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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#643 Disrupting the recruiting world by combining humans and AI with Heidi Golledge, Jobot
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- [00:00]
Domo Representative
Wouldn't it be great if you could ask your data anything at any time? Like how are sales this quarter? How's the new marketing campaign performing? What does the overall health of the company look like? And actually get answers right away. With charts and graphics and actionable information, you can with Domo's AI and Data products platform. Domo lets you channel AI and data quickly, securely and innovatively to deliver measurable insights wherever and whenever you need them. Anyone on your team can use Domo to easily prepare, analyze, visualize, automate and distribute data, all amplified by AI. Domo goes beyond productivity. It's designed to transform your processes, helping you make smarter and faster decisions and drive real growth. All powered by Domo's trust, flexibility and years of expertise in data and AI innovation. The world's best companies rely on Domo to make smarter decisions. See how Domo can help transform yours. Learn more@AI.domo.com that's AI.domo.com the Agile Brand.
- [01:15]
Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and martech platforms as we explore marketing technology, AI, E commerce and whatever's next for the Omnichannel customer experience. Together we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com to make sure you always get the latest episodes, please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. Now onto the show.
- [02:12]
Heidi Golage
In an era where AI is reshaping industries, can technology ever truly replicate the nuance and intuition of human judgment and hiring? Or is the future all about finding the perfect balance between man and machine? Joining us today is Heidi Golage, CEO.
- [02:28]
Greg Kilstrom
And Founder of Jobbot, which has a.
- [02:30]
Heidi Golage
Mission of good jobs for good people. A three time EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award winner, Heidi's redefining the recruiting landscape by blending cutting edge AI with human expertise. Known for her transformative no jerks allowed policy and her dedication to fostering inclusive people first workplaces heights, Heidi brings unparalleled insights into building authentic company cultures and disrupting the staffing industry. Welcome to the Show Heidi.
- [02:55]
Thank you so much for having me, Greg. I'm super excited.
- [02:58]
Yeah, looking forward to talking about all this with you. Before we dive in though, why don't we start with you giving a little more background on yourself and what inspired you to launch Jabot.
- [03:08]
Yeah, so it was actually way back in the golden era, like around 2000 when the Internet took off, I was realizing that it was kind of like AI now where it was a huge dot com era and I felt like I was doing finance. I had a three year old and a six month old, so I felt like it was a risky time to take a leap. But I just felt like this idea of you could pay 70 on GoDaddy.com and suddenly have a website like you could open a shop for a hundred bucks. It was like unheard of. So I took a leap of faith. I started a company called Cybercoders, a technical recruiting firm and so grew that was able to exit that successfully, had a non compete for a few years. And then I thought really what's going to be taking off now? And this is about six years ago was AI and the idea of how do you use AI as a complement to a job or as a tool versus just replacing all the jobs. And so I thought that there was going to be a lot of fear from people which you can kind of see now in the marketplace what's going to happen with the robots, with the AI with jobs taking over. So I thought like we'd really embrace that. So I just merged the word job and robot and came up with jobbot and then founded jobbot.
- [04:32]
Nice. Nice. Well, yeah, let's dive in and you know, we're definitely going to touch on what you're talking about here. And you know, wanted to start by talking about this disruption in the recruiting and staffing industry. Certainly We've talked about AI's impact in a number of different areas of the enterprise and the business. But you know, let's start with talking about what's working and what might need some change. So in your areas of recruiting and the consulting worlds, what are some of some areas where they're thriving today and where are some outdated practices and inefficiencies in staffing overdue for disruption?
