July 1, 2023 • 21 mins
Imagine a world where your employees can engage with each other in a virtual 3D environment - without the need for goggles or downloads! That's exactly what Alex Sheshnoff, CEO and co-founder of RemoteBridge, has created to revolutionize the way medium to large companies build and retain remote teams. With immersive 3D technology that rivals solutions like Slack and Zoom, RemoteBridge is not only transforming employee engagement and productivity but also providing a more inclusive experience that's bringing joy to employees worldwide.
Join us as we discuss with Alex the incredible benefits of RemoteBridge, from revolutionizing onboarding and training experiences to aiding in recruitment for companies like Amazon AWS. Learn how RemoteBridge's virtual career fairs, analytics, and translation tools are helping large companies attract top talent and improve their brand perception, particularly for early to mid-career technical and sales/marketing positions. Don't miss out on this engaging conversation that will leave you eager to explore the world of RemoteBridge and its potential to enhance your company's remote work experience.
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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 and HR tech.
That's what we do.
Here's your host, williamTincup.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
This is William Tincup and you're listening to
the Use Case Podcast of Alex ontoday from RemoteBridge and
we're going to be learning allabout RemoteBridge And that's
going to be fun and I can't waitto actually learn.
Alex, would you do us a favorand introduce both yourself and
RemoteBridge?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Of course.
Well, first, william, thanksfor having me.
Sure, yeah, my name is AlexSheshnoff and I'm the CEO and
co-founder of RemoteBridge.
We help medium to largecompanies to build and retain
remote teams using immersive 3D,so like Avatar is running
around a virtual world, butwithout the goggles or downloads
(01:04):
.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
So I hate software categories, alex, so I'll just
admit my bias here.
But a lot of HR and recruitingbudget are built in Excel or
Google Sheets, whatever.
So where do y'all fall Like?
where do you see your customerscome pulling budget from to
help fund the work that they'redoing with you?
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah, fundamentally we are an employee engagement
platform.
Okay, so it falls into othersort of workplace productivity
tools like Slack and Zoom andeverything else, so it's a way
of connecting people who areotherwise feeling disconnected.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Have people thrown employee experience as well,
Because in there I'm justkicking engagement.
So many people, especially lastyear, so many people were
talking about EX.
Do they throw you there as well?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah, they do, and we're okay with that.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, all right, let's talk about your initial
thesis.
When you started the company,you wanted to solve EX, and then
let's talk about go throughsome of the features of the
solution itself and talk alittle bit about it.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Yeah for sure.
The thesis and it's provingtrue is that we started during
the pandemic And people weresuddenly cast a drift from one
another and trying to figure outhow to remain connected and
cohesive as a team and haveeverybody on the same page when
it comes to mission, culture andvalues, those kind of things.
And we sensed early that Zoom,while in video conferencing,
(02:34):
while it has a role, pretty soonZoom fatigue was setting in And
people were turning off theircameras and they were
multitasking.
And at the time I was workingfor another company and we were
doing 1000 live webinartrainings a year in HR And we
were looking for different waysto engage our customers, and so
(02:57):
we started thinking about VR andAR and immersive 3D.
And then we ended up landing onimmersive 3D, which is really
just again, just like avatars,but there's no goggles.
There's a lot of resistance andissues with goggles.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And cost.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
And a third of wears get nauseous or seasick, and it
will get better over time, butfor non-gamers it's a pretty
steep curve.
And it's also a download.
It's an application to downloadand that creates a lot of
security issues, and so wedecided to make an immersive
environment that was browserbased, that you could just click
(03:36):
on a link to access, and theaudio works the same way as
we're talking here or as peopletalk in video conference, but
anyway, so it grew out of thepandemic, in effect, and a lot
of people have shiftedstructurally to remote work and
are going to stay that way.
And yet how do you engageemployees and keep them retained
(03:58):
and loyal when they're justzooming into one company?
they can zoom into anothercompany, so that's where we fit
in.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I want to ask you because, first of all, i love
the thing that I've seen with ARand VR and headsets in
particular is it's not asinclusive, like it's the
socioeconomics right?
So some of it's like theheadgear is expensive, okay, so
you got that And you got buyanother thing and learn a new
technology, okay, all that stuff.
But also it's justsocioeconomically it's just like
(04:26):
you're just going to cut off athird of the universe that they
just can't ever.
They don't have the bandwidth,literally the bandwidth, or they
can't buy the applications.
But so I like this approach AndI want to ask you about
training and onboarding inparticular.
So we jumped right intoemployee engagement experience,
but I can see applicability to alot of other things that HR
(04:49):
goes through.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I appreciate that one .
Yeah, i totally agree oneverything you're saying.
And just to go back to thegoggles, just one moment, we
work with 19 of the Fortune 100are paying clients and they're
big tech forward companies likeIntel and Microsoft and Google.
