The Multifamily Innovation® Podcast

Multifamily Hiring Confidence, Without The Guesswork

Patrick Antrim

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 36:10

Send us Fan Mail

Most teams still hire on gut and guesswork, and pay dearly for it. We sit down with Patrick Antrim to unpack why resumes and performance in a single interview rarely predict how someone will actually reason through the messy, high-stakes decisions that define success on the job. The fix isn’t more software noise; it’s decision intelligence that translates your real-world success factors into precise, role-level questions and signals leaders can trust.

Patrick walks us through a practical shift: extract the competencies that make your top performers win, then use a custom AI model to generate targeted interview questions for every applicant in your current workflow. No process overhaul, no gimmicks - just sharper due diligence for people decisions. We explore how this approach exposes hidden mismatches, like when a strategic manager applies to a hands-on tactical role, and how scenario prompts reveal assumptions about pricing, pace, and constraints before they turn into costly rework.

We also connect the dots across the business. Treat talent acquisition with the same rigor as any major investment: respect the data, test the scenarios, and make the risk legible. When hiring, training, and bench planning operate in sync, you cut churn, stop overcompensating with remedial development, and build a pipeline that keeps you from rushing the next backfill. For multi-location companies, we dig into giving local teams the flexibility they need while preserving governance and signal consistency at scale.

The throughline is simple: humans decide, AI clears the clutter. By scaling the kind of insight once reserved for executive searches to every qualified candidate, you raise manager confidence, improve candidate experience, and turn selection into your last true competitive edge. If smarter hiring would change your quarter and your culture - this conversation maps the path.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a hiring leader who’s ready to move past guesswork, and leave a quick review so others can find us. Want more? Explore role-level models at PicassoHire.com 

About the Multifamily Innovation® Council:

The Multifamily Innovation® Council is the executive level membership organization that makes a difference in your bottom line, drives a better experience for your employees, and allows you an experience that keeps demand strong for your company. The council is uniquely positioned to focus on the intersection of Leadership, Technology, AI, and Innovation.

The Multifamily Innovation® Council is for Multifamily Business leaders who want to unlock value inside their organization so they can create better experiences and drive profitability inside their company.

To learn more or to join, visit https://multifamilyinnovation.com.

For more information and to engage with leaders shaping the future of multifamily innovation, visit https://multifamilyinnovation.com/.

Connect:
Multifamily Innovation® Council: https://multifamilyinnovation.com/
Patrick Antrim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickantrim/

SPEAKER_03

Welcome to the podcast. Sitting here with Patrick Antrim. Patrick, it's so great to have you here.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's great to be back.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you. Yeah, I'm so excited. I'm excited to dive into our topic today. Um, and that topic is um how confident hiring managers or business owners are when selecting new hires.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And uh I would love to just kind of start with a question for you about how confident do you think hiring managers really are when selecting new hires?

Resumes, Interviews, And Guessing

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's a very interesting question because oftentimes we're we're guessing. And an interview, you know, typically people think about when they're deciding who to meet, in many cases, many, multiple interviews, um they're looking at a resume, right? And they're looking at maybe past experience, what they've done before, and that's what the resume tells us. And then they get into an interview. Somehow, at some point, they're going to make that decision in an interview. And in that interview, mostly that assessment is around their confidence, their presentation, their performance. And at that point, they're guessing. Because at we what we don't know then is how somebody reasons or thinks, because ultimately, once they get into the organization, that reasoning or how they think or how they see the world is what will drive the decisions that they make at work. And so that's how we're able to predict performance.

SPEAKER_03

That's great. So it's not just about the it's not just about the resumes, it's about decisions on how the power manager makes. Um, I love that. That's great. Um, where do you feel um that maybe like the risk could come in with those decisions if they don't have the right tools in place?

