Dr. Jeremy Sharp (01:18)
Hey folks, welcome back to the podcast. Today I’m talking with Nicole Brewer, who is the founder and CEO of Rethink Therapy, a 20 something, 24 person group practice in Henderson, Nevada, right outside of Vegas. She is building what therapist employment should look like. Salary based, benefits backed, and grounded in belief that excellent therapy starts with great therapists. Over the past decade, she’s evolved from solo clinician to
practice leader and she now shares what she’s learned with other practice owners through Rethink Your Practice. She’s especially passionate about the practical human side of running a therapy business, building teams, designing systems, and lately pertinent to our topic, using AI to make hiring smarter, faster, and more values aligned.
So I met Nicole, gosh, four or five years ago at a conference and she ended up working with my wife, Carrie, on some group practice, or group therapy development in a practice. And then we reconnected a year or two ago in this kind of peer support group. And it’s been awesome. Nicole is very well versed in AI and utilizing AI, I think in an ethical and balanced manner, which you will hear about on this podcast. So we talk about how she’s utilizing AI in her hiring process.
And she’s developed a bit of a rubric or a system for how to do that. And that’s what we are talking about. So we talk about Nicole’s journey with this. We talk about why she decided to implement AI to help combat some biases and, gaps in the hiring process. We talk about the actual process that she’s using and we get into the practicalities of how she implements and utilizes AI, some of the prompting, some of the questions. We go deep into her hiring process, which I think gives us a lot to learn from. So there’s a ton to take away from this.
I mean, obviously, Nicole is running a larger practice, but there is a lot of valuable material here for those of us, anyone who is considering hiring can take a lot of information from this conversation. And as you will hear, Nicole does consulting on this topic and has provided some resources on the AI side of hiring. So you can check those out in the show notes.
Let’s see, as of this recording, there are a few spots left for Crafted Practice, which is an in-person business retreat in July here in Northern Colorado, July, early August. So people have been asking, really, what is Crafted Practice? And how is this different from other things that I might do? think the biggest thing to mention is this is what I call the anti-conference.
So, If you’ve gone to conferences or larger events, and I’m sure you’ve gone to like tons of talks and like learned helpful information and had like a nice like packed agenda and you know, went home with a lot of things to theoretically implement, right?
My experience is that it’s rare to actually implement that information, and it feels really good when you’re taking it in, but then kind of overwhelming and, tiring, know, by the end and a little bit guilt, guilt inducing because then what do do with it? I mean, I personally have a whole folder on my Google Drive just from with notes from conferences and talks that I’ve never actually looked at. So this is the anti-conference. It’s a small group situation.
There are no more than 20 people there. We do small group coaching. There is real deep connection between folks. We do cry for better or for worse, mostly for better, I think. And, you know, it’s a time to actually like go deep with other people, make connections that you may not anticipate making. But I’ve heard from past attendees that this is the real value of the event beyond the information or the coaching even.
It’s the connection and just being in a group of people who understand your practice your business your life and what it means to be a testing psychologist So it’s a small group experience. We get three days to work on your business connect with others relax Have some drinks go on some hikes go sit by the water. It’s really meant to be rejuvenating and Invigorating for your practice. So I’ll stop there. I’ve talked a lot about it.
But if you’re on the fence you can go to the testing psychologist.com slash crafted practice and hit that link to book a call with me and we can talk about whether it’s a good fit or not. You can also register of course, but the hope is there will still be some spots left by the time this airs. So all that said, let’s get to my conversation with the coal brewer.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (06:12)
Nicole, hey, welcome to the podcast.
Nicole Brewer (06:15)
Hey, thanks for having me, Jeremy.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (06:17)
Yeah, of course. I am super excited to have you here. So the audience should probably know we know one another. We met, gosh, for the first time probably four or five or six years ago at a conference, and you worked with my wife for a little bit on group consultation in your practice. But then the two of us here have been in a, don’t know what you call it, kind of a consultation group, kind of a philosophical discussion group.
For practice owners over the last year or two. And that’s been a ton of fun. And I am thrilled to have you here after you know hearing some of these ideas just in our small group. I’m glad that we’re gonna be able to share them with my audience. So I’ll start with that question that I always start with: which is: out of all the things that you could do with your time and energy, why focus on this right now?
Nicole Brewer (07:07)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So I think the topic we’re like, sort of digging into today is how to leverage AI to up level your hiring process. And I think the reason to do that is because what initially started for me is an efficiency project really revealed some deep biases and gaps that I had in my hiring process that I’ve since been able to, I think,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (07:18)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (07:35)
really eliminate or at least largely remove. And I found that I’m getting much better candidates as a result and spending a lot less labor in the process. So I think two things, leveraging AI for hiring, one, it saves you time and two, it reveals some gaps and biases that you may have that are unknowingly bringing in candidates that aren’t quite the right fit.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (08:03)
Yeah, yeah, we’re I feel like we’re already off to the races so gaps and biases in hiring I think this is something I mean hiring is hard in general. I feel like Everybody is having trouble hiring good candidates and this is a frequent topic of discussion. It’s really fraught And it’s just a hard process one for finding folks, but then too if you do find folks you run into these issues of like you said bias and
Nicole Brewer (08:06)
Goose.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (08:28)
you know, gaps in the process and it can’t, we can’t seem to nail it down. So tell me, I would love to hear like for you personally, what gaps or biases did you find happening that influenced this process for you?
Nicole Brewer (08:32)
Hmm?
