October 27, 2023 • 22 mins
Ever wondered what it's like to start a tech startup in the middle of a pandemic? Join us as we engage in a riveting conversation with Andrew "Woody" Wood and Euan Cameron, the minds behind Willo, a recruitment tech startup born out of necessity and innovation during the COVID-19 crisis. Drawing from their personal experiences in recruitment, they shed light on the birth of Willo, the challenges they faced, and how the pandemic propelled the adoption of video quizzes in recruitment, changing the game entirely.
Imagine a future where AI tools streamline the recruitment process, identifying potential hires in record time. That's the world Willo envisions, and Ewan and Andrew are here to tell us how they plan to make it happen.
Special mini series recorded with Oleeo at HR Tech 2023 with hosts Ryan Leary, Brian Fink, and Shally Steckerl.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,
friends of all ages, welcome toOlio's recruiting daily podcast
man.
So many intros that I got to dofor this thing right.
So we are in the talentacquisition content lounge at
HRTech here in Las Vegas.
It is sponsored and powered byOlio, your source for
data-driven automatedrecruitment for ATS, crm's,
internet and Internet interviewsand events.
(00:22):
I'm joined by my co-host, ryanLeary.
That sounds like a personallywritten commercial.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
It was personalized.
Right, it was personalized, itwas personalized.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Speaking of personalized, do you want to
introduce?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
us to our two next guests.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I do, I do.
These are two guys.
That, how long has it?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
been.
I've been here for a long time.
How long has it been?
A couple years?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Three years.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Three years Three years I've been talking to them,
never met them.
It was the first time.
First time I'm seeing them inperson, which is cool.
They've got great logo.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Great logo.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
that's on your boat.
That's on my boat.
I love it.
I love it, I do.
I need to get a bigger one.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I need a bigger one.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I need a bigger boat.
No, no, it's got to fit in thegarage.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
We're going to need a bigger boat.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
If I come home with a bigger boat, I will not have a
family.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Is that something you're willing to do?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I mean I don't hate the answer.
That's a difficult question.
I appreciate that it's what youshould be asking Bigger boat or
family, I can do a lot with aboat.
The family is restricted.
I shouldn't say that Wow.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
All right, ladies and gentlemen, I'm Brian Finkalheim
.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
No longer joined by Ryan Leary.
I'm kidding.
So yeah, so we've got Ewan andwe've got Andrew, or you go by
Drew, woody, woody.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Woody Go by.
Woody, there you go.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I even changed my badge, you did you crossed it
out From Willow.
Hello, what's going on guys?
Speaker 3 (01:56):
It's awesome to be here.
Yeah, our first time in the US.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Your first time in the US Ever.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Wow, okay, and you picked Vegas.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
This is special.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Vegas HR tech event in the world.
We were quite excited.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah Well, I mean this is definitely the place to
be and it's the right time foryou guys to be here and to be
having a conversation not onlywith Recruiting Daily but, more
importantly, with our audience.
Today, as we were kind oftalking in the preview or the
pre-show I'm doing air quotesfor those of you who know that
this is a video podcast.
I mean an audio podcast we werehaving a conversation about the
(02:28):
vibe on the floor and what'sgoing on and what the big topics
are, and then it came out thaty'all actually have a background
in recruiting, not justtechnology to solve a recruiting
problem.
Who wants to talk about thelife of a recruiter to founder
of a tech company Like who wantsto talk about that first?
Speaker 4 (02:50):
I'm happy to.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Leave it a little bit .
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Thank you All right.
Thanks, woody, are youlistening?
Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Are you listening, whoa.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
So, yeah, working in recruitment is really hard
actually Almost harder thanstarting a tech business from
scratch, genuinely.
So I worked in recruitment for11 years, working in grad
recruitment with Rundstad.
Most people have heard ofRundstad.
I actually worked for a smallerdivision over Rundstad, A
(03:24):
company called Pareto shout outto Pareto.
Absolutely loved my time there,but obviously you were talking
about a candidate that.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah, I have a candidate that I just closed.
I'm pretty excited, yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
So congrats, good news, thank you.
But I think there's so manysimilarities between and this is
me being genuinely honestbetween being a recruiter and
actually starting your owncompany, the reason being, like
recruitment just never stops,never sleeps.
You can't turn your phone off.
Candidates are always wantingto talk to you at all times of
the day and you have to beabsolutely on it.
(03:55):
There's no difference betweenthat and running your own
business.
Really, and actually I thinkthe fact that, so if anybody is
in recruitment thinking, ah, doyou know what?
I'd really like to switch overto the tech world and do
something like that, like,absolutely, you have an amazing
grounding and an addiction toworking really hard right, and
that will set you up to be asuccessful tech founder, then
(04:18):
what you need is somebody that'sclever like Ewan to actually
join you and do the hard stuffTo make it work, yeah absolutely
so I can do the sales, I canwork really hard.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
We're going to hit you with that beer.
Ewan is now sitting in the wayof a champagne trolley.
What?
Speaker 4 (04:29):
are they doing Over here?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
First trip to the United States and there's a
champagne trolley.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
Oh man.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Wait till you see all the buffets and you'll see why
Americans look the way we do.