And you think, okay, if youwork for Intel, you are very
tech heavy.
(05:10):
But like we're working with,like the accounting department
or the like the graphic designdepartment, they have 30 people
doing graphic design for theirannual report, a role work with
the patent department.
So they're not all coders Andyou know, for somebody, for
Diane and accounting, like justbeing in an avatar form and
using arrow keys to move around,that's that is super cool and
fun and engaging.
(05:31):
But the goggles would just be.
It would be.
It would be there'd be a lot offriction and getting her
engaged And she's, she's happyjust being an avatar form.
The gamers, by the way.
The gamers are like where arethe zombies?
I'm gonna blow stuff up Andthen there's nothing to blow up.
But but so people so far likeit's just bringing such such joy
(05:53):
to to you know what otherwisemight be a fairly mundane day.
I just want to.
It's okay if I just play aquick audio clip, just to get a
sense of what, of what the sortof experience is like.
I know we're on audio only, butthis is.
This is some audio that we justcaptured from an event recently
.
It was actually an Intel eventAnd there's like these two
people are watching their bossdancing in avatar form And this
(06:15):
is what they what it sounds like.
It's just like 12 seconds.
Oh, sorry, One second.
Oh, I didn't hit the sharebutton One second.
Please bear with me.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Okay, now you'll hear it Three, two, one.
Which is what you'd hear inlike real life.
If you're at the office or youhad a party or something like
that, there was some type ofbonding experience.
That would be normal, right.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yeah, exactly Exactly So in.
I think zoom and videoconferencing has a way of
getting everybody, it's veryefficient And it's very agenda
driven, but it's not so good forthe sort of like structured
serendipity that you need tocreate cohesive teams.
And so that's where we have arole to play.
The other thing happens in zoomis that if you get more than
(07:09):
five people in a zoom meeting,there's one person that's
usually like a guy who's talkinga lot and everybody is
responding to him and it's asort of hub and spoke thing and
it's not so conversational, andso you need to get people off
script again and people areturning off their turning off
the camera and checking theiremails and they're they're
multitasking.
But when you are in avatar formand you're dancing and doing
(07:31):
backflips and doingcollaborative problem solving,
you are engaged and you arepresent And and so we're of
course very excited about it.
But can I just go back to yourquestion about onboarding.
So onboarding we're reallyexcited about.
we we were approached by let meback up we were working with a
company called Veritas out ofSilicon Valley 7000 employees
and we were helping them withtheir onboarding And our art and
(07:55):
they loved it and they keptcoming back and we're doing
training and sort of avatarbased training, like engagement
during the first 90 days.
So this is not this is notcompliance and filling up forms,
but this is actually like thatinitial cultural immersion with
the company And it was goingwell.
And then our primary contactwas poached by Amazon AWS to
(08:18):
help improve their onboarding.
Right now they're.
when they came to us, they'reonboarding involved like
watching 26 videos at home aloneand then taking a quiz based on
those videos.
right, so their scores werewere great.
Amazon, of course measures,everything.
So they came to us and they saidcan you improve this process?
and over a series of months intrials, we have really dialed it
(08:40):
in so much better for them, andnow they're doing some of their
onboarding for AWS on the salesside in our platform, and the
results are terrific.
Like 85% of people said, theywould have been more excited to
be part of the Amazon team, butthey had come if they'd done
their initial onboarding on ourplatform.
Information retention is up by75%, and so now they're talking
(09:02):
about rolling it outorganization-wide, which is, of
course, exciting, but I think alot of companies are facing that
same kind of problem, which ishow do you engage people in the
first 90 days?
You agree with that, wayne?
Speaker 2 (09:12):
100%.
I think I've thought this for awhile, i think in the
onboarding experience, the waythat probably you and I went
through it with a binder or aday, or you're in a conference
room, especially like sterileand kind of event.
they come out of recruiting andwe've where, we've romanced
them and listen to them and talkto them And there's all this
(09:33):
wonderful engagement And thenall of a sudden we drop them off
in onboarding and it's justreally sterile And so I think A
fixing that part and kind ofcontinuing the hey, this is a
great company, you made theright decision, this is a great
company, you're gonna have fun,the work's gonna be the work,
teams are gonna be the team, etcetera, but pulling that
(09:55):
excitement through And I thinkit goes on much longer than 90
days, like I think we're to acertain degree, where does the
line of onboarding andengagement stop?
I think it's blurred, andthat's okay actually, in my
opinion, that you're never notonboarding Like you.
This company just brought brandnew software.
(10:15):
You've been there 20 years.
You've got to engage them andtrain them and onboard them into
a new system.
So I don't know if that's thefuzziness of onboarding, like
because there used to be realclear lines of demarcation, like
it was 90 days or a week orsomething like that.
