Episode 70: The Hiring Revolution: Fraud, AI, and the Future of Talent Acquisition with Justin Dixon

Den (00:14):

Hey folks, just before we start today's episode, I'd love to share a little bit about 909 Shield. It's our flagship product that helps you trust the human that's on the other end of the phone or the video. Think of this, right? Someone calls your service desk, they want to change their password or their MFA. They're giving you a lot of stress. You need to do it now. There's a sense of urgency. Well, your service desk people, they want to help, so they'll go reset the password. But today's process is to validate that that person is real on the other end of the line. They're just not up to the challenges of the attacks we're being faced with. 909 Shield helps protect your company and your service desk from these kind of threats by doing identity proofing, biometric and AI fraud, all wrapped into a nice little bundle.

(01:00):

So please, if you want to learn more, go check out 909shield.ai. Hope you enjoyed today's show. Thanks folks.

Narrator (01:17):

Welcome to 909 Exec, the executive leadership podcast from 909 Cyber where cybersecurity intersects with business strategy. Your host is Den Jones, founder and CEO of 909 Cyber. Den has been a practitioner for more than three decades, including leading enterprise security at Adobe and Cisco, helping executives navigate risk, trust, and transformation. Each episode goes beyond headlines and hype with conversations that matter to leaders shaping the world of technology. So please join us for 909 Exec episode 70 with Den Jones and Justin Dixon.

Den (02:03):

Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of 909 Exec, the podcast that hopefully helps you with your journey as an executive in tech. And every week we try and bring in guests that are exciting, dynamic, and have something to teach you. And this week is like no other. I've got Justin Dixon. He's a founder of Hire Tomorrow. Justin, welcome to the show, man.

Justin (02:25):

Yeah, thank you for having me on. I'm excited.

Den (02:27):

Now why don't you explain just a little bit about who you are and what does Justin do for a day job?

Justin (02:34):

Yeah, so I've been in the talent acquisition space for 20 years now. It's crazy to think that I've been doing the same thing for the last 20 years in various industries and companies. And then almost seven years ago now I left the corporate world, quit a job that was very stable and steady just before COVID in January of 2020 to start Hire Tomorrow, which is a recruiting business that mainly focuses on investor backed companies. So we typically get brought in by venture capital or private equity firms to help their newly acquired portfolio companies scale. And a lot of that has to do with exec talent, but also we help those startups all around the ladder. So we'll help on executives and then everything down to frontline employees and all that fun stuff, really trying to help be that one throat to choke when it comes to recruitment for these companies that are just trying to grow.

Den (03:28):

Awesome. Awesome. And then you're also, I know this because I was a guest, you're also a podcast host. Tell me about the Growth Capital Podcast.

Justin (03:39):

Yeah, so the Growth Capital Podcast, we're actually just about to start our third year, which is pretty cool to say. And the goal of the podcast is really to share the stories of people that are starting businesses, funding those businesses, and then scaling those businesses. So we tend to have three types of guests on the podcast, people that are startup founders. That does not mean that you are a tech founder. Everything in my mind is a startup that starts from zero and then grows. We had a guy on that started a gluten-free beer company, which was a pretty cool conversation. And then we have people that invest in those businesses, so VC firms, private equity firms, we've had a few angel investors on there as well. And then the third persona are what I call scaled CEOs. Those are folks that take over from a founder and take that business from founder led to enterprise led, and they continue to scale that business beyond the founder.

(04:28):

So yeah, it's a pretty cool conversation. Check it out.

Den (04:31):

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, we'll put the links to the pod in the show notes as well, folks, so it'll be easy for you to find. Okay, so let's dig into Justin. So I want a couple of things, right? You've been in this industry a long time and AI, like every other industry, is trampling all over your world. But describe, so for the audience that are not in the TA space, what does it mean to have AI now get involved in your space? How do you see that showing up? What's different about the industry with AI? And yeah, let's start there.

