Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholtz on Boomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have a special guest.
Speaker 1: Her name is Kathryn Minshew, and she is the founder
Speaker 1: and chief executive officer of the Muse dot com, a
Speaker 1: site that finds itself somewhere in between LinkedIn and glass
Speaker 1: door and some of the other recruiting employment career management
Speaker 1: HR related sites. Her client base are both the companies
Speaker 1: that are hiring millennials and others and the people who
Speaker 1: are seeking jobs. Uh. This is kind of a fascinating
Speaker 1: conversation in that there aren't a lot of relatively young
Speaker 1: women entrepreneurs who have successfully navigated the entire startup, venture capital,
Speaker 1: et cetera. There are many, but we don't know them
Speaker 1: uh as well as we know some of the more
Speaker 1: infamous male counterparts in the world of tech and and
Speaker 1: I found this to be very fascinating and eye opening
Speaker 1: um conversation. So, with no further ado, my conversation with
Speaker 1: Katherine Minshew. My special guest today is Katherine Minshew. She
Speaker 1: is the founder and chief executive officer of the Muse
Speaker 1: dot com, a career platform which has been used by
Speaker 1: over fifty million millennials to help manage their careers. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Muse has five million unique monthly visitors tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of career advice articles. Katherine is also the author
Speaker 1: of a national best seller, The New Rules of Work,
Speaker 1: and she is an operating partner at X factor Ventures,
Speaker 1: a venture capital fund investing in the next generation of
Speaker 1: female founders. Katherine Minshew, Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to be here and I've been looking forward
Speaker 1: to having you for a number of reasons. Um we'll
Speaker 1: get into some of them later on. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons I really wanted to speak to you is your
Speaker 1: relative rarity in the world of finance and tech. There
Speaker 1: aren't a lot of women co founders. Let's let's put
Speaker 1: a pin in that and come back to it later.
Speaker 1: Let's talk more. Start talking about the whole background of
Speaker 1: the Muse. You you founded the site in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eleven. What was the inspiration for the site and
Speaker 1: what was the muse behind the name the Muse. So,
Speaker 1: the very short version is I wanted it and it
Speaker 1: didn't exist. Um. The slightly longer version is um so
Speaker 1: in two thousand, eight, thousand nine, I was living here
Speaker 1: in New York City working at McKinsey and Company as
Speaker 1: a consultant, and I knew that I didn't want to
Speaker 1: be a career consultant, but I wasn't sure what it
Speaker 1: was I did want to do. So, you know, like
Speaker 1: many people my age, I sort of on the older
Speaker 1: end of the millennial demographic. I went online and I
Speaker 1: looked at all the big job boards, the major sites
Speaker 1: that everyone here is familiar with, and I just kept thinking,
Speaker 1: there is something really broken about this experience. To give
Speaker 1: you an example, on one of the biggest job aggregators,
Speaker 1: I was typing in Business Strategy Director and it was
Speaker 1: showing me assistant store manager, seven eleven cea Caucus, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, like, this can't be the best
Speaker 1: there is, and even you know I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of LinkedIn, it was just showing me more consulting jobs,
Speaker 1: the same thing I've been doing, but more of the same.
Speaker 1: And I kept thinking, you know, when I look at
Speaker 1: other people in my peer set, people that are getting
Speaker 1: started in their career, people that in their early thirties
Speaker 1: changing jobs, many of them are making decisions about where
Speaker 1: they want to work based on things like the growth,
Speaker 1: opportunities involved in the role, the culture and values of
Speaker 1: the organization, and none of that was evident on most
Speaker 1: of the job search sites that I was seeing and using,
Speaker 1: and so I thought, well, what would it look like
Speaker 1: to create a better one? And my co found and
Speaker 1: I we had a you know, a white board a
Speaker 1: living room in Brooklyn. It was very, very stereotypical, but
Speaker 1: we started to imagine this much more visual, personalized, immersive
Speaker 1: career site that really took people by the hand and
Speaker 1: helped them navigate their careers and for companies, helped them
Speaker 1: tell a story about what it was like to work there,
Speaker 1: why would somebody want to come join their organization, and
Speaker 1: what sort of person would be most successful or most
Speaker 1: happy there? Um, And that's and that's really where the
Speaker 1: idea for the news came from. So so that raises
Speaker 1: a question that's fascinating. And I don't requal if I
Speaker 1: read this on the site or in your book, but
Speaker 1: the phrase career satisfaction comes up over and over again.
Speaker 1: What is career satisfaction? Career satisfaction is um feeling like
Speaker 1: you are in the place that you're meant to be,
Speaker 1: or that you can wake up on most days not
Speaker 1: every day, but most days on the balance, you wake
Speaker 1: up and you're fairly excited to go into work. Um
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I'm a realist. No job is
Speaker 1: going to be perfect. We're not talking about sort of this,
Speaker 1: you know, follow your bliss kind of um pie in
Speaker 1: the sky thing. But at the same time, I think
Speaker 1: all of us see in our relationships and our friends
Speaker 1: and our family the difference between when someone is at
Speaker 1: some measure satisfied or or content in their role at
Speaker 1: their company and their career, and when someone is deeply dissatisfied.
Speaker 1: And I believe that the benefits both to the individual
Speaker 1: but also frankly at a at a macro level, to
Speaker 1: the economy, to companies when you have people in the
Speaker 1: right spots are massive. And I think we're at a
Speaker 1: point where we can and should expect more from our
Speaker 1: careers and and that sort of career satisfaction is one
Speaker 1: of the things that I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: are driving. So how do you get from a consultant
Speaker 1: at Mackenzie to making the leap to Hey, everything is
Speaker 1: broken and we can't even patch it. We have to
Speaker 1: start by building a new site from the ground up.
Speaker 1: How does that transition take place, and and the big
Speaker 1: consultancies like Mackenzie, they're a pretty cushy gig. It's very
Speaker 1: challenging to say I'm going to give up all the
Speaker 1: money and the and the career job security and make
Speaker 1: a leap. How did that come about? You know, UM,
Speaker 1: call me crazy, but I have always been willing to
Speaker 1: take a a jump if it was something that I was,
Speaker 1: you know, significantly passionate about. And UM for the idea
Speaker 1: behind the muse. It actually started smaller at first, so UM.
Speaker 1: In fall of two thousand ten, I started a UM
Speaker 1: I guess you could call it an online blog, a
Speaker 1: community that was aimed at sort of you know, driven,
Speaker 1: UM ambitious women in their twenties and thirties. And I
Speaker 1: started it with a couple other women and it was
Speaker 1: it was it was a side project for all of us.
Speaker 1: We had other roles. I actually left Mackenzie in goodness
Speaker 1: June and moved to Kigali, Rwanda to work with the
Speaker 1: Clinton Health Access Initiative on vaccine introduction, which is a
Speaker 1: whole other story. But I had come back from Rwanda,
Speaker 1: was still working for Chai and UM and all four
Speaker 1: of us started this project. No no, sorry, Chaia's Clinton
Speaker 1: Health Access Initiative. That just a mouthful. It's it's the
Speaker 1: sort of health wing of the international nonprofit that does
Speaker 1: um vaccine introduction, HIV AIDS work, et cetera. So that
Speaker 1: was my day job. And the other women were all
Speaker 1: at McKinsey, including my co founder of the Muse, Alex
Speaker 1: and we just we started building this small community. And
Speaker 1: what was so interesting to me is other people, other
Speaker 1: women in the community, had the same issues that I
Speaker 1: was having around the broader search for a satisfying career,
Speaker 1: finding the right job, the right company. UM. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, it wasn't so much you know, a single
Speaker 1: individual lightning bolt as a series of small ideas and moves.
