Hacking Tech Hiring w/Mark Chaffey

[00:00:00] Welcome to The Recruitment Flex with Serge and Shelley, I'm Serge.

[00:00:10] And I'm Shelley and we talk all things recruitment starting right now.

[00:00:14] Bonjour and welcome to The Recruitment Flex Shelley.

[00:00:21] I'm really excited about this guest because we met him at HR Tech and I screwed up when

[00:00:26] we interviewed him.

[00:00:27] I forgot to press unpress the mute button on his mic.

[00:00:33] So we finally had to get him on because we love the message and what this gentleman is

[00:00:39] doing.

[00:00:40] So Shelley, please introduce our guests.

[00:00:41] Absolutely.

[00:00:42] Thank you, Serge.

[00:00:43] And yeah, you'd think after 300 episodes, you'd know.

[00:00:47] It's a lot more than you find.

[00:00:49] Anyways, it is my pleasure to finally welcome to the show.

[00:00:54] And I really admire, accompany, I really admire.

[00:00:57] We have joining us the CEO of Hackajob, Mark Chaffey.

[00:01:01] Mark, thank you for joining us.

[00:01:02] Daddy, Serge, thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:05] I think that it's a blessing that interview never happens because it gives us an opportunity

[00:01:09] to spend some real time together today.

[00:01:11] So really excited for today's conversation and thank you so much for having me on the

[00:01:15] show.

[00:01:16] There you go.

[00:01:17] Absolutely.

[00:01:18] I would love if you would please share with our audience just a little bit about you

[00:01:22] and how you got into HR Tech.

[00:01:24] Yeah, totally.

[00:01:25] So I'm one of the co-founders and CEO of a business called Hackajob.

[00:01:29] I co-founded a business with a guy called Razvan who I met at University or College back

[00:01:34] in London at King's College London.

[00:01:36] We were both studying.

[00:01:37] And it was actually Razvan that had the initial idea for Hackajob.

[00:01:40] He had identified an opportunity to effectively understand somebody's skills and create more

[00:01:47] of a skills-based higher-end approach from a sourcing perspective.

[00:01:50] And we had worked on a few different projects together and here approached me one day saying,

[00:01:54] Ma, I've got this idea and I'd love you to join me on this journey which I'm super grateful

[00:01:58] that you did because it's fundamentally changed my life over the last nine years.

[00:02:02] So we got to work on building Hackajob.

[00:02:04] We went through Techstars.

[00:02:05] We wrote some investment.

[00:02:07] We made some more investment to the point at which we turned 10 this year, which is crazy.

[00:02:12] So yeah, I've never had a professional job.

[00:02:14] This is the only one that I have done.

[00:02:16] I spent probably a hundred hours a week for all of my twenties thinking about the problem

[00:02:21] of tech hiring and how we can build software and products to help company hire technical

[00:02:26] people more effectively.

[00:02:28] I'm curious how your co-founder came to this conclusion, right?

[00:02:31] So I'm assuming he's a software developer and he was having difficulties getting hired

[00:02:36] or he had challenges.

[00:02:37] Yeah, so he is one of these rare and critical people that is very technical but also very

[00:02:43] commercial.

[00:02:44] Yes, he had done an undergraduate comp site but was doing a master's in business and he

[00:02:48] had seen the world of recruitment agencies in the UK in different ways for recruitment

[00:02:53] agencies worked.

[00:02:54] And how you kind of had non-technical people screening technical people, not really understanding

[00:02:58] what the technical person does and then spamming CVs out to our companies hoping they would hire

[00:03:03] them.

[00:03:04] That was really the insight was actually can we build some software that understands people's

[00:03:08] skills and then primarily use that as the primary data point?

[00:03:11] After interesting, I think that is what I would say has been most surprising about the third

[00:03:18] party staffing industry because what you described is 100% true in North America as well.

[00:03:25] Most of these recruiters have zero experience and they're 100% commission.

[00:03:32] That means they will not be able to buy lunch if they don't make a placement.

[00:03:38] And so it drives desperation, it drives extremely high turnover.

[00:03:43] So that is remarkable that your co-founder would have that much savvy to figure it out.

[00:03:50] I spent 10 years working in that world and I can tell you straight up that is absolutely

[00:03:56] how most firms work.

[00:03:59] So talk a little bit more about what Hackajob does differently.

[00:04:04] Yeah, totally.

[00:04:06] The essential hypothesis is that every company in the world is now technology business.

[00:04:10] Technology has evolved from a standalone industry to a function that touches every industry.

[00:04:16] And therefore, the ability to engage higher retained technical talent is a broad-roaming

[00:04:20] priority for every organization.

[00:04:23] If you're going to build a successful company over the next decade, technology needs to

[00:04:26] be a core part of your strategy.

[00:04:28] The challenge often that companies face is that technical individuals are slightly different

[00:04:33] breeds to other job seekers.

[00:04:34] Over the last decade, there's always been more jobs than that has been candidates available

[00:04:39] so they've been very used to having all of the power.

[00:04:41] They are generally not on the more popular hiring platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed.

[00:04:47] And those channels aren't really built for a technical audience.

[00:04:49] So generally where direct sourcing teams typically go to find talent, they often struggle

[00:04:54] with tech.

[00:04:55] You obviously have the growing importance of DE and I and how we build them all represent

[00:05:01] this team within tech.

