Hear our first impressions of ChatGPT 4o, as Fred, Josh, and Eric share our initial experience of the latest GPT evolution. We unravel the latest features of GPT-4o, from its voice interaction that's set to redefine customer service to its nuanced emotional intelligence that picks up on mood through facial recognition and voice inflection. But we don't stop at the features; we delve into the serious business of AI incident protocols, comparing them to bank robbery responses—because with great power comes great responsibility, especially in financial institutions.

We reflect on Apple's announcement they are embedding Chat GPT on the iPhone - Goodbye Siri? And we also we ponder the implications for tech juggernauts like Amazon and Google. Their strategic moves—or lack thereof—could shuffle the competitive deck in the voice interaction landscape.

Finally, as we eagerly gear up for the Financial Brand Forum, we share some of the sessions we are most looking forward to: SEO in banking, customer experience strategies, and the ethical maze of AI in financial services.

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(06:52 - 08:11) Impressions of GPT 4o Conversational Model

(22:09 - 23:23) Subscription Model for Language Models

(27:02 - 28:23) Google Ad Placement

(38:11 - 39:22) Effective Hiring Manager Interview Techniques

(42:23 - 43:25) Understanding the Honest Interviewee

(46:45 - 48:14) Excitement for Financial Brand Forum

(53:52 - 56:02) CX and AI Sessions

(59:18 - 59:40) What does AI have to do with your Robbery Incident Response Protocol?

00:03 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

and that's the type of stuff that, as you're talking with FIs, they're going to want to know that you've thought through both sides of the equation, because there are a lot of people that have got rose colored glasses on that. Just think AI is going to be the solution and and I think you and I we talk about a lot of the cool stuff, but we also are very realistic in the sense that we know that things can go sideways very quickly and you got to be prepared for that. Just like I liken it to the robbery procedures incident protocol. What happens if, god forbid, somebody comes into a bank and robs you? You've got detailed procedures and protocols that you follow to recover from that incident. And this is just that at a different magnitude. Who talks to media? How do you respond? What sorts of documentation, all of those things.

01:08 - Fred Cadena (Host)

Hello listeners and welcome to Banking on Disruption. I'm Fred Cadena. This week, we're doing things a little differently, with a Quick Takes Only episode. We're a few days away from Financial Brand Forum, so Eric and I wanted to take a few moments to share what sessions we're most looking forward to. We also all tuned into the ChatGPT 4o release announcement this week and we're ready with our first impressions of the tool.

01:33

While you're listening to this podcast, why not take a moment to follow us on LinkedIn at the Banking on Disruption podcast, and on Instagram at at Banking on Disruption? Now sit back and strap in, because our show is coming to you right now. All right, we're back. I am super excited. We've got a bit of an abbreviated episode this week, but with financial brand coming up next week and with GPT 4o released today, we thought we had enough to talk about just with a quick take segment this episode. So I've got Josh and Eric with me and I think we'll kick it off with the 4.0 announce. I know we all watch the 4o video. I have not had a chance to be hands-on with it yet, but I know you guys have. So, Eric, you want to kick it off. What do you think about 4o so far?

02:27 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

Well, I will tell you, the video is pretty impressive. For those of you that didn't see it, go out to chadgptcom and you can get a link that goes to YouTube. You can watch the full live stream. It was about 28 minutes. Their chief technology officer and a couple other engineers came out and demonstrated the new 4.0, which stands for Omni, which is more of an enhanced instantaneous conversational model that gives you the ability to have more of a natural conversation without a delay. You can interrupt the model. It has, uh, some pretty powerful per the demo, pretty powerful vision and facial recognition capabilities. They showed it solving an algebraic equation 3x plus 1 equals 4. Solve for x. What does that mean?

03:23

and so, yeah, with the camera, with the camera, yeah, pointing the camera at a piece of paper where he was like writing the equation and the cool part about teaching him how to how to do math. He didn't want to solve the problem, he just said talk me through how I go about solving for x and and was it right?

03:44 - Fred Cadena (Host)

And I remember one of the big downfalls GPT-3 and 4, was especially around math it just wasn't right.

03:55 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

It wasn't right. Yeah, it said you know, first thing you need to do is subtract it, get things equaled out on both sides of the equal sign. And he said I'm going to subtract one from both sides. And she said yep. And then gave him a hint about how to get the X off the three. And he said subtraction, nope, the opposite of multiplication. And kind of walked through and then, after it was done, congratulated him for getting the right answer and even wrote on a piece of paper I heart chat GPT and said what am I looking at now? And the camera recognized the heart as the love symbol and said, oh, you love me. And got all emotional. And now we've done some pre-testing here on the quick take show and didn't exactly go exactly the way that it went when they were recording on youtube today. So at some point we can fire it up. But I saw the gpt 4.0 got dropped into my chat gpt app so we can maybe take it for a live test spin, but um but you do have to.

05:02 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

I'm just going to jump in eric real quick. So you it, whatever you're on on your chat, gpt app, whichever mode or model, that's what it's going to be. So you'll have to go to it and select gpt 4.0 for it to actually work on your phone. So don't just think it's there and now it's, it's active, yep, yep.

05:23 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

So if you've got that and I believe, don't quote, think it's there and now it's active. Yep. So if you've got that and I believe, don't quote me but I believe the 4.0 is restricted to the paid model. I don't know if 4.0 is going to roll out. If you got the free version, I don't have the free version so I can't tell you if it's there or not. But I pay the 20 bucks a month for Chad GPT. So when you go in to start a conversation, if you have access to GPT-4, you should be able to click on the dropdown that gives you the ability to downgrade to 3.5, or you should see GPT-4-0. And that's the little O, it's not-.

05:57 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

I think it is free, eric, it is free, it's just you're limited.

06:00 - Fred Cadena (Host)

You're going to be limited on how many searches you can do per hour, like that sort of yeah, so it's throttled and I I did check, so I had it in mine without the little sparkly icon and I went to the app store and it had a further update. So I did the further update and now I have it with the sparkly icon next to it. So I wonder if the test I was doing earlier, before I actually updated the app, was really giving me 4.0 or it was just one of the selections.

