How AI and Skills-Based Hiring Are Replacing CVs
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we speak with Wouter Durville, Co-Founder & CEO of TestGorilla, about the rise of skills-based hiring and how AI is transforming recruitment. Wouter shares his entrepreneurial journey, the inspiration behind TestGorilla, and why traditional CVs are becoming obsolete.
He explains how AI-driven assessments, resume scoring, and video interviews are making hiring more fair, efficient, and predictive. The conversation also explores the future of work, shifting skill demands, and why critical thinking and human skills matter more than ever in an AI-driven economy.
🎓 In this episode, Wouter discusses:
Why collecting multiple data points reduces bias in hiring
Why CVs and degrees are poor predictors of job success
The case for skills-based hiring and how to implement it properly
The rising importance of soft skills and problem-solving in the AI era
How AI-powered assessments and interviews improve fairness and efficiency
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Wouter Durville 0:00
Matching people with jobs that that's where AI can is really up enough consume so much data, and we're sitting on all the proprietary data, right? All these these new people that we have their skills test results from, and on the other hand, like all these jobs are being created, and people are saying, Hey, I'm looking for decent skill. So matching those and using AI to do the perfect matching. Let's say that's where I see the biggest kind of opportunity for us. But also in the product itself, there's just so many ways where you can apply AI, right? So the AI video interviews is an amazing one. The other one is AI resume scoring, where you set certain criteria or things you're looking for, then score everyone, right? Which is so much more objective and fair than having a an intern or junior recruiter going through 600 CVS a day and on their desk, right? So there's just so many ways smaller applications everywhere in the product we're now introducing
Chris Rainey 1:02
you. Walter, welcome to the show, my friend. How are you?
Wouter Durville 1:09
I'm doing very well. Excited to be here. Good to see you.
Chris Rainey 1:13
I did say this before we hit record like that, you have one of the best company names and logos.
Wouter Durville 1:21
So got your we'll get
Chris Rainey 1:23
we'll get into that before we jump into that. Tell everyone a little bit about you personally and your journey and background to where we are now, because you've had it. Definitely had it. Haven't had a straight line route along the way.
Wouter Durville 1:36
Yeah. Cool. I am Dutch, but I've been living in Barcelona for 12 years working remotely, way before covid. And my career trajectory, let's say it's been really entrepreneurial, like since I was a very little kid, I think maybe 10 years old or something, I was like, selling candy and then organizing parties, creating a magazine at an internet startup that felt miserably as a student, etc, etc. Etc. So my whole life has been doing things for profit, not for profit, and then ended up at tesker with the idea for tesca, at a previous company that I started with my wife.
Chris Rainey 2:13
Yeah, what do you what do you think drove that entrepreneurial side of you? You know, know what we have family and parents entrepreneurs, or is it just something you've always had burning inside of you?
Wouter Durville 2:25
Yeah, it's a good question, because my father is a dentist, and my mother was a director, civil servant, like a pretty high management position. Nothing to do. So they have this has been the biggest question in their life, like, where did this come from in our son? I honestly don't know. It's been in my DNA since I was born. I
Chris Rainey 2:47
think, yeah, it's an interesting one. I get the same questions from my friends and family all the time, but for me, it was just like, it was a way for me to really change and create something special for for my family. Yeah, like, I grew up single parent, raising four kids in a government housing. You know, we didn't have anything, and we really struggled financially. And growing up, I wasn't a good student. I never went to school. Got my first job at 16, and I always kind of listened to podcasts around entrepreneurship or business, and I was like, Okay, this is the way for me to break the generational mindset that we cannot do or achieve this, you know, like the sort of restraints that I could see my family and friends had put on themselves. And I was like, the only way I'm going to break this is not why. It's not by being an employee, which is nothing wrong with that. But for me to really make an impact, I have to just go out, you know, and risk it all. And then ever since then, I just kind of been pushing. And as you know, entrepreneurship is the ultimate learning journey. It's never ending. That's why I love it, right? I like this, like, with all the sports that I play, like ice hockey and basketball, etc, there was a level of mastery that I've that you can reach very, quite quickly over many years. But entrepreneurship, I felt like it's just a never ending pursuit that you can never, you can never really finish.
Wouter Durville 4:21
Yeah, interesting. My mother, especially, and also my father, erased me in a way where they taught me the world is not fixed. You can do anything you want. Is makeable. So I really grew up with that belief, which is obviously not true. I can't do anything, but I did somehow. It's in my system. I feel like the world is makeable and I'm in control. And that goes really well with entrepreneurship. I think so being in a big corporate which I've done a little bit, really doesn't gel with that spirit. So it sounds like these are the rules. No, no, I have my own rules, like so that, for example, right? Or my own ambitions. So that's something I really credit my parents for, for installing that kind of makeable mindset.