[00:05:02] And then obviously over the last 12 to 18 months, there's just been so much uncertainty

[00:05:06] in the hiring market.

[00:05:08] So that's the backdrop into why we exist.

[00:05:10] How we've approached solving that problem is by building a modular product suite that

[00:05:15] effectively impacts and solves every part of the hiring process.

[00:05:19] It starts in probably what we're most famous for is our two-sided marketplace.

[00:05:23] So here we onboard candidates into our community.

[00:05:26] The important that it's all first-party data.

[00:05:28] So they become a hacker job user.

[00:05:31] We take them through a job fit qualification where we're understanding their motivations,

[00:05:35] visa, salary, location, tech, all of that good stuff.

[00:05:39] We take them through a technical qualification where we'll actually validate their skills

[00:05:42] and we've built a cloud-based IDE.

[00:05:45] We can also analyze open source projects and they can also build up commercial work experience.

[00:05:49] And then the final part of the onboarding journey is an opt in DE and I which 80% of our

[00:05:54] users self-disclosed.

[00:05:56] So really powerful data set.

[00:05:58] From there our matching engine will predict how likely that candidate is to be interviewed

[00:06:04] by the companies that are hiring on hacker job and if they are, the candidate will be live

[00:06:09] or visible for a short period of time about four weeks initially.

[00:06:14] And it's here where we flip the model.

[00:06:16] So rather than the candidate applying to the job, the company actually makes the first move

[00:06:20] and reaches out to the engineer.

[00:06:22] And this creates this really magical candidate experience because as a senior software engineer

[00:06:27] I'm used to getting spanned nonstop about mostly completely irrelevant opportunities.

[00:06:31] Whereas on hacker job I'm only going to get pitched by companies that meet my salary,

[00:06:35] visa, seniority, tech, tech, location.

[00:06:38] So I feel all of that noise out to see the really relevant opportunities which in turn

[00:06:43] means that companies get a 90% response rate.

[00:06:46] So you've just got this engagement that you don't have across any other channel.

[00:06:51] And so in turn of recruiters love it because they can spend a lot more time doing what

[00:06:55] they're elite at which is engaging candidates getting them through the interview process.

[00:06:59] And a lot less time just sending hundreds and hundreds of messages and not getting any

[00:07:02] responses.

[00:07:03] And then we pair that product with an employer brand solution, a DEMI solution and an

[00:07:07] insight solution to really like I say touch every part of the hiring funnel.

[00:07:12] Okay.

[00:07:13] It's really interesting when you talk about two-sided marketplace because I've lived

[00:07:17] in that world and it's extremely challenging right?

[00:07:19] When we're talking about two-sided marketplace obviously we're talking about the companies

[00:07:22] we're talking about the job seekers.

[00:07:24] I'm really curious how you've created the engagement in depth with the candidate side because

[00:07:31] obviously they're probably getting approached from different companies that are doing similar

[00:07:35] things maybe not completely the same but what really keeps that engagement with those

[00:07:40] job seekers.

[00:07:42] So I think one of the most powerful things about what we've done is place the candidate

[00:07:46] experience at the heart of what we do.

[00:07:49] And so we've got a large community right over half a million users on the system but

[00:07:54] only a fraction of those users will be interviewing at any one point because you're really focused

[00:07:58] on engagement.

[00:07:59] So about 15,000 of our users will be interviewing with companies at any one point.

[00:08:04] Well, those 15,000 users are third or repeat users.

[00:08:08] So they found a job and had a job in the past and then a couple years later they come back

[00:08:11] around and use us again.

[00:08:13] And that just speaks to the value that they're able to get from the solution.

[00:08:17] And then about another 20% of our users are referred and word of mouth users.

[00:08:22] What we've been able to do is as we've scaled the supply side, the candidate side of the

[00:08:26] business, we've been able to reduce our cost per acquisition which is actually quite

[00:08:31] rare as you scale and normally you'll see some expansion in your cost per position.

[00:08:35] And one of the real magic of what we've done is taking the best of software but also

[00:08:39] layered in a human approach.

[00:08:41] So it's really funny and we'll talk about our scaling journey.

[00:08:44] We went on a journey of scaling our own product team and we used Hackajob to do it.

[00:08:48] And 17 of the 18 hires we made for our own solution.

[00:08:52] And we got to then obviously speak to those engineers once they joined us and said how

[00:08:55] was the experience?

[00:08:56] And the thing that all took them by surprise was every single candidate on Hackajob gets

[00:09:00] what we call a talent success manager.

[00:09:03] And that is somebody that is optional to help them through a hiring process.

[00:09:07] I think us that live and breathe recruitment sometimes would get just how big a deal

[00:09:11] it is to change your job.

[00:09:13] And they all thought that was a bot.

[00:09:14] But actually it wasn't a real human and they wouldn't be able to speak to a real human

[00:09:18] and actually no, that's a real human.

[00:09:19] We have real humans that will be there to support our candidates if they want to.

[00:09:23] Now some candidates will sign up to Hackajob never engage that person and move on.

[00:09:27] But surely to your point those individuals are not commissioned based so they can actually

[00:09:30] be an independent third party to help coach your candidate and the thing that we really

[00:09:35] measure them on is the candidate that promotes us.

[00:09:37] You know how good was the experience for the candidate.

