Pivot w/Daniel Shalinsky

[00:00:04] Welcome to The Recruitment Flex with Serge and Shelley. I'm Serge.

[00:00:09] And I'm Shelley, and we talk all things recruitment starting right now.

[00:00:17] Bonjour and welcome to The Recruitment Flex. Shelley,

[00:00:20] remember going to RecFest last year or is it still really hazy in your mind?

[00:00:26] Of course I remember. It was the first time I got to meet my TA crush, James Ellis. Do you

[00:00:31] remember that picture that you have of me? I think I was hugging his leg or something.

[00:00:36] I don't know, but Shelley you had so many crushes in the TA stage and I'm hoping you have a new one

[00:00:42] today because we actually met this gentleman at RecFest last year. And that's the great thing

[00:00:46] about RecFest. You're surrounded by your peeps and we did have the honor of meeting our guest

[00:00:54] in Nashville last year. So joining us today on the show is Daniel Shalinski who is the

[00:00:59] co-founder and CEO of a company called With. Welcome to the show.

[00:01:05] Thank you so much. Great to be here. So Daniel, we did get a brief chance to meet,

[00:01:12] but let's share with the audience a little bit about who you are and maybe talk to us a bit

[00:01:19] about your journey into founding the company, With. Well, yes, it depends how much time you

[00:01:24] have because this answer would go on all day, but I'll try to keep it at the milestones. We'll

[00:01:29] start maybe a year ago to say With as it stands today, the idea was started actually at a taco

[00:01:35] stop in Vancouver. So Taco Fino holds a good place in our heart, but we'll go back a

[00:01:39] little further than that. I was born in Montreal. I grew up in the suburbs of Vancouver

[00:01:43] and naively thought maybe as not too many Canadian kids did that I wanted to be the

[00:01:49] prime minister. And so to follow that dream, I went and studied politics in Ottawa,

[00:01:54] Harleton University, and learned very quickly that it wasn't for me and that politics was

[00:01:59] not the path that I was going to go down. In that time, I had taken some internships in

[00:02:04] tech and business and actually dropped out of university to join a marketing technology company

[00:02:11] that came out of Hootsuite. And I grew my career there for nearly eight years,

[00:02:16] mostly in the digital marketing space, although I did hire for for our teams as the company

[00:02:21] scaled. I worked in the account management and the more client management side of things.

[00:02:27] I worked in the business development side of things. And probably most importantly,

[00:02:31] my last stint was in the product management side of things. Leading to when COVID hit,

[00:02:38] I had the opportunity to start my own thing with one of my best friends that I met on the

[00:02:44] first day of high school. We lived together post university, never realizing that we were

[00:02:49] going to start anything together. And we actually were helping a family business that was in

[00:02:54] retail and couldn't sell online their product within women's dresses and evening wear,

[00:02:59] which I'm sure you could appreciate without actually trying it on or feeling it or touching

[00:03:04] it. It's really hard to think to purchase. It's not something you add to cart and wait

[00:03:09] Amazon the next day. So we thought to ourselves, how do we bring that experience

[00:03:14] online? And we came up with a few ideas and we use some technologies to try virtual appointments

[00:03:20] where we used combination of Calendly and intercom for chat and scheduling. And then

[00:03:26] we did FaceTime appointments. And we were able to help my brother-in-law's family business

[00:03:32] start selling dresses over video chat. And we thought to ourselves, if we can sell a dress

[00:03:38] over video, you can sell anything over video. And when COVID was a thing and people weren't

[00:03:43] going into stores, it was so hard to buy the most important things in our life.

[00:03:48] And we created a solution that with one click, you could instantly connect with a

[00:03:53] salesperson from that store, see the product, understand if it's right for you and go along

[00:03:59] that journey. We built this company. It was called with the idea of shopping with someone.

[00:04:05] And we're building that out. We had some pilot customers who were doing about a hundred calls

[00:04:09] a month when my co-founder and I were taking a meeting at Taco Fino, I'll say a meeting.

[00:04:14] It really was lunch. And next to us sat a group of people who were new to Vancouver,

[00:04:20] at least that's what it sounded like. And we got to talking and they said,

[00:04:24] what do you do? Oh, we're at a startup. What do you do? Oh, we're in recruitment.

[00:04:28] Interested. We talk about Vancouver, recruitment, startups, and so on. And I said,

[00:04:34] hey, give me your email. Let me send you a note just of things to do in Vancouver,

[00:04:38] talk or stops, coffee shops. And I always just did a one-liner of what we did.

