to its customers. It's very clear that, first of all, that's not independent. And secondly, that the compliance responsibility falls on the employer and not the vendor in this law. Secondly, exactly like you said, it's clear that the auditor can't be an employee can't be an investor can't be a board member, etc, etc, of the company itself. So that's kind of why we put what we're doing together. We're, that's what, that's what we do. That's what we're going to do for companies, because by law, they can't do it themselves.

 

Leighann Lovely  21:20

Interesting. Wow. And it makes sense. I mean, I'm not, you know, I sit here and go, Oh, my gosh, but It completely makes sense. And the fact that we are going in and, first of all, you know, I talked to a lot of people about the whole, you know, applying to an automated system, and you mentioned 500 applicants, any company would be like, Yeah, I got 500 applicants to apply. But you know, a lot of if you talk to the people who are applying, right to these positions, one, people hate applying through applicant tracking system systems, I mean, you're applying to a black hole, you apply, you never hear back, you have no idea. A lot of companies, I mean, these systems are set up to be able to do an auto reply, thank you for applying to our position. And then when the position is closed, it's it's designed to be able to say, hey, this position has been, you know, filled again, thank you for your interest, you know, we'll let you know if there's another opportunity that could fit your skills. And companies are not utilizing that, to do all of that there are plenty of employees out there that have applied to these positions, they never hear a single word on whether or not their application was even, you know, accepted. And when the position was closed, and you hear this time and time again, the applicant, you know, the employee, or the person applying that experience has been lost completely. And it's a frustrating, annoying, you know, position to be in when you spend hours of your day, I mean, it's a full time job looking for a job 100%. So it needs to change in so many different ways on on how these systems work. In my opinion, there are a lot of companies out there that I feel that they're it's it's pure laziness, because you can set these systems up to be very robust and very awesome tools. And the fact that they're not even utilizing them to their full potential, just speaks volumes to the fact that they're, they've lost their customer service when it comes to bringing employees in. So if they're not even using it to the full potential in that sense, what else is there missing? So I truly believe that there needs to be an audit system. However, on the flip side of that as an as a company, who's all of a sudden staring down the barrel of yet another expense that the government is going to impose on them? That is a, you know, a major frustration? Do you you know, with all that being said, Do you think that there's going to be companies out there that decide to eliminate these applicant tracking systems, or I shouldn't say eliminate, but to kind of go back to a little bit of the old school way and say, hey, just email your resume to me. Especially because we're in a time when there are there aren't 500 applicants applying? In some cases, companies only have, depending on the role 10 applicants applying?

 

John Rood  24:26

Yeah, I think it's I think it's definitely possible. And, you know, I've certainly talked to a number of especially smaller businesses, and this is how our business runs. I mean, we're a very small business to where we don't we don't use these tools, right. We we know people on our network, you know, we'll we'll put up a job, but then I'll manually look look at every single resume. So a lot of companies don't use these tools. The I've seen estimates our own data is highly skewed because people don't come talk to us if they're not using these systems. But I've seen data that something like 40 to 50% of companies are using these automate To tools that's going to skew towards midsize to large companies rather than small business for sure. But yeah, I think you're right. I think that especially, you know, especially sometimes we'll see in an applicant tracking system that there are and you mentioned this yourself like there's there's some automation modules, and there's some modules that don't use automation, right. So I think that definitely one thing that some businesses that just don't want to deal with this, this will do is turn off the automated parts of others, whatever system this is, and just kind of go without it until the regulatory environment is a little bit less uncertain and frothy? Yeah, I think that that, that could well be the case. The other side of it is, first of all, you know, the the cost of what we're doing and happy to talk about that is, you know, no one wants, no one wants to get a new expense on their in a budget, which they haven't, you know, haven't planned for it don't have authorization for like, that stinks for everyone. That said, the cost of you know, making the wrong hire is an order of magnitude worse, always. So I think that companies that are that are beneficial using these tools will probably just go through the compliance process. The other side of it, which we haven't talked as much about is, you know, fundamentally, if we are helping companies understand whether the tools that they're using are producing fair or unfair outcomes, that's not only a compliance issue, that's a that's a kind of a dei issue, as well. So I think that companies would want to know that, and will they, you know, will they have urgency on that issue? I don't know. But, you know, I think that if we're, if we're really interested in making sure that we've got fair hiring practices, and that's commitment that many companies have made just to do the right thing, this helps them fulfill that obligation as well.

