Candidate Feedback Report '26 | Amazon Launches AI Hiring Platform | UKG Cuts 950 Jobs | Rippling Hits $16.8B

[00:00:11] Here we go. Ready? Ready? Born ready. You got your notes ready? I do. I do. They're right here. These are my notes. Yeah, I'm sure. I've got them ready. I'm sure. Did you see that hand scratch? I did see the hand. Can you read any of that? Can you read any of that shit? No, it's impressive that you have paper on your desk. Oh yeah. No, I always have paper on my desk.

[00:00:39] Yes. So, all right. Old school. Let's get to it, man. Welcome to the BARF. So we've got a couple new sponsors we want to talk about. We've got Candy Tech. You know, we met them at ERE Recruiting Innovation Summit. And I don't know if you remember this, but they had a giveaway that was like a purple lanyard bit that you put on your phone. I brought that home to Michael and she still has it. In fact,

[00:01:08] I thought you were going to pull it out right now. No, no. She is. If you want me to whip it out, I'll whip it out. So, she has requested. She's like, can you get like five more of these for my friends? I'm like. All right. Talia, hook it up. It doesn't work like that. They're in television. We got, I'll pull it up now. We're going to do this later. We got our cool little wheel. Oh yeah. Can you hear that? Oh, I like that. You hear that little sound effect?

[00:01:36] We're giving away some cash money. So, so stay tuned because you might actually, well, maybe not you, because if you didn't sign up. Got to sign up. You got no luck here. Not Birdman's cash money. And they're all decent. They got like $100, $150 gift cards on there. So it'll be fun. We've got Fama's back. Do we have a winner? Right. Do we have a winner? No, we're not pulling it yet. We're going to do that a little bit later. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

[00:01:59] Yeah. So we got Fama's back in a new one today. SAP Sapphire. Welcome to the family, brother. I've always wanted to attend that conference because it's Sapphire. I mean, it's SAP specific. I just want a ring. It's always, it's always been. Yeah. Did you, you saw Vans high school championship ring? That thing was pretty good. Dude, that is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they didn't have those when I was, I mean, first of all, I didn't win a state championship. But there's no, there's no Sapphire on that ring.

[00:02:29] No, there's no Sapphire on that ring. No. No, no. You know, there's the first ring I bought, Michael, was a Sapphire and diamond ring. Oh, that's fancy. Yeah. Yeah. There's a first, it was a first, it was a test. It was a, it was a test. I had my mom go with me to, to Neiman's and I bought it. I mean, it was like $600 or some shit like that. It wasn't a lot of money, but, but yeah, it's the first ring I bought her. All right. She still have it? Oh yeah. She owned it, didn't she?

[00:02:58] I bought rings for both boys for the birth of both boys and have India, their Indian names engraved on them. Yeah. Well, watch out for the owls. I learned, learn something new today. If there is an owl, it is a witch for you. That's not, that's not for Cherokees. That's not a good thing. No. For me, we have an owl that's like, it floats around in our, in our back area and I just listened to it.

[00:03:26] And we have a woodpecker too. And that's, that does not stop. Those, those can be, I had a, I was on a camp out, a Boy Scout camp out and there was a woodpecker on the tree next to the, to my tent. And this dude was like on meth. It just keeps going. Like he was going. Yeah. I'm like, dude, seriously. I'm like, I'm going to hurt. Like, I mean, you know, I don't know. All right.

[00:03:50] If you, if you ever, you or the audience, if you ever get out to, uh, to Tucson, if you ever find your own self in Tucson, which your daughter should go to the university of Tucson. She's not, she's already accepted and she's done. Stop it. We're not looking at any more schools. Anyhow, they have a hummingbird sanctuary where you go in and it's just hummingbirds around you. And it is the greatest thing. Cause you know, they're just, you know, they'll come right up to you and hang out with you. Like they fluttered her, their little things. Yeah.

