Use Case Podcast – Storytelling About recruiterAI With Vic Abeledo and Dana Ugolini

Music: 00:02 Welcome to Recruiting Daily’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: 00:27 Ladies and gentlemen, this is William Tincup and you are listening to the Use Case podcast. Today, we have Vic and Dana on from Recruiter AI. And we are learning about the business case, the use case, cost benefit of analysis, whatever, of why prospects and customers pick Recruiter AI.

So, let’s do some introductions. Vic, will you do us a favor and introduce both yourself? And Dana, will you introduce yourself and then Recruiter AI?

Vic: 00:54 Hi William. First of all, thank you for having us in the podcast.

William Tincup: 00:58 Sure.

Vic: 01:00 I’m Victor or Vic as a shorthand. I’m a developer from Argentina and I met Dana through a common friend. I’ve been doing front end development and full stack development for four years before coming up with the idea for Recruiter AI. I like to build things, so that’s more or less all about me.

William Tincup: 01:25 Sounds good. Dana?

Dana: 01:27 Hi. How are you?

William Tincup: 01:28 Good.

Dana: 01:29 Thanks for having us. Dana, also from Argentina. I’m in marketing. I’ve been here for the last 10 years working in computer marketing and well, I’m with Vic. I loved his idea and here we are.

William Tincup: 01:46 Fantastic. Tell us a little bit Recruiter AI.

Dana: 01:52 Yes, of course. Vic, would you like to tell William, how everything came up?

Vic: 01:57 Sure. Yeah.

William Tincup: 01:58 The origin story. Yes.

Vic: 02:01 So, I was having a lot of messages from recruiters. And I noticed the messaging, they weren’t personalized enough. They almost sounded robotic or it was just a copy-paste template. Sometimes, they even left the blank space for the variables. For instance, I received some message that said, “Hi, first name,” and then the message.

So, I noticed. And I figured that there was a lot of room for improvement on that specific scenario. And I think it would be cool to use some of the technologies that are coming up right now, like text generation and artificial intelligence, to create a better alternative, for recruiters to write messages faster and for us, the receivers of the messages or the candidates, to feel a lot more… I don’t know if the word’s comfortable, but to feel like they are caring about us and not to feel like just the target of a massive email sent to thousands of persons.

William Tincup: 03:14 So, this is a way for recruiters and sourcers to be able to find talent, if it is one thing. And then to be able to engage that talent or message that talent, is another. It’s a different skill, potentially different tools, et cetera. And one of the things that Recruiter AI does, if I understand this correctly, is you help create kind of a highly personalized experience in terms of messaging.

Vic: 03:41 That’s right. Yes. That’s our main goal with Recruiter AI. Yeah.

William Tincup: 03:45 And do we work inside LinkedIn, outside of LinkedIn, et cetera?

Vic: 03:52 The product was started to work with LinkedIn.

William Tincup: 03:54 Right.

Vic: 03:56 We do that using a Chrome extension. You just have to download the extension and it starts working with LinkedIn because we think that most recruiters use LinkedIn already. And they are familiar with their interface and the way to handle the sourcing steps of all the process. So, that’s why it was that we chose to work with LinkedIn instead of creating a whole new platform for the product.

We tried to focus on the messaging part and we are expanding to more of the prospecting part, but in a sense that it stills work with LinkedIn. So, first, we help with the message creation. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that later, but we want to help the recruiter notice if the specific profile is the one he wants to send a message to [crosstalk 00:05:03]-

William Tincup: 05:02 Yeah, go ahead, Vic. Finish your thought.

Vic: 05:06 To do that, we are using text highlighting tool. You just input the words or the keywords. And then, we highlight the keywords you want. For instance, if you want a backend developer and you input backend developer, PHP, and Java, then our tool will highlight those words and similar words to let you know if the profile is the right one to send a message to and to avoid sending messages to wrong candidates.

William Tincup: 05:40 Does it do contiguous skills? So, if someone’s great at React or great at Python, but it’s not explicit, they don’t put that keyword in, now or in the future, do we see it kind of, if you’re good at Java, you’re probably also good at something else?

