April 15, 2026 • 51 mins
Most hiring still starts with a resume. Jason P. Carroll says that's the problem, not the solution.
Jason grew a company from $20M to $80M before building Aptive Index, a behavioral intelligence platform that replaces resume screening with validated science. In this episode, he and Josh break down why formal education and work history predict almost nothing about job performance, what behavioral data actually reveals, and how one CEO used Jason's AI to resolve a team conflict in five minutes that management couldn't crack for months.
Key takeaways:
• Why DISC and MBTI lack scientific rigor and what assessments actually predict performance
• What behavioral descriptive interview questions are and why they outperform everything else
• How Aptiv Index writes job descriptions that repel the wrong candidates and surface hidden talent
• Why your best candidate already applied and you probably said no
• The real cost of a bad hire and why avoiding one pays for the platform for five to ten years
• How HR teams are using this to finally have a concrete AI initiative they can own
Guest: Jason P. Carroll, Founder, Aptive Index. aptiveindex.com
Consumer version launching soon: askaria.com
The Hiring Edge explores hiring strategy, leadership, and the systems companies use to build exceptional teams. Follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jason Carroll (00:00):
Who wrote every resume that comes across your
desk nowadays?
ChatGPT.
And even before that existed,though, what is a resume?
It's just a snapshot,self-glorifying snapshot, full
of exaggerations and sometimesoutright lies.
Josh Matthews (00:18):
Welcome to the Hiring Edge, the podcast helping
leaders navigate the age of AI,create teams that thrive, and
build a workplace people neverwant to leave.
Today on The Hiring Edge, we'regoing to uh we're going
straight to the heart of why youkeep hiring A players on paper
who underperform in the seat.
And that's a problem.
Like everybody's seen it.
It's a serious problem.
I'm joined by Jason P.
(00:39):
Carroll, the founder of ActiveIndex, who scaled the company
from 800 people to 2,500employees over seven years.
And then he built the scienceto fix hiring and team
performance for the rest of us.
And it's not just what Ithought originally, which was
like, hey, take this test.
Let's see if you fit into ourculture or if you're going to be
successful.
It's actually scientificallybacked AI software that
(01:05):
communicates with the team,communicates with the managers.
Right.
So, Jason, why don't you goahead and talk?
By the way, I love this stuff.
I think I just did a littlepost and it was like hiring,
behavioral analysis, and AI.
Yes, sign me up.
I'm all about that, right?
So like let's go.
Tell us about, tell us aboutyour company, tell us about your
team, and more importantly,tell us what problem you're
(01:28):
solving.
I think that's what peoplereally want to know.
Jason Carroll (01:30):
Sure.
Yeah.
Gosh, what order to go in?
Yeah, the the team is stillsmall at this point, maybe 10
people or so.
You know, from softwaredevelopment to marketing to uh a
lot of like advisors.
So, you know, we've got thesefull-time advisors that work
with our clients to have thehuman element.
Yes, we rely heavily on AI.
We've got advisors that havebeen CEOs, they've hired,
(01:53):
they've fired, and so they workwith our clients to make sure
that there's still that humanjudgment as part of what we're
doing.
But yeah, like you said, it's abehavioral assessment.
We're we're calling ourcategory behavioral
intelligence, and we're the onlyones really doing it.
It's assessment meets AI.
So the AI doesn't actually playany role in the assessment,
(02:14):
right?
That's all been scientificallyvalidated.
The algorithms, the factorsthat we're measuring, and the AI
picks up from there.
And so it's been trained.
Josh Matthews (02:24):
It's not a floating rubric that's going to
bend as the LLMs adjust.
Correct.
Yeah.
Jason Carroll (02:30):
Okay.
Yeah.
So the assessment is its ownengine.
Uh then there's the softwarelayer, which has charts and
teams and org charts and graphsand all that kind of fun stuff.
Yeah.
Uh there's there's a mobile appfor that as well.
And then ARIA is our AI, andARIA is really where everything
kind of comes to life andshines.
(02:50):
So this isn't some PDF you getand it sits in your inbox and
collects dust.
It's something that our clientsare using every day, which
frankly shocked me.
I I knew it would make it moreuseful.
I didn't realize that I wasgoing to have business owners
logging in from their phoneevery single day, being like,
I'm walking into a meeting withat Josh Matthews, give me tips,
(03:11):
you know, or these two peopleare having conflict, or help.
My marriage sucks.
I mean, literally, I have CEOswho's whose spouses have taken
the assessment and they're usingit for romantic purposes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, why wouldn't they?
Right?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Josh Matthews (03:28):
Yeah.
So there's a part that I'm I'mkind of interested in, which is
this it almost sounds like youdecided to approach behavioral
assessment from the ground upwith some sort of foundational
core, right?
There's going to be a modelthat it leans on more, sort of
this Jungian MBTI stuff, or someof the newer models.
(03:52):
Was there one?
Because you you said, hey, thisstuff got really exciting for
you.
You want to live in that space.
And trust me, man, I get itbecause I love that.
I love that shit.
What was the model that youwere like that kind of caught
you?
That was like, oh, you bit thathook and you're like, oh, wow,
this is exciting.
Because that totally makessense.
Now I can understand myselfdifferently.
(04:13):
I can understand theseemployees differently.
And then you're actually usingit, and it's almost like magic,
like NLP stuff.
Jason Carroll (04:21):
You know, yeah, my first like my first foray was
back in 2016, uh with twoprimary tools, uh uh what's it
called?
Strengths finder or CliftonStrengths and Culture Index,
which is a similar kind of likefree choice assessment style
like ours.
And I that opened my eyes tojust how much self-awareness I
(04:45):
lacked.
I was gonna tell you.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
And then from self-awarenesscame others' awareness.
I mean, just simple stuff, likemore than half the population
prefers that you tell them whatto do.
Not in a way that strips theirautonomy, but like they want
direction.
They want clarity.
And for me, like everythinginside of me rails against that.
(05:08):
Like if you tell me what to doand how to do it, like you're
enemy number one now.
And I'm gonna revolt.
And I just thought everybodymust be the same way.
Nobody wants to be told what todo.
It couldn't have been morewrong.
And so that was the Are you?
Josh Matthews (05:23):
What are you, an ENTJ?
I want to know your MBTI, andI'm sure you know it, right?
You must know it.
Shoot.
ESTP, I think.
ESTP.
Oh, that's interesting.
Okay.
Jason Carroll (05:34):
I think so.
It's it's been a minute.
It's okay.
Josh Matthews (05:37):
Don't worry about it.
Jason Carroll (05:38):
Yeah, often called the entrepreneur or doer.
Yeah.
So I'm looking that up herereal quick.
But yeah, uh it was a big gamechanger.
Then a couple years later, Iwent and met Brene Brown and uh
I got to be like I becamecertified uh dare to lead
facilitator.
Like got to sit with her forthree days getting trained.
That was mind-blowingly good.
(05:59):
That's awesome, man.
Yeah.
Good for you.
Josh Matthews (06:01):
Yeah.
Jason Carroll (06:02):
And yeah, just just really uh awakened to my
own inner world and being ableto take the perspective of
others.
Uh so yeah, that was that wasthe initial intro into it.
Uh that's a good thing.
Josh Matthews (06:15):
I want to take this moment right now, and
because some people who aregoing to listen to this, many
people have taken an assessmenttest, but as you mentioned, it's
sitting in a drawer somewhere.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah.
Josh Matthews (06:26):
When I ask people, hey, what's your MBTI?
or they're like, oh, I don'tknow.
I thought it was like an EFFP.
And it's like, well, thatdoesn't exist, so you don't
remember, and that's okay.
You know, so normal.
But if there's one assessmentthat you would say, hey, look,
like I've got my favorite.
I like the Myers Briggs.
I just do.
It's I've been working on itfor 35 years, right?
But if you were going to say,hey, you want to go learn about
(06:48):
yourself, right?
It's not inside of thisenterprise software system that
you've built.
Like, where would you tellpeople to go so that they can
kind of get real?
Jason Carroll (06:56):
That's a good question.
I mean, and disk are bothpretty good.
Enneagram's fun andinteresting.
We're measuring some additionallayers.
And it's hard to kind of stepout of my world, of course,
because I see what's lackingstill.
Like there's so much about ouremotional world, our
interactivation, what we callaffective chronometry, uh you
(07:19):
know, our abstraction and likekind of cognitive styles.
Like those other tests don'teven touch on those and and
they're just invaluable.
So I'm trying to remove myselffrom that and think what might
have similarities.
But yeah, so I think, yeah, M ET I, it's free.
Disc.
I think it's you can't.
Josh Matthews (07:37):
Yeah, it's free, and you can do it in five
minutes or 10 minutes nowadays.
I am kind of curious.
And and look, there's a bigdifference between these things,
right?
Like I'm I'm an E N T J.
I'm barely an E.
I'm barely a T, right?
So I'm not gonna be like aNapoleon, right?
Who's pinging high on on bothof those things, right?
Or at least high on the T.
(07:58):
So where you scale inside ofthese these sort of 16 profiles,
that's not gonna cut it.
There's eight billion of us.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah.
Josh Matthews (08:07):
You know, there's more than just 16 types.
So I'm I'm glad that youmentioned that.
I'm I am really curious abouthow people in organizations that
you service, and you can startwith your own, like, what
started to change?
Like, what was a palpablechange that you saw once
(08:30):
leadership started to utilizethis stuff?
What was there resistance oflike, oh, I know what you're
doing?
You're trying to talk to melike that thing because you're
using that program.
Because we'll see smart peopledo that.
Smart, smart, uh, rebelliouspeople like you, Jason.
Skeptical.
Will do that.
You'll see it.
Right.
Did you do companies experiencethat at all?
(08:50):
Or is it sort of like thisquiet peacefulness that gets
things just get better?
Jason Carroll (08:55):
I think the language matters.
There's a way to take thisbehavioral data and present it
in a way that feels really kindof destructive and
disempowering.
And then there's a way to takeit in and say, hey, look,
there's no good or bad or rightor wrong answers.
There's just kind of who youare.
And we were very, veryintentional and continue to be
(09:16):
as we update and tweak aboutlanguage.
I want everybody who comesacross this to feel empowered,
to feel like they uh see areflection of themselves and and
like that they just go, oh mygosh, this thing gets me.
And I and I feel so like freebecause of it.
And I get to see that happenall the time.
Now, are there people inorganization, I mean so many
(09:37):
clients now, some peopleprobably have more of a visceral
reaction.
I don't encounter that, whichis great, but that's not to say
it doesn't exist.
So yeah, I mean who knows.
Josh Matthews (09:48):
So what do you what are your clients saying
now?
And where are they leaning intoit the most?
So kind of two questions.
I guess that let's start withthe leaning into it the most.
Are they leaning into it moreup front in their hiring
determination and decisionmaking around who to bring on?
Or does it matter less becausenow they can kind of be
(10:10):
variable?
It's a depend to who they'vegot.
Jason Carroll (10:12):
Yeah.
Like right people, right seatis kind of the first line of
defense.
And so the hiring part reallydoes matter.
Are there a wide variety ofdifferent types of people who
can succeed in certain roles?
Yeah.
But there's there are thingsthat give us energy and there
are things that drain us.
And when we can get put in theright seat where most of what we
(10:35):
do actually brings us energyinstead of drains us, it's all
around better for everybody.
We're more engaged, there'shigher trust, there's better
performance, et cetera.
So it starts on the hiringside.
And you you asked a minute ago,and I didn't even answer your
question, but what problem arewe solving on that side?
Like who wrote every resumethat comes across your desk
(10:58):
nowadays?
Chat GPT.
And even before that existed,though, what is a resume?
It's just a snapshot,self-glorifying snapshot full of
exaggerations and sometimesoutright lies about what I've
done before now.