So let's talk more about Willow.
So you guys kicked this off.
How long now?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
January 2020.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Oh, what a time to start a company.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Yeah, three months of normality, and then COVID hit
yeah yeah, we got our firstclient February 2020 and we were
absolutely stoked.
We were like, yes, bang 40bucks in the bank.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Yeah, it was a tiny little client.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
We thought, yeah, and the men, everything's shut down
.
And then three months later,after March, everybody suddenly
goes oh shit, we got rid ofeveryone, we got everyone and
now we've got a hire again andwe can't meet anyone.
But luckily everybody's doingZoom video quizzes with their
cousins twice removed, sothey're suddenly comfortable
(05:28):
with video, right, and that'swhen it just went through the
roof.
Adoption just completelychanged.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
So about the adoption and what you've been doing at
Willow, you talked about theproblem that you're solving.
How has that problem changednow that we live in an
environment where candidates areusing generative AI to really
kind of game the system?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
That's a great question and it's obviously been
in our radar for a while.
But what's interesting aboutWillow is that we're recording
candidates on camera.
We're recording their immediateresponses to questions, and you
just can't create that with AIright now.
You can't immediately get thequestion.
You can't then read the scriptwithout it being obvious on
(06:12):
camera.
So we have this real benefitthat we're capturing everything
about the candidate on camera.
You can see them, you can hearthem, you can see where their
eyes are looking, you can seeall their interactions, and that
really rules out a lot of thegenerative AI.
You know script reading stuffthat you might expect to see.
We just capture it all.
There's a lot of data pointsthat you can read from those
(06:33):
Willow video interviews whichare just not possible to be
created through chat.
Do you think, for example and Ithink the other thing on that-
is right.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
If somebody manages to assimilate the information
that chatjbt gives you in aninstant and then deliver a
convincing video interview,right that they go.
Oh, this guy definitely did.
A guy, a girl didn't usegenerative AI to answer that
question, so they did.
That's the person you want inyour company, because in three
(07:01):
years, they're going to be thecalculators of the future.
Right, that is the skills youneed.
You need somebody in yourcompany that can use this stuff
to the point where it looks likethey're not.
That's my opinion when it comesto like in our world.
Frictionless, absolutely yeah,and if it's authentic if they
use it to guide their answer butnot give it.
You know, all of that stuffmeans that person's going to
(07:21):
come into your business.
They're going to be superliterate in AI and they're going
to help you supercharge thecompany.
So to me it's like a no-braineractually hiring those people.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
So you made a point about the eye contact.
There's an app, it's calledDescript.
Yeah, have you seen that?
Yeah, it's cool.
That's pretty fun.
That's pretty cool.
What does this do?
So look at the camera, but youcan read, I can look at you and
it makes me look at him.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Oh, it moves your eyes and moves your eyes.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
So if I was going to interview.
I'd literally just read it offhere and it makes me look here.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
What's cool about that?
As well, as the Willow doesn'tactually allow you to use that
kind of technology, so ourcamera capture technology is
native we're capturing thecamera from that person's device
, from right.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
So it doesn't allow it to.
It's rules are a lot of that,right, but it is a cool
technology yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
If you're a candidate with ADHD and you're going into
a live interview.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
It's really difficult to.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
I was going to ask about this.
Yeah, what accommodations do wemake for somebody who's
neurodivergent?
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Well, as a neurodivergent myself, we make
quite a lot within Willow, soour obsession has always been
for the candidate experience tobe the best possible experience
first.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Love that.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
From my perspective, it's great if you've got
something that really helpsrecruiters essentially assess
all of the candidates.
But what's even better is ifyou get a really great candidate
experience that goes along withthat, because then you get more
candidates to choose from,whereas if you have a real loads
of friction and it's reallydifficult and you've got ADHD or
dyslexia or whatever it may beand you just drop out of the
(09:07):
process, then your pool's justgetting too small and you're not
actually delivering anydiversity.
So we have things like ourthinking time.
It automatically rolls on soyou can still complete your
interview regardless.
It just notifies somebody.
So on dyslexic, I would nevergo to an employer and say, hey,
I really need some extra time,because I'm dyslexic Because
immediately there's unconsciousbias.
(09:30):
So we build it into the platformso they can give a quality
answer and then the recruitercan.
A discerning, well-trainedrecruiter can go.
Hey, they went a minute over,but it's a really great answer.
Maybe I should ask them ifactually they needed reasonable
adjustment.
So it's kind of trying to flipit around in a different way.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
So making those accommodations based upon the
human element and bringing someof the humanity back to
recruiting.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Absolutely yeah, and making those adjustments without
the candidate having to tellanybody.
So the candidate just makes theadjustment themselves in the
platform.
They aren't having to gothrough this sort of friction of
going to a set.
There's organizations that havereasonable adjustment teams
that you have to go in contact.
Yeah, it's a whole process.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
And we talked about this being frictionless and
inviting and candidate first andcandidate centric, going
through all those accommodations.
Yeah, you're shaking your head.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
It's not worth it.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
We can speak personally from our experience
for both dyslexic and neither ofus, when we were younger,
requested additional time oradditional support in our exams.
