Panel: The Future of Work

[00:00:02] Speaker A: We have three amazing panelists today. He has over two decades of experience in the language services industry and has lived in South America for more than 26 years. Under his leadership, tbo has expanded its services to include tbo talent, tbo dep and tbo lab, reflecting the company's growth and diversification. I'm Paola McGrath. Paula McGrath is a recruitment professional with over 20 years of experience in international hiring, particularly within the language services industry. Through her work at International Achievers Group, she collaborates with hiring managers, localization leaders and business owners to support recruitment strategies and team building efforts. She brings a practical perspective on recruitment emphasizing professionalism, clear communication and long term feed. Hello, hello and welcome everyone to this panel on the future of work. Up first, Sebastian Gallo. He is the co founder and chief operating officer at Torre AI where he focuses on market expansion, revenue growth and operational scalability. He specializes in engineering productivity frameworks for teams and individuals integrating process design, automation and leadership enablement. His expertise encompasses strategy, operations management, cross functional team leadership, product development and business process improvement. We also have Charles Campbell who is the co, the founder and president of tbo, a provider of talent translation and localization services with offices in Argentina, Peru, the Ukraine and Vietnamese. The first question is going to be really easy. Let's do this. Paula Sevas. Charles, where are you located right now? [00:02:06] Speaker B: I'm in Ireland, in the Republic of Ireland, in Dublin, sitting looking out at the Irish Sea and some lovely mountains. [00:02:13] Speaker A: Fantastic. Thank you. [00:02:15] Speaker C: Sevas this week in Bogota in Colombia. Wonderful. Charles. [00:02:22] Speaker D: Okay, I'm in Cordoba, Argentina. [00:02:25] Speaker A: That is wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you were not tuning in our show before, we are in Lang Talent, at least the first edition for 2025. We are on our second or our panel for today which is the Future of Work and we are talking to Sebastian Gallo, COO, Ator AI, Charles Campbell, founder and president of TBO and Paola McGrath from International Achievers Group. The reason why we're having this conversation is because of an internal movement in the language industry. So I'll give the context of course for Sevas to learn to hear a little bit about the language industry. Sevas comes from tech and startups, but all of this is going to relate what artificial intelligence has done over the past two years is really transformed the way in which our industry, language industry and all other industries work. I've been talking now with people in the elevator industry. Right now I'm in the niche magazine conference and here are, you know, people that work in elevators and they are talking about how artificial intelligence is, is getting rid of their jobs. So all the, all industries are going through this and that raises many different questions. Not about the evolution, not only about the evolution of roles, but also about identifying talent and where we go with that identification on talent and how that helps build companies. And that's the context in which we are in. But we are seeing many changes and the first question is going to have to be what are the most significant ones? What are the most significant changes you are seeing or anticipated in the way we work both in other languages and within the language industry? We've already seen some of these changes. But what are the other things that are going to happen in our respective industries because of the changes that we are seeing through artificial intelligence? What are the changes in work that we are going to be seeing? And anyone can do it, of course. [00:04:26] Speaker B: Well, we've obviously experienced is hiring organizations, be they on the buyer or supplier side in the language management industry are trying to cut costs because they're trying to maintain revenue level levels even though it's actually almost impossible at the moment. And also trying to protect profit where possible. Trying to quit costs means redundancies. So the way that people are, are working is going to change somewhat because of that alone. I mean there's obviously a number of other influences but, but the number of redundancies that are happening and have been happening for the last 24 months. So individuals I believe are going and it's hard because in some instances it seems to be coming very quickly. At some individuals, people need to, in order to stay. Well, your last discussion was on mental health management and in order to present effectively and as best that they can when interviewing opportunities come their way, it's important that individuals find a way to accept that there may be a time in their life where they may have to move to contract roles, individuals may have to accept fractional roles and for some individuals that can take a little while to adjust. Now I'm focusing on the way we work rather than obviously the contributing factors to the changes. But that's the thought that I had when I saw your suggested question. And I think that if people, if individuals are able to move to accepting the new way as soon as possible, it's a little easier to move and spot and work with the opportunities that do exist. [00:06:21] Speaker A: What else have you seen? Sevas? I'm really curious because I know you are in tech, you talk to a lot of startups. What's changing there? [00:06:29] Speaker C: So the first point, and I think that this has been covering multiple times by Multiple people in the past. And it is the remote work, right. Usually you need to be on a place, then you not have to be there anymore. But it has some implications and I'm not sure if always we are seeing all of them. Yeah. First you need a proper setup, proper sound system and those kind of things. Yes, that's needed. But on the other hand, what are you doing with the rest of your life? What's the time of commuting that you may be saving? Right. But also the challenges if you're in your house, that you can handle the whole background, the noise, everything that is happening around you. So you can make sure that you have everything needed to excel on your performance. And that's something key sometimes getting into that remote work or hybrid and you can work from home. And it is like for me, hybrid is like, I usually do not tolerate. I don't think that's good. I think that it's just a screen on saying like you should go to work, to an office, but you can sometimes stay at home and that's it. Like you can sometimes miss your obligation of going to your office. Because usually it is not the best way to get the best thing of both worlds, but usually it is the opposite. But that's kind of something like a topic that has been covered in some cases. I can get deeper into that in the future if needed. But I think that's something even more important is that now with remote work, there are also remote opportunities. And sometimes we don't see how those boundaries and disappearing. So at the very beginning, you needed to be on the same place where the job opportunity was. Now you can work for someone, for a company or a project anywhere in the world. So that means more competitors in terms of offer of talent. Right. But a bunch more of opportunities that you can get uncovered. Right. And there's some asymmetry also in terms of the value of the