Justin (05:10):

Yeah. Well, I will say since I've been in it kind of pre-LinkedIn days, every innovation was supposed to crush the recruiter and make us irrelevant, and it's only made us more important. And I don't know where AI will go. I think AI is obviously more disruptive than a lot of technology that's come out in at least my lifetime. But I think in the early days of AI and recruitment, it is allowing recruiters to do certain things faster. It is allowing recruiters to engage with the candidates more because we can automate a lot of our messaging and we can do automated follow-ups and things like that. So it can create a little bit of a better candidate experience from a recruitment and candidate perspective, but it's also can be used for bad things. I think one thing that we've noticed is because we work a lot with startups and they tend to not have massively robust internal recruitment teams is if you're a candidate, you can hire an AI bot to apply to hundreds of jobs a day for you, and you can tell that AI bot to modify your resume to make you as attractive as possible based on the job that you're applying for.

(06:23):

And so while as a candidate that may sound great, what's happening on the other side of the desk, if you will, is these businesses, large and small, are now being inundated with real resumes, fake resumes, modified resumes. And so hiring managers are now getting, instead of a hundred candidates to a job they would've posted three years ago, they're getting a thousand and that just becomes unmanageable. One of the things you and I talked about when you were on my podcast was about just fraud in the recruitment process. People are using AI to answer questions and it's a pretty obvious telltale sign if I ask somebody a question and they say, "Oh, that's a great question, Justin," and they pause for another three seconds waiting for the AI engine of choice that they're using to respond, and then they respond with this eloquent answer that has all the buzzwords possible in it, and you can clearly tell that they're using AI.

(07:17):

So I think there's been some positives on business efficiency for us as the recruiter, but also I think it is causing a lot of pain for candidates because they are now not only competing with other actual humans, they're competing with other AI generated resumes and fake people. And it's just a less personal human to human process because I know a lot of recruiting firms and internal recruiters at massive companies are starting to use AI as part of the first interview. We don't use AI interviewing. We don't have somebody sign into a Zoom call and have an AI bot on the other side asking questions. That wouldn't work really well for the type of level of talent that I input into my companies or to my clients. But I know a lot of agencies that are using it to essentially try to speed up the interview process.

(08:12):

I've heard positive and negative things about it. So will it destroy the recruitment world? Will it take my job one day? Maybe. I think right now it's making us in the recruitment world a little bit more needed. And yeah, I think there's pluses and minuses like there is for a lot of things.

Den (08:29):

Yeah. It blows my mind that a company's willing to throw AI in to do the first round of interview actually.

Justin (08:41):

Yeah, it's interesting. So I look at it from a couple ways. One, one of the biggest gripes about applicant tracking systems, which is essentially where your resume goes when you apply to any job, it goes into a system. They're called the black hole because you'll apply to a bunch of jobs and you'll never hear any feedback on your resume until the job is closed. And that may be six months or a year later, then you say, "Hey, thanks for applying, but we filled the job." And you're like, "I didn't realize I applied for that job six months ago." So there's not a lot of engagement in the traditional process. So what is happening is we're like, "Cool, if we get 500 applicants to this job, we're going to just have everybody interview through the AI bot." So that gives the candidate the feeling of like, "Hey, at least I have a shot at getting this job when before they may not have even seen my resume." And that's great, but it also opens that company up to risk in my mind, and I'm not a legal professional, but you can control what an AI bot asks.

(09:41):

You can tell it to ask these certain questions, but you're dealing with a human on the other side of the line, so you really can't control what they respond with. So in theory, that person on the other side of the line could reveal something that is discriminatory, and if they don't get the job, they can then potentially sue that company because they felt that they were discriminated against based on something that they told the AI bot. And oh, by the way, the AI bot now has recorded that whole transcript and has stored it in the system of record, which then can be researched and actually brought up in a court. And so now these AI bot tools are starting to redact things, but again, in my brain, it's still recorded in some form or fashion. So yeah, there's some risk components to it. And I can see application in certain industries if you're hiring box picker packers in an Amazon warehouse and you see to churn through a bunch of applicants, could be an interesting way to do it.

(10:36):

But in my opinion, if I would send a link to some of the executives that I work with saying, "Hey, thanks for applying to this job," or, "Hey, we'd like to interview, go talk to this AI bot," they would say, "No, thank you," and move on to the next one essentially.

Den (10:48):

Well, I mean, I think that's going to be one of the things. I mean, I look at the interview process like a two-way conversation where not only the candidate's brand is on the line, but the company's brand is on the line as well. So if you're known as a company as using AI bots for the first round of interviews, just from a brand perspective, if I knew a company was doing that, I wouldn't want to apply for that job. So I mean, do you see early doors as this been a bit of a brand issue for companies? And so there's the legal component, which I totally agree with, but from a brand perspective, do you see that as being a thing?

