Guest: Carisa Miklusak, CEO of tilr
Air Date: February 12, 2019
Chad
Hi everyone. My name is Chad Nitschke, co-founder and CEO of Bunker, and also the host of this podcast, Ready. Set. Work. Ready. Set. Work. is a podcast series focused on the future of work, specifically highlighting all different perspectives from the gig economy to on demand platforms and more. Join us each episode to hear from thought leaders paving the way for the future of work.
Hey everyone, today I’m talking to Carisa Miklusac, co-founder and CEO of tilr. Thanks for being here, Carisa.
Carisa
Chad, thank you so much for having me on, I’m thrilled to be here.
Chad
Yeah, it’s our pleasure. So maybe do you want to start things off just by talking a little bit about what tilr does? And I also love to hear kind of the origin story, like what inspired you to solve the problem that you’re focusing on?
Carisa
Absolutely. It’d be an honor. What tilr is, is a platform that matches workers to local jobs. But what’s different about tilr, and the reason that we started the organization, is that it matches on skills rather than on titles. When you match on skills rather than titles, you’re able to reallocate talent much differently. And although there’s certainly a very real skill gap that needs addressed through education globally, this is one way that you can really shrink that skill gap and find people that are really just a perfect match based on their skills, again, not their titles, and available for roles in their backyard. And that’s really why we took on this project. I’ve had an amazing opportunity to grow up in recruitment and then digital recruitment over the past 20 years – if I might date myself just a bit – and in doing so have really enjoyed introducing new technologies to the market. But it’s been clear that the core unit that’s used in recruitment, the title, has become somewhat archaic when we think about the future of work and the way that new work forces really like to work. So that was the inspiration. The second piece of tilr is that we were very fortunate – and we always like to find trends that our friends – to have this idea at the same time that on demand and the gig economy was really growing and people were changing the way that they like to work. At tilr, when you make a hire as an employer, our algorithm actually selects your candidate. We of course do a proper onboarding and screening, but our employers don’t interview our tilrs. Because that’s quite a leap, we focus today on jobs with start and end dates. So we’ve become a natural front runner in connecting gig workers, or independent contractors or on demand workers, with local jobs. And it’s not only rewarding as organizations look to really change their total talent management strategies to align with the new workforce, but also allows workers to work in a flexible way that matches with their schedule and on projects that they really value. And so that’s just a bit about why we were founded in 2015. And tilr the name T. I. L. R. is just the short version for T. I. L. L. E R, meaning a tiller that’s on a sailboat that one can pull to really change their direction. So you’ll see a lot of that through our branding and that’s a bit of the origin.
Chad
Interesting. No, that’s super interesting. And I’m curious, how did you come up with that name? Like what was it that prompted – what’s the story behind that?
Carisa
Ah you want the real backstory? Chad, here we go. You’ll learn that I’m completely transparent, so you always have to be careful what you ask me. Bobby Tiller is a jockey but never loses a race. And one of my partners in this business and core investors has a horse that’s been well-run by Bobby Tiller, and he called me late at night one night at 10:30 PM and said, what about Tiller? T. I. L. L. E. R. As I described, we were speaking of the tiller in the sailboat, although the other tiller, the kind that you plant seeds with would also make sense. But we were, speaking of tiller, we then did some focus groups looked at different spellings of the name bid on some different websites and really got positive feedback around dropping the R, shortening it a bit so we had one of those famous four letter URLs, and really went to market with it. We then worked with a firm in New York city early on to really develop our brand. And there was so much about tillers and the nautical aspect that matched with skills. You know, if you think of Tilly, which is our submarine, that comes from our name tiller. And there was a panic moment, Chad, where I went, oh my goodness, wait, someone Google: do submarines have tillers? And it was like, yes, they have tillers, okay, great. They allow you to be below the surface and look above. And when we think about skills, skills oftentimes are below the surface of that title, but really what create the value or the ability to move so many directions in your career as a member of this new workforce. So I can’t say I can came up with it on my own. I tried to shake it, we tried to hate it, but we fell in love, as did our focus group.