 

Leighann Lovely  26:48

And I think that, you know, especially nowadays, companies are pushing for, you know, more, you know, equal opportunity or inclusion dei is becoming a conversation that is being had across the board with, I mean, everywhere, I don't know that there is a company that you can walk into that that doesn't, you know, understand for the first time, what Dei, you know, is whether or not they fool it, you know, understand the full breadth of what that means, you know, there's still companies that are a little bit behind in that. But that is a conversation that, that companies are having, for the first time on a regular basis of how can we, you know, infuse a little bit more, you know, inclusion, and, you know, spread our wings on that. And so, I truly believe that the majority of the companies out there are attempting to be, you know, more inclusive, and do the right thing, and try to change their culture to, you know, for the positive, which is, which is awesome, you know, for the first time in my career, I'm I'm seeing that shift, and that's happening at a at a much faster speed, then, than it would have if the pandemic never happened. Right. I think that we've all seen that. So with the implication now of of hiring individuals, I think they're doing that push. It just, it scares me with, you know, the constant changing in regulations. And so this is another piece that, you know, you and I kind of have talked about that, you know, regulations are constantly being rolled out. And you had mentioned that there's like, what, another five or six, you know, regulations out there. So, you know, with all of these regulations that are being rolled out, why do you think the government is acting on this now?

 

John Rood  28:41

So I think that, first of all, if we if we step back, so way, way, way back, EEOC at the federal level has since the 70s, done rulemaking in terms of, of this kind of like fairness in hiring. And so last year, actually, the EEOC put out a memo, it wasn't a regulation, but basically, what it said was, hey, all the stuff that you should be doing for your hiring process, you still have to do even if it's with this technology, right. So you're it's a company, the EEOC was clear that companies are responsible for fair hiring practices. And they can't simply say, Well, this algorithm that we got from some vendor made us do it, like they're gonna be responsible for those for those results. I think that EEOC has seen that more and more companies are using these kinds of automated tools, that number is likely to likely to go up because technology keeps advancing. But I also think that just the the consciousness of this issue is substantially higher this year than two years ago. Right. So two years ago, most sort of like average people were not talking about artificial intelligence, and you know, this year they are right so it's just a it's a much bigger portion of kind of the the thought share of our of our society. So I think that the government See, you know, hey, that's interesting, we should look at that. And then also, I think that you'll, you know, it just to be blunt about it state governments are, are very different in terms of their political leanings. And, you know, we're going to see that a lot of sort of the blue states, to us kind of the the political terminology, are really going to get out ahead of this. And especially the Oregon, especially California, and California is historically out in front of basically everything for HR and hiring regulations. So that's what that's what we can we can expect. So there'll be some leaders, there'll be some, you know, some catch up from other states as well. And then there'll be the federal action, which is already in process.

