Jodie Prestinario, Strategic Partnerships at ZipRecruiter

Episode Transcript

00;00;00;16 – 00;00;12;02
David Pardo
It’s like, what is that thing in Star Trek the, the question, the, you know what I’m talking about? There’s like a battle scenario that you actually can’t win, and they get they give it to the young commanders.

00;00;12;04 – 00;00;13;09
Jodie Prestinario
I got to be honest–

00;00;13;13 – 00;00;19;19
David Pardo
Okay, I’m really outing of myself as a nerd.

00;00;19;21 – 00;00;42;17
David Pardo
Hey there and welcome to the Long Game. I am your host, David Pardo. Today we delve into the dynamic world of hiring and recruiting. With Jodie Prestinario, the head of strategic partnerships. Over on a recruiter. ZipRecruiter is a tech powerhouse and a household name. If you’ve ever listened to any podcast besides this one. They have revolutionized how employers and jobseekers connect.

00;00;42;19 – 00;01;04;05
David Pardo
Since their humble beginnings in the kitchen. We’ll talk about that. The company has grown to become a publicly traded entity and of interest to us. They’ve invested over $1 billion in advertising and pioneering AI driven job matching technology. Jodie, with her seven year tenure at ZipRecruiter, offers us a unique insider’s perspective. She’ll share insights on building effective partnerships.

00;01;04;08 – 00;01;25;07
David Pardo
Super interesting. Adapting to market shifts and the evolving landscape of hiring practices. Looks for critical topics like the trend away from four year degree requirements. The rise of something called skills based hiring and how AI is reshaping the recruitment process. So join us for this illuminating conversation about the long game in recruitment and how it’s shaping the future of work.

00;01;25;09 – 00;01;28;15
David Pardo
And say, a big, hearty welcome to my friend.

00;01;28;22 – 00;01;31;27
David Pardo
Jodie Prestinario. Welcome to the show.

00;01;31;29 – 00;01;33;19
Jodie Prestinario
Thank you.

00;01;33;21 – 00;01;47;22
David Pardo
so please, for our listeners out there in the World Wide Web. Tell us about your role in strategic partnerships at ZipRecruiter.

00;01;47;25 – 00;02;15;04
Jodie Prestinario
It’s a great question. So I have been at ZipRecruiter for almost seven years. I joined ZipRecruiter, actually, a very interesting story. I was working at a different tech startup, Santa Monica, and, somebody that I worked with actually met an executive at ZipRecruiter on an airplane ride from LA to New York. And, they ended up reaching out to me as a recruiter and said, hey, we have a new and interesting opportunity.

00;02;15;07 – 00;02;33;19
Jodie Prestinario
We’re doing our first kind of embedded or reseller partnership. We specialize in this. I would love to, to see if this is something you’d be interested in. And so we went back and forth for several months and, during this time, ZipRecruiter was securing kind of one of their larger partnerships. And so the second I joined, we kicked off this new partnership.

00;02;33;20 – 00;02;54;11
Jodie Prestinario
You know, and I’ve actually been working on the same partner, same channel since then. So it’s been a really exciting ride at ZipRecruiter. And in that time frame, I’ve also seen them go public. So it’s an awesome kind of, front seat, front, each story to be able to see that growth from a startup and kitchen to what ZipRecruiter is now.

00;02;54;14 – 00;02;56;25
David Pardo
Was it actually the kitchen?

00;02;56;27 – 00;03;20;05
Jodie Prestinario
Yeah. Our CEO Ian Siegel founder, started it with a couple other gentlemen, and yeah, it was founded in his kitchen. he was working at another startup at the time, and he’s been able to grow it massively. And so we thought offices in Phoenix, Tel Aviv and Santa Monica, a couple other remote satellite offices. But that’s been amazing to see that journey.

00;03;20;05 – 00;03;41;24
Jodie Prestinario
I think I was employee number 400, 400 something. And yeah, now we’re well over almost 2000 employees. And so it’s been an awesome journey. And just to be able to see something that scaled, right, especially through all the changes and Covid and, different economy and macro environment for hiring. It’s been awesome to see ZipRecruiter withstand that kind of test time.

00;03;41;24 – 00;03;48;06
Jodie Prestinario
And that’s actually how you and I know each other, right, is through our relationship with Apploi.

00;03;48;08 – 00;03;54;23
David Pardo
I’d love to ask you more about that. I’m so curious, though, when you mentioned changes and growth.

00;03;54;25 – 00;03;55;16
Jodie Prestinario

00;03;55;18 – 00;04;15;13
David Pardo
I guess growth is sort of, a typical story, but specifically ZipRecruiter has has, rolled with the punches, like you mentioned, Covid and a lot of, the labor markets change. A lot of work from home, remote work. you and I are not even sitting in the same, state right now as we’re speaking to each other.

00;04;15;13 – 00;04;25;00
David Pardo
So can you talk about some of the most, remarkable changes or noteworthy changes that you’ve seen Zip go through?

00;04;25;02 – 00;04;52;23
Jodie Prestinario
Yeah, definitely. I think Zip has been one of the first pioneers and invested quite early in AI. And so something about our platform that I think has continued to evolve is the focus on matching job seekers and employers to each other, using this technology that we invested in and so for us, we’ve always been focused on what is the fastest and easiest way for employers to make those connections, as well as job seekers.

00;04;52;25 – 00;05;15;26
Jodie Prestinario
And then with the evolution of what we’ve seen with Covid and to your point, kind of, the shift into being much more hybrid roles or being remote focused, ZipRecruiter has been really good at getting in front of how to make those tools available to employers to make these connections easy. and so I think some of the biggest changes we’ve seen is the hybrid work strategies, as you know, shifting to remote work.

