October 7, 2023 • 25 mins
Want to revolutionize your hiring process? We've got Amit Singh, Co-Founder and CEO of Weekday, in our corner this episode. Weekday is a unique recruitment marketplace making waves in the world of talent sourcing.
This game-changing startup is all about fostering trust by providing upfront reference checks and reviews for engineering talent. Discover how Weekday is challenging the status quo in recruitment, offering a fresh layer of data that could drastically accelerate your hiring timeline.
Our conversation takes a deep dive into the inner workings of Weekday, starting with their disruptive payment model. Imagine only paying 15% of an annual salary for a successful hire? Sounds tempting, right? We also shed light on how Weekday is shaping up to be an indispensable tool for recruiters, connecting job openings with the best-reviewed talent in a snap. Catch a glimpse of their impressive stats and success stories, including having 60% coverage of reviews and arranging five interviews within just five days of signing up!
So, grab a cup of coffee, sit back and get ready to rethink your recruitment strategy. You won't want to miss this!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Recruiting Daily's Use Case Podcast, a
show dedicated to thestorytelling that happens or
should happen when practitionerspurchase technology.
Each episode is designed toinspire new ways and ideas to
make your business better as wespeak with the brightest minds
in recruitment in HRTech.
That's what we do.
Here's your host, williamTincup.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
This is William Tincup and you are listening to
the Use Case Podcast.
Today we have a mitt on fromWeekday and we'll be learning
about the business case, so theuse case for why customers and
prospects pick Weekday.
So why don't we just jump intoit A mitt, would you do us a
favor and introduce yourself?
And Weekday.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
All right definitely.
First of all, thank you so much,william, for having me on the
podcast.
It's an honor, sure.
So, talking about myself, I'mthe founder of a company called
Weekday.
We are a recruitmentmarketplace startup wherein we
basically help companies findengineering talent which have
upfront reference checksavailable on them.
(01:08):
So the easiest way to thinkabout us is for a layman would
be something like if, let's say,you're going to buy a product,
in general, you basically lookat Amazon, right?
You look at Amazon and whileyou look at the product
description, you also look atreviews, and that's a major part
of the decision making process.
If you go to a restaurant, youlook at reviews there and
ratings, as opposed to whenyou're.
(01:29):
And that could be like as asimple thing, as like buying a
t-shirt, buying a bottle, etc.
But when it comes to likemaking a much crucial decision
of who to hire, that's somethingthat is not available and there
are related reasons for that,but that's what we are trying to
break.
Hey, can we get reviews onpeople which basically bring
(01:49):
trust into the whole hiringprocess, and eventual idea is
that how do we bring this trustin the hiring process so that
the interview process and theprocess like the sort of steps,
extra steps that get addedbecause there's no trust in
recruiting process gets removedeventually.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
So that's what we are doing and so the reviews are
for people.
So if we said Yelp for peopleor Glassdoor for candidates or
employees, etc.
How far would we be off?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
I think that's a little reductive, but I think
that's broadly what it is andlike for someone to understand.
I think, yes, that's what we do.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Okay, and so the buyer of Weekday, who's
typically?
Who are we targeting as thebuyer?
Speaker 3 (02:36):
So right now we are basically looking at startups
which are seed series, a funded,for whom, like, the quality of
talent is like the utmostimportance, and so these would
be start up looking to hire theearly funding team wherein what,
like one particular engineeringhire could make or break the
startup.
So those are the early sort ofcustomers and then, when it
(02:58):
comes to larger ones, it ends upbeing like a very critical role
that like a larger companywhich has it's how do you get so
?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
two things how do you get people to join, or do they
need to join, and how do youdrive reviews?
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yeah, so that's basically.
I saw like there's a fairlypowerful community that powers
on the back end, which enablesus to become like a Yelp or like
a people, which is like acommunity of software.
Engineers sign up on ourplatform, connect their email
contacts, linkedin connectionsand agree to provide reviews on
(03:37):
people if and when they getshortlisted or interviewed.
Okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
So this is actually a really interesting way to
validate talent, especiallytechnical talent.
We'll just use that as anexample, because you use the
software engineers as an example.
So if you've worked previouslywith this person or you know
them from school, you can reviewthem.
So it's another way, anotherkind of a data point for HR, for
(04:02):
hiring managers, recruiters,etc.
To see some third partyvalidation One way or another.
Validation can be positive ornegative, right.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
So it just being valid has to be negative for it
to for it for the positive onesto actually have any value.
So this is very different from.
There are recommendations orreviews on LinkedIn as well, but
nobody really trust thembecause there are multiple
aspects to it.
This particular, the reviewsthat we are talking about, is
actually not available for thejob seekers to actually see.
(04:35):
A lot of confidentiality, thatis ensured and we basically
design sort of the whole reviewcollection system such that it
incentivizes the people toactually share negative reviews
as well as well as share thepositive ones that they've had.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
So what?
What are we displacing?
And why ask that question in away I do?
Is it other software, or is itsomething that's being not being
done, or what are we displacing?
Speaker 3 (05:03):
So typically, like right now, we're building like a
data sort of layer that, okay,this is like a lot of new data
that we're capturing aboutpeople Now in terms of buying
behavior.
Currently we are displacingrecruitment agencies, which
typically would charge some likecommission, like 25% commission
on the particular hire.
We basically displaced them.
(05:24):
Right now, the eventual idea isto become like a recruiter tool
wherein they have like access,to become like an endpoint
wherein it's like they have allthis data available to them and
they can use it on the per usebasis.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah, you could do matching for the job that's open
for the per talent and then beable to match that to the people
that have the best reviews.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Yes, so for a company , how it works is like you sign
up for us.
