Skills-Based Hiring: How Vervoe's CEO Is Rebuilding the Interview | Omer Molad

Unlocked Professional: AI and Future of Work: Well, if you're expecting people to use AI on the job, why shouldn't they use AI when they're applying for the job? It's only natural. That's not cheating. Let's set the rule what is cheating?

Well, let's set the rules of engagement. Let's tell people. For example, it's okay to use AI, but the thinking has to be original. And we're gonna ask you to A declare if you've used AI in this response or not, and B, be prepared to explain your thinking.

So the following so you might Do an exercise and then the next question will be a video where you have to explain why you do it that way and be prepared to explain it in the interview. Yeah, I think for me as a hiring manager, I got really sick of interviewing people with terrific resumes who couldn't stand up to the scrutiny of the the practical aspects of the job. So when we put them in scenarios that that they would face, i it just ⁓ there wasn't a great ability to kind of transfer the apply those skills in a different setting.

And and it's just this massive dislocation between, you know, I look good on paper on the one hand and I can do tasks really well on the other. And there's a reason for that. I mean the the the resume is essentially like a career chronology, you know, chronological kind of i work experiences. Most companies think they have a hiring problem, but what they actually have is a measurement problem.

They've built processes designed to evaluate what a candidate looks like on a resume, not what the candidate can actually do once they get into the job. And the cost of that gap is wrong hires, missed talent, and wasting time which compounds every single corner. Omer Malod saw this from both sides. He applied for hundreds of jobs he was more than qualified for, not a single interview.

He finally landed a job and spent nearly a decade at National Australia Bank leading a corporate finance team of twenty-five and watched the exact same flaw play out from the other side of the table. The best performers weren't the ones with the most prestigious resumes. They were the curious, resourceful, and tenacious ones, and none of that showed up on paper. So in 2016, he co-founded Virbo with his partner David Weinberg, which was built around a simple but radical idea.

Instead of inferring what candidates can do from where they went to school or who they used to work for, just put them in a real job scenario and see what happens. Let the work speak for itself. So today, Virvo is an AI powered skills intelligence platform used by over 8,000 companies globally, including Fortune 500 clients across the US and Australia. And they're currently doing something people haven't caught up to yet helping enterprises figure out not just who to hire for AI augmented rules.

But which of their existing employees are actually ready for what's coming? I've been following what he's been building for a while now, and I'm fired up for this one. Omer, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Jeff.

Great. So prior to starting Virvo, you worked in large enterprises and also the humanitarian sector. What made you want to be an entrepreneur? Firstly, I felt compelled to solve this problem, and so did David, my co-founder.

We felt very strongly that the traditional hiring is on this like repetitive loop. It just keeps going the same way and everyone talks about how bad it is, but no one does anything to fix it. And you know, I felt it from both a candidate side and the the hirer side. I'm sure we'll get into it more later, but but in short, the people who can contribute in the best way aren't surfaced through d the traditional process.

And we both felt very strongly that that's something that we want to fix and as we're not practitioners, we're not recruiters, and sometimes it takes people from the outside to come in and And fix the problem. And then the second thing is on a personal level, I felt this ⁓ burning desire to create my own job. And I also felt that a lot a lot of the things that I did in my career up until the point that we started this company, Vervo, seemingly were disjointed from each other.

But this it all makes sense now. I feel like maybe in hindsight, everything I've done up until this point was really an apprenticeship to be an entrepreneur. And there's a book by David Epstein called Range, How Generalists Thrive in a Specialised World, that talks about analogous thinking and how you can it's often that the people that work in totally different fields and then move to a to something else that are most successful because they can bring analogous thinking. And that helped me kind of make sense of my career that I was able to till today I'm able to draw on all these seemingly completely disjointed or divergent experiences and help me become a better entrepreneur and better leader.

And I didn't maybe didn't understand it at the time, but I felt this kind of compulsion to do it as well as solving this specific problem. Well, it's a small problem, so it should be pretty easy to fix, right? That's right. Then no one's tried it before.

But but you know, hard problems are problems worth solving. Yeah. No, absolutely. I I I can't agree.

I I talk about it a lot. And you know, obviously I was on the hiring side for a number of years and I'm still do hiring myself. And I think that it's there's a long road ahead, but I think it's exciting that there's some innovation, some new creative ways of going about. that process, if you will, and improving upon it.

And then I also think that it's pretty interesting what you mentioned about, you know, you were you had specific domain knowledge in one area and then you took those skills and then you applied them to something something else that wasn't that was newer for you. And I talk about this a lot, but I think with AI in particular, that opportunity a lot of people are gonna have to do that crossover is going to increase immensely, right? If they have if they have the right mindset and interest and Because now you can just basically tap into a number of different skills and or knowledge.