00;05;15;26 – 00;05;38;19
Jodie Prestinario
And so figuring out like, what are some of the tools from an interview process that ZipRecruiter could design and provide in product, to make it easier for employers to make those hires, knowing that potentially doing that different sides of the country. and then there’s been changes, right, in generational preferences and, the upcoming up and coming kind of, workers that are much younger and what their expectation is.

00;05;38;19 – 00;05;56;23
Jodie Prestinario
So one of the cool things I’ve tested is still testing is, the opportunity for employers to provide, a button right away to job seekers when they apply to the job on our app or on our site, that they can meet with the employer almost instantly called Instant Interview. And it’s been something we’ve been testing for a while.

00;05;56;23 – 00;06;16;07
Jodie Prestinario
And so this is something we’ve seen with younger workforces. They want the opportunity right away to take action and move on the resume, that they’ve just filled out and submitted. So I think that’s been a really cool tool that we’ve been able to test, and continue to test as we think about our product solution and, and kind of the different hiring trends that we’re seeing.

00;06;16;10 – 00;06;35;29
Jodie Prestinario
something else too, that we tested early on that was very effective. And we actually rolled this out through the partnerships channel. My channel first was, during Covid, there was a lot of questions about what employers were actually still hiring. And in that environment and, what was maybe considered to be like old or expired jobs that were still live on our site.

00;06;36;01 – 00;07;02;11
Jodie Prestinario
So ZipRecruiter rolled out what we considered to be kind of stickers or banners that indicated that an employer was still hiring during Covid was supporting, remote work. And so these were banners that we provided that employers quickly added to their job posts, and we were able to get high visibility to these jobs and still allow and help employers make great hires in this market and kind of get through all the hype and break through the noise of what was going on with Covid.

00;07;02;11 – 00;07;25;11
Jodie Prestinario
And so that was something we adopted very early on. And then the first couple months, Covid, and we had a lot of lessons from that as well. And so I think ZipRecruiter is always going to be committed to how can we help employers and jobseekers, meet each other and connect quite fast? And how can we do that with speed and also delight to make sure that the best matches are being made?

00;07;25;13 – 00;07;49;13
David Pardo
said a lot of interesting from a product perspective. but I’m also very curious, going back to the beginning of this conversation, strategic partnerships. I think that’s a that’s like a $4 word for a lot of us. a lot of people I want to say watching this or listening to this are very keyed into, recruiting, hiring labor.

00;07;49;13 – 00;08;07;14
David Pardo
But the with the word strategic partnership just sounds like, I don’t know, like a foreign language. Can you, like, fill us in? I’m so curious. Like when you got recruited by Zip or are you doing strategic partnerships? Where are you doing that? At the beginning, or is that something that they carved out for you as you went along?

00;08;07;17 – 00;08;11;00
David Pardo
That’s a lot of questions. You can answer them in any order.

00;08;11;02 – 00;08;37;14
Jodie Prestinario
That’s an interesting question. So I actually belong to a professional group called Partnership Leaders. And we talk about this all the time that there is a lot of questions. Every company has a different version or expectation of a partnerships team. and Zip’s actually been really interesting and that it’s evolved to your point. But our focus as a partnerships team is to make ZipRecruiter ubiquitous, to reach more employers and jobs on more platforms than just direct to us.

00;08;37;17 – 00;09;07;02
Jodie Prestinario
and interestingly, that isn’t my background, my background with leading learning and development teams and launching and commercializing product launches. And the way we did that primarily was through learning and development. So, actually, when I shared that story of how I got to Zip, when, those executives had met on a plane and my name came up, it was actually because they were discussing, how ZipRecruiter was going to be rolling out a large partnership that would require enabling an external sales force.

00;09;07;04 – 00;09;30;27
Jodie Prestinario
So when I think about what, my team does well, and what ZipRecruiter has done well is we recognize that, you know, getting a partnership, securing a partnership is half the battle. But the bigger part of the battle and what what has to be done really strategically is how do you got an external sales team or an external marketing team to be able to sell the value of your brands, right.

00;09;30;27 – 00;09;49;12
Jodie Prestinario
They don’t work at ZipRecruiter. They aren’t trained in onboarded by our teams. But how do we get them to understand what the value of ZipRecruiter is, how to properly discuss that? how to do a, you know, a correct discovery with a prospect or a client and help them understand how ZipRecruiter is a fit for them. How do you do that well, and how do you do it at scale?

00;09;49;12 – 00;10;04;13
Jodie Prestinario
And one of our largest partnerships, they have over 6000 sales reps. And so I have figured out at this moment in time, I’ve cracked the code to how to do that well and at scale with the team. I won’t say that I’ve done that. You know, I’ve done it.

00;10;04;13 – 00;10;05;03
David Pardo
With the code?

00;10;05;05 – 00;10;05;28
Jodie Prestinario
three places.

00;10;05;29 – 00;10;06;22
David Pardo
Can you share the code with us?

00;10;06;24 – 00;10;10;06
Jodie Prestinario
I can share the code with you. It’s it’s it’s hard work, right?

00;10;10;06 – 00;10;11;09
David Pardo
It’s not proprietary, okay.

00;10;11;10 – 00;10;13;20
Jodie Prestinario
Not proprietary, but I think, I think a lot.

00;10;13;21 – 00;10;15;06
David Pardo
Oh, it’s one of these answers.

00;10;15;08 – 00;10;40;21
Jodie Prestinario
No. It’s not a hard answer, but I think a lot of brands think that they can create a sales aid or, you know, even record a podcast or training, send it out to a sales team and that’s enough. And what I’ve seen done at previous companies is my one. A rule I had a whole other lifetime ago was I worked at Ginett, very large publishing, print and broadcast Company, and they wanted to roll out digital.