You find find all thecandidates which would be like a
fit.
Okay, these are the reviewsthat are available from this
particular person.
Do you want to interview withthem or not?
And if they end up hiring by us, they pay us 15% of annual
salary.
That's the current.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Right, which is a little bit lower than just a
kind of contingency fee that astaffing firm would charge.
Yeah, oh, I love that.
Now, I hate software categories, just the concept of software
categories.
But a lot of budgets are builtin Excel or Google Sheets etc.
So what are your customers,what are they calling you and
(06:23):
what are they putting you andwhere they're taking money out
of budget to pay for you?
Speaker 3 (06:28):
So right now it is the budget that they allocate
for recruitment contingencyagencies, staffing, yeah, yeah.
So basically you would use likea recruitment agency for, or
they would they probably have aLinkedIn recruiter or any of
these products that they use,and if they have an in-house
recruiter, then it basicallyeither takes time from LinkedIn
(06:49):
recruiter or it takes money fromrecruitment agencies.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I love this because reviews are the way that you get
talent in and for talent tovalidate other talent, review
other talent.
But really what you'redisplacing is an inefficient
staffing or RPO, MSP kind ofrecruitment agency model that
doesn't give you those reviews,so they give you.
They might give you the talentor source the talent to you, but
(07:17):
you don't really know if it'svalidated, which means it's
harder work for the hiringmanager to then go find out if
that person is really what theysay they are, Whereas, yeah,
With weekday you could.
That's already.
Some of that work's alreadybeen done.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yeah, perfect.
So that's exactly what we doand, like, the biggest thing
that a company gets out of us isthat the discovery of talent.
So now that is, we're in thebusiness of discovery of talent
and within that discovery, oneis surfacing talent, which a lot
of other companies can also do.
But among thousands of people,how do you find out which is the
best one for me to actuallyspend my time talking to, right?
(07:55):
So what happens as a result ofthis crowdsourced approach that
we have is that one?
It does help in surfacing thebest people, which might or
might not be apparent from their, as you may, or like a LinkedIn
profile and along with that,okay.
So once you have surfacedsomeone, then you have like
reviews on them available aswell, and it helps in discovery
(08:16):
as well as selection.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, validation, it's okay.
So let me ask you two buy sidequestions.
One is when you get theopportunity to show an employer,
a potential client, thesoftware for the first time.
So you get to go crack openweekday for the first time,
which your favorite part of thedemo.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
So for us, it basically, and during the demo
process we set up like, okay,this is the only thing that we
need from a particular companyis the job description, okay,
this is what you're looking for,and we feed into the system.
It turns out okay, these are the30 people would be we think
would be a great fit, whichbasically automatically comes up
(08:56):
within seconds and for each ofthese people they see, okay,
this particular person, thisfits the bill perfectly.
Okay, or, this person isprobably not a great
communicator.
This is what their ex managerat the previous company had said
.
So when they look at thisspecifically review, they think,
okay, now I can take a call andnot waste take a call at this
(09:18):
point itself and not waste mytime talking to someone, go
through four rounds of interviewand then probably reject this
person.
So when this that reviewsupfront is basically when they
feel that wow moment, okay, thisis.
I've not seen this anywhereelse, it's not available and I
would probably have to wasteprobably six, seven manners to
actually get to the same momentof date that they has already
(09:40):
been connected.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
So other reviews just real quickly, for the
application for the audience isother reviews.
Can they be anonymous, theytethered to a profile, or both
Like how do you, how does the,how do you know if you're a
hiring manager, you're lookingat a talent and you really like
them and you see all the reviewsthat data is either again, it
(10:04):
can be anonymized or it can betethered to a profile, but again
it's private, so it's somethingthat only you can see.
So what's the?
What's your model aroundreviews?
And again, there's pros andcons to anonymous and tethered
to a profile.
I totally get that, but justwhat does that look like?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
So for us, we basically optimized on how much
can you trust that particularreview.
So majority of the reviews endup being non-anonymized, so that
tethered to a profile and whois giving this review is that's
huge, equally or like sometimesmore important than the review
itself.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Agreed, I see that I like that.
And again, if someone needs tobe anonymous for whatever types
of reasons, I totally get thatas well.
But if I worked with somebodyat Metta and worked together for
three years and it just sohappens to be product leader or
somebody that everyone knows, etcetera, that review especially
(11:01):
if it's a glowing review, thatreview is going to carry its
weight in gold.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Exactly, and so what we typically see is that
whenever there's a negativereview that is, when, like the
reviewer chooses to be anonymousin loom form cases and in
exceptional cases that's theygenerally keep it.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, yeah, but again , you don't want to, you don't
want to burn that bridge.
So I can see that as well,Because it's like they tell you
early in your career you neverknow when you're ascending, you
never know who is going to workfor you, because you never know
who you're going to know you'rea work for.
So I can see why people wouldwant that to be anonymous.
But also the realness peoplebeing able to say Pat's really
(11:44):
good at this, not great at this.
If you're looking for, like asoftware, if you're looking for
a software architect, pat isfantastic, like top 1%.
If you're looking for a personthat just is going to spend 14
hours a day to writing code,that's not as strong suit.
So what do you need?
(12:06):
So it could be a review likethat and so like I get
somebody's going to have to beable to go through that review
and go okay, no, that we do needan architect.
We need we.
