Successful Skills-based Hiring is About Who Can Do the Job, not Who Looks Good on Paper.

Episode Transcript

Kelly Ryan Bailey  00:01

Hi, everyone, welcome to Let’s talk about skills baby. I am your host, Kelly Ryan Bailey. Each week I chat with inspiring visionaries about the skills that make them successful, how they developed those skills and their innovative approaches to improving skills based hiring and learning around the world. Come learn what skills help you live your best life. Today, we are joined by our special guest Omer Molad. How are you?

Omer Molad  00:31

Hey, Kelly, great to be here.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  00:33

Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us. So let me do a little quick introduction for Omer. Omer is the Co-Founder and CEO of Vervoe, a recruitment platform that helps companies hire the very best by focusing on who can do the job, not just who looks good on paper. Vervoe predicts job performance using skills assessments that showcase the talent of every candidate, and works with some of the world’s largest companies, including Walmart, as well as 1000s of SMBs. I am so interested in diving into this today, Omer, because honestly, this topic for me is just sort of top of mind right now figuring out how to assess skills. So again, thank you so much for joining us. Is there anything else you’d like to add to that introduction?

Omer Molad  01:22

No, I think that’s a great start. You nailed it.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  01:25

Wonderful. Well, let’s start maybe by just if you don’t mind kind of taking us back a little bit and letting us know for you personally, how you ended up starting Vervoe, maybe a little bit more about your journey to this point in time.

Omer Molad  01:40

Yeah, sure. So I I grew up in Tel Aviv, in Israel. And after high school I served in the military. And that was an important period in my life that helped shape part of my thinking and career. And then after that, I moved to Melbourne, and immediately met David, so my Co-Founder, so we’ve been friends for 20 years. I also went to law school and met my wife, who’s an Aussie, and ended up getting married and been living here for a long time. So, very important period of time. After moving to Melbourne, I worked mainly in the corporate sector in financial services. But there was a two year period where I worked with the Australian Red Cross and led an international emergency deployment effort. So that was a really interesting thing to do. But for most of the time I was  in banking. And I reached a period where I started thinking about this problem a lot. I was leading a big team, and I was thinking about who are the high performers? Who are the people in the team that we can’t live without? And what journeys have they been on? Where did they go to school? Where did they work? And what kind of people weren’t doing well? And what kind of people do we need to recruit? And it just became obvious that there’s a big dislocation between this sort of resume and traditional process, versus who actually performs. David and I got talking, and he’d been through, albeit a very different career journey in technology, but had a very similar experience. And we decided that this was something that we wanted to tackle. And I think we were also ready on a personal level to, not apply for the next job, but create the next job for ourselves. And I think that’s an important factor as well. And obviously, there’s a lot more to it. But that’s at a sort of very high level how we got here.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  04:01

Very cool. So I’m curious to hear a little bit about when you started to see this with your own needs, and within your own team, how you might be looking to hire the best of in terms of your team. What were some of the themes in terms of skills that you kept seeing that were successful versus maybe not as successful?

Omer Molad  04:28

I think a lot of the skills were skills that people would generally consider to be soft skills, although that’s not a term that that we use.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  04:39

It’s a little outdated now, right? What do we call soft skills now?

Omer Molad  04:43

Yeah, so we kind of think of skills in terms of they’re either job specific, or the general work skills that apply to many jobs. But a skill is something that you can learn. And that’s how we think about it. I mean, we used to do cases study interviews and basically get people to go through scenarios that we would work through on the job. And what we learned was that some people found it really difficult to apply their prior experience and skills to a new setting. Okay, so that’s kind of one thing. Whereas, the people who did well in our team, were able to switch constantly and be confronted with new situations and apply what they’ve learned. They also were very curious, they were learners, which is, I think, a wonderful skill to have. The ability to self learn, and to constantly have that hunger for more knowledge and then find ways to acquire it. So, then we’re resourceful. And there was also a, sort of, work ethic. But when I say work ethic, I don’t necessarily mean just working long hour. I mean dedication, a genuine care about about the team, care about the customer, becoming a safe pair of hands. And so it was a combination of things. And they’re just not things that you’re taught at school. They’re not things that you get from coming from a privileged background and so on. And so, they’re not things that you see on a resume.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  06:26

Definitely. I can appreciate that a lot. Now, for you and, it’s David, right?