06:35 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

Yep, could be, could be. So if we want to take it for a spin, we can go ahead and we can do that. Cool. So let's go ahead and I'm going to select GPT-4-0 from my available options and let's just have a conversation. Hey GPT, how are you doing this evening? Hey, I'm doing. Great Thanks for asking. Anything exciting happening? Well, I'm recording a podcast right now and we're pretty excited about GPT-4.0 being available on my phone. Can you tell me a little bit about this new model? That sounds awesome. Gpt-4.0 is pretty cool.

07:13

It's the latest iteration of Now I'm going to try to interrupt you and it's designed to be even more accurate, conversational and context-aware than the previous versions.

07:22 - GPT 4o (Guest)

Plus, having it on your phone means you can access its capabilities on the go, which is super convenient. Anything specific you wanna know about it?

07:32 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

So in the demo, one of the things they talked about was much more of a natural language progression. The instantaneous nature that we saw in the demo wasn't there. There was a lag we're not slowing anything down or speeding anything up here and when the model was talking to them in the demo, when they revealed it earlier today, they were able to just talk and it recognized that there was somebody else talking and it paused and allowed for you to interrupt and not require that it has to finish, and there was no click or touch or tap in order to shut it up, to get it to stop talking and to accept an interruption.

08:12 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

So hey Eric, I'll just share one thing that I recall from the video, and it's that the person who is doing the actual demo plugged it in and he said he plugged his phone in.

08:23

And I think he plugged his phone into the computer or maybe even directly into the wi-fi, because he said I'm plugging it in to make sure that, like whatever, the bandwidth is super stable, or or it's fast, solid internet connection yeah so, and I know that there's a desktop version of this now, which is great, but it's, it's very possible that the desktop version, or your phone, if it is somehow more directly connected to a stable and fast wi-fi, may perform the same as the demo yeah, it's true it could be lagged on the connectivity. Well, you live in the middle of nowhere. I've got In the center of that town and it's yeah, it's possible, man.

09:11 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

I'll own that. I'm good with that.

09:16 - Fred Cadena (Host)

So what is the feature, what is the the the part of GPT for, oh, that you are both the most excited about?

09:26 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

I can tell you real quick they had a. It's the voice. It's the way the voice talks back and the way you can make requests of how the voice should communicate are you going to tell me a bedtime story? Yeah, exactly right. So you know he's like okay, my friend bob, you know, has trouble sleeping. I want you to make him a bedtime story about whatever it was, like like a robot and yeah something I don't know something like that.

09:56

and then he kept saying you know, I want, you know, I want you to make it dramatic. And so she changes her voice to more drama and he's like, no, he actually said maximal drama. I thought maximum drama would have been better. Small complaint about the production of the video, but in short. And then he said, now do it in a robot voice, right, and it did. So you can really, with your voice, manipulate the voice style that you're engaging with, and it does sound. It kind of feels like like it's just got a tiny bit of snark to it, not really, yeah, but it kind of reminds if you've ever seen uh, uh, not psych. What is suits deborah I, what was her name, deborah? And she had like a basically like the first you know voice thing. It was. All her advice is a little bit snarky, it's a little bit of that, but you can tune it up and I think that's really cool yeah, I also thought the camera facial recognition.

10:57 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

We talked on the Hume platform here a couple of episodes ago, where the camera can actually analyze your facial expression or the inflection in your voice to tell what your mood is and that capability seemed like it was didn't give you all the visual feedback that the humai platform did, but he smiled into it and after he corrected it to say that he wasn't the actual table that she was looking at in the prior image, which I thought was actually kind of funny. He said I'm not a table and she goes oh good, that explains things better. Thank you very much. So she's got a little bit of a sense of humor too, but she did facial recognition and was able to see who he was, and there's some demos on the open AI site where somebody was on camera and it recognized.

11:48

Okay, you know you are in a studio with lights and it looks like there's tripods and you're wearing a microphone. Are you getting ready to record a video? Because it was looking for cues of the individual that was talking to it, and where my brain goes is thinking about customer service agents, and we talked about Hume being able to tell when somebody's getting a little irritated and pissed off. Maybe it's time to escalate that person to a real human being within the organization. This really gave me the sense that this platform is going to be able to tell you know those sorts of things, whether it's through a video call like through an ITM, and you've just got it sitting there in the background watching. So you're having it detect facial expressions and feed cues into the ear of the agent that might not be picking up on things.

12:38 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

Oh yeah, I want my customer service to sound like Spicoli right.

12:42 - Fred Cadena (Host)

Like if.

12:43 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

I call and. I've got a problem and I'm like hey you know, whatever my headphones aren't syncing, they're like dude, that's a major bummer man. That's what I want to hear. I'll hang them and walk through help desk with them and get it done.

13:00 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

Rather than asking it to talk like a robot, maybe you could say talk like Spicoli and see whether or not it you know, I think I'd go for Snoop Dogg myself.

13:12 - Fred Cadena (Host)

I'll tell you what. And this is going to sound lame compared to those other features. So I'll tell you what. And this is going to sound lame compared to those other features, but it's one of the things that's driven me to use perplexity as often as I have no-transcript. I think I've said before I'm not a big proponent or user of a lot of the voice interaction stuff. Most of the time I'm either on a call with somebody or I'm listening to some other content. I would much rather just type something into GPT and get the result. I usually find, like you know, interacting in audio to be distracting to my other workflow.

14:07 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

Yeah, I'm impatient with it because there is lag and it's like there is lag and you can read so much faster, excuse me, so much faster than you, than you listen, right, Yep agree.

14:19 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

Well, what was also interesting is some of the other podcasts and news articles that I have read talked about the fact that Chad GPT beat Google, which is going to go live tomorrow, for their big developer event, where they're allegedly going to be releasing a multimodal voice assistant. We'll be curious to see whether it stands up to what GPT-4.0 just dropped.