[00:04:43] And our original product that we sold to customers to connect over e-commerce still

[00:04:49] exists on our website. So that's me waving at you. And it still works to this day.

[00:04:53] If you click on that and you put in your name and email, it will call me and I will

[00:04:57] get into an instant video chat with you. And I do this with many of our customers.

[00:05:01] And so I send this guy an email with a bunch of things to do in Vancouver.

[00:05:06] And a week later, I'm walking into the office and I get a notification.

[00:05:10] This gentleman is calling me through with. So I pick up my phone, I answer it and I say,

[00:05:15] hey, how are you doing? And sorry to your fans in India. And he just says,

[00:05:19] oh shit, and hangs up. Now it's fair. People weren't really ready for this experience of

[00:05:26] connecting instantly with a real human, right? That chat bots face. We can get into that.

[00:05:32] There's a lot of thoughts and I don't think they're talking to someone real.

[00:05:35] And then he called my cell phone, my numbers and my signature. And he goes, Daniel,

[00:05:39] I didn't realize your product worked, which is every founder's dream, to be sure.

[00:05:44] And I said, thank you. And he said, no, no, you don't understand.

[00:05:47] I was screen sharing on a Microsoft Teams meeting with 30 of my colleagues

[00:05:52] and our VP needs a demo right now. And I said, okay, sure. So I hop on this Microsoft Teams

[00:06:00] meeting with a company whose website didn't really tell me anything. It's the people company.

[00:06:06] And that's all I know at this point. And they're telling me about these challenges

[00:06:11] they have staffing for some of the biggest businesses in the world saying, hey, we'll

[00:06:16] host a job for one of the world's largest hotel brands. We'll get a thousand applications

[00:06:20] overnight. And by the time we review every application, we invite 100 candidates to interview

[00:06:26] and we get through that process. We get to the interview days, seven people show up.

[00:06:31] And this whole thing was broken. It's exactly the sales enablement problem that we were

[00:06:36] solving for sales teams. It's like, hey, you've got someone interested, qualified,

[00:06:41] and you're making them wait a week to actually talk to you.

[00:06:46] In business, sure, they might just find another opportunity or forget what you're talking

[00:06:50] about. But as a candidate who needs to put food on the plate at the end of the day,

[00:06:53] this is so important. And so I'm thinking to myself, you've got the recruiters,

[00:06:58] you've got the candidates. Why not just connect them instantly if there's a fit?

[00:07:02] And he looked at me and said, sure, that's interesting. But we can't do this all the

[00:07:06] time. We can't just be, you know, click to video interview. And in my head, I was

[00:07:10] wondering why not. But he said, listen, what if we just did a hiring day? And so I said,

[00:07:16] sure, let's do it. So we got a trial with one of the world's largest hotel firms.

[00:07:20] And at the time for our sales product, we were doing about 100 calls a month.

[00:07:25] In this trial in three hours, we helped them interview 200 candidates. We were like,

[00:07:30] oh my god, there's something here. They call us afterwards. They said,

[00:07:33] this would typically take us two or three weeks to do the volume that we've done with

[00:07:37] you in a morning. So we did it again. We help them open property in Clearwater, Florida.

[00:07:43] We help them staff their call center. And we realized that this really works if you've got

[00:07:49] qualified candidates, the faster that you can connect them with a real person,

[00:07:54] a power who needs to fill these seats anyways, the more effective we can be.

[00:07:58] So that's what really brought us into this space. That's a very long answer for your question.

[00:08:02] Wow. But you did answer a whole bunch of things along the way, Daniel. So thank you,

[00:08:07] because I don't want to assume anything. Love the name. Now I get it because you walked me

[00:08:14] through the whole story of why you named the company with It Makes Complete Sense.

[00:08:19] But what serendipity and to think that they are open-minded enough to even consider it,

[00:08:26] because we all lived through that recruiting nightmare of the candidate ghosting where you

[00:08:33] had 100 candidates and seven showed up for the interview. We all lived through it.

[00:08:39] I know on your website, you talk about meet qualified candidates around the world using

[00:08:44] with virtual hiring events, whether you're interviewing 10 or 1000 with eliminates no shows

[00:08:51] and brings top applicants to the front of the line. How did you do that?

