In an era where AI is reshaping industries, can technology ever truly replicate the nuance and intuition of human judgment in hiring, or is the future all about finding the perfect balance between man and machine?
Joining us today is Heidi Golledge, CEO and Founder of Jobot. A three-time EY Entrepreneur of the Year award winner, Heidi is redefining the recruiting landscape by blending cutting-edge AI with human expertise. Known for her transformative “No Jerks Allowed” policy and her dedication to fostering inclusive, people-first workplaces, Heidi brings unparalleled insights into building authentic company cultures and disrupting the staffing industry.
About Heidi Golledge
Heidi Golledge is a visionary entrepreneur with a passion for connecting good people to good jobs. As the founder and CEO of Jobot, she has developed an AI-powered platform that merges cutting-edge technology with a human-centered approach, transforming how talent and opportunities connect within the staffing and recruiting industry.
A three-time EY Entrepreneur of the Year award winner, Heidi has successfully scaled multiple businesses, including CareerBliss, a platform dedicated to workplace happiness, and another venture that achieved a $100M+ exit. Her leadership at Jobot is driven by a culture of kindness, respect, innovation, and connection, empowering both individuals and organizations to thrive.
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Transcript
Note: This was AI-generated and only lightly edited.
Greg Kihlstrom:
In an era where AI is reshaping industries, can technology ever truly replicate the nuance and intuition of human judgment and hiring? Or is the future all about finding the perfect balance between man and machine? Joining us today is Heidi Golledge, CEO and founder of Jobot, which has a mission of good jobs for good people. A three-time EY Entrepreneur of the Year award winner, Heidi’s redefining the recruiting landscape by blending cutting edge AI with human expertise. Known for her transformative, no-jerks-allowed policy and her dedication to fostering inclusive, people-first workplaces, Heidi brings unparalleled insights into building authentic company cultures and disrupting the staffing industry. Welcome to the show, Heidi.
Heidi Golledge: Thank you so much for having me, Greg. I’m super excited.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, looking forward to talking about all this with you. Before we dive in, though, why don’t we start with you giving a little more background on yourself and what inspired you to launch Java?
Heidi Golledge: Yeah, so it was actually way back in the golden era, like around 2000 when the internet took off, I was realizing that it was kind of like AI now where it was a huge dot-com era. And I felt like I was doing finance. I had a three-year-old and a six-month-old. So I felt like it was a risky time to take a leap, but I just felt like this idea of you could pay $70 on GoDaddy.com and suddenly have a website, like a You could open a shop for $100. It’s unheard of. So I took a leap of faith. I started a company called CyberCoders, a technical recruiting firm. And so grew that, was able to exit that successfully, had a non-compete for a few years. And then I thought, really, what’s going to be taking off now, and this is about six years ago, was AI. and the idea of how do you use AI as a complement to a job or as a tool versus just replacing all the jobs. And so I thought that there was going to be a lot of fear from people, which you can kind of see now in the marketplace, what’s going to happen with the robots, with the AI, with jobs taking over. So I thought we’d really embrace that. So I just merged the word job and robot and came up with Jobot and then founded Jobot.
Greg Kihlstrom: Nice, nice. Well, yeah, let’s dive in and we’re definitely gonna touch on what you’re talking about here. And I wanted to start by talking about this disruption in the recruiting and staffing industry. Certainly we’ve talked about AI’s impact in a number of different areas of the enterprise and the business, but let’s start with talking about what’s working and what might need some change. In your areas of recruiting and the consulting worlds, what are some areas where they’re thriving today and where are some outdated practices and inefficiencies in staffing overdue for disruption?
Heidi Golledge: Yeah, so across the US, there’s about 25,000 staffing firms. So you can imagine that it runs the gamut from old fashioned, like literally like fax machines, like file folders with resumes, like some scary business. all the way to functional AI and AI doing the searches for candidates. So I’d say on both ends of the spectrum, there’s some issues. Obviously, doing it manual is literally impossible at this rate. We have 10 million users that come to jobbot.com, so imagine manually going through all that. At the same time, if the AI isn’t correct or the algorithms are not correct, you’re effectively not looking at candidates who might be an incredible fit. So it’s interesting now, it’s really this idea of how do you put this human aspect into the AI, so it can consider a nuanced thought process. Maybe the client wants to hire someone with a master’s degree. Maybe this person has a bachelor’s degree, but they do have six years experience. So a human recruiter would look at that and think, maybe that’s a good fit. And that’s where we’re still working with AI to say, look at the entire package of the human being and all of their experience and all of their skills. And then we’re able to take essentially like 10 million users, 10 million resumes, and narrow it down to about 10 people. But then we don’t have, they have the capability for AI to actually call every candidate, but we do it ourselves because we like to judge the attitude, like the AI can definitely tell aptitude, like do they have the skills? But the human can tell the attitude, like would you actually want to work with this person?