14:44 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

Anything's better than Alexa dude Anything Like for real.

14:50 - Fred Cadena (Host)

I mean Alexa has not had like a major refresh. Well, and Siri is going to be, I'm assuming, GPT-4.0. I mean there was just that announcement last week that Apple signed an agreement with OpenAI to basically have them back-end their voice assistant features. Interesting, because you guys probably remember, Apple bought Siri from a third party that developed it as well. So Apple's really not playing at all in the AI development game. They're more playing in the let's go find what we think is best in class and plug it in game. But I'm the most surprised that Amazon hasn't done something, especially considering how much they've stood up in the AWS side. You know infrastructure for companies to go stand up and do models. Alexa is not any better than it was two years ago. Like there's just nothing, or three, there's no there, there, yeah.

15:51 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

I would agree, other than accidentally, the voice recognition is so bad, like just the voice recognition it can't understand what you're saying, like you just can't yeah yeah, I'd be interested.

16:03 - Fred Cadena (Host)

I don't, I don't know. I don't know if you guys know or not. Not. I'm going to try to tune into to go some of google's developer day tomorrow, but you know there are. There is also the google voice assistant, which I do not have. I I have used, but I I wonder if this is being released into google. Google voice assistant, which I do not have, I have used, but I wonder if this is being released into Google's voice assistant. You know if it's, you know, the, the new, the new Google release is going to be put in there in their um, in their devices, or if it's something they're holding out separately.

16:31 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

I keep rooting for Google. We're a Google workplace, workplace. I've got the gemini. I bought the subscription. I want it to give me an ecosystem. That's going to be amazing. But, man, it's like rooting for the underdog. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over again come on, dude, have you, have you paid for the, the google?

16:52 - Fred Cadena (Host)

I forget what the, what the google workspace ai piece is called. I think it's $20 a user a month. Yep, are you using it? What are your results so far?

17:04 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

I have it and it's been very underwhelming. It's not conspicuous enough for me to think about it when I need it, and when I do need it it generates information for me, but it's not on brand, it doesn't really sound like me and I can't figure out how, within the platform, to train it to have any sort of an Eric-like personality. And I might need to just lock myself inside for a couple of days and nerd out and try to figure that out, but I'm not finding it.

17:36 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

Eric, you're starting with a principle that you can be replicated, and I just don't think that's the case.

17:44 - Fred Cadena (Host)

Aw, I don't know If it can happen to Reid Hoffman, it can happen to Eric let's all just hope it happens to Spicoli, right?

17:55

I don't know you would think Google would be in the driver's seat, especially, like you said, you're a Google workspace user for your business. How many thousands of emails that you've written, how many documents are sitting in Google Drive that you've authored Like it should be fairly straightforward for Google to put that in a model you know and train it and be able to be a little bit more on brand and be a little bit more Eric. Yeah, kind of a both end.

18:22 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

Yep, I don't want it to replace me, but when I lean on it I want it to sound like me, so I don't have to re-edit everything that it creates.

18:30 - Fred Cadena (Host)

I want it to replace you. It'll be a lot easier to schedule it than you.

18:33 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

Yeah, probably.

18:36 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

I will give you that. Do you guys agree that when companies don't do a lot of improvements, despite what the competition is doing, that they're either losing or they're just kind of going underground and working on the next thing? Like I see this in F1 all the time Like the team comes out and they know this year is going to suck. They're not expecting many wins or points or anything like that, because all of their money and all of their time is going to be dedicated towards making sure that they've got the development right on the next model. Do you think that's the case in some of these big tech companies?

19:15 - Fred Cadena (Host)

I think it's sometimes the case. I think, in Google's case specifically, they're fighting a war on a bunch of fronts, right? Not only do they not have, I'll say to date, I'll go out on the limb and say to date, and tomorrow is their developer conference, so I may be proved wrong they don't really have a competitive GPT, you know, publicly available. You know GPT chat interface. You know voice assistant or text assistant not one that's competitive. And at the same time, they're losing more and more what would traditionally be search revenue, or at least you know to. You know these platforms.

19:57 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

I haven't run a Google search in weeks since getting to what do you call it? Perplexity.

20:06 - Fred Cadena (Host)

Perplexity.

20:07 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

Yeah.

20:07 - Fred Cadena (Host)

And you know, I mean they're not going to lose the whole market but, like, every point that they lose of search traffic is tens of millions of dollars in revenue and more than that in market cap, and I think it's one of those things of like fighting a battle on too many fronts. So I think they are probably developing stuff that's not ready for prime time. I think they're going underground. I think they're probably trying to figure out how to come out with the next thing that's going to blow people away. At the same time, I think they're digging a hole. I think they're fighting from already being as far behind as they are I never want to say never, especially a company of their size and their resources but it's not looking good.

20:52 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

But you need them. I mean, I don't know if you need them, need them, but you basically need them. I mean, it's an ecosystem. Perplexity doesn't work without Google.

21:01 - Fred Cadena (Host)

Yep, yeah, I mean perplexity would be significantly more difficult to run without the indexing behind on Google and I don't know honestly how or if there's a revenue model around that, because Google doesn't. Years and years ago they entertained subscription option. I don't even think they have a commercial API-based subscription option. I don't even think they have a commercial like API based subscription option. I think the only way they make money on search is through ads, and perplexity doesn't view ads. They don't serve ads, so that that might be a, that might be an option. But you know, at the end of the day, if, if it's no longer economically viable to index, somebody is going to have to step into that role with more of a paid subscription model, because if these chatbots, if these large language models are going to go out and access real-time information, they still need access to some kind of real-time index search to go find that information.

22:07 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

Agreed. I had heard Perplexity was investigating I don't know if they reversed that or not, but Perplexity was investigating some sort of an ad-based option For people that are using the Pro. I believe it was going to be excluded from that. So those of us that are anxiously awaiting that damn little orange rabbit device, which probably now is even less of a value prop now that 4.0 is out there. So we'll see how that goes, but they were talking on the brick that you've already paid for.