economy. So how people from some countries where they have a, let's say a lower cost of living can get and reach much more opportunities and take advantage of this asymmetry. Right. But also because of all of this technology, AI data points, structure and all of these, we are getting to the point where we are seeing people that are getting to take new jobs or responsibilities for a certain period of time, predefined that they're saying like, hey, yes, I accept working for you for the next 10 to 12 months because after this I will be leading. And the candidates, let's say the talent is getting much more power in that negotiation because they can say, like, yeah, this is the time that I need to improve my skill set to get the knowledge and expertise so then I can get better opportunities than this one. And also we are seeing companies that are pushing back very hard, but other ones taking that advantage. And they're saying, kind of negotiating and saying, like, okay, you're going to stay 14 months, not 12, and I am going to pitch you even more things. So you cannot get, like, one level up, but two levels up after you complete the period working for me. So what I'm saying with all of this technology and all these movements, and I think that this industry is very affected by this, is that the job is getting much more liquid, and the job opportunities are more liquid. You can move faster, you can move easier, but also things are much more transparent. And the ones that will win that game on the talent side are the ones that can play all of these pieces and move at the proper pace. But also in terms of companies and projects, the ones that understand that that's happening and that can leverage that on the best talents, or in the other case, try to know, okay, what's the kind of talent that I can develop very quickly, they will go away, and that's okay. And I will love them to have a very good next opportunity because that will also help my employer branding and will help me to get the new batch of people that will be working for me. [00:10:19] Speaker D: Love. [00:10:20] Speaker A: I love that concept. Jobs, Jobs. Jobs are becoming liquid. I think that's very, very interesting. It talks about. It talks about the period in which we are at and like, the conditions in which we're at that now. Now I'm getting into. Into the. Into the metaphor. But. But we might get into a different scenario in the world where that liquidity would change and, you know, it become more dense. But that would be a different thing to. To talk about. Charles, what are you seeing? And I understand that, you know, you have team members that work remotely. You have others that, you know, have to do certain things physically. That's evolving anyways, and it's always been evolving. The TBO that you have right now is not the TBO where you started. What are you seeing and what do you also see in your clients? [00:11:06] Speaker D: Gosh, Eddie, I mean, it's. It's very difficult to give a concise answer to such a broad question, but there's. There's so many different things going on right now. But what I would say is, if you can remember the World cup in Italy in 1990, then you will have lived through a recession and it would have hit you, and you would have had family members lose their jobs or friends or even yourself. But if you can't remember watching Italy Nolenta, then you probably haven't lived through a real recession. So it means that any changes to the status quo, I mean, unemployment in the United States has gone up from 4% to 4.1%. Okay. In 1991, it went from 5% to 11% in one year because of the Gulf War. That was a recession hemorrhaging jobs. This is a totally different situation, a totally different scenario with a generation of people, especially in our industry and in the tech industry, who've seen nothing but growth. And now there's kind of where maybe we're in a holding pattern. It depends a lot on which country you're in, which role you do, what you want to do, where you want to go. So what are the consequences of this? I see people holding on to their jobs more, perhaps valuing what they have more, not so much focusing on where the grass might be greener. It doesn't mean that people don't voluntarily resign from positions and go out and do new things, but they're doing so with a greater degree of caution, I would believe, than a couple of years ago. So this is just a natural cycle. And AI is only one factor at play here. We have other factors. We have a global slowdown on the way due to, for various reasons related to tariffs and other economic policies. We also have a tightening of the labor market in the United States in particular, and maybe in other countries, due to a shutdown of legal and illegal immigration to a greater degree and in the past, it's going to be difficult to find people, both engineers for Silicon Valley and cooks for the kitchen. So there's a lot of different factors at play, and I think it's going to impact everyone in many different ways. But at the end of the day, unemployment is still 4.1% of the United States. So if several thousand people lost their jobs, several thousand people got new jobs. But as Siba says, there may be changing, and those guarantees that you thought you had are no longer there. It's no longer easy to negotiate that raise that you wanted. It's going to be very difficult to get a raise that matches inflation unless you get a promotion. It's going to be a very tricky market that is going to push the laws of economics as we know it. Yeah, I mean, it's exciting times. It seems to me that the market is going in all sorts of different directions at once. And from an individual standpoint, one, you know, reflects on one's individual moment. Get it, you know, living from paycheck to paycheck and you're in your location. But there are many global trends out there and it's difficult to look at the whole planet. Okay, what's going on in the United States is not happening in over 30 countries where unemployment is at over 10%. I just looked at the OECD statistics and there's a whole bunch of countries where unemployment is three times higher than the United States. And well, big news, those countries are the countries with the lowest level of technology adoption. So in my experience, I would say that adopting technology for countries, for companies and for individuals is the surest way to ensure employment and, and staying in business for companies. If you want to go the route of busting the machines and, and being a technology denier, I mean, that's a lost battle. So there you go. [00:15:29] Speaker A: That's great, that's great. Technology, technology deniers. And we've seen a bunch of those that they are disappearing very, very rapidly, which of course tells us a lot about where everyone thinks this is going to go. I go to the next question, just digging a little bit into what we're talking about from this first broader question in particular, and you said it, Charles. You know, AI automations, this means roles have to explicitly change, not just implicitly. What are you seeing out there in terms of the roles that you've been demanded from clients? Right, your clients are asking for roles. What have you explicitly been seeing in terms of skills that are required in artificial intelligence or automation? Because really what I'm looking for is understanding how, how these technologies in particular artificial intelligence and automation, are reshaping the specific roles. So do you see clients asking you more for these skills even as, you know, I guess masqueraded as soft skills? I guess being able to prompt it's going to be soft skill, I wonder, because