Omer Molad  06:33

Yeah.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  06:34

So for you and David, were you also seeing this sort of like mirror of yourself in this? I’m wondering if you were thinking, well the skills that sort of are making me successful, are a mix of these similar types of skills that you were looking for on your team as well?

Omer Molad  06:54

We come from such different backgrounds, but non-traditional. I mean, you’ve heard about me. I’ve served in the military, I’ve grown up in two countries, etc. A resume doesn’t do me justice. And David, interestingly, worked in technology, but then he managed a catering business for a few years, and basically was in the cupcake business. So, you know, it’s kind of crazy as well. So we’re not conventional. Neither of us are conventional. And I think there’s this feeling that, well, there’s no piece of paper, there’s no interview, we’re not necessarily good at selling ourselves in an interview. And we felt that, you know, that’s part of it. But also, in being hiring managers and in leading teams, we constantly saw that the people who can contribute the most, the door isn’t as widely open for them. Because the game’s kind of rigged. Not rigged maliciously. It just makes it easier for people that fit into a box. And I think that really bothered us.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  08:04

Isn’t that so many things, though, if you think about life that way, right? I mean, if you think about formal education, we sort of have the tendency, I think just generally speaking, our society, global society at large, tends to try to put people into boxes. Because it’s easier to create sort of general pieces to that. I see that a lot with education, I see that a lot in hiring, I see that a lot in other areas, too.

Omer Molad  08:28

Most definitely. And it’s true in education. And then education is highly influential in terms of the the career paths that people have access to. So it kind of starts very early on in life. And I think we just refuse to accept this notion that your tickets been stamped from an early age. And that’s it. You know, that’s just a horrible way to think about the world. Rather, we think that instead there’s opportunity for anybody if they apply themselves. If they work hard, if they’re prepared to learn, if they’re prepared to venture outside their comfort zone. And typically, those are the ingredients for success. They’re not the only ones. There are other factors, many other factors, including luck. But if you do all those things, you give yourself a really good chance. And so why won’t the system actually help facilitate that?

Kelly Ryan Bailey  09:30

Well, before we fully jump in to what you’re doing with the organization, which I’d love to, I have one last question. Because I’m curious now that you described this with education. Did you find that those people that you described having those skill sets that were really successful, would you have said they maybe came from some of the top schools with high level degrees, or did you see otherwise?

Omer Molad  09:54

No, absolutely not. That’s what surprised us. They’d often taken, you know, the road less traveled.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  10:03

I had a feeling you might say that.

Omer Molad  10:07

Had to just throw in Robert Frost quote. But, you know, I think there’s something about the road less travel that helps you develop that sort of perseverance and, you know, the school of hard knocks, another cliche. But you have to sort of dig deeper, sometimes, when you’re not gifted with opportunity. And there was a mixture. I mean, some had good grades and others didn’t. It wasn’t like, it sort of highly correlated one way or another, it was random. But what wasn’t random was the attitude that they had, and how they turned up to work, and how much reading they did, and how and how they applied themselves. That was not random. It doesn’t matter how rich you are, or what gender you are, you can choose to do those things.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  11:05

Right.

Omer Molad  11:05

And if you do those things, then you will give yourself a chance, a better chance to succeed. Not only that, the people around you in the organization will then be more inclined to invest in you, as well. And so those were kind of the things that I think, also shouldn’t come as a surprise. And this is obviously a bigger topic, that grades don’t necessarily correlate. If someone got good grades, that’s great. But the way we teach in school and in university, in college, doesn’t necessarily translate into the way that we do things practically in the workplace. I mean, I went to a school that was very traditional, University of Melbourne, where I studied very, kind of like, old school education. I went to law school, you know, and you learn a certain way. And it’s not the same way that you then need to do a job. Right? Now there are certain skills you get out of it. Like, I got really good at writing essays, which teaches you how to articulate and absolutely, that’s great, but that’s not the be all and end all

Kelly Ryan Bailey  12:24

Right. No, totally. And when you say that I am envisioning to anyone that has any difficulty in learning in different ways. I know for me, personally, I was really good at memorizing. I was a terrible test taker. Unfortunately, right, at that time when your young, people basically tell you you’re going to be unsuccessful at life. But that’s not necessarily the case. It’s just, that’s how traditional education being set up.