This technologist needs to havemore of a brain rather than
architect than an actual program.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Okay, yeah, and that's basically how our reviews
are, like, structured as well.
You have to choose between anaccess of these three.
So someone is good atcommunication, someone is good
at IC work, and you have tochoose between the two, like you
can't deselect both, whichbasically means that which is
the strongest suit and then whatis the second is probably the
weaker suit.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Oh, I liked that.
I liked that a lot.
Okay, Cause then against forced.
But you've got to get people sothat they don't say everything
is great.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah, exactly, yeah, that's the hell.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Again.
You mentioned LinkedIn earlierand that that was.
They've never really put timeby an injury.
Energy behind that and it'salways been thought of probably
incorrectly, but been thought ofpublicly is just I'll talk to
you, review for you, which willbe glowing.
You'll do a review for me andit'll be glowing.
And neither are accurate.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Exactly and, if you think about it, that's exactly
what happens in the current sortof hiring system as well.
So typically you would actuallyask for a reference check
towards the end, when you'veactually made the decision to
actually give it this someone,the give a person an offer or
not, and you would ask thatcandidate hey, can you give me
two references?
And they would give two peoplewho are most likely to give
(13:35):
glowing references.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
I've always wondered that I've only who gives a
recommend, who gives a potentialreference, the a bad this
person's going to give.
It was a terrible experience.
I don't think they really likedme, but you know what call them
.
Anyhow, let's just see how thatgoes.
I've never understood that,cause these are three people
that know me possibly are familymembers and they're all going
to say really nice things aboutme, which is basically a waste
(13:58):
of everybody's time yes and no.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
so it does have some purpose that, if your objective
is not actually to find out anyred flags, if your objective is,
how do I set this person up forsuccess in terms of just?
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Good point okay.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
It is still helpful, but it is not like serving the
exact purpose why you were doingit right.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
We were trying to find out other bits of
information that we couldn'tfind out there.
What are?
What's the pricing model?
So what is we'll get in thedollars and cents part, but I'm
assuming sass, or Is it not sass?
Speaker 3 (14:32):
So we do both.
Right now, the majority of itis actually like person this we
charge 15% from the company sidein terms of if they end up
hiring buyers.
Small portion right now, whichis slightly larger, the
company's is sass, where theypay like a fixed amount per
month.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Okay, good, good, good.
Let me ask you a workflowquestion.
Where in the workflow do peopleuse weekday we?
Are they using it as a sourcingtool, or they're using it like?
What I'm really thinking aboutis what?
What other technologies does itneed to be connected to?
Speaker 3 (15:04):
So they're using it as a sourcing tool and Once
they've identified a particularlead who's actually shown
interest and they have, theyfound okay, this was person.
I don't want to do an intro ora first round call with.
That is when it goes into anATS and we don't get the idea
sort of a side of the part.
We're basically going to thebucket of sourcing tools, right
(15:25):
services that exist on but it'sa different type of way of going
about sourcing, is you know?
Speaker 2 (15:30):
I mean, there's been sourcing tools that are great
after on the marketplace, andbut this is going about sourcing
in a different.
It's a different paradigm.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah, exactly, and so like the.
That's why the analogy of likeAmazon or yet make sense,
because then you're Finding outthis particular product after
you've initiated, let's say,send a request to contact this
person.
Then the whole journey goesinto another surface suit.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I can see that.
I can see that all rightquestions that buyers should ask
.
So If they've never boughtsomething like this, right?
So if they bought sourcingtechnology, then it's okay.
This works similar to company X, but we're different in in this
way.
What questions if you couldscript them for for prospects,
(16:18):
what would you like for them tobe asking you?
Speaker 3 (16:21):
so most typically the questions that get asked to us
is there are tons of other waysin which I can get quality needs
right, which is I could useeither like an outsourced agency
or I could hire in-house personand do that.
What like?
Will I get a different set ofcandidates here?
And the answer to that is yes,because For us, like whenever
(16:45):
someone like this kind of talentthat gets sourced here is
basically passive talent, whichis might or might not
necessarily be looking out.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
I love that Go ahead, no finish it.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Quality of talent ends up being very different
from most, because most of thesourcing tools exist that out
there, apart from like a fewchosen ones, would actually have
, like people who are activelylooking out, and more often than
not, that is not the quality oftalent that you would want to
restrict yourself.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
And we started with kind of a technical talent, and
so let me go back to that realquick.
Is that basically?
Is that who we serve Istechnical talent, or is it
broader than technical talent?
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Right now it's technical talent, because that's
we wanted to start with a sortof a very targeted piece of the
market and then just be verygood at it.
So right now it is technicaltalent, but the idea here is to
evolve into a more generalmarketplace.
It's like a very similar thingto Amazon, that you start with
books and then do everything.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Are you going to market with partners right now?
Are you?
Is there?
The question, I guess, isaround the ATSs, because we
mentioned ATSs.
This is sourcing gets people toa place, whether or not you
then integrate into CRMs andthings like that, but also
integrate into ATSs.
If they want to drop thatworkflow into ATSs, are there?
(18:08):
Are you already integrated witha bunch of ATSs?
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Not right now, but that's something that is in the
pipeline.
So we would like just aboutstarted building some of those
integrations.
But for now it is mostly drivenby that once you have an
interest person you manuallyhave to do it right now, put
into the ATS and which, becauseso like that is a friction point
, yes, but because of that youadd that sort of our customer C
(18:34):
is high enough that they wouldstill want to go through that
friction point.
Eventually we would want tomake that friction lesser.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
What successes can we talk about without brand names
or stuff like that company names?
