The Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast
The one with Jerry Hu from Amazon Web Services
Welcome to the 22nd episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast!
Alan Walker (the podcast host) describes the episode below:
In this one, I - Alan Walker - Alison Ettridge of Stratigens and Toby Culshaw of Amazon - met Jerry Hu from Amazon Web Services.
Passing the mic over to Toby, we caught up on everything happening in the talent intelligence world.
According to a 2022 report by IndiaAI, a government-led industry group, AI is expected to raise India’s annual growth rate by 1.3% by 2035 – which, for context, is an additional $957bn to India’s economy.
“I think this is really fascinating. We’re already seeing a lot of companies looking to India for their tech solutions in terms of workforces.”
Toby Culshaw
“On the talent piece, you can see this great migration trend, with many who may have been living overseas deciding to come back.”
Jerry Hu
Another survey of 20,000 employees from 11 countries found that 52% of Gen Z and millennial workers are considering changing employers this year. However, 73% said they would stay at their jobs if it were easier to change roles internally.
“That really ties into what we were saying on our last episode. Internal and external data needs to be looked at separately to make sensible decisions regarding how to shape the workforce.”
Alison Ettridge
With the utter chaos that the UK workforce seems to find itself in, it was impossible for us not to talk about it. With 350,000 people across the UK being inactive due to long-term sickness due to the pandemic, the new UK chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, aims to reverse this inactivity by pushing those over-50s into full-time work.
“I’m not convinced. I think in most industries, age discrimination is still alive and well. It’s one of those issues we don’t really discuss. That makes it hard for those over-50s to pick up work.”
Toby Culshaw
After this very labour-focused discussion, it was time for us to learn more about our fantastic guest, Jerry Hu. Alison was especially eager to explore Jerry’s career path - the why and how he got to where he is today.
“I started my Talent Intelligence journey with Alibaba. At first, it was about sourcing new talent across the border but then it transitioned. Some skills were non-existent, so we started going beyond a typical talent acquisition approach. We began utilising data and tying that back to how we were helping the business.”
Jerry Hu
While we know that Talent Intelligence can be so fundamental for making business decisions, when you’re working for large-scale companies, it’s easy to experiment. But what about when you’re working within a startup?
“I absolutely think that Talent Intelligence has a place in startups. But when every decision you make impacts whether your business will survive tomorrow, plan your talent first. What is the number one thing you’ll need to know to solve your recruiting problems?”
Jerry Hu
As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. A review or a share on social really goes a long way in helping us reach as many ears as possible.
Till the next one – stay intelligent!