Oskar Santos
[ 00:00:00,000 ]Hello and welcome everyone to day four of RMIT Online's Future Skills Fest. We are at day four, I cannot believe it, we've already had some fabulous conversations, we've had debates, we've had masterclasses, and today's conversation is going to be just as good, talking about climbing the AI ladder. Before I introduce my guests, my name is Oscar Santos and I am the Partnerships Manager at RMIT Online and absolutely thrilled to be hosting today's session.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:00:29,640 ] I'm looking around the room and I can see some industry partners, I can see some alumni, and I can see some students. So welcome to everyone and of course everyone online who's dialing in today.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:00:39,570 ] Um, we are here in Melbourne at the Queen Victoria Women's Centre, which sits on the land of the Wurundjeri and Wurundjeri language groups of the Eastern Kulin Nations. And I'd like to pause for a moment and just acknowledge their elders past and present before we kick into today's festivities. Now, a little bit of housekeeping for everyone. This is absolutely going to be an interactive session. So for those of you online, make sure you're using that chat. Good. Pop in your questions, pop in your comments, and we will absolutely endeavor to get to those.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:01:19,880 ] Bear with us.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:01:30,970 ] This morning's segment is hot. Thank you. Don't worry, everyone's on their knees.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:01:40,850 ] This is why I'm not in the IT.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:01:44,180 ] How's that?
Oskar Santos
[ 00:01:46,530 ] The cheers, we're on, and it's loud and it's working.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:01:51,670 ] Do I need it to get from the top? I think we're okay. I think we're okay. As I was saying, for those online, please make sure you use that chat function. We want to hear your questions. We want to hear your comments. And for those of you in the room, there will be working mics making their way around after today's conversation as well. Now, AI, what a... What a topic. It's everywhere we look. All around us. Today's conversation, though in particular, is going to zoom in on something. It's about what it means for us in our careers and I'm joined today by some fabulous JetMeta experts who are going to help us unpack this and get started on that conversation.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:02:30,220 ] Sorry.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:02:33,170 ] Before I get into the formal questions, it's important that I introduce this wonderful panel.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:02:37,940 ] I'll start with Jackie Pooley.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:02:41,270 ] Jackie is the Organizational Development Lead at CultureAmp. where she focuses on leadership capability. Organizational culture and how AI is reshaping the future of work and skills development.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:02:55,580 ] Brett Knowles is a Senior Capability Specialist, REA Group. and the architect behind Appreacademy. AI Learning Hub. and focus on building practical AI capability across the organization.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:03:09,640 ] Sarah Purchase, Managing Director of Kindtide, where she works with founders, scaling businesses, building high-performing teams, strengthening hiring practices, and developing leadership capability.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:03:23,490 ] Cat Francis.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:03:25,060 ] Kat is an executive coach and founder of Coach Kat, specializing in leadership career growth, high performance, drawing on more than 20 years experience across senior active creative agencies and in her roles.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:03:41,900 ] A bit of a round of applause, I think. Let's welcome the panel.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:03:48,840 ] Now, before I get stuck into the individual questions, I'm going to start by... posing a question. To the panel itself. And I'm going to start with this question.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:04:00,310 ] If you could go back 12 months— 12 months from today—what is the AI skill?
Oskar Santos
[ 00:04:06,790 ] habit or mindset. You wished you would adopt earlier. And Sarah, I'm going to start with you.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:04:14,930 ] Okay, is that working? It is. That's a, yeah. That's a really difficult question because AI is evolving every day. So, you know, what I know now versus what was actually even available back then, maybe I couldn't have. Delved into it deeper. But I think one of the most, probably something that I've evolved in the last 12 months, is really around the prompting piece, but also the judgment piece that comes with that and diving deeper in the why. However, then also exploring other AI tools outside of your chatty G and Claude that... help you, I guess.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:04:54,020 ] Really contain the data or the problem that you're trying to solve in a really safe way so that you can work within those parameters. So things like Notebook LM, for example. So yeah, I think just exploring more. I think in the early stages, everyone just thought it was ChatGPT, but there's actually so many different... AI products, I guess, out there that you can use. And I wish I had of me explored a bit more broadly rather than focusing in on one particular AI product or LLM.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:05:25,600 ] Thanks, y'all. Jackie?
Jacqui Pooley
[ 00:05:27,420 ] For me, it's more around a mindset. I think the mindset that using AI is not cheating your way through life and actually reaching for AI as a thought partner first and foremost, rather than trying to just... do things manually on your own off that. So yeah, changing that mindset around AI is not cheating. And yeah. treating it more like a teammate rather than a tool.
Kat Francis
[ 00:05:53,530 ] Mine is also a mindset.
Kat Francis
[ 00:05:57,330 ] There's a quote, and I'm going to share a few of those tonight because as the leadership coach, that's like my job. Bye. It's that you can't fear that which you know and that which you can control. So, about 12 months ago. I probably didn't even have Chat GPT on my phone. But I was also in that state of ignorance is bliss. I don't know it. I don't need to know it. But maybe a bit fearful as well, but it was fear of the unknown rather than fear of what it actually was. So, only in the last month or so since I've started an AI course, which is wonderful. It's a free resource called 'A Thousand Women in AI.' So write that down. Unfortunately, it is only for women.
Kat Francis
[ 00:06:40,370 ] Amém. If someone in your life is a woman, she could get in and you could... get her login. I started that course and all of a sudden I was just lit up by the opportunities and just by feeling so much more empowered by one simple action of like. Watching one module for 10 minutes and then I couldn't get enough. It just went from feeling like in a cave to suddenly having seen the light. And I think it's just that one simple step you can take to... Um, see it with curious eyes rather than fearful ones.
Brett Knowles
[ 00:07:13,630 ] Yeah, I mean, I'd echo what you've said there and mine would be the mindset piece. I agree, Sarah, the tools are moving as quickly as they can. I said to Oscar just before I heard a speaker talk or give me something that's really shifted my focus is that the AI tool that we're using today is the worst version of that tool today. So we can't actually get ahead of it. So my mindset would be: if I went back 12 months, I'd constantly be looking at my work. and asking myself the question or challenging myself the question, 'Why am I doing it this way? Is there a better way I can do this? Is there a more effective way? And do I now have access to a tool that can support me in that? So mine would be that mindset piece of how I look at my work.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:07:55,450 ] Thank you, everyone. The mindset piece absolutely resonates with me. I think that if I had my... Time again one year ago from now, it would be one. The mindset, and two, hurry up and learn something, which is going to change in a month's time from now, which is a bit daunting. But thank you all for sharing. Kat, I'm going to jump to my first question to you.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:08:16,780 ] If AI was helping everyone produce more polished work, what actually makes a candidate or employee stand out?
Kat Francis
[ 00:08:25,910 ] Great question and definitely have this conversation often with clients. And when I speak to them about it, I often hark back to my time before coaching, which was as a brand strategist and owner of an agency. And there's two concepts in branding which are really important here for personal brand. And that is differentiation and distinctiveness. And they sound the same, but they're actually different. And differentiation is actually standing for something. And being really clear on the value that only you can bring. Who's the buyer? So you have to frame it in a lens that the buyer goes, that's valuable to me rather than just... not just saying what you can do, but what you can do for them. And the other piece is distinctiveness, which is really about cutting through. Standing out. It doesn't actually have to be... imbued with meaning but more physical assets that you have that, when a potential... Um, Hi, we're up. Looks at it, it's memorable. And they feel something. They feel a sense of personality coming through. So a really basic example of this is the Macca's Golden Arches. Like we all recognize that as an asset of that brand and we call it to mind. So what that would look like in a hiring situation would be a CV. That is memorable, that has a sense of the person. So I see the most amazing candidates with CVs that look like they're written on a Macintosh computer from a back office in an accounting firm.
