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FIRING SQUAD: tilr CEO, Carisa Miklusak


Can a couple of CareerBuilder alums really make a dent in the growing on-demand workforce platform wars?

We grill CEO and co-founder Carisa Miklusak to find out. Enjoy this Talroo exclusive.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:

Disability Solutions helps companies strengthen their workforce and broaden their market reach by hiring talent in the disability community.

Chad: Hey Joel.

Joel: What up?

Chad: Would you say companies find it hard to attract the right candidates to apply for their jobs?

Joel: Well Jobs to Careers thought so.

Chad: Job to Careers? You mean Talroo.

Joel: Talroo?

Chad: Yeah, Talroo.

Joel: What is that? Like a cross between talent and a kangaroo?

Chad: No. It's a cross between talent and recruiting.

Joel: But ...

Chad: Talroo was focused on predicting, optimizing and delivering talent directly to your email or ATS.

Joel: Ah ha, okay. So, it's totally data driven talent attraction which means that Talroo platform enables recruiters to reach the right talent at the right time and at the price.

Chad: Okay, so that was weirdly intuitive but, yes. Guess what the best part is.

Joel: Let me take a shot here, you only pay for the candidates Talroo delivers.

Chad: Holy shit, okay, so you've heard this before. So, if you're out there listening in podcast land, and you are attracting the wrong candidates, and we know you are, or you feel like you're in a recruiting hamster wheel and there's just no where to go, right? You can go to Talroo.com/attract. Again, that's Talroo.com/attract and learn how Talroo can get you better candidates for less cash.

Joel: Or just go to chadcheese.com and click on the Talroo logo, I'm all about the simple.

Chad: You are a simple man.

Announcer: Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad. Chad Sowash and Chad Cheeseman are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest in data start ups through the gamut to see if they've got what it takes to make it out alive. Dig a foxhole and duck for cover kids, the Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level.

Joel: What's up everybody? The December episode of Firing Squad and if our guest was expecting any favorable treatment because of the holidays, well she's in for a rude awakening, I must say. But, that being said, welcome to Carisa Miklusak, am I saying that right?

Carisa: You did an awesome job. Close enough.

Chad: I don't think he did, I think she's being nice.

Carisa: Miklusak but, you know what? When I first got married I got a lot of Mrs. Miklusak so, I'm going to call it like a B. That's good with me.

Chad: Okay, good.

Joel: Considering that there's a sac in there that you should be lucky that I'm trying to say it as it is because I could make up a lot of different stuff.

Chad: Yes.

Carisa: Totally.

Joel: So, Carisa is with Tilr. Carisa, give us a little bit about you before we get into your company.

Carisa: Sure. Thanks so much for having me today. I really cut my teeth in temporary staffing in the late 90s and then did a long stint at Careerbuilder.com and spun off to start building [crosstalk 00:02:56]. Let's just get it out of the way. I'm going to own it and I then started building startups in 2008 when no one else in the world was thinking it was a good economy to do so. And bootstrap company called T Media and was approached by an investor that really helped to inspire the company that I run now, Tilr. Other than that, I've got four and a half year old twins, a super geriatric dog that died twice and is still hanging around and I spend a lot of time in New York, Toronto and Cincinnati.

Joel: I could've gone for the sympathy vote for the dying dog.

Carisa: Oh, right.

Joel: That's nice. So, Chad tell her what she's in for.

Chad: So Carisa, you're going to have two minutes to pitch Tilr. At the end of two minutes, you're going to hear the bell, then Joel and I are going to hit you with rapid fire Q and A. If the answers start rambling, if you start rambling with the answers, Joel is going to hit you with the crickets. You're going to wanna move along and also tighten that game up. At the end of Q and A, you're gonna receive grades from Joel and I. It's either going to be big applause which means you killed it, golf clap, that means Joel almost fell asleep, or the firing squad.

Joel: That was pretty good Chad, that was nice.

