Chris’s take: Poach has the possibility of being a useful tool in any recruiter’s toolbox. It’s not necessary to recruit, but the data it promises to uncover could become quite valuable in certain industries. Time will tell if Poach has what recruiters want.
Learn more about Poach at http://poach.ai/ or follow Joel on Twitter
FULL TRANSCRIPT (20 min audio)
Joel Cheesman:
This is Joel Cheesman, founder of Poach.ai, and I'm next on the RecTech podcast.
Chris Russell:
Welcome to the only podcast that helps employers and recruiters connect with more candidates through technology, and inspire conversations. Do you want to know about the latest tools and tactics for finding talent online? This is your show.
Chris Russell:
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Chris Russell:
Hey, and we're sponsored by HR Lancers, the first and only dedicated marketplace for freelance HR consultants and independent recruiters. Post your profile, post a gig. Anything from compensation projects to employment law, recruiting, sourcing, remote roles, contract gigs, or projects. HR Lancers is the Upwork for HR. Check it out at HRLancers.com.
Chris Russell:
So, Poach.ai is the newest venture by Serial Entrepreneur and fellow industry podcaster Joel Cheesman. The platform aims to track worker sentiment to help companies identify when it's the right time to recruit employees away from your competitor. I've known Joel, and Joel and I go way back. Have known each other for many years in the industry. I was on his show early this year, so now it's time for me to ask the questions. And welcome to the pod, JC.
Joel Cheesman:
Nice, nice. I'll do my best not to ask you the questions, but it's in my nature to do that. So, if I cross the line, just slap me on the wrist. I'll behave myself.
Chris Russell:
And I don't know how you going to get through a show without sound effects, but there are none today. [crosstalk 00:10:46] There's no gun, there's no crying.
Joel Cheesman:
I think I'll be all right. I think I'll be all right. I'll give you a, "Hell yeah!" Every now and then.
Chris Russell:
There you go. All right. So, let's do this. A couple years ago, you started a product called [Ratedly 00:11:01] that tracks employer over your sites. And when I heard about your latest venture Poach, it seemed to me kind of a natural derivative of that. Would that be a fair statement to start off with?
Joel Cheesman:
Yeah, a natural progression. So Ratedly, those that don't know, we track roughly 30 places online where employees past and present talk about their workplace. So, people obviously know the big players, but we look at those guys as well as Twitter, and Reddit, and Cora. Because those are just too time consuming to do on your own, so we automate that process. But it's more or less a branding tool than it is a recruiting tool.
Joel Cheesman:
And being in recruiting as we both are, I simply thought how can what we know from the data and our core competency of grabbing data from a variety of places help us provide a product for recruiters to help them basically poach from their competition and other employers? Too many people, poach is a dirty word, but everyone does it, whether they admit it or not. I just think it's done not in a very smart manner. It's done usually by word of mouth, or, "Hey, the internal Slack group, someone saw something on Tech Crunch." We're trying to be smart about it, to automate some of it, and really be a data-as-a-service product for recruiters to basically monitor a variety of companies to track worker sentiment, and see when is a good time for me to go call on my competitor and grab their employees.
Chris Russell:
Yeah. The name struck me a bit, too. I remember we've had a number of it could be two, three other startups with poach in the name. Do you remember? I think they're all dead now, but is the third time a charm here?
Joel Cheesman:
I don't know. There are obviously poaches. First of all, I think the name is great. The fact that I was able to grab Poach.ai I think it's great. And the fact that we use AI tools to help companies better poach from their competition was great.
Joel Cheesman:
But yeah, throughout the years there have been a myriad of poach-based products. I can remember, and you probably do as well, almost 10 years ago there was a product it was from the Tech Crunch Hackathon when they used to have those, and they created Poach Base which was taking data from Crunchbase, and trying to figure out the lifespan of a startup. And when they slowly start failing, because 85% of them do, and then seeing what that timeline looks like, and creating synergies around when startups start to die. And then, creating triggers to go poach startups based on Crunchbase data, which was pretty clever. But yeah, I think that was a Hackathon thing, and they didn't really take it much farther than a two minute pitch to the Silicon Valley folks.
Chris Russell:
Yeah. Isn't there an app, too, called Poach?
Joel Cheesman:
Which one?
Chris Russell:
Wasn't there an app, too, called Poach? I'm trying to remember.
Joel Cheesman:
I can't say that when I started this, I did a deep dive on everything with Poach in it. If you look at LinkedIn, because we have a page on LinkedIn, you can follow us there. But there aren't a ton of poach-based LinkedIn profiles. And if you're going to start something around poaching employees, you should have something on LinkedIn. And there might be three or four poach-based names, but most of them are job boards or staffing technologies. There's nothing really like what we're building.
