← So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
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- [00:01]
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- [01:03]
Farnoosh Torabi
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- [01:53]
Chaewang
economy you're listening to so Money with award winning money guru Farnoosh Torabi. Each day get a 30 dose of financial inspiration from the world's top business minds, authors, influencers and from Farnoosh herself. Looking for ways to save on gas or double your double coupons. Sorry, you're in the wrong place. Seeking profound ways to live a richer, happier life. Welcome to so money. Where's a general kind of heat map of jobs in the future? I think the things that aren't able to be automated are things where human contact is necessary. Are you constantly talking to humans all day as part of your job? Is there really nuanced human judgment that is needed in that industry as well. I think all those things like folks need to put on that lens to see, okay, if I play this out, if I play this four year degree out, what type of job will I end up with in the best case scenario? And will that job be heavily repetitive? Will that job necessitate me having to talk to folks all day or having me at the controls where it's really difficult for a robot or an AI to really make that judgment call? I think that's what folks should be asking themselves because the traditional method of oh, I'm going to go study this, work hard, graduate magna cum laude and end up with a wonderful job on the other side that's no longer guaranteed and it sure as heck won't be guaranteed by the time they're graduating in four years.
- [03:26]
Farnoosh Torabi
Welcome to so Money everybody. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi. What if the biggest threat to your career isn't losing your job but becoming irrelevant before you even get one? Right now we're watching something seismic unfold in the workforce. College grads are struggling to land entry level roles. Companies are hiring more cautiously or not at all. And quietly. In the background, artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape not just which jobs exist, but whether entire career paths survive. In fact, a recent survey of 5,000 unemployed Americans found that only 50 15% would choose a four year college. Again, knowing what they know now, that is not just a statistic, that is a warning. So today I've invited someone who is not just observing this shift, but actually building solutions inside it. Chae Wong is a serial entrepreneur and co founder of the startup Pelgo. Pelgo is working at the front lines of the intersection of AI and the job market, helping workers reskill, reposition and stay in the game. We unpack why entry level jobs are quietly disappearing, the surprising roles AI is actually creating, what employers are really thinking right now about hiring, why your ability to learn and move quickly may matter more than your degree and how to use AI, not avoid it to stay competitive. Let's get into it. Chaewang. Welcome to SO Money.
- [04:53]
Chaewang
Thanks for having me parnish.
- [04:54]
Farnoosh Torabi
We are going to get into it. A lot of fear out there right now about AI upending the workforce. I know, just look. Looking at the data of people graduating from college right now, they're entering a really tough job environment for many reasons. But of course I think there's also this suspicion that AI is taking on a lot of those entry level jobs that people with bas would Apply for normally. You are living in this space right now as a problem solver, as a true problem solver. A lot of people wondering what is AI going to do to the job force? And you're asking how can we help at Pelgo? So take us right there to the intersection, to the sort of the war zone if you will, of AI and the job market.
- [05:40]
Chaewang
I love that you said that Varnish, because we felt like when we started this company, like when we looked around there weren't many folks just saying, okay, how can AI help create jobs? How can AI help folks transition from a currently displaced job into something a little bit more AI focused? And so that's exactly what we do. And you just mentioned also education as well. We just commissioned this 5,000 person survey of 5,000 on unemployed Americans across a multitude of GEOs and different demographics. And what we found is that around 15%, only about 15% of people knowing what they know now about AI would go, if they did it all over again, would actually go to a four year college. Wow. And that was really sobering. So only 15% said they would do it all over again. And there's going to be broad ramifications when it comes to the job market. And with AI we're just starting to see the crack surface, I think.
- [06:32]
Farnoosh Torabi
What are you already seeing? What has been immediately impacted and there's already job displacement or job elimination because of AI.