Bias, Intuition, And Mishire Costs

SPEAKER_00

Well, oftentimes when I said guessing, I mean we're we're making gut instincts, and sometimes those are biased, right? And so I've always said that nobody knows a company's business better than the people that are in there doing the work, especially the leaders that are designing the system and leading the teams, and and they they know already what is unique about their business, and they also know who has already succeeded in the past, right? And what specifically the skills and the tactics and the and the things that drove the business. Um, sometimes those people have left the organization, maybe got promoted, moved on, have a life event, and and they also know who doesn't work, like what doesn't work in the organization. And so during that interview process, uh you're we're working off of intuition from a leader. And it's not necessarily scalable and it's not necessarily repeatable. But with Picasso Hire, what we're able to do is extract the competencies and success factors from an organization to formulate a unique AI model that can use to match culture fit and um assess if the person has the capabilities and the competencies and the success factors for what you expect in that role. And historically, we've not been able to do that. And when we don't do that, we guess or we're using just our intuition. We're it's costing right now companies three to five times the annual salary in just expense, cost, you know, not having the right revenue in place. Maybe there was a risk because of the business, you know, alignment wasn't there. When they have a mishire, it's costing a lot. And it takes time to replace that position. So that cost right there is um you know something that we're we're aiming to solve for, the mishire as well.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Um, you mentioned about AI. I would love to hear more about how you mentioned Picasso, which is your uh your platform and AI and how that can leverage into businesses to make it a smoother hiring process for them.

Workflow Shift And Targeted Questions

Candidate Experience And Red Flags

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, if you think about how it happens now, uh the workflow is changing. In other words, you know, you advertise for a job, and when that advertisement is seen, you know, somebody's applying for that role. And that when that comes in, it's going into a workflow. And that workflow right now is just collecting resumes and stacking information. What we're doing is we're creating an AI model that when the when the resume comes in during your current workflow, that we're able to do some analysis to determine what questions we should ask that candidate specifically for that role. So you may have company-wide values, you may have specific needs of the organization, but the role that you're hiring for in a specific market may have unique nuanced needs. So we're creating an AI model that is going to do some things in the background to look at the resume coming in and come up with really great questions that now the interviewer can ask to guide a really good interview. And so, from a candidate experience, uh the candidates love that because they feel like, wow, they really did some research and they spent some time to really get some clarity about you know my role and my background. And for the hiring manager or the operator or the leader, they they get tools and assessment insights that you know they would never have had taken the time to do, right? And that's allowing them to see needs and gaps in what we know winning looks like and what the candidate presented. And so now the hiring manager gets interview questions that can um listen for certain tell signs or red flags, right? And so if you think about you're hiring for a role that is more technical and and more tactical, in other words, they are doing the work, and then the candidate that came in is more a leader and has managed the work. So Picasso Hire will help you guide constructive interview questions to determine is this person set up to succeed in what we actually need as success? Right. And it's as if you hired an agency to do this for you for every candidate that comes through the system. That's that's I think what's most fascinating.

SPEAKER_03

That's yeah, very fascinating. Um, I guess with the change, of course, AI is becoming such a big just employ, I guess, just it's becoming really Yeah, we have work. We have work. And I just want to like hear more about with companies that are still introducing AI um with their hiring needs and just in their business. Um what would you say on that?

