Deanna Shimota (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. Good day. In this episode, we are shining a spotlight on Turn, an award-winning background screening platform designed to help high-volume employers screen workers. Joining me today to talk about turn is founder and CEO of the company, Rahil Rahman. We're here. How are you?
Rahier Rahman (00:01:02) - I'm good. Thank you for having me.
Deanna Shimota (00:01:04) - Yes. It is a pleasure to have you on the show. The first question I have for you. Tell us about your background in the tech space.
Rahier Rahman (00:01:12) - Yes. Thank you. I've been in HR tech for almost a decade now, and prior to that I spent some time in fintech. So I've been in technology broadly for about 15 years, all focused on one particular segment, which are immigrant and blue-collar workers. so I think I've been able to understand kind of that journey of those workforce from the early days of the, you know, 2010 all the way to today where it is and being able to understand and see that change, both on the worker side as well as the employers, has been fascinating.
Deanna Shimota (00:01:46) - So I know turn does background screening. Tell us a little bit more about what your platform does.
Rahier Rahman (00:01:53) - Yeah. You know, it is really born out of an observation I had during my time in the fintech space, when we had created financial products for the hourly workers and high-volume workers. And when we started seeing, you know, more and more employers having a need for this workforce.
Rahier Rahman (00:02:10) - And, you know, I started doing a lot of research and found, you know, that the, you know, the major trends in our, in our society today are really leading us towards an interesting point in time where our convenience culture is highly dependent on this workforce. And the growing need of employers in a widening array of industries are needing this workforce. And so we really came out of the birth origin story of saying, how can we make it better, faster and cheaper for employers that need this workforce to be able to to, you know, screen and hire these workers more efficiently? So that to me was really kind of the the genesis, the origin point. And we built Turn in a way to make sure that we could create a product that was faster, cheaper and better for employers who are looking for, you know, this type of worker.
Deanna Shimota (00:03:07) - What would you say is a big challenge or problem that you're seeing facing HR departments today? That turn can help with?
Rahier Rahman (00:03:15) - Yeah, I mean, I think for us, you know, as employers have started to scale and need workers across the country, one of the biggest areas was how do you maintain trust and safety on disparate groups of people that are hiring all over the country, and you need to hire them fast.
Rahier Rahman (00:03:34) - And that became something that's more and more challenging. And I think, you know, it's obviously a multi-headed issue that was facing HR departments. And we tried to tackle it from a couple different vantage points. One, you know, maintaining trust and safety, even that has evolved over the last five, 5 to 7 years that we've been operating as a company. And, you know, it's been interesting to see that evolution. In the beginning, it was a lot of how do you maintain trust and safety standards? How do you make sure the people you are screening are able to pass the, you know, the litmus test and be able to come and work for your company? And today it's evolved into, you know, now that you have these national workforces that are all over the country and operating for your product or services, how do you ensure that they stay compliant? And so I think the evolution that we have seen has gone from screening as a point in time to continuous monitoring. And how do you move to an environment today where you're continually looking at your workforce to make sure that they stay compliant with the standards that you set up? And that's been a shift that we have seen.
Deanna Shimota (00:04:47) - And what would you say? You know, I know going into the market, there's a lot of background solutions out there. What makes turn unique or what's your unique point of view in the market that can help prospects and companies out there looking for a solution? Understand why pick. Turn over someone else.
Deanna Shimota (00:05:06) - Yeah.
Rahier Rahman (00:05:07) - That's a very valid question. There are, you know, multitude of background screening companies out there. I would say, you know, when I think about the key differentiators for us, I think we are not something for everybody. Right? We have a very specific focus. Our focus and our technology is really geared towards what we call high-volume employers, that is, employers that are hiring over a thousand people a year on average. So if you are doing that, if you're at that type of employer, there are a couple of things that really matter to you. One, cost matters a lot because every background check is multiplied by a thousand plus. Right. So you're scaling this thing.
Rahier Rahman (00:05:49) - So any, you know, cost improvements have a real impact. Second thing that's really important when you're a high-volume employer is speed to hire. Right. Oftentimes when you're hiring this workforce, that worker may be applying to 3 to 5 different jobs across right different and different employers. And the faster a background check can come back accurate and clear, the faster that person can select that job. So speed matters a lot in our space. And then third, I think that's really important part is accuracy, right. To what extent. You know the reports we generate are highly accurate, which provides, you know, less disputes by workers and ideally allows an employer to make a decision faster and a worker to make a decision faster. So those things matter a lot when you're high volume employer, if you are just hiring five people a year, the things that we bring to the table don't really matter, because cost is less relevant, because you can pay a little bit more and it doesn't have to be the fastest because you're not hiring that many people.
