Minter Dialogue with Esther O’Callaghan

Esther O’Callaghan, OBE, founder of Hundo, joins me to discuss the global youth employment crisis. We explore Hundo’s innovative approach to workforce skills development and their new research arm, Hundo Lab. Esther shares insights on the disconnect between education and employment, the importance of integrating technology skills earlier, and the need for businesses to engage with future workforces sooner. We delve into the challenges of intergenerational workplace dynamics, the value of both technical and soft skills, and the role of sports and gaming in skill development. Esther offers practical advice for parents and young people navigating the rapidly changing job market, emphasizing the importance of diverse experiences and aligning interests with future career paths.

Please send me your questions — as an audio file if you’d like — to nminterdial@gmail.com. Otherwise, below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to rate it here.

To connect with Esther O’Callaghan:

• Check out Hundo.xyz here
• Find the report, “Skills: The New Global Currency? Navigating the New Workforce Economy,” here
• Find/follow Esther O’Callaghan on LinkedIn

Further resources for the Minter Dialogue podcast:

Meanwhile, you can find my other interviews on the Minter Dialogue Show in this podcast tab, on Megaphone or via Apple Podcasts. If you like the show, please go over to rate this podcast via RateThisPodcast! And for the francophones reading this, if you want to get more podcasts, you can also find my radio show en français over at: MinterDial.fr, on Megaphone or in iTunes.
Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign-off music is “A Convinced Man,” a song I co-wrote and recorded with Stephanie Singer back in the late 1980s (please excuse the quality of the sound!).

Transcription courtesy of Flowsend.ai, an AI full-service for podcasters

Minter Dial: Esther O’Callaghan, how lovely to get you on finally. It’s been, I don’t know how long, but we got to know each other through the greater tech advocates. And Russ Shaw, you are the founder of Hundo and you have three little letters after your name in your, in your own words. Who is Esther O’Callaghan?

Esther O’Callaghan: So, founder of Hundo, workforce skills development platform for young people. And we’ve just launched HUNDO Lab, which is our research and development arm, looking at how to tackle the ever growing youth employment. Youth and employment skills crisis globally. Yeah, we were definitely introduced by global tech advocates. I’m on the steering committee with Russ, among many other things that I do. But, but broadly speaking for the purpose of today, that’s, that’s the, that’s me in a, in a nutshell.

Minter Dial: And you’re based out in the Middle East. Tell us about that decision to, to move out to Abu Dhabi.

Esther O’Callaghan: Yeah. So, Hundo was chosen to go into the Muadala backed Hub71 startup scale up programme. And I find the GCC quite a fascinating place currently because it’s going through such a huge transition and obviously the need to make sure that a predominantly young workforce has the skills that they need to successfully transition these economies is just a fascinating challenge and opportunity. So, we wanted to kind of. Yeah, we were asked to come here. Amazing. Sort of for me personally it’s not a part of the world I’d spend a lot of time. So, actually getting to travel around to meet people, you know, sort of like learn about a new culture has actually been. Yeah, it’s actually. Yeah, really, really enjoyed it actually.

Minter Dial: Well, presumably multiple cultures in the area. So, OBE, a fascinating title. Obviously one step above MBE. How did that come about, Esther?

Esther O’Callaghan: It was a long time ago. It was 2006. Seven I think.

Minter Dial: All the more credit to.

Esther O’Callaghan: So, yes, yeah, it’s very young. It was for services to the voluntary sector. So, for all of my career I’ve always been heavily involved in voluntary sector. And that was. Yeah, it was, it was a recognition for, for that work. They don’t tell you exactly what it was. It’s just services to the voluntary sector. So. So, yeah.

Minter Dial: And, and the curiosity since I, far from all that world, do you get a. Have to get an MBE before you get the OB or, or can you just leapfrog?

Esther O’Callaghan: No, it’s so that there’s a. There’s obviously different. So, there’s a member officer, you know, commander Night Commander. So, it’s. It was. Yeah, it was just what I was. Yeah, that’s what they chose for me, so I didn’t have anything to do with it.

Minter Dial: Right, right. You don’t negot, you just say yes, yes, thank you.