- [06:42]
Chaewang
Yeah, yeah. The first thing that's been really interesting for us to see is that this is not. We talk often talk about what industries are being affected, but what's really interesting is that it's beginning to cross different industries, but also different countries and different GEOs as well. The reality is that when you look at especially tech companies, there's usually teams that are spread all over the world. And so when AI kind of starts to replicate some of those workflows or automate some of those workflows, you're going to see that impact not just across the United States, but all across the world. And some of our clients actually are seeing that amongst their own teams. And so the same countries that potentially rode the IT wave up also have a reckoning on their hands in terms of how are they helping their citizenship, their citizens transition to an AI future.
- [07:30]
Farnoosh Torabi
Wow. What worries you most? What gives you the greatest sense of urgency as you go to work?
- [07:37]
Chaewang
I think it's that it's meeting the moment and it's how do we make sure that we have the infrastructure in place to, to be able to help people whether they are an entry level kind of team member all the way up to a C suite member. So that's what I worry about the most. But in general, I. For the industry or for the country at large, I fear that we're talking, we're just barreling at full speed towards a technology and with the amount of money that's being invested in a technology without actually taking a pause and saying, okay, who are we tasking with solving some of the problems that will inevitably occur because of this technology? We were just talking about mobile before we got started, and the mobile revolution was big, but there weren't trillions of dollars being piped into mobile in such a short amount of time. And so I don't think we've taken a breather to really understand the impacts of it all.
- [08:31]
Farnoosh Torabi
And I want to get into Pelgo and how it's showing up for workers and people new to the career force, as well as those who've been entrenched for years. But you mentioned these trillions of dollars, and that is also a real fear that we've been hearing about the entire market having to have a. Its bubble burst before it can move forward. This isn't exclusive to AI. We saw this with tech and real estate in some cases, but there is this sort of overexuberance over investment in AI right now. And what happens if and when the industry does have that huge global financial reckoning? Right, the technology doesn't go away, but it's that the investment exuberance in it collapses. We have to reevaluate, revalue these companies and then go forward. Like, how does that then disrupt the job market?
- [09:23]
Chaewang
I think it's going to be a compounding attribute where you will not only have the kind of AI flood wash away a bit, but also the overall macroeconomic impact of it all if we do go into a recession. And it's inevitable that these things will go up and down. Because, Ranuj, you've covered enough cycles to know that even with the Internet, the Internet didn't go away, but certainly a lot of companies did and a lot of pain was had. Same thing with mobile. A lot of those mobile companies that rode the wave up didn't go away. Mobile didn't go away. I think the same is going to happen with AI as well. Like, the general direction is that this will be a thing, but the kind of, I guess the candlestick charts, both green and red on the way there, I think will be, will be sometimes painful. The coming future.
- [10:07]
Farnoosh Torabi
All right, let's get into Pelgo this is your third time at the rodeo. First you, I understand, started a gaming company that was acquired by Zynga during the whole iPhone app boom. And then Boxed, which is a beloved company going direct to consumer membership. Free surplus boxed goods delivered right to your door that was acquired. You had an exit there. And now you're helping folks reskill, upskill to meet this moment and future moments with the rise of AI. Tell us about first just how you went from realizing this was a gap to saying, here's how we're going to solve it.
- [10:48]
Chaewang
I can't take all the credit for it because I do have a co founder in this company. So my co founder, Frank d' Souza, also co founded and was a CEO of Cognizant for many years. So Cognizant is a Fortune 500 systems integrator where they really saw the advent of the Internet as a way to provide services for companies that would not have the wherewithal to fulfill all the demand that the Internet would actually create. In terms of jobs needed, for example, content moderator, content moderation, data labeling, all these different things that the Internet kind of enabled is what Cognizant provides to their clients. And so as we were talking and as we were thinking about starting something together and actually a tidbit, Frank is also a Jersey guy, so extra kudos to him. As we were talking about this, it seemed like AI was poised to do the same thing. Like, yes, I think in the near term there will be unequivocally, there will be job destruction because of AI. But at the same time, we fundamentally believe that there's going to be job creation as well. If you go to Cognizant's website today and you look at their services and you went back to 1993, I think is when they were started, and you went into their office and said, these are going to be real jobs and this is what they're going to be called. People would think that you are absolutely crazy, absolutely nuts. But here we are. They built a Fortune 500 company offering those services and $40 billion worth of those services. And so when it comes to a, I think job destruction, or we thought job destruction, but also major job creation in the coming years as well.
