Jill: Welcome to the Entrepreneuring show, where we strive to provide insights and stories for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs, where innovation meets inspiration, led by veteran entrepreneur and tech founder. Here’s your host, Jill Button. Welcome to the Entrepreneuring show. Today’s episode is brought to you by Searchless.
Jill: Searchless is an AI based subject matter expert for talent acquisition teams. Searchless interviews candidates before talent acquisition sends them to hiring managers. This ensures that hiring managers and their teams can find talent faster, spend less time interviewing candidates so they can make the best hires.
Jill: My guest today is Jonathan Mirecki, the co founder and CEO of Searchless. He’s taken on a wide variety of responsibilities in his career, including accounting, consulting, collections, sales, sales management, product management, and partnerships, partnerships. He attended U of T for business, and Searchless is his second business.
Jill: His first was an independent consulting business, which he started during university. He has tons of experience with small business, working on several projects, Welcome to the show. Jonathan,
Jonathan: Really great to be here. Jill. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So I’ve been looking forward to this episode.
Jill: You and I chatted briefly at one of the trade shows, and I’m so interested about AI, it seems to be the big buzzword.
Jill: Everyone’s talking about AI, AI, and your take on AI in the recruiting process is really, really interesting. And so I’m looking forward to hearing a little bit more about it. Yeah. Before we get to that, I’d love to hear your story. Why did you become an entrepreneur?
Jonathan: Sure. Yeah, I think it started when I was a child, really.
Jonathan: I always had a, uh, an interest in business. There were a number of different business initiatives I took on as a kid and not real businesses, but things like. Going around the neighborhood, knocking on people’s doors to ask them to mow their lawns or shovel their driveways, and I remember I tried to recruit one of my friends from my neighborhood, and by the 20th door that we knocked on, he said, this is crazy.
Jonathan: I’m going home. Um, but I continued and I probably knocked on probably 200 doors or something. Um, and I got three clients, so that was a steady summer’s income for me as a, as a 11 year old or 12 year old, whatever I was. And I continued doing that type of thing throughout my, my early years in life. Um, and then as you mentioned, I dabbled in entrepreneurship.
Jonathan: By mistake, almost, um, during university and the reason for that is I was looking into different consulting projects. Um, that’s something that I was curious about getting into and there was, uh, uh, a consulting firm that I spoke with and they asked me if I could do some consulting work for them, um, but they weren’t going to bring me on full time.
Jonathan: So they said, why don’t you start your own consulting business and you could do work for us and for other people. And so. That was my first time registering a business. And that’s what I did for about a year and a half. So this is while you were at the University of Toronto? Yes. Yes. And they’re asking you to do consulting and you hadn’t even yet graduated.
Jill: Yes. It’s amazing.
Jonathan: Yes. I had, I had a number of years of experience beforehand. I, I actually started studying university, um, Online through Athabasca University, that’s based out of Alberta and that’s an online school. And then as I was doing that, I was working as an accountant and then I, um, Moved over to UFT pursuing studies full time.
Jonathan: So I did have a background in, in accounting and process improvement already. So that’s, that’s why I was able to start doing that during school.
Jill: Congratulations. I also saw that you made the Dean’s list for three years. Uh, you missed the first year because you were just on the honor roll. Is that correct?
Jonathan: Uh, so the, the first year I, I actually had three and a half years at UofT. So I think it was. One of those years was only a half year. And so that’s why I didn’t qualify for the Dean’s list. Um, but I, I probably would have made it. I, I, I studied a lot. I was in the library 12 hours a day. I used to get made fun of for that.
Jill: So, so a lot of successful entrepreneurs sort of start out that way. Cuban, mark Cuban, I think actually started out cutting lawns, I think it was Cuban or, or someone. He, I recall hearing a similar story. They all talk about, you know, having a, an early entrepreneurial spirit, the bug that sort of got them, or this gnawing idea.
Jill: That they had to, they absolutely had to pursue. So, uh, clearly you are pursuing that passion. Tell me a little bit more about your entrepreneurial journey. So you had your first business in, uh, in university. And then when did you start your current company? You’re a co founder, correct?
Jonathan: Yes. Yes. Um, I started it.
Jonathan: It was technically a multi year journey because Jill, I, I actually had the idea to become an entrepreneur three or four years before that, that was kind of always in the back of my mind, but I didn’t feel ready to start something, a serious business where. I’m, I’m building a product from scratch, trying to solve a, a real world problem.
Jonathan: And that’s something that I just kept in my back pocket, more or less mold around on it. At the end of 2023, 2022, actually, I decided that 2023 would be the year that I commit to something. And so that was, that was kind of the, the start of 2023. One of my, um, New Year’s resolutions was, I’m going to start a business this year.