You get to bring in this domain expertise and you get to look at it with a whole different set of eyes that maybe never had a chance to to look at that specific domain with that level of knowledge and experience in the past. It's a it's a great point. I think AI has commoditized knowledge and so so it's never been easier to access information. And so the nineteen year old intern can now, in theory, become an expert very quickly.

Now that's not entirely true because you need judgment and taste and experience to make good decisions, but but you can get up to speed very, very quickly and immerse yourself and develop expertise and s what then if we do hold this thesis that that knowledge has become somewhat commoditized raises the question of well what matters? And what what skills now become important. And I I think analogous thinking actually becomes even more important because you can draw on different experiences to help you know be be ⁓ make better decisions.

And it becomes less important that you did the same craft for twenty years when that craft itself could become obsolete. True. I think I'm gonna steal that. ⁓ Analogous analogous, analogous thing experience, yeah.

David Epstein range. That's the book. Yeah. I like that.

I think and I think that's critical. So good call out there and and I a hundred percent agree. Back to just kind of more of a fun side. So you you live on a semi rural property surrounded by gum trees, which actually when I was thinking about it, I was thinking about this departure a lot of people had.

I I'm not sure if you're familiar with the show Yellowstone, if you if you've heard of that, but it's absolutely Yeah great show. Right. Great show. Yeah, we my and and I and like we watch that show and my daughter's wearing a cowboy hat now and my wife wants to move on a farm, so you know, I think about the gum trees and and you know what life's like.

Just tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah. Not quite Yellowstone level, not quite rancher lifestyle, but but definitely in the forest, in the gum trees. I think that we live the the Australian dream.

We have a an amazing lifestyle it it feels you know, we don't see our you can't see your neighbours surrounded by gum trees, peace and quiet, but commuting distance close enough to you know, to get into the city and close enough to amenities. I I I'm a city kid, I grew up y you know, always in big cities and and and ride in the heart of you know, you walk to everything. But but I think I've got a somewhat of a of a countryside soul and I I like nature, I like the peace and quiet, I like the birds, I like green.

And w we have a property that you know it's a dirt road, so it it feels qu quite rural. And the pocket that we live in, it's one block back to the river. It it does feel very countryside, but it's actually deceptively close to things. So we're not isolated.

And you know, work can be intense. And in the middle of the day I can step away from a meeting and go stand outside and it it just it sort of the the calm washes over you and I'll have sometimes in the summertime calls out on the deck and people say to me, Are you in the are you in the bird sanctuary? Are you in the botanical gardens? What what does that sound like in the background?

And it makes me happy. So it's the it's the sort of the alter ego, it's it's the contrast to the the busyness and the intensity on the inside. But I'm surrounded by a a level of serenity. I love it.

Yeah. Well, I aspire to be there one day and my my wife's ready to sign up right now. So maybe we'll we'll get there one day. But no, I I a hundred percent agree.

I think it's good, you know, sp especially now, right, with with the tools and obviously you're running a business. So that is there's a lot to that. And so taking a little bit of a mental break, having a good place that's comfortable is great. So I imagine you you're also work remote primarily as well or Yeah, we're we're remote first.

We during the pandemic shut down, we had offices at the time in Melbourne, in Dallas and in in Kiev in Ukraine. We shut them all down and went fully remote. We do s some people go in, we we use co working spaces and go in several days you know, a few days a week, but it's it's optional. We don't have any sort of mandatory or hybrid with the exception of when we're ramping people, we like to insist that the first few months they spend at least a few days a week together to ramp.

But beyond that it's it's remote first and then they have the option to go in and and collaborate in person if it makes sense to do that. Yeah. Yeah, I I I agree. I mean if possible it's always to have the you know definitely good to have that some person in person interaction.

But yeah, it especially with commutes and everything and how challenging that can be. I think it's great to have that flexibility of of being remote. So I'm just curious. So like going back to like, you know, your mission here and back when you were doing the hiring, right?

And on the hiring side, what do you think? What would you call out as like the catalyst moment where you just decided, hey, something really needs to change? Like where what what was the big motivating factor there behind this mission that you're on now? Yeah, I think for me as a hiring manager I got really sick of interviewing people with terrific resumes who w you know couldn't stand up to the scrutiny of the the practical aspects of the job.

So when we'd put them in scenarios that that they would face, i i it just there there wasn't a great ability to transfer the apply those skills in a different setting. And it's just this massive dislocation between I look good on paper on the one hand and I can do tasks really well on the other. And i i i there's a reason for that. The the resume is essentially like a career chronology, a chronological kind of work experiences.

And that made complete sense when our careers were organized in that way, like four hundred years ago, when you had to do a blacksmith apprenticeship for ten years, and so you know, i if you'd only done b if you're only three years into your ten year apprenticeship or then that that's very indicative of where you're at. But today, as we discussed earlier, you can have someone who has less experience or didn't necessarily go to the the school that maybe y you'd expect because they don't come from a fortunate background or maybe they don't work at Google or whatever, but actually they're perfect.