Chad: That means hit the bricks, close up shop, pull out the drawing board because your shit sucks. So, that's Firing Squad. Joel are you ready to get that timer ready buddy?

Joel: I'm ready. Carisa, are you ready more importantly?

Carisa: Let's do it.

Joel: Boom.

Carisa: I'm ready.

Joel: Two minutes starting.

Carisa: All right. Tilr is new search technology for the workforce and what's different about Tiller is that we match on skills not on titles. We actually think that titles are pretty bias and screen people out and not in. So, here's an example of how we reallocate talent. Let's pretend that Tim had job A, and gained skills one through three and then Tim had job and gained skills four, five and six. He's never had a job with title C but yet, title C requires Tim to have skills one, three and six. Our technology will actually send Tim that job and once a worker's screened and background checked, they get to make the decision as to whether or not they wanna go to work. There's no interviews in Tilr's marketplace. So, our companies, or our employers rather, really trust us for our technology to make that decision based on skills.

Carisa: Once Tim goes to work, if there's a positive outcome, our algorithm learns from that and learns that there's again this neat, new network between someone that's never done this job and someone that can. So, for workers, we give them new opportunities. For clients, we give them a larger talent pool and we've also recently just introduced our enterprise product which does for companies the same thing that we do in our market place. So, that's a bit about who we are and skills are really the name of the game for us.

Joel: So in the time you have left, where can someone find out more about Tilr?

Carisa: You can definitely go to www.Tilr.com and it's tilr like the tilr that you pull on the sail boat to turn your direction and also you can download our app. From a company or worker perspective, check it out that way. We've been called the Tinder if you will or Match.com [crosstalk 00:06:20] I know, I know. I'm just getting them out of here of recruitment only because we have swipe left and right. That's like the only similarity so, other than that, that's where you can learn more.

Joel: All right. You're done.

Carisa: You asked for more man, you asked for more.

Chad: Swipe left and right just killed me but even before that, I don't believe, I'm not good at math but, I don't believe that one plus three plus six equals C, okay? That doesn't compute. I did a little research and it looked like you guys, at least before, focused on really trying to become like a new style ATS and now you're talking about search.

Carisa: Interesting.

Chad: Was that a pivot or ...

Carisa: No, we never were an ATS, we came out truly with search. We focused on the on-demand market. We're asking people to believe in true algorithmic hiring and not interview. We focus on the on-demand market believing that jobs that had start and end dates would be an easier way for people to make that leap of faith and start to change the way that they recruit. Also, we focus on jobs in certain areas. We headquartered in Cincinnati, Cinci was our beta market and then [crosstalk 00:07:29] to that tri-state area. So, we never really focused as a ATS at all. We've always been search technology. The first product was our marketplace which is a true on-demand marketplace that matches on skills, not on titles. Our second product now is Enterprise which again is a white label of that product that does it for internal organizations.

Chad: Okay. So, one of the YouTube videos that I watched actually focused on how the ATS process methodology sucks. So ... and it was one of your videos, so, that is fairly confusing. So, that is one of the reasons why when I was thinking about okay, process methodology, you guys are looking to try to flip the script on how people get jobs. Now it was skillcentric, there's no question, but on the front end, it was talking about how the ATS process methodology sucked, is that not something that rings kind of true to you?

Carisa: So, we do pump out a lot of content. If watched isolated, there's generally a theme of the month that might seem strange but we often times partner with ATSs to provide additional level of detail for the candidates during the on-boarding process. So, the message is they're perhaps incomplete and kind of like Ford when our current recruitment system was built, pumped out their first car rather, sorry, rather like when Ford pumped out their first car, at the same time, our recruitment system was built. Sometimes tends to look at a candidate in an archaic way. We do have young, spunky fired-up people around saying everything sucks. Resumes suck, titles suck, ATSs suck, job posting suck.

Chad: They're right.

Carisa: And I obviously totally don't disagree because I built the company but, yeah, no, you're not off based but, sorry if it indicated we were like an ATS. That's not what all our business nor a business personally I wanna spend any time in.