We just went to school, did theexams, suffered and suffered,
got lower grades than we wouldhave otherwise got, and that's
because there was too muchfriction.
We didn't want to be like heylook, I'm dyslexic, give me
extra time.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Well, please read my resume in a different way to
other people.
Yeah, because it's terrible.
It's got thousands of spellingerrors.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
And I can't structure a proper name Exactly.
You know it's one of my, acouple of my dogs.
Two of them have the samechallenge in school, but they
give them extra time.
So now they have that in school.
They give them extra time,smaller groups, they pull them
up and it has changed their lifein school.
(11:12):
It really has changed theirlife.
Prior to that, forget it.
Every night was just I mean sitdown and do it.
I mean sit down and just theidea of doing math homework,
forget it.
Or reading spelling, forget it.
It was over.
It was over.
Not that way anymore.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
So about things that are not that way anymore.
Video interviewing for thelongest time, I feel like you've
got a bad rap Right, like we'renodding our heads, we're
shaking our heads, we'rethinking about the use cases
that say this incurs bias.
This creates a.
This creates a.
It disenfranchises candidates.
How does Willow broaden thatspectrum, if you will, or
(11:55):
broaden that pool of candidatesby creating that great candidate
experience?
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Yeah, it's a really great question and absolutely
fundamental to what makes usdifferent to other video
platforms.
I feel like the platforms ofold that have given video
interviewing a bad rap.
They are the ones that focusedon I don't know if it's the
right word, but discriminatingcandidates to make a decision
(12:20):
quicker, Right.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
So I'm not going to focus on the candidate
experience.
I'm going to focus on making itdifficult for them to be good
so that I can get to a smallernumber quicker, whereas what we
want to do is we want to giveevery candidate the opportunity
to get their voice across, beunderstood etc.
And then give the recruits ofthe tools to assimilate that
information quickly throughthings like AI summaries etc.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Talking about the AI summary.
Tell me more about that, please.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
Yeah.
So at the moment, what we'redoing is we're developing our
generative AI, and what webelieve is, again passionately,
that a human should be making adecision, not the AI.
That's just our stance on it.
So what we want to do is we'regoing to transcribe all of the
interviews.
We're then going to summarizethem into short candidate you
know, almost like a resume basedon their answer that they gave
(13:10):
on the video, right.
But then, more importantly,what we want to do with our AI
is then give the recruiters someguidance around.
Hey, we didn't hear much ofthis in their answer.
This was kind of missing thiselement.
This was maybe weakness,pro-deepness.
Go into here.
These are the questions youshould be asking.
So you supercharge it becauseyou go this is a candidate I
(13:32):
really like, but I wonder whattheir weaknesses are.
I wonder what's missing, wheredo I need to ask the questions?
And we go hey, this is whereyou should spend your time, you
know, screening the candidate.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah, and how do you do that?
Like I mean, that's text-based,that's audio-based yeah, how do
you?
I'm not asking you to spill thesecret sauce here, like we had
the guys on from Raising Cain,and they sell sauce by the
32-ounce container, but can youtell us a little bit how the AI
works to do that?
And then I got a follow-upquestion.
(14:03):
I want to ask you about search.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Yeah, so all of our questions in Willow are text,
audio or video, but once youobviously transcribe them,
everything's text-based.
We work with all thetranscription, all the
text-based transcriptions, andthen we're essentially doing
like a gap analysis.
So our prompts are looking forgaps where the candidate maybe
didn't cover a topic very much,they maybe were a bit wooly on
their answer, or whether it wasjust no answer, it wasn't a very
(14:26):
strong response to the question.
Yeah, we're then flagging thosegaps, if you want to call it
that, and then saying, hey, youshould dig into this, you should
delve into this a little bitmore.
We've done the hard work aswell.
We've captured, you know, roundone interview, if you want to
put it that way, round one isdone.
And, by the way, here's a gap,here's a gap, here's a gap.
Go, delve into that one liveinterview.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
So I don't know this because I'm not using your tool.
So this is coming from a prettyvulnerable place.
Yeah, I'm a sorcerer first.
I'm a recruiter second.
Can I search for the wordPython in all of the interviews
that have taken place fordevelopers and engineers, the
(15:08):
same way that I would be able tolook inside my database?
Speaker 4 (15:10):
You will be able to next year.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Okay, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
So it's not live yet, but H1 next year absolutely.
You'll be able to go in andjust across every single video
interview that you have type inPython and find everybody that
ever mentioned it.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Okay because you know I sit here and I think you know
a candidate.
I could be interviewing acandidate for data science and
we just have a casualconversation about Python and R
and in its casual right, andthen I ask them different
questions about cloud technologybecause that's part into the
role I'm interviewing for at thetime.
But they were silver medalists,Absolutely.
How could I go back and findthat individual?
(15:47):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
That's, you know, silver medalists.
It's for us the beauty, thechallenge of doing telephone
interviews rather than doingthis kind of one-way video
interview is your telephoneinterview is gone, that's it.
It's evaporated.
It's memory and notes in a CRMat best right.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
At best it's human-entered information.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
With us, you have an audit trail of all these silver
medalists where you can go hey,who came second in that last
role?
And how do I find and surfaceall of these people in the
future?
