Refining the Remote Hiring Process with Agustin Morrone of Vintti (Part 2)

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Noir podcast, where we work on getting better step by step, professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of Building Better Foundations. Also this is the Building Better Developer podcast known as Developer Noir. The interview with Augustine Marrone will be part two. But first, all of the traditional introductions will allow him to just dive right in. Myself, I am Rob Broadhead, one of the founders of Development Noir, also the founder of RB Consulting, where we help businesses understand where they're at, what the technology is that they've got, what is the roadmap that's out there, actually what is more the map, the culture map of technology that applies to their business. And we help them build a specific recipe, specific roadmap for how to do things better. This is improving your processes, improving your systems, improving your people even through the leveraging technology, through simplification, integration, automation, and even innovation. We can help you either create a roadmap that you're going to go execute on or we can walk beside you. And this is all a technology agnostic way to build a better company for yourself, build a better roadmap. Good things, bad things. I guess the good thing was yesterday I was got to the end of my workday and decided to try somewhere because we're in a new place, try somewhere new for dinner. And then even so it turned out great. Actually, while we're there, talked to the server and she recommended a couple of places. We tried a second place. Also excellent. So good was got to the end of a long day and was able to have a couple of cool places to go to wrap up the day. Bad thing is this is one of those personal kinds of things. I'm dying to share more about this and I will sometime, but we're not ready to talk about this other thing that I'm watching. But related to that is I've actually in a situation I'm sort of have moved back in with my children. Instead of my children moving back in with me, I'm moving back with them. They're actually going to be renting a place from us. And so we're there and for a little bit going to be roommates to them. But we also are allowing them to make it their own place, which is a challenge. It's very different when it's your place and you're having guests in versus now you're going to move into somewhere and you're being a guest and they are a multiple, a multiple generation feels like difference in your style and approach to living. So I'm going to be like stressing for a little bit until we wrap that one up and we were able to move out again. I am not stressing waiting for the introduction of my host co-host. So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself? Hey, everyone, my name is Mike Mulash. I'm one of the co-founders of Building Better Developers, also known as developer. I'm also the owner of Envision QA, where we build custom software that helps business owners take back control of their operations with a strong focus on service, reliability and long term success from streamlining your work flow to replacing outdated systems. We create tools tailored to your business and we don't stop there. We back everything through testing and quality checks to make sure it works right the first time. At Envision QA, we combine great software with great support so you can run your business with confidence. Learn more at EnvisionQA.com. Good thing, bad thing, kind of similar situation. A good thing. My daughter's related brother from another marriage is moving to Tennessee. He was visiting us last week. He put a bed down on a property, so he's going to be living just down the road from us. So kind of good and bad. We're now going to be grandparents. So we get to now experience that life. So it's going to get a little crazy, a lot of fun. So looking forward to it. And that brings us to part two of our interview with Augustine Marrone. He's already introduced himself in the prior episode. So we're going to pick up right where we left off. And here we go. So through this process of growth and as you've been building the company and finding this talent, what are some of the tools or like have you come up with any automation steps or anything to build these SOPs so that you can find the talent, get them on board quickly so that you can get them in front of your customers? What we are doing is we are. So I have a very young team. And as you know, this new generation, they have been doing their whole career with AI and they what I like of young people is they are starting to think AI. This means they don't automate everything. They just do their job and they find the best way to be as efficient as they can. Right. So that's the mindset that we are trying to apply in each process of being, for example, all the, at the beginning of BINTI we did all the interviews ourselves. Now 50, 60% of the interviews are done by an AI. An AI that interviews all the candidates. It's a pre-vetting machine that gives me a score. We can analyze the call and then we will get like, I don't know, 90 in English, 95 in technical skills for FPNA, whatever. And then once the AI has pre-vet that candidate, we interview them personally to understand our things and before we introduce them to our clients. But that thing save us a lot of money because we save a lot of recruiters to hire and a lot of time of our recruiters so they can get more time searching the web, searching LinkedIn, contacting people and finding better talent for us. That's one example, right? So is this like a specific AI program that you have purchased or something you've built customly to help you with these interviews? No, this specific tool, we purchased the tool, but we are developing one of ours, not to interview, but to support our team. For example, we, what we do is we don't send the CV or the resume that that candidate send us and then resend that to a client. We, we, we send everything normalized with our CVs, we load the