So essentially experience.
(11:20):
Not even skills, because youcan write skills and they don't
have to be true, but experience.
Well, and sometimes formaleducation.
We have studies from the 80sand 90s that tell us that formal
education and experience havealmost zero predictive power to
tell us if somebody's going tosucceed in a role.
(11:41):
Like formal education might aswell throw it out the window,
unless you need it, like you'rea surgeon.
Josh Matthews (11:49):
There's a handful of those types of roles.
I think we're going to see, infact, I think I have a guest in
two weeks or four weeks, andwe're going to talk about that
because it's like the death ofthe university, especially
liberal arts.
Yep.
Jason Carroll (12:02):
And then experience.
If you've done this thing for20 years, but you've done it
poorly, now you're bringing 20years of shit experience into my
organization.
And that doesn't help me atall.
And so this whole system isbroken and it has been for
decades, where we're looking ata resume as the first line of
(12:22):
defense to figure out ifsomebody is a good fit for a
role.
And it just garbage.
It doesn't actually give usanything other than how well
does somebody present themselvesand what they've done in the
past.
Josh Matthews (12:39):
But come on, Jason.
I mean, I'm just going to pushback a little bit.
First of all, yeah, I totallyagree.
You know, thousands andthousands and thousands of
resumes that I look at, not inmy life, every year, look at.
Every year.
Sure.
And so there's, and it is, it'suh there's so much AI garbage
now.
I have to use AI just to getrid of the AI garbage.
(13:00):
Right.
It's just like, first there wasemail and everybody loved it.
And it's like, you've got mail.
Oh my God, I got an email.
And now it's like, you've gotspam, 400 messages.
So now we have spam filters.
And the same thing's happeningwith resumes and AI written
resumes.
It's a battle.
Right.
And eventually, and I wastalking about this with someone
(13:20):
the other day.
It's like, well, what's goingto eventually happen?
Eventually, some alternative isgoing to get squeezed in the
middle because people are justgoing to be like, you know what,
I'm sick of this.
Boom.
And some idea is going to takehold and it's going to, you
know, put it into, it's going tomake it obsolete.
Right.
The whole idea of resumes.
(13:41):
Platforms are starting to dothat with LinkedIn, but it's
still just a resume, a digitalresume.
So I've got to ask you, I mean,okay, I'm hiring a Salesforce
architect.
They have to know some prettyserious stuff.
They have to have a certainamount of experience.
I need to start somewhere,right?
I need to look at somethingthat certifies or verifies that
(14:05):
this person can do that thing.
So when you talk about the sortof the obsolescence of the
resume, what's the alternative?
Jason Carroll (14:13):
Well, I mean, there are multiple legs of the
stool.
Structured interviews are stillone of the best determining
factors.
And not just having astructured interview, but using
the right strategy for thatinterview, like behavioral
descriptive questions.
So that's the term you want tolook up if you're listening to
this and you're like, what doeshe mean?
Yeah, behavioral descriptive,which is instead of asking you a
(14:34):
question that you answer, it'stell me an instance where XYZ
happened.
So now you have to actuallyrecall a real scenario.
So that's a piece of it.
Um, you know, referrals, buthandling them in a productive
way.
That's right.
And sure, we can find out aboutexperience if we want to.
Personally, out of my dozens ofpeople or dozen or so people
(14:57):
that work for me, I haven'tseen, I don't even have in my
inbox a single resume of anybodythat works for me right now.
Never seen it, don't want tosee it because it doesn't matter
for me.
If I need to hire a Salesforcearchitect, I'm going to use my
platform to determine what arethe kind of behavioral hard
wirings that's going to givethis person, like that's going
to be the best fit if I findthis person who's wired to
(15:21):
succeed, feel energized, etcetera.
And then I'm going to use ARIAor AI to write a job description
that that speaks to thatperson's wiring.
So yeah, there's going to bethe job duties and all that, but
it's also going to almost belike a sales pitch for the kind
of person I'm looking for.
And so the people who areapplying now, I'm weeding out
(15:43):
the ones that are just the wrongwiring because they're going to
read some of the stuff andthey're going to go, ew, well,
that doesn't sound fun at all.
But then there's going to besome that light up.
Some of those people are goingto read Salesforce expert,
whatever, architect, and then belike, well, I don't have that
at all.
So I'm not even going to apply.
Right.
Yeah.
But there's going to be somepeople that have it.
And so they apply.
And there's going to be somepeople that are like, I don't
(16:04):
know how to do this, but man,this company sounds cool and
this job description soundsawesome.
And I bet I could learn.
And they're going to apply.
And these are the hiddenpotential folks that we never
even see when we overemphasizethe resume and the prior
experience.
Josh Matthews (16:20):
You know, I'm with you 100%.
Can I just say that?
Yeah.
Man.
Like this is, in fact, the lastpodcast talked about that.
It talked about all the thingsthat people are doing wrong and
how they're losing.
Like, I forget the exact title,but it's basically like your
best candidate.
You already said no to the bestcandidate and you don't even
know it.
Right.
(16:40):
We all know that these vibecoding, not vibe coding, these
sort of vibe interviews, like,hey, I just want to get to know
you.
That's my style.
Let's have coffee.
Yeah.
I want to know all about.
It's like, okay, whatever.
That doesn't work.
That's a one in five shot ofsuccess.
And you're right.
Like, unless you're hiringsomeone who has to be like
steeped in serious, whatever itis, machine learning theories to
(17:03):
go work on some global panelfor, you know, for like world
agreement on how an MP4 is goingto be structured.
Like, yeah.
Like you don't necessarily needa degree.
Not at all.
Yeah.
Not at all.
It used to mean something.
It doesn't mean the same thinganymore.
It's completely devalued.
But this idea of look, it'sbroken, man.
(17:28):
And you know it.
Like the hiring systems are dogshit.
And unfortunately, the peoplethat are involved in the hiring
are nice, genuine, earnest,well-meaning people that lack
the skill set to even be able toanalyze those behavioral
questions that you were justdescribing.
(17:50):
Tell me about a time when youdidn't suck at interviewing.
That's a good question.
Me personally, I always suck.
No, I'm just kidding, dude.
I only don't suck atinterviewing.
No, I'm just joking.
I'm making a joke.
Come on, man.
Come on.
No, I'm making a joke.
But like those tell me about atime things, yeah, they're real
and they can definitely throwpeople.
(18:10):
What do you think is uh do youhave like have you noticed for
yourself that when it comes tothe people that work for you or
that you're helping people gethired, there's you and I already
know like intelligence is sortof the key.
Like if you're smart, there'sbehavioral stuff too, but it
(18:31):
kind of starts withintelligence.
Like, can you problem solve?
Can you figure this out?
Is emotional intelligence, likecan you handle, you know, can
you be flexible?
Like all of these sorts ofthings.
But is there a specific qualitybeyond say intelligence and you
know potential that you see isintrinsic to all top performers?
Jason Carroll (18:52):
No.
We don't measure intelligenceand we don't measure EQ.
We we measure natural stylesand and and relationships to
things like emotion that cangive us clues.
But the beauty of EQ is theirskills.
Anybody can become empatheticor resilient or whatever else if
they put the work in.
(19:13):
So things that are pure skillsyou can work on.
We don't measure IQ andintelligence.
We don't measure and so we haveto look at the eight attributes
that we do.
And there's just per role, theanswer to your question is
absolutely yes.
But across the board, wherelike if you have this or that or
(19:36):
the other, you're gonna be goodor not, not not even remotely.
No.
Josh Matthews (19:42):
So like conscientiousness just as an
attribute, that's not somethingthat you see come up like all
the time or in most roles.
Jason Carroll (19:51):
No, no.
So what we have a couple ofthings that we measure, one of
them called a precision, whichis gonna be kind of closest to
that conscientiousness.
Okay.
Where it's like, I want thingsto be right.
I have like this inner drivefor things to be buttoned up and
to be done the right way,exacting standards, high
(20:11):
standards, high work ethic andexpectations for myself and
others, right?
Sounds great.
But when you if that's dialedup too high, even if it's a
strength, it can really derailprojects because it can tap the
brakes so hard that everythinghas to be perfect.
And so it never ships.
Josh Matthews (20:32):
Yeah.
Every good quality can bemaximized to the point of
liability.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Jason Carroll (20:39):
I love how you said that.
I'm a musician, so I talk aboutstrengths getting too loud.
I had a guitarist who justcranked his amp way up too high
all the time.
I'm like, that's not goodmusic, man.
I know those.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah.
Jason Carroll (20:52):
Um, you know, and so dial it in, man.
Dial it in.
Make good music.
Yeah, yeah.
You can see my, I don't know ifyou can see my guitar in the
background here.
Uh but yeah.
So low precision people meansthat they're actually strong on
the expedience, understandingthat close enough is good
enough, and and having thisability to wing it and be like,
(21:15):
hey, we'll figure it out as wego.
Low precision people generallyare going to be more risk
tolerant.
All right.
And we need people in ourorganization who have an
appetite for risk.
And we need those that are riskaverse, and they help us like
with that rigor and thatvalidation to make sure that our
ideas don't fail.
Josh Matthews (21:36):
So your vision of diversity is going to be
something different than justwhat we, you know, witnessed the
last five years.
Yeah.
You've said that visionariesoften create chaos if they don't
have systems.
How does that chaosspecifically show up in hiring
and team building?
Like we because you justdescribed somebody who's like a
(21:58):
risk taker of these.
Visionaries, they're not alwayssystems bound because they
never get to do what they do,right?
Jason Carroll (22:07):
Yeah.
I'm chaos incarnate.
Are you yeah.
Um I mean, just yesterday wehad our first four minutes of
server downtime ever because Iwas like, ooh, I have this new
method of rolling out code thatwill eliminate any downtime.
And there's a bug that I reallywant to fix.
So I'm just gonna go ahead anddo it right now in the middle of
the middle of the day?
(22:28):
Yeah, like an idiot.
And of course it didn't work.
And so I had to roll thingsback and I was down for four
minutes.
Like that to me, that's likeultimate sin, right?
Because of so many users.
And that was so stupid of me todo.
Uh so I fixed it then, and thenI actually rolled out my update
at like two in the morningtoday.
And then I actually fit fixedmy script.
(22:50):
So now I can.
Anyway, I'm chaos incarnate.
I'll take a different route towork just to do it.
Like I don't want to do thesame thing that I've ever done
before.
But, you know, and now I'mearly on, I'm a startup, and
right now it's okay.
But the result of that iscurrently I have a business and
a platform that is scalable, butit's not multipliable because I
(23:12):
haven't been able to create anactual repeatable go-to-market
strategy that the strategyitself can scale.
So the platforms can scale,right?
I I can take on enterpriseclients all day long and it's
not going to slow me down.
But the strategy of new clientsfor us right now has just been
the universe dropping people inour lap.
And that's not a plan, right?
(23:33):
No.
It's great that we're gettingreferrals.
It's great that we're in thesenetworks.
Our close rates are insanelygood, but it's not a plan.
And I'm not the planner.
I'm not the one who's going tocome up with that plan.
So I have to balance myself outas I bring on more strategic
talent.
But I also have to be mindful.
(23:54):
If I find my opposite, well,now I've just created such a
chasm between how we're wiredthat we'll we'll just we'll
never meet eye to eye.
It'll take three weeks foreverything done.
Josh Matthews (24:06):
You'll repel one another like magnets.
Exactly.
Exactly.
It's a real tricky thing.
And I, you know, I think that'swhere you go get help, right?
It's like it's not the how,it's the who.
It's like, how do I scale?
No, you don't, it's the who.
Who's going to help you scale,right?
And I personally found not thatI'm here to solve any
challenges that you're facing,because I have myself, man.
