How AI is Transforming HR
In today’s episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we welcome Kristy Sundjaja, Chief People Officer at Taboola. Kristy S. shares her unique journey from engineering to HR leadership, highlighting how her technical background shapes her approach to transforming HR practices.
She dives into the evolving role of AI in HR, the importance of scaling people operations, and how HR leaders can lead the way in adopting innovative technologies. Kristy also reflects on the significance of embracing vulnerability as a leader and balancing personal growth with professional ambitions.
🎓 In this episode, Kristy discusses:
Why vulnerability in leadership builds trust and collaboration
Strategies to prepare HR teams for rapid technological changes
The power of AI in transforming HR practices and automating tasks
How HR teams can scale their impact while staying small and effective
How Taboola is leveraging AI to create personalized employee experiences
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Chris Rainey 0:00
Hey, Christy, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm great. Thank you, Chris, nice to see you again. Are you like me? You've got the fake plants behind you trying to pretend that you or
Kristy Sundjaja 0:11
is that a real one like match your background?
Chris Rainey 0:16
Yeah. Well, we tried getting real ones in the studio, but I just I'm not consistent enough to keep to keep them alive. I feel really bad. So I was like, let's just get some fake ones. These poor plants are not surviving as well. Virtual
Kristy Sundjaja 0:30
background, you know? Yeah, it's just fake.
Chris Rainey 0:33
Yeah, the amount of people that still think this is virtual, like, I get a lot of people like, Oh, is that fake behind you, Chris. I'm like, No, it's a real thing. It's not fake, but it's hard to know right in this day, in this in this day and age as well. But I'm super excited to chat to you, and I'm also excited for people to learn more about the organization as well, because I kind of came only came across the business a couple of months ago, and I was like, wow, how have I not come across this organization before? So that was super cool. And then when I found out about your background and journey into HR, I was like, this is going to be an interesting conversation. So before we jump in, tell everyone a little bit more about you personally, and then your journey to where we are now, sure,
Kristy Sundjaja 1:15
personally, I live in New York, two boys. I mean, really fun to be a mom with two boys living in New York. Originally, I came from Indonesia and Hong Kong, and having lived there for 18 years, and then came to the states for college and graduate school, and ever since then, has stay in this country. You know, obviously now I'm a chief people officer in a technology company. My background actually started as an engineer, right? That's what's my dream. When I go to college and say, You know what, I want to be an engineers, and you know, one thing lead to another, and eventually I become a head of people in a high tech company. And you mentioned Taboola earlier, right? I mean, about our company, it is a global company. We have 2000 people globally, 34 offices, you know, we work with advertisers and publishers, so it's really a fun time to be, you know, figuring out how to use technology to support our customers and our people at the same time. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 2:18
break that down for me. How does an engineer become a chief people officer?
Kristy Sundjaja 2:25
Yes, I mean, it's actually interesting, right? I mean, you're coding one and zero, and then all of a sudden you become Chief People Officer. How does that happen? Well, I would say that my journey was atypical, right? I graduated from graduate school with an engineering degree looking for tech companies to work for. You know, pick the right time to graduate is 2000 if you remember, that's like the first.com just first, right? And, but that's also the before Google and Facebook and all this company came to the world, so I has the privilege to pick up career path in strategy consulting. And you know, the options for me is to work with high tech company, right? So the HP, the Microsoft, IBM, like the Giants at that time, and then really help them to figure out that strategy their operations. And I spent 10 years doing that. And then from there, another financial crisis happened in 2008 Right, exactly. And in 2009 I got the call from the City Hall in New York City, right? A friend of mine was working for the mayor, which is Michael Bloomberg, a very successful right? I really respect him as an entrepreneur tech leaders, and he's like, I want to transform New York City's economy. We were known for our financial services industry, right? But when the future we want to be known for also becoming a technology center, right? So I joined the team, created a transformation team within the New York City Economic Development Corporations, and really work on like, what will it take to transform New York City by 2020 to be a media and technology center, right? So from there, we did, like, all the things that you see nowadays actually, like shared work space Venture Program, right? All the entrepreneurship mentoring program that nowadays, you take it for granted, it's like, oh, yeah, I mean, but if you think back 15 years ago, when we that, it's quite new. So that is kind of slowly transitioning into, kind of building this tech industry. And then at some point in 2013 2012 I left the administrations and went back to the for profit sector and then joined a publicly traded tech company called live person. So we do software as a service. And then. It is at that company, the CEO and the board member have the foresight to invite me to become the head of people for the company. So that's my introduction to becoming a leader. They're like, well, love your background, right? Know that you know technology, know that you have worked with company with strategy and operations, would love to invite you to become our head of people. And I say, wow.