22:42

Yeah but like I said before I I bought perplexity pro for a year and they gave me a Rabbit for free. I just paid Rabbit for it. So that's how I'm justifying it there you go.

22:56 - Fred Cadena (Host)

That is true. I do wish at some point whether it was Google. There were two or three other search engines at the time that explored subscription-based pricing model. I would support it in the same way. And I'm the guy sitting here paying for three large language models. I'm still paying for OpenAI, chatgpt and Perplexity and Anthropic Claw at the same time. I just think that one of the reasons why, for me, google's frustrating and I've heard it from a lot of other people is there's too much bias in the search results, not for conspiratorial or political or whatever reasons, but just based on serving me, things that I think I'm going to click on to generate ad revenue. Know and uh, I I would much rather pay to get like truly pristine, best results than you know. Have it for free and have the first five or six things.

23:59 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

24:42

Right, and it's specifically one of the greater causes for allegedly for the political division in the country is because people are, you know, oh, this person doesn't like thing, you know, right wing things, and so we're not going to give them any news that supports that point of view. We're going to just give them the things that it's going to click on and all the clickbait associated with whatever these articles are that we know he'll spend more time reading and vice versa. It's both sides of the aisle. So it's a complex, ethical significantly ethical question, because it's shaping politics and it's shaping the way people feel about one another and feel about their community too. So, yeah, this is probably a whole other episode, but it's a pretty interesting idea what you're talking about getting clean results for a fee I'd pay.

25:39 - Fred Cadena (Host)

And here's the thing I would be fine with some type of a drop-down on my Google search homepage or my we'll call it pristine search page. That said, I want to see results that are, you know, that support my preferences, right? Maybe they know that I prefer, you know, this political side, or maybe they know that I prefer, you know, these sports teams or what have you. So when I do a search, fine, I want it with my preferences, and then I can click a thing and say, oh no, I just want the pristine results. But at least then I'm like driving it and I know that it's truly based on my preferences and not the inferred, you know, result of what the algorithm thinks I'm most likely to click on from an ad perspective.

26:27

And that's, and that's the part that that really, you know, kind of I don't want to say, you know, bothers me, I get it, it's a great, it's a great business model. You know, I'd be very happy if I had come up with it, but, um, you know, I just I just don't think it's the best possible user experience and and I wish there was a viable alternative. And I'm kind of hoping and this is, I guess you know to, in a roundabout way that I said it explicitly. I would be a little disappointed if perplexity started going down an ad supported model, because that's that's the end result, like we played that game before yeah we know where that, we know where that ends up I got.

27:02 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

I got a quick funny story for you. Clicked on some news, some news article man beheaded with axe. Sorry, gruesome story, but it was whatever some news story. Right next to it was a Google ad for an axe.

27:17 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

Contextually sensitive.

27:20 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

I thought now that is crazy. Okay, it's not their fault. At the time I was way into bushcraft and I'd been hunting for a small forest axe, so that's what it was. But I did screenshot it.

27:33 - Fred Cadena (Host)

It's pretty damn funny, except for the you, you, you would think it would be smart enough not to put that ad next to that article.

27:41 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

Yeah, exactly One would think. One would think, but not so.

27:47 - Fred Cadena (Host)

So, josh, now that you've got the floor, I know one of the other topics we want to talk about today was just some of the I'll say, energy, some of the advice you have around employers, and I know you've got some content planned for your show around it next week, but I would love it if you kind of previewed it here and I'm a big fan of the overall message and, I think, the rest of the audience. We've got a lot of people here in hiring, you know, in a position to make hiring decisions, and I think it would be great for all of them to hear as well.

28:21 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

Yeah, thanks for the time. Thanks for the time, fred. So something interesting happened. I think it was last Thursday. I just signed a new client and we so, for those who don't know, I run a staffing firm called. You can check it out, it's the salesforcerecruitercom. We just specialize in Salesforce pros and ancillary software to that support Salesforce. So I spent you know I don't know 10 days negotiating with this client, conceded in a couple areas. I didn't really want to, but I did. Thought it'd be an okay client, got the signatures and was crystal clear about our methodology and our results from the beginning, and the intermediary, the woman in HR, said that the hiring manager was going away for 10, 15 days on business, just doing business, and would not be available to meet to take in the job order, which they said was absolutely urgent. Now we tend not to submit candidates if we haven't talked to the hiring manager, because why would we do that? All we're going to do is-.

29:28 - Fred Cadena (Host)

How are you going to know if they're the right candidate if you don't know what they?

29:30 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

want.

29:31

It's silly. It's like, well, you know, talk to Steve. It's like, well, if they're not reporting to that person, if I can't talk about your, what your behavior is like, if I can't discuss what your expectations are, how you manage people, I'm not going to ask the HR person that you interact with five minutes every other week what you're like Like I need to ask you right? So I said, look, you know I get that she's traveling, but you know everyone's got a laptop, everyone's got a phone. Right, it's 15 minutes. Here's my cell phone.

30:03

She called me late at night. I don't care, but I do need to take the job order. I have to talk directly with the hiring manager. The next day we get a message that they no longer want to work with us. So, okay, fair enough, I'm pushy, but I'm pushy because it works. I'm pushy because the methodology works and we've got some stats that we really love no one getting fired in the last five years that we've placed on full-time jobs like that's not insignificant.