Jonathan: I don’t know in what I think it’s going to do some have to do something with recruitment and it’s going to be a tech company, but I don’t know what I’m going to build or, or how I’m going to do it. And, and so that was kind of the start of that. The idea, the ideas kept circulating throughout the next eight months.
Jonathan: I threw a bunch at my wife and, and she, Told me how foolish most of them were. So I just kept going and by August came up with the idea of Searchlesss and wrote up a business case, shared it with my brother, my younger brother, who was working at Dropbox at the time as a software engineer on their core product.
Jonathan: Very smart guy. He’s, uh, he’s worked at Amazon as well. Um, and so I, I, I shared the business case. I deal with him just to get his insight on. Is this technologically possible? A and B, could you help me vet a technical co founder? I didn’t think he’d leave his job, but he became very interested in what I was thinking about.
Jonathan: And within three or four weeks, both of us quit our jobs and went full time with it. That was September last year.
Jill: So your co, your co founder, your technical co founder is your brother, who’s an engineer by trade was so impressed by the idea, just had to be a part of it.
Jonathan: Yeah, more or less, more or less. It was, it, it also kind of became his idea too, though, because as he was looking at what I was thinking, he started thinking through the technical aspects of it and he really, uh, helped to solidify what the business case would look like in that way. Yeah.
Jill: That’s, that’s great to be able to work with, um, family is incredible as long as you don’t end up, you know, killing each other, which I don’t think I could work with my siblings, but, uh, and may happen to have a technical, um, co founder who happens, you know, to, to who happens to be your, your brother is amazing.
Jill: Um, let’s talk a little bit more about that entrepreneurial journey. So you’ve always had the bug. I, I actually had. Um, I don’t know if a lot of people know this, but when I was, this idea. This is pre internet, um, for putting those on a computer as well as music. And 10 years later, it became Netflix. So I can’t say that I invented Netflix.
Jill: Um, I actually found a letter when my dad passed away in 2019, writing to him because he was a technical person and I asked him about the ability to do it. And, you know, I signed it entrepreneur and I found that. Yeah. Um, I found that letter. So it was reinforcement for me that I really needed to be an entrepreneur and that I needed to keep going in my journey.
Jill: Um, and it was, uh, not long after that we actually launched procure hub. Um, so I love your, I love your story. Um, the courage to do what you do. Um, right out of university with, with lots of experience, um, is, is, uh, absolutely inspiring. So what are, what are some of the most motivating things, incredible things that have happened to you?
Jill: Inspiring things share with our listeners. Inspiring things.
Jonathan: I would say one of the, one of the inspiring things. I mean, during, during my last role, I was head of sales and business development at a company called Carpages and that’s a web and, uh, marketing technology company. For automotive and I think one of the most inspiring things for me was going from being, um, uh, a company that didn’t work with a lot of brand name dealerships.
Jonathan: So by brand name, I mean, Ford or, or, um, or Honda. Um, that, that type of thing. We, we mostly worked with used car dealers. We had, we had, we had some, some of those brand name clients, but what, what we were trying to do is break into the brand name market, building websites for Ford dealerships, for example, and getting into that is incredibly hard because if you’re going to win a Ford dealership, you have to be certified by Ford of Canada.
Jonathan: As a vendor, and they only have a small list of certified vendors. If you want to get certified by Ford of Canada, you have to have a lot of Ford dealerships who are to use you. And so there was very much a strange chicken and an egg problem where you have to sign on clients and convince them to trust you, even though you’re not certified.
Jonathan: That’s an uphill battle. It’s, it’s hard enough to sign clients when you are certified, but when you’re not certified and we weren’t certified by any brands, so we had no reputation in that space. We had to build that reputation and it was very difficult. Um, we tried going after a couple of different brands.
Jonathan: Kia was the first one. We went after it three times and lost it all three times. And then we decided we’re going to go after Ford and we managed to sign on a huge number of Ford dealers in a short period of time. And at the same time, build a relationship with Ford of Canada. And then when they had some slots open up for the certified vendor list, we were invited to participate in a request for proposal.
Jonathan: We submitted that proposal. And from there over the next year, we worked on. Becoming certified. So from the time we decided we wanted to become a certified vendor with one of these automotive brands to the time that we actually became certified was, I think, four years. Um, that was inspiring because it takes a lot of people rowing in the same direction.
Jonathan: I played a part. I was the person as the point person for Ford of Canada. Internally, um, and I headed up the sales team, the sales reps worked so hard to make those deals happen. Our customer service people and client success people work so hard to service our dealers so that they would gloat about us to their friends and to other dealers and vouch for us with testimonials.
