Episode 590 - ‘References Available on Request.’ A statement that is complete Garbage. with Lee Seymour

Speaker A: Get ready. It's TARPOD time. We talk talent recruitment and everything in between. So strap in and prepare yourself for a dose of knowledge tied up in a ribbon of fun. Now, please join your hosts and industry leaders, Lauren Scharf and Craig Watson.

Speaker B: Hi everyone and welcome to tarpaud. I'm Craig.

Speaker A: And I'm Lauren. And today's special guest, special, always special, this one is Lee Seymour, founder and CEO, uh, of xref, and one of our sponsors and supporters. Thank you.

Speaker B: Welcome back, Lee.

Speaker C: Hey guys, lovely to be back. Thank you for having me.

Speaker B: Hey, what a year or 18 months it's been. It just not only with your business but in the market with the changes that AI has brought with it and maybe even some of the concerns that might be raised around AI and even how it's even helping. So maybe we can start there today. Yeah, and really dig into, I mean,

Speaker A: I think what it comes down to, Craig, it's obviously reference checking and background checking is hugely important with the amount and the next level fraud we're seeing.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, why don't we start there? Tell us a little bit about that, Lee.

Speaker C: Let's think about where this, where possible fraud comes in, where AI is being used and the reasons why. And I think in the market, people sometimes align the employment market with the housing market. You have a buyer's or sellers market. And when we swap from a buyer's to a seller's market, we have a transitional market. And that tends to be a little bit of chaos until we get to the next part. And in recruitment we have candidate led or job led. And people are very used to this. Right. And when we become job led, it means that we've got pressures on the market and that those macro pressures might be economic or they might be pandemic. Right. Which we've all experienced. When something happens for all of us feel the pressure, uh, of, of reduced jobs and lots of candidates filling the streets. We are not in that market. We have gone through a transitional market, but we are in one of the markets that none of us have lived through before. And an awful lot of people I speak to don't even recognize it. And that is a two track market. Okay? Our employee market has been split into two. One is a redundant side of the market that is being replaced by AI support services. Administrative type roles are being replaced daily by AI support, LLMs, etc. And then on the flip side, if you have essential, uh, workers, specialized workers, maybe specialists in AI or age care, healthcare, those kind of essential workers, emergency services, they are in super demand. So imagine right now you're, you have an aged care center and 70% of what Xref does around the world is in critical areas like age care, education, etc. So imagine you're in a, in a, in an aged care at the moment. Your healthcare workers, you have to compete for them and they're at short supply. But your administrative support and your client support is being replaced by bots and AI and, and those kind of services. So as a recruiter in that environment, you have to work two different ways. You have to see, you have to compet for talent on one side and you have to really interrogate huge levels of applications on the other side. And at the moment our uh, ATSs can't keep up because some of these ATSs have AI shortlisting abilities that are failing and because they're failing. Why? Because the job spec is written by AI and it's the best of that organization on a page. And resumes are uh, written by AI to match that job and they are your best life, life put down on paper. And so it, these recruitment teams are getting hundreds of applications for administrative roles and they cannot see the wood for the trees. So it's time that we really threw resumes into a question mark and we really looked at uh, fraud. And fraud is a very interesting topic.

Speaker A: It's almost like the AI is canceling out the AI,

Speaker B: right?

Speaker C: It's happening in investment. Somebody will build a pitch for investment and someone will ask ask AI, who do I invest in? And one is meeting the other, but what is the output? Complete mediocre.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's not surprising. It is not surprising at all. So around the security issues and things like that, we're obviously seeing that their CVs are uh, a pile of crap because they're tailored. We're seeing bots come up and fake people who aren't real and all of those things. So how do we get around some of this?