Yeah, so I would say that there were probably four, three or four main ones. Four, probably main ones. I think the first one was overconfidence. I prided myself on being a good read of people, ⁓ which I don’t think is an untrue thing, but.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (08:51)
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (09:04)
I would be overconfident in what I wanted and sometimes I also wanted the process to be over. So I felt like something clicked, I saw what I needed, and then I would just want to check the box and move on. ⁓ And I don’t think that I was wrong in that I didn’t have a bad candidate in front of me. I had a good candidate, but I didn’t have the best candidate.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (09:11)
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Nicole Brewer (09:30)
⁓ I can circle back to that in a second. think the other thing is another bias is high cognitive load. I think a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to this is you have a lot going on and a little bit of what I said before is you want to just get to the next thing. And so when someone looks good enough, you’re apt to just sort of move on. I think the third thing is being in a super homogeneous environment.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (09:30)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (09:56)
So live in Las Vegas. a diverse city. And so I’m not really speaking about diversity in this instance, though that could be the reason why there’s bias. But for me, I just got in this rut of the same type of hire with the same strengths, the same weaknesses, and wasn’t asking questions out of the box to maybe get a different type of candidate.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (10:18)
Mmm.
Nicole Brewer (10:23)
And then lastly, I think that being highly educated and highly experienced sort of impacts all three. You can just sort of like have confirmation bias or like almost a halo effect when somebody says one thing that you like. So like those are the areas that I had seen the most probably.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (10:41)
Hmm.
Yeah, I feel like I resonate with a lot of those. lot of that. I don’t know that I would articulate it that same way, but the way that you the way that you put it makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah, it’s like we are just sort of and I’m doing this right now. I’m literally like in the hiring process right now with someone, you know, who’s kind of in the middle. I’m thinking back and yeah, it is almost like I have these things that I’m looking for and you know.
Nicole Brewer (10:44)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (11:03)
once those boxes get checked, I’m like, okay, this sounds great. Now let’s play out the rest of this process kind of as a formality and then everything will be great. But that really constricts the view. And like you said, it kind of keeps you locked into confirmation or whatever. keeps you from seeing things that may not be great.
Nicole Brewer (11:09)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I’ll give you an example of how that played out just like earlier in the year for me I had a candidate so we had to make a supervisor hire. We plan out our hiring Six months in advance, so we typically know who we need next but we had a supervisor have an unexpected medical illness and we needed to replace we needed to hire somebody to fill her shoes while she was out and
her rule was going to fall on me while I was gone. And so I felt pretty, a sense of urgency to get this done quickly. So I had someone come in, she was a perfect value fit for the company. And she qualified on paper. And then we’ll talk about this in a little bit, the process of how I primed my AI in this instance, Claude, to like pick this out.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (11:58)
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (12:13)
But after the interview, I was sort of reviewing the transcript with Claude and it had said, this candidate is a good fit, but this isn’t gonna relieve your load. Her experience level won’t be able to absorb the amount you want to absorb as quickly as you want. It will take three to six months of training to get her there. And I was like, ooh.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (12:14)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Nicole Brewer (12:40)
I could invest that or I could just keep this open for another month and really get the best candidate, one that wouldn’t require that much upfront because they had years of experience. I did that and we got a candidate with much more experience. Again, it took me from a good candidate to a great candidate. I think that that candidate would have excelled in our company.
Through the moment of time we were needing, it pushed me in a way that I wouldn’t have, I would have never thought those things. I would have just offered her the job.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (13:13)
100%. Yeah. Well, and good for you for being able to have patience. feel like that’s hard. That’s really hard, especially given your situation. And like you said, there was some urgency there. I don’t know if I could have done that, to be honest, just because of the need. And it’s like somebody who’s good enough. ⁓ So let me back up. Let me back up and maybe ask a philosophical question just about the.
Nicole Brewer (13:18)
Mm-hmm.
It’s hard.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (13:40)
the hiring process. ⁓ I think this is a dilemma that we wrestle with a lot, especially among psychologists and testing folks. It’s really hard to find candidates, especially later career or more experienced folks. And so that we get that, and maybe I’m projecting, I don’t know, I’m speaking for myself, but I think it’s pretty widespread. We get this like, bird in the hand versus
Nicole Brewer (13:41)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hmm… Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (14:06)
two in the bush or whatever, where it’s like, okay, have a great candidate right now, even if maybe that’s not the best, how do you weigh that versus the needs of your practice? So I’d be curious just how you think through that process of, am I gonna wait for the 10 out of 10 when I have an eight and a half out of 10?
Nicole Brewer (14:14)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s so, man, that’s been an evolution, that thought process, because two years ago, three years ago, maybe even a year ago, I would have made, said, you know, a candidate that’s a fit is a fit. ⁓ But now, I don’t know, I don’t feel that way anymore. So for me, the…
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (14:39)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (14:47)
The amount of leadership responsibility that they have is directly correlated with the amount of time I’ll wait. So entry-level position, I’m more likely to take a gamble on. I one time heard someone say that hiring is guessing, firing is knowing. And
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (14:55)
Mmm.
⁓
Nicole Brewer (15:08)
I truly believe that when you hire somebody, you’re making an educated guess. Like you can only know somebody so much before you actually begin a relationship with them. ⁓ So with an entry level position, if I’m on the fence, I might be more likely to just say, yeah, you know, like I see these gaps, but
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (15:14)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (15:32)
let’s give it a try. So I’m talking about an intake coordinator, front desk receptionist, something like that. But with somebody that’s going to be leading people, if it’s not an exact fit, I’m going to go back to the drawing board and try it again. ⁓ Just because I believe now somebody that’s not in alignment with your leadership philosophy,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (15:46)
Mm-hmm. Mm.
Nicole Brewer (15:55)
or has soft skill gaps that don’t fully fit the position, that’s a slow erosion over time. And so they can never fully take the bag from you because they’re not in alignment with you. It’s almost like a partnership or a marriage. If there’s an inch of distance between the two of you, that’ll sit for a while, but it will widen over time until it’s…
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (16:04)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (16:22)
addressed.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (16:24)
Yeah,
yeah. I’m gonna, I like the way that you phrase it, like the amount of responsibility that they have is directly correlated to the amount of time you’ll wait for the right candidate, which makes intuitive sense, but I don’t know. You’re saying things that just sort of resonate really clearly this morning, which is great. Yeah.