[00:08:56] Great question. I can't give away too much of the secret sauce, but one of the things that

[00:08:59] we heard when I was interviewing hiring managers and people in the space is this thing blew my mind.

[00:09:06] You would have hiring managers sit in these empty video conference rooms,

[00:09:11] and they had no idea how long they needed to sit there. Is it five minutes? Is this

[00:09:15] candidate running a couple of minutes late? Are they just not showing up at all? How much time

[00:09:18] do I sit in this meeting? Now imagine your entire day is booked full of meetings,

[00:09:23] and they're all just empty. In the meantime, you've got a ton of candidates that could have

[00:09:28] talked to you in that timeframe that you're just leaving to the fray. Of course, that's not a great

[00:09:33] experience. I'm terrible for the hiring manager and terrible for the candidates who

[00:09:37] are missing out on these opportunities. One of the things that we do is when we book

[00:09:42] interviews with candidates, and that's assuming they don't show up to a live event.

[00:09:46] We do allow that live event feel for a virtual hiring event. If you're a qualified

[00:09:51] candidate and you come across that the recruitment flex has a virtual event,

[00:09:56] many companies cut off registration. They're like, no, we need to know who's applied

[00:10:00] beforehand so we can prep the hiring manager and so on. But in many of these roles, you don't need

[00:10:04] that. If you've got a qualified candidate and you've got a hiring manager available, why wait?

[00:10:09] Which is really this question we keep going back to. We're saying, hey, if someone's

[00:10:13] qualified and they're through, connect them with the first available hiring manager.

[00:10:17] To take a step back and answer your question, for candidates, we hard schedule. What I mean by

[00:10:23] that is we put in their calendar, we give them SMS and email reminders if they were

[00:10:27] scheduled beforehand. But for hiring managers, we just let them know, hey,

[00:10:32] Serge, Shelley has booked a time to interview with you in this time slot.

[00:10:37] But we open up that time slot to a number of candidates. You can put a limit depending on

[00:10:42] how many hiring managers you have. And so you're not in an interview with a candidate.

[00:10:47] You're not sitting in a video conference until that candidate is already there.

[00:10:51] And so we connect the first candidate with the first available hiring manager,

[00:10:55] second with the second and so on and so forth until all the hiring managers are speaking with

[00:11:00] candidates. And then we queue candidates up. That's hey, Shelley, can't wait to speak with you.

[00:11:06] There's about a five minute wait time before you can chat with them. In the meantime,

[00:11:10] here's some really interesting information about the company that you're applying for.

[00:11:13] And so if you engage, we can give you SMS updates. So if you walk away from a computer,

[00:11:18] it's oh, Serge is waiting for you. And we're only connecting the hiring manager with a candidate

[00:11:24] who's in the room. So we really wanted to eliminate that idea of hiring managers just

[00:11:29] sitting in empty Zoom rooms and looking at their calendar being like, am I meeting people

[00:11:33] today or am I just going to be staring at myself in the camera? Digging a little bit

[00:11:38] deeper, I'm curious, like how long do candidates have to wait? So say you're scheduling

[00:11:42] four candidates at 9am and they all show up. Do they wait? Like is there hold music? Are you

[00:11:49] putting entertainment in front of them to keep them entertained? How does that work? And I

[00:11:54] guess the further question to that is do you have a percentage that you're tracking of people

[00:11:57] that you booked that have shown up? Great, great question. So one, it all depends on

[00:12:01] obviously the role you're hiring for your typical no show rates and the type of job.

[00:12:06] When we got into this, we really thought it was going to be entry level, low or low to

[00:12:11] medium skill work. And we found that's actually not the case. We've done events for senior software

[00:12:16] developers, we've done events for sales enablement folks, we've done events for hospitality folks

[00:12:21] and general labor. So we've gone across the board for the types of candidates. So

[00:12:25] one is of course, you know, who the actual candidates are. Two is how long these interviews

[00:12:31] actually are. So screening calls we've learned for some companies, the average time is six or

[00:12:36] seven minutes, but they're booking them at least 30 minute increments. And it's like,

[00:12:40] well, of course your team is sitting twiddling their thumbs or time maybe they've got more

[00:12:44] important things to do. But of course, they're sitting with 20 minutes to spare at the end.