Tell us a little bit about someof the early successes that
we've had with weekday.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Yeah.
So in terms of their two waysin which we define success, one
is surfacing good talent and thesecond is do we have reviews on
that?
Right now we have.
We are at a stage wherein, fromfor any talent that is
available, we have reviewscoverage of around 60%.
So there's a 60% probabilitythat you would find like a
legitimate, trustable review ofa particular person that you
(19:15):
would want to talk to.
So that's one specific successthat we see.
The other is how quickly wouldyou be able to have five
interviews, interviewablecandidates, on your calendar?
So that is basically what wepride ourselves in that within
five days you would be.
Within five days of signing up,you would be able to have five
interviews on your calendar with60% coverage of reviews
(19:36):
available.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So what's the basic go to market strategy right now
is how do we get people to knowabout this?
What do you think what's thestrategy to get?
Again, things are noisy, right.
So like how do you get?
How do you cut through thenoise?
How do you all plan to and howhave you already cut through the
noise?
Speaker 3 (19:56):
So right now, it is most of the times that we end up
getting are through likeinteractions or people inbound,
people reaching out to us, andwe also have something called
talent drops, which is wheneverthere's like someone who has
done a job post and wants to getlike access to three set of
candidates.
Then we have this list ofcandidates, which is a weekly
newsletter that goes torecruiters or hiring managers
(20:20):
and they can just browse theseprofiles and if anyone gets into
profiles and reviews and ifanyone is interested, they just
deeper into it and then sign upon a platform.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
So we're having this podcast a year from now.
What's different about weekday?
No-transcript.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
So here from now, we would be, I think, at a stage
wherein we have probably cutdown a few steps in the
interview process.
So what I mean by that isbecause, at the end, what we're
doing is we're trying to buildtrust into the hiring process.
The reason why you make like astranger which is you're looking
to hire, go through so manyhoops is because you don't trust
(21:01):
that person and eventually,what the world we would like to
do is because, let's say, ifyou're doing five interview
stages which is making peoplecross like an individual step
because there's a lot of trustassociated with the person, the
person is no longer a completestranger.
You would have only threeinterview stages and the time to
actually hire someone.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah, sorry to interrupt.
It's interesting because youspeed things up, but also you've
increased the quality, becausepeople can then see the reviews
and again, just like Amazon,just like Yelp and et cetera, so
they can see the reviews, theycan see all the positive, they
can see whatever might not beperceived as positive, but it
will speed the hiring process up, which helps everybody helps
(21:45):
candidates, hiring managers gettalent recruiters everybody wins
.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah, exactly, and that's the whole problem right
now, like you're talking to astranger and then you can't
really trust a stranger unlessyou have you talk to them enough
number of times.
But if there is some way inwhich you could trust that
person beforehand, you would notwant to talk to them enough
number of times.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
It's interesting because in my mind of I've
combined on Google, or when youfirst go to Google and you've
got that, the search bar, butyou've always I feel lucky or
I'm lucky or whatever, the onethat's bit that I've never used,
I feel lucky.
It's almost like that at Amazon.
If you were to just go toamazoncom and then just go yeah,
(22:26):
I feel lucky, just servesomething up and then just buy
it, not even not looking at thereviews, not thinking about it.
It's Amazon knows me wellenough.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, yeah, good.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Let me buy that.
It's that it could be a homerun, but there's so much that
you could do that would helpthat and qualify.
And again, reviews are aninteresting, it's a really
compelling way to qualify acandidate.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
And imagine, like, even in the Amazon analogy, if
let's say you were like Amazonwas not, did not have those
reviews, or like a sort ofcomponent, what you would have
to do is then do an inquiry tothat seller and then you have to
talk to that seller to justbuild that trust that is going
to give me, and then probablyhave a bidding system, et cetera
.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
I have to admit to you.
I mean, I've been on recordsaying that it really doesn't
matter what the reviews say.
So just bear with me, itmatters.
It matters more how manyreviews you have, and so this is
typically because I advise alot of startups, so this is
usually advice I give them likelisten, get on G2, get on
software advice, get on all ofthese things, give reviews, get
(23:33):
as many reviews as you can,because oftentimes people don't
look at the sushi restaurant,the actual reviews themselves,
they just look at the number76,000 people reviewed this
restaurant.
Yeah, it's got to be good, andso the assumption has got to be
good.
Now, with this being talent,they're probably going to go a
(23:54):
little deeper than that.
So maybe I can adjust my lineof thought.
But in general, like aroundsoftware, they don't get into
the reviews that per se.
They look at the quantity ofreviews, which still could hold
true here.
If it's too like talentedpeople, one's got 180 reviews
(24:17):
and one's got two, I'm probablyjust being a human being, I'm
going to probably look at the180 as better.
Whether or not it's actuallybetter or not, If I don't read
the reviews, I won't know.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
But that's where this analogy breaks, because, like
why you can do, look at thingswherein the absolute number of
reviews have been the SK userlesser.
Like for the Amazon, it has afairly limited number of
products and then one product inthat sort of someone is hiring
a product for their particularuse case and there are a large
(24:51):
number of people are using thesame sort of product, versus, as
opposed to when you're workingwith a talent and if a large
number of people have usedthat's not necessarily a
counterintuitive right, so a lotof people are giving you
reviews.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
You've worked with a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
So it could, might not be that good.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
I love it.
I absolutely love what you'vebuilt this is.