(24:28):
But there are really great waysof interacting.
And I'm sure you already dothis with AI.
If you've built this sort ofrubric about what you are, who
you are, kind of behaviorallylike you do with ARIA, right?
Where you can actually get thatto start solving your problems
for you with very lowhallucination and deep tests and
(24:51):
pushback and no fluff and likeall of these sorts of things.
What do you think when you lookat companies that come on
board, right?
You don't have to answer anysort of like business questions,
but sort of like your typicalsize company that that signs up.
Are they 10 people?
(25:11):
Are they 100 people?
Are they 2,000 people?
Like what sort of size?
I know that you can doenterprise level, but you know,
what's sort of your typical sizeclient right now?
Jason Carroll (25:22):
Yeah.
The the range is, the typicalrange is anywhere from 50 to a
couple of thousand.
Okay.
And so we, again, we arecapable of the larger ones.
That's just not who we're goingafter.
We have a high concentration ofthe like 20 to 50, but simply
because we've ended up uh inlike certain networks, like uh
EEO or YPO, if you've heard ofeither of those.
(25:42):
Yeah.
Um, you know, that it's a bunchof entrepreneurial risk taker
people, and they come on boardand they're just like, I have to
tell everybody about this, andthey're already in a network.
And so we get, you know, thereferrals start rolling in.
So that's just you know, I saythe universe is dropping people
in our lap.
That's why.
Josh Matthews (25:59):
So in a 50-person company, are all 50 people
taking assessments?
Jason Carroll (26:04):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, I should have had youdo it before this.
I don't know what I wasthinking.
Uh, what were you thinking,Jason?
I actually thought of thatabout five minutes before we
jumped on here.
Yeah.
Uh it only takes about 10, 12minutes.
So it's super short.
This isn't one of those like45, 60 minute Hogans or
whatever.
It's it's engaging, right?
So it's an easy ask.
(26:24):
It's very easy.
Josh Matthews (26:25):
Does it measure stress?
Does it I talked to a guy theother day for an AE role for a
Salesforce org?
And I'm talking to him.
I was like, You got stuff goingon, man.
What's going on?
He's like, Yeah, I've got stuffgoing on.
What is it?
Like, you don't have to tellme, but you could tell me.
Court battle, custody stuff.
It's like, oh, okay.
Don't change jobs.
Right.
(26:46):
Just stay where you are, hunkerdown, try to be the best you
can, get through this, recover.
Because you you can't you'renot going to have the energy to
bring that adapt adapting to anew role is.
I'm kind of curious.
Your assessments with does itrecognize that?
Can it pick up on things likethat?
(27:07):
Like, are there enoughopportunities for input?
Is it like you is it tappedinto Slack?
Like is it kind of analyzingall this stuff?
Jason Carroll (27:14):
No.
So it's not tapping into anyother third-party things.
Okay.
Way too many privacy issues andcorporate compliance issues
there.
Sure.
Yeah.
Two ways that it can one onething is we can see what would
drain and stress you out, butwe're not necessarily looking at
what is currently stressing youout.
There is a module where like sowe have our core identity that
(27:36):
we measure, and then we have ourwork styles.
And so if I do the work stylesportion of the assessment, which
is basically like kind of asimilar assessment, but it's
answering it in how well, likewhat's expected of me from work
right now in order to besuccessful.
Josh Matthews (27:51):
Okay.
Jason Carroll (27:51):
And so if I answer that and we end up with,
you know, the graphicalrepresentations and they're
radically different, that can bean indicator.
Like whatever's being expectedof me right now is pulling me
out of my hard wiring in a majorway.
Uh so that can absolutely now.
Does that mean I'm stressed?
Maybe, maybe not, but it's ait's a big indicator.
And then we use that to ask theright questions.
Josh Matthews (28:13):
Yeah.
That's what happens when youput the wrong person on the
wrong job or you give the rightperson the wrong tasks.
Yep.
You know, it's like, hey Josh,I want you to go through with a
fine-tooth comb this Excel sheetfor eight hours a day for eight
days in a row or kill me now.
Yeah.
My God, right?
It's like there's an app forthat, dude.
No.
(28:33):
Yeah.
But some people would be ableto do it.
Yeah.
unknown (28:37):
Yeah.
Josh Matthews (28:38):
I met with a software company yesterday.
We were talking about somesoftware that I have with them.
And I was like, you know, I'mI'm a little frustrated because
I can't get the metrics that Ineed out of this software,
specifically because what shouldbe a tick box for me for how I
use it is about eight steps.
Tick here, click there, enterthis bit of information.
(29:00):
It's like, I'm a small company,I don't need any of that stuff.
I know what's going on.
I just want to be like, yeah,click.
This happened.
And consequently, I don't getKPIs because I'm not going to
put it in.
Good luck with that.
You know?
Talk, talk to me aboutinterface.
Okay.
Because the software thatyou've got, there are guys like
(29:21):
me, like I just described.
I'm not doing that.
How much of this is sort ofhard-coded, and how much of it
is just natural language chat?
Jason Carroll (29:29):
I mean, the charts are there to serve as
like visual representations andsnapshots.
They're helpful, but it's theAI that people are using all the
time.
So it it looks and feels a lotlike a clot or a chat GPT.
You pull it up, you have yourchat history, but uh the
difference is how it's beentrained and the tagging
(29:49):
features.
So putting pulling otherpeople's assessment results into
this chat and having thatconversation in that way.
But if I'm like if I'm on ateam in the software and I open
up ARIA, ARIA preloads everybodyfrom that team.
So it's there's really a reallyeasy lift to just navigate the
software, go and chat, and havethat natural language
(30:12):
conversation.
And we have a whole promptlibrary, which is really fun.
So like if you just kind ofwant to explore, you're like,
what should I even ask rightnow?
There's a whole library forthat from anywhere from team
dynamics, hiring, jobdescriptions to sports and
performance and bounce backstrategies.
And because we've uh uh weactually have a number of D1
(30:34):
sports teams using our platform.
Oh, very cool.
And things like you know, heck,faith and spirituality or
relationships and romance andother stuff.
So you know, we saw how ourclients are using it, and we're
like, oh, this is gold.
Not what we thought, but thisis gold that's built into the
software.
Josh Matthews (30:52):
So every employee has access to this.
Jason Carroll (30:54):
They can, yeah.
Uh I mean generally mostcompanies aren't doing it that
way.
Most companies are they kind ofhave the select few, you know,
executive team, HR, downstreamleaders.
It's like a per se package.
Uh no.
They have the option of givingeveryone access.
Okay.
It's an annual license based onyour employee headcount, and
then it's unlimited everything.
(31:16):
It's just, you know,practically speaking, if you've
got 300 people saying, hey, 300people log into this platform
and use a chat without gettingsome sort of training or
workshop or something, it can bepotentially messy.
Josh Matthews (31:30):
But is it mostly leaders leadership that's using
this?
Sort of like team lead on up?
Yeah.
Okay.
And then when they go in, it'spersonalized to them, right?
So it's like, okay, this isJosh's console.
This is Josh, you know, likethis is Josh's team.
Is it giving me, you know,let's say I'm in marketing and I
(31:51):
um really don't interact withsales too much?
You know, I'm like a secondtier down, like the CMO, I'm
three steps down, but I'm stilla team lead.
Is it giving me access on howto communicate with the VP of
sales?
Yeah.
In this console?
If you it's going both ways.
Okay.
unknown (32:08):
Okay.
Jason Carroll (32:09):
Now your chats are private.
Like nobody else sees whatyou're saying.
Even if you tag somebody in thechat, you're just tagging the
results.
You're not, you're not puttingthem in there with you.
You can export and you canshare chats, but that's
different.
Josh Matthews (32:22):
Are your clients seeing a reduction in HR issues?
Jason Carroll (32:25):
Oh, yeah, man.
Yeah.
I I just heard a testimonial.
Actually, I was presenting to aboard of a network, a CEO
network, and I got like twominutes in, and then I had two
clients in the room and theytook over.
And they were like, actually,Jason, let me tell you.
And so I didn't even present,they did it for me.
And one guy was just like, Ihad two people that were having
(32:46):
conflict, and I tried everythingin my playbook, and I could not
get them to see eye to eye.
And then I was like, Oh, yeah,I should ask Aria.
And so I did, and I justliterally printed the conflict
resolution guide that it gave meand walked through it with
them, and it was solved in fiveminutes, and I couldn't believe
it.
That's awesome, man.
Josh Matthews (33:06):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's so cute.
Jason, it's a real gift thatyou're giving to these
organizations, but moreimportantly to these leaders and
to these people.
You know, it can't be, it can'tbe like we talk about this
stuff, and it's fun and it'sinteresting, and it's it's
topical, and you know, everybodywho listens to this show knows
I eat this shit up.
(33:26):
But not enough people dobecause for whatever reason,
they're just not wired for it.
Fair enough.
But this is stuff, real stuff.
And when it comes to the world,it's changing fast.
It's changing.
I'll bet 70% of the worlddoesn't even know how fast it's
(33:47):
changing.
I think those of us who arebuilding AI software and working
in hiring and are in touch withthe job market and the hiring
market can see exactly what'sgoing on, including shifts, just
as recent as December.
You know, OpenClause changed alot of things.
And there needs to be a change.
(34:08):
And it has to happen ideallyfaster, faster than it's
happening.
I think, you know, 90% ofpeople would look at a different
job if they were presented theright kind of offer.
That's the job satisfaction inthe United States so low.
It's so freaking low.
Now there's AI encroachment andfear, right?
I mean, clearly your software,like it or not, is displacing
(34:32):
certain levels of experiencethat are necessary.
You can take someone, I mean,and fair enough, it doesn't
matter.
Like, why not?
Why not?
Like, okay, you don't needsomeone who's been managing
people for 20 years, and I knowthat metric doesn't matter.
But like, you don't need thatkind of background and deep
learning experience if you canhave a conversation and all the
(34:52):
only quality you have is thatyou'll see this, digest it, and
then take action on it.
That's the quality necessaryfor that leader now, right?
And you're helping thesepeople.
Do you think do you think thatHR as products like Active Index
and others?
Again, there's nothing similar,but like other AI-oriented
(35:17):
predictive modeling software.
What do you what do you thinkis gonna happen?
Just be a futurist with me fora moment.
Two years.
Jason Carroll (35:27):
It is so hard to know.
The AI is accelerating at aclip that we've never seen new
innovation accelerate.
The tools that exist right now,if you like I actually part of
the presentation in New York wasa couple weeks ago that I was
telling you about, there was aslide that showed all of the not
(35:49):
even all, but just a suite ofavailable AI tools for HR, from
learning and development tohiring and ATS and coaching and
all this stuff.
And it was the most busy,messy, intimidating slide I've
seen in any presentation in along time.
And it was meant to be.
Because the point was there'stoo many options, and this whole
(36:11):
space is very convoluted.
All I can really do is focus onmy lane.
And I'm not replacing humans.
I'm I'm not replacing humanjudgment.
I'm I'm liberating humanjudgment so that we can take
that dynamic of understandingother people and scale it
broader and faster so thatthings like what you're saying,
(36:33):
job stat goes up, turnover goesdown, trust increases.
So like I I've got my visionfor what I want Active Index to
do in the world of work.
But then, man, I you know, Ithink I need a substance before
I can futurize what two yearsfrom now is gonna look like.
Josh Matthews (36:53):
Sure.
I mean, at the end of the day,we don't we don't know.
Like we just don't know.
But you're you you talked aboutthat crowded HR software space.
It's ridiculous.
It's gonna get rid of well, itit will, but not yet.
Because what's going like it'sstill growing.
Um I was gonna wait to sharethis to my audience, but I've
(37:14):
I've built software over theweekend.