For your company, and they're smart and hardworking. And so the kind of the way that we articulate ⁓ our ability to contribute to to a company doesn't really make sense in this older format. And we wanted to find a diff we want to give people a different way to articulate how they're gonna contribute rather than here's my list of jobs and then I'm gonna do this chit chat over an an interview with these mind numbing questions telling me about a time that you faced a challenge, all these kind of interview questions that everyone hates but keeps asking.

And so we the what inspired us was the movie industry, the kind of audition concept of we'll just audition for the role and we invented the job trial basically, or that's what we tried to build. Yeah, and like it's funny because I I bring on career coaches that I've had a few guests that are in that space. I have folks a wide range, right? And now talking to a lot of recruiters that are out there, my background is in that and a lot of sales.

And I just what I w my recommendation a lot of times for people that are looking for work is treat that interview as a game, right? You're going into that game and you're looking to win that game and there's a strategy in order to to do that. Now, like you said, that strategy was built a long time ago and aligns well to the way that hiring has always been done. Doesn't mean that's a a great game.

It's just the current state of where we're at. But, you know, there is a lot of subjectivity obviously that happens during that interview and hiring process right now. And I've I've seen a lot of people that were great in an interview, but then didn't perform very well when when they started, right? And Again, that that what you're talking about, like the the pedigree and the college degrees and and the working experience, it tells somewhat of a story, but it doesn't tell the complete story.

And you know, there's so many points of failure along the way, right? Ultimately, who's been managing that person and why did they stick around? Was it by choice or because there was no other opportunities for them to move into something else because they didn't have the skills, right? I mean, there's so many variables that could come into play there.

And I I I think of what you're doing, and I and again, I haven't personally experienced it, but I I I think that just like this space of innovation is is gonna disrupt the hiring space considerably over the next couple of years. And like the tools that you guys are building and and some of what you're doing is is a contributing factor that we'll see, right? Obviously how it all all plays out, but I think having that performance based component. is probably the most valuable not only to the hiring manager, but it also does a service to that candidate to assure that they aren't stepping into the wrong thing.

You know, they aren't missing out on another great opportunity and taking something that really doesn't align well with them. So yeah, you know, I And you touched on a really important point there that the value to the candidate that the language we use is we say we're giving every candidate an opportunity to showcase their talent and the the the pitch to the candidate is you don't have to be disqualified before you have an opportunity to prove yourself. You won't be disqualified based on a piece of paper.

And there is this concept of hidden obviously we talked about people who are good at interviewing, but there's the reverse of that, the people who never get to the interview then not necessarily good at interviewing, that maybe they don't even look good on paper and they they but they're the we call them hidden gems. That actually are going to be great performers, but for whatever reason that they don't stand out from the pile. And and so, you know, by leveling the playing field, you're giving everyone an opportunity to show what they can do.

And and as a candidate, I would have thought if I'm confident I can do this job, I see this as an opportunity to succeed. not as extra friction or or a hurdle. It's like, right, like that's all you want. And if you go back to the movie an analogy, what does every actor want?

An opportunity to audition. Right. And be judged on them on on their merit. And that's what we're trying to do.

Yeah. Which again, yeah, disruptive and different than what's in practice. And I imagine there's obviously people on both sides. Some people, the old guard, right?

They d they don't want it to change. And then some people see the value. So I definitely see the value in it. And I think that again, that along with just a like I I talk a lot about AI, and I don't want to beat AI to death.

I do have some other questions for you later on because I I do think that it's relevant. But similar to what we just talked about before, which is you have this introduction of this tool, which is an absolute game changer for people, and hiring and the types of jobs that will exist in the future. So If you're not, I guess, assessing individuals on their ability to leverage those tools, for instance, and maybe they have or haven't had experience with those tools over the last 20 years, I think that that company is probably doing themselves a disservice because of how important those tools are going to be in the next few years, likely, right?

So I yeah, I and so how do you assess for that? And I was looking at your website and kind of noticed that you guys are dabbling into that too, doing some types of AI assessments. I'm just curious, what's what's maybe you can give us a little bit behind the scenes on progress with that or how it looks or just any input you have on how that's going. Yeah, there's this concept called AI proficiency, which is basically companies are now require requiring so often they're requiring the the candidates to have a level of proficiency in AI.

But here's the thing, they often don't know what that means. They they it's kind of this top down like we need to hire people who know how to use AI. Okay, great. What does that mean they can use Chat GPT?

What can they use to b can they build financial models using Claude? Like what what are we actually kind of looking for here? And so we sort of bring it back to the job. What does performance of i in the role look like today and what does that look like in twelve months and twenty four months?