30:28

So what I wanted, the message I wanted to share to every hiring manager out there is is this you will only grow in your own career, in your own self-satisfaction, your fulfillment of the work that you do as much as the team that you lead is there to support that. The better the team, the more you'll grow right, and that can include massive financial gain for you. It can include a better life balance. It can include more prestigious companies to work for, that really look after you, that take care of you. But, more importantly, more than anything, you'll produce better work and you'll have, more importantly more than anything, you'll produce better work and you'll have a lot more fun doing it right, because that's the end of the day, these are the folks that you're working directly with. Spare half an hour to talk to your recruiter, whether they're internal talent acquisition and they're the ones that are finding the job, whether it's your underling who's tasked with it. Really spend time in detail to give a crystal clear understanding of expectations, the things that matter, all the things that someone wrote on the job description that don't matter and you know you put it on there. Get rid of that stuff, by the way. Or if it's an outside recruiter like me, no matter who the person is that's doing the actual communication with the candidates has to have time with you and without that, you are literally going from about a 90% chance of success over the next 18 months that this person will still be there to about a 48% chance of success.

32:07

Now there's a lot of other things that you need to do. To hire well, you need to know how to interview. That doesn't mean knowing what questions to ask. It also means knowing how to interpret the responses and dive deeper on each subject, right? There's so much to this.

32:20

To make a good decision, you have to have the right tempo so you don't lose great candidates because you're too slow with your process. Now, if they're passive candidates, that's great. They got all the time in the world but not really, because once they get a whiff of the job that you reached out to them for, they're going to start sniffing around all the other jobs because they're a top candidate and we know this already, at least a little bit because they have a job right. So anyway, fred, that's basically my message, right? Which is, when you hire vendors, when you hire experts and they know what's best, if you've selected the correct vendor, then you just do what the vendor says, like literally. I mean, you're an SI partner, fred. What happens to clients when they don't take your advice? What happens to them?

33:04 - Fred Cadena (Host)

It costs them time and money every single time. And I'll say this, and you and Josh, you and I have talked about this offline a number of times, but sometimes, being in the provider seat, you're better off just firing the client, right? If you've got a client and you know the best practice, you know what works, you've sat down, you've explained it to them and they want to go off and do something completely different. Maybe in some cases you're like, okay, that's interesting, it's not the best practice, but I'm willing to try something different. Let's try that out. And sometimes, if you know like that's not going to work, you have to just tell them that's not going to work. And you know I'm not going to tell you how to run your business, but I'm not going to be a part of this because I know this is not going to be successful and you're just going to end up paying me a lot of money and you're going to end up wasting a lot of your time and I already know how this movie ends.

33:59 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

Yeah, they're going to be unhappy, and unhappy customers tell 10 times the people that happy customers tell.

34:07 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

Most of them are unhappy. Oh, I would never use them.

34:10 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

Well, 10 times the people that happy customers tell. Right, Everybody knows that, oh, I would never use them. Blah, blah, blah happened it's like but don't you remember when you took that spanner and stuck it in the works and stopped all progress? Do you remember that thing when you were? Advised with love for your own benefit and you didn't heed it. Well, sorry, yeah, yeah.

34:27 - Fred Cadena (Host)

And I don't say this, but the times that I've had those kinds of difficult conversation with clients and again you do it tactfully, you do it at the right level, nine times out of 10, they've appreciated. They said you know, I appreciate that. You told me that this is the result and I understand where you're coming from. And most of the time they're like yeah, we hired you because you know and you've done this before. Yeah.

34:51

And it's the one in ten where you know they're convinced they've got the right answer and in those cases they're probably not the right fit to work with me, and it sounds like the same thing with you.

35:03 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

It is, and I think it's. A thing Like this is not a slight on middle management at all, but if you've been in middle management for a very long time and you have not elevated your career to the next level that you desire, that you hope for, that you work hard for and you still don't get there, it might not be you. It might just be your hiring practices. It really might be, Because when you can build a team that no longer needs you, they find another place for you to go do it all over again and they tend to give you more money. That's how it works. This is not a mystery. This is carved in stone. This is how it works.

35:44 - Fred Cadena (Host)

I think that's fantastic advice. I'll ask you one thing. You tell me You're the expert I'm hiring and I am definitely not. But one of the things that I've done in the last several years and usually I'm working with internal recruiters but after talking to them about the role and everything that I am looking for, I'll let them do the screen and they come back with a list of people and then, if I'm the hiring manager, I want to be the next person to talk to them. And it really is. That first conversation is usually half an hour, 45 minutes, and it's it's 90, like I'll ask them a question, and the question I'll ask them is usually a variant of what was it about this particular role that got you excited about wanting to apply, you know, to this role at this company? And I'll let them answer and then I'll say look, I want you to have this as your time.

36:39

Job descriptions can be weird. You know. What questions do you have? What do you? What do you? What are your questions about the role? Like, does this sound like it's a thing for you? What are your questions about the role? Does this sound like it's a thing for you?

36:49

And a lot of times I think I can train all kinds of skill and I'm not saying I'm going to hire completely unskilled people, but it's hard to train fit. It's hard to train desire. I can't make somebody want to do this job. They can be perfect as far as the skills line up, but if the job is not something that excites them, if the job is not something that they're really bought in on, I can't train that. I can't bring somebody along to that and I have found at least you know, taking that tact. You know I'll have some people bow out, but the people that stay in usually feel much more aligned and much more kind of bought in on the job early and I know it's worked for me. I don't know if that's something that you recommend or what your thoughts are on it.

37:36 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

Yeah, not for a recruiter, because recruiters are short on time and they really need to be able to like if it is a two-part thing, so you have your screen, so the recruiter's talking to them. Let's just imagine, right, yeah, if it is a two-part thing, so you have your screen, so the recruiter's talking to them. Let's just imagine Recruiters should be able to rapid-fire questions to see how they handle stress, get a sense of their pace and tempo, see if that person matches them. You get to do that. You get to play around a little bit and you should, because you're trying to decipher their personality.

38:04

Can they keep up? Are they closed off? When they're closed off, you develop rapport. Now they open up. Now you get to understand the truth, right? So we have a little bit less time, but it is absolutely 100% a best practice to start, if you're a hiring manager, to start it by saying like hey, tell me about yourself. Or boom, just like, ask me whatever you want. We're going to spend the next 10, 15, 10, 15, 20 minutes. I'm just going to answer all of your questions, because when we're talking, we're not learning anything about the other person, are we?