[00:04:20] Yeah. It is really, really cool. Yeah. So you said one thing that threw me off. You said to the audience, you're assuming people are actually listening to us. You got it. I mean, yeah. I mean, we at least have family and friends. There's people, there's some, there's some people that hate listening to us. I'll share it on Facebook. See if we get friends. Well, here, here's the deal. It's going to be different this week because you didn't do your homework. I'm going to call you out on it. Cause you would call me out.

[00:04:49] You should, you should, because you told me that I didn't have to prepare for this. No, no, no, no. I said you don't have to do the research. I, I mean, sorry, I should have, I should have followed up. That's fair. No, no, no, no. All right. If you dish it out, you should be able to take it. That's right. All right. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to read off. I got, I got a bunch of stories. I'm going to just, I'm going to read them off. We'll, we'll, we'll rip through them. Cause they're actually kind of important stories. I think this, this week I, I found some good ones that, that I've been following.

[00:05:18] One of them is UKG. Now this isn't big in and of itself, but UKG is, they cut 950 jobs in their latest restructural run. Yeah. That was a riff. That should have happened six years ago. Yeah. And it's not, it's, it's not a, it's not a huge deal other than the fact that for me anyway. So UKG for those who, I mean, y'all should know it at this point back in, was it 2020? They did the merger of Kronos and Ultimate.

[00:05:46] $1.5 billion company with another $1.5 billion company becomes a $3 billion company. $3 billion company, 80,000, whatever customers, you know, across the world. So they're, they're PE backed. PE firms. We know don't love bloated companies. Right. However, I feel like, and this is kind of, I heard your voice in my head as I'm reading

[00:06:13] the story and I found that it was, somebody was talking about LinkedIn, it was a long thread. But I didn't think it was that bad, right? They have a long history of layoffs ever since the merger. They've laid off thousands of people. Well, I mean, again, it's, it's with Ultimate Software, you had a great place to work. Yeah. And with Kronos in Boston, you had a great place to work. So they brought two great places to work together. But you're going to have overlap. Yeah.

[00:06:41] I mean, you do, you have two analyst relations departments. You have two, you know, sales teams, enterprise sales teams. I think what I love, cause I was at the Ultimate Software Connections analyst bit and they all came in, they announced it to us. And what they, I mean, it was in the beginning of COVID, this is February and people are handing out hand sanitizer, which of course was useless. But what I loved about this bit, I remember the CEO of Kronos, Aaron, getting in front of

[00:07:10] all of us and just basically saying, we don't have all the strategy baked out yet. Because what we've learned is we're not, we, if we just sell to each other's customers, we'll, we'll make up, we'll make money. Right. And, and again, going through that overlap, selling to each other's customers and, you know, you're going to have, you're going to have layoffs. Like that's, this isn't an AI taking jobs thing. No, they've been doing this historically. And, and look, you have two companies come together.

[00:07:38] There's going to be repetitive, you know, opportunities. But, you know, so anyway, so I didn't think it was that big of a thing, but I, I, it did make me think though, when one, I don't know who would be able to acquire these guys. Right. I mean, no, they're going to be too big. No, they're going to go public. Yeah. The PE firm will take them public again when the market is. Yeah. And that, and that, that was my initial thought was, is this a move to set them up for the

[00:08:08] next event, which in my opinion, wouldn't be an IPO. Yeah. They got to, they got to go for them. Everybody to get right with, with their money. They got to go public. Yeah. Yeah. So there's, there's another one. I want to talk to you about this one. So we have Amazon, Amazon, right? Have you seen this? Well, we know. Yeah. Creating a recruiting solution. Yeah. Yeah. What's it called? Yeah. Talent. Right. So I don't connect talent. Dude. I love this.

[00:08:38] I haven't seen it, but I love it just by name. And just by what I'm reading on it. So if you're able to demo, I think talent, call me. I think Charney did a demo this week. So we can, we can reach out to Matt. He, he, he posted that he was going to do a demo with it. I think what I like about it is because they have such a strong consumer brand. You already have candidates because you have people that, you know, prime customers.