I'm so glad we got on the phonetoday because I just I had an
idea what you did, but youreally did a great job of
breaking it down, so thank youso much for covering our time.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
for us, it's a pleasure.
Thank you so much for thesemany insightful questions.
I've interacted with a lot ofpeople and, like even investors
etc.
Have not asked me this day today.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
That's very kind of you, and thanks to the audience.
Thanks for everyone being hereand we'll see you next time.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
You've been listening to Recruiting Daly's use case
podcast.
Be sure to subscribe on yourfavorite platform and hit us up
at RecruitingDailycom.
Welcome to Recruiting Daily's Use Case Podcast, a
show dedicated to thestorytelling that happens or
should happen when practitionerspurchase technology.
Each episode is designed toinspire new ways and ideas to
make your business better as wespeak with the brightest minds
in recruitment in HRTech.
That's what we do.
Here's your host, williamTincup.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
This is William Tincup and you are listening to
the Use Case Podcast.
Today we have a mitt on fromWeekday and we'll be learning
about the business case, so theuse case for why customers and
prospects pick Weekday.
So why don't we just jump intoit A mitt, would you do us a
favor and introduce yourself?
And Weekday.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
All right definitely.
First of all, thank you so much,william, for having me on the
podcast.
It's an honor, sure.
So, talking about myself, I'mthe founder of a company called
Weekday.
We are a recruitmentmarketplace startup wherein we
basically help companies findengineering talent which have
upfront reference checksavailable on them.
(01:08):
So the easiest way to thinkabout us is for a layman would
be something like if, let's say,you're going to buy a product,
in general, you basically lookat Amazon, right?
You look at Amazon and whileyou look at the product
description, you also look atreviews, and that's a major part
of the decision making process.
If you go to a restaurant, youlook at reviews there and
ratings, as opposed to whenyou're.
(01:29):
And that could be like as asimple thing, as like buying a
t-shirt, buying a bottle, etc.
But when it comes to likemaking a much crucial decision
of who to hire, that's somethingthat is not available and there
are related reasons for that,but that's what we are trying to
break.
Hey, can we get reviews onpeople which basically bring
(01:49):
trust into the whole hiringprocess, and eventual idea is
that how do we bring this trustin the hiring process so that
the interview process and theprocess like the sort of steps,
extra steps that get addedbecause there's no trust in
recruiting process gets removedeventually.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
So that's what we are doing and so the reviews are
for people.
So if we said Yelp for peopleor Glassdoor for candidates or
employees, etc.
How far would we be off?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
I think that's a little reductive, but I think
that's broadly what it is andlike for someone to understand.
I think, yes, that's what we do.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Okay, and so the buyer of Weekday, who's
typically?
Who are we targeting as thebuyer?
Speaker 3 (02:36):
So right now we are basically looking at startups
which are seed series, a funded,for whom, like, the quality of
talent is like the utmostimportance, and so these would
be start up looking to hire theearly funding team wherein what,
like one particular engineeringhire could make or break the
startup.
So those are the early sort ofcustomers and then, when it
(02:58):
comes to larger ones, it ends upbeing like a very critical role
that like a larger companywhich has it's how do you get so
?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
two things how do you get people to join, or do they
need to join, and how do youdrive reviews?
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yeah, so that's basically.
I saw like there's a fairlypowerful community that powers
on the back end, which enablesus to become like a Yelp or like
a people, which is like acommunity of software.
Engineers sign up on ourplatform, connect their email
contacts, linkedin connectionsand agree to provide reviews on
(03:37):
people if and when they getshortlisted or interviewed.
Okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
So this is actually a really interesting way to
validate talent, especiallytechnical talent.
We'll just use that as anexample, because you use the
software engineers as an example.
So if you've worked previouslywith this person or you know
them from school, you can reviewthem.
So it's another way, anotherkind of a data point for HR, for
(04:02):
hiring managers, recruiters,etc.
To see some third partyvalidation One way or another.
Validation can be positive ornegative, right.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
So it just being valid has to be negative for it
to for it for the positive onesto actually have any value.
So this is very different from.
There are recommendations orreviews on LinkedIn as well, but
nobody really trust thembecause there are multiple
aspects to it.
This particular, the reviewsthat we are talking about, is
actually not available for thejob seekers to actually see.
(04:35):
A lot of confidentiality, thatis ensured and we basically
design sort of the whole reviewcollection system such that it
incentivizes the people toactually share negative reviews
as well as well as share thepositive ones that they've had.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
So what?
What are we displacing?
And why ask that question in away I do?
Is it other software, or is itsomething that's being not being
done, or what are we displacing?
Speaker 3 (05:03):
So typically, like right now, we're building like a
data sort of layer that, okay,this is like a lot of new data
that we're capturing aboutpeople Now in terms of buying
behavior.
Currently we are displacingrecruitment agencies, which
typically would charge some likecommission, like 25% commission
on the particular hire.
We basically displaced them.
(05:24):
Right now, the eventual idea isto become like a recruiter tool
wherein they have like access,to become like an endpoint
wherein it's like they have allthis data available to them and
they can use it on the per usebasis.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah, you could do matching for the job that's open
for the per talent and then beable to match that to the people
that have the best reviews.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Yes, so for a company , how it works is like you sign
up for us.
You find find all thecandidates which would be like a
fit.
Okay, these are the reviewsthat are available from this
particular person.
Do you want to interview withthem or not?
And if they end up hiring by us, they pay us 15% of annual
salary.
That's the current.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Right, which is a little bit lower than just a
kind of contingency fee that astaffing firm would charge.
Yeah, oh, I love that.