Tactical Versus Leadership Fit

AI Adoption And Evolving Org Design

The Four Levers Of Company Scale

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So let me back it up a little bit and talk about what is a company. A company is nothing more than a collection of people. So our belief is that as companies grow in the future, they're going to be the organizational chart is going to change. And uh as that changes, the workflows change with it. And when the workflow changes, that means there's different skills that are going to be required. So, like Picasso Hire is going to help assess a lot of those changes that may come come down the road as well. But if you look back in history, a company was, you know, going back to like, you know, way back from like Rockefeller days, which you had like steel and railroads and these types of things going on. It was the leverage was your ability to put financial resources together, get capital, get investors, and scale. And then all of a sudden, then a company became, you know, financial resources and physical resources. And what I mean by that is like buildings. Think of like a simple analogy like blockbuster video. More locations meant more growth, more income. So people used to say, How big is your company to assess if you're a big company or not, or a good company, or not, with the amount of people, because you had a lot of locations, so you had a lot of human bodies running these locations, and that was growth, that was scale. And then comes you're you're thinking, well, I got all these properties across the country now, and I have all these people running around running them. I got to figure out how to manage them. And that came the third piece, which was human resources. And and now it's like, how do we get leverage through our people? And what's interesting about resources is resources get depleted over time, and that's why I don't like to talk about human capital or talent management or talent strategy as human resources, because our goal is to increase the value of individuals. AI allows us to do that. So it's no longer what can AI do for you, it's what can you become with AI. You know, historically, CEOs had access to teams of people, an assistant, a finance, you know, consultants, attorneys. They're making decisions because they have all the right information. Now, Picasso Hire is giving every hiring manager, I don't care if you're on-site, regional manager, a property manager, uh talent manager of the whole organization. Picasso Hire gives you an insight report as if you had a team around you to help you understand how people think. And it's really interesting, and that's why I key into the word acquisition, and I'll talk specifically about the apartment industry, real estate, is they acquire properties on a daily, weekly their look, their job is to look for properties and grow the business or more locations. And in that acquisition strategy, they have a lot of respect for acquisitions. Now, I said acquisition, so talent acquisition and also real estate acquisition. What that means is they'll spend$50,000 on attorney fees to figure out the right structure, lender fees, right? They're looking at due diligence reports, looking at mechanicals in the building and the air conditioning units and the physical plants. They'll fly across the country, go look at the property, inspect contracts, inspect leases. They want to figure out all the information to make a right acquisition.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

Treating Talent Like Real Acquisitions

Don’t Chase Talent, Lead And Attract

SPEAKER_00

And they invest in that intel because they know it matters. They know that when I do that, the investors respect them and give them more money when they want to do investments. They also know it's a leading indicator for the ability to get yield out of a portfolio or an investment. They also know fiduciarily, it's the right thing to do if you're the one deciding on which investment to make. But when it comes to talent acquisition, we're spending more money on balloons than we are on talent acquisition. Yeah. Because they're thinking human resources, they're thinking expense, they're thinking recruiting, they're thinking cost, and they're thinking scarcity, and they're rushing the process. And so I want every executive leader that runs a business to know that their job is to build a great business. And bringing great people into that business means understanding how to attract them and then also how to select them once they're in front of you. But right now, nobody's really been trained on this. They're not cognitive scientists, and the technology wasn't available in the last 30 years to be able to do this at scale. And now, with like Picasso AI, we can do this on every candidate that comes in. Right? Typically, if they're hiring a CEO, they'll do this kind of work. And the background check and they'll look at the personality tests and all these things. Yeah. But they don't do it for every candidate that comes in because they get 300 candidates on every application. What we do, every candidate that comes in gets this level of intelligence, so these executives and business leaders that are bringing people into their company can make smarter hiring decisions. And ultimately, that is the leverage. That's that fourth leverage. I talked about financial resources, physical resources, the buildings, and then human resources. That fourth one is being able to use technology and AI as leverage to make smarter decisions. It's what can I become as a company when I have this type of intelligence, and what can those people do inside the company once I figure out how to build that winning team? Because that is recruiting. You're you're you're when you are winning, that's the best way to recruit, is because people want to work on winning teams. But if you're selecting the wrong people, the winners leave. Nobody wants to work with a negative, non-performer, complainer that isn't matched with the competencies. So we have to look at who's the problem. Was it the employee that was matched up with the wrong competency, or did we select the wrong person and put them in a role that they weren't ready for? So that is where I think the greatest opportunity is, regardless of what happens in AI, regardless of what happens in technology, if you believe people will be part of companies and that you will need to bring in the right people into those companies, then this will be the single most important skill set of a leader. It's not something for HR. Now, HR, yes, this is the kind of air cover that goes around all the current things that they're doing, but we've never had decision intelligence to make the smart decisions with people.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, no, that's fascinating. There's a few things that you just mentioned.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Um, one, I want to dive into the business impact, as you mentioned, talking about winning and leaders. And then, but also before we go down that, um, talking about Picasso, and just I was researching a little bit about Picasso, and I love the slogan about hire better, hire fat or hire better and faster, making confident decisions. And you talk about confident decisions in that talk just now. And I think that's what these leaders are wanting to key in is confident candidates, confident leaders in their organization. And um, of course, there's a lot of wanting to have new candidates and new leaders, but we want to make sure we're not chasing just anyone that comes in. And so I would love to know your thoughts about don't chase but lead in your leadership.