Jonathan: Um, the whole team really just pulled together. The technical team built out some amazing functionality and really leveled up our technology in a way that. Made us appealing to dealers as well as to Ford of Canada. Once we were able to secure that one, we were able to get a couple of others. Um, one, one being Toyota Canada and, you know, and that just opened up more doors.
Jonathan: So inspiring, just seeing the team work together, building something all everybody playing their part, it was, it was magical.
Jill: And do you take from that in your current business and draw on that inspiration and as you grow Searchlesss?
Jonathan: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I, I know it’s not going to happen in one or two years.
Jonathan: I know I’m going to make pitches on deals and then they’re going to fall through and they’re going to go with somebody else who has a bigger name in the space and it’s going to be disappointing. But if I get back up and we keep going and we address our weaknesses and we, we make those weaknesses strengths, or at least fill them, we’ll be able to go back after somebody else.
Jonathan: Thanks. And we’ll be able to win a deal with them. It’s just a matter of perseverance and, um, not giving up. And it, and it could take several years to get a breakthrough.
Jill: Yes. And I mean, I think that’s the, that’s the expectation and journey of, of most entrepreneurs that you need to just keep going, the, the resilience that you need to have to, to build a business, you know, you get knocked down, you get up, you get knocked down, you get up, um, It’s, it’s really hard being an entrepreneur.
Jill: I’ve been at it now for 11 years. Um, I started my own business, uh, consulting business after working in the corporate corporate world for, um, 25 years. And I, I think there’s a bit of a myth out there for people who think that, you know, being an entrepreneur is glitz and glam and, I know they, they see this image of, you know, the, the Cubans of the world, um, the musks of the world, but it isn’t really like that, right?
Jill: It’s not, it, it, it’s really every single day getting up and dusting yourself off and, and just keep going. What, what’s helped to motivate you to just keep going? What is it? What did it, what strength do you draw upon, um, as an entrepreneur?
Jonathan: The desire to build something. I love building teams. I love building products.
Jonathan: I love seeing things come to life. So with Searchless, for example, the original idea of the product, I won’t get into it because we’ll, I think we’ll talk about that a bit later, but it’s morphed since the original idea and that’s fine. But for me, it’s, it’s seen the product actually come to life and start working.
Jonathan: And when I show it to people, the, the change in the way people perceive the product from the beginning, where it’s a prototype and they say, Oh, that, you know, this is broken or that’s broken. Or what about this? What about that? To them seeing it and saying, Oh, wow, that’s, that’s incredible. You know, like the, a very different, uh, perspective you, and you start seeing that happen in real time.
Jonathan: To me, that’s extremely motivating and rewarding.
Jill: No, I remember when I actually started procure hub, I had that same feeling when we launched procure hub. Um, it didn’t hit me right away, but I remember distinctly sitting in my car in traffic on the highway. And I had this. Overwhelming realization that, oh my gosh, we’re live.
Jill: We actually did it. And it was just like, I’m screaming in the car and the people are looking at me like, what’s, who’s this crazy lady. But I love, I love that that motivation for you is so, I think that’s so common among entrepreneurs, that, that spirit of building something, you know, And getting that feedback and knowing that they’re helping people and that they’re really bringing value that that for, for a lot of entrepreneurs, I think, is, um, a part of that motivation.
Jonathan: Yeah, you, you, you have to get that motivation from somewhere because it takes a lot of it to keep going. Yes, some days you, you, you hit some roadblocks or, or you, you get some negative feedback and it’s, it’s, it’s in the end, it’s, it’s helpful feedback, but it’s, you perceive it as negative, maybe in the moment and you feel like, ah, this isn’t going to go anywhere.
Jill: Yeah, I know it can be daunting for sure. I just want to remind our 10 minutes. So pop your questions. into the comment section, if you’re on YouTube, LinkedIn, or Facebook, and we’re going to get to them, uh, coming up real soon. So let’s, let’s talk a little bit about, um, you know, what are some of the hairy, scary things, um, that you’ve encountered?
Jill: Um, I’ve talked to a few entrepreneurs and the, the raw reality of being an entrepreneur, there’s a lot of. ups, but there’s a lot of downs. Is there anything that comes to mind that was really, you know, in particularly challenging quitting my job? Yeah, that must have been scary. And your wife, how was she with that decision?
Jonathan: She was very supportive. Um, but the timing was, was terrible. We, we had a second child, um, the week before. I, I put in my resignation. Oh, wow. So, I mean, that was a whirlwind of emotions for about one or two months. Um, just trying to get, come to grips, like what, what am I doing? She’s on maternity. Like I was, I was on paternity for a little bit as well.
