Company Culture, Career Navigation and Deep Talent Insights - What is PlumFlourish and PlumThrive with Jason Putnam

[00:00:00] .

[00:00:01] Yeah, what we wanted to do is what we've always done.

[00:00:02] We've taken something incredibly complicated and cumbersome.

[00:00:06] And from a science perspective, we want to make sure, hey, can we get the same outcomes

[00:00:09] that are predictive, that are ethical, that are humane, that work and do it in a way that's

[00:00:14] way faster, better and cheaper?

[00:00:16] So we did it with soft skills and scalable.

[00:00:19] We did it with culture and we've done it with hard skills.

[00:00:22] And that's kind of the approach we've always wanted to have.

[00:00:24] All right.

[00:00:25] I want to talk to you for a moment about retaining and developing your workforce.

[00:00:29] Retaining is hard. Recruiting is hard.

[00:00:31] Retaining top employees is hard.

[00:00:33] Then you've got onboarding, payroll, benefits, time and labor management.

[00:00:37] You need to take care of your workforce.

[00:00:40] And you can only do this successfully if you commit to transforming your employee

[00:00:44] experience.

[00:00:46] This is where ISOF comes in.

[00:00:48] They empower you to be successful.

[00:00:50] We've seen it with a number of companies that we've worked with.

[00:00:53] And this is why we partner with them here at work defined.

[00:00:57] We trust them and you should too.

[00:00:59] Check them out at isolvedhcm.com.

[00:01:03] Hello, this is William Tenkup and Ryan Leary.

[00:01:08] You're listening and watching the Use Case podcast with Jason Putnamon from Plum.

[00:01:13] That's a lot of things to put together, but we'll let the audience kind of digest

[00:01:17] that.

[00:01:18] Jason, how are you doing today?

[00:01:19] I'm great.

[00:01:20] Thanks, friends.

[00:01:21] Appreciate you having me.

[00:01:22] You are great.

[00:01:23] You are great.

[00:01:24] All right.

[00:01:25] Let's start with some basic stuff.

[00:01:28] For those that might not be familiar with Plum, let's talk a little bit.

[00:01:31] Give us the breakdown.

[00:01:32] What does Plum do?

[00:01:33] So what we have done is a little different than what we're doing moving forward because

[00:01:37] we've added some stuff.

[00:01:38] But historically for those who are familiar or not familiar with Plum, we built Plum

[00:01:45] primarily with the human in mind first.

[00:01:47] So over the last 10 years, we use kind of human-centric data.

[00:01:50] So think of it as soft skills.

[00:01:52] We use it via psychometric assessment to really make sure we can bring people together

[00:01:57] who are either looking for jobs, who are current employees at a particular company, or just

[00:02:02] people who want to know more about themselves.

[00:02:04] So the last two years have been great for us really serving both sides.

[00:02:09] And that has exploded into popularity on both sides.

[00:02:11] William, I don't know if we've ever talked about this, but right now we have 50,000

[00:02:15] people a month creating Plum profiles.

[00:02:17] Part of the profile is the assessment, but it goes beyond that.

[00:02:21] And what's interesting about the 50,000 is a portion of them are applying for jobs.

[00:02:26] A portion of them are employees, but about 20 percent of that number every month is just organic.

[00:02:30] So they're just coming to Plum to learn more about themselves and get career advice and career coaching.

[00:02:35] So we've grown a lot in the adding new people to Plum, but we've also grown a lot in

[00:02:40] adding new customers. In the last two years, I think we grew 230 percent, which I

[00:02:44] appreciate in the market that we're in.

[00:02:46] But now what we've done is we saw such a demand because we did the hard stuff first.

[00:02:52] Taking psychometric data and doing it at scale and not requiring consultants and making it a good

[00:02:57] experience on both sides where people find value is very hard.

[00:03:01] So we did the hard part first, and then we went back and said about two years ago, how far can we take this

[00:03:07] while maintaining or increasing value on both sides?

[00:03:10] So as today, we rolled out that we've really bifurcated Plum into two distinct platforms.

[00:03:16] Plum flourishes one side and Plum thrive is the other.

[00:03:19] So flourishes for the human, for the people, irrespective of where you are in that stack as an applicant,

[00:03:23] organic or employee. Plum thrive is for the company.

[00:03:26] So on the on the flourish side, it's really this user centric solution where we'll invite individuals to

[00:03:33] to map their best career fit.

[00:03:34] So unlocking the right opportunities, build career paths using both data from a psychometric side,

[00:03:41] but also skills data, which we'll talk more about.

[00:03:44] And then on the Plum thrive side, that's our enterprise solution.

[00:03:47] We've really gone deeper with that and probably what we'll spend the most time today based on YouTube,

[00:03:52] but it's really solving skills based hiring.

[00:03:54] And we're the first to combine hard skills and soft skills into one proprietary technology and

[00:03:59] methodology. And what we want to do is we can match hard skills and those innate soft skills

[00:04:04] together to map the total human to give the employer really a 360 view on the human.