Chris Rainey 4:59
It's so funny you use those exact words, because I have a thing of my seven year old daughter, Robin, where whenever she says I can't do something, I look at her and I say, what can you do? And we've made a little kind of like something we do all the time, where she says, I can do anything I want. So and now she catches herself, so when she says to me, I can't do that, then she just pauses because she knows exactly what I'm gonna say. And then she says, I can do anything I want. And then she walks away. So just sort of like training that mindset with her, like, so now, whenever she's, she does Jiu Jitsu, she does, you know, tennis, etc. She's, she approaches anything with the mindset of, I could do anything, right? So I think that's what it is, that mental any she understands that she will fail. I like Jiu Jitsu. I think the first few months she watched, she was crying. She wanted to give up. She didn't like the fact she wasn't as good as everyone else. And a few, few weeks ago, there was a new kid joining the class, and she was like, Daddy. I was like, yeah, she's like, remember when that was me? Like, cry crying, because the kid was crying and wanted to go home as well. So I feel like it's also good to build their resilience
Wouter Durville 6:12
restraint in their own mind, right? It starts in your mind to think free, think big, and indeed, without the constraint of, I can't do this because the media limits yourself.
Chris Rainey 6:25
It's like just flipping the other way around right? Like, I try, like the word failure for me excites me now, and that sounds crazy to maybe sound crazy to people listening right now, because with failure becomes comes opportunity becomes innovation. And like now I look at failure as something I should run towards, whereas in my younger career, I'd look at that as something to avoid. Because, you know, what if this happens, what's my boss going to do? What's my family going to do? You know, what are my friends going to think? And now it's the complete opposite. It's like, what if I succeed? You indeed, right? And, and if I don't, then I'm going to learn a lot of lessons. Yeah, so it's so valuable, so like, sort of that mental switch of looking at failure or something exciting that energizes you, to most people, that seems very foreign,
Wouter Durville 7:18
that's also something you learn as entrepreneur, right? You feel so many times. Yeah, it's very confrontational, because it's like, it's on you really, you're starting something, but I think that's how you indeed eventually hit something that does work. Yeah, one thing I did have to learn most just to disconnect business failure from personal failure, like I may failure like that. Took me a while to kind of make that this to separate the team.
Chris Rainey 7:45
I learned that I was very lucky that I learned that really early on, because I spent the first 15 years of my career in sales. And if you look at the people that succeeded and did very well, and those that kind of left very early, they couldn't disconnect their self worth with rejection, right, right? So, like you just said, if clients said no or they're not interested, they'll take it as a personal attack, right? And it and it's not easy. Just to be clear, it took me many years to separate me and my self worth from the success and the failures. And once you can do that, it just unlocks. Even when you're negotiating with a client, you know you're not, you're not you're talking to them from a position of authority and and and trying to provide guidance, as opposed to me talking to them like worrying about, What if I lose this deal, and my team would always be like, you're so willing to walk away? And I'm like, Yeah, of course, if this doesn't make sense for us or the client, then you have to, you know, you have to ruin to walk away. And that confidence is kind of built over time to be able to do that and make decisions. And also, even with my own team, sometimes I know it's the wrong decision, but I'll still let them go on the journey, because I don't want to rob them of the opportunity of failing Exactly, yeah, because you know otherwise they're never gonna even when I know it's the wrong thing to do, I'm like, let it. I want them to go on there, because they're going to grow and develop from there. We should probably tell everyone a little bit about task gorilla. So tell a little bit about tescala.
