The Use Case Podcast: Storytelling about Jobeo with Brent Skipper

William 0:25
Ladies and gentlemen, this is William Tincup, and you are listening to the Use Case Podcast. Today we have Brent on from Jobeo. And we’re gonna learn all about his firm. So – very excited to kind of jump into this, Brent, you’ve been on a podcast with me before. So this is kind of old hat for you. But for those that maybe didn’t listen to that episode or whatever, introduce yourself, and also introduce Jobeo.

Brent 0:54
Alright, great. Well, first, William, it’s, it’s great to be back with you. You do good work. And yeah, I’m excited to tell everybody a little bit about Jobeo. Oh, I am one of the founders of Jobeo. We just launched late in 2020. So we’re still getting up on our legs. But we are a video hiring platform or a video hiring portal, however, you want to look at it. And what that means is we give the recruiting experience, a new slant, we focus it, we focus at the top of the funnel, using video, video tools that give more transparency and authenticity to the hiring process. So fewer applicants, but higher quality candidates get into your hiring funnel. All of our – all of our employers are required to create video job listings, and all of our applicants must submit a video application. And using that – using those tools, you get better results faster.

William 2:01
And so in that space, there’s asynchronous and synchronous, both of these are asynchronous, right?

Brent 2:10
That is correct. We are not video interviews, video interviews have been done a long time, right? That’s – and people don’t like ’em.

William 2:18
Yeah, this is a different bit. This is this is okay. So, so we got the industry lingo out of the way, which no one really cares about. The people that talk about it all the time.

Brent 2:33
It’s good to get it on the table because a lot of people dismiss us if I say jobs on video, and they’re like, they roll their eyes, okay, another video interview tool.

William 2:41
Not – Not that, not that at all. This actually touches on some employer-brand things, especially from the company side.

Brent 2:47
It’s huge, huge for branding and, and identifying culture and showing off your culture. I mean, I don’t care how well written you are, you’re never going to communicate what your brand and culture really are about. And a 1200 word 50 bullet point job description.

William 3:04
So when you do the demo, and you show people Jobeo for the first time, what’s the thing that they really, that really shines? That sticks out for them?

Brent 3:15
They just love the video application. I mean, they just absolutely love it. They’re like this is – this is everything that they want to give them the transparency that they want. Early, you know, again, in the end, the very first step before a single email is sent before anything is scheduled before a screening of any kind. They get to see the personal brand and the personal culture of the candidate.

William 3:42
Right. And then obviously, they can do that with the company and the position as well. So it could be two ways they can see. Both parties could see these things before they decide to go further in the process.

Brent 3:54
Yeah, and that’s and that’s kind of – that’s really it’s not I hate to call it the secret sauce, but we try to tell people like listen, because they’re like, how do we you know, we’ve tried getting video interviews before. Why are you successful at it? And we’re like, well, because it’s this is the classic you show me yours, I’ll show you mine. Right. And when an employer or when a job seeker sees that an employer has taken just a few seconds, 30, 60, 90 seconds to be genuine, to be authentic, to be transparent. And show them who they really are. That is enough to motivate the job. The good, again, we’re talking about quality job seekers, that is what gets them off the couch and says okay, I already have a job but I want to apply for this job cuz that William Tincup guy looks like a guy I could work with, you know, I want to learn more about what he’s talking about.

William 4:49
So he – no finish your thought.

Brent 4:53
Well, I was just gonna say, yeah, that’s what that’s why they’re more motivated to you know, sit up straight and put on a better shirt and you know, comb their hair and make a video. And that’s really all they’ve got to do they, it’s about being casual and, you know, we, we don’t ask people to, you know, you put getting put on their suit, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s not about that it’s about who they really are and who they’re going to be every day when they show up to work.

William 5:20
So do they get to practice? Is there? Is there a mech-is there a mechanism in case you know, the word on their phone? And, you know, maybe there’s poor lighting, and they recognize that halfway through? Is there a way for them? On the candidate side? Is there a way for them to kind of take two, take three? That’s right.

Brent 5:37
Yeah, they can take as many takes as they want. It’s all it’s where you can do it on your computer. But we’re built for mobile-first because that’s what job search is anyway. Right. But yeah, I mean, it’s really as simple as if anybody’s ever made a Facebook or an Instagram video, or whatever, you record it. And if you don’t like it, you delete it, and you start over. I mean, that’s the way Jobeo is set up. I mean, if you get it the first time, or the 10th time, it’s, you just submit it when you’re ready.