Kat Francis
[ 00:09:55,490 ] And this is one of the most... Incredibly dynamic candidates you can imagine— but it just hasn't been thought through from that perspective. There's a human who's choosing whether they want to meet another human. And you've got to actually give them a reason to want to meet you. So you can do that in your CV. You can do that in your cover letter, visually and verbally.
Kat Francis
[ 00:10:16,080 ] And you can do it on LinkedIn. But you could also, if you're a tick whiz, and AI will help with this too, have a website landing page that doesn't say much, but says enough.
Kat Francis
[ 00:10:26,190 ] This is me. This is what I stand for. Here's what I believe in. Here's what I do. So that's a long-winded answer. But I feel that we're going to have to go to a little bit more effort now because what's happening with AI is it's equalizing skills, not the actual skills that you own, but the way we talk about them. So everyone can sound like they have the exact same skills. They put the JD through cord and they say, 'Make me sound like I've done all this stuff.' So what's the next layer, I think, is what you have to think about, and that is building that differentiation and that distinctiveness around how you present yourself.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:11:01,160 ] Thanks, Kat. I feel like that if I were to do my CV again, I might handwrite it and send it just to make sure it has that real impact. Um, you, Sarah, what causes a resume? to get filtered out by AI screening tools.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:11:16,680 ] And what increases the chances of getting shortlisted?
Sarah Purches
[ 00:11:21,390 ] That's a great question. It comes up a lot. And I think the first thing to disclose, I think in Australia, we're still pretty immature in our AI adoption. Particularly, I mean, I've worked in talent teams for a very long time, but often the budget for talent is sometimes the first to be cut. So not all organisations... Organisations actually have an ATS, which is an applicant tracking system. So when you apply for a job, it goes into this database, right, called an ATS. Not all of them have AI capability. Some of them are pretty much like a standard database. Some of them that do have AI capability will scrape things like, you know, keywords.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:12:00,390 ] And I think when we're looking at our resume, you want to look at it with a bit of a lens like SEO. But you want to be honest about what it is. You don't want to be just putting all of these, you know, keywords in there and making the font white so no one sees it, but you don't actually have any of those skills or technologies or experience under your belt. I think as someone who's looked at... thousands upon thousands upon thousands of CVs, some of the things that really stand out to me is maybe not so much into the AI side of it. It's really about, and what Kat touched on before, it's about what is memorable.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:12:37,570 ] And it's highlighting not just what you did, so not just a couple of key roles about manage a team of 11, you know, stakeholder management, blah, blah, blah. That tells me nothing. What's the value you actually brought to the business? What changed because you were there? Um, And this is what gets you over the line. They're hiring because they need someone to help change things or grow things or do better. It's easy to get a bummer seat and let's be honest, if we want... Something that's just the bare basics. We can probably just build a bot to do it. But it's the human element that's really critical. And so I guess when it comes to... I don't think it's beating the bot, and I'm going to be really clear about it. I think that's something that's been thrown around a lot in media as well, that AI is the enemy and we're all getting taken over by robots. I don't think that's true. But I do think that AI will support your application when you understand how to use it really well. And so an example of that might be, you know, we're really bad at talking about ourselves and promoting ourselves when we're writing our resumes.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:13:38,070 ] And you could use, perhaps, ChatGPT or Claude, whatever it is, to build out a metrics bank. So all the wonderful things that you've achieved throughout your career— and actually put either percentages to it or numbers, you know— could be. For example, reduced 100,000 dollars in spend on something or whatever that is, and build a metrics bank from that, and then help build that into your capabilities throughout your CV, throughout your LinkedIn, and make it have a lot more impact. So it's actually telling a story. And I find that this is what helps.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:14:12,520 ] You know, if we're trying to stand out, there's no, I don't think it's beat the ball. I think one of the cool things is making sure that there is clarity. Like your email address and phone number. If you don't have them on your CV, we need to be able to contact you. We need to be able to find you. But list out all the skills, experience, technologies. If you're using, you know, AI, list what it is.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:14:35,690 ] But make sure you're actually capable and competent in using it as well because, when it comes to that interview, I say, 'Great, tell me about your AI experience. I'd love to know how you're using it. How have you learned about it? What's the impact or outcomes from actually using it?' Now, if you're going to turn around to me and say, 'Oh, well, you know,' I just use it to make my email sound more professional. That's not really AI capability. It's a little bit of laziness and it does serve a purpose. I've done the same. When I returned to work from mat leave, I couldn't put a sense together and I had mum brain, but AI really helped me deliver more appropriate emails and reports and things like that. But I think we just need to be a little bit more mindful as opposed to fearful. And just don't believe everything you're out in the media about AI and beating the bots.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:15:27,580 ] That's very reassuring. Thank you very much.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:15:30,620 ] Brett, on a similar... Type of question. Simply listing AI tools on your CV, how can candidates actually demonstrate the genuine AI capability in a credible and meaningful way?
Brett Knowles
[ 00:15:45,690 ] Yeah, and I'll try and maybe... build on the two perspectives that Sarah and Kat have shared, because I think what you're saying is absolutely right. Presenting value and communicating that value in a business context is what future employees are looking for. Respectively, employees are looking for before REA actually spent 10 years in the recruitment area, which, funny enough, where Sarah and I have had past connections. So I'll go down that road for a little bit and I'll give you something practical, which is the acronym CAR, C-A-R, which is Circumstance, Action, and Result. And the result, often when I interviewed people for years, they missed the R. They missed talking about the result. What was the impact of what your skill is? So, yes, I can use ChatGPT, and you can put that on your resume, the skill that you have, or a platform technical skill that you have. Have because when hiring managers are looking at it, they're going does this person know how to use the tools I have in my business? Yes, tick great that's the first thing. But you need to stretch beyond that to the A and the R. What was the action you took with that platform? And what was the result you had?
Brett Knowles
[ 00:16:47,850 ] Did you create a small prompt library for your team of five people? And those five people, you reuse those prompts 50 times, which reduced five hours of admin work for the team a week. I'm making that up on the spot. You can see how you're shifting away from, I know how to use ChatGPT. To actually I know how to implement and I know how to get the most out of that platform that solves real business challenges, because generally when people are employing, it's most likely because they've got a challenge or a business challenge that they want to solve and they're looking for the people that can help them solve those challenges. So, if you can articulate that in your resume or CV, that is what will cut you out.
Brett Knowles
[ 00:17:29,130 ] Position you with something different. Because there's a bit of brand identity behind that and something memorable. This person achieved this in that business. So CAR is a good little acronym that I like to follow. And I use that in my resume. What was the context? What was the action I took? And what was the result that I achieved by doing that?
Oskar Santos
[ 00:17:46,530 ] Thank you, Brett. Jackie, over to you.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:17:50,160 ] In a rapidly changing AI landscape, how should people decide which skills are worth investing in and now versus what they can wait?
Jacqui Pooley
[ 00:18:01,900 ] This is such a good question because it can feel so overwhelming. You know, Sarah said before, there's so many AI tools out there. Every tool now, every technology product has an AI element to it. What I would say is invest in durable skills over tool-specific skills because these tools are... evolving at such rapid paces that how it works today is going to work completely different in one week, two weeks, three weeks. Um, so. Yeah, focus on building those durable skills around, you know, Thinking critically about AI outputs, you know, you still need to apply your own brain to what you're seeing come out of AI. How to craft really good prompts so that you're getting the most out of your AI tools. And how to spot where the tool's actually falling short. What is the right tool to even be using to begin with?
Jacqui Pooley
[ 00:18:53,710 ] So I'd say prioritize AI fluency over tool training. So understand, you know, where does AI do it best? You know, synthesizing information, recognizing patterns, helping you to draft or iterate. And then what does the human do at best? Where should the human be taking leave? So ethics, decision-making, judgment. Um, building relationships, you know, none of that's going away. Um, then ultimately, if a skill, if something, if AI is going to solve a real pain point in your work or in your, even your day-to-day life, prioritize building that. Don't wait for your organization to prompt you to use it or to tell you how to do it. Start to teach yourself or just start playing with it. Um, I will say here, though, being really careful that you're using the right tools. So using shadow AI, you're going to introduce a material data security risk to your organization.
