Data Wars with Rebecca Car

TECH ISN'T THE PROBLEM

In this episode of Mallorca Talks, Chad Sowash and Rebecca Carr, CEO of SmartRecruiters (an SAP company), discuss the future of AI and enterprise software.

Rebecca argues that the biggest barrier to innovation isn't tech, but the ego of companies trying to "own" the user through closed systems. She envisions a shift toward open ecosystems where SAP, Slack, and AI agents collaborate to provide a seamless, "in-the-flow" experience.

Key Highlights:

• Breaking Walled Gardens

• The "Task" Revolution

• The SAP Fleet

  
  

This conversation explores how AI will reclaim the 80% of time spent on admin work to finally unleash human creativity.

Like, subscribe, and comment to join the conversation on the future of work.

PART 2 - MONEY LEAK

PART 3 - JOB SPLIT

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

0:00:24.2 Chad Sowash: Day two.

0:00:25.0 Rebecca Carr: Day two. I'm here.

0:00:25.9 Chad Sowash: Day two. I know. I got to see the presentation and everything, right? That was good, that was good.

0:00:29.9 Rebecca Carr: Yes, yeah, yeah.

0:00:31.4 Chad Sowash: Uh, but one thing I didn't get to do is talk to you about the stuff that I saw yesterday because...

0:00:36.0 Rebecca Carr: Mm, yeah.

0:00:36.9 Chad Sowash: We didn't have the conversation. The big thing that I want to talk about, and we hear this a lot from CEOs, but you're more of a product person...

0:00:47.1 Rebecca Carr: Mm.

0:00:47.9 Chad Sowash: Right? And you're... You're a leader, but you've been a product leader. Umm, I want to talk about vision. And I don't just mean smart recruiters vision. I want to talk about vision moving forward with a bigger suite of service, moving to business...

0:01:01.9 Rebecca Carr: Mm-hmm.

0:01:02.0 Chad Sowash: Outside of just talents.

0:01:04.0 Rebecca Carr: Mm-hmm.

0:01:04.1 Chad Sowash: Umm, what does this actually mean, this move from a... From a technology standpoint? Because the opportunity is great...

0:01:11.9 Rebecca Carr: Yeah.

0:01:12.0 Chad Sowash: But execution is a bitch.

0:01:13.3 Rebecca Carr: Yeah. Oh, well, that's true. Uh, I'll... I'll start with the execution comment.

[laughter]

0:01:19.1 Rebecca Carr: At the end of the day, the... The experience that will ultimately be provided will be far more connected than our egos allow us or want us to... [chuckle] to be. Umm, I think...

0:01:31.0 Chad Sowash: Say that again. Say that again.

0:01:33.0 Rebecca Carr: It'll be far more connected than our... Than our egos would... Would want us to be. I guess you could say.

0:01:38.0 Chad Sowash: Okay. Okay. Okay.

0:01:39.6 Rebecca Carr: Umm... No one company is probably capable of delivering the experience that the user will want in order to feel as seamless and in-the-flow as it will need to be and will become over time.

0:01:55.0 Chad Sowash: Sure.

0:01:55.7 Rebecca Carr: And, uh, right now, we think about our business. I'll just use SAP as an example. Huge business enterprise software platform. But they do look at the market and they go, "Oracle's my competition. And, uh, Workday is my competition."

0:02:10.1 Chad Sowash: True.

0:02:10.9 Rebecca Carr: Umm, because we build the same type of product. And that is true.

0:02:14.8 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:02:15.0 Rebecca Carr: But the reality is that... And I... I'd also argue that they'd call ServiceNow their competition. They'd call Microsoft their competition. They'd call Salesforce their competition. But, umm, the reality is to build that experience, we will need to break down the walls of where comp... Like, that line of competition lies...

0:02:33.0 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:02:33.1 Rebecca Carr: And we'll need to open ourselves up to a level of connectivity across those platforms that delivers the experience to the user... User that they expect. Umm, I look at something like a sales leader. My sales leaders live and breathe in Salesforce today.

0:02:50.5 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:02:50.8 Rebecca Carr: Umm, and if they could, they would want to do everything in Salesforce. They want to do their capacity planning in Salesforce. They'd want to hire in Salesforce because it's just the tool they've come to be comfortable in.

0:03:04.1 Chad Sowash: Right.

0:03:04.9 Rebecca Carr: But we don't allow them to do that because businesses put up the wall of, "Well, umm, you... You didn't pick us for that piece of the product. So you're gonna log into a new system and learn something different. And I'm gonna collect that data, and I'm gonna hold that data really close to me, umm, because it makes me more valuable."

0:03:23.1 Chad Sowash: Right.

0:03:23.8 Rebecca Carr: And that is true. Umm, that is true as the world exists today. Umm, but I think in order to truly follow people through life, you have to be open to sharing that data across those walls, umm, with the intent of delivering the user with a sticky enough experience that they feed you more data to learn back. Umm, because what ends up happening is that... That... That sales leader just doesn't ever log into that other system. They go into like Slack or Teams and they say, "Hey, can you put my review in that system?"

0:03:55.1 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:03:55.3 Rebecca Carr: "And/or can you fill out my... Here's my performance review in... On a Word doc." [laughter]

0:04:00.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:04:00.9 Rebecca Carr: "Can you just load it up for me?"

0:04:02.0 Chad Sowash: "Consume this and..." Yeah.

0:04:03.2 Rebecca Carr: Yeah. And what happens is that person maybe loads it up or maybe they try to guess what that person is thinking based on the way that they've, uh... Or the decision that they've... They've made.

0:04:13.8 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:04:14.0 Rebecca Carr: And you don't get real time feedback.