Speaker C: Let's just focus on fraud for a second. I've got, I've got a huge warning, right? And a piece of news that an awful lot of people don't realize and that there are two levels of fraud. The first level is with candidates faking either the contact for their reference or their reference entirely, or they're coaching their reference to what that person needs to say about them. The first level is reference fraud driven by the candidate. But here's the horrible truth, right? Because we reference so late in the game, sometimes we flag XREF flags that a candidate has probably faked their Reference or digitally, we can absolutely confirm it. And I'll give you some stats right. Over the last 3 million candidates that have been referenced by us, we have 150,000 legitimate fraud cases and 100,000 have been ignored. These are uh, bright orange flags, ah, in our system that say stop. We have reason to believe this candidate has faked their background. Now a lot of candidates will have one reference and they'll fake the second. Right. And because of where we reference so far down the track, employers are ah, saying we've got one reference, the second reference, we got a fraud flag. Two things are going to happen. One, they'll just ignore it and recruit them anyway. For 40,000 of them, they have accepted that fraud flag and said that it's not fraud and hidden the flags from the reference report so that the rest of the business can't see it.

Speaker A: Okay, okay.

Speaker C: So we have employer fraud happening. Uh, this is the area that no one realizes. Now here's the station. In a standard market, 3% of candidates will fake their references.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: Today in administrative redundant markets where the pressure is high, the applications are high, fraud goes up to 9%.

Speaker B: So almost one in 10 candidates in those markets.

Speaker C: Yes. So find that.

Speaker A: So on the end of that then the employer, so whoever's administering these references, whether it be HR or TA or a bp, whatever, they're ignoring it because they've got so far down the track they're like, we can't keep going and doing this, we need to fill this role.

Speaker C: Look, I think if you have a recruiter in house and they've got so far, and they've got one decent resume and the line manager has already made the mind up that they like this person, they've said all the right things, they've got the right resume, they fit. They're getting pressured by the business to hire this role and, and in fear of losing this candidate to somebody else, they're making the decision. But look, this is easy. This just needs reinvention, right? The things that we're doing wrong is that we're doing references. We're taking references on the final candidates far too late. And, and the industry has proved to us that it doesn't work.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: And we're also asking only two references. Now other areas around the globe, many parts of Europe will do time based referenc will ask you for evidence of your existence for the last three years with no gaps longer than four weeks. And so this is gap based referencing. Right. And, and they will ask for character volunteering, professional and academic references to Fill your existence for the last three years. That and they'll ask for it early. But in, in our market down here, we're asking for two references. And a lot of the time people are ignoring the fact that this reference only as two week. The first two weeks of a five year tenure. That's not a reference.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Okay, so we show all this data and because of the pressures of recruiting these people, it gets ignored. So what should we do? We should, we should make sure that we reference on application. We should ask not for two, for three. If you have a critical role, then ask for three references. I can give you three. You guys can give me three. Anybody worth their weight will give you three contacts. We shouldn't just ask for two. So the in. So the resume and referencing and the way we do it, we've got to rethink it. And we can't throw resumes in the bin and say they're fake. We've just got to re. Rethink how we submit our application. We all thought that cinemas were dead. I stood in a queue on Saturday to see Odyssey.

Speaker A: Oh, how was it?

Speaker C: Amazing. Okay, but here's the thing. Cinema with that film, cinema has been reinvented and the Imax has took 40,000 tickets and he's booked out for two months. Why? Because the technology's changed and um, people want us to experience the new way of cinema. Right? Isn't it brilliant? So could we experience the new way of applying? And here's the thing. If a candidate can apply with their whole community stood behind them, and I'm talking about provenance, right? So as they apply, stood directly behind them, vouching for their history. And their providence is their lecturer, their family friend, their past employers who they volunteered for. And their history that is on account in their resume is pre verified. So they are applying within a verified history. And that is the answer to the pain that we're seeing. M. And that is exactly why we launched Xref. Me.

