Episode #52: Brian Vesce, Co-Founder & CEO | Vinda Souza, CMO - RefAssured

🎙️ Fighting Candidate Fraud in the Age of AI

In the latest episode of Hiring University, I sat down with Brian Vesce, Co-founder & CEO, and Vinda Souza, Chief Marketing Officer at RefAssured, for a fascinating (and slightly terrifying) discussion on one of the biggest challenges in today’s hiring landscape….candidate fraud.

We unpacked:

• How AI-generated resumes and automated screening have created an “AI stalemate” in recruiting, and how RefAssured can help!
• Why human judgment still matters more than ever, and how to re-center it in hiring
• The staggering impact of fabricated candidate profiles (yes, including North Korean operatives inside Fortune 500s)
• Why resumes might soon be obsolete, and what could replace them
• How RefAssured is building the “back of the baseball card for talent” with real, validated data

Brian and Vinda also share an honest look into the future of ethical AI in hiring, redeployment at scale, and how to bring authenticity back into the talent experience.

💡 One big takeaway: candidate integrity isn’t just a compliance issue for staffing firms; it’s a growth strategy!

Tune in wherever you get your podcasts or at hiringu.com to catch this episode.

For more Hiring University episodes tune into your favorite podcast player or visit us at www.ursusinc.com

Transcript

Jon Beck: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Thanks for joining us on Hiring University. I'm your host, John Beck. Really interesting guests, plural today, uh, uh, and interesting topic. Uh, on this episode today we're diving in, uh, to subject matter that is equal parts fascinating and terrifying, which is candidate fraud. Um, which, uh, everyone I know, uh, our listening base is familiar with.

Um, and from North Korea. So joining me on the show today are two experts who live and breathe hiring in integrity. Uh, we welcome Brian Vessey, CEO, uh, and founder of Ref Assured and Ndaa, CMO Of Rest assured Brian Venda, welcome to Hiring University.

Vinda Souza: Thanks, John. 

Brian Vesce: Thanks John. Appreciate you having us on. 

Jon Beck: Your team is comprised of leadership from all the industry stalwarts tech systems, Bullhorn, Avante, Cyprus. For anyone new to Ref Assured, give us the elevator pitch. Uh, but not the polished ones. The one like, I'm trying to explain it to my mom version.

Vinda Souza: I'll let Brian take that because I'll only give you the polished one. 

Jon Beck: Maybe a little bit of both. 

Brian Vesce: Yeah, I mean, look, we spend a lot of time, uh, vetting candidates [00:01:00] and you know, I was a recruiter 25 years ago. I sat in the seat and we used to do a lot of things to really understand candidate strengths and weaknesses.

Um, and one of the things we actually used to do manually was run references. Now. A lot of people have said like, oh, references don't work, or Nobody gives a bad reference. Um, couple of things. One, if that, if you fully believe that you're, you're doing it wrong. Um, number two, you know, the age old adage was like, oh yeah, if the client wants us to do it.

We'll, we'll do it at the end during the onboarding phase. And so the unvarnished version of this is we always joke, like, why would you wait to the end only to find out that like, oh, they didn't really work at that job. Or, oh, uh, they actually didn't really have that great of a reference associated with their work on that project, or they weren't working on the project that you positioned the candidate for.

Um, and so we've, we've found a really elegant way to automate all of that. Extract some really valuable insights. And you know, quite frankly, the long-term goal for our business is to build a back of a baseball card on [00:02:00] talent. Not only pre-hire, like, hey, how do we understand candidate strengths and weaknesses, quite frankly, before we present them to the client.

Because if we can extract valuable data from that, we can use that as a part of the presentations to the client to differentiate not only the candidate but our firm. So yeah, I mean, when I started. You know, resumes were written by Canada that's edited by recruiters today. You know, they're written by AI and mm-hmm.

We're trying to screen 'em out using ai. 

Jon Beck: Venda. Let's, um, let's take a step back in terms of how we got here. Um, it, it feels like the problem has exacerbated as we went through COVID and remote work, but what's changed in the hiring landscape that made candidate fraud and misrepresentation such a big issue has really, like this year in particular, that's come to the forefront.

Vinda Souza: Right. So we've introduced a tremendous amount of noise. Into the hiring equation without a clear cut means of solving for it. And we've created what people are now calling an AI stalemate. So we have AI generated resumes [00:03:00] that are largely sort of fabricated and non-unique language being overused. And so you see the same sort of format over and over again.