I mean, it's conversation, right? Should be conversational if you have an LLM. But anyways, the question about the roles that you've been demanded from clients, is that changing? How does that look right now? Is it the same that it was three years ago? [00:16:56] Speaker D: Well, we get asked for a very wide range of different roles. But you know, it's one of those things where it seems to change every day and then you come back five years later and it looks more or less the same as it did five years ago. You know, salespeople, project managers, engineers. But if you, if you break away from the, the big picture and Go down into the detail and nitty gritty. There's certainly a lot more specific detail on what people are looking for. And I see them directly rejecting candidates who do not mention A on AI on their resume. Now, remember that recruiters. I don't know if Paula does this, but recruiters will often use AI to scan a resume for keywords. And if the. If AI isn't in there, you know that that resume might not even get thoroughly read. So that was great for individuals. You know, if you don't know much about AI, we'll start learning. But this is nothing new. I mean, I have an uncle that I love very much. He's like 86, and in the 1980s, he sold fax machines and then he sold fax paper and then he used to sell. He said, oh, the fax machines, nobody's using them anymore. And I said, well, there's still a niche. I have an aunt who's deaf and she communicates with my mother by fax machine. Okay. He said, well, you've got your niche, but the general use for the machine is dying out. Then I'm selling these car phones, and he had this great big phone that he plugged in the middle of his car. And then a few years later, he took me down to the marina. I would have been about 15. And he showed me these yachts and he said, the yachties are now buying satellite phones with GSM digital, I remember, to use out on the ocean. And he kept evolving as a person. And when I, and I, when I met him when I was a child, he was already like in his 40s. And he took every wave of the industry as a K. And then he started doing cell phones, you know, little Nokia ones. And then, and, you know, whatever. And then he retired out just before the smartphones hit the market. I don't know if he even saw blackberries, you know, but what I'm saying is that the job changed. The specific job of selling fax machines. Yeah, that was eliminated. Okay. But the same guy did all these other different things and he had to. And that's it. And that's what we're all going to do. [00:19:18] Speaker A: That's fantastic. I love that summary for me is going to be, this is nothing new. Business as usual. Thanks for that, Charles. Paul, do you have something to say about what you see? And then of course, we'll see what Sevas has there. [00:19:34] Speaker B: In principle, I, I agree with that. I mean, I actually read a very interesting article that was published by a guy called Justin Custer, the CEO of CxConnect AI. I actually don't know this person, but he was telling a story about the old model versus the new model. Now it pretty much says, sorry, excuse me, getting over my. The old model for the Japanese market, we used to need a Japanese team. For the German customers, we needed German speakers. For French accounts, we needed French Asians. It cost us $2.1 million in annual cost. And the four hour response time. The new model for that exact same situation is we now have eight top problem solvers. One language AI handles the translation. Our costs have reduced from 2.1 million to $800,000. Our response time has dropped from 4 hours to 15 minutes. Satisfaction by the client was up 30%, costs were down 60%, market coverage doubled and response time cut by 75%. How we stopped solving for language and started solving for expertise. Now it goes on a little bit more than that, but right at the end I'm pretty much agreeing with what Charles has said. Here is the future. That's the future of global support. Hire the best problem solvers, let AI handle translation, watch the costs drop, watch satisfaction soar. Stop hiring for languages, start hiring for excellence and let technology bridge the gap. Now I 100% accept that there are parts of the industry that can't apply because the regular. Some of the regulated industries there's such. They're so rigid in what's needed that you can't have machines looking after everything. But this was a report that I read and I actually think it expressed it cleanly what we're seeing in relation to the requests for the type of staff that we need. Sorry that we need to hire for our clients, but I agree with Charles. I've been in this in recruiting industry for far too many years and I've seen there's all this change comes the whole time, the whole time. So individual AI is what's needed now. Prompt engineering is huge. You actually jokingly said, I wonder, is that a soft skill or not? That's actually very interesting thought. I never thought of it that way. But it's going to continue to change. So this is not the suddenly, oh my goodness, what's happening in the world today that wasn't happening five years ago, 10 years ago it was the same situation. It just had a different. They had different names on them. There you go. That's my Tokensworth. [00:22:28] Speaker A: Thank you. Sevas. Sevas. [00:22:31] Speaker D: Yeah, I like that. [00:22:32] Speaker C: Some spices and pepper to the conversation here because I think that this is different to moving from selling a fax machine to a phone or Something because it is not a matter of what, it's a matter of how. And that's pretty different. It is like if we go to the construction industry right from the beginning of the humankind, I guess people say like, oh, let's go and build a cave, right? Or whatever it is. However it worked, right? So it was a bunch of people gathering together and doing whatever they needed to do to build a house, a cave or something, right? When we put like fast forward from the middle age, then we noted like in the middle of the squares of the towns, people gather to know like, okay, what's my journal? I mean, what should I do today? I will get paid per day, right? Even on the Bible we can read those kind of things. Like it was like from long time ago and recently it has been the same thing. I mean, we hire people to build houses, right? What's the matter of what it is like, okay, it is a house, it is a building. Those are the things that have been changing. The matter of how is, how are we getting the people a big revolution? The revolution was, okay, it is not a matter of people, it's a matter of machines building things. Okay? So now everything changed because the how was modified in here. How we are using the language is what is evolving or is changing. Now we have technology that can improve, interact with language in that way. This is. I agree that it is business as usual. Yes. But with the fast forward button just put in and putting on hold and it is always going faster, faster and faster. Things that we didn't consider will happen like 10 years ago or five years ago, one year ago, now it's happening. But things that today we're saying like, oh no, it is not possible. May be possible in a couple of weeks and much cheaper, right? So the evolution, or let's say the pace in which this is evolving is going faster and faster. And that's what I think that the pieces. Yes, a revolution. Yes, I agree with what Paula mentioned. Like, okay, we just need to hire like smart people or people that can solve things as it always has been. But the how we are doing the things may change. I mean, whatever. Yeah, it's very true because