[00:04:10] We want to go as deep as we can on a particular human with the amount of data that we have,

[00:04:14] whether you're using that to screen people in on board and succession planning, leadership potential,

[00:04:19] anything you want. So that's the big change.

[00:04:21] The other thing we did because that wasn't good enough is we overlaid a third product release,

[00:04:26] which is our culture gap analysis. That is on the TM side.

[00:04:29] We're not just TA, we're TM. Most of our clients choose us for TM as well.

[00:04:32] But now with that same data and same methodology, we're going out in a way that is both because

[00:04:38] we're a science company, both predictive from a science perspective, great user experience,

[00:04:43] but also fast and easy. So companies can really understand the gaps in their culture and

[00:04:48] double down on what's really important for them. It's a lot.

[00:04:53] It's still a lot to consume.

[00:04:57] Well, it is and it isn't if you've been following this story for a long time.

[00:05:01] Kaelin, just a really thoughtful person when it comes to this stuff.

[00:05:07] Your background, like this isn't... It is because it's a lot for people that

[00:05:13] haven't followed the story. But I think it makes a lot of sense, especially when people

[00:05:19] say skills-based hiring, if they only apply it to hiring and they don't apply it to

[00:05:25] everything else, it all falls apart. And that's one of the things I love that you've

[00:05:30] tackled that part. I like the fact that you tackle talent management and you've got a

[00:05:37] distinct experience for the people that are candidates and employees, etc.

[00:05:43] You've got an experience, an explicit kind of experience for the folks that are managers.

[00:05:50] And people love it on both sides. We've all been assessed our whole life,

[00:05:54] our completion rates the highest in the industry and the satisfaction rate, because

[00:05:58] with the Flourish side, we really want people to look to Plum. And it's only going to get

[00:06:03] more and more iterative over time. We want humans to look at Plum as this career

[00:06:09] coaching platform. If you're just, hey, I'm going into a meeting with my boss,

[00:06:13] what it's going to be? I'm going to get an interview. I'm looking for a job.

[00:06:15] We just want them to be in a position where Plum can provide them the most value because

[00:06:21] we know the most about them. So how do you see the market responding to what you've created?

[00:06:32] Because a lot of people, soft skills, they'll pick a lane, soft skills or hard skills.

[00:06:39] And they'll kind of build a narrative around why that's the most important, etc. We won't even get

[00:06:44] to culture fit right here. But how do you think the people that you compete with ish?

[00:06:51] How do you think they're going to respond? I still think people are behind in their thinking.

[00:07:00] The world is at breakneck speed. So I'm going to answer your question

[00:07:04] kind of in a different way, William, when I come back. Because I think culture is intertwined

[00:07:08] in this, which is why it is. But the innovation that we're experiencing today that we think is

[00:07:15] innovation or anyone thinks is innovation is ancient history by tomorrow. So we did

[00:07:20] this study which played into this. A five year span in the 2000s, the speed of that change

[00:07:27] feels like one year now. And 16 years from now, the study says it'll feel like a month.

[00:07:33] So it's the time it took to change in five years, 16 years from now will take a month.

[00:07:38] Right? So if you combine that with the half life of hard skills, which is an all time low,

[00:07:44] it's two and a half years, which is only going to get shorter. All you're really going to be left

[00:07:47] with is some version of soft skills, which is incredibly more predictive of success on the job.

[00:07:52] And then some version of eligibility. If you think about a developer as an example,

[00:07:57] if you're hiring developers, up until recently, the languages they know from a development are

[00:08:02] really important. The chat GPT is less important. It's going to be way less important. Communication,

[00:08:08] how you write a script into chat GPT is going to be much more important than what development

[00:08:11] language that you know. So if people are falling behind that, then there's a problem. But you

[00:08:16] still have to have some version of eligibility. Right? I don't want to hire a sales rep for

[00:08:20] enterprise who's never done sales. There's a level of eligibility you have to bring in.

[00:08:24] But more importantly, culture to me is the imperative. And with the speed of change that's

[00:08:30] happening that we just talked about, if your team's not all rowing together with the same culture,

[00:08:34] and it may not be the culture that the CEO wants it to be. Right? The company may actually

[00:08:38] have its own culture and may need to shift to a different culture. But if you start with

[00:08:42] culture and then lay out the skills, right? I don't think anybody, everyone's trying to solve,

[00:08:48] everyone wants to be a skills-based work, but they're solving it in my opinion

[00:08:51] in a very antiquated way. They're trying to determine what every sand on the,

[00:08:56] every pebble of sand on the beach is versus that's not really what you need to know about

[00:09:01] somebody. Right? If I'm going to hire a pediatric surgeon in Ohio, what do I need to know about

[00:09:08] that person outside of psychometric? Do you live in Ohio? Are you a pediatric surgeon?

[00:09:12] Two things. Right? Now there may be a background check and all the other stuff I have to do.

[00:09:16] But as far as getting somebody to an interview or if you look at it from secession planning,

[00:09:20] like if you're in marketing and you're a demand gen person or you're in marketing

[00:09:24] and you're a brand person, like that may just need to be all I need to know about that

[00:09:28] particular person in order to screen them in or talk about that for internal mobility.