And that that That raises a whole bunch of bigger questions of like workforce management and and job profile design. But but I think companies are generally grappling with this concept of you know, we need to use AI and we need to know that people can use AI. But but w as you dig deeper, there's a little bit more to unpack. Now there's another side to it, which is pretty much all candidates are using AI to generate their resumes, their cover letters, and cheat on assessments and and so ⁓ companies also have to grapple and that and and when that happens companies say ⁓ no not like that that's not what we meant when we said use AI.

What we meant was you know write your own resume manually but use AI on the job after we hire you. Our advice to companies is first of all let's understand what performance in the job you know in in this marketing role you're trying to fill do you expect people to use AI? Yes? Okay, how?

N no problem, let's evaluate for that. And then second, well, if you're expecting people to use AI on the job, why shouldn't they use AI when they're applying for the job? It's only natural. That's not cheating.

Let's set the rule and what is cheating? Let's set the rules of engagement. Let's tell people. For example, it's okay to use AI, but the thinking has to be original, and we're gonna ask you to a declare If you've used AI in this response or not, and B, be prepared to explain your thinking.

So the following, so you might do an exercise, and then the next question will be a video where you have to explain why you do it that way. And be prepared to explain it in the interview. And I feel for these recruitment teams, because they're getting this these like mandates from the top. Everyone has to use AI and every spend money on tokens.

Hire people with AI, and they're like, what Hang on, what what does that mean? Right. Right. So so I think we we've we've got a role to play in helping them just kind of like unpack that and bring that down to earth.

But there's a lot of demand at the moment for understanding the ability of both candidates and existing employees to use AI i in the performance of the job. And and we can absolutely test for that. That's not the challenge. The challenge is what are we testing for?

And what is the candidate You know, it's like I went to law school and in law school it's open open book exams. Right. But if you walk into a biology exam with a book, you're you're gonna be done for cheating, right? So so it's like, okay, well just tell us the rules.

If if we're allowed to bring in a book and the book, you know, the the rules of the exam are that y you can use the book because you have to analyze problems, then that's fine. Just let us know. And I think companies aren't that they can probably do a better job at Telling candidates what's allowed and what's not allowed, rather than just saying, ⁓ everyone's used AI, they're all cheating. Well, they're not.

You didn't tell them they're not allowed to. Yeah. And you I mean, you bring up a tough ⁓ a valid point too, which is, and based upon a lot of my conversations and my experience both with enterprise companies and small, medium-sized businesses, they have to figure out their strategy first before the you know, like if if they themselves don't necessarily know how to leverage the tools, then how are you gonna put together a requirement, right? Ultimately.

So I it sounds like a lot of what you guys are doing, at least to define some of your practices there, probably have to do with like strategy, road mapping, and aligning on what, you know, what their actual future looks like, right? If they if they have basically, yeah, aligning with their planning and how they plan to leverage AI tools. And if they don't have a plan yet, then yeah, that that needs to be considered when they're hiring people. So I I was curious, like with back to the the assessment parts of it.

And I know you mentioned it could be variable or ultimately you you may want somebody that's really strong with using AI tools because they're going to be 2x or 3x, maybe in tur have have two 2x or 3x the capabilities of somebody who's not leveraging those tools. But when it comes to the assessments in particular, you know, and I think more of like proctored interviews and these little short clips you see online of people that are like, Cheating, but how are you guys dealing with that?

Yeah, so it it it's very situational and th we ⁓ there there's it's important to draw a distinction between fraud, cheating, and plagiarism. So fraud is I'm actually getting someone else who's not me to do the assessment or I'm lying. It's just like think of it would be criminal basically. It's like dishonesty.

It's fundamentally like You know, all the stories you hear about North Koreans and robots and all these kind of so so that's that's just fraud. And that's f like in any category of anything, that's something that you can try and prevent, but that is not like an in the normal course of business. Then then you've got ninety-nine point nine percent of people who are you know, honest actors in good faith trying to get a job, but but may you know, you know, ⁓ abuse in inverted commas the system a little bit if the rules aren't clear.

And so cheating might be that they you know, get help or they might use an answer that that that's not theirs or they might use some tools that maybe they weren't allowed to do and there are kind of ways to you know like you mentioned proctoring and the geolocation. There's like a bunch of tools to detect are they fundamentally being being honest. And then there's plagiarism where they will essentially use content that exists on the internet that's just like if you write a you know, PhD thesis and you steal someone else's idea.

So that's like plagiarism. So we can detect that. We can detect if like, you know, i c did you copy and paste, it did does this content exist somewhere else on the internet. kind of do do things to to detect that.

So there are a bunch of tools that that that can address all those things. But the most of the time the advice we give is actually simpler than that. It's look, we can do all those things. If someone's a a highly sophisticated, motivated fraud star, y you know, just like you can put locks on your house and put an alarm in cameras, but if someone wants to break in they'll break in.