0:04:16.1 Chad Sowash: Right.

0:04:16.3 Rebecca Carr: You don't get wholly accurate feedback. Uh, and, uh, you are made less better because of it. So I'll be curious to see how the... The boundaries of enterprise software get broken down and how partnership, and like real meaningful part... Partnership accelerates... Umm, accelerates our world. But it will... It could theoretically create a bit of an instability in the market. Like, then what... What do we hold valuable? How are those companies valued?

0:04:46.1 Chad Sowash: Right.

0:04:46.7 Rebecca Carr: Umm, and how do we think about growth of any one of those entities, uh, over time as a result? So, I don't know if I've totally come to the answer. I just, I think that one of the biggest blockers that we have is that our e... Our ego wants to own everything.

0:05:03.9 Chad Sowash: Yes.

0:05:04.1 Rebecca Carr: And we, because that's how we get paid and that's how we get bigger and that's how we become more successful as humans.

0:05:12.0 Chad Sowash: Right. Gotta own the revenue.

0:05:12.8 Rebecca Carr: But it's... It's, uh, it's actually enabling a bad experience for the user.

0:05:18.7 Chad Sowash: So, what I'm... What I'm hearing, or at least what I'm translating in my brain is that ther... There's an opportunity even outside the SAP ecosystem, let's say for instance in Slack...

0:05:31.0 Rebecca Carr: Sure.

0:05:31.4 Chad Sowash: To be able to have Winston interact...

0:05:33.0 Rebecca Carr: Mm-hmm.

0:05:34.0 Chad Sowash: Gather intel and bring it into the... The... The... The system of record...

0:05:38.0 Rebecca Carr: Yeah. Yes.

0:05:39.0 Chad Sowash: Whatever that system is, right?

0:05:40.0 Rebecca Carr: Yep, mm-hmm.

0:05:40.7 Chad Sowash: So at... At that point, uh, you're going well beyond that of just... Just SAP. You're working outside of SAP. You're becoming the, pretty much the connective tissue, the messaging connective tissue within the actual business suite itself, but then also outside...

0:05:56.7 Rebecca Carr: Mm-hmm.

0:05:57.0 Chad Sowash: And gathering data.

0:05:58.0 Rebecca Carr: Yeah.

0:05:58.2 Chad Sowash: Umm, either... I mean, even, uh, using, you know, mechanisms like WhatsApp.

0:06:03.2 Rebecca Carr: Yeah.

0:06:03.8 Chad Sowash: Or whatever messaging systems, right? That's still outside...

0:06:07.5 Rebecca Carr: Yeah.

0:06:07.9 Chad Sowash: Something that... That SAP owns. Although as a candidate or as, let's say, for instance, an employee, that might be my preferred method of... Of messaging.

0:06:17.0 Rebecca Carr: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

[overlapping conversation]

0:06:17.8 Chad Sowash: Right? So is that where you're saying breaking down those walls?

0:06:20.0 Rebecca Carr: Yeah. Being okay with adapting to what the user... The user preference would be.

0:06:25.9 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:06:26.0 Rebecca Carr: And frankly, learning from their engagement on their platform... There's a HR startup... Startup that recently came out or, uh, recently launched, uh, a, uh, program by which they're taking skills, performance, personality data about an employee, umm, which is actually very fascinating to me at the psychology level.

0:06:46.6 Chad Sowash: Sure. Yeah.

0:06:47.6 Rebecca Carr: And they are collecting that through an independent assessment that the... The employee engages with...

0:06:53.8 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:06:54.2 Rebecca Carr: And they are injecting that into a Slack experience. So that when you as a manager engage with your employee and you write them a message, maybe you're trying to give them feedback on a presentation...

0:07:05.9 Chad Sowash: It's tonal.

0:07:07.0 Rebecca Carr: It's, uh...

[laughter]

0:07:08.1 Rebecca Carr: It... It changes tone. So, the... Shure People's the name of this company, and they're... It will rewrite it for you in a structure and tone that will be well received...

0:07:20.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:07:20.7 Rebecca Carr: By the person on the other side. And when you think about how much cross-functional collaboration happens, how much, like, cross-country collaboration, like multilingual collaboration happens. Like,

0:07:30.0 Chad Sowash: Cultures. Yeah.

0:07:31.0 Rebecca Carr: Yes. It's making a recommendation to the user as to how you should change the way that you're giving them that feedback in order to make them more productive in the receipt of that feedback. Umm, I... Like... How... Like... I just... I remember when I was hearing that example, I was like, that is so cool because here they are, they're an HR tech startup that's really trying to help people manage more effectively. Like, that's the intent.

0:07:59.2 Chad Sowash: Right.

0:07:59.7 Rebecca Carr: But think about all the other things that that unlocks. And they're only actually delivering that based on a, like, one single assessment that they do. Think about what could happen if more of that ecosystem was... Was opened up. Umm, what if it recommended feedback that you give people based on their performance in real time? But they don't have access to that performance data, they just have access to the assessment. So, it actually is supporting, like, real development of the employee themselves and their ability to accelerate growth within that organization at a much faster clip because that feedback loop is so tight.

0:08:34.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:08:34.8 Rebecca Carr: Uh, and I... I see a great opportunity for SmartRecruiters in the SAP world because it covers so many verticals of enterprise software.

0:08:42.5 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:08:43.1 Rebecca Carr: Umm, but in order to actually deliver that and really be effective, we're gonna still have to lean into a real ecosystem strategy that finds people where most conversation happens for them. And that is not in SAP in most scenarios. Yeah.