Joel: Good. You noticed Chad that she didn't say that the young kids are saying VR sucks but, that's a different podcast.

Carisa: Nice.

Joel: [crosstalk 00:09:22] a branding question. I'm always interested in how you came up with the name, certainly if I go to Tilr.com common spelling if you will, it takes me to a much different website, so talk about how you came up with the name and the challenge that you have from the end of sales process of telling people where to go.

Carisa: Oh, interesting. So, we came up ... here's the true story of how we came up with the name. I of course think it's super fun. One of my business partners, the investor that I mentioned earlier, has a jockey that rarely loses a race by the name of Bobby Tiller. He races horses and he called me one night at about 10:30 and we had all kind of names on a whiteboard and I was kind of pissed off because we wanted internally to own coming up with the name. We this amazing MVP underway, it's late at night, we're in this workshop trying to figure it all out. I come home and I get a call from the investor, what about the name Bobby Tiller? Guy never loses. So, the next morning we wrote in on the board and everyone started talking about it. Tried to put it down. We did look at Tiller but, weren't really feeling it. It was partly formal and so, we started playing with different four letter, five letter versions of it but wanted a four letter version.

Carisa: Looked at Tilr and I rented the name to test it out first before we actually bought the URL and we totally fell in love with it. We felt like it was both a noun, a verb. So, we call our workers Tilr community members. We also have an association where we offer portable benefits but, that's beside the point. One can also till for example and we hope that in the future people will say I need to Tilr that. So, we thought it was fun and that's how we introduced it. We haven't ... maybe I need to pay closer attention because you asked a good question. Makes me wanna check things out. What's the sales challenge in introducing it? I feel like 100, in this day and age gentleman, that's literally what I was going to say. So, I'll just own it, in this day and age, I feel like people don't really harp too much on your name. I did get one push back from a blogger and I apologize, I can't remember his name. He meant the world to me because it was the day after we rolled out the name.

Carisa: That's was such a cool idea, skills are so important, why the hell did you go with one of these Flickr, Tilr, R names. You seem smart, why'd you do that man? Why? Why? Why? And I was like, oh, that sucks. But anywise it's been really fun. The only other thing I'll say about the name is everyone always thinks it's like tiller, like you're sowing seeds, tiller like that and no, you can't really see what I'm doing right now but, you know. Kind of higher up, like Tilr like this. So, I go through a lot of that.

Chad: So does Tilr have a community database?

Carisa: In terms of where employers can go and look at Tilr's opening? No. We have a closed proprietary database and our algorithm matches the most suitable Tilrs based on skills, availability, and location directly to employers requests. Actually, maybe you guys can help me. We wanna kill the name posting. I can't figure out what to call it other than a posting so, I'm just like a request, when an employer makes a request. But, it's a closed database. We've had conversations about opening it, what would be the meaning of that, but to date, we've not.

Chad: Okay, so the actual database itself, it's a database that an organization can post, you're not going to get rid of that word, I'm sorry. You can post [crosstalk 00:12:50] it's been around for 20 years, I mean it's like a common unit.

Carisa: We can do it, we can do it.

Chad: It's a common unit and it's understood so, just use it. Not that I don't hate it, but just use it. So, if I post into the actual database, does it match up against your Tilrs and then bring back your matching kind of whoever matches in the database?

Carisa: You got it, exactly right. 100% and two different types of algorithms go to work. One is someone posts something, and they need it now or tomorrow and there's a very short window and in that way it's like first come first serve. Kind of like Uber. Blow every Tilr that matches and has the right skill profile, availability, and location receives a push notification on their phone that says this job is yours, first come first serve and remember, there's no additional interview with the employers so, once you accept the job, it's yours. If there's a longer window, we like to provide a better experience for the worker so, we'll do more of a linear algorithm where someone will have an exclusive. Again, depending on the time frame, maybe half hour or hour or day if it's a long assignment, to answer whether or not they can take it before it moves on to the next person.