Speaker 1 5:27
What was your reaction? Be honest, I my
Kristy Sundjaja 5:32
jaw drop. Was like, What? What? Like, what? Exactly, what? What exactly
Unknown Speaker 5:37
do you want me to do? You're like, Am I in trouble?
Kristy Sundjaja 5:40
Right? You know, usually when, when they say, you know, the HR word is like, what, what I'm meeting with, right? I must be in the principal office. I couldn't believe it. I actually said, No, mind you. I was also like, seven months pregnant.
Chris Rainey 5:58
Oh, wow. And what a time to get what time to have that conversation.
Kristy Sundjaja 6:03
I don't know. Is my hormone talking to me like my brain, like rich brain is talking to me, but I thought the board member, who's my mentor now, was very wise. He's like, Well, look, any, any organization, tech company, engineering company, has two things. Two real assets is the money in your bank, and then the people, right? So if you learn to manage people, to lead people, to create a space for people to be successful, you can run any companies out there. And I thought that was very convincing. And I think as an engineer, we always love to solve difficult problems. Sometimes we create our own problems to solve, and it's like, you know what that is interesting? Like, is there a way to really create a space for people to be successful, right, regardless of what industry and what type of companies you're in? So, so yeah, I took it on as a challenge, and then the story continues. So
Chris Rainey 7:02
what did you did you go on maternity leave? And your return from maternity leave was straight in the deep end into that role? Like,
Kristy Sundjaja 7:09
yeah, I took it on before I went on the leave. Oh, okay, okay. And at that point, I was like, Team, please don't leave.
Chris Rainey 7:19
Right? Wait a minute. Who's leading us now,
Kristy Sundjaja 7:23
exactly, I think you should interview my team. Well, what was your feeling when this person, yeah, lead the team? And I think I was very humbled, definitely vulnerable in that position. I went to the team, I have some really good leaders already in place. And I say team, I I'm honored, you know, to have this opportunity to learn, to lead the team, but I need to learn a lot from you. And by the way, I'm going on leave in like couple weeks. Please don't leave like give give me a chance. Give us a chance to work together, and they did stick around. So I'm really appreciative of
Chris Rainey 8:06
leaders. Well, they did that. They did that because of your humility, right? And they did that because you came to them. You could have come in and been like, you know, like this, what we're going to do, this is the direction, etc, and like, I've been worried about showing any type of vulnerability, but because you led with vulnerability, that just made them step in, one step closer, and go, Okay, right? This is this, is this is like refreshing, right to have that? Yeah,
Kristy Sundjaja 8:33
I think is I acknowledge what I don't know, yeah, but I also, I hope I did let them see what value I can bring to the table, right? So before I took on that role, I was the right hand to the CEO, right? I was his chief of staff. It was a turnaround situation, so I was, I mean, I had a seat at the table. Was
Chris Rainey 8:56
ingrained in the business. Really, you're fully ingrained in the business. Exactly,
Kristy Sundjaja 9:00
exactly, right? So what I'm asking for them is to meet me in the middle, right? I'll, I'll come to you all with, this is where the business is heading. This is the business challenges. These are the opportunities. Help me understand how HR can help the companies achieve the goals, right? So I thought it was a fun time. I mean, we, I mean, the turnaround was successful. We spent four years working really hard on it. Yeah, I also learned a lot. I mean, I've, I had no idea what HR, BP is. I mean, I'm sure you heard
Chris Rainey 9:37
you're like, all of the acronyms you have to now, know what people were saying, like, what does that
Kristy Sundjaja 9:43
mean? Like, help me, help me, right? And then it's a publicly traded company. So, you know, if you're a private company, you run it a certain way, but publicly company has a set of rules. So it was quite a learning journey for me. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 9:55
I really it's interesting how some of our leaders and mentors can see things. In us that we don't see in ourselves, right as well. Because, you know, as you said, that that's a natural reaction. And many CHROs that I spoke to recently, like I just interviewed the corona of L'Oreal Stephanie, and she had 20 years in the business in L'Oreal, in other functions, r, d, operations, etc. Now she's a chro first time straight in the deep end. And same thing, same thing for you, like she did exactly the same thing you did. And had a meeting say, Hey, I don't know what I don't know. And this is why I've got an amazing team, and that's they've got the experience and the skills, and I'm and, and same for Legos theater, or Lauren, who was in sales, and now he's a teacher of air. Like, it's becoming more and more common, to be honest, because companies are seeing it, and they need people with the business to truly understand the business. You know from the inside out, but also you bring a very different perspective to the table, which we'll get into in terms of your diversity of thought skills that you bring and look at it through a different lens. And that's a perfect segue, right? One of the things that we're talking about right now, which everyone is, is AI right right now, literally, in two weeks, I have 10,000 CHROs joining our AI HR Summit, which is hard to even believe, considering I don't know you told me 20 years ago, I've been talking about AI and HR, I would have laughed at you. What are you talking about? HR, and here we are. So on that point, given your background, what are your views and thoughts and perspectives on AI, because you have a quite unique vantage point, given your experience,
