(00:00:05) - Welcome to the HR Tech Spotlight podcast. I'm Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. The HR technology market is crowded, and we know it can be hard to find the best software solutions for your business in the sea of sameness. On this podcast, we shine a spotlight on some of the best up and coming technology options out there. Check it out if you are interested in learning about new, innovative solutions available in the market. And if you are with an HR tech company and interested in being considered for a guest spot. Stay tuned for details at the end of the show.
(00:00:45) - Hello and welcome to The HR Tech Spotlight. Today we are shining a spotlight on Pharma, the world's largest social media screening company and a leader in applying AI to background screening services. Their out of the box solution screens for nine types of workplace misconduct to detect fraudulent or illegal activities and identify extreme behaviors that are detrimental to the workplace. With an AI tool that searches 10,000 online sources of public data. Joining me to talk about pharma is founder and CEO Ben Mones.
(00:01:18) - Hello, Ben.
(00:01:20) - Hey, Deanna. Thanks a lot for having me on board. I appreciate you nailed the pronunciation.
(00:01:25) - Oh, thank goodness I was worried about that. So Ben, tell us about your background in the HR tech space.
(00:01:33) - Yeah, sure. So, my background really has been, uh, more in technology than HR tech in particular. Um, so sort of started in the world of a cloud based software, doing everything from media analytics to CRM technology to even, um, you know, some, some work in the wearable space. But I actually started pharma because at a previous company, I hired a guy who looked great on paper, uh, resume checked out, well referenced VP of sales guy ends up coming on board and unfortunately sexually harassing one of our top salespeople at the company. And it was a horrible experience for this woman and for, you know, the business as a whole. And after the fact, we saw, uh, you know, all this, like, pejorative, misogynistic content about women that had we seen it on this guy's social media, we never would have brought him on board.
(00:02:17) - So I actually came from the perspective of simply just using technology to solve difficult problems. But this, you know, starting pharma in 2015. So almost, uh, nine years ago, January will be nine years, uh, has really been my education in the world of HR, tech, talent acquisition and sort of building with our customers in mind. So yeah, it's been about nine years or so now in the world of HR. Tech is kind of a service provider. And definitely, uh, my, my favorite category of technology that I've worked in, uh, so far. So.
(00:02:50) - Well, and I can see where there's definitely a need. I mean, there's a lot of risks when you hire someone, right? Like, you don't know what their background is. And many companies have made the mistake of hiring someone, only to find out after the fact that the red flags were there. They just didn't know how to look for them. Right?
(00:03:08) - Totally. Yeah. And you know, I think that's, uh, if you boil it down right.
(00:03:13) - And this is a bit reductive, a bit overly simplified. But if you boil it down with hiring, at the end of the day, what we're trying to do, we have all these people, we have all this process, we have all these tools, this technology, these workflows. Right. Um, it's all designed to kind of make a bet on like, how is this person going to act around employees and customers when they join? Right. We can qualify someone. We can look at their degrees, we can make sure they have the right skills, you know, to perform a function in the role. But at the end of the day, a lot of us are just asking that question of outside of just doing the job, how is this person going to act around employees and customers and plugging into one of the world's richest data streams, which is our online personas? Uh, to get that sort of historical pattern of behavior, that years and years of data, of information, and we're creating 1.7MB of data every second.
(00:04:05) - You know, in the world that we live in today, we live so much of our lives online that being able to plug into that data source and extract insights in a compliant way from that data source, that data stream is really only possible because the latest advancements in artificial intelligence and technology. So it's a really interesting moment for us to be able to say, like, to your point, this used to be kind of the cost of doing business. You don't really know where to look. You couldn't really get the information. Um, but now you can. So it's a really interesting moment in sort of the way we think about our roles and our jobs and, uh, the world to and HR tech more general.
(00:04:40) - Yeah. So your tool searches 10,000 online sources, and you have nine types of workplace misconduct that you screen for. Let's dig into that. Tell us a little bit more about how all of that works.
(00:04:53) - Yeah. So when we think about, you know, um, the, the, the source of data that we tap into, a lot of it is really structured around this concept and idea that there's power in who we are as people, in words and image and video as it exists online.