It was okay, you've beenonboarded, now you're going with
your manager And good luck.
(10:38):
God speed.
A little mental, but I thinkit's blurry now, especially with
remote work.
What do you think?
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Yeah, i agree.
One of our clients saidsomething like if you don't get
onboarding, you end up withdisengaged employees who leave
or disengaged employees who stay.
But either way it's fine.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Oh, wow, that's really good.
That is right.
I'm gonna use that because thatis really good Cause, again,
that's something you can control, like it's an experience right,
like any experience, you cancontrol this, you can.
There's a symphony, you canmanufacture it, you can control
it, and if you don't, this isthe result disengagement.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Right, and before the sort of onset of remote work at
scale like we're seeing now,people were a little more
trapped depending on where theylive, and now they can work
globally, in effect, for anycompany, and so you got to keep,
you got to keep these folks,your team, engaged and excited
to be part of the team, as yousay, like throughout the
(11:38):
employee, the entire employeesort of life cycle.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Right And in training .
So like I could see thisexperience and what you built
with Remote Bridge doing orhelping people train, like I
could see because it's kind ofit's fun, it's visual, it's a
different way of thinking aboutit And we're constantly thinking
about skills and skillsdevelopment.
So how can you know theapplicability?
(12:03):
how can we use Remote Bridge toactually help people learn
something new and interact witheach other in kind of a learning
and development, training anddevelopment type way?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
For sure.
We work with a Harvardprofessor who is in the
Department of Education andfocuses on e-learning And he's
helping us guide this of how westructure the content In general
.
What we have found is that youhave to use sort of movement in
the 3D environment, because ifyour avatar is not moving, if
you're not taking advantage ofthe medium, like in some ways,
(12:35):
you might as well be in Zoom ifyou're just getting where you
can see facial expressions Andso it, but in a movement context
and it's really good, for wehave these, this feature where
you can turn on these privatesound spaces in this courtyard
and around these tables, and sopeople can wander in between,
from table to table.
That's very difficult to do ina video conference situation.
You can go to breakout room butsuddenly the screen goes black
(12:55):
and you can't see who's in whichroom.
And so for role playing it'sespecially effective.
And the other use case that weare working in partnership with
another company is is torecreate a sort of a retail
environment where it's like abig box retailer And because,
like the store layouts arepretty consistent from store to
(13:16):
store.
There's some variation, but wecan recreate that environment
And and there's huge turnover inthat industry.
And so grocery.
I know the numbers on itsomething like 50, 50% of
employees turnover every 90 daysWow.
And the number one reason theycite for leaving the job is they
felt like they were not giventhe tools to do their job well,
(13:37):
Which is like a very narrow andto me, like surprising reason.
So we can, using sort ofimmersive 3D, we can make the
initial training more engaging,We can help them retain it
better and make it moreconsistent, because right now a
lot of times the training isdone by whoever the manager on
duty happens to be, And ifthey're having a good day or a
(13:57):
bad day, or if they have time,they don't have time and it's
very inconsistent.
And we can, we can say we canalso do like product location
training.
So you like to keep goingthrough until you get all the
product locations right.
We can do simulations wherethere's like a shoplifter in a
health three and a spill inaisle four and you got a triage.
Oh, I love that I think there'ssome really yes, for short, some
really interesting applicationsAnd again, they're not goggle
(14:19):
based.
I know Walmart and some othersare going towards goggles, but
it's hard to scale in for a lotof distributed workforces and
right.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Right, It's that scenario, And let's do me
mention with retail It's againemployee comes in, there's fires
somewhere, something's notbeing done and they don't get
the training or the attention orthe engagement that they needed
.
They're just thrown intosomething.
I think role playing, like youmentioned, is so important in
(14:48):
those environments.
But also I was thinking aboutit when you first said role
playing I'm like this would beso great in a sales environment
to go over objection responsestuff, Being able to actually
you're the prospect, I'm thesalesperson, Okay, go, And then
flipping that around and lettingeveryone else be a part of that
.
I think that would be just afantastic use of it.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Yeah, yeah, we have had our core focus, but we have
had clients who've come in anduse that, especially on the tech
side, where they're trying toengage their partners or their
potential clients.
Right now, for the most part,they had to go to Zoom or video
conference and then they share ascreen.
Maybe it's a PowerPoint Andagain the client is just like
the employee.
They're multitasking theircamera's off, but you put them.
(15:30):
Sometimes they do it in anavatar form And they're mixing
it up with some games and prizesand depending on the style of
the meeting, but in any case,they're using immersive 3D to
further engage the client.
So for sure, i totally agree,there's a great use case there
too.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
So we'll switch to some of the buy side stuff for
just a second.
What's your favorite part ofthe demo?