The the m dashes, uh, the, the flowery language to describe something that's largely un parsable. And then you are screening that with an AI solution. That doesn't have any intrinsic human judgment. Therefore isn't able to discern fact from fiction or what seems plausible versus implausible. In fact, there's fair number of candidates who are even starting to game the system a little bit by putting in prompts, uh, and, and little, you know, Easter eggs into their resumes to bypass the, the screening agents.

And so what you're introducing is noise upon noise, uh, and the resumes that actually make it through to a human recruiter. Are usually not ready for prime time. And so we've kind of failed at both ends of that. And one of the things that, you know, we pride ourselves on as recruiting industry professionals is this innate ability to, you know, sense bullshit, right?

Like we [00:04:00] absolutely have a bullshit meter that is hyper tuned. Um, and the more you do it. The more new reps you have under your belt, the easier and quicker and more innate it is. Um, and we are devaluing that, uh, in some of the solutions that we are investing in. And one of our goals at Rep Assured is to recenter human ingenuity and judgment in recruiting again.

Right? To bring that back to the core of what we know to be accurate. We have a friend who, you know frequently, um, he loves a good analogy, so do I. It's like you wouldn't hire a babysitter off the street, right? You wouldn't hire a nanny without stellar, exemplary references. So if you're not doing that for your own clients, all you're saying out loud is I don't really consider the talent that goes to work for your organization as important as I consider the talent that goes to work for mine.

Jon Beck: Love that. And by the way, thank you for using the word bullshit because in the fifties episode that we've recorded, this is the first time I can [00:05:00] check the box that explicitly may, may exist. So we've done it. Good job. 

Brian Vesce: I expecting it from me, John. I didn't expect it from, 

Jon Beck: well now I'm gonna say it too because we're checking the box.

So it's on, um, there's so many players involved. In the hiring process, you have suppliers like scis and full disclosure, we're a happy rep, assure customer and have been for over a year. You have the client, obviously, and their hiring managers. In some cases, there's a MSP that's involved, that's overseeing who at the end of the day is responsible and, and should, and should take.

Take the to the lead on this, because I know from your selling cycles, you're talking to all of us. 

Brian Vesce: Mm-hmm. Well first, you know, we're purpose built for staffing. It's where we grew up. Um, like I said, I've spent 25 years in the industry. Um, we see a unique opportunity for staffing agencies, quite frankly, uh, to level up the capability around how they measure the quality of talent.

And so, you know, we'll get into this in a little bit further detail, but what Venda was really underpinning. At the forefront of what we do, it's identifying [00:06:00] performance fabrication. Like, oh, I, I worked at a b, C company and I was really good at xy, X, Y, Z. And, um, the other thing that Venda was saying was really the only reliable signal we have left is human validation from people who actually worked with the candidate.

And so from our perspective. An overwhelming majority of the volume of hiring takes place within the staffing industry. So, um, quite frankly, it starts with the recruiters. It starts with the sourcers. Um, and that's why we're, we're purely focused in staffing. 

Jon Beck: You mentioned, uh, in a recent post, Brian, uh, you, you quoted some pretty staggering numbers.

DOG rates in 14 states, 137 laptops seized North Korean opera operatives operating in Fortune 500 companies. Still thousands of more fake workers out there. How much is all this costing the industry right now? 

Brian Vesce: Well, one of the things that we get pulled into, quite frankly, is our customer's customers. And so there's been some pretty large organizations that have reached out to us and we've had conversations and they've said, Hey, we work in a lot of these programs and we just did a quick census over the last 12 months, and we found that a lot of [00:07:00] candidates actually get all the way into the onboarding phase.

Only to find out they didn't work at a specific organization that was, that they worked at, where they worked on a project that was important to us. And we've probably spent over a thousand interview hours interviewing candidates that ultimately we can't hire because they fabricated performance, they lied about where they worked.

Quite frankly, they're not even the same person that we interviewed. Um, and so yeah, the numbers are staggering. Obviously there's tons of articles out there, but we get pulled in quite frequently to talk to the, the end customer quite a bit about it. 

Jon Beck: Linda, you mentioned there are some candidates that are trying to gain the system and placing prompts in their resumes to, to trigger a, an ai, uh, agent to, to pick up, uh, from them.