[00:12:48] So one will reduce the timeframe of the slots based on their average interview time. Two,

[00:12:54] we set a limit for the number of candidates per slot based on one, their no show rate and

[00:13:02] two what we're seeing in the industry. So if you've got three hiring managers available,

[00:13:06] depending on the industry, you might recommend five candidates per slot. Obviously, if we're

[00:13:10] doing hour long interviews, we don't want to have people waiting that kind of thing. So

[00:13:14] it really depends on the screening calls. That's one. Two is that time adjustment.

[00:13:19] And then three is of course, engaging the candidates not just with the queue that hey,

[00:13:23] you're up next and letting them know, but also with the information about the company and the

[00:13:28] role that they can have on hand. So they're coming to that interview armed with information.

[00:13:32] And in a lot of entry level or low to medium skill roles, that's extremely helpful. And one of the

[00:13:38] things I was going to bring up for tips that I recommend and we found really useful is for

[00:13:42] candidates that pass the qualification form, they pass your yes or no questions to red light

[00:13:47] green question, giving them a bit of a snapshot of the role in terms of a role card that says,

[00:13:53] Hey, this is the role that you're applying for. Here's the hours. Here's the salary.

[00:13:57] Here's everything the key information for that role. So when they're coming to the interview,

[00:14:02] as much as we'd love to believe that that candidate is only coming to us, their chances are

[00:14:06] they're applying to a lot of roles. They have that information front and center.

[00:14:09] They don't have to ask the same questions that I know some hiring managers are seeing over

[00:14:14] and over again. So how do we arm candidates with the right information at the right time

[00:14:19] to ensure these interviews are effective? Love it.

[00:14:23] So can I just go back just a little bit here to the process? Because as you're talking,

[00:14:29] I've got this picture in my mind, and I can appreciate that your background is in digital

[00:14:34] marketing. What I'm wondering is even before whatever it is they're recruiting for,

[00:14:40] how are you driving traffic to your event? Like, how does anybody even

[00:14:46] find out that you're running whether it's a virtual event or an in person event?

[00:14:51] Great question. So with ones in the background, if you will. So when you go to a with

[00:14:57] landing page for Neo Financial, for example, or Portofino Bakery is a great bakery just did a big

[00:15:03] for last weekend. You're not there and like, Oh, this is a wish hiring event. This looks

[00:15:08] like their page. It's their process. It's really simple, really clear. So the first thing

[00:15:12] I want to say is that it is on our clients to share because it's a part of their employer

[00:15:18] brand with their candidates. So they're sharing on their websites, they're sharing

[00:15:21] on their job boards on SoCo and so on. I mean, Portofino even had them on the radio,

[00:15:25] which actually was extremely effective channel for what they were looking for.

[00:15:28] And what with does is track all of the sources for candidates. So you can say, Oh,

[00:15:33] I spent X amount on indeed, I got this many people booking interviews and this no show

[00:15:38] rate and see how many were actually qualified. Whereas we posted to social, we only got this

[00:15:44] many candidate, but they were all great all the way through. So we're helping our clients

[00:15:48] optimize their recruitment marketing spend and really understand those channels.

[00:15:53] We do partner with some of our clients on helping them distribute those as well.

[00:15:57] But our bread and butter is giving them the platform to connect with candidates

[00:16:03] as quickly and as effectively as possible. We're not typically the recruitment marketing team.

[00:16:10] Okay, thank you. So question on that. Who is your competitors?

[00:16:15] Yeah, I think one that comes up quite a bit is indeed, of course, I mean, indeed,

[00:16:20] virtual hiring events. It's a behemoth. It's a great platform. I think you'll get a lot of

[00:16:26] strong opinions in the industry about them. I love them or hate them, they're an extremely

[00:16:30] effective platform. One of the things that we're seeing is if indeed changes their pricing

[00:16:35] model, all of a sudden your cost for applicant or cost for hire can change significantly,

[00:16:40] which we've seen in the last couple years. Two is if you're doing this through indeed,

[00:16:45] all candidates need to come through indeed. And so now you're sending candidates to indeed

[00:16:50] to pay for those applicants. And that is an issue. And three is just it's not the platform

[00:16:56] for every candidate. It's a great platform. I know it's very adaptive in many use cases,

[00:17:00] but it can't be the only platform. And so we want to reduce the reliance on any single

[00:17:04] channel. I think indeed is a really important part of your recruitment marketing mix,

[00:17:08] but it shouldn't be the only part of your recruitment marketing mix.

[00:17:11] And so if we can power these teams to use a ton of different channels to see what's most

[00:17:16] effective for them, that's where they're really going to find their best candidates.