You know, I probably put 35, 40hours into it.
It's serious software.
It's not related to HR.
It's not related to anything Ido, but it's just something,
it's sort of a passion project.
And it's gonna be, it's verycool, and I'm excited to share
it.
But that I was able to sitthere with my with my agent, you
know, my open claw, and getwebsite logic, like you just put
(37:39):
it all together, you know,build the whole thing out.
It's still in, you know, it'syou know, it's like this much
time to build it and then likethat much time to refine it.
You already know that, right?
Yep.
But that a guy like me, who'snot a coder, can do that in a
weekend is that's the newbenchmark.
It's outrageous.
And now, and you'll see guyslike Mike McCullough, principal
(38:02):
engineer at Salesforce for vibecoding.
He's been on the show and he'sa friend of mine.
He was joking the other day,he's like, Do you remember,
Josh, like a year ago, and wewere uh, you know, I was I was
like telling Lovable to to likewhatever, build some app,
lovable.dev.
And now I just tell my agentswhat to do, and then they just
(38:23):
go and build it and bring itback to me.
Like it's so it's it's such adifferent it's such a different
thing.
The next step, of course, isthat those agents should build
them anyway without you, youknow.
Jason Carroll (38:39):
So so what are another few weeks gonna do?
Josh Matthews (38:42):
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
It's it's absolutely insane.
So I think this space is gonnaget crowded, but I also think
too that there's just gonnapeople are just gonna home grow
their own stuff, right?
Yeah, but what they're notgonna do is go hire a what did
you call them?
It was psychometrician.
Yeah.
Psychometrician.
Like they're not gonna go,they're not gonna go do that,
(39:03):
right?
But like until apsychometrician avatar is
available on Claude that canjust be accessed for everything,
you know.
Jason Carroll (39:11):
Uh you can do it.
I mean, I you can download theIBM SPSS software, and that's
your statistical analysis.
You can use an agent to teachyou how to be your own
psychometrician.
And you can go build thisthing.
That's not rocket science.
It's behavioral science.
Josh Matthews (39:27):
But the thing is, is it's not can you?
It's are you gonna?
And the answer is no.
And with that in mind, youshould definitely check out is
it aptiveindex.com?
Jason Carroll (39:37):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Index.
Yeah.com.
Okay.
Josh Matthews (39:45):
Do you or have you noticed, and we're gonna
wrap up here in a little bit, Iwant to thank everybody who's
been listening to this show liveor who's um listening to it on
uh the Josh Force YouTubechannel, the hiringedge.ai
podcast.
Um, and then also stay tunedfor some good blogs and some
clips that are gonna come outfrom this program.
But one of the things that I'venoticed with people who are
(40:09):
spending time with anythingrelated to behavioral awareness,
it's it's kind of exciting andit's fun at first, and
eventually they just kind of getit.
Like, do you have any markersaround, say, clients where
they've used um your softwarefor a year?
(40:30):
Drift of I'm not saying thewhole company as a whole,
because companies rotate peopleand it's always going to be on.
But but like, oh yeah, I don'teven need that anymore because I
know I recognize that type ofperson and what that person
needs and and what you know, howto communicate with them to get
the most out of them.
Do you see these people kind ofgrowing, not just
(40:50):
professionally, but emotionallybecause of the use of ARIA?
Jason Carroll (40:54):
Yes to the growth, but no to the drift.
And I think you'll even you'llyou'll feel this answer
yourself.
The more you go to AI and andlearn, the more you kind of keep
going to it, right?
Like you haven't drifted awayfrom your AI usage because
you've learned.
You've learned and you're likeconsuming.
(41:15):
I mean, our art the human brainis unbelievable what we can
retain and how we can compute.
Josh Matthews (41:25):
Yeah, it's it's like that, it's like that.
I know kung fu.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Yeah.
Josh Matthews (41:32):
I know kung fu.
Jason Carroll (41:34):
Yeah.
Josh Matthews (41:34):
You did it much better than me.
Jason Carroll (41:36):
I've been living and breathing this stuff for 10
years, and I get it, but I'm inaria all the time.
Uh I'm in ARIA for my personallife when stress happens, you
know, and because it's it servesas this companion to not just
teach you and learn and you cangrow, but to also like check
yourself and to like be asounding board.
(41:58):
Uh and what I try to tell myclients is like you are the
thought leader, and AI is yourthought partner.
And so if you engage it thatway, don't let it do thinking
for you.
You be the thinker and you letit be your partner in thinking.
And sure, you can use it forwriting faster emails if you
want, like, fine.
But like I'm thinking about AIstrategically.
(42:18):
And for the human element, likewe're not gonna stop learning
how to better interact, how togrow in emotion, emotional and
social intelligence.
You know, we're not we're notgonna arrive someday and be the
perfect human with perfectself-awareness and ability to
match other people's needs andexpectations.
Ain't gonna happen.
Yeah.
Josh Matthews (42:39):
You make an excellent point.
And you're right.
I mean, I mean it all day,every day, right?
So yeah, it's not like, oh, nowI know I know how to prompt, so
now I don't have to promptanymore.
Yeah.
It's a little bit, you know,it's it's a little bit
different.
It's a little bit different.
Um I want you to have a chanceto share with the audience what
kind of um financial benefitthey can realize.
(43:04):
And uh, it's gonna be differentfor different types of
companies, it's gonna bedifferent for different size
companies, but when you know, ifturnover is reduced by 22%,
right?
If um if there are lesslawsuits resulting from you know
uh disgruntled workers, thingslike that, if you're not hiring
(43:29):
the wrong people for the rightjob three out of five times,
four out of five times, have youbeen able to go back to some of
your early clients and sort ofhave them articulate for you
what the cost benefit hasactually been by going with
(43:49):
aptive index and what does thatlook like?
Jason Carroll (43:52):
Yeah, I mean hard numbers are tough, right?
Yeah.
But just ballpark.
There are themes and youmentioned a bunch of them
already.
Biggest, clearest ROI ishiring.
We've all seen a great resumeand has somebody do really well
in an interview.
And so we pulled the triggerand they bombed.
We we've all experienced that.
And we also know how painfulthat is.
(44:14):
The direct replacement costscan be up to and even beyond
that person's full salary.
But the indirect costs of a badhire, the ripple effect, the
culture impact, the lostproductivity, all of that stuff
can be three, four, five Xsomebody's salary, especially
(44:36):
for like the six figures typesof roles.
So if I I mean, dude, our oursoftware costs it's peanuts,
man.
Like it's it's nothing.
Yeah.
In the grand scheme of things.
So let's say you fall in thetier and it costs you 15 grand
for the whole year becauseyou've got a couple hundred
employees, which means you'reprobably hiring a couple a
(44:57):
month, right?
Maybe not that much.
But if you avoid one mishire,you've just paid for the
software for the next five, 10years.
Yeah.
It's just, it's a no-brainer.
And what about the advantage?
You will avoid the mishire.
Josh Matthews (45:11):
Look, those are all great points.
I'm glad it's so nice to havesomeone on the show who can
amplify that reality because itis very real.
And sometimes when I tellpeople like the cost of a bad
hire is 5x or 3x or 10x, dependson the role.
It sounds so fantastical, theydon't want to believe it.
They're like, Josh, I don'twant to pay you $45,000 for this
(45:34):
person.
Why would I do that?
You know, um, and and then notlisten to you.
Right.
Like, why would I do that?
It's like, well, if you if youdelay this hire by four months,
you're gonna lose um $120,000 to$140,000.
And then if you lose thatclient because you don't get the
work done, um, you could lose amillion dollars in billings
(45:56):
next year.
So it the numbers real, right?
And I'm kind of curious howyour internal HR talent
acquisition teams are theyfalling in love with this?
Are they resistant to it?
Jason Carroll (46:11):
No, they love it.
The smaller companies I'm goingin through the founder or CEO.
Uh, but once we get in thethree, four hundred, two
thousand range, we're going inthrough HR most often.
Yeah.
And they love this stuff.
They don't see it as a threat.
And it's actually, you see thislike breath of fresh air that
happens because they're allevery lead of HR right now is
(46:34):
being asked to embrace AIinitiatives.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Yeah.
Jason Carroll (46:38):
But zero direction on what the heck that
even means.
And so they go out and theystart looking at these tools,
and they're they're like adirect threat and an affront to
who they are, what they do, howthey've done things before.
Yeah.
And so, of course, they're alittle bit nervous coming into a
conversation with us.
But then when they see it comealive, they're like, oh man,
(46:59):
this this just enhanceseverything that we're about.
This, this like helps ourculture.
It helps me with judgmentcalls, and it's not replacing
anybody on my team at all.
It's a it's and then they startusing it and they just go
nutso.
And I get unpromptedtestimonials all the time.
It's fantastic.
Josh Matthews (47:16):
Awesome, man.
Yeah.
That's great.
What haven't I asked you that Iprobably should have asked you
on this show?
Jason Carroll (47:23):
I do have one cool thing coming soon.
If you go to ask aria.com, youcan sign up for a lot of people.
A-R-I-A.
Yeah.
Uh just like the opera.
Ask aria.com.
Uh Puccini.
You can you can sign exactly.
You can sign up for like thewait list.
This is the consumer offshootof Apptive Index.
(47:46):
So tens of millions of peopleare already using AI as a mental
health companion.
Like it's it's their firstgo-to for like therapy and
self-growth and all this kind ofstuff.
Tens of millions, just inAmerica.
And the problem with that isthat's not what Chat GPT is made
for.
It doesn't know who you areother than your chat history,
(48:09):
uh, and it's gonna tell you whatyou want to hear.
And Aria's already been tunedto not be a yes man.
She knows you deeply, and sheknows the immediate people
around you on your team at workor your spouse or your or
whatever.
So ask Aria, because I've hadso many people asking me to do
this, is it's gonna bechat-based, all the graphs and
(48:29):
dashboards and none of that.
You take the assessment, fillin your bio, and just start
chatting.
And it'll be like, hey, youknow, show me what you know
about me, Aria, and she'll giveyou this readout that you're
just like you're looking at it,you're going, How in the world
does this AI know me after a10-minute assessment?
Like it's yeah.
Yeah, right.
But then she'll prompt you,she'll she'll walk you through
(48:52):
scenarios and situations.
You can get your significantother to take it as well.
And like now you can interactwith those, you know, both of
those results, or your friendgroup, or your uh faith
community, whatever kind ofthing you're in.
That's the that's the dream ofAsk ARIA is to be the consumer
offshoot.
And I mean, it's technicallyready, but I I you know it's
(49:13):
probably not gonna really launchfor another month.
But I'm really excited aboutit.
Josh Matthews (49:18):
Like, so can people build like ARIA is a
brain now.
Can people build their ownsoftware with ARIA as an engine?
Jason Carroll (49:29):
No, we're it's ARIA is simply an LLM connection
to like the anthropics and openAIs of the world, but that's
been fine-tuned and trained onits specific role and of course
all the aptive index lingo andlanguage and science.
(49:49):
But no, there's no there's noway to tap into ARIA from an
external platform.
Not yet, at least.
Think about that.
Yeah, we I have.
We've got some clients thatwe're talking to already for uh
some unique use c use cases.
But yeah, it's it's not as easyas it sounds on surface.
(50:09):
No.
But it's it's doable, but it'sdoable.
Josh Matthews (50:11):
Come on, man, prompt it out.
Jason, it's been a pleasurehaving you on the show.
Thank you so much.
My audience thanks you.
You're appreciated.
Let's give them some ways toconnect with you.
So it's Jason P.
Carroll, two Rs, two L's hereon LinkedIn.
Um, and if you're watching thison LinkedIn, you can just click
the button below.
