AI-Powered Hiring and Navigating Startup Success with Sabashan Ragavan

Intro [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter podcast with your host, Benjamin Menna, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership, and placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:19]:
Hey recruiters, have you heard about this tool? You have to check out hey Milo. It's the AI powered tool that's revolutionizing the hiring process. With hey Milo, you can scale your time and interview more candidates in a fraction of the time. Hey milos uses proprietary AI for two way conversational voice interviews, giving you the edge you need. Hundreds of recruiters and hiring managers are already using hey Milo to streamline their workflow, boost their success, and making four x the placements. Ready to transform your recruiting process? Check out Heymylo AI and start making more placements in less time. You can try it out for free today. Hey Milo, thank you for sponsoring the Elite Recruiter podcast.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:56]:
I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. I have my special guest who's going to talk about how you can utilize AI to save time. And what is time? Time is money in recruiting. Time gives you the focus where you can focus on the right things, focus on the relationships, and that is how we make money in recruiting. So I am so excited to welcome Sebacean from Hey Milo to the podcast. So welcome.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:01:18]:
Thank you for having me, Ben. We've chatted a few times in the past and excited to finally be on the podcast.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:24]:
So, like, AI is going to like, it's one of those things right now, like artificial intelligence. I think a few people, like, saw some really crappy chat GPT messages, some really crappy chat GPD content, and they're like, AI kind of sucks. AI is a fad. AI is like, just game over. I think things are different. I think AI is going to absolutely change the game, and it's actually one of the reasons why you are going to be one of the featured demos at the AI recruiting summit. So I'm so excited about you sharing there also with everything that you guys are doing. But let's dive in.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:52]:
Okay. First of all, what is hey Milo? And then we'll kind of like, walk into how you got started there.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:01:58]:
Yeah, definitely. So, hey Milo is an AI break agent that enable companies to interview and evaluate candidates through a two way conversational interview. So we started building hey Milo almost a year ago, and the idea was we have hiring managers in the past used to do a ton of screening calls, and we realized that a lot of the recruiters that we were working with kind of struggling to scale their time. And we're struggling to evaluate candidates for more technical roles. So we built a milo to kind of solve that problem. It's since kind of evolved to going after high volume jobs, you know, non technical roles as well as technical role. And you've been kind of just adapting to, like, a customer demand where the market has taken us.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:37]:
So you actually were one of those hiring managers. Like, you got a background at what, Microsoft, Instagram? Like, some big tech players as, like, a product manager. Like, how'd you roll from there into the recruiting space?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:02:49]:
Yeah, definitely. So a big part of what I would do at Microsoft and Instagram and then at other companies as well, also helping my friends who are startup founders was helping them interview candidates.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:02:59]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:03:00]:
And I saw kind of the struggles that they would have in regards to being able to, you know, scale their time when they were startup founders. And then I found myself, my team, like, vending, like 20% to 25% of our weeks just interviewing candidates.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:03:13]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:03:14]:
And it was insane. And when we talked to, like, our recruiter like, counterparts, we realized it was difficult for them to also, you know, scale their time. We realized there was a lot of intricacy that regards to how they were evaluating candidates that were difficult for them to do because they were scaling to so many different roles from, like, product management, engineering, you know, designer roles, all sorts of, you know, other roles in between as well.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:03:35]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:03:36]:
And so me and my co founder resonated with this problem in regards to helping companies interview candidates more effectively. We've also been on the other side, as candid, where we weren't really happy with the way interviews were conducted by companies. And so we kind of were like, all right, we gotta, like, there's not really anyone solving the problem right now. And that, like, all the stuff coming out, like generative AI, we can go in and transform this space. And so that's kind of how we went from being, you know, a tech lead and a product lead. Now building a startup in the recruiting space.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:07]:
I had a guest on recently, Lukey, who actually did a great breakdown of what he does with the hiring managers he's worked at, and he actually ran the numbers. And just like, if you're looking at hiring these many engineers, you're also losing this many thousands of hours in time for these engineering managers and interviews, which you got to factor that into, like, how much time they're supposed to be building a product.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:04:31]:
And it's a lot of contact switching, too, right? Like, you're busy working, right, building your product, right. And then you got to go do like a two hour, like, session of, like, interview with, like, candidates.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:04:39]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:04:40]:
And then there's all the follow ups and stuff like that. And more and more I realized so many of the candidates are coming through the funnel right to us, right. As hiring managers were not or were barely qualified or like, they were able to answer the basic training questions and get through that first round. But, you know, clearly we're not a good fit still, right. It was something that, like, my team used to always complain about, like, I complained about all the time to, like, my managers and like, my directors and so on. So, yeah, here we are with hey, Milo.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:08]:
That is awesome. So, like, you initially had the idea of hey, Milo and what have you guys learned along the way through testing and dealing with customers and, you know, seeing the changes that you guys went through?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:05:20]:
Yeah. So a lot of things, right. I think the realize how important it was to have a really solid candidate experience. Companies aren't going to deploy hey, Milo. If candidates don't actually want conduct the interview and aren't having a good experience while they're doing the interview, that's ultimately going to reflect poorly on the company.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:05:37]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:05:38]:
I think we realize, like, how important it is to customize, you know, hey, Milo. For different companies needs. They need in different roles. And so there's been all sorts of stuff that we've had to do to kind of allow companies to really customize team Milo for their specific hiring needs. And then the third thing is, like, just the importance of integration in this space, right. There's so many different recruiting tools out there from like ats to different ways to source candidates. Right. Having a way that you're able to easily integrate and then push data across different systems, that's super critical.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:06:09]:
Which were things that I think when we initially started, hey, Milo, be kind of overlooked, but we quickly realized how important they are and they've helped us kind of grow and ensure that customers are happy using us.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:18]:
So talking about ATS, there's like a thousand different ATS out there, but there's a few big players. But one of the hardest things that I've seen many recruiters is actually updating their ATS. Can you guys automatically update these conversations and get it dropped in there?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:06:32]:
That is definitely the plan. Once we do integrate with an ATS for as new versions come out and stuff like that, we are compliant based on the API that we're using. Luckily, most of the large ats have API deprecation paths that we're able to easily push to new APIs if needed, or they legacy AP's or until the new versions and all that kind of stuff.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:06:51]:
Right?

Benjamin Mena [00:06:52]:
Okay.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:06:52]:
The idea is that once you get Kmyelo set up, you don't have to, especially for some of the role, they're super high volume.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:06:58]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:06:58]:
You don't have to go in and constantly have to like update it or change it.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:07:02]:
Right?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:07:02]:
There's as little manual work as possible for the company. Awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:07]:
So flipping gears, we're going to talk about just like recruiting artificial intelligence. I'm super excited about the summit. How can recruiters overall, this is the lens that you have an AI tech recruiting company, but recruiters, how can they overall utilize AI to get ahead or even just stay relevant?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:07:27]:
Definitely, I think a lot of different ways, right? Number one, when you look at what a recruiter does, they're usually like the first touch point.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:07:33]:
That's candidate, right?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:07:34]:
But oftentimes for role, there's so many different applicants, right. It's hard for them to kind of scale their time, right? So using AI to even like handle that first touch point with candidates is becoming more and more critical. And there are a number of companies kind of doing that. And then when you look at it like a layer lower, right. Actually being able to do those initial streams, doing an initial touchpoint is great, but you need to still figure out if they're a good fit. Being able to scale those conversations and taking that unstructured data from conversations and turning them into insight is becoming increasingly critical. There's a few different players solving that, including us. And then from there, actually automating.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:08:12]:
Once they've gone through the deeper levels in terms of interview, like the actual hiring manager around, maybe a few on site take interviews, actually automating the process around getting them an offer, getting them answers to questions that they might have to ultimately get them forward and actually accepting the offer.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:08:28]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:08:28]:
I've seen a few companies actually going in and solving that. Right, where you have chatbot available twenty four seven to answer stuff about, okay, you know, what do the benefits package look like in this scenario? Can I take time off if I have this issue, et cetera? So I think just like kind of the end to end experience, right, of like, you know, how you engage with the candidate is being transformed. With AI, it's critical for recruiters to kind of adopt because they're able to, number one, scale and stay ahead of the curve, right. You're seeing a lot of these tech enabled recruiting agencies kind of grow really quickly because they're adopting AI, right? So I think some of these legacy recruiting agencies need to do so as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:05]:
Like between like agency and internal, or people that have their search firm and internal recruiters. Who do you see utilizing AI the most?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:09:15]:
Right now it's 50 50, I'll be honest. Right. There's times where I think it's more the recruiting agency and then there's times when I see it more internally. I think there's different reasons why both ultimately want to adopt AI, though. Agencies want to do it so that they are competitive to their clients that they're acquiring and they're using that like a selling point.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:09:33]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:09:34]:
And they're using that the way to kind of help them make more by interviewing more candidates and all that kind of stuff. Well, for companies it's more of like a cost reduction initiative.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:09:43]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:09:43]:
A lot of these companies have like, you know, scaled down the recruiting team and they're not looking to maybe rehire because they're still kind of going through this period of like cyclical hiring, right. Like they might have a couple of roles here and there. So it's been 50 50 in terms of like where we've seen more adoption of AI, but like for different reasons ultimately.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:59]:
Do you see a point in time with some of these large companies where they're going to spend more money on AI tools than they will like on, on additional recruiting headcount?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:10:07]:
It's a good question. I don't know if it would ever get down to that point, but I can see it definitely where AI tools supplements the team, right. It's part of the budget in terms of like hiring plans. So instead of like you hiring five more recruiters, maybe you hire a couple and you bring on, you buy a few seats for these AI tools, right, to either scale interviews or scale candidate touch points, et cetera.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:30]:
We had like a time period where I think we can make the most impact with artificial intelligence when it comes to recruiting and AK make the most amount of money. How long do you think that like financial window of opportunity really is to take advantage of AI before literally everybody's using it?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:10:46]:
Interesting. So I think for like recruiting agencies using AI as their selling point to acquire clients, right. I think that window is probably closing in the next couple of years.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:10:57]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:10:57]:
I think every recruiting agency is going to be leveraging AIh. Otherwise you're going to become basically irrelevant or you're going to be losing a lot of customers or you're not going to be that efficient.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:11:06]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:11:07]:
So I'd say in the next couple of years, but I do think that how well and how much these different agencies and companies are utilizing AI. Like, I don't think they've seen the full extent of that and I don't think we know in like the next couple of years, I think it's just going to be like an exponential curve where people are using AI more and more intelligently to do what they need to do right over time. Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:28]:
So it's not going to be like, hey, we have like a one year window to really make some money. It's like we have multiple years to really take advantage of the opportunity, learn the AI and utilize it.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:11:39]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:11:40]:
Like I don't think it's going to happen like super instantly and I think it eventually will become kind of table stick to use these AI tool to stay relevant. But how well you leverage it is where there's going to be like there's going to be different agencies at different levels and like that's going to growing over time.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:11:54]:
Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:55]:
I know we were talking offline before we hit the record and one of the things you were talking about is when it comes to a recruiters database, it is one of the biggest things that recruiters have. They talk about, but they almost never actually utilize. How can AI help keep their own database and candidate pool fresh? Were always sitting on this goldmine that we tell our customers about, but we almost never use. We just go to the first available people.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:12:20]:
I think the biggest thing that we've seen with agencies is like they have potentially even millions of candidates who they've interviewed once, right. Or maybe they've contacted once for a role, but they ultimately didn't get the job and they're now just like stagnant in their database, their ATF, their CRM, whatever, right. And it's difficult for the agencies to get their recruiters to basically find these second place candidates for additional role and leverage that candidate pool to really monetize additionally for new opportunities that come up. And so what weve had a lot of companies do now is theyre using hey Milo, or whatever voice agent you might want to use to interview these candidates out scale, right. And keep their candidates fresh, chase a new job posting. Were actually seeing some companies actually use that as a way to win deals where theyre like, hey, we already have these candidates. They just did a screener screening interview with hey Milo, which is based off of your job posting, right. Here are the top ten candidates that we interviewed.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:13:16]:
Let me know if you want to hire one of them. And then companies are looking at our agency that are looking at doing that as a way to make additional kind of revenue, like additional win additional clients.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:28]:
And, you know, it's, when you're an agency, it's who has the client many times is the one who gets paid or who has the candidates the one that gets paid. When it comes to AI and recruiting, is there anything that recruiters should actually be worried about, especially with this legislation that we're seeing come about?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:13:47]:
Yeah, I still think that AI, you don't ultimately want it to make your hire, you still want to use it as a tool where it's maybe collecting information from the candidate, maybe doing a basic screening interview or doing some additional collectional info after a screening interview. But if you're automating it to the point where I, you're making like pure hiring decisions and like trying to remove the recruiter, I think that's when you get into kind of dangerous territory, both in terms of like, from a legal perspective.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:14:13]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:14:13]:
Based on the laws that are out there in New York and Illinois, I believe.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:14:16]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:14:17]:
As well as in terms of like actually being like leveraging AI effectively, there is still an amount of human involvement required to actually kind of bet these candidates, right. Make sure like potentially they're the right cultural kind of fit. And so, yeah, I think that's when like you're getting into kind of like dangerous territories from like a regulations, legal perspective and actually making the right hires.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:37]:
Awesome. So I gotta ask the question, especially since you're definitely in the AI space, will AI replace the recruiter?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:14:43]:
I personally don't think so, or at least not anytime soon. I do think it will supplement the recruiter and I think it will help them, for example, not have to do as many screening interview calls.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:14:55]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:14:55]:
Which is kind of the problem that allow them to focus on the right set of things.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:15:00]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:15:00]:
I still think that like, you're gonna need recruiters for that. I also think human recruiters are going to be the ones who are going to be managing the different AI tools, getting them to work properly with each other, setting things up, monitoring. But in many ways, AI is going to augment every single role out there, from product management to software engineering, you name it. I think it's going to augment recruiters the same way it's going to augment product management, engineering and so on. But it's not going to replace these roles and it might change the role significantly. But I still think recruiters are going to be required just their role and their day to day, I think will be definitely super different a couple of years from today.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:39]:
If you want to get laugh. I really want to get this trending. The job of a recruiting engineer who's the one that's actually in charge of working with all these platforms, working with all the data, understanding the artificial intelligence, that's the goal I have, is to get that job actually trending.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:15:54]:
I like that. I make a lot of sense. The person who builds integration between the tools configures the agent. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. The recruiting engineer is a job title that you should probably, like, file a trademark about right now.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:07]:
Check that out once we get it done with this interview.

Intro [00:16:10]:
But.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:11]:
All right, so I'm going to jump over the quick fire questions, and I want to take this out on a bit of a founder's approach because you're a tech founder, but also at the same time, there's a lot of people that have their own agencies and, like, being a founder and running a business is a completely different skill set than it is, especially when I was an internal recruiter or when you were internal working at Instagram, Microsoft. So people that are looking at making the jump to owning their own business, setting up their own company, what advice would you give to somebody that's actually just starting out?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:16:41]:
I think, number one, you got to be passionate about a problem that you're looking to solve. Number two, I think you have to be a little either hungry or there's got to be this itch inside of you to want to do something different against the great go outside of, like, the typical nine to five to want to start a company. And then number three, I think it's really important to have, you know, good, like, a good, like, partner.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:17:06]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:17:06]:
When you're starting, like, a startup business or like, a venture type scale business.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:17:11]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:17:11]:
I think if you don't have, you know, any one of those three, like, it's a recipe for disaster. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:17]:
When it comes to partnership, I think that's one of the toughest things to do because, like, you're literally marrying somebody, building this business together. How do you go about finding that, right co founder, the right partner? Because I've seen it blow up so often in the recruiting space.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:17:33]:
Yeah. I think, number one, it's someone who shares kind of a passion for the problem that you're solving.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:17:38]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:17:39]:
That's really key. Number two, it's ideally someone you've worked with in the past and maybe built things together with or maybe started a business, so you know what it's like to kind of work with them.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:17:47]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:17:48]:
And number three, it's someone, you know you can you can get angry at or you can get upset at.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:17:54]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:17:54]:
And you can, you can get in the trenches, you can go to war with the person. If you can't do that, right. I don't think you're going to have a happy partnership.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:18:01]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:18:01]:
Because the startup journey is like, it is a story of ups and downs. It's kind of like the stock market in a way. Over a long period of time. It's going up for a little bit, then it goes down a little bit, then it goes up over a little bit. And then ideally if you're new to compound and like approved the company, if you're addressing customers problems effectively, right. Like you'll see gradual growth right up until the right, ideally, right. Assuming there's a market there, all other crazy variables that are involved. But it is a story of ups and downs.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:18:27]:
Things are maybe getting better. So you need someone who you can go to war with and get angry. But I've hardest like hard conversations with but deal with it in a very effective manner.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:18:38]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:18:39]:
And so luckily my co founder, we've known each other for a while, you've gone through that like we've gone through the ups and downs, our second company together now as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:45]:
So yeah, I love that somebody that you can go to war with because whatever business you're starting, especially recruiting business, you are literally in the trenches every single day. You were going to war. You worked at Microsoft, you worked at Instagram, some of the biggest tech companies out there, but you decided to make the jump and bet on yourself. Why did you leave? Did you always have this itch? Because you could have been safe working at those companies for the next three decades.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:19:13]:
Yeah, I think for me I was doing a lot of zero to one stuff at these companies, at these big tech companies on like other early pm on Microsoft Teams and then later with working on Instagram reels on the recommendation platform in the early days as well.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:19:26]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:19:26]:
And so something I realized was like, you know, I would spend so much like time and effort like helping like these products grow, right. And I realized like the return for me personally was not nearly as much as if I started my own thing, right. And was to grow it from zero to one. And I felt like I was putting in so much energy for these different products, I kind of wanted to do it for myself. And so I was looking for a while I like kind of different problems I wanted to solve. And so that's eventually what led us to build our last company refer market, right. Which kind of a problem that we saw based on people in our networks and all that kind of stuff, inequality with people. You know, we grew up back in Toronto versus like, people in like, ss Seattle and all that kind of stuff, but, yeah, like, it was just like an itch, right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:20:08]:
It was like this desire to kind of like, create something that I could say with my own and I can spend, you know, morning tonight working on and know that, like, I was building it for myself.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:20:18]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:20:18]:
In a way, I love that you.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:20]:
Just also said that, like, the morning tonight, like, when you're starting everything, like recruiting business, tech business, like, it takes a lot of momentum to get like, you know, over the first hop or over the first hill. Yeah, but that kind of goes into my next question. And, you know, this probably helps because you've exited a startup already, but what advice would you give to experienced founders to keep on seeing success?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:20:42]:
What advice would I give to experienced founders? I think we're still in the process of becoming experienced founders ourselves. Right. I'm gonna, like, say that before I give any advice to experienced founders, but I think you've seen some success, right. You need to still stay hungry. There still has to be this motivation for, like, okay, like, I really care about this problem and you wanna see what you're building ultimately through fruition. I think that's like, very important, right. I don't know. When I talked to some folks in my network where like, sold companies for like hundreds of millions of dollars to like, billions of dollars, right? I think they all have this, like, internal fire in regards to, like, seeing a different world, right? And so they're like, fixated on, like, making that a reality.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:21:20]:
They have almost this, like, they almost cannot see a world where that future vision which they're trying to build towards, it's in a reality. I think you, you need that, right? Like an experienced founder or like, as someone who's like, building multiple companies, those are the folks that I've seen, like, be the most successful, right?

Benjamin Mena [00:21:35]:
So take that question and kind of like, break it down into just the rec tech side of the house. Other founders in the rec tech space, what advice would you give to them?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:21:45]:
I think in rec tech, because it is a more crowded faith, you gotta spend a lot of time making sure you're solving the right problem that doesn't have a bunch of solutions around.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:21:54]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:21:54]:
And when you think it's a problem, you need to go really deep into why it's a problem, why other folks haven't solved it. I think that's something that's really key. I think you have to also have experienced the problem if you're trying to build a solution to it, right. That you have to really put yourself in your customer shoes or you should be the customer yourself. I think that's where I've seen a lot of rec tech founders struggle. They're like product manager and they're building some random thing in an area that they haven't really experienced. I think luckily for me and my co founder, we've kind of lived through this problem, right. So we kind of understand it from that perspective.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:22:25]:
But I see a lot of folks, like, for example, building source control, then they've never done sourcing before, right. So that's really key. I think as like a founder in the rec tech space, right. I think also be ready for investors to turn you down. It's a space that most investors don't want to invest in.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:22:40]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:22:41]:
It's like not the easiest market to go after, but if you really care about it or you see a problem that hasn't been solved effectively, then it makes total sense to go after. Cause there is money to be made in the face.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:50]:
I always see the occasional rec tech founder bring out this product. They've never touched recruiting. They've never done anything about recruiting at all. And you're kind of just like, did you even talk to a recruiter?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:23:00]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:00]:
Did you even like, talk about this? But at the same time, I've also seen some rec tech founders that knew nothing, have no recruiting background. Completely kill it.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:23:09]:
Yeah, you want to drop a name right now?