00;10;40;25 – 00;10;59;07
Jodie Prestinario
And this was, as you and I have joked in kind of previous conversation, they needed to roll out the Google. How did they roll out Google ad to their newspaper and broadcast properties and those customers and let them know, hey, we can advertise your company on Google. You know, this was kind of mid early 2000s and same story.

00;10;59;10 – 00;10;59;18
Jodie Prestinario
How do–

00;10;59;18 – 00;11;05;26
David Pardo
And Google was new and you were in a very sort of technophobic old-school industry

00;11;05;29 – 00;11;22;18
Jodie Prestinario
Yeah, very legacy environment. Exactly. How do you got when you think about the incentives for a sales rep? Right. And one of these types of, I don’t call it antiquated, but legacy companies, how do we get them to be interested to sell digital in the correct capacity? It’s the same thing with selling ZipRecruiter, right.

00;11;22;18 – 00;11;39;29
Jodie Prestinario
And the answer is you have to go out in the field, you have to go on sales calls and prospect calls with them, and you have to learn how they’re pitching their customers, how they conduct to discovery, how they overcome objectives, and what those incentives are to get by. And you have to actually craft your entire pitch around that.

00;11;40;02 – 00;12;00;29
Jodie Prestinario
And so, we’ve done that. We’ve done a really good job with our partners and being able to get people out in the field. And we continue to do that. Right. We’ve been doing it for seven years. We still, conducts new hire trainings with these partners. We’re in their new hire classrooms when they’re bringing on rep classes, we join their leadership and Sko kickoff calls.

00;12;01;01 – 00;12;20;10
Jodie Prestinario
I mean, there is nothing about a partner sales process that you can side-step and have the amount of success that you need to cultivate, kind of a joint partnership. And so that’s been the secret. Again, I learned it in a much tougher environment with Ginett and I’ve been able to take those learnings and now build them into our partnership.

00;12;20;10 – 00;12;21;27
Jodie Prestinario
at ZipRecruiter.

00;12;22;00 – 00;12;34;07
David Pardo
What was it like at Ginett. I know I’ll be just transparent I’m trying of fish some like good stories out because I know I’ve heard some of them and the internet deserves to hear the rest of them.

00;12;34;09 – 00;12;50;14
Jodie Prestinario
The internet does deserve so, I think a lot of people that, you know, I’ve 35 around my age can appreciate this. When I graduated college. Right. I had a good sense. The internet had, you know, been on Myspace and felt confident clicking on the paid listings on Google.

00;12;50;14 – 00;12;51;12
David Pardo
And the Google.

00;12;51;12 – 00;13;09;29
Jodie Prestinario
On the Google. And so when I joined Ginett right out of college, it was interesting, right? Because that’s how they would talk about it. I would meet with these reps, been highly successful selling broadcast and print advertising space to brands, and they didn’t know how to talk about Google, right. They had no idea. How do you how do you sell cost per click?

00;13;09;29 – 00;13;30;17
Jodie Prestinario
How do you come up with a budget? This you know, it’s nothing like selling broadcast or positioning print advertising. And so I, you know, 19 years old, 20 years old, I got in the car with them and they take me to their largest advertiser in Louisville, a mattress company, and they’d say, go ahead. This is this is my largest client, sell them the Google.

00;13;30;21 – 00;13;46;05
Jodie Prestinario
Tell them about the Google, about how they can use their computer, and customers will be able to find them on the Google. And they won’t just have to advertise in their window, tell them about how they click on them. Actually find and locate this business, you know, outside of,

00;13;46;07 – 00;13;47;10
David Pardo
As they surf the web.

00;13;47;11 – 00;14;06;24
Jodie Prestinario
Yeah, they’d never search the web. And so a lot of the education piece and I still can’t believe, looking back, like I’m sure a lot of people can relate to this. Again, my age is like just showing them how Google works with like 20% of the pitch and then showing them like, hey, if we allocate a budget, we can get you on the Google, right?

00;14;06;24 – 00;14;19;21
Jodie Prestinario
And that was the remainder of the pitch. And how do I know it works? Then how do I know it’s not a scam? And, you know, showing them. And then through that, of course, it was like, oh, so I could find a new dentist on here. And it’s like, well, we’re not here to help you find a new dentist.

00;14;19;21 – 00;14;21;13
Jodie Prestinario
But yeah.

00;14;21;15 – 00;14;29;11
David Pardo
But we’ll throw that in. I’ll teach you how to save 15% on car insurance. If you sign with me today.

00;14;29;13 – 00;14;54;07
Jodie Prestinario
Exactly. We could use the Google for that purpose. And so it was just a coming of age time. And I’m sure it was very challenging for, you know, a very successful broadcast print rep to have, you know, 19 year old out there reallocating their, their advertising budgets over to digital. But it was just such a learning lesson and then a coming of age time, at least for myself, that yeah, you had to really understand that this was a very large shift.

00;14;54;09 – 00;15;14;17
Jodie Prestinario
And I think the same was coming with AI. I know you and I talked about that, but just the learnings of that and how long it took to permeate a lot of those beliefs say it took a decade. You know, we’re still there sometimes talking to different, brands about, hey, you can make hires online. You don’t have to just put up a sign at your ice cream shop, you know, make a hire.

00;15;14;17 – 00;15;34;02
Jodie Prestinario
And of course, we’ve got, you know, very large enterprise ETS partners and mid-market ETS partners such as Apploi that help us do that. But I’m sure you guys have had those conversations with customers where even just shifting them to online hiring, was a very large change. and what they had been doing for many years.