Nicole Brewer (16:29)
Mm.
Yeah. Yeah.
No.
It makes intuitive
sense, then when your feet are on the fire of having to absorb the burden of not having that leader, you can see again how easily it would be to just say, let’s just give this person a try, you know, because you wanna be done.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (16:47)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
for sure.
yeah,
yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let me go back to one of the biases that you mentioned as well. ⁓ then, you know, we can slowly transition into this actual process that you’ve developed. But one of the things that you said kind of stood out and that was that you found yourself kind of hiring the same type of person, ⁓ same strengths, same challenges. And, you know, there’s a part of me that was like, is that a bad thing? Like if you found
Nicole Brewer (17:07)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (17:27)
the template, so to speak, for the kind of person that worked well in your practice, why is that a bad thing necessarily?
Nicole Brewer (17:32)
Yeah.
Yeah, so, okay, let me think through this. Okay, so it’s not inherently a bad thing. If you find an avatar of an employee that works for your company, that’s great. I think it becomes a problem when you need a new…
type of employee because of something you want to build out within your company, or you begin to build leadership within your company and the employees that you have are the first place you want to look for your leaders just internally promoting.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (18:15)
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (18:17)
Yeah, so I think that the type of position and how your business evolved can change the needs. So for example, we for a long time would hire people that were, we use the Colby index in hiring. So ⁓ high fact finder, high follow through. so like in layman’s terms, somebody that’s going to do the research and follow through.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (18:32)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Nicole Brewer (18:43)
The avatar of the person we were hiring would be a low quick start, meaning they aren’t going to improvise on the fly and they’re not going to pivot. So this person is a great individual contributor, but very much struggles in an environment where there’s change. ⁓ Working in healthcare, there’s a lot of change that happens outside of our control.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (19:03)
Mm.
Nicole Brewer (19:09)
whether or not you have a stable company. Just we work with insurance companies, things come down the pipeline, we have to respond. And so we noticed we needed an employee that was a little bit more nimble because we would have folks leave because of policy changes that we had to make because of a Medicaid or Medicare change that we would have to respond to.
But I wasn’t necessarily picking up that need in interviews, that need of like, how am I gonna assess for somebody that’s like nimble, that can be adaptable? And because I had already hired 20 people in this way, I was biased of what a good candidate looked like. And then when I started looking for candidates that was more adaptable, I initially was internally flagging them as like a potentially resistant employee.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (19:44)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (20:02)
when this is an employee that asks questions, wants to engage in the change, and I was flagging that internally wrong. So I had become biased to the overly compliant, not overly compliant, but very compliant employee that doesn’t like change. And I hadn’t acquainted myself to what somebody that does well with change looks like.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (20:17)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That’s well said. That’s well said. That’s such a good point that, you know, different employees obviously need different skill sets, right? And the ones who are great clinicians may not necessarily be great leaders or great administrators or whatever it may be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think you’re just like operationalizing a lot of things that we maybe think about or feel, but you’re putting words to it.
Nicole Brewer (20:23)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. You know what, actually, I to, it feels like right to say this right now. I wasn’t really motivated to operationalize this until we were looking at my clinical director taking over interviews and I was trying to train her. And I was like, how do I train intuition on interviewing? And…
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (20:49)
making it structured, which is great.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (21:14)
I feel like that’s largely learned, I felt like there had to be something that I could extrapolate from what I was doing. And so that’s what sort of led me on this whole journey to this process I’ve created now, as an intern.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (21:20)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that. We were just talking about this in an episode. Gosh, I’m trying to get time when this is maybe like a month ago, let’s say, the time this comes out. Like how to operationalize your clinical skills. Like basically in a supervision, a clinical supervision environment. Like how do you teach intuition? And it’s a wonderful question. But here you are. You’re tackling it in this hiring process, which is really cool. So.
Nicole Brewer (21:37)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (21:56)
Maybe this is a nice segue into the actual process. You give me just like a, we’ll start with maybe like a big picture overview of the journey, like how this process evolved for you. And then we can kind of like go deeper on the specific steps or aspects of it.
Nicole Brewer (22:05)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, very good. Okay. So I’m going to first talk about the process that I did without AI, because if you don’t have a good process without AI, AI is just going to put more words to what was already being done possibly badly. ⁓ So I think first, it will confidently tell you, will confirm your bad process. So I…
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (22:28)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It will confidently do a bad job.
Right.
Nicole Brewer (22:40)
I have a four layer process that I’ve done now, I think for coming up on three or four years. And the foundation of it is trusting but verifying. So if you can envision like this four part Venn diagram where you’re asking unique questions at each phase, but they all overlap and there’s some overlap of questions because you’re wanting to ensure consistency throughout the process. ⁓
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (23:07)
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (23:07)
So, the first part is I have a very in-depth application that I’ve honestly just renamed as a pre-screener because that’s what it is. That’s doing all the heavy lifting. We want applicants that are a good fit to feel like a great fit by the time they’re done with the application. So think about like a product that you’ve purchased, and you’re scrolling through the page and you think you want the
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (23:29)
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (23:33)
product at the beginning, and then by the time you’re done reading about the product you’ve decided this is the product that’s going to change your life. So that’s the kind of application that you want. You’re wanting to ask questions about value questions for your company. We ask positional questions, some like literal things like this is a full-time job.
That means 40 hours a week. That’s important for us in our culture, because full time can mean a lot of different things. We’re asking like comfortability and pivoting. So we want to sort of get to know them by the end of the application. And we want folks that counter to they feel confirmed at the end. We want people to not finish the application that know in the middle this isn’t a fit.