William 6:07
I love that. I love that. Now, you’ve mentioned authentic and genuine a couple of times so far. Um, when we talk about employer brand, we on the corporate side, we talk about your job descriptions should both attract. But they should also repel. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. But it’s like you want the right talent. And I remember Rackspace used to do a great job of this down in San Antonio where they would their engineers would blog publicly. And so they would basically talk about, you know, we work in the dark, we drink a lot of Mountain Dew, we skate? You know, it’s like, yo, you know, it’s like, they were painting a culture. And if you as a candidate, you can either see yourself in that culture or not, and so it attracted, and it also repelled equally enough. What do you think? Do you think videos kind of, do you think these – your videos fit into that category?

Brent 7:06
100%. Again, you know, there’s a reason why 83% of job seekers, you know, rate, you know that the NPS score or whatever, of job search, is just horrible, okay. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a painful process, we’ve all heard the cliches about job search, you know, looking for a job is a full-time job and all that, and it shouldn’t be that way. But it’s gotten that way. Because everybody because it’s been digitalized. And it’s been made, it’s been a numbers game that’s too easy to apply to a job. So everybody has to apply to every job, just to feel like they have a chance of getting recognized. And it’s that’s wrong, you know, I think applications should actually be the second step in the process. And you know, Jobeo is the top of the funnel, you get all of, you get all the disclosure in the first step or as much as you can possibly do with a couple of minutes of video, which is actually quite a bit. So then the job seeker qualifies themself for the position. And that’s what you really want, you want the job seeker to confidently apply to click that apply button and take the next step. As opposed to these bullet points. Some of them look good. Some of them I’m not really qualified for but I think I’m going to apply anyway. And next thing, you know, you’re dealing with 250 applicants, when really only 10 to 20% of those applicants are legitimately qualified or even interested in the position.

William 8:41
So you mentioned workflow, which is where I was going to ask you about next. And you mentioned, top of the funnel front of the funnel, you advise that to basically say, you know what, let’s put it let’s put our best foot forward, and you put it as far out as possible. So that again, it kind of filters, filters, and filters out.

Brent 9:02
That’s right. That’s what we call it the video hiring portal. We want to be your gateway job, every job listing on Jobeo has a hyperlink. And however you want to disseminate that hyperlink, you know, just like your normal job description, instead of sending out a 1200 word, you know, job description, you know, the link to that. Now you just send out the link to your job to preview, right, and let that be the gateway. You know, your employees can text it to their friends, you can paste it on your social media, you can share it on a job board. If you still want to use job boards, that’s fine. But now, you’re going to automatically start calling, calling out people because again, they’re going to be self-qualified because they’ve seen the video.

William 9:47
So people will ask, Well, we know where in the flow. What is this tied to in their workflow? I’m assuming the ATS but I don’t want to assume anything. What were the, you know, when customers talk to you about this? Where do you advise them that they kind of tie this in data-wise.

Brent 10:08
So if you have an ATS, an employer, most of the time, they have an online application link right to the job. Jobeo has a field where you can input that hyperlink to your ATSs. And at the appropriate time after somebody has been shortlisted in Jobeo. When you want to advance them to a formal application, you can tap a button on Jobeo. And an automatic email gets generated through our system, and it gets sends it to the candidate and says, congratulations, we’d like to invite you to create your formal application. And that’s where they put in their name, their address, the stuff of the background, check all of that, because the best job seekers don’t want to do that in the first or even the second step.

William 10:57
It would make sense, you know, you’re doing something you want them to do pre-application, you want them to both see the company for what it’s worth, and then go Okay, yeah, this makes sense for me, and then take the next action, which would be in the ATS at that point.

Brent 11:16
Yeah, I was just talking with, a job seeker this morning, she was texting me about, you know, just some really good feedback. And she says, she talked about how the assessments that people are requiring her to do when she’s looking for a job, are a turn-off. And this is a very good candidate. I mean, she, she, she adds value or brings value to the table, she already has a job. But because of that, you know, she’s the quintessential passive job seeker that is not going to jump through a hoop unless she sees real value. And with Jobeo, she saw the value, she saw somebody that she said, Okay, I can work for that person, I want to learn more. And she had no problem creating a simple video application.

William 12:00
Love, love, love, love, love, love that. The industry so that when you’re looking down at the data, so far, industries or in job classes where this just works best to start with, where is that right now? What’s the data telling you?