Chad: How big is the database and what type of individuals in the database? Is it entry level, mid level, or even you talking about extreme professionals at times?

Carisa: We're not talking about extreme professionals yet. We're really focused on jobs where people [crosstalk 00:14:10].

Joel: What's an extreme professional Chad?

Carisa: Not me I know but otherwise [crosstalk 00:14:15].

Chad: We're extreme professionals.

Carisa: Do I get to be one too?

Chad: Maybe.

Carisa: Maybe, you guys will decide at the end. Let me know in addition to the normal judgment system. We really are asking people to make a leap of faith and trust in an algorithm so, today, when we're controlling the database, we're focused on jobs like logistics, customer service, light sales, hospitality, events. Oftentimes, we do serve one off clients. Like someone has an administrative person going on leave and needs to fill a job for two months but, we also serve truly on-demand things like an event center has a big event and needs 50 people to come in the morning to clean up, and they wanna have 50 Tilr community members come in eight hours. So, we focus on a variety of different sectors but, I guess what's common to all of them is that there is a driving force that they need a business that's just in time or flows with their business. So, retail you can imagine right now is huge for us. We've got a couple hundred people in a warehouse, another hundred people in a customer service center for a chief client in Columbus, and a couple other deals like that around the country that are really meaningful to us.

Carisa: We've become part of their planning for the year. You ask [crosstalk 00:15:38].

Chad: How big is the database?

Carisa: Yeah, sorry, I was just going back to that, I was just going to say you asked a direct question, direct answer, we're just under 50,000 total Tilr community members and actively today on the site we had about 417 clients posting since we can't figure out a better word or actively looking for Tilrs.

Joel: One of the things that you have going for you is the on-demand workforce solution is hot. One of the things you have going against you is the on-demand workforce software or solution platform is hot and on the show we've talked about everyone from Plated to Snag, to Upwork, to Fiver, to TaskRabbit, where do you guys fit in that economy and how are you different?

Carisa: So, I get asked this question a lot as you can imagine and it's been hard to pinpoint us to date but, I think that we sit closely by Upwork and Wonolo in that platform. What makes us really different and I know I keep harping on it is, that way that we match on skills. So, I don't wanna say sorry because then you guys will boo me for being wimpy but, I can only come up the word. I apologize that that example didn't make sense but, where our IP lies and where we're really different is let's say, you eat a skill table and then all of a sudden you start to reallocate talent differently based on a different metric, and that's measured, and either thumbs up or thumbs down over time. You start to build new neurons or connections between skills and outcomes, the outcomes being titles like that word post, it's a unit. It's how we understand things.

Carisa: So, that's where a lot of our IP sits, are in these new connections that we'd built between an amalgamation of someone's skill set and their ability to perform in the economy. And that's what makes us really different than let's say Winolo that's also doing just in time, on-demand hiring and allowing scheduling and availability to be part of their algorithm but, really matching very differently.

Joel: Why are you going market to market? I think you mentioned you guys are in Cincinnati and yet you'd recently moved or opened up in Indianapolis, why not just open the floodgates and go national?

Carisa: At first it was because we really wanted to bait out of course. So, we went to Cincinnati, believe it or not, it's a great city I think for innovation. Maybe you do believe it. [crosstalk 00:17:56] a place for big companies will take a chance and join beta programs. We then really took a community approach in Cincinnati, where we started to work with a lot of undeserved populations and we started to replicate that market to market or community to community rather than a national flood. The other reason just to be totally candid, is funding. We've got about nine million dollars into the business to date and we've built two really meaningful products. We want to be able to make a difference and put the workers to work that sign up on the platform in the markets where we're live. So, as we go for our next round, we'll do exactly what you're talking about, work to expand nationally.

