2092 – The Power of Psychometric Assessments in Recruitment with Aptive Index’s Jason P. Carroll

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1:05With us right now, it's Jason P. Carroll. Jason, you are the CEO and founder of Aptive Index. Your website is AptiveIndex.com. Jason, thank you for joining us. Yeah, you're welcome. I like your radio voice intro there. It's so unconscious at this point now. So truth be told, I did go to broadcasting school, and there is a fine line from a decent intro and something called puking. oh yeah like the movie phone guy remember that guy yeah yeah right right right right anyway uh but uh and that's different so one man one way that that guy right if you look up there is a funny funny funny this was in that you we were talking about like 90s music there was a community 90s you know i'm talking about pablo francisco so i don't know maybe yeah on youtube and just like um like the the movie trailer voice guy it's like a segment it's pablo francisco is the comedian but he does like a super hilarious riff on that guy again we haven't had movie trailer voice guy in our movie trailers for probably a couple of decades at least yeah some of our younger folks are probably scratching their heads right now just go just go watch some old trailers especially trailers from the 80s no doubt no doubt well jason um listen you've got a great guitar on the back while you're a musician.

2:31We were kind of geeking out on music before we started hitting record. But I want to learn about Aptiv Index, what you do. And I love the title here, Say Goodbye to Workforce Headaches, of which I think for leaders listening, there can be many. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Previous to this, I was the president of a company called Champion. And we grew from 800 to 2 ,500 employees during my seven years there. And yeah, it was massive growth, incredible stories, not all success. In fact, a lot of that growth was probably in spite of me, not because of me. Made mistakes in leadership, made mistakes when it came to people and hiring.

3:13And so, I mean, look, everybody knows how hard it is to hire. Resumes are relics. They're like AI generated fabrications of fiction. I mean, they've really never been the greatest lever to lean on anyway, and now they're relatively worthless. And so there has to be a better way. And that's what I was in search of back at Champion. Is there such thing as objective data when it comes to hiring and understanding people and seeing who's going to be good for a role. Uh, and I've discovered something called psychometrics, which is basically behavioral assessments or, uh, let's say, call it personality assessments, but on steroids.

3:57So, so active index is that it is a seven or eight minute assessment that is so eerily accurate. It peers into your soul. I mean, it's creepy. Um, and it's, it, and it's not personality assessment. It's actually far beyond it's, it's scientifically validated and proven to predict success in a role, to build better teams, to keep employees engaged, to improve retention of your best people. And then from a selfish standpoint, just profound self-awareness, if you really just dig into it. So that's what Aptiv Index is. It's a pre-hiring tool. It's validated and exceeds all of the EEOC requirements.

4:39So now we can bring in objective of data before we start getting confused with all of these AI resumes and phone screens and interviews and everything else, remove all bias, whether it's age, sex, or ethnicity. And now we're just looking at data first. And it's not the only leg of the stool, but it's one that just totally changes the game and gives us hiring superpowers. Wow. Wow. So help me understand now, just to make sure I understand where this fits in the hiring process. So if you could maybe take me through a very typical kind of recruiting, attraction, kind of awareness, you know, kind of that whole user journey for hiring.

5:27Could you take me through that? And then, of course, obviously, help me understand exactly where Aptiv fits in. Yeah. And it's actually shifted. Um, and I think it makes sense to people who have to hire why it's shifted. It used to kind of come a little later in the stage. Now clients are using it as the first line of defense. So let's say you put an ad out on Indeed or LinkedIn. Now you're getting hundreds of applicants because everybody's just doing that quick apply. Right. And your ATS is trying to read it and figure out who we should talk to. Um, but, but if, if we rely too heavily on that, we're missing all the hidden potential for people who don't have the best written resumes or whatever.

6:05So they're using this on the front end. Like I get the application from indeed. And I have a template set up that automatically emails them back and says, Hey, thanks for applying. We're taking a look. If you could spend seven or eight minutes and take this assessment, it's going to help us understand a little better how you move through the world. And so then when they all take that, it's giving us these insights on the people. It's even giving us a percentage match to the position we've created and the targets of the attributes that we're measuring so that we can know like who might be a really good fit and it's better for the organization, but it's also better for the person, right?