Kristy Sundjaja 11:35
yeah, super excited. I mean, I think AI is going to change how company operates, how we individual operates, how our team operates, right? I remember when I first graduating from college. This is when the, I don't know, the World Wide Web just really become popular. I remember my first job having the senior partner in the company, and the Secretary was printing the email for him to read. Like, printing emails. That's
Unknown Speaker 12:11
crazy. Yeah, that's crazy. Like
Kristy Sundjaja 12:14
we having that deja vu moment now, right? Is like, okay, like everyone is trying to dabble into AI, right? And then a bit scared, a bit unsure what that really means, right? But, yeah, I think it's, I mean, technology is going to move faster and faster, I believe in a in, I don't know, 1224, months, it should be a common language, common tools, common way of doing things like, if you're not touching AI on a daily basis, something is wrong. It's almost like if you're not chatting or texting or emailing people on a daily basis, you're not in the loop, right? So I think it's gonna have tremendous impact changing how we do things.
Chris Rainey 12:54
Where do you see that AI is gonna have the biggest impact in HR? What do you think it's really gonna
Kristy Sundjaja 12:59
Yeah, I think that's multiple layers, right? And then I start with the most basic layers. Is just how we do things, right? There are things that now we can automate, right? I mean, being a global company, as simple as even drafting the communications, right, we always say, Oh, we have a writer's block. Nowadays, you should not have a writer's block. You can just ask AI to Hey, these are the couple bullet points. And even for me, I did all grew up like English is is actually still my second language, right? So having been having a tool to even just give up the points and list the things that you want to talk about and turn it into a draft on an email, that is kind of a basic requirement, right? But I think is, how do you then take that to the next level, right? To speak with your voice, to really insert the human component? I don't think I've trained my AI smart enough to speak for me yet, right? So, and also, they might give you the basic informations, but you still need to go one step deeper, right? So I've seen employees who gave me work project outcome or looking at a problem, I was like, Okay, this this person really just use AI to do his or her work, right? It's not that different from our kids nowadays, like the teachers, know, like when you submit a homework, Hey, did you actually think about it? Or did you ask Gemini or chat GPT, to do the work. So I think basic requirement is learn to use it, but use it as a tool to get things started and take it to the next level, right? That is just day to day how we do things. I think there's a lot more administrative work automations, work that you will see in People Operations overall, but that's, as I say, level one. I think level two as HR organizations like think forward for the company, right? First, you need to learn how to do it yourself, and then you need to then lead the company or support the company to do it as well, right? So what type of skill sets are we thinking about, right? I mean, if you I mean, I'm very active in the engineering school space. My education. So I'm still active in my alma mater, and, you know, prompt engineering, if you talk about it 20 years ago, people be like,
Chris Rainey 15:10
what? One Two years ago, three years ago, two years
Kristy Sundjaja 15:13
ago, engineering, right? So there's now a new field in engineering in terms of how do you design, how do you train right? Different profile, different persona? Right? That will also as a tech company, we should also look at what does that mean in terms of upskilling our workforce? I've seen,
Chris Rainey 15:31
by the way, like the last three weeks, probably four or five of the biggest companies in the world, higher prompt engineers dedicated just in their HR team. So now the specific Gazette, I don't know if I could say the company name, but one of the sitros I was speaking to is saying, I've just hired a dedicated prompt engineer in my team. Because all of the different tech stack we have, they're turning on their agents, right? So I've got my work day agent. I've got my vizier V agent for my people analytics. I've got my service now. Agent, so they've had to hire someone in to manage all of that and really understand how it works. And it's like that's a brand new skill in the HR that doesn't currently exist in 99% of HR teams, that's going to have to exist in to be successful.