Justin (11:29):

Anecdotally, I see on LinkedIn some people will, and I posed this question probably a couple months ago, just would people want to do an AI interview? And some people said, yes, I would like to at least have a shot to show the AI that I can do the job. Others are like, heck no, I would rather move on to another company that values my time as much as I value my time by having a human talk to me versus just throwing an AI bot at me. And one thing that I'm starting to see early days of is Workday had historically been a terrible candidate experience from an application standpoint. And so anytime you would go into apply to a job that Workday was using, and I don't know this is true now, so I don't want Workday to yell at me for this, but they historically have been poor at parsing resumes, meaning I would put in my resume and then they'd be like, "Hey, answer all these questions that are exactly what's on my resume and it just wouldn't work." So people were essentially, if you saw at Workday or something like that in the job posting, they just wouldn't apply because they knew they would spend an hour applying to a job and all that fun stuff.

(12:39):

I think some companies, to your point about branding, are starting to get that type of brand of, "Hey, we're an AI interview shop," and there's certain laws that are starting to be rolled out that are, if you use AI in your interview process, you have to disclose that upfront and have it. Some of them have to be opt-in, opt-out. So I think we're in the early innings of there being some rules and regulations around AI in the job interview application process, and it's going to be hyper specific to, I think, certain GOs. Some are going to be more restrictive, some are going to be less, but it's just the nature of the beast.

Den (13:20):

Yeah. I was talking with the guy, he's an AI lawyer. Well, he's a lawyer and a lot of his specialty is AI. So for me, that thing is going to be... I'm going to have him come on the show and talk a little bit about this because you're right, there's a whole, if you're using AI in certain circumstances, then what is the legal recourse if someone thinks they've been discriminated against or if someone thinks there's been biased shown or something else because of the AI in the middle piece? I keep hearing it's been a tough market. I don't want to blame AI for this. I don't know if it's an AI thing. A lot of companies had a lot of layoffs and they said, "Oh, it's because of AI," and then a lot of them wanting to hire people back. Now, I would still say that during COVID, a lot of companies went on a hiring rampage for some reason.

(14:23):

So what's your sense of the market and then what's your thoughts on what's causing either the plus or minus?

Justin (14:33):

I think you are correct in that some companies, a lot in the tech area, we're both out in the Bay Area, and I think they've even come out and said that they have overhired and hired engineers specifically or tech people just so that their competitors couldn't hire them. So they were hiring people not to have a job that was open, but really just to make sure that that candidate was off the market in the event they wanted to use them in a project somewhere down the road. And I think some of that stuff has been unwound or is unwinding over the last probably two years, and they're using AI as the scapegoat as opposed to saying, "Hey, we overhired, we made some errors, and now we're going to let these people go." I think there's also people that had FOMO and rushed to do anything they could with AI and essentially say, "Well, this saved us a bunch of time, so we can lay all these people off." I think that there are some validity to AI helping people do their jobs better, faster, so they don't have to hire as many people.

(15:31):

Where I think where the job market is a little wonky is yes, there are layoffs. I think some of that is what we've already discussed, like overhiring in post - COVID two, three years. I think there's obviously some macroeconomic pressures that are going on, geopolitical pressures that are going on that are causing companies not to perform as well as they had hoped. I do a lot of work in private equity. A lot of those companies that were bought or invested in 21, 22, it was super easy to raise money in 2021 and early 2022, and then interest rates went through the roof. And now those companies that should have exited already or should have had the next round of funding can't because it would be a down round or their product was AI based and now ChatGPT comes out with a new model and that completely just destroys that company's business overnight because that essentially is now just a standard free option within Claude or ChatGPT.

(16:28):

But I think going back to AI specifically, I think what I'm seeing is companies are trying to... If let's say somebody leaves a job, if a salesperson, an accountant, a software engineer leaves, what they're trying to do is not replace that person right away. I know a couple of companies that are saying, the CEOs are essentially mandating, "If this person leaves, I want you to show me that you tried to replace that person and/or some of their responsibilities using AI, and if you couldn't generate essentially the same result, then yes, we can go and hire that person again." Or they may, like a senior engineer leaves or a senior accountant leaves a company. "Okay, well, we can outsource a lot of their junior stuff, so we're just going to hire another junior person. "So there's a little bit of transition in the market, and I don't have direct stats on this.

