Azeem Azhar

So one of the reasons we had discussed that managers were slowing down their new hiring was that Jason from outside the firm, who's 24 and just finished a grad degree, is not known to the firm.

And Jason can get all his orchestration skills, and he does it through Khan Academy and ExecEd and whatever else, and demonstrates his micro-credentials, but he's still outside the firm.

So are there any mechanisms?

Are there any things that, as an economist, one could come up with that allows that signaling to de-risk for the manager?

It does feel to me that we understanding that what the concerns of the manager are is the first step.

And, you know, we identified one, which was.

You need to be a good orchestrator.

You need to be a good manager, even as a new hire.

So there are things that you can go off and do and credentialize or prove.

The second is about de-risking yourself as a novel resource in the organization.

And I'm going to unbundle this in two ways.

So one way would be that as a novel resource, I may not know how long you're willing to stay somewhere.

The last thing I want to do is hire someone who's going to stay for six months.

So is there something that the candidate can do to prove

a long-term interest in a particular direction?

And then the second thing that I need to know is that work is tough and I need to know that you've got the grit to stick through the ups and downs, stick through being told what to do.

And are there ways in which you can evidence that

The second feels it's a little bit easier to evidence because you can say, well, I went off and did a seven-week route march just with two bags of M&Ms and I came out the other side.

Then there might be ways of evidencing the first.

Do you think if we could do that, if graduates could do that, that would help address the concern that this very, very scared hiring market is exhibiting?