Jacqui Pooley
[ 00:19:50,149 ] Because there's nothing protecting the data you put into it. So just be sure that you're using the right rules and enterprise-approved tools there. So yeah, what can wait? Deep technical skills unless your job actually requires you to have that knowledge. Otherwise, focus on fluency and those durable skills.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:20:08,400 ] Thanks, Jackie. And I can see people taking notes here. I'm very glad this is being recorded because there's some absolute gold coming out of this conversation already. Brett? REA has embedded AI learning into its culture through initiatives like the REA Academy.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:20:23,840 ] From your perspective.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:20:26,470 ] How has this approach impacted AI literacy? Day-to-day adoption and the overall productivity across the organisation.
Brett Knowles
[ 00:20:35,650 ] Yeah, it's, I mean, go back to the first question. If I knew what I knew now, 12 months later, how would I approach building? An AI academy in in a tech business, I would have done it completely, completely differently.
Brett Knowles
[ 00:20:49,640 ] I could sit here and talk about the fun metrics of, you know, we've got a literacy program. And 88% of the organisation has gone through the literacy program. We've got data of how confident, 80% more confident in using AI tools in their day-to-day roles, et cetera. They're all really, really... But I think the biggest impact that I've seen in the work we've done over the last few years is more the mindset shift that people have seen of AI as a tool into AI as more of a collaboration partner.
Brett Knowles
[ 00:21:18,230 ] And by helping people on that journey and demystifying what is AI and how you can use AI, we're finding our people are now experimenting safely and planning. With AI a lot more, and that's enabling them to attach that to real problems and work problems and challenges that they have. And once you get that small win, it's like candy. You're like, 'Oh, I want to do that again.' That was really fun. Or I can see the immediate value that I'm getting because it solved this challenge or solved this problem. And that, for us, has been a huge unlock. And we gamify it. We make it fun. We just launched a program which is called the REAI Academy Zombie Hunt Program. You're thinking, what's a zombie hunt, right? And it's like, well, we think about it. We've all got these little workflow processes or team rituals that are slowing us down, that are chewing our time. They're just eating away at us doing the high value work. And so we labelled them zombies, right? And so we sent these teams on a mission. Go find your zombies. Head off, come together as a team and look at your work and go, where is this work getting slowed down?
Brett Knowles
[ 00:22:21,170 ] Where could we implement AI? And we create some fun around it. And then we bring these teams together and we put them through a really quick little incubator to build agents, potentially or prompts that can solve that. In three hours, we had our teams lead that program and 73% of them said they were confident that what they built would actually work in the real work. And we've just recently come back to celebrate them and reward them. And the biggest feedback that we got was is that we made AI fun, we made AI accessible, and we made AI real. We made it real work, real challenges, real things that our people could engage with, and that's been an unlock. Now it's like, now we need to slow down, hang on, we've got to try and get this in order, all that in order, and all these little things are popping up everywhere, which is fine. It's always good to just let it go.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:23:10,360 ] Thanks, Brett. Always reminds me how fun a place REIA Group sounds to work.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:23:16,760 ] Kat, you started your career in creative agencies. And now you work as a coach focused on empowering women. How have you navigated multiple career pivots? While staying ahead of emerging technologies like AI.
Kat Francis
[ 00:23:31,620 ] Big question. And I'd like to say that I think I've had more career pivots before I even joined the workforce.
Kat Francis
[ 00:23:39,710 ] And that I started, I guess, my journey with creativity very young with a teacher who said to my mum. We can't keep up with her thirst for creative.
Kat Francis
[ 00:23:50,179 ] And from there, I wanted to be a dancer, but apparently I didn't have stature for it. My mum called me a baby elephant on the dance floor. I then fell in love with architecture. Turned out I can't do physics. So that wasn't a goer. And then advertising. I fell in love with that. And now I laugh at that because... I obviously got to a point of doing that and realised I didn't love it at all. But I moved into branding. So all along, I think the thing I'm trying to express is that I didn't attach my identity to a particular job. I attached it to a set of passions and way of being in the world, which was around creativity, curiosity, but mostly like lifelong learning and adaptability. And now I look back and I think, 'Oh, thank God,' because going through a major career pivot at almost 40 years old with two kids is like no joke. And has had its rough moments. But if I hadn't have come into that with that growth mindset and that sense of like— You're either winning or learning, but you can never fail. I would have turned around and gone back to the safety of a job that paid really well, I could do with my eyes closed while my kids were in the bath.
Kat Francis
[ 00:24:58,580 ] But, you know, these days I've got the most fulfillment I've ever had creatively and at work. So I think the most important thing is to not attach identity to a job role. But start to see it through the lens of values. And not so much purpose as purpose with a big P is very confronting for a lot of people. But getting a sense of fulfillment and contributions for what you do with your professional energy. And also to stop attaching worth to... a level on the career ladder, a level of status, power, money. And start attaching it to, yeah, those intrinsic rewards that you get from doing work you love with good people.
Kat Francis
[ 00:25:39,200 ] I haven't really answered the question of technology. I do think creativity, curiosity. And a growth mindset enables you to navigate those disruptions because, you know, the only constant we have is change. So you just kind of have to live with it.
Brett Knowles
[ 00:25:55,650 ] I just wanted to build on a word you said, which is a sense of failure and removing the fear of failure. I'm obviously doing that within safe parameters within a work environment. But if you can remove this stigma of someone getting it wrong and flip that into actually celebrating what people are getting wrong. And then sharing those learnings with other people. You're actually bringing the collective together. You know, in that program I just shared about, the biggest reward we gave was the most ambitious failure award. And we celebrated it. We said, 'What did you learn from it?' And then, how can you help other people do that? And that unlocked creative thinking. What could we do? How could we try this? And let's just give it a go and see what happens, knowing that some things might not work. So I thought it was a really good little point that you highlighted around this. Remove the stigma of failure when it comes to AI in a safe environment and safe way, of course.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:26:43,460 ] Thanks, Brett. And thank you, Kathy. A lot of what you said resonated with many of us.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:26:49,500 ] I heard you say 'lifelong learning' in there. I know at MIT Online it's a very big thing for us, that and obviously my dream of also being a dancer. Didn't come to life, so I can also resonate with that. Um, There's still time, as they say. Um.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:27:05,130 ] Jack, where are we?
Oskar Santos
[ 00:27:07,660 ] Jackie. Someone working in an environment, in the environment where AI isn't yet a priority. How can they still stay relevant and continue building their future-ready skills?
Jacqui Pooley
[ 00:27:18,780 ] Such an important question, because there are so many organisations out there that really haven't left the start line yet in terms of their AI journey. Um, The thing I would say is... Don't wait for permission. There's nothing stopping you from experimenting and playing with AI on your own. As I mentioned before, keep it within the right parameters for security and safety of your organizational data. But think about how you can start to employ AI in your day-to-day. You probably have some tools that might be accessible. Just start using them and see what happens. You know, remove that expectation to deliver something perfect or polished using AI and just see what it's capable of. Um, Thank you. The example I have here at Culture Ramp, we had an employee who had... Created a lean agent that was helping him with his just day-to-day admin work, so works with customers and wanted to be able to make that time of gathering the data for his customer meetings just a little bit quicker. He actually went and ran a session with his peers in his team about how this was helping him and making him more efficient in his role.
Jacqui Pooley
[ 00:28:21,870 ] It was such a wild success. Everyone kept talking about it. That he had to run a second session to expand the audience to the broader organisation.
Jacqui Pooley
[ 00:28:30,580 ] No one asked him to do that. He took the initiative to do it himself.