information. So what we have done is we created our own tool and from the interviews that the candidate had with our team, the interviews that or the meetings that we have with the client and the LinkedIn of our candidates and AI put that together and they, and it builds a CV customized to our clients and with the skills and assets of each of our candidates. That's one example. And then we automate a lot of messaging, emailing, follow up, those things we are automating a lot. And that helps us to be on top for clients, I don't know, for reviews, asking them for feedback for our candidates and whatever. Those kind of things we are building in. So I know you're using AI now. So throughout the journey of your company, have you used AI the whole time or have you kind of gone from like the manual process in the AI? Have you seen a higher success rate with the AI, with the vetting? Or was it a little more personal, a little more the cultural fit? Were you able to see that a little bit more before the AI or is AI just kind of streamlining the process? We use the AI in terms of when we prevent candidates, we use the AI just for the technical skills, English level, those kinds of things. Cultural fit, we are still doing it ourselves because we have to go deep in some things and it's not just what the client, what the candidate is saying, it's also the way they are saying if they have energy, they are speaking like this or if they are just laying down. So there are lots of things that we need to interpret and to understand that person is a fit for our clients. And at the beginning where we were doing everything ourselves, I don't know when ChurchiPT came out like massive, but I remember already being in Vinti when this started or when I realized we can start using it right. And we started January of 2023, so I think it was at the same time. So imagine. Now, when you're going through, especially now, this is an interesting one I hadn't really thought of until we started this conversation, as you're going through and you're looking for candidates, how do you see the whole resume CV approach to applying for a job? Because it sounds like you guys have this interview process. And I'm wondering if this may be from yourself, are you saying that maybe that whole resume CV thing becomes a secondary part of looking for a job if somebody's out there trying to land a position? Because if you could just jump into an AI conversation and interview, then does it even make sense for you to have that sort of that gatekeeper of a resume or a CV? And then how is that working with how you guys are looking for people? How are you incorporating this into, I guess we'll call it the traditional way to define candidates versus now incorporating AI into that process? You know, we have tried some tools to try to help us search through LinkedIn or those things, but we didn't find anything that works. What is working best for us is our recruiters doing search in the mainly, to be honest, I think we do, we hire everyone through LinkedIn. We search there, everyone is there, at least in Latin America. We have contacts with some universities, but we mainly scout LinkedIn and we didn't find anything that helps us scout better. LinkedIn is getting better and they obviously we have like the pro program. I don't remember the name, but they have the pro program and they are investing a lot on AI and AI at the beginning didn't work right that good. Now it's getting better. But what the best thing for the moment for us is to scout ourselves. But what I think is key and what I and this is something that I think are skilled at that, at least our team has is that we are always testing new things and comparing, hey, this makes sense or not? This tool is making me is making my job better or not? And I encourage a lot in B&T for the people to take risks to I don't I don't care if they spend some kind of money or a bit of money in buying a tool and doing a test and it works. Hey, we can implement it in the whole team. So I encourage them a lot to do that because it's a moment that they are starting lots of new tools and I want them to test them and to see if we find things and we find better ways to do the things that we do. Right. So I think that's that's key. We want like stay in our status quo. We are always challenging everything so we can find better ways of doing what we do. Another question just sort of a little bit of a change of pace again a little bit. So are there certain are there are there because I've seen this a lot of different areas. Are there's what we call traits or things like that for certain cities or countries in Latin America where that it's like we're especially cultural fits and stuff like that. Or if you want a person that's a certain type of person or a certain type of employee that you're going to have a better fit looking at like say Rio de Janeiro versus Mexico City or something like that. Or does it do you is it do you find that from a professional point of view it is much more of a of a roughly the same culture in general than it comes down to personalities as you're trying to do those fits? So, yes, there is a difference from Colombia to Argentina, Argentina to Mexico. So, for example, in Colombia and this is a things that we have been discovered since we started. It was not on purpose, but we started and I don't know, we sent in free for a position of customer support. We introduced free candidates to our clients, one from Colombia, one from Mexico and from Argentina. And in 90 percent of the cases when we are speaking about customer support, things like that, they choose someone from Colombia because they are more they are nicer people. They are they are very patient. And these these things in customer support are super important compared in sales. In sales, they generally choose people from Argentina because they are always I don't know, they are it's easier for them to to to to expose themselves to go out there to to I don't know. They like to talk. I mean, I we like to talk because I'm from Argentina, so I don't