Wouter Durville 9:24
Great. Yeah, that's tescola is a talent discovery platform, so, and we're just about to launch and very exciting new product. So that's, that's quite nice. So we started with talent assessments. So replacing CVS, basically, with our assessments to shortlist candidates, right? To give them, give your candidates an assessment that consists of a couple of different tests, for example, cognitive ability or some hard skills, coding, you name it, personality. You can also add your own question, maybe with a video response from your from your candidates. That's the original product that we started with. And then you would log in as a customer, you would see all your candidates rank from the highest scoring to low scoring. Spend. Your time on on the ones that that are the best fit for, for the for the role. So making hiring much more data driven and efficient and fair, also right. So everyone gets a fair chance actually, to to show their skills to you. That's how we started. Now we're actually adding a second product, which is standard sourcing, because we've built up, like a database of millions of candidates that have been skills tested. So now we're giving our our customers, also access to these candidates who have said, Hey, I'm open for work, basically, right? And they have been skills tested, and we have their CV information. So that's our new thing. So we're really a talent discovery platform. So if you you're looking to find talent for a vacancy that come to us, either source them for through us, assess them through us. So that's, what
Chris Rainey 10:40
we do? Yeah, no. And we, and before me and you met, we had to use test gorilla to hire here at HR leaders. And I don't know if I told you that before, and and my co founders, a big fan, Shane, who used the platform as well. And then we connected through social media. And we, obviously, you share quite a lot of content on LinkedIn, and I followed you, and here we are. But I have to ask what the inspiration was behind the name and the logo I've gone
Wouter Durville 11:14
so one of the learnings I had as an entrepreneur is, you need something that sticks a little bit right so, so I had a other company that I started with weird kind of names that no one remembered. So that was one learning. I was like, Okay, I need something, and we're focused on, like, the mid market say. So it's kind of consumery, right? So I was looking for for a name that direction. Now, of course, I think the immediate information were companies like Survey Monkey, mil chim, so a lot of other, yeah, we I don't want to be the monkey, I don't want to be the gorilla. I want to make a very big number one kind of platform, not not the monkey in the room. And then we're starting with these tests, right? That's the unique thing. It's skills based hiring that we're offering. Yeah? So that's how it came together. And it's like, this, great. That kind of sticks. I kind of like it. Yeah?
Chris Rainey 12:01
So skills based hiring. Obviously, there's not many conversations that I'm having that doesn't involve this topic. You know, obviously it's huge right now. It's gaining a lot of momentum. There's obviously a lot of talent marketplaces now that software and solutions that are out there that companies are leveraging to build skills based organizations. But it still feels like there's some some red tape, and companies are moving a little bit slow. Yeah, what's in your opinion, holding companies back from fully embracing this model?
Wouter Durville 12:34
Yeah, good question. So it's interesting actually, because now skills based hiring is indeed a term that you're here everywhere. Just five years ago we launched, this was not the case. So, yeah, we actually learned. It's, honestly it was, it feels so normal now. It wasn't just five years ago. We were actually publishing a state of skills based hiring report, like some real proper research behind it. We took us a while to think about the name, which what are we just think, okay, let's do skills based hiring, which was a bit of a of a risky bet at the time. Now it feels very normal, but, and what we see is like every year, more companies are indeed saying that they're doing skills based hiring. I think it's now 86% or something in the companies we surveyed in in especially in the UK, US. So it's a lot, but it to your point, it's not, what is skills with hiring. So if, if a company does one test somewhere in the process, they probably say, Hey, we're doing skills based hiring. But like to do proper skills based hiring is different, right? You do it from the beginning of your recruitment process. You first start with with a an assessment, ideally testing for different things, just like you do an interview, right? Hard skills. Soft skills is to match with our culture, etc. And then you have a structured interview, you have a take home assignment, etc. The proper skills based hiring process would have, would have those kinds of components. But I think a lot of companies are just sticking to all practices, right? I don't know. I just first want to do the CV screening or the resume screening, right? I do want to do it myself or and honestly, few people just use pictures or just brand names or stupid stuff. You don't want to know how the first kind of shortlist system, and then they might introduce some kind of skills based hiring somewhere. But I think a lot of companies to your to your questions, are just holding tight to their to old processes, right? Some people maybe have worked already for 20 or 30 years. That's how they've always done it, so it takes a while to kind of change those old habits. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 14:26
I've even seen interviewed. I shouldn't probably mention the company they might get in trouble, but if you just see it sure last week and they spent an entire year just building their skills, taxonomy,
Wouter Durville 14:36
wow themselves, yes, right?
Chris Rainey 14:40
But off camera, one of the things that they said to me is it's then, it's now a year later, so it's already out of date,
Wouter Durville 14:50
all right, yeah, because with AI and all the new skills, yeah,
Chris Rainey 14:53
right. So that's super interesting to think about. It's not, it's not something that can be a one two year project, and this can always be evolved. Think, especially with new skills, that how are you kind of adapting your platform solution to stay current as the world's changing and the skills are changing so fast?