Now, I hate software categories, just the concept of software
categories.
But a lot of budgets are builtin Excel or Google Sheets etc.
So what are your customers,what are they calling you and
(06:23):
what are they putting you andwhere they're taking money out
of budget to pay for you?
Speaker 3 (06:28):
So right now it is the budget that they allocate
for recruitment contingencyagencies, staffing, yeah, yeah.
So basically you would use likea recruitment agency for, or
they would they probably have aLinkedIn recruiter or any of
these products that they use,and if they have an in-house
recruiter, then it basicallyeither takes time from LinkedIn
(06:49):
recruiter or it takes money fromrecruitment agencies.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I love this because reviews are the way that you get
talent in and for talent tovalidate other talent, review
other talent.
But really what you'redisplacing is an inefficient
staffing or RPO, MSP kind ofrecruitment agency model that
doesn't give you those reviews,so they give you.
They might give you the talentor source the talent to you, but
(07:17):
you don't really know if it'svalidated, which means it's
harder work for the hiringmanager to then go find out if
that person is really what theysay they are, Whereas, yeah,
With weekday you could.
That's already.
Some of that work's alreadybeen done.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yeah, perfect.
So that's exactly what we doand, like, the biggest thing
that a company gets out of us isthat the discovery of talent.
So now that is, we're in thebusiness of discovery of talent
and within that discovery, oneis surfacing talent, which a lot
of other companies can also do.
But among thousands of people,how do you find out which is the
best one for me to actuallyspend my time talking to, right?
(07:55):
So what happens as a result ofthis crowdsourced approach that
we have is that one?
It does help in surfacing thebest people, which might or
might not be apparent from their, as you may, or like a LinkedIn
profile and along with that,okay.
So once you have surfacedsomeone, then you have like
reviews on them available aswell, and it helps in discovery
(08:16):
as well as selection.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, validation, it's okay.
So let me ask you two buy sidequestions.
One is when you get theopportunity to show an employer,
a potential client, thesoftware for the first time.
So you get to go crack openweekday for the first time,
which your favorite part of thedemo.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
So for us, it basically, and during the demo
process we set up like, okay,this is the only thing that we
need from a particular companyis the job description, okay,
this is what you're looking for,and we feed into the system.
It turns out okay, these are the30 people would be we think
would be a great fit, whichbasically automatically comes up
(08:56):
within seconds and for each ofthese people they see, okay,
this particular person, thisfits the bill perfectly.
Okay, or, this person isprobably not a great
communicator.
This is what their ex managerat the previous company had said
.
So when they look at thisspecifically review, they think,
okay, now I can take a call andnot waste take a call at this
(09:18):
point itself and not waste mytime talking to someone, go
through four rounds of interviewand then probably reject this
person.
So when this that reviewsupfront is basically when they
feel that wow moment, okay, thisis.
I've not seen this anywhereelse, it's not available and I
would probably have to wasteprobably six, seven manners to
actually get to the same momentof date that they has already
(09:40):
been connected.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
So other reviews just real quickly, for the
application for the audience isother reviews.
Can they be anonymous, theytethered to a profile, or both
Like how do you, how does the,how do you know if you're a
hiring manager, you're lookingat a talent and you really like
them and you see all the reviewsthat data is either again, it
(10:04):
can be anonymized or it can betethered to a profile, but again
it's private, so it's somethingthat only you can see.
So what's the?
What's your model aroundreviews?
And again, there's pros andcons to anonymous and tethered
to a profile.
I totally get that, but justwhat does that look like?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
So for us, we basically optimized on how much
can you trust that particularreview.
So majority of the reviews endup being non-anonymized, so that
tethered to a profile and whois giving this review is that's
huge, equally or like sometimesmore important than the review
itself.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Agreed, I see that I like that.
And again, if someone needs tobe anonymous for whatever types
of reasons, I totally get thatas well.
But if I worked with somebodyat Metta and worked together for
three years and it just sohappens to be product leader or
somebody that everyone knows, etcetera, that review especially
(11:01):
if it's a glowing review, thatreview is going to carry its
weight in gold.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Exactly, and so what we typically see is that
whenever there's a negativereview that is, when, like the
reviewer chooses to be anonymousin loom form cases and in
exceptional cases that's theygenerally keep it.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, yeah, but again , you don't want to, you don't
want to burn that bridge.
So I can see that as well,Because it's like they tell you
early in your career you neverknow when you're ascending, you
never know who is going to workfor you, because you never know
who you're going to know you'rea work for.
So I can see why people wouldwant that to be anonymous.
But also the realness peoplebeing able to say Pat's really
(11:44):
good at this, not great at this.
If you're looking for, like asoftware, if you're looking for
a software architect, pat isfantastic, like top 1%.
If you're looking for a personthat just is going to spend 14
hours a day to writing code,that's not as strong suit.
So what do you need?
(12:06):
So it could be a review likethat and so like I get
somebody's going to have to beable to go through that review
and go okay, no, that we do needan architect.
We need we.
This technologist needs to havemore of a brain rather than
architect than an actual program.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Okay, yeah, and that's basically how our reviews
are, like, structured as well.
You have to choose between anaccess of these three.
So someone is good atcommunication, someone is good
at IC work, and you have tochoose between the two, like you
can't deselect both, whichbasically means that which is
the strongest suit and then whatis the second is probably the
weaker suit.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Oh, I liked that.
I liked that a lot.
Okay, Cause then against forced.
But you've got to get people sothat they don't say everything
is great.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah, exactly, yeah, that's the hell.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Again.
