The Use Case Podcast - Storytelling about Canvas with Ben Herman

Welcome to the Use Case Podcast, episode 86. This week we have storytelling about Canvas with Ben Herman. During this episode, Ben and I talk about how practitioners make the business case or the use case for purchasing Canvas.

Ben is fantastic to speak with and is an expert on many things, including hiring, analytics, and diversity. With Canvas, they have created an end-to-end diversity recruiting platform. Their solution enables companies to build their brand, track and understand diversity, and then ultimately, engage and hire more diverse talent through their platform. 

Give the show a listen and please let me know what you think.

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Episode Transcript

Music (00:02):
Welcome to RecruitingDaily's Use Case
Podcast, a show dedicated to thestorytelling that happens or
should happen when practitionerspurchase technology. Each
episode is designed to inspirenew ways and ideas to make your
business better as we speak withthe brightest minds in
recruitment and HR tech. That'swhat we do. here's your host,

(00:23):
William Tincup.

William (00:27):
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is William Tincup and
you're listening to the Use CasePodcast. Today, we have Ben on
from Canvas. And we're gonna betalking all about his company.
And I can't wait to kind of getinto it. So Ben, would you do
us, do the audience a favor andintroduce both yourself and
Canvas?

Ben (00:45):
Yes, I'm excited to be here today and thank you for having
me. I'm Ben Herman, co founderand CEO of canvas.com. And
Canvas started as a differentcompany, which was Jumpstart, a
few years ago. And wepredominantly help students find

(01:09):
internships and new gradopportunities with companies
like Airbnb, Pinterest,Snowflake, Twitch, etc. But what
we realized was is our visionwas much bigger than that. And
although starting in in thatarea, we realized that our
solution could help anyone andeveryone, and so we have

(01:33):
recently rebranded to Canvas.
And we're now solely focused oncreating a new category, which
is around diversity recruiting.
And we believe as every company,you know, needs a CRM, every
company needs a DRP. And so weare, you know, an end to end

(01:55):
diversity recruiting platform,and our our vision is to be the
number one diversity recruitingplatform in the world.

William (02:02):
You know, it's funny because Ben, I've been
programming this HRTX eventthat's about the diversity and
inclusion and the intersectionof talent acquisition. I've been
talking to a lot ofpractitioners, I've found
probably what you you found, aswell, is that now the
responsibility, it's not, it'snot just one, it's not just one

(02:24):
group. It's not just one person.
It's almost like, you know, youcould be a talent sourcer years
ago, but now even if you're atalent sourcer and that's your
sourcing engineers, you're also,you care also about diversity
and inclusion.

Ben (02:41):
Yeah, depends, but

William (02:43):
Right. You might care about it in different ways. But
you're going to have pressure,it seems like the conversations,
the societal conversations thatare external to the business,
have have increased the dialogueinside the business, from HR.
well, from the C suite, from theboard, to HR, to TA, all forms

(03:04):
of TA. So I think that, first ofall, I love the way that you've
positioned the company, I thinkit's super helpful. It will be
super helpful to folks. Let'slet's take a walk through some
of the functionality, like sothat folks understand what a
diversity inclusion platform orrecruiting platform, what is

(03:25):
that? Yeah, what does that looklike? So

Ben (03:28):
Just, just before I do that, I think, I totally agree
with your sentiment of whatyou're saying just there as
like, it's now a lot less about,you know, words and much more
about actions. And people arebeing held accountable. And so
that means that it's gone aboveand beyond just the one or two

(03:49):
people who saw it as animportant thing, or something
that they were responsible for.
So I do agree. In terms of thequestion, you ask, you know,
what, what functionality andwhat features? You know, we
ultimately, you know, stumbledacross a solution that started

(04:12):
in early career, which was justbased off of a lot of research,
understanding of historicalproblems, being a recruiter of,
you know, a decade prior tostarting, you know, this company
now Canvas. It was, it wasreally sad to see that companies

(04:36):
never really valued theirinbound applicants. And, you
know, that there's, there's allof these articles, and I'm sure
many interviews that you'vedone, where people will talk
about, you know how good talentdoesn't apply, and people have
to apply to 100 jobs before theyget one response. And I think

(04:59):
that's really like, caused likemuch bigger problems in this
industry. When you think aboutthat, you know, people sometimes
think it's because of them, thatthey're not hearing back. But
actually, it's just becausecompanies tend to not really
look at those people. And soinstead, they go to places like