Aligning Hiring With Training And Bench

SPEAKER_00

If you could kind of highlight in that, I want you to visualize a feather floating right here. And if that feather was floating right there and I went to grab it and I put massive force to grab it, the force of me approaching it will push it away. So we need to kind of catch the candidates. So a lot of what we do in our brand and our business and the way that we engage and lead as leaders allows us to build healthy organizations. And if you're a healthy organization, people will want to work on teams where people have a plan and they're going places and they're really taking care of stuff. Yeah. But in marketing, recruitment is marketing. And I think the resources are not allocated that way. And I also believe that great marketing repels as much as it attracts. And if you think about a great sports team, they don't rush the process, and they go where winning are, when winning happens. So they observe their talent pool in another company. So they're watching college sports and they're saying, I like the way this player approaches the game. I like you know the way that they fundamentally make decisions, I like the way that they work with others, and and they're selecting off and they're projecting a future. Will they fit our competency, what we believe winning looks like in our organization?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

Confidence, Competencies, And Better Interviews

SPEAKER_00

And they're willing to uh have a bench, and that bench doesn't need to be on payroll. I've I've managed people for many, many years, and I've had friendships, relationships where we um worked competing companies, but I also was on a mission to know where the portfolio was going. And at one moment in time, when we were in a position to go national and take over 13 different properties, I had already spent and invested time with people outside of my own payroll to though when I needed them, draft them at that moment and say, I want to bring you in. Because I I spent that time. So people rush the process. And what happens is this is a way really Nectarflow solves this through line is the way it works now, is Nectarflow can get your training and your hiring to work together. What that means is right now, if you look at an organization, oftentimes each one of those disciplines is uh overcompensating for the other. So training is trying to train people that may not have been selected properly with the right competencies. So they're like, okay, we got to find another role for you, we got to move you to another department, and they're overcompensating. That costs money, a lot of money. And they're just not tracking the cost of that. The other piece of it is if you're not developing leaders, becoming that winning organization and roadmapping plans for people, then you don't have the development going on in the organization, then you rush the hiring because somebody leaves, you don't have a bench and you don't have anybody there. So now you're rushing the selection process and you're in this loop of constant waste of money.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But back to my fiduciary responsibility, if we want to elevate the professional management of these businesses and organizations, it's your job to figure this out. And especially if you're taking care of a business on behalf of investors, you're consciously deciding to let money leave the organization if you don't solve this problem.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Right now, most people will talk about it being a problem, but they're not solution aware of how to solve it. And that's why we want to do what we're doing now is help people understand that we now have the ability to do help protect mishires coming in, yeah, but hire smarter, faster on the way in. So this chasing concept is really interesting question because when we get into let's chase just say this is a job interview, and let's say you're a candidate and I'm an employer, who's doing the choosing? A lot of people have a conscious bias thinking that the employer is selecting, but oftentimes the candidate, if they're winners, yeah, and they have options and they don't need the job, but they want to be part of your organization, they're the ones choosing.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And so we have to start thinking about that candidate experience and how to productively move people through that process.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, no, that's that's fascinating. Um, and going back to the financial um aspect, um, if a company, of course, is hiring the right candidate um with maybe Picasso or the right tools, um, then it it can have a good benefit of their cost for their business and just a good benefit for their their company, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I mean, we're taking million-dollar problems and taking them down to$60,000 problems. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_00

I think most CEOs, most CFOs recognize like, yes, I'm I'm in for that.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Um, they're in for that.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. No, that's great. Um yeah, I just I would love to, I mean, I for those that are listening, I would love to hear more about um just improving confidence um this year and just in future years. Um, what can they take from our conversation today um that that can benefit for their their business and their interview process?