(17:18):

This is just anecdotes of things that I'm hearing from my clients, but it makes a ton of sense. If I can try to replace some or all of a person's job using AI or outsourcing it to a low cost country, which is also something that we're seeing, everybody's hiring VAs in the Philippines or engineers in Brazil. So I think AI is getting the blame for a lot of the restructuring and reorganizations, but it's also just general outsourcing to lower cost environments as well.

Den (17:53):

Yeah. Well, look, I think the thing about smart business is your goal is how do I deliver still a great service to a client at a price point that is good for the client and with a margin that's good for the company? And you're always trying to reduce your expenses.

Justin (18:10):

Absolutely.

Den (18:11):

That's good business, right? Okay, we're going to take a break for a quick minute, and then when we come back, we're going to jump into some fraudulent discussion. Hey folks, just want to take a minute to say thanks for listening to the show, watching the show, however you engage with us. If you're liking the conversations, if you think we're adding some value, we'd love you to like, subscribe, and share the show with your friends if you know of anyone else that would benefit. Ideally for us, that will help us be able to grow the show, invest more in the quality, get some more exciting guests, and keep bringing you some executive goodness. Thanks everybody. Take it easy and enjoy the rest of the discussion.

(19:05):

So Justin, so you and I have talked a little bit about fraud. My whole thing is obviously with us launching Shield a couple of months ago, we are pivoting to a product company where we think we can help solve some of this problem. But the problem I look at was we hear a lot about North Korean laptop farm workers and organized crime out of different countries like India or Russia or whatever else. But how much of that do you think is hype? And then how much of that do you and people in your network actually see or experience or do you know someone that's been impacted by this nonsense or is it fear mongering with product companies trying to push their wares?

Justin (20:00):

I think all can be true at the same time because yes, I do know of companies that have hired inadvertently North Korean bad actors and they've got to realize, okay, how did that person figure out getting through our process? And that's obviously something that's very scary to know about. I think the other things that we've talked about offline are, that's the worst case scenario is you actually hire somebody that is a North Korean bad actor or enter any country that could have bad actors. But I think what's more frustrating for a lot of the startup clients that I work with is just wasted time. And I know that's not necessarily fraud, but again, going back to being flooded with applicants that are not always real. And yes, that is frustrating, but it's also you're reaching out to these people, you're spending a lot of company time and resources on that process, but then you get people into the interview process.

(20:57):

Something you and I talked about a lot over the last couple of weeks is having people, especially on technical interviews, one person shows up to the actual recruiter interview that's a little bit more high level. They're not going to get super deep into the technical weeds. The second conversation with the hiring manager is going to maybe get a layer deeper, but then another person shows up to that interview and they're using deep fake technology so it looks like the same person. It sounds like the same person that was on the first round, but it isn't. And so while your solution can identify those issues and then alert the hiring manager, whoever's on the other side of that Zoom video to the fact that this person isn't the right person that was actually on the first interview, I think that's amazing. But there's a lot of companies that just don't use that because that technology is obviously very new.

(21:46):

You guys just launched it and there's probably a handful of other competitors that do something similar or different. But I think that that's a massive thing that I see in the process where not only are people deepfaking, but I think there's other people showing up and doing the technical part of the interview or using AI to write code. And there are services that I've seen that can identify AI generated code during those things where it looks like the person's typing, but actually it's their friend over here that's actually doing the work and it's just being piped in or something like that. I'm not a technologist, I don't know how it all works, but we've seen a couple of our clients have those type of issues where they're like, "Hey, we don't think the guy that showed up for the first interview is the same guy that showed up for the second one." I had one client, this is actually before the AI hype, where the person that started wasn't the person that interviewed and it was like, "How did that happen?" So I think there's a lot of fraud, and I think fraud is a broad term that I'm using it as, is actual fraud where somebody is showing up and not the right person.

(22:52):

But I think a lot of companies get frustrated because it's a massive time suck, and it could cost them a lot of money, not only in wasted time and energy, but in actual, if they get trade secrets out into the world, that could be not a good thing.