Is, is part of the. The reason we've seen an increase in fraud, partly due to what candidates are frustrated with, with a TS systems that are a black hole, no response back. Fake job postings. I [00:08:00] mean, does some of the responsibility lie on the companies that are, are just creating more garbage that we have to, to, to get through in order to get hopefully a job?

Is that part of the equation here? 

Vinda Souza: 100%. I mean, I think that we all have to take accountability for where the process has evolved into. Um, and part of that is, you know, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. So I think it's very easy from a corporate perspective for us to like shake our fingers at candidates who are using AI to spray and pray.

Blast their resumes, resumes out to jobs that they're not particularly qualified for while suited or even to embellish to certain degrees. Their performance record, which frankly has been going on since time Im memoria, but unfortunately now is exacerbated to a level that's truly untenable. However, the reality is, you know, there is a lot of issues incumbent within, uh, the, the way that resumes are screened by, uh, certain technology solutions, right.

Um, and even using a resume at all. Mm-hmm. As the, the cornerstone of the recruiting process. I mean, it's a very ancient document. That has not evolved, uh, to meet the needs of how hiring currently functions or the velocity by wi by which it [00:09:00] functions. One of the challenges that we're trying to solve for is to kind of reduce reliance on it because it's a very flawed document, and to increase, again, this authentic validation of someone's not only.

Ability to do a job, but a means of quantifying the degrees to which they can do a job well. And also if you think about it, like the reality of the situation is AI isn't going anywhere. Um, we're in this new normal, and the, you can't, you can't squeeze the toothpaste back into the tube. It's out. Here we are.

We're using it now. I have to figure out how to use it well and how to focus it to solve problems that are actually worth solving as opposed to ramming a square peg down a round hole. And one of the ways in which we do that is to really ensure that we are able to understand. The talent performance at scale and holistically, and what someone's really good at, where they have challenges and where they could potentially flex into.

Especially because hard skills aren't really hard anymore. You know, we're seeing. Vibe coding startups getting massive valuations because now apparently you [00:10:00] can write lines of code, maybe not of a tremendously high degree of quality, but you can write lines of code using ai. You can write emails using ai, you can write LinkedIn posts as we all see, right?

So while it may not replicate the capacity of a true artist, um, or somebody who's an expert at it, it's passable. For a baseline level task. So as we start to see that maturity evolve, we're going to get further and further into this challenging area, which is what do we do with the humans? And there is a really interesting, um, area of potential that we affect with the data that we have amalgamated now more than a million reference checks processed through our platform, uh, around the soft skills that are profitable, the soft skills that are most relevant.

This new world of work, um, things like cognitive elasticity, flexibility, ability to handle criticism, ability to flex, tolerance for ambiguity, all these things. That's going to be what really is important to assess moving forward in somebody's, uh, proclivity for a role [00:11:00] versus just the traditional hard skills like I know c plus plus or, you know, I can Code and Python, right?

I mean, those things will become table stakes and what will become differentiated are the truly human skills 

Jon Beck: skills. You mentioned resumes becoming obsolete. What replaces them? Is it one thing, a number of things, because I've heard that comment before and. Um, and I understand it, uh, but I haven't really seen anything to the alternative yet.

Any, any ideas on what it might look like? 

Vinda Souza: Reference checks?

Jon Beck: Yeah. Well, all the 

Brian Vesce: thing is I almost, I almost feel like, sorry to interrupt. I feel like the resumes or LinkedIn profiles, quite frankly now almost replace kind of a cover letter. 

Jon Beck: Mm-hmm. 

Brian Vesce: Which are obsolete, 

Jon Beck: right. I think we can agree on that. The cover letter is obsolete. 

Brian Vesce: Totally. Yeah. Like, uh, cover letters are a lot like when you go to buy a house and you, you put a letter together for the buyer to try to get 'em, like sentimental doesn't work 

Jon Beck: Right.

Brian Vesce: Um, but in my opinion, resumes and LinkedIn profiles are a lot like cover letters and you'll even see. Resumes have quite frankly come down in size quite a bit, even for [00:12:00] technical roles, right? It literally lists out, you know, full stack engineer worked at this company. Quick blurb, maybe they put a little tech stack in there, but the summaries of those have come down, uh, quite a bit.

I see resumes in LinkedIn profiles, quite frankly, as just cover letters today. 

Jon Beck: Hmm. Table stakes almost. You guys have both been in the industry a long time. Um. If you, if you could look ahead five years from now, um, with your own personal opinion and anything specifically that you wanna share about the product evolution of ref Assured, what, what does it look like in five years?