[00:09:33] So tell us a little bit about the responses you've been, you've gotten so far. Right.

[00:09:40] As this has come out, this is a big reveal. As somebody who runs Go To Market, right? Like

[00:09:46] the face I'll put on here is like, well, we always knew it would be amazing, but there's

[00:09:50] always a little bit of what is it going to be like when we roll it out? And we have some,

[00:09:56] for a little while we've had some of our larger customers beta testing it and those responses

[00:10:00] have been amazing. We rolled it out to our partners and those responses have been amazing

[00:10:05] and we had a big media day, a bunch of analysts and those responses have been amazing.

[00:10:09] And then everything we've seen again, we're 24 hours in everything we've seen online has

[00:10:12] been really good. I feel like there may be some people out there who are very entrenched

[00:10:19] in the way they solved a particular thing who may not love the way we solved it, but that's okay.

[00:10:23] Or there may be some large enterprises out there that have invested so much time and resources

[00:10:27] into however they tried to solve it, even though they know it's not going to work

[00:10:31] or they've realized it's not going to work, but they're going to put their arms around it

[00:10:34] and say, do it. But they'll be back. Yeah. Yeah. Well, because Oracle,

[00:10:41] Oracle, Workday and SAP are success factors all have some take on skills. Sure.

[00:10:48] In general, you know, they might, but they all have some type of approach because they saw the

[00:10:53] market going in this direction is that they had to react to it. So again, it'll be interesting

[00:10:59] to see over the years how those big three, because that's what's Fortune 1000 uses

[00:11:07] one of those three. Yeah, for sure. So it'll be really interesting to see how that plays out.

[00:11:13] What we wanted to do is what we've always done. We've taken something incredibly complicated

[00:11:17] and cumbersome. And from a science perspective, we want to make sure, hey, can we get the same

[00:11:22] outcomes that are predictive, that are ethical, that are humane, that work and do it in a way

[00:11:26] that's way faster, better and cheaper? So we did it with soft skills and scalable. We did

[00:11:32] it with culture and we've done it with hard skills. And that's kind of the approach we've

[00:11:36] always wanted to have with things. So what does the rest of the year look like for you?

[00:11:40] What are you doing? A lot of this, a lot of travel. Going on the road show.

[00:11:48] Going on the road show as always. We've had such a good couple of years that we've

[00:11:54] even changed kind of the mix of our cab of our customer advisory board,

[00:11:58] which has been really good. So a lot of the feedback for us has been there. So we're

[00:12:01] spending more time with them. And then a lot of our time, which we will continue, is getting

[00:12:05] feedback from the market because part of this is not necessarily a B to C play because we're

[00:12:10] not charging on the floor side, but really making sure that humans are getting value in

[00:12:13] what we're going out and doing. And then aggregating all this data in a way that we

[00:12:18] can come back to the market and point to the success that we're driving with the level

[00:12:23] of lift being lower. And that's ultimately our goal. I think companies can become a skills

[00:12:28] based organization in 90 days. Now, funny enough, we did a bunch of ads. That was one

[00:12:33] of the ads we put out a few months ago to test and that was the lowest performing ad because

[00:12:36] people went, that can't be true. Right? Yeah. Yet we've done this with enterprise

[00:12:43] companies again and again, again, without hard skills. And now we're bringing the

[00:12:46] hard skills in and it's really the same approach. So then overlay culture. I think

[00:12:52] we're in a really good spot. It's going to be a really busy six months from here on out.

[00:12:56] What's the, so what do you think the reason is companies don't believe they can

[00:13:03] become a skills based organization in, you said 90 days? Can I answer? Can I answer? Sure.

[00:13:10] Because they don't think they can do it. It's not so much that they fear the vendor

[00:13:16] and whether or not the technology can do it. It's that they can't move that fast.

[00:13:20] They know their, or at least the perception is, is that they have is that their own

[00:13:24] organization can't move that fast. You might be able to, we can't. Is that perception?

[00:13:31] No, that's just me talking. I'm not the expert. Jason, what?

[00:13:34] I completely agree. And what is, I think there's a shift happening.

[00:13:40] A lot of the people we talk to run ops and not talent or TM now. Right? So there's a big

[00:13:47] distinct shift here now that's happening. And historically talent, whether you're TA or TM

[00:13:55] has been a very administrative function historically. So hiring manager says,

[00:14:00] go find me this person who has this. They go find them five people. They say, no, not good

[00:14:03] enough. And they're beholden to whoever this person is. They've worked in the business,

[00:14:08] not on the business. Right? And I think there's been this shift, but there's still a fear of

[00:14:13] change because they're not the persona to go kick the door down of the CFO. Like I can tell

[00:14:19] you all the ROI we have for our clients to where not only are they paying for plum,

[00:14:23] they could go out and buy a huge HRS from an ROI perspective. What we're seeing now is people

[00:14:28] are becoming a little more bold because they're being asked to do so much and they don't have

[00:14:31] the ability to do it. So that's one reason. The other reason is they've been marketed to.