Den (23:06):

Yeah. And obviously we originated as a consulting practice and then trying to help students get part-time work while they studied. We built a little platform for that, and then we though we'd expand that so we could use that for our bench. And that's when we started to notice applications coming in for positions that we were posting that were fake. So then we were like, "Okay, well, we want to put something in place." And then we realized, well, the interview process, oh, there's a lot of nonsense here. So it wasn't really on our radar, but I had a conversation with one of the executives at one of the big four consulting firms, and they told me that they were taking screenshots of the video call. So they'd upload the screenshot into their HR platform and for every interview, then manually comparing it. And then when the person started, they would check it again.

(24:00):

And like you say, they found somebody started that wasn't even the same person interviewed. I think Gartner had done a survey. They surveyed people and 6% of them admitted to participating in interview fraud. And I'm like, "Holy shit." I do know an instance, and I'll not name names and stuff, but I do know instances of someone close to my circle where they had another friend do the math test for them because that other person was just brilliant at math and the candidate in this case wasn't necessarily as good. I'm like, "Shit." And that was 15 years ago. And I'm like, "Oh man." I went, "That's insane." So I look at this like, yeah, I think it's a big problem. Gartner says one in four candidates will be fake by 2028. I look at that as including the application piece at the start, and I think we're already there at the application piece at the start.

(25:04):

And to your point about fraud or fakeness, if I generate a resume that matches the job description just so I can submit it and my bots are doing that and they're doing a hundred a day or whatever that number is, then provided it stays within the realms of that is truly still representing you and what you're able to deliver, I don't have an issue with that. So I wouldn't care if I'm using AI to apply for a hundred jobs a day because the reality is if I can do the job and I would've applied anyway, I'm now using AI to benefit and apply for jobs at a higher rate. So that's cool. Where I would take offense is obviously if you're having to craft something which you are not, and then obviously it's misrepresenting who you are, then we got some trouble. We've seen clients where there's someone that's had many jobs at the same time, so they've applied for five jobs and they're working three jobs at the same time, full-time contract or otherwise.

(26:09):

I don't have a problem with that if they can do the job, but we've had clients where they turned up and they didn't do any job. They got the job, they got the laptop, and they just didn't do an ounce of code and they got a month's salary. When people ask about this, I think as a recruiter for you, and I guess at the end of my shameless plug and rant, at the end for you, what do you feel like the implication is if you're a recruiting firm and you're giving clients candidates and it turns out that these are the fraudulent people or whatever? I mean, I can imagine in your industry, and we've had this conversation, so I kind of know your answer, but I can imagine from a reputation for your business or you, that this is a huge risk, right?

Justin (26:58):

Oh yeah. I mean, obviously if we find a candidate regardless of level, we submit them to a client and then that client goes through their normal interview process and then hires them, yes, we are definitely partially to blame because we brought that candidate to them. I would say there's also some blame on the hiring team because if they didn't identify them, we talked to them maybe once or twice, they talk to them probably three, four, five times depending on the level and all that fun stuff. So yes, would it still damage us? Absolutely. I would feel awful if I would have supplied a candidate that turned out to be a nefarious actor and/or even if somebody that's like, "Hey, they just showed up for a month, they took our laptop and then they effed off and just did something else or they got six other jobs, that's obviously not something that I want as my reputation.

(27:53):

Can I prevent that 100%? No. I do everything we can to make sure that we represent our candidates and our clients as best as we possibly can. One thing that some of our clients are starting to do is do in-person interviews. They're flying people around to do interviews, and obviously it's hard to fake showing up in an actual interview in person, and that also will weed out some people because they're like," Oh, sorry, I don't want to do that, "and you obviously know why. So I think sometimes to beat new tech, you've got to go old school and go low tech and say," Hey, cool, we're going to fly you to X, Y, Z, or I'm going to fly to you and I'm going to see you in person. "And it's hard to fake that.

Den (28:38):

I tell people when I talk about this, I always say," Look, there's an area where the problem's rife, and then there's an area where it's not as bad. "If you're doing executive talent recruiting in person and that stuff, that's expected. You're not going to apply for a C-level job and go all the way through that process without meeting people in person, board, CEOs, whatever. And then to your point as the talent firm, you're only going to meet them once or twice, even if it's on video and stuff. So the reality is you're not going to fly to meet them in person unless they're all local. So I look at it like the ownership is still on the employer, they're leveraging your talents to fast track finding good quality candidates. Will some get through the fence that's not brilliant? Absolutely, but that's always the case. So not brilliant to me means they could just be shit or they could just be fraudulent, but the reality is you're going to have a success rate, which is...