Vinda Souza: Yeah, sure. So, I mean, there's a lot of ways, uh, in which we plan to scale and evolve. I mentioned that we processed a million reference checks now through the platform. That is an impressive stat on its face, but what's more impressive is the 20 million data points that it represents. Hmm. So what can you do with those data points?

That's a really interesting problem to solve, and we're doing it in a methodical and thoughtful way, which is customer centric and outcome focused because we don't wanna just create and build a bunch of products that we find entertaining for ourselves that aren't particularly useful for the customers that we've set out to serve.

[00:13:00] So we're solving problems that we consider to be acute, and the first one that we're solving is around this post higher insight. So we are connecting the dots between expectation and reality. The reference check is an informed expectation. It's an assessment of someone's proven ability to do a job in the past, uh, and using that to extrapolate a possible outcome for how they might perform in a role in the future, in the near future, right?

A role that they're applying for. That being said, creating post-hire insight that's, again, equally validated, that has the same type of structural integrity as our pre-hire reference checks, allows us to then connect those dots and say, well, this is how they actually performed. What's the confidence interval here, uh, between what we expected and what we got as a return, uh, and then to be able to solve a critical area of need for staffing agencies of all kinds, which is around redeployment.

Brian Vesce: Mm-hmm. 

Vinda Souza: Because if you think about the industry average and redeployment and it staffing, in particular being around 5% optimistically, they're co-creating 95% of their book of [00:14:00] business every year. 

Jon Beck: Yeah. 

Vinda Souza: In this type of economic climate. Oh my goodness. You know, that's. That's tough. If we can affect that even incrementally, it could make a mammoth amount of difference in the pocketbooks of all of our customers and pretty much any agency in the industry that would consider using us.

And then if we go to what we're projecting, which is maybe improving it up to 50% redeployment rate, can you imagine what that would do and what that would unlock for you? As an agency and your ability to move quickly and grow prolifically because then you think about the other value props that our data already provides around warm lead generation and talent opt-ins and sales opt-ins, and being able to nurture these profitable bulk relationships into, you know, paid customer relationships like that is, uh, a huge opportunity for revenue growth.

And then adding on top of that, the efficiency improvements and stage metric conversions and operational alignment and just better compliance, risk mitigation, mitigation, [00:15:00] and the dramatic reduction in candidate fraud, identification of it, the ability to, uh, create better CS csep by nature of the fact that you're not sending.

You know, completely unqualified people or potentially fabricated people to your customers that you have, uh, signed a contract to do right by. Right. All of these things add in to a, a perfect storm of opportunity so that performance evaluations and post-hire component, something that we're very passionate about, and that is immediately impending, we're getting that thing out in the next month.

Um, then in addition to that. There's a lot of other avenues that we could go from theirs. Things around universal candidate profiles. So you asked John what replaces the resume? Well, maybe there's a more of a, a central point of control from the candidate to be able to kind of live what this, you know, ideological.

Unicorn type of future state we anticipated with blockchain. Right. But in a much more accessible form, which is to have an authentic non fungible general ledger of someone's performance [00:16:00] history. Right. That is in the candidate's control, but the candidate cannot manipulate. Right. But then can deliver and use as a a calling card of sorts.

If we could do something like that, that would be super interesting. That's on our radar. Then again, the data feeds ethical and accurate ai. We can make better business decisions when you don't have garbage and garbage out. And we already integrate with, uh, some of these very exciting new AI hiring agentic solutions.

And so the, the future is bright, you know, onwards and upwards on that front. Brian, anything to add? 

Brian Vesce: No, I mean, really, I take a very simplistic view to the whole thing and. We started this business because we have reviews in every walk of life from where we shop our doctors, um, the facilities we go to.

However, since the beginning of time, you know, we quite frankly don't have a structured way to understand the quality of talent, and we want to build the back of a baseball card for talent. [00:17:00] That information, especially for contingent labor. And even, you know, full-time labor is usually locked up in these HRIS systems, like through some form of performance management.

But when they leave the company, um, they're not able to to get any of that information. And so we want to unlock that. We want to unlock that during the screening phase. Pre-hire, we wanna unlock that post-hire and so. The future for us is really building what doesn't exist, which is a past performance prior to placement, performance data set that informs a whole host of other services that you can utilize.