Jonathan: And then, but now I’m building this business and, And, you know, there’s no, no income, you know, it’s all, it’s all coming out of the savings. And, uh, that, that was extremely daunting leading up to the decision to pull the trigger. And afterwards it was, um, it was pretty terrifying. I’m not going to lie.
Jill: Yes.
Jill: And it’s an ongoing experience of being terrified, at least, you know, I’ve been doing it for 11 years and there is. Many sleepless nights, many nights where I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and, you know, thoughts are racing, you know, can I fix this bug? Can I add that functionality? Um, it, it is, uh, it’s not for the faint of heart for sure.
Jill: Um, we’ve got a few questions coming in. That’s awesome. Um, so. I’ve got a question here from Brock and he says, how do you survive financially as you build this?
Jonathan: Yeah, great, great question, Brock, uh, working hard, saving hard before pulling the trigger. So that was one of the reasons that I took a while. Um, in addition to not knowing what I wanted to build, um, just working hard and saving to, to make sure we had enough to, to keep going for a little while.
Jill: Yeah, I think that’s a pretty common, um, a common response from a lot of people. When I, when I leapt off the corporate ladder, I was lucky enough to orchestrate my own exit. I knew I needed to be on my own and become an entrepreneur. And I actually decided, um, I actually contemplated like booster juice, pet value franchises, but I had set myself up so that I actually was able to tap into my.
Jill: Savings my, uh, retirement savings and the ability to actually, uh, and a lot of people, you know, have that savings, but they’re also drawing on their credit cards, their drawings on line of credit, they’re hitting up, you know, friends and family. So. It’s a fairly common story. I think there’s a follow up question from Brock as well.
Jill: Um, he says, did you, did you have a budget financially and a timeline?
Jonathan: Yes. Uh, yes and yes. Uh, budget wise, we don’t eat out on the weekends. We, we don’t eat out hardly ever. Um, that’s a huge one. Um, especially with, uh, with four of us now in the family saving, you know, one, one meal can cost easily 50 to a hundred dollars.
Jonathan: So, um, we, we used to love eating out and, and we just don’t do that anymore. Um, if we do go out. Um, on on dates or whatever, we try to keep it within a tight budget. We’re not traveling. We normally love to travel. I haven’t been on a vacation in 13 months, for example. Um, and that’s not just the side comment, but being an entrepreneur, I’ve been working almost every day.
Jonathan: Um, even. Throughout, you know, Christmas and times I would normally take off. Um, but, uh, timeline wise, yes, uh, we, we had a timeline in place and, and that’s based on a couple of factors. 1 is, you know, the, the, the savings that we have, but then also my wife is going back to work. Um, so we will be able to, uh, manage for a little bit from that.
Jonathan: Um, and then the ideal is we fundraise, um, Uh, once, once we get to a certain point and that’s probably something we’re going to start doing this fall.
Jill: Good. I was actually going to, it’s a good segue because I was going to ask you about fundraising because you’re building a national tech company. Um, what is your path for investment?
Jill: So are you looking for external investors, uh, in order to fund and grow the business? Yes, yes. And so when, what’s the timeline for looking for investors?
Jonathan: Right now we’re talking to a handful and, but that’s mostly just building relationships and giving updates. We’re not going to start seriously fundraising until the fall.
Jonathan: And at that point we’ll start going into pitch after pitch. That’s the idea at least. Um, and try to close something by, uh, by late fall, early winter.
Jill: It’s a challenge. We’re in fundraising mode right now. I’ve rewritten my pitch deck at least four or five times. I’ve had lots of good conversations with angel investors who are in my network.
Jill: Uh, I’ve been turned down by some VCs. So far, um, a lot of them want to see traction. So, um, is that part of the plan in terms of showing that traction that all, all, uh, important traction to investors? Is that part of why you’re, you’re holding off for exactly, exactly.
Jonathan: One, one of the things that I wasn’t aware of is, um, you have, what’s called a pre seed round, right?
Jonathan: And so a pre seed for, for listeners who don’t know is raising money when you don’t have any revenue. And that’s, of course, for an investor, that’s extremely risky. You’re handing somebody a check and they don’t even have a proven product that people are willing to pay for. Normally, the idea of a precede is If you have a good enough idea or a good enough team, you’re able to raise on the precede the Canadian investors, especially in the last year and a half have become very, very conservative as far as making investments, especially in hype.
