FutureProof You

AI #fu Podcast 3.3.25
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john-lovig_1_03-03-2025_125910: welcome to this episode of The Future Proof You podcast f yourself. This month is March Madness. It's also AI month for us at Future Proof View, where we have four classes coming up, AI for teachers, AI for entrepreneurs, students including non-traditional, go back to school and get a master's degree online.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: Trainings for work. All of those we consider students to learn with ai. And fourth in our list of classes is AI for content creators, which should be everybody, and we'll get into that later. I am one of your three hosts, Aaron Makelky, joined by John Wig and Dan Yu. We are gonna get started with John, our local expert on recruiting.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: He's also an entrepreneur and very well versed in AI tools. John, what are you seeing in the recruiting world in terms of [00:01:00] positions you're hiring for and how your side of the recruiting process is being reshaped by ai?

john-lovig_1_03-03-2025_125910: Yeah, I mean, AI has changed a lot of things in terms of what companies are hiring for, what they aren't. So, I mean, I'm directly impacted by this right now because I'm working with a company helping them with, with AI trainers. People who are training AI models for different tech companies. Um, however, what you're also seeing is companies sitting and waiting to see what impact AI has on content creation.

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: On, um, you know, like for instance, Buzzfeed had let go a lot of folks because their main content type is a listicle. And so they've been using AI models to do that instead. Um, but I think for the most part, what what we're gonna see is a shift for people in. In the sense that if you're not embracing and understanding AI and figuring out how to use it in your daily work life, you're going to be surpassed by someone [00:02:00] else. And it's going to only make other people more efficient at what they do. So, you know, as you're going through and learning about these things, integrate them into the way that you do your job in a way that's effective. I use it pretty regularly myself. Um, you know, one thing we've talked about, probably. At this rate a hundred times in different ways is, is that myth. We hear about AI in the applicant tracking system, right? Oh, the AI bots are coming from me now, maybe with a more, um, bespoke piece of software with some of the bigger tech companies, maybe they have that implemented. But if you're applying through a greenhouse or a lever or any of the traditional applicant tracking systems. AI is just not there yet. It's very light and it does not disqualify typically. Um, will that change in the future? Almost certainly. Um, but it's not there yet. Yeah. And Dan, what would you say to those people that think they don't need to learn AI or [00:03:00] adapt to that? Because you're, you know, the career pivot. Expert. What, how? How should you have that conversation with those colleagues or clients? Uh, well, ultimately it's about skills, skills building of where you want to go, right? And everybody does have transferable skills, right? So maybe they're really good in a math, you know, or being able to analyze, you know, large data sets. Um, bringing that human element to making data-driven decisions.

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: However, every role is going to be affected by ai. And it does. It just doesn't matter. We know what industry you are in, and so building your skills today, right, is a, is gonna be an absolute necessity going forward. And as we've taught in our classes for future-proof, you the most important thing is to build your skillset and then talk about it.

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: Your personal brand of where you want to go. [00:04:00] It's all about future proofing, right? Future leaning. And if you're not future leaning and your, you know, LinkedIn profile is looking backwards, you know, to jobs you had five years ago, it's really not gonna be relevant to the reader. Or you wanna be relevant to whoever's reading your profile.

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: Is it the hiring manager? Is that the recruiter or the outside headhunter? You wanna be at the forefront. And so the leveraging AI. As a skill, but also leveraging AI in your everyday content creation. I, I use it. I know both of you use it as well. Um, I tend to be a first miler, so I will use AI as my inspiration and then I'll put my own spin on it.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: Uh, I use it every day. Um, I have, uh, recently, uh, started to use a tool called bordy, and that's helping me find people that I would like to meet. It's, um, and it's a, it's a way [00:05:00] for, uh, for you to leverage your networking and I recommend it to everybody that wants to get out and network. Yeah. And for people who say AI and networking, that sounds, uh, dystopian. Well, what do you think someone with a Rolodex would say about your contacts app and your phone being searchable? Right. That didn't replace, it didn't,

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: it didn't replace relationships like, oh, now you can search in your phone for who lives in Chicago or who has a certain email.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: It just, It

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: made it easier to interface with the, the people and the relationships you've already had. Uh,

john-lovig_1_03-03-2025_125910: let me fax you my details. Let me fax you my details.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: Yeah. John, since you're in the recruiting world, I mean, I get asked this all the time, is AI replacing jobs? Are companies saying AI tools substitute for human position? I.

john-lovig_1_03-03-2025_125910: It can be, uh, think of it this way. If you have a very task based, very rules based [00:06:00] job, so the more rules based, the more task based, the more predictable. The more likely your job's gonna be disrupted. If you have to put strategy behind your job in some way, or there's a place in that career path where strategy becomes involved, that's where you need to get to be before AI does replace it.