Omer Molad  12:53

And also the way we process information, some people are very visual. There’s auditory processing. I learn more by engaging, by having a discussion. Some people learn by reading, some people look at slides, some people listen. And most education at that level is delivered in a very certain specific format. Interestingly, now that a lot of it’s moved to remote learning, I don’t know if anyone’s done research on it. But I bet you that it now favors a different type of student than what it did in the physical format of learning. And so that’s a factor as well, and how motivated are you and a lot of other things. So, we’ve just realized that all these things like where did you work and where did you study, they’re reference points. But they’re not the strongest signal in determining how you perform on the job. That’s how we think about it. They’re not irrelevant, they’re just reference points.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  13:54

And how do we then take in some of those other reference points into the mix, and understand them? Because I’m sure you know, that you’ll get into this, that those are just areas that we just didn’t know how to take that into account. Because we’re so used to and so reliant in hiring on this document, this resume, this CV, maybe a social media profile, again, fairly basic information that’s relayed there. But I’d love to hear as you kind of delve into this, I’d almost love to hear the story of when you guys, you and David first got together and we’re like, we think we have something here. Because that’s always really fascinating when someone decides let’s actually do this.

Omer Molad  14:42

Part of the inspiration came from the movie industry that does casting. Actually, David and I got involved in a film together, which is an interesting project. An independent movie that someone we know is making. And casting is really interesting because like, play the part, audition for the role. And then also, David read this article about a company called automatic the company that invented WordPress. And they used to do, I think they still do it, auditions where they bring someone in for a week to do a trial. And that’s such a great concept. And we said well, is there a way to do that with technology and make that more efficient? Essentially, that’s what we said. And that’s really the foundation for everything. And so what we wanted to build was the digital version of, you know, a restaurant, saying to someone come in for a shift come into the kitchen, we’ll see how good the omelet is that you make.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  15:41

This is what we do at my family bakery when we’re hiring, you know, pastry chefs.

Omer Molad  15:45

That’s exactly….

Kelly Ryan Bailey  15:46

 They come in we see what happens.

Omer Molad  15:49

You can join the Vervoe sales team now. That’s it. That’s what we do. But we use technology to do it so that you can do it for, you know, 100 or 10,000 applicants in parallel. And, you know, a lot of data and we make it nice, and it’s one way and all these other things that the benefits of technology brings. But at a fundamental level, when you remove technology from the equation, and you just talk about the evaluation method itself, it’s that versus some goofy interview where you say, tell me about a time when you had a problem. Who cares about that? Let’s actually get you to make the omelet or you know, bake the cake or the cupcake or whatever, and see. I always like to talk about, I know it’s an extreme example, but I like to talk about Roger Federer. If you sit down with Roger Federer and have a coffee, you’re not going to know how good he is. If you look at his grades from high school, I promise you won’t know. If you get in to do a personality assessment, you’ll find out he’s an introvert. But if you see him on the court, and there’s no substitute, there is no substitute to seeing him on the court. And when you see him on the court, it’s not just that he’s good. I mean, Nadal. I mean, now there’s a debate about Nadal, I think just won his 13th French Open.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  17:11

I’m a huge tennis fan, and I love to see them both compete together.

Omer Molad  17:16

They’re both unbelievable. But like, for me, Roger Federer is a different level because he has something that nobody has, which is the grace, the elegance. It’s intangible. And you have to see it. And our thesis is, well, everybody has a little bit of Roger Federer. They’re unique. So give them an opportunity to show you. That’s it. And we use technology to make that, you know, very good and fast and whatever. But that’s the fundamental premise.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  17:44

It’s just such a great way to describe that, because, like you said, it’s like everyone has this unique power in them, and that varies so drastically. I think, what you made me think of when you were describing that story, just because it’s something that’s so prevalent in my life right now, is my middle daughter, who happens to have the gift of dyslexia. And I talk about this a lot. But we’re going through, she’s 10, it’s a very difficult time, and she gets very down on herself. And what I try to like point her to is you don’t realize like the magic that will be created one day, when you just realize this creativity that you have inside of you. That reading is this one thing that doesn’t define you. But it’s so hard as a young person, you get so blocked into that. I think of Federer. That’s actually one thing I would say, that natural grace that you described, that you just can’t train that piece of it. You can become a better tennis player. But there’s this one thing, that combination of all that you described earlier, the passion, the etc, etc, that creates something that is unique to that person.