Speaker 1: And once I realized that the entire industry was effectively
Speaker 1: ignoring a lot of the needs of the millennial population,
Speaker 1: it suddenly just became so clear to me that there
Speaker 1: was this massive opportunity and if you know, if if
Speaker 1: I didn't step in and try and build something, um,
Speaker 1: who would Let's talk a little bit about the old
Speaker 1: business model, which you have described the old business model
Speaker 1: for finding, recruiting and hiring new employees. You've described that
Speaker 1: as broken. I think the days when a company can
Speaker 1: expect to just stick an advertisement for a job on
Speaker 1: the Internet and that the best and brightest talent in
Speaker 1: the world are gonna walk right up and compete for
Speaker 1: that job. Those days are over and um what I'm
Speaker 1: seeing in the market, and I think one of the
Speaker 1: principles that the Muse was built on is that the
Speaker 1: balance of power between candidates and companies is changing. Companies
Speaker 1: and the MUS works with around seven hundred of many
Speaker 1: of the best, most recognizable brands in the world. They're
Speaker 1: competing for great talent, and they're not just competing with
Speaker 1: their traditional competitors. You know, a major technology company might
Speaker 1: be competing with a large global financial institution who might
Speaker 1: be competing with a with a CpG or consumer you know,
Speaker 1: consumer goods company. And I think especially when you look
Speaker 1: at talent like um engineers, top sales people, many of
Speaker 1: them want to join a business where they feel like
Speaker 1: the values of the organization align with their own. They're
Speaker 1: looking for growth opportunities. We call it the three piece people, purpose,
Speaker 1: and path. But they're looking for these things within their employer,
Speaker 1: and companies are starting to have to focus on their talent,
Speaker 1: brand recruitment, marketing and other elements of really um showcasing
Speaker 1: themselves and competing for talent in the open market. And
Speaker 1: I think that's opening a really interesting set of opportunities
Speaker 1: for the businesses that are doing it well. So let
Speaker 1: me push back a little bit on a phrase you
Speaker 1: said that quote my ear, which is candidates want to
Speaker 1: work for a place that aligns with their values. Now,
Speaker 1: theoretically that sounds wonderful, but realistically in the real world,
Speaker 1: how significant a factor is that? Is this something that
Speaker 1: is genuine? Is it a function of a fairly fully
Speaker 1: employed workforce and the balance of power at least at
Speaker 1: this phase of the cycle, seems to have shifted to
Speaker 1: the employee or is this a permanent change in how
Speaker 1: employees or potential employees get to behave Yeah, I believe
Speaker 1: the change is permanent, although you'll see it flex stronger
Speaker 1: and weaker as the economy cycles through. A couple data
Speaker 1: points I think are really interesting here. So Deloitte recently
Speaker 1: did a millennial survey that indicated that of millennials had
Speaker 1: turned down a job because they didn't like the values
Speaker 1: of the employer brand of the company that the job
Speaker 1: offer came from. Similarly, in a survey about what UM
Speaker 1: what's important to you in life of millennials indicated that
Speaker 1: meaningful work was a core component of what was satisfying them.
Speaker 1: And this was this was I believe, a Wells Fargo study.
Speaker 1: And so when you look across the demographic, they're raising
Speaker 1: the expectations on employers. And of course this isn't going
Speaker 1: to be a perfect alignment. But I think even recently politically,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of talk about UM some of
Speaker 1: the chief executives withdrawing from various presidential advisory councils. Some
Speaker 1: of that has also been driven by internal employee groups
Speaker 1: and advocy groups standing up and saying, as employees, these
Speaker 1: are our values and pushing their chief executives to take
Speaker 1: a stand. And I think that this is a really
Speaker 1: interesting time because again we are we're sort of redefining
Speaker 1: the contract between individual employees and the organizations that they
Speaker 1: support UM. And I do think some of these changes
Speaker 1: are permanent, and I think the businesses that understand how
Speaker 1: to navigate them, they're going to have a huge edge
Speaker 1: in recruiting and retaining great people over the businesses that
Speaker 1: don't understand this. So who I want to better understand
Speaker 1: the business model of the muse and the natural comparison
Speaker 1: is linked in. So who are the clients? Are your
Speaker 1: clients these companies? Are they the millennials who are potential hires?
Speaker 1: Is that the nexus the marketplace between the two. How
Speaker 1: does MWS actually operate? Yeah, so we started as a marketplace. UM.
Speaker 1: As you mentioned, we have fifty million people every year
Speaker 1: who come to the MEWS to navigate their careers and
Speaker 1: that is our sort of most important and initial user community, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But our business model is based on the employers and
Speaker 1: it's a few things. UM. One, we're able because we
Speaker 1: have this massive community to leverage a huge amount of
Speaker 1: data and information about what matters to the individuals. UM.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we call ourselves the voice of the candidate. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because not all of our users
Speaker 1: are candidates. Many of them are happily employed and they
Speaker 1: come to the views in between changing jobs as well
Speaker 1: as when they're looking for a new role. But from
Speaker 1: the from the individual user side, we're able to really
Speaker 1: help people find new jobs, explore companies and career paths,
Speaker 1: take classes, get advice and information. And that's a mostly
Speaker 1: free service that we provide for the community. On the
Speaker 1: employer side, as I said, we have about seven customers
Speaker 1: and it's essentially an annual subscription product as sas business
Speaker 1: in which we're helping them essentially capture, create, distribute, and
Speaker 1: measure elements of their talent brand. So without getting hyper
Speaker 1: specific of them, I'm happy to go as deep into
Speaker 1: it as you want. Fascinating, I want to. I want
Speaker 1: to get into the nitty gritty. Yeah, So so let's
Speaker 1: start with the beginning. So capture um. The days at
Speaker 1: which a company could just say we're a great place
Speaker 1: to work or we value diversity and inclusion, those days
Speaker 1: are gone. Companies now exactly trust us. That doesn't work anymore.
Speaker 1: Companies now have to show, not tell, and the best
Speaker 1: way to do that is through the voices of their
Speaker 1: current employees. In fact, research has shown continuously that candidates
Speaker 1: are much more likely to trust a specific story, a
Speaker 1: real human anecdote from one of your people, than they
Speaker 1: are some sort of generic marketing jargon. And so we
Speaker 1: actually help companies go in and we have a we
Speaker 1: have a sort of story capture technology that allows them
Speaker 1: to source both qualitative and quantitative data about what their
Speaker 1: current employees think. Why do their best people show up
Speaker 1: every day and how does that vary based on the
Speaker 1: Dallas office versus the Chicago office or different parts of
Speaker 1: the company. Then, armed with both the data about what
Speaker 1: is this company's talent brand, what are their own employees
Speaker 1: saying about it, and the stories that those employees are telling,
Speaker 1: we can then help the companies create all of the
Speaker 1: materials that they might use in their recruitment marketing. So
Speaker 1: this is everything from helping them build out a better
Speaker 1: career website, helping them understand when their recruiters are reaching
Speaker 1: out and contacting people, how are they telling a story
Speaker 1: about why somebody would want to take a look at
Speaker 1: the opportunity that's actually going to resonate with a candidate UM.
Speaker 1: And then we can help them sort of distribute and
Speaker 1: optimize those messages so they understand what's working in the market,
Speaker 1: what's not and and essentially the goal is to help
Speaker 1: UM for the companies make sure the right sort of
Speaker 1: message gets to the right person at the right time.
