Storytelling about Maki with Maxime Legardez

William Tincup: [00:00:00] Ladies and gentlemen, this is William Tincup and you’re listening to the Use Case Podcast. Today we have Max on from Maki People, which will shorten to Maki through the podcast, but the website is MakiPeople.com. And we’re going to be doing kind of a standard use case podcast, where we look at the business case of the use case, cost benefit analysis of why prospects and customers pick MyKeyPeople.

Max, would you do us a favor and introduce both yourself and Maki?

Maxime Legardez: William. First, thank you very much for welcoming me today. I’m very happy and glad to be there. My name is Max. [00:01:00] I’m 36, based in Paris. I’m an entrepreneur since 15 years. I have built many e commerces and marketplaces in Latin America, Southeast Asia, Middle East.

The Europe, I have exited some companies. I have failed other ones. And I have started a new journey last summer, exactly 12 months ago, called Maki People in the HR landscape this is a few words regarding myself and what we are doing at Maki, actually. I’m a big fan of how, companies and enterprise will evolve in the next 20, 20, 10, 20, 30 years and which kind of enterprise and company my kids will work.

And my starting point was just, talent is everything in HR in a company. We know it. But the candidate experience is a disaster when you want to apply. If you talk to 100 HR people, it’s also a struggle every day to handle all the Massive flow of people that applies to companies and we are, we need to change of [00:02:00] paradigm because CV is completely dead and we need to hire, based on skills and not on CV in schools anymore.

So what we are doing at Mckeown, we are a SaaS. HR product, we want basically to make hiring easier, much more than an accessible, remotely more objective because based on skills, much more fun and cool for candidates to apply and much more fair because we really want to know that diversity becomes a true world in a, in our society as of today.

So our product helps companies that in less than three minutes, anyone, a recruiter or manager can create an assessment to assess soft skills and hard skills of candidates. And this, based on two pillars. The first one, we have developed a library of almost 200 tests. And the tests, tick three boxes.

First, they are gamified, short, between 3 to 10 minutes, and accessible on mobile. Second, they are made by experts, a bit like masterclass way. And third, they cover all dimensions. So you will find, test of [00:03:00] personality, test of cognitive ability, test of language, test on tools, how to use SIP or Salesforce, Upspot, et cetera.

Test of art skills in marketing, sales, business intelligence, customer support, product, tech, data and many other, transversal soft skills tests, your ability to have empathy in a group, to take decisions, et cetera, et cetera. This is the first pillar. And the second pillar, we want the company to.

Personalize, personalize and customize the assessment so companies can bring the business case and use case, but they can also create a test on my key that after they can basically reuse any time they want and they can interact with some candidates, by small capsule of video, audio or text in an in synchron way.

So this is basically what we do. We are not. And as a product, because we are, we partner and we’re integrated to all the major ATS. So we work with Lever, with Greenhouse, with SAP with [00:04:00] Workday so we can easily start, working with new enterprise companies. And this is pretty much what we do since now.

6 months because we started in November and we are now sitting, globally because our product is English and global. So we have already customers, in India and Europe, Africa, and of course in the US. So

William Tincup: we got a number of things to unpack. One, one is I just want to make sure the audience understands where, because globally.

Done. Workflow, you integrated already with a number of ATSs and that’s going to be an endless kind of, you’ll continue to add more and more ATSs as you, as they come along. Where in the market do you play right now? Is it more on the hourly side? Is it more on the corporate side? Is it a large organization or enterprise, global enterprises?

Where do you see

Maxime Legardez: yourself? So today, We are great for companies that have large volume. So we play in the enterprise segment. We already have, from the largest audit and advisory consulting firm Capgemini [00:05:00] or KPMG. We also work with McDonald’s. We work with very large recruiting and interim firm like ADECO.

We work with a few of the largest European banks. So really work with this kind of global companies and why do they work with us? First, to save between 40 to 70% of time in pre screening. Why? Because, when you receive, I don’t know, 500 CV for a job in a bank, you can easily, by using myKeyC, okay, that guy would be great in English.

It will be good at numerical reasoning. It knows how to reply to customer and that way. And I can also see a three minutes video in a kind of behavioral situation case. So you save time. This is a main points why company uses. Second, we clearly shortened by at least 50% the time to hire.

Why? Because With Mackie, you spot much more quicker and faster the candidates you need to spend time with. And you can reject [00:06:00] the other by sending feedback, but qualitative feedback with the result of the test. Third, we decrease, the end of promotion period on contracts because as we are more, with more objectivity, we try to reduce also the amount of mistakes.

And finally, we brand. When you create an assessment, you brand, your McDonald’s pages. So when candidates click on a job offer on Indeed, on any job board, on your website carriers, they arrive, in your company branding page. They see a video of your HR saying, Welcome candidates, this is the first step in our large journey.