Carisa: You'll see us beta a few larger markets first, like a New York or a San Francisco, learn from any differences of some of the tier only in size, not in love and passion and productivity markets that we focus on to date. I mean it really comes down to marketing dollars.

Joel: And you raised five million to date?

Carisa: Nine million, sorry.

Joel: Okay.

Carisa: Yes.

Chad: So, skill sets rather than job titles and resumes. So, what data are you using if not candidate profile data or resumes to pull all this together to be able to match against these job onthologies?

Carisa: Yep, you got, a better word than I could come up with consider that stolen. So, two different ways, one is that person by person, people upload their skills. That's how it works in the marketplace and we joke a lot that marketplace earned us the right to enterprise or build this white label because as we learn from everyone's skills, they can lie to us, just like you lie on a resume or in an interview but, where the difference is, is the first time they go to work, there's a 360 degree rating cycle. Second time they go to work, we have a really good score on the accuracy of their skills, predictability around their work behavior and that kind of piece. So, that's one way that we learn. The other way that we learn, now that we've earned the right is with our enterprise product, when we go into an implementation, the first thing that we do is eat the organization's existing skill table. We don't expect their skill table or even the names of their jobs to resemble our let's call it Tilr master database.

Carisa: And so then we learn from every single one of those implementations as well and we're able to share the learning we have from marketplace with our clients and vice versa. So, that helps us to become that much smarter, burn that many new connections, the many new neurons if you will.

Joel: I love that we're talking about how do we refer to postings as something different and it occurred to me that these models of on-demand workforce platforms really

expect employers to sort of make a mind change of how they normally do business.

Carisa: Absolutely.

Joel: [crosstalk 00:20:52] most them I'm sure post on Craig's list, they get responses, they interview and then they're done. So, talk about the challenge that that's been and how you're overcoming it.

Carisa: Yep, absolutely. That's the biggest challenge and I wanted to stop talking before I got a boo earlier because I felt like I was starting to ramble but, I was going to say, you said where do you fit in, starting to talk about competitors and what we run into in terms of competition with dollars is just that. It's job postings, it's traditional recruitment, it's not Wonolo, we're not running into them. Or Shiftgigger, even Upwork in the market, we're running into exactly what you talked about. This is the way we've recruited forever. And so one of the things that we do is really build trust by asking for a very small order or a job that's often times hired in mass and doesn't have any type of customer interface in order to earn trust.

Carisa: What we do find is very quickly in the process. For example, we went into mainly entry level jobs or like warehousing, data entry jobs for our beta program. The way that we got to hiring recruiters for example with this technology or sales professionals or customer interfacing professionals at events was by earning that trust up through the organization or through a referral network by doing well on less interactive roles if that makes sense. So, that's one of the way we do is just with grit, and earning one role at a time. Now that we've been in the market for just two years, some of that was beta but let's just call it two years, we do have a number of case studies and a number of clients that are really willing to show not only how drastically the cost reduced but how they felt like they couldn't hire in their backyard and now because they're looking at skills as the pull, not titles as the pull, it's much larger and they're able to hire refreshingly locally.

Joel: I have sort of a general question about the whole on-demand phenomenon or trend. Companies spend a lot of money on employer brand, what it's like to work here, who we are, etc.

Carisa: Absolutely.

Joel: Does that matter in an on-demand environment because do you really care about an employer's brand? You're just going to go work based on what an algorithm told me on Tilr or another website.

Carisa: So, it's an interesting question. Maybe I'm like a traditionalist all of a sudden but, I think it does. You'd be really surprised at the passion that Tilr community members have for working on projects, even if it's only at XYZ client for the holiday for three and a half months. Also, a lot of these roles, not a lot, 10% of these roles turn into full time job opportunities as well. If someone falls in love with their Tilr, we don't want them to hire them behind our backs so, we make it really easy on the platform if the Tilr's interested to move off our platform and to a new home. What I find, and I don't wanna be overly cheesy so I'll say this at risk of a boo, but that is ... values truly are changing and even in the quote, unquote on-demand economy which I think is a word that will go away but, yet the behaviors of this new workforce will stay. Even though people wanna work on different projects or around different schedules, they wanna be attached to things that are making a difference and they wanna be very clear about how what they're doing is making a difference.