Speaker A: All right, let's talk about this because I think it's revolutionary. I've not seen another product. I have gone looking, as we discussed earlier, I cannot find anything like this. This for our listeners, this is, you know, how you get your blue tick and everything on LinkedIn and all that stuff. So it's verified that it's you. This is the closest thing I can call is like a green tick from Xref. So talk to us about me by Xref.

Speaker C: Yeah, look, I'm glad you you mentioned LinkedIn, Lauren, because LinkedIn's tiny in the markets we work in, LinkedIn's great for, for the people that we deal with every day. But health workers, the essential workers in our community, they're not there. They do not have a platform to prove their history. We stood outside our gardens clapping these people in Covid, and then we forgot about them, right? And healthcare workers out there need a. A place to prove their worth in our society. And here's Xref Me. Xref Me is. Is free for life for a candidate. They can literally go to XREF Me today, open an account, upload their resume. We will build it out for them. Here's the kicker, right? We have verifications on people for the last 16 years across 11 million people in Australia and New Zealand, right? And so if you were referenced five years ago on XREF and you open Adopt me, we're going to ask you if you would like to have that data back right now. Commonly with, uh, references. Commonly with references. And here's the thing. References are taken by an employer, they're filed in their ats, and the candidate never has the ability to use them again. But that data belongs to the candidate. We worry about all these organizations and how much money they have, right? Organizations that build cars and rockets. But actually we should be complaining about how much data companies own that should actually belong to us. So here we go. Privacy laws are going to change. Get ready for it. We're ahead of that because we have a mindset of giving the data that belongs to a candidate back to them. It's like searching for your super fund, right, and bringing it forward. So candidates that have been verified by XREF before in the past can reach in, build their profile and gain those verification and pull them forward so that they can use them in the future. They can then go and request their own references. And not just professional academic volunteering, um, character. And they can build this body of this community around their career history or their education history. And then if they want to, if they want to apply, they can apply with a link or can share. They can share their public link or they can literally push in the email of the person wanting to see the resume and that will send them an invite to view it.

Speaker B: So, Lee, so if someone's applying for a role, they've set up a. A me account with XREF they're applying for, they can share that link to their own, ah, their own data when they're applying. Is that how it work? Is that so?

Speaker C: Yes. So Xref.me is completely portable. However, you Apply. If you're apply on a job site, you can add your link in there. If you apply directly to an organization, you can provide a link. Commonly what people are doing is if they are applying with a, a traditional reference resume because it's an online ATS system that requires an upload of a resume. The, the point of XREF me is that we're replacing the sentence that crept into our sector probably 25 years ago and has been the bane of everybody's life. Sentenced is references available on request. Right. So it means nothing is complete garbage. Right. We used to do it the right way. We used to apply with a resume and headed letter references and 2003 email became popular email. You couldn't do it then. So people put their reference contact details on a resume only to find that recruiters were using them for business development and they didn't like back channeling. So they took the contact details off and they replaced it with the worst sentence that we've ever had, which is replace reference is available on request. It might as well not even be there. So we've replaced it with a link or a QR code or a badge. You can get an XREF Me badge and put it on your resume. And that means when you get to the bottom of the resume you can see, or even at the top you can see that you can go and click on a verified version of that, that resume and access on um, by requesting the candidate's consent you can access those references and you, you don't have to be an X implant an employer that uses XREF to view these references. You can view all the references and all the feedback on candidate requests for 27 bucks.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: So you think in Australia, let's help the recruitment market. 70,000 customer clients in Australia are large to enterprise. The majority of companies in Australia and New Zealand. Right. Are SMBs, small medium businesses. And there's three, there's three million of them. So 30% of Australia's workforce works in the SMB market. Now let's give them tech, let's give them Integra enterprise grade technology for 27.

Speaker A: That's incredible.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So you've got your ID check, you've got a vivo check. If they require any certifications or licensing for whatever they do is going to be included in that. I'm assuming if they require police checks and working with children. All of that's in one thing and it's done.