That’s perfect for them, it’s perfect for us. It doesn’t waste anybody’s time. So applications should focus on the company alignment and alignment with the position at hand that they’re doing. So literal tactical questions about the position to make sure that they’re good with completing the job. Not soft skill, but like the job will be doing. And then the second layer is interview one.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (24:18)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (24:47)
And this is where we’re honing down on the company’s values. confirming, we’re asking more in-depth questions and then confirming alignment with the position that they want. And we’re also taking anything from the pre-screener application and asking questions about it that could be a flag for us.
So let’s say that somebody, like for instance, somebody moved from working to a private practice to our group practice, that’s fairly uncommon. And we’re asking why? So why would you want to do that? So just things that maybe the prescreener isn’t capturing. The third step is then we send an assessment after interview one.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (25:17)
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (25:31)
For entry level, we send the Colby. For anybody that’s going to be in leadership, we send the Colby in the desk. ⁓
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (25:39)
Okay. How do you, how do you introduce that or how do you present that to the candidate?
Nicole Brewer (25:44)
Yeah, that was a little hairy at first. I actually had an application, an applicant that we later hired that was a great applicant employee was like, I got to be honest with you. I almost didn’t come back for the second interview when you sent me that, when you sent me that assessment. And I was like, Ooh, we got to prime that better. So I, my director of operations is the one that does interview one and she will prime them during that interview.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (25:47)
Hahaha
Yeah, sure.
Nicole Brewer (26:13)
that that’s coming and the why behind it. So our why for the Colby is it’s given language to what our natural bend is for, for our natural bend toward work is, like how we best thrive in the workplace. And we have, we found that that’s enhanced one communication into our training. And so it’s really helpful for us. And then for the disc, we want to know how they’re going to connect in the workplace.
So it’s more information to help us in the process. And we say, and you’ll get a copy of this right when you’re done. So it’s neat for you to look at. And then I send an email out that goes into it in depth again with the why and also why we use it. Something that’s really important is to never start or end on an assessment because that could look like a…
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (26:54)
Okay.
Nicole Brewer (27:03)
that could get hairy legally. You can utilize an assessment for the interview process, but that can’t be your whole interview process, if that makes sense. Because you’re essentially assessing soft skills in the assessment. So that’s why I’ve sandwiched them between, because it gives us a runway before and after. Since we’ve done that, I have found in interview two people are actually
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (27:07)
Okay.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (27:32)
excited to talk about it. And so it’s changed the tone of it. So that’s how I handle that piece. So then in the second interview, we’re looking at their soft skills. So they’re like their virtues as a person. We’re doing, we’re looking at their strengths and possibly gaps, or their strengths and areas where the position may be weak, just to see if they’re
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (27:34)
Okay.
Nicole Brewer (27:57)
they have insight in it. So for instance, somebody that’s slow scores low on quick starts, that’s somebody that’s not naturally maybe as adaptable. We’re not going to not hire them, but we want to know if they have insight around that weakness and how they manage it. And if they’ve got skills and can articulate that, that’s good. But if they don’t have insight or skills, that’s the flag.
And then we’re talking about their, in the interview too, we’re talking about their area of expertise. So to recap, I do conduct an interview too. ⁓ Yeah. So application, pre-screener, that’s one. Interview one, assessment, interview two. It’d be ideal to have those separate, by separate people, interview one and interview two.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (28:28)
and who conducts interview to.
You do interview too. Okay. Okay.
Nicole Brewer (28:45)
But if a company doesn’t have the resourcing to have two separate people, I think the same person can do it. And I do not think it should be combined into one because space gives time to, again, help with bias, I think.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (29:01)
For sure, yeah. I like seeing people at different points in time. ⁓ And I think there’s decent research out there around, interviews essentially are just a gauge of how well people can sort of respond socially in novel situations. to get them in a couple different time points stretches that a little bit and kind of gives you, yeah, just a little more depth.
Nicole Brewer (29:04)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (29:26)
what happens when there’s a little more familiarity.
Nicole Brewer (29:29)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (29:31)
Nice, nice. it sounds like, so we do, there’s a portion of our interview process where we do a round table with all of our staff or as many of the staff as can make it. ⁓ Do y’all do any kind of group thing like that, like where the rest of the staff ends up meeting them or is it purely at the leadership level?
Nicole Brewer (29:37)
Mmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
At the leadership level, our interview too would be a as opposed to me, individual. So typically when we do a panel, I’ll be running it, but others will be asking so I can purely observe, which is sort of a nice switch up. Yeah, think roundtables are great though, Jeremy. I honestly want to figure out how for a leadership position,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (29:52)
⁓ got it. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mmm.
Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Nice. OK. So we’ve got our overview. ⁓
Nicole Brewer (30:17)
I can figure out how to make, like just make going out to lunch a part of the interview. You know, to just see them in a totally different environment. I’ve never done that, but I thought it. So I think introducing a group is great in the process.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (30:25)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think there’s value to it. know, the way we do it, there’s no, I am not present at the roundtable. I’m there to introduce everyone and get it started. But then it’s, you know, it’s employee led. And I mean, the hope is that it feels less formal and brings out different things. But yeah, I mean, I remember.
Nicole Brewer (30:39)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (30:53)
When I was coming out of postdoc, I interviewed for a faculty position, which is just, I mean, it’s such a long interview process. But one of the components was going out to dinner with everyone, you know, like all the other faculty and everything. And, you know, it still super nerve wracking, but, you know, it a good chance to like connect with them in a different way. I think there’s something to that. No, no, thankfully, thankfully. Well, I think, you know,
Nicole Brewer (30:56)
and
⁓ wow, okay, that’s cool. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Did you get that position? it was good. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (31:18)
So, okay, here’s,
I was one of the last two candidates, which was great. You know, was like affirming. And the reason I did not was because my dissertation, like the research methods weren’t advanced enough. And at the time I was like, that is fine. Like I, that’s nothing I can be upset about. And, you know, that sent me in the direction of private practice anyway, which was probably a much better fit than being a research driven factor.
Nicole Brewer (31:21)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I’m good with it. Yeah.
Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah.