[00:14:40] Right? There's really big marketing budgets for products out there that say this is

[00:14:43] the way to do it. So you're convinced to do it. And then the third aspect is,

[00:14:47] you know, if you've never seen a car, you just want a faster horse. Right? So we're coming in

[00:14:56] and this is what Ford had to deal with is why would you build a car when, you know,

[00:15:00] just give me two or three more horses. So we're taking this very different approach to

[00:15:03] things and we have to understand the adoption curve. Like early on adopters, when we speak

[00:15:08] to one, we will know in five minutes on that call if they're buying plum within five

[00:15:12] minutes. You'll know within 30 seconds if they're not. And it's just not now.

[00:15:19] They're asking what they ask a lot of the how, not the why. So we were on a call the other day

[00:15:27] and a woman on the call says I've been tasked. So anytime somebody has been tasked,

[00:15:31] somebody gives them the plan. It's not their initiative. Right? And she goes, I was tasked

[00:15:37] to buy, she looked at plum, she loves plum. She says, I can't buy plum because I was

[00:15:40] told to buy AI. Which by the way, there's AI in plum. But I'm like, go back to your boss

[00:15:48] and ask him or her, do they care about the what it is or the how it works or the why it is?

[00:15:54] Right. I don't care if it's AI, if the outcomes are great. Did he or she just tell

[00:15:58] you to go buy AI, to buy AI, not care about the outcomes? Well, they're not asking the

[00:16:01] right question. So within 30 seconds, like you know that versus we have a client who's

[00:16:06] going through a $2 billion talent transformation. Like that's a big investment, huge fortune,

[00:16:10] ex company. Plum was the first thing they did to then use that data to feed everything else.

[00:16:16] What other tech stack are we going to do? Who in the company are early on adopters so we can

[00:16:20] start with them versus rubbing sandpaper across the whole organization of people who

[00:16:24] are fearful of change? So you just like, we all have a gut now that we just know immediately

[00:16:29] and over time it will all get there. Those people will retire or somebody else will take

[00:16:33] their job or the C level suite will figure out a different way to do it. But it's about

[00:16:38] the outcomes, it's not it. But we're also not spending $10 million a year on marketing like

[00:16:42] other companies are. Right? They're controlling the narrative of that.

[00:16:46] Yeah, they're being beaten down with the how, how the technology works. So we use machine

[00:16:54] learning, we use AI, we use gen AI, we use this, we use this. And again, to your point,

[00:17:00] who cares on that on a certain level, as long as it's not called fusion. Who cares about that?

[00:17:10] No, let's make you fun of it or not. I think sometimes that gets lost in the translation is

[00:17:15] they don't care so much about the AI. They want to just care that it's going to be around,

[00:17:21] that it will sustain the next five, seven years of their life, that it will be outdated.

[00:17:27] They also want to just be left alone. Right? So they have tasks to do this thing, they want

[00:17:31] to check the box. If you think you're going to move to a skills based organization, you're

[00:17:35] going to be able to check that box with scraping and matching, you will never be done. You will

[00:17:39] never be able to check the box because skills get sunsetted every day, new skills. It'll be

[00:17:44] it'll never be done. And those same people don't ask questions about the things they use

[00:17:49] in their day to life. Right? So I always use this joke that these people come home,

[00:17:53] they turn their thermostat to 70 degrees. They're not HVAC experts. They don't need to know how it

[00:17:59] works. No, doesn't matter if there's a dragon breathing fire in the basement, just make my

[00:18:03] house 70. Right. But yet, they think they need to understand how the technology works. And

[00:18:08] we're fine showing them and everyone's fine showing them how the technology but that the

[00:18:11] buttons don't matter. It's the outcomes that they drive them. Well, some folks,

[00:18:19] they do want to see it work because they've been burned before. For sure. By folks in

[00:18:27] another space that have sold, marketed and sold a roadmap of products or a roadmap or a vision.

[00:18:34] It's something that I've talked about for years is like look at a lot of software.

[00:18:39] Just look at the don't I don't even care what's on the roadmap because I just assume

[00:18:42] the kitchen sinks on the roadmap. Tell me, show me what's alive right now. Crack

[00:18:47] into a customer instance that you have permission to show me. Show me live software, not a demo

[00:18:52] environment, not PowerPoint, not anything else. Just show me live software and I'll believe it's

[00:19:00] there if I can see that it's there. It's one of the reasons I chose Plum when I came here.

[00:19:06] It's the best product I've ever had but we had zero tech debt. Right. So I'm a big fan

[00:19:11] of sell what's on the truck, right? Because you never know what's going to come tomorrow

[00:19:15] and we could have been selling this release months ago.

[00:19:19] Now we have some customers beta testing it but we're not selling it. That's different.

[00:19:22] We're not talking about it till it comes out and I think I agree with you William.