So that's kind of But but the advice we give them is like what I said before, set the rules of engagement and then also as much as possible make the assessment task-based and practical rather than knowledge-based. Because if it's knowledge-based, you're asking to be lied to. Because as we said before, knowledge has become commoditized, they can look up the answer. And they're going to look up the answer.

And you know what? So they should, because That's what they'll do on their job. They'll Google it or chat GPT it or or whatever. But if it's task-based, that's much harder to cheat, much harder to gain because they ha actually have to do something.

And if they can't do it themselves and they get their cousin to do it for them, well, that's pretty blatant cheating. So as much as possible, make it task-based and get them to perform things that are to do things that they would normally do on the job, which is by the way, the essence of our product. And so if you stick to that, you're gonna stamp out ninety-five percent of the problems to to begin with, and then you've got these edge cases which you can you know, our anti-cheating ⁓ mechanism will detect.

But you I I gotta say, like having said all that, we haven't got this a hundred percent. There is more th this is a never ending it's like credit card scams. You never there's always gonna be a percentage, right? Yeah.

Anyone who tells you there's zero cheating, they've worked it out, no. It it's a it's an ongoing battle. The cheaters get better and we will have better it's like an arms race. We're gonna get better at fighting and they'll get better at cheating and you have to stamp out like a reasonable amount.

Yeah, and can you just briefly for I think it would be good to add context too. So could you give us an example of what that task base assessment might look like for a given role? Yeah, like in sales we'll get you to do objection handling, negotiation, we'll get you to do like a PowerPoint, like a sales deck. In customer support, we'll get you to resolve support tickets or respond to an angry customer.

Back to sales in a in an SDR prospecting role, we might get it like write emails or leave a voicemail for a prospect. In finance it'll be Excel heavy. So we'll get you to do work in Excel, do calculations, do discounted cash flows, reconcile ledgers, whatever. In technical roles it'll be like working with code or in a QA role working inside JIRA.

It could be writing code for a software developer. It's you know, very, very practical, highly dynamic, multiple formats, presentations, spreadsheets, code, video, audio, writing. As much as possible, it's like aspirationally come and do a shift in the kitchen of my restaurant, but for white collar jobs and using the internet. So w where we're not you know, where it doesn't sort of lend itself to certain role types like cardiothoracic surgery, y you know, you're probably not gonna do a good job of simulating that with a an internet based assessment.

Right. But but for all kind of like knowledge roles, skilled roles, semi skilled, you know, think of sales, customer service, marketing, technology, finance, healthcare, even warehouse roles and sort of blue collar roles. you can get a a really strong signal by getting people to do tasks o online and we're constantly finding new ways to to simulate the job, but that's in essence what we do. So it go I mean and I think it's as good just to paint that broad picture.

It help helps me to get the visual as well. But we're talking about when I think of assessments and the ones that we typically would administer. To candidates, a lot of technical assessment assessments, coding assessments. Those are all some of them were multiple choice, some of them were fill in the blank, but you're but what you're talking about is a lot more dynamic than that, right?

Where you might incorporate, you mentioned it's like conversational. You might put the salesperson in a scenario. What would you say? Mr.

Manager's screaming at you right now. What would you say? Right. So that that I think, yeah, I I think obviously having those different degrees of measurement.

is is is unique. I don't know. Maybe there's a a lot of maybe I'm just unaware of it, right? But would you say you know No, you're right.

Yeah. You you're right. So two two things that we do that are certainly differentiated, I can confidently say, rather than ⁓ it sort of making a massive claim that it's unique, but differentiated. It's one is that it's role based and f almost always firm specific.

So the assessment will be highly tailored. So it'll be it won't just be like investment banking analyst. It'll be investment banking analyst at JP Morgan, or it'll be the it won't just be call center, it'll be pet insurance call center assessment. So like highly, highly tailored to the situation and even the company.

And the second thing is which you touched on is that it's ⁓ open-ended. There's no right or wrong. It's not objectively verifiable, which makes it a lot more powerful. Because once it's right or wrong it becomes rudimentary, it's limiting.

The answers can be found online, it can be gained. But if you're asking someone to design an onboarding flow or create a sales deck, there's no right or wrong for that. And that's why we use machine learning to grade it, we learn from our customers what good looks like. There's no answer guide, which makes our assessments much richer and much closer to the holy grail of a job trial or an audition, right?

Play the part. It's kind of like asynchronous role play, if you like. Yeah. I remember we we talked about that a little bit too on the the pre call where you were mentioning that obviously, yeah, the go through a few iterations, it starts learning more, getting better, improving.