38:34 - Fred Cadena (Host)

nope no.

38:35 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

So we ask questions to engage that person and then they start talking and that's great because we can lead it. We can drive it, but you never get to understand how they might lead a conversation. But when, when you give them the ball, tell them to pitch, and you say, okay, ask away, you're going to find out very quickly what's most important to them whether they're being cautious with their questions, whether they've done their research or not. You're going to uncover all this stuff and if you just sit there and blab for 25 minutes about the company and you and the job and everything, it's like you'll have learned nothing. Maybe they've learned something, but they've learned that you don't invite questions early in a conversation. They'll definitely learn that right. So I think it's a great method, yeah.

39:21 - Fred Cadena (Host)

Yeah, cool, thank you. The other thing I do I don't know if you recommend this or not is I try to get all the ugly out early, like all the not shiny parts of the job, all the things that they may question, all the I don't know the exact words here, but the dark side, if you will, of the job, all the non-glamorous parts, because they don't want anybody to come in and be surprised, right Like waste their time, waste my time. You know they're not happy, I'm not happy. I want them to know hey, this job is going to require X amount of travel. Or you know, hey, this job you're going to deal with some clients and they may not be the easiest to deal with.

40:02

Or you know, whatever the particular situation is, I want to make sure they know the good, the bad and the ugly right up front, because we both like if you're looking for a job, my opinion it's a lot of work, and if you're already working, it's like having a second job. And on the hiring manager side it's a lot of work too, right, you know, to your point, you ask this hiring manager to be available. You know they still have a job to do. It's like having a second job to really run the hiring manager side of the process as well, and I just want everybody to go in eyes wide open and make sure that they know, and that way at the end nobody's ever surprised.

40:41 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

Yeah, I mean, I think it's absolutely important. Everyone should do that at some point in the interview process. I tend not to lead with it, right? I mean something like travel. Yeah, it's easy to do, but I'll give you an example and we'll use travel as an example. Fred, I hope you understand that there is a component of travel to this job. You're aware of that, I sure am. Okay, Now, did anybody share with you yet what percentage of travel you'll need to be on the road?

41:10 - Fred Cadena (Host)

I think I saw in the job description up to 50%.

41:14 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

Up to 50%. Okay, so you applied knowing that. I did, and how do you feel about travel in general?

41:20 - Fred Cadena (Host)

I'm going to be home 31 hours the rest of this month. I guess I feel pretty good.

41:25 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

Okay. So now, if they don't know what, how much travel is in there, fred? And you say okay. So, like, what level of travel are you comfortable with? They might say 10%, they might say 20%.

41:36

So if you, before they know anything, ask them about bad stuff, like, ask them, like, what are your, what are the three or four things that you'll absolutely will drive you crazy and and never mind this job, any job. Like, what are the things that make you nuts? You know, what are the things that make you want to leave? And they'll, they'll tell you. And now you get to understand whether or not you're you know, you can identify internally if your company is in fact, an organization that exhibits some of those things that they don't like, right.

42:08

So now, if this person isn't working, they're looking for a job. They're going to say, no problem, not a big deal, I don't care, I'll do anything. Right, like they're going to behave very differently than someone who's already got a pretty good job that you're trying to arrest them from. Okay. So you've got to be really aware of one Is this a passive candidate or an active candidate? Are they working or are they not working? Do they need this job or do they not need this job Because that's going to change the honesty and integrity of their answers. It doesn't mean people who aren't working lie in job interviews. It does mean that, statistically, yeah, they lie more than the average person, because almost everybody lies.

42:46 - Fred Cadena (Host)

Right, well, and they're probably lying to themselves, right? They're probably saying, oh, you know, I need this job. We're bad. That's a 50% travel's fine, yeah.

42:54 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

That doesn't even mean nefarious. It's like you got to do what you got to do. I had a, you know, I had a three hour commute, four hour commute back in Australia. I mean, I just said yes, I needed the job. I said yes.

43:13

I did it. It sucked. Eventually we moved and I didn't have the commute anymore. But, um, yeah, what's that? Were you? Were you riding a kangaroo? I wasn't. I drove, then I took a train and then I had about a 15, 20 minute walk, but I saw kangaroos most mornings from the train. Wow. So the idea here is, when you go in and before you describe the job or anything about the company, one, you answer their questions and then, two, you ask them what their ideal role looks like, what their ideal company looks like, what their, what their absolute nightmare situation looks like. And now you know, because if, if you just tell them, they might just agree to be agreeable.

43:49 - Fred Cadena (Host)

Yeah.

43:50 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

You know, more than half the population has an agreeable nature where you got to be careful.

43:54 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

So in that example that you just walked Fred through, rather than telling him 50%, would you be better off asking him what his interpretation of the amount of travel required is for the job and see if he read the description, knows what he's getting into. And if he comes back and says 25% and it was very clear that it was, half of your time will be spent on the road traveling. Is that you know you're? You're kind of using that. I'm not mad at him.

44:26 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

I'm not mad at him if he gets the interview anyway, even knowing that he doesn't want to do 50%, because job descriptions are total BS half the time, like I had one we were running. It was like 40% travel, 45% travel. The company and this is a major player, over 300,000 employees, the company on their own website was posting these jobs saying it's 40, 45% travel, and people did about a week a year in reality. Okay, so not 40%. Yeah, so look, I mean, anyone who's listening to this hopefully also knows what's on their job description and does something about it. That would be the smartest thing above anything else, right? But yeah, these are great points. I think that you do a really good job. You both cited two core things here, right. One is like one transparency about what the actual environment conditions are and responsibilities, tasks, expectations, all of that stuff. And then, of course, the other one is giving them an opportunity to demonstrate how they lead a discussion through their questions about the role.

45:31 - Fred Cadena (Host)

Yeah, and that one to me is always critical. Just being in the line of work that I'm in, it's critically important to have a good you know, discovery conversation framework.