(50:32):
If you're watching this on uhJosh Forrest YouTube channel,
you're gonna have links in thedescription to Active Index and
to Ask Aria and to uh Jason'sLinkedIn profile.
Anything else?
Anything else I missed that wecan point people to?
Oh, um I don't think so.
Jason Carroll (50:52):
I mean, if you happen upon this and and you
love sales and this sounds likesomething fun to sell, I am
hiring.
Josh Matthews (50:57):
You are hiring.
Hit me up, yeah.
Okay, no, that's good.
And uh we'll be back in twoweeks.
I'm excited about the nextshow.
You'll be hearing all about itin the post next week.
Who wrote every resume that comes across your
desk nowadays?
ChatGPT.
And even before that existed,though, what is a resume?
It's just a snapshot,self-glorifying snapshot, full
of exaggerations and sometimesoutright lies.
Josh Matthews (00:18):
Welcome to the Hiring Edge, the podcast helping
leaders navigate the age of AI,create teams that thrive, and
build a workplace people neverwant to leave.
Today on The Hiring Edge, we'regoing to uh we're going
straight to the heart of why youkeep hiring A players on paper
who underperform in the seat.
And that's a problem.
Like everybody's seen it.
It's a serious problem.
I'm joined by Jason P.
(00:39):
Carroll, the founder of ActiveIndex, who scaled the company
from 800 people to 2,500employees over seven years.
And then he built the scienceto fix hiring and team
performance for the rest of us.
And it's not just what Ithought originally, which was
like, hey, take this test.
Let's see if you fit into ourculture or if you're going to be
successful.
It's actually scientificallybacked AI software that
(01:05):
communicates with the team,communicates with the managers.
Right.
So, Jason, why don't you goahead and talk?
By the way, I love this stuff.
I think I just did a littlepost and it was like hiring,
behavioral analysis, and AI.
Yes, sign me up.
I'm all about that, right?
So like let's go.
Tell us about, tell us aboutyour company, tell us about your
team, and more importantly,tell us what problem you're
(01:28):
solving.
I think that's what peoplereally want to know.
Jason Carroll (01:30):
Sure.
Yeah.
Gosh, what order to go in?
Yeah, the the team is stillsmall at this point, maybe 10
people or so.
You know, from softwaredevelopment to marketing to uh a
lot of like advisors.
So, you know, we've got thesefull-time advisors that work
with our clients to have thehuman element.
Yes, we rely heavily on AI.
We've got advisors that havebeen CEOs, they've hired,
(01:53):
they've fired, and so they workwith our clients to make sure
that there's still that humanjudgment as part of what we're
doing.
But yeah, like you said, it's abehavioral assessment.
We're we're calling ourcategory behavioral
intelligence, and we're the onlyones really doing it.
It's assessment meets AI.
So the AI doesn't actually playany role in the assessment,
(02:14):
right?
That's all been scientificallyvalidated.
The algorithms, the factorsthat we're measuring, and the AI
picks up from there.
And so it's been trained.
Josh Matthews (02:24):
It's not a floating rubric that's going to
bend as the LLMs adjust.
Correct.
Yeah.
Jason Carroll (02:30):
Okay.
Yeah.
So the assessment is its ownengine.
Uh then there's the softwarelayer, which has charts and
teams and org charts and graphsand all that kind of fun stuff.
Yeah.
Uh there's there's a mobile appfor that as well.
And then ARIA is our AI, andARIA is really where everything
kind of comes to life andshines.
(02:50):
So this isn't some PDF you getand it sits in your inbox and
collects dust.
It's something that our clientsare using every day, which
frankly shocked me.
I I knew it would make it moreuseful.
I didn't realize that I wasgoing to have business owners
logging in from their phoneevery single day, being like,
I'm walking into a meeting withat Josh Matthews, give me tips,
(03:11):
you know, or these two peopleare having conflict, or help.
My marriage sucks.
I mean, literally, I have CEOswho's whose spouses have taken
the assessment and they're usingit for romantic purposes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, why wouldn't they?
Right?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Josh Matthews (03:28):
Yeah.
So there's a part that I'm I'mkind of interested in, which is
this it almost sounds like youdecided to approach behavioral
assessment from the ground upwith some sort of foundational
core, right?
There's going to be a modelthat it leans on more, sort of
this Jungian MBTI stuff, or someof the newer models.
(03:52):
Was there one?
Because you you said, hey, thisstuff got really exciting for
you.
You want to live in that space.
And trust me, man, I get itbecause I love that.
I love that shit.
What was the model that youwere like that kind of caught
you?
That was like, oh, you bit thathook and you're like, oh, wow,
this is exciting.
Because that totally makessense.
Now I can understand myselfdifferently.
(04:13):
I can understand theseemployees differently.
And then you're actually usingit, and it's almost like magic,
like NLP stuff.
Jason Carroll (04:21):
You know, yeah, my first like my first foray was
back in 2016, uh with twoprimary tools, uh uh what's it
called?
Strengths finder or CliftonStrengths and Culture Index,
which is a similar kind of likefree choice assessment style
like ours.
And I that opened my eyes tojust how much self-awareness I
(04:45):
lacked.
I was gonna tell you.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
And then from self-awarenesscame others' awareness.
I mean, just simple stuff, likemore than half the population
prefers that you tell them whatto do.
Not in a way that strips theirautonomy, but like they want
direction.
They want clarity.
And for me, like everythinginside of me rails against that.
(05:08):
Like if you tell me what to doand how to do it, like you're
enemy number one now.
And I'm gonna revolt.
And I just thought everybodymust be the same way.
Nobody wants to be told what todo.
It couldn't have been morewrong.
And so that was the Are you?
Josh Matthews (05:23):
What are you, an ENTJ?
I want to know your MBTI, andI'm sure you know it, right?
You must know it.
Shoot.
ESTP, I think.
ESTP.
Oh, that's interesting.
Okay.
Jason Carroll (05:34):
I think so.
It's it's been a minute.
It's okay.
Josh Matthews (05:37):
Don't worry about it.
Jason Carroll (05:38):
Yeah, often called the entrepreneur or doer.
Yeah.
So I'm looking that up herereal quick.
But yeah, uh it was a big gamechanger.
Then a couple years later, Iwent and met Brene Brown and uh
I got to be like I becamecertified uh dare to lead
facilitator.
Like got to sit with her forthree days getting trained.
That was mind-blowingly good.
(05:59):
That's awesome, man.
Yeah.
Good for you.
Josh Matthews (06:01):
Yeah.
Jason Carroll (06:02):
And yeah, just just really uh awakened to my
own inner world and being ableto take the perspective of
others.
Uh so yeah, that was that wasthe initial intro into it.
Uh that's a good thing.
Josh Matthews (06:15):
I want to take this moment right now, and
because some people who aregoing to listen to this, many
people have taken an assessmenttest, but as you mentioned, it's
sitting in a drawer somewhere.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah.
Josh Matthews (06:26):
When I ask people, hey, what's your MBTI?
or they're like, oh, I don'tknow.
I thought it was like an EFFP.
And it's like, well, thatdoesn't exist, so you don't
remember, and that's okay.
You know, so normal.
But if there's one assessmentthat you would say, hey, look,
like I've got my favorite.
I like the Myers Briggs.
I just do.
It's I've been working on itfor 35 years, right?
But if you were going to say,hey, you want to go learn about
(06:48):
yourself, right?
It's not inside of thisenterprise software system that
you've built.
Like, where would you tellpeople to go so that they can
kind of get real?
Jason Carroll (06:56):
That's a good question.
I mean, and disk are bothpretty good.
Enneagram's fun andinteresting.
We're measuring some additionallayers.
And it's hard to kind of stepout of my world, of course,
because I see what's lackingstill.
Like there's so much about ouremotional world, our
interactivation, what we callaffective chronometry, uh you
(07:19):
know, our abstraction and likekind of cognitive styles.
Like those other tests don'teven touch on those and and
they're just invaluable.
So I'm trying to remove myselffrom that and think what might
have similarities.
But yeah, so I think, yeah, M ET I, it's free.
Disc.
I think it's you can't.
Josh Matthews (07:37):
Yeah, it's free, and you can do it in five
minutes or 10 minutes nowadays.
I am kind of curious.
And and look, there's a bigdifference between these things,
right?
Like I'm I'm an E N T J.
I'm barely an E.
I'm barely a T, right?
So I'm not gonna be like aNapoleon, right?
Who's pinging high on on bothof those things, right?
Or at least high on the T.
(07:58):
So where you scale inside ofthese these sort of 16 profiles,
that's not gonna cut it.
There's eight billion of us.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah.
Josh Matthews (08:07):
You know, there's more than just 16 types.
So I'm I'm glad that youmentioned that.
I'm I am really curious abouthow people in organizations that
you service, and you can startwith your own, like, what
started to change?
Like, what was a palpablechange that you saw once
(08:30):
leadership started to utilizethis stuff?
What was there resistance oflike, oh, I know what you're
doing?
You're trying to talk to melike that thing because you're
using that program.
Because we'll see smart peopledo that.
Smart, smart, uh, rebelliouspeople like you, Jason.
Skeptical.
Will do that.
You'll see it.
Right.
Did you do companies experiencethat at all?
(08:50):
Or is it sort of like thisquiet peacefulness that gets
things just get better?
Jason Carroll (08:55):
I think the language matters.
There's a way to take thisbehavioral data and present it
in a way that feels really kindof destructive and
disempowering.
And then there's a way to takeit in and say, hey, look,
there's no good or bad or rightor wrong answers.
There's just kind of who youare.
And we were very, veryintentional and continue to be
(09:16):
as we update and tweak aboutlanguage.
I want everybody who comesacross this to feel empowered,
to feel like they uh see areflection of themselves and and
like that they just go, oh mygosh, this thing gets me.
And I and I feel so like freebecause of it.
And I get to see that happenall the time.
Now, are there people inorganization, I mean so many
(09:37):
clients now, some peopleprobably have more of a visceral
reaction.
I don't encounter that, whichis great, but that's not to say
it doesn't exist.
So yeah, I mean who knows.
Josh Matthews (09:48):
So what do you what are your clients saying
now?
And where are they leaning intoit the most?
So kind of two questions.
I guess that let's start withthe leaning into it the most.
Are they leaning into it moreup front in their hiring
determination and decisionmaking around who to bring on?
Or does it matter less becausenow they can kind of be
(10:10):
variable?
It's a depend to who they'vegot.
Jason Carroll (10:12):
Yeah.
Like right people, right seatis kind of the first line of
defense.
And so the hiring part reallydoes matter.
Are there a wide variety ofdifferent types of people who
can succeed in certain roles?
Yeah.
But there's there are thingsthat give us energy and there
are things that drain us.
And when we can get put in theright seat where most of what we
(10:35):
do actually brings us energyinstead of drains us, it's all
around better for everybody.
We're more engaged, there'shigher trust, there's better
performance, et cetera.
So it starts on the hiringside.
And you you asked a minute ago,and I didn't even answer your
question, but what problem arewe solving on that side?
Like who wrote every resumethat comes across your desk
(10:58):
nowadays?
Chat GPT.
And even before that existed,though, what is a resume?
It's just a snapshot,self-glorifying snapshot full of
exaggerations and sometimesoutright lies about what I've
done before now.
So essentially experience.
(11:20):
Not even skills, because youcan write skills and they don't
have to be true, but experience.
Well, and sometimes formaleducation.
We have studies from the 80sand 90s that tell us that formal
education and experience havealmost zero predictive power to
tell us if somebody's going tosucceed in a role.
(11:41):
Like formal education might aswell throw it out the window,
unless you need it, like you'rea surgeon.
Josh Matthews (11:49):
There's a handful of those types of roles.