0:08:59.8 Chad Sowash: Yeah. So, uh, I have also heard that, you know, that there... There's a change from point solution, right? To... To... To suite and... And whatnot. But what... From what you just described, that, to be quite frank, could actually power many smaller point solutions just because of the connectivity, right?

0:09:19.0 Rebecca Carr: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

0:09:19.4 Chad Sowash: So, being able to literally drive...

0:09:22.2 Rebecca Carr: Mm-hmm.

0:09:22.6 Chad Sowash: Uh, more connectiv... Or connection points...

0:09:25.2 Rebecca Carr: Yes.

0:09:26.0 Chad Sowash: And we all know that for the most part, that's a pain.

0:09:29.3 Rebecca Carr: Yes.

0:09:30.0 Chad Sowash: Because when you get into a bigger system...

0:09:32.8 Rebecca Carr: Mm-hmm.

0:09:32.9 Chad Sowash: Umm, and a bigger suite, and you want to get paid attention to...

0:09:35.6 Rebecca Carr: Mm-hmm.

0:09:36.9 Chad Sowash: That's really hard.

0:09:38.0 Rebecca Carr: Yes.

0:09:38.1 Chad Sowash: Although, if you go through and agent tech, let's say, partnership process or what have you...

0:09:43.3 Rebecca Carr: Yeah. I mean, I actually think though, the... The way that... It's hard today because of the way that we have constructed packaging and pricing in partnership as a commercial motion. Umm, AI is opening a... A very big door right now to consumption-based pricing.

0:10:02.1 Chad Sowash: Like, transactional...

0:10:04.5 Rebecca Carr: Yes.

0:10:04.6 Chad Sowash: Okay.

0:10:05.0 Rebecca Carr: Umm, enterprise software has historically... I mean, Vertical SaaS has just been subscription, subscription, subscription...

0:10:10.4 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:10:10.9 Rebecca Carr: And commitments, big upfront commitments. And so today, how partners engage with us in the ecosystem is they come to us and they go, "Okay, you sell my point solution along with yours." And so what does that require? It requires great integration, or... Or like a niche-use case, but also you selling the heck out of the... Your point solution to the field so that they never forget to put you in a demo.

0:10:32.8 Chad Sowash: Yes.

0:10:33.1 Rebecca Carr: Umm, and then what happens? You have to be in a SKU, you have to meet certain security standards, you have to go through this process of, like, negotiating rev share. Umm, I think as agent collaboration becomes more hi... High-value but also just in the forefront of product development...

0:10:50.0 Chad Sowash: Right.

0:10:50.7 Rebecca Carr: Umm, your product will be successful by how impactful and usable your use case is within the flow of business activity. So we might OEM one type of, uh, interaction is a good example. We have some OEM partners that are supporting, umm, umm, some of our ca... Our candidate conversation workflows.

0:11:13.0 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:11:13.9 Rebecca Carr: Umm, really, our model with that partner is not ever to sell them. In fact, our customers don't even know that they exist.

0:11:20.9 Chad Sowash: Uh-huh.

0:11:21.0 Rebecca Carr: But we are using some of their technology and we're paying them per application for it.

0:11:26.8 Chad Sowash: Sure.

0:11:27.0 Rebecca Carr: And our customers don't know the difference, they don't care. As long as they meet their security standards, that's great.

0:11:32.7 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:11:32.8 Rebecca Carr: They are... They have decided to enable that feature because it provides them value. Umm, and as long as we continue to provide them value and that technology provides us value, they will be making, Monday... Mm... Uh, money, and they will grow alongside us. And I think you're gonna see a lot more partnerships that look like that. Umm, what... What's tricky about it is most people aren't used to planning their businesses that way in B2B.

0:11:55.5 Chad Sowash: Yeah. Yeah.

0:11:57.0 Rebecca Carr: In B2C they are. Umm, but it takes teams of FP&S teams that, you know, look at the market and get very, very good at predicting sort of how labor will move across organizations in the HR space. But it could be in the... Umm, uh, in the procurement space; it could be the number of contracts negotiated a year. And, uh, they put out a forecast that would... Would have to say that this is what we expect to... To receive as a result of that because our technology is expe... Expected to provide that kind of value.

0:12:27.4 Chad Sowash: So, there's a lot of work to be done in integrating and, uh, looking at SuccessFactor customers, SAP customers, so on and so forth. Uh, [0:12:38.1] ____ Allyn just talked about 120 engineers coming over, which I thought was amazing. I mean, you know, usually, at least from what we hear, "Ah, you get a... A... A couple of engineers to be able to kinda give you the overview of what the company is." Well, no, they're sending a whole fleet...

0:12:53.0 Rebecca Carr: A fleet of them, yeah. Yeah.

0:12:54.0 Chad Sowash: Of engineers over, umm, which is a great commitment and amazing support...

0:12:59.9 Rebecca Carr: Yeah.

0:13:00.6 Chad Sowash: Uh, from the SAP side on the partnership side, 'cause you've got to grow on all flanks.

0:13:05.0 Rebecca Carr: Yes. Yeah.

0:13:06.0 Chad Sowash: So, talk a little bit about that partnership growth side, because there are tons of obviously new startups that are out there all over the place, and they... And they want to... To, you know... They... They wanna have a great relationship...

0:13:18.1 Rebecca Carr: They... They really like to email me. [laughter]

0:13:19.8 Chad Sowash: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Uh, they want to have a great relationship with SmartRecruiters, uh, and SAP companies.

0:13:25.2 Rebecca Carr: Yeah.

0:13:25.6 Chad Sowash: Uh, so, talk a little bit abou... Uh, about that. How hard is it to manage something like that? Not just yourself, but obviously the executive... Uh, the executive team as well.

