Sean Mallapurkar joins host James Mackey to discuss the pivotal role technology is playing in shaping the future of staffing. Sean shares his remarkable journey from launching Recruit CRM to growing it into a global organization. Sean and James explore how recruitment professionals can benefit from integrating various technological solutions to streamline their processes and enhance their overall efficiency.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, welcome to the Breakthrough Hiring Show.
I'm your host, James Mackey.
Today, we're joined by SeanMalapukar.
Sean, welcome to the show.
Thanks, james, and we're veryexcited to host you today.
We're gonna have a lot of funtalking, I think, just about
recruiting technology and howit's impacting the staffing and
recruiting industry and otherindustries as well, and
(00:22):
hopefully this will be a veryinformative episode for our
audience If you're looking forthe latest trends and
technologies out there in theway that leaders are thinking
about the evolution of tech andproduct within the space.
So anyways, sean, to kick usoff, we'd love to learn more
about you.
Maybe we could start with yourbackground and you could get
into telling us a little bitabout the founding of CRM
(00:43):
afterward and you could get intotelling us a little bit about
the founding of Recruit CRMafterward?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Absolutely, and, james, it's an absolute pleasure
to be here, just for theaudience to know.
Like fun story, I pitched JamesRecruit CRM when we just
launched a year into uslaunching in like 2019.
We launched in 2018.
And I send them like personalvideos and messages and stuff.
So it's awesome to finally getto be in front of him face to
face Obviously not selling ourproduct anymore and just talk
(01:07):
about the journey from thatpoint to now as well is
incredible.
So just a few quick stats onRecruit CRM and who we are.
Recruit CRM is an ATS and CRMplus everything system for
recruiting and staffing firms.
We do everything from helpingrecruiting and staffing firms
run their customer relationships, their candidate relationships,
(01:29):
pipeline management, generatingexecutive search reports,
publishing jobs on their website, publishing jobs on over 2000
job boards across the world,setting up advanced analytics
and customer reporting, managingtheir website if I didn't
mention that already.
Setting up Zapier-like workflowautomation so we can help you
integrate all the tools you useto each other.
(01:50):
And also helping you messagepeople on LinkedIn view messages
that your colleagues aresending to people on LinkedIn
right on one platform in one CRM.
So the idea is we help you doeverything that a recruitment
firm needs in one place.
The reason I got into this isnot by choice, so I didn't
choose to be a recruitmententrepreneur, I was forced so
(02:11):
when I was five years old.
From the time I was five yearsold, my dad worked for a
recruiting and staffing firm.
My dad used to be the CEO ofRunstud's India business.
If you're not on video, I'mIndian.
I look very Indian and growingup, dad was part of Runstud.
As they grew from 80, 90consultants to a couple thousand
consultants.
They paid him well for doingthat job.
(02:32):
He used that money to pay formy ripoff American college
education.
And as I graduated from collegeand ran a failed startup in the
Bay Area right after graduating,my dad called me and he
basically said I'm starting atech company and since I paid
for college, you're my slave.
And so I and dad startedRecruit CRM together because he
(02:55):
had subject matter expertise andhe needed someone who
understood tech to come in andhelp him build that product.
Since then, the two of us havebootstrapped Recruit CRM from
the two of us to just under 200people on our team.
We serve just under 2000recruiting and staffing
businesses and a fewcorporations and private equity
(03:15):
firms across the world, andthey're spread across 103
countries, and that's who we are.
The one thing we're most proudof is, in the whole journey from
zero to like circa 10 millionin subscriptions, we have never
raised a dollar of debt orequity.
It's a completely family-ownedsoftware business producing a
(03:36):
few million in profit every year, which is probably rare for
software businesses, and I'mbased out of Dubai.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
That's incredible.
It's a huge success story.
It's really impressive and I'mlooking forward to learning more
about what you've built.
And you've certainly developedquite the brand and reputation,
and I know a lot of folks in thestaffing and recruiting
industry have certainly eitherworked with you or heard of you
or currently considering you,and it sounds like your team
just continues to pick upmomentum, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yeah, we're outside of maybe one or two products
that are in the market.
We have the most engineers onour team as well.
So of the 200 people we have onour team, over 90 are software
engineers, and if you addproduct managers and UI
developers on top of that, it'slike 55 to 60% of our team.
So we're constantly churningout features.
(04:24):
We literally launch or makebetween 50 to 20 releases a
month, so there's always a newupdate.
That's what helps us stay ontop of our game.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Okay, well, I'm excited to learn more about
those and I have been goingthrough your website and I did
before this recording as welljust to try to get a feel for
what you do and the company hasgrown so much.
You have a pretty significantproduct suite.
It looks like I love it.
I don't know if you wouldconsider it more of an
(04:54):
all-in-one play, but it seemsthat, yeah, I'm seeing a lot of
the most successful companies inrecruiting technology whether
it's in-house corporate teams orstaffing start to go in that
direction, and the level ofsophistication with these
all-in-one products are muchbetter than the all-in-one
solutions we were seeing on themarket five, 10 years ago.
So it's a very compelling usecase for sure.
(05:17):
I wanted to get an overview onyour primary product offerings.
I know it's applicant trackingsystem, crm, but maybe could you
break down the differentproducts and the high level
workflow of what your productdoes.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Absolutely so.
The core of the platform, whichis probably, if we have five or
six products, the flagship, atsand CRM is, let's say, 70% of
the feature set right, and theATS and CRM is essentially the
full forms are applicanttracking system.
Crm is customer relationshipmanagement system, but basically
what it does is it helps youmanage candidates, clients,
(05:53):
client contacts, jobs and dealsin one place, along with all of
your tasks, meetings, emails,linkedin messages, outbound
sequences so you don't need aseparate tool like outreach and
voice over IP.
So you can actually buy phonenumbers from us, that you can
register those phone numbers todifferent users on your team and
then they can make phone callsusing our mobile app or the
(06:16):
computer to candidates orclients or receive phone calls
that are all recorded,transcripted and AI summarized.
So it's not just an ATS or CRMsystem, it is everything.
So people use our system to goto LinkedIn, source candidates
or source clients, put them inthe system, format resumes and
(06:37):
CVs, so we reformat documentsfor people.
You can put candidates orclient into email sequences.
You can message people onLinkedIn from within Recruit CRM
.
You can then call them andrecord and transcribe those
calls with candidates or clients, whether it's picking up a job
description from a client orhaving a conversation with a
candidate about what they'relooking for, and so you're able
(06:59):
to understand that withouthaving to listen to the entire
call recording, because it'ssummarized.
We give you Kanban boards soyou can look at a Kanban board
of revenue opportunities ordeals or leads you're talking to
, or candidates within differentstages within a specific job,
within all jobs a consultant isworking on, or all jobs with a
client.
You can then send the clientcandidates, either via email
(07:22):
with attachments or via a portalwhere the client can log in and
actually look at candidates andgive you feedback and even send
you new requisitions or jobs towork on.
So there's the two-waycommunication there.
Then you commission calculations, reports, analytics on that
data, and then a lot of ourproduct or add-on suite is built
(07:45):
through partnerships.
So we've partnered with a lotof companies.
Like for analytics, we'vepartnered with a company called
Metabase, where you're able toactually get Metabase analytics
within Recruit CRM.
So when you get a lot of CRMproducts, what happens is most
of the times you have to runanalytics separately on an
advanced analytics platform likea Power BI or a Tableau or a
(08:07):
Looker, and you have to take allthe data from your CRM and you
need to figure out some wayusually through APIs if you need
it to be live, to put it in adata warehouse and then run an
analytics tool on top of it.