Chris Russell:
Yeah. So, how do you define worker sentiment? And define that for me, and then tell me more about how the tool tracks that stuff.
Joel Cheesman:
Yeah. So, without giving away secret sauce and all that good stuff, this is when you cue the boo, [crosstalk 00:15:23] the boo sound on Jack Cheese podcast. But yeah, we look at so obviously from Ratedly we've gotten really good at going out on the web and collecting data in terms of what employees are saying about their company.
Joel Cheesman:
And so, we use AI tools from a variety of services on the web to look at the content that's being created about an employer, and then creating sentiment scores around the content about what people are saying. So, we could look at a day's worth of commentary, and create a daily almost like a stock chart of sentiment to say it's positive or negative. Is it trending negative? Is there a deep drop that's unusual? And maybe what's going on there, and trying to create some context around that.
Joel Cheesman:
We're looking at also so version one'll be won't have some of these added insights, but looking at news information. Right? So, looking at when a company has a keyword layoff in a news story, or a CEO fired, or insider trading, or whatever those terms are that might trigger an event to say, "I need to go call on that company, and start trying to grab employees from it."
Joel Cheesman:
We also want to build contextual poaching data, and information, and intelligence around maybe certain job titles as well as certain locations. So, if you're tracking a big company, it may not be enough to say just, "Okay, they're trending downward." There may be intelligence in there to say, "Hey, so and so competitor, their Seattle office just saw a really deep crash in terms of worker sentiment." Or maybe we can track, "Hey, among PHP developers at your competitor, the sentiment has crashed."
Joel Cheesman:
So, as we're building this thing out, in version one, which we're hoping to release this summer, will be pretty basic. But as we're looking at building out in the future, there's some really cool data you can start cross-referencing to try to get a good idea of when is a good time to call my competitors' employees?
Chris Russell:
Yeah. It sounds like you know what you need is one of those big scoreboard ticker things like NASDAQ has showing crashes of worker sentiment at different companies, things like that. That would be awesome to do [crosstalk 00:18:11]-
Joel Cheesman:
No. If you track stocks, if you're on StockTwitch or news services and there are sentiment sites for stocks, tracking companies is a little bit like tracking stocks. And when a stock crashes, there's usually a good reason when worker sentiment crashes, there's usually a good reason. And it's lay offs, or CEO does something. There are triggers I think that we'll find that will be really great information to start looking at poaching your competitors.
Chris Russell:
So, what's sort of deliverably going to give to the user? What do they get as far as information goes? Is it just an email? Is it a dashboard? Tell me more about how I should look at [crosstalk 00:18:55] and explore that data.
Joel Cheesman:
Yeah. The way we're developing it now is so this'll be a SAS business. The first in version one we'll be allowing anyone to track one company for free. So, you'll be able to go in, put in the competitor's name, click search, we'll pull data in terms of to verify what company you're looking for, right?
Joel Cheesman:
So, if it's Yeti coolers, as I'm drinking out of a Yeti koozie, there's probably a Yeti scooters, and Yeti roofing company, and Yeti something, right? So, we'll pull all the Yeti's that we can, and more than likely it'll be the top Yeti that you're looking to poach from. You're confirmed that it's that Yeti, and then from there you'll continue via your Google account. And then once you log in, we'll start pulling data probably on a daily basis in terms of your dashboard.
Joel Cheesman:
So, we'll look at sentiment on a daily basis, which you'll be able to access immediately and for free when we launch. And we'll have email alerts and things like that to help you automate that process. You don't have to go to our site on a regular basis.
Joel Cheesman:
And then, as we build out paid versions, paid versions will be, okay, track up to 10 companies for X dollars a month. Or the third level will be track up to 25 or something. And if you want a custom product where you want to track 100 companies, you'll have to contact us and we'll set that up for you.
Joel Cheesman:
But basically, I think up to 10 or 25 will probably be enough for most. And it'll just add to the sentiment tracking that you'll have, so you'll have more companies in your dashboard. We'll probably add more data points in terms of sentiment, so you'll have more sources that we'll probably be pulling from. We'll probably pull in new sources. So, we'll track news around layoffs, and firings, and whatever else. May be positive sentiment like expanding new office space, et cetera. So, we'll bring that into some of the data points as well.
Joel Cheesman:
And that's basically how it will work. So, it'll be all e-commerce. If you want to upgrade, when we have that available, you'll just give us your credit card. You'll be able to plug in the companies you want to track, and you'll be off to the races.
Chris Russell:
Yep. So at this point, it's not lighter, right? You're collecting and waiting to go live. What's the timeline there?
Joel Cheesman:
Yep. We're developing it. You can go to Poach.ai, submit your email, and we'll let you know when we're live. We may do an invite only, or a waiting list when we first launch, so we'll start with the people who submitted their email first to start coming in, testing the product, giving us feedback. And then, we'll either slowly open it, or we'll just open it. And then if we're confident, just start taking feedback and whatnot.