Wouter Durville 15:11
Yeah, yeah, many ways. So we have over around 400 tests, different skills test. So that's one. So we have a whole engine, let's say, like a big team, right? And ways of working to build really high quality tests and then with a scientific foundation, right? Like we have so many, with millions of candidates, so we we have data to actually see if they're fair and reliable and valid these tests. So we can add new tests relatively fast, right? So if there's new skills that people are looking for, or specific tools that people use, we add those tests to the library, so there we can get stay up to date very quickly. Some other things we're launching, is just using AI to build amazing new stuff. So we're, for example, launching in August, AI video interviews. But they, these are interactive, so you actually have a real interview with a with an avatar, based on our science right? So on the best possible kind of structured interview guide, if you can imagine there's a real interview. The cool thing is, like you have a higher quality interview, and all of a sudden all your candidates can take that interview, right? Not just the five or six that you interview, interview or invite for an interview, but all of them. So it aligns so much with our with our mission of democratizing opportunity, right, and giving everyone a chance. So that's these are ways that we are also using AI in into our, in our product, product to to help customers find the best talent.
Chris Rainey 16:28
Yeah, can, can hiring managers also use that to practice?
Wouter Durville 16:34
Does that occur? Hiring managers? Yeah, that's an interesting yeah, they could. They can definitely invite themselves. Yes, yeah,
Chris Rainey 16:40
I know it's really random, but
Wouter Durville 16:44
yeah, and another thing we're offering is to customize it so we have the interview script, let's say, for from
Chris Rainey 16:49
add their own questions that they want in a loop, so, and
Wouter Durville 16:53
also on the criteria. So there's we say, Hey, these are the criteria we suggest in the way the waiting, but there's always human and loop. So recruiters can say, well, actually, I want to add this correctly. Want to add this criteria and in this waiting. So they are they're fully in
Chris Rainey 17:05
control, yeah. So you may I mean that you're kind of doing, you're saying a lot of the work there, but they can kind of tailor them to match the tone and the voice of the organization, right in this
Wouter Durville 17:16
case, yeah? So to say this is really important for us, like that you did these skills, for example, are these things we want to really test?
Chris Rainey 17:22
Yeah, yeah. Where does it Are you into? You then integrate with all of the major ATS platforms. Then, how does that work? Because where do you where do you show up? In the in, in the flow,
Wouter Durville 17:35
yeah. So what we recommend is to use desk for renovate. It really at the top of your funnel, right? So, and that's when you get the best results. So we also in our state of skills based hiring. At report, you see people who use skills based hire or assessments can be us or someone else, but at the top of their funnel, before they put in the human bias, have the best results, better hires, better satisfaction, better everything, better quality. So that's very typically what we recommend using desk gorilla also now start sourcing from our skills tested talent pool, right? There's a couple million people in there already, but what we see in reality is a lot of people use that different moments in their recruitment funnel. So a lot of our customers, we have 1000s of them, they use it a bit later. They say, look, I still want to do that manual CV screening. I'm just so used to it. And then I will introduce this. Yeah, we can't stop that, right? So we can only recommend where to use these assessments. But a lot of people stick to have different processes. And yeah, we offer the flexibility to use it how you want, right? One
Chris Rainey 18:31
of the interesting things I love your like thoughts on, was having a conversation recently with a group of Chief People officers around this, this topic of skills based hiring, and one of one of them mentioned, do you think in years from now, we would the CV will even exist? You know, the traditional CV, right? Which we all know some people are great at writing CVS, doesn't mean they have to, actually can deliver on those skills, right? And it's similar with degrees, like just because you have a degree doesn't have as clear correlation between Can you execute on those skills in your organization? So as you're in this I'd love to understand your thoughts as we build to more skills based organizations, more project based move away from job titles and hierarchies. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that?
Wouter Durville 19:21
Yeah. So I think we've already seen that the value or the importance of CVS is diminishing by the year, and now with AI even worse, right? Imagine being a recruiter, oh my god, like hundreds of these perfect cover letters and resumes, right? Or CVS, it's a disaster. We still, we still gather at data. So what we see for test credits, we just gather all the data points that you can have, pretty much, right? So our skills test first, obviously, and there's many different types of tests in there, but then also work, experience, education, you name it, all those things, it's still relevant. Do people want to work remotely or not? Like all these little data points, we just collect them and then AI interviews like, oh. Oh, etc, etc. So you have, in the end, like, a fine, limited number of data points that you can have to evaluate candidates, right? And what we do is we just gather them all, and then with all the data that we have, we get better and better at predicting what predicts job success. But to your point, CV is another great predictor. They're quite poor, actually,
Chris Rainey 20:19
yeah, if you only use those. How do you feel? Because it's interesting, because you've got platforms like LinkedIn, where it's very, very heavily. You know, to your point, one click, you can apply to a job in seconds. AI can now create your cover letter within seconds.