know why I wash my hands. But but I don't know. From Mexico, we are succeeding a lot in financial positions because there are lots of because they are near to the US. There are lots of financial institutions and they share a lot of of the general accounting rules. So it's easier to find people with experience. So we start realizing and seeing patterns there. But again, we try to find the person, the perfect person for our clients. Right. And that even though there is a general rule for some countries that are better in some things, we try not to at the end not to stick to the status quo, because if we stick to the status quo, we may be more efficient in a general rule, but we will start losing some golden gems that are out there. And I try to challenge all the time our team to change. Let's not stay in in the things that always work. Let's challenge because that's the only way to to to win and to to to win to our competition, because if everyone does the same, we are going to be the same. And that's it. And I want I want to win. So we want to challenge things right. Sorry, I think my answer went to another way. Oh, no, that's the next one. I love it. I think the quote, everybody is I want to win. So we should all understand that. But that's good. That's that's what that's part of being a leader is. How do you if there is are there things that you do for your the people that you hire in or that your your subcontractors are are there things that you do that are like the venti culture or or things that you do to build up your your contractors? Or is it a little bit more of letting them sort of go fall under the, you know, the the leadership of whatever company they're working with? No, we let them be part of of our of our clients. At the end, we like the concept of employee as a service, which is more of I'm allocating someone that is going to be part of the organization. I'm just a payment processor. And also we have other things we have people that is supporting them. I don't know, helping them in how how to ask for a raise, how to deal with a certain situation, because even though we try to find people that feed the culture of our clients, sometimes they don't know how to face a difficult conversation or they don't know how to ask for for vacations. I don't know. So we give them a lot of support in those areas or in local taxes. Right. Because they are contractors and they need to make their local declaration. So we help them a lot. We give them a lot of support in in that. But we we don't want to. To put our culture in them, because that's not the culture for our clients. Right. And that's not the culture where they work better. We found them with a specific mindset because we think they work better with the culture of our clients, not with ours. Right. So within your within Binti, within your group, as you're encouraging and growing your company and building, basically building the processes to find these this talent and to connect this out with your customers, how are you constantly challenging your team on what to look for and how to encourage the growth? What are some of the things internally that you're doing to grow your company, but also improve your standards in that for finding the best talent for your customers? For me, it's not the what we are doing to encourage them. We what I try to do is to find people that are self-motivated, that are that are that want to be part that they don't need to be motivated all the time. I actually I hate motivation. I love discipline. And I look for those people because those are the ones that that will keep going no matter what. Right. So I don't know if it's it's the culture of Binti trying to push the team and to and to keep the high high motivations and everything. No, no, we look for high working people that know that they have like ambition where they want to go and that Binti aligns with that ambition and that way and motivation or I don't know, encouragement comes along. You don't have to be always think because we are trying to find people that Binti is a part of their path. Right. That's that's what the kind of employees that we're trying to to find. So your model is more in the type of talent you're looking for versus your internal processes. It's like you have a particular value you place on the talent you're looking for to place with the customer. Cool. Sorry, sorry. Perhaps I just understand the question. This is for the people that works on our internal operation. Right. For the people that was for our clients, we leave them we leave our clients to deal with those things. We support our clients to help them how to deal with remote talent or if there is a specific situation, but we don't get in the middle of their of their relationship with the contractor and we don't even have access to the computer. Imagine. So we just make sure they are good. They have everything what they need and they have good Internet. They behave well. And that's where we are. Except if our clients wants to for us to get into a specific situation, someone that is not working well or whatever. If not, we let that person to feel as if they were a full time employee for that. That's that's our objective. That's it. No, thank you for clarifying that. I kind of thought that's what you meant, but thank you for explaining that. So how do you handle situations when you have a dispute between a contractor and a client? How often does that happen? Well, it happens. It happens. It happens a lot. At the beginning. So what we have seen is that at the beginning, things are right. Problems arise when when when our clients are not that clear with the contractors, with the rules, we have we have clients that are amazing that they say, I need this person with the skills with this culture to work from nine to five Eastern time. And they give us everything. That's amazing because we know what to find. Then we have clients that say, hey, I need someone to start working tomorrow. I don't care. They do a 15 minute interview. And that's it. And those processes end up on bad