Kristy Sundjaja 16:24
I'm not surprised. I mean, we are. We are building our own AI tool internally, even within HR and people operations, right? And that the way we work on it is we borrow resources from R and D from our professional services team. So yeah, without hiring dedicated resources, we are getting those resources and support from other teams. And I think that is going to be the common trend moving forward, right? Either you hire or you leverage what you have within the company, get it done. And I would, I would be, I would take on another level of AI interruptions to the things that we do is because of AI. Is not that different from a worldwide web development back in the day. It's like all the informations now is available in the web, right? AI just help you organize it and distill it and summarize it even faster. But the challenge is whether the AI bot is giving you the best information, the most accurate information, the most real time informations and how you interpret it, or how they interpret it. And I think HR value might be challenged down the road, right? So there are informations that we used to own, that people will come to us for informations now. The same people will go online and say, Well, what is the rules to do X, Y and Z, right? And then they will take that and say, well, AI said this. Why are you saying some things differently, right? So I've already seen that happening in our industry, where, you know, leaders or employees will go online, and they were like, we like, well, that is a very outdated informations. Or, okay, that might apply to 80% of the scenarios, but there's your scenario really fits into 20% so again, I think it's as a profession, we are no longer just distributing knowledge, right? We need to, kind of also educate the company to use those knowledge, right? We need to come with better insights. So I think it's going to be an interesting challenge and opportunity for for the HR profession.
Chris Rainey 18:33
Yeah. Why do you think it's so important for HR to lead the way on this?
Kristy Sundjaja 18:40
Because we are touching almost every part of the company, right? I actually have my global HR meeting this morning, and we were listening to the fight song, and I told the team, if you listen to the lyrics of the fight song, I don't know whether I can actually name a song on your show. You can do that. Of course, talk about that. You know, we are small belt creating big wave in an organization, right? And I truly believe that's what HR organization does, right? I don't, I don't think we need to have a very large team, right? But we need to be very effective. We need to be scalable, and then we need to touch people, touch leaders in different way to create the wave, right? And I think this is an external wave coming at us. It's called AI, right? And we need to embrace it. And the way that we can embrace it with HR is to, you know, work with the leaders, to think about, what is what does that mean for their organization, what does that mean for their processes? What does that mean for the people, right? What does that mean for our culture? And I think that HR has a very big role in it. And I think I can't say for every companies, but at least in the in the tech world, I know every company is thinking about embracing AI, right? I mean that like probably in. Top Five agenda of any business executive teams right now, and we are an enabler to make that happen.
Chris Rainey 20:09
Yeah, no, you're right there. You can't even have a cup. We just got back from our CHRO round table at Merck Pharmaceuticals in New Jersey. We had 60 CHROs for two days, every conversation, whether, whether whether we're talking about skills based organizations, it was AI, right, whether we were sort of, sort of talking about people analytics, it was AI, right, everything, like, literally every conversation the DEI we had, you know, a session around diversity inclusion, talking about how ai, ai is going to impact the AI. So, like, it's uh, every touching, every single part of the organization, yeah, yeah.
Kristy Sundjaja 20:44
And I think as a technologist or engineers, I'm loving this moment, right? I think AI is just one technology that is disrupting the work, right? And being a CHR role. This is the future, right? There will be new technologies constantly coming in, right? And I'm loving it, because that's where my background is. I chose to be an engineers because I'd love to think of the things like create things and solving problems. And I actually cannot wait for what is next after AI,
Chris Rainey 21:23
you're the opposite. You're the opposite of every other CHRO, what you know you have again, you have a unique perspective and background skills. What advice would you give to ch rose, listening that this is something just some of them very scary, right? You know, they don't understand it's so new. It's coming at them at a pace to some precedent. It's the pace of innovation and change, even for us to very into it, it's hard to keep up. What advice would you give to those that are listening right now?