What do you love showing peopleAnd or what are they the aha
moment for prospects, and wheredo they kind of get turned on?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
At the very beginning , we always just we pull up our
avatar changing room wheresomebody can customize their
avatar, and when they see thatthey can, they can have avatars
that are in wheelchairs or, andthat, that or not, and that they
can sort of customize to reallyreflect who they think of
themselves, as that's prettyexciting.
Also, the hairstyles aregenerally better than people's
hair in real life.
(16:18):
So our hairstyles were designedby an Emmy award winning
hairstylist to the stars.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Some people will spend two minutes in there.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
some people spend like 45 getting it totally
dialed in.
Then they go from there andthey like they enter our sort of
virtual island on their browserAnd suddenly they're like this
person, that this character,that kind of that, looks like
them, is doing backflips anddancing better than they do in
real life And they're just likethey're all in.
there's like this is so cool.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Okay, first of all, thank you for that.
The next thing I want to askyou is with if you can't, naming
names.
I'm not really interested inthe brands, but like where
you've seen a company use remotebridge and you just let you use
your phone and love with theway that they've used it And
again you don't have to usebrand names.
I'm just really thinking aboutthe experience itself.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
For sure.
So there is, there's a very big, there's a very big company
that came to us and theyinitially did a small workshop
with nine people And thenthey're like, oh, this is cool.
And then they came back with 50people and they did a team
building event, and then theydid another, then they did a
holiday party.
We have a version of our islandthat's covered in snow and has
like secular holiday decorations, with 125 people.
(17:26):
And then they came back andsaid, oh, can we get?
can you know?
can we have 29,000 of ourEuropean employees come through
this as well?
And we like that use case And alot of times, another one of our
clients is really helping us.
We try to.
on the product side, we try tohave it, have our customers,
have our customers drive theproduct development.
So we are now working with avery large company who is
(17:49):
helping us build out ouranalytics And we have some
analytics, but we're in theprocess of building them out, so
we're going to be able tomeasure everything from, of
course, like use time, but myengagement, also like backflips
per hour, like crazy stats, andthat same customer is also we're
building it in the process ofbuilding out translation tools
And so somebody speaking inJapanese will be understood by a
(18:11):
Portuguese speaker, and that istechnologically possible.
Right now.
It's a it's a heavy lift, butwe're going to be able to.
We're going to be able to offerthat, and that, to me, is super
cool.
So I love it when theircustomers are helping us drive
the product.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Because it's a new category for some folks.
What are some of the questionsthat that you would love Bias to
prospective buyers to ask you?
because, again, like a tss, ithink it's now a 55 year old
software category time inattendance.
It's been around since, i think, the dinosaurs, so like the
buyers of those things, and theygot a battery of questions.
(18:45):
They know the questions theyneed to ask, but with something
like with remote bridge, whatare the questions that they
should ask?
Speaker 3 (18:51):
I appreciate that.
Question One that really comesto mind is how can we use this
for recruiting?
so we do have we do thesehosted career fairs that are two
hours long, and It's it's analternative for the company to
To increase their sort of thequality, the and volume of the
candidates that they're seeing,and so we source All the and
screen all the candidates.
(19:11):
But it's so much better thantrying to drive candidates to
Sort of an antiquated careersite with stock photographs and
forms.
There's no energy there and sofor a company be able to say, oh
yeah, we're having a careerfair and it's coming anytime
over this period, over thistwo-hour block, and find out
what we're doing And we'll get achance to meet with you, and
(19:32):
that is.
I love, that use of thetechnology.
What we're finding is that that45% of the candidates who
attend these events are advancedto a second round of interviews
.
And a quarter advanced to athird and 12% into being hired,
which is a huge No yeah, that'smassive.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Is it anything I want to throw generational?
but is there anythingindustry-wise or that you've
seen in the data In terms of ageor anything like that kind of
pulls through?
because that's, yeah, 12% is ahuge number.
I'm just wondering because whenrecruiters hear this, they're
gonna get really excited.
But also like it, is it workingbetter in one place rather than
(20:11):
another?
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Yeah, what we're finding is that where I think we
have the most value to add isearly to mid-career technical
and sales and marketingpositions.
Right, more senior somebody is,the more they probably already
know the company and the companyalready knows them.
So it is yeah, early tomid-career and Technical and
sales and marketing.
The other really fun stat forus is that 88% of the people who
(20:35):
attend these career fairs saythat they leave with an improved
perception of the client'sbrand and culture.
So, even if they're not hired,they're more likely to be
evangelists for the company, andSo that's that feels to me like
like a big win.
I think we have a lot of valueto offer for for like good
companies that are great to workfor but may not be nationally
recognized brands Google andDisney they're getting all the
(20:58):
applications.
Yeah, they don't struggle, butif you're like an insurance
company, you may be like, youmay be a great place to work,
but people aren't like excitedto like brag about it at
Thanksgiving lunch, thanksgivingdinner that they work right or
whatever insurance company.
