In this episode, Joel and Chad interview Jason Putnam, Chief Revenue Officer at Plum, about the flaws of skills-based hiring and the future of work. They discuss the challenges of becoming a skills-based organization, the importance of soft skills in hiring and promotion decisions, and the need for clean and comprehensive data to drive talent management. They also touch on the role of credentialing and the potential demise of the traditional resume. Overall, the conversation explores the evolving landscape of talent acquisition and management in the face of rapid technological advancements.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (AI did it)
Joel Cheesman (00:28.114)
boys and girls it is your favorite guilty pleasure aka the Chad and cheese podcast I'm your co host Joel Cheeseman joined as always Chad so wash and today we welcome Jason Putnam chief revenue officer at plum to the show welcome Jason long time listener is this your first is this your first time on the show very nice
Jason Putnam (00:45.447)
Fellas, how are you? Been a little while since I've seen you both. It is. Doesn't seem like it. It doesn't, yeah it is. Doesn't seem like it is. It is. I think when Quincy's been on a couple times, she said nice things about me. So maybe it's just because it seems like I was here.
Chad Sowash (00:51.409)
No it's not. No. No. No.
Joel Cheesman (00:55.826)
You're such an integral part of our life. It's hard to believe that you've never been on the show, actually. So we obviously know.
Chad Sowash (01:04.945)
okay, well there it is. Jason was on the show by proxy. By proxy? No, he was by proxy, he was good. He was on the show, it's okay.
Joel Cheesman (01:07.218)
You're in our hearts every day, Jason, in our hearts every day.
Jason Putnam (01:10.183)
By proxy. Thank you.
Joel Cheesman (01:14.706)
So Jason, a lot of our listeners won't know who you are. Give us the elevator pitch on Jason.
Chad Sowash (01:18.065)
What?
Jason Putnam (01:21.287)
Yeah, I've been in the industry a long time. I'm old right now. Currently, I'm the CRO of Plum. Before that, I did the same thing with Panda Logic to get them through their exit. I was CRO of Bounty Jobs for about four and a half years. Joel, you brought up, I was even at Job Fox for a period of time and Oodle for a period of time. Yeah. They can't all be winners. Can't all be winners.
Chad Sowash (01:38.929)
Wow.
Joel Cheesman (01:39.218)
Dope.
Chad Sowash (01:43.217)
You ain't kidding. Geez! my goodness. My. Goodness.
Joel Cheesman (01:46.738)
That's awesome. That's awesome. So you recently gave a keynote presentation or speech at a conference, basically saying that, that skills -based hiring is a mirage. It's flawed. it's not quite what we think it is. So I want, I want to just give you the platform to give us what the presentation was about. Why that, why, what's the problem with skills -based hiring? Because it's really hot right now with the kids.
Chad Sowash (02:12.305)
That's hard.
Jason Putnam (02:13.223)
It's very hot with the kids and it's not the only thing that has been hot as won't surprise you guys in the last 10 years, right? There are lots of things that have been hot. There's been ghosting, quiet quitting skills -based hiring is a new thing, but you know, it's been all the words that people talk about. AI is also, you know, every single booth at every trade show has AI on it. But when you use a word over and over and over again, the term is called somatic satiation. It just loses all of its impact.
or all of its luster. And the presentation was about...
Most people don't even know what it means to become a skills -based organization. They don't know the why. They certainly don't know the how. And they've been tasked to just go out and say, become a skills -based organization because somebody told them to. And if you think about it from being able to check the box, hey, we are now a skills -based organization. You'll never ever be done doing that. So as long as you're okay with it being this ongoing long -term journey that's going to get harder and harder.
not easier and easier, then go, okay, let's do that. But there's, you know, obviously we're friends and I listened to the show, Chad, you talk a lot about, you know, data and disparate data and being in different places and all the data not being able to talk and it also not being human friendly. And Joel, you talk a lot about kind of the simplicity of platforms. Those are two huge problems that aren't really being solved right now. People aren't willing to give the data.
Chad Sowash (03:19.985)
Mm -hmm.
