The Use Case Podcast: Storytelling about INTOO with Yair Riemer

Music:   Welcome to RecruitingDaily’s Use Case podcast. A show dedicated to the storytelling that happens, or should happen when practitioners purchase technology. Each episode is designed to inspire new ways and ideas to make your business better. As we speak with the brightest minds in recruitment and HR tech, that’s what we do. Here’s your host, William Tincup.

William Tincup:   Ladies and gentlemen. This is William Tincup and you were listening to the Use Case podcast. Today we have Yair on from INTOO and we’re going building kind of the business case, the use case, or cost benefit analysis for why his prospects become customers of INTOO. And into his I-N-T-O-O. He’ll tell us the background of that I’m sure. So without any further ado, Yair, happy to you on this show. If you would introduce yourself and INTOO.

Yair Riemer:   Absolutely. Thanks so much, William. Yeah. So Yair Riemer, CEO, INTOO. Been in the HR tech and ad tech space for about 15 years across a number of organizations. Really what we do, we’re a company that helps people that develop their careers. So we do that through individualized, personalized career coaching, all delivered through a kind of a modern career development platform. I think what’s pretty unique about INTOO is we really focus across every stage of the talent life cycle. So we have solutions to help organizations from a candidate’s first touch, first interaction, the candidate experience through to an employee transitioning out of the organization, right? And when someone is leaving the last touch of the transition out and everything in between with career development for the employee experience as well.

So everything we do really focuses on that job seeker experience, that employer brand, and how can we ensure that that individuals are feeling empowered to develop their careers.

William Tincup:   So tell us a little bit about, well, first of all, two things. INTOO, is that kind of a play on kind of what’s next?

Yair Riemer:   Exactly right. Yeah. So we’re actually part of a global staffing firm called G Group. GI group, we say here in the US. Are headquartered Milan, large company, a 4 billion Euro company. INTOO is the brand that they launched in Europe. So it’s in Italy, it’s in the UK, all about, what is next for me? Am I going into that next career step? How am I navigating? This feeling of a journey, of a compass, right? Where am I going into in my career? So when we joined the organization, as part of an acquisition from a US based HR tech company called Career Arc, when we joined GI Group, we adopted that INTOO brand and we launched that INTOO brands here in the United States in 2020.

William Tincup:   Fantastic. And that was quite the guess on my part, I have to admit. So tell us about the product. So you obviously have a suite of things that you all are doing, bring the audience into the suite.

Yair Riemer:   Yeah, absolutely. So we have three solutions. Candidate care really is pretty straightforward. There are so many organizations out there, I think I was listening to a previous Use Case podcast and I heard you mention there were something like 1,200 applicant tracking systems, right? And so, the use case here for HR leaders is, it’s pretty easy to apply for jobs now. Companies are getting applications from job boards, from ATS systems, et cetera, but they’re finding themselves having to decline, 100, 150, 200 candidates sometimes for each position or each role. We felt like there was a pretty big problem to solve for customers around brand and the candidate experience. So companies came to us and said, “How can we help keep these candidates engaged?” So the challenge is really keeping them engaged and kind of securing them in a competitive recruitment market.

So our candidate care solution basically integrates with your existing career site, makes it pretty easy to nurture your talent pool. We provide all of the career development resources that we have for existing employees in our career development suite or for outplaced employees in our transition product, but we’ve modified it for candidates. So things like, how can I be the best version of myself in a mock virtual interview, right? And COVID times we’re all interviewing virtually. Or, here are certain resources and tools to practice for my cover letter, for my resume or to network, et cetera.

So it’s an organization saying, Hey William, thank you for applying. Thank you for taking all this time, these hours to go through the process, to fill out our forms, whether our ATS is slick or clunky, right? And so we’re going to reward you and we’re going to provide you sort of this tool, this career development tool to help you here in your journey with us and if you are declined, to help you continue to look for other jobs as well. So it keeps that talent engaged and it keeps those candidates sort of part of the process in the application system.

William Tincup:   So clients when they first approach you, there’s going to be multiple problems that they’re probably trying to solve, right? But where do they start? Do they start in the middle, with their career development? Do they start with the things that you help with at the transition, or do they start on the front end with talent acquisition? Generally, right now, where do they start on the journey?