Esther O’Callaghan: At the time, you know, I was very young, I was in my late 20s and it was, yeah, it was something that was quite a profound thing to receive at such a young age. It’s also quite amusing because people would expect a kind of mid-50s, you know, early 60s lady to sort of turn up and I was like, yeah, 27. So, it made for some interesting meetings at the start.

Minter Dial: I certainly bet it did. And I mean, frankly, most were the ones I know. It’s usually giving back after having done a life of other things and all of a sudden I start to need to get back to society. But you seem to be more dedicated to it from the beginning. So, a Hundo, you need to explain to me this. H U N D O, what was the, what was the origin of that name?

Esther O’Callaghan: It means 100% on the urban dictionary and we were 100% committed to tackling youth and employment, so. And we didn’t want to give ourselves a very worthy name, which I would have come up with. So, Hundo was my co-founder, Piers. Yeah, we, well, we obviously we worked with, yeah, we worked with a lot of young people, ran a few names past them and that was the one that was, that was the kind of, the one that was standout. But we liked it because of, yeah, because of our commitment to actually solving.

Minter Dial: This problem and certainly beyond my pay grade or my vocabulary. So, that’s why I asked the question just before we get into the report and everything. I do want to just dig in on a couple other things. One is working with the peers and all that eastern in the House of Lords in the UK, amongst other places that you’ve worked. Talk us about how that, how that working with the government and the people in politics has somewhat informed your need to get this report out.

Esther O’Callaghan: So, I’ve been asked to. My work with government and I mean those is pretty straightforward. I was appointed to the big lottery fund back in the early 2000s to oversee the merger between New Opportunities Community Fund to become the single largest lottery grant distributor. So, I was able to experience, you know, chair the Young People’s Fund, which is projects all over the UK, the Olympics Legacy Endowment Fund, which funded a lot of the sports facilities across the country. So, my work has always been at arm’s length, literally it’s a non-departmental public body. So, that was, that was the experience there. And with regard to the Lords, I was asked to be an expert contributor to their report on youth unemployment in the UK. So, I think that came via the small Business Commissioner. So, usually I get asked for my opinion on these things and my question.

Minter Dial: Really was around about how much that experience and working with them up close, getting their questions and responding as the expert informed. The way the report came around and what you’re doing today. In other words, did it push your red button or did it make you feel that the there’s an urgency in governments or not in order for them to get with the plot?

Esther O’Callaghan: So, I think my, I’ve worked kind of in and around youth issues now for the best like 27 years. So, for me a very UK centric issue is we have a glut of policy, qualifications, awards, you know, all of this, it’s kind of, it’s, it’s really, really grown, you know, as an industry. I think the UK has around 115, you know, different awarding bodies. For quite a small country, it’s quite a lot. And I think, you know, respective governments, you know, in four-year cycles or you know, eight-year cycles, it’s incredibly hard to change entrenched, systemic, institutionalised thinking and perception actually, you know, perception of what education’s purpose is. But for me, I have always looked at it from the outside, you know, in terms of going what it’s. For me, I’m interested in what’s happening to young people once they’ve left education and how while they are still in education, we are able to provide skills-based solutions that enable them to transition more successfully. At the moment, you know, we’ve seen this. It’s not really, I wouldn’t kind of say it’s a government issue, I would say it is a whole society issue of the kind of careers advice and guidance is out of date. Often you have teachers who have gone through a very linear university, you know, pathway into teaching, who are then expected to know the vast range of jobs, industry skills. It’s setting people up to fail. You know, I think that’s, that, that’s my, you know, that’s my kind of overarching issue. By the time we’re able to implement change things like coding, for example, in schools, we’re into no code territory. You can build a website without needing to code now. But that’s not just, and that those are just like examples. I think it’s again, it’s like for me, you know, when you look at things like Montessori or you look at Steiner or you look, you know, different types of education. I come back the same thing. It’s public, public school systems are, are based on, you know, getting everybody through the system essentially, you know, from kind of like, you know, and so, so the, the, the kind of, the, the, the way that we do that hasn’t fundamentally changed for generations, you know, and so a lot of the learning that my son, you know, who’s now 21 Gen Z experienced was broadly the same curriculum that I was doing in the 90s, which is broadly the same curriculum that my mom was doing in the, in the 60s, you know, so, so, you know, and it, it’s, it’s that kind of. How are we supposed to, you know, when, when we work in the UK with colleges, for example, in schools, some of them don’t have WIFI in, you know, to any degree of usability. And we’re talking about AI and the knowledge, you know, economy and all of this. And it’s kind of going like there’s just a very big gap between expectation and reality. And that’s le people in a situation where there’s kind of a perfect storm, you know, you need access to these ever-changing skill sets. Even if you’re working in AI, it’s like doing an AI course is not a thing. It’s like, what is the practical application of AI in the industry and jobs that you are planning to go to, you know, and learn according to that. So, it’s a, I mean, as you can tell, I can talk about, I can talk about it forever, but I think it’s. We’ve got to. For me, the skills report was really about galvanising around the ideas and viewpoints of a group of future skills experts, many of whom are experts in their field from decades and decades, you know, but are deeply concerned and, you know, really, really heavily invested in making sure that this generation and the generation coming up, you know, Gen Z now, Gen Alpha next, you know that they actually are going to be growing up in such a fundamentally technological world and environment and it’s like, how do we make sure that they’re ready for that? Because we’re not achieving that at the speed and pace that we need to right now. And we’re seeing that play out in terms of the, just the sheer numbers of young people who, many of whom are actually qualified, that’s the bit that’s changed. So, you used to, you used to see young people with degrees, for example, would go into a graduate programme. So, they had a kind of a pathway over the course of, you know, last decade, graduate programmes have disappeared. So, you have this kind of where you expect to see young people who come from backgrounds like mine struggling, you know, to get onto the. Onto the job ladder. You’re now seeing it, you know, you’re now seeing it with students with good degrees from good universities. And that indicates a systemic and structural breakdown between education, employment at all levels. That’s a problem. That’s a problem for society.