When To Pre‑Screen And When To Assess

Humans Decide, AI Clears The Clutter

Multi‑Location Hiring Without Bottlenecks

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think the main thing is number one, nobody knows their business better than them. And inside that business, Business, the people running the department know the needs of the department even better than the head recruiter at the corporate office. And so if you can get to a point where you can develop the competencies and success factors, like with Picasso, we extract that. Then you now have a benchmark or a winning rate, right? Where of all the candidates that come in, they get matched to that. But ultimately, it's getting to the interview. And it's getting to the interview where you're hiring a human. So you need to have a human experience. You need to be able to speak to them and get them talking about how they went about solving problems in the past, how they see the world, you know, what do they see about the disciplines and the activities of how they worked with others, all the stuff that they know about interviews, but being able to in that interview improve that communication. Because right now it's just intimidation. The employer is trying to figure out are they telling me the truth? Are they going to be like the three bad hires we had, right? Or they're a little scared. And the candidates has probably a single flow of income and they're depending entirely on this conversation. And they're just trying to be confident and read read it in such a way that they're trying to anticipate what do they need to hear for me to get selected. And it's this dynamic that if we can just get to how this person thinks by asking them the right questions, then we'll unlock what like a natural flow state in that conversation where everybody feels comfortable and we're just expressing, you know, what how work happens. And when we know how the way that they approach their work, that gets translated into how they'll reason once you hire them. And this reasoning stuff comes from experience. So in the interview, you want to get them talking about their experience. Any conditionality, you were listening for if this then that. Unique moment in time, not always like that, but that's your experience. So now let's fast forward 18 months from now, and you've been in this market operating, and when people come in to rent, you always say, by the way, we have a special. If you move in by Tuesday, we'll give you three months off your rent. So in your mind, you believe that's what is necessary in some cases to close a deal, right? In the market. Well, now, 18 months later, you're in a new role or hiring for a new role. And in the interview, we're talking about what was challenging about the lease up, and now you're talking about well, if I had four months free rent, we could have leased to 95%, we only got to 93%. What we're what we're trying to understand in that comment, it's not right or wrong, it's just your experience. Yeah. And if we know how you see the world or what your experience is or your beliefs are, yeah, right. Then we can we can ask better questions in that interview. Like, what would you do if you know you were if you were renting and there were no concessions? How would you go about leasing? Right. So now we have a very different, and you may come up with nine reasons that rents are too high and you have to have concessions, or people won't move. So you have assumptions in that comment, you have conditions in that comment. Well, we can figure all that out before they make the hiring decision and the financial risk. Most people figure it out after they're in the organization, and the good companies will be nice and figure it out and then overcompensate by training you. Oh, let's make you an accountant or let's, you know, move it around. Like, and they even further the expense of having the selection wrong.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So are you having AI exam or I guess interview the candidate before they talk to the hiring manager, or is this after?

SPEAKER_00

Well, that's a really great question. There's a lot of different ways people can use it. Like if you had a mass scale, you could pre-screen. Okay. So it's up to the employer, right? It's whatever they do now. Um, but what we use it as an assessment, right? So it is aiding into getting all the information ready for a great interview with those great interview questions that are unique specifically to the competencies and the success factors of the specific role, matched with the resume coming in. So now every person, every regional manager, every property manager, every business leader has like a team of people saying, We did all this really great due diligence, like they do on assets, yeah. And ask these questions in here so we can determine if this is the right fit. But they're we're getting them to the human interview better. And then at the human interview, depending on how good people want to do this, some companies are good enough with that. They're like, That's that's it, we're good. That that's a hundred times better than what we've been doing. Yeah. Now, if you really, really, really want to get it right, then you would go to an assessment, and that's where they engage in our motivational uh models and where we can determine what pri how they prioritize, what they motivate, and also in our assessment models where it's the reasoning and how they think.

Keep It Simple: Selection As Leverage

SPEAKER_03

Awesome. I love that. Yeah, yeah, that's very fascinating. Um, because it shows that it you can work with AI and the human at the same time and not just replacing one or another.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Um, I'm sure you can even highlight more about that.