Jacqui Pooley
[ 00:28:34,430 ] But the other thing that I heard someone say recently at an event, and it actually came over lunch today, which was really interesting, is how you use AI in your personal life. So I'd heard a woman on a panel a few weeks ago say that she vibe coded a colour analysis app for herself and all of her friends are begging her to use it as well. So that's using AI just in a different way. And a colleague of mine today shared that her brother had built her an app using CLAWD code. that, um, teaches her what she should plant in her garden, when throughout the year, it's all based on, you know, where she lives and whatnot. So I think there's just lots of little ways you can be introducing it and playing with AI. Without bringing this big expectation that my organisation wants me to use it or needs me to use it. You also don't know where you might go next and they might already be really far advanced in their AI. So you want to be getting up to speed with where others might be as well.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:29:31,650 ] If I may. So I am one of those massive geeks that likes to figure out how to do life.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:29:38,940 ] On a big budget. And some of the things I've actually done the same. So I've built out GPTs that are all about my garden. And, you know, I've got three zones. It's a temperate environment. I've talked about different soil across different parts of the garden and it plans out my gear of what I'm planting and where and companion planting. It goes deep. But I've been able to share that with people who live in my area, like my neighbours who are not AI people. Well, the woman, I think she's in her 60s because I'm pretty sure she just celebrated her 60th recently. They've never used AI before and all of a sudden she's like, 'This is fabulous.' I've built out financial dashboards to understand where my business is going and how to forecast over the next 12 months, but also for my personal life. So daycare, Centrelink. Accounting fees, you know, all the works that come in, you know, cost of living. It's expensive, so I want you to touch what you said, like start now, don't wait for permission, like because AI is not necessarily... the core skill around. Work. You're going to learn to build amazing things that impact your life that you can use in interviews. So, you know, you may want to work for an incredible tech company like REA Group. And then when they talk to you at interview and say, 'how are you actually using AI?' You can say, 'maybe I'm not using it at work right now, but in my personal life. I built GPTs and this is what's done and this is the impact.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:31:08,040 ] I've been able to have a massive harvest in winter. I've collected the seeds. I've replanted them, shared them, sold them.' Donated into the seed library and I'm creating this wonderful little ecosystem. All based around amazing things I've built in AI, it doesn't have to start in the workplace.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:31:25,810 ] Thank you. Thank you both. I think that's a really wonderful thing to share and allowing people to think about maybe... how do I start this journey if you're at the very beginning and then bringing into those day-to-day things you do, rather than thinking about it necessarily from a career perspective or a business perspective, humanising it like that. I think we're all very keen to see your gardens there as well, based on what you described. Thank you. Um, I'll actually stick with you, Sarah, and ask the question. What are the most common mistakes? People make when they're trying to position themselves as AI savvy in their careers.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:32:01,970 ] I don't know. Listen, I shouldn't laugh and... It's something that I've really I did a bit of self-reflection, actually, because I did see someone recently who does or teaches AI courses online, and she was almost shaming people for this topic. You know, oh, so stupid you're doing this. That's not AI competency. And I don't think that's the right approach. I think we need to empower each other and educate each other and encourage each other to use it the right way. And it's not saying, 'oh, you're doing it wrong.' Um, but I think. A really important part starts with the education piece. And that's really critical. So where I see it going wrong, and I've experienced it so many times, you kind of go, 'oh, okay.' And I will actually pick up the phone and call these candidates and give them this feedback. So I had... a cover letter. Come to me and it was literally... exactly what the PD was or the job ad that was out there. This person had obviously put into strategy or whatever they were using. Write me a cover letter so it makes me perfect for this job.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:33:03,350 ] So what do you think AI did?
Sarah Purches
[ 00:33:06,010 ] It wrote a cover letter that was perfect for that job. But when I looked at the resume, none of the skills or experience actually lined up. So, you know, the prompt that you put into AI is really going to dictate what the output is. So I'd really encourage everybody that's using AI to do some of the... I think the best place to start, and it's free, is things like Claude Academy or Anthropic Academy and do Claude 101 and understand what is a prompt, what a guard. Rails how to use it well, but then go do the ethics course and really understand more about you know the data that you should and shouldn't put in there and understanding where it goes and how it impacts. So I think the education piece is really important. And the beauty of it is you can probably learn it in a two-hour period on a Sunday afternoon and then put it to work. So that's probably some of the core things or people that will put their CV into ChatGPT or whatever and say, you know, improve my CV for this job. And then it will. Make up things so it might add skills you don't have, technologies that you don't have experience with, and if you're not using that human judgment, review the output and make sure sure it's actually correct.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:34:14,560 ] You're doing yourself a disservice. So, whilst if you had to put the human element in, you could have looked at what the skills, qualities, and experience that are required for the role and done your metrics bank and built that out a little bit more, so it was true. And maybe you would have got a foot in the door, but it becomes blatantly obvious, you know, when everything is lining up and using the same language that's in the job ad and, you know, not really come across as authentic. It's very quickly to... for skipping on to the next one.
Kat Francis
[ 00:34:44,630 ] Could I add something from the angle of in your actual work rather than applying for jobs? And I've stumbled through this problem myself, is that AI can move you from... at a question or a problem you're trying to solve to a solution so, so, so quickly. And I've gone through the process recently. I was telling Oscar. of repositioning my brand, it hasn't been released. But I had this amazing hour on AI where I was like, it's all sold. And then I went off for a walk and I came back and I was like, but it's not as good as it could be. So the moral of the story is that. For all of us, they'll be a part of our work. Float. That is high value work. It'll be different for all of us. For me, it's concepting ideation and writing. It's not coaching notes. It's not sending invoices. Of course, all that goes through AI. But when it comes to the top of the funnel— creative thinking, repositioning strategy, all that kind of stuff— I have to do, even writing on my LinkedIn. The reason people want to engage with what I do, read my writing, is because it has a really strong point of view and it comes with 20 years of experience, which AI doesn't know anything about.
Kat Francis
[ 00:35:54,860 ] It only collects patterns and then uses patterns to predict. With a level of probability that's almost certain, that's the right answer. So that's why you get wrong answers because it's only using patterns. AI has never lived your life. It has never gone to the job. So you have to use that judgment, like you said, to acknowledge that there's a part of the workflow that should not be outsourced or it should be heavily vetted in the sense that what you get back goes through your own judgment. But I would almost say this part doesn't go through III because it is easy to sort of slip into the habit of, like, it would just be easier if it just wrote me this. Article but I know that this article won't get traction because it will look like every other article. The ones where I sit down and there's a fire in my belly and the words flow— those go gangbusters. But everything else that goes through AI is just there's no feeling because it hasn't felt. So I think it's really important to acknowledge that it's not just a tool for optimization.
Kat Francis
[ 00:36:54,380 ] To be really mindful of your role— your own experience— and bring that to AI and don't always outsource to it.
Kat Francis
[ 00:37:03,750 ] Yeah.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:37:05,170 ] Thank you for sharing that, Kat. And I think what I'm hearing a lot of in this conversation is that there is still so much human element that sits around.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:37:14,570 ] This topic. And not to lose sight of that. And how much it plays a role.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:37:20,930 ] AI is simply the tool. Um, which there's comfort in that. Thank you for sharing.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:37:27,980 ] There is another question, and this is for all, and I'll start with saying with... Employees reportedly saving significant time. Eight Week Using AI. How should individuals reinvest that time to actually articulate their career growth rather than just get through more work? I might start with you, Jackie, on this one.
SPEAKER_8
[ 00:37:51,980 ] I'll show you this.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:37:53,720 ] I was there.
Jacqui Pooley
[ 00:37:55,710 ] So I think this is a really important question, right, because time saved is really only valuable if it's reinvested intentionally.
Jacqui Pooley
[ 00:38:03,830 ] So I think. Pour your efforts into things that the AI can't do. So that's the critical thinking, the relationship building. Building your visibility.
