Andrew and Sean talk about hiring tools, positioning MetaMonster, and Andrew's struggles to increase his publishing velocity. Meanwhile, Sean is slammed with inbound after RSA, is putting project management systems in place for Margins, and just got a pool table!

Links:

• Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins
• Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/
• MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/
• Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun
• Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/
• Margins: http://margins.so/
• Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/
• Apply to Miscreants: https://tally.so/r/nrWOlN

For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.

Transcript:
00:01.27
Sean
What's up?

00:02.35
Andrew
Not much, just digging through job applications for this senior product designer role.

00:07.89
Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

00:09.34
Andrew
it

00:09.45
Sean
How's that going? Do you like it?

00:10.30
Andrew
It really makes me want to build an ATS.

00:12.75
Sean
Yeah.

00:14.07
Andrew
i I looked at Home Run again, and

00:15.97
Sean
Uh-huh.

00:20.47
Andrew
it's gone up to, like, their base price starts at, I think, $90 a month or something like that. and JJ has essentially built a, an Excel Google sheets, ATS, uh, which is solid.

00:34.46
Andrew
It's, it's not bad at all.

00:34.71
Sean
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:36.55
Andrew
I think the email automation stuff she's been trying to do isn't working yet. then I have spent a chunk of today trying to figure out how to run a script inside of Google sheets that'll,

00:50.78
Andrew
integrate with an AI detection API because so many of these applications are so clearly just copy and pasted from ChatGPT and not actual applications.

01:00.49
Sean
I see. I see.

01:02.97
Andrew
Yeah.

01:03.27
Sean
You can use GPT for sheets.

01:03.42
Andrew
Which

01:06.08
Sean
And then...

01:07.03
Andrew
do you think how how good is ChatGPT at detecting itself?

01:12.38
Sean
I think if you give it a rubric, it it's good. Because, like...

01:15.84
Andrew
I don't know if I know enough to give it a good rubric.

01:18.86
Sean
can give you my, like... You know, it's not a rubric. It's just like, hey, generate this blog post. Don't use these words. Don't use this phrasing. Don't...

01:27.51
Andrew
Yeah, and you could try to kind of reverse that rubric.

01:30.27
Sean
Yeah, yeah.

01:30.85
Andrew
Yeah.

01:31.58
Sean
God, that's funny.

01:33.39
Andrew
Yeah. And, like, there's there's, like, a small part of me that is, like, well, you know, I don't...

01:35.17
Sean
Yeah.

01:42.50
Andrew
I don't have a problem with you using ChatGPT to help you write your application. But if you're clearly just like, if it's 100% copy and pasted from ChatGPT, then I have no way of knowing if it's legit information or not, or if you're just completely bullshitting.

01:53.80
Sean
Yeah.

01:58.15
Andrew
Like, I got several answers to the same question that seemed almost identical.

01:58.74
Sean
Yeah.

02:04.19
Andrew
And I was like, hmm, okay, so this isn't a real life experience you had then probably.

02:08.60
Sean
Yeah, I bet. That's so funny. I bet there's like apps now also like apply with AI like one click and then it just generates that stuff.

02:16.65
Andrew
Oh, I'm sure there are. yeah Yeah, so I mean, I think part of it is...

02:20.17
Sean
How would you build an ATS differently? Let's build a bit sauce.

02:27.31
Andrew
Like, I think it's an area where I would try to compete on price because ATS systems tend to be pretty fucking expensive. And so I think if you tried to be a fairly minimal, simple version that was at more of an entry level price, I think that's like step one.

02:43.52
Andrew
Now, the shitty part is to build even a simple ATS. You're basically building a CRM, an email marketing system, and a form builder all in one. and like kind of a website builder too.

02:54.26
Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

02:56.31
Andrew
So it's it's not a simple product.

02:59.09
Sean
Hmm.

02:59.43
Andrew
So I totally understand why they're expensive. But I still think ah ah most of that is sunk cost, not like ongoing cost.

03:10.24
Sean
Yeah. Definitely

03:10.80
Andrew
I don't think they're that expensive to operate. Just you know there's a high barrier to entry to build you the base features you need.

03:14.24
Sean
not.

03:20.98
Sean
Hmm.

03:22.20
Andrew
So I think I'd do some of that. i think I would also, think it could be really interesting. Like I've always been interested in salary transparency and stuff like that.

03:31.98
Andrew
So I think it could be interesting to try to do some like, try to talk people into doing some data sharing around salaries and stuff like that.

03:40.80
Sean
Mm-hmm.

03:41.87
Andrew
on both sides of the equation. i think it would be cool to build in, know, some, I remember when we, I know,

03:52.68
Andrew
when we were trying to care about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and like learn about it, part of what people said you should do is like serve like conduct anonymous surveys to determine you know try to determine if there's what bias there is in your application process and like you know some people say you should hide names from applications and stuff like that and i yeah that kind of stuff

04:25.09
Sean
You could do a lessannoyingATS.com. Yeah.

04:27.83
Andrew
Yeah, like I think, and that kind of stuff was often hidden behind like really high enterprise prices.

04:28.44
Sean
come

04:33.54
Andrew
And so just making that stuff more widely available, offering good rubrics, like good default rubrics for like, here are good application questions. Like here's some templates you can choose from and here's a good rubric to like help you reduce bias in your process and doing some different stuff like that.

04:49.85
Sean
yeah

04:51.78
Andrew
then just trying to make it balance that with also making it reasonably quick to eliminate people who clearly aren't a good fit and then like narrow your list down because those are the two kind of competing priorities for good hiring managers. is like On the one hand, you have a massive stack of applications to get through normally.

05:11.51
Andrew
And on the other hand, you want to be respectful of people and like you you want to get through those in a reasonable amount of time while also giving people their due.

05:15.57
Sean
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

05:21.64
Andrew
And so trying to walk that balance with thoughtful tools.

05:21.73
Sean
and

05:24.68
Sean
yeah maybe like hard filters and soft filters as you're going through applicants it'd be cool like you i mean if it's cheaper it's better for smb and then the templates make a lot of sense because i mean hiring is hard your first hundred times i'm pretty sure especially because there's differ...