(29:50):

I don't know what the industry success rate is of sending great candidates versus cannon fodder, but the reality is yeah, you're not a winner every time.

Justin (30:00):

Right.

Den (30:01):

The thing for us is, because we also, we recruit for clients too, not very often, it's not a big part of our business. But the reality is I would rather, again, punt my wares and say, "Use our platform for this round and use the platform for the other rounds." And I don't even think you need to use it for all the rounds. You just need to use it for enough rounds to be comfortable that you're speaking to the right person. But you probably want to use it for all the rounds, I guess, because they might still do a proxy interview somewhere along that journey. You just don't know.

Justin (30:40):

Yeah. I think if I think about your platform or any of the platforms that identify code fraud, using AI, all those things, I think depending on the role, it's probably the third round where you're doing a deep technical interview, you're doing some type of presentation, you're meeting multiple people because you can weed out a lot of the obvious fraud/AI stuff in the first round or two. A lot of this stems around technical hiring. And so if you're hiring a software engineer and you know that that person needs to be able to code in this language, use these AI code assist tools, et cetera, I want to know that that person is actually the person that's going to do it. So will some people get to that stage and pass through the first two gates that are not as guarded? Sure. But I want that last bracket to be very secure so that there's a very, very small percentage chance that the next person that interviews or the person that I hire is fraudulent.

(31:46):

So probably best to use it for all of them, but at minimum, the most critical round is that kind of technical assessment is my thoughts.

Den (31:55):

Yeah. And the thing, I look at it like it's not all the time this happens, but the reality is you don't know when. It's like you're playing Russian roulette really. And then the other one is from a cyber perspective, because I am a CISO hat back on, from a defense in depth strategy, we've for years not considered the I just hired a hacker as one of the threat vectors. And then all of a sudden, one of the threat vectors is, yeah, I don't need to hack the company. I just get a job now.

Justin (32:35):

That's right.

Den (32:35):

We're like, holy shit. All of a sudden we're all like, oh, wait a minute, that was not on the threat vector scale before. Well, now it is.

Justin (32:44):

Yeah. And we just sent them a laptop and gave them access to all of our things and now they have literally the keys to the castle. And so yeah, what do you do?

Den (32:51):

Yeah. And it's funny because this is the really crazy thing about the campaign is do I do a campaign that just applies for a job and then you give me the laptop and you're going to pay me and I'm going to get your code.That's almost easier than phishing the guy that looks after your domain admin guy and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because they're looking for that. But CISOs and their defense and depth strategies, they've never really been looking for the hire the person attack. So I look at it like, wow. So I feel pretty blessed that we stumbled upon this really rather than a genius Dan Jones move. It was just let's help some students get part-time work and then it snowballed from there. Now talking about twist the conversation, I guess. So Justin, the crafty eagle-eyed people will notice a little Ironman logo behind your right shoulder there.

(34:02):

So when you're not working, what do you do for fun or I guess punishment?

Justin (34:07):

Yeah, I would say that the Ironman was just a one-off. I had a weird crazy goal at the end of 2022 going into 2023 that I wanted to do an Ironman. Having never done a triathlon before, all I'd ever done is really run a marathon. I didn't own a bike. So I did one at the end of 2023. It took me an entire year to train and get my body and mind mentally ready to do it. And luckily I crossed the finish line and said that I was an Ironman. I definitely did not catch the bug. Some people told me that you'll sign up for your second Ironman at your first when you're done.

(34:47):

I did not have that happen to me. I'll be honest, it wasn't as bad. The event the day wasn't as bad as I though it was going to be, even though it was 14 hours of pure pain and torture and all the other fun stuff. I've said that story on other sports related podcasts, but what I do outside of work, other than I still work out, I work out pretty much every day. I run, I bike, I hike, lift weights, do all the fun stuff. My wife and I are getting into pickleball and I golf. So try to be outdoors as much as possible because most days I'm just sat in this room for eight to 10 hours recruiting and doing podcast stuff. And so yeah, always like to get out and about. And we live in Southern California or actually, sorry, we live in the South Bay of the Bay Area, which is right now the temperature and the weather is quite lovely.