Yair Riemer:   Yeah, that’s a good question. I think we were known so historically our INTOO’s background has been career transition. So we’ve got over 600 enterprise customers, some of the largest companies in the world going through mergers and acquisitions, or unfortunately doing a layoff. So recent big news story of a mortgage company CEO firing 900 people over Zoom, for example, right? And the difficulty of keeping an employer brand and keeping morale. So our start was absolutely at the end of the lifecycle, employee lifecycle and transition. That’s what we’ve been known for. That’s what we sort of built as kind of a global product. How can you help extend your brand values, help people land new employment fast?

We have hundreds of on demand career coaches, career advisors here in the US. We built a system in thousands worldwide, and we basically hope you get a new job, right? And fast. So, that’s where we start. I think though, to answer your question more acutely, now we really have sort of as the HR organization and people, leaders have become so much more critical to employer brand today than they were 10, 15, 20 years ago, we have talent acquisition professionals who care about that candidate experience and on that, we have the L&D professionals who care about engagement and retention. So that’s where we build career development programs internally for companies as well. How can I move from point A to point B in the company? How can I invest in sort of meaningful growth for each employee to avoid that costly turnover? And then, what we’ve been known for historically was, okay, how can I protect my brand impact on Glassdoor, maintain the productivity of my employees who remain and reduce the chance of litigation? Mitigate being sued by providing someone a severance benefit on the way out.

So all three, unfortunately for us and our sales team and our commercial team, my partner [inaudible 00:   07:   24] Mira who probably will lead the charge, we have to approach each area of the organization for each solution on its own, because there’s so much value both in the front end, middle and back end of the life cycle. But we’re really playing in all three areas.

William Tincup:   I was about saying they’re integrated. These things are-

Yair Riemer:   They’re integrated.

William Tincup:   …are interconnected as well for HR departments and from TA all the way across to out placement, the idea that they can go into one platform and to be able to manage, what I would say, experiences across all of those different kind of arcs whether or not it’s candidate, employee, or alumni seems useful to me. Again, it’s probably changed a lot of change for the practitioner to understand kind of not to use Word or Google docs or whatever, for certain things, to be able to pull them into certain platform.

Let’s talk a little bit about that. Let’s talk about what they’re switching off of. You have three different solutions that makes sense to me why they’re all interconnected and it makes sense to your prospects and customers too. But I would assume that some of that comes with some change.

Yair Riemer:   Absolutely. Yeah. I think you hit on the head. Our core competency here at our organization is help people understand what are my strengths, what’s my potential? And then help them acquire that the new skills that are needed for future roles. Whether that’s within the organization or somewhere else, and where can they be successful long term. So that’s our core competency. Yes, we deliver it through technology. Yes, we have seven days a week, mobile friendly tablet and computer friendly coaches, sort of like the Uber for on-demand career coaches there, but really we’re helping someone dare to succeed in their career.

When you talk about sort of other vendors, or when you talk about what are they switching from, the outplacement market is the easiest place to start, I think, on the transition side. That’s the most mature market. There are tons of traditional players, boutique players. Our big differentiation point and outplacement is we democratize the process, right? So there are five generations in the workforce. Candidates and job seekers want an individualized experience. What works for me in my role, in my industry, in my geography, whether I’m virtual or physical, whether I’m hourly, full-time, is different for someone else. And so traditional outplacement has usually been focused on leaders, has usually been focused on execs, C level, VP level, and if it was available to the masses, it was typically shorter hour program, shorter duration, quick workshops.

So we said, that’s pretty silly. Everyone needs to be able to land a job on their let go. It might be no fault of their own. It might be a merger. It might be the product didn’t work out. Many of our customers have been ones that have moved locations in states. Your state’s been popular one at Texas, organizations have left California moved the headquarters to Texas. Well, no fault of my own. I’m not moving to Texas. I might have my family here. I might have my, not politically, I’m not moving to Texas. I’m just not moving to Texas. I grew up here, right? So my sister and my brother live in Texas by the way.

And so you’re in this position and we want to help you out. The big differentiator for INTOO on the outplacement side, or we call it career transition side, has been, this is on demand. It’s virtual. So we have hundreds of coaches around the country and we’re delivering it through technology. People want a consumer experience now. They’re using Netflix, they’re using their mobile apps or playing Candy Crush, whatever they’re doing and they don’t want it to be some clunky workshops, some clunky CMS filled with links to go across the board. And so we were fortunate enough to really pioneer alongside one or two other firms, technology in a modern approach to out outputs.