- [05:14]
Yeah. So across the US there's about 25,000 staffing firms. So you can imagine that it runs the gamut from old fashioned like literally like fax machines, like file folders with resumes, like some scary business, all the way to functional AI and AI doing the searches for candidates. So I'd Say on both ends of the spectrum, there's some issues. Obviously doing it manual is literally impossible at this rate. Like we have 10 million users that come to jobbot.com so imagine manually going through all that at the same time, if the AI isn't correct or the algorithms are not correct, you're effectively not looking at candidates who might be incredible fit. So it's interesting. Now it's really this idea of how do you put like this human aspect into the AI so it can consider like a nuanced thought process, like maybe the client wants to hire someone with a master's degree, maybe this person has a bachelor's degree, but they do have six years experience. So like a human recruiter would look at that and think maybe that's a good fit. And that's where we're still working with AI to say, like look at the entire package of the sort of the human being and all of their experience and all their skills. And then we're able to take essentially like 10 million users, 10 million resumes, and narrow it down to about 10 people. But then we don't have. They have the capability for AI to actually call every candidate. But we do it ourselves because we like to judge the attitude. The AI can definitely tell aptitude, like, do they have the skills? But the human can tell the attitude. Like, would you actually want to work with this person?
- [07:01]
Yeah. And so you mentioned one of the advantages of bringing AI is just the volume of you're never going to go through 10 million individual resumes and interviews and all of that. So AI brings scale to the table. What are some of the other advantages that AI brings to the recruiting process that just weren't possible before.
- [07:25]
Yeah, I think that there's also nuance of thought of let's say you have a client in LA and they want someone that maybe went to usc, but they want someone with a little background from, you know, like from Microsoft and they want other pieces. And so it's interesting to think of when you think of AI, it can literally go through these 10 million resumes previously. So obviously before it was old fashioned file folders, but then we had something that semantic search. So semantic search is smart. So it can say like, okay, programmer means engineer means developer, but it's not intuitive. So unless you literally type in programmer equals developer, it wouldn't learn that on its own. So AI can learn like, oh, this is a controller, but this is also considered a senior accounting manager in some companies. And so it can actually create groups of people so it can have A full understanding of someone's background and obviously at scale over millions of resumes in seconds.
- [08:30]
Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, I would imagine, you know, it could be industry, it could be size of company, it could just be. I mean, every, every company's org chart is a little bit different. So. Yeah, that trying to find, you know, apples to apples comparison, let's say, would be really tough for even a good human, you know, recruiter that has, has done a lot in the industry. There's still like a nuance there that they may never have run through. But you're saying like AI would be able to, to learn some of those a lot easier just based on the, the sheer volume. Is that, Is that what you're saying?
- [09:08]
That's correct. And what's exciting too, so we have a software jax where we can use natural language processing. So instead of putting in like a Boolean logic string that is like I want from these specific schools and these specific companies, you can just say, I want an experienced controller that would have this type of skill set and it would have the nuance of going through millions of resumes and figuring out what would be the best person for that job. It's very good at learning. Let's say that serves up 10 people and you reject all those 10 people, it can start to see patterns like, why did you reject this 10 people? And start finding new people that you won't reject. And then every time you set up an interview, it'll take that as positive feedback and it can start to build tables of like, what was. Why is this recruiter really focusing on these seven people and start sending you more people like that? Yeah, it's like a super good Assistant that's like 20 years of experience that can go through 10 million resumes in a second.
- [10:11]
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's. Having had to go through quite a few resumes in my day, I would like that assistant. So I guess on the flip side of this though as well, and you touched on this a little bit in the, in the beginning. But, you know, finding a job, we've, most of us, I know, I've been there before, you know, applying to jobs, it's a personal, you know, it's a, it's very impactful to the individual. It's obviously impactful to the teams that are hiring and reviewing. So, you know, in a process that is personal, how do you find the right balance between AI and all the things that it can do? You know, all the efficiencies, the scale, the learning, all those kinds of Things with some of those things that, you know, human recruiters are potentially better at, you know, how do you find that balance?