What we've done is we'velicensed an analytics tool, put
it into Recruit CRM, into awindow inside Recruit CRM,
gotten BI analysts, trained themon staffing and recruiting use
(08:31):
cases and then told ourcustomers we've already taken
your data, it's already in aworld-class analytics platform.
And then here are people whoare going to help you build
whatever reports you want.
You can put them on a TV, dogamification, like anything and
everything Same with workflowautomation.
So we've worked with a companycalled Workato, which is similar
to Zapier but more enterprise,and we basically embedded it
(08:52):
within Recruit CRM and we go toour customers and we say, hey,
instead of going buying Zapier,get this through us at a very
similar price.
But we will give you experts onour team who have set up
automations for recruitmentagencies who will help you set
up best practices, everythingfrom if you submit a candidate
to a client, if they don't reactwithin two days, send the
(09:12):
recruiter a notification tofollow up with them, or send the
client a notification If acandidate is stuck in a specific
hiring stage for more than acertain amount of days.
Give the recruiter anotification Every time you make
a placement.
Once the person joins, sendthem a survey.
If they respond to the surveyas being super happy, send them
another form to give you, like aGoogle review.
Create a DocuSign contract,stuff that can help you
(09:34):
basically run your businessbetter, plus just pushing data
into other tools you need.
So this is stuff we do on topof the traditional ATS and CRM.
And then we work with a companycalled Wong for multi-posting,
where you can buy ads or evenplace ads on over 2000 job
boards across the world andstuff like that.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
So, with these different partnerships, are they
signing agreements with yourpartners or does all the
contract run through you?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Everything runs through us.
So you have one customer successmanager, you have one contract,
which is with Recruit CRM, andyou basically just take an
add-ons into your subscriptionwith us, like when you buy the
product.
Even there, in a couple ofmonths we're introducing an
all-in-one plan That'll be alittle more expensive but
include everything.
So you don't have to separatelychoose and pick and get your
(10:19):
procurement team to approvedifferent add-ons six months
later.
And yeah, and the only thing isdepending on which product
you're using, specifically thetechnical products, let's say,
advanced analytics or workflowautomation we have different
people within our team who aretrained to implement those who
also get who the CSM also bringsin to help you implement those
(10:41):
parts of the product.
But you're never talking to like.
If there's a problem in any ofthese products, you talk to us.
You don't have to talk to eachsub-vendor.
So you as a 10% agency or 20%agency doesn't have to buy
analytics separately and thenset up your own Zaps and Zapier
and then set up Recruit CRM andthen figure out the API link to
(11:02):
your website and then, ifsomething breaks, continuously
reach out to four differentpeople to figure out what works
and what doesn't.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
We just do everything and then are you targeting the
entire different customer sizeswithin staffing and recruiting,
so SMB to enterprise, or do youhave a sweet spot?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
So it's largely I'd say mostly SMB to mid markets
where customers range from oneuser to like 250, 300 users.
We don't have the 5,000 userLike.
When I say, when you sayenterprise, I think of Hayes and
Michael Page.
Sure, hayes is a customer,though, actually, while I say
that.
But we're an approved vendorfor Hayes RPOs, which means that
(11:40):
is specifically in the EuropeanUnion, in the EU.
So if Hayes is an RPO with, letsay, klm, the airline they
bring us in and then we deployit for one project, for one of
their offices or something.
But it's not like a massivepartnership.
Or Volkswagen is one of ourcustomers who has 50 consultants
using us to recruit for Porsche, audi, lamborghini and so on,
but even it's not like a.
(12:02):
It's like a corporaterecruitment team recruiting for
their brand.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, it's almost set up in a different, like an
agency perspective.
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
It's like they charge them fees too, cause like they,
they, the core, the, the, thesubsidiary that does this
charges and invoice to eachbrand separately, because they
all have their own PNLs and theywant to make sure that there's
ROI on this, so they even buildthem, so it's literally like an
agency.
It's just the money flows backto the same pocket.
Like it's interesting, it's allwithin the same shareholding
group, but yeah, yeah, let's.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
And then are you saying it sounds like you
mentioned that you have a fairamount of executive search firms
yeah about I'd say 30.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
So 30 of our customers, 25 to 30 of our
customers are pure retainedexecutive search firms, so so
they're like they only work onretainers, only exclusive that
type.
Other 40 to 50% do some execsearch, but they're mostly not
retained.
So they're either doing it on acontingent or they're taking a
tiny upfront like exclusivityfee type thing, but it's not
(13:03):
retained Because we think ofretained, we're thinking of at
least, like you're taking 25 to35% of the fee up front and then
the rest of it could be onethird, one third, one third, or
it could be one third, twothirds right, depending on Sure.
More recently it's more onethird, two thirds.
The fee on presentation is notas common, especially in this
(13:25):
market.
But Presentation is not ascommon, especially in this
market.
But on the middle end of it,which is exclusive contingent
recruitment, you call it no cure, no pay, recruitment in Europe
or direct hire recruitment.
That's like a big chunk.
And then a few of our customersalso do like contract staffing
and temping and stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, okay, so it's a pretty big spread then.
Yeah, as I was wondering, I waslike are you going to see this
more on the temp staffing side?
I honestly it surprised me alittle bit that this would be
primarily used by exec search ora big customer segment, because
I would have thought, becauseit's low volume, there would be
(14:00):
more manual motions just in,more like an old school
relationship based approachversus a higher volume kind of
staff augmentation whereautomation and efficiency gains.
It's cool to see that.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Search is very inefficient Executive search.
So an average executive searchfirm when you pick up a search
and you take a retainer, you'redoing a weekly or bi-weekly
presentation PDF where you'representing candidates that
you've done research on andtalked to and stuff.
Yeah, most of these firms havelike research assistants or
associates, or whatever theycall them, who spend usually the
(14:31):
entire Friday or the Thursdaybefore the Friday spending four
or five hours formatting thispretty looking PDF right To
present.
We generate that in about 20seconds, and so a lot of search
firms literally like outside ofeverything an executive was like
hey, I'll buy you just for thisone feature, because right now
(14:52):
sometimes I have to ask someoneto generate the report because
the partner doesn't even knowhow to do it Because they've not
been formatting PDFs fordecades.
If the person who's supposed toformat it is on holiday or is
someone offshore doing it forthem and they don't do it on
time, it's a problem, and nowthey can do it with a click and
so that is super valuable.
(15:13):
Also, search firms really careabout retaining conversations
from many years ago.
So if they've been with us forfour years and they've had a
conversation, or a colleague hashad a conversation with a
candidate and it's recorded andtranscribed.
That's very valuable to themversus someone doing high volume
.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Oh, absolutely, that makes a lot of sense.
And there's in a little whiletoo.
We can talk about June, whichis my recruiting tech company
and where we are one of thecustomer segments we think is
going to be our primary ICP isstaffing and recruiting, and
we've had simple.
We also made a bit ofassumptions about the types of
roles and staffing firms that wethink would want to leverage
(15:51):
the tech, that were essentiallybroken right and we're like, oh
wow, the application is acrossthe board to different types of
agencies, not just this initialkind of segment that we thought
it would be.
So we'll talk more about thatin a little bit too, and I'd be
curious to get your thoughts andgo back and forth on some of
that stuff too.