[00:19:25] I think that's incredible. Jason, what are some of the questions so we went through some of

[00:19:30] the how you were able to pick out. This is just not going to work out within a couple

[00:19:36] of seconds. What are the questions that you want potential customers to ask you as you're

[00:19:42] talking to them? All right. I want to talk to you for a moment about retaining and developing

[00:19:48] your workforce is hard. Recruiting is hard. Retaining top employees is hard. Then you've got

[00:19:54] onboarding payroll benefits time and labor management. You need to take care of your

[00:19:59] workforce and you can only do this successfully if you commit to transforming your employee

[00:20:04] experience. This is where I saw off comes in. They empower you to be successful. We've seen

[00:20:10] it with a number of companies that we've worked with and this is why we partner with them here

[00:20:15] at work to find. We trust them and you should too. Check them out at isolvedhcm.com.

[00:20:23] Yeah, I want them to think about their life from a multitude of lenses because a lot of

[00:20:29] times by the third or fourth call we're talking to a CHRO at a big company. Somebody

[00:20:34] tasks them and then we get there sometimes even the CEO of a large company. So put

[00:20:38] yourself in the position of first the human who's applying to your company and or who's an employee.

[00:20:44] What is their experience like today? Like you put the human first then put your functional hat on

[00:20:50] in that functional hat as you need data on your people individually and in aggregate.

[00:20:56] So if you look at through those two lenses but you're also a human in your role

[00:21:00] like so if you're a hiring manager recruiter what would you want as a human? Like every

[00:21:04] CEO should go apply for a job with their company as an example. Every CEO should get

[00:21:07] into using those tools. What we hear a lot is there's a lot of town intelligence tools that are

[00:21:13] built for the employers because that's who pays the bill and the human is second. We're opposite

[00:21:18] of them and the reason we're opposite of that is the completion rates through the roof and if

[00:21:23] we roll it out to employees it's almost 100% because we're giving them something in return

[00:21:28] but then the employer gets all the data they need at 100% versus making this really sexy

[00:21:33] thing that has a 40% adoption and missing data on 60%. So I want them first to say you know what's

[00:21:39] the experience for my people and secondarily how can I use this data to accomplish the goals

[00:21:44] that we're trying to accomplish? So what goals are they trying to accomplish? Well

[00:21:47] where they are right now they want to hire better. They want to have a better quality of

[00:21:50] hire. They want people to stay longer. They want people to be more productive

[00:21:54] and if you match people to jobs where their innate skills are going to come through every

[00:21:59] day this is not plumb data. This is market data. We're 322% more productive and they stay three

[00:22:04] years longer so if you look at that as a human you're like oh my goodness that person's happy

[00:22:08] their boss is happy. If you look at it as a CEO or CFO you're going to go holy cow

[00:22:13] company's going to make more money we're going to be more productive and everyone's going

[00:22:16] to be happy. So I don't want them to think about the buttons. Our buttons are great. Our

[00:22:19] technology is awesome. Our software is great but once you implement it what is it going

[00:22:23] to do for the people and is that actually what you want the outcomes to be?

[00:22:28] So two questions. How did you come up with names flourish and thrive and then secondly take us into

[00:22:36] a culture gap? Yeah so we've had a logo for a while that when people

[00:22:40] flourish business thrives and I'll tie it into culture. You know plums flourishes like

[00:22:45] a tree and then all businesses want to thrive as you can imagine but culture's

[00:22:50] the first part of it. With this if so we're not using culture for selection that's icky

[00:22:56] that's not what we're doing because you don't want to do right so on the team side we're

[00:22:59] doing culture and really what it is at the heart is the culture gap analysis.

[00:23:03] What that means is if we ask everyone in the company and traditionally this would be

[00:23:08] cumbersome and people don't want to do it we've gotten it down to where it's seven

[00:23:11] minutes per person. So you ask everybody in the company it's seven minutes and in return

[00:23:15] for your seven minute investment you get plum flourish which is a complete career coaching

[00:23:20] guide and within there you can look at jobs within your company only you can look at career

[00:23:24] path and a whole bunch of stuff that you want. So if you start with culture you can then get

[00:23:29] into if you think of the charter of a CEO this is how I think of CEOs they need to have

[00:23:33] a fiduciary responsibility to the business they need to make sure their people are safe

[00:23:37] and growing and they need to make sure culture's right. So if you get culture

[00:23:43] and your people are safe and growing that's flourish the business will thrive that's the

[00:23:47] financial side. So we ask everyone in the company seven minute culture gap you can do it once a year

[00:23:52] you can do however frequently you want they get something in return which checks the other box

[00:23:55] for the CEO and then we're able to look at that data almost like a Venn diagram.