(00:05:09) - Right. If you just think about, um, how much time again, we're spending and I encourage everybody who's listening in and even, you know, think about like between time on your computer, at work time on your phone, watching TV, maybe with your kid on the iPad. Right. Like so much of our lives are now lived in these sort of digital ecosystems and these digital spheres. And so when it comes down to answering that question, how is this person going to act when they join around employees and customers? You know, companies are turning and saying, hey, I want to access and leverage this data source as part of that process. So for us, what that means from a source standpoint is that we're not just looking at publicly available content on social media, what people are saying and doing and engaging with, but also any news articles that they've been, you know, involved in any media that's out there, any blog message board content. But getting deeper into things like, you know, um, civil litigation, right? Things about for executives, you might want to know if you're a CFO, if you've had a series of personal bankruptcy, if you're running a large organization, if you have a history of, you know, being sued, for example, and there are these weird corners of the internet where you can find civil litigation, right, to be able to unpack that and find that out, right, and discover more about, you know, who we are through, you know, that particular lens.
(00:06:25) - So for us, it's a comprehensive online persona that means who you are in text, image and video as it exists online. And then the types of misconduct, obviously, there's a lot of good stuff and a lot of irrelevant stuff when it comes to hiring. Right on our digital identities, everything from charities we volunteer with to photos of our kids, pictures of our dogs, restaurant check ins. Right, memes that we're sharing, jokes, sports clips, whatever it might be for the individual person. There's a lot out there that is just frankly, irrelevant and shouldn't be used when it comes to making a hiring decision. So when we talk about nine types of workplace misconduct, we're able to actually pick out any reference to things like intolerance, fraud, uh, harassment threats or illegal drug use, you know, outside of maybe cannabis, for example. So the way that pharma works is like, we don't score, we don't give you a thumbs up or a thumbs down. It's not an evaluative judgment on who a person is, like John's in 88 and James is 82.
(00:07:26) - No, that's not what we do. But instead give customers the option to say, hey, I'd want to know, for example, if someone was posting something anti-Semitic, right, or hateful towards Jews, because that's a big part of our brand and the customers constituents we serve. And you see that today. You know, if the war in Israel, everything that's happening right now, a lot of companies kind of asking that question. So what pharma does is enables you to do that as an end user to say, hey, these are the things I care about that should they exist, person's online persona, I at least want to know about it so I can have a conversation with, you know, the candidate before bringing them on board. So for us, it's really about that kind of risk management and quantifying that risk. And some of what we're getting into next year is kind of expanding that definition of insight. But for today, a lot of what we've been focused on is that sort of, uh, evaluating and minimizing your downside and making sure that as a hiring manager, that you're bringing in people that make good people want to stay and make customers want to buy, uh, from your company.
(00:08:23) - So I know pharma is available as an out-of-box solution and it uses AI. So when a new client comes in and they there are particular things that they want to look for and avoid. Are there checkboxes? I mean, I assume a lot of that is prebuilt in the way that AI works, as it looks for keywords and phrases in the content that it's searching.
(00:08:46) - Yeah. So one of the unique differentiators for us is the ability for full configuration and customization of what you flag for and what you screen. And to your point, you can use like archetypes. Out of the box. We have a couple of flags like intolerance, harassment, threats, for example, legal drugs that kind of mentioned that a second ago. So yeah, you can turn those on or off like radio buttons, but also add custom keywords. You know, things that I want to flag for. We did some work with the National Health Service, uh, in the UK, for example, in 2020 as part of their vaccine rollout campaign, where they hired 25,000 people in a matter of six weeks to give the job, you know, at the height of Covid, just when the vaccines are rolling out.
(00:09:27) - And they used us to make sure that there weren't anyone they were hiring, that was promoting anti-vaccine conspiracy theories online who might have their own agenda coming in. So that customization and configuration is something that customers, um, love with pharma. And it's something to that is a cornerstone of our compliance, because it means we're only going to escalate information for someone to review that maps to a category of risk that they deem to be important, not just telling them, hey, here's political speech, here's bullying, here's self harm. You know, there might be customers don't really care about that stuff. And that's, you know, maybe outside of the realm of what, you know, you should or shouldn't be doing.