Speaker 1: And for candidates, we want to make the entire process
Speaker 1: of UM applying for a job and going through the
Speaker 1: interview process feel much more personalized, feel more human, and
Speaker 1: to help candidates feel like they can make an accurate
Speaker 1: assessment of is this a good company for me? So,
Speaker 1: who are the competitors of the music? I want to
Speaker 1: say glass Door but not exactly and linked In but
Speaker 1: not exactly. You're kind of your own entity. Who do
Speaker 1: you perceive as your own competitors? You know, it's funny
Speaker 1: when we when we started out, and when I started
Speaker 1: the business, it was very much as you said, the
Speaker 1: glass Doors and the LinkedIn's of the world. UM. As
Speaker 1: we've grown, we've seen that. You know, there are certainly
Speaker 1: areas in which we sort of rub up against those companies,
Speaker 1: But I think we're also competing with UM, frankly, with
Speaker 1: with complacency of businesses who do nothing. UM. We've seen, UM,
Speaker 1: some companies are starting to enter the what's been called
Speaker 1: the recruitment marketing space. UM. I honestly I hesitate with
Speaker 1: that word because if I were an individual thinking about
Speaker 1: where I'm going to join to spend the next you know,
Speaker 1: two or three, four or five years of my life,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't exactly want to be recruitment marketed to. But
Speaker 1: that's the category name as it exists now. We tend
Speaker 1: to play really nice with those companies were partners with
Speaker 1: many of them because we both have the same goal
Speaker 1: and we're targeting the different parts of UM the talent
Speaker 1: acquisition and and sort of Canada experience space. I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the challenges is we're essentially seeing a
Speaker 1: new category being created right now within HR and Human
Speaker 1: Capital UM and it's kind of changing up, well, who
Speaker 1: are competitors with who? Given that there's a lot of
Speaker 1: white space that companies recognize they need to do something about,
Speaker 1: and I think the businesses that solve that need are
Speaker 1: just being built today. Let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the New Rules of Work? What are they? So? The
Speaker 1: New Rules of Work was our attempt to take all
Speaker 1: of the lessons we've learned over the past five years
Speaker 1: of building out the news and focus on what does
Speaker 1: an individual today navigating their career need to know. So
Speaker 1: we took the three main phases of career as we
Speaker 1: see it. The first being people who are understanding what
Speaker 1: do you want so, out of all of the possible
Speaker 1: career paths and roles, what direction do you want to
Speaker 1: head in. The second large step is how do you
Speaker 1: go and get it? So tactics of finding jobs applying
Speaker 1: to them interviewing, etcetera. And then the third is, once
Speaker 1: you're in a new role, how do you make sure
Speaker 1: that you're succeeding so dealing with difficult colleagues, UM, impressing
Speaker 1: your boss, handling performance reviews, communication in the office, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And for each of those we looked at the old
Speaker 1: way of doing things and the new. So, for example,
Speaker 1: everything from um, you know, technology has completely changed the
Speaker 1: way some people interview. There are video interviews that are synchronous,
Speaker 1: like a Skype of Google hangout. There's asynchronous where somebody
Speaker 1: might give you a sort of link to record your
Speaker 1: answers to questions and then send that off to a
Speaker 1: hiring manager. And the rules are subtly changing and in
Speaker 1: some ways that are very obvious, and um, in others
Speaker 1: that are harder to to sort of put your finger on.
Speaker 1: How important is the aspect? And I'm projecting here a
Speaker 1: little bit of managing your career as a millennial or
Speaker 1: even someone in their early thirties, it was something I
Speaker 1: never really gave a lot of thought to. Although granted
Speaker 1: that was a previous century, it wasn't this century, but
Speaker 1: still are are is this generation that astute that even
Speaker 1: in their twenties, they're already managing their own careers. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I think if I had to distill the entire
Speaker 1: book down to one single idea, it would be that
Speaker 1: you are in the driver's seat of your career and
Speaker 1: it's no one else's job to get where you want
Speaker 1: to go. And that plays out in a lot of
Speaker 1: really interesting ways. But yes, even people who are graduating
Speaker 1: from college today are expected much more than five or
Speaker 1: ten years ago to really articulate what they want and
Speaker 1: to go out and take steps to get there. And
Speaker 1: I think that that in some ways that there are
Speaker 1: you know that there are opportunities that arise because of this,
Speaker 1: but there's also huge challenges because there's a lot you
Speaker 1: have to figure out if you're expected to drive your
Speaker 1: own career. I've always seen this come up in terms of,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better word, brand loyalty, that companies
Speaker 1: are much less loyal to employees. They they are big
Speaker 1: layoffs when they need need to. And conversely, employees seem
Speaker 1: to know, hey, that really independent contractors, even though they
Speaker 1: may be working for some or you don't know how
Speaker 1: long that's going to last for Has that really changed
Speaker 1: the dynamics of of how either this generation or the
Speaker 1: one before or participating in in the labor force. Yes. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I think when you look at at the millennial generation,
Speaker 1: you have to understand that this is a generation that
Speaker 1: in many cases was coming of age or entering the
Speaker 1: workforce right around the Great Recession, and so many of
Speaker 1: them UM, that was a very formative experience. And I
Speaker 1: think when you look at the relationships they have with companies,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because you see these almost two themes that
Speaker 1: might seem to be contradictory ones that there's less loyalty
Speaker 1: between companies and employees. People are you know, considered the
Speaker 1: sort of the CEO of you inc. Or the the
Speaker 1: as we're saying, the driver's seat of their own career.
Speaker 1: They need to be responsible for their own professional development,
Speaker 1: their own advancement. At the same time, UM, individuals are
Speaker 1: raising the expectations they have for companies. They want to,
Speaker 1: as we were saying, find an organization where there's some
Speaker 1: alignment of values. They care about the UM sort of
Speaker 1: the employees experience, the company culture UM. And I think
Speaker 1: that when you dig a little bit deeper, these aren't
Speaker 1: I don't believe they're contradictory at all, because I think
Speaker 1: it gets to this sense that the relationship is becoming
Speaker 1: one in which individuals are saying, you know, not only
Speaker 1: do I want a paycheck, that's sort of the base case,
Speaker 1: but I want a paycheck and growth opportunities, or a
Speaker 1: paycheck and a chance to advance in my career, or
Speaker 1: a paycheck and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. They're looking for companies
Speaker 1: to provide something more than just the bare minimum. There
Speaker 1: was a statistic on your site that I found astonishing
Speaker 1: and I have to share it with you of job
Speaker 1: candidates first seek out of companies social media presence to
Speaker 1: learn more about a potential employer. So people are taking
Speaker 1: a Facebook and Twitter to check out a company that's
Speaker 1: recruiting them. Is that unique to this generation? Has that
Speaker 1: ever existed before in history? You know, I don't know
Speaker 1: that it was possible ten years ago. When you think about,
Speaker 1: you know, the access to information that a job seeker
Speaker 1: has at their fingertips today compared to a decade ago,
Speaker 1: it's a massive shift, and that's impacting everything about the
Speaker 1: way companies recruit. You know, ten years ago, if you
Speaker 1: were lucky, you could ask your buddy who worked for
Speaker 1: a company. Hey, what's what's it really like over there?
Speaker 1: You know, what's the scoop. But if you didn't have
Speaker 1: somebody you personally knew, or if you if you weren't
Speaker 1: sort of well networked in the industry that you were
Speaker 1: looking to move into, what else are you going to do?