Brent 12:18
Well, it’s tough, literally, it’s week to week. We don’t have a – we don’t have a ton of data to really draw a pretty picture yet. I will I’d like that to happen. But I mean, one of our first hires was an SAP analyst. Okay. And before we launched, we, when we were having this conversation, we were like, well, maybe we should just focus on sales and marketing or you know, very kind of left-brain creative, maybe they’d be more receptive to making videos. And then, sure enough, you know, we had an early hire was a welder, you know, very blue-collar, I mean, and the welder wasn’t even in the videos, he just showed pictures of his welds, and it just blew the company away. They’re like, this is the guy for us. He was behind the camera, showing that showing the welds, you know, the tigs, and the migs and, and all these vocabulary words, I don’t understand. But he wasn’t even on camera. He was behind there telling people what he did and how he did it. And in, you know, 60 seconds of video, they knew this was the guy for them. And the same thing with the SAP analyst. But obviously, we’ve been doing very well with sales and marketing positions. So I have, we’ve got a couple of meetings with fast-food restaurants, they love it as well. So it really does seem to be all across the board, very technical hires, analytical hires, as well as you know, marketing-driven hires.

William 13:46
I love that. I love that. I love that. Okay, so I want to go back to the demo for just a second. Because you’ve, you’ve done this for a bit on it, do the stop, start continue thing were like questions that you get asked from practitioners when you do a demo? What would you like to hear more? You know, what questions would you love to hear? What questions would you rather just kind of, you know, just kind of kill off? And what questions are consistent from demo to demo that just kind of come up every time? It just kind of comes up? And what are some of those questions as well?

Brent 14:27
Well, the first one is, you know, what about bias? You know, what about where does that come in here? Because, you know, it is so visual. And you know, and that’s kind of an easy thing to run to, when you’re when you don’t understand something or there’s something to you being put on the table when it comes to video. But honestly, first of all, if somebody was going to get sued for, you know, giving you a bias potential platform, it’d be like LinkedIn. I mean, they’re a $50 billion company and everybody’s got their, you know, profile image on LinkedIn. And when you’re in college, you go to the job fair, the career fair. And there’s always a booth in the corner that says, Get get your LinkedIn headshot here. So I actually tell people, though, that Listen, you know, your bias is, it’s going to occur, you know, sometimes no matter what, at any part of the funnel, that’s just more of a, that’s more of a “you” problem, you know, because it’s, it doesn’t matter what tool you use, if someone’s going to be biased, they’re going to be biased. And I don’t really like to focus on that, because I do think that it is rare, I do think that people are much more good than social media would, would like to portray these days. But the, the real advantage to Jobeo is we give people a platform, and a tool to put Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the top of the funnel. If you say those things matter to you, then we give you a tool that lets you go out there and get it, but not just based on their image, their skin color, their eyes, their hair, we give you a tool that gives you a 360-degree view of that person’s brand and culture at the very top of the funnel, so that you can make an educated decision on who you’re going to bring into your hiring process. And that’s, that’s what’s powerful about Jobeo, I mean, it really helps people meet their goals if they do have a DEI goal.

William 16:37
So metrics that the practitioners should pay attention to, when they use Jobeo. What does that look like?

Brent 16:45
Well, the number of applicants should drop dramatically, again, quality, not quantity, I still hear about, you know, recruiting staff that are judged by the number of applicants that, you know, come in, they report that and, excuse me, they report those numbers. And I’m just like, I just cringe, I’m like, you shouldn’t be judged on the number of applicants, that your number of interviews will reduce. We shrink the funnel, William, I mean, that’s essentially what we’re doing is we’re taking your funnel, and I think we’re, what the numbers, what the data is going to eventually show is a 50% drop in cost per hire, and a significantly reduced turnover rate. Because, I mean, whether it’s an entry-level job or a high-end job, one thing that happens now is people will take a job, just so they can, you know, fill the gap, you know, they’ve got to make rent. Okay, so Okay. You know, William – William made me an offer, I’m going to accept it, but what are they doing, they’re continuing to look for a job. And then 90 days later, they’re gone. And the reason why they have to do that is because the hiring process is so slow. And you know, they’ve been looking for months, they’ve just said, Hey, I got rent due next week, I’m going to take the next person that makes me an offer. And that’s, that’s not, it’s not fair to the applicant, and it’s not fair to the employer, you know, we’ve kind of dug this hole for ourselves by making it a numbers game. And when you reduce the size of the funnel, when you narrow it, and you make the gateway a little bit more strict, good things happen.