Kristy Sundjaja 21:54
I would say, be open, embrace it. We need to do our homework, right right? So we need to stay on top of things now, right? It's not just about labor regulations, it's not just about the business strategy, but also this technology transformations that we can bring to the company so that the company can be more successful, right? So this is no longer just the engineer job. Or, you know, the technical job, this is, this is our job, right? I mean, technology has changed the way that we do things, and I believe it will continue to make things more exciting, more innovating, right? So I say it's just be open, embrace it, stay, stay on top of it. You know, maybe read more about how technologies is shaping. You know, the things that going to change in the coming years, right? And just anticipate it. And I think another thing is learn from other functions, other talent, right? To your point, other teams have some of this talent, right? You probably have people who are very much on top of what the next technology evolutions will be in the world, in your company. Seek them out, talk to them and say, Hey, what have you been reading? What have you been seeing, right? I think, I mean for the right person, I think this is a super exciting time.
Chris Rainey 23:22
Yeah, we saw the same thing, didn't we, with people analytics, where most, most of the heads of people analytics came from within the finance team, the marketing team, the Product team, sales and now into that role. And one of my good friends is Dawn Klinghoffer as chief. She's the head of people analytics over at Microsoft, and she what she came from the finance team many years ago, and now she's heading global people analytics for Microsoft. And I see that same thing play out in many companies. You're right, those skills probably already exist. They very they do exist in your organizations, but you have to take the first step and go seek them out as well. So a lot of people immediately make the the decision to look at externally before they really look internally. And the advantage there is that that person already understands the business as well, right? So you use a lot more value that's untapped in that space you're also using. You have a quite unique perspective as a company, because you're using this in your product, yes, right? So you're really ahead of the curve in that sense that you're doing this already for customers in your product. You talk, how are you? How is this being utilized in your product, right?
Kristy Sundjaja 24:36
So thank you for asking me. We work with lots of advertisers and publishers across the world, right? What we do is really trying to if you're trying to advertise something on the open web, right, we're using AI to help you create campaigns, create the right messaging, create the right targeting, right? So I would say AI, the term itself might be new, but within. Taboola, we've been doing, you know, recommendation, deep learning, machine learning, you've heard all this engineering term as we talk about AI. Those are not new, right? So I think I do have a link up here within Taboola, because I can tap into the team who's been working on products for many years, like we've been using AI to support our customers. Now I'm just taking a part of that talent right, to infuse it into our internal operation and say, Okay, guys, well, we are making advertisers life so much easier in creating the campaigns online. What can I do internally to make our employees life easier or making our managers life easier, right? As we operate the company. So that is an advantage that Taboola totally have, right? So I hope that other CHRO will also find those opportunity to leverage your own talent internally, too. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 25:55
well, it's interesting, because with a lot of us are correcting that customized experience at scale for our customers, but we're not doing it for our employees, right? It's the same tools and technologies just used in a different way, right? Same way you go on Amazon. It's super personalized, and know what you bought, it, knows what you want, knows where you are, all of those things, right? That's also you can use a similar tool technologies internally to create customized learning experiences, for example, for your employees, to customize their employee benefits, right? All of those things that that show up in the moments that matter, that are important to employees as well. So it's a massive opportunity to be able to do that.
Kristy Sundjaja 26:39
And I think we are just at the beginning of it. Yeah, yeah. I would say most of the AI right now is about organizing informations, right? I think designing the prompt define, designing the persona so that the employees can interact with, say, a bot to solve multiple Q and A's, right? I mean, I love how you're thinking. I mean, that's exactly the point. Like, how do you customize the journey? How do you customize the development, the learning, and what they can get from the company, from the teams on a day to day basis? I would say we are far from it, but working on it. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 27:14
you mentioned earlier that you're developing your own AI bot for the team for HR, is that? What does that mean? Is that a self service agent for your employee population to ask common questions? What's the intentionality behind that?
Kristy Sundjaja 27:32
We're testing the AI technology in many different ways, but yes, I think the most basic one is having that bot to enable self service, yeah, right. And, and, I think one thing that I would add to the advantage of working with your internal resources, different teams are most likely developing their own Yeah. Yeah, right. So the challenge for an organization is, how do you connect that? Right? So as employees, is it the best experience to have different bots for different things could be, or is it one bot that will answer everything? Yeah, right. So I think that is a design perspective, experience perspectives. That's something we need to work on. We are also testing AI in specific areas, right? I mean, I'm sure you've heard recruiting, everybody is talking about that, yeah, right, you know, I if I look at sales right, they've been using tools to record the sales train like, you know it. I mean, you're in sales, Right? Transcript you have recording you use that for Training and Development? Well, we can probably use that too for recruiting, right to understand, well, you know, are we consistent in how we interview like, what? What are the attributes that really leads to a good quality of hiring? I mean, all of those can re rely on AI to to generate those inside those data, right? Of course, there's like, I think there's also data privacy legal compliance complications that we need to look at, and I think that is some of the challenge that we need to overcome as we continue to adopt the technology.