Minter Dial: Yeah.

Esther O’Callaghan: All right.

Minter Dial: So, your report talks about the devaluation of university degrees. I wanted to just put that beside another facet of your life, Esther, which is your involvement in sports as a triathlete. I’ve come. I’m sort of. I’m of the old school by, by look and by. By experience. And I have always felt that sports was an amazing way to learn to learn about your body, to learn about your limits, to learn about how to be with others, to learn how to lose, to learn to get through difficulty.

Esther O’Callaghan: Yeah.

Minter Dial: Be it an injury or loss or playing in the snow, you know, a rugby match or something like that. How do you react to that?

Esther O’Callaghan: I agree. I think the, the one that’s most interesting to me actually is esports as a, you know, as a kind of. So, I think, yeah. Do I think that young people should be saying. Do I think that children and young people should be sat in classrooms for the amount of hours that they are? No, I don’t. I should be running around learning through play, learning in the way that we know cognitively is healthy for them and being active and mobile is huge for that and also huge for mental health benefits as well as well as physical health. So, yeah, I would, you know, part of the skills report is. Is probably the first little piece of like, how do we start to build. How do we start to reimagine what a future school should look like? You know, how do we actually build what needs to exist as opposed to just talking about the. So, yeah, I think sports is huge. What I also think is coming back to the esports. So, our head of education who’s in the report, James Fraser Morrison, wrote the first VTEC for esports. And again, it’s a really interesting intergenerational divide because the benefits of things like online gaming and esports for this generation are market. You know, my son was a gamer and it’s like they’re not sitting there on their own in their room lots of way. They are developing critical thinking, working under pressure, team building skills, leadership skills, you know, all of the, all of the soft skills, you know, essential skills that employers say young people don’t have. They. They do have it, they just manifest it in a very different environment. And that doesn’t translate necessarily onto a civic, you know, and that was part of the driver of HUNDO in its original form, was how do you meet young people where they are and help them to understand how their skills in other environments are actually beneficial to them in the workplace? And that was one of the things. So, yeah, so it’s. Yeah, yeah. Designing a future school is. Is probably the next Hundo Lab project.

Minter Dial: Well, it’s. It’s rather of. Of the actuality when you. We hear what’s going on in the United States as far as the. The shakeup of. Of higher education is concerned.

Esther O’Callaghan: Yeah.

Minter Dial: Under President Trump. Have you come across Ricardo Semler, the Brazilian guy?

Esther O’Callaghan: Well, no, I haven’t.