SPEAKER_00

Um we don't believe in AI, uh well, AI never makes a decision. Humans do, the people do, the leaders do, because they know their business and they know their needs. But you have to get to the interview first.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh we do clear the clutter. We get there, we get a lot of the admin workout, all that kind of stuff, manage communications, all those things. But we're not selling software and we're not selling AI. We're talking about bringing smarter hiring decisions to companies.

SPEAKER_03

And I also like that you customize to a business because as you mentioned, every business is unique and different how they hire. Um, and so I think that's just very Yeah.

Custom Models Per Role, Not Just Firm

SPEAKER_00

One of those ways we do that is multi-location management. So typically uh in a larger enterprise, they'll have um enterprise uh, I guess, HR software, and it does everything from all the the workflow stuff, uh, but doesn't ever do the selection piece very well, right? Does all the admin and the you know all the background screening and and all the stuff that is required. That is not what we're doing. It will do a lot of those things if they don't have those systems, but the companies that do have those big scalable systems, typically, if they have 30 locations or 200 locations, they will not invest in that system at each location. Because each location has unique needs of hiring. And so they end up with this bottleneck, right? Hiring is a bottleneck because they the technology wasn't built to manage all these different locations. We've built Picasso Hire, whereas you can almost have an enterprise hiring system at every location, so you can manage candidates at each location and get corporate governance over all your locations if you're the hiring manager. And why that's important is because you may want to provision teams to only have access to one market or one thing, and you're not sending you know PDFs and documents around and emails managing multiple interviews and those types of things. So we're clearing all that clutter for these companies, making it easy.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, no, that's great.

SPEAKER_00

So they can focus on an interview, exactly.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and there's a lot of property management companies out there that have multiple locations, so that is such a benefit for them to know about. Um I guess any f final thoughts, um, those that are listening, and then just would love to hear how we can get connected with Picasso Higher or how those out there that can get connected get connected with our team and learn more about it.

How To Get Started With Picasso Hire

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think um I think the main thing is, you know, keeping it simple. And the reality is you have to collect the right people, and that's selection, and you just need to get them working effectively so you can get to your business goals. That's the goal. We're not here for software, we're not here for technology, we're not here for AI. We're here to understand that talent is the last real competitive advantage in a business, specifically in an AI world where everything is being commoditized. So if you're using an AI software that is enterprise grade, it was built to sell AI and recruiting solutions to everyone. We're bringing a custom AI model, a custom selection model for specifically even the not just their company as customization as you talk about, but to the role. And that hasn't ever been done before. So that's the decision intelligence that people need to be thinking about is if they thought or have thought that hiring has been a challenge, has been costly, has been a pain point, they need to just sit back and rest and say it's not them. It's just we haven't been doing this new intelligence layer. It hasn't existed before. We've been guessing. So uh you don't need to change your current workflow. You can use whatever systems you have already invested in, and you can bring in an intelligence layer that you can at scale assess every candidate that comes in as if you hired an agency to do that. And we've never been able to do that before, and that's the exciting part. In terms of how to get in touch with us, uh, Nectarflow is a brand that's bringing this AI solution to this one problem here. Um, and we believe this is a problem many companies have. We're obsessing on it. We're super excited because we believe um, we just believe in you know AI being a great opportunity for humanity. Yeah, and companies are some of the greatest contributors to our world, our communities. They create jobs, they bring people together, they reinvest, and payroll dollars go up and economy grows. So we're excited about supporting the economics there. But beyond that, there are companies that come to us with just the hiring solution, and that's Picasso Hire. That's that's our solution. And you can go to PicassoHire.com specifically if that's all you needed and that's all that you wanted. But Nectarflow is here to support the businesses in in bringing these technologies forward.

SPEAKER_03

Awesome. This has been so great. Thank you. Yeah. Um, it makes it make gets me so excited for the just new um companies and new improvements out there with AI and hiring and the confidence behind it. So um look forward to doing more of these. And thank you so much, Patrick, for taking the time to share everything. Yeah, thank you for having me in. Thanks. Thank you.