But so I think we can help themlike show and not just say, but
show that their culture is funand tech forward, and And so I
(21:20):
think that's a really excitinguse case too jobs might walks
off stage.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Alex, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
This has been wonderful.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Thank you, i'm really appreciate it.
It's been super fun.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
You've been listening to recruiting dailies use case
podcast.
Be sure to subscribe on yourfavorite platform and hit us up
at recruiting dailycom.
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 and HR tech.
That's what we do.
Here's your host, williamTincup.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
This is William Tincup and you're listening to
the Use Case Podcast of Alex ontoday from RemoteBridge and
we're going to be learning allabout RemoteBridge And that's
going to be fun and I can't waitto actually learn.
Alex, would you do us a favorand introduce both yourself and
RemoteBridge?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Of course.
Well, first, william, thanksfor having me.
Sure, yeah, my name is AlexSheshnoff and I'm the CEO and
co-founder of RemoteBridge.
We help medium to largecompanies to build and retain
remote teams using immersive 3D,so like Avatar is running
around a virtual world, butwithout the goggles or downloads
(01:04):
.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
So I hate software categories, alex, so I'll just
admit my bias here.
But a lot of HR and recruitingbudget are built in Excel or
Google Sheets, whatever.
So where do y'all fall Like?
where do you see your customerscome pulling budget from to
help fund the work that they'redoing with you?
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah, fundamentally we are an employee engagement
platform.
Okay, so it falls into othersort of workplace productivity
tools like Slack and Zoom andeverything else, so it's a way
of connecting people who areotherwise feeling disconnected.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Have people thrown employee experience as well,
Because in there I'm justkicking engagement.
So many people, especially lastyear, so many people were
talking about EX.
Do they throw you there as well?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah, they do, and we're okay with that.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, all right, let's talk about your initial
thesis.
When you started the company,you wanted to solve EX, and then
let's talk about go throughsome of the features of the
solution itself and talk alittle bit about it.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Yeah for sure.
The thesis and it's provingtrue is that we started during
the pandemic And people weresuddenly cast a drift from one
another and trying to figure outhow to remain connected and
cohesive as a team and haveeverybody on the same page when
it comes to mission, culture andvalues, those kind of things.
And we sensed early that Zoom,while in video conferencing,
(02:34):
while it has a role, pretty soonZoom fatigue was setting in And
people were turning off theircameras and they were
multitasking.
And at the time I was workingfor another company and we were
doing 1000 live webinartrainings a year in HR And we
were looking for different waysto engage our customers, and so
(02:57):
we started thinking about VR andAR and immersive 3D.
And then we ended up landing onimmersive 3D, which is really
just again, just like avatars,but there's no goggles.
There's a lot of resistance andissues with goggles.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And cost.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
And a third of wears get nauseous or seasick, and it
will get better over time, butfor non-gamers it's a pretty
steep curve.
And it's also a download.
It's an application to downloadand that creates a lot of
security issues, and so wedecided to make an immersive
environment that was browserbased, that you could just click
(03:36):
on a link to access, and theaudio works the same way as
we're talking here or as peopletalk in video conference, but
anyway, so it grew out of thepandemic, in effect, and a lot
of people have shiftedstructurally to remote work and
are going to stay that way.
And yet how do you engageemployees and keep them retained
(03:58):
and loyal when they're justzooming into one company?
they can zoom into anothercompany, so that's where we fit
in.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I want to ask you because, first of all, i love
the thing that I've seen with ARand VR and headsets in
particular is it's not asinclusive, like it's the
socioeconomics right?
So some of it's like theheadgear is expensive, okay, so
you got that And you got buyanother thing and learn a new
technology, okay, all that stuff.
But also it's justsocioeconomically it's just like
(04:26):
you're just going to cut off athird of the universe that they
just can't ever.
They don't have the bandwidth,literally the bandwidth, or they
can't buy the applications.
But so I like this approach AndI want to ask you about
training and onboarding inparticular.
So we jumped right intoemployee engagement experience,
but I can see applicability to alot of other things that HR
(04:49):
goes through.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I appreciate that one .
Yeah, i totally agree oneverything you're saying.
And just to go back to thegoggles, just one moment, we
work with 19 of the Fortune 100are paying clients and they're
big tech forward companies likeIntel and Microsoft and Google.
And you think, okay, if youwork for Intel, you are very
tech heavy.
(05:10):
But like we're working with,like the accounting department
or the like the graphic designdepartment, they have 30 people
doing graphic design for theirannual report, a role work with
the patent department.
So they're not all coders Andyou know, for somebody, for
Diane and accounting, like justbeing in an avatar form and
using arrow keys to move around,that's that is super cool and
fun and engaging.
(05:31):
But the goggles would just be.