[00:24:01] So if we were to cohort that data which we can cohort it any way you want you want to

[00:24:05] look at it by location by age however you want to. You just did an acquisition etc. So if

[00:24:10] we look at as an example the C level what does the C level think the culture is and what do

[00:24:15] they want it to be. Then we look at the data from the employees what do the employees think

[00:24:20] the current culture is and also what do they want it to be. So Plum because of who we are

[00:24:28] and you mentioned Caitlin and what you know we're a great company culture we're almost

[00:24:31] completely overlapped as circles there's a couple little difference in there and the

[00:24:34] differences are interesting where a lot of the legacy people who have been here

[00:24:39] still our culture is we want inclusion and transparency and we want to be a really good

[00:24:43] loving culture but if you look at the secondary one depending on cohorts what has moved is the

[00:24:48] people have been here a long time for the first 10 years we were doing well but we weren't up

[00:24:52] to the right they've seen the up to the right and now from a competitive perspective

[00:24:57] they have all kind of said hey we want our culture to be slightly more competitive in one

[00:25:00] of outcomes and that's been a change in them as we've gone. So now if I'm a CEO

[00:25:05] I can look at my culture and say again it's based on this speed of change what's best for

[00:25:10] the business I thought our culture was this and I wanted it to be all my people think it's this

[00:25:15] and yet they all want it to be this way and it's not a good versus evil thing but perception's

[00:25:20] reality if they think the culture is the same as what you want it to be cool but if everybody

[00:25:24] wants it to be a different culture you're going to have a problem from a productivity

[00:25:28] perspective. If you're completely overlapped hey go show that to your investors in your board

[00:25:32] that you're doing a hell of a job with culture like it seems like an insurance policy

[00:25:35] there but then just try to figure out where the gaps are do men and women feel differently

[00:25:39] about your culture the ages feel differently about your culture to different regions feel

[00:25:43] different about your culture because without the data you're blind but to me culture is the first

[00:25:48] and most critical part that you have to do. Are you seeing a difference between different types

[00:25:54] of organizations different industries on how they reflect or how they take action on the data

[00:26:00] that you're providing? If we look at it kind of historically from Plum not just the recent

[00:26:08] stuff the bigger the company actually the more they appreciate the data funny enough

[00:26:16] like there's a lot of people in this space who sell to other tech companies well other tech

[00:26:19] companies want a really good shiny demo even though there's nothing behind it you were

[00:26:23] looting to that William right but if you go talk to a bank they want to see a live instance

[00:26:29] of it so a good friend of mine said hey I'm redoing high up in a bank I'm redoing my

[00:26:34] tech stack will you come in and look at my tech stack and we're getting demos from these

[00:26:37] different companies so we got four demos from four different whatever products and he goes I was like

[00:26:43] cool let's talk about these two he's like this demo was awesome like people were engaged it was

[00:26:47] awesome he goes this one was super boring because it was all sales engineers doing it I'm like

[00:26:51] that product doesn't work and the one you hate it is the best problem right so it's if

[00:26:55] you can do the combination of the two it's great right make people feel included and happy

[00:27:00] and see all that but actually have a product that works so I tend to see the larger the

[00:27:04] organization we have plenty of mid-size and small companies but they've done so many things as a

[00:27:10] large corporation there's a level of cynicism but also a level of hope to where they know the right

[00:27:15] questions to ask whether it's procurement legal the the key the key decision maker they just

[00:27:20] know the right questions to ask so it goes away faster our time to close on a large

[00:27:24] enterprise is actually many times shorter than a mid-size company because they just know what

[00:27:29] to ask and they're willing to to move faster if if you're willing to move fast once they know

[00:27:36] yeah so you might hate software categories more than I do which is saying something because I

[00:27:42] despise software categories however HR budgets TA budgets are built in Excel

[00:27:49] Mm-hmm. Plum is somewhere in some type of bucket of things so what is that now with the additions

[00:27:59] that you've just recently made what are you well yes what would you say you do it's been

[00:28:06] an interesting two years with that question William and one we talk about we talk about a lot

[00:28:10] so two and a half years ago we were an assessment and we were the best assessment

[00:28:14] from a psychometric perspective in the market we won awards for it and that is

[00:28:18] an aisle we wanted to stay in even though many of our clients thought of us as talent intelligence

[00:28:23] and we won RFPs for talent intelligence over talent intelligence products and then last year

[00:28:29] we won talent intelligence product of the year so we weren't ready necessarily to go to the

[00:28:35] next aisle but people dragged us to that aisle customers dragged us to that aisle

[00:28:40] analysts dragged us to that aisle so as we're looking at it today I think we sit in this

[00:28:45] high-speed efficacy talent intelligence product but really it's more this

[00:28:50] 360 view of your talent like I don't think talent intelligence is well defined I think of us as

[00:28:55] this total talent solution to look at to look at all of your people that may be talent

[00:29:00] intelligence but most talent intelligence products infer data they don't assess data

[00:29:06] right which puts us heavily in the assessment side because if you infer things it's not

[00:29:10] going to work but if you assess things you get it there so today we see inbound from both people

[00:29:16] who are looking to replace assessments and we see inbound for people who are looking for a

[00:29:21] talent intelligence solution so it makes marketing fun but also we just have to we have

[00:29:27] to make sure that we're not alienating people and not trying to be everything to everyone

[00:29:32] and that's a hard place to be it's a very grateful place to be but it's a hard place

[00:29:39] yeah work from a workflow perspective what does this need to be connected to

[00:29:45] depending on who you it technically doesn't have to be connected to anything so we have clients