6:39We're empowering them. We're putting them in a place where they're going to thrive and kind of be able to operate within their hard wiring. Yeah. And so, you know, to those who worry, well, this is really interesting, And I was just listening to a long form interview with Yuval, gosh, I always forget his name, Noah, gosh, the sapiens guy, right? And so he's talking about AI. And, you know, really thinking of it is, it's not so much artificial intelligence, it's actually more kind of this alien intelligence, because it's able to come up with insights, AI is, that humans have not gone to that level of depth, analytics and reasoning, right?

7:32So it has the ability to create essentially new knowledge. And this has been evidenced in a lot of different examples. I think notably, gosh, what was it? The AI Go challenge. I really wish I had the name of this, but it was just really fascinating how it beat the grand champion of Go. And I think that was in Japan. Yeah. But it's just fascinating. And it came up with a strategy that no human in that country would ever consider doing. And so, you know, that ability is just exciting because this offers us the ability not to get too philosophical here. But, you know, we think of a use case like what you're describing, Jason.

8:17This is really exciting because it allows us to make fewer mistakes. It allows us to align with the right people. The process right now for attracting recruiting and hiring is just so insanely cumbersome. It is a broken system. It's a nightmare. And a mishire costs so much. And we've all been there. We've all seen a great resume. The person killed the interview. We trusted our intuition, pulled the trigger, and they just bombed. You mentioned AI. And I think it is so fascinating. I got to meet a guy called Jeff Woods. Jeff with a G, G-E-O-F-F. And he wrote a book about AI. And the central theme I took away from our meeting was that we are the thought leader and AI can be our thought partner.

9:02And that's really been interesting. And I took a lot of what we talked about and what he has in his book. And we created these custom GPTs that have been trained on all of our data and science that we're doing with Aptiv Index, like our profile nicknames and attribute names and all that. And our clients have just kind of run with it. I had one where the CEO and the head of marketing are actually a married couple. And after we had this executive debrief with their whole exec team, she went to the chat, the GPT, it's called Aria and was like, Hey, here's me. Here's my husband. Forget business. Give me a romantic guide.

9:41Like what's going on? And just using the data from the profile assessment, it gave her this like one-on-one relationship guide. She like sends me screenshots with her mind blown. She's like, this thing knows how we fight. How is that possible? Right. And it's just because AI can just, it can see those patterns that we can't see and it can all that collective data. This is so incredible. And, you know, anticipate, you know, 10, 20, 30 moves in advance based on behavior patterns. And forgive me for my ignorance earlier when I was trying to relay this. If someone wants to Google this, it's AlphaGo.

10:15AlphaGo mastered the ancient game of Go, defeated a Go world champion, inspired a new era of AI systems. Go is a Chinese, ancient Chinese game. So sorry for my errors, in fact, earlier. I was trying. I was listening to this story as I was kind of falling asleep. And then my brain was getting like rattled awake by what? And I'm like, okay, this is definitely not the kind of thing I need to be listening just as I'm trying to get to sleep. But yeah, Jason, this is really exciting. Do you mind maybe sharing a bit about who's using Aptiv Index and how they use it and kind of how it fit? And certainly what I'm really curious about is, you know, kind of what's the before and after for them?

10:57Yeah, yeah. And before I do, if y 'all listening or watching Go look up that Go story, it's so fascinating. They did a second iteration of it where they did a whole new way of training Go and that new whatever system within hours learned how to beat the first system that they created. So, yeah. Yeah. It's actually – anyway, I digress. Yeah, I know. I love where this thing is going. It's also terrifying. You're right. So, yeah. Let's just hope the – well, and that's – anyway, we don't need to talk about it. No, I know. We could go off the rails. The ethics of AI are deeply fascinating to me right now.

11:38Yeah. Yeah. To answer your question, right? We have clients that range from like kind of that scale up mode, right? Where they don't, they have an HR team and they have hiring, they have people that have been doing this, but they just don't, they need something else. Like they need another leg of the stool. So, you know, 50 to 200 employees kind of a range. And then we have, uh, enterprise clients who are publicly traded and even in an international. Uh, and, and so it really kind of runs the gamut. The tough thing for me in terms of prospecting is I don't have any sort of persona. Cause it's like, well, do you have people?