Jason Putnam (03:43.975)
They feel, obviously we're an assessment company, but they feel assessed. They feel like they're doing it without something in return. But also it's not simple for the employer to use because all that data just lives in different places. And when you start thinking about why it's hard to become a skills -based org, the speed of change that is happening right now is very, very, very fast. There's a futurist named Ira Wolf, and he talks about this thing called the pace paradox. It's fascinating. The amount of change that happened,
Chad Sowash (04:10.097)
Mm -hmm.
Jason Putnam (04:13.735)
I remember it right from 2000 to 2004. So that five year period, that amount of change has already happened in 2024. And if he looks ahead to 2044, that same amount of change that happened in five years is going to happen in weeks. So the speed of change that people are experiencing right now is why we all feel like we're running around with our head cut off. But we're going to have to figure out a new way to do things to just keep up with the pace of change that we're going at today. So that's the overarching presentation.
lot more detail.
Chad Sowash (04:44.337)
So, I mean, when we look at skills -based hiring, just before we get into the craziness of how Moore's law has been taken steroids, for God's sakes, most companies didn't even get the skills -based hiring piece right, because they take a look at a job as a job instead of deconstructing it into different tasks that happen throughout the day.
and being able to assign skills to said tasks so that you understand what the actual fucking skill is in the first place, number one. Number two, then being able to, in today's world, assign the opportunity to be more efficient and possibly use process automation, AI, Gen. AI, different types of solutions to be able to get rid of some of those tasks or aid in some of those tasks and move forward.
I believe just from the foundational aspect of skills -based hiring, we haven't even gotten that right before you get into what you're talking about. Again, Moore's Law being on steroids. So talk a little bit about that. How do we even think about creating a foundational base to start with?
If we're moving so fucking fast in the first place, what do we go? I mean, at this point, it's just like, shit, I throw my arms up and say, okay, we'll do the best that we can.
Jason Putnam (06:10.183)
I've been accused of being a very glass half full person most of my life. But what you have said, Chad, I actually don't know if it's possible. And here's why. I think it's possible to some percentage level, but it'll never be 100%. Because of that speed of change and the half life of skills now is two and a half years. Especially tech roles, it's two and a half years. So the way most people are approaching
Chad Sowash (06:13.809)
Hahaha
Chad Sowash (06:19.089)
You
Chad Sowash (06:27.185)
Mm.
Jason Putnam (06:37.703)
the skills is via an anthology, right? SAP has their skills thing, Workday has their skills thing, and customers are saying, yeah, let me go in and do all that. But in order to become a skills -based org, you have to know all the tasks that roll up to those skills. But because of the speed of change, it's like trying to categorize every grain of sand on the beach. Like new sands coming in and going out every day. Like at what point do you say, I'm done? You're never going to be done. That's part of the problem.
The other problem is there's so many people who have done it a certain way, right? And we're all set in our ways, especially as we get older. Like I actually think it's a hiring manager and a business problem, not a TA and a TM problem, right? Cause if I'm going to hire somebody, I want five years experience or 10 years experience. I want this on the resume. I want this, you know, they have to have all these things to do that job. I'm actually not saying what tasks they need to do or what skills they have to do to do those tasks. So how is there, there's enough problems between TA and TM. We can talk about.
Chad Sowash (07:08.753)
Mm.
Chad Sowash (07:14.609)
Yeah.
Jason Putnam (07:31.495)
But how is a recruiter going to sit down with a hiring manager and convince that person that, yeah, I know you said you want 10 years experience in this university and all these things on a resume, but that's not really what you want. What you want is somebody who can do this, this, and this, and then hire another person who can do this, this, and this, and then the job is done. I think it's just a legacy problem that is going to be very, very difficult to solve.
Chad Sowash (07:55.313)
But, and again, it rev -
Joel Cheesman (07:55.442)
Sounds like the only skill you need, it goes back to Darwin, right? It's not the fastest, biggest animal that survives. It's the one that adapts the quickest. That's the skill, it sounds like you're saying, we all need to have if we're going to be successful.
Jason Putnam (08:09.991)
Well, I mean, adaptation is measurable. I mean, we're a psychometric company, right? So I'm not speaking about Plum, I'm speaking about from a scientific perspective. When, and we've talked about this before, I have two people at my company who've been with me at five companies. I have several other who've been here at two or three companies. When I think about why I brought them with me or why I've promoted people, it's never, he's a 10 at Excel and she's a nine at Excel. Like, that's ridiculous. We promote people because
Chad Sowash (08:17.649)
Yeah.