Rahier Rahman (00:06:54) - And you could take a week and that would be okay. And, you know, if there's any dispute or accuracy issues, you have time to manage it through because the hiring process is a multi-week process. So for us, when we look at other providers, I think there's a lot of good providers out there in our space, but not all of them. And I think very few are geared towards high-volume hiring. And we built our company from day one based on that to all of the technology, all of the automations, all of the processes that we created, all reinforce speed and low cost. And I think that has resonated very, very well with the employers we've worked with and the prospects that we talked to.
Deanna Shimota (00:07:36) - Speaking of the employers and prospects that you work with, what type of companies would you say are the perfect fit for your solution?
Rahier Rahman (00:07:44) - Yeah, given that high volume employment is our core sector, I think naturally industries that have come to us or healthcare, you know, there's healthcare providers across the country that need, whether it's nursing platforms, caregiving, child care, etc. all gravitate towards that national workforce, high volume hiring and other natural areas, logistics.
Rahier Rahman (00:08:07) - You know, we've become more and more accustomed to having everything we want delivered, right? Whether it's our food or a car or our products. And that requires a complex logistics industry behind it. And that logistics industry demands workers, whether it's we're warehouse workers, delivery workers, fleet drivers, etc.. So all of those companies are natural fits for us. Another one that's I think often under overlooked I should say, is hospitality. You know, hospitality. You know, post-pandemic has come back pretty strong and more and more, you know, the need for having workers is growing. Our workforce fundamentally is shrinking in some extent. We have an aging population that's aging out. We have young people who don't want to do the certain types of jobs that others did 20, 30 years ago. And so it's almost putting more pressure on the high volume of workers, the, you know, the immigrant blue-collar workers to do more jobs than they were doing before. And so those sectors, I think, you know, healthcare, logistics, hospitality are natural areas where people gravitate to us.
Deanna Shimota (00:09:20) - Well, you know, just thinking about when you said speed is one of the areas where you really focus. You know, I can tell you as a small employer goes background checks. Sometimes they take days and it's like, I need to hire this candidate in this market before they get away. I can imagine in the case where, you know, a company is hiring a lot of frontline workers or, you know, really do have those high hiring volumes that you're right, they are hiring individuals that often go out and apply to several jobs. And a lot of times they take the first one that they're offered. And if you're not the first to the table, you're missing an opportunity to hire some candidates that you would normally be very happy to welcome on your team. So I can see where the speed is a big differentiator for you compared to some of the other options that are out there. What impact have you seen organizations that work with turn experience?
Rahier Rahman (00:10:17) - I mean, I would say one of the fastest things, you know, low-cost savings are very important.
Rahier Rahman (00:10:22) - I kind of look at the workforce in three buckets. Right there is worker acquisition. There is a worker engagement and worker retention. and I think, you know, as a, as a, as a, as a product that focuses on the acquisition side, you know, we're probably the second most costly part of the acquisition of a worker. The first part probably is the marketing spend that goes into identifying and sourcing those candidates. Second being the background check that's, you know, relatively expensive. So what I would often tell our employers is on day one without even seeing anything about who you're using. If you're not using us, I could probably save you 50% of the money you're spending right now on background checks. And what I would encourage employers to do, we've always done, is put that money towards worker engagement and retention efforts, right, create bonuses for workers, create engagement targets. And that way, you know, you're reallocating the money you're spending in a more efficient manner. And I think that's something that's been, you know, very well received and has been very beneficial.
Rahier Rahman (00:11:30) - We save all of our employers right off the bat quite substantial amounts. Again, as I mentioned, because it's high volume, it's very easy to quantify. The second thing that I've heard a lot from, from employers is the the positive feedback from the workers themselves. Because we have multilingual support, our systems are more accurate. We have a less than 1% dispute rate, you know, and our industry has about an average 7 to 8% dispute rate. So we are quite substantially better than our industry right now in that area. So the accuracy and the improvements that we have done have really resulted in a better experience for the workers as well. And so I think that translates to our employers because it's often the HR teams or as they call today, a lot of them have people, operations teams that are dealing with acquiring the worker, getting them through the funnel, making sure the background check is done properly if they're approved, getting them onboarded as fast as possible. So the people operations teams are really enjoying that.