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. And so you mentioned, you know, one of the advantages of bringing AI is, you know, just the volume of, you know, you’re never going to go through 10 million individual resumes and interviews and all of that. So, you know, AI brings scale to the table. What are some of the other advantages that AI brings to the recruiting process that just weren’t possible before?
Heidi Golledge: Yeah, I think that if there’s also like nuance of thought of let’s say you have a client in LA and they want someone that maybe went to USC, but they want someone with a little background from, you know, like from Microsoft and they want other pieces. And so it’s interesting to think of when you think of AI, it can literally go through these 10 million resumes previously. So obviously before it was old fashioned file folders, but then we had something that’s semantic search. So semantic search is smart, so it can say like, okay, programmer means engineer means developer, but it’s not intuitive. So unless you literally type in programmer equals developer, it wouldn’t learn that on its own. So AI can learn like, oh, this is a controller, but this is also considered a a senior accounting manager in some companies, and so it can actually create groups of people, so it can have a full understanding of someone’s background, and obviously at scale, over millions of resumes in seconds.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, because I mean, I would imagine, you know, it could be industry, it could be size of company, it could just be I mean, every, every company’s org chart is a little bit different. So yeah, that trying to find, you know, apples to apples comparison, let’s say, would be really tough for even a good human recruiter that has done a lot in the industry, there’s still a nuance there that they may never have run through. But you’re saying AI would be able to learn some of those a lot easier just based on the sheer volume. Is that what you’re saying?
Heidi Golledge: That’s correct. And what’s exciting too is that we have a software JAX where we can use natural language processing. So instead of putting in like a Boolean logic string that is like, I want from these specific schools and these specific companies, you can just say like, I want, you know, like an experience controller that would have you know, this type of skill set. And it would have the nuance of going through millions of resumes and figuring out, like, what would be the best person for that job. And it’s also can, it’s very good at learning. So let’s say that serves up 10 people and you reject all those 10 people. It can start to see patterns, like, why did you reject those 10 people? And start finding new people that you won’t reject. And then every time you set up an interview, it’ll take that as positive feedback. And it can start to build tables of, like, what was, Why is this recruiter really focusing on these seven people and start sending you more people like that?
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah.
Heidi Golledge: It’s like a super good assistant that’s like 20 years of experience that can go through 10 million resumes in a second.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s, um, having had to go through quite a few resumes in my day, I, I would like that assistant. Um, So I guess on the flip side of this, though, as well, and you touched on this a little bit in the in the beginning, but, you know, finding a job we’ve most of us I know I’ve been there before, you know, applying to jobs, it’s a personal, you know, it’s a, it’s very impactful to the individual, it’s obviously impactful to the teams that are hiring and reviewing. So, you know, in a process that’s that is personal, how do you find the right balance between AI and all the things that it can do, you know, all the efficiencies, the scale, the learning, all those kinds of things with some of those things that, you know, human recruiters are potentially better at, you know, how do you find that balance?
Heidi Golledge: Yeah, I think it’s interesting from our client’s perspective as well, because what is the value of an agency recruiter versus an in-house recruiter? And so a huge piece of that is this human component is once you get narrowed down to, let’s say, those 10 resumes, and now you have a person calling them, it’s interesting that it takes an art form just to literally get them on the phone. Because we typically focus on candidates that are $100,000 or more. in terms of annual income that are currently employed. So imagine that those are like a lot of companies are seeking them out. A lot of companies want to get them on the phone. So that is something that in terms of like if I was a college kid, this is a good job to go into because the AI can’t do this. Like the AI is not going to text them and ask about their King Charles Cavalier and like, how’s their dog doing? And what did Max do on the weekend? You know? So I think that, you know, it’s something where there’s a certain bonding that humans can do. And then there’s a real understanding of what a company’s culture is. So when you’re talking to the client, and they’re telling you all this nuance of their culture, and we always like to see like, who has been a fit in the past, who hasn’t been a fit. And there’s, you know, definitely, obviously, every company in the US when you think of your culture can be this like, You’re coming in, everyone’s introverts, you’re sitting at your desk, you’re leaving. So if you put a big extrovert in there, maybe they both won’t be happy. So these are the kind of, I would say, more of an art form. So if you think about before, recruiters had to do the science and the art. So they had to do the science of picking all the skills and picking all those things. So now, from both the candidate standpoint and the client standpoint, so if I’m a candidate, I can just upload my resume and Jobot can go through our 15,000 open positions and say like, hey, we suggest these six jobs for you. So we can help them and act like a personal assistant to them. And the AI can help them focus on which jobs would be more likely a fit. And then from the client’s perspective, which person is going to be a better fit for the team.