45:41 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

Yeah, yeah, and just get to know each other, you know.

45:45 - Fred Cadena (Host)

Absolutely, yeah, a hundred percent, 100%. Well, josh, that was really helpful. I think that both the hiring managers in our audience, as well as anybody that's in the job market passively or actively, could take a lot from that advice, and I know I took some notes. I'm in the middle of looking at a couple of folks as well, so very helpful.

46:07 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

Good deal, my friend.

46:09 - Fred Cadena (Host)

I want to transition a little bit here. Financial Brand is coming up next week. Yeah, a week from today. It's Monday, may 13th. We're recording Eric, you and I will be in Vegas, and Josh will be jealous.

46:21 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

We're going to get a couple of bald-headed bearded selfies and send them to our buddy Josh while he is missing us in Vegas. So I'm pretty excited about that.

46:32 - Josh Matthews (Co-host)

Yeah, I'm going to miss you guys. I hope you have a wonderful trip. I'm sure it's going to be an excellent trip.

46:38 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

You have hair and you shaved your beard, so you can't come anyway.

46:45 - Fred Cadena (Host)

So this question will just be for you, eric. Well, josh, if you want to look at the agenda and give us your opinion. But, eric, what are you and I'll say session-wise, right, session-wise what are you most excited about, what are you most looking forward to, kind of your top couple, three, four?

47:03 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

what have you? So I can't answer. Cindy Crawford, you can.

47:07 - Fred Cadena (Host)

If that's the top of your list, go right ahead.

47:10 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

Yeah, exactly, my, my wife will be with me. So you know, I I think she she will enjoy that as well. No, I I looked at all of the sessions and I would say probably 30% of them have two little letters the letter A and the letter I associated with it. There are a lot of sessions related to data. I saw one on particularly AI and SEO, which is something that is near and dear to my heart, and I am very excited about sitting in on that.

47:42

Do you want to name it Give a shout out to the presenter You're going to make me go back and actually find it, so hold on one moment please, and I will get right to it. Where is it? Are you looking at it by chance? Because if you are, I will allow you. I don't have the names of the individuals mesmerized quite yet.

48:04 - Fred Cadena (Host)

Got it. I don't know what session you're talking about, so I don't know which one. I don't want to misquote it.

48:12 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

Yeah, so I've got two friends that are going to be there. Well, I'm sure there's a lot more than that, but my good buddy, joe Sullivan from Market Insights, is going to be presenting. He is a fellow co-instructor of mine, the digital banking school, with the Graduate School of Banking. He's doing a session on demographic disruption banking in america, and his session with gsp this year went over very, very well, so I was excited to see that.

48:38

Speaking of google, we have james dean not the rock star from indiana, but the global generation guy yeah, the global generative AI specialist financial services lead at Google, so I'll be curious to see how that goes and what that session is all about. Yeah, I'm trying to find that SEO one. There was one specifically about SEO and marketing and banking and I'm just not putting my finger on it. There is uh will reynolds vp of innovate innovation at seer, interactive, redefining seo in the age of ai roles, goals and metrics for a new world. So pretty excited about that because I think we've got a lot going on in the seo world right now with uh google's s search generative experience. I think a lot of people, now that GPT, chad GPT is available without having an account, are jumping into it, not understanding how to prompt and actually use it as a conversational large language model, and they're doing what they were used to in the world of Google they're typing in search queries and so having large language models perform the proxy functionality and we talked about this with our mutual love of perplexity being able to find information. How does an organization like a financial institution or other position its content to be favorably found by these large language models and present as an opportunity for a footnote and a perplexity search where you can click on the number one, number two, number three, and it takes you to your FI's website, to a blog post that answers the question about what type of mortgage you should get as a military veteran or somebody that lives in a rural area, or as a first-time homeowner looking for low or no down payment options with government assistance. So that's going to be pretty interesting.

50:34

And then I also have a good friend of mine who runs Strategy Corps by the name of Dave DeFazio, and I always really enjoy his presentations because he hooks his phone up to his computer, he's bouncing around, he's pulling up apps, he's going into FinTech platforms, he's sharing things that people are curious on, and he's going to be a digital banking showcase with some live demos, which is total days. That's cool. Yeah, it's going from a PFI to primary financial interactions, and so he's the principal over at Strategy Corps, and I've known Dave and his team for a long time. They're a great group and do a lot of really cool stuff on the checking and deposit side for FIs. So, but lots of AI center stage, lots of data. Of course, the networking is going to be huge. There's a number of linked banker community members that are going to be there, so I'm really excited to connect with them. I've got a handful of clients that are going to be there. I've got some bankers I'm talking to.

51:38 - Fred Cadena (Host)

Are you hosting any kind of linked banker, like a happy hour get together, anything along those lines.

51:44 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

I'm not. I've been thinking about doing that, but nothing formally created, uh, yet, so that that may be a possibility. So we'll leave that one as an option on the table. So what about you? I've rattled off a bunch of stuff. I'm curious, uh, yeah, other than getting to get together in real life for the first time ever, which is probably top of my list, of course, and I'm sure yours.

52:13 - Fred Cadena (Host)

It totally is. I'll say, like, as far as the headliners, I'm a big Scott Galloway fan so I'm looking forward to hearing him. I listen to him a lot, like I listen to his podcast and the podcast he does with Kara Swisher, his podcast and the podcast he does with Kara Swisher and he does, for better or for worse he's got some themes that he speaks on. So I'm very curious to see how he tailors what he says for this banking audience. But I think he's a really sharp guy. I think he is one of the people that kind of says what his opinion is on trends, regardless if it's where everybody else is going or not, and he's not afraid to put, say, specifically around retail and commercial banking. That is not part of his kind of general broader message that I hear from him on his podcast and other mediums. So that's the headliner I'm probably the most looking forward to In my working with Vericast. We are hosting a VIP reception with Jim Gaffigan, so I'll be excited to meet him at that. Not a gigantic.

53:36 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

I must have misplaced my invitation for that one.