0:13:33.9 Rebecca Carr: Yeah. Uh, well, so, we divide our partner ecosystem into three categories.

0:13:39.0 Chad Sowash: Uh-huh.

0:13:39.7 Rebecca Carr: One, umm, which is more like services-partner side, pretty straightforward. We don't implement our own software. Umm, and frankly, more and more, our software implements itself with the end user. Umm, like, we really do want to provide self-service experiences wherever possible. But inevitably, there's consulting partners out there that are helping people through this transformational moment and are... Are great partners to us in identifying prospects that are ready to make that move.

0:14:07.1 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:14:07.8 Rebecca Carr: Umm, and they require a very deep technical enablement so that they can speak intelligently and guide people toward the right outcome. Umm, there's then a group of partners that we'd call our sell partners. They are managed by a different executive. Uh, and our job is to enable them to sell and support and implement and everything. And this is really where we start about... Like, we... We focus on, umm, partners that can sell into verticals that we don't know very much about. Think like public sector...

0:14:37.8 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:14:37.9 Rebecca Carr: As a good example.

0:14:38.9 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:14:39.0 Rebecca Carr: Or, uh, segments where, uh, the... The cost of acquisition of that customer is just gonna be far too high for us at our size and scale. And so for SAP, that's typically gonna be below 5,000 FTEs. Like, our commercial segments are gonna be driven by partners. And what tho... Are... My executives do is they spend all day, every day, enabling those people on our vision, on what's important, and any new products. And as we... Because we release every two weeks, that takes quite an army of people. Umm...

0:15:08.5 Chad Sowash: Yeah. Yeah.

0:15:09.7 Rebecca Carr: But then there's, like, I think the partners that you're referencing, which is gonna be our product partnerships. Umm, here we're looking for a couple things. One, we're a global... Uh, we serve global enterprises, umm, and we operate globally. Most startups focus on one market, on one industry at a time, one problem space at a time.

0:15:30.9 Chad Sowash: Yeah, yeah.

0:15:31.6 Rebecca Carr: And the problem with approaching someone like me is there isn't a business case that maths out if I'm only gonna sell it to one very small sliver of my customer base.

0:15:41.8 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:15:42.1 Rebecca Carr: So, usually those conversations end if they can't, like, truly adapt to me at a global scale. And it takes a lot of time and money to get to that level.

0:15:53.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:15:53.7 Rebecca Carr: Umm, now, some people have done it really well, and there's obviously, uh, new technologies have made it a lot easier for businesses to get there faster than it took me in 2016. Umm, but, uh, that... That's one attribute. But the other is, I have to know that there is a level of expertise in that partner team, umm, that I do not have, in... Both in the workflow, the user experience, umm, and the technology.

0:16:23.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:16:23.1 Rebecca Carr: And I can't acquire it quickly. Now, right now, I need to deliver product faster than anybody else on the market in order to be successful, 'cause this is... This is a... This is a race at... At a certain point. Umm, a lot of people can come up with my idea, and a lot of people can build it really quickly. Umm, and so I need to be very, very agile. Where I'm gonna pick my partners is the... Is like the teams of people that can align to that adaptability, that pace...

0:16:48.7 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:16:49.0 Rebecca Carr: And have a skill that I couldn't teach the engineer sitting in Poland to do in a month or two. Umm, and, uh, some partners have done that really well because they focus on a piece of the workflow that is genuinely unique. It's... It's adjacent to recruiting. It's like workforce planning. Umm, there's some folks that are doing some really cool stuff in learning and enabling of, uh, employee resources that have nothing to do with sort of the old learning and content error, but are really thinking about bringing learning into the flow of work. My team doesn't know anything about learning and the learning journey outside of what they do every day within SmartRecruiters.

0:17:31.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:17:31.5 Rebecca Carr: So, that level of expertise would probably take me six months to acquire of discovery...

0:17:36.1 Chad Sowash: Oh, yeah.

0:17:36.7 Rebecca Carr: If they're willing to partner, they having a... A global enterprise technology at their fingertips and they'll play ball, they'll integrate and really collaborate with us at a deeper level very quickly. "I'm all... I'm game for it." And, uh, I think we've done that, uh, very, very well within SmartRecruiters in a couple pieces of our journey. But, I mean, I'd say we're... We're only at the infancy. We have maybe like four or five today. Yeah.

0:18:02.0 Chad Sowash: It... It sounds like for... For those specific points of need that it's... It's more of a shopping expedition for you guys than it is waiting for the right partner to come to you because you know what you need.

0:18:16.0 Rebecca Carr: You... You would think. [laughter]

0:18:17.1 Chad Sowash: Not so much?

0:18:17.9 Rebecca Carr: You would think... I mean, we definitely do do market evaluation all the time.

0:18:21.8 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:18:22.0 Rebecca Carr: Umm, but there's one thing, and I say this to any of the startups that, like, come to me and ask questions about, like, you know, "How do I scale? How do I grow?"

0:18:31.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:18:31.9 Rebecca Carr: None of them know anything about channel selling. Like, it's just... It's not a motion that you, like, as a founder, you intuitively, like, come to understand the value of. You think of partners and ecosystem as, like, that other thing that gives you 15% of your growth opportunity.

[laughter]

0:18:49.9 Rebecca Carr: Umm, and they think, "Oh, I gotta go hire a salesperson that's gonna go there and knock on doors and I'm gonna do it differently 'cause I'm gonna use an agent to do all the dialing," and then someone's gonna pick up the... Like, that's how they're... That's where their minds go.

