Ep 46 Rachel Zeller of Kitces.com—Hiring Humans in an AI World
Episode Summary
Rachel Zeller, Managing Director at Kitces.com, discusses how her fully remote financial education company is adapting hiring practices in response to AI-generated applications. She explains their human-centric approach: requiring robust application forms instead of easy-apply, manually reviewing every submission, asking candidates to submit AI transcripts alongside work samples, and prioritizing culture fit over technical skills that can be trained.
Pull Quotes
On rejecting a candidate who looked up and right during interviews, appearing to reference AI prompts for polished answers
“I can't take a chance that she didn't really know what she was talking about, and she was relying too much on a support.”
“AI isn't great yet at pushing back and telling you when you're wrong about everything. Like, it still likes to tell you that you're right.”
“I think we learned how to ask the business questions behind the data sheets because we had our hands so in the data sheets. So, it's much more important, I think, for the people coming up to understand what the questions we're asking, how we're making business decisions.”
On candidates who reapplied after initial rejection and later joined the team
“The fact that we can say no, thank you to someone in a moment, and they still feel good enough about the whole process that they want to try again. I feel really good about.”
Advising her college-aged son on career preparation
“Nobody is as invested in his development as a person as he is. And so sometimes that means he needs to know how to do polite follow-ups and how to do those sort of outreaches.”
Transcript
Todd Merrill:
Welcome, today's guest. We're doing something a little bit different. It's real-time. It's evolving. Our guest today is Rachel Zeller:. Hi, Rachel. How are you?
Rachel Zeller:
Hi Todd. I'm great. Thanks for having me on.
Todd Merrill:
Want to go deeper?
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