And I think that's a critical aspect. Just like with the what the basically what your system does, if you will, you mentioned and maybe the differentiator between what I have most experience with, they're really vetting it's like a test at school. Right, where it's you're just taking it. Do you know the answers to these questions?

And and obviously there's value in that, but I also think of this too. I'll just go off on a little weird tangent. And maybe this aligns to kind of your vision and what you're doing. But I think about oftentimes we I know a lot of people that were brilliant, right?

Great people, but maybe not the best workers, right? Or like maybe didn't have such a great personality, or but if you put a test in front of them, they could ace it, no problem. So I I think what I'm hearing from you again is like. And you mentioned specific, I think your example was like a JP Morgan Chase or something, is that you're not only looking at do does this person have that technical capability, but are they aligning culturally as well, right?

Which is a big part in recruiting of what you're trying to vet out is like you're trying to understand your customers and what the dynamics are of that specific customers, because it's gonna vary depending upon the size, the culture, all those components. And you're trying to match that up to see. Does this person match that? Just because you are a great accountant and XYZ company doesn't mean you're gonna be relatable at this other company over here because maybe they're a startup, right?

And it's not a large enterprise company. You're not gonna get the same level of training. So yeah, I think that's cool that you, you know, you your tool is vetting out that cultural component too. Yeah, we think about it it j just to to to use a really simple wa way of explaining it, we w we wanna validate that.

s you can do the job and then how are you going to contribute to the company that that you've applied to. So so so that's it's like can you do the job? That that's kind of you know hard skills, job specific skills, and then how you're going to contribute is the kind of soft skills. We call them general work skills.

So skills that are applicable to many jobs, but how are you going to contribute? How are you going to go about it? And so it's often a combination of job specific skills and general work skills. The number one skill tested on our platform in sales roles is actually resilience.

It's not a that's not a job specific skill for sales. Objection handling is an example of a job specific skill for sales. But resilience is required in many jobs. But the resilience you need in sales, where you need to handle rejection and just keep going, would be different to the resilience that you need As a veterinarian, where you have to put down someone's cat, and different to the resilience that you need if you're a war crimes investigator, where you see atrocities.

So the context matters. Interesting. So we're trying to put the candidate in the context of the job and give the employer insight into how they perform that role in your context or in a close enough context. Doesn't have to be specifically yours, but ⁓ close enough.

And that's v a very powerful signal and that differentiates us from all the off the shelf kind of assessments that tell you that you're extroverted, which is fine, but it's not connected enough to the job or company you've applied for. Yep, makes sense. Another thing I was thinking about is back to the resume and just the traditional process of hiring and Obviously what you guys are doing is vetting out experience versus resumes. So I resumes and I I think I I heard you say a lot of your clients have also abandoned resume screening altogether for certain types of roles, which is a pretty significant shift.

And I'm just curious, what's the pushback that you still get from companies that haven't made that move and what usually gets them there? Well what we've learned over time is that there are different personas and drivers inside a company. So we might have a a very change driven talent acquisition function, but then the hiring manager managers in the business who make the hiring decision are not you know, don't have the same appetite for change or the same level of awareness. And it's a journey.

And so the company needs to be committed to transitioning to a skills based selection approach. It's not enough to have one champion. And so and we qualify for that at the outset. How committed are you and your team to actually making this transition?

And that's part of the gap that i you know, it's not enough to give them software to give them a a product. Sometimes there's a change management process that's fundamentally a human process. And oftentimes We we're not asking clients to make multiple leaps of faith at once. So they'll get started and then they'll say, ⁓ wow, I can't believe how good this is.

I'm now gonna move it further up the hiring funnel. And I I was initially looking at resumes and screening and then sending the assessment to the short list, but now I'm gonna send the assessment to everyone. So they they don't necessarily do that. S some do it from onboarding, from the get go, that's what we aim for, but some aren't quite ready.

So rather than push them, they will get there eventually. We work with them towards that. And so oftentimes within the first few months, they'll go, Well, I'm now moving you up to the top of the funnel, I'm putting the assessment at the point of application, and then they're never going back. It's like you can't go back.

It's like once you've gone from coach to business class, it's very hard to go back. Because now you've saved all the heavy lifting at the top of the funnels automated, you're getting all this insight, you just can't go back to what you were doing before. And so with our power users, with our sort of the the clients that are getting the most value, what we typically see is we've replaced all resumes, all phone screens, and two-thirds of interviews. So we're not replacing the interview, but they're interviewing fewer, more qualified people.

And they don't have to spend the interview time validating that Jeff can do the job. That's happened already through the assessment. So now I can talk to you and we can focus on how we're gonna work together. I can sell to you why you should join our company, and maybe I can drill down or d like double click on certain things that that the assessment surfaced.