Carisa: Our most successful clients have programs for their quote, unquote on-demand workers in hopes that they won't have to re-train a whole new crew next year and a lot of them will come back and make this cyclical opportunity a part of their behavior. I actually don't like the word on-demand. I just think it's like the trend is our friend right now and it's a really smart place to prove algorithmic hiring.

Chad: You have to play to kind of like AI, Chadbots, Machine Learning, and it's like oh, yeah, well okay.

Carisa: Yeah, and that's why you actually purposely see me stay away from those words. I mean if you've noticed I haven't said them once because I think what we're saying is behaviors are changing so much, I think that's what's here to stay. So anyways, at the risk of being cheesy.

Chad: So, just adding skill sets into the process. So, let's say you go into a market, what if a candidate, this is a brand new candidate based that you're actually getting into. What if a candidate believe that they're an expert but they're really just average. How do you weed out the over sized egos? Does that just happen through the process as the companies review them? How does that all come together?

Carisa: A couple different checkpoints right now, and maybe one become automatic in the future, hint hint, specifically in certain verticals where we're comfortable or have staffed a long time in the markets. But to date, first thing is absolutely like Linked In, like a resume, self-onboarding. You tell us who you are and your proficiency, next thing is we have literally interviewed in 15 to 20 minute phone call, every single Tilr community member to date. We did that for a learning, we did it to hold hands, to help people understand this new experience and to learn how we could automate it. We do ask experiential questions so, it's as good as a quick interview. You said you're a five resolving customer problems, tell the largest customer problem you've resolved on the phone and how many minutes it took you to resolve it. What skills did you use?

Carisa: Then of course they do a background check, but once that's done, you're right, they could've lied to us just like a normal interview recruitment process where the proof really lies is the first time they go on site, the first employer rates their proficiency in said skills and they rate the experience as well. That algorithm gets stronger and stronger, the accuracy rather becomes stronger and stronger. Then we look for trends over time. We are in conversations as we earn the right to go further up the chain in terms of the sophistication of roles to partner with and lay over things like personality testing and such but, we've kept it really simple to date and really focused on that reallocation of skills. Like can you take someone that had been a bank teller and a, I don't know, sales rep and have them all of sudden manage a retail organization. Do the skills translate in that regard? I guess they'd be missing that management piece.

Chad: How do you interview these individuals, is it a phone interview? What's the actual interview?

Carisa: Yes. So, to date on the app, once you're done onboarding yourself, there's something that pops up and tells you to book a phone call. We've literally had phone calls. The reason I was saying hint hint is we have build a Chatbot in 25 different area where we feel we've done hundreds, thousands of matches and really can understand a pattern and have the chatbot ask and screen if you will, for us. But only in those verticals. In new verticals where we are new, we still wanna learn and talk to people and we also do have like a white glove free of charge, so maybe white glove's not a good word, good thing I'm not in marketing anymore, right? But like a white glove service. If any worker, employer wants their hand held, I mean it's really a strange experience right?

Carisa: We had to tell workers when we first opened, not there's nothing else, the job it yours. Go to work now and they're like what do you mean? I accepted. We're like yeah, you're already screened, go to work, you're going to be rated there. What are you talking about? No, no man, you've got the job. Or employers all of a sudden just see like hey, Ed will be there at four. They're like okay, profile looks great or [crosstalk 00:28:25] so, yeah, Ed's coming, expect Ed. So, the conversations have been really helpful because we condense sometimes the hiring process to like 30 seconds and although it's efficient and great, it freaks people out.

Chad: What's the ejection rate though? I mean because they don't show up a hundred percent of the time, what's the ejection rate that you're seeing right now on your analytics?