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: Right? So at the end of the day, it's moving people away from being tacticians and being strategists. And so if you understand the ai, you can, you can be that strategist behind the scenes. Versus the person who gets replaced. Yeah, and uh, I think if you become the AI expert. In your organization that's also kind of future proofing your existence there.

john-lovig_1_03-03-2025_125910: No.

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: And um, you know, just being the subject matter expert on whatever, you know, not just ai, but maybe AI mixed with. Some of the tasks or some of the job [00:07:00] functions, um, that will protect you as you continue to forward, lean, right future.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: Lean on how to continue to build your skills. 'cause you'll be ahead of the other people if you're teaching them. Yeah, and I, I have a good friend who taught me this. He uses the analogy of having AI Scouts in your network, and whether that's your colleagues or your LinkedIn followers, people that go out and experiment and figure out how are these tools useful or which ones are best for which purposes. And he said, everybody needs those scouts within their networks and organizations.

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: So if you don't have one, then go be that person for your network and have your boss come to you like, Hey, I have an AI question. You're the AI lady. How would you do this? Or How should we do this? And, uh, because the playing field's very level, there were no AI experts in the consumer world, like outside of really nerdy statisticians and machine learning engineers. Nobody was good at this [00:08:00] two years ago, so they can't be that far ahead of you. Even if you're a total rookie in 2025, you're still ahead of where the mean. The mean is still back at zero with these tools. Yeah. With fax machines. Yeah. I mean, Aaron, one of the things that you've done with your content is, uh, the worth It Wednesdays, which I think is great, right? It, it kind of demystifies some of the technological, the new tools that are out there. Right. And, and I think that's been really helpful. You know, even, you know, especially for me actually since, you know, I'm older, but, uh, it is, it has definitely helped me appreciate some of the tools that are out there.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: Yeah, and content creation I think is one of my greatest leverage points with ai. Just at the, the morning of recording here in March of 2025, I I had a YouTube video, a blog article, a LinkedIn article, and a podcast episode come out [00:09:00] this morning at the same time, and I get asked to, like, do you, do you have a job?

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: Or do you just sit at home and, you know, film and edit videos all day? And I go, well, I, I did all of that in about two hours. So it took me about an hour to write and film. About 30 to 40 minutes to edit, and then with a 15 to 20 minute window, I can chop that up, retain all of my authentic words and tone and ideas, and repurpose it across channels. You could do that manually. It would take three or four hours with AI tools like you were talking about. Dan. You know, I use AI for inspiration. Then put a twist on it. Another way you can use it is to just repurpose and go, well, if I'm scheduling text. Posts on LinkedIn or X, but I have a long form article this week. Why wouldn't I use AI to help me clip it? Or if I have a long form YouTube video that's 14 minutes long, why do I need to film a bunch of Instagram reels? I can just clip those. And there are AI tools that take [00:10:00] 95% of the manual labor out of that process. Absolutely. So it, it's a skill that we should all be learning and, and, and, and we're all fumbling through, as you said, right? Because it's, it's so new. So it's, it's okay to be, um, be a newbie, a rookie, or just suck at it, right? It's okay. And, but now as a teacher, right, for you and, and, and who you deal with, right?

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: So. You know, how, how are, you know, how are you, you know, seeing kind of the progress of learning. I.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: That's a great question. It depends on what classroom you're in, but uh, in the ones that are embracing these tools, all it does is remove barriers to access. That's how I view ai. Students that read on a lower level or students who you used to have to give a copy of the notes to. Why don't we have a digital version of that already existing that the teacher [00:11:00] provides?

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: Or even better, that students can take an article, the teacher assigned and using AI tools, revise it to be on a grade level, they comprehend or use analogies that they're actually interested in, and all that does is just make learning more accessible for students that previously. Didn't have access to the content or the teacher didn't have time to level it and personalize it for them. I'm a big fan of personalized learning is not bestowed upon you by the teacher. It is actually the burden of the learner to take that content and put it in their own terms and their own level and make it interesting to them. And AI makes that almost instant, almost free some, in some cases, it is free. And the biggest question is institutions don't know how to adapt to that because professors and teachers were gatekeepers of knowledge. Uh, the internet has eroded that a little bit, but AI even more so.