(00:10:08) - There's obviously a lot of background screening companies out there in the market. What would you say is pharma's kind of unique take or differentiation compared to everything else?
(00:10:20) - Yes. So we operate in kind of this, uh, category. And it's again, it's a bit nuanced, but of candidate screening rather than background screening.
(00:10:28) - So background screening partners actually use our solution. So we are a supplier to about 90, 95% actually the global background screening industry. So we recently acquired our biggest competitor called social intelligence which dramatically increased our customer count. So actually background screening firms embed our solution within their offering so that they can offer a more comprehensive and well-rounded check. So we become in the same way that like, uh, Experian, you know, might do a work number verification or LabCorp might offer a drug test. You know, we offer the online screening portion as part of a background screening package, you know, for a for an HR end user. So background screening firms are actually partners to us. And we look at them as, as big customers that we can help kind of them advance their own mission and offer a well-rounded suite of services to their customers. So, you know, it's kind of a a supplier category to background screening. But some of the other stuff we do, we work directly with employers, uh, you know, is more in that kind of candidate screening evaluation side of things, too.
(00:11:34) - So, um, background screening firms are our friends and we love it, uh, because they really help us get our product out into the market.
(00:11:42) - How should leaders think about the candidate screening piece as they're looking at building up their workforce? Like, what are the challenges that you see that maybe they're blind to today?
(00:11:54) - Yeah, I think we're at a really unique moment where. Historically, it had been just. Impossible to identify the sorts of stuff we're talking about. Kind of like what you said at the top, you just don't know where to look. And also, it's like you don't have the time, tools or capital to get that information right. But now we're at this unique inflection point where maybe business risks that might have been chalked up to the cost of doing business. I can't find somebody who acts anti-Semitic or threatening towards other people. I just have to kind of wait and see, right? Well, no, now, now we can do that. Right. And so I think it's almost an evaluation of saying, what are the tools that we're using? What are we trying to accomplish? And does our toolkit, current toolkit and process reflect what we're trying to accomplish and the latest and greatest technology that's available on the market today.
(00:12:46) - So, you know, it's really this sort of things are changing so quickly in the world of technology. And artificial intelligence has ushered in this enormous, just explosion of new types of information and tools that we can access. And, you know, things that we can do that now, what used to be chalked up to just, oh, that's impossible, we can't do that. Or oh, that's just a cost of doing business. All that's out the door. Because now we're in a position where we can really begin rethinking the tools that we have access to the technology that we can use to advance some of our own initiatives. And, you know, to give you an example, on the candidate screening side, we got some stuff next year that's allowing us to actually take the language that candidates and job seekers are creating online and use that language to generate professional competency and psychometric assessments. Right. So in the past, you could only get this data by having your candidate go through this long workflow of stopping the machines and answering these ten questions, or filling out this prompt, or doing a video interview with Hirevue, or reacting to a bunch of pictures with paradox or something like that.
(00:13:51) - Like a lot of really cool tech. But sometimes companies didn't turn to it because it disrupted the candidate experience, and it might have extended the time to fill. But now we're having, you know, ourselves in a position where we can get that same insight without ever engaging with the candidate and just drawing from the online language that people are creating on the internet, because you can do the same thing, uh, you know, with, uh, with, with that sort of text. So really interesting moment. I would just say the biggest challenge is like, yeah, you don't know what you don't know, but innovation is happening so quickly right now that I'd encourage everyone who's listening to just kind of take a look and say, what are we trying to accomplish this here in this technology come out that could help us do it, that I might have been, you know, unaware of previously.
(00:14:33) - Yeah. It's so fascinating to learn that everything you're putting online can, can be analyzed to determine the type of personality that you are.
(00:14:43) - And I think it just goes to show that, you know, that people need to be mindful of everything you put online can come back to haunt you at some point, right. Or work in your favor.