0:19:01.3 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:19:02.0 Rebecca Carr: Umm, they don't think, "Ooh, maybe I should build a company that actually just goes to the channel only." Umm, because it feels... Business development in general feels like a little bit, like, soft and fuzzy and salesy. It doesn't... It doesn't translate to dollars as quickly and concretely as someone going and putting a contract and someone signing it.

0:19:26.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:19:26.3 Rebecca Carr: And so a lot of these startups aren't shopping for that reason. If they're shopping, it's because they want to be acquired.

0:19:34.0 Chad Sowash: Yes.

0:19:34.6 Rebecca Carr: And if they want to be acquired, they're usually, uh, wanting to be acquired because they're tired and they're not growing as quickly, and they're like, "You know what? Maybe just the easiest way is to just get eaten up by one of these guys." They're not coming to me to go... Coming to me and going, "Rebecca, I want you to embed me and I'm gonna come up with a really creative commercial model that's a little risky for me, but I trust you."

0:19:57.8 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:19:57.9 Rebecca Carr: And we're gonna put it in the product together." And it's... It's true, though, if you think about, umm, that vendor that I chatted about with, umm, applications. That's terrifying for them. Like, here they are, a little company that probably has raised, you know, one or two rounds, and their board is looking for, you know, committed growth in order to continue their investment or maybe not shop a buyer elsewhere.

0:20:20.9 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:20:21.0 Rebecca Carr: And they're going, "You know what? We're gonna put our product in here and it's gonna be totally consumption-based and you're gonna tru... Trust that our product works. And if it works, this is how much... How many multi-millions of dollars we're gonna make." And the board goes, "Mm, but if it doesn't work, you're gonna make zero dollars, and you're going to have wasted an entire year." That's a huge leap of faith. Umm, and so...

[overlapping conversation]

0:20:40.9 Chad Sowash: Alright. So you're saying you have to take, though, right?

0:20:43.0 Rebecca Carr: Yeah, it... It's... It is the leap of faith that these folks are gonna have to start taking. Umm, but it's uncomfortable. So, you don't really get a lot of inbound with people shopping you that design. Umm, you have to go find and convince and sell them on the opportunity that they have with you.

0:21:01.3 Chad Sowash: Uh-huh.

0:21:01.9 Rebecca Carr: And there's a little bit of flexibility upfront on how you think about the commercials and committed spend, but, you know, nothing to the... To the level that, you know, they're hoping to get from the relationship.

0:21:12.7 Chad Sowash: Yeah. So, when you're talking about these types of partners, let's go to the... To the top of the funnel real quick and we're talking about, umm, being able to create, uh, a self-sustaining suite of services, right? So top of funnel today, companies go and spend a lot of money on recruitment marketing. Right?

0:21:30.8 Rebecca Carr: Yeah. Yeah.

0:21:31.8 Chad Sowash: After they've bought these candidates five, six, ten times over. Right?

0:21:35.1 Rebecca Carr: Yes. Yeah.

0:21:36.1 Chad Sowash: So that... That candidate's already in their database. Umm, is... Is there a perceivable model where SmartRecruiters or the connective tissue of the... The... The actual database itself goes, finds those candidates before going and spending money, number one...

0:21:53.0 Rebecca Carr: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.

0:21:54.2 Chad Sowash: Uh, but while... Even before that happened, you were keeping... Uh, you were engaging the individual, doing gap analysis, knowing that, "Hey, look, do you... Do you meet these requirements, etcetera, etcetera?" Are we moving to a point where we're only gonna need to spend money as a company when we need to? Because we've been spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions every year that we really didn't need to. So is that something that companies are coming to you saying, "Look, we need a better... We... We... We need a better way of fixing this as opposed to this crazy leaky bucket that we're dealing with"?

0:22:30.9 Rebecca Carr: Yeah, they... They want outcome-based pricing. Umm, like, "I'll pay you if you get it done for me." That's probably what they ask for more than "when I need it..."

0:22:39.4 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:22:39.8 Rebecca Carr: 'Cause they... They perc... They perceive themselves to always need it. And most people are really bad at searching their own databases...

0:22:46.0 Chad Sowash: Oh, yeah.

0:22:46.1 Rebecca Carr: I'd say mo...... And the people that know they have big databases have one really big problem, which is they don't understand intent. Umm, and so a lot of what they're looking for is me to go and search that database for them...

0:23:02.0 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:23:02.3 Rebecca Carr: And give them high-intent candidates back. Umm, they... They have found lots of different ways to like market their brand and these people know who they are.

0:23:12.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:23:12.1 Rebecca Carr: But what that's translating to is us all getting a bunch of spam texts from recruiters at these companies right now going like, "Hey, you open to a job right now?" which is like actually the most uncomfortable way to ask for intent. There's a lot of other ways that we could understand that.

0:23:27.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:23:27.5 Rebecca Carr: Umm, and so what they... What they're looking for is a return on that alone. Like, "I just want you to find the 1,500 people in my database of 100,000 that actually wanna work for me right now, and then I will spend money to market to just those people." Umm, and it will be...

[overlapping conversation]

0:23:48.2 Chad Sowash: [0:23:48.2] ____ Qualifications, yeah.

0:23:48.9 Rebecca Carr: Yeah, yes, who meet... Who meet the qualifications and whatnot. And I think that there's actually like an interesting, umm... There's an interesting way to do that. Like, as... And... And what... Intent can be discovered, you know, by search activity and job... Like people applying to jobs for sure.

0:24:05.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:24:05.3 Rebecca Carr: But it also can... It needs to be something that's understood in real time. If you're walking down the street or, uh, like walking past a store, and I know that you've been looking for retail associates and in that moment I push a campaign at you...