[00:09:08] So you have access to people, a lot of people. And you have people watching videos. You got, you know, a lot about these people now, whether or not they activate that knowledge or not, I'm not sure, but you have access to them. Yeah. Who knows if they even can, but it's, I just, I love the fact that, I mean, we've seen, we've seen Google try this. We've seen others try it. These are the ones that actually, I think can actually pull it off.

[00:09:35] Google researched for, uh, for three, almost four years before they went out with Google for jobs that bit at it. And it didn't, didn't, didn't go well, but it wasn't for the lack of research. They tried, they, they had smart people really digging in and doing all that stuff. And it just, it just didn't, didn't work. What Amazon is doing differently reminds me of what Ikea did in, in Australia, where they

[00:10:04] put job ads into the boxes. So into the instructions, so you get your box, you know, your shelving unit, you get your, get home and you get the instructions out. They'd have job ads in there written in the instruction format. And so like, that's just brilliant. Which is why no one applies because no one reads instructions. I, I forced myself the last time I went to Ikea to, I think I bought a chair. Yeah. It was chairs or tables. I can't remember.

[00:10:33] Um, I forced myself to read the instructions because I didn't want to have extra shit laying over. So I forced myself, you know, that commercial that's on TV right now. Even if I read instructions, I've got shit left over. I, I've, I held, Henry helped me actually. And I had him take me through it. I'm like, okay, take me, what do I do with this chair? Take me through this. He's like, okay, take me through this bit. And so I had someone, cause I won't read them.

[00:11:01] So I had someone else, I had a proxy. Yeah. So forced me to do the instructions. So, so I want to, I want to, let me, let me go deep, a little deeper on, on, on the Amazon connect. So the, from what I'm seeing and I, and I want to see this cause it, I'm actually excited for this one. So for recruiters, the AI agents automatically build and run competency-based interview and assessments.

[00:11:27] They get the full transcripts, the scoring logic, the notes, the audit, all that. Standardize the interviews, all that stuff. It does it immediately for them, right? There's no work that they actually need to, to, to do. And obviously on the candidate side, it just opens stuff up. They can, they can do whatever they need to do and interview whenever they want, which I think we're seeing with a lot of these tools now, they can do stuff on their own time.

[00:11:55] I think that's, you're setting yourself up for success, even in an employer driven market by allowing candidates to do things when they want to do them. I think it's, I think it's just smart. I think it's more of the movement of just letting candidates be candidates and instead of forcing them into some rigorous thingamabob and structure and process and technology and stuff like that. Like, like candidates do it on their own time. If they want to do it on their phone, their phone, let them do it on their phone. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:24] Why do we care? So, all right. So I think it's good. I don't know to your point, how much data they can access on the consumer side. Yeah. But they know a lot about you. Yeah. Oh yeah. They know a lot about you. Which would be cool if they could pull some of that stuff, like the last rod you bought or the last, you know, whatever the bit was like, you know, you're a habitual returner. Like if they knew that, can we just talk about their return policy right now?

[00:12:54] And make it a heart on your brother. 21 clicks. Let me just tell you how I know that because I counted them yesterday. 21 clicks from the time. Make it in hard on a brother. From the time you say, I want to return something until you actually select your location. 21 clicks. 22 clicks. I thought of you yesterday, last night. It was really, yeah, it was in the afternoon, but I finished it in the evening.

[00:13:23] Is I finally, and you'll know this pain, I finally went through my GoDaddy account and got rid of all the domains. I was harsh. Wow. All these domains that I've kept since, you know, 1999. Took them off auto renew? I took them off auto renew. Now here's the deal. GoDaddy doesn't make it easy.