I think we're going to see, infact, I think I have a guest in
two weeks or four weeks, andwe're going to talk about that
because it's like the death ofthe university, especially
liberal arts.
Yep.
Jason Carroll (12:02):
And then experience.
If you've done this thing for20 years, but you've done it
poorly, now you're bringing 20years of shit experience into my
organization.
And that doesn't help me atall.
And so this whole system isbroken and it has been for
decades, where we're looking ata resume as the first line of
(12:22):
defense to figure out ifsomebody is a good fit for a
role.
And it just garbage.
It doesn't actually give usanything other than how well
does somebody present themselvesand what they've done in the
past.
Josh Matthews (12:39):
But come on, Jason.
I mean, I'm just going to pushback a little bit.
First of all, yeah, I totallyagree.
You know, thousands andthousands and thousands of
resumes that I look at, not inmy life, every year, look at.
Every year.
Sure.
And so there's, and it is, it'suh there's so much AI garbage
now.
I have to use AI just to getrid of the AI garbage.
(13:00):
Right.
It's just like, first there wasemail and everybody loved it.
And it's like, you've got mail.
Oh my God, I got an email.
And now it's like, you've gotspam, 400 messages.
So now we have spam filters.
And the same thing's happeningwith resumes and AI written
resumes.
It's a battle.
Right.
And eventually, and I wastalking about this with someone
(13:20):
the other day.
It's like, well, what's goingto eventually happen?
Eventually, some alternative isgoing to get squeezed in the
middle because people are justgoing to be like, you know what,
I'm sick of this.
Boom.
And some idea is going to takehold and it's going to, you
know, put it into, it's going tomake it obsolete.
Right.
The whole idea of resumes.
(13:41):
Platforms are starting to dothat with LinkedIn, but it's
still just a resume, a digitalresume.
So I've got to ask you, I mean,okay, I'm hiring a Salesforce
architect.
They have to know some prettyserious stuff.
They have to have a certainamount of experience.
I need to start somewhere,right?
I need to look at somethingthat certifies or verifies that
(14:05):
this person can do that thing.
So when you talk about the sortof the obsolescence of the
resume, what's the alternative?
Jason Carroll (14:13):
Well, I mean, there are multiple legs of the
stool.
Structured interviews are stillone of the best determining
factors.
And not just having astructured interview, but using
the right strategy for thatinterview, like behavioral
descriptive questions.
So that's the term you want tolook up if you're listening to
this and you're like, what doeshe mean?
Yeah, behavioral descriptive,which is instead of asking you a
(14:34):
question that you answer, it'stell me an instance where XYZ
happened.
So now you have to actuallyrecall a real scenario.
So that's a piece of it.
Um, you know, referrals, buthandling them in a productive
way.
That's right.
And sure, we can find out aboutexperience if we want to.
Personally, out of my dozens ofpeople or dozen or so people
(14:57):
that work for me, I haven'tseen, I don't even have in my
inbox a single resume of anybodythat works for me right now.
Never seen it, don't want tosee it because it doesn't matter
for me.
If I need to hire a Salesforcearchitect, I'm going to use my
platform to determine what arethe kind of behavioral hard
wirings that's going to givethis person, like that's going
to be the best fit if I findthis person who's wired to
(15:21):
succeed, feel energized, etcetera.
And then I'm going to use ARIAor AI to write a job description
that that speaks to thatperson's wiring.
So yeah, there's going to bethe job duties and all that, but
it's also going to almost belike a sales pitch for the kind
of person I'm looking for.
And so the people who areapplying now, I'm weeding out
(15:43):
the ones that are just the wrongwiring because they're going to
read some of the stuff andthey're going to go, ew, well,
that doesn't sound fun at all.
But then there's going to besome that light up.
Some of those people are goingto read Salesforce expert,
whatever, architect, and then belike, well, I don't have that
at all.
So I'm not even going to apply.
Right.
Yeah.
But there's going to be somepeople that have it.
And so they apply.
And there's going to be somepeople that are like, I don't
(16:04):
know how to do this, but man,this company sounds cool and
this job description soundsawesome.
And I bet I could learn.
And they're going to apply.
And these are the hiddenpotential folks that we never
even see when we overemphasizethe resume and the prior
experience.
Josh Matthews (16:20):
You know, I'm with you 100%.
Can I just say that?
Yeah.
Man.
Like this is, in fact, the lastpodcast talked about that.
It talked about all the thingsthat people are doing wrong and
how they're losing.
Like, I forget the exact title,but it's basically like your
best candidate.
You already said no to the bestcandidate and you don't even
know it.
Right.
(16:40):
We all know that these vibecoding, not vibe coding, these
sort of vibe interviews, like,hey, I just want to get to know
you.
That's my style.
Let's have coffee.
Yeah.
I want to know all about.
It's like, okay, whatever.
That doesn't work.
That's a one in five shot ofsuccess.
And you're right.
Like, unless you're hiringsomeone who has to be like
steeped in serious, whatever itis, machine learning theories to
(17:03):
go work on some global panelfor, you know, for like world
agreement on how an MP4 is goingto be structured.
Like, yeah.
Like you don't necessarily needa degree.
Not at all.
Yeah.
Not at all.
It used to mean something.
It doesn't mean the same thinganymore.
It's completely devalued.
But this idea of look, it'sbroken, man.
(17:28):
And you know it.
Like the hiring systems are dogshit.
And unfortunately, the peoplethat are involved in the hiring
are nice, genuine, earnest,well-meaning people that lack
the skill set to even be able toanalyze those behavioral
questions that you were justdescribing.
(17:50):
Tell me about a time when youdidn't suck at interviewing.
That's a good question.
Me personally, I always suck.
No, I'm just kidding, dude.
I only don't suck atinterviewing.
No, I'm just joking.
I'm making a joke.
Come on, man.
Come on.
No, I'm making a joke.
But like those tell me about atime things, yeah, they're real
and they can definitely throwpeople.
(18:10):
What do you think is uh do youhave like have you noticed for
yourself that when it comes tothe people that work for you or
that you're helping people gethired, there's you and I already
know like intelligence is sortof the key.
Like if you're smart, there'sbehavioral stuff too, but it
(18:31):
kind of starts withintelligence.
Like, can you problem solve?
Can you figure this out?
Is emotional intelligence, likecan you handle, you know, can
you be flexible?
Like all of these sorts ofthings.
But is there a specific qualitybeyond say intelligence and you
know potential that you see isintrinsic to all top performers?
Jason Carroll (18:52):
No.
We don't measure intelligenceand we don't measure EQ.
We we measure natural stylesand and and relationships to
things like emotion that cangive us clues.
But the beauty of EQ is theirskills.
Anybody can become empatheticor resilient or whatever else if
they put the work in.
(19:13):
So things that are pure skillsyou can work on.
We don't measure IQ andintelligence.
We don't measure and so we haveto look at the eight attributes
that we do.
And there's just per role, theanswer to your question is
absolutely yes.
But across the board, wherelike if you have this or that or
(19:36):
the other, you're gonna be goodor not, not not even remotely.
No.
Josh Matthews (19:42):
So like conscientiousness just as an
attribute, that's not somethingthat you see come up like all
the time or in most roles.
Jason Carroll (19:51):
No, no.
So what we have a couple ofthings that we measure, one of
them called a precision, whichis gonna be kind of closest to
that conscientiousness.
Okay.
Where it's like, I want thingsto be right.
I have like this inner drivefor things to be buttoned up and
to be done the right way,exacting standards, high
(20:11):
standards, high work ethic andexpectations for myself and
others, right?
Sounds great.
But when you if that's dialedup too high, even if it's a
strength, it can really derailprojects because it can tap the
brakes so hard that everythinghas to be perfect.
And so it never ships.
Josh Matthews (20:32):
Yeah.
Every good quality can bemaximized to the point of
liability.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Jason Carroll (20:39):
I love how you said that.
I'm a musician, so I talk aboutstrengths getting too loud.
I had a guitarist who justcranked his amp way up too high
all the time.
I'm like, that's not goodmusic, man.
I know those.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah.
Jason Carroll (20:52):
Um, you know, and so dial it in, man.
Dial it in.
Make good music.
Yeah, yeah.
You can see my, I don't know ifyou can see my guitar in the
background here.
Uh but yeah.
So low precision people meansthat they're actually strong on
the expedience, understandingthat close enough is good
enough, and and having thisability to wing it and be like,
(21:15):
hey, we'll figure it out as wego.
Low precision people generallyare going to be more risk
tolerant.
All right.
And we need people in ourorganization who have an
appetite for risk.
And we need those that are riskaverse, and they help us like
with that rigor and thatvalidation to make sure that our
ideas don't fail.
Josh Matthews (21:36):
So your vision of diversity is going to be
something different than justwhat we, you know, witnessed the
last five years.
Yeah.
You've said that visionariesoften create chaos if they don't
have systems.
How does that chaosspecifically show up in hiring
and team building?
Like we because you justdescribed somebody who's like a
(21:58):
risk taker of these.
Visionaries, they're not alwayssystems bound because they
never get to do what they do,right?
Jason Carroll (22:07):
Yeah.
I'm chaos incarnate.
Are you yeah.
Um I mean, just yesterday wehad our first four minutes of
server downtime ever because Iwas like, ooh, I have this new
method of rolling out code thatwill eliminate any downtime.
And there's a bug that I reallywant to fix.
So I'm just gonna go ahead anddo it right now in the middle of
the middle of the day?
(22:28):
Yeah, like an idiot.
And of course it didn't work.
And so I had to roll thingsback and I was down for four
minutes.
Like that to me, that's likeultimate sin, right?
Because of so many users.
And that was so stupid of me todo.
Uh so I fixed it then, and thenI actually rolled out my update
at like two in the morningtoday.
And then I actually fit fixedmy script.
(22:50):
So now I can.
Anyway, I'm chaos incarnate.
I'll take a different route towork just to do it.
Like I don't want to do thesame thing that I've ever done
before.
But, you know, and now I'mearly on, I'm a startup, and
right now it's okay.
But the result of that iscurrently I have a business and
a platform that is scalable, butit's not multipliable because I
(23:12):
haven't been able to create anactual repeatable go-to-market
strategy that the strategyitself can scale.
So the platforms can scale,right?
I I can take on enterpriseclients all day long and it's
not going to slow me down.
But the strategy of new clientsfor us right now has just been
the universe dropping people inour lap.
And that's not a plan, right?
(23:33):
No.
It's great that we're gettingreferrals.
It's great that we're in thesenetworks.
Our close rates are insanelygood, but it's not a plan.
And I'm not the planner.
I'm not the one who's going tocome up with that plan.
So I have to balance myself outas I bring on more strategic
talent.
But I also have to be mindful.
(23:54):
If I find my opposite, well,now I've just created such a
chasm between how we're wiredthat we'll we'll just we'll
never meet eye to eye.
It'll take three weeks foreverything done.
Josh Matthews (24:06):
You'll repel one another like magnets.
Exactly.
Exactly.
It's a real tricky thing.
And I, you know, I think that'swhere you go get help, right?
It's like it's not the how,it's the who.
It's like, how do I scale?
No, you don't, it's the who.
Who's going to help you scale,right?
And I personally found not thatI'm here to solve any
challenges that you're facing,because I have myself, man.
(24:28):
But there are really great waysof interacting.
And I'm sure you already dothis with AI.
If you've built this sort ofrubric about what you are, who
you are, kind of behaviorallylike you do with ARIA, right?
Where you can actually get thatto start solving your problems
for you with very lowhallucination and deep tests and
(24:51):
pushback and no fluff and likeall of these sorts of things.
What do you think when you lookat companies that come on
board, right?
You don't have to answer anysort of like business questions,
but sort of like your typicalsize company that that signs up.
Are they 10 people?
(25:11):
Are they 100 people?