Wouter Durville 20:39
It's a disaster if you're on the other end, there's a recruiter, oh, my god,
Chris Rainey 20:43
yeah, we want to speak with those people. What does that? What does it mean for the candidate, like, like, are they? Are they more likely to be impatient and not want to take a test?
Wouter Durville 20:55
Just, I think there's a lot of skepticism or cynicism almost, right? They come both ends, because candidates are doing spray and yes, spray and pray, let's say, overloaded with all these, these applications. But we now offer candidates to create their own profile, a test grader so they can create their own profile. Take more tests like, make it really like make it, create a very valuable profile, much more information and on LinkedIn to stand out right from from the crowd. So I think these assessments work also in a process, because indeed, if it's just a one click thing, yeah, you get overloaded with people who are not even interested, who might not have read the vacancy at all, right? If people take one hour just to go through an assessment, which should be very relevant to the job, right? So it's not a very scary thing or something, you get much more motivated and better candidates as a customer also,
Chris Rainey 21:45
yeah, what's the most common challenges that customers come to you with?
Wouter Durville 21:50
Yeah, one is this actually to indeed, all will not be negative for the candidate experience. Now, what we actually see candidates rate us four and a half out of five. Like hundreds and hundreds of reviews, it's really, really high. So people actually like the opportunity to do most of them, to have the opportunity to stand out and show their skills. Of course, there's a small percentage, a couple of percent, who are way better off in a CV only based world, right? Imagine the perfect white guy from Harvard. That's to put an extreme right? Yeah, this is not helping that person, but the other 95% in the market, they like, who didn't go to Harvard, maybe, I mean, didn't have the right background, yeah, they're like, thank you God. Like, finally, I can just show my skills in a fair way, right? And stand out. So that's something we need to teach customers often. Like, look, you actually might get more candidates, and most of them will actually really, really like this, yeah, give them a fair shot.
Chris Rainey 22:41
You mentioned like, one or two examples already about how you're leveraging AI, but how, what? Where do you see some of the other opportunities for you in the team to leverage AI on both sides, for the candidate and for the for the corporate client?
Wouter Durville 22:57
Yeah, in many ways, so that, in the end, the biggest thing is just matching, right? Like matching people with jobs that that's where AI can it's really helping us, because it can just consume so much data, and we're sitting on all the proprietary data, right, all these, these millions of people that we have their skills test results from. And on the other hand, like all these jobs are being created, and people are saying, Hey, I'm looking for decent skills, so matching those and using AI to do the perfect matching, let's say that's where I see the biggest kind of opportunity for us. But also in the product itself, there's so many ways where we can apply AI, right? So the AI video interviews is an amazing one. The other one is AI resume scoring, where you set certain criteria or things you're looking for and then score everyone, right? Which is so much more objective and fair than having a an intern or a junior recruiter going through 600 CVS a day and on their desk, right? So there's just so many ways smaller applications everywhere in the product that we're now introducing.
Chris Rainey 23:54
Yeah, on the video side, I've had kind of like a mixed feedback from both friends, family, colleagues, and also our customers, because not everyone does good over video, right, right? Like you have the most like one of the best sales people I've ever met, guy called Cameron. Shout out to Cameron if you're out there, most high performance sales rep you ever speak to, but very introverted and would perform terribly if he had a camera pointing in his face, right and you would and you'd miss out on one of the best hires that you ever had, but on a phone where there's no no one looking at him and he's on a phone, incredible. So how do you ensure that you're being fair and equitable to different people in and neuro diversity, for example, and make sure that, you know, you don't force them to take the video. Is it, is it optional for them, or, you know, so I just want to know you how you're thinking about that. Well, I think
Wouter Durville 24:57
I would think about, is it like you have to collect. Different data points, right? So our recommendation would be to use like, five different tests. So for example, Hey, like a cognitive ability test, problem solving or something for this, for this, okay, are they smart? Do they understand quickly, like, what the problem is of the customer, right? And what they need to solve for there may be some more negotiation test, like some soft skill test, maybe something around a culture, maybe a leadership test, if it's a leadership role, etc. So bunch of different tests. If you fail on one, it's not the end of the world, right? You
Wouter Durville 25:27
just collect multiple, sorry, and then
Wouter Durville 25:31
the AI video interview. Now, this person might not do great on this one, but he might have aced like the other five tests already. Then the AI resume scoring. So you just combine all these different data points to get to the most objective possible score. And shortlisting, that's, I think, the beauty. So if you just use one thing, so if you only AI interview, right, or only the negotiation test, then you have that problem that you described, like, Okay, you won miss out on a lot of good people. But if you collect more data points, then then it averages out, right? If you understand what I mean, then it doesn't matter. This person is not so good on a video, he will, AI the other things,
Chris Rainey 26:05
yeah, no, I love that. I didn't kind of realize that that's the approach that makes a lot of sense, and to do that, because some people are going to be more stronger, like for me, if it was written, I'm probably going to be pretty weak. But I'll probably, I'll be pretty good for the video exactly as well. So the fact that you're meeting people where they're at and giving multiple data points is really, is really interesting, and
Wouter Durville 26:30
helps to put people at ease a bit, right? It's like, look, it's fine. If you freaked out on one test or something, it doesn't matter. Like, there's just a couple more. It should be related to your job anyway.