[00:13:44] For you to select multiple domains, you have to go into each domain and hit cancel three different times to finally get it to the, and you have to give them a reason and all that stuff. I made it. I made a game out of it, and I picked all the different, even though they reshuffle them, I picked all the different reasons. Because I was just like, I'm not going to give you the reason. The reason is it's too expensive. And I'm not doing anything with it, and I haven't done anything with it for 20-something years. Yeah. You've invested all the money.

[00:14:13] You could have been a millionaire. If someone else wants to clear Channel Park or connected cities, if someone else wants to do something with it, Godspeed. There's a couple that are in there that are, I don't want to say sentimental. They are sentimental. But I really like, you know. I kept the five-letter domains. Yeah. The five-letter.com domains. I kept those. I kept anything 10-cup related.

[00:14:40] So Studio 10-cup, which was what my wife's company's name and all my son's names and all that stuff. I kept all of those. That's it. Good luck with that. 28 domains. Oh, there you go. You're going to- 28 times $22. Consider it a pay raise. All right, look. Greenhouse. Let's talk about Greenhouse. They acquired Ezra AI Labs for voice first interview, right?

[00:15:10] So let's talk about this one because they – I was watching an interview. It might have been with George. George Lerock at WarTech with Daniel. Daniel has a good – yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so Greenhouse had said – Greenhouse, I had to say Daniel. So the applications per recruiter has spiked 412% since 2023.

[00:15:40] That's insane. It's because we're using – let's say where they are using AI tools to build and blast their resume and customize resumes for all this stuff. So what I – As they should. What I love about this though is this leverages AI to go through and do all of the stuff that they're doing before it ever gets to a recruiter. You're fighting fire with fire. Not that that's kind of the sentiment behind it.

[00:16:09] It's AI versus AI. Yeah. On some level. Yeah. It's a battle that's being waged above us for us. Yeah. So, yeah. I think, you know, to me, I think, you know, you and I were playing around with Claude, the tool, yesterday, not the person. We just don't want to, you know, get into trouble there. And it's like, you know, they have that tab for code.

[00:16:36] And it's like, you know, you download the Git software. You create a GitHub account. And then all of a sudden, you just talk. And it then does the hard part of coding behind you. That's cool. That's crazy. Yeah. And I think it's cool as an interface to think of what can be done on the recruiting side for recruiters, hiring managers, and candidates. What can be done with voice as an interface. Yeah. I think is actually really cool.

[00:17:06] So I think it was a great pickup. Yeah. I love it. I don't think they're in the market for a pickup, but I think it was a great pickup. Yeah. No, I love it. I love the fact that they recognize the pain in the space. And hopefully this helps clean that up for their customers. I think that's a great, great opportunity. Yeah. All right. So LumApps. Yeah. Do tell. What's that? Do tell. Do tell. They've acquired a company called, I'm going to mispronounce it, Komin?

[00:17:36] Komin? See who? Something like that. Kumin. Komin. Isn't that a spice? Kumin? Kumin. Yeah. So I was going to have the Dallas Cowboys, you know, or the Eagles fight song ready. I could probably. Hold on. Let me just pause it real quick. You need a cleaner version of the fight song. If I can find. The one we have. No, I can't. Oh, you can't hear? I can't. Yeah.

[00:18:06] It's the fight song. It's the Eagles fight song. It's playing. It's too loud. And it's too not clear. Like, we need a clear version. What? The Eagles song? Yeah. Nah, it's good. It's good. It's good. When you hear 80,000 fans screaming it down your throat. Says an Eagles apologist. Yes, of course it's good to you. Good birds. Oh, boy. So, all right. So, so LumApps Human. Yeah, human. Which, which we know, right?

[00:18:34] So they, they own the digital workspace, like internal comms, workflows. Basically, you know, they, they tout themselves as an AI employee hub, right? Employee experience platform, the internet or intranet. Did you say intranet? Intranet. Yeah. Social intranet. Do you remember? Do you remember going to intranets and like having to do stuff in intranets? Yeah. Some companies are still doing that. Oh, yeah. So. SharePoint. Yeah, yeah. Komin.