Chad
That’s an amazing story. And I love the transparency. And like the way you kind of described it and kind of laid out how you came up with a name almost makes me think that like, the way we came up with the name Bunker, it was like super, super unscientific. Like literally no focus groups. I mean, I just, I distinctly remember like, I literally had three names in mind. Two of them were horrid, like two of them were just horrible and the other one was Bunker. And I was in an Uber with my wife and another couple and I was like, ‘Oh hey, what do you guys think about the name Bunker?’ And they were like, ‘Oh yeah, I like it.’ And it literally stuck from then on and then we didn’t didn’t do any focus group testing and just kind of went with it. So that’s awesome.
Carisa
Amazing. That’s also very – if your wife approves it and the Uber driver, I mean, that is a focus group. That’s technically a focus group right there. And the wife is probably the hardest to pass so that’s fantastic. And I enjoy the name very much. I think it makes sense for the industry.
Chad
Yeah. Cool. Well, thank you. Alright, so as you mentioned, tilr is powered by artificial intelligence. And I was wondering if you could just unpack that a little bit for the listeners and you know, we’ve heard about, I think maybe the classic resume keyword searches, and you talked about like ‘skill based,’ but maybe what does truly kind of an AI powered recruitment platform look like?
Carisa
Absolutely. So I don’t – I want to be brief, but I want to give you just a bit of background to feel how somebody onboards themselves with the tilr application because the data that they provide is really what allows us then to automate the recruitment process. When an individual decides that they want to create a tilr profile – we call all of our tilr members community members and perhaps we’ll talk about why a bit later – they first tell us a few jobs that they’ve had and start picking the skills and their proficiencies. So the first line of data is a self declared, self vetting process. It’s fun, it can be as short as 90 seconds or as long as you want to make it if you want to continue to add jobs. And after that, all of our tilrs are, of course, background checked and then also today still do a 15 minute phone conversation with a tilr specialist to really not only talk about the experiences that they’ve shared and the skills that they’ve articulated, but also to help them understand what will happen next. And here’s the direct answer to your question: Once we have that data, as you can imagine, we have a similar set of data from employers who also tell us what skills they need, what roles they’re hiring for, the availability, so on and so forth. What happens next is done algorithmically without any recruiter or human interference, if I might call it, which might seem like a strange name, but one of the reasons that we’re so committed to algorithmic hiring is that it completely removes bias from the process. So what happens is that the algorithm uses the data that it’s been given by both employer and worker, as well as the verifications from the team, to match skill to skill, what works along with availability. And then ranks, tilr community members algorithmically – again, this is all automated – in a numerical fashion from most qualified to least qualified. Those that’re on the gold list, or have a hundred percent qualification, are all of a sudden served an automated push notification. This is why we’ve been called the Uber of jobs in the past, although I think the systems are much different. We’ve reversed the decision making process from the employer – who trusts tilr, our team, and the algorithm, to select the right worker for them – to the individual. So if the worker sees a push notification come onto their phone and they love the job, they’re available, and they want to commit to it, when they hit accept that job is theirs. Algorithmically, when they go on site that first time and they work a job, they rate the experience as well as the employer. And now all of a sudden, unlike a traditional recruitment process, we collect real data that feeds the algorithm. There’s a tilr trust score, for example, that can indicate with a 99.9% accuracy whether or not someone’s going to show up on time, how many absences they may have, what their skill proficiency is in different areas, and each time this person goes to work and each time an employer and they give feedback, that algorithmic connection grows and grows and grows.Â
So how does machine learning work? What happens in recruitment? Those data points follow the employer so we know better and better what the employer likes, and they also follow the worker so we know better and better what the worker’s capable of. As they learn new skills those skills are added, and when we get something right, the relationship is strengthened. The algorithm goes, wow, I got that right. That makes sense. Let me learn from that and do it again. And if for some reason there’s not a good match, and employer thumbs down it and says, you know, it just wasn’t the right fit, these two skills were missing, the algorithm actually learns and says, man, did I get that wrong – let’s not do that again. And so we’re able to serve even traditional recruiters with a different level of data that’s so powerful about both what employers really need and what workers are really proficient at.
Chad
Yeah, that’s amazing. And I mean you really clearly see, I think, why that would be valuable for the employer in that case, right? They can identify top talent, but then it’s also valuable for the worker, right? Because they, if they aren’t that top talent, they can distinguish themselves more. It seems like that would be just kind of a win win for everyone that’s involved.