(05:20):
LinkedIn. And we'll sourcetalent, usually, on very biased,
like, search strings, right,which could include, you know, a
top five school, you know, aFang company. And there's so
much more talent than that,right. And people just haven't
been given an opportunity. Sowhen we did all this research,

(05:44):
what we found in in earlycareer, which is, you know,
generally interns and new gradopportunities, they had what was
like, such large volume for theheadcount they were hiring. So
take, you know, a company likeLyft, you know, they will
receive over 20,000 applicantsfor 100 positions. So when you
think about that in context,right, even if they hired all

(06:08):
100, from those 30,000applicants or so, like, you
know, 29,900, you know, wouldfall to the wayside. And, and we
just thought like, there must bea better way to, like, manage
this, right. And there reallywasn't. Like, there was no

(06:33):
solution that enabled companiesto understand, you know, the
backgrounds of candidates beyondjust the resume in an ATS. And
they didn't have the ability togo through these applicants,
right. Like, if you ask arecruiter to go through 1000
applicants, you know, that theyreceive, and there's no, there's

(06:54):
no way that they could do thatin anything less than a day,
right? And that's probablyskimming keywords, right? And so
what we focused on was, how dowe get, you know, these
candidates to self identify. Togive what is structured data to

(07:14):
us, so we could then add an app,enable companies to actually go
through these candidates, andhighlight people that otherwise
had never been viewed or givenan opportunity before? Right.
And so we did that, in a veryhacky way to begin with, as an

(07:36):
experiment. You know, we had a,a company invite, you know, 1900
applicants and of which, youknow, I believe 1600 completed
profiles on our on our platform.
And we optimized and built thisin a fully automated way. Where

(07:56):
companies can control themessaging, the branding, the
questions, and the workflowaround this, to to really
optimize that, that conversionand activation from a candidate
side. And, and so yeah, weultimately, you know, give
companies the ability tounderstand their historical and

(08:20):
future applicants. Giving themthe full picture, to increase
diversity across their funnel.
And because we have this data,we can do so much more beyond
this, and we do from, you know,analytics, to, you know,
sourcing, to event management,and to talent communities. And

(08:45):
so, for us, you know, it's anend to end solution, enabling
companies to build their brand,to track and understand that
diversity, and then toultimately, you know, engage and
hire more diverse talent throughour platform. And so that's the

(09:05):
solution.

William (09:06):
Well, I love it. I love it. So a couple of probative
questions. With with yourclients that are kind of ahead,
you know, I mean, there's amaturity curve to all these
things, right. So the folks thatyou've dealt with that really,
really get it, that are doingsome really innovative things,
you know, we don't need tomention names or anything like
that. But how are they thinkingabout diversity differently?

(09:29):
insofar as you know, in the US,a lot of folks when you say
diversity, their minds go torace and gender, immediately.
Which is fine. But with some ofyour more advanced clients, how
are they thinking aboutdiversity and inclusion
differently?

Ben (09:48):
Yeah, that's a that's a really great question. I think
that the true answer to that,William, is that I don't think
they figured it out. They'releaning on us to actually share,
you know, more about likestrategies and tactics that they

(10:10):
can take to, you know, eithermake that process more diverse
and inclusive, or how they canengage and hire like these
people. I think, you know, wewant to redefine what diversity
is, as you kind of say thereit's not just about ethnicity

(10:32):
and gender. It's about yourwhole self. And in some ways,
you know, we're all diverse inour own ways. And really, the
goal is accessibility. And Ithink for too long, there's been
this. There's been this like,you know, blanket over talent

(10:57):
acquisition recruiting asthere's a war of talent. And I'm
sure you've heard that right,for many years, right, as have
I. But the question I always goto, like, is that really a war
for talent? Or is that really adiscovery problem? Right? And I
think, now more than ever, it'sabout how do we bring companies

(11:21):
together to complete the datagaps, like diversity data? But
then in addition to that islike, how do we enable, like,
companies and candidates to justhave the same accessibility,
right, and that's really whatwe're trying to facilitate. And

(11:43):
so they don't necessarily needto have a strategy. They just
need to have commitment to whatthey're doing, and we can help
them get there.