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: I, I mean the, [00:12:00] the democratization right of access right. Is, is really the key. And then, and then now it's being served up, right? Not just having access, but now it's being served up. It's, um, I, I, I love the, the idea of accessibility, uh, in education. And, uh, I remember. Being shamed for using, uh, cliff Notes, right?

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: And now we're really leveraging AI to create custom. Custom for the audience, for the user, the student, custom CliffNotes for that person, which I think is just, is such a great, uh, use for it. Um, especially when the student, um, you know, just, just needs a little nudge, right? Like, I, I don't think they, they want all the answers.

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: I think they really are interested in learning.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: Yeah, let's, let's get specific with the use case in the recruiting and career pivot case. You guys probably get asked about resume review or resume [00:13:00] feedback. My answer is those knowledge work professions in a lot of ways are already being automated out in education. The use case is I have a piece of writing.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: My teacher is busy and I want him or her to review my essay before I turn it in, or my research paper until chat. GPT came out just over two years ago. There was no way to do that without finding an expert or hoping your teacher had time. And what I've really tried to instill in my students and then the the educators I work with is why wouldn't we want kids to get feedback on their work before they turn it in?

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: Why wouldn't we want them to get help writing it, uh, at a higher vocabulary level or more supporting evidence? And once we teach our students those skills, they're less reliant on us. And that's ultimately a good thing because now they don't need to wait for us to give them feedback before they turn it in. Same with job search. Candidates, uh, with their LinkedIn profile, their about me section, their cover letters. Why wouldn't you use ai? Even if it's not just [00:14:00] a direct replacement? Do it for me. It's, here's what I have, here's what I want it to do for me. Give me feedback from a career expert named Dan Yu, who specializes in career pivots.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: Yeah, a, a great use case for this too is, is I've, I've uploaded resume and a job description for someone that I knew and had it create an interview guide for the person so that they were prepared more for the interview, and it worked pretty well. I added in a few other questions that might come up. But it's a great starting point. Yeah. Dan, what's a use case

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: Yeah, the old.

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: job search, career pivot people? Well, I mean, just, just preparing, right? So, um, you wanna prepare for an interview, you wanna prepare to, uh, have an interview in an industry you don't know anything about, right? So, for people that, uh, that wanna make a career pivot, I think there's a lot of, uh, apprehension because they don't feel. Like [00:15:00] their skills can transfer.

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: I think AI can take a hard look at your skills and then translate it. I. Right in a common, you know, kind, kind of a colloquial way, right, for your audience so that it helps them understand, puts two and help them put two and two together of what you can bring to the table in this industry that you don't have any real experience in.

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: Um, you know, that I think that's a, you know, that that's a great way to, again, democratize access. Because we all have transferable skills. We just need to be able to translate it for whoever the audience is in that next industry. Um, John and I have seen this actually, uh, in recruiting. Um, we've recruited for education technology.

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: I. And in most technology firms, we've seen the, uh, program management office [00:16:00] being the, uh, kind of like the scrum masters or the project managers, the how to people. And in some ed tech circles, program managers are actually product people and they're building the why and they're building kind of the curricula for that education technology software.

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: And so just the, just the title. Sometimes gets mixed up and then you get confused that way. So just imagine if you were going from one, you know, uh, from a software company to education technology, you might get lumped into the wrong pile, you know, by accident.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: Yeah. And here here's a use case to connect both of yours. So prepping for an interview and then understanding how my skills transfer. I tell people all the time, chat, GPT, advanced Voice Mode, it's free. And even if you don't have the app, call on your phone, one 800 chat GPT, and you can talk on the [00:17:00] phone to it. People, a lot of people don't know that's a real thing and say, Hey, here's my skillset. Let's use the ed tech example. I just had this conversation with a colleague last week. I'm a career teacher. I want out. I wanna work for an ed tech, but I don't speak the corporate lingo or the ed tech vernacular. Can you be an interview panel for an ed tech and quiz me and use your lingo and then help me understand how to transfer my teacher skills? For example, they go, oh, it's a customer success role. If you walk down the hallways of a high school in America and say, do you have any experience with customer success? Teachers are like, no, I don't even have customers. What does that mean? And you go, do you do other things for students to support them and keep them from failing? And they're all like, oh yeah, that is customer success. They're just clients, not students. And they're like, oh, I didn't know my skills transferred. To Dan's domain, well use a voice assistant to [00:18:00] quiz you on those and teach you the vernacular and even say like, what are the skills I have that they'd be looking for, and how do I frame those in an ed tech context?