[00:17:20] So as a practitioner, I had a lot of experience of running hiring events,

[00:17:24] doing it for drivers was the one that I used it the most indeed was definitely a channel that

[00:17:30] I leverage the most successful channel in that particular space was Facebook. Facebook drove 90%

[00:17:36] of the people that showed up at these events. So interesting. I do like that perspective on

[00:17:42] the multi-channel approach and obviously the audience that it hits is going to be different,

[00:17:46] but still a behemoth to compete with who has their claws in a ton of clients already. Right?

[00:17:55] So I want to change direction a little bit and go into high volume hiring because it definitely

[00:18:01] sounds that that is the target market that you're going after here. And the last couple

[00:18:06] of years, a lot of change in this space. What have you seen? What have you seen when it comes

[00:18:11] to the demand from companies who have tools for them to leverage for high volume hiring?

[00:18:17] Is this still very challenging for a lot of companies to hire for?

[00:18:22] Absolutely. I think one thing we've talked about in the show in the past is AI and automation

[00:18:27] and the changing of roles. You might see the tech sector dip or you might see something else

[00:18:31] dip, but travel and tourism, hospitality, general labor, these seasonal hiring jobs,

[00:18:37] volume hiring jobs, you still need people. We're not replacing anybody just yet and these companies

[00:18:42] do often struggle with finding the right talent. Another thing that I really want to touch on

[00:18:48] something that we don't do and we purposely don't do is async video interviews or one-way video

[00:18:55] interviews. It has become a bit of a trend in high volume because of course you can get

[00:19:00] candidates to record these videos en masse and send it out. When we think about the candidate

[00:19:06] experience, which is so important, one is accessibility and two is the candidate experience.

[00:19:11] Shelley, you talked about this a couple of weeks ago as being dehumanizing,

[00:19:15] tech being dehumanizing and I know there was some opinions on both sides, but if people are

[00:19:20] putting their resumes together and applying and they're already getting upset that they're

[00:19:24] not hearing bad, imagine taking a video and presenting your entire self, sending that into

[00:19:29] the ether and never hearing. My little cousin is new to the job market, she's had to do quite a few

[00:19:34] one-way video interviews and at the time she hasn't heard about it. That's just got to be

[00:19:40] so dehumanizing. I think while great for some hiring teams who can do these interviews on

[00:19:46] 3x the speed and pull that out, they're really missing a chance to connect with great

[00:19:52] candidates and creating a bad experience there. That's one trend I'm seeing, but I know there's

[00:19:57] a lot of backlash to it online and I know that candidates are really feeling that.

[00:20:02] We're really focused on getting qualified candidates in front of the real opportunities there.

[00:20:08] Others in the high-volume hiring landscape just had the CEO of Paradox on, amazing interview.

[00:20:13] You've got some really great technology there to engage candidates, but for me, yes, there's

[00:20:18] still the volume people need to hire and at the end of the day, for most of these roles,

[00:20:24] especially if they're customer-facing, if they're front-facing and they're representing your brand,

[00:20:29] you need to be talking to them in person and that is what we're here to facilitate.

[00:20:35] Daniel, you touched on something that is the holy grail of high-volume recruiting or high-volume

[00:20:42] hiring, I should say, and that is quality. Quality is what everyone is after. So every

[00:20:49] candidate that took the time to put their resume together, read the job posting in their head,

[00:20:55] they're like how hard could this be? But we know as recruiters from the other side of the

[00:21:00] screen, we're like what are you thinking in terms of the qualifications? You have none.

[00:21:06] Candidate experience is very important and how people are treated, absolutely,

[00:21:13] but when it comes to quality, where does with fit in there?

[00:21:17] So we help with the qualification for all of our finds. You can have a hiring event with no

[00:21:23] qualification, we don't have any clients that are doing that where someone just clicks and

[00:21:28] books. So that's not what we do. We have built a really smart qualification form builder

[00:21:34] that you can on any type of data and on any logic create a qualification form that candidates

[00:21:42] have to fill out to actually pass a bar to register for hiring event. So before I dig into that,

[00:21:49] I will say one click apply is not the solution. It's a really nice idea but then you get spray

[00:21:55] and pray of applications and people thinking I think you said it, you got a marketing degree,

[00:22:00] why can't I be the CMO? So you get spray and pray like oh I have that experience,

[00:22:04] I'm going to apply for that. Then you've got the other end which are these multi-page,

[00:22:09] multi-stage application forms where you're just literally while uploading your resume,

[00:22:15] copying and pasting the same information or rewriting it in the box. That doesn't work

[00:22:19] either. So how can we effectively understand what does a qualified candidate look like for

[00:22:24] our customers? How do we get the bare minimum of qualification that if they're not passing

[00:22:29] that they should never get a time with a hiring monitor but not make it so laborious

[00:22:36] that we're just losing candidates who they're paying or like I said where they're paying,

[00:22:40] indeed they're paying all of these recruitment marketing platforms to drive them here.