00;15;34;05 – 00;15;57;01
David Pardo
it’s it’s always it’s always a challenge. It’s always interesting. I think health care is fun because it’s a very traditional industry. And there’s just there’s just such a big delta on like a little bit of elbow grease on the right kind of tech tools that can actually, like, really change. the business can really change patient care.

00;15;57;03 – 00;16;25;01
David Pardo
so it’s an exciting time, really, for the right kind of people in the right and in the space. It’s only going to grow as the population gets older. but the to jump back to partnerships, I thought were you were saying was just so interesting because to me it means like business 1.0 is I’m going to do like a really great job and fight for my share of the market.

00;16;25;03 – 00;16;42;15
David Pardo
And then business sort of 2.0 is realizing, like, you know, you could do you can fight for your share of the market all day long. But the real thing is like finding some allies who are not actually doing what you’re doing. It’s not like, yeah, you know, find allies who are doing what you’re doing and collude together.

00;16;42;15 – 00;16;55;16
David Pardo
It’s like finding allies who are doing something similar or completely different and work together and raise up the the ships that way. So, yeah, you’re doing like a lot of ZipRecruiter’s work that way.

00;16;55;19 – 00;17;25;05
Jodie Prestinario
Yeah, I think for us we have a couple partners that we have assessed and determined bring kind of what Ian, our founder, refers to as brand halo effect. So these are best in class partners that have a customer base that’s large significant over a million customers that, we potentially can touch through our own direct channels. But if they have a healthy relationship with a partner and it’s a space that we can add value into, especially when you think about the life cycle environment or an employer or brand.

00;17;25;07 – 00;17;59;16
Jodie Prestinario
I think those are places that we’ve made investments and have really seen. The takeaway being access to, you know, hundreds of thousands of employers, customer retention or stickiness that potentially we wouldn’t necessarily have. And then, a really good customer service and sales experience that feels, definitely like one experience, like I described in some of our partnerships where we’re out in the field helping them sell a lot of customers don’t even have awareness that we’re not the same company or that, like, one of us doesn’t own the other one.

00;17;59;16 – 00;18;01;08
Jodie Prestinario
And so I think we.

00;18;01;08 – 00;18;01;23
David Pardo
Is a success when

00;18;01;23 – 00;18;02;06
Jodie Prestinario

00;18;02;09 – 00;18;05;29
David Pardo
that happens or is that like, just curious.

00;18;06;01 – 00;18;24;23
Jodie Prestinario
You know, it’s funny, I think people are very familiar with ZipRecruiter in that we’ve been around for a long time where, you know, trusted company to help make those connections. But we also do millions of dollars in advertising. And you know, we’ve spent over $1 billion in our lifetime getting into people’s homes and commercials and mailers and podcast advertising.

00;18;24;23 – 00;18;25;23
Jodie Prestinario
And so I think, yeah.

00;18;25;24 – 00;18;28;25
David Pardo
900 million on podcasts, I think.

00;18;28;28 – 00;18;50;09
Jodie Prestinario
Yeah, absolutely. So I would say we’re pretty ubiquitous out there with, being the hiring partner. But I think when we see that happen, that is just a testament to the work we do on partnerships to make that buying experience and that customer service journey, feel very integrated. Right. And that customers don’t have an awareness that these are two separate companies.

00;18;50;09 – 00;19;10;07
Jodie Prestinario
And that goes as far as, we even have this is a little bit bizarre to share, but we even have like an IVR tree that’s mapped to some of our partners. And so that means if a customer is calling into one of our partners companies, that customer service team there has the ability with one click to switch that customer directly over to our service team.

00;19;10;07 – 00;19;14;25
Jodie Prestinario
And there is no delay. So more customer experience is, you know, so delightful journey and easy.

00;19;14;26 – 00;19;16;06
David Pardo
Seamless.

00;19;16;09 – 00;19;30;18
Jodie Prestinario
seamless. Exactly. And so we focus our efforts there and again have been very successful and continue to grow and and provide ZipRecruiter again through a scalable non direct panel. That’s been an effective manner for us.

00;19;30;20 – 00;19;52;16
David Pardo
I’m going to jump to sort of like labor market questions in a minute. But just curious if I’m an 18 year old kid listening to this pod, and I want to grow up to be Jodie. What’s the is a career path through sales, through marketing. Do you like sign up to be a partnership associate? Like what’s the best path?

00;19;52;18 – 00;19;56;18
Jodie Prestinario
That’s a good question. I would say of the most success.

00;19;56;19 – 00;19;57;13
David Pardo
I try to ask the best.

00;19;57;19 – 00;20;22;02
Jodie Prestinario
You do, you ask some thoughtful questions. I’d say, actually, that if I were to give someone advice, I think the best way to go into partnerships is probably to get finance or business backgrounds, and then to do sales for a little bit of time or sales supporting enablement, learning and development. product marketing, I think those are all ways to understand 30,000 foot view of

00;20;22;04 – 00;20;50;27
Jodie Prestinario
a business what makes it tick. And then when you come into a partnerships role and you get very specific and strategic about what levers you want to use to drive revenue and drive brand scalability, you have experience on how to test those things. I think the most successful people in partnerships that I’ve worked with at other companies, they have experience, pulling those levers, those growth levers, and they know how to test pilot, different tools to make that successful.

00;20;50;29 – 00;21;18;08
Jodie Prestinario
I don’t think someone can come up in partnerships and have a really unique or interesting background that will lend itself to trying and really pushing growth. I think that’s kind of the differentiator. I know when I hire, I always ask people, tell me about something that you not only initiated as far as you know, something new at your company or something you helped grow, but also like what were the steps that you took to grow it?