Benjamin Mena [00:23:11]:
I'll save that for like, later. Just so like, you know, we're talking about you and not a bunch of other products, but there's some, like, people that have just absolutely done it. Like, I don't know if done the research or like, actually, like you said, like, I've lived, breathe, and went through this problem day in and day out. It had a financial impact on everything that we were doing company wise. Like, let's work on trying to solve that. So jumping over to the next question I have for you is, has there been a book that has had a huge impact on your own personal career?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:23:39]:
There's been a lot of podcasts, I'd say, that have had a big impact on me. I think 20 VC is one that's been really helpful when I was in my early days as a founder and even to this day, you know, this week in startups, right. I think is another big one in terms of books. Like, I think there's like the classic ones, like zero to one that's been, like, really helpful, but I'm honestly not the biggest book guy. I kind of like doing things firsthand. So apart from zero to one, I can't think of anything else that's been really, you know, impactful.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:24:07]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:24:08]:
I think I've had a lot of peers in my circles, though, that have been very impactful to me, wanting to become a founder. I've seen people build companies kind of, you know, both from my, like, you know, class at Waterloo.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:24:18]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:24:19]:
As well as, like, place full co workers on Microsoft Instagram. So I think that's helped drive me to want to do that as well and, like, seek similar success. But, yeah, like, apart from that, like, I think that's where I've drove. That's kind of where my motivation kind of comes from.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:32]:
So you're saying like, mentors have had more of an impact than, uh, big time.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:24:36]:
Yeah, big time. I'm not a reader.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:38]:
Has there been like a mentor too that you love to like, like that you've learned a ton from?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:24:41]:
I think, like my old director at Microsoft.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:24:44]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:24:44]:
I won't give him a, well, I don't know if I can say his name right now, but he was someone that I learned a lot about in regards to how he thought about product and also how he managed. He had this way of motivating folks, which was really, really amazing to see. And then also like the product lead over at Instagram that I worked with.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:25:01]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:25:01]:
He was amazing. Like his ability to like, focus on the right things.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:25:04]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:25:05]:
And you needed to like, make deficient. So those are a couple of folks. And then, yeah, there's been a ton of folks at like the startup accelerator that we were at era that were really helpful.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:25:13]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:25:14]:
From the sales mentors to product and engineering mentors. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:18]:
So as a founder, you had your great days where everything's freaking awesome. Sign those new clients, but there's a lot of days that are just hard. How do you get yourself through those hard days and those hard weeks?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:25:30]:
Alcohol definitely helps. But beyond that, beyond that, I think, like, you gotta keep, you gotta keep looking at like, what's next, right. And see, like, that there's still like additional opportunity.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:25:40]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:25:40]:
And focus on that. Obviously understand what has led to, like, the low, right. Like you've lost, you know, maybe a contract with the big customer, figuring out what you did wrong with it. Like, you know, on the customer support side, was it on the product side, was it on who knows what, right. And obviously taking that low, learning, then learning from them, but then still looking at like, okay, like what do we have next? Right. We still have additional opportunity ideally and focusing on that to like ensure that you can keep pushing forward in the.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:05]:
Journey that kind of goes into. The next question I have is, and this is one of my favorites, I'm going to ask it kind of like two ways. First is just going to be just basic career. If you had the chance to go sit down with yourself at the very beginning of your career, probably at Microsoft with everything that you know now, what advice would you give yourself?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:26:24]:
I think continuously hungry in terms of like wanting to learn as much as you can. Try to meet as many different individuals with different perspectives as possible.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:26:33]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:26:34]:
Continue to do that in your career and continuously look for where there are areas or like problems to solve within the organization, the product, etcetera. And don't be scared, regardless of how early you are in your career, to voice those as things that should be improved and bring those up to like the right people or go and solve them yourself. That would be the advice I would give to myself if I was, you know, day one at Microsoft or someone just starting their career and they so much of, when I first started I was like, okay, I gotta fight within my bounds, right? Like I'm, you know, a software, I started a software before I became a product manager, but I was so like in my bubble of like, okay, I'm a software focusing on this area of this product. Like I should be building in this space, right. But I wish sooner in my career I started just looking outside of that like kind of bubble and like look at weight and move and just like provide impact, right. It would have accelerated my growth and my learnings a lot earlier.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:25]:
Same question, but like looking back at like the first month or two of, hey, Milo, like everything that you know now with working with customers, acquiring the customers, working with recruiting companies, if you had a chance to sit down with you and your co founder and just like have a cup of coffee or grab a beer.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:27:40]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:41]:
What would you tell your yourself?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:27:43]:
Good question. I think the biggest thing I would tell us would be the customer that are actually willing to pay. Don't spend time with the folks that just think this is a hot product and there's a big difference there. The folks who are willing to pay actually have this problem, right. And they're going to give you way more helpful feedback and that you're going to be able to iterate with them like more effectively versus the folks that are, you know, looking to work with AI companies because it helps their brand and all that kind of stuff, like, that's not going to take you very far. And I think we wasted months, I'd say, right. Working with the wrong set of customers who didn't really have a problem in scaling their interviews.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:28:19]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:28:19]:
If you just started seeking the folks who are actually willing to, like, pay because it was, like, already costing them a ton of money to scale their recruiting teams, or they were losing candidates because they couldn't interview, like, even a fraction of them.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:28:31]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:28:31]:
So that would be the number one advice they'll give us.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:35]:
Talk about a lesson learned right there. Yeah, of course. Direct rebel, which is awesome. So for people that want to follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:28:46]:
You can add me on LinkedIn. I've been a little quiet on LinkedIn and Ben, we talked about this. I will be upping my LinkedIn game, but send me a connection request. I love popping out with calls, but potential folks who resonate with the problem are just interested in AI in general and continue the conversation. I said link to probably where I'm honestly most active. I was going to shout out my Twitter, too, but I think I got ten followers. So that's probably the, like a year.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:11]:
I was ready to give you a hard time. I'm like, with everything you're doing, you know, all the recruiters that you're working with, you should be, like, on LinkedIn way more.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:29:17]:
I know. It's coming. It's coming. I'm going to up my LinkedIn influencer game pretty soon. You're not going to be able to, like, turn me off. I'm going to, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:27]:
Well, now, before I let you go, is there anything else that you would love to share with the listeners?

Sabashan Ragavan [00:29:32]:
I mean, I think just in general, like, it's been tough for a lot of recruiters over the last couple of years that, like, you know, hiring kind of, like, freezing in a lot at a lot of companies. Right. So we've seen a lot of recruiters kind of get laid off. We've seen agencies, like, lose business.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:29:46]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:29:46]:
I do see, like, a re acceleration occurring.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:29:49]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:29:49]:
And again, I don't think for the recruiters who are worried about AI replacing their job.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:29:54]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:29:54]:
Like, I wouldn't view it as that. Like, AI is augmenting every job in the world from the most white collar roll to no blue collar and everything in between. So being open to that change is going to make you a ten x recruiter, and it's going to help you be able to drive value to your business.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:30:10]:
Right.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:30:10]:
So that's the advice I'd give to recruiters both internally at companies, right. And also on like the agency side.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:16]:
I love that a Ten X recruiter and recruiter engineer coming out of this conversation.

Sabashan Ragavan [00:30:21]:
I love Republican. I'm actually going to adopt that.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:25]:
Well, I'm so excited to have you on here. Like I said, I'm super excited about having you at the upcoming AI recruiting summit. So make sure you get registered. Make sure you check out the hey Milo demo there too. And for the listeners, I want you guys to keep crushing it. I want 2024 year to be your best year yet. And I want you to take advantage. You know, don't forget the hard work and the work that recruiting requires to win, but take advantage of the AI and AI systems that can help Ten X, you all right, guys? Thank you.

Intro [00:30:53]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.