Jonathan: Areas like AI, um, for a while they were getting excited and, you know, writing multiple hundred thousand dollar checks, sometimes multiple million dollar checks for grand ideas. Um, many of those ideas, uh, didn’t go anywhere. And so I think there’s, there’s a lot of hesitancy now. Um, so I think even the ones who call themselves pre seed, they’ll invest in you if you’ve had a previously very successful company.
Jonathan: If you don’t, if you don’t currently have, if you don’t have that track record, which I don’t, um, then you need to prove that you have paying customers and you’ve been steadily growing those customers over time.
Jill: Yes. Yes. That’s consistent with my experience as well. Um, we are pre seed as well, and we have been in market with our MVP, uh, minimum viable product for those who don’t know the term for just over a year.
Jill: And we’ve been lucky enough to grow ProcureHub. We’ve got over 120 users on the platform, yourself included, Barack included, um, and many of our listeners. And this is what that this show is about is to help promote and support our, our growing community of ProcureHub users. Um, but it’s very consistent with what I’m hearing.
Jill: Um, and one of the things that, uh, I’m hearing. Even more often is the state of the Canadian investment community is, to your point, much more skittish. Um, they prefer to invest in businesses that have that proven traction and you know, it’s hard to get traction unless you actually have investors to be able to scale your business.
Jill: So it’s tough out there. That’s for sure.
Jonathan: Oh yeah. Yeah. But, but that’s where Where that, that passion and finding that motivation come in to play. It’s yes.
Jill: Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. Um, we’re at the point where we’re going to take a quick break, uh, and we’re going to actually take a little bit more, uh, questions if they, if you want to pop them into the comment section.
Jill: And when we get back, I want to talk to Jonathan about Searchlesss. I want to hear more about, uh, how Searchlesss is, Revolutionizing the recruiting industry. So we will be right back after a word from our sponsor.
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Jill: All right, we are back with Jonathan Marecki, co founder and CEO of Searchless. So Jonathan. Let’s get into Searchless. I’m dying to hear about this business and how AI is revolutionizing this process. Sounds great. So Searchless was it, it’s a software company to go from there.
Jonathan: Yes. Yes. So Searchless is a software company and what we’ve built and, and we launched this back in February, but what we’ve built is an AI based subject matter expert, and what that means is it has knowledge of specific functions.
Jonathan: We’re starting with technology functions, but we’re going to expand to others, including, I think accounting is actually a very good Parallel to software engineering, if you can believe that or not. Um, but, but I won’t get into that too much. Um, so, uh, what it does is it uses its knowledge of specific functions to be able to have a dynamic conversation with the user.
Jonathan: Candidates for a job, and then it’s able to summarize and score how they meet the requirements of that job. And it will do that in a very similar way to how the hiring manager or an interview panel that the hiring managers set up would do that. And because it’s able to do that. Automatically, the person interviewing can do it on their own time, which means you’re able to get people through the interview process faster, and you’re not taking the hiring manager and their teams away from their primary roles and responsibilities.
Jonathan: So you’re saving hiring teams 20 to 30 hours, um, for every role that they’re hiring for. That’s that’s the key benefit of searchless and how it works.
Jill: And so when the Searchlesss come into play, so the typical hiring process, um, is this intended to be used for recruiters or in house recruiting or both primarily in house?
Jonathan: Um, we’ve explored a little the, the, the idea of outside recruiters. The thing about outside is what they’ll normally do is they’ll talk to somebody and, and vet them at a high level for a fit for a role. And then they’ll, they’ll pass them to the hiring company and they want to get those candidates in as quickly as possible because they’re normally competing against three or four other companies, recruitment firms.
Jonathan: So I don’t know if there’s a place for our technology. With recruitment firms for that reason, just because I think it would slow down their speed of getting those candidates over to the hiring managers. Um, for internal recruitment teams, that’s, that’s where we’d be targeting this. And so the idea is not replacing the recruitment teams.
Jonathan: We’re not even touching the recruitment process at the very beginning of it. We’re coming in after recruitment, and we’re essentially replacing the need for the hiring manager and their teams to do the interviews. Or at least reducing the amount of time they’re spending in those interviews.
Jill: So when does the software come in?
Jill: Is it at the point in which the candidate has been shortlisted and they go through this sort of AI process walk me through how, like from, from the point at which the candidate is identified to when Searchless comes in.
Jonathan: Sure. So, so candidates will come into the company in one of two ways. One will be, they’ll be sourced.
Jonathan: From the talent acquisition or the HR team, or from maybe a 3rd party. Um, once they’re sourced, then they’ll go through a screening interview. Um, and actually I should say also on the sourcing side, it could also be a direct applicant to a job posting. And that’s obviously a very common way for applicants to come in after that.