Jason Putnam (08:39.399)
They're innovative, they're adaptable, they have drive, they work well with others. Like that's why we promote people. Those are the soft skills side as people call them. Those are gonna become exponentially more important, but most companies who are trying to become a skills -based org are only looking at hard skills. So TA and TM have been bifurcated for so long that the reason we're bringing people into an organization is with hard skills and yet we're promoting them for soft skills. The disconnect is just completely insane.
Chad Sowash (09:06.641)
Well, and we're opening positions and pushing them externally when we've got great candidates internally, which again, the bifurcation, the Chinese wall, you know, between talent acquisition and talent management is we talked to some of the...
biggest names around talent acquisition and on the global side and they are getting rid of that wall. Do you think that that is a must for every organization on the fucking planet to be able to be one stream of talent acquisition all the way through the talent lifecycle?
Jason Putnam (09:45.383)
It's in every presentation I think I've done in this industry, what you just said. And everyone, I think most people want that to be true, but from a storytelling perspective, they can't see it. So I'll give a different example. It's the same reason I believe sales and marketing should roll up to the same person. If you have an ineffective go -to -market organization, typically what happens is you have a bunch of salespeople barking, saying, our leads aren't good and marketing sucks. Then you have a bunch of marketing people that says our salespeople are awful. If they're under a united leader,
Chad Sowash (10:12.849)
Yeah, right.
Jason Putnam (10:15.207)
Right? That doesn't happen. It just doesn't. And the same thing. It's no different in TA and TA.
Chad Sowash (10:21.905)
Give me the Glenn Gary leads. Come on. It's the leads. It's the leads. Yeah.
Jason Putnam (10:24.423)
That's it.
Joel Cheesman (10:25.202)
ABC always be closing. Well, Jason, as you know, as a long -term in this, in this space, upskilling is incredibly trendy right now. And there are companies that serve businesses to say, look, instead of recruiting for that, that spot, like Chad said, why don't you grow them internally? And we have an up like we're always growing skill our skills internally. Is that model flawed or do you think there's there's promise in
Jason Putnam (10:28.007)
That's it.
Joel Cheesman (10:51.154)
that new strategy.
Jason Putnam (10:53.607)
it has the propensity to be flawed for a lot of the same reasons we've already talked about. So if you have somebody who, let's say, has been doing a particular job for five years and their next progression is to be a leader of some sort, you better make sure they're prepared to be a leader. And I always think about it from a sales perspective because we can always joke about it. How many times has the top sales rep been promoted to be a leader all the time? How many times are they horrible leaders? A lot. So they have all the time, they have these big impacts.
Chad Sowash (11:19.921)
All the time.
Jason Putnam (11:23.207)
And now they're impacting a whole organization. So it has to be a combination of things to look at it. And you can measure leadership potential, right? You can measure performance, you can measure on the psychometric side, you can see the hard skills that they have. But everyone, all that data is either non -existent in an organization, or it's relegated because it's expensive to people who are already in leadership, or maybe a separate cohort of high performers. That's incredibly biased. So the problem is you...
to go back to the beginning, you have all this disparate data that lives in these different systems and everybody's trying to pull that data that's in potentially different languages, right? All into one system and then try to make a decision. Chad, you talk about like a total talent solution, right? That means you have to have all the data, as deep of amount of data as you can on a human and then be able to map that human to any situation, including jobs for internal mobility. So if Susie is always at 80 % of quota,
but she's in the upper 10 % of leadership potential. She's been at the company for five years and she's great. Look at her to promote, right? Or look at somebody in marketing who'd be great in sales or somebody in product who'd be great in marketing, right? We've been taught so much about this just linear approach to mobility. It really is a lattice, right? And people leave because they don't see the path to go and they don't see the path to go because nobody's telling them about the path because they don't have the data to tell them where to go.
Chad Sowash (12:48.017)
Yeah, we actually had a discussion with the CHRO over at Harvard Business Publication yesterday, at HBR, and she had actually brought data.
from several different sources that demonstrated that most people don't want to be leaders these days. They are looking to more of that lattice. They're not looking to go up the ladder. They're looking to go sideways, diagonal. But the problem is, and we've seen this for years, is that again, the information isn't transparent and available to employees. You hear from talent acquisition all the time, just go to the career website and apply through there. That's a bullshit answer.