[00:19:02] I'm going to, if I'm mispronouncing his name, I apologize. You're just not going to say Komen. They, they said they own the physical space in the office or like, like, like space management, digital signage, visitor management type stuff, et cetera, et cetera. So that's the. They make you sign into the security log? Sign into the security log. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good for them. That's a good pickup. People still go into the office, I guess. More and more. Yeah.

[00:19:32] More and more. I actually saw, this is on social, but I saw a job posting where they put it as remote, but down at the bottom of it, they put, we put remote for visibility, but this is actually a job where you have to go into the office. And they stated that. And they stated that because it gets more visibility in the job boards. I love that. But they stated it down, buried down below. They stated it for the record. It's like, eh.

[00:20:02] Actually, it's not a remote. You have to go into the office. Yeah. A lot of people I'm part of, especially like in the fishing groups, they'll put this boat up or the fish up and has lots, like pick for attention. Like, just ask your goddamn question. Stop with this pick for attention stuff. All right. We have. We have. That's so great. So, before we get too lost, let's break out the wheel. Bring it. You want to do it? Let's do it. Yeah. Go over and grab this thing. I'm actually really excited about the wheel. Yeah. Me too.

[00:20:31] Didn't you get a smaller one to start with? You guys can't really see. What's that? Didn't you get a smaller one? No, this is small. To begin with? This is small. It's only an inch. It's small. But, okay. There's a bigger one. No, not a big. I mean, if I put it closer to the camera, it'll get bigger. Right. You've heard this before, right? This is the first time we're down this road? So, this is the candy wheel, right? I keep saying candy, but it's candy wheel, right? So, and the tech, right? So, let's talk about these guys for a sec.

[00:20:59] So, they are brand new to the family. Yes. And we love these guys. And I absolutely love work with them. They're based in Tel Aviv, where a lot of companies are based. A lot of companies. Tons. Yeah. A lot of big, big tech out there. Tons of great tech. Yeah. Yeah. And they're all doing well, which is great. So. Let's do it. I'm going to spin the wheel. I'm going to put it by the microphone, try to get some. You and I talked to somebody the other day. She's Scottish.

[00:21:27] And Jewish as well. And to deal with air raids. Yeah. Like, to hear a horn and go. Gotta go. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Probably need to go in the bunker. Yeah. I can't. I can't imagine. Don't want to imagine. Can't imagine. But yeah. Let's spin the wheel. All right. Let's spin the wheel. So, here's what we'll do. Twice a month. We're going to spin this wheel. Apple gift card. Choice. So, they're all gift cards. Yeah. So, actually, we're going to change it up a bit because what we're going to do is allow them to pick their own gift cards.

[00:21:58] So, sign up if you haven't. If you're watching, you want to know, how do I get a $150 gift card? Just sign up. Where do they sign up? Where do they sign up? I'm at a link somewhere. No, there'll be a link in the notes. Just go to work to find. Just go to the website. There's a link somewhere. Slash Candy Tech. It's C-A-N-D-I-T-E-C-H. So, we'll put it in the notes. We'll email a bunch of people. I've always wanted to say Candy Tech. Candy Tech. But it is Candy Tech. Candy. Here we go. Ready? I'm going to spin it. All right. Can you hear that? I'm looking.

[00:22:28] I can't. That's a sexy spin right there. Let's see. That sounds like a fart. Let's see. I'm going to cheat. Is it a choice? Oh, $50. It's kind of on the line. It's still spinning. Hold on. If it lands on the line, should we re-spin it? I think you're just moving it with your hand. I'm moving it on my hand. $50. So, it landed on the $50 choice. I like the one to the left. You like the one to the left? Yeah. This one? The yellow one? Yeah. All right.

[00:22:56] So, since it's our first spin, let's do another one. We'll take the best of. Let's do that. Best of. Nah. No, we can't do that. All right. Best of three. Here we go. Come on. One more. $25. You can't buy anything. It's got to be a biggie. There you go. Now we're talking, baby. All right. $150. Now you can do something with that. $6.7. $6.7. You can do something with it.