Minter Dial: I highly recommend checking out his approach to education. CEO of a company. And then he. He very much embodies a piece that you have in your report, which is. And you talk about, I’d like you to elaborate on, which is that businesses or corporates should have a bigger impact or role in education. So, just talk about that and then how do you actually see that coming to reality?

Esther O’Callaghan: So, it’s really about. I give the example of the. We work with the NHS in Essex, where we work with 1500 health and social care students. So, they’re studying health and social care, they’ve gone into a vocational environment for a specific thing. But we see this repeating pattern of when you kind of turn around and go, what jobs can you do? You know, what skills do you think you need? There is a huge gap in that knowledge base and things like we are. And again, that’s sort of the more technical side. Even, you know, nurses, you know, care workers, support workers, need to have a level of technical proficiency, you know, that they are using tablets and AI diagnostic tools to treat patients. You know, we’re seeing an increase in VR, you know, AR within health and social care. So. And one of the most interesting ones for me is cyber security. Obviously, healthcare data is extremely valuable. So, one of the jobs at the NHS is Threat Hunter, which. Which I love as well. It’s a great job title.

Minter Dial: Bounty hunters.

Esther O’Callaghan: Exactly. So, if you can imagine, as a young person, wondering what they want to do, you know, not even thinking about the NHS as a potential place to work, and yet in their online, you know, gaming life, they probably have developed a lot of the baseline skill sets, you know, for that role. So, it’s that mismatch between what you’re learning what you are being the access to the information about your future employment prospects. And we see this even with, you know, talking to University of Strathclyde and they were saying there’s something like 24,000 students studying law degrees, but there are 5,000 available roles. If you consider the traditional graduate go and work in a law firm, that’s true. But most companies, you know, of a certain size have whole departments where they need people with legal skills, you know, and experience and qualifications in that interest, in that example, because it’s specific. So, for me, employers are an essential part of the ecosystem of transitioning young people successfully from education into jobs. And what’s happening at the moment is employers wait until young people have left education and then they kind of pick up and it’s too late. And that’s. And that’s where you see that gap. And also the tools, you know, with the NHS, there’s something like 12 or 14 different types of tools that young people need to know how to use and that’s applicable in lots and lots of jobs. You know, if you think about, you know, we’re using Zoom right now, you know, we use email. If you think about the suite of technological tools that you use on a given day. Miro, Canva, whatever it is, most young people won’t have access to Figma. Exactly. Most kids won’t have access to those tools until their first day at work. That’s crazy, because then you’re then having to invest all of your time, effort and energy upskilling people on tools they already could be proficient in.

Minter Dial: Right, well, in your forward to the report, you talk about the intergenerational battle between the old and the young, or you call it the old and the new, but the old and the young, should we call it differently? This tension is going to be difficult to get over because the people in power are still the old people, at least they’re the ones, the governors and the ministers and what in general. So, how are we going to tackle that? What is it? Is it just flood them with this report? How do you expect to shift their minds with regard to this issue?

Esther O’Callaghan: So, I actually very deliberately use the words old and new, because if you take someone, for example, like Lord Goddard, you know, Stockport, who is of a particular age, he is incredibly forward thinking. So, it isn’t, it isn’t a question of old as an age, it is, it is the mentality, you know, which actually you can see and, you know, so it’s not, for me, it’s more of like the old ways of doing things versus the new ways that we need to be working, you know, going forward. So, I think for me, the report was intended to start the very, very necessary conversation, but also to put forward the fact that there are really good things happening. You know, it isn’t, it isn’t doom and gloom, it’s more going, it takes everybody. Now we need, you know, it’s an overused phrase, but, you know, coalition of the willing to sort of go. We all kind of know that the system isn’t quite working in the, in the most effective way that it could be. And we’re seeing that in, you know, play out in very, very different ways. What can we collectively do to start to reimagine solutions? By bringing together all of the parties, you know, you need all of the players. So, government, you know, policymakers, experts, employers, teachers, you know, young people especially, you know, they are the people who are the ones having to like live through this and deal with it. And for me it’s, you know, the lab, you know, and the purpose of the reports is to provide obviously insights, but also kind of like actionable outcomes, but mostly to go. We want to actually design and develop solutions to these problems collectively. And we’d love you to be part of it. You know, if you’re someone of any age that cares about what the future looks like for your nieces, nephews, grandsons, you know, you know, granddaughters, whatever. We can’t just keep having the same conversation that we’ve been having for the last quarter of a century and the problem not only not changing, but actually getting worse. And that’s, yeah, that, that’s kind of why, that’s why we released the report. And it’s interesting if you think about the fact that we partnered with City and gills. They are 145 years old. So, and that’s what I mean, you know, it’s like. And actually date back to this report, you know, they, they saw the importance of the need to start to think about how we start to transition into this new world.