We are very happy to have you today, etc. We put, human and candidate experience as first, from the first click.

William Tincup: I love this. Okay. Let’s do let’s do a couple of things. So we’re looking at skills over some of the traditional ways of looking at things. How do we tease out some of the, how do we tease out skills?

Maxime Legardez: Yeah. So first, [00:07:00] William, it was funny because just before we, you started and you click on recall, we were talking about art, which is very funny. It’s like the CV was created by Leonardo da Vinci, five, six centuries ago. And it’s still, the way to recruit. Today, if you look at, science it tells you it doesn’t work.

And if you look at the reality of today, one figures I love, if you have 15 years old today, you will do an average 17 jobs in five different careers across your life. So the CV doesn’t make any sense anymore. That’s why basically skill based recruiting approach basically is first much more adapted as today.

Second, much more scientifically proven because you have the highest, basically correlation of performance by using this. And what we do for a skill based approach is a mix between, having personality tests, cognitive ability tests, language tests, some behavioral situation tests and some.

All skills [00:08:00] and job competence test. If you do a mix of this, it is scientifically proven that you have the highest chance to get the best correlation of performance when you hire someone. And we believe that test is not a dirty word that should frighten people. We work with people, that needs to bring test as a cool thing for candidates in a gamified way.

where you can do it basically in short instances of two to five minutes on mobile, which is 10 times much better than having sometimes 70 to 80 clicks on a large corporate career website where you need to upload your cover letter on CV. I

William Tincup: love this. Let’s do the two pillars because I want to make sure that the audience understands the two pillars again.

So let’s start with the first pillar.

Maxime Legardez: Yeah, the first pillar, we have developed a library of 200 tests, and we have a team that adds more and more tests every week based on market demands. And

William Tincup: as other folks build their own, do they, do we, do, can they [00:09:00] opt in and put those into the library? Do they automatically go into the library?

Maxime Legardez: Yeah, so they can go to the libraries, they can, upload their own tests. They can create, I don’t know, you want to create a 10 test getting your company values. You want your c f O of your company. You want to put in screenshot of Excel and put 10 question regard. Basically that specific case, you create your own finance level two junior test, and you put it in the library, takes you 20 minutes to build it, and then after you can reuse it.

Anytime you want. And one quick thing, William, regarding the first pillar, I think it’s very important. We really want, to take the best masterclass we can find anywhere in the world. I’ll give you some example. Our personality tests are made by people like Thomas Chamarro Perezic, teacher at Harvard and Columbia.

That spans 30 years, I’m sure you know it that build basically our personality and cognitive ability one. Our sales test B2B are made by a guy called Brendan McGiver. He was basically responsible for years to onboard and [00:10:00] train the sales people at Google. In all the U. S. and Europe our test basically are getting the how to give and receive feedback are made by the worldwide expert about feedback.

So really want, we picked basically the best people all across the globe to create, a community of people that shares the knowledge. And participate basically to the largest skills test library you can find anywhere.

William Tincup: I love that. Okay. And the second pillar.

Maxime Legardez: And the second pillar is okay, we have tests, but you have your company culture.

You have your own things on how you want to work with people. So you can create basically your own test. You can upload your own test. You can create your own custom question when talking to people. I don’t know. You want to create a video of three minutes. I can apply for a sales job in our B2B SaaS product.

How do you sell our product? I’m a candidate with my mobile. I’m in my room. It’s, 11 p. m. I will record the video. You want to, I don’t know, ask the candidates to [00:11:00] share a few words in English or in Dutch or in French regarding why is motivation hard to join the job. You want the candidate just to reply to some basic questions.

What is your salary range and do you work during weekends? We can be very easy basically for some type of job. So that’s why, which is very good. Mike is we do some drivers and people in the restaurant from McDonald’s. But, we also do cyber security consultant for biggest, audits consulting firm.

And for the first one, you will find, a total experience of maybe six, seven minutes with one short video, one quick three minutes test to make sure the candidates know how to speak and to reply to customers in English with customer service behavioral some test you will have more.

Complex assessment with one personality related MBTI test, for instance, one English B2 test plus one, I don’t know, corporate accounting, finance, and one business case, et cetera. [00:12:00] Do

William Tincup: you find our, it’s assessment is obviously pre hire assessment is fantastic.

Do you find customers want to put knockout questions either somewhere in the process or try to put those into their assessments in some way or shape or form?

Maxime Legardez: I’m not sure I understood your

William Tincup: question. Knockout questions during the hiring process things that basically you want to know about the about the candidate.