Like to me, it's just bonkersthat you wouldn't have that
accessible, really vibrant dataabout somebody.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
And then you have to restart the process.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
but instead of restarting the process, you've
got those answers to yourquestions, but then the search
is taking you to the timestampof where it is in the video.
Exactly Right, you're juststarting there, so you watch
that.
You can then watch Exactly.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
You can watch 15 seconds before you get the
context.
You can watch the videoafterwards.
Or it might be an audio answerDon't forget this is also audio
answers or it might be textanswers.
They might have answered a bigparagraph attack as well.
They can search all of that.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
All right, and we talked about an AI summary.
How does that work?
Does anybody want to touch that?
Or is that secret sauce?
Speaker 3 (17:00):
So that is still secret sauce and the reason it's
secret sauce, and I'll give youthe background to that.
So we do just around a millioninterviews in the past 12 months
, so a million candidates.
It's a lot of data, as you'dimagine.
Each candidate is answeringabout five questions on video,
so five times a million, a lotof data.
What we're trying to do at themoment is figure out how do we
summarize that data best, basedon the past 12 months, and we
(17:22):
need to get to an accurate point.
We can't just summarizecandidates and say that's it.
It needs to actually bereflective of the whole answer,
or all of the answers.
So there's quite a lot of workstill to be done there.
So secret sauce at the moment.
But 2024 is our AI year andthat's when everything AI
focused on comes to the platform.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Alright, so you mentioned 2024.
I want to dial into that alittle bit deeper.
We talked at the top of thecall about UIs being recruiters
first and that you becametechnologists and built Willow
to kind of solve your ownproblem.
What do you see happening forrecruiters in 2024?
What trends do they need tostay on top of so that they can
(18:01):
be the best version ofthemselves?
Speaker 3 (18:04):
So the big one that we're seeing is efficiency.
How can you make your job moreefficient?
So obviously, things like AI.
How do you make your job moreefficient, better use of time,
more productive in the hoursthat you're actually working?
Large part of the stuff thatwe're doing at Willow is exactly
that, so it's helping them in2024 with their typically
smaller team potential in 2024.
My slimed down Sallie, how doyou continue to be as productive
(18:27):
and efficient as possible witha Sallie-type or TA team?
And that's things like you know.
Great technology helping youget to the right decisions
quicker, make the best use ofyour time.
So productivity is a big thingfor 2024.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Right, what you got, buddy.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
I'm loving it, man.
I've been following thisjourney since day one.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
And I think it's yeah , we love you for that.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I think you guys are doing amazing and seeing.
I mean, there's a lot of videocompanies that are out here.
I think their journeys havebeen.
They're a little longer right.
But I think it's very different.
I think you guys are a verydifferent team than where
they're at, so congrats on thejourney.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
I think you guys are doing a good job.
We're going to be the lastmover.
That's what you want to be.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
The last mover.
Okay, you're just the lastmover and you're going to do it
right.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
We don't have to meet the same mistakes, and I think
that's an important note.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
We probably could have put a load of AI stuff in
the platform already and reallydone a bad job of it and not
listen to what people actuallywant and need, and that's why
we're going to.
Next year is the year we'regoing to be the last mover and
take over the world.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Okay, world domination.
What are we, hey, brian?
What are we going to do today?
Speaker 3 (19:42):
We're going to do the same thing we always do, pinky.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
We're going to take it over the world.
So, having said that, is thereany question that we didn't ask
you, either about Willow orabout your personal journey that
you feel is pertinent to sharewith our audience?
I want to give you that partand that area to make space.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Yeah, best thing that I can say is, obviously we're
giving recruiters AI tools nextyear, which is big.
You know there's a lot of datain the platform.
We need to start making thatuseful and productive, trimming
that down.
The other piece that's veryexciting is we're bringing
scorecards in next year.
Oh so, scorecards customscorecards You're going to put
in the criteria so, as arecruiter, you can define the
criteria that you will assessall your candidates on.
(20:21):
But we'll also be giving youtemplates so you can come and
say, hey, willow, I need atemplate to assess this person
on.
You know they're going to be asenior sales hire for us
Consistency in the process.
Yeah, so not only are you thendoing consistent questions and
answers, but you're also thendoing consistent scoring
comparison.
So that's again a huge part ofwhat we're talking about next
year when I say productivitybeing efficient with your time,
(20:44):
being efficient with yourscorecards as well.
So we're going to bake thesescorecards in.
It'll be very easy for you toanswer the scorecards as well.
So, as a recruiter, you canjust click through.
You can click through, you candraft those as well, so you
don't need to save it.
But it's also saving, and whenyou're ready, you submit it.
Everyone in your team does thesame thing, all your hiring
managers.
Data is coming in, it's allflowing in, and then it just
says, hey, this is thecandidate's score highest and
(21:06):
you can compare them all likefor like.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
And now, as that, as you get a lot of those in, you
have a million interviews thatlast one month.
Let's say you get a million ofthese over the next 12 months.
You can then say people scoringhere generally, performing here
Correct, yeah, so it's a bit ofa long play.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
This, yeah, all of this is long play.