- [12:21]
Farnoosh Torabi
So what are the jobs that are coming or the jobs that are, that people don't even know about, but that your team has really analyzed and said this is likely to exist next year, in the next five years, and what are the industries that are going to see the most fertility of job growth?
- [12:39]
Chaewang
It's still early to say, but I'll give a very concrete example today of both sides of the coin. So on one side I'm sure for you have friends who are engineers are saying, hey, it's tough, especially for junior engineers these days, graduating with CS degrees. If you're not like hardcore deep into AI, it's just harder and harder to find entry level coding jobs. And I think that is definitely the case. That is definitely the case of what we're seeing as well. But at the same time, what you're also seeing is an absolutely insatiable demand for forward deployed engineers. Again, 10 years ago, what the heck is a forward deployed engineer? No one would ever imagine that's an actual thing, but actually what forward deployed engineers do is they show up on site and say, farnoosh, if we had a small business or any type of business and we wanted to kind of use AI or integrate it into some of our workflows, it's no longer the case that you actually just hire an engineer and they program it for you. Someone actually has to work it into your daily workflow of how your company works and all the nuances of it, the politics of it, the tribal knowledge that you have of who approves what. And that's what a Ford deployed engineer does. They not only actually integrate it, but they integrate it with a lens or viewing at it through the lens of kind of your day to day life within that company. So again, engineering starting to be a challenged industry when it comes to entry level positions. But for deployed engineering seems like it's booming. So something as interesting as that, is
- [14:08]
Farnoosh Torabi
there a framework that you use to decide to understand where the new opportunities will be? So you gave an example, but is there sort of a model or a pattern of how to think about, okay, I'm in this industry, here's what's happening outside in the world. My job may not exist in five years, but some semblance of it will. Here's how it will likely exist using Pelgo's framework or sort of conceptualization of the future.
- [14:37]
Chaewang
Sure. Especially towards the future. I think the overarching umbrella that anyone listening today needs to think about is what is your capacity and what is our collective capacity to learn. So, meaning that one of the core part of the Pelgo thesis is that the traditional kind of 45, 50 year run at the same company that was long gone probably 20 years ago, that would be so strange to see someone at a company for 50 years, but that was the norm. Call it 40 years ago then I think we're in the kind of, I think we're in the transition phase now where it's going to be quite rare to see someone even in the same industry for 50 years. You look at our backgrounds, right? Like, I've made video games, I've been in E commerce, now I'm in career transitions. You've been an anchor, you've been a financial analyst, and now we're on your podcast. And so I think it's going to change. It's going to be par for the course. But what's necessary to succeed will be your capacity to learn so that you could take advantage of all those transitional mom. So I do think that fundamental kind of layer is your capacity to learn.
- [15:47]
Farnoosh Torabi
Che, walk me through working with a client when you are actually trying to upskill or reskill them, like, what does that actually entail? Does it require going back to school? Does it require doing an apprenticeship, taking an online program? Walk me through it.
- [16:02]
Chaewang
Yeah. Right now, almost all of our clients, and I say with an asterisk because I think this will change in the coming years of folks voluntarily reskilling their current workforce. But most of our clients are undergoing something sort of reduction in force. So as they're going through a rift, they're displacing previous team members. When that happens, generally folks get severance. One, two is they get insurance benefits via cobra. And third, if you're above a certain level, you actually get what we call outplacement service. So it's like career pathing, career coaching, but that's. It's really expensive. So it's usually reserved for managers, executives and above. What we've created is a service where everyone in the company, no matter if you're an individual contributor, frontline worker, all the way up to a C suite executive, we've created affordable and effective outplacement services. As that person is displaced, we ask, do you want to start a new business? We try to learn more about you. Do you want to reenter the workforce? Are you on the cusp of retirement? Do you just want someone to talk to? These are all things that we can help with. And if it is reentering the workforce after you, after we create help you create that resume, we match it to jobs that you might like or that you might want to go for. If there's a gap, let's just say you're scoring a 75% match. Then we actually create custom modules for you to say. If you take these six modules with a straight face, once you add this to your resume, this score might go up to call it 80%, 85%. But we also keep it real because if you score 5%, like if I want to be an NFL quarterback, I will score a 0%. And we say, hey, not for you.