Chris Rainey 29:18
Yeah, have you? Have you looked in. Have you talking about that issue of multiple agents? Have you looked at the sort of open AI swarms, the model that they're kind of working on, have
Kristy Sundjaja 29:32
not so applications for HR, no.
Chris Rainey 29:36
So basically, swarms is their their terminology. Correct me in the chat, if I know I'm wrong, is that they're kind of, everyone's fighting to be sort of the master agent, right? That can that controls all of the other agents. And the name they come up with, swarm, I'm assuming it's like a swarm of agents. Is the name, right? It's kind of a scary name. They can come up with something a bit more palatable than swarm. It's pretty intense. Yeah. As well. Of course they love, I bet they love it internally as well. But that's the issue, right? Because you got, like you said, sales has got one, marketing has got one, even supply chain now, you know, the whole business, and then, kind of, in many companies I'm speaking to, it's just causing chaos at the moment. So everyone's in this all and all of the vendors want you to be their, their agent of choice, right? So it's like, this kind of, like, really interesting, tough landscape right now, where speaking to a situation yesterday, said, if I wanted to right now, Chris, I could turn on seven agents today because, because I've got my work day. Agent, I've got my service now. Agent, I've got my Visia. Agent, you know, I've got all of those vent tech vendors, you know, my recruiting software, My People Analytics through, you know, it's like, okay, but none of these are talking to each other, right? And obviously, Microsoft is trying to become the master swarm agent with copilot, and people are integrating. So in the next 612, months, it's gonna get really interesting to see how this all plays out. We've just released our own, we released our the world's first AI copilot for HR six months ago. So we've now got, you know, probably 60, 70,000 HR executives using our agent every day is connected to all of their systems. It gives them instant answers to any HR question. It gives it up to date legal legislation. It's connected to their teams. It's connected to the service now. So we're kind of doing that ourselves, HR leaders, because we realized that, you know, we've got 50,000 hours of content, quite literally, and 1000s of pieces of content and research, and we built the first version just to help our leaders get instant answers to their questions, because we had too much content. If that's content, yeah, but not just call for the content, but take you to the exact second in the video that gives you the answer the exact line in a document, right? Translate it into any language for you as well, so you can listen to me in any language. This interview we're doing right now will be immediately uploaded into our agent after for our for our and most of the listeners now use the agent to to ask questions to the podcast. Hey, what's been shared so far? What were some of the key takeaways from this episode? Right? And then it will say, Oh, by the way, internally, this is some of the policies that you have around this, this or here's some learning content, because we've already connected it to your systems. So that's when it starts to get really interesting, as well as you have sort of the practitioner insights. You get the external data and research. You get your internal documents and resources. And we also have various thought leaders that add content every week. And now what would normally take you months or weeks to gather. You can just get that all in one you know area as well. So it's, it's an you are, right? It's an amazing time to be in this space, right?