Are they 2,000 people?
Like what sort of size?
I know that you can doenterprise level, but you know,
what's sort of your typical sizeclient right now?
Jason Carroll (25:22):
Yeah.
The the range is, the typicalrange is anywhere from 50 to a
couple of thousand.
Okay.
And so we, again, we arecapable of the larger ones.
That's just not who we're goingafter.
We have a high concentration ofthe like 20 to 50, but simply
because we've ended up uh inlike certain networks, like uh
EEO or YPO, if you've heard ofeither of those.
(25:42):
Yeah.
Um, you know, that it's a bunchof entrepreneurial risk taker
people, and they come on boardand they're just like, I have to
tell everybody about this, andthey're already in a network.
And so we get, you know, thereferrals start rolling in.
So that's just you know, I saythe universe is dropping people
in our lap.
That's why.
Josh Matthews (25:59):
So in a 50-person company, are all 50 people
taking assessments?
Jason Carroll (26:04):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, I should have had youdo it before this.
I don't know what I wasthinking.
Uh, what were you thinking,Jason?
I actually thought of thatabout five minutes before we
jumped on here.
Yeah.
Uh it only takes about 10, 12minutes.
So it's super short.
This isn't one of those like45, 60 minute Hogans or
whatever.
It's it's engaging, right?
So it's an easy ask.
(26:24):
It's very easy.
Josh Matthews (26:25):
Does it measure stress?
Does it I talked to a guy theother day for an AE role for a
Salesforce org?
And I'm talking to him.
I was like, You got stuff goingon, man.
What's going on?
He's like, Yeah, I've got stuffgoing on.
What is it?
Like, you don't have to tellme, but you could tell me.
Court battle, custody stuff.
It's like, oh, okay.
Don't change jobs.
Right.
(26:46):
Just stay where you are, hunkerdown, try to be the best you
can, get through this, recover.
Because you you can't you'renot going to have the energy to
bring that adapt adapting to anew role is.
I'm kind of curious.
Your assessments with does itrecognize that?
Can it pick up on things likethat?
(27:07):
Like, are there enoughopportunities for input?
Is it like you is it tappedinto Slack?
Like is it kind of analyzingall this stuff?
Jason Carroll (27:14):
No.
So it's not tapping into anyother third-party things.
Okay.
Way too many privacy issues andcorporate compliance issues
there.
Sure.
Yeah.
Two ways that it can one onething is we can see what would
drain and stress you out, butwe're not necessarily looking at
what is currently stressing youout.
There is a module where like sowe have our core identity that
(27:36):
we measure, and then we have ourwork styles.
And so if I do the work stylesportion of the assessment, which
is basically like kind of asimilar assessment, but it's
answering it in how well, likewhat's expected of me from work
right now in order to besuccessful.
Josh Matthews (27:51):
Okay.
Jason Carroll (27:51):
And so if I answer that and we end up with,
you know, the graphicalrepresentations and they're
radically different, that can bean indicator.
Like whatever's being expectedof me right now is pulling me
out of my hard wiring in a majorway.
Uh so that can absolutely now.
Does that mean I'm stressed?
Maybe, maybe not, but it's ait's a big indicator.
And then we use that to ask theright questions.
Josh Matthews (28:13):
Yeah.
That's what happens when youput the wrong person on the
wrong job or you give the rightperson the wrong tasks.
Yep.
You know, it's like, hey Josh,I want you to go through with a
fine-tooth comb this Excel sheetfor eight hours a day for eight
days in a row or kill me now.
Yeah.
My God, right?
It's like there's an app forthat, dude.
No.
(28:33):
Yeah.
But some people would be ableto do it.
Yeah.
unknown (28:37):
Yeah.
Josh Matthews (28:38):
I met with a software company yesterday.
We were talking about somesoftware that I have with them.
And I was like, you know, I'mI'm a little frustrated because
I can't get the metrics that Ineed out of this software,
specifically because what shouldbe a tick box for me for how I
use it is about eight steps.
Tick here, click there, enterthis bit of information.
(29:00):
It's like, I'm a small company,I don't need any of that stuff.
I know what's going on.
I just want to be like, yeah,click.
This happened.
And consequently, I don't getKPIs because I'm not going to
put it in.
Good luck with that.
You know?
Talk, talk to me aboutinterface.
Okay.
Because the software thatyou've got, there are guys like
(29:21):
me, like I just described.
I'm not doing that.
How much of this is sort ofhard-coded, and how much of it
is just natural language chat?
Jason Carroll (29:29):
I mean, the charts are there to serve as
like visual representations andsnapshots.
They're helpful, but it's theAI that people are using all the
time.
So it it looks and feels a lotlike a clot or a chat GPT.
You pull it up, you have yourchat history, but uh the
difference is how it's beentrained and the tagging
(29:49):
features.
So putting pulling otherpeople's assessment results into
this chat and having thatconversation in that way.
But if I'm like if I'm on ateam in the software and I open
up ARIA, ARIA preloads everybodyfrom that team.
So it's there's really a reallyeasy lift to just navigate the
software, go and chat, and havethat natural language
(30:12):
conversation.
And we have a whole promptlibrary, which is really fun.
So like if you just kind ofwant to explore, you're like,
what should I even ask rightnow?
There's a whole library forthat from anywhere from team
dynamics, hiring, jobdescriptions to sports and
performance and bounce backstrategies.
And because we've uh uh weactually have a number of D1
(30:34):
sports teams using our platform.
Oh, very cool.
And things like you know, heck,faith and spirituality or
relationships and romance andother stuff.
So you know, we saw how ourclients are using it, and we're
like, oh, this is gold.
Not what we thought, but thisis gold that's built into the
software.
Josh Matthews (30:52):
So every employee has access to this.
Jason Carroll (30:54):
They can, yeah.
Uh I mean generally mostcompanies aren't doing it that
way.
Most companies are they kind ofhave the select few, you know,
executive team, HR, downstreamleaders.
It's like a per se package.
Uh no.
They have the option of givingeveryone access.
Okay.
It's an annual license based onyour employee headcount, and
then it's unlimited everything.
(31:16):
It's just, you know,practically speaking, if you've
got 300 people saying, hey, 300people log into this platform
and use a chat without gettingsome sort of training or
workshop or something, it can bepotentially messy.
Josh Matthews (31:30):
But is it mostly leaders leadership that's using
this?
Sort of like team lead on up?
Yeah.
Okay.
And then when they go in, it'spersonalized to them, right?
So it's like, okay, this isJosh's console.
This is Josh, you know, likethis is Josh's team.
Is it giving me, you know,let's say I'm in marketing and I
(31:51):
um really don't interact withsales too much?
You know, I'm like a secondtier down, like the CMO, I'm
three steps down, but I'm stilla team lead.
Is it giving me access on howto communicate with the VP of
sales?
Yeah.
In this console?
If you it's going both ways.
Okay.
unknown (32:08):
Okay.
Jason Carroll (32:09):
Now your chats are private.
Like nobody else sees whatyou're saying.
Even if you tag somebody in thechat, you're just tagging the
results.
You're not, you're not puttingthem in there with you.
You can export and you canshare chats, but that's
different.
Josh Matthews (32:22):
Are your clients seeing a reduction in HR issues?
Jason Carroll (32:25):
Oh, yeah, man.
Yeah.
I I just heard a testimonial.
Actually, I was presenting to aboard of a network, a CEO
network, and I got like twominutes in, and then I had two
clients in the room and theytook over.
And they were like, actually,Jason, let me tell you.
And so I didn't even present,they did it for me.
And one guy was just like, Ihad two people that were having
(32:46):
conflict, and I tried everythingin my playbook, and I could not
get them to see eye to eye.
And then I was like, Oh, yeah,I should ask Aria.
And so I did, and I justliterally printed the conflict
resolution guide that it gave meand walked through it with
them, and it was solved in fiveminutes, and I couldn't believe
it.
That's awesome, man.
Josh Matthews (33:06):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's so cute.
Jason, it's a real gift thatyou're giving to these
organizations, but moreimportantly to these leaders and
to these people.
You know, it can't be, it can'tbe like we talk about this
stuff, and it's fun and it'sinteresting, and it's it's
topical, and you know, everybodywho listens to this show knows
I eat this shit up.
(33:26):
But not enough people dobecause for whatever reason,
they're just not wired for it.
Fair enough.
But this is stuff, real stuff.
And when it comes to the world,it's changing fast.
It's changing.
I'll bet 70% of the worlddoesn't even know how fast it's
(33:47):
changing.
I think those of us who arebuilding AI software and working
in hiring and are in touch withthe job market and the hiring
market can see exactly what'sgoing on, including shifts, just
as recent as December.
You know, OpenClause changed alot of things.
And there needs to be a change.
(34:08):
And it has to happen ideallyfaster, faster than it's
happening.
I think, you know, 90% ofpeople would look at a different
job if they were presented theright kind of offer.
That's the job satisfaction inthe United States so low.
It's so freaking low.
Now there's AI encroachment andfear, right?
I mean, clearly your software,like it or not, is displacing
(34:32):
certain levels of experiencethat are necessary.
You can take someone, I mean,and fair enough, it doesn't
matter.
Like, why not?
Why not?
Like, okay, you don't needsomeone who's been managing
people for 20 years, and I knowthat metric doesn't matter.
But like, you don't need thatkind of background and deep
learning experience if you canhave a conversation and all the
(34:52):
only quality you have is thatyou'll see this, digest it, and
then take action on it.
That's the quality necessaryfor that leader now, right?
And you're helping thesepeople.
Do you think do you think thatHR as products like Active Index
and others?
Again, there's nothing similar,but like other AI-oriented
(35:17):
predictive modeling software.
What do you what do you thinkis gonna happen?
Just be a futurist with me fora moment.
Two years.
Jason Carroll (35:27):
It is so hard to know.
The AI is accelerating at aclip that we've never seen new
innovation accelerate.
The tools that exist right now,if you like I actually part of
the presentation in New York wasa couple weeks ago that I was
telling you about, there was aslide that showed all of the not
(35:49):
even all, but just a suite ofavailable AI tools for HR, from
learning and development tohiring and ATS and coaching and
all this stuff.
And it was the most busy,messy, intimidating slide I've
seen in any presentation in along time.
And it was meant to be.
Because the point was there'stoo many options, and this whole
(36:11):
space is very convoluted.
All I can really do is focus onmy lane.
And I'm not replacing humans.
I'm I'm not replacing humanjudgment.
I'm I'm liberating humanjudgment so that we can take
that dynamic of understandingother people and scale it
broader and faster so thatthings like what you're saying,
(36:33):
job stat goes up, turnover goesdown, trust increases.
So like I I've got my visionfor what I want Active Index to
do in the world of work.
But then, man, I you know, Ithink I need a substance before
I can futurize what two yearsfrom now is gonna look like.
Josh Matthews (36:53):
Sure.
I mean, at the end of the day,we don't we don't know.
Like we just don't know.
But you're you you talked aboutthat crowded HR software space.
It's ridiculous.
It's gonna get rid of well, itit will, but not yet.
Because what's going like it'sstill growing.
Um I was gonna wait to sharethis to my audience, but I've
(37:14):
I've built software over theweekend.
You know, I probably put 35, 40hours into it.
It's serious software.
It's not related to HR.
It's not related to anything Ido, but it's just something,
it's sort of a passion project.
And it's gonna be, it's verycool, and I'm excited to share
it.
But that I was able to sitthere with my with my agent, you
know, my open claw, and getwebsite logic, like you just put
(37:39):
it all together, you know,build the whole thing out.
It's still in, you know, it'syou know, it's like this much
time to build it and then likethat much time to refine it.
You already know that, right?
Yep.
But that a guy like me, who'snot a coder, can do that in a
weekend is that's the newbenchmark.