I think I'm curious when you'retalking with your customers and
beginning of 2025, q4 2024,what are they asking for right
(16:17):
now?
What are the feature sets andthe products that they really
want over the next 12 to 18months?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
It's actually the same theme.
It's been since, like I'd say,probably about the last 12
months, give or take Withinthree to four months, of ChatGPT
coming out and getting big,everyone's wanted the same thing
.
They were like how can this beimplemented in work?
Everyone asks about AI, butwhen we talk to them, what we
realize is they actually needtwo things.
(16:44):
Most firms have a lot of stupidrepetitive tasks that need to
be automated, that don'tnecessarily have to be AI.
They say I want generative AI,but what they basically want is
I want an automated message togo out to this client if they
don't pay an invoice after sevendays, and then another one
after 12 days.
And then I want a task for ahuman to pick up the phone and
(17:05):
call them, and that doesn'trequire generative AI.
That requires a defined processthat you map and then a system
that just automatically executesit like a robot over and over
again.
So they want automation, right?
So one we sit with them andeducate them on the differences
between the two.
And then they also wantgenerative AI for stuff.
Hey, I want to write an email,but I don't want to have to type
the entire email.
(17:25):
I just want to write a littleprompt and in fact you know what
screw that.
I want to write a prompt and Iwant you to create a 12-step
sequence for what the firstmessage should be.
And if they don't respond,should I get a reminder as a
task or an SMS or another email?
And how do you create thatsequence with a prompt?
And then I can just edit it andsave it and then use that very
(17:46):
basic how can I use ai for jobdescription generation?
And then how can I use ai totake someone's resume and
reformat it into a completelydifferent?
I want to tell you I please doa write-up on james and focus on
how he would be a great fit asa head of talent at a software
company and you take his resumeand you basically have GPT
rewrite it with what GPT assumeswould be a great formation of
(18:10):
knowledge.
That's smart.
I like that.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
I like that a lot.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
So that's where AI is useful, but in recruitment,
actually, I believe automationis actually more important than
AI and it's also super useful.
You take a call transcriptionand you like convert it into
like really actionable text andstuff.
But with most recruitmentbusinesses, what you need more
than AI is automation, becauseAI, okay, it's not very
(18:35):
difficult.
You just plug into an existingmodel, you plug into OpenAI 4.0
or something, and you'recompletely fine and most
products will be at parity there.
Where you're not at parity issetting up workflows that are
repetitive, that are consumingan hour, two hours, three hours
every single day.
Yeah, human effort.
That are not things that youcan just do with generative AI.
(18:56):
It's just a process that youneed to implement.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
So, just to give you some context, I started a
company called June andofficially launched in December,
which is there's definitely anAI component.
We don't consider ourselves anAI company exactly.
We, of course, from a brandingperspective it's, you have to
say, ai powered essentially.
But for me, the way it's likeevery company is going to have
AI, so like this idea of it,like being an AI Every company
(19:20):
is an AI company, like the carcompany is an AI company.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
now, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
It's just how companies are going to be built.
But anyways, we essentially ourproduct, which I think there's
AI components, there's certainlyautomation workflow components
to it, but essentially ourmission is to optimize inbound
recruitment, to createessentially a larger
contribution and ROI to hiring,and the initial product is an AI
(19:47):
agent where, essentially, whencandidates apply inbound to a
job, june will immediately SMSor call the candidate and
conduct the pre-screen interview, so typically asking knockout
questions, the types ofquestions which the first five
minutes of a screening interviewa recruiter would know the
candidate's disqualified.
So those types of questions,essentially the inefficiencies,
(20:09):
that's, all the times in an houra day or whatever it might be,
where recruiters are reviewingresumes, scheduling calls and
then speaking with candidatesthat they disqualify quickly.
June essentially eliminates allof that and the productivity
gains are quite significant aswell in terms of hours of
productivity back to recruiters,decreasing time to fill for
(20:31):
inbound applications and adecrease in talent acquisition
costs.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
James, is this basically like you send the
candidate a link, they click onit and there's like a video
prompt asking them questions andthey answer it and then June
just processes that and doesn't?
Speaker 1 (20:45):
It's essentially so.
It's not.
There is a link, butessentially when candidates
apply to a job, when candidatesapply, june is triggered to
automatically reach out to them,assuming that they opt in.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
June automatically reaches out and conducts the
pre-screening and thenessentially evaluates what is
the pre-screening a videointerview or is it just like a
bunch of questions?
No, not video not video now.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Right now SMS and we're rolling out and so
essentially June's taking largeapplicant pools and turning them
into candidates shortlists forhiring teams.
So a hiring team could just sayokay, yeah, it's like who are
the top three candidates thatapplied today or this week or
something like that.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
And how does it do the ranking?
Because I'll give you anexample right.
So we have one customer they dovery successful company, almost
200 people on the team and theydo a lot of offshore
recruitment.
They help businesses in the USfind talent in Latin America,
south Africa and the Philippines.
They got acquired for 50million bucks six, seven months
ago somewherecom, and so whatthey do is we do something very
(21:45):
similar for them.
We don't rank, but what we do iswe have a workflow automation
setup using our workflowautomation system where they're
receiving anywhere from 50 to100,000 applications every month
.
It's just they get lots ofapplications in those countries
and they have rules.
They say for this job, we needthem to be based in the
Philippines for time zonereasons, or in Colombia, and
(22:05):
they need to Spanish, and thenwhatever the flags are, and they
set that on the job andwhenever someone applies to that
job, the application formautomatically includes those
questions.
So, right on, the applicationform is customized by job based
on what they fill in thoseanswers, people get auto
rejected.
So, like most people get autorejected, right so not to share
their exact stats and stuff, butlike most people get auto
(22:27):
rejected and that just saves theactual recruiter many hours.
But what we don't have, likewhat you said, is which of these
now remaining candidates arethe top three.
Don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
It's the evaluation.
It's also just like the aspectof being an intelligent form,
like being able to ask follow upclarification.
You could say something at ajob, could be like do you work
on weekends?
And a candidate might say everyweekend, every once in a while,
or there might just be likenuance, right when there's a, so
it's.
It manages that aspect as well.
But yeah, this is the initialfunctionality is essentially
(23:00):
creating candidates shortliststack, ranking, evaluation,
essentially like an intelligentform, of course integrating with
the applicant tracking systemsto push that back into an
existing workflow, and I thinkit would work very well, even
with an automation system likeours that I'm sure a lot of
other folks have too, becausewhat happens is most people want
to use a cheaper way of doingbulk qualification.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
So, for example, when a company uses what I just
talked about to process 50,000applications because we have
batch processing, that can costlike 100 bucks or 200 bucks to
process 50,000 people and get tothe top let's say 10,000.
At that point you can trigger amore specialized tool like
(23:45):
yours.
That's probably going to bemore expensive than like 0.000
per person and it can do ahigher quality engagement.
So people are still able tocontrol cost by not freaking out
and saying, oh, you're going tosend this expensive AI
questionnaire to 3,000 people.
No, you just focus on the topand then you have, let's say,
500 people or 1,000 peopleacross jobs.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, I think that really that is one of the use
cases, right, and I think thisis also it's like why we're
dialing in on staffing andrecruiting.
Is we feel like they're goingto be early adopters for
technology like this as well?
And I think, yeah, our rightnow we are, our strategy is to
be a fantastic point solutionand we do see opportunities to
grow through partnerships wherewe're looking for all-in-one
(24:28):
product suites and differentapplicant tracking systems and
different strategic partners topartner with and integrate into
workflows for a more holisticsolution for customers.