Kristy Sundjaja 32:56
And then the question is, besides data gathering, data analysis, right? That's, again, the minimum, or the basic level of AI, yeah, what's next, right? How proactive can it be, taking actions, right? Predictive can it be right? And how insightful can it be is, what do you use with all this informations? I think is the most important questions to answer. Yeah, and that's exactly is out there in digesting the data, like THINK, THINK faster than a human being can, looking through all your sound files or data files and generating those insights. Yeah, I shouldn't
Chris Rainey 33:38
really play with it. Yeah, I'll say, I'll send you a link. Yeah, the next one, the next evolution. We're seeing everyone do this, so we're going deep on this for everyone listening right now. But here we are. Is the ability to take actions, right? So that's the agentic, which we're moving to now, and also the BI directionality. So our agent, unlike chat GBT, it won't just throw you all the information. It will ask questions back. We'll have a conversation. So it helps to lead you to the specific answer. Because if you just say, you know, how do I lead remote teams? And it just throws all this information. It doesn't it lacks context, so it doesn't know who you are, your culture, your organization, your values, any of that stuff, right? What's your remote work? How do you work? Is it a hybrid? Is it all in office? So we feed that all up front for your agent. So we create a personal agent for each company we work with, so it know, it knows who you are, it knows your team, where you're based, all that. So when you're asking a question, it has context, and that's what chat TV doesn't have. It doesn't know what. It doesn't have any of that context. So that's kind of one part. And then the second part is automating all of those tasks that you and the team do every day so you can focus on strategic work and having meaningful conversations. So you know, one of our one of our partners, I can't say the name, but we removed 700 tickets per month that their HR team was getting. Thing, and it was really basic stuff, and they already had an agent. They had chat GBC enterprise solution, and it was still saying, and we both laughed about it kind of ironically, that when we asked the question, it said, go talk to HR as literally. And she was like, I'm embarrassed to even show you this, Chris. And she was like, I'm going to screenshot this and send this to my my tech, my IT team, as I was like, this is the whole point. We have this. So it doesn't do this. But the problem was, is the agent didn't understand the context. So if that person said, I'm hiring a person in this country, you know, or I'm letting go of someone in this specific country, what is the labor law, etc, it doesn't have that. Whereas we've partnered with companies that we've integrated that data so in real time it updates in our in our application. So wherever that person is in the world, they have real time data on to make the right decision, if that makes sense as well. So that's kind of where we're moving to. It's not just a smart query or Smart Lookup. It's more moving to removing all of that administrative burden. And also for the employees, they get the answer that they need. You know quickly, and it's in teams. We actually integrate it into teams, so it's in the flow of work. It's not like another tool, if that makes sense that you want to add anyways. So that's kind of like our vision of how we brought that to life. And my two co founders, one's the former Situ of Walmart, and the other is the former theater of IBM and Boeing. So we've got a great team that live and breathed it for 20 years. Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of, it's an it's really an interesting one, how are you preparing your team in terms of their Up skill and re skilling themselves, given the pace of change? Yeah,
Kristy Sundjaja 36:51
both internal and external, training, right? Development Programs lately have been invited to a lot more seminar conferences, like learning from other companies, I feel like whatever in stock in terms of training, because of how quickly the technology is moving, probably already out of date, right? So that's why I enjoy talking to someone like you or other ch arrows, right? And what exactly are you guys doing? And I think it's not just the CHRO I learned, I mean, for us, but as you mentioned, we have the advantage of working with our R and D team, our customer facing team, right? Like they are ahead of our learning curve in terms of how to use AI technology. So we also pull in our internal star player and say, okay, teach us what you know already, and how can we apply to how we do things. So, yeah, I think it's an ongoing learning process. I don't think we are perfect, but we are slowly, gradually getting everybody up to speed. Have
Chris Rainey 37:56
you experienced one of the things that feedback I've got from Citro is they're experiencing a little bit of fear right now in their teams, that when they're bringing in AI, there's this sort of this, am I being replaced if I learn to do, you know? You know, like recruiting is a perfect example of a space where there's a lot of disruption, where you had a team sifting through CVS before, you now have a technology that can do it instantly, to be able to do that, right? But what we know is that that's now freeing them up to have meaningful conversations with candidates, right? And again, more value as strategic work. And it's not necessarily you ask our teams gonna downsize, inevitably, a little. Of course, anyone saying that that's not gonna happen, you know that's not, that's not true, but it's we're getting, I'm seeing many companies get HR teams and their leaders are telling me, I'm getting a lot of pushback, Chris, when I'm trying to, when I'm trying to introduce some of these tools. Have you seen any of that, or experienced that? I
Kristy Sundjaja 38:55
I have not. I mean, I'm just trying to think, like, have we have that? I would say to my team who's listening, we're not downsizing, but I would say we're going to ask for more scale, right? So if you're not spending time screening the CV, which we still are, I think it's a combinations like we don't think AI can completely take over that can let me know. I think on the flip side, though, I'm sure you've read like candidates are used also using AI,
Chris Rainey 39:25
apply to a million jobs
Kristy Sundjaja 39:33
on that side and see how quickly like each other. Yeah, right. So, so we do need AI to counter the external AI, and then distill it to the most meaningful set of work that the internal team can do. And I think the team is actually very excited, right? Because now they can actually do the interviews, they can train the managers, they can analyze the data. It's like, okay, this questions really work or testing this attribute. It's really helped to to generate great results, because we also trying to tie hiring data to performance data to development data, right? So I would say I'm very happy and fortunate that our team is more excited about these possibilities versus fearing of losing their jobs. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 40:19
no, I love that. It's not, it's a natural progression. It's like, it's not that you're going to be replaced, but you're, there's going to be someone out there that's doing what you're doing with AI as well. So you kind of want to get onboard now, yeah, with that, but I love that example. It's interesting, right? Same thing, like, so someone recently to say, Chris, we're seeing now, like, the same person apply for like, 20 jobs in our company, because they, because they're using AI just to apply across the board, instantly to be able to do this as causing like chaos, they got like, you know, like 10x the amount of CVS that they were getting before. So you they have to use technology at this point.