It would be.
It would be there'd be a lot offriction and getting her
engaged And she's, she's happyjust being an avatar form.
The gamers, by the way.
The gamers are like where arethe zombies?
I'm gonna blow stuff up Andthen there's nothing to blow up.
But but so people so far likeit's just bringing such such joy
(05:53):
to to you know what otherwisemight be a fairly mundane day.
I just want to.
It's okay if I just play aquick audio clip, just to get a
sense of what, of what the sortof experience is like.
I know we're on audio only, butthis is.
This is some audio that we justcaptured from an event recently
.
It was actually an Intel eventAnd there's like these two
people are watching their bossdancing in avatar form And this
(06:15):
is what they what it sounds like.
It's just like 12 seconds.
Oh, sorry, One second.
Oh, I didn't hit the sharebutton One second.
Please bear with me.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Okay, now you'll hear it Three, two, one.
Which is what you'd hear inlike real life.
If you're at the office or youhad a party or something like
that, there was some type ofbonding experience.
That would be normal, right.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yeah, exactly Exactly So in.
I think zoom and videoconferencing has a way of
getting everybody, it's veryefficient And it's very agenda
driven, but it's not so good forthe sort of like structured
serendipity that you need tocreate cohesive teams.
And so that's where we have arole to play.
The other thing happens in zoomis that if you get more than
(07:09):
five people in a zoom meeting,there's one person that's
usually like a guy who's talkinga lot and everybody is
responding to him and it's asort of hub and spoke thing and
it's not so conversational, andso you need to get people off
script again and people areturning off their turning off
the camera and checking theiremails and they're they're
multitasking.
But when you are in avatar formand you're dancing and doing
(07:31):
backflips and doingcollaborative problem solving,
you are engaged and you arepresent And and so we're of
course very excited about it.
But can I just go back to yourquestion about onboarding.
So onboarding we're reallyexcited about.
we we were approached by let meback up we were working with a
company called Veritas out ofSilicon Valley 7000 employees
and we were helping them withtheir onboarding And our art and
(07:55):
they loved it and they keptcoming back and we're doing
training and sort of avatarbased training, like engagement
during the first 90 days.
So this is not this is notcompliance and filling up forms,
but this is actually like thatinitial cultural immersion with
the company And it was goingwell.
And then our primary contactwas poached by Amazon AWS to
(08:18):
help improve their onboarding.
Right now they're.
when they came to us, they'reonboarding involved like
watching 26 videos at home aloneand then taking a quiz based on
those videos.
right, so their scores werewere great.
Amazon, of course measures,everything.
So they came to us and they saidcan you improve this process?
and over a series of months intrials, we have really dialed it
(08:40):
in so much better for them, andnow they're doing some of their
onboarding for AWS on the salesside in our platform, and the
results are terrific.
Like 85% of people said, theywould have been more excited to
be part of the Amazon team, butthey had come if they'd done
their initial onboarding on ourplatform.
Information retention is up by75%, and so now they're talking
(09:02):
about rolling it outorganization-wide, which is, of
course, exciting, but I think alot of companies are facing that
same kind of problem, which ishow do you engage people in the
first 90 days?
You agree with that, wayne?
Speaker 2 (09:12):
100%.
I think I've thought this for awhile, i think in the
onboarding experience, the waythat probably you and I went
through it with a binder or aday, or you're in a conference
room, especially like sterileand kind of event.
they come out of recruiting andwe've where, we've romanced
them and listen to them and talkto them And there's all this
(09:33):
wonderful engagement And thenall of a sudden we drop them off
in onboarding and it's justreally sterile And so I think A
fixing that part and kind ofcontinuing the hey, this is a
great company, you made theright decision, this is a great
company, you're gonna have fun,the work's gonna be the work,
teams are gonna be the team, etcetera, but pulling that
(09:55):
excitement through And I thinkit goes on much longer than 90
days, like I think we're to acertain degree, where does the
line of onboarding andengagement stop?
I think it's blurred, andthat's okay actually, in my
opinion, that you're never notonboarding Like you.
This company just brought brandnew software.
(10:15):
You've been there 20 years.
You've got to engage them andtrain them and onboard them into
a new system.
So I don't know if that's thefuzziness of onboarding, like
because there used to be realclear lines of demarcation, like
it was 90 days or a week orsomething like that.
It was okay, you've beenonboarded, now you're going with
your manager And good luck.
(10:38):
God speed.
A little mental, but I thinkit's blurry now, especially with
remote work.
What do you think?
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Yeah, i agree.
One of our clients saidsomething like if you don't get
onboarding, you end up withdisengaged employees who leave
or disengaged employees who stay.
But either way it's fine.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Oh, wow, that's really good.
That is right.
I'm gonna use that because thatis really good Cause, again,
that's something you can control, like it's an experience right,
like any experience, you cancontrol this, you can.