Greg Kihlstrom: Knowing and acknowledging that AI keeps getting better and the technology gets better and all those things, as it stands today, what are potential pitfalls of over-relying on AI as it stands today? How does a platform like Java address them?
Heidi Golledge: Yeah, I think that, you know, one of the pitfalls is like, you know, there are recruiting firms that basically someone applies and then the AI can literally call them and do like a 20 minute interview. So, and actually it’s interesting because a lot of people really go through those interviews and they may even like it better than a human because it’s in the sense of like, it’s like getting gas at self-service. Like you don’t have to deal with someone else, you know, you kind of just go through the process. You know, it’s like, ordering Uber Eats. You don’t have to call the restaurant. So I do think there’s that piece of it. We choose not to use it because we have a lot of professionals that really want to talk to us about the nuance of the companies. So I do think that you could use AI to pretty much automate everything. But at the end of the day, it’s like, Even if you’re going to post on LinkedIn, you can use AI. At the end of the day, people are seeking more and more this human connection. And so for us, it’s combining both the human connection and the AI, versus it’s all automated, because then you’re easy to replicate. Your competitors can literally build the exact same thing, because you’re just an AI engine versus a human connection.
Greg Kihlstrom: Right, right. Well, yeah, I would imagine, though. the applicants as well. I mean, you kind of said this, but like, you’re applying for a fairly senior position. And they’re sticking you with a robot, you know, for throughout the entire like, again, it’s one thing to like, make it through the screening process. And, and, and I’m sure there’s there’s streamlined benefits for applicants as well, you know, by by doing that, but to make it, you know, let’s say 90% of the way through the process and never dealing with a human. You know, it seems like the balance, in other words, is probably desired by both parties. Would that be safe to say?
Heidi Golledge: Yeah, it’s definitely correct. And because if you think about it, too, is like, let’s say that you’re 27. So you’ve had a couple of jobs, you’re trying to figure out where you’re going to spend your 30s. And so you’re not only want to talk to AI to say, like, am I a technical fit? Do I have this? Do I not have this? And, you know, we have what’s called instant interviews. As soon as you apply, if we think you’re fit, immediately the AI can do a very quick online interview with you. So it’ll just help the recruiter understand if you are an indeed a technical fit. But beyond that is like a human component that not only do you want to talk to someone for the possibility of learning about the company and all this, but you also want to also get feedback from them. So we act as also like career coaches, getting them excited for their interviews, like telling them like these are nuances about the different hiring managers. So it’s actually like a human coaching you versus just like you’re a fit or you’re not.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, given, given all of this and, you know, looking out a few years, you know, is, are things going to keep moving in the direction of more and more automation? You know, what, what do you see as the future of recruiting over the next five years or so?
Heidi Golledge: Yeah, I think it’s clear that both recruiting tools as well as the jobs themselves, everything’s going to be revolutionized by AI. So I think AI will be as prevalent as electricity. It is interesting, even if we say things like power by AI or Jobot’s an AI recruiting firm, at some point we’re just going to drop AI because it’d be like saying Jobot’s powered by electricity. We use monitors, we have keyboards.
Greg Kihlstrom: Right, we’re on the web, right? It’s kind of like that, right?
Heidi Golledge: Yeah. WWW, you know. Right. So yeah, I think that’s exactly right. And so I think that it’s incredible in terms of what it will be able to do. And it’s, again, for each unique person is how are they going to harness that and use it as a tool? Because it’s kind of an interesting thing is like, you’ll have the power of a supercomputer in your pocket with your phone. So you could literally make apps, make code, like there’s already today. So imagine in five years what it can do. And it’s also, I think, puts a burden on the companies to figure out if you can make people 10 times more productive. So does that mean that they should be paid 10 times more or five times more? Or maybe everybody works 30 hours a week. And so I think if you get it right, you’d have a scenario where people could make the same or more and then work less hours.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. That would be great. Nice. So I want to switch gears a little bit here and talk a little bit about, you know, as I mentioned at the top of the show, you’re a founder of Java, but you’re a three-time founder, right? So, you know, several founded several successful companies here. So I want to talk a little bit about that and what it takes to build an authentic and a positive company culture to start. So you have something, the no jerks allowed policy. I love this by the way. And you know, it’s, it’s garnered some attention for the focus on inclusivity, respect. What inspired this approach and you know, how, how does it work in practice?