[00:09:39] So I think the way we've been able to scale the supply side, the candidate side of the

[00:09:44] marketplace is by creating this really strong experience which creates very high repeat

[00:09:48] users and very high referrals.

[00:09:50] I just want to clarify Mark are job seekers being charged?

[00:09:55] Is there absolutely no?

[00:09:56] No, completely free for users.

[00:09:58] Yeah, completely free for our candidates.

[00:10:00] The way we monetize is we charge an annual subscription model to the employer and we charge

[00:10:05] it in a way in which that we're a direct sourcing solution.

[00:10:08] So often people are reducing their reliance on third party staffing agencies where you

[00:10:13] might be paying 20, 30 K higher and using our annual subscription model to reduce that

[00:10:18] by 75%.

[00:10:20] So yeah, we only charge employers completely free for candidates.

[00:10:24] Okay.

[00:10:25] So then your talent success managers are they working on behalf of the client company or

[00:10:32] the candidate?

[00:10:33] Again, maybe I'm falling back into the old fashion way of looking at this because I want

[00:10:38] to spend my time with the highest likelihood of placement.

[00:10:42] So how do they get paid?

[00:10:44] Like, how would a talent success manager model work here?

[00:10:47] Yeah, phenomenal question.

[00:10:49] So I think one of the issues with the third party staffing agency model is the incentives

[00:10:53] that all miss a line.

[00:10:55] At the end of the day we only get paid if that candidate gets hired which then creates

[00:10:58] this environment where you want to force people into jobs because we don't get paid

[00:11:02] per placement.

[00:11:03] We have no incentive around whether the candidate accepts one job or the other.

[00:11:06] So the talent success manager is exclusively working for the candidate.

[00:11:10] They will never speak to the employer.

[00:11:12] I'll touch on the employer in a second and what we have just decided as an organization

[00:11:17] is we're willing to bear the cost of that.

[00:11:19] So when you think about a P&L and you think about what sits in your costs of good sold

[00:11:22] with your cogs are, our talent success team will sit in there.

[00:11:26] And that's fine.

[00:11:27] We're willing to do that because we think the talent experience is so important.

[00:11:30] What we do have on the employer side is our customer success team and they will be working

[00:11:34] very closely with the employers and the individual recruiters using the platform

[00:11:37] and using the product.

[00:11:39] I'm that's great and it's a very successful team for us.

[00:11:41] And obviously we've invested in a lot of technology internally to make these workflows

[00:11:45] very efficient and effective so that the talent success team can really support the

[00:11:50] candidates that need the support which again isn't really about whether you're more likely

[00:11:54] or less likely to be successful.

[00:11:56] You might be a really senior software engineer but you haven't changed jobs in six years.

[00:11:59] So actually the talent success manager is really valuable to you.

[00:12:03] You might be a graduate who's interviewing at 25 different companies and I'm like, I

[00:12:06] get interviewing right now.

[00:12:07] I don't need another person speaking throughout into it.

[00:12:09] I just want to manage this directly with the employer.

[00:12:11] And that's what we really like to kind of dictate that job.

[00:12:14] Wow.

[00:12:15] Okay.

[00:12:16] Thank you.

[00:12:17] I want to jump into some of the hot topics are happening in the industry and get your

[00:12:21] thoughts around it.

[00:12:23] One hot topic is definitely skills based hiring and I know that's how you base the foundation

[00:12:29] of your company.

[00:12:30] What's your overall thoughts here as far as skill based hiring, where it's going, what

[00:12:34] are the challenges that we're going to see as organizations start moving to that approach

[00:12:39] instead of the all resume college degree requirement type of approach?

[00:12:43] Yeah.

[00:12:44] I think it's generally a positive move for several reasons.

[00:12:48] Firstly, I think has TA functions and the TA leaders.

[00:12:51] We need to get more proactive in our sourcing.

[00:12:54] And I think the old model of a job requisition gets released.

[00:12:58] It's got some really strict requirements against it.

[00:13:00] We're going to react against those requirements, find some candidates, come back to the job

[00:13:04] wreck and hope you fill it.

[00:13:05] It effectively makes us service delivery people to hire managers to be organization.

[00:13:10] I think the opportunity with skills based hiring is to understand the skills that your

[00:13:15] organization generally hire for and then constantly be talent pipelining in those areas.

[00:13:21] So that when a requisition comes, you've already engaged, you've already mapped the market,

[00:13:25] you know who you want to go forward with.

[00:13:27] So I think that's a big step forward.

[00:13:29] I think the other big step forward is that, generally when I'm hiring, I care about the

[00:13:34] skills that you have.

[00:13:35] I don't really care about the college that you went to or the previous employer that you've

[00:13:39] worked on in.

[00:13:40] So you would hope over time that there is a positive impact on representation because we

[00:13:45] should be removing some of that unconscious bias filtering.

[00:13:48] I'm always fascinated when, well, I would call maybe an industry trend coincides with

[00:13:53] a tech trend and I know we're going to touch on Gen AI as well.

[00:13:56] One of the challenges with skills based hiring is the skills taxonomy itself.

[00:14:00] How do you keep a skills taxonomy up to date?

[00:14:03] How do you keep your relationship between skills up to date?

[00:14:06] What does that end up looking like?

[00:14:07] And how do you do that in a way that's useful for a human?

[00:14:10] On hack a job, there are like 50,000 different skills that a candidate could have and each

[00:14:15] of those skills are going to have some level of relationship to each other.