Omer Molad  18:54

That’s exactly right. And when you look about sort of profound people in history, and there’s a book called Mastery, that sort of talks about Da Vinci and so many other people. And you look across a range of fields, not just science, sports, education. You know, they’re all kind of really weird people. A lot of them are on the spectrum, you know? It takes something, you know, to be different. And as kids, we get pushed to just be normal to be the same and actually that’s what kills you.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  19:34

I think what you describe, people that haven’t been given all of it, I feel like that’s almost the way to describe what you’re saying now. Which is, it’s usually something that is challenging or a struggle that you have because you don’t fit into what people might call “normal.” At some point

Omer Molad  19:55

You overcome. You have to overcome.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  19:57

Yes, yes. And you do. And then you really, truly live in, and figure out who you are.

Omer Molad  20:02

And when you have to overcome, I think the obvious thing people think about is, Oh, you did it the hard way, so you’re tougher.  I think that’s certainly a benefit, the resilience. But there’s another more overlooked benefit, which is you had to be resourceful, you had to be creative. You had to innovate. You had to find different ways. And, you know, part of the growth mindset theory of Carol Dweck, which also, I think is misunderstood, growth mindset is not just about like sheer determination. It’s about having a different strategy to succeed. It’s about saying this didn’t work, I’m not just going to bash my head against the wall more. And bashing your head against the wall sometimes is necessary, but it’s not not necessarily the most intelligent way to go about it. And so it’s about working out, okay, I did this, and I got a Grade B. So instead of labeling myself and saying I’m a B, the conclusion I’ll reach is that the strategies that I use to get here didn’t work. So I’m going to find a new strategy to get a better outcome. It’s not that I’m going to just like, stare harder at my book. That’s not what’s gonna work. And, yes, there’s a resilience that’s required to even have that realization. That, okay, I’m not a failure, I need to continue. But then to actually develop that strategy, to teach yourself or to do whatever that is where the creativity, that’s where the magic happens. And people who are slightly different, they’ve gone through a different path.  They’re more likely to then apply themselves in the future in ways that will lead to better outcomes, because they’re gonna think, you know, across a much broader spectrum.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  21:54

So how do you harness that through your technology and share that with potential employers? Because I can imagine that anyone that has that power behind them, they come into any environment, and likely they’re going to succeed? Because they’re not going to be worried when they fail once. They’re just going to figure out this new way?

Omer Molad  22:16

So coming back to, you asked me a little bit about my personal journey, there’s a book that really influenced me that I read quite recently, in the last few years by David Epstein. It’s called Range. I think it’s Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, something like that. And it talks about the fact that we push people to specialize. Actually, Federer, just in the last week said he wished people would not start specializing so early in life. And, and we push people to specialize and we value specialization, but actually, he looked at people who have been successful in a range of fields. And there are a couple of exceptions like poker, poker players and golf, Tiger Woods, there are a few exceptions. But other than those exceptions, pretty much all of the people that he reviewed, are actually generalists, and they’ve succeeded in more than one field like a neurosurgeon that then started writing a TV show, and a ballet dancer that became a stockbroker, and all these kind of things. And, initially, at face value, sort of on the surface you think oh, that that’s crazy stuff. That doesn’t make sense. But actually, it makes sense because of what David Epstein calls analogous thinking. That you’re able to apply a way of thinking that you learned in say, ballet, to then a completely different field. And you don’t get into this sort of like pattern matching groupthink, where everyone’s the same. And it’s those people who have essentially more strings in their bow, they have a larger sort of array of solutions. And when I read that book, I felt a sense of kind of relief. Because until that point, I thought, geez, my resume is a mess. You know, I’ve done like, like, I can’t make sense of it. I’ve grown up in two countries. I’ve studied law and then I worked in the humanitarian sector. And now I’m in a technology company and like, what’s going on and banking. But then, through this lens, I looked at it all and thought, actually, they’re all apprenticeships that helped me prepare to do what I’m doing now, and I can draw on the skills and the experiences from every one of those places, and apply it all to doing a job that a CEO and a founder job that there’s no school for, there’s no preparation for. And I just felt the sense of, you know, validation. And coming back to your question, I’d love for more companies, more hiring managers, more recruiters to have this openness, that analogous thinking exists. That you don’t have to have worked in the same thing, in the same field,  in the same place in order to be good at X. That there are other paths. And that thinking then leads to an openness around, okay, well, let’s actually focus on the skills and what someone can do not the chronological hostory. Because that’s why it’s this belief that if people have done all these things in the past, you know, past performance predicts future performance. But actually, that’s incorrect,

Kelly Ryan Bailey  25:49

Right.