Jonathan: They’re going to be interviewed by somebody on the talent acquisition team. And that person is going to assess are they a good cultural fit for our company? A and B, do they check off at a high level the requirements of this job? And if the answer to those questions is yes, then they would pass them over to the hiring manager who would.
Jonathan: Um, then interview them, and then they might send them over to a hiring panel to interview them as well. And and sometimes that can, um, be as many as 6 or 7 interviews. Um, it could be as quick as 1 or 2 interviews. Um, our idea is to streamline that as as much as possible. Um, whether you’re talking 2 interviews or 7, if you have.
Jonathan: One or four or five people being taken out of their jobs for an hour at a time, and you multiply that by ten candidates, or even let’s say five candidates. The hours add up very quickly. Absolutely. And, and, and there’s also switching costs. You’re doing one thing in your day and then you get invited to do an interview.
Jonathan: So you have to check your schedule and then you see, okay, yeah, I can make this work. And then you have to do some preparation work for each of the candidates. And then you do the interview, and then you do a post-analysis of that candidate. It adds up. So you’re talking 20 to 30 hours of, of work just to make a hire.
Jonathan: And that doesn’t include all the time that talent acquisition puts into those candidates.
Jill: And so could it be used in the actual identification of candidates? Because I know there is AI capability at the front end. So for example, if there’s a job posting on one of the job boards, AI is used today to be able to qualify whether or not this individual meets all of the requirements.
Jill: How would it work? Would it replace something like that? Or would it work in collaboration or compliment that? It’s more of a compliment to that.
Jonathan: So the, the way that I see AI being used in the, in the talent acquisition process is at the very beginning. It’s going to be helping first of all, in sourcing candidates, because there are AI tools now that will.
Jonathan: Find people on the Internet, um, that match certain requirements and automatically send them an email to invite them to apply to a job. So that’s that’s the 1st part. The 2nd is it’s going to be helping in screening people’s resumes to see if they check all the boxes and and scoring those resumes. After that, I think it’s best that talent acquisition or somebody at the company talks to that candidate.
Jonathan: Um, and, and especially for more senior or hard to fill roles. And this is really critical and something that maybe not everybody sees, um, but. Talent acquisition is actually a sales role more than more than anything else. You’re selling the company to the candidate, especially if they’re an in demand candidate, um, you’re trying to convince them that this is the right company for them to work at.
Jonathan: You’re also selling that candidate to the hiring manager. Trying to convince them that, yes, they look, they meet all the requirements. Go ahead with them, take your time to interview them. Or, you know, I think you really should hire this person, that type of thing. And, and here’s why. So there’s, there’s a lot of sales involved in talent acquisition and it.
Jonathan: Makes it very challenging because you have 2 parties that you’re selling to. So, I, I think that that piece is still going to require a human, uh, for quite some time. And I, I don’t see that being replaced by AI. Um, but the hire, the hiring manager part, 100%. Hiring managers don’t want to spend time interviewing 5 candidates.
Jonathan: Or 10 candidates, they want to talk to 1 or 2 interesting.
Jill: So it’s a compliment to the existing human resources recruiting team, um, as opposed to replacing them. So, so help me understand for somebody who doesn’t understand. AI, even though I built a tech company, people can’t believe that I did, but I did understanding AI and how the application works.
Jill: Is it an interactive discussion with the candidate that the AI is literally interviewing them? Like, how does that work? Yes. It’s the short answer.
Jonathan: Um, it’s, it’s both chat based as well as voice to text, text to voice. So, um, it’s able to speak to the candidate. Um, in natural language, as well as, um, with the chat bubble, and it will ask the candidate questions about specific requirements.
Jonathan: So, because we’re starting with technical roles, we’ll say they need to know Python or C sharp or something like that. And it’s going to ask, can you tell me about a challenging project that you worked on where you were using Python and some of the things that made that project so challenging as the candidate starts to answer that question.
Jonathan: It’s then able to. Ask us a follow up question based on what they said, and it’s able to dig deeper into their experience that way and what we’ve done because one, one thing about AI is it can get out of hand very quickly. Um, if you’ve played around with chat GPT much, you’ll, you’ll know that sometimes it shoots out in this direction or that direction and it, it doesn’t always fully understand what you’re asking.
Jonathan: And it, the conversation can theoretically go on forever. Um, so making sure that you make it as quick as possible while still getting the details that you need from that candidate, that’s where the challenge is in the product that’s taken us eight months to figure out, um, through. Probably. I don’t know what we’ve done hundreds of user tests, um, to, but prior to launching the product to get it to that point, um, And and so what we’ve done is if, um, Jill, you or any of our listeners are familiar with the star based interview answering approach star is situation task action results.