You can't do all the thingswe're talking about next year
without years worth of dataRight.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
This is good man, I'm excited this has been a great
conversation.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
It's been.
It's been noisy here on thefloor.
There's an energy in the room.
There's an energy in thisconversation.
I want to thank Woody, I wantto thank you and thank you both
for joining us.
Thank you for making candidateshave a better experience.
I'm Brian, he's Ryan.
We're here in the Olio talentacquisition content Mostuted now
(21:56):
loading.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,
friends of all ages, welcome toOlio's recruiting daily podcast
man.
So many intros that I got to dofor this thing right.
So we are in the talentacquisition content lounge at
HRTech here in Las Vegas.
It is sponsored and powered byOlio, your source for
data-driven automatedrecruitment for ATS, crm's,
internet and Internet interviewsand events.
(00:22):
I'm joined by my co-host, ryanLeary.
That sounds like a personallywritten commercial.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
It was personalized.
Right, it was personalized, itwas personalized.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Speaking of personalized, do you want to
introduce?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
us to our two next guests.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I do, I do.
These are two guys.
That, how long has it?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
been.
I've been here for a long time.
How long has it been?
A couple years?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Three years.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Three years Three years I've been talking to them,
never met them.
It was the first time.
First time I'm seeing them inperson, which is cool.
They've got great logo.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Great logo.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
that's on your boat.
That's on my boat.
I love it.
I love it, I do.
I need to get a bigger one.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I need a bigger one.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I need a bigger boat.
No, no, it's got to fit in thegarage.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
We're going to need a bigger boat.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
If I come home with a bigger boat, I will not have a
family.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Is that something you're willing to do?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I mean I don't hate the answer.
That's a difficult question.
I appreciate that it's what youshould be asking Bigger boat or
family, I can do a lot with aboat.
The family is restricted.
I shouldn't say that Wow.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
All right, ladies and gentlemen, I'm Brian Finkalheim
.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
No longer joined by Ryan Leary.
I'm kidding.
So yeah, so we've got Ewan andwe've got Andrew, or you go by
Drew, woody, woody.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Woody Go by.
Woody, there you go.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I even changed my badge, you did you crossed it
out From Willow.
Hello, what's going on guys?
Speaker 3 (01:56):
It's awesome to be here.
Yeah, our first time in the US.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Your first time in the US Ever.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Wow, okay, and you picked Vegas.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
This is special.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Vegas HR tech event in the world.
We were quite excited.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah Well, I mean this is definitely the place to
be and it's the right time foryou guys to be here and to be
having a conversation not onlywith Recruiting Daily but, more
importantly, with our audience.
Today, as we were kind oftalking in the preview or the
pre-show I'm doing air quotesfor those of you who know that
this is a video podcast.
I mean an audio podcast we werehaving a conversation about the
(02:28):
vibe on the floor and what'sgoing on and what the big topics
are, and then it came out thaty'all actually have a background
in recruiting, not justtechnology to solve a recruiting
problem.
Who wants to talk about thelife of a recruiter to founder
of a tech company Like who wantsto talk about that first?
Speaker 4 (02:50):
I'm happy to.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Leave it a little bit .
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Thank you All right.
Thanks, woody, are youlistening?
Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Are you listening, whoa.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
So, yeah, working in recruitment is really hard
actually Almost harder thanstarting a tech business from
scratch, genuinely.
So I worked in recruitment for11 years, working in grad
recruitment with Rundstad.
Most people have heard ofRundstad.
I actually worked for a smallerdivision over Rundstad, A
(03:24):
company called Pareto shout outto Pareto.
Absolutely loved my time there,but obviously you were talking
about a candidate that.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah, I have a candidate that I just closed.
I'm pretty excited, yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
So congrats, good news, thank you.
But I think there's so manysimilarities between and this is
me being genuinely honestbetween being a recruiter and
actually starting your owncompany, the reason being, like
recruitment just never stops,never sleeps.
You can't turn your phone off.
Candidates are always wantingto talk to you at all times of
the day and you have to beabsolutely on it.
(03:55):
There's no difference betweenthat and running your own
business.
Really, and actually I thinkthe fact that, so if anybody is
in recruitment thinking, ah, doyou know what?
I'd really like to switch overto the tech world and do
something like that, like,absolutely, you have an amazing
grounding and an addiction toworking really hard right, and
that will set you up to be asuccessful tech founder, then
(04:18):
what you need is somebody that'sclever like Ewan to actually
join you and do the hard stuffTo make it work, yeah absolutely
so I can do the sales, I canwork really hard.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
We're going to hit you with that beer.
Ewan is now sitting in the wayof a champagne trolley.
What?
Speaker 4 (04:29):
are they doing Over here?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
First trip to the United States and there's a
champagne trolley.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
Oh man.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Wait till you see all the buffets and you'll see why
Americans look the way we do.
So let's talk more about Willow.
So you guys kicked this off.
How long now?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
January 2020.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Oh, what a time to start a company.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Yeah, three months of normality, and then COVID hit
yeah yeah, we got our firstclient February 2020 and we were
absolutely stoked.
We were like, yes, bang 40bucks in the bank.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Yeah, it was a tiny little client.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
We thought, yeah, and the men, everything's shut down
.