Speaker 1: You might go on the corporate website. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: but that's not necessarily known for being a paragon and
Speaker 1: sort of trust in authenticity. And now you know, not
Speaker 1: only can you look on LinkedIn and see whether you
Speaker 1: have connections, but um, it's much more common for companies to,
Speaker 1: for example, UM put photo and video of their offices
Speaker 1: and their employees online. That was the original product that
Speaker 1: the Views built our business model on, was and humanize
Speaker 1: cold corporate entities so they look more appealing to potential employees.
Speaker 1: There's so much that they look more appealing. But it's
Speaker 1: it's this concept of fit, right, Um. You know, five
Speaker 1: years ago when I started the business, I used to
Speaker 1: have a slide where I took some sentences off the
Speaker 1: career pages of Dell, Intel and IBM, and I had
Speaker 1: the three logos of the companies and the three paragraphs,
Speaker 1: and I said which ones which, and frankly, nobody could
Speaker 1: tell the difference because it was all, you know, we're
Speaker 1: committed to authenticity, where this where that. But what's fascinating
Speaker 1: is if you went into Dell, people all talked about
Speaker 1: certain themes and certain things that they valued about the
Speaker 1: culture there, and that was very, very different from Intel,
Speaker 1: which had this really kind of cool, very competitive different offices,
Speaker 1: and those things are going to fit different types of
Speaker 1: people very well. But from the outside, you know, from
Speaker 1: looking at a job description or their company website, you'd
Speaker 1: never be able to tell the difference. And I think
Speaker 1: that seemed like such a missed opportunity. So it's less
Speaker 1: about making companies quote unquote look good. In fact, we
Speaker 1: can get into this, but I don't know that I
Speaker 1: believe in a sort of vertical sense of, oh, this
Speaker 1: company is good and this company is bad. I think
Speaker 1: it's more who are you and what are you looking for?
Speaker 1: Do you want a company where people are constantly pushing
Speaker 1: each other to succeed, competing against each other or the
Speaker 1: clock or the Singapore office, you know, it's very go
Speaker 1: go go, very driven. Or do you want a company
Speaker 1: where people really care about each other, where things are,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm kind of creating a silly sense
Speaker 1: of opposites. But companies have personalities just like people or
Speaker 1: humans do, and the best company for one person it
Speaker 1: might not be the best one for another. And so
Speaker 1: I think that to me, it's just fascinating, you know,
Speaker 1: how can you help companies show that personality? And to
Speaker 1: your question about social channels, that's exactly what candidates are
Speaker 1: looking for. They're saying, Okay, how do they tweet? Do
Speaker 1: they have an Instagram account where their employees can post
Speaker 1: day in the lifestyle pictures? What happens on Facebook? When
Speaker 1: I when I scoped this out, you know, there was
Speaker 1: a fascinating another statistic that the average candidate consumes. I
Speaker 1: think it's fourteen pieces of content before they apply for
Speaker 1: a job. That's kind of wild when you think about
Speaker 1: just what candidates had access to several years ago. But
Speaker 1: now people are doing their research and they're saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: before I answer this recruiter's email, before I go, you know,
Speaker 1: spend twenty or thirty minutes filling out my cover letter
Speaker 1: and my resume and everything. Um, okay, you know, do
Speaker 1: I want what you're offering in the first place? And again,
Speaker 1: this is especially true of the most talented individuals, which
Speaker 1: are the people that everybody's fighting over. I want to
Speaker 1: get into the millennials and the modern workforce, but before
Speaker 1: I do, I have to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: all the craziness that's been going on with venture capital
Speaker 1: farms out in California and technology firms, and the role
Speaker 1: of women in these entities. This really has very quickly
Speaker 1: been revealed as an old boys club. Only there's we
Speaker 1: mentioned social media before. There's so much of an intense
Speaker 1: spotlight and so much there is no hiding anymore. This
Speaker 1: seems to be coming to the four and changing very rapidly.
Speaker 1: You have a unique perspective on the industry. What do
Speaker 1: you say? You know, it's a fascinating time to be
Speaker 1: in tech right now. Um. When I started my business
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, it was very different. I was often
Speaker 1: one of the only women at tech events. UM. I
Speaker 1: would regularly get asked who I was there for, whether
Speaker 1: I was there because I was dating somebody or you know,
Speaker 1: somebody's assistants. Like now I founded a company and UM,
Speaker 1: you know what's interesting is is most people didn't mean
Speaker 1: badly assistant though that's a little insulting honey, could you
Speaker 1: get me a cup of coffee? I mean, that's a
Speaker 1: little you know, that's right out of mad men practice,
Speaker 1: and and and it was to some extent. But you
Speaker 1: also have to take the intention behind it, right. Some
Speaker 1: people mean it badly and and some people are just
Speaker 1: they're just clueless, they don't realize. UM. And I do
Speaker 1: think what's interesting is, you know, there's always been lots
Speaker 1: of good people working in technology, but frankly, any industry
Speaker 1: is going to have its bad apples. I think the
Speaker 1: challenge in tech was that for a long time, the
Speaker 1: industry didn't want to talk about the problems, so the
Speaker 1: bad apples just kept doing their thing. And what's been
Speaker 1: interesting to me is, as we've seen some of these
Speaker 1: revelations recently, women are coming out and saying that, um,
Speaker 1: you know that that certain venture capitalists have behaved highly,
Speaker 1: highly inappropriately. It's often many, many, many women, you know,
Speaker 1: with the same people. Because when you have a culture
Speaker 1: that allows certain behavior to go on with impunity. UM,
Speaker 1: I think what you often happen is is a few
Speaker 1: people that are serial offenders. And UM, to be totally candid,
Speaker 1: it's it's been really refreshing the summer that a few
Speaker 1: of the most egregious harassers and tech have finally suffered
Speaker 1: some consequences. And this again, this is both on the
Speaker 1: technology company and the venture count. There have been lots
Speaker 1: of resignations and lots of founders, CEOs others stepping down
Speaker 1: over the past not even twelve months, six months, it's
Speaker 1: been a sea change. Is this a temporary blip and
Speaker 1: then everything will go back to normal or is this
Speaker 1: really a secular change that's taking place. I hope it's
Speaker 1: a more permanent change. And the reason I believe that
Speaker 1: that's likely is um, I can't tell you how many
Speaker 1: men in the industry I've talked to who said, God,
Speaker 1: this the stuff is terrible, some of these stories that
Speaker 1: are coming out. You know, I'm I don't want our
Speaker 1: industry to be a place where this sort of behavior
Speaker 1: happens unchecked because when I think you look at when
Speaker 1: you look at the technology industry again, you have a
Speaker 1: lot of great people who want to work with the
Speaker 1: best of the best. Be those people men, women, black, white.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of people who are very
Speaker 1: committed to the idea of of making the best ideas
Speaker 1: sort of uh, you know, surface to the top, yes, exactly, which,
Speaker 1: unfortunately that word has been used in the past to
Speaker 1: play down some of the very real issues of bias
Speaker 1: and discrimination that that do exist. UM. But I'm happy
Speaker 1: that that as an industry we're talking about it because
Speaker 1: I think awareness of the problem is the first step
Speaker 1: to making a change. Second step is obviously consequences for
Speaker 1: people that are the most um, sort of pervasive harassers.
Speaker 1: The one other thing I want to make sure it
Speaker 1: doesn't get lost in this discussion is it's very easy
Speaker 1: to write, um, you know, an our dicle. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't mean this in any way downplaying that. A
Speaker 1: lot of the articles that have come out have been
Speaker 1: the result of of sort of exhaustive research. But let's
Speaker 1: just say that it's it's easy for someone reading an
Speaker 1: article about severe gender based harassment UM to be outraged
Speaker 1: by that. Right, you know, nobody should be put in
Speaker 1: a position where someone else is saying, UM, i'll fund
Speaker 1: you if you sleep with me, and we I think
Speaker 1: we've all I hope acknowledged that that's just not appropriate. UM.