Jacqui Pooley
[ 00:38:13,630 ] With the higher use of AI, we've kind of touched on this already, but, like, humanity is going to be even more important as we move forward here. The more you're using AI, the more your human skills become important and they will be on display and exposed a lot more as well. That's what I think, building more time into those things that the AI can't do.
Brett Knowles
[ 00:38:33,730 ] Yeah, I would build on that on a real practical level of... get to the things that are on the list that you've been meaning to get to. But I haven't had enough time, resources or experience to do that because often I can solve. One maybe all of those it can give you time because it's doing things for you, it can give you experience because it's been able to recognize patterns and provide and do deep research and be the specialist that you haven't got in the room, or it can add a resource to your team because you can have an agent that can complete certain tasks. So, if you are gaining those productivity gains from AI, then I would be looking at that list of, okay, what are the things that I can do now that will shift the dial? And on an individual level, I'd be going, what problems in my business, and let's say my employee's business or the organization, that no one's looking at, that I know if I spent an hour doing that. It'd make a real impact on the team and go do them. Because then, once you've achieved them, that's a great story to tell to your employer and will accelerate your career.
Brett Knowles
[ 00:39:38,780 ] It becomes a milestone on your CV that you talk to your future employer with. And so yes, we get productivity gains and you know we're seeing some great ones, but Totally agree with you, Jackie. It's only valuable if you reinvest that time into... something that is actually really meaningful and upbeat. The things in our tool list that... We just never get around to doing. But now you can.
Kat Francis
[ 00:40:01,710 ] I'm going to give a shameless plug and say coaching is a good option.
Kat Francis
[ 00:40:06,080 ] Professional development is a great way to reinvest your time. Obviously, any kind of professional development. I also say personal brand as being— it's such a buzzword, but. Whoa. The way to think about it is career endurance. You're basically creating trust and credibility for yourself as an individual in a world where it's very competitive. So that might look like writing and producing content. It might also look like building and creating and experimenting with new things that you have your name to. So that's one side. But the sort of counterintuitive side, I would say, is rest. So this is, bear with me. In order to show up really well in our career, we actually need to have rest. We need to come into any environment with peak performance, and that requires an element of downtime and rest and touching grass, so to speak.
Kat Francis
[ 00:40:58,730 ] What's going to be most valued in leaders is humans who can empower other humans to do great things. So, if you come into a tricky situation and you don't have... the energy, the mindset, the mental performance to be able to lead in that moment, then everything's lost. So I would suggest that... You don't want to over-optimize every minute of time because then you're actually going to outnourish the energy that you're going to need to be a great leader. So it's a bit of a balance on both sides.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:41:33,500 ] To echo a lot of that and that's definitely one of the big factors. For me personally, it's something I encourage. And it really, it depends on where you are in life and where you are in your career. But. With, I guess, the implementation of AI, we're doing more work and more work and more work. So then we free up more time. And why not just pause? Like you say, put your own oxygen mask on first. And we have got increasing rates of mental health decline. People are more anxious. We're seeing ADHD diagnoses everywhere. So what if we just took a moment to breathe? and to put our own oxygen masks on first.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:42:15,080 ] You know, or maybe it's a matter of, you know, if I only had time to do that course or if I only had time to do that Pilates class or if I only had time to learn how to cook this amazing chicken curry that my grandma used to make me as a child. There's so many things from a human element that we're not doing anymore because we're living in this digital world. And some of the most high-value skills you can ever have is being human. So maybe use that time to interact with others that you love or admire or want to learn from and place it back into the human element as opposed to sitting in front of a screen. I think that's something that's really critical and going through even hiring processes. We're hiring people.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:42:57,280 ] People. Not robots. We can create them using AI, but we're hiring people. And every person in this room, every human being is so incredibly valuable. So I think we need to more often. You know, now that we can use AI to free up our time, is give some of that time back to us and be graceful to ourselves with that. So even just taking that moment to sit with yourself. I mean, when was the last time that you sat in a park and took off your shoes and put your feet in the grass and just... Great.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:43:28,040 ] Turned your phone off and just had five minutes of time with yourself. And it's a luxury, and isn't that sad. That that's a luxury. So... I think we probably need to... Be a little bit more mindful about how we're using AI and when we're throwing up our time, doing more and more and more work until we break. Like, is that how you want to live your life? And when, you know, we eventually all pass away, is that how you want to be remembered? Gosh, they work so hard. What do they want to remember that wonderful time? At the park where you both put your feet in the grass and were like, 'Oh, look at us. Isn't this nice?'
Sarah Purches
[ 00:44:03,570 ] So I think, you know, that's important. The other side, and I won't go into too much on this, is we want to be really mindful about the environmental impact of AI. Because when we are using AI, I believe it takes a whole bottle of... water for each AI prompt or whatever that you put in. So it's power and it's water we're building all these data centers everywhere. I'd encourage everybody, whilst it's exciting that's a sexy new tool, to think about the environmental impact of it as well. Because for future generations, what are we doing to our earth around us? So, you know, don't be lazy and use AI to make you sound more professional to your boss. Try and use your brain a little bit more to write better. You know, tap into that creative side and improve those skills.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:44:46,240 ] Be a bit more conscious about the environment— the environmental impact of using AI as well.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:44:52,890 ] Thanks, Sarah. A lovely way to end the formal questions. I'm sure that there is both online and in the audience some people very eager to ask the panel some questions. Do we have roaming mics or are we sharing these ones up here?
Oskar Santos
[ 00:45:10,740 ] We're sharing. So if you're online, make sure you're submitting using that chat function.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:45:17,120 ] And. Do you want to grab maybe Sarah's one more pass at it?
Oskar Santos
[ 00:45:22,340 ] Anyone? Yes, hand over here. Thank you.
SPEAKER_12
[ 00:45:30,569 ] Is this on? Okay, cool. That was incredibly valuable. Thank you so much. I have a bit of a cheeky question. Did you use AI to prepare for this session?
SPEAKER_12
[ 00:45:41,220 ] And why or why not, and also kind of how?
Oskar Santos
[ 00:45:46,220 ] Who wants to take that one?
Brett Knowles
[ 00:45:48,850 ] Uh, yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I use it in the way of, I'm always thinking about how can I utilize this tool to help me with things and honestly for me writing and those types of skills is a challenge for me, right? I struggle to articulate words on paper very easily or think of concepts early. So I use it as a tool to help me with that brainstorming. But it's always a starting point. It's never the end point. I always go back and review and refine.
Brett Knowles
[ 00:46:18,310 ] Put in my words and get rid of those em dashes that it loves to put out.
Brett Knowles
[ 00:46:23,270 ] But yeah, I did. Yeah.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:46:25,830 ] Absolutely. I use it for a lot of things. I'm time poor. I'm a solo mum and I'm usually running from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting. And today was one of those examples. I don't live in Melbourne. I live down the coast near Port Arlington. And a client meeting ran over and I had to check into my hotel and then I had to be here and I had to do it in about 20 minutes when it was about 30 minutes to get here. So I checked into my hotel, spoke to my chatty G. It already knew what I was preparing for today. And I was like, 'Can you please just refresh me and prepare me for what we're going through today?' just so it could ask me questions and prompt me and get those ideas fresh in my mind. You can use this as well for interview preparation or, you know, when you're having that one-to-one performance management discussion with your manager, you can use it to start questioning you. So, yeah, I use it for a lot of those things. Or even brainstorming, like problem solving, things like that as well. So it's really valuable, but I think, again, just being mindful in how you're using it, but it's a great time saver. You've got 10 minutes in the car to that next meeting.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:47:26,740 ] You know, what is the client I'm meeting? What do I need to know about them? What's the job brief? What's the outcome that needs to happen?
Sarah Purches
[ 00:47:33,980 ] Five minutes. Go. Give it to me clear. Don't make anything up.