Minter Dial: Well, amongst the industries that I think will still exist is the gold industry. You say it’s not doom and gloom, yet your report also states that 45% of CEOs are concerned that their business won’t be viable in 10 years time. And so, how much of that do you think is attributable to a lack of skills, the skills crisis that you’re talking about?

Esther O’Callaghan: So, I think it’s looking at what does, I think it’s actually the Nvidia CEO who said it and said it best. It was kind of going, AI won’t take your jobs. It’s people using AI. And I think there’s a huge amount of truth in that. I think we are again caught between this old and new world where we have tensions between boomers in the workplace versus Gen Z’ers and millennials. And it’s actually last year was the first time that younger generations made up the vast majority of the workforce. That’s the first. Last year is the first time that tilted in the UK. And I think that presents a huge challenge when you think about the processes, procedures, the hr, you know, all of that stuff, which is, you know, still quite. There’s not a huge amount of innovation in there, you know, let’s put it that way. And yet you have this generation who think differently, you know, have different priorities and it creates these kind of tensions. And I think that’s my, you know, my point is sort of going, we can either keep having the, the conversation and we can keep going like the friction points and the pain points. So, we can go like, how do we solve it? You know, if you think that you are going to be not in existence in, you know, X amount of years, then you’re probably right if you’re not actively engaging in developing the solutions that you need to ensure that that isn’t the case. So, so I think it’s, I think it goes both ways. If you want to, it can be, but it also is like, you know, there are solutions to that problem.

Minter Dial: All right, so let’s take the CEO of a company. What concrete steps would you advise? I mean, obviously each CEO and company has different contexts, but give me an example of concrete steps that a CEO who’s listening to this should be considering immediately because we’re talking within 10 year’s time to get to figure this all out.

Esther O’Callaghan: So, I think that the biggest area that I would focus on is how are you actively engaging with your future skilled workforce much, much earlier. So, instead of waiting until they’re 18, 20, 21, 24, what is your company doing to raise awareness, you know, of, of, you know, that you exist, what jobs you can do with a much younger age group so they can start to make better decisions about how they can upskill and be ready to go and work in, in your business? You know, that that’s, that’s one thing.

Minter Dial: I would then, so, so you ask. So, specifically, that sounds like going to students who are 14 to 18 years old, for example, who are already doing school, and many of them seem to be overwrought by the amount of work that they already have. How would you concretely see that sort of happening? Would you say, go to your local school and make a presentation in the morning, get them to change their syllabus? What sort of things are you thinking about which they could actually end up?

Esther O’Callaghan: Well, we built Hundo XYZ to ensure that young people get consistent virtual work experience and an AI career coach to help them navigate the world of work. So, in the UK, 64% of young people don’t get any work experience whatsoever.

Minter Dial: Young people being under 18.