Vic: 06:00 Yes. For instance, if you are inputting Java as a keyword, the product will also highlight Spring Boot, which is a technology related to Java. Yes, so it does intelligently highlight other related words to the search.

William Tincup: 06:21 I love that. I love it. Dana, what are some of the newest features of Recruiter AI? What are some of the newest things that folks can get excited about?

Dana: 06:31 Well, the highlighting one is one of the new ones. And the other one is a feature we’re working on where the AI scans your candidate’s profile. And it tells you how it is similar to what we are looking for. If the profile is really accurate on your search, it can show it’s a green light. Or if it’s so-so, a yellow light, or a red one.

So, you can personalize the message. You can highlight the keywords in order to have a faster reading. And also, you have that other feature that helps you have a quick scan to see if the profile matches your search.

William Tincup: 07:25 I like that. That’s getting a little bit into the prospecting part of finding candidates, right? So, if we have three, five, seven, 10 profiles where we feel like these are good profiles, then we can then use those keywords to then go out and find more profiles that are like those.

Dana: 07:44 Of course. Yes, you can do that.

William Tincup: 07:47 That’s very nice.

Okay. So, let’s deal with this. The Chrome extension itself, I mean outside of going into the Chrome library, et cetera, going to the website and downloading the Chrome extension, what else do people need to do?

Vic: 08:04 So, the installation steps are pretty simple. It’s justly downloading the extension, as you said. And we just ask for a name, an email, and a password. So, it’s pretty simple. It’s just three input fields you have to fill up. And then you start using the tool.

We are offering 14 day free trials. You don’t even have to put your credit card. It’s just 14 days. You try it. And if it does improve your response rate and if you feel that you are connecting more with your candidates, you just put your credit card and start using it.

William Tincup: 08:46 And pricing is roughly what?

Vic: 08:50 Okay. Right now, we are charging $99 a month for it.

William Tincup: 08:54 Right. And it’s unlimited? You can use it as much as you want?

Vic: 08:59 It is. The messaging, it’s unlimited. You can send whichever amount of messages you want. And you can use it either for messages in regular LinkedIn, you can use it on LinkedIn Recruiter, or you can even use it for connection requests. So, we have two buttons that are shortcuts and save you two or three clicks. So, if you click send connection request, for instance, you just click that and it opens the “send connection” note message box, and writes the message there.

So, it also saves time because it saves you like three, four clicks to do the things.

William Tincup: 09:40 I love that. Dana, now or in the future, what does it look like in terms of message templates?

One of the things we’ve you’ve you’ve built is you’ve got an application that helps people create highly personalized messages. But then, you know how it is. If it’s a white screen or blank box or whatever, people still kind of like, “Okay, now what do I say? Or what’s what’s best practice? What’s going to work to recruit Vic?” A couple years ago, what would’ve actually stood out to get him to do that.

And so I’m thinking a library or templates or something like that, but I could be completely off with that. So, what does it look like? Again, now or in the future, what does it look like for y’all?

Dana: 10:30 Yes, of course, we are constantly working on improving our messages and getting the feedback of our users. It’s really helpful for us to understand how the virals and templates work best.

We are adding virals almost every week. And we are having now location, about us, education. Those fields, they take the candidates’ information and customize it automatically. We are trying to make it easier to write and to curate the templates and getting to make them as useful and as engaging as we can.

William Tincup: 11:24 Vic, do we have any insight into response rates, like what works or what’s working currently? What’s working? Or do you see that as something in the future that you want to kind of understand? Because we can send out the messages, do we have any visibility into the messages working or getting responses, et cetera?

Vic: 11:47 Yes. With most people we talked with, we found out that the recruiters who were having higher response rates were the ones writing shorter messages.

William Tincup: 12:00 Oh, interesting.

Vic: 12:03 Apart from that, I think we learned while talking with recruiters, they do want flexibility. So, that’s the reason behind adding more different variables and letting the user pick which variable they want to personalize. Some people want to personalize based on the “about us” section because it’s a bit more personalized sometimes. And others just want to personalize with the location. So, perhaps making a smart comment about the nickname or [inaudible 00:12:40] the way they want to go about personalizing. And others, skills or education. That’s another thing we noticed.