Carisa
And the other thing that it does, because it happens in real time, is for an employer, it takes the average hiring cycle which – if my numbers are still accurate, correct me if I’m wrong – is still about 37 days and shrinks it into sometimes seconds, or if it’s a very hard role to fill, or perhaps the wage is a little low and a few people decline at first, maybe a few hours. And that experience for the worker of uploading a skill profile, moving through a background check – which can be instantaneous in some communities, or can with all transparency take two to three days in more manual communities where background checks are still being run by people taking documents to a court – but once they’re ready to go, they can go to work almost instantly. And so it shortens the process and therefore that hemorrhaging gap that we oftentimes have while a position, you know, sits open and that skill isn’t able to be found. So there are some real economical and time efficiency benefits as well.
Chad
That’s great. And then you also mentioned bias and I’m curious – I mean that’s a topic and a problem that just comes up more and more – and I’m curious for your perspective on how pervasive is that bias today in the recruitment and hiring process?
Carisa
You know, I remember in the early 2000s attending a number of conferences on diversity employment, really, you know, looking at the growth of EOC committee and thinking about how to remove bias from the process. And we thought, gosh, if we can teach people how to evaluate talent for talent we’re really going to get this right. And I think we’ve done great work over the last two decades to achieve that. I think today, practitioners know what questions are unreasonable, help their hiring managers really focus on talent, but there’s something that’s still exists – well, of course there’s still just plain bias that exist, right? I mean, we, we see it in our country now more than we have in some time and it translates into the hiring process as well.Â
But what I want to introduce is really this idea of unconscious bias. That’s not a negative thing, it’s simply something that we have as people. Oftentimes, hence the name unconscious bias, we’re not even aware of it. And it comes from our backgrounds and the way that we were raised or the experiences that we had or didn’t have. And again, it’s not intentional. When you allow an algorithm to sort through the data you remove not only intentional, but also unconscious bias. And that together provides the first lens in recruitment that allows you to focus on one thing: the person’s capability to do the job. And we haven’t seen that ever in recruitment. And as we think about the values of the new workforce, I believe it’s the only type of tool that they’re going to subscribe to and accept. So I think it’s incredibly powerful. And beyond just the recruitment spectrum, I think it’s something that’s needed for society in general. And again, sometimes we’re making a direct match, sometimes we’re serving traditional recruiters data oriented decisions so that they can benefit like every other industry in the world from logistics to hospitality, you know, from data points and from measured results, not just from a gut feeling.
Chad
Yup. No, that makes sense. And I’m curious like, do you think – and this is probably more of a forward looking kind of future question – but do you think it’s possible then for like the algorithms themselves to ever be like biased or have bias?
Carisa
Oh, Chad, I love that question. Such an important question and the answer is yes, absolutely. And I point fingers toward Amazon in a loving, I want to hug them and just thank them so much for talking about why they discontinued their AI program. I love that they own it because as practitioners, we need to be very, very aware that algorithms, machine learning and AI can become very biased as well. I credit my cautionary approach to my co founder and CTO Leak – Luke Vigeant. I just called him leak, he’ll love that. Luke Vigeant, who was really cautious in the beginning to allow machine learning to kick off on its own. We teased for a long time that our intelligence was, was Luke Intelligence – L.I. – as we really, really evaluated each and every individual decision that the algorithm was making on its own and then either agreed to teach it to the computer or not teach it to the computer. So a very simple example; let’s think about a warehouse where someone’s responsible for lifting heavy things and packing boxes. If we’re not watching how an algorithm makes decisions, much like we saw at Amazon, it may naturally gravitate because it’s a results oriented data platform toward favoring one type of person or even physique unintentionally – it can’t see the physique over another. And so we need to watch for things like that and as practitioners really practice what I call responsible artificial intelligence and measure results in the way that we have traditionally and manually as we allow our algorithms to learn from themselves. So we’ve had a large level of human intervention in allowing our algorithm to learn on its own. And once we feel very safe in certain areas, we’re able to monitor rather than lead, but much like a child, you have to raise an algorithm to have the right values and think correctly.