00;21;18;11 – 00;21;44;07
Jodie Prestinario
And how do you perceive, how did you measure it like what? What was the focus for you in that growth? And I think if someone can’t tell a really complicated, convoluted like long story about that, it means that they’ve never been close enough to help grow it. And so that’s kind of one of our, our hiring strategies at Zip is we always do cases, and we’re always focused on, how someone can tell that story about their previous experience and how they initiated and manage growth.

00;21;44;07 – 00;22;10;00
Jodie Prestinario
And that’s one of the best things you can do in a partnership, is have an eye for that, and be able to have a unique perspective that lends itself to somebody else’s environment. an example of this is when I first started at ZipRecruiter, and we had signed a pretty large partnership. my boss at the time, his name was Dennis, said to me, we don’t know what shape this is going to take, but can you go out to their office and just observe for a couple days and then come back and we’ll make a plan?

00;22;10;02 – 00;22;29;27
Jodie Prestinario
I said sure. So I flew out to an office, and when I got to the office, it was a new office. Nobody knew that. One of our brands has 50 offices nationwide, so a very established company didn’t know I was heading to a new office. And when I got there, the site director said, hey, I know you’re here to kind of observe, but it’s our first hire class.

00;22;29;29 – 00;22;47;03
Jodie Prestinario
Can you go in the hiring class and can you help them plug in their phones because they’re going to be doing outbound dial and they could just use some support, and they’re really quick. So I did that. And then while I was in there, they started talking about how they do discovery and, you know, reach out to prospects.

00;22;47;03 – 00;23;04;04
Jodie Prestinario
And the site director said, hey, you in the back with ZipRecruiter, do you have any examples that you can lend and add? So I, I gave some of my own experience and some of these answers. And again, this is a class of like 70 brand new hires at this company. And as I was there, they just kept asking questions.

00;23;04;04 – 00;23;21;02
Jodie Prestinario
And, you know, how could I add value to the conversation. And what I realized at the end of it is I came out building really strong relationships, but I hadn’t really done anything in terms of growing the partnership specifically. Right. I hadn’t sat down and kind of talk shop with any of the leadership to figure out how we were going to pitch this new partnership.

00;23;21;02 – 00;23;43;07
Jodie Prestinario
I hadn’t built a pitch deck with them, nothing of that nature. I helped them plug in phones. I gave them sales support for a new hire class. I took them to lunch. I sat there, you know, from 8 to 5 every day. I was attentive, I made myself available. And that was huge, right? And to this day, I would say, if you talk to anyone at this company, they know that that’s kind of my brand is I’ll figure it out.

00;23;43;07 – 00;24;08;20
Jodie Prestinario
I’ll make myself available, and I will be flexible in any of your offices, and so does my team to make sure we’re just there to support whatever the challenges are in office. And I think that’s one of the things that’s made us super successful is I think a lot of people have a very specific shape or strategy they want to fit a partnership into, and our brand at ZipRecruiter has very much been enabling and supporting employers and other brands.

00;24;08;22 – 00;24;22;10
Jodie Prestinario
And so we’ve been able to be flexible and lend ourselves to that. and I think that’s truly been one of the biggest secrets of our success, is just being open minded and available to do those types of things and ultimately it grows our relationship.

00;24;22;13 – 00;24;43;20
David Pardo
Relationships, everything is relationships. The older I get, the more like it just pound it in. And like relationships and partnerships is fascinating because it’s one of these areas of business where you’re not supposed to be good at partnerships per se. It’s some it’s everything around partnerships that leads into it. It’s like.

00;24;43;21 – 00;24;44;08
Jodie Prestinario

00;24;44;10 – 00;24;54;16
David Pardo
Really business writ large. You don’t get too good at business. You get business is the byproduct of being good at doing something else. Yeah. which is a good segue.

00;24;54;19 – 00;25;11;05
Jodie Prestinario
Well, I was gonna say the only other thing I’d add is, I think in partnerships, in marketing, this is always the conversation is how do we make it easier for our own sales reps and our own sales teams to be able to go out and have, easier conversations with the public? We want to make our name and our brand more ubiquitous.

00;25;11;05 – 00;25;32;02
Jodie Prestinario
And so that’s another piece of partnerships, is if you can make something easy, you can make something fun to talk about that adds value. I think a lot of times we’re actually going out and creating like live walking podcasts advertisements right through the different partners we have. through the client success stories, we’re able to capture the partner.

00;25;32;02 – 00;25;52;13
Jodie Prestinario
I think the goal with partnerships is always going to be to make it easier to tell the brand story and to have those real life, advocates out there, which is, you know, your clients, your prospects and your partner, but also your partner itself and all their sales reps and client service reps and their product teams who have worked with you and you make it again, just easy and flexible to work with you.

00;25;52;16 – 00;25;58;18
Jodie Prestinario
This is just a much larger extension of what we’re able to do, you know, in a formal marketing capacity.

00;25;58;20 – 00;26;14;05
David Pardo
Real life podcasts. I want that as a sticker. I’ll slap that on my laptop. Speaking of the segue, labor markets though, Zip put out a big labor market report, I think in April. I don’t know, sometime this year.

00;26;14;12 – 00;26;16;16
Jodie Prestinario
I think our last one was May.

00;26;16;18 – 00;26;27;06
David Pardo
Okay. Even even more recently. So, can you talk about some of the trends in the labor market? That Zip has put their eyes on?

00;26;27;08 – 00;26;47;27
Jodie Prestinario
Yeah, I think we’ve been living in kind of a funny time, but I think, Julia, our chief labor economist, had put out that report back in June. And while we were still seeing a lot of business uncertainty, I know she spent a lot, a lot of time talking about that. she did also speak about wage growth, right.

00;26;47;27 – 00;27;10;12
Jodie Prestinario
And that it’s kept a very healthy pace with inflation. And we’re starting to see a steady increase consumer spending, which, as you know, is is kind of where the focus has been. And so I think at ZipRecruiter. What we’re seeing internally is that we’re starting to see that job seekers are feeling more confident. And there is a lot more optimism about starting to apply to jobs.