And if they can’t do this, then they don’t go move forward in a process where an assessment is an objective evaluation of the talent. I found a lot of hiring managers and recruiters, they want to try and, they, they want to get to the candidates that The cream, if you will, the cream at the top.

I want to get to that faster. Yeah.

Maxime Legardez: In iVolume and we have, it’s crazy. We have some companies that receive, more than a thousand of application basically for one job in a few days. It’s impossible to be processed manually or it’s, it’s a crazy job. Yeah, basically you like a question, sometimes it’s just are you available to start in two weeks, do you [00:13:00] work during nights and weekends? And can you please upload your ID card? This is just, 50 seconds to put on Mackie and you get, when you connect to our platform or your ATS, just a filter and you just 5%. Out of the top 5% that replied to the 3 questions, you just see a 2 minute video of, I don’t know, a candidate that will sell the product or try to reply to a customer that is unhappy because his delivery is late for a meal.

And you will pick basically the top 10 you want. And these top 10 candidates, you will have put 30 minutes to identify them. You will call them. Straight after, basically, the applications, they can, we meet tomorrow because we want to proceed with you and all the 99% others, they receive the feedback.

It’s completely game changer.

William Tincup: Oh, that’s nice. That’s nice. So the value proposition, you went through it really fast and and again your French is much better than my English. I want to go back to the value propositions. The one I keyed in on, but I want to go through all of them was the.

Time to hire [00:14:00] in the way that you shorten that time to hire for clients. So let’s start there. Time to hire again, high volume, lots of people going through the system and being able to get to the right people faster and then be able to respond to them. This is mobile friendly, if not mobile first being able to respond to them in minutes, seconds and hours.

I love that. Give us some more kind of a color to time to hire it. And then let’s unpack the other the other value

Maxime Legardez: propositions. So the first one would be clearly to save time. Here we see, it’s between 40 and 80% more, volume of candidates you get per job. More efficient. We are this is completely clear.

We are not solving the problem of, you have a pen job, you don’t have any a applicants. We will find and fix your sourcing problem. We are not doing this, but if you have volume, basically saved between 40 to 80% of time, this is second, we can shorten by up to 50% the time to hire. [00:15:00] Because, you spot much quicker and faster the candidates that fit to what you are looking for.

And at the same time, you don’t spend unless precious time with the candidates that don’t fit. Those guys, you click and they receive basically a branded email with the result of the test. This is the second point. The third one… I would really put this on, the candidate experience at the end compared to a normal world where candidates queue on your website to put a CV and a cover letter.

Here, they see some interaction, human interaction on video or pictures regarding your brand, your person, your values on their mobile before basically they take the assessment. Here, we have a KPI because we take the net promoted score of candidates that do every McKee test. 95% of candidates prefer clearly.

Companies that use Mackeys, it’s a standard process. This is the third one. And the fourth one, as we bring more objectivity on the process, we have two cool things. We reduce hiring mistakes. As of today, to be [00:16:00] honest, I don’t have, the exact numbers because we need more time after only six, nine months to show basically the A decrease of hiring mistakes and same goes for the decrease of diversity issues and promotion of more inclusion and diversity.

This will need more time, but this is for USPs and why basically today is the largest already cool brands from retail, finance, bank already work with us after only, six, nine months in the market.

William Tincup: I love that. Okay, let’s move to by side for just a couple minutes and and, talk a little bit about the demo customer success stories and questions you love.

So let’s do questions you love. When you’re, when you and your team talk to people and again we’re trying to educate Practitioners on how to buy software, especially how to buy, my key, how to buy that. So what questions do you love hearing from practitioners? Like what, what helps you know that they get it, they understand like the value, and this is going to be a, [00:17:00] not pushing a boulder up a hill.

Maxime Legardez: Usually, we ask, first, how many, application you, you receive per And are you happy with the current, process that you have? Here in 90% of situation, when you receive a lot, the answer is like, it takes time. It’s a lot of human decision. It takes time to approach from our ITS to the prolific question calls.

We do mistakes, et cetera. So we ask a lot of questions regarding the process of handling the application. This is the first one. The second question we love is do you think if you were a candidate? And you were applying to your own company, you would be happy with the process you offer to a candidate that spent their life on TikTok, Instagram, and Uber Eats.

Do you think you are adapted to the world of today? Usually people are quite, honest and they say, no and it is great [00:18:00] because We show them what we do for other customers in a candidate perspective. And this is what I love about Mackie. I see a lot of cool of HR software in the market and B2B, but the large majority of them are built for recruiters, which is cool.

But I really believe you can sell to recruiters. But as of today, You need to buy things for candidates, because if you make candidates happy, then after your recruiters will be happy. And I think, we ask a lot of questions regarding candidate experience because today, it’s just something companies and large enterprise companies need to improve and consider.