(00:14:56) - Totally. Totally. Yeah. You, uh, you know, I has, you know, brought in, I think this kind of. Question in a lot of folks minds. I think we all jump to, you know, I'm a I'm a I'm an early, early 90s movie guy. We all jump to, you know, Terminator. Right? We jump to this concept of the machines are going to take over Skynet. It's going to kill us, all right? Or, you know, we're going to have AI robots who are doing our job for us. But the reality is, is that the the advent of AI, at least in the enterprise, and this again, could be famous last words of like, you know, the the quote that I always regret saying, but, you know, I do think that you're going to see in artificial intelligence in particular.
(00:15:41) - Users of the technology become more adept, more intuitive, right? Being able to ascertain the meaning and the implications, you know, behind what AI is suggesting in terms of insights, that is the uniquely human piece of the equation. Right. And so I think what you'll see are folks that begin to kind of level up their own role, their own job, their own expertise, because now suddenly they're getting more inputs than they were before allowing their kind of, you know, synaptic reactions, their experiences, their expertise to shine even brighter because they got a lot more information at their fingertips. We're talking about going from basically screwdrivers to power drills overnight. And that's it's really cool, you know, to be a part of that, that that evolution.
(00:16:29) - Yeah, that is very cool. What type of companies would you say are the perfect fit for pharma?
(00:16:37) - You know, we, uh, we started in the early days. Um, sell into highly regulated industry, financial services, health care, professional services.
(00:16:47) - Right. Um, where revenue per employee is high and the risk of missing something is also high. Right. And so these are companies that naturally drifted towards, hey, I want to invest more in screening because the downstream effect is significant from a risk management standpoint. If I miss something, um, that has evolved substantially, I think as our costs have gone down and we've lowered those costs to our customers through some of the innovation that we've done. So, you know, we've got everyone from big supermarket chains to mass market, uh, you know, retailers to big financial services firms using our solution. But I would say anybody who is proactively interested in making sure that, you know, the people who are coming into their or that they can get a really good read on how they're going to act around employees and customers. That's the right fit for our organization. And I would say it gets to that point of scale where typically, you know, you have to rely on tools, process and technology to do your job.
(00:17:43) - So like pure small startup, if you're a 50 person company, a 100 person, even 2 or 300 person company, and you can, you know, see the whites of the eyes of every single person that you hire. And you maybe don't need technology. You can answer it all the questions yourself, few and far between. Those might be categories of clients that maybe aren't the best fit for pharma, but we do see exceptions to that rule all the time. So, um, yeah, you know, I'll just say everybody we want everybody. But certainly the customers that start with us financial services, healthcare, uh, you know, professional services. But now we're seeing an explosion in like retail manufacturing and, and technology has always been a big category of ours.
(00:18:22) - You mentioned the downstream effects. Speaking of that, what impact have you seen organizations experience when they start working with FEMA and they do the candidate screening?
(00:18:35) - Yeah. I mean, just this year alone, we've identified, uh, you know, an active workplace shooter who is threatening, uh, people who they work with and naming people that they wanted to hurt.
(00:18:45) - We were able to intercede on that and intervene before that happened, which was huge. Uh, we've seen stuff like doctors who sell, you know, body parts on Twitter. True story. But the run of the mill stuff that we find, I mean, it sounds like, you know, it's just day to day for us at pharma, but is probably material for folks who are outside of our world, but people who act intolerant or harassing towards other people and left unchecked, you know, that finds its way into your organization, right? A lot of people, what they what they don't look at when it comes to misconduct, when it comes to that phone call that HR gets at like 11:30 p.m. or, you know, first thing when you walk in that like, you know, oh, crap, you know, phone call that you get that you didn't want to get. A lot of people say, oh, well, that misconduct signal, it just happened. You know, it's part of doing business.