Rahier Rahman (00:12:33) - The experience is also better for the worker. I'd say those two are probably among the most relevant things we hear.
Deanna Shimota (00:12:41) - As the CEO and founder of the company. What is your future vision for turn?
Rahier Rahman (00:12:47) - That's a great question. You know, I think we are still in the early innings of what we can do for the hourly worker and the high-volume employers. You know, I envision a world where, not too distant future, we have the capacity to create some background check portability, where you can take your background check and use it once it's done. You can use it for multiple employers, right? Imagine if you know the same way. You and I will use our credit report as a means to access financial service products, automotive products, etc.. Imagine if you're that same, you know, element in the in the high volume employment space is your background check, right? That is the last gating item before you can work for an employer. Imagine if that component was more portable and your ability to kind of freely move between hundreds of employers that could, I think, create better worker productivity and better worker fluidity, you know, the ability to move around.
Rahier Rahman (00:13:52) - I think that could unlock a lot of really exciting opportunities for both employers and workers.
Deanna Shimota (00:14:00) - Yeah, that's a really interesting concept, and I've never thought about a background check as comparing it to like, your credit score, even though when you step back it's like, yeah, it kind of is similar. You know, it's it's a history of you that someone else is assessing and to be able to access that as the consumer more easily. You know, for some people that probably would save them a lot of headaches because they wouldn't have to go through the process every single time. You know, they're looking at a new opportunity.
Rahier Rahman (00:14:31) - That's exactly.
Deanna Shimota (00:14:34) - Roger, what do you feel are the biggest hesitations that you see companies have when they're looking at a solution like Turn?
Rahier Rahman (00:14:43) - Yeah. I think, you know, we've designed our platform to be very dynamic in terms of it is what you want it to be. So it's a very a la carte. Right. So yes, there is the ability to create packages. Yes.
Rahier Rahman (00:14:59) - Their ability to, to have a lot of different services. But really when I think about it, you know, with, with large scale employers, we're entering an interesting era where budgets are very tight. Right. And I think often what we want to do and we work with employers is understand what is the budget you're working with. How can we make sure we optimize that budget? So you have the best coverage, best services. Right. It's if you want a bare-bones product, you know, you can select very little things. And that's the background check that you will get. You can also add more functionality and features. You know, as as an example, you could do a basic check on a single person, which is again a snapshot in time. You could add federal checks, you could add county-level checks. You can add a motor vehicle record check. Right. You can create more dynamic background check. But those things tend to cost more money. And in an environment where we're seeing more cost cutting, you know what? We want to make sure we work with employers.
Rahier Rahman (00:15:59) - And we do work very closely with HR teams and people operations is to understand those trade-offs. What do you what are you missing if you're getting if you're downgrading or changing services? and I think that tends to have real, real world applications. Right. Give you good examples in industries where people are interacting more closely with you, either they're entering your home to clean your home or you're driving people around. You know, if there's there's a, I think, a greater need for trust and safety in those environments. And if employers miss out on some of that stuff, I think it creates, you know, unnecessary risk both for your service providers as well as the consumers who are using those services. So we're in this interesting era with, you know, a different economic environment where people are weighing those trade-offs and as rightfully they should. And I think, you know, it's interesting to see we've never seen insurance companies get more involved than we've seen today. And insurance companies are getting more and more involved because they underwrite a lot of the risk of these massive workforces and massive fleets around, around the country.
Rahier Rahman (00:17:05) - So it's I think insurance companies in many ways are paving the way for innovation in HR because the insurance companies are saying, hey, we want more continuous monitoring, more review of active workers in real time, which has resulted in, you know, us developing technology which cater to those requests. And now those services are available and you can monitor driver fleets in real-time. You can monitor workers for criminal activity in real-time. And to me, for services that have that high touch, I think this is fantastic. And this didn't exist a few years ago. Right. So it's it's great to see the evolution of the industry sometimes coming from within and sometimes coming from the influence of adjacent industries.
Deanna Shimota (00:17:53) - So you you've maybe.
Deanna Shimota (00:17:54) - Answered this a bit already, but I'm curious what things would you recommend someone that's looking at purchasing or bringing in a technology like turn take into consideration as they evaluate their options?
Rahier Rahman (00:18:08) - Yeah, I think, you know, probably the most important thing that we work with, you know, HR teams on is first understanding what are your needs, right.