There's a symphony, you canmanufacture it, you can control
it, and if you don't, this isthe result disengagement.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Right, and before the sort of onset of remote work at
scale like we're seeing now,people were a little more
trapped depending on where theylive, and now they can work
globally, in effect, for anycompany, and so you got to keep,
you got to keep these folks,your team, engaged and excited
to be part of the team, as yousay, like throughout the
(11:38):
employee, the entire employeesort of life cycle.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Right And in training .
So like I could see thisexperience and what you built
with Remote Bridge doing orhelping people train, like I
could see because it's kind ofit's fun, it's visual, it's a
different way of thinking aboutit And we're constantly thinking
about skills and skillsdevelopment.
So how can you know theapplicability?
(12:03):
how can we use Remote Bridge toactually help people learn
something new and interact witheach other in kind of a learning
and development, training anddevelopment type way?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
For sure.
We work with a Harvardprofessor who is in the
Department of Education andfocuses on e-learning And he's
helping us guide this of how westructure the content In general
.
What we have found is that youhave to use sort of movement in
the 3D environment, because ifyour avatar is not moving, if
you're not taking advantage ofthe medium, like in some ways,
(12:35):
you might as well be in Zoom ifyou're just getting where you
can see facial expressions Andso it, but in a movement context
and it's really good, for wehave these, this feature where
you can turn on these privatesound spaces in this courtyard
and around these tables, and sopeople can wander in between,
from table to table.
That's very difficult to do ina video conference situation.
You can go to breakout room butsuddenly the screen goes black
(12:55):
and you can't see who's in whichroom.
And so for role playing it'sespecially effective.
And the other use case that weare working in partnership with
another company is is torecreate a sort of a retail
environment where it's like abig box retailer And because,
like the store layouts arepretty consistent from store to
(13:16):
store.
There's some variation, but wecan recreate that environment
And and there's huge turnover inthat industry.
And so grocery.
I know the numbers on itsomething like 50, 50% of
employees turnover every 90 daysWow.
And the number one reason theycite for leaving the job is they
felt like they were not giventhe tools to do their job well,
(13:37):
Which is like a very narrow andto me, like surprising reason.
So we can, using sort ofimmersive 3D, we can make the
initial training more engaging,We can help them retain it
better and make it moreconsistent, because right now a
lot of times the training isdone by whoever the manager on
duty happens to be, And ifthey're having a good day or a
(13:57):
bad day, or if they have time,they don't have time and it's
very inconsistent.
And we can, we can say we canalso do like product location
training.
So you like to keep goingthrough until you get all the
product locations right.
We can do simulations wherethere's like a shoplifter in a
health three and a spill inaisle four and you got a triage.
Oh, I love that I think there'ssome really yes, for short, some
really interesting applicationsAnd again, they're not goggle
(14:19):
based.
I know Walmart and some othersare going towards goggles, but
it's hard to scale in for a lotof distributed workforces and
right.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Right, It's that scenario, And let's do me
mention with retail It's againemployee comes in, there's fires
somewhere, something's notbeing done and they don't get
the training or the attention orthe engagement that they needed
.
They're just thrown intosomething.
I think role playing, like youmentioned, is so important in
(14:48):
those environments.
But also I was thinking aboutit when you first said role
playing I'm like this would beso great in a sales environment
to go over objection responsestuff, Being able to actually
you're the prospect, I'm thesalesperson, Okay, go, And then
flipping that around and lettingeveryone else be a part of that
.
I think that would be just afantastic use of it.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Yeah, yeah, we have had our core focus, but we have
had clients who've come in anduse that, especially on the tech
side, where they're trying toengage their partners or their
potential clients.
Right now, for the most part,they had to go to Zoom or video
conference and then they share ascreen.
Maybe it's a PowerPoint Andagain the client is just like
the employee.
They're multitasking theircamera's off, but you put them.
(15:30):
Sometimes they do it in anavatar form And they're mixing
it up with some games and prizesand depending on the style of
the meeting, but in any case,they're using immersive 3D to
further engage the client.
So for sure, i totally agree,there's a great use case there
too.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
So we'll switch to some of the buy side stuff for
just a second.
What's your favorite part ofthe demo?
What do you love showing peopleAnd or what are they the aha
moment for prospects, and wheredo they kind of get turned on?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
At the very beginning , we always just we pull up our
avatar changing room wheresomebody can customize their
avatar, and when they see thatthey can, they can have avatars
that are in wheelchairs or, andthat, that or not, and that they
can sort of customize to reallyreflect who they think of
themselves, as that's prettyexciting.
Also, the hairstyles aregenerally better than people's
hair in real life.
(16:18):
So our hairstyles were designedby an Emmy award winning
hairstylist to the stars.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Some people will spend two minutes in there.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
some people spend like 45 getting it totally
dialed in.