But, yeah, I think theevaluation piece is certainly
really valuable for a lot ofagencies and all that time that
you get back is, with yourautomation, ours too.
It's like that those are hoursthat can be used on more
(24:50):
strategic motions, yeah, soanything that's automated and
repetitive.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
That's like a standard set of questions with a
standard response which resultsin a standard yes or no.
A human shouldn't be doing that.
If there's no creativity tolike the task, a robot robot
should do it.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, 100%.
So in terms of the future likejust to get a little bit more
big picture and to zoom out alittle bit where do you think
recruiting tech for staffing andrecruiting is agencies is
really going?
Do you have any thoughts onwhat the technology is going to
look like on the market 12 to 18months from now, or what do you
(25:27):
think?
Speaker 2 (25:29):
12 to 18 months is, like, fairly easier.
If you ask me, like, five yearsfrom now, I don't know, 12 to 18
months.
I think more and more platformswill become full stack, doing
more things rather than justbeing point solutions.
Because it's just, I thinkpeople, customers have vendor
fatigue, which means like wewithin Recruit CRM pay for like
about 140 different tools,because we have 200 people and
(25:50):
they're different departmentsand functions and each
department has multiple toolsand we use some.
We buy some tools that sitwithin the Recruit CRM product
suite and it's just ridiculousbecause I can't even name 30 if
I just name them but we'repaying for 140 tools.
Like for some of them, surewe're paying 50 or a hundred
bucks, but for some of themwe're paying five grand a month.
So it's, it's a range, and somea little bit more than that as
well, and so I think more andmore companies will realize that
(26:17):
customers that are happy withthem want to buy everything from
them.
So they should just buildeverything out or partner or
integrate and have a one-stopshop to a certain extent, or
more stop shops, right.
Like at least cover a largerpercentage of the use case.
So that'll happen more for sure.
I believe AI tools will be alittle more embedded into the
recruitment workflow.
So the last probably six monthseveryone rushed into like just
(26:38):
plugging AI into their product.
So these are not products.
So when you say AI product,that's a company that's building
their own foundational model.
These are AI powered productswhich are using someone.
It's just the application layerversus the foundational layer,
right?
Yeah, exactly.
So we're not an AI company.
We just happen to use AI that'snow available to make our stats
better, right, which is whatmost people are doing,
(26:59):
irrespective of what they wrapit.
And I believe theimplementation of that AI is
going to be significantly betterbecause now companies have
figured out okay, customers likethis, they don't like this,
let's optimize or fine tune it,versus basically just having a
window into base chat, gpt, intoyour products right.
That's basically what it is whenyou use it.
Instead of just doing that,having, based on learning from
(27:21):
how people are using yourproduct, have preset prompts
like optimize how you'retraining your own versions of
those models.
So that's going to change.
What we're doing within RecruitCRM to go even more full stack
is building products for thelarger contract staffing market
as well, because there'ssignificantly more people
(27:44):
working at the contract staffinglayer in both blue and white
collar jobs, than there are VPsand CXOs.
And for this technology to trulyget the degree of impact it can
get and produce the financialoutcome or the business outcome
as a company, we need to beserving that market wider and
better.
So we already have contractstaffing customers, but they
don't do timesheets on us.
(28:04):
So we usually integrate with atimesheet vendor to help them do
timesheets and timekeeping andstuff.
So we're building our ownsheets platform and eventually
the goal is for us to handletimesheets and then eventually
not just integrate with payrollsystems like an ADP, but also
run our own payroll in selectcountries let's say the United
(28:25):
States, the UK and so on wherewe have large numbers of
customers.
So we can be a full stop shopfrom helping you manage your
website ATS, crm automation, andthen back office and then
actual reconciliation and thenalso collecting payments and
dispersing payments.
And basically be all in and all.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
That's awesome.
How long do you think it'sgoing to take to build that up
the contract?
Speaker 2 (28:50):
capping piece we will build out this year, so we're
already working on it.
So we should be live in sixmonths, or less than that.
We should have timesheetsavailable.
We won't be doing payroll yet.
We'll just be plugging intolocal payroll systems via API,
which makes the most sense.
Doing payroll ourselves isprobably two or three years away
.
We'll probably also be doingpayments by the end of the year,
so people can collect paymentsto pay out their contract staff
(29:12):
or even firm recruitmentpayments through us with
essentially no processing feesor super low regular ACH
transfer processing fees.
The reason why I believe peoplewill choose to use that versus
just raising an invoice manuallyor using a Stripe is because
it'll cost the same, but becauseit's linked into your ATS and
CRM system.
(29:32):
When you collect that paymentwe're automatically able to mark
that invoice is paid, updatethe status of a deal, the
commission calculations and alot of stuff that revolves
around collecting the cash in abusiness.
So that's what we're reallyexcited for over the next 12
months and then how we'llexecute on that or go to market
on that over 2026, 2027, 2028.
(29:54):
And then, oh, that's reallycool.
Personally at Recruit CRM, ourvision or goal is to build a
billion-dollar business, apublicly traded billion-dollar
business, and so hopefully ourSeries A is an IPO.
That'd be pretty cool andthat'd be great, great financial
outcome for my family and forthe team, since we've never
(30:14):
raised venture capital.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
That's really exciting.
We got all sorts of thingsgoing on and I think the roadmap
in terms of taking on paymentsand everything in terms of
automating that entire processis there's a ton of efficiency
gains across and it's also justcollaborating in between
departments and finance and therevenue organization delivery
team recruiters.
It's just going to make it alot less manual back and forth,
(30:39):
right Everything is in one place.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Everyone's accessing one system with different
degrees of access control toview different parts.
But now you don't have to belike, hey, it's updated on our
billing system, but it's notupdated on our CRM system, which
then needs to plug into ourcommission system.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Yeah, it creates bloated costs on the finance
team and then it also does, ofcourse, like it dilutes focus
from the recruiting teams wherethey like it's, even if it
doesn't take them a ton of time.
It's all the context switchingand it's just an additional
workflow and something that theyreally should be, yeah, it's a
total pain, massive inefficiency.
So that's really smart andrecruiting will reduce that pain
.
Yeah, that's why your teams aregrowing so fast and you're
(31:17):
doing so well, and I'mdefinitely going to be talking
to people about what you'rebuilding and talking to the
folks I know in staffing andrecruiting Awesome, you should
and for people listening too, wehave an affiliate program, guys
.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
So, like James and everyone else listening should
join.
Just go to our website, go topartner with us.
You get 20% of whatever someoneyou refer to us brings us in
the first year.
But you have to register first.
You can't register.
It doesn't work.
Sorry, James.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Gotcha.
Yeah, no, that's great.
That's great, sean, we'recoming up on time here, but this
has been a great episode.
It's been great getting to knowyou a little bit and what
you're building, and clearly youall know what you're doing and
I think you're going to continueto grow at a rapid pace and I
think you've made the right betsin terms of becoming an
all-in-one solution.
You've read the market verywell over the past few years.
(32:03):
You've built in the rightdirection and you're continuing
to do that, and it all makes aton of sense to me.
I'm a big fan of what you'rebuilding already, so I
appreciate you sharing yourinsights with our audience today
and joining me.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Thanks, james.
I appreciate it.
Thanks for bringing me here,thanks for saying all the nice
things you've said in the lastcouple of minutes, and best of
luck with June.