Chris Rainey 26:40
It's okay, yeah, who? Like, I'm just wondering, like, why the current platforms out there, like Applicant Tracking platforms, don't already, haven't already gone down this route and built what you've built in the way that you've built it, because it seems so obvious in hindsight, obviously, in terms of what you've built right now, you found an area which you'd think that they would really focus quite heavily, yeah, on and fill that gap in the market. Why do you think that is? I have
Wouter Durville 27:11
a hypothesis. It's just hard work, seriously, like ATS is just and now even more, already AI, you can spin out an ATS with a lovable pretty fast these days, even some fine coding, but it's just a piece of software, right? There's no data, really, so like or no content. So we are combining Tech with content. There's, we have a whole bunch of IO psychologists, etc, which is every day, are going through all that data to see which questions are They vetted? Are they reliable? Is it fair? Are women of disadvantage? I'm just etc, etc. So it's a lot of work to build all that content and in a scientific way, not just to put some AI stuff in there, right, which is not validated at all. It's hard work. So it's both tech and content in our in our products, that's different, I think, from the ATS, or just like a tech layer, let's say, and like a database with some features on it.
Chris Rainey 28:02
I mean, you just described us as well with what we're doing with Atlas and HR leaders. You know, we spent 10 years building the content, 10 50,000 hours, literally, of video, audio content, 1000s of pieces of research, and combining that with the technology and the ongoing insights that we gather through the work that we do, you can't, you can't just spin that up, even if you have, even if you have lovable you see, you can't spin that up. Yeah, no, I get it, but I'm glad you shared it as well. It's we've we speak about the word, the term future of work now, but we always kind of talk about through the lens that the future work is now. We're already, already living it. When you think around the future of work, like, what, what comes to mind to you right now?
Wouter Durville 29:02
Yeah, biggest thing that comes to mind, I guess, is just the impact of AI, right? I don't know the magic answer, what's going to happen. I actually really have a call with one of our investors this afternoon. He's like, I want to talk about, like, what are you thinking of desk or that in a world where humans are no longer needed? Oh,
Wouter Durville 29:18
my God, already
Wouter Durville 29:20
we have a different perspective. We think with desk, you will always be in demand for humans, but indeed, it's changing already, right? I see it in my own team. You need to be really good at using these tools, so you become a manager of different AI tools to supercharge your productivity, so the value of the humans that you hire becomes even higher, right? So even more valuable, also to make sure you get the right one, to make sure you have a proper process in place to recruit those people, valuable. So that's the way we look at it. But yeah, it is. It is changing, right? The by the AI, is having a huge effect, I think, on the on the workplace and the future of work.
Chris Rainey 29:57
It's difficult as well, right? Because I. So there's no playbook for any of this, no, right? Because there's new tools coming out every single day that you know, like my, my marketing team, every actually, every where it's the video editing team and the marketing team, the sales team operation, they all using a stack of AI tools. Yeah, right. And, and like. And there's always new ones popping up that we're experimenting with, and we're looking at what integrates best and what tools clean. They can do something they don't actually, it's just great marketing as well. And we've been able to save days of productivity games. You know, even for myself, some of the tools that I built recently I have a AI assistant connected to my email. Yeah, even after this call, actually, it will send me an email recapping our conversation and suggest an email to send to you, right? So it's already and it's in the tone of it knows that we discussed everything on this podcast, and it will write the email. And it's trained. It's trained itself on my entire inbox for the lifetime of my entire Gmail. So it took, it takes a couple of days for it to do that, and now it almost every single call I have, I just press send off. There we go. And that's freed up a day of a week for me. I've worked I've worked out roughly an entire day as well. So it is real. My only concern is people are kind of talking about this whole AI is going to bring forward the 10x employee, but are they going to be doing 10x more admin or more work? Or you, are you actually going to free them up to spend more time with your customers, right? Or your candidates, etc, and surely do value add work, because I see some companies freeing up that time and just replacing it with more of the same, if that makes sense, and then that's leading to burnout in people. Does that make sense?