Jon Beck: So let me unpack a couple things that you guys said. Um, first of all, Venda, yes, I can imagine a state where 50% redeployment happens and it sounds wonderful. So thank you for giving me that visual. Um. Brian, you've mentioned the back of the baseball card stats, and I like and understand the analogy, but let me challenge it for a second.

Um, I'll use a [00:18:00] basketball card and hopefully there aren't any James Harden listeners. James Harden's back of his card is magnificent. He's a stat machine scores a lot of points, right? All, all the right things to fill up the stat sheet, but a lot of people wouldn't want him on his team because he's really selfish.

And that leads to the question of. Gut instinct, and I almost, I was, when I was prepping for this, I, I was debating whether I was gonna ask this question. Now I am, how do you capture the gut instinct, right? On paper or on the back of that baseball or basketball card looks amazing. But then you interface or interact with the person, you're like, oh, no way.

Maybe that goes to Vida's, you know, example of the, you know, the, the, the, the, um, organic profile of a person, which sounds very Black Mirror episode ish. But anyways, I'll let you guys answer the question 'cause it comes up all the time. Right? Gut. 

Vinda Souza: I have an opinion on this. Ryan, do you wanna take it first? 

Brian Vesce: I, I can see that you do.

Yes, please. 

Vinda Souza: Okay. So I'm an English major. Uh, I've always been obsessed with languages. I spent my whole career writing. I'm a writer first and foremost. Language is power. And one of the things that I'm really excited about with our [00:19:00] solution is the open-ended questions at the end. Like we have these rating scales.

We have soft skills, we have hard skills, we have attributes, right? That's all like very pattern matching data. Um, actionable insight, you know, tm, but the open-ended questions where you get the really juicy stuff and because, uh, you can fill that out. Easily and unobtrusively. There's so much that can be interpreted by a human recruiter when you actually read those responses, that gets at the heart of exactly what you're saying.

Brian Vesce: Mm-hmm. 

Vinda Souza: There's a huge difference between like, so why, let me back up. Why does our brain hurt when we see this uncanny valley of Chad GPT generated? Um, posts on social media because it's the same thing written over and over again. So, in, in innately as a human being, we, we assess that pattern. We're just like, oh, line break, paragraph, break paragraph, break paragraph, great M dash, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Flowery adjective, you know, three adjectives, then a blah, blah, blah. Um, and we started to tune it out and we're like, this is the same. I'm not gonna get anything from it. I'm reading all of this and I still don't know what the point is. When you see [00:20:00] something that somebody else wrote authentically from their, their own heart and mind you innately get what it's trying to communicate, even if there are gram grammar errors, even if there were spelling mistakes mm-hmm.

Whatever it may be. Right. Even if there are inaccuracies, um, from like a, a contextual standpoint. So when I see a reference check for Brian or a performance evaluation, I look at that open-ended component and they're like, Brian's a good egg. Right? I'd have a beer with Brian. 

Jon Beck: Mm-hmm. 

Vinda Souza: That's telling me a lot of what I need to know.

Jon Beck: Mm-hmm. 

Vinda Souza: About what sort of teammate he's going to be, as opposed to, I trust Brian to be adequate at performing this task to the best of his ability. Right. That also speaks volumes. That person would not wanna get a beer with him. 

Jon Beck: Mm-hmm. 

Vinda Souza: Right. What does that mean about his ability to work well with others in a team?

Also, with these questionnaires, when we construct the right. Types of questions we can get at that hidden insight, which are things like, you know, not just the rehire question, which of course is the, you know, the kitchen sink. 

Brian Vesce: Yep. 

Vinda Souza: Question, uh, the, the deal breaker, but [00:21:00] also things around like, where is this candidate's weaknesses as far as managing a team?

Or you know, do they play well with others or you know, would you put them on this type of project for clinical talent, especially if you're placing like an RN and a peds word. What's their bedside manner like? Do they scare children? Like these are things that we need to assess

Jon Beck: lot to think about. Lot to think about. Um, and I like the answer and I understand that we could go on and on. Before we do, I want to, uh, I wanna ask you guys a couple, uh, personal questions to get to know you better. But before we do that, I, if you could leave every hiring manager recruiter with one piece of advice to reduce candidate fraud tomorrow, what would it be?

And if the answer is ref assured, it's ref assured.

Uh. The 

Brian Vesce: answer 

Jon Beck: for sure. 