I'm sure you'll kill it.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Thank you.
Thank you and for everybodyjoining us today, thanks so much
and make sure to tune in nextweek as well.
Talk to you later, bye.
Hello, welcome to the Breakthrough Hiring Show.
I'm your host, James Mackey.
Today, we're joined by SeanMalapukar.
Sean, welcome to the show.
Thanks, james, and we're veryexcited to host you today.
We're gonna have a lot of funtalking, I think, just about
recruiting technology and howit's impacting the staffing and
recruiting industry and otherindustries as well, and
(00:22):
hopefully this will be a veryinformative episode for our
audience If you're looking forthe latest trends and
technologies out there in theway that leaders are thinking
about the evolution of tech andproduct within the space.
So anyways, sean, to kick usoff, we'd love to learn more
about you.
Maybe we could start with yourbackground and you could get
into telling us a little bitabout the founding of CRM
(00:43):
afterward and you could get intotelling us a little bit about
the founding of Recruit CRMafterward?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Absolutely, and, james, it's an absolute pleasure
to be here, just for theaudience to know.
Like fun story, I pitched JamesRecruit CRM when we just
launched a year into uslaunching in like 2019.
We launched in 2018.
And I send them like personalvideos and messages and stuff.
So it's awesome to finally getto be in front of him face to
face Obviously not selling ourproduct anymore and just talk
(01:07):
about the journey from thatpoint to now as well is
incredible.
So just a few quick stats onRecruit CRM and who we are.
Recruit CRM is an ATS and CRMplus everything system for
recruiting and staffing firms.
We do everything from helpingrecruiting and staffing firms
run their customer relationships, their candidate relationships,
(01:29):
pipeline management, generatingexecutive search reports,
publishing jobs on their website, publishing jobs on over 2000
job boards across the world,setting up advanced analytics
and customer reporting, managingtheir website if I didn't
mention that already.
Setting up Zapier-like workflowautomation so we can help you
integrate all the tools you useto each other.
(01:50):
And also helping you messagepeople on LinkedIn view messages
that your colleagues aresending to people on LinkedIn
right on one platform in one CRM.
So the idea is we help you doeverything that a recruitment
firm needs in one place.
The reason I got into this isnot by choice, so I didn't
choose to be a recruitmententrepreneur, I was forced so
(02:11):
when I was five years old.
From the time I was five yearsold, my dad worked for a
recruiting and staffing firm.
My dad used to be the CEO ofRunstud's India business.
If you're not on video, I'mIndian.
I look very Indian and growingup, dad was part of Runstud.
As they grew from 80, 90consultants to a couple thousand
consultants.
They paid him well for doingthat job.
(02:32):
He used that money to pay formy ripoff American college
education.
And as I graduated from collegeand ran a failed startup in the
Bay Area right after graduating,my dad called me and he
basically said I'm starting atech company and since I paid
for college, you're my slave.
And so I and dad startedRecruit CRM together because he
(02:55):
had subject matter expertise andhe needed someone who
understood tech to come in andhelp him build that product.
Since then, the two of us havebootstrapped Recruit CRM from
the two of us to just under 200people on our team.
We serve just under 2000recruiting and staffing
businesses and a fewcorporations and private equity
(03:15):
firms across the world, andthey're spread across 103
countries, and that's who we are.
The one thing we're most proudof is, in the whole journey from
zero to like circa 10 millionin subscriptions, we have never
raised a dollar of debt orequity.
It's a completely family-ownedsoftware business producing a
(03:36):
few million in profit every year, which is probably rare for
software businesses, and I'mbased out of Dubai.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
That's incredible.
It's a huge success story.
It's really impressive and I'mlooking forward to learning more
about what you've built.
And you've certainly developedquite the brand and reputation,
and I know a lot of folks in thestaffing and recruiting
industry have certainly eitherworked with you or heard of you
or currently considering you,and it sounds like your team
just continues to pick upmomentum, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yeah, we're outside of maybe one or two products
that are in the market.
We have the most engineers onour team as well.
So of the 200 people we have onour team, over 90 are software
engineers, and if you addproduct managers and UI
developers on top of that, it'slike 55 to 60% of our team.
So we're constantly churningout features.
(04:24):
We literally launch or makebetween 50 to 20 releases a
month, so there's always a newupdate.
That's what helps us stay ontop of our game.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Okay, well, I'm excited to learn more about
those and I have been goingthrough your website and I did
before this recording as welljust to try to get a feel for
what you do and the company hasgrown so much.
You have a pretty significantproduct suite.
It looks like I love it.
I don't know if you wouldconsider it more of an
(04:54):
all-in-one play, but it seemsthat, yeah, I'm seeing a lot of
the most successful companies inrecruiting technology whether
it's in-house corporate teams orstaffing start to go in that
direction, and the level ofsophistication with these
all-in-one products are muchbetter than the all-in-one
solutions we were seeing on themarket five, 10 years ago.
So it's a very compelling usecase for sure.
(05:17):
I wanted to get an overview onyour primary product offerings.
I know it's applicant trackingsystem, crm, but maybe could you
break down the differentproducts and the high level
workflow of what your productdoes.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Absolutely so.
The core of the platform, whichis probably, if we have five or
six products, the flagship, atsand CRM is, let's say, 70% of
the feature set right, and theATS and CRM is essentially the
full forms are applicanttracking system.
Crm is customer relationshipmanagement system, but basically
what it does is it helps youmanage candidates, clients,
(05:53):
client contacts, jobs and dealsin one place, along with all of
your tasks, meetings, emails,linkedin messages, outbound
sequences so you don't need aseparate tool like outreach and
voice over IP.
So you can actually buy phonenumbers from us, that you can
register those phone numbers todifferent users on your team and
then they can make phone callsusing our mobile app or the
(06:16):
computer to candidates orclients or receive phone calls
that are all recorded,transcripted and AI summarized.
So it's not just an ATS or CRMsystem, it is everything.
So people use our system to goto LinkedIn, source candidates
or source clients, put them inthe system, format resumes and
(06:37):
CVs, so we reformat documentsfor people.
You can put candidates orclient into email sequences.
You can message people onLinkedIn from within Recruit CRM
.
You can then call them andrecord and transcribe those
calls with candidates or clients, whether it's picking up a job
description from a client orhaving a conversation with a
candidate about what they'relooking for, and so you're able
(06:59):
to understand that withouthaving to listen to the entire
call recording, because it'ssummarized.
We give you Kanban boards soyou can look at a Kanban board
of revenue opportunities ordeals or leads you're talking to
, or candidates within differentstages within a specific job,
within all jobs a consultant isworking on, or all jobs with a
client.
You can then send the clientcandidates, either via email
(07:22):
with attachments or via a portalwhere the client can log in and
actually look at candidates andgive you feedback and even send
you new requisitions or jobs towork on.
So there's the two-waycommunication there.
Then you commission calculations, reports, analytics on that
data, and then a lot of ourproduct or add-on suite is built
(07:45):
through partnerships.
So we've partnered with a lotof companies.
Like for analytics, we'vepartnered with a company called
Metabase, where you're able toactually get Metabase analytics
within Recruit CRM.
So when you get a lot of CRMproducts, what happens is most
of the times you have to runanalytics separately on an
advanced analytics platform likea Power BI or a Tableau or a
(08:07):
Looker, and you have to take allthe data from your CRM and you
need to figure out some wayusually through APIs if you need
it to be live, to put it in adata warehouse and then run an
analytics tool on top of it.