Esther O’Callaghan: Yeah. So, for me. So, we built a platform to be able to very simply deploy bite size, learning and content and virtual work experience programmes because it’s clearly a huge ask for employers to go and do that manually. It’s also not very data driven, you know, you’re not really able to then articulate that that happened, et cetera. So, I think it’s. So, yeah, greater correlate, you know, greater engagement with a much younger audience. That is an investment. The reason that needs to come from the kind of C suite is you’re asking a business to make an investment. And businesses, when it comes to hiring, it’s quarterly cycles, it’s, you know, and then it’s going and then wondering why you can’t find the people that you need. Most businesses know what their hiring requirements going to be for the next 18 months, you know, three years, five years, some longer. But what doesn’t happen is starting to then invest in that future workforce two to four years before you know you, that you need them. And then, and then people can’t. And then no one can find anyone. And it’s like, yeah, we can have this conversation forever. So, an investment upfront in a future skilled workforce I think is essential. But it’s also essential to incentivize hiring managers, L and D managers, workforce skills. People too do things differently, you know, to be able to work more innovatively, you know, to be able to. There’s no incentive like, what’s the incentive for an HR person to do anything differently to how they’ve done it for the last decade? There is no incentive. Salespeople are rewarded on results. HR people are not. And yet people and skills are the lifeblood of the business. So, you end up, you know, we’re stuck in this world of job boards, you know, where we already know that, you know, that kind of is so old school in its. In, in its methodology and its way of thinking. It doesn’t deliver the Results Young people never get past the algorithm, you know, and yet these are the hiring practises, tools that are, you know, that they’ve been in place now for decades and even though they are self evidently no longer effective or fit for purpose, what is the incentive to change? And the biggest problem is it requires investment and it requires long term thinking. And that’s where I think government does need to step in and step up. Because asking employers to invest in a future skilled workforce is a big ask. We know because we’ve been doing it for, you know, a while. But that comes back to sort of the crux of the, the issue. It’s like whose problem is it then? If we all know that the problem exists and we all know that the challenge is there and we, and we perceive that it is presenting an existential crisis, you know, for education because young people are increasingly turning away from university because they don’t want to walk out with 60 grands worth of debt and no job at the end anyway. And we know that employers, you know, 40, nearly 50% are saying we might not be here in 10 years going like okay, it’s everybody’s problem. So, what are the different bits of this problem that people want to put their hands up for, to solve? You know, and you see it with, you know, you see it with big corporates like IBM, you know, the skills builder, but it is incredibly fractured I would say, you know, there is, there isn’t a kind of a, an ecosystem. If you look at, you know, places like Switzerland or Germany for example, you know, with things like the apprenticeship, you know, that kind of much more effective transition into work. So, there are good models but it’s more kind of going, you need to be willing to invest and take the risk. And that’s a hard ask, that’s a hard ask for governments, educators and employers. But self evidently we need to do things differently.

Minter Dial: Can I just get back to the hundo.xyz? So, this is a platform to what extent? So, just describe to me a little bit the process and how much companies are actually part of creating these internships or something like that or the work experiences. Is this something that you are integrating with businesses and government into schools? How does it work?

Esther O’Callaghan: Yeah, so it was a platform developed specifically to provide a track of skills-based learning while young people are still in education to help them and their parents and teachers and careers advisers to make better educational choices based on the future of work, personalised. Because even if you look at the UK, you know, if all the service-based economy jobs are in London showing young people those jobs and those skills in Newcastle, where the industry is different and the requirements are different, isn’t valuable. So, we wanted to really look at how do you enable students to chart a more effective path into employment. The way that we work is with, with schools and colleges at the moment so they can onboard cohorts of their students who learn together. They also, you know, didn’t want students just sitting staring at a screen on their own. You know, the whole point is that you’re learning, you know, to do things together collaboratively and that you’re also using emerging technology and tools just by virtue of being on the platform. So, the AI career code, you know, a lot of young people use it to do like interview practise, for example. And with employers, obviously young people can search employers, they can search the types of jobs, the types of roles, you know, and they can, with the Co-pilot they can go really into detail about not just what skills they need, but what qualifications or other, you know, aspects of their education they need to consider. And then they can complete virtual work experience programmes. So, instead of walking into an interview on day one going, I’m a highly motivated, hardworking individual, they can go, for the last two years I have designed and developed whatever that thing is, you know, the reason that I want to come work at your company is because X, Y and Z, you know, so, so it’s, you know, it’s to help them be able to much better advance their own skills based learning and to discover more about the world of work.

Minter Dial: My cheeky comment, just to throw it in, is for you, for your students from Newcastle, is to learn how to be authentic as opposed to what you need in London. But let me go into another zone which is certainly stimulated by your report and on page 10 you talk about the top skills valued by employers in 2025 and then to the other side you have skills increasing in value 2025-2030. What struck me about that list is that the ones that are valued today are largely or much more around soft skills. The notions of humanity, I mean empathy and active listening of course gets my attention, Esther. Whereas the skills that are increasing in value seem to be large or much more around about these sort of more technical skills. So, it’s kind of a funny counterpoint. I mean certainly your report advocates for recruiting for skills rather than qualifications. It seems that I don’t know if these are all skills. I mean, being curious, is that a skill or is it just a sort of a way of being learning for a Lifetime. Is that a skill or is that a way of being just to maybe qualify that? Esther, When I was the CEO, I would say to my team, I’d rather hire for attitude than for competency.