Speaker C: Yeah. So you can, you can confidently make a decision on that candidate on application. And the good thing Is that you can concentrate on being human. Right. You can concentrate on getting to know that person rather than spend the first, second and third interview, keep going over the history and verifying their example, existence. You can move past that and get to know the candidate and how they're going to fit in your organization. So it's giving time back to the recruiter as well.

Speaker A: Actually you've got the verification, you've got the references. So you just have to be concerned about can they do the job.

Speaker C: Yeah. And if that business enjoys that, enjoys uh, that experience, they can click one button and they're into a two week free trial with xref. So they can even gain access to all of the other tools we have engagement surveys, additional background checks, all of those things. Talent pools, exit surveys at a click of a button. It's introducing companies to a better way to uh, to handle talent from hire to retire. But it is giving enterprise technology to the organizations that form the core of our country.

Speaker B: Let me throw a, let me throw a tricky one at you, Lee. As we probably know, anyone in the recruitment business or working in talent acquisition knows that current candidate data is difficult, difficult. So in terms of, let's say Lauren, I think you mentioned working with children or something like that. So if there's something within a profile that either expires or needs to be updated, how is XREF managing that process?

Speaker C: The, this is a living account. Right. So it moves. There's no, there's none of this, oh, I need to update my resume because I'm going on a job hunt. Right. When you finish a role, request your references. When you finish volunteering in a uh, job request, request them. And the crucial thing here is that commonly when candidates are requesting feedback from old employers, they're actually asking that person to delve into their five year memory and think about the time that they spent with that candidate. And to be honest with you, that's, it's a failure. Yeah, Process, right. And if I work for Lauren today and I finished, I would reach out and say, okay, it's fresh in your mind. Can you answer this reference feedback for me? And guess what? You will never have to do it again. You are not going to get called by a call center overseas in five years time asking you 50 questions at ah, 2pm in the afternoon when you're busy because you've answered a reference on me over and over again. Do it and it's set. And forget forever. Don't forget, of course, that references are a moment in time that cannot change.

Speaker A: I think it's innovative. I think it's absolutely brilliant. So how do we get the mindset to change of some employers? I know from a TA and HR perspective, we're going to embrace this. It's less work, it's efficient. But some, um, employers and line managers, hiring managers, they'll be like, oh, I don't know about that. When do we, they're not going to put a bad one in there, are they? So I want to speak to the reference to how do we get them to start embracing this type of process?

Speaker C: We're already doing that. Right. And we've been here, right. We started in 2010 and people said I was an idiot for trying to automate something that gets done manually. Right. And we pounded the pavement and smashed the phone and told HR that they were doing it wrong for five years until people went, hang on a minute, this is pretty good, good. So we've been here, we used, we're used to taking a risk to change the way the sector works. Right. That's just, that's just the difference in being found lead and having a, and having a dream shot. But here it is. We're only, I think we're 12. April 14th we launched XF Me. There's 6,000 people that have built a full profile so far. Um, and we're still in, we're still in a uh, beta, uh, slow mo stage because we're learning. We've already got 6,000 people out there.

Speaker A: It.

Speaker C: We had the first candidate arrive at one of our clients last week with an XREF Me profile and say you don't have to do that because I've got this. And the, the client was like this is brilliant. Can we get out other candidates to build one in the early stages of their application so that it's ready. This is happening because people know that this is still even automated. We automated it. Even automated, when you do referencing late, it causes the issues that we've spoken about. And in today's market, with a two track market filled with fraud chaos. It's chaos.

Speaker A: Pure identity purposes alone. This is golden.

Speaker C: Isn't it funny that we, we're asked to survey our postman when they deliver a parcel. How was your parcel delivered? And we are asked to give feedback on that person immediately after the parcels delivered. But then we wait five years to ask for an employer to validate our exist. It just doesn't make sense.

Speaker A: I don't know if I want Craig to do my reference.

Speaker B: No, it's fresh in my mind. You probably want to wait five years when I've calmed down a bit.