(35:39):

And so we have super easy access to hiking and biking and trails and all that stuff. So anytime I can get out and not be inside is a good time.

Den (35:50):

Yeah, we are pretty blessed in this vicinity. I mean, I can't describe it to some people because it's almost like they think I'm bragging. It's like, yeah, I can go an hour this way, be here and an hour that way be there so I can go snowboarding or on the way home I could go to the beach.

Justin (36:08):

That's

Den (36:09):

Right. And still be... Yeah. Oh, by the way, so for people that don't know what Ironman is, a little bit of running, a little bit of cycling and a little bit of swimming. Is that it?

Justin (36:20):

Yeah. So you swim 2.4 miles, you bike 112, and then you run a full marathon. So it's 140 point something miles all in.

Den (36:30):

All one after the other, right?

Justin (36:32):

That's right That's right.

Den (36:33):

Because if it was the same time, you'd be Superman really.

Justin (36:38):

That's right. Yeah. You would be doing all the things at the same time. Yeah. So I mean, like I said, the whole triathlon, Ironman's obviously, I would call it more of a symbol or a status or whatever. Say, yep, I was an Ironman, that's great. But the sport of triathlon's pretty fun. It's pretty cool. It's a pretty cliquey community where you get to meet a lot of cool people. It's similar to any kind of sport that you do. I joined a local run club here, so I actually will probably go running with them tomorrow morning and all that stuff. So it's just good to get out and meet the people that are doing the same thing. The worst part about the Ironman was just the training. I mean, there were days right here I've got my bike on a trainer and sitting there for six hours just spinning and spinning and spinning, my wife Allison, she would get up in the morning, she'd go work out, she'd do some things, come back.

(37:26):

She's like, "Are you done yet?" I'm like, "I'm only halfway through. I'm just sitting here for three more hours and then I go for a two-hour run." So your weekends are shot, especially as you get closer to the actual event. I don't even call it a race because I was not racing. I was just finishing, trying to finish.

Den (37:44):

You're surviving.

Justin (37:45):

That's right. That's exactly right.

Den (37:48):

Yeah. And then talking about clubs, you mentioned the other day when we were talking about the South Bay Podcast Club or some meetup, that one took me by surprise. So I'd love to join that group because that must be a fun bundle of people.

Justin (38:08):

I just went to the first one. There was 10 of us there. One of the guys has a podcasting studio in downtown San Jose and the next event will be there. So I think I sent you the link to that one, so you should definitely check it out. It's pretty cool. I mean, like I said, the podcast for me is not, I don't know how you think about it, but it's not necessarily a... I'm not trying to generate revenue from it directly. A lot of the people that I have on are clients, current or past, and then potentially could be future. And I like to just share the stories of people that are starting businesses. I like to share the stories of people that are funding them because that's just fascinating on what they're seeing in the market. It keeps you up to date on what's going on.

(38:51):

And then there's always this different persona that not all founders are good at... They're good at building zero to one, but they're not always the right people to take it from one to 10, 10 to 100, whatever. There's always this

Narrator (39:04):

Kind

Justin (39:04):

Of limit to where people can get to. And so some people aren't as self-aware that they're not the right person. They're the right person to take it from A to B, but they're not the right person to take it from B to C, and that person's probably not the right person to take it from C to D. So there are these people that they're better at certain stages of a company or certain sizes of company. I know a lot of people that only can thrive in big business, and I know other people that can only thrive in startups because they're just different animals. There's very few people that I've encountered that are really good and can be a chameleon and survive and thrive in both of those environments.

Den (39:44):

Yeah. I think that's one thing that I experienced in my very short tenure in the startup world is first time CEOs, how does a first time CEO navigate the journey and what do they have tools in their toolkit? And going back to the podcast, for me, I was like, I try and bring people on to have interesting conversations that help people who are applying their technical journey, sorry, their executive journey. I look at it like there's a lot of technical training, depends where technical popped in my head. There's a lot of technical training out there for us, but the softer skills and all the other stuff, there's a real gap.