William (11:56):
Well, you've hit on something that's actually it's
a, it's a, it's great for theaudience to hear. Because it's
something that I believe instrongly. That you should, as a
practitioner, you should lean onthe vendors, your partners, and
work with them, because, youknow, y'all are y'all are
sitting on top of hundreds, ifnot 1000s of different installs.

(12:17):
You've got a lot of experiencein what works and what doesn't.
Practitioners need to leveragethat. Again, for wherever they
are, whatever they're trying toachieve, they should talk to
your team and go, Okay, here'swhat we're doing, how can we
change? Etc. So they shouldleverage that. I love that. I
did want to ask about candidatepersonalization. Because, again,

(12:37):
your background on the earlystage and interns and things
like that, and also dealing withdiverse talent, how much do you
think the solution needs to bepersonalized to the candidate in
their experience that they havewith the brands that they apply
to?

Ben (12:57):
Yeah, I think, I think that's a really important
question. And I would say a lot,right? Like, when you look at
LinkedIn, every profile looksthe same. Right? And, and, you
know, we are so much more thanwhat is like words, on a on a

(13:21):
document. Right? And, and thefact that candidates can't show
their whole self, I think isdamaging. Because now more than
ever, you know, people aren'tjust looking for work, right?

(13:42):
They're looking for a missionand a group of people that they
find connection with. Wherethey're more excited and more
willing to go above and beyondto do their best work. And so I
think in order to for that tohappen, it's really important

(14:05):
that people have the opportunityto express themselves, and also
start to own more of their data.
That companies, you know, willstate that AI is using, but it's
not really AI. It's more like,you know, they use an API that
gives them public data. Andthat's what they use, but the

(14:28):
candidates can't even see what'sbeing used. Or they'll use, you
know, a diversity API, whichguesses, you know, whether or
not you're Black or Asianbecause of your name or your
photo and I just think that it'swrong and like, right, things
need to change. And I think thatthe way that that changes is by

(14:50):
giving the power back to thecandidates.

William (14:55):
I love that. So when we first started, we talked about
diversity inclusion recruitmentplatform. For the audience
because, you know, like, the ATScategory has been around 50
years, the CRM category has beenaround for maybe 10 years, etc.
When you say, kind of end toend, I think sourcing to

(15:18):
onboarding. So I know a littlebit broader, probably than than
the normal, normal person. Wheredo y'alls, what's your line of
what's Canvas's lines ofdemarcation, like, where do you
partner with folks? Yeah, on oneend, and partner with folks on
another end? And what's yoursweet spot?

Ben (15:36):
Yeah. So, you know, the DRP category is something we want to
create. And we want to be thefirst one there. And when we
think about that, it's about howdo you understand your data,

(16:00):
take action against that data toultimately hire. So it's like
the end to end hiring process.
Regardless of if you want tohost virtual events, whether or
not you want to, like build,like more communication at scale
with your candidates, whether ornot you want to, like source

(16:20):
more strategically, or whetheror not you want to, you know,
have like more one to one, like,you know, connection. And so for
us, it's really about the hiringprocess. And from the first
point of someone applying to ajob. To them, ultimately, moving
forward in the process and beinghired.

William (16:50):
Right, right. Okay. So, for those that are listening,
when when they do the demo, wantto ask a couple questions on,
you know, when they see, youknow, when you when you show
people Canvas. What's the what'sthe, I would say, aha moment,
that's the thing, but you knowhow it is when you look at

(17:12):
software, when finally the lightbulb goes off, you're like, Oh,
my God, I can't live withoutthis. What is that for Canvas
and y'alls prospects andcustomers?

Ben (17:22):
Yeah. Yeah, it's really the, the moment that they
connect and sync their ATS to beable to, you know, immediately

(17:42):
understand and filter and finddiverse talent that they
wouldn't have otherwise everconsidered. And that really is
like a jaw dropping moment forthem. Because it's, it's data
that they've never had. And so,because of the integration we

(18:06):
have with the ATS isbidirectionally. It gives them
so much information that's like,just beyond like, you know, this
person's profile, but actually,their full, kind of application
history.

William (18:21):
You know, folks are gonna, Ben, people are gonna ask
me the integrations. I know,you. There's 1200 ATSs in the
world. So you probably can't beintegrated with all of them.

Ben (18:30):
Yeah.

William (18:31):
Yet. Which, which ones have you? Are you focused on?
Kind of what part of the marketHave y'all focused on the most
right now?