We let the recruiters choose because we know they think that recruiting or the sourcing part, sending message part, it’s kind of an art. And they want to do it their way. So, that’s why we are doing it the way they do want to do it.

William Tincup: 13:08 Yeah. There’s quite a lot of freedom. If they’ve already got something that works with front end developers or full stack or whatever, they know the bit. They know what they want to put in there. With a lot of Chrome extensions, it’s more like a B2C play. It’s just, “We’re just trying to get as many people using the Chrome extension as humanly possible.”

At one point, and you all are probably already being pulled into the enterprise, and so, what does that look like right now, currently, for Recruiter AI? In terms of, are we just trying to get as many people using the Chrome extension as possible? Are we trying to go into the front door of the enterprise and lock down kind of large accounts, et cetera?

Vic: 13:59 Yes, right now we are focusing on small companies and freelancers because we feel there is a lot of personal touch with it. So, that’s why. We want quick feedback and we want to notice the changes quickly. But we are open to working with bigger companies too. We think that right now, the best way to do it is on a personal, freelancer, or small company level.

William Tincup: 14:36 And Dana, do you see a future for staffing firms or RPOs using Recruiter AI?

Dana: 14:44 Yes, of course. We are a new company right now but we want to help as many recruiters we can to save time and money because we know how valuable their days are and how much time they spend personalizing messages for everybody.

William Tincup: 15:02 Yeah, well, it has to be done. Right?

I say that. And we know that it doesn’t happen that way because people will send out the copy and paste and same message goes out to the same 85,000 people. And so-

Dana: 15:16 Yes, of course.

William Tincup: 15:18 We know that it’s not happening, but if it’s done correctly, it does take a lot of time. And you all have created a way to then create so we could save time and increase quality.

Do y’all currently do demos for prospects? Do you find yourself doing demos and showing people the tool? Or is it pretty self-explanatory? What’s the… I say the buying experience, but basically what does that experience look like for them to find the Chrome extension and then, download it and then to use it? What are we doing in terms of marketing them to the actual Chrome extension? And are you demoing the product and getting people that way? What’s that look like for you?

I know, Dana, I’ll start with you.

Dana: 16:07 Yes, we are. We are doing demos for everybody who wants it. They are just quick calls where we show the recruiter or the sourcer who is interested how the tool works and how to create a template and how to use every part of the tool. So, it help us to get feedback of the users and also to know that the user will understand correctly how to use our tool and get the best of it.

William Tincup: 16:44 It seems it’s self-explanatory. I mean, on some level, once they see it, they know they have this problem. They know that the candidates need something better. So, Vic, what’s your favorite part of the demo? When you show prospects Recruiter AI for the first time, what’s your favorite part to show?

Vic: 17:07 Well, I guess my favorite part is when they send the first message and they look and read the text generated by the two. So, it’s like an aha moment.

Dana: 17:20 Yeah.

Vic: 17:20 I really enjoy when they figure out that the message is like human written message and the tone and details and everything. So, it’s not that easy to understand for people or recruiters who don’t have experience using other Chrome extensions, but I think most recruiters do.

William Tincup: 17:41 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Vic: 17:42 That’s a good thing. Yeah.

Dana: 17:44 Yes. Also, an important part is that the demo is for free and we also have a 14 free day trial.

William Tincup: 17:53 Right, right. Again, lowering the barrier, showing people something that probably already get it, probably already using Chrome extensions in some capacity or another, maybe not for messaging, but maybe for sourcing. So, they’re familiar. This community, sourcing and recruiting, they’re pretty familiar with Chrome extensions. So, I think your target audience gets it. They might not get what you do until you explain it to them and show them. But once you do, I think people will get it pretty quickly. And then it’s just a matter of using it, trying it out.