You mentioned LinkedIn earlierand that that was.
They've never really put timeby an injury.
Energy behind that and it'salways been thought of probably
incorrectly, but been thought ofpublicly is just I'll talk to
you, review for you, which willbe glowing.
You'll do a review for me andit'll be glowing.
And neither are accurate.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Exactly and, if you think about it, that's exactly
what happens in the current sortof hiring system as well.
So typically you would actuallyask for a reference check
towards the end, when you'veactually made the decision to
actually give it this someone,the give a person an offer or
not, and you would ask thatcandidate hey, can you give me
two references?
And they would give two peoplewho are most likely to give
(13:35):
glowing references.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
I've always wondered that I've only who gives a
recommend, who gives a potentialreference, the a bad this
person's going to give.
It was a terrible experience.
I don't think they really likedme, but you know what call them
.
Anyhow, let's just see how thatgoes.
I've never understood that,cause these are three people
that know me possibly are familymembers and they're all going
to say really nice things aboutme, which is basically a waste
(13:58):
of everybody's time yes and no.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
so it does have some purpose that, if your objective
is not actually to find out anyred flags, if your objective is,
how do I set this person up forsuccess in terms of just?
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Good point okay.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
It is still helpful, but it is not like serving the
exact purpose why you were doingit right.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
We were trying to find out other bits of
information that we couldn'tfind out there.
What are?
What's the pricing model?
So what is we'll get in thedollars and cents part, but I'm
assuming sass, or Is it not sass?
Speaker 3 (14:32):
So we do both.
Right now, the majority of itis actually like person this we
charge 15% from the company sidein terms of if they end up
hiring buyers.
Small portion right now, whichis slightly larger, the
company's is sass, where theypay like a fixed amount per
month.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Okay, good, good, good.
Let me ask you a workflowquestion.
Where in the workflow do peopleuse weekday we?
Are they using it as a sourcingtool, or they're using it like?
What I'm really thinking aboutis what?
What other technologies does itneed to be connected to?
Speaker 3 (15:04):
So they're using it as a sourcing tool and Once
they've identified a particularlead who's actually shown
interest and they have, theyfound okay, this was person.
I don't want to do an intro ora first round call with.
That is when it goes into anATS and we don't get the idea
sort of a side of the part.
We're basically going to thebucket of sourcing tools, right
(15:25):
services that exist on but it'sa different type of way of going
about sourcing, is you know?
Speaker 2 (15:30):
I mean, there's been sourcing tools that are great
after on the marketplace, andbut this is going about sourcing
in a different.
It's a different paradigm.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah, exactly, and so like the.
That's why the analogy of likeAmazon or yet make sense,
because then you're Finding outthis particular product after
you've initiated, let's say,send a request to contact this
person.
Then the whole journey goesinto another surface suit.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I can see that.
I can see that all rightquestions that buyers should ask
.
So If they've never boughtsomething like this, right?
So if they bought sourcingtechnology, then it's okay.
This works similar to company X, but we're different in in this
way.
What questions if you couldscript them for for prospects,
(16:18):
what would you like for them tobe asking you?
Speaker 3 (16:21):
so most typically the questions that get asked to us
is there are tons of other waysin which I can get quality needs
right, which is I could useeither like an outsourced agency
or I could hire in-house personand do that.
What like?
Will I get a different set ofcandidates here?
And the answer to that is yes,because For us, like whenever
(16:45):
someone like this kind of talentthat gets sourced here is
basically passive talent, whichis might or might not
necessarily be looking out.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
I love that Go ahead, no finish it.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Quality of talent ends up being very different
from most, because most of thesourcing tools exist that out
there, apart from like a fewchosen ones, would actually have
, like people who are activelylooking out, and more often than
not, that is not the quality oftalent that you would want to
restrict yourself.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
And we started with kind of a technical talent, and
so let me go back to that realquick.
Is that basically?
Is that who we serve Istechnical talent, or is it
broader than technical talent?
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Right now it's technical talent, because that's
we wanted to start with a sortof a very targeted piece of the
market and then just be verygood at it.
So right now it is technicaltalent, but the idea here is to
evolve into a more generalmarketplace.
It's like a very similar thingto Amazon, that you start with
books and then do everything.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Are you going to market with partners right now?
Are you?
Is there?
The question, I guess, isaround the ATSs, because we
mentioned ATSs.
This is sourcing gets people toa place, whether or not you
then integrate into CRMs andthings like that, but also
integrate into ATSs.
If they want to drop thatworkflow into ATSs, are there?
(18:08):
Are you already integrated witha bunch of ATSs?
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Not right now, but that's something that is in the
pipeline.
So we would like just aboutstarted building some of those
integrations.
But for now it is mostly drivenby that once you have an
interest person you manuallyhave to do it right now, put
into the ATS and which, becauseso like that is a friction point
, yes, but because of that youadd that sort of our customer C
(18:34):
is high enough that they wouldstill want to go through that
friction point.
Eventually we would want tomake that friction lesser.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
What successes can we talk about without brand names
or stuff like that company names?
Tell us a little bit about someof the early successes that
we've had with weekday.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Yeah.
So in terms of their two waysin which we define success, one
is surfacing good talent and thesecond is do we have reviews on
that?
Right now we have.
We are at a stage wherein, fromfor any talent that is
available, we have reviewscoverage of around 60%.
So there's a 60% probabilitythat you would find like a
legitimate, trustable review ofa particular person that you
(19:15):
would want to talk to.
So that's one specific successthat we see.