Omer Molad  25:50

And that just comes from this historical inertia that, you know, the days of like the blacksmith, you were a blacksmith for about for 10 years. So you’re going to be good blacksmith in year 11. But careers are more complex, the world of work is much more complex today, the education pathways are more complex. We’re doing jobs today that didn’t exist five years ago, because of the internet, because of a million things now because of COVID. Right? And so what I would encourage people, and what we try and encourage people to think about is this openness, that there are many ways that people can arrive at the point that they’ve arrived at, and many ways that they can learn skills and be good at a job. And people with different parts and different personalities, and different logos on their resume can be really good at sales or design or whatever. So if you think of it like that, you hopefully develop an openness to also evaluating them differently.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  26:51

No, and I love how you describe this apprenticeship sort of in these roles. Because I never thought about it that way, but you’re exactly right. It might not all make sense, you know, especially when you’re going through it. Now you can look back, and you can say, of course, this was training me to where I am today. But that descriptive description around that, as an apprenticeship model, I think really would resonate with a lot of people. I just feel like that’s a great dialogue to start with organizations, that a lot of times this discussion around the skills tends to be very difficult because they’re so set in the traditional ways. But when you throw in language like that, I feel like it would just be like almost an immediate understanding

Omer Molad  27:36

And just to make it more real for everyone listening, If you learnt a language, or how to play a musical instrument, that doesn’t seem obvious at the time of how’s it going to make you better at writing code. But clearly the skills to learn a language, the skills to learn how to play a violin, and let’s go further, what about being a parent? I mean, we talked about this earlier. You know, between us, I think we’ve learned a little bit about ourselves and about negotiation skills and the whole range of skills you learn as a parent. That doesn’t mean that if you’re not a parent, you’re not going to be good at, but why aren’t we valuing these things? There’s more to a human than just what they did at a university or you know, what they studied or what they did in their last job,

Kelly Ryan Bailey  28:25

Right?. There’s a holistic view. I wonder too, I’d love to dig a little bit deeper into the technology that you provide through Vervoe, if you don’t mind? Because I’m really curious, not only how and what you’re able to assess, but now that you brought up the non-formal skill building, like being a parent, or whatever life experiences, is that something that you’re also…So two part question, one, just like dive into the technology, two being are these additional life skills, something that you’re able to also assess?

Omer Molad  29:01

Yeah, so they come out through the process. So essentially, at a very basic level, going back to what we discussed earlier, the digital version of getting someone to come into the bakery for a shift. That’s what we do. So we put people in the scenarios that they face on the job. And we think about that in a way that’s context dependent. What do I mean by that? So, someone selling ice cream at the ice cream shop is different to someone selling software at Oracle. They’re both sales. And someone selling software and article is different to someone selling software as Snowflake, both big software companies but still different again. So context matters. So it’s not just the job of sales. It’s the job of sales at your company in your team at that time. And we get them to do tasks that are relevant and through that we learn what their job specific skills are, and their general work or soft skills are. I’ll give an example. A skill that many, many employers want is attention to detail. Sounds great. Sounds straightforward. Actually no. So the attention to detail of say, a librarian, is going to be very different to the attention to detail required of say someone in my job. So I need to pay attention to certain themes. I need attention to detail, but it’s a very different skill. So we say, Don’t test this generic thing attention to detail, test attention to detail in a way that’s relevant to the job that the person has applied for. And then you can talk about teamwork, teamwork in a factory, different to teamwork in an engineering team. Okay? So when you do it in context, you bring out not just the functional or job specific skills, can someone sell? Can someone design, etc? But how they’re going to contribute? How are they going to apply themselves? How they’re going to learn? How they’re going to work with others? Critically important. It’s not enough to know that an engineer can write code. What if they don’t pay attention to the Jira ticket and sort of go off track? What if they don’t communicate when there are problems? What if they don’t help others on the team? What if they take shortcuts and it ends up being…There a million things that may…And then what about just like being a generally helpful, good person to work with as well? That’s that’s another sort of, what about being a good mentor? What about receptiveness or openness to feedback so that they can learn? So all of these things come out when you put people in the scenarios that are relevant, and challenge their thinking, as opposed to asking them these sort of vague questions like, you know, what are your strengths? You know, that doesn’t really mean anything. You’re asking to sort of be gamed, to be lied to. People are really good, they can rehearse for that. That’s, that’s how we do it. And then we collect a lot of data as that process happens, and we use machine learning models to to rank people, and we learn from the employer. So what we then learn is like, we might have two companies using a very similar job, similar assessment, but they care about different things. So like, graphic designer role at a startup, you might want them to ship fast. Graphic designer role at a big accounting firm, you might want them to like take things through committees and not make mistakes. Similar job description. So we then look at what is that employee indexing for? What are they attributing more weight to, and we recalibrate and we surface those candidates, they can all do the job, but which are the ones that are sort of stronger in the things you care about the most? So we’re not prescriptive. We don’t tell you as a company what good looks like. You tell us what good looks like. You’re gonna hire other people, we tell you how to test for that. That’s how we think about the world.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  33:11