Cool. Cool.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (31:47)
Yeah. And now I know the guy who got hired, which is super interesting. And his wife works at our practice, which is a weird small world kind of moment. anyway, complete detour. Let me, no, no, this is what we did. So let me go back to the first step though. And I’m, you know, I think my audience knows this. You probably know this having interacted with me many times, but I’m a pretty concrete person. like the first step where you’re doing this pre-screening application,
Nicole Brewer (31:54)
that’s fun. I love that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sorry.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (32:14)
Where is this happening? Is this like on Indeed? Is this like on your website? Like how do they access this pre-screener?
Nicole Brewer (32:22)
Yeah, so that’s on our website. ⁓ something that I talked to my consultees about a ton is your website, resume. And so the jobs portion should not be an afterthought. That’s the main event. Maybe not the main it should be just as main of event as the services pages. So talk about why someone would want to be there.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (32:25)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. ⁓
Nicole Brewer (32:46)
give them a mental picture, just like the clients that you’re seeing, a client needs to be able to see themselves coming to a practice before they do it, in the same way an employee does. And so really the application is the call to action after they’ve experienced the page, I guess, so to speak. So that’s where that lives. ⁓
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (32:58)
Yeah.
Hmm… Yeah.
Nicole Brewer (33:12)
If we were to go to an event like a job fair or something, we put it on like a QR code or something, but that’s one out of 10, nine out of 10 people come directly through the website. Clinically, we only tend to post on Indeed for administrative positions, so like front desk, though occasionally we’ll seek out a candidate on Indeed. But Indeed has their own thing that they like to do.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (33:19)
Sure.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (33:42)
And I try to do that as minimally as possible. I try to use Indeed as minimally as possible their presets so that I can then just use it to filter out people that are absolutely not a fit. And then we chat them and tell them, hey, if you’re serious about the position, the next step is to complete this pre-screener.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (33:43)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (34:04)
Please do so within 48 hours and then you’ll hear about the next step. So we intervene with our own pre-screener. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (34:05)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
I like that. Yeah, we do the same thing with Indeed positions. Yeah, just kind of get them off that platform as soon as possible and into them. Yeah, nice. So, OK, one more like practical question, then I want to dive into the how AI is getting woven into this process now. ⁓ Where are you actually finding your clinical candidates? Are they just coming through the website somehow, like via word of mouth, or are you actively?
Nicole Brewer (34:15)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (34:38)
telling your clinicians to like go find their friends or you know how how are clinical applicants finding you.
Nicole Brewer (34:44)
Yeah, that’s a great question. years ago, I used to post on Indeed whenever I needed somebody, whenever I wanted to hire. Now, about three years ago, I started investing in pipeline, essentially building a hiring pipeline. And so how I’ve done that is through the university. So I’ll go and talk at a class pretty two, three times a year.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (34:50)
Yeah.
Okay.
Nicole Brewer (35:08)
We hire lot of pre-licensed. So post, for where I’m located, pre-license is a post-graduate master’s clinician. social work, marriage and family therapy, mental health. And so we get a lot of pipeline through there. Now SEO on our website pulls up. And then local groups.
we’ve advertised in throughout the years, local therapy groups like on Facebook. Those are all where our pipelines have started. And then we’ve just continued to foster those by someone reaches out, they’re either going in one of three camps, moving forward now, moving forward later, not a good fit. And so my director of operations has done a tremendous job
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (35:31)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Cool.
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Nicole Brewer (35:56)
with follow-up. So we’re always talking to applicants that aren’t a right now. She spends more time talking to applicants that aren’t a fit right now than are a fit right now. And those become, those become tomorrow’s hires often, or those folks talk to other people and refer to us.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (36:01)
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (36:21)
So like they’re not a fit for us, but their friend is. ⁓ So anytime anybody reaches out, it’s the beginning of a relationship with us. So when I say talk to, I mean, she’s emailing, she’s quick to hop on a five minute call. We’re not spending hours with these people. It’s sort of like, you know, on social media, on Instagram, how you like, or I guess TikTok.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (36:22)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
This is cool.
Nicole Brewer (36:48)
to probably depending on what your platform is, just seeing something, the recognition of it over and over is what creates credibility, whether or not it’s crap or not. And so I think we gain a lot of credibility through just showing up a lot, if that makes sense.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (36:52)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah,
that makes sense. Brand recognition. Yeah.
Nicole Brewer (37:07)
Yep. And then for our more experienced leaders, when I want a leader, the first thing I do is I call five people I know and I say, Hey, I’m looking for this position. I don’t, it’s maybe it’s three, maybe it’s seven. I’ll call several people I know and I’ll say, Hey, I have this position. Do you know anybody that might want it? Um,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (37:29)
Interesting.
Who are these people? Are these like local people?
Nicole Brewer (37:31)
Yeah, colleagues in town that I’ve developed, that I’ve, you know, just your local resources, your local colleagues, I’ll call and I’ll say like, hey, you know, I have this position. Every time that’s produced an extremely strong hire, every single time. And that’s an underutilized, I think, strategy too, is your colleagues, we don’t think that they would have somebody, but everybody’s talking to somebody at some point.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (37:34)
Uh-huh.
Nicole Brewer (37:58)
So, yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (37:59)
Sure, sure. Very cool. Verycool.
Okay. Okay. So yeah, let’s maybe we pivot back to the process and, you know, I know everybody’s just waiting to hear how AI gets utilized in this hiring process. So tell me how you started to weave that in and what role it is playing now.
Nicole Brewer (38:17)
Yeah, so you can use whatever platform you’d like. I use Claude, so you’ll hear me say Claude throughout. But I think that, you know, like Copilot, ChatGPT, I think any of those probably could do this. I like to utilize a project. So in most AI platforms with a purchase plan, you can create a project and that is a banked set of knowledge that lives within that project. So the AI will crawl
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (38:31)
Yeah.