 

Leighann Lovely  30:41

Interesting. And so what do you think that some of this is going to look like? And how do you think it's going to affect? You know, and we all know that, you know, once it hits some of these big states that it just, it slowly rolls out everywhere? You know, we, except for legalizing marijuana, which? Sorry, lower? Right, right. Okay, anyways, I digress. Um, what do you think that some of these, you know, regulations are going to look like? And, I mean, what, what kind of impact? And I guess, you know, I always, you know, default to, you know, the financial impact that it's going to have on, you know, especially the larger companies, or I shouldn't say the larger companies, usually they're able to absorb those on a fairly easy level, it's usually the mid sized companies that, you know, have to have to figure out how do I come up with the funding for this, because they're, they're not, they're not small enough to eliminate, you know, these systems, they're not large enough to just be able to absorb the cost of what they have to do. You know, so what do you think the impact of some of these new regulations and again, for my audience, you know, this is not anything, this is not anything new, we're always have new regulations, you know, I go back to, you know, when the Affordable Care Act was implemented, and we all were like, Oh, my gosh, it's gonna cost so much in order to, you know, be in compliance with us. And really, when it was all said and done, you know, we were able to roll with that a lot of companies didn't see the financial impact on being becoming compliant the way that we had originally thought that it was going to be, you know, this huge cost to organizations, you know, we're most organizations were able to, you know, to roll without fairly easily, but I shouldn't say easily, but it wasn't as big of a deal as a lot of people were thinking it was going to be right.

 

John Rood  32:46

So what you're gonna see in this market is it's going to advance and I think a fairly similar way. And I think this is this is common, both for regulation and for technology, development in general. So right now, it's going to be annoying and onerous. And I don't know, it's not gonna be that expensive, but it'll, you know, there's certainly going to be costs associated with it, particularly as state different states are figuring out what to do. Right. So this is going to be the year that it's that it's going to be the most challenging as we go. I think that certainly at our company, we're using technology and, and software to try to make it cheaper to try to make it faster, try to get to compliance earlier. And I think that you'll see that as as the years progress, right. So it will be less, you know, we have to kind of put together these bespoke solutions for the states. And it'll be more like, here's, you know, here's the menu of states. It's tell us where you operate. And we'll, we'll send you the solution. ACA compliance was a great 140 1k compliance is one that we studied really closely. That was similar, people thought it would be hard. And now it's, you know, it's $5,000 for a midsize business every year to do with just a box to check. So I think it'll, I think it'll start it'll start developing like that. The other the other example, which is where this market is probably going to go is GDPR compliance, where again, it's it was amazing, right? And everyone remembers this, just like lay people remember, like, one day, there was no little accept cookies button, and then the next day, like every single website had to accept cookies button. It's gonna kind of be like that, right? So we'll it's figuring out what's the software solution to make this more straightforward. Now, that'd be the case, I do think that there will be lots of laws that are requiring third party auditing. So there is definitely kind of like a tech enabled services angle where this can't be done just with software. We have to have real people that people that kind of like sign up for the right code of ethics and are using their professional judgment in this as well.

 

Leighann Lovely  34:47

Very interesting. Very, very, so a lot to come. Do you? Do you have a place where people can, you know, follow you And, you know, hear updates on what's happening. And you're shaking your head.

 

John Rood  35:08

Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you for asking. Yeah, so our company has proceptual and I'm sure we'll have links there, but proceptual is PROCEPTUAL, we're at proceptual.com, come to our website, sign up for our newsletter, we're on LinkedIn, you go to LinkedIn and follow us on LinkedIn, we post everything there as well. I would, I would love it if listeners, you know, like it. Even if you're not going to do this this year, even if these laws don't apply to you, because you're not located in these jurisdictions, everyone has to kind of keep this on their radar. So I mean, my hope is that everyone's comes and signs up and stays kind of in the know about these regulations. We're also happy to talk to anyone about how these regulations apply to them. So if you go to our website and fill out the contact form, we'll happy to talk to any, any, any people leader and HR leader for free talk through what are the regulations entail? Does your company have responsibilities? Are these responsibilities coming up? Possibly in April, which is, you know, three months away from from where we are now, to my to my two and a half, actually. So yeah, we're around and we're happy to talk to anyone about what their responsibilities will be.

 

Leighann Lovely  36:13

Right? So, and you, obviously, you're talking to individuals, but do you, you know, are you keeping people abreast on on what those regulations you know, on any any news, you know, YouTube channel or anything else? Because you're truly a wealth of knowledge when it comes to this?