[00:14:18] That is clearly a fantastic problem for AI to go and solve because it can handle far

[00:14:24] more data than a human brain can handle.

[00:14:26] And what's fascinating with Gen AI specifically and other lens is potentially the use of synthetic

[00:14:32] data to actually build skills taxonomies in the first place when you've got the industry

[00:14:37] shift, the skills based hiring combined with a tech shift or a tech enablement with what's

[00:14:42] happening with other lens makes it a really exciting move.

[00:14:45] I think it's something that the most forward thinking T.A. organizations will do.

[00:14:49] I don't think it's where everyone's going to end up.

[00:14:51] I think there will still be a lot of people that end up in that kind of more service based

[00:14:54] model of responding to acquisitions as they get released.

[00:14:57] Gen really speaking, it's a positive step forward.

[00:15:00] I love that response because what seems to be so overwhelming for most organizations is

[00:15:07] understanding the taxonomy and the relationship for each job because the possibilities when

[00:15:13] you really dig into it could be infinite.

[00:15:16] And so most organizations don't have something at the ready where they can do this.

[00:15:22] I might throw you off a bit here, but are you strictly focused in technology software

[00:15:28] development?

[00:15:29] Are there any thoughts at Hacker job to look at other industries where the problem also

[00:15:36] exists?

[00:15:37] Yeah, it's one of the for any questions in the history of Hacker jobs.

[00:15:41] So we have definitely expanded the areas that we now cover.

[00:15:45] We started software engineering.

[00:15:47] We now cover 150 different job titles across about 35 different job categories.

[00:15:51] We took the quite brave decision about a year ago now to actually rebuild our core matching

[00:15:56] engine from scratch because of what's possible with Allen ends combined of our first party

[00:16:00] data.

[00:16:01] It's like a really magic combination.

[00:16:03] And historically we've been very focused on technical skills, what you might have considered

[00:16:07] hard skills in the past.

[00:16:09] But if you go and speak to a CTO and you ask them what makes your best software engineers

[00:16:12] the best, a lot of them are what you would consider soft skills problem solving, communication

[00:16:16] and leadership, all of that stuff.

[00:16:18] So what we're really excited about in our new matching engine and again what kind of some

[00:16:22] Allen ends in the neighborhood.

[00:16:23] If the skills taxonomy is blend technical skills or what you might consider hard skills with

[00:16:28] soft skills and actually blend that into the matching.

[00:16:30] And I'm sure we're going to touch in general in lots of different ways, but you can now use

[00:16:34] unstructured requirements to start your search when you're looking for talent.

[00:16:39] And that might be, find me a Java engineer that works in a really collaborative environment

[00:16:43] that's demonstrated leadership skills.

[00:16:45] That's like a search you've never been able to run before because you would have had

[00:16:48] to have the keywords, communication skills and the keyword leadership and the keyword

[00:16:52] Java.

[00:16:53] Now you can do so much more on how you think about matching that.

[00:16:55] So that's really interesting.

[00:16:57] Will we go beyond head in the broader definition of tech?

[00:17:01] I think it's unlikely.

[00:17:03] My primary reason for saying that is we predominantly work with enterprise organizations

[00:17:09] and it comes back to my first statement.

[00:17:11] Every industry is now a technology business.

[00:17:14] And so we work across a vast range of industries and therefore there isn't a natural job category

[00:17:20] for us to go and tackle next where we could help our existing customers.

[00:17:23] If there was, that would be where we're most interested by.

[00:17:25] Instead, we're more interested in how we expand our Gio reach.

[00:17:29] So we're doing an experiment in India at the moment and we're going to keep pushing

[00:17:32] the boundaries on where we can support people from a global tech source.

[00:17:35] I think it's like that.

[00:17:37] Let's talk about Gen AI.

[00:17:39] There's two sides of it.

[00:17:40] There's companies and how they're leveraging it, but there's also candidates and the way

[00:17:44] candidates are using it is potentially causing some issues with recruiters.

[00:17:49] So what's your thoughts around Gen AI when it comes to candidates and how they're leveraging

[00:17:54] and the possible challenges that's going to cause for talent acquisition departments

[00:17:59] in general?

[00:18:00] Yeah, I almost feel sorry right now for some of the tools that have been created for

[00:18:06] candidates because I think

[00:18:07] they're trying to gain the system that can't be gained.

[00:18:10] So the two big ones that you're seeing is resumes being created based off of job description

[00:18:16] so it looks like you're the perfect candidate for the job and then like lazy apply, just

[00:18:21] going to apply it like 500 jobs for me.

[00:18:24] And again, if I can understand there being some level of personalization in your resume

[00:18:29] against the job description to me, that makes sense.

[00:18:32] We used to do that with cover letters.

[00:18:33] Fine.

[00:18:34] The challenge with that is people are gaming the system, but ultimately if you don't have

[00:18:38] the skills to get the job, you're just going to waste your time either interviewing and

[00:18:41] fading in the interview process or actually getting hired because you might as well somehow

[00:18:46] get your way through the whole system.

[00:18:48] But then doing a really bad job and getting fired anyway.

[00:18:50] Yeah.

[00:18:51] So I think candidates can leverage these tools in a way that might enable them to get

[00:18:55] a foot in the door.

[00:18:56] Maybe they do get that interview.

