Latest / The Tech Matchmaker / Journeyfront: How to Spot Hiring Fraud Before Day One
Transcript
- Gina: Hi everybody, today we're chatting with Daniel Ash, CEO and co-founder from Journey Friend. Daniel, we're so glad to have you here. Welcome to the Tech Matchmaker. Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: Thank you, Gina. Very good to be here. Gina: Awesome. So let's get into it. let's start with the basics. Why don't you give us a little bit of background on yourself? Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: Yeah, so I'm the CEO and co-founder of Journey Front, intelligent hiring platform. We'll get into that, I'm sure. been doing this for almost 10 years. I s have been passionate about what we do for a very long time. I like to tell people I had a front row seat to this problem we're helping solve called JobFit since I was a a young boy. My my dad, in a time where a lot of people's parents, you know, would have the same job, career, even company, all their all their lives, retire with benefits at 65, had more more cur more jobs, even careers than anyone I'd ever met. He was a rancher, a flight attendant, a tour guide, a real estate agent, a broker, a lawyer, a politician, a judge, a lobbyist, a nonprofit. And I I always remember when I when he when I was in college, he called me up and said, I finally found what I'm passionate about. And it was on the eve of his retirement. So I I just saw him go from one thing to the next and and there was always you know, obviously like most kids, I looked up to my dad and just thought the world of him, but there was always this these things that weren't a fit, right? And and so you know, I just thought a lot about that growing up, you know, what the the impact that a person a person's career and job has on them and whether they fit that that thing or not. And For n for obvious reasons, I started my career likewise a little concerned that maybe I'd be searching all my life but never finding type thing. And I I had jobs where I felt like I was using my left hand and I was right-handed. I I worked in private equity. I worked in at a company called Sorensen Capital, you know, high growth tech companies. I I worked in management cons consulting at a baning company. and one of the insights I had while I was there at those two companies was just this idea of. job fit and how it's not just people that win or lose, companies win or lose if if if the people they're hiring fit the job or don't fit the job, right? Both groups have a stake in this. And so that's that's what led to Journeyfront fast forward. We're we're we're helping solve this this problem of how do you truly hire people that will go on to thrive, enjoy, enjoy working there, you know, fit the job, have the skills needed, and so on. Gina: I love that. And and tell us a little bit about give us the elevator pitch. So it is about skills, it is about their fit for both the employee and and the company, but talk a little bit about for somebody that has no idea and has never heard of Journey Front, what's what would you tell them? Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: Yeah. well there's there's a short elevator pitch and then there's the Burj Khalifa long elevator elevator pitch. Let's do let's Gina: Well let's go that way. Yeah. Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: do the short one for now. We are the intelligent hiring platform built for BPOs and contact centers. So we really focus on that style of hiring. We didn't st start out that way, but it just so happens that BPOs and contact centers found us because of our unique capabilities. A few things that come to mind that That really matter when it comes to building hiring right. We we're a full-fledged end-to-end applicant tracking system, but we also have a built-in assessment suite. So with Journey Front, you can manage that whole end-to-end hiring process in one system, a simple workflow, and there's all sorts of robust automation, you know, AI, AI capabilities, data-driven hiring tools, reporting and analytics. So we specialize in the needs of BPOs and contact centers that are hiring in volume. So that's improving speed of hire, efficiency of hiring, and then the big one, quality of hire. How do we with data, with better candidate assessment, improve new hire performance, retention, all the things that really matter in these high volume roles, you know, contact center agent or otherwise? Gina: And and with attrition, right, being a problem, a a significant problem in BPOs, w what's the cost of bad hiring and like what does it look like? And then how do you guys help prevent? Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: So very expensive. The cost to replace one hire is estimated to be about 30% of that hire's fully baked salary. So do the math, right? A $30,000 agent maybe in the US, which actually is probably lower than what most US contact centers are paying. But even that would be $12,000 a year to replace that worker, right? And and and with high volume hiring, as you know, Gina, you'll get these contact centers that are hiring, you know, big classes. And maybe only 50% of those classes are there at 90 days, right? So it's not just that that cost to replace one. This is magnified in high volume hiring across endless hiring classes and and whatnot, right? So it can be significant, certainly into the millions, even for smaller contact centers and for for these large global contact centers, you know, BPOs and otherwise that we also work with, then the numbers massive and almost hard to believe. Gina: And and talk a little bit too like about hiring fraud, because it's funny. I was talking with a customer the other day and they shared a story with me that happened on US soil, not even, you know, offshore, that someone came in for the interview because the hiring's in a different department. Somebody else showed up from the job, had done the job for well over, you know, a hundred and some days, and then they came to find out it wasn't the person that they hired. Right. Talk about how you guys help with because I think it's baked right into your platform, right? So can Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: Yes. Gina: talk about how big of a problem it is. Cause honestly, I'd never heard of that before and I was shocked. And then, but for it to be built into the platform, clearly it's a problem. Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: Yeah. Yeah. People, contact centers have been aware of these weird anomalies where, you know, you you interviewed a person X and then person Y shows up day one, right? But largely organizations and contact centers especially that are very susceptible to this kind of fraud, given the volume of hiring and that they're hiring digitally and you know, so on, a lot of it's been invisible to them historically. But we Gina: And hey. Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: we're seeing because Journeyfront tracks this live within our platform. Anywhere from 10 to 25% of your applicant funnel, maybe more in some unique cases, is are fraudulent candidates. What does that mean? That can mean people that are that are not really who they say they are. whether that's they're trying to, for example, you know, they live in one country, they're trying to get a job that's remote in the US as an example. So there's that, you know, kind of geo geographic arbitrage. Maybe they have ulterior motives to getting a job, you know, to come in and do something malicious, right? Maybe there there's a lot of professional test takers out there that will literally take the test for other people, let alone Gina: Mm-hmm. Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: the cases of, hey, buddy, you're you're my friend. Will you take this test for me? Cause you're better at speaking English than I am, or you're better at you know XYZ Gina: Yeah. Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: skill than I am. So our system monitors that. In real time at the top of the funnel, all the way through the process. So we detect things like IP address anomalies. Does this candidate's IP address match the IP address of other candidates? And it'll go from no to low to medium to high fraud as it starts to see that. If there's a candidate whose IP address matches three other people, maybe it's roommate, maybe it's a public library. If they're matching 50 plus, 100 plus other historical candidates, we got a problem here. We'll detect things like location changes, like you said. We'll When we l first launched this, I r recall some clients being so shocked that there was a candidate, step one, they were in, you know, New York City. Step two, suddenly they were in Nigeria three minutes later. Phenomenal, right? so we'll we'll detect location changes every step along the journey of that candidate, things like VPN use, proxy servers. And it's just a a means to give hiring teams, especially those hiring in volume, an automated real-time view on if there's any risk of this candidate not being who they say they are or cheating and so on, which which we also do a lot of like cheating proctoring during our assessments, taking pictures of the candidate, you know, preventing them from using AI and other things like that. Gina: So interesting. And I want to go back to something you mentioned about your pre-hire scoring, I think, and then the outcomes. Can you talk a little bit about what the what you score the agents on and then how you tie it to the post-hire and how that I guess becomes a predictive or learned mechanism for what you should look for in employees going forward? Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: Yeah. So this is actually where we got our start almost 10 years ago, before LLMs, before AI as it's known today at across the masses was such a big thing, we created a machine learning algorithm that would learn from a company's data on what the profile that predicts retention and performance in a given job was, right? So we've been doing this for a very long time and certainly have been very excited as you know, even more and more AI capabilities have come out and available to us. but in a nutshell. Anything you're collecting on a candidate besides these like logistical things like you know, are they 18 years or older? Which you know, you are required by law to ask that and to only hire people that say in a certain area that are above 18. So there's a few things like that that you just logistically or for compliance purposes have to collect. But everything else, whether it's resume, whether it's assessments, whether it's interviews, whether it's screening questions that you ask, should be to predict if this candidate is going to work out in this job. And what we mean by that is are they likely to be able to do the job, perform? And every job's different. Every job has different performance KPIs, especially contact centers, as you know. And are they likely to stay, which is another you unique angle, right? Doesn't matter to hire a great performer if they're not in seat one month later, right? That hire, Gina: Yeah. Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: even though they were a top performer and they could do the job, costs you a lot of money if they left before production, right? As an example. Gina: Right. Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: So Our algorithm within our system, there's a feedback loop that, first of all, we we help capture data no matter what the source is. We have a resume AI resume scoring capabilities. We we capture data from the application screening questions. We have a robust assessment suite of AI language tests and pre-hired job simulations and skills tests and behavioral assessments. And then we have advanced interview tools that help you know recruiters or hiring managers. Perform interviews, or it has AI doing the interview, right? No matter the source, we help quantify all that data. And then as you're hiring, we will analyze that data against those same hires, post-hire performance, retention. And our system identifies what's predicting those outcomes you care about and what's not. So that you can make adjustments to the hiring process over time. So that's how we help companies learn from their hiring data, use that volume that's such a such a burden as an actual Gina: Yeah. Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: advantage. So that they can with data learn what the hiring profile is across all these different roles, geographies, cl in the case of BPO's clients, and get smarter over time. Gina: That's phenomenal. W what's the differentiator for you in the marketplace from other applicant kind of tracking software companies that are out there in the marketplace? Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: Yeah, well, for one, what I just described, believe it or not, does not exist, for my knowledge, in other applicant tracking systems. For whatever reason, most hiring systems, if not all, all they're reporting, they stop at the hire, right? And and and the job for them is to get you to that hire, but not necessarily to get you the right hire per se, right? Journeyfront. Reporting and the analytics doesn't stop at the hire, it continues into the journey of that company. If you see what I did there with our name, but so so that's a unique capability that we have, and that it's allowed us unique and robust functionality, also on customizability of like adjusting your hiring formula and even the scoring of Journey Front is unique. you you have many hiring softwares that'll make it hard. You know, they're they're kind of more designed just for the paperwork and the workflow, which which is great and important and we are too. But the actual decision of who you're hiring, that most crucial thing, you know, they they they aren't necessarily real built for that kind of scoring and and that it they make it some sometimes they make it hard. The data's all spark parsed in different areas, the resume or the, you know, the interview data's over here, assessments sit in another solution. So you got to go over there to look at that data. Journey Front pulls it all together in one system. So there's one end-to-end workflow where you know exactly what you're screening for, you know you can build in automations. And then when you make that hiring decision, you have not only all the aggregated scores in one place, whether they be human interviewers, you know, automated scores, AI scores from AI interviews or resume, but it's all in one place. And in our case, we we can leverage predictive analytics on top of that, that gives you some AI predictions based on historical trends. So it's just very robust around both, you know, data driven AI powered scoring as well as automation, I would say. Gina: Phenomenal. Can you share with us one of your client's success stories where you guys made a measurable difference? whether that's in your turnover numbers or performance, you know, how whatever stats that that customer used to measure success. Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: Yeah, so two come to mind. first early years of Journey Front, we were working with a contact center that c that found us that had a significant problem. They had three contact centers, a sales, a customer service, and a kind of compliance type contact center. And all three were hiring in volume, they were trying to grow, but had crazy turnover issues, like like certainly a hundred percent plus turnover annually in in in in these these three co d departments. And they had performance issues. A lot of hires didn't work out for performance reasons. So we came in with this methodology of let's bring in more data-driven tools to assess candidates. Let's learn from your data over time. And it's a source of pride because the methodology worked. It we saw significant improvements in both turnover and performance across all three contact centers within the first 12 months and even six months of launching the tool. So they'd had this historical problem. We were able to with these Tool, powerful tools for assessing job fit and you know, candidates' likelihood of success in the role. We're able to move the needle on those outcomes that they were suffering from. The more recent favorite examples have been, and I can think of one where you you have some of these contact centers or BPOs that have just very complex hiring processes. You know, the volume they're doing, sometimes they're matching to various role types, sometimes it's across various geos. And I can think of one in particular that. The their process was so complex. They had six different tools or systems that they used. The candidate was bouncing around different tools and systems. The hiring teams were bouncing around to tools and systems. And they had all sorts of manual steps. And we were able to, in one fell swoop, take that complicated, mess of a process and make it overnight simpler, more seamless, you know, all in one in one single workflow, more automated. A lot of these steps that they had to do before, like they had to go and take a screenshot of the candidates' systems, computer system, because it was a work for home position and their internet speed. We have an automated internet speed test and system diagnostic within our tool that with a click of the button just measures that on the candidate's computer. So all these different things we were able to do that just made their life go from just horrible experience trying to hire at the scale and speed they they they hired. to suddenly it all felt manageable and easy and even fun because the system was doing a lot of the heavy lifting and the the hiring team could do what only they can do best. So that those are probably two of the examples. One's more on the quality of hire side and the other's more on just the speed and efficiency and seamlessness of hiring that that can be had. Gina: Yeah, that's phenomenal. What's next for you guys? What's what's on the horizon that you can share with us? Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: Well, agentic AI is a powerful technology and we are we've already rolled out a lot of AI in you know, LLM AI. Like I said, we've been dealing doing machine learning and s other components of AI for many, many years. But we we've already rolled out a lot in the last call it two years, and we've got some stuff coming that's going to take it to the next level where we're fol as an example, I think we have 13 agentic solutions that we are working on right now across the end-to-end hiring lifecycle. But what which is obviously very exciting. But what we're focused on is with our unique knowledge and our our data, because we have millions of of data points on historical candidates in contact centers and BPOs. What can we uniquely bring to the world and to contact centers and BPOs to give them advantages with these new technologies that are now possible? based on all that we've learned over the years and all and all that we already have structured within our products. So that's what's coming next. Very we're very excited about it. And a lot of that stuff is launch well has already launched or is launching like in we're talking months. Gina: Wonderful. Is there anything that you'd like the audience to know, Daniel, that I haven't asked you yet? Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: well, I'm launching a book. we're we're we're gonna be at CCW Vegas next year. you know, like I said, one of our biggest customers, our top customers, BPOs, and you know, is they feel the consequences of hiring the most and have the most complicated hiring processes in the world, right? And it's kind of crazy that no book on hiring has been built for them. And so we're launching the BPO hiring playbook, strategies and tactics for for high volume c you know, a client focused hiring at scale. And We're launching that at C C W and we'll have copies. I'm gonna have a copy for you, Gina. So that's Gina: Perfect. Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: that's something that's that's kind of fun. We we we aren't just, you know, technologists, but we deep we believe deeply in the science of hiring and how to get it right and the strategies associated with it. So we we definitely we definitely care about this topic and our clients and and and this book is to give our clients and and others a resource to to help take their hiring to the next level. Gina: Phenomenal. Congratulations. As an author, that's no small feat, right? So congratulations on that. Yes, absolutely. Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: Yeah, it's a lot it's a lot of work, but it's been fun. Gina: To wrap things up, I've always been a fan of James Lipton. And so to end the podcast, we do a little bit of rapid fire. So tell me, what sound or noise do you love? Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: So I'm big into the outdoors, and I love the sound of running water like a stream or a river, or my personal favorite is the sound of wind in in an aspen grove. You ever heard that sound? It's it's my special place. I have a aspen grove in my backyard and brings me joy. Gina: Excellent. What sound or noise do you hate? Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: Ooh, there's a lot of nails on a chalkboard, shovel on on concrete. I suppose that's probably the worst that I can think of if you ask me on the fly. Gina: I'm gonna guess that you live somewhere cold that you would no shovel on concrete, Daniel. Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: I I do, yes. Heard it more times than I care to to mention. Yeah. Gina: And what profession other than your own would you like to attempt? And and this is funny given your father's history and and that kind of thing, but Yeah. Yeah. Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: I know, right? Which w do I want to be a rancher or a well let's see. you know, I've always had a a creative side to me and and also a desire to to you know, I grew up reading a lot of books and just being inspired by a lot of great, great people that came came before us. So I'd probably say an author. Nowadays, you know, movie producers also can have that kind of impact if they make a movie that's good. so you know, movie producer author is probably on my list, I would say. Those are probably things I would do for free if I could and that's probably a good Gina: Absolutely. Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: sign that it'd be a great profession too. Gina: Absolutely. And if somebody wants more information on Journey Front, who should they reach out to? Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: Well, www.journeyfront dot com, of course. they can reach out to me personally. They can reach out to you. You know, what we've obviously worked with you with a lot of your clients as well, shared clients. So I would say between our website, journeyfront dot com, yourself or myself, that should give what they need. Gina: Wonderful. Daniel, thank you so much for your time today and for joining us and for sharing your your origin story. that's fascinating about your father and Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: Thank you, Jim. Gina: and about you. So thanks so much for being with us today on the Tech Matchmaker. And I look forward to seeing you next week. Daniel Ash - Journeyfront: Likewise, thank you.