In this episode of Career Compass, SHRM Chief Transformation Officer Andy Biladeau discusses how to find a satisfying career path and future-proof it by developing your AI prompt muscles.
In this episode of Career Compass, SHRM Chief Transformation Officer Andy Biladeau discusses how to find a satisfying career path and future-proof it by developing your AI prompt muscles.
Earn 0.5 SHRM PDC by listening to this podcast; all details provided in-episode.
Rate and review Career Compass on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts.
Aly Sharp:
Hello, and welcome back to Career Compass, a podcast from SHRM. I'm going to be your host today, Aly Sharp. Career Compass covers pertinent topics in HR that are relevant to students and emerging professionals. Each episode, we are joined by an industry expert to share their knowledge and advice with you. Today, we are welcoming Andy Biladeau, chief transformation officer here at SHRM. Andy has over 10 years of experience as a human resources leader, practitioner, and consultant at companies such as PwC and Target. He also served as a founding team member of the Josh Bersin Company and as the chief learning officer of the Josh Bersin Academy. At SHRM, Andy drives the execution of the SHRM global strategy, ensuring the development and successful delivery of innovative products, unparalleled services, and transformative experiences to our diverse audiences. Welcome, Andy.
Andy Biladeau:
Thanks so much for having me, Aly.
Aly Sharp:
We are going to jump right in here. As one of our newest executive team members, would you be able to give the listeners a brief rundown of how your career brought you to SHRM?
Andy Biladeau:
Yeah, absolutely. I have a pretty diverse background. I think the common thread through all of my experiences, though, is being really close to the HR profession and the HR craft. I out of college wanted to be a high school English teacher. And so I pursued that dream for all of one year and learned a lot in the classroom teaching freshmen and sophomore English, but really wanted to seek an administration role or some type of instructional design role in a corporate environment or corporate setting. And so I went back to graduate school and got my MBA, and that's where I really fell in love with human resources. And so while I was at Florida State for my MBA, I got the chance to have a concentration in HR strategy and operations and just really fell in love with the possibilities of HR. And that led me to getting a job at PwC as a human capital consultant.
So for about five years I did large-scale HR operating model transformations, led those initiatives, was a team member on many of those initiatives. And so I got to see a lot of different business problems, and I got to work across a lot of different industries with a lot of different stakeholders and clients. And so I would say it gave me broad exposure to the breadth and depth of the HR profession. And I've always looked back on that chapter of my career really fondly because I think that as I think about the learning curve of my career, very steep, but very exciting during those five years. I also at the time just really had this sense that as much as I loved going to different clients solving different problems or helping them through different challenges, I also wanted to understand what it felt like to actually be an HR practitioner. And so I pursued a role at Target Corporation in Minneapolis.
And at Target I led learning and development and change management for a large portion of the stores' organization. And so it was exciting because I to take all the lessons that I learned from consulting and all the analysis and advice and recommendations that I had previously given to clients, and then I got to implement a lot of what I thought were leading practices there at Target and gotten a real appreciation for the distinction between what it feels like to be an external consultant or an advisor and what it's like to actually be an HR professional sitting in that seat, having to make choices and trade-off decisions every day as you have competing priorities, and then also managing the internal stakeholder alignment that comes along with those decisions.
As an external consultant, you parachute in, you assess the problem, you make a series of recommendations, and oftentimes you leave before you get to see some of those solutions or ideas implemented. And so, again, I look back really fondly at the chapter of my career that I spent at Target because I got to live and breathe what HR professionals experience on a day-to-day basis. So incredibly grateful for my time at the bullseye. And then a couple years into my time there at Target, I got a reach out from a friend who had worked with Josh Bersin, who's a global thought leader in the HR space. And Josh had retired from Deloitte and he was looking at starting a company that was based on upskilling the HR profession, and it really checked a lot of boxes for me.
One, it was a chance to be part of a founding team at a startup, and so I got to experience what it feels like to be an entrepreneur. Also got a chance to build something from my consulting experience and industry experience and serve the HR profession in that capacity. And so like you mentioned in the intro, I was a chief learning officer at the Josh Bersin Academy, and then I also led our advisory services practice. So I dipped back into the consulting world to help larger organizations with many of their HR challenges. All of that led me to the doorstep of SHRM because it all makes sense in reverse now. At the time-
Aly Sharp:
Right.