SPEAKER_8
[ 00:47:40,730 ] Yeah, well, while you're reshuffling the mods, I just want to ask something about the creatives and IP.
SPEAKER_8
[ 00:47:50,820 ] So obviously everything has been taken on board. What you've said is absolutely fantastic. But if you had some IP or creative... Would you drop any... um, ChatGP, buddy. um, because you you could potentially lose your intellectual property over the thing. Like that's, yeah, it's just, yeah. I mean, it's just something that's in the background.
SPEAKER_8
[ 00:48:19,990 ] If I'm not going to develop the song—[if I'm not going to develop the song, is that cool? From the singer and dancer, among other things. But if I was dropping in the song, would I ask... Chat, you've been... GPT or whatever, whatever the age. Um, to help me do it because knowing full well in the back end that that could.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:48:48,139 ] For those online who didn't maybe hear the question, it's... I'll paraphrase, but I believe what you're getting at here is what are the risks associated with Chat GPT and... what should we be aware of to avoid anything that we don't we may not want to go out into the ether.
Brett Knowles
[ 00:49:07,049 ] Very simple, very easy way. If you are not a customer, you are the product. So, if you are using a free portal like a ChatGPT and you are not on a subscription base with them, and you are engaging in the free services, you are merely the product that they have and you are training their large language model. You are a customer. You can then gain access to a lot of security measures that enable or stop the training of their large language model. So that's on a personal front. And on an employment front, absolutely work within the bounds that it's... Set by your security teams and your organisations on what you can and can't put in and only follow those rules to a T, because they've obviously gone through the right measurement. To make sure that they are. You can do that. We at REA, we've got tools that are approved where I can put in sensitive information in a way of what we might be working on to help further the work within the safe world.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:49:58,630 ] Yeah. I think to add to that, when in doubt, don't.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:50:03,440 ] I mean, if you're worried, don't do it. Go at all schools.
SPEAKER_5
[ 00:50:09,360 ] Hi, thank you everyone for it's a very insightful presentation. I just want to ask a really quick one because you guys talked about. How everyone now is on par with writing, for example, in CV. And when you do a presentation out there, when you are showing yourself your branding, do you guys use... to sort of type yourself and go, 'Hey, am I doing this correctly? Am I answering the questions as the interviewer is doing?' I just want to understand if you guys are doing that. At all, because I do a lot of... communication sort of presence myself with Toastmasters. I'm just wondering, do you guys actually use AI to give you a viewpoint of that instead of asking for personal experiences? From keeping you feedback. Thank you.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:50:57,310 ] I can probably answer that because I run a brand new webinar, which is personal branding. Writing your CV and LinkedIn, and helping get that out there. I don't use AI for it, but I do record the sessions for me. So that I can look at how I'm presenting and make sure I'm clear. But I also share that with some of my closest friends and trusted advisors to ask their honest feedback on that. So I keep it pretty human because at the end of the day, I'm delivering to humans. I don't really care what the AI thinks. I care about the people that I'm delivering that to and what they think.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:51:28,340 ] That I'm sure others may use AI for different purposes.
SPEAKER_11
[ 00:51:37,640 ] First of all, I just wanted to find out if there's an AI summary at the end of it so I can just... Recap.
SPEAKER_11
[ 00:51:44,020 ] But no, seriously.
SPEAKER_11
[ 00:51:46,360 ] Before you were talking about how, you know, AI saves time and what else you can do with that. What my question to Jackie is, you mentioned that one of your colleagues developed something to help him, and I'm assuming it's saved him time. So the question is, did your work... Say, oh, great. Take that time and do your own thing, self-development or did you give him other tasks?
Jacqui Pooley
[ 00:52:10,950 ] That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that. Again, it was all him. Self-driven in terms of his, uh, time and how he then reinvested that time himself. Um, but yeah, we've had many time savings. I guess you could say in the business. We had our managers using our own AI tool to write their manager reviews and that's saving them so much time. In terms of preparing and gathering all the context and the data to write. Those reviews. In terms of how they reinvest that time, I mean, I don't know about all of you working in organisations, the number one complaint I hear from managers when it comes to performance reviews is how much time they take. And they often end up doing them out of hours on their weekends and not during business hours because they've got to do their... job during that time. So the time savings, I think, for our perf reviews, for example, is that our leaders now are not working out of hours to achieve getting those things in on time.
SPEAKER_11
[ 00:53:09,070 ] Yeah. Sorry, and just a quick follow-up question to that because you mentioned that he held a seminar session and then he had repeated. Did the others start using the tool or modify it for their own? Personal benefit.
Jacqui Pooley
[ 00:53:23,110 ] Potentially. I don't know exactly. I mean, our organisation, we've got hundreds of agents, clean agents that our employees have developed themselves. Some of them share within their business functions. They say, 'Hey, this works for me in my group.' Someone might see something that. Works for them and they need to adapt it, I mean, they can do that, but it's not something we're really closely monitoring at this stage.
SPEAKER_6
[ 00:53:50,240 ] Thank you. Thank you all for your insights today. My question comes back to the environment and when we talk about that, the effect that... that AI is having on that um are you sort of across any any steps or practical steps that are being taken to decrease that the effect the environment that AI is having on the environment because I know that there are um AI uh platforms that you know, claim to be environmental friendly. Um, but.
SPEAKER_6
[ 00:54:25,120 ] Personally, I'm not across practical steps that they're taking to decrease that effect.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:54:33,490 ] The honest answer is I don't really know. I've been trying to do research and be mindful of it, and I think, you know, you put... search things into, I guess, things like Instagram and it starts showing up a lot of these news articles. um It's interesting and I do feel a bit conflicted by it. Like, whilst AI is really wonderful, at what point do we draw that line in the sand?
Sarah Purches
[ 00:54:54,870 ] you know, is it that you know big organizations are benefiting and it becomes more of a greed cycle as opposed to really caring about the future of our world and future generations and how we treat our environment? And it's one of the reasons I really encourage people. To put that front of mind as well, because the more of us that are more front of mind, I mean, you know, someone in this room could generate next amazing AI tool. But if you've got an environment in front of mind, then hopefully you'll do it in a really ethical way as well. But, you know, it's something that's going to continue to evolve, as we know, but we can only just keep researching. I wish I knew more and I want to keep learning more.
Sarah Purches
[ 00:55:34,950 ] But, yeah, I think anybody using AI, you have to have that lens as well and just be mindful, you know. And it's things like, you know, you see people. And I jumped on board. I've been guilty of it. I try not to do it now because now I get the guilt about it. But creating some of these fun memes that people are sharing online and some of them are a bit of a laugh. But then when you think about, geez, that was a whole bottle of water and we've got people starving in the world that would love a bottle of water. I just feel really conflicted.
Oskar Santos
[ 00:56:02,950 ] Can I jump to a couple from the online audience? I think this is actually one for you, Kat. It says, 'I'm curious to hear how working through multiple careers helped you in your current role and in the age of AI.'
Kat Francis
[ 00:56:18,590 ] Okay.
Kat Francis
[ 00:56:21,210 ] I was actually talking to you about this before we started, but when I pivoted to coaching, I thought it was a clean slate, so to speak. I would be bringing 20 years of leadership experience. But I wouldn't necessarily be bringing agency experience. However, what actually came to be is that where I was most effective and where I found myself feeling most true to myself was when I was coaching a woman who had come through a journey that sort of similarly tracked or had an agency moment within it. And that actually, instead of saying, 'I'm a new person now. I've got a new work identity.' It was like, 'I'm bringing it all together with me. It's like, it's not one new identity or one new outfit.' It's just like layering a few things together. So I think it's really important to acknowledge that. Already, as an individual in your career, no matter where you are, you're already standing on what I would say is like a mountain of value. Because you've done so many great things, even in your own personal lives, you all have experiences, history, passions, values, and all of those things, when you put them together, make most... powerful thing on earth, which is you. No one can copy that. So I've started to realize that I don't have to. Worry about competing against leadership coaches who've got 20 years of experience, and I don't. Because I'm bringing 20 years of experience— of all those other things that I don't have. And there are so many people out there that are looking for that, that aren't just looking for someone who's been a career coach since they came out of the womb, so to speak. So I would say it's really important to acknowledge that. Your skills aren't just relevant in the one role you're in, that they're very transferable, that you need to be... have a heightened awareness of what that looks like and start to articulate that.