[00:23:26] We need to visualize. We need to. Because we're spinning the wheel here. $150. Simone Bolton. The winner. Simone Bolton. Simone Bolton. She is the talent acquisition manager for Custom Inc. Oh, I know Custom Inc. Okay, cool. Yes. That's a good brand. She's in Virginia. So, here's what I'm going to say. Simone, you cannot get your gift card unless we get a 97% discount on our next quarter. Well, that might be a bit much.

[00:23:55] There might be an employee discount. All right. 95%. I like that. I like that brand. That's a cool brand. I'm a member of Jamestown Society, so I love Virginians. Congratulations. You are the first winner on the Candy Tech wheel. That is amazing. Bring it. Let's bring Nick in. We're going to talk some research. Nick is with Candy Tech, and let's do it. All right, Nick.

[00:24:20] We're going to talk some research, but you'll notice, the audience will notice, we are missing another guy with a lot of hair, and that's William. And that's because you and William just don't see eye to eye on anything. I must have said something that upset him. He just walked out of the room for a second. He's like, I'm out of here. I'm gone. Screw this. No. It's going to be me and you, and we're just going to talk research.

[00:24:47] You and me, we're going to do this thing because you guys at Candy Tech have put together some research on skills assessment and candidate feedback on that through 2026. And you've done something like, there's like 80,000 or something like that candidates. So first off, let's introduce yourself. I'm going to just talk forever because I love what you guys are doing. Introduce yourself to the audience and then we'll jump right into this. All right. Well, firstly, I'm Nick.

[00:25:15] I'm the director of customer success at Candy Tech. So primarily, I'm responsible for making sure that all of our customers get value from their partnership with us. I've been in TA and hiring for about 16 years. I've spent about six years in HR tech, 10 years before that as a recruiter myself. So really focused on top of funnel hiring challenges throughout my whole career. Tell us about the research. What do you guys have going on? Awesome. So we think often about how candidates are experiencing the hiring process right now.

[00:25:43] And we've gone ahead and we've surveyed over 80,000 candidates and we found some really interesting insights. And there's two specific insights I want to bring to this conversation. But before that, I think it's helpful to just explain a bit more about the current environment that we're in because hiring has shifted a lot. Right now, we are in a very different space than we were even 12 months ago, definitely two years ago, largely driven by AI. As you know, it's changing everything in amazing ways. By the way, I'm a huge AI fan.

[00:26:13] But for top of funnel hiring, it's definitely created some unique challenges. Mainly being that candidates now all have access to these tools where they can bespoke, customize their applications to any role in the click of a button to hundreds at a time. So they can fire out these tailored resumes, you know, at mass, which presents a lot of challenges. Firstly, for recruiters, you know, when I speak to TA teams, you know, which is basically what I do all day long.

[00:26:39] They're talking about how much volume they're drowning in and the admin behind sifting screening. And because they're all using the same tools, it's almost impossible to identify who are the right candidates to prioritize and get into the process. But when you flip it and you think about it from a candidate's perspective, they are now in an environment where they are just one of hundreds of people who are applying to roles. And it's very difficult for them to stand out and to show the abilities that they have.

[00:27:06] And if you look at play, I don't know how much time you'll find out a lot about me and what I do in my spare time. I spend a lot of time. He's just going to talk forever. It's all good. No, I just scroll through recruiting hell on Reddit a lot. I just find it really interesting to understand how candidates are experiencing hiring at the moment. And one of the major or most common grievances you hear from candidates is that they apply to roles. They hear nothing. A couple weeks later, they get auto rejected and they just don't know why. There's no data point.