So maybe in the assessment you were outstanding at prospecting and outstanding it objection handling, but maybe there's some question marks on how coachable are you? Are you receptive to feedback, Jeff? So maybe I'm I might that that that came out of the assessment, I might spend some time in the interview talking to you about that and giving you some feedback to see how you react. And so that's a much more valuable conversation going into an interview when you already know as a hiring manager or as a recruiter a lot about the candidate.

And so you need to do fewer for every high you need to interview fewer people because it's a more valuable interview. Yeah, and I like that because now you yeah, it's a more targeted approach with the actual questions you're asking versus these just standard generic questions that you're asking. Again, less less subjective. I also find it funny too.

What you're doing, I think, is essentially what I did, but mine was more manual than that, right? My goal was always like Let's skip the process of having this hiring manager review the resume because I can guarantee you you're gonna want to meet them. Right. So, like that, that's my, my philosophy in those situations when I had, you know, an end customer, let's say, that wanted to meet a candidate.

It's like, we've already done our due diligence, right? We understand that this is the right person. You may want to ask a few follow-up questions or you may want to dig into a little bit or this or that, but you don't have to go through that full blown. process that you would typically.

And and I and the value behind that again, which is which and especially when you're talking about competitive types of rules, is that which I just don't think people appreciate it. Even in markets that are not where there's a lot more opportunity or a lot less opportunities available and maybe more candidates, it's still speed to market, right? Because great candidates are getting positions. And if you're not scooping them up quickly, then they're gonna take something else.

Right. So It's still, I think what you're talking about, obviously removing those additional layers is still very beneficial. I I can see how it's just it's a it's the evolution process, and there's still a lot of people that are probably still still you it's like still a little hesitant about that, right? Or you know, but but then Yeah.

It's human nature. You know, it's human nature. People are used to doing things a certain way, and it has to be compelling and for them to change behavior. And sometimes it's show, don't tell.

And they have to experience it themselves. It doesn't matter how much you'll convince them or explain to them. Like they just have to do it and then they go, okay, now now I get it. And what we've learned is that it's not enough to just give people the tool.

You have to take them along, take them along for the ride. They have to go along for the journey and and they have to want want to do it. And so one of the things we qualify for now is, you know, do you care about skills, do you care about skills based hiring? Do you you know yeah and cause if not, that's okay.

You can keep doing what you're doing. ⁓ that's fine, you'll miss out, but we we can't convince everybody. Going into this as an entrepreneur, you've obviously been working and building out this company. What do you think is one thing that stands out to you that you never really anticipated in the beginning, but it's been like a huge lesson learned for you along this journey?

When we started the What I imagined was that we're gonna spend a lot of time building something and then we're gonna try and sell it and that's where like the challenges are gonna be. And I think in the end the it's funny 'cause experienced people will probably listen to this and laugh and say kind of no you know, no kidding, but the I think in the end like when I look back on all the bad things that have happened and all the problems that have happened and all the the the times that we nearly died or the the sort of the crisis crises that we've had.

It's almost always been around people. Which is ironic 'cause we're like in the business of helping companies get good people, right? We should kinda know that ourselves. But y you know, the I don't want I don't wanna sound cavalier about and say building a product's easy or customers are easy, but for me and I'm bo particularly my job for me, like people are just the answer or they're what's right and wrong with so many things.

And almost everything that we've that's gone wrong I can trace back to some wrong people. decision or y you know that yeah the conversely the opposite of that is true that like so we maybe to add some context we're self funding our growth we're not reliant on external capital and when you're when you don't have a massive amount of cash in the bank and you're funding your growth with with cash flow and you're competing against huge incumbents that are backed by private equity, you have to think about well, how do you it's like David and Goliath, like how do you win, right?

Right. And we've in i i you can say product all day long, and that's certainly part of it, but at the end of the day now with AI, like people can build product can't be your moat because people can build products very, very rapidly. I think really the the sort of secret weapon has to be people and Every time we've upgraded that we brought in better talent, we've immediately felt it's been a force multiplier. Not only that, I sleep better.

It's just been more calming. And when I say better people, I don't just mean certainly smarter and more skilled, but I don't just mean that like on the same page and mission-aligned and bought into the purpose and Have the temperament to work in a like tech scale up, fast moving, you know, the sort of the resilience and the grit. And I must admit with humility that we probably underestimated that, which sounds crazy, because like we built a hiring tool, right? Yeah.

So it's kind of like, geez, I sound I feel like an idiot saying it. But we probably did. We probably didn't, we probably weren't as ruthless and uncompromising enough in the beginning. In terms of like we're gonna get the best people in the world no matter what.

And I think we are now. We are now like whatever it takes that we've realized that. We weren't like that in the beginning. We probably maybe compromise in certain areas and geez, I regret that.