- [17:35]
Farnoosh Torabi
There's no module for that.
- [17:36]
Chaewang
There's no module that's long gone in
- [17:38]
Farnoosh Torabi
your DNA, in your genetics or not. But what are those modules? Out of curiosity, what are actually, what are you feeding your clients?
- [17:47]
Chaewang
Yeah. So what's absolutely magical about AI is that instead of very staid kind of old school modules where it's oh, let's learn about, about how to start your own podcast. A six part series by Farnooche. We take what we know you're good at and then we run it through our system and then we create a custom module for you so it based upon what you already know and then also based upon what you don't know. But what might you, what you might be interested in. We create a custom module. It's both, it's old school, clickable, if you just want to read it, answer questions and go through. That's available to you if you want to download it so that it's more like a podcast so you can listen to it also available as well. And in the coming years you can imagine the different formats like video and other things that we can start to create.
- [18:32]
Farnoosh Torabi
By the way, I have that podcast workshop if you want to.
- [18:34]
Chaewang
Oh actually okay.
- [18:36]
Farnoosh Torabi
For a handsome fee. Yeah, I want to go back and focus on the young adult, those who are in college or about to go to college. We have many lists, listeners, parents with young kids, high schoolers on the road to potentially a higher ed degree. What would be your advice to. Let's just say the cohort of soon to be college goers or currently trying to decide a major given what you are seeing on the AI front?
- [19:04]
Chaewang
Yeah, I think it's. It goes into a little bit of what you asked before of like where, where is this really going and where's the general kind of heat map of jobs in the future? I think the things that aren't able to be automated are things where human contact is necessary. Are you constantly talking to humans all day as part of your job? Is there really nuanced human judgment that is needed in that industry as well? I think all those things like folks need to put on that lens to see, okay, if I play this out, if I play this four year degree out, what type of job will I end up with in the best case scenario and will that job be heavily repetitive? Will that job necessitate me having to talk to folks all day or having me at the controls where it's really difficult for a robot or an AI to really make that judgment call? I think that's what folks should be asking themselves, because the traditional method of oh, I'm going to go study this, work hard, graduate magna cum laude and end up with a wonderful job on the other side that's no longer guaranteed. And it sure as heck won't be guaranteed by the time they're graduating in four years.
- [20:17]
Farnoosh Torabi
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- [22:22]
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- [22:43]
Farnoosh Torabi
Hey.
- [22:43]
Chaewang
Hey.
- [22:44]
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- [22:53]
Chaewang
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- [22:55]
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- [23:05]
Farnoosh Torabi
It seems like industries like medicine, teaching, maybe teaching, I don't know. Let's talk about teachers here, because I feel like teaching can be. There's definitely one camp that says, let's just do online learning all day. And then of course, others that are like, heck no. During the pandemic, we saw people move out of certain communities because they were done with zoom School. So I think it's going to be interesting to see how AI changes the teaching landscape. But I've also listened to, like, Ezra Klein did a whole episode on his podcast about the threats in education because of AI. What are you seeing in that industry?
- [23:42]
Chaewang
I love that you bring that up because so many people in my family have been educators through their lives. And actually I started my career as an educator, so I was an English teacher for two years. And so add that on to, like, career transitions. Yeah, so I don't think if you're an educator, like an in person school teacher. I think that job is heavily augmented by AI, but that job is not going away because think about what we teach in school. Of course, you can break it down to just coursework, and of course that's okay. That's a lot of the job. But the reality is that the best educators are teaching you how to be an adult, are teaching you the skills you need in between the kind of bells to be a functioning part of society. And that's really hard for AI to do that. That's really hard for a robot to do that. So I think being an educator, I don't know if anything is perfectly safe, but I think that's. That profession is not going away anytime soon.