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: I.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: 500

john-lovig_1_03-03-2025_125910: Yeah.

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: That's perfect. That's so good. So yeah, I mean the, there's no reason why you can't do that, especially, you know, when there's an app or an 800 number, right? So, uh, that, that's, that's great advice, Aaron.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: and I, and I, one of the things that John has taught me is

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: grabbing job descriptions before they go down and project

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: manage. You know, I have this application out, this one's closed, this one I have an interview for. What you can do with that is say you're the hiring manager for this company. Here's the word for word job description. Walk me through what you think the interview would be. Why wouldn't I use that?

john-lovig_1_03-03-2025_125910: Exactly.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: Yeah. Well, uh, final thoughts. Let's, let's do a quick hit at the end here. What's been the biggest aha moment [00:19:00] for you guys, Dan and John individually? When it comes to using ai, what's something you've did, you've done or you've seen that made you go, wow, like this is the future, John?

john-lovig_1_03-03-2025_125910: I mean, when I started to really dive into training AI with my existing content, um. Once I started seeing the results of that and, and how it would start to sound more like my tone of voice, for instance, I like to use it for candidate write-ups, which is something recruiters hate doing. I take the transcript of our call, the candidate's resume. I use chat GPT, and I've trained it on my tone of voice using several different write-ups I wrote myself, and now they all come out highlighting. Right things, um, like 99.9% of the time. So it's made my life. This is something that people would take hours to do at the end of their work day all the time. That takes me minutes now,[00:20:00]

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: Yeah, and it's just like if you wrote it, it's still your ideas 'cause you trained it. That's not. Uh, a shady use of

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: ai.

john-lovig_1_03-03-2025_125910: it's also not me using it for copy to try and do anything other than highlight someone's background. To a client,

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: Yeah. What about you, Dan? What's been an aha moment for you personally with ai? Um, I got this from, from your class that we, that we, uh, that we hosted last fall. Um, just creating that persona for the ai. To start, you are an expert in X, Y, Z industry, right? It's already framing. You know who the writer should be, and you have experience in, um, in writing about A, B, and C. But I want you to have certain guardrails, right?

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: And write it in a certain tone of voice. [00:21:00] I like to write in a semi irreverent tone of voice, and I will. Actually say semi reverent in my, in my prompt, or I'll say in a casual voice, and then it's really casual. And um, I'll say, Hey, can you rewrite that in a little bit more formal? Right. And it'll rewrite it for me.

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: And so the, the, and the framing of your question. With the ask in between as well as the guardrails, I think is, uh, something that people should just get to, you know, just get used to using and play with it. Um, you know, we're, we're all learning, we're, we're all learning about the capabilities. And so is the ai, the AI's learning too, right?

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: And so just as the AI learned, John's tone, it can learn in multiple ways and you need to train it. And so over time it can get better and better.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: Yeah. And speaking of,

undefined_NaN_03-03-2025_125912: So that's been the, that's been the revelatory thing for

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: yeah, speaking of learning ai, [00:22:00] that's why, uh, the month of March Madness is full of AI classes For us at Future Proof U, if you missed March, 2025, you can check out our website, future proof y u.com. But if you're listening to this in March of 2025, our four upcoming classes are AI for teachers, entrepreneurs, students, including non-traditional students and content creators, which, like Dan said, we're all content creators.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: We all should be, and AI can help you remove a lot of friction from the content creation process. We are also going to hit some career pivot topics in April.

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: Our four classes in April, including teacher, career pivots, college students, or graduates, looking for their first career stop return to work. If you are a mom or a parent returning from parental leave bereavement or just a sabbatical and you have a space in your resume, how do I get back into the job [00:23:00] market?

aaron_1_03-03-2025_105910: We have a class for you in April. And then finally, late stage career pivots. You're at the end of your career, but you're not done. What else could you do and how could you do that? Future Proof U has a live class coming for you in April of 2025. Check out our website, future proof y u.com. I am one of your three co-hosts, Aaron Makelky, joined by Dan Yu, the Career Pivot expert, and John Lo, the recruiting expert. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Future Proof's Podcast. F yourself.