Andy Biladeau:
... it wasn't quite as clear, and I don't think that I had that career path plotted out with any degree of accuracy when it all started. But you can kind of see how those stackable experiences and skill development opportunities led me to SHRM. And ultimately, when Johnny reached out to me at the end of 2023 and asked if I'd be interested in coming over and leading the transformation and strategy office for SHRM, I jumped at the opportunity because, ultimately, SHRM occupies a category of one when it comes to speaking on behalf of the HR profession and also leading the HR profession into the future. And so to be somewhere where I can serve the mission of elevating HR and also do it at a global scale is something that I cherish every day.
Aly Sharp:
That is so awesome. And I remember I was reading your bio and I was like, "I had no idea that you came from HR," because the first thing I think you talked to us about, us being SHRM, was AI and technology. And I was like, "Oh, so he's clearly a technology guy." I had no idea that you basically have done everything from literally teach to being an executive. That is so cool.
Andy Biladeau:
Yeah.
Aly Sharp:
But [inaudible 00:05:58]-
Andy Biladeau:
I have an insatiable curiosity and so I just, I can't stop learning about things. And when I get fixated on something or want to know more about it, I have a tendency to throw myself in the deep end and try to learn how to swim my way out.
Aly Sharp:
Yeah, and that is actually the perfect segue into our next question. How do you recommend for students and emerging professionals to learn more about AI use in the workplace?
Andy Biladeau:
Yeah. Anybody who goes to any type of conference or meeting or event recently or sits in a classroom and listens to professors or teachers talk about the future of technology, they probably have an AI bingo card in front of them waiting for the buzzwords to drop of large language models and tokenization and drift and corpus of knowledge. I would say this. We're still so early in this, even though it doesn't feel like that in terms of the way that this has the potential to disrupt many parts and aspects of our lives, both within work and outside the context of work. But that being said, we also have to appreciate that the technology has been around for coming up on two years when ChatGPT was introduced to general availability. And so the technology has existed in the wild now for an extended period of time. What's really interesting about specifically generative AI is that it kind of went against the grain of every other technology implementation that anybody had ever seen or experienced.
Aly Sharp:
Yeah.
Andy Biladeau:
Meaning typically when you roll out a new technology or a new product, there's a lot of marketing lead up, there's a lot of training, there's playbooks. People have really beta tested it. It was completely different. This was 180 degrees different in the sense of it was released to the general public and given a open license to effectively experiment with the tool. And I think what we found is that there's not a lot of ways that you can do top down prescription of here's how to use this technology to better your life or your work. And really, so much of it is putting it into the hands of the user for them to independently figure out what is the best application of this in the context of my work or my life?
And so I think if you accept that premise that there's not going to be an instruction guide for this, then I would say that that advice about jumping into the deep end and learning to swim your way out applies here as well, meaning you have to get your hands on the tool and to play with it and learn about it and try different tools and try different prompts and try different inputs or different scenarios, even if you think there's no relevant application.
I think one thing I'll say about my career and that has proven to be true is that I've learned a lot more from my mistakes and my failures than from my successes. And I think that there's no perfect or right way to use some of these technologies as long as you're doing it in a safe, secure way, which as a SHRM employee I know that we're big on harping on. But the point being that there's no right or wrong when it comes to the use of these technologies, and each individual is going to have to independently figure out the best application form. And so I would say that if you haven't gotten your hands on it, get your hands on it. If you're not using it on a daily or almost hourly basis, I would encourage you to get more reps at it just to see what the applicability of it might be for you.
Aly Sharp:
I'm sitting here shaking my head. I know we are just an audio podcast, so no one knows that, but I'm like, "Yeah." That's crazy. I use it maybe twice a week, which is-
Andy Biladeau:
Yeah.
Aly Sharp:
... maybe hard to believe because I'm in marketing and I think that's a big push for using AI is to come up with maybe different buzzwords or different ways to market something. But now I'm like, "Maybe we should just drop a new product and not market it at all and see what happens."
Andy Biladeau:
Right.
Aly Sharp:
Kind of what ChatGPT did.
Andy Biladeau:
And that's the exciting part about this, which is they really, again, rewrote the approach to launching product or shipping product. Now, I will say that it has created a lot of confusion and a lot of mistrust maybe or skepticism in the marketplace about what the future applications of the technology are. And I think that regulators are actively working through what that's going to look like and what that framework might be to govern the technology. But right here and now, AI use is a muscle. And if you're not going to the gym every day and using the muscle and building the muscle, you're not going to find those connection points with your work and how you can use it to enable and accelerate your work. I think that being said, I also, I would acknowledge here too, Aly, that it does feel, and I don't know if you share this sentiment, but it feels like we've been waiting for a while for the other shoe to drop on this-
Aly Sharp:
Yeah.