And then three months later,after March, everybody suddenly
goes oh shit, we got rid ofeveryone, we got everyone and
now we've got a hire again andwe can't meet anyone.
But luckily everybody's doingZoom video quizzes with their
cousins twice removed, sothey're suddenly comfortable
(05:28):
with video, right, and that'swhen it just went through the
roof.
Adoption just completelychanged.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
So about the adoption and what you've been doing at
Willow, you talked about theproblem that you're solving.
How has that problem changednow that we live in an
environment where candidates areusing generative AI to really
kind of game the system?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
That's a great question and it's obviously been
in our radar for a while.
But what's interesting aboutWillow is that we're recording
candidates on camera.
We're recording their immediateresponses to questions, and you
just can't create that with AIright now.
You can't immediately get thequestion.
You can't then read the scriptwithout it being obvious on
(06:12):
camera.
So we have this real benefitthat we're capturing everything
about the candidate on camera.
You can see them, you can hearthem, you can see where their
eyes are looking, you can seeall their interactions, and that
really rules out a lot of thegenerative AI.
You know script reading stuffthat you might expect to see.
We just capture it all.
There's a lot of data pointsthat you can read from those
(06:33):
Willow video interviews whichare just not possible to be
created through chat.
Do you think, for example and Ithink the other thing on that-
is right.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
If somebody manages to assimilate the information
that chatjbt gives you in aninstant and then deliver a
convincing video interview,right that they go.
Oh, this guy definitely did.
A guy, a girl didn't usegenerative AI to answer that
question, so they did.
That's the person you want inyour company, because in three
(07:01):
years, they're going to be thecalculators of the future.
Right, that is the skills youneed.
You need somebody in yourcompany that can use this stuff
to the point where it looks likethey're not.
That's my opinion when it comesto like in our world.
Frictionless, absolutely yeah,and if it's authentic if they
use it to guide their answer butnot give it.
You know, all of that stuffmeans that person's going to
(07:21):
come into your business.
They're going to be superliterate in AI and they're going
to help you supercharge thecompany.
So to me it's like a no-braineractually hiring those people.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
So you made a point about the eye contact.
There's an app, it's calledDescript.
Yeah, have you seen that?
Yeah, it's cool.
That's pretty fun.
That's pretty cool.
What does this do?
So look at the camera, but youcan read, I can look at you and
it makes me look at him.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Oh, it moves your eyes and moves your eyes.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
So if I was going to interview.
I'd literally just read it offhere and it makes me look here.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
What's cool about that?
As well, as the Willow doesn'tactually allow you to use that
kind of technology, so ourcamera capture technology is
native we're capturing thecamera from that person's device
, from right.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
So it doesn't allow it to.
It's rules are a lot of that,right, but it is a cool
technology yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
If you're a candidate with ADHD and you're going into
a live interview.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
It's really difficult to.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
I was going to ask about this.
Yeah, what accommodations do wemake for somebody who's
neurodivergent?
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Well, as a neurodivergent myself, we make
quite a lot within Willow, soour obsession has always been
for the candidate experience tobe the best possible experience
first.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Love that.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
From my perspective, it's great if you've got
something that really helpsrecruiters essentially assess
all of the candidates.
But what's even better is ifyou get a really great candidate
experience that goes along withthat, because then you get more
candidates to choose from,whereas if you have a real loads
of friction and it's reallydifficult and you've got ADHD or
dyslexia or whatever it may beand you just drop out of the
(09:07):
process, then your pool's justgetting too small and you're not
actually delivering anydiversity.
So we have things like ourthinking time.
It automatically rolls on soyou can still complete your
interview regardless.
It just notifies somebody.
So on dyslexic, I would nevergo to an employer and say, hey,
I really need some extra time,because I'm dyslexic Because
immediately there's unconsciousbias.
(09:30):
So we build it into the platformso they can give a quality
answer and then the recruitercan.
A discerning, well-trainedrecruiter can go.
Hey, they went a minute over,but it's a really great answer.
Maybe I should ask them ifactually they needed reasonable
adjustment.
So it's kind of trying to flipit around in a different way.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
So making those accommodations based upon the
human element and bringing someof the humanity back to
recruiting.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Absolutely yeah, and making those adjustments without
the candidate having to tellanybody.
So the candidate just makes theadjustment themselves in the
platform.
They aren't having to gothrough this sort of friction of
going to a set.
There's organizations that havereasonable adjustment teams
that you have to go in contact.
Yeah, it's a whole process.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
And we talked about this being frictionless and
inviting and candidate first andcandidate centric, going
through all those accommodations.
Yeah, you're shaking your head.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
It's not worth it.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
We can speak personally from our experience
for both dyslexic and neither ofus, when we were younger,
requested additional time oradditional support in our exams.
We just went to school, did theexams, suffered and suffered,
got lower grades than we wouldhave otherwise got, and that's
because there was too muchfriction.
We didn't want to be like heylook, I'm dyslexic, give me
extra time.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Well, please read my resume in a different way to
other people.
Yeah, because it's terrible.
It's got thousands of spellingerrors.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
And I can't structure a proper name Exactly.
You know it's one of my, acouple of my dogs.