Speaker 1: And so I think that it's it's great that the
Speaker 1: industry is waking up and saying that's not okay. But
Speaker 1: what I think shouldn't get lost in this discussion is
Speaker 1: that there's also a lot of more subtle bias, what's
Speaker 1: called unconscious bias that also can can can sort of
Speaker 1: hold not only women entrepreneurs back, but entrepreneurs that don't
Speaker 1: look like the standard, uh, the you know, the classic
Speaker 1: hoodie wearing young guy who's a Harvard dropout. Um. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of research that's starting to come out, and
Speaker 1: and Harvard Business Reviews on a really interesting job publishing
Speaker 1: some of the latest that across the board. Male and
Speaker 1: female investors ask different questions of female entrepreneurs than male entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1: They're more likely to see young male entrepreneurs as promising
Speaker 1: and young female entrepreneurs is inexperienced. They ask more questions
Speaker 1: around women how do they protect themselves against risk, whereas
Speaker 1: male entrepreneurs how do you capitalize on opportunities? Which leads
Speaker 1: to very different sorts of assessments of those entrepreneurs. And
Speaker 1: what's been fascinating is there's even been studies where they've
Speaker 1: actually had entrepreneurs present the exact same pitch, but they
Speaker 1: play with the gender and the attractiveness level of the entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: and they found that attractive men were the most likely
Speaker 1: to get funded, followed by unattractive men, followed by unattractive women,
Speaker 1: followed by attractive women. These people are making these unconscious assessments, um.
Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, first again, the first
Speaker 1: step to UH, to realizing this as an investor is
Speaker 1: to being aware of how unconscious bias can play out.
Speaker 1: But I also think as an industry, we're starting to
Speaker 1: grapple with you know, what does it really mean to
Speaker 1: create a technology industry where people can get funded with
Speaker 1: great sort of industry changing ideas regardless of whether they
Speaker 1: quote unquote look like the person you'd expect to lead,
Speaker 1: you know, to lead a successful business. You know, I've
Speaker 1: I've seen two specific unrelated to tech areas where they've
Speaker 1: done blind um for lack of a better word, interviews.
Speaker 1: One is in professional orchestras, philharmonics, what have you, where
Speaker 1: the player is actually behind a screen and you don't
Speaker 1: get to see them, you only hear them, because after all,
Speaker 1: that's all that matters if you're a violinist or a
Speaker 1: saxophonist or wherever. And that process has completely changed the
Speaker 1: way orchestras quote unquote. Look, it's more genda diverse, it's
Speaker 1: more race diverse. It is become a blind meritocracy. And
Speaker 1: I think it might have been Samantha Beast program. When
Speaker 1: they were hiring comedy writers, they made sure someone literally
Speaker 1: went through all the applications stripped out the name or
Speaker 1: any other identifying characteristics, and people were hired just on
Speaker 1: the quality of their work. And lo and behold, you
Speaker 1: end up with a more diverse group of comedy writers,
Speaker 1: a group of musicians, and net net you get a
Speaker 1: better product. There's a fascinating study as well, um where
Speaker 1: I think it's adjunct professors were asked to grade mathematics
Speaker 1: proofs and when they completely objective and not a subjective
Speaker 1: sort of you would think so. And when they changed
Speaker 1: the gender of the names on top of the proofs,
Speaker 1: um and this again, this was a you know, an
Speaker 1: academic sort of fully um, I don't even know the
Speaker 1: right words for it. It was it was the sort
Speaker 1: of study that a university puts out and gets behind
Speaker 1: with all the right protocols. When they change the gender
Speaker 1: of the names on top of the mathematics proof female
Speaker 1: names scored on average lower I believe than male names.
Speaker 1: On substantial. You know, in your example about the about
Speaker 1: the orchest straw. Before they instituted blind auditions, a lot
Speaker 1: of orchestra leaders would say, look, it's nothing personal. I'm
Speaker 1: not discriminating. Women just don't have the lung capacity to
Speaker 1: play these instruments at the same level. They genuinely believed
Speaker 1: that they were hearing a difference. It was only when
Speaker 1: that difference was physically removed that the disparity in male
Speaker 1: versus female musicians musicians who are hired went away. And
Speaker 1: I do think. I mean it's challenging in technology because
Speaker 1: to some extent an investor is betting on the entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: they are betting on the founder. But the way that
Speaker 1: investors measure things like grit, perseverance, determination, ambition, they code
Speaker 1: those things differently in some cases in their assessment of
Speaker 1: male versus female founders. Like grit is a key component
Speaker 1: of an entry level tech job, right is or is
Speaker 1: that just an excuse? Well, you know, I think that, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think in some cases people mean to make excuses.
Speaker 1: I think people go with what they're familiar with, and unfortunately,
Speaker 1: in tech, what they're familiar with looks like one thing.
Speaker 1: It often leaves out. I think some of the best
Speaker 1: talent and ideas right now that that can help us,
Speaker 1: you know, make big things happen. You would think market
Speaker 1: efficiencies would punish people who were misbehaving in that way.
Speaker 1: But before I I spend too much time on this,
Speaker 1: let's talk about millennials a little bit, because that was
Speaker 1: what I really wanted to discuss in this UH segment.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the data point earlier. I have to bring
Speaker 1: up forty percent of millennials turned down a job because
Speaker 1: the organization's values did not align with theirs. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine any previous generation getting away with that. How how
Speaker 1: is that possible? Hey? Thanks, but I just don't dig
Speaker 1: your values and I'm going to turn the job down.
Speaker 1: Is that a realistic thing? It absolutely is, and it's
Speaker 1: fascinating and how it plays out. I think we're only
Speaker 1: going to see that trend grow. So firstly, um, there's
Speaker 1: projected to be a shortage of one point five million
Speaker 1: knowledge workers by and in some fields the shortage of
Speaker 1: talent is even more intense. So for example, there I
Speaker 1: believe are five open developer jobs for every single developer
Speaker 1: looking for work today. So you have these certain parts
Speaker 1: it's I know, it's staggering, and honestly, it should um
Speaker 1: you know it, it should really concern you if you're
Speaker 1: a business that needs technology talent to survive, which by
Speaker 1: the way, is almost everyone today. And so what what
Speaker 1: you're seeing when you have these imbalances in the types
Speaker 1: of talent that businesses are looking for and the number
Speaker 1: of people with those skill sets in the market, is
Speaker 1: that those people have the opportunity to be pick here.
Speaker 1: And one of the ways that they're voting with their
Speaker 1: feet is they're saying, no, I want to join an
Speaker 1: organization with values that align with mine. Now I want
Speaker 1: to be really clear about what this means. I think
Speaker 1: sometimes executives will come to me after I've given a
Speaker 1: talk or a keynote and they'll say, you know, how
Speaker 1: do I compete with Facebook? They have free snacks, or
Speaker 1: I hear Google has a slide. But believe me, it's
Speaker 1: not these sort of flashy perks. They make for great,
Speaker 1: you know, magazine articles. But that's not what's driving most
Speaker 1: millennials to choose one opportunity over another. It goes much deeper.