So that’s been the easiest to place to disrupt. We’ve gone from zero to 600 plus customers in less than a decade, five plus years. And that’s been a pretty disruptive part of the talent cycle. On the first [crosstalk 00:   11:   30] oh, go ahead.

William Tincup:   No, no, no, go ahead. Finish your thought.

Yair Riemer:   I was going to say on the first two areas, it’s much more complimentary. So in candidate experience and in career development, we’re complimenting, we’re not an LMS. We’re not an LXP, right? We’re complimenting these systems. We’re complimenting engagement and pulse surveys through leadership coaching on demand or leadership coaching dedicated through technology. So it’s career coaching at scale, that’s very low cost, that compliments programs that may already exist. And in some areas it’s expanding markets for organizations who used to only provide career coaching to high performers.

So if there’s one thing to remember, if you’re listening to this and you’re an HR leader, about INTOO its democratization. We’re trying to bring career coaching to the masses, both in outplacement and in inside organizations. And typically, these industries for many, many years, and these solutions that have usually been focused on leaders and high performers only. And so we’re trying to enable organizations to understand this should be for everybody and it can be affordable for everybody. We deliver through technology for everybody.

William Tincup:   So with the three different areas, and again, they’re kind of blurring together of course, when you show the software to prospects for the first time, you’re obviously showing them whatever the pin they start with, but you’re also probably going to show them everything else. Let’s go through the Aha moments of each of the three, and then overall what is that Aha moment that people get that they love kind of overall. But let’s start with the talent attraction and candidate experience related one first.

Yair Riemer:   Yeah. Aha moment there on candidate care and candidate experience is making sure that a brand can be incorporated and a brand can remain top of mind for someone, even if they’re declined. So basically making everyone feel like a silver medalist. So most decline emails are automatic through an ATS system, not really personalized. And so the Aha moment is when we show the integration with ATS and how you can provide a benefit for someone with your brand, with your colors, with your logo, you can name the platform and it can be William cares. William cares about you. And you’ve applied to work with William and you’ve been declined, and all of a sudden the company sees their name, their brand, their logo, and they see a benefit that they’re providing. And the Olympics are coming up soon, right? In a couple weeks, and everyone feels like a silver medalist.

And so people who work in HR usually, hopefully care about people, right? And so all of our solutions are here to make people better at their jobs or better in finding a job. So the Aha moment there is, wow, I can provide something for such an affordable cost to thousands or tens of thousands of client candidates with my brand and my logo to tell them here’s a better way to prepare for an interview. Here’s an AI video assessment. Here’s job search. So it’s really just the concept. Concept is so new to them that the Aha moment is being able to provide something to someone that usually would just get a decline email. Sorry, sorry, this position’s filled, right?

So I’d say that’s what that is on the candidate experience side.

William Tincup:   Okay.

Yair Riemer:   When it comes to career development, it’s more straightforward. I think Aha moment for career development is, wow, I could put my own coaches on this platform, or I can use yours at scale. So we have the ability for employers, if they have their own mentors, their own career coaches, their own professional team, to use our platform almost as their mission control their CMS, if you will, or coach kind of management system and enables them to use it for, for their coaching. Or, to enable our coaching team to get there. And I think they love to see the different analytics that we provide, how many individuals are searching for jobs internally integrating with their LMS to showcase their courses, their skills, their career pathways, and really how we integrate with existing processes that they have. Most L&D buyers have something, and they want to make sure we play nice with it, and we’re the layer on top that’s providing that coaching piece.

So I would say that’s the Aha moment when it comes to career development. What we call a career development, basically, career coaching internally in an organization. And then the Aha moment in outplacement is, wow, this is unlimited. Wow, this is online. Wow, this is for everyone. And adults like to learn at their own pace. You know, adult learning practices is how can adults learn at their own pace? It’s customized for me. So let’s say I’m laid off and I live in Virginia and the onboarding process, if I’m doing a demo on the platform, the platform’s immediately going to show me how to file for unemployment in Virginia. So boom, right away, Aha moment. I’m in there, and it’s customized just for me.