places. Right. Even though we encourage them to do good analysis and whatever, there are people that they don't care. And they just find someone that they like and they put them in their in their company. And those things generally end bad. Those are the situations where we get calls from clients. Hey, this person isn't working. They are not connecting or whatever. And we jump in. We try to have a call with the candidate to understand what is going on. And I don't want I don't have I don't want to invent a number, but I think that every case is because that person is not culturally aligned or does not have the technical skills because they have not been evaluated in the interview process by our clients. Right. Because generally they want to go fast. And these things take some time to find someone. Right. Now you have this AI process to kind of vet and find your talent. Have you thought about using your kind of the same AI tool to help vet and kind of go through the process with your customer to kind of get some of that cultural information upfront before you even go look for talent? The problem is that we believe that at least at the moment, we try to do it on a personal way with our clients because it's better for us to understand what they say, how they say, how they move. I don't know. There are lots of things that we try to analyze and doing that on scale with AI. I don't feel comfortable that AI is there yet. Perhaps it's going to be in the short term because this is going super fast. But yet I feel more comfortable analyzing it internally on a human relationship with our customers. And obviously the candidates. Right. So that kind of leads me to my last question for you on this with the AI. So where do you see AI taking your company in the next five, 10 years? I hope they don't erase us from the earth. Right. Because I think at the speed this is going, I don't know what we're going to be doing, but I'm a true believer that AI is going to obviously replace lots of jobs, but there AI also is going to be a great support for other ones. And as a recruiting firm, what we have to do is two things. First is try to find those skills that are going to be required in the future and perfect ourselves to find those people that have those skills. And the second one is internally in our internal operations to have a mindset of how we work together with the AI to be better and more efficient ourselves. Right. Like in the interview process or in automating communications with our clients or doing sales or whatever. Right. I don't know. We have to be super tech savvy. We have to be eager. We have to be challenging ourselves all the time to be trying to test new tools, testing new ways of doing things with AI. I think companies that are going to succeed are the ones that can work together with AI. And those companies I think they're going to win the game at the end. Definitely. We talked quite a lot about this and that it's not going to be a replacement as much as it's going to be a tool. And it's just like every other tool out there. It's around how to use it the most effectively. Now, time has flown by. I appreciate so much the time that you've given to us. And you've given a lot of great ideas that I'm sure that people out there in the audience would love to hear more about you guys and how to reach out. So what is the best way for them to get a hold of you or to check out more, learn more about Vinti? You can reach out to our web, vinti.com, v-i-n-t-t-i dot com. And then there you can just book some call with us or if not, at my email, Augustin at vinti.com. And happy to answer every question. So if you want to to know how we can help your company, happy to help you there. Okay. Well, thank you so much for your time. I just want to, I guess, and as we're wrapping it up, I want to point out that I came across Augustin through just one of those things, one of those pseudo networking just out there, virtual communities. And it's just I want to just have everybody embrace those as much as possible. Yes, we're spread out all over the place. But the globe has gotten smaller and smaller and things like this are where you have these great, you know, these sort of like, we'll call them those chance meetings. And it turns out to have like this, like a great conversation. And so I want to, again, say thank you so much for your time, Augustin, and appreciate that you've been able to come join us. And I just want to push everybody else where you can. If you're thinking about, hey, maybe I want to go, you know, try the contractor life for a little bit, you may reach out to Vinti or if you need some people, particularly the Latin America space, or maybe you haven't even explored that maybe you're looking for outsourcing, you're like, huh, I hadn't thought about going there. Reach out and help them out, because it sounds like you've got a lot of good he's finding a players. So it'd be you know, those are the ones I'm sure you want. As the and I guess that we will wrap this one up. So thank you so much for your time, Augustin. And I'll let you get back to your busy day. And we'll reach out to you with any further questions we have, anything like that. And don't hesitate to reach out to us in the future as well. Thank you very much for Michael. I had a really good time. And thank you very much. It's our pleasure. Thank you. Yeah, have a good one. And for those of you listening in, sorry, there's like the bonus material this time around is basically getting to see some of the things behind the scenes, because this guy once again, forgot to hit record initially. And we also have got like time constraints and all of those sad things. So thank you so much for your time. We appreciate you. We will continue throwing some bonus material out here, maybe some bonus episodes or something. As always, go ahead and have yourself a great one. And we will talk to you guys next time around. Thank you for listening to building better developers to develop a new podcast. You can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success.