- [11:05]
Yeah, I think it's interesting from our clients perspective as well because like what is the value of an agency recruiter versus an in house recruiter? And so a huge piece of that is this human component is like once you get narrowed down to, let's say there's 10 resumes and now you have a person calling them. It's interesting. It takes an art form just to literally get them on the phone. Because we typically focus on candidates that are $100,000 or more in terms of annual income that are currently employed. So imagine that those are like a lot of companies are seeking them out. A lot of companies want to get them on the phone. So that is something that, you know, in terms of like, if I was a college kid, this is a good job to go into because this, the AI can't do this. Like the AI is not going to text them and ask about their King Charles Cavalier and like how's their dog doing and what did Max do on the weekend? You know, so I think that, you know, it's something where there's a certain bonding that humans can do and then there's a real understanding of what a company's culture is. So when you're talking to the client and they're telling you all this nuance of their culture and we always like to see like who has been a fit in the past, who hasn't been a fit. And there's, you know, definitely, obviously every company in the US when you think of your culture can be this like, you are coming in everyone's introverts, you're sitting at your desk, you're leaving. So if you put a big extrovert in there, maybe they both won't be happy. So these are the kind of, I would say more of an art form. So if you think about before, recruiters had to do the science and the art, so they had to do the science of picking all the skills and picking all those things. So now from both the candidate standpoint and the client standpoint, so if I'm a candidate, I can just upload my resume and Jobbot can go through our 15,000 open positions and say like, hey, we suggest these six jobs for you so we can help them and act like a personal assistant to them and the AI can help them focus on which jobs would be more likely to fit. And then from the client's perspective, which person is going to be a better fit for the team.
- [13:15]
Domo Representative
Wouldn't it be great if you could ask your data anything at any time? Like, how are sales this quarter? How's the new marketing campaign performing? What does the overall health of the company look like? And actually get answers right away. With charts and graphics and actionable information, you can with Domo's AI and data products platform. Domo lets you channel AI and data quickly, securely and innovatively to deliver measurable insights wherever and whenever you need them. Anyone on your team can use Domo to easily prepare, analyze, visualize, automate and distribute data, all amplified by AI. Domo goes beyond productivity. It's designed to transform your process processes, helping you make smarter and faster decisions and drive real growth. All powered by Domo's trust, flexibility and years of expertise in data and AI innovation. The world's best companies rely on Domo to make smarter decisions. See how Domo can help transform yours? Learn more@AI.domo.com that's AI.domo.com.
- [14:23]
Heidi Golage
So knowing and acknowledging that, you know, AI keeps getting better and, you know, the technology gets better and all those things as it stands today, what are potential pitfalls of over relying on AI as it stands today and how does a platform like JobBot address them?
- [14:43]
Yeah, I think that one of the pitfalls is there are recruiting firms that basically someone applies and then the AI can literally call them and do a 20 minute interview. So, and actually it's interesting because a lot of people really go through those interviews and they may even like it better than a human because it's in the sense of like, it's like getting gas at self service, like you don't have to deal with someone else. You know, you kind of just go through the process. You know, it's like ordering Uber eats. You don't have to call the restaurant, you know, So I do think there's that piece of it. We choose not to use it because we have a lot of professionals that really want to talk to us about the nuance of the companies. So I do think that you could use AI to pretty much automate everything. But at the end of the day it's like even if you're going to post on LinkedIn, you can use AI. At the end of the day, people are seeking more and more this human connection. And so for us, it's combining both the human connection and the AI versus it's all automated because then you're easy to replicate. Your competitors can literally build the exact same thing because you're just an AI, you know, engine versus A human connection.
- [15:59]
Right, Right. Well, yeah, and I mean, I would imagine the, the applicants as well. I mean, you kind of said this, but like you're applying for a fairly senior position and they're sticking you with the robot, you know, for, throughout the entire, like, again, it's one thing to like make it through the screening process and, and, and I'm sure there's, there's streamlined benefits for applicants as well. You know, by, to make it, you know, let's say 90% of the way through the process and never dealing with a human, you know, it seems like the balance, in other words, is probably desired by both parties. Would that be safe to say?