Or if I’m an engineer that’s been laid off in Virginia, it’s going to show me, here are the engineering roles available right for me. So the platform is smart. The algorithms are smart. And the Aha moment there is everyone gets a customized, individualized approach instead of your job board approach. Your one size approach, right? And so I think that level of personalization goes a long way when it comes to taking care of your departing employees.

William Tincup:   If someone does the full demo and they see all three, which I’m sure happens all the time, what is the thing that they walk away from and any questions or are things that they just love, now that they’ve seen kind of this? Because it’s a new approach to pull these three things together is actually truly unique. What do they say to you?

Yair Riemer:   I think the key, the ones who really get it and who are investing in both engagement as well as brand, really the takeaway loyalty. It’s loyalty. It’s brand loyalty. It’s loyalty from the candidates. It’s loyalty from existing employees. It’s loyalty from, as you call it, alumni, right? Former employees. So I think the big takeaway for us is they say, wow, you’re touching three areas that are so critical for us. And it’s a virtuous cycle. You’re going to have boomerang employees. You’re going to have alumni. You’re going to have referrals. Some of the best companies are hiring through referral. And they’re not being that affected by this fierce warfare of talent or the great resignation because they’re already known as an amazing place to work. They’re already known as a place with great morale and great brands.

So I think really forward thinking people leaders and NHR leaders look at all three of these areas as sort of part of one stool. They’re not separate solutions. They’re all part of one stool, which is, let’s help people develop their careers, in turn that will help them and it will help our brand. It will help our brand, which will be better for us commercially. It’ll be better for us to recruit the top talent and it sort of all works together

William Tincup:   And retention, engagement, satisfaction, all this other fun stuff, how do they build a budget for this? These have been historically three different little areas, line items or parts of a budget, right? So how have you seen prospects and customers kind of start to rethink the way that they put their money together to pay for something like this?

Yair Riemer:   Yeah, I think there’s no secret here. I think this is absolutely, for us, listening to the pain point of the customer and starting from what they need first. So for us it’s primarily land and expand. We don’t have tons of organizations who say, I want to start and kick off all three at once. We look and say, what’s your priority? Wow, you’ve got tens of thousands of applicants? You’re not replying to them besides a one liner ATS email? Or, hey, I’m going through a merger or I’ve got high turnover, 10% turnover a year. I’m a 1,000 person company. 100 people are leaving every year. I don’t have a great experience with Glassdoor, the morale of those left behind. So we’re really trying to learn. We’re trying to sell through learning. And so there is not a budget for all career development and all career coaching.

It either has to come through an initiative in L&D. We care about retaining our people, to your point. Or outplacement, very clear line item, very clear budget, traditional, typically executive. Or candidate experience. Where we’re saying, “All right, you’re spending this much on recruitment. You’re spending this much on brand. This is how you can boost your kind of recruitment marketing efforts.”

So we’d love for it to be more, right? Absolutely. What organization wouldn’t love to sell all three of their solutions, right? From the largest in the world all the way down, LinkedIn or [inaudible 00:   19:   56] on demand, whatever you’re talking to. But for us, we typically are starting with one or two pain points. And then after we’ve proven trust 6, 12, 18, 24 months down the line, we get introductions to other individuals in the organization. Whether it’s an L&D or in talent acquisition or benefits or rewards. And then we’re able to introduce our other solutions as well.

William Tincup:   I love that. So let me ask three questions left. One is around buying questions from prospects. And I want to talk a little bit about the ones that you love. And when you hear someone ask or question, what are some of those examples? And in some of the buying questions you loathe that you’d like to eliminate if you could somehow eliminate. So when you’re talking to a prospect, what kind of questions are you like, okay, they get it? This is a good question or the opposite.

Yair Riemer:   Yeah. I love that. Yeah, so I think the questions that I love are when they ask about data. What are the results here? And so, how fast are people finding a job? What are the retention rates of organizations that are using you for career development? What are sort of the studies on employer brand and sort of the values? So, for us, one of the most common questions that we get which I absolutely love is talk to me a little bit about the efficacy. People with INTOO, when they’re searching for a job on the career transition side are landing a new job on average in about 10 or 11 weeks. And the national average in the US, bureau labor statistics changes, I think monthly or quarterly is 20 to 25 weeks, so two to two and a half times faster than national average.