Wouter Durville 31:59
Yeah, yeah. And I think, like you said, like, no one has the answer, right? I think it's a but I do think the roles change quite a bit, right? So, for example, the full stack marketeer or something, right? If you have all those different tools, you can just do so much yourself in terms of design and copy and video and all of those things. You can just become a full stack marketeer, for example. Same in other departments. I think the role of certain departments will change quite drastically, or even coding right? You might have, like a couple very deep experts, but like the rest of the company, can just vibe code themselves a little bit right, and only for the deep integrations or connection with the current product or whatever DevOps and stuff. You might have like a very specialized team, more like a finance team or something. We don't know, I also don't know, but I can definitely see it shaping up differently
Chris Rainey 32:46
than, yeah, it's so interesting because you're going to be on the forefront of that, yeah, in a
Wouter Durville 32:51
way, well, at least in terms of the hiring. Yeah, we already, we honestly see already in in our data, of course, we see, we have all those different tests. We already see shifts occurring. So for example, there's a big increase in cognitive ability tests. So in the problem solving, numerical reasoning, those kind of things to get. Make sure to get smart people who can just work with different things, new coding languages, new tools, you name it right. Another big shift we see is towards soft skills. So really, human skills, communication, leadership, planning, whatever, those kind of things. There's a huge increase in companies looking for those things with this human, human skills, basically. And we see a decrease of, like, hard skills, because, like, let's say translation or coding or data entry, yeah, every time less, right? We can use AI for many of those things, to an extent. So you really see that shift happening as we speak in our own data.
Chris Rainey 33:43
It's so fascinating how that's flipped so quickly and gone full circle, because it was always the focus on the hard skills and the technical but with AI, we can do all of that right as well. Whereas one of the things I'm concerned about, which we speak about quite a lot, is, is, is AI almost removes critical thinking, right? Right? Because you don't have to really think through and start with a blank piece of paper and do the hard work of really thinking free things through. You can just type in a prompt, and then all of a sudden, you've got half of everything you need, right? Yeah. So I'm worried about what that means for critical thinking, for creativity, you know, for building resilience to fail and it's really tough to start with. Nothing can build a foundation, whereas with AI, you can just do that in seconds. That's true.
Wouter Durville 34:36
But on the other hand, I think if you don't have the experience or the talent, let's say it's really hard to get something really high quality out of these AI tools. If you don't know what you're looking for, if you don't know what good looks like, that's true. It's really hard. So I've seen a lot of exams in our own company, like you give them the Ferrari, let's say right, in terms of AI tools, but if they're blind, it's useless, like it's useless like it is that. That's quite tough. And I think especially for junior roles, if you don't have the training and the experience, it might be a bit of a challenge.
Chris Rainey 35:05
I agree. I mean, within Atlas, the number one request for our learning pathways is AI literacy for every single company, like no surprise. And me and you are sitting here talking about vibe, covid, as if everyone listening understands what that means, right? I guarantee you most people that don't know what that even means, which is basically an AI tool for everyone, that you can use to code, and it's incredible. And you know that it's just check it out, you probably won't sleep and be spending many hours experimenting after you check out as well, and they're growing massively right now as well. But listen, before I let you go and ask you some kind of quick fire questions, what are some of the hobbies and passions you have outside the office?
Wouter Durville 35:53
It must be my kids. I just got my fourth kid, so that's consuming all my time, and it's definitely a big passion of mine as well.
Chris Rainey 36:00
Amazing. How do you when you remain present as a father and a husband, when you're so busy with work?
Wouter Durville 36:08
Yeah, that's my biggest challenge. I've had periods where I was, you're sitting at the dinner table, for example, and you're just not there, physically there. And I take it so much. I feel so guilty like so it's such a challenge always, to really try to disconnect. I don't have the magic formula, I think, but at least kind of blocking my my time in certain always blocking out dinners and weekends and stuff just to be there. But it can be a struggle, especially in stressful periods. I often fail. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 36:35
no, I appreciate the honesty, right? Because that's kind of the similar for me, like, I'll come home and be present with Robin, but at the back of my head, I'm thinking about tomorrow, tomorrow's investors call, right? Or whatever it may be as well. But I kind of found that, like, to your point, just blocking it out, putting the phone away, and just being present in the moment. And if anything, it's actually probably for one of the best things for me, personally, for my own mental health and well being, and just being present there robbing because I escape from all of the stress and the daily grind and just be there building some Lego or doing a puzzle, or, you know, dancing or whatever it may be as well. So no, yeah, I understand that. What would you say is the biggest investment you've made in yourself
Wouter Durville 37:25
buying a really good bed. I remember in 2003 my first corporate trip ever, I went to Sweden, and I was like, lying in his bed. I was like, wow, I never slept in such a good bed. Now, like, I'm gonna buy that as a hasten like, a very expensive brand, whatever it took me 10 years before. Did you say AI sleep a Hastings, I know
Chris Rainey 37:44
hastens, oh, the actual bed itself, okay?