Nicole Brewer (38:44)
that first. So I do what I call priming the project first. So I’ll prime the project by feeding it the information that I want it to know, which is our mission map. So values, mission, our one year, three year, 10 year plan. If you do EOS like your VTO. So the particulars about your business.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (38:46)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (39:13)
the job that I’m hiring for. And that’s so that’s it’s an entry level. That’s it. If it’s a leadership position, I’ll put the Colby scores and the disc scores for all the leaders in it too. Because I need a subordinate to be a match for the leader too. So
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (39:30)
interesting. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.
Nicole Brewer (39:40)
With leadership, I put more framing in.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (39:44)
Got to, are you creating, we’re good as in the weeds question, but are you creating a separate project per job or do you just have one project for like HR and hiring or how do you set this up?
Nicole Brewer (39:55)
Yeah, so I used to do one project for all and I think that’s fine. I think that’s good. What I have found a little bit more precision with is I have a leadership project now, a clinical and an admin. And that feels like that works a little bit nicer just because then with each I can put the Colby and discourse for the leader in each of those individual and it’s not cross-referencing the wrong thing. So I like it by department, if you will. I think that that’s a nice way of
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (40:00)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Nicole Brewer (40:24)
doing it. ⁓ So like another thing that I will put in are the other job descriptions within that department as well sometimes so that they so that the AI can have a little bit richer context of what the person will be introduced in. So with AI context is everything. So the context has to be primed to get the best response.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (40:26)
Yeah.
Mmm. Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (40:52)
So this is the priming. The project is all about giving the context. So that’s the first step. So I’m literally uploading these things. And then the final thing I’ll do is I’ll give a prompt, something like any like other little thing I want. So like recently I was hiring a biller and I didn’t want anybody that had had three jobs in the last two years, three or more jobs.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (40:57)
Mm-hmm.
Love that.
Nicole Brewer (41:15)
So I said disqualify any candidate that comes through that has three jobs in the last years. So something like that. So that’s the first part. Then I take the application and I’ll upload it when we get it. And I’ll say score this applicant based. so like you’ll want to develop your scoring system. I find either a one to five or ⁓
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (41:34)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (41:38)
a zero to 100, almost like on a grading scale is helpful. ⁓ This you have to play with over time to see what your threshold is. So for me, I’ll take a 3.5 higher if it’s a pre-licensed therapist, but I’m not gonna take it for a leader. So that takes some wiggle room win. So I’ll set that piece aside for a minute and just talk about the wording part of it, because I think that that’s the most rich. So I’ll put the app…
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (41:42)
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (42:05)
the applicant the application in and I’ll say Pull this client’s strengths weaknesses and tell me their fit for the company ⁓ And lots of times what we’ve also used strong questionable not a fit strong questionable not a fit something like that or strong maybe not a fit And then we have five questions
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (42:15)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (42:29)
Typically that we ask every single applicant, that’s the same. That’s primed when we’re priming the project. And then we say, ask three unique questions based on this applicant’s application to dig into. So then it will spit out a interview guide based on that. And this is what I love about the interview guide. It will say, even in your five standard questions,
for this applicant watch for this answer. So it’s sort of a nice like pre-bias screening that you can be watching for if that makes sense. So.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (42:57)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm, sure. And this is all
happening before interview one.
Nicole Brewer (43:08)
This is all happening before interview one. So prime the project. If it’s clinical, you might already have it just sitting there, you know, and you just put in another application. Hey, give me an interview guide for interview one. So then interview one takes place. We record every interview now. That’s like a part of our culture to do that. The transcript.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (43:11)
Okay, great.
Same.
Nicole Brewer (43:32)
goes in and then the prompt is give me an interview summary, strengths, weaknesses, and gaps, candidate gaps, and then it spits the next piece out.
We’ll make a determination if they continue on or not and then if they continue we send the assessments, then we send the, we upload the assessments in project and then we say take the assessments along with the transcript and the application and give an interview to. Also add if hired where the applicant is likely to thrive and where they’ll need training in the first 90 days. And so then what comes out is a whole what I call an applicant report.
So I’ve got my, again, five standard questions and three candidate specific questions based on the gaps. And then I also have a report on where the candidate is likely to thrive and where they’re likely to struggle and where additional training could be needed, if that makes sense. So.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (44:21)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (44:40)
Then before what I used to do is I would look at the resume, I would look at the application, would look at all this paperwork. And you probably visualize that and I bet your listeners can visualize themselves like you got all this stuff or you’re flipping through the screens. So I take one, probably about four page document and it’s a very thorough candidate profile and I just read it.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (44:57)
yeah.
Nicole Brewer (45:06)
30 minutes before the interview. And I feel like that gives me incredible objectivity for then the interview at hand. So then I do the last interview and I upload that final press transcript. I scored in my mind before I do it to Claude, just because I wanna, I’m the one that’s in the driver’s seat. You don’t have to agree, you can make decision. If Claude, if your AI says no,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (45:26)
Right.
Nicole Brewer (45:30)
you can still say yes. And that’s happened before. Because AI gets things wrong. But I’ll typically make my decision ahead of time and flag those things, strengths, weakness, where they’ll thrive, they’ll need training. And then I’ll see what Claude says as like a confirmation bias type of deal. And then from there, we do or don’t make the offer.
If we don’t make the offer, we may say, this a candidate for a later time? And if it is, they go back in the pool and they’re given a different rejection letter. And that’s actually proven to be really great too, because that leader that I started talking, that I talked about at the beginning, that wasn’t a right fit, reached back out to us and said, hey, you like, I know you hired for that position, but I wonder if you might still consider me for another position.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (46:02)
Gotcha.