yeah, there are some niches in which people will keep doing things as usual, right? This is not going to change art, right? Yeah, you can create art using GPT and comics and those kind of things. But we always love this human touch and stuff. [00:25:01] Speaker D: Right? [00:25:02] Speaker C: But how we are doing things, and I was talking with someone two weeks ago about this, like using AI will be survival level Neat. It will not be a nice to have. It will be more important than knowing English. It will be more important than knowing how to use Excel. It is as important right now as it is. Do you know how to send an email? Do you have an email address? Can you communicate via email if you cannot most probably 90 something percent of the potential job opportunity that you may have dropped. Right. Same thing would happen. And it is already happening in some industries, in some sectors, for some roles. And it is, if you don't know how to use this, someone else will be beside you. [00:25:48] Speaker D: Right. [00:25:49] Speaker C: So for example, if I'm looking for a translator and I have someone that knows five languages, someone that knows just two. Right. And we are growing globally. Okay, which one should I pick? Both of them with cell level excellence, et cetera, et cetera. Like, okay, maybe that will be obvious. I will go with him or with her. Right. Same thing is if you know how to use additional tools to solve problems, it will be an order of magnitude in terms of difference. So how it will be impacting each company, each role, we will see. Because it is not a matter of what, it is a matter of how. So remember how it was before using cell phones? Remember how it was before the Internet or before having chat, having WhatsApp. [00:26:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:31] Speaker C: Or having a message, being able to communicate on real time with people. Things change a lot. This is what we are looking, what we are experiencing right now. Yeah, this is just one piece. We're looking for many other things happening worldwide. But this will be a compound effect in terms of the next status quo that we may be experiencing in five years or something will be very different to the ones that we were experiencing five years ago. [00:26:58] Speaker A: That's very interesting, Sevas. It seems like the understanding of the things that are going to change, it's still difficult to assess, mostly because it's happening as we speak. So we didn't know we were learning how to send emails until we learned to send emails. We didn't know what spam was until we got that prince of Nigeria emailing us way too many times after the first excitement of getting 1,000 million dollars in your account by just helping this Nigerian prince. Right. And it seems like we don't yet understand what is the structure of technical knowledge needed to showcase what AI is doing in that how. Right. So if we look at sales teams, sales teams now are using AI to generate sample emails, to generate, how do you call them? Proposals to generate responses. Like from the top of the funnel to the moment where you send the proposal to the Moment where you close, you can have all of that being Gen AI generated. Now how you include it in a different workflows, all those hows, I think they are happening as we speak. The use cases are happening as we speak in sales, in design. Just to give you an example, Adobe Premiere could take. Can take our magazine, our entire magazine and layout. We give it the text and it suggests layout given our previous designs. So this is crazy, right? It's like. So I usually design these, this magazine here is the text. It's okay, let me see your 100 these previous designs. All right. Because of your last one. This is what I'm going to suggest. And you have to make changes significant in most cases, but it speeds up part of the process. Yet that's very fragmented right now. I think it takes more time to even do it. It's faster to just do it humanly because it takes too, too long. But that's, that's reshaping as, as we speak. So I, I understand where you're coming from. Sevas in in in that conversation, of course. I think one of the. Before, before we get into other conversations, I think for us what's really important and for the audience of lang talent, which is in many cases companies looking for talent and in most cases talent looking for work, we want to understand what can they do in practical terms. Because what I'm mentioning right as is happening, I am so unconscious that these things are happening. In some cases I see myself doing things in ChatGPT and I'm like, it just became part of like checking my email kind of thing. Right. So what are the practical things? Because I do understand, hey, be aware of artificial intelligence. Be aware that it exists. I think most professionals right now in tech, which most of us here probably are, we are aware of artificial intelligence. Now what, like what do I do? And of course I bring this question to you because you're all of course like company leaders and in multilingual, I can tell you I've promoted writing content with the help of artificial intelligence. And editors don't like it. I tell you right now, writers don't like using artificial intelligence, which is great. That's the type of pressure you need, right? You need that type of pressure to guarantee the quality behind that. But for other things like articulating schedules of promotions or working on proposals which we have done hundreds of times, that is the type of thing that we promote the team to use. Now what we're looking for is are there any automations that can we put in place, for example, when we receive content in the form of a press release, let's say we're having an announcement and then we receive it in the company. How can artificial intelligence help to that level of automations? And surprisingly there are many companies here in this conference where I am that are offering services like that. We will automate your flows. Of course they're using artificial intelligence otherwise it wouldn't be like $100 a month. So that's kind of like where I'm coming from. Are there any practical, is there any practical advice you could give to emerging talent? Whether it is in this industry or in other industries. These are professionals that are, you know, working on their technical abilities and then they've just, they were selling their fax machines and then this artificial intelligence thing came and then we're hitting no, just you know, be aware of it and you know it's going to change everything you do. Just adapt. It's like all right, what, what, what can I, what can I do? What can I do to get well educated to reduce the anxiety? Because this is the, these are the topics that we get, this is what people are asking us and these are the people that your companies are going to hire. I know I just threw a bomb in the middle of the room. So anyone who wants to take, take it, I'll be happy with that. [00:32:02] Speaker B: Go. First of all I think the speed of change is huge because if I look at. So obviously we're spe. Honestly I don't do recruiting on a daily day to day basis nowadays. Thankfully my team is better at that than I am. But from time to time the more sometimes mid management and upwards would come and want to have a chat and I'm happy, I'm more than comfortable to talk. But what I'm saying to people that it's, it's key that you understand the terminology that's used. This is for an individual who's a job seeker or maybe knows there might be a, there might be about, might be a chance of redundancy in three months or six months time. It's absolutely key