0:24:19.0 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:24:19.5 Rebecca Carr: Umm, knowing already that you are on the hunt and you're standing next to the store and there's an interview spot right now, am I more likely to get you to lean in than if I were to market to you at home when you were sitting in bed? Umm, I think the answer is probably yes. But again, it requires like a certain level of ecosystem that we don't have today. Umm, I... I mentioned I think yesterday that my... My... Like, my dream partnership would be like an OpenAI or something like that.

0:24:48.7 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:24:48.9 Rebecca Carr: But I actually think like, who's gonna be the enterprise software platform that partners with Apple first and understands location and behavior through... Through like your day-to-day life and then pushes business moments to you that are relevant and timely? Umm, that would be a cool partnership to invest into and it would be very helpful from a top-of-funnel perspective in the recruiting journey. Umm, 'cause I think you need to hit people at the right time and place. Uh, and that is... That outcome alone is valuable enough to the company that they'd pay me for it. But the fact that I have a database of people is irrelevant, doesn't mean anything to them.

0:25:26.4 Chad Sowash: So, but what is relevant for a lot of core systems is that, umm, recruitment marketing's about a $16 billion a year, uh, nut. So, why haven't you figured it out?

0:25:40.0 Rebecca Carr: Why? Yeah. Well...

[laughter]

0:25:42.0 Rebecca Carr: It's even bigger than that is agency.

0:25:44.2 Chad Sowash: Yeah. Yeah.

0:25:45.0 Rebecca Carr: Yeah. Yeah.

0:25:46.0 Chad Sowash: I mean, so...

0:25:47.0 Rebecca Carr: I mean, I... Yeah, no one is... So, I don't have the answer for this, but I'd probably loop... Loop it back to how static the job object is today.

0:25:57.0 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:25:58.2 Rebecca Carr: I mean, you're only as compelling as your job description right now, and like that is not very good. Bar's low, we'll say that much.

0:26:06.4 Chad Sowash: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:26:07.6 Rebecca Carr: Umm, I also think there's a certain sense of commitment that we have created around job. Like, I'm making a commitment to you, I will be here for multiple years. Think about like the structures that are created within organizations. You get rewarded for tenure.

0:26:24.8 Chad Sowash: Oh yeah.

0:26:25.2 Rebecca Carr: Umm, and for... For, you know, moving up through an organization. I mean, my father worked for the same company for 45 years and he received two rocking chairs, like multiple statues.

[laughter]

0:26:39.0 Rebecca Carr: Like, had an amazing 401(k) program by that point. Like, we rewarded him for that.

0:26:44.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:26:44.3 Rebecca Carr: But do I think that there was opportunity cost to him because he sat there? 100% there was.

0:26:49.7 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:26:50.2 Rebecca Carr: And we haven't made it... We haven't normalized fluidity in the workforce. But the next generation of workers, I think, expects it. You're starting to see them want that.

0:27:02.1 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:27:02.7 Rebecca Carr: And all of recruitment marketing today is sort of pushing the, "You're gonna go do this and you're gonna do it for two years and then you're gonna get to the next," not, "Here's like a really cool thing that I actually want... You have the skills to do, you're missing this one..."

0:27:17.1 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:27:17.5 Rebecca Carr: "but would you be willing to like work on this project and try? And if it doesn't work out, no problem. Like, there's another one that you can go to here."

0:27:24.0 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:27:24.1 Rebecca Carr: Or, "By doing this project, you're actually unlocking all these other cool things that you could go work on." Umm, it's never framed that way. Nor do we, umm... Nor do we pay recruitment agencies, umm, to support that motion. We pay them as a percentage of your base salary...

0:27:43.1 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:27:43.5 Rebecca Carr: As if you're gonna go work there for an... Uh, one year again. So we put a lot of time restriction, we put a lot of, umm, like qua... Qualification restric... Restriction, we put a lot of re... Like job requirements restriction on everything.

0:27:56.9 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:27:57.2 Rebecca Carr: And candidates need to love every piece of those things. They need to want to be there for a year. They need to love every requirement. They need to know... They need to think that they're qualified in every single category in order to lean into the moment. Oh, and by the way, they have to, you know, be in the same location. They have to want to be working right now. It's not experimental enough, I think, to get the... The level of adoption that's gonna actually drive customers to faster time to hire. Umm, and I don't know how that... I don't necessarily know how that comes together in product...

0:28:31.1 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:28:31.7 Rebecca Carr: Umm, or in the movement of labor around the world frankly. But I think it, uh... I think it is... It's one of the reasons why recruitment marketing hasn't worked as well as we'd hoped for.

0:28:45.0 Chad Sowash: Over and over and over. It's... It's... It's a garbage in, garbage out scenario, right? With the job descriptions and resumes and so on and so forth. It's almost like, you know, I... I... I hear that there's... There's a... A... A fix for the candidate side. We take a look at the resume, there's a gap analysis. We message them, we ask them, "Do you do X, Y and Z?" Right? To be able to fill those gaps. Or we generally don't. Do we just throw them into a bla... A black hole? Right.

0:29:10.0 Rebecca Carr: Yeah.

0:29:10.8 Chad Sowash: But I'm not hearing that on the employer side on, "This job description sucks." You know? How do we...

0:29:17.3 Rebecca Carr: No, they... They do not... They never say that. Yeah. Yeah.

[overlapping conversation]

0:29:19.7 Chad Sowash: Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, but we should, right?

0:29:23.1 Rebecca Carr: Yes, we should.

0:29:23.8 Chad Sowash: We're... We're literally, we're the experts. They've worked for this one company. Maybe they've had a few more companies, but, you know, "This is how it's always been done. Well, it doesn't work work well that way."