Nicole Brewer (46:21)
And so she’s right now in the candidate pool for another supervision position later in the year that’s a better fit for her experience level. So it’s sort of like, again, we’re always like filtering through this like now, later, never. Yes, maybe, no. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (46:32)
I like this.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, the thing I like about that is there are, I mean, there are levels, obviously. Like, it’s not just a binary, like, yes or no, and you’re kind of all in or all out. There’s, like, a not the right time, which I kind of love. And there’s a maybe, there’s room for maybe. Yeah. Yeah, I like the flexibility, I suppose.
Nicole Brewer (46:57)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (47:13)
Very cool. So what have you found is most helpful with this process, like integrating the AI? And then after that, I want to talk about where it still maybe falls short a little bit or where you’re continuing to tweak it. Yeah.
Nicole Brewer (47:28)
Yeah,
yeah, I got focused on the where to continue to tweak it part, because that’s where I’m always at. Tell me the first question one more time. me the first question because it’s, gone in my mind. I heard this.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (47:35)
We could start there if you want to. Yeah, we’re flexible.
I was just asking like, where have you found it most helpful? Like, how has this been most valuable to you?
Nicole Brewer (47:43)
⁓ yeah.
Yeah, it’s given me the confidence to wait. So like you said at the beginning, like that’s scary to wait. And I wholeheartedly agree. And I didn’t have the impulse control and the confidence to wait before. And it’s given me that confidence to wait for the right leader. It’s also pushed me to hire people that I previously would not hire.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (48:00)
Hmm.
Nicole Brewer (48:10)
So I recently just hired an intake coordinator and I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something about the interview that I was like.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (48:10)
Mmm.
Nicole Brewer (48:22)
I, for lack of a better terms, I felt like, is, is this put on or not? You know, like I couldn’t tell if there was like a, a mask. Yeah. Yeah. But we, we had really struggled with great customer service. And I was like back and forth with, with Claude. I’m like, do I hire this person? And Claude was like, just try it. You’ve not ha you know what I mean? Like,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (48:30)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like cannot trust this person. Yeah, is this a facade? Yeah, are they just yeah
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (48:49)
And so I did and man, has she been wonderful. And so before, I think I would have just been like, I’m, whenever I’m unsure, it’s a no for me. ⁓ And so I was, yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (48:54)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah. I feel like we have that vibe. It’s like the
whole, it’s either hell yes or no. And I’ve kind of lived by that for a long
Nicole Brewer (49:08)
Yes, yes, exactly.
Yeah, I would have never hired her before because it wasn’t a definitive no, but my reason for the no wasn’t particularly strong and that’s what challenged me. So yeah, it’s given me the confidence, the weight, and it’s also giving me more confidence to try things that I wouldn’t have tried.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (49:24)
Yeah.
OK, OK. Those are the examples I think I’d be most interested in.
I don’t know convinces is the right word, but where it, you know, presents a possibility that I would have otherwise said no to. And it, you know, presents it in a way that I would actually consider this person. ⁓ yeah, I feel like we do make a lot of, snap decisions in hiring, whether we know it or not. It’s that sort of unconscious, bias or judgment. You know, there’s all that stuff around, like you make a, determination about someone within like 30 seconds of meeting them or whatever. And.
Nicole Brewer (49:44)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (50:06)
You know, I could see it combating that pretty well.
Nicole Brewer (50:08)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I’ll give
you an example if that’s helpful. Yeah, so with this candidate, there was like a question that I asked that I was basically asking how she handled conflict with if she had ever had a moment where she had been in conflict with a peer in the workplace. And her answer she had and her answer wasn’t bad. It was just a little like,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (50:13)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (50:35)
messy in the way that conflict can be messy when you’re in your early 20s. And she didn’t do a bad job. She just didn’t do a job of somebody that was older and wiser, probably, you know what I mean? And had been in the professional world for a long time. And so was really hung up on that. And so Claude had challenged me like, this is a new professional.
She did, she did a reasonable job given her, given her level of experience at that time. And that allowed me to give a little bit more grace to that and see that with better clarity, almost in the way, I know this is taboo to be like, you’re talking to A-like, they’re your friend, but like, almost like a friend can be reasonable with you about like, hey, I think you may have missed the mark on that thing and were like too overly scrupulous. So yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (51:15)
Hmm
Mm
hmm. Well, yeah, I want to focus on that for just a second. Like a lot of the things you’re saying in terms of like Claude challenging you or like pushing you like a friend or whatever. That’s sort of that’s sort of counterintuitive to what we think AI typically does. And so can we detour for a second? Did you specifically prompt it to challenge you in some form or fashion? Like how did you get that to
Nicole Brewer (51:28)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, so whenever you set up your AI as a whole, you can, and I think that you gave me this a long time ago, the master prompt. Yeah. So over time, I’ve evolved that a bit. And so one of the things that I’ve primed my system as a whole to do is challenge confirmation bias, ⁓ challenge over intellectualizing, and
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (51:57)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (52:17)
Stop me when I’m ruminating.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (52:19)
Nice. This is why we get along so well, Nicole.
Nicole Brewer (52:22)
Yeah, so it literally has said sometimes, we’re done with this, go home to your family.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (52:30)
That’s amazing. That’s amazing.
Nicole Brewer (52:32)
I like it because it’s a nice like stop point for me.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (52:35)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely. Okay, okay. That’s super helpful. Yeah, because I think this is an ongoing thing of like, AI being too nice and, you know, just acquiescing or affirming.
Nicole Brewer (52:45)
Infantilizing. Yeah, it’s also given me, yeah, this is, I gotta say right here, I don’t know if this has lost half the audience, but it’s certainly lost half my friend group and my husband, because when I talk about this with you, why don’t you just like talk to a human being about this, which I do, which I do. But like, it’s also, AI can give you feedback on your strengths in a very objective way.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (52:58)
Let’s go for it.