Carisa: You're totally right, biggest problem I think in the industry is no shows. Specifically as you start to address certain industries. People have a tough problems, like transportation problems, child care problems and that's fair. We have gone to a 40% no show when we opened in beta to about an 8% no show and now we have algorithmic things that kick off in the background, let's just call them things since my my CTO isn't on the phone with me. That allow us based on how the client has preferrenced they wanna handle a no show situation, kick off to either send someone new within the hour, send someone new the next day, not replace them. So, that's part of the client onboarding process is to understand how they wanna hire them.

Joel: My God, we just through in ghosting, are there any other buzz terms that we can use on this [crosstalk 00:29:36].

Carisa: Ghosting.

Joel: I look at both sides of where you market is and sort of downstream you have some of the names I mentioned with Snag and Platted and Winolo that you mentioned. I look at the high end and I look at Facebook, Linked In going after sort of the similar small business instant matching solution, uncommon is a sponsor and they have really cool sort of sourcing and programmatic advertising tool, text recruit, [crosstalk 00:30:06] my question is, what keeps you up at night? Because those kinds of things would keep me up at night but, I'm curious what keeps you awake?

Carisa: This is such a shitty answer for lack of a better vocabulary word, I sleep so good and that's not to be arrogant at all. I'll tell you what my worries are but, I hit a certain point at Tilr where I just started sleeping really great because there's so many things that can keep you up, I just started sleeping great. Finally, after being an insomniac for years but, that's too much about me personally, I digress. Here are the things that I really worry about, I don't worry about a crowed space. I think that a crowed space shows validation. I also look at Linked In, Upwork, perhaps not Winolo but, a lot of the organizations that you just mentioned is great potential partners for what we're doing. Also, in full disclosure, my husband just left Linked In a year ago after being there for a long time so, I know the team there well and I think that there's a lot of partnership opportunities long-term with organizations like that.

Carisa: What keeps me up at night is this, there's a very finite opportunity I believe anyways, to change the way that people look at other people. I don't know that we're moving fast enough or that we can necessarily do it alone. So, I'm a big proponent of partnerships and what I mean by that is truly when you start to look at people as an amalgamation of their skills, they are worthy of so much more. We're trained as a culture, take McDonald's off your resume because you wanna be an engineer and no one cares if you worked at McDonald's because it's just going to hurt you. Your manager doesn't wanna see that. But there's really skills that are gained during that job and if we can flip the script and change the way that people are measuring other people, I think we're going to have a lot more dynamic workforce and we'll still have a skill gap but it'll be a manageable skill gap.

Carisa: What keeps me up at night is investors are investing in the space right now or the reason I should wake up at night rather and get my computer rather than sleep well, is investors are investing in the space now and I don't know that any one entity can move fast enough to really take advantage, dare I say, of the way that we could impact humanity over the next few years while recruitment finally has a data focus after decades of other verticals really benefiting from it. But, I feel like you're hearing true passion from me now so, I'm going to get off my soapbox.

Joel: I love it, I love it. Well our time here has come to an end, so ...

Carisa: No.

Joel: You guys have a unique offering where you only pay I guess if you hire or there's a match [crosstalk 00:32:32]. Talk about that, what can companies expect to pay for your service?

Carisa: 100%. 25% on the hour when someone goes to work and you're pleased with the work. So you've got it. We've kept it really simple, no barriers to entry. We've looked at different subscription models, perhaps in the future we'll introduce different pieces but, completely complimentary to sign up. You post a job, and if it's filled and the person comes to work and works, you pay that 25% on the hourly. That's really it. It keeps us competitive, it keeps things easy. We don't do a percentage of salary for conversion fees. It's literally a flat flee between 500 and 1500 dollars if you want someone to convert to a W-2 employee and find their home with your company. Enterprise is sold as a SASS model. As you would imagine, there's an implementation fee that grows if you want it integrated with things like your ATS as we talked about earlier or your LMS if you really wanna identify skill gap and close it.