Speaker C: This backfired on me because my whole team, when we launched XF Me, I told them, get in, get to know it, get to use it. So overnight I had uh, a uh, wealth of references to provide and I've actually provided references for everybody in my team and hopefully they don't, don't leave me because they've got brilliant accounts of their history. Right. But isn't it a nice thing to do to give a reference on somebody that is currently working with you with no worry about them? Uh, it's just an account. Let's give you an account of today. Right. It's like a, ah, it's like a 360. There's no worry about leaving. But I, I've done a good project and I'd like you to give me an account for it. It's no reason why that can't happen. And I know that those people will use those references for the rest of their career.

Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, I think it's genius, Lee. Genius.

Speaker B: And Lee, there's people who are listening who would like either a demo or a bit more information. So maybe how it looks and feels. What would be the best way to reach out and get in Contact me

Speaker C: is great for candidates to go and have a look at there. There are videos, uh, online.com you can get hold of me leexref.com we make it super easy. So, you know, I think the best thing to do is open an Xref Me account and uh, build a profile. My son's just appl. Applied for his role on an Xref Me profile and yeah, uh, it changes the game.

Speaker A: Excellent. So when is Johnny Xref back from his little jaunt to the U.S. he's just got back.

Speaker C: He's just got back.

Speaker A: So you know, he doesn't have an actual last name. Everyone in the industry refers to him as Johnny Xref.

Speaker C: Johnny Xref. Yeah, I think that's his. I think that's his Xref Me URL.

Speaker A: That is actually what people. Johnny. You mean Johnny X Ref? Honestly that is who he is. But yeah, why we're talking about Johnny X Ref. Let's get on to bigger and better things. The Iters.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: Oh, game on, my friend. Yeah, the X Ref Teeny has cemented itself in ita's history.

Speaker C: That drink we the the XRF Teeny. I think it just fits. I think we do xref, we do an espresso martini and because we're always get to the bar at 6 o' clock and we're all working hard over here. So we need a pick me up before we can celebrate anything. It's our chosen drink and to rebrand it the XF Tiny.

Speaker A: Why not?

Speaker C: And I think it's always enjoyed pretty well. It gets the night off to a good start.

Speaker B: I think the challenge to all the attendees of the Artist this year is to have your Xref teeny and then do an Xref, uh, me profile straight after to make sure that you're. You're hitting all the right notes.

Speaker A: I think I have meant M. I've heard numerous times the day after the itis and the week after those bloody X ref teenies got me again.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: And.

Speaker C: And we leave clients to drink at least two or three before we start with the sales pitching. Johnny Xref's glass. There's. It's actually just Coca Cola.

Speaker B: He knows how to play the game. Hey, Lee, thanks so much for joining us today and really we appreciate the support of XREF with the Eiders. The XREF Me initiative is amazing and we really, uh, encourage people to look at it. Set up your own profile for as an individual and from a business or potential client perspective, reach out to XREF to understand more about it and how it can streamline your hiring processes. And data is king, isn't it? And all the data is there it

Speaker C: is and it belongs to the candidate. So let's start thinking like that.

Speaker A: Bloody brilliant. So everyone, it's a goodbye from me

Speaker B: and a goodbye from me.

Speaker C: Thanks both.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening to Tarpod and please don't forget to subscribe and make sure you listen to the outtakes at the end of the episode. They're usually the best bit. I freaking hate, uh, that I did my back making the bed once.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why you shouldn't make your bed.

Speaker A: Oh, I try to avoid it.

Speaker C: Now, this should be we're audible only, aren't we? Yeah. I've even brought m my nice little speaker for you. Look at that.

Speaker B: Wow, look at that.

Speaker A: Hey, I haven't got makeup on. The fact I've got a jumper on and I'm not sitting here in active wear.

Speaker C: I haven't put my eye makeup on this morning.

Speaker A: Really? Crown artist Craig.