Welcome to Demystifying IT. I'm your host, Sarojit Khinunga, CEO of CG Infinity. Welcome to Demystifying IT season two. Today's guest is Andrew Jackson. Andrew is an entrepreneurial leader with more than forty years of experience in building and managing technology solution companies. He's the co founder and president of Bravo Tech, a Dallas based workforce solution firm that has earned repeated recognition on the Inc. Five thousand, SMU Dallas one hundred, and Dallas Business Journal Mid Market fifty list. Andrew, welcome to season two of Demystifying IT. Thank you very much, Sarjit. I'm glad to be here. Absolutely. Just for the record, Andrew, I've known Andrew for a long time and we've become close friends in the last four, five years now. So very thankful for that, Andrew. Me too. All right. Let's start with why IT? Why service industry? What what was some of the trigger for you to get into this great industry we have been? Since you dated me with the introduction of forty years in the industry, I started off as a recruiter in the in the engineering business actually out of college. And so I was involved with technique technology, but it was more engineering side in in the late 80s, early 90s. The the shift was coming more IT. Everybody's getting more into computers, and so I saw that and really broke away from the company I work for and and reached out to Valerie Freeman, who's my business partner, and said, hey, IT is picking up. You know, we'd like to start a company in IT. And and that's how she and I got together and and started Bravo. So it was it was demand. It was it was seeing that the demand was growing in IT, then, as you know, it's just taken off from there. One of the thing I'm always inspired by your style is how you were so deliberate about developing a IT community in in DFW, not just going and getting business, you know, knocking on doors, but your door, Bravo Tech door was open to everybody. Like, whether we are your competitors or not, you you had all your doors open. Was that deliberate? You know, how did you how did you think about it and have such a broad mindset? What was some of the thought process behind it? That's part of our culture is to give back. So we encourage all of our staff to be involved in things outside of just work, and and we do a lot of things, you know, after hours and luncheons and awards and special events because we believe, just like you said, being part of the community is a part of what we do. And so that's our DNA. You know, that that's it. And you've picked up on so many things with the the same thing. I you know, now people come to your offices, which is a is a great And I'm glad that you have the big office space now where you're able to host those things. I applaud you and how you all have gone down that same path. Well, learning from the master. Right? You have and Bravo Tech has the good fortune of serving many customers, Fortune five hundred or mid sized customers. So you have a very wide perspective. What impact you are seeing that AI is bringing to the workforce? How the workforce is evolving? Can you share a broad spectrum of what you are seeing? Yeah. I can look at it through two different lenses. One is for us what we see from the customer side, and then also what we see is, you know, from our corporate side in the recruiting, staffing, workforce solutions business. From the customer side, there are a lot of needs for, like, data engineers and things like that. So we're seeing things pick up like that. They're not necessarily using contractors or temporaries because a lot of those initiatives are kind of secret sauce, and they don't want a transitional employee in their doing that. So that we see that more on the perm placement hiring side as far as those skill sets. There's still a lot of companies that that are toying with different different things, some much more advanced than others. And as you and I are both members of SIM, we we do a lot of different things with the IT leadership there. And it's amazing. I've learned, you know, people are leaning into it. Some people are just all about it, and some people are holding back and saying, you know, all that's going to go away. And I'm leaning into it. Can't believe, you know, AI is here to stay, and it's going to increase our efficiencies. And I mean, we need to be careful, but it's definitely you can't put your head in the sand on this thing. In regards to us as a company, we're on a digital journey to work on our digital core database, get everything ready so that we can have agentic tools to help us reach out to people. And a little bit later on, we can talk about that and the employees, employers, and how some of those tools work. But, yes, I'm I'm a firm believer in in leaning into the AI. Alright. So, Andrew, we live in AI world today where there are agents everywhere, whether recruiting agent or whatever, sourcing agent. So what advice you can give to employers and job seekers to what to do in this new world and what not to do? The thing that I say is AI can lie, and it lies with conviction. Yeah. And so you've got to be careful. There's there's always gotta be a, you know, a man in the middle, a person in the middle because that that's that's the spooky part. And once it burns you once you'll you'll you'll realize that for sure. But I think you know the other thing is a lot of companies have had issues