Kristy Sundjaja 41:05
TV looks different. They tweak it. Like the AI was able to is not just, you know, distributing click, like 10 to 1000 click to submit a job as they actually tweak their resume. Yeah, right. They amble, I don't know, embellish it friendly. So yeah, I mean, we do need technology to fight technology sometimes.
Chris Rainey 41:26
Yeah, I even played around with one of my friends was getting a new job, and I basically SEO optimized his CV so it would appear at the top. So we don't know if I should be saying this on the podcast, but you know, was using basic AI to ask questions and say, Hey, how do we make sure that this appears at the top in these softwares which will screen this? And so it was really gaming it to say, like, all the different keywords and the different things I needed to mention to ensure that it was one that surfaced. And it was like, it did it, and it was very easy. And I was like, oh my god, this is crazy, like that. I don't know yet. I don't know. He's getting a lot, he's getting a lot of replies. So that was the main first the first goal was the first. First goal right? Was, Is he getting the calls right? And the answer is yes. So that clearly worked. So it's up to him now to get to do, to do the rest as well. I know we're kind of near time, but, like we covered so much, and I want to know that as we look forward to 2025 What are you most excited about,
Kristy Sundjaja 42:37
personally or professional,
Chris Rainey 42:38
both? Let's say both. Let's, let's make this personal and professional.
Kristy Sundjaja 42:44
I mean, I think professionally, we have some very ambitious goal to grow the company right, to continue to transform the company to be the must buy for performance advertisers, right? So we really want to be able to tell advertisers, if you want to drive through in performance, come to Taboola, we are your best partners. We have the best technology and people to help you. So it is a very ambitious goal. So I'm very much looking forward to that. And on a personal side, that's a good question. I mean, usually I do this on, like New Year's Eve, I would hope that next year's I will continue to focus on both my work, my family and my health. And you know, I think as we continue to run a bigger and bigger organizations, right and given all the external, internal challenges, is I need to continue to ground myself, to continue to handle the scale that I want to handle. So I'm very excited about, you know, continue to support myself in that growth as well. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 43:50
I love that message, by the way. I'm glad I asked you that question. I know you wasn't expecting it as well, but it's so important in order for us to be the best version of ourselves for everyone else, whether it's our family, whether it's our colleagues, our friends, we have to start with ourselves.
Kristy Sundjaja 44:04
Yeah, right. Put on our oxygen mask before we can see Yeah.
Chris Rainey 44:08
And unfortunately, HR leaders are some of the biggest culprits in my experience, of not, of not, of not doing that for themselves. And it is tough, right? You know, who does HR go to when they're when they have a challenge? Right? It's sometimes pretty lonely, so I think that's a great message to leave for those leaders listening, or those leaders that are going to be sitting in a seat one day. You have to take care of yourself. This is not an easy job. And you know, you have to know when you're when you're sprinting and when you're not, and prepare yourself and create boundaries and systems around that to be successful. I've personally been there and had anxiety attacks and struggles with my mental health, and I thought I was doing it all for everyone else, but I was like, actually, I need to take care of Chris first, and then I can be the best version for everyone else and for the family and be present as a dad for. Example as well. So I think that's a great way to end the episode. I appreciate you coming on. I feel like all of the CH rose are going to call you now for advice about AI. Help Help me. Please. Christy, help me.
Kristy Sundjaja 45:15
Help me. So and So who's calling me? Do you have a better idea? Always Learning love all the innovation that this technology can bring to us. Have fun with it. I I'm I'm sure that it will be a fun year for every one of
Chris Rainey 45:29
us. Amazing. Well, listen, I wish you all the best. Until next week. Thank you so much for coming on the
Kristy Sundjaja 45:34
show. Thank you. Bye. Ai,
Unknown Speaker 45:37
that was great.
More from the HR Leaders Podcast
Kristy Sundjaja, Chief People Officer at Taboola.