Jonathan: And so people who are going to interview for a job are coached to answer situation based questions using the star method, because it gives the person interviewing you a clear picture of how you think and how you approach problems. What we’ve done is we’ve chained all of the questions that our interviewing, uh, system asks candidates to a reverse star methodology.
Jonathan: So what that means is it starts with the S question and as they start answering the situation, it’s able to determine, okay, How many of the star pieces is the candidate answering? Did they answer the star, you know, the situation? Did they talk about the task? Did they talk about the action? How far did they get?
Jonathan: And then it’s able to ask a follow up question based on how far they got through that. Not every candidate knows how to answer situation based questions well, and so we’re able to draw that out of them. Wow, this is fascinating.
Jill: Um, I, I see, like, there’s so many things going through my head in terms of the, of the application of this and how this could really help.
Jill: And I love that AI. I mean, a lot of people are, are. Concerned about AI replacing people, but I see it more as a means to assist humans to be able to work on the things that they want to work on and the things that they’re really good at and taking away some of the, um, some of the things they don’t love to do things that are transactional or tactical.
Jill: This sounds like it would really be a huge help to recruiting organizations, to human resources, um, managers to be able to get through. And especially you’re talking about the learning capability of the AI to be able to actually. Formulate questions based on the answers that it’s received. Um, just so many applications, like you said, tell me a little bit of, so I don’t want to switch gears too quickly if you have anything more to add, but you also mentioned accounting and other applications that you’re potentially pursuing.
Jill: Can, can we get into that?
Jonathan: Yeah, of course. Yeah, I think, I think the key thing is it’s focused on determining functional competency. And so for us, we spent a while trying to decide where are the applications of AI best used. One of those could be cultural. And, and that was, you know, that was obviously something we played around with the challenge with that is culture is very hard to define, you know, a company has their core principles.
Jonathan: They, they have, but they also have a lot of, uh, Um, intangible elements, there’s a, there’s a certain feel that the company might be going after. And I think sometimes that requires a human to be able to be involved in that atmosphere. You know, it’s the same thing. If, if you get, uh, an external recruiter, they might be necessary because it’s a very hard to fill role.
Jonathan: But I think for most roles, it’s ideal if you have an internal recruiter. And the reason is they understand the company, they work in it. They get to know the hiring managers. Very well over time, uh, same with, with the teams that the person’s going to be playing on. Right. And you need to make sure that people are going to get along and enjoy working together.
Jonathan: So, so that’s, that’s really, there’s so many different pieces to that. I don’t see AI replacing, um, that, that part of it. So once we realized that we decided, okay, well, the functional competency piece of this. Yeah. That’s not something that recruiters have usually. I mean, sometimes you’ll have somebody who’s worked in accounting or software and then they become a recruiter, but most of them are not functional experts so they can get to know certain skills or competencies at a very high level, but they can’t dive deep in those areas.
Jonathan: And so if you’re talking about something like, um, Well, let’s say a recruiter role. That’s not, that’s not an area I don’t think where Searchlesss would play a factor because if you have recruiters or talent acquisition people talking to talent acquisition applicants, they know how to. Interview those people already, but if you’re talking about a software development manager, um, or a software team or or an accountant, um, that’s that’s where you do need the hiring team to get involved with the recruitment team and the hiring team again is they spend so much of their time.
Jonathan: Getting involved in that interview process. Um, so I think that’s where we can add the most value for that reason. Um, yeah, and I, I think that harder skills or, or very, um, technical or skills that require training, finance, accounting, uh, in addition to software. Possibly product management, certain aspects of user experience, like user research, those kinds of things.
Jonathan: That’s something that we could train our system on, um, soft skills. That’s, that’s a much more touchy subject. Um, right there, there could be a lot of biases. When you start getting into soft skills, does the person have an accent or, or do they use different words or all those types of things? You know, that’s, that’s something we don’t want to get into for, for a variety of reasons.
Jill: Yeah. No understandable. Um, is so searchless is in market right now. Are you currently under an MVP? Are you, are you full live? Like, where are you in your.
Jonathan: Yeah. So we, uh, we started in September, we built out the minimum or not the minimum viable product, the pro the, the prototype. Um, so basically the, the basic functioning system where people could start interacting with it.
Jonathan: We had that built up by mid November and we started testing it with users. Uh, as I mentioned earlier, over 200 users probably. And those were product managers. Those were entrepreneurs. technical hiring managers, lots and lots of software engineers and, and related technical roles. And from that, we were able to figure out what pieces were missing in the interview experience.