Speaker 1: I mentioned people, purpose and path earlier. Those are what
Speaker 1: we call the three p's internally, But many of the
Speaker 1: talent that uses the Muse to navigate their careers, they're
Speaker 1: looking for. Okay, who are the people that I'm going
Speaker 1: to be working with? Is that you know on my
Speaker 1: colleagues inspiring to me? Is the leadership someone I can
Speaker 1: look up to? What's the purpose of this organization? Does
Speaker 1: it have a clear sense of mission, whether that's social
Speaker 1: impact or not. Frankly, it can be UM making a
Speaker 1: you know, a complicated process much more simple for a
Speaker 1: specific buyer. But is there some sort of why or
Speaker 1: reason that the organization exists? And then path what opportunities
Speaker 1: exist for growth and development? And when we work with companies,
Speaker 1: we try and help them really tell that story. UM,
Speaker 1: and again, your employees are your best advocates because just
Speaker 1: trying to you know, compete for candidates based on paycheck
Speaker 1: without taking a look at the rest of it, UM,
Speaker 1: that is going to be a more and more challenging
Speaker 1: strategy as time goes on. We have been speaking with
Speaker 1: Katherine Minshue. She is the founder and CEO of the
Speaker 1: Muse dot Com. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure
Speaker 1: and stick around for the podcast extras when we keep
Speaker 1: the tape rolling and continue discussing all things involving millennial employment.
Speaker 1: We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us
Speaker 1: at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. Be sure
Speaker 1: and check out my daily column on Bloomberg View dot com.
Speaker 1: Follow me on Twitter at Rid Halts. I'm Barry Dhults.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast, Catherine. Thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 1: I've really been looking forward to chatting with you about this.
Speaker 1: Were really didn't get to talk about the millennials and
Speaker 1: as much as I wanted, and I have some questions
Speaker 1: I have to follow up with you on that because
Speaker 1: I have a lot of millennials in my office and
Speaker 1: I find the general I don't want to say complaint,
Speaker 1: but the general descriptions of that generation to be somewhat
Speaker 1: a little off base, a little off kilter. You could
Speaker 1: take any extreme example and use it to paint a group.
Speaker 1: So so first question that I find shocking something that's
Speaker 1: in one of your PDFs is of candidates who have
Speaker 1: a less than in thrilling experience in an interview, what
Speaker 1: what do they end up doing with with the experience?
Speaker 1: So many of them will sever their business relationship with
Speaker 1: the organization where they have that bad yet experience. And
Speaker 1: it's fascinating because when you start to really follow the numbers,
Speaker 1: you can actually put a pretty substantial business impact to
Speaker 1: not treating candidates well. And it makes sense right as
Speaker 1: the expectations that individuals have as consumers. Let's think about,
Speaker 1: you know, the way that people expect customer service to work,
Speaker 1: or the types of interactions people expect to have with
Speaker 1: just brands in their day to day lives. When you
Speaker 1: contrast those to how most people are treated as candidates,
Speaker 1: which frankly is very poorly, you can see that they're
Speaker 1: starting to be this disconnect and candidates, especially UM individuals
Speaker 1: that are you know, have skill sets that are more
Speaker 1: valuable in the market, are starting to stand up and
Speaker 1: say no, I won't take it. When we did a
Speaker 1: survey of users on the muse um, the number one
Speaker 1: thing that they hate about the current job search and
Speaker 1: career process today is what they call the black hole.
Speaker 1: It's when you apply to a company that you never
Speaker 1: hear anything. And UM similarly, you know, there's there's many
Speaker 1: cases in which people go through the experience of interviewing
Speaker 1: for a company and they're treated more like a resume
Speaker 1: or a number than an individual human. We've actually started
Speaker 1: to work with a number of our customers and our
Speaker 1: partners on Canada experience. You've spent so much time and
Speaker 1: money getting these people to apply, why would you want
Speaker 1: them to leave the process with a bad impression of
Speaker 1: your company? So so that raises two questions I have
Speaker 1: to ask. The first is about the black hole. Is
Speaker 1: it better to just politely say thank you, will file
Speaker 1: this away, or thanks but no thanks, or to actually
Speaker 1: turn around and do nothing. Our candidates uniformly would prefer
Speaker 1: just to know they want to hear I'm sorry we
Speaker 1: won't be moving forward with you at this time, but
Speaker 1: thank you for applying. And you know, the best companies
Speaker 1: leave the door open for the future. Just because it
Speaker 1: wasn't the right fit today doesn't mean there might not
Speaker 1: be a great opportunity. I actually think that that is
Speaker 1: a great approach that remows that removes some of the
Speaker 1: hubrists from companies saying you know, no, sorry, you're you're
Speaker 1: not right, because the truth is a lot of great talent,
Speaker 1: even if they're not right for you today, they may
Speaker 1: go off and work at one of your competitors somewhere
Speaker 1: else in your industry, and you know, six months, three years,
Speaker 1: ten years down the line, that could be the person
Speaker 1: that you're dying to hire. And if you if you
Speaker 1: haven't at least treated them with a basic sort of
Speaker 1: minimum of professional respect, you're much less likely to be
Speaker 1: able to do that. So so that raises the second
Speaker 1: half of the question, which is how much of this
Speaker 1: sort of hand fisted I don't want to use the
Speaker 1: word rude, but just unpleasant experience as a candidate, is
Speaker 1: the legacy of that power shift? Where it used to
Speaker 1: be the company had all the power. They were the
Speaker 1: ones who are writing the paycheck, and now suddenly that
Speaker 1: there is a short especially in tech in areas where
Speaker 1: there's a real shortage of talent. How much of it
Speaker 1: is just these companies haven't quite recognized, Hey, the power
Speaker 1: um ratio has shifted and it's now with the potential employee,
Speaker 1: not the employer. Oh look, some of it is a
Speaker 1: legacy of the technology. Early application tracking systems did not
Speaker 1: make it easy to respond to people, to treat them,
Speaker 1: you know, well, it was it was very much a
Speaker 1: processing system. Frankly, and I think that you had and
Speaker 1: and I'm going to keep the shorks. I don't want
Speaker 1: to recount the entire history of the online recruitment industry,
Speaker 1: but you had this phase where all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it became so much easier for individuals to apply to
Speaker 1: jobs that companies were swamped by applications. I mean, think
Speaker 1: about just clicked to apply versus having to mail in
Speaker 1: a cover letter and resume. And when this initially happened,
Speaker 1: when companies were initially swamped, they responded by just processing
Speaker 1: the applications as quickly and efficiently as possible, and it
Speaker 1: became more of a you know, how many applications, how
Speaker 1: quickly do we move people through? How quickly do we
Speaker 1: get a button the seat? And it was less about
Speaker 1: um cultivating the people that you're turning down today but
Speaker 1: that could be right in the future. It was also,
Speaker 1: to some extent, less about fit, because there was more
Speaker 1: of a sense that as a company, you just got
Speaker 1: a bunch of applications and you picked the best one
Speaker 1: and you moved on. Now companies are starting to wake
Speaker 1: up and say, what if the talent in the world
Speaker 1: isn't even applying to my jobs because they're not even
Speaker 1: thinking about me as a place to work, and that
Speaker 1: changes the game again, both with the candidates you you receive,
Speaker 1: but also understanding the way that people talk to each
Speaker 1: other on social media. You don't want someone to have
Speaker 1: a bad experience and perhaps they tell their friend or
Speaker 1: their colleague, you know, oh that place treated me terribly.