Joel Cheesman (13:12.146)
Hang out.
Jason Putnam (13:28.231)
It is. Yeah, when we when we talk from from a plum perspective, we want to put and I think everybody should do this. Right. This is not specific to plum. There there there has been a change in the balance of power. Used to be companies when I grew up and you guys grew up, companies had all the power. If you wanted to go work for Dell, you move to Austin. If you didn't want to move to Austin, you don't go work for Dell. Right. So covid changed that power dynamic a lot. There's very much an equilibrium now. And.
I now have a lot of control and now you've put as a human, you've now put generative AI in my hands, which companies were the only ones they used, right? They used AI to scrape and look at all the resumes. And now I can fight that same battle on a very fair front. And in order to do that, my expectation as a human is you're giving me all the data. I need to be successful within your company or outside of your company. And there's a lot of companies who are fighting that, right? They still want to be in control of that.
But it has to start with the human and empowering the human to know more about themselves and to show them what their past can be. If they love your company and they love your culture, they'll find a place at your company to stay. You as an organization have to be able to look at all your people. But ultimately, a top -down approach is not going to work anymore. It has to be a bottom -up approach.
Joel Cheesman (14:44.754)
How do you look at things like credentialing now? Are they more important than ever or less important than ever? I mean, people love shorthand, right? They love seeing a brand of a college and saying like that person must be smart or have these, these attributes. We have services like Coursera or LinkedIn learning where I can learn how to be an advertiser on Tik Tok, even though I had no prior experience because Tik Tok didn't exist.
you know, five years ago as an advertising platform is credentialing and sort of that ongoing learning process more important than ever, or are we still moving at a snail's pace compared to what, what we should be dealing with on a company level.
Jason Putnam (15:23.335)
If you look at the adoption curve, the company, in my opinion, the companies who are doing really well with retention and productivity are the ones who aren't moving at a snail's place. The problem is there's very few of them on the adoption curve. I think credentialing is important. When I look at a human, and Joel, you and I are going to go to lunch, you can't just tell me to come to the street. You've got to give me a cross street or I can't find you. And I think of, like when you're trying to understand a human, think of longitude and latitude. The longitude is the hard skills. Maybe where did you go to school?
Are you a developer? What do you know how to ride a bike? Like all the things that are learned. The psychometric data, the personality side are the soft skills, right? That's the latitude. And then what you're talking about from a credentialing is much more altitude, right? You know Excel, but how well do you know Excel? I think it's incredible. It's not something we do, but I think it's incredibly important because just because you went and you got a four year degree at ABC school doesn't mean you're smart, right? I know plenty of smart people who don't have college degrees who outwork and are smarter than a lot of people with college degrees.
What the credentialing is to me, it's like it validates that you know that particular skill and you're good enough to be able to do it versus if you have a degree in finance from a really good school, yeah, you probably know finance. It doesn't mean you know it better than somebody who went to a different school or no school.
Chad Sowash (16:29.393)
Mm.
Chad Sowash (16:42.321)
So when it comes to like, good.
Joel Cheesman (16:42.674)
But we always talk about no one ever got fired for using IBM. No one ever got fired for hiring someone from Harvard. I mean, is that not true anymore?
Jason Putnam (16:54.727)
I think it's true in a lot of people's eyes. I think it's ridiculous, but I think it's true. It's like, it is, and it's, a lot of it is a bunch of people who look like us, who are making these decisions and also went to Harvard. It's a different, sorry, soapbox, go look at all the startups in our industry and outside of our industry who got funding and tell me, go look at their leadership team and tell me where they went to school.
Joel Cheesman (16:56.722)
Okay. Perception is reality.
Chad Sowash (17:10.417)
Yeah, it's a different bias, yeah.
Jason Putnam (17:23.527)
you're going to see like five schools, right? So they're not being hired.
Joel Cheesman (17:25.714)
Yeah, and where they got money and who they got money from. Yeah.
Jason Putnam (17:30.503)
Right. They're not being hired, but they're being given money to go start a company because of where they went to school, the network they have. I have a great network, but it's like it is that is an incredible bias that also exists in the workplace. Scotiabank, Big Bank in Canada, great example. They had this problem. They were hiring from five unit for recent grads. They're hiring from five universities. The mandate was those five schools. Everyone has to have a finance and business degree period. They couldn't hire anybody.