Two of them have the samechallenge in school, but they
give them extra time.
So now they have that in school.
They give them extra time,smaller groups, they pull them
up and it has changed their lifein school.
(11:12):
It really has changed theirlife.
Prior to that, forget it.
Every night was just I mean sitdown and do it.
I mean sit down and just theidea of doing math homework,
forget it.
Or reading spelling, forget it.
It was over.
It was over.
Not that way anymore.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
So about things that are not that way anymore.
Video interviewing for thelongest time, I feel like you've
got a bad rap Right, like we'renodding our heads, we're
shaking our heads, we'rethinking about the use cases
that say this incurs bias.
This creates a.
This creates a.
It disenfranchises candidates.
How does Willow broaden thatspectrum, if you will, or
(11:55):
broaden that pool of candidatesby creating that great candidate
experience?
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Yeah, it's a really great question and absolutely
fundamental to what makes usdifferent to other video
platforms.
I feel like the platforms ofold that have given video
interviewing a bad rap.
They are the ones that focusedon I don't know if it's the
right word, but discriminatingcandidates to make a decision
(12:20):
quicker, Right.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
So I'm not going to focus on the candidate
experience.
I'm going to focus on making itdifficult for them to be good
so that I can get to a smallernumber quicker, whereas what we
want to do is we want to giveevery candidate the opportunity
to get their voice across, beunderstood etc.
And then give the recruits ofthe tools to assimilate that
information quickly throughthings like AI summaries etc.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Talking about the AI summary.
Tell me more about that, please.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
Yeah.
So at the moment, what we'redoing is we're developing our
generative AI, and what webelieve is, again passionately,
that a human should be making adecision, not the AI.
That's just our stance on it.
So what we want to do is we'regoing to transcribe all of the
interviews.
We're then going to summarizethem into short candidate you
know, almost like a resume basedon their answer that they gave
(13:10):
on the video, right.
But then, more importantly,what we want to do with our AI
is then give the recruiters someguidance around.
Hey, we didn't hear much ofthis in their answer.
This was kind of missing thiselement.
This was maybe weakness,pro-deepness.
Go into here.
These are the questions youshould be asking.
So you supercharge it becauseyou go this is a candidate I
(13:32):
really like, but I wonder whattheir weaknesses are.
I wonder what's missing, wheredo I need to ask the questions?
And we go hey, this is whereyou should spend your time, you
know, screening the candidate.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah, and how do you do that?
Like I mean, that's text-based,that's audio-based yeah, how do
you?
I'm not asking you to spill thesecret sauce here, like we had
the guys on from Raising Cain,and they sell sauce by the
32-ounce container, but can youtell us a little bit how the AI
works to do that?
And then I got a follow-upquestion.
(14:03):
I want to ask you about search.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Yeah, so all of our questions in Willow are text,
audio or video, but once youobviously transcribe them,
everything's text-based.
We work with all thetranscription, all the
text-based transcriptions, andthen we're essentially doing
like a gap analysis.
So our prompts are looking forgaps where the candidate maybe
didn't cover a topic very much,they maybe were a bit wooly on
their answer, or whether it wasjust no answer, it wasn't a very
(14:26):
strong response to the question.
Yeah, we're then flagging thosegaps, if you want to call it
that, and then saying, hey, youshould dig into this, you should
delve into this a little bitmore.
We've done the hard work aswell.
We've captured, you know, roundone interview, if you want to
put it that way, round one isdone.
And, by the way, here's a gap,here's a gap, here's a gap.
Go, delve into that one liveinterview.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
So I don't know this because I'm not using your tool.
So this is coming from a prettyvulnerable place.
Yeah, I'm a sorcerer first.
I'm a recruiter second.
Can I search for the wordPython in all of the interviews
that have taken place fordevelopers and engineers, the
(15:08):
same way that I would be able tolook inside my database?
Speaker 4 (15:10):
You will be able to next year.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Okay, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
So it's not live yet, but H1 next year absolutely.
You'll be able to go in andjust across every single video
interview that you have type inPython and find everybody that
ever mentioned it.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Okay because you know I sit here and I think you know
a candidate.
I could be interviewing acandidate for data science and
we just have a casualconversation about Python and R
and in its casual right, andthen I ask them different
questions about cloud technologybecause that's part into the
role I'm interviewing for at thetime.
But they were silver medalists,Absolutely.
How could I go back and findthat individual?
(15:47):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
That's, you know, silver medalists.
It's for us the beauty, thechallenge of doing telephone
interviews rather than doingthis kind of one-way video
interview is your telephoneinterview is gone, that's it.
It's evaporated.
It's memory and notes in a CRMat best right.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
At best it's human-entered information.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
With us, you have an audit trail of all these silver
medalists where you can go hey,who came second in that last
role?
And how do I find and surfaceall of these people in the
future?
Like to me, it's just bonkersthat you wouldn't have that
accessible, really vibrant dataabout somebody.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
And then you have to restart the process.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
but instead of restarting the process, you've
got those answers to yourquestions, but then the search
is taking you to the timestampof where it is in the video.
Exactly Right, you're juststarting there, so you watch
that.
You can then watch Exactly.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
You can watch 15 seconds before you get the
context.