Speaker 1: Never work there. What if that person is someone that
Speaker 1: you're trying to recruit. And so I think that companies
Speaker 1: are starting to both obviously be more aware, but there's
Speaker 1: also been a lot of data, hard data coming out
Speaker 1: recently about the business impact in terms of lost dollars,
Speaker 1: negative employer brand ramifications of having a Canada experience process
Speaker 1: that does not value candidates as people. I never would
Speaker 1: have imagined that, but now that you mentioned and it
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense. Let's get to some of our favorite
Speaker 1: standard questions we ask all our guests. What is the
Speaker 1: most important thing people don't know about your background? All?
Speaker 1: The most important thing, Uh, that's a tough question to answer. Um.
Speaker 1: The sort of most fun and random thing is that
Speaker 1: I love to travel, and I've been to sixty one
Speaker 1: countries since two thousand four sixte in thirteen years, including
Speaker 1: the border between Turkey and Iran, the border between Rwanda
Speaker 1: and the DRC. I love I love travel, and I
Speaker 1: love exploring. I think the the other thing is um.
Speaker 1: You know, I really do believe that the the entire
Speaker 1: industry around how people find their next job, how they
Speaker 1: choose what to do in their career, and how companies
Speaker 1: are able to source great people. I think we're going
Speaker 1: to see something in five years that looks radically different
Speaker 1: from how it looks today, and then especially from how
Speaker 1: it looked a couple of years ago. And and I
Speaker 1: am so unbelievably excited to be part of that. Tell
Speaker 1: us about some of your early mentors who affected how
Speaker 1: you think of the world and and who affected your career. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was very lucky when I first started the muse
Speaker 1: to have a few other founders, entrepreneurs um, you know,
Speaker 1: individuals and technology that that took me under their wing
Speaker 1: and explained some of the dudes and don't so um.
Speaker 1: There was an incredible woman named Rachel Squar who was
Speaker 1: very active in media. She actually helped me get on
Speaker 1: television the first time that I ever did a TV segment. UM.
Speaker 1: There was a business mentor from McKinsey, Joanna Barsh, who
Speaker 1: was incredibly influential UM. Also actually my one of my
Speaker 1: managers UH at McKinsey was a guy named Dan, who
Speaker 1: I think was probably responsible more than anyone else for
Speaker 1: me not seeming like a total and complete idiot when
Speaker 1: I was twenty three year old walking into these client
Speaker 1: meetings as a consultant. And I've taken a lot of
Speaker 1: those lessons with me ever since about UM just you know,
Speaker 1: basic UM presence and interaction with h with executives. It's
Speaker 1: actually been very helpful as the news has started to
Speaker 1: sell into enterprise clients, and then I think as as
Speaker 1: as my company has grown. You know, we were part
Speaker 1: of why Combinator. Several of the partners there really helped
Speaker 1: us avoid some of the early pitfalls because there's so
Speaker 1: much you don't know as an entrepreneur. And if you
Speaker 1: can find those other people to um, you know, to
Speaker 1: tell you well, you may not want to do that,
Speaker 1: because I did it, and here's what happened. That that
Speaker 1: can save you more more heartache than I can possibly express.
Speaker 1: Tell us about some um either venture capitalists or technologists
Speaker 1: who affected the way you built your business. Oh my goodness, UM,
Speaker 1: I would say, you know here UM here in New
Speaker 1: York City, I've certainly learned a lot from watching the
Speaker 1: way that Rent the Runway has been built. Jen Hymen
Speaker 1: has done a really incredible job building a company that
Speaker 1: again that created a fairly new category in the space,
Speaker 1: and also really proud to be an entrepreneur from New
Speaker 1: York City. So seeing um, you know, seeing her build
Speaker 1: that company has been incredible. UM. There's a woman named
Speaker 1: Nila for Merchant who is a former senior executive an
Speaker 1: investor UM. She actually recently came up with a book
Speaker 1: called Onliness about the concept of of denting the world,
Speaker 1: bringing what only you can and she has been incredibly
Speaker 1: influential because I think that early on for me, there
Speaker 1: were times when people looked at the way I was
Speaker 1: approaching my business, the way that I, for example, wanted
Speaker 1: to uh structure the company, or or treat our employees,
Speaker 1: or just I know, there were so many little things,
Speaker 1: especially in the early days of the muse, where we
Speaker 1: were going kind of against the grain of conventional tech wisdom,
Speaker 1: and UM, there were a number of people who who
Speaker 1: were very powerful in in helping me realize that being
Speaker 1: different didn't necessarily mean we were wrong. So you mentioned Onliness,
Speaker 1: what other books have you enjoyed. What are you reading currently?
Speaker 1: My goodness? Well, I loved The Hard Thing About Hard Things,
Speaker 1: which is ben horror. What's this book about entrepreneurship? I
Speaker 1: think he coined the phrase eating glass and staring into
Speaker 1: the abyss, which is certainly the most accurate description of
Speaker 1: some of the low points of entrepreneurship. Um. Uh. Eric Reese,
Speaker 1: who was an early News Seed investor and another person
Speaker 1: that I got some incredible guidance from early on. His
Speaker 1: book The Lean Startup is a classic of how do
Speaker 1: you break you know, these big complicated ideas and plans
Speaker 1: down to the most basic m v P minimum viable
Speaker 1: product and experiment test them in the world. Uh. Nila
Speaker 1: Fir's book, Sorry, The Power of Onliness is the full title. Um,
Speaker 1: that's actually just came out. But her, I think ideas,
Speaker 1: UM and perspective have been very impactful on me for
Speaker 1: a long time. And then uh, in terms of what
Speaker 1: I'm reading now, I'm about halfway through when breath becomes
Speaker 1: their Uh. Paul Kellnathy, it's a fascinating book. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was a neuros neurosur gen neuroscientists and UM and eventually
Speaker 1: was diagnosed with cancer and it's his his story and
Speaker 1: sort of meditation on life. And uh to say very
Speaker 1: it's it's very, very impactful. So you joined the technology
Speaker 1: slash web industry six years ago? Is that about right?
Speaker 1: From from mackenzie as a consultant. What has changed over
Speaker 1: the ensuing six years? And is this a good thing
Speaker 1: or a bad then? You know, I love being part
Speaker 1: of the technology industry and I think it's a really
Speaker 1: great time to be a founder right now. Um, in
Speaker 1: terms of what has changed, you know, the the the
Speaker 1: sense of what's trendy has changed. I know when I
Speaker 1: was first raising capital for the News, everybody that I
Speaker 1: talked to was really into daily deal sites. That was
Speaker 1: when groupon was really big, and you know, investors probably
Speaker 1: funded twenty five smaller niche opportunities. And you know, now
Speaker 1: it's obviously AI bots. There's a lot of new trends.
Speaker 1: Some of them are going to be massively big. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't mean to discount that, but I think
Speaker 1: that the you know, the industry, one thing that has
Speaker 1: not changed is this sort of sense of everyone trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what's the one or two next big things. Um.
Speaker 1: But that said, I think it's a it's a time
Speaker 1: where as much as there's a lot uh that's very
Speaker 1: challenging about the world, the political system that we live in,
Speaker 1: and there's a huge amount of optimism in terms of
Speaker 1: what can be accomplished with technology and and you know,
Speaker 1: when you look at just the career industry, for example,
Speaker 1: there are I could name a half dozen companies that
Speaker 1: are innovating on different parts of the process, different needs
Speaker 1: that individual candidates or that companies have um and I
Speaker 1: think it's a it's a great time. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a so one of my favorite books I didn't mention
Speaker 1: earlier is Arcadia to Play by Tom Stoppard, and one
Speaker 1: of the characters has this beautiful quote and he says,
Speaker 1: it's the best possible time to be alive when almost
Speaker 1: everything you thought you knew is wrong. That's that's an
Speaker 1: interesting quote. Tell us about a time you failed and
Speaker 1: what you learned from the experience, My goodness, UM, I
Speaker 1: am definitely. I've had some some epic failures as well
Speaker 1: as obviously some things that have been very successful, and
Speaker 1: I think you probably learned more from the stuff that
Speaker 1: goes wrong. The one that that I'll give you the
Speaker 1: quick story is I mentioned earlier In between UM leaving Mackenzie,
Speaker 1: I had moved and then moved back from Rwanda. UM
Speaker 1: I started a blog, a community essentially a project that
Speaker 1: became a company with several other women that was sort
Speaker 1: of the predecessor to The Muse and ended really badly.