So now they're hiring from like 30 different universities. They changed the initiative. They're not requiring resumes anymore. And I think 60 % of the hires are minorities and 30 % of them have STEM and art degrees. They changed their business because they had the forethought to say, and it was a business function. They didn't do it out of the goodness of their heart, right? Eventually it got that way. And there were certain people there who were like, yeah, it's out of the goodness of our heart. Let's do the right thing. But it was having really negative business impacts because they couldn't hire anybody.
Chad Sowash (18:17.809)
Mm -hmm.
Chad Sowash (18:26.673)
So is this gonna be the death of the resume finally because the resume, the paper document or the digital document can't keep up with the pace of change or is generative AI going to just make shit up and you'll have 2 ,500 resumes in the first place? I mean, it seems like, you know, never know what's gonna happen with this shit.
Joel Cheesman (18:45.682)
Both could be true. Both could be true.
Jason Putnam (18:47.463)
I think both are true. We have clients who don't use resumes for certain jobs, right? But again, it's the inherent bias that we all have that that's traditionally how we were hired, right? This is how I parented, right? So this is how I want my kids to parent. It's that inherent bias in there. But this, go get a switch, right? Yeah, we grew up the same way. So to me, a resume is just a stand -in for what you have learned.
Chad Sowash (18:50.417)
Yeah.
Bye.
Chad Sowash (18:59.921)
Right. Right.
Chad Sowash (19:06.001)
Go get a Switch.
You
Jason Putnam (19:17.703)
It's not a stand in for what you could do. And I think that's how people want to be seen now. It's not a human problem. It's a business problem because they need some stand in to say, I need some way to do it. The speed of change, I believe, is going to crush the resume because people are going to like nobody wants to update their resume. It's like doing an expense report. Everybody hates updating their resume. So there's got to be some place where through AI it can just be updated for me or it's a very easy process for me to
you know, talk about the new credentials I got or the new courses I took. And LinkedIn has done some things, but their matching is awful. Right. So there's got to there's got to be a way where like it's not on me anymore. Like you should be able to look at me as a human, figure out everything you need to know to determine, you know, am I going to be a good leader? Am I good for internal mobility? Do you want to hire me?
Chad Sowash (20:04.497)
But you just talked about the disparate databases and not clean data. I mean, there's a lot of work to be done.
It was funny because, you know, text kernel was just acquired by Bullhorn and you heard all these people saying, well, text kernel saw the writing on the wall because, you know, open AI was coming after them. It's like, no, it's harder than that. Right. So, so I mean, Gen AI isn't worth the damn letters for God's sakes. If you don't have clean data and you can't
tune that large language model and that takes domain experience. So how are we going to get this shit put together? It's not easy.
Jason Putnam (20:44.391)
No, it's, and some interesting things are happening, right? I have an AI background too, but some interesting things are happening. You know, LinkedIn changed their terms of service, right? LinkedIn's value was you could look at everybody on LinkedIn. I don't know if you guys even realize how much they changed their terms of service. The reason they changed their terms of service in my opinion, and I was brought into a council to talk about this stuff is companies were built on the back of LinkedIn's data. And because it's public or a lot of it's public, there's no value in it anymore.
Chad Sowash (20:56.561)
Mm -hmm.
Jason Putnam (21:14.183)
from a large language model perspective, because everyone can have access to it, no matter how much they want to shut them down. So they change their terms of service partly because they don't want other people using their data. But more importantly, they want that data to be unique and be able to feed their own LLM, right, and have their own proprietary data lake. Like, that's why we don't expose our data. Like, our data is in 50 ,000 people a month take Plum and create a profile. We don't let anybody see it, right? The value in that is amazing.
Chad Sowash (21:19.121)
Mm -hmm.
Chad Sowash (21:39.185)
huh. Right. Yes.
Jason Putnam (21:42.695)
And we don't want other people building their products on our back. And if we get acquired someday, part of it's going to be, you know, we've grown really well. Huge part of it's going to be, holy crap, that data no one else has access to.