[00:29:48] who use it freestanding not as an ats what they're using us for is kind of the front end

[00:29:53] provisioning side as well as some tm stuff they can pull in data into plum on both the front

[00:29:59] end of the back end from a tm perspective but most of our clients are going to integrate it

[00:30:02] to their ats and we can integrate to any ats so if you're using workday and you see the

[00:30:06] plum scores both now hard and soft skills you'll just see that your candidate view you can go back

[00:30:10] and forth we've had people integrate it to a crm because there's some functionality where

[00:30:17] if if everyone the way people typically use plum is you apply for the job and you take plum

[00:30:23] it's top of the funnel everyone because completion rates are high and the experience

[00:30:25] rate so high is so good so then all those people get into either an ats or crm within

[00:30:31] plum you're able to rediscover those people over time for other jobs they may be matched to

[00:30:36] one of the reasons we did hard skills is hey that makes that matching way easier but also being

[00:30:40] able to go back into your ats or your crm where you already spent money how can you repurpose

[00:30:44] those people who have applied over years and then use the match scores that we have now

[00:30:48] to bring them in there so those are the two main functions that we see within kind of the

[00:30:52] personal development side so for me as a manager i can look at my the profile of

[00:30:59] people on my team and i use it from a learning development but also a management perspective

[00:31:03] i can refer somebody on my team to go take some of the classes we've kind of curated in plum

[00:31:08] to build coping mechanisms but me as an individual i can also take them but then

[00:31:12] we'll we can also use that a lot of our clients use that as a as a gps to their elements

[00:31:18] right be able to point them back where they need to go so let's talk about the demo for

[00:31:22] for a moment when you guys are talking to a prospect where where in the demo

[00:31:30] when you get to this point in the demo where is that point that you know okay they've gotten

[00:31:35] this far they're going to be a good client of ours yeah so it's a it's a fun question

[00:31:42] and one i appreciate um so if you look back two and a half years ago if we had an hour

[00:31:47] with a customer it was 55 minutes worth of demo and five minutes of questions where we are

[00:31:53] today it's about 35 to 40 minutes worth of a deck and about a 15 minute demo right right

[00:31:59] um which is the right cadence right nobody's going to see every button now that's not the

[00:32:04] last demo we do they're going to be people are going to do a much deeper dive after that

[00:32:07] but nobody ever looked at a demo and go oh my god i want your product right it's what problems

[00:32:11] are you solving so we will know by slide seven eight or nine if it's clicked right what ends

[00:32:17] up happening is it becomes their idea to bring plum in because it's not just about solving the

[00:32:22] problem they've been tasked with it's it's about solving the problem at the human level

[00:32:27] that they're seeing either for themselves or candidates or employees but also it solves a

[00:32:32] personal problem for them and that's what most people kind of leave out in this so if you look

[00:32:36] at let's just say it's a recruiter which is rarely who it is but that recruiter is now being

[00:32:40] asked to do more with less and they have all these things and you know they're missing

[00:32:45] meals with their family because they're being worked to the bone if they have plum on the

[00:32:49] front end it almost becomes this recruiter co-pilot that makes their job significantly

[00:32:52] easier not that they're going to win a trophy but i can have dinner with my kids tonight

[00:32:57] right and as you get higher and higher in the organization if you get to let's say

[00:33:01] a vp of talent or a chro or somebody higher the boulder they have is bigger because they're

[00:33:06] trying to solve bigger problems so if you look at it from a chro perspective they may have

[00:33:10] been trying to solve culture forever and it's just it changed as william said culture change

[00:33:15] is hard it's seven minutes roll it out let's go right so it it's the personal aspect of

[00:33:22] it a lot because a lot of people want to be heroes in that journey they just don't know how

[00:33:28] especially these people right so if you look at some of our clients some of them have won

[00:33:32] practitioner of the year awards because of plum and i'm not patting ourselves on the back but

[00:33:36] they they took the risk because they were early on adopters to just hear the first conversation

[00:33:40] they then went and kicked all the doors down made huge changes in the organization

[00:33:44] that's you know that's where that personal benefit comes from them and five to ten minutes

[00:33:49] into a conversation long before we get to the demo we'll know if we're if we're if we're framing

[00:33:55] the problem and talking with questions and somebody says can you get to the demo we're done

[00:34:01] you know you've got them at that point yeah yeah so favorite kind of our most recent customer

[00:34:10] success story without brand names or any of that type stuff but like a story you like

[00:34:15] telling people where maybe they were a cynic or maybe they didn't believe or whatever

[00:34:21] maybe maybe they just bought it just just because they were forced to but but but

[00:34:28] a story that is a story that you can tell somebody to go hey this is this is this is

[00:34:34] a journey that someone took and this is their this was their outcome might not be your

[00:34:39] outcome but this was their yeah i'll give a story without naming names but yeah imagine a

[00:34:44] very very large consulting company that everybody knows so they are a partner of ours

[00:34:49] but also said hey we're thinking about a solution like plum let's bring it in and because