- [24:41]
Farnoosh Torabi
Do you think then, with the need for more human interaction, for the nuanced stuff, nuanced things, that those careers could pay more, pay better? Because I'm thinking like the arts, for example. I always say, as a daughter of immigrants, it was forebod. I was not allowed to go and pursue the arts. God forbid. I said one day I want to be an actress. No, not too late.
- [25:06]
Chaewang
Not too late.
- [25:06]
Farnoosh Torabi
I know right now I'm thinking like my son the other day, he said he wants to go to film school. He's 11. And I think that would always be a fine choice, but especially now, I think that there's real opportunity there as a creator to do something with your hands, to show up for work and use your body. Right. As a director, as a producer, as an actor. I think there is something that we always took for granted with those jobs that. That in the world of where AI takes over, it's really appreciated and highly specialized and maybe then worth more earned. You can earn more. I don't know. Maybe I'm just wishful thinking here.
- [25:43]
Chaewang
No, I do think you're onto something and I applaud you for kind of encouraging your son because I think you're obviously as. As a son of an immigrant as well. I certainly could not have gone to film school without my parents booting me out of the will. I.
- [25:56]
Farnoosh Torabi
The will.
- [25:57]
Chaewang
Yeah, but it's film school. It's one of those things. Right? It's right in the middle of the storm right now. You're seeing all these kind of AI models being able to create really compelling realistic film clips. But I think what folks aren't realizing is that someone's still directing those film clips.
- [26:15]
Farnoosh Torabi
Yes.
- [26:16]
Chaewang
Like film clips aren't going to create themselves. You won't be able to say, hey, make me a compelling movie. Go. It still needs direction. It's still to know how the lighting should be, the consistency of the different kind of characters, and how they're. Even if we go into the dystopian world where it's only AI actors, how the actors need to behave, all that. I think a human needs to direct. To your point, before, could that industry shrink from a headcount perspective? Potentially, yes. That's. I'm not here to paint like a magical picture of the future and. But potentially, could those remaining folks get paid more because there's just less of those jobs around? I think that's a real possibility that you bring up.
- [26:56]
Farnoosh Torabi
Pelgo is B2B. Primarily, you work with companies to help with their. As you said, like Upskilling their workforce that's maybe been laid off or they've exited. Is that pretty much the model at this point?
- [27:08]
Chaewang
It is to this point. But actually, as we get more and more everyday individuals emailing in, and especially as part of my job now, I'm on the layoff subreddit and reading the folks going through this very tough time in their professional lives, more and more we're thinking about how can we help those folks as well. We're still so early, but I would say never on B2C.
- [27:33]
Farnoosh Torabi
What do you hear from employers right now? I think it was the Fed chairman the other day. He said that white collar employment is basically at a standstill. And is that what you're seeing? Is that what you're hearing, that hiring is just not what is going on? Is it like, is it a financial constraint as much as just the uncertainty of do we even need to hire this person? Because in a year there's going to be a technology that can replace their role. What is. I would love to hear what's happening behind the Iron Curtain so I can
- [28:03]
Chaewang
just based upon kind of my discussions with clients and with kind of potential clients, and just again, as part of my job, I'm just out there all the time talking to employers about what they're seeing and how they're thinking about the world. I hate it sounds like a punt, but it's both. So here, and here's where I'll break it down very specifically, the layoffs that are happening today, almost all of them. And I want to freeze time because I don't want folks to listen to this in a few years and say that wasn't true. But as of today, the vast majority of layoffs that are happening today are financially driven. Think about it with AI and how we use AI in our daily lives, the reality is like AI hasn't completely automated entire workflows for entire departments just yet. And so it's a bit of overhiring during COVID It's a bit of consternation when it comes to the overall macroeconomic environment. So that's what's really driving kind of rifts today. With that said, what is happening at the junior ranks when it comes to recruiting the junior folks out of university, out of school? It's absolutely the latter of what you said. It's actually folks thinking, well, that workflow hasn't been automated, but I wonder in four years or in three years will it be? And I think what's happening is they're shrinking that incoming class, especially the Big professionals, service firms that usually would hire thousands of folks. They're still hiring in the junior ranks, but those classes are starting to shrink again, not because it's been automated, but in anticipation of some of that automation.