You can watch the videoafterwards.
Or it might be an audio answerDon't forget this is also audio
answers or it might be textanswers.
They might have answered a bigparagraph attack as well.
They can search all of that.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
All right, and we talked about an AI summary.
How does that work?
Does anybody want to touch that?
Or is that secret sauce?
Speaker 3 (17:00):
So that is still secret sauce and the reason it's
secret sauce, and I'll give youthe background to that.
So we do just around a millioninterviews in the past 12 months
, so a million candidates.
It's a lot of data, as you'dimagine.
Each candidate is answeringabout five questions on video,
so five times a million, a lotof data.
What we're trying to do at themoment is figure out how do we
summarize that data best, basedon the past 12 months, and we
(17:22):
need to get to an accurate point.
We can't just summarizecandidates and say that's it.
It needs to actually bereflective of the whole answer,
or all of the answers.
So there's quite a lot of workstill to be done there.
So secret sauce at the moment.
But 2024 is our AI year andthat's when everything AI
focused on comes to the platform.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Alright, so you mentioned 2024.
I want to dial into that alittle bit deeper.
We talked at the top of thecall about UIs being recruiters
first and that you becametechnologists and built Willow
to kind of solve your ownproblem.
What do you see happening forrecruiters in 2024?
What trends do they need tostay on top of so that they can
(18:01):
be the best version ofthemselves?
Speaker 3 (18:04):
So the big one that we're seeing is efficiency.
How can you make your job moreefficient?
So obviously, things like AI.
How do you make your job moreefficient, better use of time,
more productive in the hoursthat you're actually working?
Large part of the stuff thatwe're doing at Willow is exactly
that, so it's helping them in2024 with their typically
smaller team potential in 2024.
My slimed down Sallie, how doyou continue to be as productive
(18:27):
and efficient as possible witha Sallie-type or TA team?
And that's things like you know.
Great technology helping youget to the right decisions
quicker, make the best use ofyour time.
So productivity is a big thingfor 2024.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Right, what you got, buddy.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
I'm loving it, man.
I've been following thisjourney since day one.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
And I think it's yeah , we love you for that.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I think you guys are doing amazing and seeing.
I mean, there's a lot of videocompanies that are out here.
I think their journeys havebeen.
They're a little longer right.
But I think it's very different.
I think you guys are a verydifferent team than where
they're at, so congrats on thejourney.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
I think you guys are doing a good job.
We're going to be the lastmover.
That's what you want to be.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
The last mover.
Okay, you're just the lastmover and you're going to do it
right.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
We don't have to meet the same mistakes, and I think
that's an important note.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
We probably could have put a load of AI stuff in
the platform already and reallydone a bad job of it and not
listen to what people actuallywant and need, and that's why
we're going to.
Next year is the year we'regoing to be the last mover and
take over the world.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Okay, world domination.
What are we, hey, brian?
What are we going to do today?
Speaker 3 (19:42):
We're going to do the same thing we always do, pinky.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
We're going to take it over the world.
So, having said that, is thereany question that we didn't ask
you, either about Willow orabout your personal journey that
you feel is pertinent to sharewith our audience?
I want to give you that partand that area to make space.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Yeah, best thing that I can say is, obviously we're
giving recruiters AI tools nextyear, which is big.
You know there's a lot of datain the platform.
We need to start making thatuseful and productive, trimming
that down.
The other piece that's veryexciting is we're bringing
scorecards in next year.
Oh so, scorecards customscorecards You're going to put
in the criteria so, as arecruiter, you can define the
criteria that you will assessall your candidates on.
(20:21):
But we'll also be giving youtemplates so you can come and
say, hey, willow, I need atemplate to assess this person
on.
You know they're going to be asenior sales hire for us
Consistency in the process.
Yeah, so not only are you thendoing consistent questions and
answers, but you're also thendoing consistent scoring
comparison.
So that's again a huge part ofwhat we're talking about next
year when I say productivitybeing efficient with your time,
(20:44):
being efficient with yourscorecards as well.
So we're going to bake thesescorecards in.
It'll be very easy for you toanswer the scorecards as well.
So, as a recruiter, you canjust click through.
You can click through, you candraft those as well, so you
don't need to save it.
But it's also saving, and whenyou're ready, you submit it.
Everyone in your team does thesame thing, all your hiring
managers.
Data is coming in, it's allflowing in, and then it just
says, hey, this is thecandidate's score highest and
(21:06):
you can compare them all likefor like.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
And now, as that, as you get a lot of those in, you
have a million interviews thatlast one month.
Let's say you get a million ofthese over the next 12 months.
You can then say people scoringhere generally, performing here
Correct, yeah, so it's a bit ofa long play.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
This, yeah, all of this is long play.
You can't do all the thingswe're talking about next year
without years worth of dataRight.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
This is good man, I'm excited this has been a great
conversation.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
It's been.
It's been noisy here on thefloor.
There's an energy in the room.
There's an energy in thisconversation.
I want to thank Woody, I wantto thank you and thank you both
for joining us.
Thank you for making candidateshave a better experience.
I'm Brian, he's Ryan.
We're here in the Olio talentacquisition content Mostuted now
(21:56):
loading.
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