Chad Sowash (21:53.873)
Well, big difference, you were created as a closed system, LinkedIn was created as an open public system, right? So I mean, they have a big PR shift to be able to make, not to mention, I mean, many of those individuals joined and they believe that that's their data, right? And, you know, again, it might be. So carry that forward a little bit. How do we, once again, you guys at Plum,
Jason Putnam (21:58.471)
Correct. Correct.
Chad Sowash (22:19.953)
You were thinking about this because you are closed. You have the opportunity to have more clean data, which means you can start using large language models. I don't know if you are or not. We should probably talk about that. On the data, it's a hell of a lot easier. But again, when we're talking about trying to tie these talent acquisition, talent management, evaluation systems, all these things together, that almost seems like it's impossible.
Do you see that happening? Do you see maybe some organizations creating like the text kernels of the world or what have you, daxters or what have you, cleaning data and making this happen?
Jason Putnam (23:01.223)
I think it almost has to happen. And that's, again, glass half full in me because if we took money out of the situation, it would already have happened. If we took revenue out of the situation, people would have shared that data because it's the right thing to do. But there's money in the world to be able to do it. I think there'll be some pretty large acquisitions around this. There's always going to be unique data out there that you're not going to get access to or that you're going to have to pay. So I think there's going to be, as a hypothesis, there's going to be some company out there
Whoever the founder maybe is going to be really well connected. And what's going to happen is they're going to figure out how to be a platform to pull data from everywhere in a really clean way, sanitize it, hydrate that data, and let other people use that data. I mean, Vizier to some extent does a version of this. Like their business model is very much like this, but it's different. It's the human data to be able to bring in all the human data. And ideally, bottoms up data and top down data, that platform is worth billions if it's built.
Chad Sowash (23:44.021)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (23:55.185)
In Linux, yeah.
Jason Putnam (24:00.999)
Billions.
Chad Sowash (24:01.009)
Yeah. Get on it, Cheeseman.
Joel Cheesman (24:02.834)
Jason, people listening won't see this, but you have a nice collection of, I guess, geeky shit behind you from Stormtroopers to Iron Man, et cetera. Curious because I know you think about this stuff. Are you an optimist or pessimist about the future of, I guess, humankind? On one hand, I see us adapting to this ever -changing, quickly changing world. Maybe it's computer chips in our brains.
Jason Putnam (24:11.175)
I did. Lots of.
Joel Cheesman (24:28.21)
and on the other hand, I see us just getting collecting checks from the government via, you know, universal basic income and the robots do all the work because they're the only ones that can keep pace with what's going on. Just curious as a, as a human being, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future?
Chad Sowash (24:40.273)
Wally.
Jason Putnam (24:45.191)
I am, if it's in regards to AI, I'm very optimistic, right? Cause it's not gonna, it's gonna take some jobs and those are the jobs they probably should take to be frank. Like if we use AI correctly and it makes us more efficient or it gives us more time in our life, we'll be better human beings. Like we use AI correctly, it allows us to be better human beings. If you would've asked me that question last Wednesday before the debate, I would have been incredibly optimistic about the future of this world. But with the options that are in front of me, I'm a little more pessimistic on the options that are in front of me.
in front of me. I think I think inherently people are good and people want to be good. But we're in this incredible rat race that has built this this society where it's just everyone's trying to keep up with everybody else. But technology should make that better, not worse.
Chad Sowash (25:14.129)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (25:29.49)
If you're looking to feel better, just buy a house in Chad's neighborhood in Portugal, because I don't even know if they had the debate on in Portugal. That is Jason Putnam, everybody. Jason, for those that want to connect with you or learn more about Plum, where do you send them?
Jason Putnam (25:45.767)
Yeah, anybody can go take their Plum profile. It's free during the 50 ,000 month. Just go to Plum .io and give you a whole career coaching platform. And then if you look at me, I'm everywhere on LinkedIn. It's just Jason Putnam, P -U -T -N -A
Joel Cheesman (25:59.986)
Love it. And can't wait to share a drink with you at the next conference that we run into each other. Chad is, that is another one in the can. My God took this long to get Jason on the show. Let's not make another seven years before he's back on. We out.
Jason Putnam (26:03.982)
Likewise. Thanks, fellas. Appreciate it.
Chad Sowash (26:14.577)
We out.
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