Brian Vesce: It's, it's, yeah, no, I mean, honestly, the, it, it's a deeper answer in that things that you need to solve for first and foremost is performance fraud. 

Jon Beck: Yeah. 

Brian Vesce: [00:22:00] And then obviously you need to identify if that candidate is behaving fraudulently in any way, shape, or form. Right. So, um, did they actually work at that job?

Did they work on that project? At that job? Did they perform at the level they said they performed at? That's number one. Number two is, are you actually working? With John Beck, right? Or is somebody else posing as John Beck? And there are a number of different ways in which you can go about that. There's, you know, digital footprinting.

So what is that? It's checking to see, hey, when John logs in, if John's from San Francisco, California. Is he logging in from an IP address that's in that particular area, or is he using some form of A VPN? Is John that is supposed to be doing a certain process using John's device? Or is it from a device that quite frankly is not in that area or outside the country?

That's digital fingerprinting. There are a number of different professional networks, technical networks, whether it be LinkedIn, GitHub, whatever. Um, it's [00:23:00] checking the, the. Is that the right social network for that individual? That's called social proofing. And then the last thing is, is John. John. So you can do.

A document check against a government issued ID and a liveliness check, and all of those things exist across different processes. So you know, there's a whole host of ways in which you can use those as kind of gating items, which leads you to the next check, right? You could start with performance verification.

You can move to digital fingerprinting, social proofing, and then identity verification or. You can just skip right to identity verification once you've gotten through the gate of is John the right candidate for this position? What are John's strengths and areas of opportunity and are we at the place we wanna present this person?

Jon Beck: That's good. And, and I think it's fair and, and I'll, I'll, I'll answer my own question and give a plug at the same time from the buyer's perspective, because when I first engaged with you guys, my initial. Reaction, which was wrong was, this is cost center, not [00:24:00] necessarily revenue generating, right? I need to do this because I need a higher quality of candidate, but it's gonna, it's not gonna result in any sort of net new opportunity when that's completely the opposite of what you guys offer.

And, um. So many staffing companies are negligent in that they don't do anything. And that's bad for all of us because it's bad for the reputation of what we, you know, present and the value that we add. So, uh, it's definitely, you know, and we've, we've touched on it in a couple different ways here. Yes, we're trying to mitigate a problem, but at the same time, the overall quality that you're gonna give and your responsibility and the opportunity to do more with the data that you have.

Is, is definitely a revenue gross margin generating opportunity. So, um, for our listeners, yeah, that that's really what it's about. 

Brian Vesce: Yeah. And, and I say this to a lot of operators in the space and execs, which is. What do your customers want? 

Jon Beck: Mm-hmm. 

Brian Vesce: And from the beginning of time, everybody is trying to create mousetraps that help them improve one of three things.

Speed, quality, and cost. And so I always ask our customers, did you talk to [00:25:00] your customer? What does your customer want? 

Jon Beck: Yep. 

Brian Vesce: And there is a new old story that was written about when Jeff Bezos met with Jim Senegal, the founder of Costco. And Bezos asked him, Hey. What's the secret sauce here? And Senegal told them, be relentlessly focused on delivering exactly what the client wants, even if it's harder or it costs you a little money.

'cause once you build trust and loyalty, it becomes unbreakable. 

Jon Beck: Mm-hmm. 

Brian Vesce: And so I talk to a lot of these operators and I share that story with 'em and they're like, oh yeah, you know, I'll, I'll, you know, I, I spoke with our sales reps and they're not really getting good feedback and I'm like, it. You one, you can't have the telephone game here.

Jon Beck: Right. 

Brian Vesce: You need to do it. Right. You, you, you know, I, you know, I know you don't shine shoes anymore, but like, let's get in front of the customers. Let's understand what they do and what they need. And I think that helps really underpin a lot of the decisions that they make around the technologies that they use and the processes that they're gonna deploy.

Jon Beck: Yeah. And that's our, our industry is constantly. Trying to balance between the transactional nature of what we do and the service [00:26:00] aspect of what we do, which is around human beings, which is where you guys play. Um, we could go on and on. Let's ask a couple fun questions for you guys. Um, Brian, I'll start with you.

What's more difficult building a staffing company an a TS system or candidate reference and verification platform? 

Brian Vesce: No. Uh, the ATS business is a hard business. 

Jon Beck: No, 

Brian Vesce: I'll to you that way. Yeah, that was, that was a, that was a tough business. I mean, I think, uh, when, when you're building a solution today. Uh, for that particular space.