I love that y’all have a free trial. Then it’s like, “Listen, it either works or it doesn’t. Go test it. And if you find it works for you, great. Swipe your card and we’ll just go from there.” I also like that it’s unlimited so that it’s not metered in any way that they can use it. You just don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to think about it and they don’t have to think about it, which I love. I think it’s just smart strategy on both sides.

I did want to get back to the highlighting tool, just to make sure the audience understands the highlighting tool real quick. Vic, would you mind running through that again for us?

Vic: 19:11 Okay. So, the highlighting tool, it’s similar the way you highlight, if you press Cmd+F on any browser. But the problem with that is that it just searches one keyword. What we fill out is, there are some alternatives to that that let you highlight multiple keywords. But there’s room for improvement. You can also recommend similar words to that.

So, sometimes you are searching for some candidate, for instance, a React developer. That’s a technology for programming in JavaScript for front end. So, you sometimes may forget to include JavaScript or front end on the keyword search. With this tool, you just type in React and it highlights all the similar words to that search. In that way, you can find some profiles that, if you are not using these tools, they may have gone unseen because some profiles just add JavaScript as a skill or in the about us section. And it’s not evident that it’s also a React developer.

William Tincup: 20:24 Perfect. So, plans in terms of… We obviously have a free trial that you can see the technology, then jump into a free trial, test it out, and then it’s $99 per month unlimited usage. Do we have any other packages or plans in case there’s a team? Or is that something that you want to develop in the future?

Dana: 20:53 Yes.

Vic: 20:53 Right now, yes. We are getting requests for that. And the best way, at least we’ve found out, to handle that right now is just, you can send emails. Send us an email at [email protected]. And we can have a meeting and discuss it.

William Tincup: 21:11 Right.

Vic: 21:11 But we don’t have an official plan on our website yet.

William Tincup: 21:15 Right. And Dana, you were going to say something?

Dana: 21:16 Yes, the same thing as Vic.

William Tincup: 21:21 Okay, good. Last question is, a year from now as if we have this conversation… Or not if. When we have this conversation a year from now, what’s different? Or what’s similar or different for Recruiter AI?

Dana: 21:38 Wow. That’s a good question. I think what I would love to is to have really happy users to give value to recruiters who use the tool and also to make their daily task easier.

William Tincup: 22:02 And Vic, what about yourself?

Vic: 22:05 Yes. I think what makes me happier about the product is when you find out people download the extension without us telling them, so having referrals saying, “Hey, use this tool. It’s amazing.” That would be like the best, massive usage of the tool. That would make me happy because as a developer, making something that helps people, it’s the best thing.

William Tincup: 22:40 Yeah. And you all both touched on the same thing in different ways. It’s like you’ve created something of value and you’ve lowered all the barriers for people to use it. And they’ll find value in it. And then, they’ll tell other people.

Dana: 22:53 Yes.

William Tincup: 22:54 That’s one thing I love about the recruiting and sourcing community is that, when they find something that they love, they don’t keep it as a secret. They’ll get on Facebook. They’ll get on Twitter. They’ll get on LinkedIn. They’re at conferences. They’ll tell people. It’s like, “Hey, if you’re not using Recruiter AI, you’re wasting time.”

I love that.

Vic: 23:14 Yes. And I do love that all the recruiters are super tech savvy. It’s amazing. It’s amazing. You always are trying to find out better alternative to do things.

William Tincup: 23:28 Yeah. And again, this isn’t a problem searching for a solution. This is actually a problem that people have. They don’t have enough time in the day to then reach out to the amount of candidates that they want to. And if they do, they do it in a clunky 1980s one to 185,000. And that’s not a great experience for candidates. That’s not a great experience for them, either. So, I love what y’all have built. And I appreciate you both coming on the podcast.

Dana: 24:06 Thank you. Thank you for having us.

William Tincup: 24:08 Absolutely.

Vic: 24:08 Thank you, William.

William Tincup: 24:09 A hundred percent. And thanks everyone listening to the Use Case podcast until next time

Music: 24:15 You’ve been listening to Recruiting Daily’s use case podcast. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite platform and hit us up at recruitingdaily.com.