[00:34:56] they're global you're not going to go sell a five million dollar deal to do it globally so

[00:34:59] we did you know we did a proof of concept not a pilot multi-year with a cohort of people

[00:35:04] we had them out the door and completely up and running as a skills-based org in 90 days

[00:35:10] the ceo of this large consulting company spoke about plum in their all-hands meeting

[00:35:17] a couple weeks ago right so this is a very large company so to me like that's a testament

[00:35:21] but there's other ones and just interesting ways how people can use the data we have a client

[00:35:27] that has 176 000 employees all who have access to plum their struggle is they're in

[00:35:33] 26 different countries in 20 different languages so now they can use plum and the data as the

[00:35:38] single source of truth it's not the only data they need but it's the starting point so they're

[00:35:43] not muddying it with all this other data that doesn't work we have a really interesting one

[00:35:48] that's about to happen again i won't say the names but they hire five to seven thousand people

[00:35:54] every year to test things i won't tell you what they're testing but it involves controllers

[00:36:01] and it's like we don't care about their hard skills like we they literally interview all

[00:36:05] 5 000 people and they're like hey with plum especially with the with culture and everything

[00:36:09] else we will just hire people from that data like we'll bypass the phone screen right and if

[00:36:15] they're this level or higher for this particular job we'll bring them in for a face-to-face

[00:36:19] and we'll just hire so it's like how much time money and effort we did the roi calculator

[00:36:25] for that and the savings they were going to get per year was somewhere like in a million

[00:36:31] and a half dollars just for that cohort now that's only like 10 of their whole company

[00:36:38] that's that's an interesting but it was a visionary it was a visionary he went and said

[00:36:42] hey i've got our chro or our chief people officer let me go bring that person in and

[00:36:47] i want to make sure he's on board on the front end and if he's not i'm never going

[00:36:50] to get it done or everyone tell you i can get it done because i have budget no you're

[00:36:53] not so they went and got this they went and got the person involved he's like i love it too

[00:36:57] so now our contact has permission he's like let me know when it's done and we'll implement

[00:37:02] and that deal will close super fast and it's large large enterprise customer good good so

[00:37:07] our final question from from me where do you see companies getting it wrong

[00:37:15] maybe specifically in on the culture side as they're trying to run solutions like this

[00:37:22] through their organization

[00:37:26] yeah i want to it's a great question i want to be careful because

[00:37:28] you've had people ask us like what's a good culture what's a bad culture it's in the eye

[00:37:31] yeah that'll take there is there's no such thing right um you know if you're the ceo of a large

[00:37:38] collection company like you have to have a different culture yeah right if you're running

[00:37:42] a wall street firm you have to have a different like it's just it's just the way it is

[00:37:46] right and let's use elon musk right he gets a lot of crap for the culture that he has

[00:37:52] i don't know if the three of us would love working for elon musk maybe we would

[00:37:55] but that's not who's working there right so it's like that's his culture works great for him and

[00:38:02] them so where i think it goes wrong is there's too many assumptions without data right so you

[00:38:09] have the ceo sit in a room going our culture is innovation yet we can measure innovation and

[00:38:14] tell you exactly how many people in your company are innovative right we can also ask

[00:38:18] the entire company do you think it's an innovative culture yes or no do you want it

[00:38:23] to be an innovative culture so if 100 of the company says i don't want an innovative company

[00:38:27] and yet the ceo wants an innovative company there's a big problem so what they're getting

[00:38:31] the problem now is twofold they're not engaging the human on the front end as to why we're

[00:38:36] they're asking cultural questions do it because i told you to do it and they're

[00:38:39] getting nothing returned and then number two it's it's diagnostic without prescription

[00:38:46] right you can assess and get the data but if you're not telling people what to do with the

[00:38:49] data that's the problem right it's like it's like going to the doctor and they say you have a cold

[00:38:54] okay well what do i do about it we go home get rest drinks and i have cancer very different

[00:39:00] set of prescriptions and and and what you need to do with that scenario so most people are

[00:39:05] just collecting the data and not actioning on it because they don't know what to do

[00:39:10] so i'll give you the choice this will be my last question but i'll give you two questions

[00:39:17] you can pick one success for plum in the next year is dot dot dot or

[00:39:25] plum is a bullet train what derails it only pick one yeah i'll pick the first one

[00:39:34] i know how you are i know try to give you answer both in one i know i knew you were

[00:39:45] because we're putting the human first that's the first layer of things that

[00:39:48] we're going to be measuring so we have 50 000 people a month i want to make sure and i believe

[00:39:53] 100 this will be true that that number is going to go up exponentially month over month

[00:39:58] and i want people coming in as frequently as they feel they need to get value in their career

[00:40:04] so i want to be sticky for them as well and if if there's this which there already is but

[00:40:09] if there's this cult following for plum at a much higher rate more than 50 000 everything else

[00:40:14] will take care of itself chops mike walks off stage jason thank you so much for your time we

[00:40:21] know we're crazy busy you are and congratulations on this massive release thank you two years in

[00:40:28] the making love plum love you and just thanks for being here