that you understand today's tech terminology and it could be a little bit different to what the terminology for three months ago. Because even if I look, you know when we're speaking to hiring companies I can obviously see from the CRM and I do speak to clients and we can actually look at the job specifications. What they need is changing very fast. This is what I'm seeing. So the individuals that were talking with that are the, are my companies talking with the job Seekers, they actually have to be on top of that change. And so for an individual, it's absolutely key, I believe, to be read, read, read, to actually have a challenging and questioning mind, to make sure you have access to. And access now is really easy. You know, honestly, it's easy through LinkedIn, it's easy through all the stuff that the special industry specialists are posting and you're getting individuals that are posting from both sides or 30 sides of the same point. I think it's really important that an individual is on top of that, is reading that. It's not only reading one opinion, this challenging opinion, technically checking things out to make sure, okay, what does that mean? So, and look at the latest developments that are coming from the. The technology, the language technology organizations. They're actually bringing out new. I can see it, I'm not a technologist, but even I can see, pardon me, you know, the. How quickly they're bringing out the new releases, how quickly the new releases are coming out. And I think if you're a job seeker, the practical thing to do is to make sure you can talk the language and understand today's situation, not the one three months ago. So sometimes, you know, when people would say to me, I look at their CV and I'd look at their LinkedIn profile and unfortunately it can look outdated if it hasn't been updated in six months. Stuff like that, I think needs to. An individual needs to make sure that they're on top of. Now, I don't know if that's far too basic for the question that you asked, Eddie. [00:34:44] Speaker A: That is perfect for the question that I asked. That is broad and you can take anything. Let's see what sticks in the wall. I don't know if Sevas or Charles have anything to add. [00:34:57] Speaker D: I mean, there's obviously some basic stuff that you could do. I recently went to a workshop about advanced use of LinkedIn and a third of the people in the room didn't have a LinkedIn profile. So there you go. And one third probably had a LinkedIn profile that was hideously out of date. Once again, I look at the big picture and these trends are not unique to our industry. We just believe they are. We're screaming as if it was the end of the world in our industry. But if you don't know how to use a kitchen robot, you're probably not working in a kitchen. You know, if you don't use digging machines, then you're not digging ditches. So if you don't understand all the different features of a fancy car, Then you're not going to be a chauffeur. So this is just par for the course. This is nothing new. But remember, human beings are being expected to work longer. So my five, and I think he died about one or two years afterwards. So the working life was shorter. And now we're, you know, we're being pushed out to, you know, 40 plus years on the workforce and, and it gets harder, I do believe, as you get older to keep up with the technology and, and to also have the will. Remember that this, a lot of this depends on the will. We can't force a Japanese linguist who specialized in biomedical translations to use AI and all sorts of other things if he or she doesn't want to. Maybe we can force the really big volume languages where there's an oversupply of linguists to do so, but market economics will dictate a lot of what happens in the future. And as far as I understand it, in English speaking countries, there's a significant, significant decline in the number of people studying foreign languages. So that to me signals a significant labor shortage downriver. In terms of how we view the industry today, I don't know what these people are doing. Instead of studying languages, I'd be interested to see which part professions like, okay, there's more chefs in England than there were 30 years ago when you could only get a meat pie for dinner. Okay, obviously there's a lot more chefs, but people are studying languages a lot less. Does that mean the profession is dying out? No, it doesn't. I mean, when I started out as a linguist in 1997, I was translating driver's licenses, birth certificates, death certificates, weddings stuff. I mean, it wasn't exciting. And a 10 page project was what I thought was a big project. So instead of looking at the photo of where we're at today and drowning in our own anguish, I would look at the whole film, the whole movie from where we started out in the 80s or 90s or even 20 years ago, and where we are today, we're translating significantly higher volumes. We have translation and interpreting companies, localization companies that do a billion dollars in sales. We have a whole industry that wasn't even here 30 or 40 years ago. So we just have to accept that maybe we have to have a bad year every now and then, like every other industry on this planet, and then move on and keep retraining and reskilling and so forth. So I think extrapolating that down to an individual level, keep learning, stop complaining, you know, you know, because this is just not like, it's, it's our, Our industry is the only industry that's being subject to change. [00:38:50] Speaker B: Yeah, can I just. Can I just jump in there and. Sorry, Charles. I do. Obviously, yes, there are organizations, a few, you know, the super agencies are making huge turnover from the language management industry, but they're not doing what they did even 24 months ago. They're not doing that by doing what they did, what the services were 24 months ago. Which means that the job seekers have to be able to not do. Do something different to what they were. What they were able to do 24 months ago. So, yes, you're right. The industry still has mileage, I believe. I'm actually not an expert in it, but, you know, the industry has mileage bus. Both parties have to keep up with what the changes. [00:39:37] Speaker D: And several are looking at an industry that died out. [00:39:41] Speaker B: Pardon me? [00:39:42] Speaker D: I'm trying to think of an entire industry that died out. [00:39:45] Speaker B: Did Kojak, do you remember? I kind of shouldn't be named companies, but. But I'm not saying the industry is dying out, but the way it's being done is different. [00:39:55] Speaker D: So the photography industry hasn't died out, but it's significantly done differently. [00:40:00] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's been done differently. That's the same with the language management industry. It's just being done differently. The services that are being delivered is very different to what was delivered 24 months ago, even 36 months ago, 48 months ago. [00:40:15] Speaker D: Yeah. I guess the Kodak example is probably one of the best examples of what happens if you don't embrace change and you miss opportunities. But the photography industry hasn't died out. Any one of your children or grandchildren or brothers or sisters probably has more photos taken of him or her than a royal Prince would have 60 years ago. Right. So things have just evolved significantly. You know, I think about. I think about horses, cars, trains and planes. So what replaced horse and carriage? The train. What replaced the train? Still there, right? Depends on where you are. Depends on where you live and what you