Heidi Golledge: Yeah, it’s interesting because earlier in my career, I was a rare mix of, I would say, technical skills and also sales skills. I was a poor kid, so I figured the best way to get out of being poor is learn technology and learn how to sell. Typically in sales, if you think of the old-fashioned boiler room and sales environments, they actually almost promote the jerks. It’s like, ooh, Bobby got a big million-dollar deal, rah, rah, rah. And if Bobby is a jerk to tech support, nobody cares. So to me, it’s like every person at Jobot is equally as important. So it doesn’t matter if you close a million-dollar deal or not. If you call tech support, for example, it’s like, let’s say your laptop is down. You don’t have to say, do you know how much money I make? Do you know how important I am? Because our superbots, which is our tech support, they understand that everyone’s important. They treat everyone with kindness and respect. So they will jump on your issue for your laptop, whether you brought in a million dollars last year or you just started yesterday. So if they’re going to give that level of service, then that demands that they are also treated with respect. And so that’s why I just came up with the no jerks allowed. I feel like that it just simplifies it, because we believe in kindness and respect. But it just means like you can’t bill enough to make you come in and have a toxic culture. There’s no amount of money that it makes sense. Because we’d rather have three people billing 500K than one person billing a million and five that’s treating people poorly.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. And I mean, I could see, you know, even outside of sales driven, sales driven organizations can definitely see how, how this kind of policy applies. I could see it in, in many different organizations. You know, what advice would you have for other leaders that, you know, listening right now and are like, wow, that sounds pretty good. You know, what, how can they, how can they implement something like this? What, where, where should they start?
Heidi Golledge: Yeah, definitely earlier in my career, it actually started with our tech team. And so we had software engineers and software architects. And we did have some software architects with very big egos. And they would be rude and actually not mentor junior software engineers. And so that also started there. So I always feel like culture is not your pizza parties. It’s not your fun logo. It’s really the worst behavior that you will allow. So if people see that, oh, OK, that software architect, senior salesperson, pick a title, even tech support can be rude. It’s like if they’re allowed to treat people like that, that means everybody else, we’re saying it’s OK. We’re saying that what they bring to the table, whether it be money or code or whatever they’re creating, is more valuable than treating people with respect. So I feel like if you have a five person company, 10 person company, it starts with you. It starts with this fact that something happens in the office and you bring them in right away and you have a chat. And like, this is not tolerated here. You wouldn’t also tolerate a mistreatment of them and you also wouldn’t mistreat them. So it is something that it’s, if you can get it right, everyone in the company can get behind. So they understand that they work at a place that they can’t abuse people, but they will also not be abused. It’s a fair trade.
Greg Kihlstrom: an excuse, not one that I would say is a valid one, but an excuse, nonetheless, that a lot of companies make you kind of touched on this, but okay, so and so they, they did bring in, you know, the $20 million deal. And so, yeah, yeah, they’re a bit of a jerk, but you know, if we lost them or we need more people like that or whatever, you know, how do you, how do you tie. This no jerks allowed policy to business success, because at the end of the, you know, a for-profit company. does need to make money and does need to be profitable. So how do you tie those two together, you know, for those listening out there as well, because again, it’s it’s definitely one thing you want happy employees, and that saves money and breeds a, you know, successful company, but you also want that business success that that jerk may have brought in, but I don’t know. I just I feel like to make it sustainable, it’s got to also be tied to some kind of revenue or profit or something. So sorry, I asked you three questions in there, but I like it.