What we've done is we'velicensed an analytics tool, put
it into Recruit CRM, into awindow inside Recruit CRM,
gotten BI analysts, trained themon staffing and recruiting use
(08:31):
cases and then told ourcustomers we've already taken
your data, it's already in aworld-class analytics platform.
And then here are people whoare going to help you build
whatever reports you want.
You can put them on a TV, dogamification, like anything and
everything Same with workflowautomation.
So we've worked with a companycalled Workato, which is similar
to Zapier but more enterprise,and we basically embedded it
(08:52):
within Recruit CRM and we go toour customers and we say, hey,
instead of going buying Zapier,get this through us at a very
similar price.
But we will give you experts onour team who have set up
automations for recruitmentagencies who will help you set
up best practices, everythingfrom if you submit a candidate
to a client, if they don't reactwithin two days, send the
(09:12):
recruiter a notification tofollow up with them, or send the
client a notification If acandidate is stuck in a specific
hiring stage for more than acertain amount of days.
Give the recruiter anotification Every time you make
a placement.
Once the person joins, sendthem a survey.
If they respond to the surveyas being super happy, send them
another form to give you, like aGoogle review.
Create a DocuSign contract,stuff that can help you
(09:34):
basically run your businessbetter, plus just pushing data
into other tools you need.
So this is stuff we do on topof the traditional ATS and CRM.
And then we work with a companycalled Wong for multi-posting,
where you can buy ads or evenplace ads on over 2000 job
boards across the world andstuff like that.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
So, with these different partnerships, are they
signing agreements with yourpartners or does all the
contract run through you?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Everything runs through us.
So you have one customer successmanager, you have one contract,
which is with Recruit CRM, andyou basically just take an
add-ons into your subscriptionwith us, like when you buy the
product.
Even there, in a couple ofmonths we're introducing an
all-in-one plan That'll be alittle more expensive but
include everything.
So you don't have to separatelychoose and pick and get your
(10:19):
procurement team to approvedifferent add-ons six months
later.
And yeah, and the only thing isdepending on which product
you're using, specifically thetechnical products, let's say,
advanced analytics or workflowautomation we have different
people within our team who aretrained to implement those who
also get who the CSM also bringsin to help you implement those
(10:41):
parts of the product.
But you're never talking to like.
If there's a problem in any ofthese products, you talk to us.
You don't have to talk to eachsub-vendor.
So you as a 10% agency or 20%agency doesn't have to buy
analytics separately and thenset up your own Zaps and Zapier
and then set up Recruit CRM andthen figure out the API link to
(11:02):
your website and then, ifsomething breaks, continuously
reach out to four differentpeople to figure out what works
and what doesn't.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
We just do everything and then are you targeting the
entire different customer sizeswithin staffing and recruiting,
so SMB to enterprise, or do youhave a sweet spot?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
So it's largely I'd say mostly SMB to mid markets
where customers range from oneuser to like 250, 300 users.
We don't have the 5,000 userLike.
When I say, when you sayenterprise, I think of Hayes and
Michael Page.
Sure, hayes is a customer,though, actually, while I say
that.
But we're an approved vendorfor Hayes RPOs, which means that
(11:40):
is specifically in the EuropeanUnion, in the EU.
So if Hayes is an RPO with, letsay, klm, the airline they
bring us in and then we deployit for one project, for one of
their offices or something.
But it's not like a massivepartnership.
Or Volkswagen is one of ourcustomers who has 50 consultants
using us to recruit for Porsche, audi, lamborghini and so on,
but even it's not like a.
(12:02):
It's like a corporaterecruitment team recruiting for
their brand.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, it's almost set up in a different, like an
agency perspective.
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
It's like they charge them fees too, cause like they,
they, the core, the, the, thesubsidiary that does this
charges and invoice to eachbrand separately, because they
all have their own PNLs and theywant to make sure that there's
ROI on this, so they even buildthem, so it's literally like an
agency.
It's just the money flows backto the same pocket.
Like it's interesting, it's allwithin the same shareholding
group, but yeah, yeah, let's.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
And then are you saying it sounds like you
mentioned that you have a fairamount of executive search firms
yeah about I'd say 30.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
So 30 of our customers, 25 to 30 of our
customers are pure retainedexecutive search firms, so so
they're like they only work onretainers, only exclusive that
type.
Other 40 to 50% do some execsearch, but they're mostly not
retained.
So they're either doing it on acontingent or they're taking a
tiny upfront like exclusivityfee type thing, but it's not
(13:03):
retained Because we think ofretained, we're thinking of at
least, like you're taking 25 to35% of the fee up front and then
the rest of it could be onethird, one third, one third, or
it could be one third, twothirds right, depending on Sure.
More recently it's more onethird, two thirds.
The fee on presentation is notas common, especially in this
(13:25):
market.
But Presentation is not ascommon, especially in this
market.
But on the middle end of it,which is exclusive contingent
recruitment, you call it no cure, no pay, recruitment in Europe
or direct hire recruitment.
That's like a big chunk.
And then a few of our customersalso do like contract staffing
and temping and stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, okay, so it's a pretty big spread then.
Yeah, as I was wondering, I waslike are you going to see this
more on the temp staffing side?
I honestly it surprised me alittle bit that this would be
primarily used by exec search ora big customer segment, because
I would have thought, becauseit's low volume, there would be
(14:00):
more manual motions just in,more like an old school
relationship based approachversus a higher volume kind of
staff augmentation whereautomation and efficiency gains.
It's cool to see that.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Search is very inefficient Executive search.
So an average executive searchfirm when you pick up a search
and you take a retainer, you'redoing a weekly or bi-weekly
presentation PDF where you'representing candidates that
you've done research on andtalked to and stuff.
Yeah, most of these firms havelike research assistants or
associates, or whatever theycall them, who spend usually the
(14:31):
entire Friday or the Thursdaybefore the Friday spending four
or five hours formatting thispretty looking PDF right To
present.
We generate that in about 20seconds, and so a lot of search
firms literally like outside ofeverything an executive was like
hey, I'll buy you just for thisone feature, because right now
(14:52):
sometimes I have to ask someoneto generate the report because
the partner doesn't even knowhow to do it Because they've not
been formatting PDFs fordecades.
If the person who's supposed toformat it is on holiday or is
someone offshore doing it forthem and they don't do it on
time, it's a problem, and nowthey can do it with a click and
so that is super valuable.
(15:13):
Also, search firms really careabout retaining conversations
from many years ago.
So if they've been with us forfour years and they've had a
conversation, or a colleague hashad a conversation with a
candidate and it's recorded andtranscribed.
That's very valuable to themversus someone doing high volume
.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Oh, absolutely, that makes a lot of sense.
And there's in a little whiletoo.
We can talk about June, whichis my recruiting tech company
and where we are one of thecustomer segments we think is
going to be our primary ICP isstaffing and recruiting, and
we've had simple.
We also made a bit ofassumptions about the types of
roles and staffing firms that wethink would want to leverage
(15:51):
the tech, that were essentiallybroken right and we're like, oh
wow, the application is acrossthe board to different types of
agencies, not just this initialkind of segment that we thought
it would be.
So we'll talk more about thatin a little bit too, and I'd be
curious to get your thoughts andgo back and forth on some of
that stuff too.
I think I'm curious when you'retalking with your customers and
beginning of 2025, q4 2024,what are they asking for right
(16:17):
now?
What are the feature sets andthe products that they really
want over the next 12 to 18months?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
It's actually the same theme.