- [16:39]
Yeah, it's definitely correct. And because if you think about it too is like, let's say that you're 27, so you've had a couple jobs, you're trying to figure out where you're going to spend your 30s. And so you're not only want to talk to AI to say, like, am I a technical fit? Do I have this? Do I not have this? And you know, we have what's called instant interviews. So soon as you apply, if we think you're fit immediately, the AI can do a very quick online interview with you. So it'll just help the recruiter understand if you are an indeed a technical fit. But beyond that is like a human component that not only do you want to talk to someone for the possibility learning about the company and all this, but you also want to also get feedback from them. So we act as also like career coaches, getting them excited for their interviews, like telling them like these are nuances about the different hiring managers. So it's actually like a, like a human coaching you versus just like you're a fit or you're not.
- [17:35]
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, given, given all of this and you know, looking out a few years, you know, is. Are things going to keep moving in the direction of more and more automation? You know, what do you see as the future of recruiting over the next five years or so?
- [17:52]
Yeah, I think it's clear that both recruiting tools as well as the jobs themselves, everything's going to be revolutionized by AI. So I think AI will be as prevalent as electricity. It is interesting. Even if we say things like powered by AI or JobBot's an AI recruiting firm, at some point we're just going to drop AI because it'd be saying jobbots powered by electricity. Like we use monitors, we have keyboards, you know.
- [18:21]
Right. We're on the web. Right. It's kind of it's kind of like that, right? Yeah.
- [18:25]
Www, you know, so yeah, I think that's exactly right. And so I think that it's incredible in terms of what it will be able to do. And it's again for each unique person is how are they going to harness that and use it as a tool? Because it's kind of an interesting thing is like you'll have the power of a supercomputer in your pocket with your phone. So you could literally make apps, make code like there's already today. So imagine in five years what it can do. And it's also, I think puts a burden on the companies to figure out if you can make people 10 times more productive. So does that mean that they should be paid 10 times more or 5 times more? Or maybe everybody works 30 hours a week. And so I think if you get it right, you'd have a scenario where people could make the same or more and then work less hours.
- [19:20]
Yeah, yeah, that would be great. I like that.
- [19:24]
Greg Kilstrom
Nice.
- [19:27]
Heidi Golage
So I want to switch gears a little bit here and talk a little bit about, as I mentioned at the top of the show, you're a founder of Java, but you're a three time founder, right? So several founded several successful companies here. So we want to talk a little bit about that and what it takes to build an authentic and a positive company culture to start. So you have something the no jerks allowed policy. I love this by the way. And you know, it's garnered some attention for the focus on inclusivity, respect what inspired this approach and you know, how does it work in practice?
- [20:07]
Yeah, it's interesting because earlier in my career, so I was a rare mix of, I would say technical skills and also sales skills. And so I was a poor kid. So I figured like the best way to get out of being poor is learn technology and learn how to sell. And so typically in sales, if you think of the old fashioned like boiler room and sales environments, they actually almost promote the jerks. Like it's like, ooh, Bobby got a big million dollar deal, rah, rah, rah. And if Bobby is a jerk to like tech support, nobody cares. So to me it's like every person at Jobbot is equally as important. So it doesn't matter if you close a million dollar deal or not. Like, so if you call tech support, for example, is like, let's say your laptop is down. You don't have to say, do you know how much money I make? Do you know how important I am? Because our super bots, which is our tech support. They understand that everyone's important. They treat everyone with kindness and respect. So they will jump on your issue for your laptop whether you brought in $1 million last year or you just started yesterday. So if they're going to give that level of service, then that demands that they are also treated with respect. And so that's why I just came up with the no jerks a lot. I feel like that it's, it just simplifies it because we believe in kindness and respect, but it just, it means like you can't bill enough to make you come in and have us have a toxic culture. There's no amount of money that it makes sense because we'd rather have, you know, three people billing 500K than one person building a million in five. That's treating people poorly.