[00:18:58] But I really think we should be building tools that enable candidates to find the right

[00:19:02] companies for them, the right jobs for them where they're going to be the most successful.

[00:19:05] I'm still bewildered at some of the major job sites and how bad their job recommendation

[00:19:11] services are to candidates.

[00:19:13] The jobs that I get recommended on the major platforms have nothing to do with my experience.

[00:19:17] So I would much rather we focused on using Gen AI to really personalize that kind of experience

[00:19:23] which I think is really exciting and set up candidates for success.

[00:19:27] Rather than this first wave of tools which bluntly is just spreading ahead of a lot of noise,

[00:19:31] a lot of spam, creating a really bad recruiter experience or it cruises the drowning with

[00:19:35] a reddit and abdication right now.

[00:19:37] The first wave of these tools I don't think is really helped candidates generally speaking.

[00:19:42] Obviously you've built tools, you've leveraged LLMs and you've started building on Gen

[00:19:47] AI as well.

[00:19:48] There are thousands of companies that have launched AI tools in our space and it's just creating

[00:19:54] noise for a lot of recruiters and practitioners that are trying to figure out what's real

[00:19:59] and what's not.

[00:20:00] What's your advice for practitioner or tell acquisition leader?

[00:20:04] How do they assess this?

[00:20:05] Yeah, when we were at HR Tech and Vegas it was hilarious to me however I was suddenly

[00:20:10] an AI company.

[00:20:11] There's a Steve Jobs quote and I hate quoting Steve Jobs because I always feel very like

[00:20:16] a bit of an imposter quoting somebody like him but he has this brilliant line that's really

[00:20:20] shaped our product strategy at Hack and Job which is the end consumer so in this case

[00:20:24] ahead of TA fundamentally does not care about the technology you're using to solve

[00:20:29] that problem.

[00:20:30] They just want their problem to solve 10 times better than what it was before and one of

[00:20:34] the challenges of being a founder of the technology business is there's always new technology waves

[00:20:38] coming forward and what is a new way to do something?

[00:20:42] What is actually just not applicable for us?

[00:20:44] So Web3 and crypto was very exciting and people tried to build some interesting blockchain

[00:20:48] apps in our space.

[00:20:49] We never saw an interesting use case.

[00:20:51] We could not ever think that this technology solves our customers problem 10 times better.

[00:20:56] Then LLMs came to market and chat GPT3 whenever it was in back end of 22 our approach was

[00:21:03] this one an internal hackathon.

[00:21:05] Let's just spend some time on it for a week and see if there's something new here.

[00:21:08] And we genuinely believe there were new novel approaches that LLMs enabled but were not

[00:21:12] possible before.

[00:21:14] If I'm ahead of TA and I'm trying to buy a new vendor I would not be focused on the

[00:21:19] technology that they are using.

[00:21:21] It does not matter if they have built their own LLMs, if they are a very thin wrapper over

[00:21:26] a chat GPT type product.

[00:21:28] If they're doing some basic regression analysis like are they providing some software that

[00:21:32] makes my job better, that solves my problem etc and I think that people get caught up in

[00:21:38] the latest trends and the latest buzz is a little bit too much.

[00:21:41] We as founders and the CEOs of businesses know it so we all lean heavily into product marketing

[00:21:45] because we know that people are going to get caught up in it but I would just be really

[00:21:49] challenging any vendor to say like how are you actually solving my problem and I think

[00:21:55] if you want to generally use AI in a completely new way you need first party data.

[00:22:01] You need to actually own a data asset and so another question that I would be asking

[00:22:05] these people is do you own your data or is this actually just a very thin layer on top

[00:22:10] of an already built LLMs or actually just scraping third party data which is always a

[00:22:14] ton of risk.

[00:22:15] So ultimately the technology that a company is using bluntly doesn't matter what matters

[00:22:20] is can you solve my problem in a new novel way that makes a key metric for me improved.

[00:22:25] I love it but let's jump into your journey here.

[00:22:31] Let's talk a little bit about hack a job in how you scale because from 2022 to 2023 you

[00:22:37] went from 75 to 150 employees.

[00:22:42] That is a massive leap for any organizations usually 50 to 100 a lot of things start crashing

[00:22:48] and burning and there's a lot of challenges that come with it.

[00:22:51] So I'm curious when you went from 75 to 150 first of all what is your talent acquisition

[00:22:57] process?

[00:22:58] You're leveraging hack a job for a lot of those roles but how did that flow?

[00:23:01] How do you hire?

[00:23:02] Yeah great question.

[00:23:04] So for the tech roles we never used to have like 17 out of the 18 roles that we hired

[00:23:09] in that space and that was amazing.

[00:23:10] There's like a concept in our world called dog food ink we use your own product so we've

[00:23:14] got a lot of product feedback from using our cells which was awesome so that was great.

[00:23:18] Outside of that we have still a really strong internal recruitment function so we absolutely

[00:23:22] could even direct sourcing and I think we've got a very attractive employer brand I think

[00:23:27] we're well known in the space and I think we did a really great job of leveraging that

[00:23:31] and I would be lying if I sat her and said we had this perfect interview process and everyone

[00:23:34] had interview score cards and everything.

[00:23:36] If you're going from 75 to 150 people it's chaos like it's internally chaos and I actually

[00:23:41] quite like chaos so don't mind that at all.