want to do. Things have changed. A lot of those trains have been refitted to be freight trains. I don't know. Europe's different from North America. East Eastern Seaboard is different from the south of the country. There's different realities all the way around the world. It's complex. What I can say is that the slowest adopters of technology are going to be the ones that earn the least, that have the highest levels of unemployment, that lose business and that die out. And there's going to be countries that are going to be locked into that cycle and there's going to be companies that are locked into that cycle. And worst of all, there's going to be people locked into that mentality of. I remember seeing a really cool video when I was doing a business course in the 1990s about some guy with a huge desk at a factory and he would proudly said that he didn't have a computer. Then he did management by walking around and he walked and he literally, they filmed him walking around and he said, hi, Joseph, to a guy working on some machine. And then he said, hi, you know, hi, Reynaldo to another guy. And then hello to Mark, who was a supervisor and so forth. And he was charismatic and had a booming voice and he was unemployed 18 months later. So being proud of not using technology is a complete waste of energy. Now, if you are two years out from retirement, then, you know, okay, you're maybe you can deny technology and, and so forth, but your children and your grandchildren won't be. And when you're sitting at home, you're going to be wanting to communicate to them. And there's nothing better to communicate with your kids than technology. So I just don't see anyone other than the Unabomber living in the hills in a hut, not using technology. Why? To be against it for linguists? I mean, yeah, you can be an interpreter, you can be a project manager, you can evolve into an engineer. Almost none of the engineers in the language industry have an engineering degree. Almost none of the data scientists have a data science degree. Most of them are translators who evolved, retrained, learned stuff. Now, thinking about practical advice, Eddie, I would stop changing jobs too often. So first of all, get a really, really fresh, as Paula said, Fresh LinkedIn profile and stop changing jobs too often. I look at a resume and I see a person who's been, you know, two years a year and two years there and 18 months here and nine months there and then one year and two months there. I'm thinking, my gosh, I would almost omit things from my resume when I got to that point. It's as love. It's as if it just. It's just like that uncle who's been married five times, you know, you didn't learn any lessons. I'm not saying that we have to stay at an employer for life, and I'm saying an employer doesn't have to stay with an employee for life. This isn't, you know, Toyota in the 1980s. I mean, we're here because we choose to work for the company. We work for and we are here because the company chooses to employ us. But that said, I wouldn't, I would not do more than six job changes every 10 years. I know that's really difficult for someone who's 27 to think about, about. But you know, stability and commitment are valued more by people who are in hiring positions than by people who are applying for the positions. So think about that. [00:44:43] Speaker A: Thank you, Charles. And to your point, it refers back again to that sort of like ground level where we have to be regardless of like the state stage, the historical moment in where we're at. I'm wondering, Sevas, I'm sure you have not, you might not have not done this type of analysis, but I know you are confronted with a lot of talent that comes to Torre and then you have, you see successful talent and then you see successful companies and you see them succeeding because they are hiring more. Is there a correlation to this conversation that we're having on like, okay, the talent that's getting, that's get that's been hired most often is talent that is doing this type of things right, like adapting to change and adapting technologies and also sticking to jobs a little longer because that means, you know, you have a long term impact before you move on to another project. What are some of the things that you're seeing there? Even if it's just anecdotally. [00:45:37] Speaker C: Okay, so a couple of things. First, about changing jobs and that stuff. As I mentioned, I have seen for example in BPOs, in call centers, in those kind of places where people tries to hold the talent for a long time. People going up front and saying, I want to be here for a year. So it is not a matter of jumping because oh no, I get bored, I get tired. My boss, this new generation that usually say people like, oh, they cannot tolerate anything. It is the opposite. It is a strategy. And when it is done up front, result seem to be very good. Based on the, on what we have seen. Of course, not many companies do that and not many people do that. Right? What I have seen in terms of successful cases are people that is, that are fully transparent. And I will connect this with the answer to your question about. Okay, so what are the actionable items after this for people using AI and technology and those kind of things? And it is first we need to learn not why they exist, but what are they used for and how do they work. Why? Because in some cases we mix things. When I learn from recruiters saying, you know, to create this, this and that, I do this front on GPT, then it starts hallucinating when I am trying to select the candidates. And like, okay, if the model is hallucinating, unless you're a PhD trying to go, I mean, to pass the boundary of the human knowledge, most probably it is because you're using the wrong technology for your objective, right? Because when you are a hammer, you know, but in these cases, we have multiple type of tools, but everything is AI. And the most popular AI is ChatGPT. Yeah, not even the LLM model behind it, but ChatGPT, because that was the interface that got very popular about how to utilize this new wave of AI, right? So, and I'm saying this because here in Torre we're doing that matching between talent and job opportunities. I mean, from recruiters and companies, right? And people trying to say like, you know, I want to optimize my profile, that we call it genome because it has a bunch of structured data points. I want to optimize it for this job in particular. And then for this other job, we're like, dude, you don't know how the technology works in the way that you have more structured data, you can get better predictions. And in this case, it is a system helping you to get the best job available based on your experience, on your past, but also in the future, in your preferences on what do you want to get, what do you want to do, right? So when you have that approach from when you understand, like, okay, every tool may work differently, you can get the most out of each one of them, right? So my practical advice on that front would be the first one. Go and read. As I was saying, let's go and study. Go and check. What is it? I mean, is it GPT? What else is there? What's the technology? If you, I mean, you can just go to GPT and say like, okay, what is this boom of AI? What are the different technologies? What are the main use cases? And then you can get a pretty decent overlook of everything that is going on, right? And then after you understand what is there, I think that the next step is, okay, how can I apply it to my daily life? I mean, today, for the things that I'm doing today, it is not common to have something to do where you cannot utilize new AI technology