[00:22:44] If they're qualified and you're just asking them 37 questions to understand that's not right

[00:22:49] either. So we are absolutely playing a role in terms of qualification and filtering out

[00:22:57] candidates that don't meet that bar and then we're also on the back end working on scoring

[00:23:02] that to say hey of all of these candidates here are the candidates that best meet your role

[00:23:09] and this isn't something we're doing yet but something we're playing with on the back end.

[00:23:12] When those candidates call in can we get them to the front of the queue so that your top

[00:23:16] candidates are connecting instantly with your hiring managers? And it's not to say we'll

[00:23:20] keep anybody at the back of the bus or not let them interview, they still need to pass

[00:23:24] a bar and we'll get them through as fast as possible. But how do we create the best

[00:23:28] experience for the best candidates to make this a really successful event?

[00:23:33] How are you scoring in the back end? So what criteria are you leveraging? Are you

[00:23:37] leveraging AI to help you score? How does that work?

[00:23:41] Right now it is a bit of an automated process and what I mean by that is you will have

[00:23:48] a driver role and so you may need them to have their class one license. So if they're

[00:23:52] class five, that's fine. If anybody needs to have their class three or their class ones,

[00:23:56] understanding years of driving experience, understanding if they've done this type of

[00:24:00] role in the past and if they have a clean record and that's all ignoring are they eligible to work

[00:24:05] in Canada or the US or whatever that may be. If you've got someone who has a clean record

[00:24:11] and 10 years of experience that may be a better fit than someone who has a clean record

[00:24:15] and one year of experience. And so that's how we're doing that on the back end. It's

[00:24:19] not AI yet where it's like oh this equals this and therefore just pick out who has

[00:24:23] the most driving experience. But if you're setting up the qualification form in width

[00:24:28] and you're asking for a year's experience, can we then bump those with the most experience

[00:24:32] to the top? Or can you set an importance to this question do you have customer

[00:24:37] service experience and is it one that we get a lot? The more customer service experience

[00:24:41] they have can we score those a little bit higher? So it's not not hard I wouldn't say

[00:24:45] is the most sophisticated yet but it really does help inform who the top candidates are

[00:24:52] and then we'll want to get smarter and smarter around that. Perfect. So I want to dig in a

[00:24:56] little bit deeper in high volume hiring. I'm curious what you're seeing how they're

[00:25:01] measuring success when it comes to leveraging tools like WIT or other tools. What are the

[00:25:06] KPIs they're measuring that this is working and this is making whatever we're doing

[00:25:12] successful? Yeah there's some easy recruitment metrics that come to mind such as time to hire

[00:25:18] we can argue how we calculate that of course but at the end of the day what a success look like

[00:25:23] for these companies. The first is they've got a number of seats they need to fill or a number

[00:25:27] of openings they requisitions they need to fill and they've got a timeline to do it and do

[00:25:32] we help them do that faster and more effectively than they were doing before? And the short

[00:25:36] answer for all of our customers is yes they're running these events where they either do a

[00:25:41] big event that cuts out all of the other work that they're doing or they run a recurring

[00:25:46] hiring event through our platform. They're like every Wednesday between 11 and 1 we're open to

[00:25:51] chatting with candidates they set up that recurring event in with and they're constantly

[00:25:56] talking to a stream of candidates. Pause there because I went away from your question which is

[00:26:00] how do they measure? Time to hire, quality of hire and then most importantly which we've learned

[00:26:06] is that retention rate. If we're bringing them qualified candidates and a number of them and

[00:26:12] they're keeping them on they don't need to do future events with us. So it's a bit of a double

[00:26:16] edged sword but something we're really proud of. We did our first events with Neo Financial

[00:26:21] to do bilingual customer service reps and sales associates in the malls if you walk in a mall

[00:26:27] in Calgary someone might go and talk to you about debit and credit products.

