Job hunting runs on two broken filters: software screens resumes for keywords, so the candidate who wrote "strategy" beats the one who can execute it, and interviews reward whoever charms the room, so the smooth talker beats the quiet star. Michael Kamins spent twenty years advising Fortune 500 consumer brands, and he watched both filters fail: companies couldn't find real skill, and nearly half their new hires left within eighteen months.

Pyvot, the platform he co-founded, replaces the resume with a "Living Portfolio" built for one industry: consumer packaged goods and retail. Candidates join free and upload a resume, and Pyvot turns it into a starting profile. They then add what a resume can't show: work samples from projects that mirror real industry problems, like landing a new soda on a major retailer's shelf; written answers to the classic behavioral interview questions; a work-style and personality profile; and their deal-breakers on salary, remote work, and benefits.

Companies pay to join, and they fill out a portfolio of their own covering their culture, ways of working, and perks. Pyvot then matches the two portfolios against each other, not against a list of keywords. Candidates can also hire and get expert advice from vetted industry veterans as coaches, and those veterans pay Pyvot a monthly fee for access.

AI handles the heavy lifting. Google's Gemini models parse resumes, run mock interviews tailored to specific CPG roles and score them, grade project work with detailed feedback, flag biased wording in job postings, and calculate a fit score between each candidate and each job. But Pyvot draws a hard line: the AI ranks and advises, and it never rejects anyone. A human always makes that call.

On this 96th episode of Bald Ambition, host Mookie Spitz and Mike dig into what sets Pyvot apart from LinkedIn and Indeed. Candidates own a portfolio for life, interviews start from answers they've already thought through, and companies get rated by candidates on how fast they respond. Mike also explains why his team scrapped its first build for looking like a LinkedIn clone, and why companies should read Gen Z's job-hopping as agility, not disloyalty.

The Guest

Michael Kamins is CEO and co-founder of Pyvot, the workforce technology platform behind the Living Portfolio™. He spent more than two decades in executive leadership consulting across CPG, retail, healthcare, pharma, industrials, and technology, including time on the global executive team at The Gap Partnership, where he ran a $92M+ P&L spanning North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. He started his career as an Ombudsman with the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Inspector General and holds an M.S. in Negotiations and Conflict Management. He founded Pyvot on a simple conviction: a one-page resume is a poor substitute for proof of what a person can do.

https://pyvotnow.co/

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For a decade, PR played marketing's secondhand stepchild: hard to measure, and easy for a CFO to slash. Now the credibility PR builds shapes what AI says about a brand, and LeadersPR founder Evan Boyer calls this moment a golden era for the discipline.

On this 95th episode of Bald Ambition, Evan tells host Mookie Spitz why most clients miss opportunities: they walk in demanding "ink" and skip the strategy. He fixes that with a disciplined sequence. First, he defines the audience precisely, down to how those people consume news and whom they trust. Next, he builds messages that tell the story cleanly and coaches leaders to deliver them everywhere, from TV interviews to sales meetings and town halls. Then he maps the most efficient route from where the brand stands to where it wants to go.

He measures success with the same rigor. A thousand likes mean nothing if the coverage skipped the key message or missed the audience. What counts: the right people hearing the right story, and the brand showing up when an issue in its space breaks. That kind of authority takes months to build, and Evan still builds it the old way, with phone calls, sharp angles, and emails a human wrote. AI speeds up his research, but he holds himself to one rule: never hand a client anything he spent less time on than they will spend reading it.

Join us for a terrific conversation about Marketing & PR in the AI age!

The Guest

Evan Boyer is the founder and CEO of LeadersPR, a PR consultancy for organizations that want to earn visibility in traditional media and in AI search. With about fifteen years in PR, he specializes in audience strategy, messaging, media relations, and reputation. He works directly with clients as a senior strategist and partners with other marketing specialists on larger programs.

https://www.leaderspr.com/

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Gen Z is the first generation to grow up on social media and the first to openly question hierarchy at work, and their Gen X and Millennial managers keep misreading the signals. Anjan Kasi, a Gen Z leadership coach and TEDx speaker with a software engineering background, joins Mookie Spitz on Bald Ambition to untangle the mess. Mookie brings the view from the other side of the desk: a Generation Jones business consultant who works with Zoomers, has Zoomer kids, and has plenty of questions.

Anjan's diagnosis centers on visibility running in both directions. Managers hand out tasks and rarely check in, and Gen Z hires work in relative isolation and deliver finished projects with no sign of how they got built. Anjan warns that ignoring young talent costs far more than learning to manage it, especially as Gen Z climbs toward a quarter of the US workforce and become the consumers of the future.

Mookie inists that corporate purpose campaigns have targeted Gen X and Millennials for years, and the Zoomers he knows care more about money, travel, and flexibility than mission statements. Anjan answers with a sharper definition of purpose: the impact a job has on one real person's life. From there the conversation turns practical.

What managers can do:

• Connect each role to the impact it has on a real person's life
• Give feedback every month or every two weeks, since twice a year leaves Gen Z guessing
• Spell out the specific moves that earn the next level so people can track their own progress
• Manage for outcomes and drop the compliance mindset

What Gen Z can do:

• Show your thinking, because managers can't advocate for what they can't see
• Tie every task to the outcome the company wants
• Make the case for a raise by describing the problem six months ago and what changed since
• Build habits that hold under pressure, because goals fade and habits take over

Anjan also lays out VISIONx and the Pressure-Proof Promotion Method: three habits (ownership, visible thinking, and staying grounded under pressure) that he teaches to Gen Z and their managers together through role-play. The conversation takes on Gen Z's AI anxiety too. Anjan tells graduating students that humans doing machine-like work are struggling, while humans doing human-like work are in demand: built on intuition, creativity, and judgment. He also explains how to show all three in a job interview. Mookie closes with a career workshop story confirming Anjan's insights, and a reminder that every generation annoys the next, and the friction forces everyone to improve.

The Guest

Anjan Kasi Sampath is a TEDx speaker and Gen Z leadership coach whose talk has been watched more than 400,000 times. He’s the creator of the VISIONx™ framework and the Pressure-Proof Promotion Method™, which trains early-career professionals and the managers above them to close the trust gap between them — not through workshops, but through observable behavioral habits. His own turning point came in 2008: thirty days into his first corporate job, during the financial crisis, his manager told him to prove his value or lose the position. With no mentor and no blueprint, he built — under pressure — the exact habits he now teaches. Anjan is John Maxwell certified, spent 25 years in corporate and coaching roles before this work, and is a contributing author alongside Les Brown in Your Story Heals. He speaks on what separates the people who get noticed from the people who get managed out — especially now, as AI changes what used to signal talent in the first place.

Website: https://www.anjankasispeaks.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anjan-kasi-sampath/

TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YD2FH0aHCSg

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