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Remote Work and AI the Keys to Unleashing Human Potential

By Jonathan Siddharth - Turing
CEO and Co-Founder

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By Jonathan Siddharth | Co-Founder and CEO - Thu, 01/26/2023 - 09:00

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The world has changed.

Not long ago, virtually all work was done in an office, and nearly all hiring was done within a 20-mile radius of wherever that office happened to be. No longer.

For quite some time, the tools and technologies enabling remote, or as I prefer to call it, boundaryless work, have been slowly paving the way for more and more people to work from anywhere. But, then, in 2020, COVID catalyzed a massive tipping point — nearly the whole world went boundaryless for a brief moment. It was one of the biggest experiments in the history of modern enterprise.

The biggest surprise was not that it was catastrophic but rather that it turned out so well. Productivity didn’t fall off a cliff. Instead, companies found substantial savings as they eliminated rents, relocation expenses, and the need to equip offices. Moreover, while not every person loves working from home, so many do that it initiated a massive shift in where and how people work.

For example, 46 percent of employees in Mexico had never worked remotely before the pandemic. However, after two years without commutes or spending entire shifts burrowed in physical office spaces, 97 percent of employees want to keep this work scheme or, at least, switch to a hybrid system, according to a survey published by Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC). The same study also reveals that around 58 percent of employees working from home increased their productivity during this period, while 35 percent claimed to have met their prior office-bound productivity level.

So, while it’s clear that boundaryless work is the future, there are obstacles companies need to overcome to make a sustainable transition to a remote-first culture.

What used to work when you were adding talent near your office makes no sense when the world is your talent pool. 

How do you hire people from the other side of the globe? Even finding candidates is a challenge. Let alone understanding their backgrounds, vetting their skill sets, or evaluating their prior work history or education. 

What school in Delhi is the equivalent of Stanford? Who knows? What company in Mexico City is the match for someone who worked for Google? It’s not an easy question to answer.

Further, making good hiring decisions takes time —   something many companies don’t have. The old ways don’t scale, and they don’t capture a large enough segment of the talent pool to ensure you’re finding the best people.

I learned this during my first startup. I couldn’t compete with the likes of Apple, Google, and Facebook when it came to hiring people near my office. Fortunately, I decided to adopt a remote-first approach, and my company succeeded. This was my “ah-ha!” moment. 

I realized that software could solve many of the problems associated with finding, vetting, managing and retaining the best engineers, all that was needed was for someone to build it.

How an AI-powered talent cloud is changing the game for engineers and the companies that need their skills.

When I realized no one else was prepared to create the talent platform of the future, I resolved to do it myself. What we needed to unlock the world’s untapped human potential was a system that let people find, vet, match, and manage talented engineers using software instead of manpower: the talent cloud.

Yesterday’s model of online resumes and job postings doesn’t work anymore. Job boards don’t have the intelligence to help companies find great people, nor do they help extraordinarily talented engineers stand out. 

This is where software has the ability to change the game. An AI-powered talent cloud lets people demonstrate their capabilities. By ingesting the data from coding challenges, and hundreds of other signals from each engineer’s profile, companies no longer need humans to validate a candidate’s abilities. By decoupling geography from opportunity, countless highly skilled people are suddenly part of the silicon valley workforce, whether they live in Palo Alto or Mexico City.

Companies stand to benefit from an intelligent talent cloud just as much as engineers. No longer are businesses competing for the same small pool of people and hoping that their recruiters and interviewers are finding good matches. Software can vet and match people at a rate that’s impossible for traditional methods of hiring.

While some estimates suggest that it costs a company 99 man-hours to make a single hire, with a lag time of weeks to months for each new person, AI-driven processes can reduce this time to days — sometimes even hours. And if a company needs to scale up an entire engineering team, a talent cloud like Turing’s becomes even more critical.

Vetted Once, Hireable for lLLife

Some people wonder why would an engineer be willing to submit to an intensive test-based vetting process? The answer is simple. Once an engineer qualifies for Turing’s platform, they’re eligible for placements for life. As the engineer grows their skills, an AI-based platform maintains a continuously updated profile that incorporates their skills, experience, performance reviews, and projects, helping drive future matches if a particular engagement ends.

The benefits go both ways. Companies can make apples-to-apples comparisons based on clear metrics rather than references, a resume, and a good interview. And, because remote engineers don’t need an office, companies cut expenses, greenhouse gas emissions, and many report improved retention.

While the job boards of the past were a great start, companies and highly skilled people need more. Talent clouds, and there are new versions specific to multiple industries, have the ability to go far beyond just finding people and matching them with jobs. They can become a management, productivity, and career development tool with equal utility for the companies leveraging the technology and the people seeking great jobs.

There’s a reason why companies like Pepsi, Dell, Rivian, Johnson and Johnson, and many others have moved their hiring efforts to the talent cloud. The proof is in the results.

The Mission

From the day I founded Turing, my mission was to unlock the world’s untapped potential. Today, according to the 20th edition of the State of the Developer Nation report, there are 27 million engineers and countless companies that need their talents. If your company needs exceptional people to scale quickly, the Intelligent Talent Cloud can help. And if you’re an engineer with excellent skills who lives in an underserved local market, geography no longer matters. It’s a big win-win. Companies get access to great people while saving time and money. Great people can enjoy life-changing opportunities with income to match regardless of where on Earth they live. The world has definitely changed — the future is brighter than ever.

Photo by:   Jonathan Siddharth

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