[00:27:36] There's no feedback on how they can be better. And this is not me saying that every company should now be providing personalized feedback to every application. It's just not possible. But from a candidate's perspective, it becomes very difficult to understand what's going on. But give them something. Just just or if not something, maybe a different way about evaluating if they're the right fit than just their resume alone. Because a resume, it tells you their history, but it doesn't really tell you. It can't tell you what they can do in their ability.

[00:28:06] So what was really interesting in our research, we found two interesting stats. One is that 89% of candidates told us they prefer a process that includes a skills assessment rather than just CV screening, which is super interesting. So candidates would rather do the extra work to showcase their ability and be judged based on that rather than just their resume. And if you think about it from a candidate's perspective, if you go through an assessment

[00:28:32] and then you don't make it, at least you know, hey, I just didn't have the skills for that role rather than this abstract. I'm not really sure. Maybe if I formatted my resume slightly differently or if I use this language instead of that or this keyword, that keyword, you know. So that was the first interesting insight in the research I thought I'd bring to the conversation today. You know, it's interesting.

[00:28:57] I'm looking at some of the work here that you guys talked about. So talk about, so I'm looking at some of the stats. Yeah, 89% preferred hiring, the hiring process with skills assessment. But 95% prefer assessments tied to real world job scenarios. So talk about that a bit. I can remember, you know, it's I can remember years and years ago.

[00:29:26] This is before we had, you know, the type of platforms that we have today. You know, we would be asked scenario based or situational based questions. And that would kind of be your assessment. It's not we're not we're not talking about that. Not not not really, maybe in certain instances, if that's the right way to evaluate a certain skill. But yeah, so that is the second really interesting insight that you've called out that 95% number.

[00:29:52] So I think when when you use the phrase job simulation, some people don't fully, you know, there was a conversation in our office earlier. Obviously, we were joking around. But I think some people might think that we create these sets in these environments to simulate an office and someone comes in and something happens. And its essence, a job simulation is mimicking tasks that someone would perform if they were in the role. So, for example, you'd ask a developer to debug a coding issue or you might ask a marketing

[00:30:20] or a content person to go and write some content or someone who's in finance to go jump into a spreadsheet and solve a finance issue or reconcile some accounts. You know, so it's it's very job specific tasks that relate to that role. And these should be the sort of tasks that candidates who are applying to your roles are very comfortable with because they're doing them on a daily basis. This is their skill set. So when you allow candidates to take a job simulation, you're seeing their ability.

[00:30:47] And what's really interesting when we look at this isn't part of the study, but it's just interesting to talk about is when you look at who companies end up hiring once they've taken candidates through job simulations is very often someone who on paper they probably wouldn't have considered because of, you know, some criteria like must have three years experience with X tool. You know, who's to say having two and a half years experience or three years experiences is largely different.

[00:31:14] Some people might just be able to pick things up slightly quicker. But yeah, to go back, fundamentally, a job simulation just means giving someone a task. In some scenarios, to your point earlier, that could be some scenarios, but it could be a scenario because what you might find is if you're hiring an AE, for example, they are coming into lots of different scenarios and you want to understand how they would behave in each. For example, you might have a sound clip of a customer objection.

[00:31:43] Hey, record a video of yourself responding to this. How would you deal with that? You know, or talk to us about what you would happen if 50% of your pipeline fell through and now you have two months to rebuild before the end of the quarter. Now, jump into a spreadsheet and create your weighted forecast based on that, you know, or go into your prospecting using chat and show us how you utilize AI. So it could be a scenario, but often it's a mix of scenarios plus real world tasks that

[00:32:11] candidates would be doing if they were in the world. A couple of years back, it's probably two years now, we did. We were at an event and they were doing virtual reality. And so, which is, I know different than what you guys are into, but we had the headsets on and I think my scenario was I walked in or I was sitting at a desk and I was being interviewed for, it was a customer service role. I think it was. And it was, I did two things.