Kat Francis
[ 00:58:09,750 ] Try and bake it in to what you're doing. Something you did 10 years ago could still be very relevant now. You just haven't thought it might be. So that's how I'd answer the question as far as AI.
Kat Francis
[ 00:58:22,820 ] I think it just goes back to the lifelong learner. I'll tell a short story. I was offered an opportunity when I was about 30 to become the general manager of an agency and I knew exactly what that job would look like. It would be me ordering toilet paper. dealing with people who have complaints about their chairs and their computers and probably being in trouble for like overspending on snacks and stuff like that. And I was like, 'I'm just not. I don't want that job, even though I'm a paper.' Was like, that's the next step, right? And I said, but actually, I'd love to start the strategy function, which they did not have. I'd seen it done, I'd sort of co-piloted on some projects, and I was like, 'I'd rather have a crack at that, because that's learning for me.' So, within a couple of years, the strategy team was team of six, and it was 30% of the revenues, that was all incremental revenue, and it was like a now core pillar of the business.
Kat Francis
[ 00:59:09,850 ] Their ability to adopt... something without fear and without feeling like you need to know it all to start. So I think you can take that mindset with AI as well, and with any technology, is that you don't need to... Be confident to start because waiting for that means you'll never take action. So act, then you build strength and confidence with that action.
Kat Francis
[ 00:59:34,980 ] That was a kind of convoluted answer, but hopefully it all came together.
SPEAKER_12
[ 00:59:40,630 ] It's really fantastic hearing the actual examples of how you're using AI— just personal and in work. Are you each able to say a couple of AI tools that you each use outside of ChatGPT, Claw, and Cursor?
Brett Knowles
[ 00:59:59,470 ] No, because they're the ones— my tool is Claw. And, yeah, I use it at work and at home. I recently just purchased a new house and I was like, 'Hey, Claw, can you do me a full – forecast of costings and spreadsheets and budgets that I can make sure I can manage my cash flow? It's great. So I'm using— Claude's my favorite. So there's no other special one that I am using actually. Yeah.
Kat Francis
[ 01:00:22,800 ] I will give it. Drop in here because this one I've absolutely been loving. It's called Granola AI. It's a note taker. Thank you. What it does is it plugs into all your meetings. So it'll start automatically. It will take all your notes. It won't show up on your call. So it's sort of an ethical question whether you divulge that or not. That's up to you. But it also works in like... in-person meetings. So for me, it's really great because I can put a template in. Um to granola so that it's transcribing, but by the end of it, within 10 seconds, it's put it under the exact fields and frames that I want it to be, because then, like, the admin of a coaching session can take half an hour afterwards. It now takes me three minutes. So that tool has been kind of epic for me because of that template function and that sort of just chat to note function. Even like. If you're used to using Google Keep or Notes on your phone and the voice recording, there's such a better version of that and it's also free.
Sarah Purches
[ 01:01:26,780 ] I'm using Fathom, which is an AI note taker that sits in the back end, but it's present. So all the interviews and meetings that I do with people, Fathom comes up and I'll always have conversation at the beginning to make sure people are comfortable. And the reason I use it is because it allows me to be present. So rather than scribbling notes down about the interview or the meeting, I can have a really present conversation with someone. And I think... We're losing the art of that sometimes. So I really try to be present in those meetings, but also the person gets exactly the same notes, the recording, absolutely everything back to them. So when it's an interview, it allows that person to be fully present at the interview as well or in the meeting or whatever the discussion is about. So it goes both ways and I find that quite valuable. Another thing I've been using is Notebook LM to lock down confident information. So, for example, and this is a bit gross and hairy, but in HR sometimes you've got to do investigations.
Sarah Purches
[ 01:02:22,380 ] misconduct. you know, ugly things at times. And sometimes you've got to. put all the evidence into a spot and start analysing and making decisions. And it's really hard to do that manually. It takes a long time. But Notebook LM allows you to lock that down privately and not release it to OpenAI when it's paid premium. But that's a really helpful tool that I have found and I've used it for debarbing into like complex data as well that might be confidential to lock that down into that space. Another one that I've really enjoyed is Notion.
Sarah Purches
[ 01:02:56,080 ] A couple of ADHD friends actually got me onto Notion and said that it's been life-changing for them. I find that I house a lot of really important... documents like my resource hub. So when people come and do the brand new coursework, the workbooks are actually stored on Notion. So rather than me sending out all of these attachments that take up their inbox, I get an email with a link to that. Resource hub: So it's almost like a landing page that's got lots of information that's handy, links to the documents or workbooks they might want to use, articles that I've written that, you know, are about gaming, ATSs and stuff like that. And anything that's useful. So that's quite a handy spot as well. I'm trying to think of any others. I mean, I love Claude, but I won't lie, I'm an LLM. I use Chatty and Chee. I use Gemina. I use Claude. It depends on what I'm using. For.
Sarah Purches
[ 01:03:48,720 ] Claude uses a lot of tokens and it's quite a powerful tool. So usually I'll write my prompts in Gemini or ChatGPT first, and then I'll use that into Claude so it doesn't chew up my tokens. So being more mindful. Um, but, yeah, there's so many out there, but all of them have. different capabilities as well or some are better than others, you know, whether it's analysing data or being more creative. Gemini used to be amazing at image generation, but now I'm finding ChatGPT is doing fabulous image generation.
Sarah Purches
[ 01:04:19,270 ] Depends on what you're trying to do.
Oskar Santos
[ 01:04:20,940 ] And don't worry if you didn't take all those down as notes because this is being recorded— you'll get a copy of it for anyone who is desperately trying to get all the names of all those special tips there. Time probably for two more.
Oskar Santos
[ 01:04:33,160 ] Go for it.
SPEAKER_9
[ 01:04:33,600 ] Hi, perfect. Thank you so much. That was really insightful. I think my question lies in more of the recruitment side. I think. Every modern job ad is requesting a cover letter, and I think. My question is your relationship with AI, with one, reading resumes, two, reading cover letters, whether you're the third step in the process or whether you're viewing them in conjunction in that sense. Because I think... It's that relationship with having an authentic voice, putting yourself in the role in order to have. Like a genuine cover letter, but then also trying to optimize how many applications you can have in a quite grueling job market essentially.
Sarah Purches
[ 01:05:14,780 ] Yeah, thank you.
Sarah Purches
[ 01:05:16,680 ] I'm happy to answer that one. I love the cover letter, I won't lie. But I don't want you regurgitating your CV into it. I want to know who you are as a person. Um, previously, and it's more of an exercise to understand who's paying attention. And your attention to detail. So that's why I've asked it. I'll ask specific questions. You know, who's the most inspiring person in your life? If you got a choice to take the team out for lunch in the city, where would you go and why? It's more about understanding that human element. And I usually try to ask questions that AI would probably really struggle to answer. So you trip people up that way in a way. But, you know, we're not looking for perfection. And every organisation is different in terms of what they're looking for. But I think... When it comes to a cover letter, try and keep it as authentic as you can. Because part of what we're looking for is you.
Sarah Purches
[ 01:06:01,870 ] you know, not a computer. Another way, if you want really hot tip, and this impresses me so much. is doing a video cover letter. Record yourself, edit it if you have to. But record yourself and send a two-minute video. Hey, I'm Sarah and this is why I'm good for the job. And let me get those questions out of the way first. That is so impressive. And it's that human connection. Makes you stand out.