- [29:39]
Farnoosh Torabi
I think about yesterday I had a meeting with some, with some clients and I was giving some advice on how to grow their audience for their podcast. And one, one client said, gosh, if I could just not be on the Internet, I'd be so happy. Doesn't like to interact, quote, unquote, interact with people on the Internet. And I'm like, kudos to this person who's gotten this far in their care with that philosophy. And I'm wondering. There are definitely people who are very anti AI for a host of reasons. They're afraid of it, they think it's like a scam, they think it's just a fad like crypt, like Bitcoin or whatever. And for those in the audience who are skeptical or just not into it. You know, I got someone writing me a negative review recently because I mentioned I used ChatGPT and they said, oh, look at this gobbledygook that she's using. And I wanna. And I get and I understand the sort of, the friction there and the doubts potentially. But what do you say to that person who. Is there a world che, where I can just not listen to AI? I can just live in my analog bubble and make do is because with the Internet there was a little bit of that possibility. I guess you could still live off the grid as they say, and live happily. But. But what about AI? Feels like it's a much more intense force taking over is.
- [31:00]
Chaewang
So I think the backdrop is that it's going to be very difficult to not have it pervade your daily life, no matter how we live. And it's nothing. I just. If we. It's the so Money podcast. So let's bring it down to money. I can't name another technology or another moment in the world where this much money was invested by, by governments, by everyday people and stocks, by big companies, small companies, into a single technology, like it is literally trillions of dollars. Like we're like even in my world, in these kind of startup kind of tech world, like suddenly like 100 million dollar rounds are small, like people are raising billions, billion tens of billions of dollars in a single round. It's just wild out there. And so there's a certain momentum backed by all that, that money flowing into the industry. But all hope is not lost because I actually think it's A race between AI pervading your life and actually being a potential detractor of your life versus the benefits it, it brings. And if that goes off the rails and it's like you're seeing so much more negativity and negative aspects of AI before you're starting to see the positive benefits in your daily life, then I think we have a real problem. And that real problem has actually it's not new. History rhymes the term we use, Luddites. That came because during the Industrial Revolution people were really angry in London and they actually started rioting. They were like, screw these machines and we don't want any of this. And there was actual riots and it's a wild time. We're going in. But it's not unprecedented like where people have been angry and they don't like technology and technological innovations.
- [32:41]
Farnoosh Torabi
If you weren't starting Pelgo, what other professional pursuit do you think you'd be looking at curious about right now?
- [32:51]
Chaewang
I'd probably start a really good New Jersey based barbecue smokehouse. I don't. I think there's a lack of that and I never understood why there's an absolute monopoly on great kind of barbecue.
- [33:02]
Farnoosh Torabi
We just had one close shutter in Montclair.
- [33:05]
Chaewang
See, you talk about AI not being able to do that and also I'm of that age. There's a saying that once you're above 40, as, especially as a guy like, you either have to get really into military history history or you have to get really into smoking meats. I'm both. But joking aside, I think this I find I've been finding real gratification in this new vocation of mine. So it's interesting working with cutting edge technology using AI to help folks find jobs. But at the same time it's morally gratifying because I can honestly lie my head down on my pillow at night and think I'm one of the folks actually trying to leverage AI to help folks being affected by it. So not sure it's much needed.