Chad
Yep, that makes sense. And I’m curious, are there any examples that come to mind where through the work that you’ve done, you’ve seen situations where there’s more of a preponderance for bias?
Carisa
One area that I think this platform is starting to unravel a bit, is there is a very large underserved population in recruitment that is oftentimes left out of standard recruitment because they either don’t have a resume, don’t know how to write a resume, aren’t savvy in you know, placing their resumes on job boards, and so I think traditionally with recruitment, we tend to see some bias in certain underserved ethnicity groups. They’re just not included in the search, if that makes sense. That’s one problem that we’re working to solve. We specifically have not brought to market our resume reader, which can read a resume and get a tilr you know, profile, let’s say 80% of the way complete. Because what we find is that inviting people to the platform is a more meaningful way to honestly discover what their skills are. And so we are reaching – if you could think about an unbanked population and the economy from a financial perspective – we’re almost reaching that ‘unresumed’ or unbanked population in recruitment who has amazing skill sets in some of the areas that we’ve been talking about. I mean, we keep coming back to warehousing, logistics, these types of areas, but other areas such as hospitality and retail that have never been included in the search because they didn’t have that traditional job seeker approach or that resume that had the exact right skillset, the right availability, the right transportation and are really helping those employers to fish in a different, very meaningful pond.
Chad
Yup. No, that makes sense. And maybe shifting gears a little bit, if we can specifically focus on like independent workers and the future of work. And at least this is kind of my opinion, but it seems like this is where we could really see benefit from what you’re building. You know, because if you think about bias in the recruitment process, if you’re an independent worker, you’re probably going to be working for multiple different companies, and/or you’re going to be changing those companies. Versus, you know, if you’re a W-2 employee, you might work for the same company for a period of 10 years and you can, you know, demonstrate your skills and demonstrate your value to the organization. And I’m curious as you think about, like, what you’re building as it relates to independent workers, like how important do you think removing that bias is for that type of worker versus somebody that might be at the same company for 10 years?
Carisa
I think it’s critical. So we really work with our clients, our employers to think about total talent management very differently today than they have traditionally. we are gravitating, as you know better than anyone, toward a future of work where over 50% of our population will be independent contractors and will choose to work in different ways on multiple projects at one time or in a linear fashion. And I believe that that population will continue to grow. So it’s critical that we remove that bias. And from an employer standpoint, one great way that we have found to really help employers think differently about the types of employees they may want to hire, including independent contractors, is to look at their business goals and what they want to achieve in the next year and start to think about total talent management or their recruitment strategy in a way that aligns with those goals. If they have peak times throughout the year where they require more employees or less – is probably the most simple or obvious example – then having a hiring plan that incorporates independent and part time workers, contract workers, makes a lot of sense for their business – better sense than it would to hire and then lay off a number of people, which not only creates a very negative employment brand and experience for the workers, but it’s also very costly for the organization in onboarding and offboarding costs. So to answer your direct question, I think that it’s absolutely critical and you’re right, platforms like this – tilr and a number of, you know, we believe in partnerships, a number of other organizations focused on the space are who will be responsible for removing that bias and coaching employers to understand that the new workforce and the future of work is comprised of all types of workers, perhaps even robots and artificial workers alongside independent, gig, contract, W-2 full time, part time workers. So what is that real total talent management strategy and how do you align it with your business goals in the future at work?
Chad
Yup that makes sense. And I’m curious if you look forward five or 10 years, like what does that future of work look like to you?