12:15Okay. Then you're a prospect. It makes it hard to find a niche. Um, but yeah, it's, it's really fascinating because companies of all sizes are using it. The bigger enterprises tend to bring it in with, uh, like one or two teams, like our HR and marketing is going to, going to utilize this and then we're going to grow and, and, you know, kind of spread it out throughout the rest of the organization. Companies of, you know, only a couple hundred employees, we just do one big fell swoop and roll it out across the board. And we do these cool workshops too, where we give people more bite-sized insights about themselves and about the people around them.

12:47And we use archetypes, which are like animals. So there's the eagle, dolphin, wolf, and octopus. And so everybody kind of understands what that means for themselves. themselves. And of course we get a lot more nuanced than that, but, uh, because there's only so much you can encompass with four archetypes, but the cool part about that is it's this new common language that everybody starts talking about and be like, uh, Josh, you're such a dolphin, you know, that kind of a thing, uh, as people interact at work, it's, it's really fun. So it's not just on hiring. It really, uh, enters into the culture and permeates and gives people common language.

13:20And, uh, and the onboarding process is different, right? Like if, if you onboard me, the best way to get me to do well is to throw me to the sharks day one. Let's go. Right. You do that to somebody who is a total opposite hardwiring than me. And they're going to quit on day three. They don't, they need resources. They need information. They need to be kind of walked through given clear expectations and all that. Um, you know, versus, I mean, you, you give me too much information on day one or two or three, I'm drinking from the fire hose. And I'm like, when do I actually get to work? And I'm checked out.

13:51Right. So it's pre-hire screening. It's the hiring process. It's the onboarding and it's the leadership. It's really full scope. Jason, is this a enterprise level solution or is this something that's accessible to SMBs or do you mind talking a little bit about how this platform is structured? Yeah, the pricing is a annual retainer and it's based on employee headcount. And so we have a tier, even right now, one that's for less than 20 employees, that's super affordable. I really want to get this in the hands of startups and emerging companies. Obviously, the hands-on isn't quite as heavy as a larger account that's paying tens of thousands of dollars.

14:37But yeah, I mean, it really, it runs the scope. Hope that answers your question. at. Yeah, yeah, certainly. And then of course your website, activeindex.com. And so to our friend that's been listening to listen, you know, we've been talking about this conceptually. You really do need to see what this looks like visually on the front page. But, you know, to someone that they may or may not be ready for a demo, but you know, where do they go from here? Yeah. So we are redoing the website, but we probably won't see that until January, February. Um, but I'm trying to get it to where we can have, uh, give people the ability to take that assessment, uh, right from the site.

15:18Uh, it's a little tough though, because you get those results. And if you're complete rookie and you don't know what you're looking at, it can't, it's not necessarily super informative. So we're restructuring a little bit of that. But right now, if you just go submit your name and email, uh, on the website, we'll get in touch with you. And, you know, if you're somebody that's, uh, you know, in HR or you're a C-suite and you, you want to see how this, um, you know, kind of speaks to you and could actually, you know, help your team and the dynamics there, then we'll reach out. We'll get you a link.

15:47You take the assessment. We'll give you a readout and a breakdown of that. Um, you know, and usually what happens is we spend 30, 45 minutes with someone and, you know, to reuse this language, you're like peer into their souls and they're just going like, holy shit. If you knew that about me after a seven minute assessment, like what can you know? I, one of the, my favorite things is to, uh, there's two things I love doing with a CEO. I'll say you take it and have your spouse take it. And if I can't give you good relationship advice in 30 minutes, then you never have to talk to me again. Uh, or for a sales team, I'll say, take your, have your top three and your bottom three salespeople take it.

16:23Don't tell me who is who, if I tell you accurately, who is who, then you know, you better pay attention. Right. And the result of that, right? The reason we do that is because then people start seeing the light bulb, right? And they start going, wow, if I can make, if I get one higher right, that I might've gotten wrong. Like I've paid for the software 10 X, you know, it totally changes the game. Yeah. I mean, easily hundreds of thousands of dollars, you know, depending on the role that you're hiring for the team or the, you know, the, the, the, how, just how critical this role is. So I love it, Jason.

16:59And listen, it's a great time. And to those, again, who are feeling apprehensive, listen, you're not competing against AI. You're competing against other employers that are already using advanced tools like this. So it's up to you. How do you want to respond to that? But the toothpaste is already out of the tube. Jason P. Carroll, founder and CEO of Aptiv Index, your website, AptivIndex.com. Jason, thank you so much for this conversation. Really enjoyed it. Let me talk about it.

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