Heidi Golledge: I like it. So I think, you know, one of the things that we do is, for example, you know, for our recruiting managers every quarter, they’re voted anonymously by their team of like, how would they rate on kindness, on respect, on connection, on innovation, like one through 10. And so we typically have leaders that rank 9.9 or higher. So they are ranked, and then there’s an award of manager of the quarter that’s based on this. So it’s based on average revenue per person, total revenue per team, and also these ratings. So it’s like if you have an incredible team that brought in the most revenue, but your average was low because you just have a couple top builders, and then you as a manager rank really low, then you wouldn’t be getting the award. And it’s quite a bit of like esteem within the company. But I do think that in terms of your listeners, I think a great thing to do is start it from day one. And then if you didn’t start it, and now you have a team of 27, just really talk to them. And then have everyone come in and say, this is important going forward. If anyone has any questions, I’m here. If you ever feel like you’re not being treated with kindness and respect, please talk to me. And then you double down. And then as soon as someone does something, that is maybe unethical or not with kindness and respect, you immediately talk to them. And then there would be a point that you might have to terminate someone that is doing something unethical. And it’s interesting, it’s happened at Jobot before that unfortunately we had someone that was going in our database and changing phone numbers to top people so that way other recruiters couldn’t call them. And it was interesting because he was billing like $200,000 a month, which means that’s like $2.4 million a year, which means he was making like $1.2 million. So this is an incredible opportunity for him. And I did have a chat with him of like, he’s better than this. He doesn’t need to do this. Unfortunately, in his scenario, he kept doing it. So he’s no longer here. But I’d say that that’s rare. I’d say that I’ve probably had a similar conversation with 50 people and he’s the one that didn’t change. I think that most people, it’s almost like raising good children, like you put some guardrails. You don’t want to like sneak and like, hey, I hear you’re doing this. Like, be very clear. Like, we do not tolerate this behavior. And this is the reason why we don’t, is we want an inclusive workplace. We want people to feel comfortable in meetings, to give ideas where they’re not mocked or teased. And so once you permeate that through the culture, and then you’re serious about it, where you’re pulling people in when things happen. people start to realize, and then it’s kind of self-policing where they themselves want to treat each other well, and they become a much more positive unit because of it.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, makes sense. So, and then one more question just about your experience, you know, as a founder, as an entrepreneur, what would you, you know, obviously if someone’s looking for a job, they know where to go and apply, but let’s say those aspiring entrepreneurs out there that may be looking to disrupt an established industry or something like that, what advice would you have for them?
Heidi Golledge: Yeah, it’s interesting. One thing is to look at, for example, recruiting has 25,000 businesses that do recruiting and staffing, like I mentioned at the top of the show. And so a lot of people will talk themselves out of it. Whether you want to do a donut shop, a bagel shop, a recruiting company, a software company, your mind will start to tell you, oh, no, there’s too much competition. I can’t do it. So the first is to put that aside. In six years, we became the number one perm recruiting agency in the United States. So it doesn’t matter that there’s 25,000 that came before us, and there’s another 20,000 that will come after us. So now you go like, OK, so then it’s like, what is your uniqueness? What is your onlyness? We’re the only company that does x, that does y. So it’s like, is it the fact that you’re going to have incredible service, incredible brand? What’s special about your offering? And it’s also like you don’t need to do everything all at once. Let’s say that you want to do eventually 10 things. Focus on doing one or two things really well, better than the marketplace. And it’s, again, just get started. Because most people, sometimes I talk to people that stay on LinkedIn, and they’re like, oh, I want to be an entrepreneur. And then five years later, like, oh, I’m still trying to perfect my product. You know, it’s just like, it’s probably the ship has sailed, you know, like AI’s out now. So it’s good to be like, I have this idea. I understand the marketplace. I’m going to go research it. I feel confident I can bring something unique, whether it’s through your service of it, through the product itself, through the pricing, through the branding. Like if you think of like liquid death and it’s like worth over a billion dollars, it’s just literally water in a can.
Greg Kihlstrom: Right.
Heidi Golledge: You know, but it has great branding and it tastes good. I like liquid death. So I think that, you know, what do you bring into the marketplace? How are you different? And then just do it because let’s say that it’s going to fail. You want to get to the failure fast. You want to like get going, get moving, then realize there’s something you didn’t realize in this scenario. For whatever reason, it’s not going to work, like get through it and then do a different product. the great is the enemy of good. Like if you keep waiting and waiting to try to do something, it’s probably never going to happen.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Well, Heidi, thanks so much for sharing your insights today. One last question for you. I’d like to ask everybody, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Heidi Golledge: Yeah, I think that a huge thing that I like to do is listen to great podcasts like this one. Oh, thank you. And so it is good to, I would say, listen to others. I learn about both people who have done things in the past, like think of Bill Gates, Henry Ford, and that people are doing things currently. And it is interesting to see what are all the breakthroughs in technology. I like to also go to conferences. But a big piece of it is, trying to talk to as many people as you can. There’s value in really everyone and just in finding like, what are their pain points? What are their strong points? What are people getting excited? And so the more that I can learn about people, the more I can make Jawbot better.