Kat Francis
[ 01:06:25,140 ] One, sorry, one of the templates you might find helpful. And I used to use this pitching because I did a lot of business development pitching. It's always why me, why you? So making sure it doesn't have to be under that headline because that's a bit much. But you need to answer the question, why would you want to work with me and why?
Kat Francis
[ 01:06:43,790 ] Not why am I choosing you, but what excites me about this opportunity? So that they, it's not just me, me, me, me, me. But, you know, we all want to feel good about what we're doing. So even the reader wants to know that, like, this is a great role and I'd love to work underneath you and I'm bringing these skills and I feel like it's a great fit for us as a collaboration. So I think... Just simply thinking, why me, why you— is just a real shortcut to making sure you get the message and that whatever the method is.
Oskar Santos
[ 01:07:12,060 ] I think we've got time for one last question. I'm very conscious of time. Oh, it's all right. We've got two. I've been told. Here we go.
SPEAKER_0
[ 01:07:19,620 ] So I actually have two questions, but we've got time for you to choose either one if you want to answer. My first question would be, so you mentioned quite a couple of times that there are... Version and unpaid version for the AI tools, in which we all know what the difference is, one with more risk and the other one maybe more advanced model. So how do you feel like in position— how to address them? That could we don't kind of widen the knowledge gap, especially for the next generation, because they cannot access a more advanced model. Um, do you think, in a corporate world, like in your position, there is a position that you feel like you you can contribute to? And what do you think about that? My second question would be: all we know that AI is still a very new thing. So we heard a lot about education, about building those kind of protocols. For people actually getting to use AI tools to prevent them from doing something wrong. But how do you think, in a cybersecurity point of view, like things which are post instead of free, like if something really happened, you don't actually know it happened until something... you know, get wrong long time later.
SPEAKER_0
[ 01:08:26,050 ] So, what is the way, as in a corporate point of view, to set those kind of precaution plans, risk plans, which are happening, which to deal with problems happening after the things happen. You know what I mean? Yeah. Thank you. That's my question.
SPEAKER_8
[ 01:08:44,450 ] Thank you for the question.
SPEAKER_8
[ 01:08:47,649 ] I'll follow you.
Brett Knowles
[ 01:08:49,560 ] The paid and unpaid, I'm not a tech person, but I don't believe you're getting a more advanced model. You're just getting more different features and additional features to the same model. So I don't think there's a sort of a gap or too much of a concern that those that can't access the paid model are getting any lesser of an experience.
Brett Knowles
[ 01:09:09,569 ] Security staff, that is not my domain at all. We have a full security and cyber security team who do a lot of work around ensuring that everything is ring-fenced and safe within our environment.
Brett Knowles
[ 01:09:23,550 ] That we, you know, should potential hackers or those come through, that we've got the right tools and measures in place to make sure that that doesn't happen. But we're ProPrivileged, which is a very, very large organisation.
Jacqui Pooley
[ 01:09:35,920 ] I was just going to add to what Brent said there around The gap, I guess, and it's not for me about the paid tool versus the unpaid tool. The gap is actually widening for adopters and non-adopters. So that's it. The differentiator there. It's not whether the tool is paid or untooled. That's your material data risk when you're dealing with your organisational data. But. The gap. between the capability is those who are using it and those who are not.
Kat Francis
[ 01:10:03,710 ] Yes, the feature piece is more like how much volume you're using it for. It's sort of unlocking just more usages rather than the quality of how it's operating for you. And on the cybersecurity thing, I have no point of view on that. But what I would say is that it's an emerging technology and with any kind of emerging technology and even like medications and there I say vaccinations. We don't know the impact of what this will have five years down the track. So we have to use moral judgment and really solid decision-making as to how we're using it, which goes back to the environmental piece, the privacy piece. And yeah, using data carefully. So with my own clients, I never divulge anything that could identify my clients because.
Kat Francis
[ 01:10:50,180 ] On one sense, I don't feel that it would get out there, but on the other, I don't want to be putting them in a position that, in five years' time, because we don't know what the knock-on effect of that could look like as it compounds. So that's my thought. Oh, no.
Oskar Santos
[ 01:11:05,640 ] One last question. I've been told.
SPEAKER_10
[ 01:11:09,490 ] Um, hello. Thank you so much for the talk. I just have a follow-up question in terms of the accuracy of AI-generated content, whether it's through a prompt or a transcript in a meeting. To, I guess, in that sense. When you first integrated the tool into your workflow, how long did it take for you to generate that sort of trust with the AI? And how accurate are the content that's actually being generated throughout?
SPEAKER_10
[ 01:11:39,510 ] You know, to what extent do you have to review to fully trust that? At the end of the day, it would save up so much of your time. And you only need to like review it for three minutes.
Brett Knowles
[ 01:11:52,710 ] It doesn't stop. It's not a one and done. It's not an implement and it's ticked and it's all good. Probably took, you know, for some of the things that I've implemented, a good three to six months to test it and make sure it's working. And I constantly review them on a slide.
Brett Knowles
[ 01:12:08,870 ] A cycle, yeah. So unfortunately, I don't know if we're ever going to get to the world where it's... one and done and it's all good and I'm never going to look at it again. That scares me a bit. I think there's always going to be a human in the loop to make sure it's working.
Jacqui Pooley
[ 01:12:23,460 ] Totally agree with that. I don't think I ever fully trust anything that AI is giving me. I've had instances where it tells me something like, 'I know that is absolutely false.' I'm looking at the data myself. You've hallucinated that.
Jacqui Pooley
[ 01:12:38,270 ] Critical thinking, human judgment is always going to be required with AI. You can't just run and be like, 'oh, that's good enough.' That's AI slop in true form right there.
Kat Francis
[ 01:12:47,650 ] There's also what's called a knowledge cutoff, which is the data which it's been trained up to, and that's not cutting edge. It's talking like six months ago sort of thing. So it's really important to understand that if you're looking for recency, that that is not going to give you accuracy. The other thing is you can use settings on AI to train it to sort of know you. So you need to toggle on to that. And can you say on Claude projects, which you can have a project, say for me, an example with this would be. Write content writing I would write instructions of how I want everything it produces Two. Basically, the rules that will follow. I speak like this. I don't speak like this. I speak in first person. I like these phrases, all that. And then I can add files, which are references. So you can train it to be more accurate, but you can never. Um, never fool yourself to think that you wouldn't even need to look at it or you wouldn't need to look at it with a critical eye even.
Jacqui Pooley
[ 01:13:44,350 ] I often add to my prompts, like, if you don't know, say you don't know. Don't make something up.
Sarah Purches
[ 01:13:49,780 ] Five questions to see if that will respond.
Oskar Santos
[ 01:13:55,050 ] Okay. I think, as much as we could all stay here for a very long time and keep the conversation going, we will need to bring it to a close. Join with me in thanking the panel for a wonderful conversation.
Oskar Santos
[ 01:14:12,780 ] Now, if this conversation sparked your interest, it would be reminiscent of me not to talk about RMIT online courses. Please go on and check out RMIT online. Have a look at the online courses. We have an AI in particular. I'm sure you'll find something fabulous. I'd also encourage you to go online and post about this conversation on your socials because we are giving away five courses. All you need to do is make sure you tag RMIT online and mention what you thought was a major takeaway from today's conversation.
Oskar Santos
[ 01:14:43,290 ] We do also have one last event tomorrow, and I'd encourage you that topic earlier about cyber security. So if you want to... Listen to a wonderful conversation tomorrow, 12 o'clock, RMIT Online. Have a look at the event happening then. It's about what happens in the real world when a cyber breach occurs with our friends at Palo Alto. Definitely one not to miss.
Oskar Santos
[ 01:15:08,700 ] And apart from that, for everyone who's still online, thank you very much for joining.