That's my best answer to your question. It's not technology, it's not the selling, it's not it. It's I I know it sounds kind of like cra like like master of the obvious, but Yeah, to do it all again, you just the one thing you don't compromise on is that the the best, most aligned, most committed, most dedicated people. Yeah, no, and I think it's interesting, it's like full circle that you were building you wanted to build this tool to make the hiring process better, right?

And then you came to the conclusion that it is really important to hire the right people, right? So like, wow, and you'd think we wouldn't have to learn that lesson the hard way, but And this is not something we woke up to yesterday and you know I'm so like obsessed with our current team. Our team is so good and we continue to add to it. But we've come such a long way.

But yeah, it it's it's it it takes also like a special kind of person to come and join ⁓ a roller coaster when you're inventing something from scratch and you're going through all the ups and downs in startup land. And and I heard one of our board members has this this phrase, it's like Renaissance people. They're people who can invent the playbook that don't need the playbook. Right.

And they're very rare, these people. Very rare. And if you find them and they're good people as well as in like kind, like honest, high integrity people and renaissance, you gotta hold on to them. Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more and back to what we were talking about before, those those general assessments that are in place are not gonna help you find those people.

Right, that they're not gonna help you lock in and find those specific qualities. So I'm glad I'm glad that you're you're fighting the good fight to make sure that people are finding the right people. I agree. I couldn't agree with that.

I don't know what the answer you were hoping for, but but or you were expecting, but like that that's to me the biggest area of humility. And I keep thinking like how do we just get more and more talenting? Sounds obvious, but it's not obvious. No, but I also I think it's super important to consider that You made a mistake and you're aware of that mistake.

And the only way in order to get better and improve is a lot of times to make those mistakes. Right. So, like, I mean, you'd you gotta do it. You gotta go through that process.

But yeah, we're in a hundred percent agreement, like having the right team, having the right people, having people that you connect with and understand the mission that you're on and you know, you're in partnership. It's it's a total game changer. So sounds like you guys are locked in in a good position. And was there anything else that we you want to discuss or talk about that we didn't have a chance to get into today?

No, I mean we're we're it's been great and you've I think we naturally got to like a lot of the stuff that that we wanted to cover and maybe the only thing we didn't talk about is this like voluntary obsolescence concept that that I that we spoke about, which I can touch on in like thirty seconds, which is this like belief that we have that with with the sort of AI era, you need to Nothing is can be taken for granted, everything can be crushed, you know, everything can become obsolete overnight, and you have to constantly reinvent yourself, which means you ha you need to have good appetite for change, but also you need to be be prepared to like cancel yourself or your craft and say, This website that we built six months ago it was great, now it's shit.

That doesn't mean I'm shit or I did a shit job six months ago, I did the great job. Based on information I had at the time, but now the market's moved or the capabilities change there's new capability available, and now I can do something better. And the only way, as you said, to get better is to acknowledge that something isn't good enough, and that takes a level of humility and the ability to like. And I've cancelled myself many, many times over, and I've said this thing that I used to do is not good enough.

I've got learn a new thing, or this thing that we built's not good enough. And when you get into that habit. It's not you don't get insulted anymore, you don't take it personally, you just go, This has reached its ex its expiry date, let's move on. It there is this freedom, it becomes very liberating where you can constantly just like make things better and better and better.

And we're big believers, we've been talking to our team about that very often, to to unlock that kind of mindset of voluntary obsolescence and and it's it's very liberating and it allows you to improve at a rate of knots. That's the only thing I wanted to that's my like my final kind of like manifesto. Yeah, all good. And yeah, I mean things are evolving so rapidly that if you're not considering things are going to be completely different tomorrow, then you're not putting yourself in a great position because yeah, the innovation is happening rapidly.

So in the in the job market will be changing rapidly and already is. So yeah. We're in total agreement. So where where's the best place for people to stay connected with you and find out more about what you're building?

Yeah, ⁓ the LinkedIn and the website. I'm I'm on LinkedIn. I also I shouldn't say this, but I respond to every email. I get I get flooded every day as you'd imagine, but I I actually respond to people 'cause I respect the hustle and I mostly I say thanks to anyone interested, but I respond to people.

So if people want to get into my inbox, they'll generally find a response. And I'm on LinkedIn and I you know, LinkedIn is because where our market is, our audience of recruiters are on LinkedIn, and our website. You know, our we've got a career site we're currently hiring, we're hiring for an advisory leader, we're hiring for a bunch of customers success. We're we're always hiring.

So the roles are on our website, and then we have a newsletter as well, which we we send to our customer base. So we're very easy to be connected with and I'm very easy personally to find on LinkedIn or via email. Yeah, perfect. And all that information will be also in the show notes as well.

And appreciate you being here and telling us about your journey and helping the audience stay unlocked and don't be a stranger. And Jeff Jeff, I really appreciate you giving me time and really the the nature of the conversation we've had and it's been great talking to you. Thanks for the opportunity.