(00:19:36) - It's who we are, what we have seen, what our data shows is that there's some actually called the misconduct multiplier effect, meaning that one incidence of workplace misconduct inside of a company leads to 1.6 x more misconduct, meaning that, in other words, like a bad apple really can spoil the bunch. And if you think about it, right, that kind of normalization of aberrant behavior, that normalization of misconduct in the workplace, puts employee employers in a position where essentially people around the company start to see, oh, well, that's normal. That's just how things are here. Like it's okay to act that way. Right. And so intervention earlier in the process, more efficient pre-employment screening puts companies in a position to kind of avoid that. So for us it's really about avoiding the horrible things like the workplace shooter, the doctors on body parts and all that, the harassment in the workplace. But the again, the run of the mill stuff is identifying those kind of folks that might be outside the lines that you think are just kind of one small thing that happens, but once they get in, they can really create some damage internally by, you know, setting the expectation of what good and what normal looks like.
(00:20:45) - So yeah, I can totally see that. And I feel like I've I've seen that in action when I've worked at larger organizations as well. You know, one person can come in and they may not have a fraudulent background, but just the way that they kind of react to things is a snowball effect that really impacts the culture.
(00:21:07) - Totally agree.
(00:21:10) - So what is your future vision for pharma and what innovations do you have coming down the pipeline?
(00:21:16) - Yeah. We're, uh, really excited about the future. I mean, I think for a long time, we've, uh, you know, really focused on risk management. It was the burning problem, the low hanging fruit, the thing that everybody wanted because, you know, managing risk and doing it the right way can have really positive effects for your company, for your people, for your shareholders, for everybody who's involved in the success of your business. But what we've seen historically is that, you know, there is so much power inherent in our online personas and these digital identities that we create.
(00:21:51) - And so, you know, one of the things that we're focused on for next year, I think one of the reasons that, you know, nucleus, uh, research name from a hot company to watch in 2024, uh, alongside open AI, data IQ, a few others. Um, is this sort of transition from just risk management and thinking about new ways to identify workplace misconduct, but expanding that definition to say, well, what if we could use our online personas to assess things like professional competencies and traits, to give a hiring manager insight about how to get the most out of this person based on some of the competencies, professional traits that they bring to the table to give the person joining the company. Hey, here's some insight how we you know how we think you can get the most out of this experience you're walking into. So adding this additional layer of not just minimizing the downside of that question of how is this person going to act when they join? But how can I get the most out of them when they join? How can I set them up for success? By using tools and technology at the front of the funnel to set that person on the right course.
(00:22:55) - So it's a really interesting transition for us, because we can now go from just risk management to answering a bunch of other questions around that same problem of how do I make, you know, hiring great people as easy as possible. And I think we want to be that business that, you know, allows the hiring manager to unleash their full expertise, intuition on. Yeah, making a judgment about the meaning and implications around the insights that we provide. So that's what we're most excited about for next year. It's called Pharma Instant Fit. Uh, and you can get on the waiting list if anyone's interested. So.
(00:23:32) - Awesome. I love all the information you've shared today. I think it's a really fascinating business model that you guys have.
(00:23:40) - Thank you.
(00:23:41) - What final thoughts do you want to leave our audience with?
(00:23:45) - I would just say there is a power in our online personas. And if you think about the ways that, again, we live our lives, the time we spend on the phone, the time we spend on the computer, so much of our lives now and in the future are going to happen in these digital ecosystems, and there is so much more that we can do there besides just sharing memes and dog pictures with that information or selling us, you know, weird stuff on Instagram or TikTok that we use once and never use again.
(00:24:11) - So anyway, that's what I would leave you with and we'd love to chat more about it so you can come to our website or subscribe to our newsletter. Connect me on LinkedIn. Any of those things I'll work.
(00:24:23) - Excellent. Thanks for joining me on today's episode, Ben. I'll be sure to include the links in the show notes so listeners can learn more about Fama.
(00:24:31) - All right. Thanks a lot, Deanna. Appreciate it.
(00:24:39) - Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Tech Spotlight podcast, where we showcase some of the best up and coming HR technology options in the market. If you are an HR tech company leader who would like to be. For a guest spot on this program. Please contact me via GrowthMode Marketing.
(00:24:58) - Com. Or reach out to me Deanna Shimota on LinkedIn and if you found this show informative, subscribe to. Leave a review.
(00:25:08) - This is Deanna with GrowthMode Marketing signing off. Thanks for listening. We hope you'll tune in again next time.