It's been since, like I'd say,probably about the last 12
months, give or take Withinthree to four months, of ChatGPT
coming out and getting big,everyone's wanted the same thing
.
They were like how can this beimplemented in work?
Everyone asks about AI, butwhen we talk to them, what we
realize is they actually needtwo things.
(16:44):
Most firms have a lot of stupidrepetitive tasks that need to
be automated, that don'tnecessarily have to be AI.
They say I want generative AI,but what they basically want is
I want an automated message togo out to this client if they
don't pay an invoice after sevendays, and then another one
after 12 days.
And then I want a task for ahuman to pick up the phone and
(17:05):
call them, and that doesn'trequire generative AI.
That requires a defined processthat you map and then a system
that just automatically executesit like a robot over and over
again.
So they want automation, right?
So one we sit with them andeducate them on the differences
between the two.
And then they also wantgenerative AI for stuff.
Hey, I want to write an email,but I don't want to have to type
the entire email.
(17:25):
I just want to write a littleprompt and in fact you know what
screw that.
I want to write a prompt and Iwant you to create a 12-step
sequence for what the firstmessage should be.
And if they don't respond,should I get a reminder as a
task or an SMS or another email?
And how do you create thatsequence with a prompt?
And then I can just edit it andsave it and then use that very
(17:46):
basic how can I use ai for jobdescription generation?
And then how can I use ai totake someone's resume and
reformat it into a completelydifferent?
I want to tell you I please doa write-up on james and focus on
how he would be a great fit asa head of talent at a software
company and you take his resumeand you basically have GPT
rewrite it with what GPT assumeswould be a great formation of
(18:10):
knowledge.
That's smart.
I like that.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
I like that a lot.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
So that's where AI is useful, but in recruitment,
actually, I believe automationis actually more important than
AI and it's also super useful.
You take a call transcriptionand you like convert it into
like really actionable text andstuff.
But with most recruitmentbusinesses, what you need more
than AI is automation, becauseAI, okay, it's not very
(18:35):
difficult.
You just plug into an existingmodel, you plug into OpenAI 4.0
or something, and you'recompletely fine and most
products will be at parity there.
Where you're not at parity issetting up workflows that are
repetitive, that are consumingan hour, two hours, three hours
every single day.
Yeah, human effort.
That are not things that youcan just do with generative AI.
(18:56):
It's just a process that youneed to implement.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
So, just to give you some context, I started a
company called June andofficially launched in December,
which is there's definitely anAI component.
We don't consider ourselves anAI company exactly.
We, of course, from a brandingperspective it's, you have to
say, ai powered essentially.
But for me, the way it's likeevery company is going to have
AI, so like this idea of it,like being an AI Every company
(19:20):
is an AI company, like the carcompany is an AI company.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
now, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
It's just how companies are going to be built.
But anyways, we essentially ourproduct, which I think there's
AI components, there's certainlyautomation workflow components
to it, but essentially ourmission is to optimize inbound
recruitment, to createessentially a larger
contribution and ROI to hiring,and the initial product is an AI
(19:47):
agent where, essentially, whencandidates apply inbound to a
job, june will immediately SMSor call the candidate and
conduct the pre-screen interview, so typically asking knockout
questions, the types ofquestions which the first five
minutes of a screening interviewa recruiter would know the
candidate's disqualified.
So those types of questions,essentially the inefficiencies,
(20:09):
that's, all the times in an houra day or whatever it might be,
where recruiters are reviewingresumes, scheduling calls and
then speaking with candidatesthat they disqualify quickly.
June essentially eliminates allof that and the productivity
gains are quite significant aswell in terms of hours of
productivity back to recruiters,decreasing time to fill for
(20:31):
inbound applications and adecrease in talent acquisition
costs.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
James, is this basically like you send the
candidate a link, they click onit and there's like a video
prompt asking them questions andthey answer it and then June
just processes that and doesn't?
Speaker 1 (20:45):
It's essentially so.
It's not.
There is a link, butessentially when candidates
apply to a job, when candidatesapply, june is triggered to
automatically reach out to them,assuming that they opt in.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
June automatically reaches out and conducts the
pre-screening and thenessentially evaluates what is
the pre-screening a videointerview or is it just like a
bunch of questions?
No, not video not video now.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Right now SMS and we're rolling out and so
essentially June's taking largeapplicant pools and turning them
into candidates shortlists forhiring teams.
So a hiring team could just sayokay, yeah, it's like who are
the top three candidates thatapplied today or this week or
something like that.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
And how does it do the ranking?
Because I'll give you anexample right.
So we have one customer they dovery successful company, almost
200 people on the team and theydo a lot of offshore
recruitment.
They help businesses in the USfind talent in Latin America,
south Africa and the Philippines.
They got acquired for 50million bucks six, seven months
ago somewherecom, and so whatthey do is we do something very
(21:45):
similar for them.
We don't rank, but what we do iswe have a workflow automation
setup using our workflowautomation system where they're
receiving anywhere from 50 to100,000 applications every month
.
It's just they get lots ofapplications in those countries
and they have rules.
They say for this job, we needthem to be based in the
Philippines for time zonereasons, or in Colombia, and
(22:05):
they need to Spanish, and thenwhatever the flags are, and they
set that on the job andwhenever someone applies to that
job, the application formautomatically includes those
questions.
So, right on, the applicationform is customized by job based
on what they fill in thoseanswers, people get auto
rejected.
So, like most people get autorejected, right so not to share
their exact stats and stuff, butlike most people get auto
(22:27):
rejected and that just saves theactual recruiter many hours.
But what we don't have, likewhat you said, is which of these
now remaining candidates arethe top three.
Don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
It's the evaluation.
It's also just like the aspectof being an intelligent form,
like being able to ask follow upclarification.
You could say something at ajob, could be like do you work
on weekends?
And a candidate might say everyweekend, every once in a while,
or there might just be likenuance, right when there's a, so
it's.
It manages that aspect as well.
But yeah, this is the initialfunctionality is essentially
(23:00):
creating candidates shortliststack, ranking, evaluation,
essentially like an intelligentform, of course integrating with
the applicant tracking systemsto push that back into an
existing workflow, and I thinkit would work very well, even
with an automation system likeours that I'm sure a lot of
other folks have too, becausewhat happens is most people want
to use a cheaper way of doingbulk qualification.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
So, for example, when a company uses what I just
talked about to process 50,000applications because we have
batch processing, that can costlike 100 bucks or 200 bucks to
process 50,000 people and get tothe top let's say 10,000.
At that point you can trigger amore specialized tool like
(23:45):
yours.
That's probably going to bemore expensive than like 0.000
per person and it can do ahigher quality engagement.
So people are still able tocontrol cost by not freaking out
and saying, oh, you're going tosend this expensive AI
questionnaire to 3,000 people.
No, you just focus on the topand then you have, let's say,
500 people or 1,000 peopleacross jobs.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, I think that really that is one of the use
cases, right, and I think thisis also it's like why we're
dialing in on staffing andrecruiting.
Is we feel like they're goingto be early adopters for
technology like this as well?
And I think, yeah, our rightnow we are, our strategy is to
be a fantastic point solutionand we do see opportunities to
grow through partnerships wherewe're looking for all-in-one
(24:28):
product suites and differentapplicant tracking systems and
different strategic partners topartner with and integrate into
workflows for a more holisticsolution for customers.