00;27;10;15 – 00;27;32;13
Jodie Prestinario
And I think what we’re telling employers right now is with the right strategy and investments, there are going to be talent acquisition wins, right. And that job growth is is continuing. and it’s been kind of keeping pace, but it is continuing to grow right now as we look at June, and the unemployment rate again has been at or below 4%, for the last 29 months or so.

00;27;32;13 – 00;27;49;26
Jodie Prestinario
And so I think for us, again, we’re, we’re starting to say we’re seeing improvements. Slowly but surely, we believe we’re going to get there. and we’re continuing to kind of watch the market. I think our next labor report should be out in the next 30 days or so. but again, we’re seeing kind of improvement.

00;27;49;28 – 00;27;50;28
David Pardo
We spoke too soon.

00;27;51;00 – 00;27;58;06
Jodie Prestinario
Yeah. A little bit of robust, unemployment growth that’s happening. So we’re going to continue to watch that.

00;27;58;09 – 00;28;07;21
David Pardo
so I think something of interest, some of the listeners who a lot of them are owners, operators, employers is to talk about a shift to skills based hiring.

00;28;07;29 – 00;28;09;00
Jodie Prestinario
Yes.

00;28;09;03 – 00;28;14;18
David Pardo
Can you talk about the kind of talk about that, what that is and what that means?

00;28;14;20 – 00;28;40;25
Jodie Prestinario
So this is nothing new. I think we’re starting to see a lot of thought leadership to talk about this. I know Burning Glass Institute has done a ton of, published work on this, but I think when we talk about, the shift to skills based hiring, what we’re talking about is identifying talent based on somebody’s abilities and competencies, rather than just their education and direct experience.

00;28;40;28 – 00;29;16;29
Jodie Prestinario
And I think part of this is that employers have more tools and technology available to them to identify skills, and so they’re using, one of our partners, ADP, for example, has many, many tools that they provide employers to help them provide personality assessment and competency assessments. And they can really fine tune in the hiring process, different expectations that they’d like to capture in, in going through those interviews and that they can find somebody that maybe doesn’t necessarily fit a traditional template that employer had hired for previously.

00;29;17;01 – 00;29;47;03
Jodie Prestinario
but they do fit kind of the new template and the new competencies that they’ve identified will make somebody successful in the role. And so I think part of this has been borne out of employers taking a step back slightly from educational requirements. I think I saw, Burning Glass Institute had put out a stat recently that something like 17% of employers on LinkedIn had removed a bachelor’s degree as being kind of a base requirement for applying to the job.

00;29;47;05 – 00;30;08;03
Jodie Prestinario
So I think part of that is really yeah, you’re starting to see the elimination of those four year degree requirements. and that’s, you know, there’s many reasons. I know, where we’re seeing that. Right? There’s there’s more innovative ways that someone can get an education there’s schools, you know, alternative schools that you can get, licensing and accreditation.

00;30;08;05 – 00;30;26;27
Jodie Prestinario
and so I think that’s part of that. But I also think, again, technology is allowing us to get much more, to get better, right, at hiring and using different tools to be able to identify abilities and competencies that will help, get you the best hire and not just check a box.

00;30;27;00 – 00;30;46;18
David Pardo
I’m such, I can’t tell you this isn’t like a show about my opinions, but I’m such a fan of that. Like, as someone who’s over educated, I spent a lot of time, I just think that the requirement for a four year bachelor’s is really just a proxy to, to require some level of competence from a person.

00;30;46;18 – 00;31;13;10
David Pardo
And what you’re basically saying is, I trust the admissions department of X University to have done the work to make sure that this person is sufficiently competent to. But I don’t think and it would be, especially because there’s such an emphasis in this country, again, as somebody who has a degree in economics I’ve ever used, I’m inspired by your chief labor economist, for, for actually, using their economics degree.

00;31;13;13 – 00;31;32;24
David Pardo
there’s, there’s no expectation in a liberal arts milieu that you’re going to actually learn something that you’re going to apply in your job. So we’re really just begging people to go into debt so that they can apply to a job that they didn’t train for and they like, why don’t we just skip that middle part and save like a lot of pain, a lot of hurt.

00;31;32;26 – 00;31;54;19
David Pardo
It’s just it’s it’s become like a cultural rite of passage. The whole four year university. so again, like thinking of different ways people can acquire skills that they can then use in the labor market and accelerate their life without also living in debt is just such a plus. Huge fan.

00;31;54;22 – 00;32;30;20
Jodie Prestinario
Yeah, I think I’ve seen a lot of articles on this and we’ve certainly discussed it internally is like the smartest companies today are really starting to redefine jobs as a collection of skills and tasks and not just job titles. And so I think as companies evolve with their talent strategy and think about the evolution of AI and what it means for everyone on their team, I think they also have to think about how can AI aid and enable a lot of these teams that maybe can offboard a lot of their day to day work and save their time more for collaboration and strategic work

00;32;30;22 – 00;32;55;14
Jodie Prestinario
that allows them to leverage their competencies. And like I mentioned before, for my own talent strategy, I’m looking at someone’s overall holistic experience, how they’ve been able to solve situations, remain flexible and focus on growth, and what are different levers that they can use to test growth. I think it’s the same thing from an employer’s perspective, is that you’re going to be able to use really advanced tools and technology, you know, that are here today and continue to evolve

00;32;55;14 – 00;33;15;19
Jodie Prestinario
Tomorrow. You’ll be able to identify talent and make those connections. And ZipRecruiter is certainly there. And that, you know, we’ve been investing in AI for over a decade. We’ve been able to help employers make those matches that we we believe are credible. But I think when you think about redefining jobs as a collection of skills and tasks, it is on the employer.