53:39 - Fred Cadena (Host)

You are welcome to come. We'll connect offline. I will get you on the list. I won't say like I'm a giant Jim Gaffigan fan. I always found him funny and so that'll be cool. As far as, like the breakout sessions you mentioned some that I was definitely looking at. A couple more on my list One of my good friends and former podcast guest here he and I worked together at IBM.

54:09

Guest here he and I worked together at IBM Brandon Garina is doing a session called the ROI of CX Success Strategies from Banking's Best. He is a really sharp guy. He really kind of. He brings a lot of multidisciplinary approaches to financial services customer experience Like he's worked in FinServ now for quite a while, but he's had also a lot of experience outside of financial services and looks extensively outside of financial services to see what the best practices are in other industries. He previewed a little bit of what he's going to be talking about when he was a guest on the pod a few months ago, but I know he's done a lot more since then, so I think that's going to be a really good and engaging session.

54:53

The other one and it is one of the AI sessions and I don't know this individual, but I thought it was an interesting session. It was the ethical, legal and strategic risks of AI in banking. It's by Lance and I'm not going to pronounce his name very well Senuit I don't know him. He's with SAP, but the more I think about AI and the more conversations I have with banks and others around AI, I really and I've worked in financial services now for over 25 years and I'd like to say I know a bit about compliance and regulatory. I am far from being the biggest expert and I just want to hear some people that have thought a little bit more deeply and spend a little bit more time in the day-to-day thinking about, and probably in dialogue with regulators around, what they're thinking about AI. So that's another session that I was really interested in leaning in on. So those are two that were not on your list that are definitely on my list.

56:03 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

There's some pretty sobering bullet points underneath his description that when you read those how AI can be exploited to harm bank credit union brands directly or indirectly, how AI-powered models can yield unintentional but devastating outcomes, privacy, security, regulatory risks presented by AI tools, et cetera. Anytime you work the word devastating into your description, it's worth sitting up and taking notice of. So that, yeah.

56:31 - Fred Cadena (Host)

Well, and here and here's the thing, we've said it before right, it's just like. You know, you, you've talked a bunch of times about your work with, with banks and other institutions. You know, back at the dawn of the social media era, right, and they said, oh, we will. I said, oh, we'll never have Facebook, We'll never have Twitter, we'll never use LinkedIn. Obviously, we all know how that game ended.

56:52

Ai is coming, but we also can't bury our heads in the sand and not understand what the risks are and not understand what we have to do to make sure that it's being used and employed in a way that's safe and regulatorily compliant. You know, used and deployed in a way that's safe and regulatorily compliant. And again, it's something I've given a lot of thought to, but I've not had a lot of. You know I'll say I've not heard a lot of experts come to the forefront, you know, with strong opinions. You know, in these areas, I was one of the things I was looking forward to. I think we talked after I was at CBA live earlier this year. I was kind of hoping that there'd be some more sessions there, kind of, you know, thinking about the regulatory implications of AI, and I didn't really get a lot there.

57:36 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

So I'm I'm excited that this, this session I mean it's as excited as people can get about a compliance and regulatory session- I'm very excited this session's at at the's, at the financial brand, having a proactive stance and some insight, because I suspect, rather than this you know, I know the description paints a lot of doom and gloom about all the bad things, but I would have to believe, as a presenter, you're going to offer up here's ways that you can mitigate this or risk base it or, you know, understand, have a plan and be aware of them so that you're not oblivious and completely ignorant to what's out there.

58:31

And that's the type of stuff that, as you're talking with FIs, they're going to want to know that you've thought through both sides of the equation, because there are a lot of people that have got rose colored glasses on that. Just think AI is going to be the solution, and I think you and I we talk about a lot of the cool stuff, but we also are very realistic in the sense that we know that things can go sideways very quickly and you got to be prepared for that. Just like I liken it to the robbery procedures incident protocol what happens if, god forbid, somebody comes into a bank and robs you. You've got detailed procedures and protocols that you follow to recover from that incident and this is just that at a different magnitude. Who talks to media? How do you respond? What sorts of documentation? You know all of those things, so it'll be an interesting one for sure you know all of those things, so it'll.

59:30 - Fred Cadena (Host)

It'll be an interesting one for sure. Yeah, absolutely yeah, I I'm with you. I do hope there. There definitely was not a lot of like hope in his bullet points.

59:34 - Eric Cook (Co-host)

I hope there's a little bit of like you know he's going to ruin your world and cause society to not exist exactly.

59:43 - Fred Cadena (Host)

I hope. I hope there's a little bit of like and here's how we work through it in in the presentation itself. But even if it's just problem identification right, I think that goes a long way. But I'm really the most hopeful. I've got a lot going on. I've got a pretty packed schedule. I'm there between clients and prospective clients and that kind of stuff. Clients and prospective clients and that kind of stuff.

But I always try to get to as many of the sessions as I can, because there's always so many ones that I end up wanting to be at, and I usually end up kicking myself at the end because I've missed two or three that I really wanted to be at.

So, but it'll be an exciting three days, so yep Packing the Red Bull and the coffee extra strength Death Wish coffee.

I love it. I know where I'm going every morning. Yep, I'll see you at Starbucks, all right. Well, eric, really appreciate it. Josh, I know you had to drop a minute ago, but, josh, thank you for joining as well, and we'll see you in a week, eric.

Excellent, I'm looking forward to it. Safe travels to Vegas. Baby, you too, man, take care.

Well, everyone, we hope you enjoyed episode 29 of Banking on Disruption. Don't forget you can find show notes and a full transcript of the show on our website, bankingondisruptioncom. New episodes drop every other Thursday, so we'll see you in two weeks and in the meantime, don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram at at bankingondisruption. If any of you happen to be in Las Vegas next week in the Financial Brand Forum, please look for me and Eric Cook. We'll both be there and we'd love to meet you in chat Until next time. This is Fred Cadena, wishing you success in your digital pursuits.