You are building a lot of stuff. And when I look back on the, on the a TS building days, I mean, you know, we had a full blown front office, right? A-T-S-C-R-M, opportunity tracking, job order management integrated to your job board. Um, and then that went to middle office and it was time and expense capturing.

And we also need project management. And then, oh, by the way, that's gotta get integrated to our payroll and, uh, back office systems. So. The a TS space, in my opinion, was tough because there's a lot of moving parts and quite frankly, there were a lot of players. So, um, that was a tough space. 

Jon Beck: Venda, nine years at Bullhorn.

You've been gone for almost five now. How many companies has Bullhorn acquired in that 15 [00:27:00] year span? 

Vinda Souza: Oh gosh. Um, there were 14 transactions when I was there. Over the nearly decade that I was there. 'cause I used to, to, one of the things I managed was communications for m and a. You wrote a lot of, uh, so including bullhorns own exits.

I think it was 10 acquisitions and, and four turns of some sort while I was there. Uh, and yeah, prolific, uh, and excellent. Fast way to grow business. Uh, and I very much enjoyed being in that type of seat, uh, and having a bird's eye view of it. But as since I left, uh, I could not tell you. I can recall at least six that I've read about, but I'm sure there's more 

Jon Beck: fun fact.

I used to be in the data center space before I. Found myself in staffing. Bullhorn was one of when they were just getting started. Uh, we were their data center provider as, and art was still, art was there and still is there, so it's, it's incredible. The evolution over so many years in the staying power, uh, and they're obviously the a hundred pound gorilla.

Question for both of you. Uh, I've invented the way back machine and I put you guys in it and I [00:28:00] transport you back to the point in time when you're first starting your careers, what one piece of advice do you give yourself with all the things that you've learned to this point at the point where you're starting your career?

Vin 

Brian Vesce: Vi, you take it first. 

Vinda Souza: Oh, um, that's a really good, interesting question. I think I would just say, and this is so cliche, I'm almost embarrassed to say it out loud, trust your gut. All the mistakes that I made, I made when I was chasing some sort of external validation. And inside, like my stomach was doing loopy loops and I was like, this is wrong.

Jon Beck: Mm-hmm. 

Vinda Souza: I'm, I'm doing this because I feel some sort of pressure to do it, or it looks great on paper, or something about it seems urgently compelling, but there are huge red flags, even if they're not overt. I know and I sense them and if I [00:29:00] just trusted my gut, which is almost always correct. In fact, I can't think of a single time and it wasn't.

I would've saved myself a world to hurt. 

Jon Beck: That's twice, by the way. We've referenced gut instinct on this episode. Hiring. 

Vinda Souza: Yeah, there's a title right there. 

Jon Beck: And career choices. Yes. Brian, same question to you. 

Brian Vesce: Um, mine might be a little different only because I, I decided to become an entrepreneur like way too early.

Um, and, and mine, looking back, I think I would've benefited from. Learning how to run towards problems sooner versus assuming that they would work themselves out organically. 

Jon Beck: Mm-hmm. 

Brian Vesce: And um, you know, the result of that was just a ton of failures and, um, quite frankly, those failures. Were important. I think the failures were probably even more important than the successes.

Jon Beck: Yep. 

Brian Vesce: Um, but I think one of the things that I could have done earlier in my career to avoid some of those failures was to just run towards the problems and, um. I was just a little bit naive and young and resistant to [00:30:00] conflict, so I never really ran towards those problems. But after a few failures, I realized, um, that was something I needed to do.

Jon Beck: Failure is fertilizer for tu future growth, as they say. Uh, that's right. Vin Brian. Thank you guys. Uh, great discussion. Um, the work and the offering that you guys have is important to our industry more so than ever. Uh, if people are interested in getting in touch, uh, and learning more about ref assured offering, best way is through how 

Brian Vesce: we're easy to find.

Um, you can get us, you know, via LinkedIn direct to our site. Um, we are a smaller but mighty team, so ref assured.com, pull us up online on LinkedIn as well. 

Jon Beck: Awesome. Thank you guys again for coming on the show. We'll do it again, uh, and check in with you in a couple months. To our listeners, as always, keep the faith, keep grinding, stay safe, and we will see you next time on hiring you.

Thank you both. 

Brian Vesce: Thank you, John. 

Vinda Souza: Thanks John.