Ben (18:39):
Yeah it's probably where we spend most of our time, and
we've actually been building andlaunching what is a universal
integration system. So really,state of the art works
bidirectionally, can, you know,be plugged in and work in basic

(19:01):
form with with any ATS. So wewill be looking to expand to
hundreds of different ATSs overthe next, you know, 12 months or
so. But specifically right now,you know, we're an official
partner for WorkDay, an officialpartner for Greenhouse, we have

(19:21):
a bidirectional integration withLever. And we're also an
official partner to Jobvite. Andwe'll be doing you know,
integrations very soon with withiCIMS and Smartrecruiters.

William (19:35):
Oh, that's fan, I mean, you've you've almost covered
covered a majority of the marketjust by covering those as well.
And just the WorkDayintegration, I think is a
fantastic integration. They'vegot what almost 4000 HCM
clients. So WorkDay recruitingis installed in a lot of those

(19:56):
and to be able to be able tomake that a better tool for
folks, I think it's just it'sjust wonderful. Folks that
listen, the audience always asksme these questions. So I'll ask
you, I don't want to get intothe weeds around pricing. But
what's the what's the philosophyor the model for pricing for

(20:16):
Canvas?

Ben (20:18):
Yeah. We, in general want to give companies access, right?
Because, you know, our missionis, you know, to make the world
more equitable. And how we dothat is ultimately by more and
more companies utilizing, youknow, our services. So we tend

(20:39):
to think about it on two forms.
One is like, it's how manypeople want access, so a seat
model? And then what usage dothey want. And you know, we have
a price per seat based on thatusage. And if they want more
seats, the seat price is, youknow, discounted. And that's

(21:00):
generally how it works. And theypay, you know, for an annual
subscription. And in general,you know, we don't sell under,
you know, 12 months is, youknow, managing and dealing with
all that data takes time. Andthose integrations, and they,
yeah, and then, you know, wealso sell two year and three

(21:23):
year contracts in addition.

William (21:27):
Sure, sure, sure. So I think the business case for D&I
and even going further intobelonging, equity and equality,
I think it's becoming easier forpractitioners to make that
business or use case or businesscase for services and software
that kind of helps them there.
But from your perspective,what's what success? Like when

(21:48):
you talk to your customers andyou hear stories?

Ben (21:53):
Yeah.

William (21:54):
Like, where are you the most proud of like, what it what
is success when people useCanvas?

Ben (21:59):
Yeah, it's, it's not, it's not just about doing events that
help you build your brand toshow that you're doing
something. But it's about beingable to take action on the
people who give that event timeand commitment, to ultimately

(22:25):
give them an opportunity. And Ithink that, whether that's an
event, an applicant, whoever.
It's just about, like look, whensomeone expresses interest in
your company, like, doesn't itmake more sense to like, first
consider them? Before trying tofind people who aren't
interested or who haven't showninterest? Because at the end of

(22:49):
the day, when anyone's lookingfor a relationship, we don't go
out and talk to people that aremarried. That's not how it
works. So why is it anydifferent? And so for me,
success is giving people theopportunity to express and show
interest in your company.

William (23:09):
I love that. Okay, last last question before as we as we
roll out. Canvas in let's say,three years. Let's not go too
far. Success for Canvas in threeyears? What is that? What does
that look like for you? What's,what do you envision as, as just

(23:29):
this would be, we would love tohit this ball marker.

Ben (23:34):
Yeah, I think is that we built the largest and most
diverse, you know, community oftalent, with the best, most
accurate and most fresh data seton any given like candidate

(24:02):
enabling, you know, everycompany to be held accountable
for their, you know, diversitymetrics and goals. And so that's
really about like, showing thatdata, so people will have the
understanding of what companiesare doing. And that, to me would

(24:25):
be success.

William (24:26):
I love it. I love it.
And, folks, Ben's going to bespeaking at HRTX in June. So, so
please make sure you you come tohis session, because it's gonna
be awesome. Come to the wholeevent, but come to his session,
in particular, because it'sgonna be awesome. Ben, thank you
so much for your time. I knowthat you're crazy busy right
now. I appreciate you schoolingus and educating us on Canvas.

Ben (24:51):
No, thank you. And I appreciate your time and giving
me this opportunity to speak andI look forward to speaking
meeting again soon.

William (24:59):
Alright my friend thank you, and thanks for everyone
listening to the Use CasePodcast. Until next time

Music (25:06):
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