0:29:32.4 Rebecca Carr: Mm-hmm.

0:29:32.6 Chad Sowash: So how do we put systems and products in place, much like we are trying to with the candidate and engage the candidate and engage the employer and say, "Look, we need this and that," and then ask those, those engagement, those... Those questions to fill and make it more full so that when the candidate comes and you're doing that with them, you're actually getting a halfway decent match.

0:29:57.9 Rebecca Carr: Right. I think it starts with better workforce planning at the top, I'll say that much.

0:30:03.8 Chad Sowash: Oh yeah.

0:30:04.2 Rebecca Carr: Umm, that's like the one workflow. It's so fascinating to me and it came up, I was... When I was in Switzerland two weeks ago, like, it came up a lot. People asked about like the agentic workflow within workforce planning. Umm, it's mostly done in spreadsheets today. There isn't like... Yes, there are a handful of applications that do some of this...

0:30:23.7 Chad Sowash: Sure.

0:30:24.2 Rebecca Carr: But it's... It is pretty amazing to me how large enterprises still like do this entirely offline. Umm, and I think that, uh, because they have to fill a cell with like a number, uh, in order to, like, uh, I don't know, reorganize, work around a single person...

0:30:45.4 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:30:45.7 Rebecca Carr: The job is just the easy object to go and do that. Umm, I think as jobs are broken into what product managers would say jobs-to-be-done tasks, and those tasks are reallocated to agents as well as people, I think we will start to realize that any one task doesn't take a full person to deliver, and that sometimes the combination of tasks... So if you have like... If you have five or six different things that you're doing and three can go to agents, those three tasks that remain might not make up a full person's job anymore.

0:31:23.0 Rebecca Carr: So what we thought of as a project manager or a product manager...

0:31:27.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:31:27.1 Rebecca Carr: Now requires a different level of curiosity and skill that would have been taken up by another role.

0:31:32.1 Chad Sowash: Right.

0:31:32.7 Rebecca Carr: And so you're gonna need someone that can do two jobs as they exist today. And it's gonna start to break down sort of the borders of what a job description is, and they're going to start breaking people in half almost. This person will do half of what I needed to get done here and half of what I needed to do there.

0:31:51.7 Chad Sowash: Because of the tasks...

[overlapping conversation]

0:31:52.0 Rebecca Carr: But... But it also helps the... The individual grow at an accelerated rate on one side faster than the other. So, now you're not sort of stuck in this one box with just these skills that you slowly learn over time, but you're... You're now two boxes of work. And one of them you might become more passionate and curious about and might accelerate more quickly. And that could open your spectrum of opportunity to something much bigger while you still do another half of an existing job that might be maybe, umm, more normalized. Umm, but it's a... I... I... I... I don't... I think because we plan companies around a job, we get jobs. It's the only thing.

0:32:33.0 Rebecca Carr: And so until you start planning companies around tasks and the allocation of tasks the same way that you were talking to [0:32:40.8] ____ Michal, we... We completely reframe our teams around jobs to be done and we change them every six months. And so an engineer is an engineer, but 50% of an engineer's job is to deliver against a piece of the product strategy. And if we keep changing, if they're an engineer and they're maintaining the platform half the time...

0:32:59.7 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:32:59.8 Rebecca Carr: We're co... Constantly like changing the other side of their job. Umm, and as a result we're realizing that that one engineer that used to be working on just doing like core platform fundamentals is actually really good at our comms networking. And so like, we move him very quickly into projects where he's working on communication channels...

0:33:22.0 Chad Sowash: Right.

0:33:22.2 Rebecca Carr: As a good example. And we would have never known that if we just kept him in the job of internal software architect. Uh...

0:33:29.7 Chad Sowash: So is it projects more... More... Do you see it moving toward where it's like project-based even when you're internal? Obviously, there are the external pieces where it's like, you're gonna come on for six months, this is the project deadline, this is what we have going on, but also internally, because, uh, that to me is that... What you just... What you just literally detailed is the best way to not only keep your people happy, but to keep them inquisitive and curious and looking at different aspects of the business as opposed to being in... Being painted into a corner.

0:34:05.8 Rebecca Carr: Yes. And frankly, it makes them feel comfortable not being good at something. So if they... If they go, like... So if we put them on a project where they maybe aren't as excited or they aren't performing at a high level...

0:34:18.8 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:34:19.1 Rebecca Carr: Umm, it doesn't mean that they're a bad engineer. It means that maybe that particular realm of work is not where their... We're going to be able to leverage their strengths.

[overlapping conversation]

0:34:27.9 Chad Sowash: Their... Their sweet spot, yeah.

0:34:29.4 Rebecca Carr: And right now, when you're in a singular job and you're, like, beholden to it and then you don't do well, what happens is you have fear that you will lose this job. And because we're moving you around so much, you are trying new things, you're find... We are finding out where you can maximize strength. And if something doesn't work out, you don't feel as though the end is here.

0:34:53.0 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:34:53.1 Rebecca Carr: You feel as though you've learned something about yourself and you can move to the next thing. Umm, now, that doesn't mean that you... You, uh, keep poor performance just moving across your organization. There's a difference between underperforming because you have no will or want and...

0:35:10.3 Chad Sowash: Right.

0:35:10.8 Rebecca Carr: That another one that's underperforming because maybe your strengths as an... As an engineer or as a product manager, as a project manager, as a customer success are maybe not as high in one category. And us recognizing that as an organization and... And experimenting with where your work then goes next as a result of learning that.