Esther O’Callaghan: Yes, I think I don’t see them as. It was certainly from our experience when we talk to employers consistently it’s the so called soft skills which I actually call essential, you know, all power skills you need.

Minter Dial: But is my friend Lena, the truth.

Esther O’Callaghan: Is you need both. You know, the one thing that we hear consistently about young people is, you know, as I said earlier, they arrive and they don’t know, you know, they don’t have kind of like the basics, you know, the kind of, you know, there’s much what they call softer skills. So, for me actually in many ways technical skills are easier because they’re more measurable and more definable. And you make a great point, you know, is curiosity a skill? I think it becomes a skill in application, you know, learning how curious about.

Minter Dial: Something and how to limit by the way, sometimes your curiosity if you have too many wormholes to jump down rabbit holes rather well.

Esther O’Callaghan: Exactly. I mean, exactly that. It’s like knowing when to stop, you know, like, you know, when you’ve gone far enough in a particular research rabbit hole that you’re in, you know, for example. So, so I think that point is valid. Yeah, I think it’s for me as we, I think we’re starting to see interestingly now this sort of AI, it’s not a peak, I wouldn’t say but that kind of idea that actually we’re still going to more now than ever we’re going to need the humanities to, to complement this, this, you know, I don’t know, inexorable advancement of technology in our lives. So, for me it’s not a one or the other. The more, you know, I would say the more critical thinking that you have, the more of those soft skills that you have, curiosity etc is going to help you to remain agile and start, you know, because to give you an example, it’s like even at a high end technical level now when you think about blockchain based credentials, you know, kind of qualifications, a lot of the solidity developers are having to retrain for rust, you know, and it’s this kind of like. And it’s, we just haven’t seen the pace and scale and speed of change that’s happening now and it’s incredibly disruptive. So, I would, I would say that I think what we will see over the next decade is the need for the Humans in the loop, you know, the humans in the machine to be actually more present, not less. And we’re going to need both. We’re going to need to be able to have a. What I, you know, for me, I think about it like a skill stack, you know, and that the foundation of that is, is the human you can overlay, you know, the technological and all the rest, but essentially having that stack that you can effectively then transition, that you can switch and, you know, because, you know, the jobs for life aren’t there anymore. So, you’re going to have what, 10 careers, you know, in the time that a young person now who’s 14 will be entering the workforce. It’s not out of question that Quantum will be entering a mainstream phase. For example, it’s not out of, you know, range that the space tourism economy will be nascent and emerging or kind of established. You know, in many ways it’s like, should we be excited or terrified? I think the answer is both. And I think the need to have a white. The widest possible range of skills that you can adapt to various different industries, I think is going to be like really, really essential. That’s my view.

Minter Dial: Yeah. It feels like at some level the skills, if we’re going technical, that are needed to work, make money and survive in our society are not in counterpoint, but a little bit counter to what actually is needed in society for it to survive. And, and you talk about resilience. Well, there’s quite a lot about resilience in the report. Is it being the second highest with flexibility and agility? It’s a little lower, but still existing in the ones that are increasing in value on the other side in the future. But to what extent do you think we have a societal issue, a systemic societal issue with the way that we are bringing up our kids. And maybe I would add one more piece to this, which is, in my opinion, I feel like we are disencouraging risk. We are far more happy to talk about safety and precaution and getting rid of pain and the challenges of life. Whereas running a business and being an entrepreneur, it’s really all about handling and facing risk. And dealing with an agility is dealing with mistakes and dealing with errors. Fail fast and. And going back to one of my initial questions where thoughts was how sports is a tremendous ground to learn how to get yourself back up off the ground after you’ve been tackled. You deal with it, get on with it and don’t just cry about it.