Then they go from there andthey like they enter our sort of
virtual island on their browserAnd suddenly they're like this
person, that this character,that kind of that, looks like
them, is doing backflips anddancing better than they do in
real life And they're just likethey're all in.
there's like this is so cool.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Okay, first of all, thank you for that.
The next thing I want to askyou is with if you can't, naming
names.
I'm not really interested inthe brands, but like where
you've seen a company use remotebridge and you just let you use
your phone and love with theway that they've used it And
again you don't have to usebrand names.
I'm just really thinking aboutthe experience itself.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
For sure.
So there is, there's a very big, there's a very big company
that came to us and theyinitially did a small workshop
with nine people And thenthey're like, oh, this is cool.
And then they came back with 50people and they did a team
building event, and then theydid another, then they did a
holiday party.
We have a version of our islandthat's covered in snow and has
like secular holiday decorations, with 125 people.
(17:26):
And then they came back andsaid, oh, can we get?
can you know?
can we have 29,000 of ourEuropean employees come through
this as well?
And we like that use case And alot of times, another one of our
clients is really helping us.
We try to.
on the product side, we try tohave it, have our customers,
have our customers drive theproduct development.
So we are now working with avery large company who is
(17:49):
helping us build out ouranalytics And we have some
analytics, but we're in theprocess of building them out, so
we're going to be able tomeasure everything from, of
course, like use time, but myengagement, also like backflips
per hour, like crazy stats, andthat same customer is also we're
building it in the process ofbuilding out translation tools
And so somebody speaking inJapanese will be understood by a
(18:11):
Portuguese speaker, and that istechnologically possible.
Right now.
It's a it's a heavy lift, butwe're going to be able to.
We're going to be able to offerthat, and that, to me, is super
cool.
So I love it when theircustomers are helping us drive
the product.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Because it's a new category for some folks.
What are some of the questionsthat that you would love Bias to
prospective buyers to ask you?
because, again, like a tss, ithink it's now a 55 year old
software category time inattendance.
It's been around since, i think, the dinosaurs, so like the
buyers of those things, and theygot a battery of questions.
(18:45):
They know the questions theyneed to ask, but with something
like with remote bridge, whatare the questions that they
should ask?
Speaker 3 (18:51):
I appreciate that.
Question One that really comesto mind is how can we use this
for recruiting?
so we do have we do thesehosted career fairs that are two
hours long, and It's it's analternative for the company to
To increase their sort of thequality, the and volume of the
candidates that they're seeing,and so we source All the and
screen all the candidates.
(19:11):
But it's so much better thantrying to drive candidates to
Sort of an antiquated careersite with stock photographs and
forms.
There's no energy there and sofor a company be able to say, oh
yeah, we're having a careerfair and it's coming anytime
over this period, over thistwo-hour block, and find out
what we're doing And we'll get achance to meet with you, and
(19:32):
that is.
I love, that use of thetechnology.
What we're finding is that that45% of the candidates who
attend these events are advancedto a second round of interviews
.
And a quarter advanced to athird and 12% into being hired,
which is a huge No yeah, that'smassive.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Is it anything I want to throw generational?
but is there anythingindustry-wise or that you've
seen in the data In terms of ageor anything like that kind of
pulls through?
because that's, yeah, 12% is ahuge number.
I'm just wondering because whenrecruiters hear this, they're
gonna get really excited.
But also like it, is it workingbetter in one place rather than
(20:11):
another?
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Yeah, what we're finding is that where I think we
have the most value to add isearly to mid-career technical
and sales and marketingpositions.
Right, more senior somebody is,the more they probably already
know the company and the companyalready knows them.
So it is yeah, early tomid-career and Technical and
sales and marketing.
The other really fun stat forus is that 88% of the people who
(20:35):
attend these career fairs saythat they leave with an improved
perception of the client'sbrand and culture.
So, even if they're not hired,they're more likely to be
evangelists for the company, andSo that's that feels to me like
like a big win.
I think we have a lot of valueto offer for for like good
companies that are great to workfor but may not be nationally
recognized brands Google andDisney they're getting all the
(20:58):
applications.
Yeah, they don't struggle, butif you're like an insurance
company, you may be like, youmay be a great place to work,
but people aren't like excitedto like brag about it at
Thanksgiving lunch, thanksgivingdinner that they work right or
whatever insurance company.
But so I think we can help themlike show and not just say, but
show that their culture is funand tech forward, and And so I
(21:20):
think that's a really excitinguse case too jobs might walks
off stage.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Alex, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
This has been wonderful.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Thank you, i'm really appreciate it.
It's been super fun.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
You've been listening to recruiting dailies use case
podcast.
Be sure to subscribe on yourfavorite platform and hit us up
at recruiting dailycom.
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