Justin (40:33):

I did an ask me anything the other day because I'm affiliated with an angel investing group called Girl Math Capital, and I did an ask me anything for some of their founders because they were like, "I don't know how to hire. I'm trying to raise money and then what do I do? Do I hire a full-timer? Do I hire a part-timer? Do I use AI?" And so it was a really cool conversation because everybody has a lot of the same questions around, "Okay, I raised a little bit of money and I need to go from A to B. How do I do that? What's the best path? And do I go spend money on using an agency, a recruitment agency, or do I try to find it myself? What's the benefit of one or the other?" Yeah, it was a really cool conversation just to have a bunch of, I think it was like 13 or 14 founders on there just being like, "What do I do?" Some of the stuff that we already talked about on this podcast of how do I minimize fraud?

(41:29):

How do I know that the person I'm hiring is the right person? And how do I evaluate those people outside of just doing technical assessments and all that?

Den (41:40):

How do they secure their company as they're trying to build it? I mean, oh wait, 909 Cyber, I guess.

Justin (41:45):

There you go.

Den (41:46):

Perfect. Well, it's interesting. I look at it like there's a lot of those conversations that you just take for granted that you think... I mean, depending on your experience, some of that you just take for granted that's like, "Okay, I thought you'd know that you're the founder and CEO, don't you know that stuff?" And then you forget that they're in their journey as well and they'll have a whole bunch of gaps in their journey. I remember talking to a founder and CEO and we were talking about having to do a layoff in the company and it's like, "Well, I've done a million of those. I worked at Adobe every other year where we're laying people off or whatever and not a pleasure, not a fun thing, but it's something that if you haven't done it, then knowing what the steps are, how to go about it, and even from a legal perspective, what does that look like?" I mean, there's a lot there and you can't expect just because you've got the CEO title, it means that you're the smartest person in the room, right?

Justin (42:50):

Yeah. Everybody at some point was the first time CEO. Nobody graduated college as a CEO, so you have to learn it. That's one of the things I helped one of the private equity groups I worked with. One of their ethos as they were going through, they liked to hire first time CEOs into their portfolio. So they would acquire a business and if that founder wanted to leave, they would bring in a first time CEO. So it is a really interesting conversation to talk to people that have never been a CEO before and be like, "Hey, have you ever thought about being a CEO?" And some of them were like, "Heck yeah, I have. That's my next thing." Others are like, "No." But I'm like, "I think you could do it because you have some of the requisite experience and skills. Maybe you're a GM of a division, so you owned a P&L as opposed to just being a line item." So yeah, that was a pretty cool couple years trying to find the right people that could be ready for a first time CEO gig of a PE-backed company.

Den (43:53):

Yeah. No, I think everyone's... I just remind myself, we're all on our own journey and nobody started their journey as an expert. We all started shit at something, and then over hard work and experience and probably trial and error and a lot of education, we became good at our craft. Whatever your craft is in life, nobody starts like a world champion. We all go start like shit.

Justin (44:24):

That's right.

Den (44:26):

Not to knock anybody because we're all on a journey. Justin, I know we're up over time, mate. Hey, thank you very much for coming on this show.

Justin (44:35):

Yeah.

Den (44:35):

You got any parting words you want to leave the audience with? Any magical wisdom?

Justin (44:41):

No, I would just say whoever's listening to this, if you're hiring people or you're thinking about hiring people, candidate experience is the best kind of branding you can think about because if you have a bad candidate experience, that candidate's going to tell all their friends about how poor it was. So just keep that top of mind as you're hiring and/or firing people. You can fire people graciously and appropriately, and you can also fire people and have them walk away feeling like complete shit. I would say that's the only thing I would part with. And if you need help hiring, let me know.

Den (45:15):

Justin. Yeah. Hey Justin, hire tomorrow. We'll have all of his contact details in the show notes as well as the link to Justin's podcast. Hey, Justin, thank you very much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it, mate. And yeah, we'll stay in touch and hopefully catch up in person soon.

Justin (45:32):

Looking forward to it. Thank you.

Narrator (45:37):

That wraps up this episode of 909 Exec. If you found value here, subscribe and leave a rating to help others discover the show. To learn more about 909 Cyber, our advisory services, and how we help organizations secure growth, visit 909cyber.com. Thanks for listening, and until next time, lead with clarity, build trust, and stay secure.

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