for anything during the whole day. It will be very exotic to have those kind of cases. And in some cases it is like, you know, I know how to write this. I know I have Grammarly to correct me on this front. You know, Word already does that for me or Excel. I needed like, yes, but if you are doing the same thing multiple times during the day, you can already automate that and they may take you half an hour, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 days. It depends on the complexity, of course. Right. But in that way you can be much more efficient in whatever you're doing and whatever you're doing, I mean, even going to the. I mean ordering your groceries via your phone or via chat or whatever and collecting the information from your whole family. Okay, what else do you want to get? And that can be automated, and it can be automated by anyone without technical knowledge. And that's the beautiful thing of this kind of technology, that the interface is being language, as I mentioned in the past. So when you can get to that point, you can go further and do much more things than the ones that you initially imagined that you can do if you understand what are those things. And I'm talking about family life, I'm talking about your hobbies, and of course I'm talking about. Right, so because I don't know if you have seen like those trends about that guild, cartoons, fixtures and stuff. That's the first layer, right? Go and play with it just to throw something and be amazed with the result. Right. But then you can go to the next layer and it is, I want to learn something, so I don't know, like general knowledge stuff. Right, okay, but then I can go to the next one. It is, I want to do some deep research. I need to be very careful about the results, not conclusion, but let's go and research for me so I can get much more input so then I can make better decisions. Then next layer, how can I automate things? Next layer, how can I create even agents that can automate multiple type of tasks and put one after the other? Next level, how can I build systems that can make things to happen one after the other? So even if for some roles, for some position right now, this doesn't have a direct relation to like, oh really, this will not affect me. I don't know. This is too far. The boundary of the things that can be done automated with AI, right. With these new technologies is going farther and farther. So if you don't spend at least 10 to 15 minutes per day or a couple of hours per week, the gap will be higher. And for me, the actionable item. That sounds very basic, I think, as Paula mentioned, like, it is go and study, but it is go and study every day, if possible, or every week at least go and read 10 to 15 minutes. Okay, what's up? Right, what's next? And Go and play with it. Because just knowing how should you write, how should you speak, what can be the result, even if it is just a mess, right? Because that mess may be in a month, it will not be a mess, right? That can help you to be not on the edge, but much closer to the edge than maybe 70, 80, 90% of the people in the world. So yeah, you need to be very curious, as Jared was saying, like, yeah, you need to have that interest. I do not think this should be like top to bottom approach. It should be per individual, any company, as I've said, at least as of now, without changing strongly the things like I will fire you if you don't do things right? It will be very classic. But without that, if you want just to encourage people to do it, you should go bottom up. I mean, it should be the interest of each person. What I have seen companies doing is trying to get them some tool like, hey, what if you go and play with this? Hey, have you tried doing that? And usually the curiosity of people starts with personal things because they feel that vulnerability. I mean, all of us, we are ignorant with the leading edge of this technology, right? But we can get closer to that, at least to a decent level for our daily lives because we are not that technical on that front. With just some hours per day, in a matter of one month or something, we can be really on the percentile, I mean very on the top because not many people is being curious. So that curiosity and applying that curiosity on reading 10 to 5 minutes, right? Or 15 minutes and then playing with it, doing whatever stuff for also 10 to 15 minutes, if you understand the logic behind that, you can get amazing results on your personal life in what you should learn, right? What's the best way to learn a new skill, right? If you want to learn a new language, if you want to play a new sport, if you want to be healthier, like what can be this protocol to optimize? You can be surprised with those small things, how they can compound and get better results. So that will be my channel on that. [00:53:44] Speaker A: Thank you. Sevas. [00:53:45] Speaker D: And I was just say Sevas, that you know, at the end of the day you still got to know what 13 times 13 is, even if you have a calculator. So what I'm trying to say here is that with all this upskilling, with all this adoption of, let's give you an example of using Grammarly and chatgpt to write. If you don't have the skills, if you don't develop your own intellect, if you don't get an education, then these tools will not be enough on their own because they are tools. If you think that they're going to replace you entirely, then you are adding no value and that you will not be necessary for your employer, that is the person who will be replaced, the person that adds no value. Right. You add no value because the machine can do it. So just remember that the machine can't do everything or maybe it can't do specific things today that it will be able to do to do tomorrow, but you're going to be learning new things that you can do tomorrow that you don't know how to do today. Today as well. But my message is don't get lazy. Don't you. I wouldn't use Chat GPT as your default to write a love letter or to write a letter to a client. I would do it myself and then maybe fall back on Chat GBT if I don't like my original content. Content. Why? I'll give you an example. LinkedIn, which we talked about, hates repetitive content. It hates things that are produced by Chat GPT that's punished by the algorithm. Once we've seen four or five movies all the same about dystopian teenagers, we get bored of them, right? Because they're all the same. My, my 14 year old daughter is going through like all these dystopian movies that have been written by Chat GPT. Okay, we know Chat GPT is not Prow, right? But we still got to know who Proust is and we, we'll be looking into a generation of people who will be very lazy if they do not develop their own skills in addition to what technology can do for them. We still got to do some heavy lifting ourselves. That's my message. So just don't get lazy. Keep sharing sharp, keep classy. [00:56:09] Speaker C: I think, please go ahead. [00:56:12] Speaker B: No, I'm sorry, I was gonna say, I think, I think the philosophical point is very valid, Charles. It's just an ongoing challenge between the philosoph, the philosophical imperative and the commercial push. It's interest. Always interesting. I don't disprove the principle Bus Big Bo. [00:56:34] Speaker C: No, I absolutely agree on don't being lazy. The point is where should you be putting your energy and your focus? So for example, I do the opposite approach that the one that you mentioned. I do not start drafting things from scratch. If I'm going to write a letter to a client, if I'm going to write a cold outbound message, I will not do that ever. What I will do is I will Invest