Joel Cheesman:
So yeah, we're looking at launching June/July timeframe. And yeah, the first version will be free. You'll plug in a competitor, click confirm that competitor, log in with your Google account, and you'll be tracking that competitor.
Chris Russell:
Nice. Look forward to trying it out. [inaudible 00:22:29].
Joel Cheesman:
Yeah. If nothing else, you should track your own company.
Chris Russell:
Yes, that's true. Good idea there.
Chris Russell:
So Joel, you've been in the industry for a long time, just like myself. You started back in the-
Joel Cheesman:
Thanks, man.
Chris Russell:
You got your start in the job board, just like I did. So, we kind of have parallel paths in the industry. But crazy times we're living in. We were just talking about before the show. I'm just curious from your standpoint, you've seen 10 million startups come and go. What kind of advice would you have for any other recruiting or tech startup out there today in this is environment as far as how to succeed or just survive this time we're all in?
Joel Cheesman:
Well, so there's two questions there. One is how to survive, and if I were giving advice on what to build or what to start.
Chris Russell:
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman:
I'll start with what to build. We've been talking about, you and I, and anyone with a microphone that talks about this stuff, the future is automation. AI data, and machine learning, that is by all accounts that's the future, and I think that corona will only expedite this transition. Because when times are good, and people are adding head count, or the headcount that they have is happy and fat, and they're making placements or hiring folks, it's hard to move over to an automated system, and chatbots, and programmatic stuff.
Joel Cheesman:
And now, companies who are on the fence that had to lay off staff, recruiting teams, et cetera, when times get better, and by all accounts, we were talking about the 60 Minutes interview, within a year or two things are going to get back on track, all these companies are going to make a decision of do we hire back people, or do we buy technology to displace the people that we laid off back in 2020? And I think a good number of companies are going to go automation as opposed to rehiring, hiring people, or at least not nearly as many people as they had before.
Joel Cheesman:
So, if I were building something today, it would be around automation, AI, programmatic advertising, or marketing solutions, machine learning, products and services. And we're already seeing paradox chatbot or conversation AI, whatever they want to call it, just got 40 million. There's a reason for that, right? If there was a job board, would they raise 40 million? I don't know. You're a job board guy, you might disagree with that.
Joel Cheesman:
But I think the money that's going to be raised, and we're seeing it already. I think you just interviewed the CEO of Remote. The companies that are getting traction and money are the ones that are work from home companies, companies that take out the in-person stuff, the face-to-face stuff. They automate these processes, and that's only going to continue.
Joel Cheesman:
Now, the second part of your question is what would I do? I guess that would depend largely of what I'm doing now. So, if I am a job site, that's a really tough question, right? If no one's posting jobs, it's a really tough business to be in. And you and I remember 2008, eight through 12 I'd probably throw out there, the healthcare industry saved a lot of job boards from going under. And this may be similar. Healthcare's going to remain hot for awhile. Warehouse workers, trucking. Any kind of logistics that's growing quickly. I think robotics. I'm sure you've got a couple job boards around robotics, or AI, or whatever. There are going to be hires made in those industries.
Joel Cheesman:
So, job boards, as usual we'll have to pivot. They'll have to cut and grow accordingly. But yeah, I think the features in cool technologies that can integrate with platforms like ACSs and CRMs, and hopefully grow to a point where they're either acquired, or God bless you if you can be your own platform. That would be a nice place to be as well.
Chris Russell:
Yeah, definitely. I got a post coming out tomorrow on job board secrets about if I ran Monster. And at this point in my day'll be just to basically blow it up and start from scratch with a small 20 person team, and just start to innovate around recruiting automation stuff, and go at it from that standpoint. It's definitely [crosstalk 00:27:15]-
Joel Cheesman:
Yeah. If I'm Monster, I'm calling it Monster Beverages, and I'm saying how much for the URL, and I'm dumping that, and then, I don't know, creating APIs or something, or selling. I don't know. Monster, CareerBuilder, all those companies are, are, this isn't news, they're in dire straights, and there's a good reason for that. Even the guys that we think of as solid, the ZipRecruiters, the GlassDoors, they're laying off 25, 30 plus percent of their staffs. That's no joke.
Chris Russell:
Definitely. Well Joel, we appreciate the time today. Good luck with Poach, and let us know when you launch.
Joel Cheesman:
Chris, I appreciate it. And again, everyone out there that's www.poach.ai. Submit your email address, and you'll get on the list to try it out when we launch.
Chris Russell:
All right. That will do for this edition of the RecTech podcast. Thanks for listening everyone. And remember always be recruiting.