Nicole Brewer (53:10)
to help you see those more clearly and then leverage them in this process. like an example of that is like, you know, like just the whole waiting thing, you know, ⁓ my AI challenging me on like, would wait for a client, you’d wait for, you’d wait in all these other contexts, but why won’t you wait for somebody that’s going to have huge amounts of responsibility? ⁓
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (53:23)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (53:36)
So, I just think that’s rich to have sort of that that messaging.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (53:43)
It is. is. Yeah. And to your point of losing friends and your husband, you know, I feel like this is something that happens. Like we have emotional reactions to other people, even if they are the most like reasonable, objective, well, you know, rationalized, whatever opinion. We have emotional relationship and it’s, I don’t know. It’s a lot easier for me to take the AIs objectivity.
Nicole Brewer (53:43)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah,
it is. And I think that, you know, everything is everything in moderation. So like, if that’s all you’re using, ⁓ not good, you know, like every hiring conversation goes through, is a conversation with my director of operations at the end of the day. And our opinion holds the most weight. It’s a tool, just like therapy. ⁓
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (54:17)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (54:33)
just like psychological assessments, it’s a tool. It doesn’t hold all the cards. And so I think that’s what I find myself challenging my friend and my husband on is like, it’s a tool, why not use it? Any tool can be used, but when used rightly, it’s really helpful.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (54:37)
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, 100%. I’m with you. I think that’s a nice bridge to then that second part of the question, which is where you feel like it still falls short or you’re tweaking it. Where can this process improve?
Nicole Brewer (55:00)
Yeah, so I think I made reference to it earlier. I haven’t been able to get the scoring quite the way I wanted it to be. I initially sought out with the idea of being able to have like some numerical scoring system that I could then pass off. ⁓ I’ve since become obsessed with the whole process and can’t pass it off because I’m now obsessed with it. But I think that I easily now teach a thought.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (55:07)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nicole Brewer (55:23)
process versus a scoring system, which is ultimately, I think, more rich than a scoring process. But a score would be nice to have. It just is a common language. And I just find that there’s some sort of misfiring for it. And what I’ve amounted it to is the language in the room that’s not picked up. So case in point, I had this. We were doing.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (55:29)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Nicole Brewer (55:48)
I was doing another interview. was in this person bombed the interview, absolutely bombed it. It was really like one of those that was really like, bless their heart, know, like type of deal. felt bad. And then it scored. It scored it super high. But what wasn’t picked up was like the.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (55:53)
Mmm.
Yeah… gosh.
Nicole Brewer (56:10)
inconsistent body language, ⁓ the in the moment masking, the peculiar affect, like all of those things weren’t picked up. And so that matters. And so I think that that’s why scoring is hard.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (56:13)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, that’s fair. That’s fair. I’m just working through like how I might tackle that. And yeah, I wonder, I don’t know. I wonder about like ending the interview, but you stay on and then you like talk into the transcript and give your own thoughts and sort of reflections. you, have you tried something like that?
Nicole Brewer (56:48)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I’ve played with that. I’ve played with that a bit on like, here’s what was going on in the room. And, you know, like, I’ve never done this, but I wonder how it would work. I don’t know if, I don’t think, I’m sure, Claude can’t read video pictures, I don’t think. ⁓ And I don’t know of one that does. I’m sure at some point there’ll be some sort of…
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (56:58)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, not that I know of.
Nicole Brewer (57:16)
Like you can do a literal video and they can read the Bobby language and that will help for the context. But yeah, like outlining the context is helpful. You can also like challenge like, did you like when this was said, this is how it was said. And then like AI will quickly recalibrate and say, well in that instance. So yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (57:19)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Hmm, sure,
sure. And maybe this is the part, I don’t know, where we’re like trying to over engineer it or something, you know, like there’s always going to be a role for us in this process. And maybe this is the role, like the nuance and the body language and the, you know, should we be trying to engineer that? don’t know.
Nicole Brewer (57:45)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I- I think so. And I think I’m going to continue to play with the scoring thing, because just I’m intrigued by it. But I’ve sort of found that I was looking for the wrong way to train it before. I wanted a number. And what I’ve came out with is a global way to think about it. And I think that’s sure. That wasn’t my initial pursuit, but that’s what I arrived to. So I think so, because at the end of the day, you’re the one making the decision. And this is also why I don’t feel like.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (58:12)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Nicole Brewer (58:24)
AI is gonna take over the world quite in the way that people think. I think it’s gonna be a big change and it’s really fascinating and interesting. I like human decision is, I just don’t know how you computerize that, you and automate it.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (58:43)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah,yeah, yeah.
There’s always that intangible connection, relationship, feel, whatever, you know, intuition. You can call it.
Nicole Brewer (58:52)
Reasoning, like human reasoning, like you have to like have that. And so you, you can’t give anything all the context in the world of your personal context and the person in front, like it would just constantly doing context. So yeah, so that’s, that’s, think the drawback is like your AI is only rich is what it knows and what it can and what it can read.
And there are things that it can’t read.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (59:20)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. This is really cool. You know, I’ve heard you talk about this in, you know, bits and pieces here and there over the past several months. And so it’s fun to dive into it and get all the details and flesh it out a little bit. Yeah, I’m excited. I’m thinking like, how can I implement this in our current hiring process?
Nicole Brewer (59:26)
⁓ yeah. Cool.
Hey.
Yeah, give it a try. Give it a try. It’s fun. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (59:42)
Yeah, yeah, it’s great.
Thanks for being here. you know, people, I’m guessing people will have questions and are kind of excited about this. Like if they want to connect with you, what’s the best way to do that?
Nicole Brewer (59:52)
Yeah, they can reach me at rethinkyourpractice.com. That’s my consulting website. And I’ll have a link for you with, they can reach me there where they can get some more information on AI and how I leverage it in this process. But Rethink Your Practice is the best way to get in touch with me.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:00:14)
Okay, yeah, awesome. We’ll put it in the show notes like usual and hopefully folks will reach out. Yeah. Thanks for being here, Nicole. It’s good to see you.
Nicole Brewer (1:00:21)
Yeah, thanks for having me Jeremy.
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