some time bringing information, researching even from my own past messages. What's the reply rate, what's the offer rate, what are those kind of things? Based on this, how can I collect this and that? So my effort, I do not, I mean I must not be lazy and people must not be lazy. Absolutely agree. But if I can leverage my time, my energy, my focus, not drafting the letter, but drafting some context to prompt some things that then I can check, review and with my knowledge and understanding, selecting and adjusting, that will be very different because basically when we're talking about AI and GPT and prompt, which is the most popular, as I mentioned, you can always kind of find out correlation between if people is doing that effort or not based on how long is the prompt of the people. And I'm not talking about how many iterations or how many chats, how many messages have you exchanged, but it is how much effort did you put on? This is the whole context, this is the kind of structure, this is the way that I want you to start resonating, right? And based on that, what may be the things? So I absolutely agree with the principle, please do not be lazy. And for everyone that is listening to us, don't be lazy, start experimenting. Where is the place where you should put your effort to get the best results? For many things it will be different. I'm not saying that it is black and white, but the, I mean the, the, the needle is moving, right? [00:58:20] Speaker D: So more than 200 years ago, Benjamin Franklin said that if you give gave him six hours to chop down a tree, he would spend the first four hours sharpening his ax. So yes, this is the 2025 version. I guess I'm just an old fashioned creative, but in terms of the, the language market, there's no doubt about it, you've got it. You've got to be. If you're not, I mean, I would be, you know, I think Renato Beninazo said this several times that if you don't, you know, use technology, you will be replaced by somebody who does. So that's it across the board. No doubt about it. If you go back to the Luddite movement in England in the late 17th century, was it, machines don't replace human beings entirely. You know, unemployment is at a historical low. We're not living in a society like that movie Wall E where everyone's sort of in a reclining chair having a huge soda with machines doing everything and everyone has become obese and just floats around watching TV while the machines do everything. That's not where we're at, right? But I do think I'm going to be sparring off next week with Andre Hemker, who's retiring from the language industry and he's going to run a dirt bike business in the mountains, in port Portugal, in the forests. And he's like, I'm changing machine translation and AI for chain lube. I think there is going to be plenty of us who are at some point are going to get so sick of staring at a screen, right. And I want to do something else. Screens all day long. I'm already at that point where, in terms, I don't like using screens for entertainment outside of my work. I mean, I don't watch TV anymore. I don't even watch. I mean, not watching much Netflix anymore. I want to go outside. You know, I think we're gonna. This is all gonna go in cycles, philosophically speaking. And. And I think on an employment level, we're just evolving. We're just evolving. And once again, don't get lazy because machines aren't gonna replace you. [01:00:39] Speaker A: That is fantastic. And it seems like the future of work is going to have echoes of the past, it's going to have echoes of the present. And I think we all agree in where we are at, what's the state of everything and what people should be doing in practical terms to do that. I want to thank everyone who's joined us today at Land Talent. We will have another session in about two months. Of course, I want to give Paula Sevas and Charles an opportunity to tell us a little bit more about their companies, where they can find, where everyone who is listening to this or watching this live or recording can find you. And just as a note, Charles, I mentioned to all of you, vamos juntos. Next year is going to happen again. And also TVO Talent has some talks for talent that, you know, I think they are going to be reactivated. Charles, is that the case? I think, I think, yeah, that's right. [01:01:37] Speaker D: The TBO Talent forum is kicking off next week and it's, it's, as I just said, it's with. I'm going to spar off with Andre Hamker, who, as I said, is retiring to run a motorcycle business in the mountains in Portugal. Whereas I haven't got to that point of burnout, still love my job, still love working with the people I work with, still love working for the people I work for. Four still love every day, not every single minute of every day. So we're going to spar off about, you know, is this the end? Because his his thesis is the end. [01:02:07] Speaker A: But that's interesting. [01:02:08] Speaker D: My thesis is going to be. It's the end for you. Well, not even the end, it's just the next step. [01:02:15] Speaker A: Right, right. [01:02:15] Speaker D: You know, metamorphosis. But yeah. So TBR Talent Forum. We're always looking for speakers. It's a once a month, once a month event. It's real cool, lots of fun. [01:02:27] Speaker A: Where can we register? [01:02:30] Speaker D: Oh gosh. It's like a really long LinkedIn address. But if you Google the tbo talent forum 2025 or you Google my name, it'll come up real quick. I can. [01:02:44] Speaker A: All right, we will, we will put a link for the LinkedIn event on the comments for the YouTube and also the LinkedIn live stream stream that we've had right now. Paula, where can we find you? Where can we find the International Achievers Group? [01:02:58] Speaker B: We obviously have our website, which is internationalachieversgroup.com on top of that we have a monthly podcast. Myself and Bruno Herman, the wonderful Bruno are actually the hosts and we get to speak with predominantly individuals that are top voices from the client side so that we can make sure that we're staying on top of what pretty much the buyers of, of the service, the language services need. Pardon me. So that's broadcast and it's top. We have a LinkedIn page. Top. If you look for top voices, you'll find that. I can't think of anything else to tell you, but I'm always happy to chat to anybody who wants to chat. [01:03:42] Speaker A: Fantastic. We can find you also on LinkedIn, same as Charles. And we'll make sure we put some of those links on the comments. Seva's last but not least. [01:03:51] Speaker C: Yeah, Torre AI. Basically you can see here is on the name. Yeah, I mean what we are doing is matching that opportunities with people to make work fulfilling. So it will be a good chance for you to test also technology to learn about it. And yeah, we see a future with that kind of liquid work. So if you're interested in something like that will be a good opportunity for you to go and check what it's there. [01:04:15] Speaker A: Yeah, fun story. I found the language industry at Torre and I've been here now for two and a half years talking about staying longer in industries and switching. So thank you everyone who's listening to this conversation today. Once again fully invited to the event with Charles next week. Paula also has her podcast, follow the podcast. Follow our podcast. Go to Torre AI. Thank you so much for joining us today. That has been everything. My name is Eddie Arrieta. I'm the CEO here at Multilingual Media. Thank you, Camila, for helping us in the background make all of these happen. Until next time, goodbye. Thank you everyone, for joining this panel.