Carisa
Well, you are, to me in the most important industry that will define what it looks like. It will either look like a very productive, sustainable workforce that allows organizations to achieve goals faster with a cognitive diversity that realizes amazing results that they haven’t even fathomed with the traditional recruitment cycle, or it won’t be sustainable because independent contractors won’t have access to the benefits that they need in order to live and take care of their families. So as you know, we partner with Bunker because we are passionate about independent contractors having the right benefits. We provide a health insurance program that’s specific to independent contractors so that they can be well while they work and have peace of mind that their families are well taken care of. We’ve partnered with Honest Dollar, which is a Goldman Sachs company that works to mimic a 401k for independent contractors so they can save for their future. Training and development opportunities for independent contractors are huge and necessary in order to advance their skills, and we work to provide training and opportunity for independent workers on our platform through partners as well. And I’m a huge proponent of the $20 million bill that’s on Capitol Hill to provide research money to figure out how to create the sustainable portable benefit network for workers. And so I think our ability to create that sustainable network is what will define what this looks like in 10 years.Â
Now, I’m very optimistic based on the partners that we have, based on the conviction that I see in the space, based on welcome competitors that are going to help get this done, that we’re going to achieve that. And so I think that the future will be a very diverse workforce that achieves things, again, that we can’t dream of today because we’re incorporating a cognitive diversity that advances these results. But it will be dependent on our ability to either publicly, privately, or perhaps a dual approach, fund a portable benefit program for these workers so that this is a sustainable option.
Chad
Yup. No, I completely agree. And obviously I’m biased in that view, but I totally agree with you. Like you kind of welcome just a lot of focus on the problem, right? Because it’s not going to be just Bunker, it’s not going to be just tilr, like this is kind of a bigger, broader movement. And you ultimately need that for, you know, kind of this more idealistic kind of future to exist for workers. And I’m curious if you – as we talked a little bit about the worker, but maybe shift gears to the enterprise and the employer – in your experience, what has been maybe the biggest challenge or like the biggest questions that enterprises and employers have for getting independent workers on board?
Carisa
So remember I talked about being so transparent? I had it totally wrong. I thought the answer to that question was going to be getting them to trust an algorithm. It’s been really interesting, perhaps because of how accepted algorithms, machine learning and AI are and other industries, that was not the hardest part. I feel like I am in 2001 or 2002 selling CareerBuilder postings and listening to people tell me, listen, we are never going to put our postings on the internet. That’s not where people find jobs. They find jobs in the newspaper. What we’re fighting is tradition every single day. We’re not really, you know, in a sales call – if we want to get very specific for a moment – taking budget away from a Wonolo or, you know, someone that may be considered a competitor – by the way I consider them really good friends and believe they feel the same about us, but oftentimes they’re considered, you know, a direct competitor. What we’re really running into is tradition of how the organization has always hired, but now ‘always’ is defined by the last two decades rather than, you know, the 50 years prior to that. And so what we’re hitting is really just that zone that this is uncomfortable. I’m not familiar with this. If I need a contract employee, I go to a temporary agency. And so we’re looking, you know, not only at working with the enterprise directly, but also in empowering temporary agencies to have this kind of data so that they can make better matches and, you know, create unbiased opportunities for their enterprises as well. But that’s a really important question and you know, it’s really fighting tradition. Once again, I wish I had something more tech savvy as the CEO of a tech company for you.
Chad
No, I like it. And I’m really glad you brought up CareerBuilder, ’cause I wanted to dive into that a little bit. It’s funny, I have like, I don’t know if it’s just coincidental timing, but I’ve had so many conversations recently with like ex-CareerBuilder people.
Carisa
We are everywhere.
Chad
I know it seems like you guys are, and like doing different things and getting involved, kind of, in the, you know, what today we call the future of work and – but you know, back then, like you said, you were trying to get people to post jobs online instead of in the newspaper. And I’m just curious like, this is a different problem, but in some ways maybe does it feel kind of similar?
Carisa
It feels incredibly similar. And the products are very well aligned as well. That’s a hard sentence to say. So it’s interesting that you asked that question. It’s incredibly similar. You know, first of all our target contacts, the people that we’re talking with are the same. So I’m teaching my reps today on how to call on and really resonate with operations leaders, site managers, of course VPs and directors of HR across the land, and we’re having conversations, again, about their recruitment strategy. What’s different about this is that it’s really a complimentary solution oftentimes to what someone’s doing for their direct hire model. And so we’re having a more inclusive conversation, and not only perhaps moving budget from some of the areas that I talked about in the past, but also creating a new piece of the pie that’s never existed for a data oriented approach to recruitment. So our clients will oftentimes, you know, continue to use CareerBuilder or whatever platform they use for direct hire, work with recruiters for their VP roles, but we’re really talking to them about – let’s take Lowe’s for an example. They’re not a client of tilr’s – perhaps they should be if they’re listening – but they, you know, announced they’re going to make 65,000 hires and that over 80% of those hires will be independent workers, or on demand workers, with, you know, start and end dates. And so we’re talking to companies about that full strategy and introducing a new technology to support the way that things are evolving. That’s the only difference because at CareerBuilder we were saying, stop what you’re doing and do this instead. Now we’re saying, okay, you’ve got that aspect figured out, but there’s this whole new workforce that has a different value, that works for different reasons that can serve aspects of your business better than a traditional workforce. How do you incorporate that, now, also, into your total talent management and really see the benefits in your business? So it’s exactly the same. With that one caveat.