Wouter Durville 37:48
And I bought like, 10 years later or something, and it's the best investment ever make. Like it just you sleep a third of your life, or you should be at least. So that's definitely it.
Chris Rainey 37:57
That's so funny. You said that because that might sound crazy to everyone, but that's my answer too. Yeah, yeah. So literally, I'm like, I have a whole thing. Like, it's blackout curtains, sleep mask. I have eight sleep beds. So it's called, yeah, so, so yeah, it's game changer. So for everyone listening, by the time I get in bed, it's automatically cool to 17 degrees, which may sound really cold, but it's like the optimal sleep based on the data from the mattress, which measures your heart rate and your sleep score. You have a sleep score. So it kind of adjusted specifically to me, and my wife on her side has it nice and hot, so she's happy too as well, and then I slowly wake up when the bed slowly heats up in the morning. So I also don't have an annoying alarm as well. And that has been an absolute game changer. Sleeping in whenever I go and travel. I'm so upset to do that. So it's so interesting. You said that, because very few people say but for me, it's been, you are right, like it's the most important thing if I sleep well, then I end up exercising next day, and then eating well, and then it's kind of a full circle, right? A background as well. Last question I'll ask you to actually, because I never, never, because I don't know we have that many entrepreneurs. On one, what advice would you give to entrepreneurs, those entrepreneurs of tomorrow, the maybe getting started on their journey. And then secondly, secondly, what advice would you give to HR leaders when we think about skills based organizations and all of the great work that you do, and then we'll say goodbye.
Wouter Durville 39:42
All right, for the entrepreneurs, just do it right? Just you have to. It's really a profession in itself. So I made a mistake. I had a couple of years in corporate, and you think, Oh, I do so, well here I can be an entrepreneur. No, it's a different profession completely. You just have to learn it. You have to, like, becoming a baker. You have to just learn. Do the job, fail and hopefully have a few mentors. So that's the biggest one. Just do it, do it. Do do it. And then for the for the people leaders, I would say that skills based hiring, do it properly, right? So it is 100% the future. That's pretty clear. I don't think there's much discussion about that anymore, but there's just, yeah, doing it a little bit, or doing it properly in your whole recruitment funnel, starting from funnel, starting from the beginning, and really make sure you know what you're looking for in terms of skills, giving every candidate a proper chance to show those those skills have structured interviews, have take home assignment, etc, etc. Do it, do it well, and you'll have a much happier employees, better employee, the higher quality. It's such a such a big win. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 40:40
And with task gorilla, where's the best place for them to get? To get started
Wouter Durville 40:45
going through our websites
Wouter Durville 40:47
and using at the top of the funnel. So use, use a we put in their job description. We have AI to help you then find the best, best assessment. Can also Source, Source candidates directly from from our database, if you don't have candidates and take them through your our evaluation process, right? With the skills test, AI interviews, etc,
Chris Rainey 41:06
yeah. How long? How long does it take to set up?
Wouter Durville 41:09
Nothing? It's because we use AI there as well. So, like, if you want, like, whoop it's like, it's set up in a few minutes.
Chris Rainey 41:15
Yeah. Okay, so for everyone listening, we'll drop a link below to the website. Also, I'll definitely recommend connecting with or on LinkedIn. I always follow your content there. I love your posts. I've definitely still some of them. Post them on mine, because they're so good as well. So make sure you follow them. Now. You're very active on there, and I love, I love the insights that you share as well. Do you have a LinkedIn newsletter as well or on Yeah? We just started one. Yeah, yeah. I will link that as well. As well. I think it's super important. Anything else that we missed
Wouter Durville 41:51
that we should have discussed big. Thank you, Chris, for having me. No man,
Chris Rainey 41:55
it's a pleasure. I've been following you out for a while on LinkedIn, so it's always I'm a fan, so like, generally excited about what you're doing. Thank you for the what you're doing, for the for the community as well, and and congratulations again on little one. Yes. Thank you so much. And I wish all the best until we next week. Appreciate you.
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Wouter Durville, CEO of TestGorilla.