So instantly right away, you can see the value there, right? Or when they ask about the background of our coaches, right? 90% of our career coaches have master’s degrees. I’m in like 45 out of the 50 states. I have 2,000 globally. They have all these special certifications that you could talk about. National Career Development Association, psychology, professional career coaches, et cetera, et cetera, right? Resume writers, Myers Briggs assessment providers. So when they ask about coach quality and coach depth, that’s where I know we really shine, because we’ve invested significantly, significantly in top quality coaches and licensed career coaches.

The second part of your question, which is which ones are more difficult or was it sort of maybe less interesting, is if they don’t fully see the value on how it’s going to come back from individual success perspective within an organization. From an internal mobility perspective, from a career development perspective. So if there’s no why to, why am I having career conversation with a leader or a manager or someone who’s working virtually for the first time ever, and has never managed someone virtually before, it’s different for managing in person. If they don’t have the internal need or reason within the company and it’s sort of a generic nice to have, that’s when you know it’s just not their time yet.

You have to have this level of organizational priority before you can come to INTOO. I can’t sell you on engagement, retention and taking care of your people. If somehow I’m in a demo and you don’t have that as a priority, I promise you, you’ll be back. You’ll all buy eventually. [inaudible 00:   23:   21] one or two or three years, but if you don’t see that as a lever that you need to move, then it’s going to be a difficult conversation to have.

William Tincup:   It’s a good knockout too. I mean, is this a priority, if it is a priority? Do you have budget set aside for this? And if you don’t, okay, then it’s obviously not a priority or you’ll still budget from somewhere else if you really want to prioritize it. Let’s move to your favorite customer story. And again, it could be the most recent one. But just something where one of your customers, you don’t have to name names of course, but just something where a customer has used INTOO where you’re like, yeah, this is really cool.

Yair Riemer:   Yeah. Oh, wow. This is the best part of my job, right? We wake up every single day and we’re very lucky. We’re certainly not a nonprofit, but this is a purpose driven organization. We’re helping people improve in their careers. I think there’s so many, but I’ll just say one. We had a leader, a director of HR, she was responsible for a pretty large consumer package good CPG company. They had to go through a reduction in force, a layoff. We were fortunate enough to win the contract and to help her transition out a few hundred individuals in manufacturing plants across the US and in various warehouses. And then unfortunately, a few months later she lost her job at that same company.

So she had brought us on to provide all this value to these individuals and to go to our executive team and our leadership team and say, we really need to provide outplacement to hourly workers, to workers in warehouses and fact is, they’d never provided that before. She put her reputation on the line and said we got to take care of these people. She was laid off herself and we helped her with one-on-one executive level coaching, find a new VP of HR role at another organization with a significant title on compensation increase in about a two or three month period after that. And then she ended up bringing us, about a year later, to that new company as well.

So it just was an example for me of the power of career coaching. We had such high quality experience for her. She used the platform and she used the one-on-one coaching over a few months period that she was so confident that then in her new job, she brought us back in again. So it’s a story that I always like to tell for new hires and onboarding in sales, which is when you go to sleep at night, yes, this is hard. We’re a new brand INTOO. We’re new in the US, only two years, but you know this works. And when a product works and a service works and a solution works, you’re set. It takes time to market, it takes time to sell. It takes time to rattle through the noise, which you know better than anybody else in the HR market is really, really, really booming, but if it really works, you’re good. You’re golden when it works.

And so I think that’s what makes me probably most proud and most satisfied when, when we’re looking at success stories.

William Tincup:   That’s a fantastic story. All right. Lastly, what’s the big push for 2022?

Yair Riemer:   Yeah. 2022, the big paush for us is you called it sort of the employee experience. So we’re really, really strong on the front end of the talent life cycle with candidate experience. We’re really, really strong on the career transition side and where we’re newer in the market, though our solution’s been around, is career development. So building out further leadership effectiveness within an organization. For retention, for engagement, for leadership development. So new programming. We’ve done some really cool integrations with course and skills providers like Coursera and edX and Udemy, and so really building out both the career development solution, as well as the career development coaching value proposition for our existing customers.

William Tincup:   I love it. This has been fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on to Use Case podcast.

Yair Riemer:   No, thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed it.

William Tincup:   Absolutely. And thanks for everyone listening through the Use Case podcast. Until next time.

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