Andy Biladeau:
... of it to completely radically disrupt our lives. And that hasn't necessarily played out. So I do think there's almost this existential angst around the technology of just hurrying up and waiting for what this is going to look like in the future. And I think that that will persist for a period of time because I don't think that there's a master blueprint for how this is all going to look in two or three years.
Aly Sharp:
Yeah. I was going to say, I feel like when it was first announced everyone was like, "This is going to take away all of our jobs and no one's going to be able to work anymore." And now it's kind of just like, no, it's there to help you. It literally can't take your job because it's not a person, it can't have conversations like this.
Andy Biladeau:
Right. I think in a lot of ways it represents a really big technological breakthrough. I don't know that it has really significantly represented a practical application breakthrough. And so I think that that's where people are struggling a little bit is they understand the significance that we have broken new ground in terms of a machine being able to pass what's called the Turing test. It's the essentially the ability for an individual not to know whether they're talking to a computer or a human. We've now kind of passed that test for the first time in technology history, but now what we do with that, I think, is still up for grabs.
Aly Sharp:
Yeah. So going into how students and emerging professionals might be able to use their knowledge or their practice of AI, how do you think they could effectively demonstrate their technical skills or are willing to adopt new technologies to potential employers?
Andy Biladeau:
Yeah. This is where I think you have to put, and speaking specifically about generative AI, you have to put generative AI in a very discreet context, meaning I think that if you're a student or an emerging professional and you're just getting into human resources and you're learning about all the different areas of human resources from talent acquisition and sourcing and recruiting and pre-boarding all the way through talent development and learning and instructional design to talent management and talent mobility, total rewards, it can be really overwhelming. And so I think the two applications that I always recommend to students or emerging professionals with this technology is use it as a resource library, for one. Just being the ability to ask the corpus of knowledge across the totality of the internet about a question you have to get smart on something very quickly and not to have to hunt and pack to find that information is massive access to information that previous generations haven't had.
And so recognize the position of strength that you're in in the sense that you have access to almost any information that you want that's just a prompt away. But the second thing, and this is about putting it into discreet context, learn the fundamentals of the role that you're in or the job that you want or the domain that you're focused or interested in first so that you can enter intelligent prompts into the engines. I think one thing that happens is people don't know enough information to ask the right questions. And so you've got to familiarize yourself with the subject matter that you're dealing with before you start to use the tool as an enabler.
And so I think that one piece of it is don't assume that the technology is going to be a replacement for education or knowledge, even though you do have access to it. And it can be very tempting because, like I mentioned, you learn through failure. And so you're going to learn through the hundred prompts that you got wrong and you're going to have to ask the right prompts to have those failures in order to get to the right one. And you can't skip over that part. This technology doesn't allow you to just detour around all of those failures, unfortunately. And so I would say, again, don't lose sight of the true purpose of what you're doing, which is trying to build your knowledge base about the human resources profession and then whatever area or domain you're interested in, and then layer on the technology as an enabler.
Aly Sharp:
Yeah. I would definitely say I have the hardest time with prompting. I'll do three, and if it's not give me what I want, I'm like, "Goodbye. I'll just figure it out myself."
Andy Biladeau:
And that's okay. And I think people walk away and assume that the technology's not doing what it's supposed to do. This happens all the time with tech is people just ascribe they didn't get what they want, and so it's the product's fault, meaning I've done a ton of Workday and SAP implementations, and inevitably we'd go live with the new system or roll something out. And people would start to abstract it out to, "Well, Workday can't do this," or, "SAP can't do that," or, "Oracle falls short here." And the reality is the technology is not a person. It's a series of binary codes. It's built to do something and programmed to do something and behave a certain way. And so I do think, to your point, Aly, that some people maybe get frustrated or those failures, they assume it's ineffectiveness of the technology when in reality it's just maybe not the particularly correct application of it.
Aly Sharp:
Oh, and I will say that. I know that ChatGPT knows way more than I do about way more things. So I'm just like, "It's fine. It's on me. I'm just not prompting it correctly. That's my bad. I'll just come back later. I'll try again another day." But yeah, so I like to use it in my work, but I don't rely on it. And I think that's very important, especially for students, because I'm sure some of them are using it to write their papers, which just makes me so nervous. I know I'm not that far removed from college, but I feel like-
Andy Biladeau:
Yeah.
Aly Sharp:
... I'm their grandmother in this instance. I'm like, "Are you kidding? You're not going to do your own work?"