William 18:29
Love that. So for some people, this is new, right for some of the recruiting and, and TA, recruiting and HR leaders, obviously, this might be a little bit new for them. How do you get them over the hurdle? I mean, no one, no one’s created change. So I mean, I don’t want to put a position anybody is like the czar of change or anything like that. So we all consume change differently and poorly. How do you get them over the hurdle? That because I would assume that candidates are easier to get over the hurdle? It’s really dealing with the internal teams and recruiters and hiring managers and getting them over the hurdle. How do you do that?

Brent 19:09
Sure. Well, yeah, and first of all, say, yeah, it’s not for everybody, you know, not everybody, you know, embraced social media, Facebook, when it started, and, you know, and it just takes a little bit of time, and that and that’s, and that’s fine, you know, we get it. But as time goes on, we just tell people, our pitches, our offer is really simple. Like, you just give us one hire will do it for free, you know, and, and you when you see how much time is saved, I mean, it’s like, oh, they’re like, yeah, you just saved me 20 hours on a single hire, you know, and I was hesitant to take 60 seconds and ask my hiring manager to send me a quick selfie video, you know like they see the results, not to mention their hiring managers like yeah, you sent me three people to interview and I could have hired all three of them, they were all great. I mean, in that those kinds of things just didn’t happen in the past for them, you know, before it was 10 interviews, and one of them was maybe somewhat worthy of an offer, you know, but you get into the warm body syndrome, because after scheduling and waiting on 10 interviews, so much time has gone by, you just got to fill the position. And, again, that’s where the turnover metric comes into play. But that’s, that’s really, that’s really what we do, you know, or how we approach, you know, the demo and the pitch is just like, just try with just try one hire, and let’s see what happens.

William 20:38
Yeah, again, it’s a good try before you buy that. I love that model. But I also love that, you know, they’re going to know that if that is right for him or not for real quickly.

Brent 20:50
Yeah. And William too, what’s great about it is we’re not a complicated, robust ATS. This is not a platform where it’s okay, let’s set aside the next two weeks, you know, these this many hours, and we’re gonna have to offload and train and all of this kind of stuff. I mean, none of that. It’s really as simple as downloading an app on your phone. And, and, you know, in just a few minutes, you’re up and going. And if you don’t like it, you delete the app, no harm, no foul.

William 21:21
Right. So two things left. One is, we don’t need the dollars and cents, but the pricing model. So how do you conceptually go about pricing?

Brent 21:31
So it is a DIY tool, you know, it’s Software as a Service, $99 per job listing per month, anybody can go to the app store, or to Jobeo.net and start using the app right away. And we will contact you when it’s time to get billed. And we offer custom pricing, obviously for volume. But it starts at $99 per job listing per month, we also offer a full service recruiting plan that is completely contingent, we will do everything we will do all of the sourcing, we will do all of the recruiting, we will bring you a shortlist of video applications for your positions. And we will do it for less than half the normal agency rate, which is easily 20% for an outsourced recruiter. So this is something that’s kind of new that nobody’s ever seen. And it’s the reason why a lot of companies, even though they really would like to outsource their recruiting, can’t afford it because it’s a high turnover position, or, you know, it’s entry-level, it doesn’t make sense to pay 20 – 25% fees is which is what the normal, you know, headhunters will charge. So what we’ll do, William, is we will do it fully contingent, we’ll do everything for starting at 9%. For 9% of the annualized rate wage, and when it when you get into these kinds of fees, and again, fully contingent, this low of a fee, it really starts making sense to outsource pretty much every role that you have.

William 23:04
Yeah, I mean, what’s the risk at that point? Last – the last thing is what else should we know about Jobeo?

Brent 23:13
Well, you should know that we just we care about the job seeker. I mean, I started this company, because you know, I was there in 2008. You know, I was there, you know, sitting at the table, you know, looking at my wife while I was you know, applying for literally 50 jobs a day and hearing back from essentially zero, you know, and I was like, man, there’s got to be a better way. And then as I moved on and was a manager, I felt like there was just so much time and money and inefficiency. I said there’s got to be a better way. And this is a solution that benefits both sides of the coin. I want people to find the best job for them, so that they can, you know, stay put longer and build a career. And when that happens, employers succeed as well, because they get a better long-term commitment. They save money in the process, and all of their employee engagement goes up. And that’s really what we want to do. We want to help both sides, both sides of the table. Both sides of the job search.

William 24:17
I love it. I love it. Brent, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on Use Case Podcast and for us and really schooled us on Jobeo. Just thank you for your time.

Brent 24:29
Thank you, keep up the good work, William

William 24:31
Alrighty, and thanks to everyone that listens to the Use Case Podcast. Until next time.