Chad
Yup. No, that makes sense. And I love like stepping back and just looking at how, you know, maybe some of the technology that we have today, we just take for granted. But then you look back and see, oh, like how did that come to be? Just because there’s, like, probably so many things that we can learn from that. And then correlate it to like what we’re focused on today and what we want the future to look like. So that’s great.
Carisa
It’s so fun. And I’ve been so fortunate, like I said, to grow up in this industry. I mean, truly tilr is an amalgamation of passion and ideas, you know, from our co-founding and core partnership group. But in terms of my ideas and direction, I mean, it’s really growing up in the space, looking at that evolution and, as we talked about a little bit before, predicting what’s going to happen next and making sure that there’s a technology, you know, just as there was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, that’s ready to help navigate and steer the community in the direction to take advantage of those new trends and to make sure that workers are well cared for. And so it’s nice to be part of that historical evolution if you’re going to take on the responsibility of being a futurist, I find.
Chad
Yup. All right, well let’s talk about geography a little bit and just how it relates to the future of work. And so before we started recording, you know, we were talking about, I’m based in San Francisco, most of the bunker team is in Madison, and I know your team is based out of the Midwest too. And I’m curious like, why did you choose to base tilr out of Cincinnati?
Carisa
Great question. Everybody thinks I picked Cincinnati because in 2003, I opened up a CareerBuilder office in Cincinnati and focused on the Tristate area. So they figured I must have a Rolodex there or something, but I think it was outdated. We went through, you know, as you could imagine, quite a matrix of different cities and narrowed it down to about five different cities based on the following criteria: of course, based on where there were a lot of temporary workers or the new workforce trend – on demand, gig, whatever you want to call it, there’s so many different names – was really vibrant, but we also looked for communities that had employers with large appetites for new technology. In Cincinnati, organizations like Proctor and Gamble and Fifth Third call themselves big Cos, and they literally host meetings with startups to figure out what new technologies they can try and taste, and it’s just such a beautiful opportunity for startups to really connect and learn from large organizations. In addition to that I guess – oh my gosh, almost four years ago – in 2015, we also looked at the litigious environment. We didn’t go to California or Chicago or New York where I live, even though my team isn’t here to reiterate your point, because at that time, the laws around 1099 workers were still really gray. So we wanted to use our capital on helping workers work better and helping employers connect with those workers and not in a litigious fashion. So those were some of the main drivers. And then in interviewing with different mayors, we were offered a tax incentive program for our work and job creation goals in Cincinnati, and it came to really make sense. We then moved our development team to Toronto, so we have two locations now. And my co founder and CTO that I mentioned, Luke is there in Toronto leading his team, and then Summer Crenshaw my COO and cofounder, is in our Cincinnati office leading our operations teams there.
Chad
That’s great. Yeah. And I’m obviously biased in this view, but I kind of feel like there is a talent arbitrage to be had in cities like Cincinnati or cities like Madison where you have really talented, educated people that want, you know, challenging positions, but you just don’t have the same competition for talent that you do in New York or the Bay area. I mean, I’m personally biased on it, but that’s definitely one of the reasons why we wanted to have most of the team in Madison. And it’s great – I think it’s been interesting to, like, in our journey two years ago when I was talking to investors, I felt like I kinda had to explain Madison a little bit, as to like, ‘Oh, this is why Madison makes sense for Bunker,’ and now I feel like fast forward two years, I think that narrative has shifted like 180. I actually think investors are like ‘that’s really smart.’ And so yeah, I’m a big fan of that. And, I mean, I’m biased because I grew up in the Midwest too, but –
Carisa
I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I truly have investors reach out to me weekly, you know, an email that says, Hey, we’re looking to invest in companies that are in the Midwest. We love that you’re headquartered in Cincinnati. We’re not interested in investing any longer in Silicon Valley or the coast, the movements going inward, you know, why did you open in Cincinnati, are you fundraising? I also have been contacted by Venture Beat and a number of other outlets to do interviews specifically on ‘why the Midwest,’ and I’ve seen the output of those articles incorporated, you know, with quotes from different VCs that are stating why they’re really focusing on the Midwest as a hotbed of innovation. So I wish I could say I picked Cincinnati because I knew that, but in full transparency I would be lying. That was just a really fortuitous outcome of the location. And we’ll pretend like I called that trend.