It's outrageous.
And now, and you'll see guyslike Mike McCullough, principal
(38:02):
engineer at Salesforce for vibecoding.
He's been on the show and he'sa friend of mine.
He was joking the other day,he's like, Do you remember,
Josh, like a year ago, and wewere uh, you know, I was I was
like telling Lovable to to likewhatever, build some app,
lovable.dev.
And now I just tell my agentswhat to do, and then they just
(38:23):
go and build it and bring itback to me.
Like it's so it's it's such adifferent it's such a different
thing.
The next step, of course, isthat those agents should build
them anyway without you, youknow.
Jason Carroll (38:39):
So so what are another few weeks gonna do?
Josh Matthews (38:42):
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
It's it's absolutely insane.
So I think this space is gonnaget crowded, but I also think
too that there's just gonnapeople are just gonna home grow
their own stuff, right?
Yeah, but what they're notgonna do is go hire a what did
you call them?
It was psychometrician.
Yeah.
Psychometrician.
Like they're not gonna go,they're not gonna go do that,
(39:03):
right?
But like until apsychometrician avatar is
available on Claude that canjust be accessed for everything,
you know.
Jason Carroll (39:11):
Uh you can do it.
I mean, I you can download theIBM SPSS software, and that's
your statistical analysis.
You can use an agent to teachyou how to be your own
psychometrician.
And you can go build thisthing.
That's not rocket science.
It's behavioral science.
Josh Matthews (39:27):
But the thing is, is it's not can you?
It's are you gonna?
And the answer is no.
And with that in mind, youshould definitely check out is
it aptiveindex.com?
Jason Carroll (39:37):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Index.
Yeah.com.
Okay.
Josh Matthews (39:45):
Do you or have you noticed, and we're gonna
wrap up here in a little bit, Iwant to thank everybody who's
been listening to this show liveor who's um listening to it on
uh the Josh Force YouTubechannel, the hiringedge.ai
podcast.
Um, and then also stay tunedfor some good blogs and some
clips that are gonna come outfrom this program.
But one of the things that I'venoticed with people who are
(40:09):
spending time with anythingrelated to behavioral awareness,
it's it's kind of exciting andit's fun at first, and
eventually they just kind of getit.
Like, do you have any markersaround, say, clients where
they've used um your softwarefor a year?
(40:30):
Drift of I'm not saying thewhole company as a whole,
because companies rotate peopleand it's always going to be on.
But but like, oh yeah, I don'teven need that anymore because I
know I recognize that type ofperson and what that person
needs and and what you know, howto communicate with them to get
the most out of them.
Do you see these people kind ofgrowing, not just
(40:50):
professionally, but emotionallybecause of the use of ARIA?
Jason Carroll (40:54):
Yes to the growth, but no to the drift.
And I think you'll even you'llyou'll feel this answer
yourself.
The more you go to AI and andlearn, the more you kind of keep
going to it, right?
Like you haven't drifted awayfrom your AI usage because
you've learned.
You've learned and you're likeconsuming.
(41:15):
I mean, our art the human brainis unbelievable what we can
retain and how we can compute.
Josh Matthews (41:25):
Yeah, it's it's like that, it's like that.
I know kung fu.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Yeah.
Josh Matthews (41:32):
I know kung fu.
Jason Carroll (41:34):
Yeah.
Josh Matthews (41:34):
You did it much better than me.
Jason Carroll (41:36):
I've been living and breathing this stuff for 10
years, and I get it, but I'm inaria all the time.
Uh I'm in ARIA for my personallife when stress happens, you
know, and because it's it servesas this companion to not just
teach you and learn and you cangrow, but to also like check
yourself and to like be asounding board.
(41:58):
Uh and what I try to tell myclients is like you are the
thought leader, and AI is yourthought partner.
And so if you engage it thatway, don't let it do thinking
for you.
You be the thinker and you letit be your partner in thinking.
And sure, you can use it forwriting faster emails if you
want, like, fine.
But like I'm thinking about AIstrategically.
(42:18):
And for the human element, likewe're not gonna stop learning
how to better interact, how togrow in emotion, emotional and
social intelligence.
You know, we're not we're notgonna arrive someday and be the
perfect human with perfectself-awareness and ability to
match other people's needs andexpectations.
Ain't gonna happen.
Yeah.
Josh Matthews (42:39):
You make an excellent point.
And you're right.
I mean, I mean it all day,every day, right?
So yeah, it's not like, oh, nowI know I know how to prompt, so
now I don't have to promptanymore.
Yeah.
It's a little bit, you know,it's it's a little bit
different.
It's a little bit different.
Um I want you to have a chanceto share with the audience what
kind of um financial benefitthey can realize.
(43:04):
And uh, it's gonna be differentfor different types of
companies, it's gonna bedifferent for different size
companies, but when you know, ifturnover is reduced by 22%,
right?
If um if there are lesslawsuits resulting from you know
uh disgruntled workers, thingslike that, if you're not hiring
(43:29):
the wrong people for the rightjob three out of five times,
four out of five times, have youbeen able to go back to some of
your early clients and sort ofhave them articulate for you
what the cost benefit hasactually been by going with
(43:49):
aptive index and what does thatlook like?
Jason Carroll (43:52):
Yeah, I mean hard numbers are tough, right?
Yeah.
But just ballpark.
There are themes and youmentioned a bunch of them
already.
Biggest, clearest ROI ishiring.
We've all seen a great resumeand has somebody do really well
in an interview.
And so we pulled the triggerand they bombed.
We we've all experienced that.
And we also know how painfulthat is.
(44:14):
The direct replacement costscan be up to and even beyond
that person's full salary.
But the indirect costs of a badhire, the ripple effect, the
culture impact, the lostproductivity, all of that stuff
can be three, four, five Xsomebody's salary, especially
(44:36):
for like the six figures typesof roles.
So if I I mean, dude, our oursoftware costs it's peanuts,
man.
Like it's it's nothing.
Yeah.
In the grand scheme of things.
So let's say you fall in thetier and it costs you 15 grand
for the whole year becauseyou've got a couple hundred
employees, which means you'reprobably hiring a couple a
(44:57):
month, right?
Maybe not that much.
But if you avoid one mishire,you've just paid for the
software for the next five, 10years.
Yeah.
It's just, it's a no-brainer.
And what about the advantage?
You will avoid the mishire.
Josh Matthews (45:11):
Look, those are all great points.
I'm glad it's so nice to havesomeone on the show who can
amplify that reality because itis very real.
And sometimes when I tellpeople like the cost of a bad
hire is 5x or 3x or 10x, dependson the role.
It sounds so fantastical, theydon't want to believe it.
They're like, Josh, I don'twant to pay you $45,000 for this
(45:34):
person.
Why would I do that?
You know, um, and and then notlisten to you.
Right.
Like, why would I do that?
It's like, well, if you if youdelay this hire by four months,
you're gonna lose um $120,000 to$140,000.
And then if you lose thatclient because you don't get the
work done, um, you could lose amillion dollars in billings
(45:56):
next year.
So it the numbers real, right?
And I'm kind of curious howyour internal HR talent
acquisition teams are theyfalling in love with this?
Are they resistant to it?
Jason Carroll (46:11):
No, they love it.
The smaller companies I'm goingin through the founder or CEO.
Uh, but once we get in thethree, four hundred, two
thousand range, we're going inthrough HR most often.
Yeah.
And they love this stuff.
They don't see it as a threat.
And it's actually, you see thislike breath of fresh air that
happens because they're allevery lead of HR right now is
(46:34):
being asked to embrace AIinitiatives.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Yeah.
Jason Carroll (46:38):
But zero direction on what the heck that
even means.
And so they go out and theystart looking at these tools,
and they're they're like adirect threat and an affront to
who they are, what they do, howthey've done things before.
Yeah.
And so, of course, they're alittle bit nervous coming into a
conversation with us.
But then when they see it comealive, they're like, oh man,
(46:59):
this this just enhanceseverything that we're about.
This, this like helps ourculture.
It helps me with judgmentcalls, and it's not replacing
anybody on my team at all.
It's a it's and then they startusing it and they just go
nutso.
And I get unpromptedtestimonials all the time.
It's fantastic.
Josh Matthews (47:16):
Awesome, man.
Yeah.
That's great.
What haven't I asked you that Iprobably should have asked you
on this show?
Jason Carroll (47:23):
I do have one cool thing coming soon.
If you go to ask aria.com, youcan sign up for a lot of people.
A-R-I-A.
Yeah.
Uh just like the opera.
Ask aria.com.
Uh Puccini.
You can you can sign exactly.
You can sign up for like thewait list.
This is the consumer offshootof Apptive Index.
(47:46):
So tens of millions of peopleare already using AI as a mental
health companion.
Like it's it's their firstgo-to for like therapy and
self-growth and all this kind ofstuff.
Tens of millions, just inAmerica.
And the problem with that isthat's not what Chat GPT is made
for.
It doesn't know who you areother than your chat history,
(48:09):
uh, and it's gonna tell you whatyou want to hear.
And Aria's already been tunedto not be a yes man.
She knows you deeply, and sheknows the immediate people
around you on your team at workor your spouse or your or
whatever.
So ask Aria, because I've hadso many people asking me to do
this, is it's gonna bechat-based, all the graphs and
(48:29):
dashboards and none of that.
You take the assessment, fillin your bio, and just start
chatting.
And it'll be like, hey, youknow, show me what you know
about me, Aria, and she'll giveyou this readout that you're
just like you're looking at it,you're going, How in the world
does this AI know me after a10-minute assessment?
Like it's yeah.
Yeah, right.
But then she'll prompt you,she'll she'll walk you through
(48:52):
scenarios and situations.
You can get your significantother to take it as well.
And like now you can interactwith those, you know, both of
those results, or your friendgroup, or your uh faith
community, whatever kind ofthing you're in.
That's the that's the dream ofAsk ARIA is to be the consumer
offshoot.
And I mean, it's technicallyready, but I I you know it's
(49:13):
probably not gonna really launchfor another month.
But I'm really excited aboutit.
Josh Matthews (49:18):
Like, so can people build like ARIA is a
brain now.
Can people build their ownsoftware with ARIA as an engine?
Jason Carroll (49:29):
No, we're it's ARIA is simply an LLM connection
to like the anthropics and openAIs of the world, but that's
been fine-tuned and trained onits specific role and of course
all the aptive index lingo andlanguage and science.
(49:49):
But no, there's no there's noway to tap into ARIA from an
external platform.
Not yet, at least.
Think about that.
Yeah, we I have.
We've got some clients thatwe're talking to already for uh
some unique use c use cases.
But yeah, it's it's not as easyas it sounds on surface.
(50:09):
No.
But it's it's doable, but it'sdoable.
Josh Matthews (50:11):
Come on, man, prompt it out.
Jason, it's been a pleasurehaving you on the show.
Thank you so much.
My audience thanks you.
You're appreciated.
Let's give them some ways toconnect with you.
So it's Jason P.
Carroll, two Rs, two L's hereon LinkedIn.
Um, and if you're watching thison LinkedIn, you can just click
the button below.
(50:32):
If you're watching this on uhJosh Forrest YouTube channel,
you're gonna have links in thedescription to Active Index and
to Ask Aria and to uh Jason'sLinkedIn profile.
Anything else?
Anything else I missed that wecan point people to?
Oh, um I don't think so.
Jason Carroll (50:52):
I mean, if you happen upon this and and you
love sales and this sounds likesomething fun to sell, I am
hiring.
Josh Matthews (50:57):
You are hiring.
Hit me up, yeah.
Okay, no, that's good.
And uh we'll be back in twoweeks.
I'm excited about the nextshow.
You'll be hearing all about itin the post next week.
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