Phil Fersht — CEO, HFS Research[00:22]
It’s an honor today to get acquainted with a gentleman, Mr. Jan Gupta, who is the President and CEO at Akkodis, which is a very colorful enterprise with a very interesting background to it and how it all came together. But maybe we’ll start off a bit with you, Jan — a little bit about yourself and the company that you’re heading up.
Jan Gupta — President and CEO, Akkodis[00:25]
Thanks, Phil. Glad to have the chance to talk to you. First of all, myself — I’m a grounded engineer. I’ve been an engineer all my life, and I worked in several tech companies around the globe, mostly in mechanical engineering and IT environments for high-tech products. So I worked on the customer side, let me put it this way. And I was asked around four years ago to join a group which wanted to build up a new leader in the consulting and tech area. That’s why I joined the Adecco Group four years ago. So I’m coming from the customer side; I know what the customer needs to have. That was my job — to build up Akkodis. We didn’t exist three years ago. By having been the customer before, it was clear to me that the world is changing quickly in the so-called smart industry setup. It’s not good enough anymore that you’re good in mechanical engineering, or that you’re superb in IT. You have to combine both. You have to understand big data. You have to understand AI. That was already clear two or three years ago. And that’s why we said, OK, this kind of company does not exist as a consulting company, so we can create something like that, maybe new from scratch.
Phil Fersht — CEO, HFS Research[02:28]
So you recently were at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and it’d be good to hear a little feedback from you on what you learned during that experience, and how that’s maybe impacted the ideas you have on running your own business.
Jan Gupta — President and CEO, Akkodis[02:56]
Every second meter and every second sentence, it was GenAI. Everybody talked about GenAI, and the key takeaway for me was that everybody is talking about it, but not everybody is clear on what it means for my company, what it means for my processes. Everybody likes to play with GenAI, of course, and everybody has to talk about it, but what does it really mean for my processes? What does it mean for the skill set of my people? How will my factory or my company look 10 years from now? I think that was a big topic which I found in a lot of discussions. And the second, bigger topic was: yeah, OK, it will come — that is clear, it’s already there — but what does it mean for our workforce? What does it mean for our existing workforce? Do we have to upskill our workforce? Do we have thousands of coders in the future, or will GenAI do 80% of that automatically? So this was also a discussion which was really in the middle of that week.
Phil Fersht — CEO, HFS Research[04:24]
Yeah, so how do you see it really changing the sector then? Obviously there’s a lot of noise. The media hypes it because it’s obviously impacting them as well. But how is this changing the engineering business per se, in terms of the types of skills that you’re looking for, where you’re going, the types of client needs you’re trying to satisfy — that sort of thing?
Jan Gupta — President and CEO, Akkodis[04:51]
Yeah, that week I was on a panel, and I explained the situation — how the future will look and how the future looks today already. I brought an example: you can take whatever machine you want, we can talk about a car or an airplane or whatever. In the past, you had teams developing this product on a worldwide basis, and you had engineers, IT specialists, and so on working together as a team to develop it. Tomorrow, it will look a little bit different. At Akkodis, we already developed what we call AI agents. These are specialists — AI specialist tools, let me say — with a focus on some engineering practices. I’ll give you one example. You want to develop a hydraulic system for a machine, or an airplane, or a car, or whatever. In former times, you made that with a group of three or four, five, six engineers. Today, you talk and work with your AI agent who is a specialist in hydraulics. So that means the engineering work is changing. You have thousands and thousands of software coders who are programming apps and other things. Tomorrow, 80% of this will be done automatically, and the last 20% you have to adapt. So there will be a lot of changes. And for Akkodis, it’s a big, big chance, because we’ve been in the AI area for many years, so GenAI is not a miracle for us. We are supporting a lot of companies in how to grow and how to manage this transformation.
Phil Fersht — CEO, HFS Research[07:03]
How is this impacting recruiting, particularly people coming out of colleges and things? Because I’m hearing about firms now — particularly big consulting firms — actually trying to run programs with students before they graduate, so that when they graduate they’re more ready and immediate for the workforce. That’s the common thing we’re hearing from everybody right now: they want talent they can just plug in. They don’t want to have to go through painful learning processes and things like that. How is that creating an opportunity and a challenge for you guys?
Jan Gupta — President and CEO, Akkodis[07:43]
Yeah, I think one opportunity, of course, is that we are part of one of the biggest HR companies around the globe, so we have the recruitment power, and we know where to get the candidates everybody wants to have. So this gives Akkodis the power to grow fast. On the other side, let me underline one topic. Of course, everybody wants the talents, especially, for example, in AI, to grow the future. It’s important that you combine these talents with industry knowledge, and that they can grow fast. So it’s a lot about training. In the former days we said training on the job, but this is now more training: OK, you know all the AI technologies and everything, but how does an airplane really work? How does the car really work, and what is important here? If you’re able to combine both, you’ll be successful. We see that candidates are coming to us because they see us as a new kid on the block. We are not one of the traditional consulting firms — we are something new, and they are attracted by something new. Something is going on, and that’s a bit of our advantage currently.
Phil Fersht — CEO, HFS Research[09:23]
Interesting. So you talk about this shift from merely a jobs-based economy to a skills-based economy, and that’s clearly something you’re embracing. How do you see this evolving in the next three to five years? It’s not going to be linear, is it, across industries and organizations — it’s going to be a very gradual, different scene unfolding.
Jan Gupta — President and CEO, Akkodis[09:25]
Yeah, I think in the past, when I grew up, everybody told me lifelong learning is key, that you should train yourself all the time. It becomes more and more important. I think the skill set in the future will be so core, and you have to adapt your skill set as a candidate on a yearly basis, because more and more you’ll see that technologies will support you. For example, think about a biologist. He or she was, maybe in the past, 80% of the time in the laboratory. In the future, AI will do a lot of these things. But how do you feed the AI, how do you develop the model so that it works? You need a completely different skill set to understand how you model that. And here we need to upskill a hell of a lot of people. That is also what we are doing, and I’m proud to be part of the big Adecco Group, because we are putting that as our focus too — to help the next generation transform into this new model.
Phil Fersht — CEO, HFS Research[11:26]
Yeah, it’s like these kids in their early twenties, right? They’re going into the workplace, and they know way more than we did when we were their age. They have exposure to politics, the world, technologies, everything. And so it’s more about how we help them with maturity and experience and emotional intelligence.
Jan Gupta — President and CEO, Akkodis[11:42]
I think, Phil, there is another topic. We also have some responsibility. We have to take care somehow — if we think about the new technologies, there is also something like ethics, which is important and which we have to bring into the workspace and into the economy. I think it’s very important that this is also an element which is not forgotten.
Phil Fersht — CEO, HFS Research[12:25]
Absolutely. Ethics and responsibility is something that humans need to set in their companies before we even think about technology. You just build it in together, and it becomes very sanitized.
Jan Gupta — President and CEO, Akkodis[12:32]
Yes, correct. You’re right, you’re right.
Phil Fersht — CEO, HFS Research[12:32]
But this has been an awesome discussion, hearing your approach to the talent industry in particular, and how you’re putting it together — it’s fascinating. So I’m looking forward to hearing more and more about your company at Akkodis as you keep growing and developing. Great. Well, maybe we’ll meet up soon, and it’s great getting some time with you today.
Jan Gupta — President and CEO, Akkodis[13:09]
Pleasure. Thanks, Phil.
Phil Fersht — CEO, HFS Research[13:09]
Take good care and see you soon.
Jan Gupta — President and CEO, Akkodis[13:09]
See you soon. Thank you.