Jonathan: And so we figured that out and started building that over the next two and a half months. And we went live with our first client in February, and that was a paid pilot. Um, that client, we Had the, the candidate interface built out, but we didn’t have the recruiter side of the interface built out. So what that meant is I was the recruiter interface, me personally.
Jonathan: And so our client was able to interact with me. I put the details into the system. We started putting candidates through it, getting their interviews, and then passing the results of the top candidates over to the client and, you know, They were able to make a decision and hire somebody that way. So there was, there was a lot more work involved in the process at that part.
Jonathan: It wasn’t, it wasn’t a full product. It was part product part service. And so after that, and refining the, the candidate experience even further, further, because actual candidates are very different than test users. And I mentioned that, um, when you’re, when you’re, when you’re initially building, that’s something to keep in mind for, for any listeners.
Jonathan: Um, if you’re early on, remember people will tell you that they want to see this functionality or that functionality, or they think your product should do this or that, but those people, unless they’re actually using your product in a real world situation, aren’t always going to give you the right ideas.
Jonathan: So you have to put a lot of time into thinking critically about, is this something that real people are going to real users are going to benefit from? Or is this something that’s a flashy, nice to have that this person who is checking out my product just for fun is saying something we should, uh, should have.
Jonathan: And sometimes those test users have excellent ideas. Sometimes they have ideas that are off base. And so you have to put a lot of thinking into Into that, um, once you start getting the real test users, um, the, the, the, the live cases, that’s when you can start really zoning in on what you need to build next.
Jonathan: And so after going through that experience, um, with that, uh, product slash service client, then we started building out the recruiter side of the interface. And we did that from, uh, about beginning of March until the end of May. And then we started testing that with a couple more pilot clients. So we had two more pilots up to that initial one between May and July.
Jonathan: And we’re in the process of starting with our third pilot right now, or sorry, our fourth pilot right now.
Jill: So you’re, you’re, you’re in a sort of pilot with a few, um, users right now. It’s commercially available. So if somebody was interested in speaking to you about a Searchless, I believe you can actually be found on procure hub.
Jonathan: Yes. Oh, and just one caveat, sorry, Jill, one caveat. I have a much different pricing model on procure hub. I don’t, I haven’t updated that yet because that’s when it was still part service, part product. Um, because it’s productized, it’s completely different now. I need to update that.
Jill: No problem. So they can reach out to you on procure hub.
Jill: Um, if you are interested in learning a little bit more about Searchlesss, and Jonathan, um, and Searchlesss is one of our founding, uh, suppliers on the marketplace, and we are thrilled to have. Um, is there anything else that you have in terms of advice for entrepreneurs or, you know, any parting, uh, words or, or words of wisdom that you’d like to share to our, with our listeners?
Jonathan: I think just basically. If you really want to start a business, you should and, you know, I, I’d say, don’t be scared, but you’ll probably be, um, pretty, pretty, uh, pretty nervous going into it. And then afterwards, you might have some emotional turmoil. Just be ready for that and know that that’s normal. Um, I think I think most entrepreneurs go through that. Yes. Yes. Um, I had some great advice from one of my advisors and they just said, dream bigger, dream bigger.
Jill: So I have, uh, really enjoyed our conversation and there’s one more question in the chat if we can, if we can just wrap up with that. Um, Roy Fang has said, what has been the initial feedback from your customers?
Jonathan: Yeah, great, great question, Roy. Um, so we’ve, we’ve had, uh, different, different bits of feedback. Some of it’s been on some of the tools that we need to, to create. Some of it’s been around, um, checking if people have been cheating using AI. And so that’s something we’ve been putting quite a bit of, of energy into.
Jonathan: Um, and I’m sure that’s a question that many of the listeners have thought of as well. Um, And, and then some of it’s been based on what kind of feedback or, um, uh, uh, analysis should we be showing. The recruiters or the hiring managers.
Jill: Excellent. Very good. So it sounds like there’s been some really good feedback.
Jill: Um, you’ve got some great testing that’s going on. Congratulations to you and your co founder on the launch of Searchlesss. Uh, it sounds like a really cool idea and I can see so many applications coming from it. Thank you so much for joining me today, Jonathan. It’s been a real pleasure to get to know a little bit more about you and Searchlesss.
Jonathan: So great to be on here with you, Jill. Thank you. Thank you.
Jill: So for our listeners, again, you can check out Searchlesss on procure hub and join our growing community of entrepreneurs by visiting procure hub. ca. If you’d like more information about the entrepreneuring show, have an idea for the show, or want to be a guest on the show, you can visit us at procurehub.ca theentrepreneuringshow. com or you can send us an email to info at procurepro.ca. Until next time entrepreneurs just keep swimming.