But, yeah, I think theevaluation piece is certainly
really valuable for a lot ofagencies and all that time that
you get back is, with yourautomation, ours too.
It's like that those are hoursthat can be used on more
(24:50):
strategic motions, yeah, soanything that's automated and
repetitive.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
That's like a standard set of questions with a
standard response which resultsin a standard yes or no.
A human shouldn't be doing that.
If there's no creativity tolike the task, a robot robot
should do it.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, 100%.
So in terms of the future likejust to get a little bit more
big picture and to zoom out alittle bit where do you think
recruiting tech for staffing andrecruiting is agencies is
really going?
Do you have any thoughts onwhat the technology is going to
look like on the market 12 to 18months from now, or what do you
(25:27):
think?
Speaker 2 (25:29):
12 to 18 months is, like, fairly easier.
If you ask me, like, five yearsfrom now, I don't know, 12 to 18
months.
I think more and more platformswill become full stack, doing
more things rather than justbeing point solutions.
Because it's just, I thinkpeople, customers have vendor
fatigue, which means like wewithin Recruit CRM pay for like
about 140 different tools,because we have 200 people and
(25:50):
they're different departmentsand functions and each
department has multiple toolsand we use some.
We buy some tools that sitwithin the Recruit CRM product
suite and it's just ridiculousbecause I can't even name 30 if
I just name them but we'repaying for 140 tools.
Like for some of them, surewe're paying 50 or a hundred
bucks, but for some of themwe're paying five grand a month.
So it's, it's a range, and somea little bit more than that as
well, and so I think more andmore companies will realize that
(26:17):
customers that are happy withthem want to buy everything from
them.
So they should just buildeverything out or partner or
integrate and have a one-stopshop to a certain extent, or
more stop shops, right.
Like at least cover a largerpercentage of the use case.
So that'll happen more for sure.
I believe AI tools will be alittle more embedded into the
recruitment workflow.
So the last probably six monthseveryone rushed into like just
(26:38):
plugging AI into their product.
So these are not products.
So when you say AI product,that's a company that's building
their own foundational model.
These are AI powered productswhich are using someone.
It's just the application layerversus the foundational layer,
right?
Yeah, exactly.
So we're not an AI company.
We just happen to use AI that'snow available to make our stats
better, right, which is whatmost people are doing,
(26:59):
irrespective of what they wrapit.
And I believe theimplementation of that AI is
going to be significantly betterbecause now companies have
figured out okay, customers likethis, they don't like this,
let's optimize or fine tune it,versus basically just having a
window into base chat, gpt, intoyour products right.
That's basically what it is whenyou use it.
Instead of just doing that,having, based on learning from
(27:21):
how people are using yourproduct, have preset prompts
like optimize how you'retraining your own versions of
those models.
So that's going to change.
What we're doing within RecruitCRM to go even more full stack
is building products for thelarger contract staffing market
as well, because there'ssignificantly more people
(27:44):
working at the contract staffinglayer in both blue and white
collar jobs, than there are VPsand CXOs.
And for this technology to trulyget the degree of impact it can
get and produce the financialoutcome or the business outcome
as a company, we need to beserving that market wider and
better.
So we already have contractstaffing customers, but they
don't do timesheets on us.
(28:04):
So we usually integrate with atimesheet vendor to help them do
timesheets and timekeeping andstuff.
So we're building our ownsheets platform and eventually
the goal is for us to handletimesheets and then eventually
not just integrate with payrollsystems like an ADP, but also
run our own payroll in selectcountries let's say the United
(28:25):
States, the UK and so on wherewe have large numbers of
customers.
So we can be a full stop shopfrom helping you manage your
website ATS, crm automation, andthen back office and then
actual reconciliation and thenalso collecting payments and
dispersing payments.
And basically be all in and all.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
That's awesome.
How long do you think it'sgoing to take to build that up
the contract?
Speaker 2 (28:50):
capping piece we will build out this year, so we're
already working on it.
So we should be live in sixmonths, or less than that.
We should have timesheetsavailable.
We won't be doing payroll yet.
We'll just be plugging intolocal payroll systems via API,
which makes the most sense.
Doing payroll ourselves isprobably two or three years away
.
We'll probably also be doingpayments by the end of the year,
so people can collect paymentsto pay out their contract staff
(29:12):
or even firm recruitmentpayments through us with
essentially no processing feesor super low regular ACH
transfer processing fees.
The reason why I believe peoplewill choose to use that versus
just raising an invoice manuallyor using a Stripe is because
it'll cost the same, but becauseit's linked into your ATS and
CRM system.
(29:32):
When you collect that paymentwe're automatically able to mark
that invoice is paid, updatethe status of a deal, the
commission calculations and alot of stuff that revolves
around collecting the cash in abusiness.
So that's what we're reallyexcited for over the next 12
months and then how we'llexecute on that or go to market
on that over 2026, 2027, 2028.
(29:54):
And then, oh, that's reallycool.
Personally at Recruit CRM, ourvision or goal is to build a
billion-dollar business, apublicly traded billion-dollar
business, and so hopefully ourSeries A is an IPO.
That'd be pretty cool andthat'd be great, great financial
outcome for my family and forthe team, since we've never
(30:14):
raised venture capital.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
That's really exciting.
We got all sorts of thingsgoing on and I think the roadmap
in terms of taking on paymentsand everything in terms of
automating that entire processis there's a ton of efficiency
gains across and it's also justcollaborating in between
departments and finance and therevenue organization delivery
team recruiters.
It's just going to make it alot less manual back and forth,
(30:39):
right Everything is in one place.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Everyone's accessing one system with different
degrees of access control toview different parts.
But now you don't have to belike, hey, it's updated on our
billing system, but it's notupdated on our CRM system, which
then needs to plug into ourcommission system.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Yeah, it creates bloated costs on the finance
team and then it also does, ofcourse, like it dilutes focus
from the recruiting teams wherethey like it's, even if it
doesn't take them a ton of time.
It's all the context switchingand it's just an additional
workflow and something that theyreally should be, yeah, it's a
total pain, massive inefficiency.
So that's really smart andrecruiting will reduce that pain
.
Yeah, that's why your teams aregrowing so fast and you're
(31:17):
doing so well, and I'mdefinitely going to be talking
to people about what you'rebuilding and talking to the
folks I know in staffing andrecruiting Awesome, you should
and for people listening too, wehave an affiliate program, guys
.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
So, like James and everyone else listening should
join.
Just go to our website, go topartner with us.
You get 20% of whatever someoneyou refer to us brings us in
the first year.
But you have to register first.
You can't register.
It doesn't work.
Sorry, James.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Gotcha.
Yeah, no, that's great.
That's great, sean, we'recoming up on time here, but this
has been a great episode.
It's been great getting to knowyou a little bit and what
you're building, and clearly youall know what you're doing and
I think you're going to continueto grow at a rapid pace and I
think you've made the right betsin terms of becoming an
all-in-one solution.
You've read the market verywell over the past few years.
(32:03):
You've built in the rightdirection and you're continuing
to do that, and it all makes aton of sense to me.
I'm a big fan of what you'rebuilding already, so I
appreciate you sharing yourinsights with our audience today
and joining me.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Thanks, james.
I appreciate it.
Thanks for bringing me here,thanks for saying all the nice
things you've said in the lastcouple of minutes, and best of
luck with June.
I'm sure you'll kill it.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Thank you.
Thank you and for everybodyjoining us today, thanks so much
and make sure to tune in nextweek as well.
Talk to you later, bye.
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