00;33;15;19 – 00;33;42;00
Jodie Prestinario
It’s on the hiring manager to think about, like, how can your workplace most cultivate growth and continue to encourage and enable their talent to grow? I think that there’s going to be a really large emphasis on employers providing that and that being just part of their brand and how they support and enable their employees. And, you know, I think for a lot of small businesses, maybe this will be more difficult.

00;33;42;00 – 00;33;47;29
Jodie Prestinario
But I think that’s the shift, is that implementation from an employer to be able to provide that experience.

00;33;48;01 – 00;34;01;06
David Pardo
So I’m curious, what if you have an answer to that question, like how can employers help grow their employees? And just to help further frame this, this for us, for Apploi has been an answer to the question of retention.

00;34;01;06 – 00;34;01;23
Jodie Prestinario
Yeah.

00;34;01;25 – 00;34;06;19
David Pardo
Which like has been very common for the past number of years in the long term care spaces.

00;34;06;22 – 00;34;14;07
David Pardo
a lot of turnover. What do we do? So, you know, sometimes the answer is like, oh, we’ll throw more money over, throw the signing bonus over. You know, we’ll throw more pizza parties.

00;34;14;07 – 00;34;14;16
Jodie Prestinario
Yeah.

00;34;14;16 – 00;34;21;08
David Pardo
But some of the more clever answers have been we’ll invest in their long term education and we’ll pay for their schooling or their licensing or

00;34;21;09 – 00;34;21;19
Jodie Prestinario
yes,

00;34;21;19 – 00;34;26;17
David Pardo
something like that. So I’m curious what you think is the answer with that sort of framing.

00;34;26;20 – 00;34;47;06
Jodie Prestinario
I think the framing part is that employers are going to have to bring skills and workforce learning to the center of their talent management strategy. and I think a big piece of that, you’re already starting to see investments and like, go one and litmus. Right. These are different, companies that employers can use to have ongoing and perpetual learning paths that are available.

00;34;47;08 – 00;35;13;28
Jodie Prestinario
But I think there’s going to be really a focus of like, training to promote bringing in, employees that are going to constantly be focused on growing their skill set. And so they are adopting at the same pace in which AI is growing. The environment is changing, right? I mean, even just Covid. Think about how quickly employers had to shift their people strategies to be able to support, you know, a remote workforce.

00;35;14;05 – 00;35;39;23
Jodie Prestinario
Zip is a great example. We have, you know, we were primarily in Phoenix and Santa Monica and Tel Aviv, and now we hire 100% purely remote. And so our own people team has had to focus on, how do we help more junior employees learn how to have executive communication skills when they don’t have the opportunity to sit next to someone in an office like their manager, for example, and attend a meeting.

00;35;39;25 – 00;35;58;01
Jodie Prestinario
and I know for myself, again, I’m 35, I grew up in an environment like Ginett where there were president, you know, regularly in the building, and I was able to join meetings and take notes and observe and understand. These are social norms. These are this is a tone you’d want to take with an executive. This is how you present a strategy.

00;35;58;03 – 00;36;11;24
Jodie Prestinario
This is how to land a deck, a formal presentation. There’s a lot of people coming up, especially younger generations, that will never have that experience, that are going to go straight from undergrad or maybe not undergrad. Right? Give it all we’ve talked about.

00;36;11;27 – 00;36;13;03
David Pardo
Online, AI school.

00;36;13;08 – 00;36;31;16
Jodie Prestinario
All right. Yeah. Exactly. They’re going to go from yeah, whatever trade school they attended. And they’re going to go straight into a working environment that is going to feel high risk, because they’ve never had the chance to see some of this happen, you know, and in real life, so to speak. And so I think that there’s there’s two pieces here.

00;36;31;16 – 00;36;50;07
Jodie Prestinario
Right. We’re going to bring skills and workforce learning to the center of talent management. But a big piece of talent management will be on leadership to help understand where is the best place for people to learn. Is it in person? Can we provide training to them that’s just as effective online? Can we put together a leadership program that allows them to be mentored?

00;36;50;09 – 00;37;09;29
Jodie Prestinario
I think all of this will matter to employees, right? When they make a decision. The determination about what kind of brand and company they want to work with grow with, they’re going to have to have much more. This is gonna have to be formalized versus pre-COVID world. I think a lot of this was much easier to access.

00;37;10;01 – 00;37;31;12
Jodie Prestinario
even the conversation around mentorship. Right. How did you and I get mentors? A lot of times we got noticed by an executive who took an interest in us organically, and we cultivated that relationship by seeing them in the office, getting water, getting coffee. And we had a chance to talk about what we both did last night, what our summer plans were, and it naturally, that relationship evolved to the point.

00;37;31;13 – 00;37;50;08
Jodie Prestinario
Now you had a formal mentor. That doesn’t happen in many organizations now. And so like for myself as a leader, I have to think about if I want to grow talent, I need to be able to give them opportunities. I can do that through skill based learning. I can give that to them through, direct exposure to someone like myself or other leaders.

00;37;50;15 – 00;38;04;11
Jodie Prestinario
But I also have to be very cognizant. I need to give them opportunities that are going to give them real life experience on the spot. And so I think we have to get a lot more creative and thoughtful about how we provide those experiences. If we want to retain talent.

00;38;04;13 – 00;38;13;18
David Pardo
That’s an incredible answer. I want to not cut this conversation off, but I also want to transition to our fun questions. Are you ready for fun questions?

00;38;13;20 – 00;38;17;04
Jodie Prestinario
Okay, give them to me. I love it.