Andy Biladeau:
Yeah. That's where the retention piece comes in. And we were talking about it earlier of you build knowledge, you put that knowledge into action, and you experiment. You test and learn and you grow. And that's been the learning cycle since the dawn of humanity. And I think we're now in a position where people have this illusion that they can bypass the first step of that process, which is acquiring knowledge. And I think that what we'll find in the coming years is does that accelerate our ability to innovate and create? Or do we have potentially a cohort of professionals or students that are over reliant on the technology, not actually building that depth of expertise and experience that all of us have built pre-generative AI?
Aly Sharp:
Yeah. And I would even say, even in the cell phone era, I can't go anywhere without my iPhone. And I wish I was born 50 years prior so I could have had a life without a cell phone. I got one quite young because I would have to walk home from school. So I'm like, "I don't even think I formed memories before I got-"
Andy Biladeau:
Yeah.
Aly Sharp:
"... a phone."
Andy Biladeau:
It's going to be very interesting to see how all of this plays out because it's colliding worlds of pixels and atoms, meaning you have the pixelated world or this digital reality that we all venture into and inhabit at times, but the reality is that we can't escape our own humanity. And so not to get too philosophical about this, but the trajectory of this points towards something like integration of human and technology. And I guess I share your perspective on this, which is that I hope we don't lose our humanity in all of this because there really is something special about being a creative sentient being. And I think that's why when SHRM talks about AI+HI, both are equally important in that equation.
Aly Sharp:
Absolutely. And HI, for those who might not be familiar, is human intelligence. And that actually kind of correlates to our next question that is about power skills. So last week we talked to Johnny about power skills, and I was curious on your take of how power skills compare to technical skills in terms of their impact on employee success.
Andy Biladeau:
Yeah, absolutely. And if there's someone to talk to about power skills, it's Johnny because he has probably more power skills than almost anybody I've ever met, and so certainly an expert on the topic. What I'd say about this complementary nature of technical skills and power skills is that if you actually go back to the pedagogy, or like we were talking about, the way people learn things or grow or develop, it comes down to, again, that same experimental cycle that I was mentioning before, which is you have to learn about something, the concepts, the vocabulary, the language, the terminology, the ideas. You then build a mental model of what you think that idea is within your mind, and then you try to put it into practice and you succeed or fail or somewhere in between and you try it again the next time and refine over time as you get more at-bats.
So if you think about the way you build technical and power skills, the reality is that you actually build them in the same ways. And so I think that that's something that's a little bit lost on folks because they assume that you naturally have a predistribution of one or the other. And I think that in some cases that's certainly possible, but the reality is that don't over index on the skills that you perceive yourself to have more depth in. Meaning if you believe yourself to be more of an engineering type and have deeper technical skills, the way you build those technical skills is actually the same way you build the power skills. How do you communicate? How do you collaborate? How do you demonstrate active listening with someone? Those are things that take practice. And I think there's an assumption about power skills is that those who are really good at them just woke up with them one day.
Aly Sharp:
Yeah.
Andy Biladeau:
And that's absolutely not the case. People can get into these false dichotomies of I'm an introvert or I'm an extrovert. And so power skills, to me, I'm an introvert and therefore I can't demonstrate those or exhibit those. And I don't necessarily fully subscribe to that. I just think it takes courage to take the first step to try something new. What I'll say is that, with power skills, sometimes it feels like you're higher up on the tightrope when you're experimenting, meaning that you're worried maybe about the social implications-
Aly Sharp:
Yeah.
Andy Biladeau:
... or the perception. And so it just takes maybe a higher degree of courage to practice some of those skills. And so I say all of that to say the two... Obviously you've interacted, Aly, with professionals who have a surplus of one or the other, and they really lean into that. But as a person who's seen that, you can also appreciate those who are actively trying to stretch into the other area. And I found a really effective technique is just to let people know, like, "Hey, here's what I'm working on."
You might not know this, but one of my coaching points is active listening and kind of giving it a beat or letting the conversation breathe a little bit before jumping in and solutioning. And so that's something personally for me that I actively work on. And even though I have developed power skills over the course of my career, there's still always opportunities to find ways to do things differently or better. Take that first step when it comes to power skills and put yourself out there, but let the other person know if it makes you feel more comfortable that you're actively working on it.
Aly Sharp:
Yeah. And, I mean, I was going to go the opposite way and say to practice with strangers because something that... I have a hard time just saying hello sometimes because I'm like, "I just need to be in the back of the room. Nobody look at me." But recently, I've been getting into running or just doing more exercise outside because the weather-
Andy Biladeau:
Yeah.