So do you create a scenario, once you understand what a company is looking for or does that company create the scenario with you?

Omer Molad  33:18

Both. Sometimes they ask us to do it, and we do it for them. Other times, we make it really easy for them to do it themselves. So they type in the skills they want, and we automatically surface the right kind of questions, and they can then choose those questions or create new ones. So we have an assessment builder that’s pretty intuitive. Nobody wants a blank canvas, but some want more help than others. Some have a strong view. They might be doing something offline, that works pretty well and they want to recreate it. And others just want, you know, more suggestions and more sort of help. And so we source questions from our library. And then others, again, come to us and say we want to test for people that can work at a call center and are resilient. Maybe they’re like 911 operators, and they’re sort of, you know, traumatic or whatever, some sort of mental health helpline. A true story, by the way. We did that. We hired mental health counselors, so you can just imagine what kind of skills they require. And so we’ll create something tailored for them.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  34:25

Yeah. And then I was just thinking through to like is this sort of embedded in their current technology they use for their hiring process? Or is this end up being a separate instance? I don’t know why, but I’m trying to think of do potential candidates, can they come directly to Vervoe? Or does this have to happen in a company environment?

Omer Molad  34:49

It happens in the company environment, we haven’t opened up a candidate portal yet. It’s not something we’re going to do in the short term, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. In a company environment it can be used standalone or in or integrated into, usually an applicant tracking system, but also a chat bot or any other delivery. So, it can be rolled into a workflow. And it can also be white labeled into a bigger platform, like a job board or a talent marketplace. Essentially, what is unchanged is the core transaction, which is testing skills. But everything around that, what we call the wrapping paper, how people apply and what the process is, the flow, wer’re sort of agnostic about that. And that can be as embedded or not as the company wants. And for the candidate, it’s really seamless. So there’s no registration, they get a magic link, it’s kind of the way slack authenticates, they just get an email, click on a link, start and finish, and that’s it. We don’t collect any details. We actually collect no details from the candidate.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  35:56

No personal details?

Omer Molad  35:58

Nothing. No, no personal details, just name and an identify, either an email or a number, so we can connect them to the assessment. But we don’t know their gender. We don’t know anything about them. We don’t we just know that they have a name, and they’re doing an assessment. And then we supply that back to the company. And we don’t really want to know.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  36:24

Does the company see the name as well, when they see this?

Omer Molad  36:27

Yeah, the company sees the name. They’ll just say first name, and the score and then the scores for the skill. You can hide names. That’s a feature. That’s not in of itself a them. And what they’ll do is they’ll go and dig deeper anyway. But essentially, another way to think about what we do is, we’re delaying the first impression. So normally, in the traditional hiring process, the first impression is the background, the LinkedIn profile or the resume. We’re making the first impression that work. We’re not proponents of blind, hiding…No, because that’s important. They’re going to learn about the person anyway. They’re going to look at other reference points. But when you make the work, the first impression, they focus on the right things, and they then can see the people they normally would have screened out, and that that gets you most of the way there.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  37:31

I love that you do that. I was just even like thinking personally that, I mean, I’ve been lucky enough to the last few roles that I’ve had in my career never required someone to read a resume. But I did stop and pause when you said that. I was like, if I actually just send someone a resume, would that communicate what I do to them? I don’t actually trust that it would. So I love that that’s the focus. I know we’re coming close to the end of our time, but I did have one more question on the output of this to the employer. You mention a lot of data points. I mean, you know, initially, I think most people are thinking, well, it creates some sort of resume. When in fact, it’s not anything like that at all. So maybe you could talk a little more about that output.