- [33:49]
Farnoosh Torabi
Just like barbecue. We actually, we have another one more thing on the barbecue and then I have another actual serious. But there's a food truck and I. They might, I don't think they delivered it to your town, but they're in my town and maybe a neighboring town. It's a food truck that only does house call calls and they. It's called Pendragon Smokehouse and they do house calls. You go online, you book an appointment, you book a time for them to come to your home. The food is already cooked. He Cooks it all in the truck. The truck is beautiful. And we ordered from there for super bowl and their specialty is ribs and chili and they do, they're great. So if maybe they'll make a special house call to you 15 minutes away
- [34:33]
Chaewang
for the next day. I know what's for dinner tonight, but it's fascinating, right? Even what you said. Look at just the, even the advent of the Internet. Even semi jokingly that's a really amazing service. I actually want to use that service. But for the Internet it would not occur.
- [34:46]
Farnoosh Torabi
No, it would not. He would have to go door to door with flyers and.
- [34:50]
Chaewang
Exactly.
- [34:50]
Farnoosh Torabi
It would take a lot longer to to catch on. Okay. Lastly, give us a great anecdote, a story of someone you your team current recently helped reskill upskill into getting safely landing into a new job after maybe working in an industry that is seeing a lot of decline.
- [35:10]
Chaewang
I I'm looking at the stats right now of this again this 5000 person study that we did and what I'm one of the interesting results was that 43% of the folks that we surveyed no longer feel motivated to search for a job anymore. That it's a tough grind when all is negativity out there and, and just so much talk about AI like where do I fit into this whole thing? 43%, that's a lot of folks. And again this was not like a 50 person study of folks from my high school. This is like a 5,000 person study across the entire country boiling that down to an actual anecdote. I recently actually spoke with someone who has been out of work for two years and that person had actually begun to just disengage from the job search because they just thought it was hopeless. Like where their previous skills just they felt weren't Apple applicable. And so after trying the platform and of course pointing out the different flaws that we had in our platform so it was very helpful feedback that we got. What they said was thank you for making me feel motivated again. It was their first kind of touch point with AI and it was the first time that they actually thought okay this thing that I wasn't sure about. They actually saw some use from from it that it actually could help them. And that motivation I thought it stays like that that I feel like, you
- [36:33]
Farnoosh Torabi
know, well it keeps you in the game. If you're not motivated, you're out and you've already lost on all the jobs and yet so many of the jobs that do happen right now it's because you knew someone. It's the network. I know that people are complaining a lot about they throw their resume into the pile and AI scans it and they don't have the right buzzwords and they don't get to the next round. And so any parting advice for those who are curating their resumes right now and they don't have the deep networks they're applying to companies, they don't have relationships at.
- [37:07]
Chaewang
The very basic thing you absolutely need to do if you're searching for a job right now, you're listening to this is you have to learn to fight fire with fire. The reality is whether you like AI or not, the employers, over half of employers I think in a recent survey were already using AI filters as they're receiving these resumes. And so if you're not using AI to get through those AI filters, you're disadvantaging yourself. And yes, you might not like it and if you want to, if that's the hill that you're going to plant your flag in, great. But I will tell you right now, you're going to disadvantage yourself. And there's so many tools, Pelgo being one of them. There's others online that help you with your resume and if you're not leveraging those tools again, you're putting yourself at a disadvantage.
- [37:50]
Farnoosh Torabi
Chaewang, thank you so much. This has been one of the best conversations I've had on AI and because it's optimistic, because it's solutions driven and we really appreciate that about you and your team at Pelgo. Thanks for stopping by.
- [38:03]
Chaewang
Thanks for having me. And again, I'm trying that barbecue tonight, so we'll see how it goes.
- [38:07]
Farnoosh Torabi
Tell them Farnooche sent you.
- [38:08]
Chaewang
Yeah, exactly.
- [38:13]
Farnoosh Torabi
Thanks so much to Chaewong for joining us. Co founder of Pelgo. I'll see you back here on Monday. I'll see you back here on Wednesday. A conversation with the author of a new book called the High Five Bank Thinking Method. A new way to think about how you structure your checking and savings. I'll see you then. And I hope your day is so money.
- [38:46]
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