00;38;17;06 – 00;38;25;01
David Pardo
Most life changing purchase under $150. When we started the show was 100, but inflation’s out of control.

00;38;25;01 – 00;38;44;20
Jodie Prestinario
So yeah, honestly, probably. I hate to be that girl, but probably more so. I take this to I know, I’m sure I’m not the first person love the Stanley. I had to make the investment on the stainless steel straw. You know, I’m trying to get plastics out of my life. Except for the top on here. so, yeah, probably the Stanley.

00;38;44;20 – 00;38;47;17
Jodie Prestinario
I bring it everywhere. I think I brought it when I met you.

00;38;47;20 – 00;38;55;17
David Pardo
You did. I mean, we were outside in Arizona, Phoenix, 105 degree heat. So it was life saving.

00;38;55;18 – 00;39;01;01
Jodie Prestinario
Casual place for a meeting. See, Adam didn’t think it was that hot, but.

00;39;01;04 – 00;39;17;13
David Pardo
I think it’s like a very enjoyable sauna just outside. So, you see, you have to pay for those things normally. And their nature was providing it for us. okay. If you had one billboard and you knew 1 million people would see it, what would you slap on that billboard?

00;39;17;16 – 00;39;28;25
Jodie Prestinario
At this current moment in time? It would be my husband’s new business, which is building Casitas or, ADUs, so it’d probably be an ad for Casita crafters. I’m still trying to help him crack the code

00;39;28;27 – 00;39;29;18
David Pardo
What’s casitas?

00;39;29;18 – 00;39;32;19
Jodie Prestinario
How to market? so. Accessory dwelling unit.

00;39;32;19 – 00;39;33;20
David Pardo
What’s Casitas ADU?

00;39;33;23 – 00;39;35;09
Jodie Prestinario
Yeah, it’s a it’s an additional.

00;39;35;12 – 00;39;36;11
David Pardo
Like little casas.

00;39;36;12 – 00;39;40;04
Jodie Prestinario
Yeah, like a tiny home. A modular build in your backyard.

00;39;40;06 – 00;39;47;21
David Pardo
Oh. okay. that is actually, I want to say, the most out of the box use of the question so far.

00;39;47;24 – 00;39;52;15
Jodie Prestinario
But I think it’s was my own personal success. Right?

00;39;52;17 – 00;40;06;06
David Pardo
no. No, I like it’s like, what is that thing in Star Trek? The, the the, the, you know, talking about that there’s like a battle scenario that you actually can’t win. And they get they give it to the young commanders. Okay.

00;40;06;07 – 00;40;06;23
Jodie Prestinario
I’m really outing myself as a nerd.

00;40;06;26 – 00;40;15;10
Jodie Prestinario
I gotta be honest. I know I was gonna say I’ve been in tech forever, but I’ve just never picked up on the, I never fell for the Star Wars or Star Trek.

00;40;15;10 – 00;40;36;19
David Pardo
There’s this there. That’s for the not not the same thing. But anyway, it’s the that there’s a, there’s sort of like in training in, in the flight school academy, which I assume is debt free. I don’t know, they when they’re training the officers, they give them a scenario. And the problem with the scenario is actually impossible to win.

00;40;36;21 – 00;40;55;25
David Pardo
So what they really want to see is like how they’ll deal with it. And Kirk famously broke the rules to figure out a way to win. So I’m just saying that you, that was a very long explanation to say that you’re a modern iteration of Captain Kirk.

00;40;55;27 – 00;41;19;13
David Pardo
You broke the code. What? not at all. This is marketing. This is how you. This is partnership. This is relationships, Jodie. we’re we’re we’re just role modeling right now. Where do you get your. I usually say health care, but I’m going to pivot and say your labor news, industry news, latest and greatest.

00;41;19;15 – 00;41;25;27
Jodie Prestinario
I would definitely say ZipRecruiter from Julia Pollak, our cheap labor economist. She publishes.

00;41;25;27 – 00;41;29;05
David Pardo
Used her economics degree, ran with it. My hero.

00;41;29;07 – 00;41;50;12
Jodie Prestinario
Yes, but she also we use it because we do a ton of thought leadership with our partners. She provides the cleanest, most straightforward summaries that someone that’s 20 years old, you know, selling payroll at one of our partnerships is able to utilize. So I love what Julia posts. I love I check her LinkedIn and the labor report she publishes under Zip.

00;41;50;15 – 00;42;07;11
Jodie Prestinario
And then I like Burning Glass Institute. So they have a couple different authors there that I follow on LinkedIn. it’s just really straightforward and an interesting takeaways from what’s happening in the macro in our economy and what it means for you on a personal note, as well as what it means for us, at ZipRecruiter.

00;42;07;13 – 00;42;10;23
David Pardo
Jodie, I really want to thank you for spending time with us today.

00;42;10;25 – 00;42;12;09
Jodie Prestinario
And again, great meeting you

00;42;12;14 – 00;42;13;09
David Pardo
Oh, last question.

00;42;13;09 – 00;42;19;09
David Pardo
I’m so dumb where wait pause pause pause- where can people find you online? Plug yourself.

00;42;19;10 – 00;42;25;09
Jodie Prestinario
You can find me on LinkedIn. I am a big thought leader in my little neck of the woods.

00;42;25;12 – 00;42;26;02
David Pardo
Nice

00;42;26;05 – 00;42;31;04
Jodie Prestinario
with partnerships. But yeah, I’m Jodie, Jodie Prestinario on LinkedIn.

00;42;31;07 – 00;42;35;10
David Pardo
I’ll post a link in the show notes. Thank you for joining again.

00;42;35;13 – 00;42;37;26
Jodie Prestinario
Will do. Thank you so much David. I appreciate you having me.