 

John Rood  36:32

Yeah, it's funny, I was, I was gonna try to shoot something next week on YouTube. And now you've convinced me, I definitely have to do it. We're gonna mark it on my calendar. But yeah, what we do at our newsletter is, basically I see our job is that there's this big kind of community of people, it's not a there's a small community of people out there that that are really, really interested in this stuff. So there's a world of academics, think tanks, nonprofits and government people who put out these, like, long reports on artificial intelligence. You know, and I had mentioned we had on Tuesday, we had a, you know, seven hours of EEOC testimony. Yesterday, we had a full day, which ended at 9pm, of testimony from Colorado. So one of our jobs is like, we sit through that, and and try to distill that down into what do people leaders really need to know? Right? So take a seven hour testimony and say, like, here's the five bullet points of things that you need to be concerned about. That's what we try to do in our in our free publications.

 

Leighann Lovely  37:28

That's awesome. That's absolutely awesome. Because it's, it's a hard I mean, as an HR, obviously, you know, as an HR professional, it's hard to keep up on these regulations. It's hard to keep up on any regulations, or keep up on your job, because what HR departments now are pared down to, you know, one or two people, and staying on top of, you know, insurance and staying on top of everything in trying to keep up on the newest and, you know, the newest stuff that's popping up is is literally impossible. So that's absolutely awesome. So if you want to find John, he's, he's, you know, set where you can find him. But I will also have that in the show notes. So, and this has been an awesome conversation. But before we wrap up, I have a question of the season that I asked everybody. So I want to ask you that you had a preview of that. What would you change about your job or the practice that people have in your in your role? If you could?

 

John Rood  38:25

Yeah, that's a that's a great question. And so I'm, you know, as I mentioned, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm founder CEO. So it was a hard question for me, because anything that I say is something that I can and should then go fix, right. So it's basically whatever I say is my fault. But I tried to think hard about it. And I thought that, you know, one thing that I want to see, changing in our in our company is, I just want us to be able to spread the word on this more. So I think that we try to do the best we can with marketing with free content. But you know, exactly like you said, we're both spreading the word on this, because our customers, mostly our customers, who when we first talk to them, I've never heard of this, they don't know anything about it. So we're both doing kind of our ongoing compliance obligations with our paid clients. But also we need to be keeping out getting out the word and spending time on our content. And it's that a that's always a hard balance at a small company.

 

Leighann Lovely  39:24

Right now. No, well, hey, John, this has been an awesome conversation. And it's definitely something that, you know, again, is, I'm passionate about I'm in the HR, you know, circle, I'm in it every day, talking to amazing people. And one of the conversations that will be coming up is is actually talking with somebody who's on the other side of, of an HR professional, who's on the other side, dealing with applicant tracking systems, because she's, you know, applying to positions right now. And, you know, it's amazing how much has changed in The last couple of years with regulations and, you know, utilizing these systems. So this is definitely something that I want to I'm gonna follow you and make sure that I keep up on these because it's, it is wildly interesting in it and I think it's going to have an impact on a lot of companies. So I really appreciate you coming on and talking with me and yeah.

 

John Rood  40:20

Leighann it's been my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

 

Leighann Lovely  40:22

Yeah. You have a great day. You too. Thank you again for listening to Let's Talk HR. I appreciate your time and support without you the audience this would not be possible. So don't forget that if you enjoyed this episode, to follow us, like us or share us. Have a wonderful day.

 

Contact Information 

Website – https://proceptual.com/ 

LinkedIN - linkedin.com/in/johnrood1

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/cruen/family-time License code: 2330NZD3BLNDKPYI

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

companies, regulations, people, compliance, systems, hiring, perceptual, law, hr, EEOC, applicant tracking systems, applicants, DEI, applying, artificial intelligence, tools, states, employees, happening, resume