[00:26:31] The churn that they were seeing meant that they were going to have to hire over and over

[00:26:36] again and they started running events through our platform and all of a sudden they needed

[00:26:41] to hire less and less because they were getting these candidates who knew what they were signing

[00:26:45] up for, who had experience in this and were really stepping up there. As a founder of a company

[00:26:51] and I would say at pretty challenging times when it comes to HR tech and recruitment space

[00:26:57] what keeps you awake at night? What doesn't? There's a famous quote from Mark Envriesen,

[00:27:04] a famous software investor who says as a startup CEO I slept like a baby. I woke up every

[00:27:09] two hours and cried. There's so much out there in this space especially being relatively new to

[00:27:16] the space, really being a student of it, understanding the nuances and also the vast

[00:27:22] amount of incredible platforms and tools that are out there to support recruiters

[00:27:26] and understanding what's real and what's not. This is the thing in many tech companies but

[00:27:31] really understanding who we can be most beneficial for, how we're serving our

[00:27:35] customers every day, but really balancing that hiring manager experience with the candidate

[00:27:40] experience. There are a lot of companies who have done so well for the hiring manager that the

[00:27:45] candidate experience has fallen apart and of course vice versa. You've got a company that

[00:27:49] served the candidate and then hiring managers need using it. So how do we really balance

[00:27:54] that and play both sides is something that keeps me up at night and really ensuring

[00:27:59] that we are serving both of our customers which really is the candidate at the end of the

[00:28:03] day as well as the hiring manager. So Daniel we've talked a lot, we know a lot about WIT.

[00:28:10] For anyone wanting to get a hold of you to find out more about WIT or yourself what's the

[00:28:15] easiest way to get a hold of you? If you go to our website you can click on that button of me

[00:28:19] waving at you on the bottom right corner and get an instant video call with me. If instant

[00:28:24] is too fast for you you can also shoot me an email at daniel at witte.co that's w-i-t-h-e

[00:28:31] dot co. We need to work on our domain it sounds like but that being said I'd be happy to chat.

[00:28:37] You know what's interesting is doing the research for this interview I went to your site and I saw

[00:28:41] that pop up and it was you right and I'm like do I click on it because I was a little bit nervous

[00:28:47] it was actually going to go to someone and not be an AI bot so now that I know it was real

[00:28:52] that's even more fascinating so anytime I need to get a hold of you I know exactly where

[00:28:56] I need to go. I say it is the best client success tool ever because sure someone could email me or

[00:29:03] call me or they go to our website and they see me face to face in a matter of seconds.

[00:29:07] Share their screen with any questions they have I can answer it and we're on to the next

[00:29:11] link. So Daniel what would happen if someone called you right now or went on the site and

[00:29:15] did it right now and you're in a meeting that you can't get out what would you do what happens

[00:29:21] there? Great question we have some smart hours around that so typically it's offline when I'm

[00:29:26] in media also I'm fortunate enough that my co-founder loves talking to our customer base

[00:29:31] and potential customers as well so he'll answer if I'm in a meeting and vice versa.

[00:29:36] Actually now that you're saying that we didn't ask that who is your co-founder?

[00:29:40] Yes my co-founder Liam an incredible software developer worked at some amazing companies some

[00:29:46] unicorns both globally and here in Canada and we built our product from the ground up and

[00:29:52] now we've been fortunate enough to hire an incredible team around him.

[00:29:55] And you do have a unicorn because you have a software developer co-founder that likes

[00:29:59] talking to clients so that is rare. Daniel this was an absolute pleasure so good to meet

[00:30:06] you again at RecFest but seeing you face to face here. Love doing this let's do this again

[00:30:12] thank you Daniel. The pleasure was mine Sally Surge thank you so much really appreciate it.

[00:30:18] Thank you Daniel. Au revoir.

[00:30:27] Shelly let's face it texting candidates is the easiest way to hire quicker today

[00:30:33] but your cell phone doesn't connect to your ATS you're sharing your personal number with

[00:30:38] strangers so it's pretty scary right Shelly and it's not even legally compliant.

[00:30:43] This is where our friends at RecTex come in they've created simple yet powerful

[00:30:48] text recruiting software that works with your ATS plus it's designed by recruiters for recruiters

[00:30:55] so you know it works. To learn more and book a demo visit www.rectxt.com mention the recruitment

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