Aly Sharp:
... here is gorgeous. And I always try and cheer on if I see someone else running. I'm like, "We got this." And it usually catches them off guard, but then they're like, "Oh, thank you." And it always-
Andy Biladeau:
Yeah.
Aly Sharp:
I'm not doing it to make myself feel better, but it does make me feel better that I have the courage to say something in the first place and lift that person up.
Andy Biladeau:
What's interesting about power skills too is there's this kind of compounding nature to them, meaning that once you have a little bit of success or you see a little bit of progress or an improvement, it can be kind of addicting because you can make progress really quickly. But that first step is definitely the hardest, to your point, Aly, to speak up in that meeting when you have an idea or a thought or a question. Or you kind of have a vague sense that, hey, there's a challenge or there's tension that, I mean, I can either choose to let it go or I can go address it and have that hard conversation to maybe surface what's really going on.
And I can tell you that doing hard things is oftentimes the right thing and makes you so much stronger. And so there's this phrase that I like to share with people that the obstacle is the way, meaning that if you really want to get to the destination, you're going to have to clear hurdles to do it. But those hurdles are actually the adventure, and those are actually the things that drive the outcomes or are the outcomes in and of themselves. So again, I just, I think that sometimes people put limits on themselves when it comes to power skills to make the presumption that they are introverted or that isn't their strength or that they can't be developed. And I would challenge them to dispel those notions and put themself out there in ways like you do.
Aly Sharp:
Yeah. Even if it's just something small to, like you were saying, start small and then it will get bigger as it goes on as you gain more confidence because you're not just going to step out the gate and be ready to lead a meeting if you're not used to leading a meeting.
Andy Biladeau:
Right.
Aly Sharp:
You have to start small and it will grow in waves. So I think we're going to round out to our last question. And of course, we've already been through your extensive career background. And I would have to guess that one of your pieces of advice is going to be try everything, but I'd love to hear it from you. What are your top pieces of advice for students who are getting ready to enter or re-enter the workforce?
Andy Biladeau:
Oh, my gosh. I love this question, first of all, because, one, you can get advice from a lot of different places. And I think that everybody means well, but a lot of people share it from their own perspective and their own experiences. So I'll caveat, I'll put a big caveat on my parting advice. I would say find the area or the type of work that makes the tuning fork of excitement in your heart ring, meaning you don't have to know what job you want or title you want or role you want. Career success, however you define that, is very much predicated on are you doing the type of work that brings you energy and joy? And that can look very differently. I've started as a teacher because I love learning, I love education. I believe in the power of education. I never thought that that would lead me to a career in HR and I never thought it would lead me to a career in technology and transformation.
But what I've always done is just tried to follow my sense of what made me feel most alive. And I think if you do that, you're going to find yourself in scenarios that you are excited to be in. And it gives you the strength to push through when things get difficult because it's worth it because you care about it. And you get that feeling of engagement and deep engagement. So much less about follow your dream or to pick the role that you want or to map your career out in very specific way. But just everybody has that feeling of the type of work that they really enjoy doing and brings them joy, whether it's having conversations with people, whether it's building something or creating something, whether it's turning something around. Maybe you like going in and fixing or building, or fixing or correcting things that are broken. Those are attributes that tend to be persistent and stick with you over the course of your life. And so as long as you're grounded in those and you're doing the type of work that brings you energy, I think you're going to be in good shape.
Aly Sharp:
That is absolutely wonderful advice, and it was so eloquently said. The tuning fork of your heart.
Andy Biladeau:
Got a little poetic there.
Aly Sharp:
Yeah. Well, it's the English teacher in you, the former-
Andy Biladeau:
It is.
Aly Sharp:
... English teacher.
Andy Biladeau:
It very much is.
Aly Sharp:
Well, Andy, thank you so much for joining us today on Career Compass.
Andy Biladeau:
Thanks so much for having me, Aly. I appreciate it.
Aly Sharp:
And for our listeners, a reminder that this podcast is approved to provide 0.5 PDCs towards SHRM CP and SCP recertification. After listening, you may enter this activity ID into your SHRM recertification activity portal. It is 25-NY9U3. Please note that this activity ID will expire September 17th, 2025. Before we say goodbye, I encourage everyone to follow Career Compass wherever you get your podcasts. And if you enjoyed today's episode, please a moment to leave a review and help others discover the show. And finally, you can find all of our podcasts on our website at shrm.org/careercompass. Thank you for joining the conversation, and we'll catch you next time.