[00:23:43] And a key part of that journey was really leveling up our exact team so we brought in

[00:23:47] a new VP of finance, new VP of product and new VP of cells but those roles we used

[00:23:50] search rooms so we actually went to market and partnered with search rooms so we used

[00:23:54] a mishmash of different strategies and tactics.

[00:23:57] I would say and I dubbed this phrase last year we definitely got caught up in momentum

[00:24:02] hiring.

[00:24:03] So in 2022 the business was just crushing it like every month, every quarter we were growing

[00:24:09] so quickly we couldn't keep up but every founder's dream the charts are just up and to the right

[00:24:14] and I think we got too quick to say yes to everybody wanting to hire.

[00:24:18] In that moment and it's chaos every is like Mark we need another ex, we need another

[00:24:22] wife, we need another zed let's just go let's go higher and I don't think I had the

[00:24:25] maturity I'd never seen this before to actually take a step back and be like okay are we

[00:24:30] actually adding the right people are we adding the people where we need to add the

[00:24:34] people is there actually process changes that we can make to drive efficiencies is a

[00:24:37] product that we could buy to drive efficiencies and I think one of my big lessons is not

[00:24:42] to get caught up in momentum hiring and actually to challenge requisitions a little bit

[00:24:46] more when they come to us rather than just saying yes to everything because right now is good

[00:24:52] and I think a lot of founders went through that lesson in 2022 maybe not everyone would

[00:24:56] admit it but I think a lot of us made some pretty similar mistakes in that time.

[00:25:00] Yeah I was going to ask if there was a workforce planning strategy before you start hiring

[00:25:04] or it was just it came in and you're like yes let's hire that person and pretty much

[00:25:09] just move along with how the industry was going.

[00:25:12] We can very candidly it depended on the maturity of the leaders running the function.

[00:25:16] So the approach that we took in product and engineering was very methodical, very strategic.

[00:25:21] We were going from one product squad to three product squads introducing two new support squads

[00:25:26] and PRVP of product and glad RVP avenge know that out beautifully very clear.

[00:25:31] And almost in some respects in product it's almost slightly easier to do workforce planning

[00:25:36] because you can tie it to a product roadmap where you go in what the strategic direction is.

[00:25:40] I think where we were probably too reactive is in more of the roles that are directly

[00:25:44] interfacing with customers.

[00:25:45] It's like onboarding more customers great, high more customer success people, high more sales

[00:25:48] people, high more account managers just go and what should have reflected on was okay,

[00:25:52] where are we forecasting to be what happens if we miss a forecast, where do we cause correct.

[00:25:57] What does that end up looking like?

[00:25:58] So I think in the commercial GTM functions, we probably had less of a plan and we're

[00:26:02] probably being a little bit more caught up in that momentum hiring first in that kind

[00:26:06] of product and end world where we had a bit more of a plan up.

[00:26:08] We were working to did you have a talent acquisition team.

[00:26:12] Yeah.

[00:26:13] So Elena, I think every startup has an Elena Elena is like our Swiss army knife who has

[00:26:18] basically done every role in the business.

[00:26:20] She's currently on Matt leave that has done everything.

[00:26:22] And so Elena was heading up our T18 and then we had a number of internal recruiters in

[00:26:26] the UK and in Romania.

[00:26:28] We've got a big team in Romania.

[00:26:29] We did do a lot through internal.

[00:26:32] We used search for senior roles and there was a handful of roles that we still went to

[00:26:34] before as well.

[00:26:36] What is your tech sack look like outside of hacker job?

[00:26:39] Do you have an ATS?

[00:26:40] Do you have any of those tools?

[00:26:42] Yeah, great question actually.

[00:26:43] So we're workable from an ATS perspective.

[00:26:46] And so another European HR tech business is predominantly well.

[00:26:50] We're high bob from a HR I.S. system and then brushing it got they've just had another

[00:26:54] amazing fundraiser.

[00:26:55] We introduced lattice which I was initially very skeptical of.

[00:26:59] It felt like too big a tool for the stage that we are at but I think the discipline

[00:27:03] it brings to one-to-one's and performance reviews is really strong.

[00:27:07] And I think one of the big culture changes in startups over the last 12 months is

[00:27:13] it used to be a KPI that you were growing head count.

[00:27:15] But I report to our investors guys we added 20 heads this one

[00:27:19] for this quarter we must be doing something well.

[00:27:21] And now it's really about being challenged how do you do more of less?

[00:27:24] And so actually now performance management is the most important thing.

[00:27:27] So we brought in a new VP of people at the end of last year

[00:27:31] and to me there's like different profiles you could go for and that kind of people leadership.

[00:27:35] There is somebody that's great at TA and there's great adabbing head teacher.

[00:27:38] There's somebody that's great kind of hate trying compliance or there's somebody

[00:27:41] that's more kind of learning development performance culture, etc.

[00:27:44] And we really optimize for the latter.

[00:27:46] So somebody that had a background in learning and development performance management,

[00:27:49] performance culture because that's what we need to be now.

[00:27:51] We need to be a leaner organization.

[00:27:53] We are smaller than what we were at our peak.

[00:27:55] We did do some restructures.

[00:27:56] We did change the shape of the organization.

[00:27:58] And now it's about being challenged to do more of less.

[00:28:00] So that is a really great tool in facilitating that.

[00:28:04] Something you just brought up was the fact that you're originally founded in the UK

[00:28:10] and you have staff in Romania.