- [21:47]
Yeah. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. And I mean I could see, you know, even outside of sales driven, sales driven organizations can definitely see how this kind of policy applies. I could see it in many different organizations. What advice would you have for other leaders that listening right now and are like, wow, that sounds pretty good. How can they implement something like this? Where should they start?
- [22:14]
Yeah, definitely earlier in my career it actually started with our tech team and so we had software engineers and software architects and we did have some software architects with very big egos and they would be rude and actually not mentor junior software engineers. And so that also started there. So I always feel like culture is not your pizza parties, it's not your fun logo. It's really the worst behavior that you will allow. So if people see that like, okay, that software architect, senior salesperson, pick a team title. Even tech support can be rude. You know, like it's like if they're allowed to treat people like that, that means everybody else. Like we're saying it's okay. We're saying that what they bring to the table, whether it be money or code or whatever they're creating, is more valuable than treating people with respect. So I feel like if you have a five person company, 10 person company, it starts with you. It starts with this fact that something happens in the office and you bring them in right away and you have a chat. And like this is not tolerated here. You wouldn't also tolerate a mistreatment of them and you also wouldn't mistreat them. So it is something that if you can get it right, everyone in the company can get behind. So they understand that they work at a place that they can't abuse people, but they will also not be abused It's a fair trade.
- [23:41]
Yeah. And I mean, I think an excuse, not one that I would say is a valid one, but an excuse nonetheless that a lot of companies make. You kind of touched on this, but okay, so, and so they did bring in, you know, the $20 million deal. And so yeah, yeah, they're a bit of a jerk, but, you know, if we lost them or we need more people like that or whatever, you know, how do you, how do you tie this no jerks allowed policy to business success? Because at the end of the, you know, a for profit company does need to make money and does need to be profitable. So how do you tie those two together, you know, for those listening out there as well? Because again, it's, it's definitely one thing you want happy employees and, and that saves money and, and breeds a, you know, successful company, but you also want that business success that that jerk may have brought in. But I don't know, I feel like to make it sustainable, it's got to also be tied to some kind of revenue or profit or something. So. Sorry, I asked you three questions in there.
- [24:44]
But I like it. I like it. So I think one of the things that we do is, for example, for our recruiting managers, every quarter they're voted anonymously by their team of how would they rate unkindness, on respect, on connection, on innovation, like 1 through 10. And so we typically have leaders that rank 9.9 or higher. So they are ranked. And then they are. There's an award of like manager of the quarter that's based on this. So it's based on average revenue per person, total revenue per team, and also these ratings. So it's like if you have an incredible team that brought in the most revenue, but your average was low because you just have a couple top builders and then you as a manager rank really low, then you wouldn't be getting the award. And it's like, you know, it's quite a bit of like esteem within the company and but I do think that in terms of your listeners, I think a great thing to do is start it from day one. And then if you didn't start it and now you have a team of 27, just really talk to them and then, you know, have everyone come in and say, like, this is important going forward. If anyone has any questions, I'm here. If you ever feel like you're not being treated with kindness and respect, please talk to me. And then you double down and then as soon as someone does something that is maybe unethical or not with kindness and respect. You immediately talk to them. And then there would be a point that you might have to terminate someone that is doing something unethical. And it's interesting, it's happened at, at Jobbot before that, unfortunately, we had someone that was going in our database and changing phone numbers to top people so that way other recruiters couldn't call them. And it was interesting because he was billing like 200,000amonth, which means that's like 2.4 million a year, which means he was making like 1.2 million. So this is an incredible opportunity for him. And, you know, I did have a chat with him of like, he's better than this. Like, he doesn't need to do this. Unfortunately, in his scenario, he kept doing it, so he's no longer here. But I'd say that that's rare. I'd say that I've probably had a similar conversation with 50 people, and he's the one that didn't change. I think that most people, it's almost like raising good children. Like, you put some guardrails, you don't want to sneak. And like, hey, I hear you're doing this. Be very clear. We do not tolerate this behavior. And this is the reason why we don't, is we want an inclusive workplace. We want people to feel comfortable in meetings, to give ideas where they're not mocked or teased. And so once you permeate that through the culture and then you're serious about it, where you're pulling people in, when things happen, people start to realize and then it's kind of self policing where they themselves want to treat each other well and they become a much more positive unit because of it.