with it. They haven't had guardrails up. They've not locked down their their language models so that they don't want the things trained on their data. So I think there's some basics like that and also one of the things that we do with every contractor we hire, they have to go through a training that talks about AI and the impact and the things about hallucinations and And we don't want them opening up risks to our customers by, again, using their you know, exposing their data outside. So that's one of the things that we do with our contractors. It's exciting. I think that, you know, from an employee from a recruiting standpoint, when people are looking for jobs, there are a lot of agents that will go out there and start the whole recruiting process called sourcing, the initial part of the process. And people are open to that right now. Can you share what tips and tricks that employers should be deploying and as job seekers job seekers should be applying in this new world or new reality? There are a lot of, hate to say it, but fake candidates out there. People can take their resume and use tools to make it match a job exactly. And and so they can also do things to you know, deep fakes on the interviews, you know, online interviews, things like that. So really, to meet to the employers is some of us get back to basics. Meet meet your core employees in person, do some in person interviews, and don't run them through the gauntlet of fifty different interviews, maybe not fifty, but, you know, sometimes people overdo it. But some of that old school interviewing, in person interviewing is is what I suggest very strongly. On the job seeker side, AI can help you find a job. It can help you present your credentials, but don't overdo it. Make sure that you have authorship and ownership of how you're presented, how your resume is presented. And there are tools that can tell if a resume has been doctored or this and so you don't want to get kicked out because you relied too much on AI to help you get prepared. So I'll leave with this. Get back to basics. A little face to face time is good. Oh, wow. Wow. That's interesting. Alright. So looking ahead, say five years from now, you know, let's what excites you the most about being a part of this industry with so much change going on? I'm an optimist, and and I feel that technology is going to continue to grow and that although, you know, some people say AI is going to replace people, I think it's people with AI are gonna replace people that don't know AI. We talked about what makes a good employee Yeah. In the world now with AI, and it's people that are curious. It's like you you you don't hire as many people saying, oh, we've talked about this too. People hire prompt engineers and that's gonna be a big a big title that people are gonna hire a bunch of prompt engineers and we're not really seeing that. We're seeing prompt engineering is a skill set across the board. And so what you want are people that can that can know AI, that are curious, and that's the future to me is looking for people that are curious. That's the answer. Very cool. Very cool. I noticed that, you know, every time I see you, you have bundle of energy. You're going at it as if you started this career yesterday. Like, what keeps you going? Like, how what stops you from being tired and and you come fresh every morning? So what is the secret here? I don't have a secret. I I I enjoy what I do. I enjoy helping people. I enjoy interacting with people. So people person. And so this industry is just perfect for me dealing with lots of different people. And I I look for people one of the things, you hire people that you want to sit down, that you'd want to have lunch with. And the other thing that we do is even though we are right now mostly remote with our core employees, we get together and we have a very intentional in person events. So keep keeping interacting with the people is real important too, and that motivates me. You know, you and I have been friends for a few years now, but I also know that when you are not working, you are ranching. So why ranching? Is there any connection between ranch and technology? Well, there wasn't, but let me let me go there. So, you know, three years ago, my wife and I bought some property, and it was bare. And what I realized is there's some interesting parallels between IT and business ownership and and also starting a ranch from from square one. So I'll announce share with you tonight that I've decided that I'm going to write a book. Oh, wow. Very nice. Yeah. And and that the working title is Wild and Wired. And and Wild and Wired. Yeah. And and it's it's gonna be talking about ranching and the things I've learned and do the comparisons with the, you know, the dirt versus the technology and, you know, people and animals and and all the the risks that we were involved with. You think about all the risks that are involved with cybersecurity and things and technology. And and, you know, on their ants, you've got rattlesnakes and and and things like that that'll kill you. You know? And so it's it's gonna be fun, and I think sometime next year, I've I've met with the publisher, it'll get out. Alright. Can't wait to read that book, my friend. Thank you very much. Thank you, Andrew. It's so great to have you on the podcast. I appreciate it. Thank you. Subscribe now and join the conversation.