Omer Molad  38:15

Yeah, so there are three outputs, the first is a ranking. So there’s a score per candidate that then results in a ranking. So imagine a graduate program, and you have 3000 people apply, and now they’re ranked for you automatically purely based on how they perform. So that’s the first. Then the next level is deeper. So, for each candidate, usually in each assessment, we test three to four distinct skills. And so then there’ll be a score for each skill. So you can have two candidates at a similar level, but one’s better at communication, the other one’s better at prospecting, or whatever. So that’s really important. And then the third is kind of deeper again, which is more insight about that candidate. And that’s less relevant for like, say, a Walmart that’s doing 10s of 1000s. But more relevant when you’re hiring sort of knowledge workers, and it’s a bottom of funnel, you’re looking at 15 people, and you’re now at the sort of top three, and you’re trying to distinguish between them. So that’s a very different activity, top of funnel filtering and ranking versus bottom of funnel, you know, sort of distinguishing between two or three really, sort of compelling candidates. You need insight that’s deeper on the candidate. So that’s to help you make that selection decision. And then once you’ve made that decision, that’s what we’re trying to do, help you make a decision. Once you’ve done that, essentially we’re then agnostic about the rest. On background checks, onboarding, we’re happy for someone else to do that. That’s not the territory we want to plain. We really want to get you initially from that application to a shortlist, and then, if you’d like, from that short list to a decision, and that’s it.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  40:04

Yeah. Now, when you think of, because like this is very skill based in this process, when you think of skills, are there various resources? Are you using companies skill frameworks? I know there’s tons of skill frameworks out there. How are you curating? What skills? Maybe this is even coming through the conversations with the employers and what scenarios they want to put in place?

Omer Molad  40:28

Well, we think of EMSI as a great resource for skills, but I mean, it’s a great question. And, you know, there are really on one hand, but there’s a subsection of our customers that have a great competency framework, but it’s it’s rare. Most look to us. And we have an in house, IO Psych sort of function. But I wouldn’t say it’s an exact science. So I think, you know, like I said earlier, even attention to detail, what does that mean? It depends on the context. So look, there’s a lot of stuff that is kind of easier to do off the shelf, like, let’s do it, let’s have an Excel test. Easy, intermediate, advanced excel test. You can do that kind of stuff. Bookkeeping test, you can do. But, you know, when you get sort of beyond that, it really depends. And so I think in terms of taxonomy, that’s something that is still evolving. We are building that a lot of it is customer led. So we listen to what our customers want, and it just continues to change. But we certainly do not use an off the shelf framework. And I think to some extent, we would like to have, not an off the shelf framework of assessments obviously, because that goes against everything, but some taxonomy that, okay, when you’re thinking about resilience, this is a definition. And then obviously, it can be context dependent. And there’ll be some migration towards that, but we’re probably not there yet.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  42:23

Yeah, one of the initiatives that I’m involved in, called the open skills network, which is a global network is looking around sort of the context layer around skill words. Actually quite similar to what you just described. So, I’m sure that there’s more than that group, but there are groups on the way that are trying to sell for that. So that is a plus.

Omer Molad  42:47

Yeah, and it’s an area that I think will continue to evolve as the the workplace evolves. What does SEO mean? What does remote working mean? What is virtual mean? Like, all these things are changing and evolving? So long as it’s not these very outdated sort of government database, then if it’s something living and breathing, I think there’s value in those kind of things.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  43:15

Yeah, definitely. And I think what I was even more curious about, although I appreciate the kind words about EMSI, but what I was more curious about too, was just how employers were really…in terms of skills, because especially I think in my circles, we tend to hear maybe less from employers than I would like to hear. And I’m always curious if when you hear from employers about skills, if they tend to be talking with similar threads, or like is attention to detail, something you just hear is permenant and contextual?

