00:27:59 · Daniel Chait
[00:27:59] S0: Well, yes. I mean, look, if you're doing anything in the world, you're gonna have people who don't like it. So let's start there. Like, yes, there will be people who don't like it. I think opinions about AI and opinions about AI interviewing are pretty mixed. I mean, there's a lot of negativity, and there's a lot of concern about the role of AI in society. Forget hiring. Think about the conversations around data centers. Think about the conversations around intellectual property. There's tons of concern around AI in all aspects of the world, and a lot of it very understandable. And in interviewing, there was a wave of AI interviewing that came out over the last few years that candidates really didn't like at all. It was not very transparent. So shockingly, as we learned when we were looking at this market, there were a lot of those early products that would not tell the candidate it was gonna be an AI. They would say, hey, Guillaume. Congratulations. We'd like to interview you. Show up on this date and time. Click this link. You're gonna get an interview. You're like, oh, cool. And then you get on there, and it's not a human. It's an AI. That's deceptive. Right? So people are just turned off by that. I think a lot of the voice mode of those early conversational products were not very good, and so they were stilted. They would interrupt you. They often had an uncanny valley cartoon character trying to talk to you. There's a lot of just the experience wasn't great. And then the decision making wasn't very defensible, so they would conduct these automated interviews, but then in some obscure black box way, like render judgment on you with no explanation as to why. And so when we went out to find our solution and research the market, we had those three things in mind. And we specifically wanted something that was gonna feel good to the candidate and sort of handle those questions about the experience itself. It was gonna be very transparent and candidate centric, give the candidate the opportunity to ask their own questions, to interrupt, to know ahead of time what they were dealing with, to opt out, all of that. And then that was built on a foundation of structured hiring with a clear rubric and a sense of structured fair hiring where we're gonna ask every candidate the same questions. And so that was the solution that we brought to market.
00:30:02 · Daniel Chait, Guillaume Moubeche
And so what we see is when a candidate goes through our process with Greenhouse Voice AI, they give it very favorable marks. They give it four out of five stars 90% of the time. And our basic idea is if the candidates aren't gonna like it and use it, our customers aren't gonna buy it. So simply, have to make it something that candidates are gonna like. [00:30:21] S1: And also, it's gonna get better over time. Like, if you look at every voice models, like, we're gonna pass the Turing test for conversation, so you wouldn't be able to notice whether it's a human or a or a Voice AI. So it's it's only gonna get better. [00:30:34] S0: I think that's right. And look, I think, you know, as much as, again, mean, I empathize, like, many of us haven't sat on the phone with the airline shouting representative, you know, to try to get to someone like, b. Right? It's like, b. Like, I get that. But I think also [00:30:47] S1: Imagine when you have a French accent.
00:30:47 · Guillaume Moubeche, Daniel Chait
[00:30:47] S1: Imagine when you have a French accent. [00:30:49] S0: Exactly. I can imagine it's not great. But at the same time, like, the technology does improve, and I think societal attitudes about AI in hiring have already evolved very rapidly. Like, what's okay to use AI to do in a job process has changed and in a lot of ways opened up, and I think that's becoming more and more acceptable. And I think we're going to start to see more and more acceptance and realization of the benefits and of the upsides as we go. I think it's on us you know, to deliver that that promise. And I think when people see that, yes, they're getting a fair shot. Yes. They're... The experience is is is pleasant. There's transparency. Then I think, you know, the... You know, we we have the ability to drive those attitudes. If we build crap products that people don't like, yeah, they're gonna hate them.
00:30:49 · Daniel Chait, Guillaume Moubeche
[00:30:49] S0: Exactly. I can imagine it's not great. But at the same time, like, the technology does improve, and I think societal attitudes about AI in hiring have already evolved very rapidly. Like, what's okay to use AI to do in a job process has changed and in a lot of ways opened up, and I think that's becoming more and more acceptable. And I think we're going to start to see more and more acceptance and realization of the benefits and of the upsides as we go. I think it's on us you know, to deliver that that promise. And I think when people see that, yes, they're getting a fair shot. Yes. They're... The experience is is is pleasant. There's transparency. Then I think, you know, the... You know, we we have the ability to drive those attitudes. If we build crap products that people don't like, yeah, they're gonna hate them. [00:31:35] S1: Yeah. I mean, you're at the forefront of something that's, like, very new, and that's also, a societal, like, change. So obviously, as you said, you know, like, some people are gonna dislike it, but if people realize that they have better shots at finding jobs, then, you know, it becomes something obvious and people will recommend it. When you look at your business model, because you went from being a pure SaaS player to leveraging AI a lot more. So we're talking about, like, token cost, etcetera. Like, what's your vision about the price of token with AI? Do you think that we're gonna have, like, similar margin to to SaaS in the coming years and the price is going down? Or what... What's your, like, perception of it?
00:31:35 · Guillaume Moubeche, Daniel Chait
[00:31:35] S1: Yeah. I mean, you're at the forefront of something that's, like, very new, and that's also, a societal, like, change. So obviously, as you said, you know, like, some people are gonna dislike it, but if people realize that they have better shots at finding jobs, then, you know, it becomes something obvious and people will recommend it. When you look at your business model, because you went from being a pure SaaS player to leveraging AI a lot more. So we're talking about, like, token cost, etcetera. Like, what's your vision about the price of token with AI? Do you think that we're gonna have, like, similar margin to to SaaS in the coming years and the price is going down? Or what... What's your, like, perception of it? [00:32:16] S0: I think everyone's trying to figure that out. I think, you know, maybe we'll... It's a super interesting conversation right now. I suspect that, you know, if we go back and watch this interview in in five years time, we're gonna be like, oh my gosh. Those people said to [00:32:28] S1: me, this
00:32:29 · Daniel Chait
[00:32:29] S0: not anything. Right. Exactly. It's all changing very dramatically. And I think it's part of what makes it a really interesting time is that we're in the middle of a true disruptive moment right now. It's equivalent to me to the late nineties Internet revolution, where everybody knew everything was changing. You didn't quite know where it was headed. But we very much at Greenhouse have said, internally and externally, this is a disruptive moment. We gotta disrupt ourselves before others disrupt us. And coming out of that disruption, you can either become Blockbuster or Netflix, right? It's huge opportunity and it's huge peril. And so there's a lot riding on getting it right. And so we're all trying to navigate these things as best we can. Certainly, the business models are changing, already have changed. The way our customers wanna interact with a company like ours is less about seats and users and more about usage. And I think where that's headed is, my best guess, more towards even further on that journey from users to usage to real outcomes. Like, if I have an agentic hiring platform, ultimately, can't you come to me and say, hey, Greenhouse. You're awesome at hiring. I gotta hire I need to make. Help me. And I go, great. Here you go. And as much of that, I don't think it's gonna be like a vending machine where you pop out a candy bar, but as much of that as I can make easy and successful and help it work as best I can using the power of data and AI, I think that's a huge possibility and something that our customers are gonna really want for us.