Speaker 1: The four of us disagreed on the right direction to
Speaker 1: take the company. We had very different senses of whether
Speaker 1: it should be, you know, in every man brand or
Speaker 1: a high end brand, how we wanted to set it
Speaker 1: up and UM, and we ended up in just this
Speaker 1: very painful situation that UM for a while, I I
Speaker 1: ended up feeling like, you know, all of the work
Speaker 1: had been for nothing, and I felt like a total failure.
Speaker 1: We uh, you know, we we kind of split two
Speaker 1: and two and the other two took the site that
Speaker 1: we've been building and renamed it and sort of moved
Speaker 1: on and Alex sand ended up starting over. And what
Speaker 1: we started over with was the Muse. And it's so
Speaker 1: funny because looking back, I don't know that we could
Speaker 1: have done what we've done with The Muse with the
Speaker 1: company without that experience. But at the time, I mean
Speaker 1: I was you know, in a fetal position for uh,
Speaker 1: for a couple of days just thinking to myself, has
Speaker 1: this all been a waste? And of course even if
Speaker 1: the work um feels like it's been a waste, like
Speaker 1: what you've learned from it, you you carry with you
Speaker 1: the path to get from here to there require Sometimes
Speaker 1: so what feels like wasted effort and what feels like
Speaker 1: well that was not. But very often it isn't tell
Speaker 1: us what you do to keep either mentally or physically
Speaker 1: fit or for relaxment or enjoyment outside of the office. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um so in terms of keeping mentally fit. I love
Speaker 1: language is um. I speak French. I always like last
Speaker 1: night I was, um, you know, sitting outside reading a
Speaker 1: book and overheard a couple of French teenagers talking in
Speaker 1: a very heavy slang, which was really fun to to
Speaker 1: sort of remember. Um. I used to live in uh
Speaker 1: in Strasbourg and eastern France, so it's kind of a
Speaker 1: fun trip down memory lane. But I love um kind
Speaker 1: of getting and staying plugged in to other languages, other countries,
Speaker 1: other cultures. Um. My other big kind of hobby right
Speaker 1: now is cooking, and it's totally ridiculous. I actually got um.
Speaker 1: I got a vite a mix a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and now I'm just like blending and cooking and making
Speaker 1: all sorts of things. So those are probably my big
Speaker 1: two outside of work. I have to share a language
Speaker 1: story with you. I just got back from Paris, ten
Speaker 1: days in Paris from my anniversary and having taken French
Speaker 1: in high school and arriving at Paris in Paris and realizing, wow,
Speaker 1: three years of French in high school and they did
Speaker 1: a terrible job teaching you to speak. Ice downloaded an
Speaker 1: app called Duo Lingo, and it's just a really simple
Speaker 1: set of um you could use on your phone, you
Speaker 1: could use on the computer tablet, and it's I feel like,
Speaker 1: in a week of playing with Duo Lingo, I've learned
Speaker 1: more language than I did in years of high school.
Speaker 1: It's amazing how we've taught people other languages so inappropriately
Speaker 1: over the years. When I when I showed up from
Speaker 1: my first day of my junior year of college at
Speaker 1: the the big political science university there, I mean I
Speaker 1: didn't I could literally could not understand anything, and I
Speaker 1: was probably six years into French language at that point.
Speaker 1: But then, of course, you know, three or four weeks
Speaker 1: sort of being I burst in it. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: finally I can understand my professor. That was that was
Speaker 1: It was a good moment, all right. And our two
Speaker 1: favorite questions that we ask all of our guests, and
Speaker 1: this question is actually really funny to ask you of
Speaker 1: all people. The the ninth question and we ask all
Speaker 1: of our guests is always what advice would you give
Speaker 1: to a millennial or someone just beginning their career? And
Speaker 1: it's funny because essentially that's what what the muse does
Speaker 1: every day. But what sort of advice if if someone
Speaker 1: came out to you and said, Catherine, I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: going into technology, hr, whatever, what sort of advice would
Speaker 1: you give them? Yeah, I'd say that anything worth doing
Speaker 1: requires grit and persistence. I think that sometimes that can
Speaker 1: get lost in our culture's focus on overnight success things
Speaker 1: that just seem to kind of work magically. Um, but
Speaker 1: literally every person I have talked to be at an entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: a successful business leader, executive, whatever it is. Maybe they
Speaker 1: just um, you know, run a small organization or company
Speaker 1: or nonprofit or or or thing in a small corner
Speaker 1: of the world. And they're not you know, necessarily famous
Speaker 1: or someone you've heard of, but people that are deeply
Speaker 1: content or satisfied with their career have usually had to
Speaker 1: put up with some heart knocks to get there. And
Speaker 1: I think grit is a is a fairly under appreciated attribute,
Speaker 1: but certainly, um, I believe it's one of the most critical.
Speaker 1: There's a new book out grit. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you're familiar with it. Someone put out a book grit
Speaker 1: is in the title. When you get a chance take
Speaker 1: look at it. And our final question, what is it
Speaker 1: that you know about technology, venture capital, HR, anything like
Speaker 1: that today that you wish you knew seven eight years
Speaker 1: ago when you were first thinking about launching the muse Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the only constant is change. Um. Just because
Speaker 1: you have a great idea or a big innovation or
Speaker 1: something that moves your space or your market forward, UM,
Speaker 1: that's never enough. That's that's the sort of opening stakes.
Speaker 1: You have to constantly keep moving, keep innovative, keep changing
Speaker 1: as a business. And actually that's a very freeing and
Speaker 1: powerful thought. But it's certainly important, especially in technology today,
Speaker 1: because the rules of the game now aren't going to
Speaker 1: necessarily be the rules of the game in three years.
Speaker 1: And if you can't commit to sort of learning and
Speaker 1: innovating and constantly updating your own assumptions. It's going to
Speaker 1: be harder and harder to keep up. That is fascinating.
Speaker 1: We have been speaking with Catherine Minshoe. She is the
Speaker 1: founder and CEO of the Muse dot com. If you
Speaker 1: enjoy this conversation, you can look up an intro Down
Speaker 1: an Inch on Apple iTunes and you can see any
Speaker 1: of the other hundred and fifty something or so previous
Speaker 1: shows we've had. Be sure and write to us. We
Speaker 1: love your comments, feedback and suggestions. Send us an email
Speaker 1: at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I would
Speaker 1: be remiss if I did not thank my crack staff
Speaker 1: who helps put these podcasts together. Medina Parwana is my
Speaker 1: audio engineer and producer part Excellence. Taylor Riggs is in
Speaker 1: charge of booking and also one of our producers. Michael
Speaker 1: Batnick is the head of research who helps delve deep
Speaker 1: into the background of our guests, coming up with better
Speaker 1: questions than I usually do. I'm Barry Ridholts. You've been
Speaker 1: listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.