Omer Molad  43:50

So, there are themes. There’s a big emphasis on, again, these softer, non-job specific skills like resilience. There are also a lot of words that we challenge. They talk about culture fit, and they talk about certain skills that we ask them, why is that important for this role? They say stuff like learning agility. So what do you mean by that? And they can’t explain. Like in a call center. We say, okay why is learning agility important to you in this role? And so then we look at what’s required to do really well in this role? Don’t worry about using big words, just give us examples. Tell us what are the things that you need to do? Oh, you need to be good with customers. Okay, so what if we told you that that actually is associated with these other skills. Empathy, whatever it is, right? And we’re good at this because we do this all day long, and we can actually tell you. And what if we told you that if you tested that, you’re going to get really, really good people. So we have these discussions. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t. You know, people have used strong views on these things. But, I think there’s a greater openness, increasing openness to have this kind of discussion, rather than I saw on Google that these are the skills that I read in some Forbes article, you know, which is not not a helpful way to think about it. And so they come with a sort of idea. And then we try and unpack it. And we get to a place where we can agree on what’s important. And then they see. And sometimes it’s [INAUDIBLE] until they get to see the candidates doing. And they go, wow, okay, now I know that these are the right…Yeah, and that’s okay. Sometimes that’s okay, you have to see it to believe it. And that’s a big part of our process is to actually show people. It’s hard for them to imagine, this is not something, it goes back to Roger Federer, there’s no explanation that’s going to tell you, just go and see.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  46:01

It’s not and you brought me back to my days working in a staffing firm, when I was out there meeting with hiring managers trying to help them describe what they were looking for. And when they would give you that long laundry list of whatever sort of the, you know, popular terms were of the day, or of the year, and then they throw a masters or a PhD on top of it. And I’d be like, so I think what you really want is this.

Omer Molad  46:25

Right. Ten years experience…

Kelly Ryan Bailey  46:29

But today, you hear those words, and I’m sure this is new within the last couple of years, empathy, resilience. Those aren’t skills we were talking about just a few years ago.

Omer Molad  46:40

That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And you reminded me of that, you know, 10 years experience in years and PhD and all these kind of things. It’s like, well hang on a minute. Are we hiring, you know, a cardiovascular surgeon here that’s in an industry that’s regulated where they need these qualifications? I mean, you’re talking about an account manager at a digital agency, and there are clear skills that that person needs, but the PhDs got nothing to do with any of that,

Kelly Ryan Bailey  47:09

Right. I’d usually say something like this person will be $400 an hour, and they’d say  wait, maybe that’s not what I meant then.

Omer Molad  47:17

Right. That’s exactly right.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  47:20

No, I get it. So we are coming close to the end of our time, Omer, and I just love for you, you get to choose, what your parting words for our guests would be completely open ended.

Omer Molad  47:35

Well, you know, I sort of hadn’t prepared any parting words, but what’s top of mind for me is the David Epstein book, and that way of thinking, and analogous thinking. And for people to really come away from this, knowing that what they have done in their life, no matter how sort of eccentric or weird or unrelated to anything tangible, it counts, it counts, it’s made you a richer person, it’s made you a better person, it’s who you are. And whether you are doing it consciously or not, you are applying it in your role. And when people look in the mirror, and they have this sense of the things that I’ve done, have contributed to who I am and help me contribute. I think that’s a better way to go about life than looking back and thinking, well, I worked in these random things or studied these random things. And I’d love for companies to be open to that. But first, let’s ourselves be open to that. That’s a good start. And hopefully, that’ll sort of, through osmosis, filter across to people. I think that’s a good, that’s a good parting message.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  48:52

I agree. And I will definitely make sure when we share this on social media, that we link that book. I already added your two books to my little sticky note right here. My Amazon cart will be full shortly. But I’ll make sure I link that. So thank you so much for sharing those parting words. I also want to let everybody know that if you would like to follow Omer he is available on LinkedIn. You can also find out more information about Vervoe on their website vervoe.com. They’re also available on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn most prominently. But I will say that I have taken a peek at this particular tool and would wholeheartedly suggest that organizations that are interested in thinking outside of the box and hiring in a unique way, should definitely check this out. And I want to thank you all for listening in to you. Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby. Really appreciate you taking time out and would love to hear some feedback. So please leave a rating, review, shoot me a note. I am available on all the socials at Kelly Ryan Bailey. Thank you again Omer for joining on us, and hope you all have a great day.

Omer Molad  50:03

Thanks so much Kelly.