Chad
Yeah, you were just a trendsetter for sure.
Carisa
Yes, that’s a great way to describe it. I’m a trendsetter, well done.
Chad
Yeah, definitely. What I tell my investors is San Francisco is a great place to raise capital and Madison is a great place to deploy capital, or the Midwest.
Carisa
That’s beautiful. Consider that stolen with Cincinnati inserted for Madison.
Chad
Definitely. Cool, alright, well maybe to just tie things up here, there’s one question that I always like to ask – and I think it’s probably one of the harder ones to answer – but you know, as you started tilr and now kind of fast forward from 2015 to today, what do you think has been the biggest surprise so far?
Carisa
Well, I mentioned earlier that I had it wrong: I thought our biggest barrier to entry would be that people would be afraid of algorithms. Quite the opposite. They’re excited to adopt an algorithm and the data that comes along with it. This is a challenging question, but if I really press myself I think that the most – from a high level a macro level, don’t get me wrong there are surprising things every single day that smack me in the face and I’m like, wow, never thought of that – but if I really look from a macro level and an industry level, I think probably the most surprising thing is the use of the recruitment data that we’re delivering outside recruitment industry. And here’s what I mean by that. We offer a product, it’s our white label product that allows an organization to skill profile their existing team and really look under the hood at the talent that they have and learn more about what they’re capable of. And we’ve seen use cases now where organizations are interested in figuring out where their team is strong and where they may have skill gaps and then connecting, let’s say a learning management system or bringing in a trainer to help strengthen the team in certain areas. We’ve also had organizations discover that they were very rich in a skill or industry knowledge that they didn’t realize that they had, and then make a sales decision to start focusing on that vertical as a result of skill profiling. So I knew that it would be powerful to really help the new workforce have opportunities that mirrored the way that they wanted to work and to help enterprise organizations and small businesses navigate this new talent landscape. What I’m so pleased to see is that there’s value outside of that in addition, that are informing employers in use cases and in ways we didn’t even think of and helping them to make different business decisions as well. So I think that that’s been very rewarding but also very surprising. And now entrepreneur to entrepreneur as you know, my goal is to figure out how to capture that, or how to just allow it to be a natural benefit of the product and stay very focused on where we started.
Chad
Yup. Definitely. No, I like it. Cool. Well, any last thoughts for our listeners before we sign off?
Carisa
Making sure that we have portable benefits and a sustainable workforce for the new workforce is absolutely critical and it will also benefit employers, enterprises, small businesses in the greatest way. So I’m just so appreciative that you’ve allowed me this time to talk about this with you. And I thank you and your partners for the focus in the space and the support that you’ve provided to us, it’s just so critical to our economy, and I’m very pleased to focus on this with you. Thank you so much for having me.
Chad
Yeah, no, definitely. Thanks for being on. And then obviously we love working with tilr and it’s fun to just hear more about the story and just appreciate you taking the time to be here. And thanks again to our listeners. We appreciate you tuning in and hope you can join us again on our next episode.
We love to hear from our listeners. If you have ideas, thoughts for guests or suggestions for future podcast topics, please reach out, tweet us at bunker HQ using the hashtag ready, set work, or email us directly, at hello@buildbunker.com. All right, back to work.
Next Episode: “Setting the Stage for the Gig Economy” ft. Jody Greenstone-Miller, CEO & Founder of Business Talent Group
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"Diving Below the Surface" Ft. tilr CEO, Carisa Miklusak