0:35:29.8 Chad Sowash: Yeah. Well, and do you believe that the opportunity to move into those types of models are coming faster because of the, uh, the agents being able to take some of those tasks? And then you have to think of, wait a minute, this used to be a full person's job, and we have agents taking over some of their tasks, now we have to reformulate.

0:35:52.0 Rebecca Carr: Yes, absolutely. I mean, we're definitely seeing that in certain groups within our... Within our company. And frankly, I... I'd say what we're... How it's... How it's being realized in its, like, infancy right now...

0:36:05.2 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:36:05.7 Rebecca Carr: Is that people just aren't growing as quickly because they have so many people doing the same thing that when they remove 50% of that work from that group of people, those... Those individuals just... Just keep doing the, uh... They just take on more of the other 50%.

0:36:23.6 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:36:23.9 Rebecca Carr: But that, uh, over time, they will... They will be at capacity. And what we're gonna realize is there's something new, uh, there's a... A new adjacency to go and invest in, a new strategic project that's gonna drive us in the right direction. And, uh, those folks will start to be stretched and will be experimented with in a different way, or agents will become more and more capable of doing the... Their 50%...

0:36:51.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:36:51.1 Rebecca Carr: Which, uh, could be the case too. But, uh, yes, I think it's... It's encouraging organizations to think a little bit differently about what any one person does or is capable of doing on a daily basis. Yeah.

0:37:06.0 Chad Sowash: I'll ask you to step outside of your SmartRecruiters CEO body. I know it's not easy, uh, but take a look at technology and business literally from a macro sense. Okay? What excites you most about what's happening today versus maybe what was happening five years ago, and what excites you most about moving forward?

0:37:29.8 Rebecca Carr: I think that the average worker spends, and it might be an aggressive stat, but I think it's true, 80% of their time, umm, feeding systems with information.

0:37:46.0 Chad Sowash: Admin work.

0:37:47.0 Rebecca Carr: Admin work. Yeah. Just answering questions.

0:37:50.0 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:37:50.4 Rebecca Carr: And that has created a bloat, umm, across companies that restricts creativity. And I think there... We... What... What we are using today as it relates to technology, but also any other field around the world, is, I think, only scratching the surface of what is theoretically possible.

0:38:12.0 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:38:12.1 Rebecca Carr: And it's gonna take human creativity and solutioning and bold decision-making to move us forward. But we don't have time. We don't have cognitive space for that. And I think what AI is gonna offer us is the opportunity to do all of that faster and free up space to really think about what we could do for our teams, for our companies, for the world around us.

0:38:39.1 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:38:39.7 Rebecca Carr: Like, that level of creativity is, uh, is restricted right now and will be unleashed, I think, as we get more and more comfortable with leveraging technology...

0:38:50.8 Chad Sowash: Uh-huh.

0:38:51.0 Rebecca Carr: To do what we don't want to be doing every day. But it's scary. Like, that... That... There's a... There's... There's comfort in knowing what you're gonna wake up and do every day that... That... I... I spend a lot of time thinking about personality testing and there's, in the Enneagram, there's this number four, like, the creative center, and a lot of people do not have this. It's like when you send someone to a paint-by-numbers class...

0:39:14.9 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:39:15.2 Rebecca Carr: Or, like, an art class and you tell them to go paint something, just paint anything, they freeze, they hesitate, umm, because they want... There's judgment and there's, umm... And they're afraid that... That they're not gonna be... That they're not gonna meet their own personal expectation. Like, that's the world we're going into where we're really gonna have to get comfortable with trying, experimenting new things, being okay with failure...

0:39:42.6 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:39:42.7 Rebecca Carr: Umm, dreaming up things that feel crazy to us right now. And by taking away all that noise, we're kinda forcing ourselves into that space, but what could come out of it is really pretty outstanding. And I'm excited for that in the business landscape and in, frankly, in the consumer landscape as too, umm, that creativity will... Will only accelerate sort of the world around us.

0:40:06.0 Chad Sowash: So, what should we safeguard against? So, you're excited against, but what should we... What should... We shouldn't go into this, you know, with our eyes closed. What should we safeguard against?

0:40:17.0 Rebecca Carr: You need... People need to understand context in order to feel comfortable. And context requires transparency. And so the worst thing that we can go do is build closed-walled gardens around what is being done of those tasks on the other end. We need a level of transparency and explainability on demand for the person that seeks it. I look at how we've transformed SmartRecruiters. Everyone goes, like, "What's the one takeaway that you would... You would give any CEO or any executive from your journey here?"

0:40:51.0 Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm.

0:40:51.5 Rebecca Carr: It is, I told them everything and anything, the good, the bad, the ugly, every step of the way. Umm, you need to give people an understanding of what they're up against. And if you do that, they're... They'll... They'll generally be much more adaptable. But if they think you're lying, if they think you're holding something back...

0:41:14.2 Chad Sowash: Trust.

0:41:15.0 Rebecca Carr: Yes. It... It... They will never give you all... All of themselves. And so I think that's the case with the adoption of AI and technology here in, like, in this new world, is we need to build systems that are... Are fundamentally always delivering context. And when you have context, you can tell them when you're... They're wrong, you can tell them when they're right, umm, and you can fee... You can feel as though you're in... As part of a trusted experience. And that will only continue to snowball us forward.

0:41:45.0 Chad Sowash: It's exciting. It's scary.

0:41:46.0 Rebecca Carr: Mm-hmm. Yep.

0:41:47.2 Chad Sowash: Uh, and it's [0:41:48.0] ____. So, thanks again for sitting down. [laughter]

0:41:50.9 Rebecca Carr: And it's Mallorca. Here we are.

0:41:53.1 Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad & Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast-forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap, because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.