Carisa: Then there's a per person per month charge that ranges between a dollar and six dollars depending on the number of users so, it's pretty straight forward.

Joel: That was the longest pricing answer I think we've ever gotten. Okay.

Carisa: At least I answered. I've heard a lot of people on your show go yeah well, just call one of our sales reps for answer. So, at least I'm direct. It's all there.

Chad: I like it.

Joel: You're getting a little saucy here at the end.

Carisa: No, not at all.

Joel: It's time to face the squad. I'm going to give my review first. Man, I think that when we look at categories in recruiting right now, that's how with automation and programmatic and I could go on and on but, this whole on-demand workforce, although you don't like the term, is sort of trend [crosstalk 00:34:21] that we're seeing. I think it's a real trend. I think I've said so on the show quite a few times. I think that it ... the challenge for you ... so I like the business mall that you're in, I do like the brand, although I don't know if I mentioned that or not, I do think it's pretty unique.

Carisa: Thank you.

Joel: It's an incredibly crowded, crowded space and the money you've raised, I know you're looking at raising more money, I think you even said how is somebody going to really stake a claim in this industry and you said the toughest challenge you have is educating the marketplace. I just think that that is going to be a major challenge to your business and I see someone like a Facebook, someone with a big brand that has numbers, that has data, that has I guess bigger brains than you, no offense, and most of your other brothern. To me, that is a real fear and that would keep me up at night, and even we didn't mention Google but I think Google [crosstalk 00:35:19] as well. Google higher and small businesses that use G Sweep so I could go on and on but, I think ultimately, I think you guys have a good team. I like your DNA, regardless of how much of a hard time we Career Builder. I like what you guys are doing from a market to market standpoint even though the traditional logic would say otherwise.

Joel: So, ultimately I think good business, I just think my hurdle in giving you an arousing applause is the marketplace and how competitive it is and the big, deep pockets that you're going to have to go up against. So, for me, it's a light applause.

Carisa: My grandpa was a golfer so, it means a lot in my heart so, I'm going to take it as a win and I appreciate the good analysis.

Chad: Yeah, you're lucky we didn't open up the guns. Okay. So, my turn. Carisa, I totally agree with the process must change. Recruiting takes too god damn long, there's no reason for it, right? So I love the concept, I'm hot on AI algorithms doing quick matching and delivery. I mean that's exactly where we need to be today. Not tomorrow but, today. 8% no show is ridiculously awesome. Especially for that market, 8% I would probably pit that against most of any of the other competitors that are out there, even staffing organization. Two things. One thing, obviously Joel mentioned from being a tight market to not a tight market, yes, it's validation, there's no question. But, there are big names in this market.

Chad: I wouldn't worry about that as much because you are really focusing ongoing from region to region. The biggest problem that I have and this is where you were teetering on big applause and golf clap, is scalability. If you can integrate chatbots and stop doing phone screens, when you do that and you get to that spot, you come back and I will give you a big applause but, the scalability as you well know, to be able to get that moving, and to be able to scale out and scale fast, that's the big key. So, at this point, you're almost there but I'm going to give you a golf clap.

Joel: You survived Carisa, congratulations.

Carisa: Thanks gentlemen, I had fun and whether it's on the air or one off, let's follow-up. We'll introduce that chatbot in Q1 and I very much enjoyed my time. Thanks so much.

Chad: Excellent.

Joel: You bet. Well, Cinci is very close to Indi so, hopefully you can make up a trip and show us the new scaling features that you have.

Carisa: There you go. Absolutely. We'll bring my CTO, he's much smarter than I.

Chad: Oh, we can all have a drink.

Carisa: Yeah.

Chad: We out.

Joel: We out.

Announcer: This has been the Firing Squad, be sure to subscribe to the Chad and Cheese Podcast so you don't miss an episode of and if you're a start up, who wants to face the firing squad. Contact the boys at chadcheese.com today. That's www.chadcheese.com.

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