This is the second one. And yeah, this is a two basic question regarding eye intensity and the volume of candidates and the candidate experience. I think it’s good to starting points when we talk to clients.

William Tincup: So let’s move to, I’m going to go backwards real quick cause I wanted to cover something you said at the very beginning.

It’s fun and fair for candidates. And you’ve talked about candidate experience a couple different times. So give us some texture to that. When we say fun and fair [00:19:00] I get the fair part. I think the audience gets that part and hopefully they get that part. The fun part, give us a little give us a little context there.

Maxime Legardez: Yeah, so in a normal company, in a normal world of today, you go on a career website, you have on average 15 to 20 clicks. You are asked to upload your resume and cover letter, and then you click on submit and you wait on average three weeks. So we come back to you. If we come back to you, this is honestly is a normal world in 80, 90% of situation.

With my key. You see a job offer, you click, you arrive on, I don’t know, mcdonald. mackey. com You see the head and the owner of the restaurant or the HR director at the headquarter saying, hi candidates. My name is Max. I’m the HR director. I’m very happy to welcome you today. It’s the first, interaction of our long journey together.

You don’t need to put any cv, [00:20:00] come as you are. You will be asked, 15 minutes with mobile or desktop to reply to a few fun and cool questions. Do your best and we come back to you in 48 hours. I’m a candidate. I do my, gamify test on mobile and when I finished I have another video of maybe the C E O of McDonald US that will do only one video.

That will be the same for candidates. And this is a c o of magnetic I candidates. I’m the c e o. And I just want to say thank you. Thank you for your time, for your patient, for your motivation. We come back to you, have a great day. Just this. It’s 100 times better if you put in candidates you choose compared to

William Tincup: the So now let’s go backwards to your favorite part of the demo. So when you get to show someone Maki, for the first time, what is your favorite part? Oh.

Maxime Legardez: I know that’s a tough question. No. I can say it’s the candidate experience because [00:21:00] anytime we show the candidate branding of our top 10, Logo customers, our future client says, wow, I love it, but I really like the part when we put in the shoes of a recruiter that just received 100 or 1000 applications in the recent days.

And we tell him, look, you click on filter, you take the top 5% of 10% of candidates. And we know, they are the ones you need to focus time on. Because they are the best in the English test, Excel test, Cognitive Ability test, and I don’t know, SQL test. Then, you click on the top ten candidates, you just have a look on their personality test and their video, and you identify the top three candidates that you sent to your managers so they can come back to them very quick.

And when we show that part, we can see, in many times, the eyes on the video of customers, That usually goes, [00:22:00] is on his RTS and click on download CV for all the 100 or 1, 000 applications. Spend CV. Do a first selection, call the first selection and do a first 15 to 20, 30 minutes preliminary, pre qualification calls.

And sometimes, it takes days of work just to identify the top 10. And we prefer to say to recruiters. Spend qualitative times with candidates that, fit to what you are looking for. Invite them to your office, go to the restaurant, two, two hours, room table with calls with your team.

But don’t spend unnecessary time basically to earn their CV. Even more if science shows that it’s not the best way to to recruit. I

William Tincup: love this. Okay. Last thing, and it’s about customer success possibly customer stories without naming names. I don’t really care about the brands or the names as much as just the stories of how they’re using Myki and and what you [00:23:00] love about that.

Maxime Legardez: So usually when we start to large enterprise, we start with some. We don’t start with all jobs. Of course, we start with some pilots. If I take, I don’t know, we just started, with with Capgemini, for instance, we started with one business unit in Spain which called Invent. And we start with the perimeters of few thousands of candidates, in a period of six to nine months.

And we just put a piece of paper and we say, look, we will show you some ROI. We will show you, how we decrease times, how customers managers and candidates are happy and how basically you recruit better candidates faster. And this is how we start the first step. And as we are integrated to the largest ATS, which is cool, is like we can start with major brands and major corporate companies.

In two to four weeks, there is not some conduct of change, if you want to change of ATS, where you need to have sales cycle of two, three years, et cetera. If, a large companies want to start Maki, [00:24:00] honestly, in two to three weeks, they can start a pilot and see the ROI. After a few months, and this is quite cool because the value you can see is quite, direct compared to, to, to other products.

I

William Tincup: love it. I could, Max, I could talk to you forever. So A, I could continue to talk to you forever, but it’s late in the day for you. And I know you have other stuff going on. So thank you so much for carving out time for us and the audience.

Maxime Legardez: Thank you very much, William, for your time, your question and and that

William Tincup: talk.

Absolutely. And thanks everyone listening to the Use Case Podcast. Until next time.