- [27:46]
Yeah, yeah, makes sense. So, and then one more question, just about your experience, you know, as a, as a founder, as a, an entrepreneur, what would you. You know, obviously, if someone's looking for a job, they know where to go and apply. But let's say those aspiring entrepreneurs out there that may be looking to disrupt an established industry or something like that, what. What advice would you have for them?
- [28:11]
Yeah, it's interesting. One thing is to look at like, for example, recruiting has 25,000 businesses that do recruiting and sapping, like I mentioned at the top of the show. And so a lot of people will talk themselves out of it, like whether you want to do a donut shop, a bagel shop, a recruiting company, a software company, your mind will start to tell you, like, oh, no, there's too much competition, I can't do it. So the first is like, to put that aside, like, to me, in six years, we became the number one perm recruiting agency in the United States. So it doesn't matter that there's 25,000 that came before us and there's another 20,000 that will come after us. So now you go like, okay, so then it's like, what is your uniqueness? What is your only ness? Like, we're the only company that does X, that does Y. So it's like, is it the fact that you're going to have incredible service, incredible brand? Is it, you know, what's special about your offering? And so, and it's also like, you don't need to do everything all at once. Like, you know, let's say that you want to do eventually 10 things, like, focus on doing one or two things really well, like, better than the marketplace. And it's again, like, just get started. Because most people, like, sometimes I talk to people that say on LinkedIn and they're like, oh, I want to be an entrepreneur. And then five years later, like, oh, I still trying to perfect my product. It's probably the ship has sailed, AI's out now. So it's good to be like, I have this idea. I understand the marketplace. I'm going to go research it. I feel confident I can bring something unique, whether it's through your service, of it, through the product itself, through the pricing, through the branding. Like, if you think of like Liquid Death, and it's like worth over a billion dollars, it's just literally water in a can.
- [30:01]
Right?
- [30:02]
You know, but it has great branding and it tastes good. I like Liquid Death. So I think that, you know, what do you bring into the marketplace? How are you different? And then just do it. Because let's say that it's going to fail. You want to get to the failure fast. You want to, like, get going, get moving, then realize there's something you didn't realize in this scenario, for whatever reason, it's not going to work. Like, get through it and then do a different product. Like, great is the enemy of good. Like, if you keep waiting and waiting to try to do something, it's probably never going to happen.
- [30:33]
Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Well, Heidi, thanks so much for sharing your insights today. One last question for you. Like to ask everybody, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it it consistently?
- [30:46]
Yeah, I think that huge thing I like to do is listen to great podcasts like this one. And so, you know, it is good to, I would say listen to others I listen to. I learn about both people who have done things in the past like think of Bill Gates, Henry Ford and that people are doing things currently and it is interesting to see like what are all the breakthroughs in technology. I like to also go to conferences, but a big piece of it is trying to talk to as many people as you can. There's value in really everyone and just in finding like what are their pain points, what are their strong points, what are people getting excited and so the more that I can learn about people, the more I can make Jobbot better.
- [31:31]
Yeah, love it. Well again I'd like to thank Heidi Gollage, CEO and Founder of Jobot. You can learn more about Heidi and Jawbot and their innovative approach to recruiting by following the links in the show Notes.
- [31:45]
Greg Kilstrom
Thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the show@theagilebrand.com that's theagile brand.com and contact me. If you're interested in consulting or advisory services or are looking for a speaker for your next event, go to www.gregkilstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
- [32:39]
Heidi Golage
The Agile Brand.
- [32:43]
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