Rahier Rahman (00:18:18) - What type of workforce do you have, what type of products do you need. And then based on that, you know, I'm a big proponent of, you know, forward looking tech, right? You know, so I think evaluating a company's API documentation, which often outlines the types of services they provide, their SLAs, their turnaround times, all of those things are often things you can glean from that data. I think understanding that will give you a good sense of how well the company's technology has been built and then, you know, understanding the products and the pricing and, you know, the trade offs there. I think if an HR team is able to do that, then they can have a very good understanding of what type of product am I going to choose and who would be the best provider for that. And then I think, you know, ultimately after that I'm a big believer in show beats tell. So test it out right. Run a test go run ten people and through competing technologies and see how they do.
Rahier Rahman (00:19:16) - I've always been a big fan of that in my career, and we've built a team that always welcomes the ability to test, and we do that with a lot of our big customers.
Deanna Shimota (00:19:26) - I love that because I think one of the challenges with HR tech, when you're looking at different types of technology, you don't have the option to really test it out. It's like all or nothing when you make that purchase, right. And with background screenings, it totally makes sense, you know, to be able to test it out on a small scale before you dive headfirst and say, okay, this is where I'm sending all of my background screening needs moving forward because this is the right partner for me.
Rahier Rahman (00:19:54) - Yeah, we do. We do pilots and tests. It's all free all the time. So we always welcome that from any high volume employers. You know come test it out. We'll do a pilot for you. We'll show you in a market or a batch and we'll let you see how it all works.
Rahier Rahman (00:20:09) - And I think that tends to be the best experience, because then you can actually, you know, what you're getting into. And you know, we work, we have a very white glove approach. And we work very closely with HR teams and people, operations folks, because we know we look at we don't consider ourselves a vendor, we consider ourselves a partner, and we interact with our top customers on a weekly basis, sometimes two, three times a week. And, you know, we work with them to understand their needs. And their needs are constantly, you know, evolving in this environment. You know, new products are being developed, new requirements are being, you know, dropped to the teams saying from insurance carriers they want X, Y or Z now or management wants to evolve and wants to do A, B or C. And so it's a constantly fluid thing where we work very closely with our partners.
Deanna Shimota (00:21:00) - What final thoughts do you want to leave our audience with?
Rahier Rahman (00:21:04) - Well, that's a good question, but final thoughts.
Rahier Rahman (00:21:07) - let me think. I would say, you know, this is a really exciting time to. To utilize background check technology. And even in our 5 to 7 years that we've been doing it, we've seen this change. Right. And I think it's it's in a point in time now where HR teams are able to really look at the background check service as a mechanism to de-risk their exposure of their business, which, you know, was always something that was that existed for the service, but today can do it in a way that really couldn't even, you know, 24, 36 months ago. And the ability I think the probably the most exciting thing I am is it's moved background checks from a pre-hire requirement to now something that can also be a post-hire continuous monitoring environment. And that just creates a, I think, in my opinion, a much more de-risked environment where you can monitor your most active workers, you can monitor your top providers and you can create a sense of, you know, stability and calm, that there's no weird exposures lurking, you know, and behind the corner.
Rahier Rahman (00:22:24) - And I think that's that's really exciting. When you manage some workforces that are tens of thousands of people. You know, if I think about what that was, if I was an HR folk, folks, you know, 3 or 4 years ago, I would always be worried that, wow, you know, let's I have 20, 30,000 people nationwide providing services. And how comfortable am I? Right? And I think today that's the box you can check in a way that I think is really, really exciting.
Deanna Shimota (00:22:52) - Excellent. So where can our listeners go to learn more about turn?
Rahier Rahman (00:22:56) - Yeah. I would invite you to come to our website. It's very easy to learn I so Tournai and if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us or our team. You can chat us. That's probably one of the easiest. Send an email. We're highly responsive. We love to support our industry and we love to support the air tech community at large. So please reach out if there's anything we can do to help.
Rahier Rahman (00:23:21) - We're always available.
Deanna Shimota (00:23:24) - Thanks so much Rahier. I appreciate you coming out and sharing your insights on Turn. That does it for this episode of the HR Tech Spotlight. Thanks for listening and be sure to tune in again next time. 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.
Deanna Shimota (00:24:00) - Or reach out to me Deanna Shimota on LinkedIn. And if you found this show informative, subscribe. Connect with us on social media and leave a review.
Deanna Shimota (00:24:10) - This is Deanna with GrowthMode Marketing signing off. Thanks for listening. We hope you'll tune in again next time.