Esther O’Callaghan: So, a few things to reflect back on that one of the, actually two of the skills experts in the report, Kay Vasy and Abdul Westit, some of the things they say I think are important for this particular conversation. So, if you think about the impact of Agritech as an example, Agritech in rural communities is an incredibly powerful tool for ensuring a few things, you know, that you can predict weather, drought, you know, all of that, all of that kind of stuff. But also it gives young people an access point to be able to not only remain within their community instead of having to economically migrate, actually stay there and they can actually develop and, you know, and enhance that. So, that’s where I see the interplay, you know, that’s why I see it as a positive. There are these, these things that exist now that can really make a difference in a number of sort of societal ways. I think the, I think this generation gets a lot of flak from an older generation. This idea that they. Yeah, I think they’re kind of, you know, talking about endurance, you know, talking about sport, you know, I know endurance triathlon actually, you know, running your own company is a bit like a endurance sport. You know, if I could.

Minter Dial: My flack wasn’t directed necessarily at them. My flack is actually directed at those who are imposing the precautionary principle and that would be the parents and the people in government saying that we shouldn’t do this, we need to avoid that. And this is a danger because the kids are just a tributary to that.

Esther O’Callaghan: Thank you. So, actually, Sakay Vaisy is phenomenal for this because obviously with her company, kid, it’s all about, rather than blocking, banning, trying to, you know, trying to be risk averse, instead of going educate, train, enable and secure and protect, you know, they’re going to go into environments online and how do we best protect them in the way that is required without just blocking them from doing things, you know, which is not a solution in itself. So, so yeah, I think, I think that works both ways.

Minter Dial: Yeah. Much less having WFI. All right, last word. Esther, for those who have, who are parents with kids, how do you future proof yourself for the, for the future? If you’re. My, my children are a little bit older, 20, 25. But you know, if you’re, if they’re, if you’re trying to carve out or craft a, a path for your life, what, what ways or suggestions do you have to future proof your career?

Esther O’Callaghan: I think it’s understanding that the future of work that your children are going into isn’t like it was when you left school or university, it’s changed. And I think the default setting to go, oh, go to university or you know, go to thing is, is just simply because equally for parents and I speak because I am one, it’s also overwhelming. How do you best advise, you know, your kids on what to do, where to go, when or when what you knew was something much more straightforward. So, I think it needs to be, I think a collaborative effort, you know, kind of. I would, I would always advocate for getting a broad range of experience and skills. You know, for me it wasn’t an option. It came out of financial necessity. You know, I had to go and work. But the, the, the side effect of that or the benefit if you like, was that I got to do a huge amount of different things and so enabling, you know, with a lot of things. It’s exposure, isn’t it? You know, exposure to things. I would say that waitressing and bar work remains where I picked up most of my skills. You know, working under pressure, dealing with difficult people, you know, kind of like.

Minter Dial: Drunk and drunken people amongst them.

Esther O’Callaghan: So, so, so I think, yeah, getting as broad a range of experience. I would also advocate for helping and supporting young people to find things they’re really interested in rather than forcing them down a route you. That you think is best. It’s more about going how do you. There is a richness of things that you can do now. It isn’t just a binary choice of going into, you know, particular industries and even within those traditional industries there are some phenomenally interesting jobs, you know. And I, I would say look at what your kids are doing online. If they’re doing side hustles, if they’re buying and selling, you know, high end sneaker, you know, try to engage with them where they are and together to sort of collaboratively, you know, so don’t, don’t dismiss, don’t just kind of go gaming, you know, or like esports is not this like it’s, it’s multi-billion dollar industries with loads of jobs, you know, so, so I think, yeah, trying to make more of a match between what young people are doing now versus what you were doing when you were a kid. You know, growing up is, is not the worst place you can start.

Minter Dial: Well, I’ve had a one person who’s entirely involved in the esports world on the show, so opening that up. Brilliant. Esther, lovely to have you on the show. Great to finally connect on this. Where can people find out more about Hundo, the report? How can they download it? What’s the next steps. Click to call to action.

Esther O’Callaghan: Great. So, to read the report you can Download it@hundolab.com and to check out what we have been building for the last 5 years pre report you can go to hundo.xyz.

Minter Dial: Brilliant. And what about you? Any way to connect with you? Or is that something off guard?

Esther O’Callaghan: Yeah, I’m always lurking around on LinkedIn. It’s the only social media I have, so you have to go there.

Minter Dial: All right, sounds good. Esther, many thanks.

Esther O’Callaghan: Great to see you. Minta. Take care.