Podcast

Ep 40 – New ways to build your future-ready workforce

May 3, 2022

This week’s guest

Kamal Ahluwalia

President Eightfold

Telco has a problem. The industry needs a gazillion people with cloud skills, but it’s late to the party. Demand for these workers is at an all-time high, and the best talent is already being wooed by the hyperscalers and industries that embraced a move to the public cloud years ago. How can forward-thinking CSPs cultivate the talented teams they need?

Good news – there are new workforce management strategies and AI tools that can help. In this episode, Kamal Ahluwalia, President of Eightfold, joins me to talk about how telcos can build a killer cloud workforce. Listen now to learn:

What’s changed about finding and managing talent [04:10];
How you can engage in-demand workers in today’s hot market [09:25];
Strategies to develop your in-house talent [10:50]; and
Why old school CVs and job descriptions are becoming obsolete [14:28].

Hint: Listen to the end for a super fun (and valuable) surprise. Telco execs, don’t miss this one!

Links and Resources

You can find the transcript for this episode here.
Check out the Eightfold website
Don’t miss Cultivate 2022, Eightfold’s talent summit running May 10-11, 2022 in Napa Valley, CA
Register for Totogi’s May 17 webinar, Why Your Lame Charging System Is Not Smart Enough For The Future
Read Eightfold’s talent insights report, What Telecoms Need to Build a Future-Ready Workforce (though I would edit it slightly: telcos are ready for 5G, what they aren’t ready for is public cloud)
Check out this book that Kamal co-authored, What’s Next For You: The Eightfold path to transforming the way we hire and manage talent
This article from Deloitte outlines six ways to tackle your software engineering skills shortage
Check out Forrest Brazeal’s Cloud Resume Challenge – and his new book
Visit the A Cloud Guru website
Ready to use data to manage your workforce? Get inspiration from a great (and true!) HR movie, Moneyball, where Oakland Athletics manager Billy Bean uses an avant-garde way to find untapped baseball talent – and WINS. It was so effective it changed the game; most teams use his approach today.

Author’s bio

Kamal has extensive experience in scaling and building businesses, software categories, and surrounding ecosystems. He is a pioneer and practitioner of AI Talent Platforms – a breakthrough technology in which any organization can hire and promote talent based on their potential, while simultaneously creating a more diverse, inclusive, and successful workforce. Kamal is co-author of the book “What’s Next for You – The Eightfold Path To Transforming The Way We Hire And Manage Talent.”

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The Telco in 20 podcast won a 2022 Gold Hermes Award and was recognized on Forrester’s 2021 list of the Top 100 Channel Podcasts and Feedspot’s Top 10 Telecom Podcasts list.

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