[00:28:13] And I know that right now as we speak, you're sitting in New York.

[00:28:17] There have been so many firms that see the United States of America is this pot of gold

[00:28:23] and buried few actually break through in the US market.

[00:28:27] And what's interesting is when you refer to companies like Workable and High Bob

[00:28:32] they've figured something out about how business is done globally.

[00:28:37] So would you mind sharing just a little bit about where you are

[00:28:41] that was breaking into the US markets?

[00:28:43] Is it what you thought it was going to be anything that you can share with the audience about the success you've had?

[00:28:50] Some of these comments are going to be incredibly naive, but in the spirit of vulnerability I will share them.

[00:28:54] So we've now been in the US for about two years.

[00:28:57] One of the advantages that we had is we generally work with enterprise companies that are global.

[00:29:02] So we were able to launch the US with a bunch of existing customers,

[00:29:05] which has really helped for an open cornerstone for us.

[00:29:08] The things that have gone well when you launch a new market, serendipity plays such a big part.

[00:29:13] And I'll give you a great example.

[00:29:15] I got intro to Joe Wilkie, HR Joe.

[00:29:18] We went for coffee, he introduced me to our friends over at Chad and Cheese.

[00:29:21] I caught up with Chads, he had then introduced me to Josh Gample who founded Recruits

[00:29:25] and now Josh is in the business working with me as an consultant every day and adding so much value, right?

[00:29:29] And it's like that chain of events is so random.

[00:29:32] Like I couldn't have planned that.

[00:29:33] That wasn't part of our big strategic goals,

[00:29:35] but having Josh inside our company who has built and scaled a US organization is so valuable.

[00:29:41] And at the end of the day, it all come back to talent.

[00:29:44] We were very fortunate.

[00:29:44] Our first sales hire in the US was a guy called Brett who's absolutely crushing it for us.

[00:29:48] And it's now running the team.

[00:29:50] We've done a brilliant job of taking some of our UK people and bringing them to the US.

[00:29:54] And it's a small team here.

[00:29:55] It's eight or nine people in New York.

[00:29:57] And I love that.

[00:29:57] It's like back to the old days that happened to me when we were a really small team.

[00:30:00] And we're making really good progress, really good momentum.

[00:30:03] Again, one of the reasons we can have to do that is identify one or two schools that we're doing really well in.

[00:30:07] So we're doing a lot in the clear talent space.

[00:30:10] It's one of the unique things about hacker job is we're able to match against clear talent.

[00:30:14] So we're doing a lot in Virginia and Maryland and DC and different areas like that, which has worked really well.

[00:30:19] I think the challenges of launching the US, there are so many.

[00:30:24] And again, somebody's going to sound incredibly naive.

[00:30:26] We speak a similar language but not the same language.

[00:30:28] And actually it's harder in many respects to understand the nuance between British English and American English.

[00:30:35] Then it is just between UK and French because the languages are obviously so different.

[00:30:40] Yeah.

[00:30:41] US organizations, and I don't mean this as a disrespect at all, are relatively confident in that they don't care what we've done in the UK.

[00:30:49] Whether US with bigger, we're more complicated, we've got more process, et cetera.

[00:30:54] So you need to prove what you can do here.

[00:30:56] And you need to sound like an American company.

[00:30:58] There's no like this British charm.

[00:30:59] No, you need to come and solve our US problems.

[00:31:01] You need to deeply understand the US market.

[00:31:03] And I think that speaks to the third thing which is again incredibly naive.

[00:31:07] I didn't appreciate how big the US was.

[00:31:10] And so I flew from New York to San Diego, which is a longer flight than New York to London.

[00:31:15] And so as you think about tackling the US, you can't just host a strategic T.A.

[00:31:20] Libert dinner like you could in London and get all the strategic T.A. leaders there, right?

[00:31:23] They're dotted around everywhere.

[00:31:25] Now, how do you then build a location strategy around that?

[00:31:28] How do you make sure that you're not trying to go after too much?

[00:31:31] So overall, I'm really happy with the progress we've made.

[00:31:34] I think the US economy is in a better place in the UK economy, also helps with that.

[00:31:38] But yeah, we've made a ton of mistakes and learnings to be.

[00:31:42] So Mark, I'm curious if someone came up to you and gives you a billion dollars for a heck of job.

[00:31:46] You sell it, you exit, you're happy.

[00:31:49] Now you're going to start a new company and you got to build up a company.

[00:31:53] You're going to scale it.

[00:31:55] What would you do differently than you did at heck of job?

[00:31:59] Yeah, my co-founder and I had discussed this so much.

[00:32:02] I don't think you can cheat to product market fit.

[00:32:05] So a lot of people talk about Syrian entrepreneurs and how they're a dearest investment because they've done it before.

[00:32:11] I don't care if you founded one startup or ten startups.

[00:32:14] The process of finding product market fit will take as long as it takes.

[00:32:18] There is a process to it and you need to know that process.

[00:32:21] But you should know that process if your first time founder there's so much content out there now.

[00:32:24] So I actually think going through the product market fit phase is very little I would change.

[00:32:28] You need to be obsessed with customers, you need to be speaking to them every day.

[00:32:30] You need to be rapid decrototyping.

[00:32:32] You can't be building stuff in isolation for six months and then taking into a customer.

[00:32:36] You've got to go through that rapid prototype.