[00:32:40] One was customer service role and they asked me a bunch of questions and I actually had to go through, it was a little weird. Not a lie. It was weird, but it was actually pretty good. And then the second was, it was a grocery store checker. And so I had to like check all these items at the grocery store. But I always thought like at that point, like, okay, that's a real good way to assess skills. Like I enjoyed that.

[00:33:06] So as you guys went through this study, this research, which is all within your system, which is awesome in and of itself, did anything stick out as being like, wow, I didn't really think about that. Yeah, I think, I think two things. I think firstly, it's worth calling out as you mentioned. So where this, how this study was formed is when candidates take an assessment in Candy Tech, they're instantly then given the option to take a survey straight after. So we're capturing this feedback at the point they've just experienced going through an assessment.

[00:33:36] And I think what's interesting is you would think that candidates don't want to do the extra work. They don't want to spend 30 minutes, 20 minutes doing an assessment, answering questions. They would rather just apply, have someone phone them, have some conversations. But actually that is not the case. And what's interesting is sometimes you work with companies and there'll be some friction because they are concerned that candidates don't want to go through assessments. But actually the data suggests the complete opposite. Candidates want to do this.

[00:34:05] And I think fundamentally, when you allow candidates to just showcase their ability, it becomes much more of a meritocracy. So if you're thinking about things like being bias free and being fair and inclusive is another route to do that. Now, I still think that resumes hold value. I think, you know, for example, you wouldn't hire no matter how well they did in an assessment, you wouldn't hire a junior intern to go and lead Apple as the next CEO. Right.

[00:34:35] So I think experience matters because, you know, you want to make sure that people have dealt with situations and they've got the ability to navigate through certain environments. But it's very difficult to say just because someone's worked at this type of company, they'll be great at this type of company in the future. Right. You know, when you then allow people to do these assessments, it becomes a bit more of a bias free higher trust signal, probably a better way to put it.

[00:35:01] But yeah, the number one takeaway was this is what candidates want, especially right now. They want to be able to showcase their ability. And then if they if they make it amazing and if they don't, they've at least got a signal as to why not. Yeah, they've got a baseline as OK, I can make assumptions. OK, I just wasn't good at this. Now, they may want more information than that, but at least they have something. I can remember. I mean, I was not a fan of assessments. This is years and years ago. We were doing assessments over the phone.

[00:35:30] I would get a call or we would call, you know, worked at a company where we did assessments. We would we had a group of either psychiatrists and we would actually call people and go through a 30 or 40 minute assessment on the phone. And they'd put all that into some form of a, you know, calculation and assessment and come up with an answer. And that was it. It was the most grueling, kind of annoying thing you could ever do. I mean, obviously, you guys, you're not doing that.

[00:35:59] At least I hope not doing that anymore. No, no, you're good. So, all right, man. So so so this is good. I love I love what you guys are doing. And we will put the link for the assessment or assessment. Sorry, for the research in in the show notes here, because believe it or not, research as part of the barf is actually one of the most viewed portions of what we do. Turns out people like research.

[00:36:27] They don't love white papers, but they do like research and they do like things that actually mean something to them. And look, you guys have you're doing this right inside the system. And I think that's that's even more more impressive. And I kind of when you said that, I kind of thought you're not obviously taking you're not taking pulse surveys in a bathroom. But I'm sure you've seen it when you walk out of a bathroom, you got the red, the yellow and the green button and you hit. And I always I don't know.

[00:36:57] I look forward to that. I don't want to touch it because I'm like, you know, but but I do paper time. And I do because I'm like, it's actually good feedback for them. And maybe next time I come in, it'll be just a little better. So maybe we'll get her on and then I get to talk with her as well. So awesome. Nick, I appreciate it, man. Thank you so much. I'm sorry you didn't get to to battle with William. Tell him to phone me so he can hash it out.

[00:37:27] Whatever's gone wrong. We'll do that next time, brother. I appreciate you jumping on. Thank you all for listening. Check out the links below. Sign up at the link below in the show notes. Get some free gear, some free money, all that good stuff. And we'll see you next time.