The other is how quickly wouldyou be able to have five
interviews, interviewablecandidates, on your calendar?
So that is basically what wepride ourselves in that within
five days you would be.
Within five days of signing up,you would be able to have five
interviews on your calendar with60% coverage of reviews
(19:36):
available.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So what's the basic go to market strategy right now
is how do we get people to knowabout this?
What do you think what's thestrategy to get?
Again, things are noisy, right.
So like how do you get?
How do you cut through thenoise?
How do you all plan to and howhave you already cut through the
noise?
Speaker 3 (19:56):
So right now, it is most of the times that we end up
getting are through likeinteractions or people inbound,
people reaching out to us, andwe also have something called
talent drops, which is wheneverthere's like someone who has
done a job post and wants to getlike access to three set of
candidates.
Then we have this list ofcandidates, which is a weekly
newsletter that goes torecruiters or hiring managers
(20:20):
and they can just browse theseprofiles and if anyone gets into
profiles and reviews and ifanyone is interested, they just
deeper into it and then sign upon a platform.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
So we're having this podcast a year from now.
What's different about weekday?
No-transcript.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
So here from now, we would be, I think, at a stage
wherein we have probably cutdown a few steps in the
interview process.
So what I mean by that isbecause, at the end, what we're
doing is we're trying to buildtrust into the hiring process.
The reason why you make like astranger which is you're looking
to hire, go through so manyhoops is because you don't trust
(21:01):
that person and eventually,what the world we would like to
do is because, let's say, ifyou're doing five interview
stages which is making peoplecross like an individual step
because there's a lot of trustassociated with the person, the
person is no longer a completestranger.
You would have only threeinterview stages and the time to
actually hire someone.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah, sorry to interrupt.
It's interesting because youspeed things up, but also you've
increased the quality, becausepeople can then see the reviews
and again, just like Amazon,just like Yelp and et cetera, so
they can see the reviews, theycan see all the positive, they
can see whatever might not beperceived as positive, but it
will speed the hiring process up, which helps everybody helps
(21:45):
candidates, hiring managers gettalent recruiters everybody wins
.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah, exactly, and that's the whole problem right
now, like you're talking to astranger and then you can't
really trust a stranger unlessyou have you talk to them enough
number of times.
But if there is some way inwhich you could trust that
person beforehand, you would notwant to talk to them enough
number of times.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
It's interesting because in my mind of I've
combined on Google, or when youfirst go to Google and you've
got that, the search bar, butyou've always I feel lucky or
I'm lucky or whatever, the onethat's bit that I've never used,
I feel lucky.
It's almost like that at Amazon.
If you were to just go toamazoncom and then just go yeah,
(22:26):
I feel lucky, just servesomething up and then just buy
it, not even not looking at thereviews, not thinking about it.
It's Amazon knows me wellenough.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, yeah, good.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Let me buy that.
It's that it could be a homerun, but there's so much that
you could do that would helpthat and qualify.
And again, reviews are aninteresting, it's a really
compelling way to qualify acandidate.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
And imagine, like, even in the Amazon analogy, if
let's say you were like Amazonwas not, did not have those
reviews, or like a sort ofcomponent, what you would have
to do is then do an inquiry tothat seller and then you have to
talk to that seller to justbuild that trust that is going
to give me, and then probablyhave a bidding system, et cetera
.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
I have to admit to you.
I mean, I've been on recordsaying that it really doesn't
matter what the reviews say.
So just bear with me, itmatters.
It matters more how manyreviews you have, and so this is
typically because I advise alot of startups, so this is
usually advice I give them likelisten, get on G2, get on
software advice, get on all ofthese things, give reviews, get
(23:33):
as many reviews as you can,because oftentimes people don't
look at the sushi restaurant,the actual reviews themselves,
they just look at the number76,000 people reviewed this
restaurant.
Yeah, it's got to be good, andso the assumption has got to be
good.
Now, with this being talent,they're probably going to go a
(23:54):
little deeper than that.
So maybe I can adjust my lineof thought.
But in general, like aroundsoftware, they don't get into
the reviews that per se.
They look at the quantity ofreviews, which still could hold
true here.
If it's too like talentedpeople, one's got 180 reviews
(24:17):
and one's got two, I'm probablyjust being a human being, I'm
going to probably look at the180 as better.
Whether or not it's actuallybetter or not, If I don't read
the reviews, I won't know.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
But that's where this analogy breaks, because, like
why you can do, look at thingswherein the absolute number of
reviews have been the SK userlesser.
Like for the Amazon, it has afairly limited number of
products and then one product inthat sort of someone is hiring
a product for their particularuse case and there are a large
(24:51):
number of people are using thesame sort of product, versus, as
opposed to when you're workingwith a talent and if a large
number of people have usedthat's not necessarily a
counterintuitive right, so a lotof people are giving you
reviews.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
You've worked with a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
So it could, might not be that good.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
I love it.
I absolutely love what you'vebuilt this is.
I'm so glad we got on the phonetoday because I just I had an
idea what you did, but youreally did a great job of
breaking it down, so thank youso much for covering our time.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
for us, it's a pleasure.
Thank you so much for thesemany insightful questions.
I've interacted with a lot ofpeople and, like even investors
etc.
Have not asked me this day today.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
That's very kind of you, and thanks to the audience.
Thanks for everyone being hereand we'll see you next time.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
You've been listening to Recruiting Daly's use case
podcast.
Be sure to subscribe on yourfavorite platform and hit us up
at RecruitingDailycom.
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