[00:32:38] I think what changes completely the second time around is just how quickly you can scale go to market.

[00:32:44] And ultimately, if you're going to build a big company distribution as well as that,

[00:32:46] actually go to market, that is more than product in so many instances.

[00:32:50] Once you've got product market fit and I think just building that muscle,

[00:32:53] I now know how to build a sales team across the success team.

[00:32:57] What they should look like.

[00:32:58] I now know the difference between whether we should optimize for outbound prospecting or generating inbound leads.

[00:33:03] And I just think that muscle is a muscle that you build and you ultimately understand

[00:33:08] that the people inside the company is everything.

[00:33:11] All the company is is the output of the people that work there.

[00:33:14] So your ability to hire exceptional people is really the difference

[00:33:18] between whether you're going to be successful or not.

[00:33:20] I think in the early phase of product market fit, you can't cheat it.

[00:33:23] It's going to take time.

[00:33:23] You need to follow the process.

[00:33:25] I think it's how quickly you can get to scared after that,

[00:33:27] which is really assessing over the people you bring in,

[00:33:29] building a really great culture and then just those playbooks that you've learned

[00:33:32] that really enable you to go quicker the second bird walk.

[00:33:36] Well, I guess we'll see when you start your second company a couple of years from now.

[00:33:39] I'm expecting Mark.

[00:33:41] I want to close it off on this one of the things that I've noticed from you is

[00:33:44] you're working really hard to build your personal brand.

[00:33:46] And obviously at the same time, you're building HackerJobs brand for founders

[00:33:51] or even recruiters, right?

[00:33:53] Like how important is it to build your own personal brand in this current landscape?

[00:34:00] So I'm conflicted on this because I definitely have invested in it.

[00:34:04] And so I'm doing broadcast and very vocal linked in and I'm conflicted

[00:34:09] because I don't feel like I've achieved enough to come out here and be like

[00:34:12] this big oracle and my note of this information.

[00:34:15] But there's a bit of that imposter syndrome in there.

[00:34:17] However, having said that, I think as the face of an organization,

[00:34:21] you have to be present and where are our customers?

[00:34:23] They live on LinkedIn.

[00:34:24] So I need to be very present on LinkedIn.

[00:34:26] If our customers live on Twitter, I spend more of my time on Twitter.

[00:34:29] That's the reality.

[00:34:30] I think what advantage does a personal brand give you?

[00:34:34] It gives you distribution.

[00:34:35] So when we've got an update, I can now share it on LinkedIn and I've got

[00:34:39] 10,000 followers that are going to see that update, right?

[00:34:41] That is distribution.

[00:34:43] So if you apply that to recruiters, if I'm trying to build a personal brand,

[00:34:47] I would probably be trying to build a personal brand in the space in which

[00:34:50] I am trying to recruit.

[00:34:52] So that when I've got a new requisition,

[00:34:54] I can go to my people that follow me and but I great.

[00:34:56] I'm now hiring for a senior Python engineer coming into me.

[00:34:59] And there's some great examples of people.

[00:35:00] I mean, HR Joe who I touched on Joe Wilkie is doing a phenomenal job of building

[00:35:04] a personal brand in this space.

[00:35:05] I do think that as a founder CEO like you have to be public,

[00:35:10] you have to be out there.

[00:35:11] So much of my job is sales.

[00:35:12] Whether that be selling customers, employees, investors,

[00:35:15] but I think having a personal brand out there is really important.

[00:35:17] Choose your channels.

[00:35:18] It's very easy to get caught up in your own hives.

[00:35:21] I have some good people around you that are willing to bring you back down to

[00:35:23] earth.

[00:35:25] But I do think it's worth while investing.

[00:35:27] So Mark, this was amazing.

[00:35:30] Such great insights.

[00:35:31] We really appreciate you coming back on.

[00:35:34] If anyone's trying to get a hold of you, what's the best way to get a hold of

[00:35:37] you?

[00:35:38] I take email.

[00:35:39] I'm like obsessive about how I manage my inbox and mark at hackajob.com.

[00:35:44] Feel free to connect me on LinkedIn.

[00:35:45] I just find LinkedIn so noisy in the inbox.

[00:35:48] Yeah, hard to like find the signal from the noise.

[00:35:50] So yeah, feel free to just drop me an email.

[00:35:52] I'm on Twitter.

[00:35:52] I don't really tweet.

[00:35:53] I'm one of those people that just lurked in the background on Twitter or X.

[00:35:56] I am exactly the same.

[00:35:57] So Mark, this was great.

[00:35:58] Really appreciate you coming on.

[00:36:00] Thank you so much.

[00:36:01] It was wonderful to spend time with you again, Mark.

[00:36:04] And thank you guys.

[00:36:05] I love the show.

[00:36:06] Thank you so much for having me on and look forward to catching up

[00:36:08] with you, Toss and see me too.

[00:36:10] I love you.

[00:36:19] Shelley, let's face it, taxing candidates is the easiest way to hire quicker

[00:36:24] today.

[00:36:25] But your cell phone doesn't connect to your ATS.

[00:36:27] You're sharing your personal number with strangers.

[00:36:30] That's pretty scary, right?

[00:36:31] Shelley.

[00:36:32] And it's not even legally compliant.

[00:36:35] This is where our friends at rec texts come in.

[00:36:37] They've created

[00:36:38] simple yet powerful text recruiting software that works with your ATS.

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