Each week, we interview proven leaders from our network, to learn from their experiences, and share their Talent Attraction and Candidate Experience stories with you.

• Our mission is to promote the accomplishments of our guests
• Highlight the companies where they work and the services, and products that they offer
• Share success stories from their experiences and, most importantly
• Provide strategies for job seekers and advice to talent seeking to accelerate their careers.
  

Today’s guest is Ron Bower, Founder and President of The Brick Path Group and InterviewPath. Ron talks about his career path in Human Resources, Financial Services, and onto being a SaaS start-up entrepreneur! Some of Ron’s key points include:

• When starting out as an entrepreneur, focus on what you love, BUT recognize when it’s time be flexible
• How to build a MVP (minimal viable product) SaaS solution
• Understanding how to assess “Cultural Intelligence” when evaluating candidates
• For college students, regardless of your “technical skill”, you must develop strong communications skills and get exposure on how to sell

Summary transcript of our interview below:

[00:00:06] Ron Laneve: Hello and Welcome to Episode 19 of the Bell Falls Search Focus on Talent Podcast. Today’s guest has built a career in human resources, talent management and recruiting in both the corporate and entrepreneurial settings. He amassed nearly 20 years of experience in the banking industry before moving on to the consulting world. And over the last few years, he has built a very successful software as a service business (SaaS), which aims to solve one of the most critical challenges in recruiting. 

[00:00:37] Very excited to introduce Ron Bower, Founder and President of the Brickpath Group, a human resources advisory and consulting firm and the InterviewPath, a SaaS solution to generate custom interview guides. Ron, thanks a lot for being here.  

[00:00:55] Ron Bower: Thanks for having me. At the risk of dating myself a little bit, 27 years in banking. You were being nice there just to not let me out. So I do appreciate that. 

[00:01:04] Ron Laneve: So thanks for clarifying that. Appreciate it. Ron, as I ask everybody…for my audience, talk about your career progression and how you moved from the banking industry into starting your own consulting firm and then into the SaaS business. 

[00:01:26] Ron Bower: So this is you have a fascinating journey and I can’t wait to share it.So coming out of college I took a job in a rotational management training program in a bank. I was a communications major, not an accounting or finance major. So I was a little different for that profile. Very different, actually. So I, started working in banking and went around and learned a lot of different aspects of the bank.

[00:01:43] About a year into that, I landed a job working on the bank operations side. Bank operations, bank technology. Where I then spent really the next 10 years of my career. Was really behind the scenes, managing lots of people, projects, process improvements acquisitions, and loved all that. I then made the move into HR. I spent the next 17 years there in a couple of different banks. I didn’t really work in the bank. It was all behind the scenes, staff, kinds of positions. It was never an aspiration to say, I want to spend all my career in banking, but it worked out where my network was. It’s where the opportunities were for me at that point. So I just followed that. 

[00:02:23] So into the HR part, if we jump ahead to the very end of that, what became the end of the corporate part, I was working for an organization that in the the banking crisis of a few years ago was failing and eventually failed and was taken over by the FDIC and sold. 

[00:02:43] It was during that year or so that I really started to explore the, okay, what am I going to do next? And it became very clear to me as I was doing a lot of research and to be fair, some interviewing during that time that I just really didn’t want to work for someone else again.

[00:02:58] I just I had this, like many do, an itch. Call it whatever you want…that just said I want to go explore this on my own. I didn’t know what that meant. But that led to me creating a consulting practice now almost 14 years ago, 14 years in February that I started. So at its core, was driven off of, I just I don’t want to go find another job.I’ve done it. I’ve proven what I felt like I needed to prove for me, and it was time to go, prove something different for me. 

[00:03:29] Ron Laneve: In the run of banking experiences you’ve had, was it coincidence that you ended up working for 3 banks in a row or were you recruited? 

[00:03:39] Ron Bower: It’s probably a little bit of both. As I made those moves, it was more about the HR experience I brought in my background more so than what I knew a bunch about banking. Now, I learned a ton about banking after that many years. I don’t really believe it was based on that. I believe that it was more on the people side, the leadership, the HR piece, that is why and my network. My network happened to be in that space and I knew people and I went to meetings, I was involved in industry organization. So that just admittedly made that part easier.

[00:04:13] Ron Laneve: I hear what you’re saying on the consulting side, same thing for me. And that’s why I went out and finally started my own thing and wanted to be my own boss.But, curious when you started, I’m sure you had a predisposition on the services you were going to offer and how those were going to work. How did that play out in reality and how has that evolved over the years? 

[00:04:37] Ron Bower: Great question, So when I first started my consulting practice. I was very focused one very broad topic. 

What I wanted to do was build this business around recruiting strategy and recruiting effectiveness, helping people do recruiting better.

I had spent the end of the last two corporate jobs I had in the last few organizations I was in. I knew that those jobs were predominantly leading, turning around, fixing, improving, recruiting functions.

[00:05:07] I fell in love with that space, and I didn’t feel like that there was anybody really talking about that on a local regional basis here in and around Cleveland. And so that’s what I wanted to do. That’s my differentiator. That’s how I’ll go make a name for myself. I love this space. I have a lot of passion and energy around this space. And here’s what I found out. Everybody wanted to talk about that, but in 2010, 2011, 2012, no one wanted to pay for it. That really then led to, and even though over, over the years, I did end up, I’ve done a fair amount of work in that space but it wasn’t in the very beginning and in the very beginning, what that then meant is, I had to step back, I won’t even say pivot, because it never really took off from that perspective.

[00:05:53] It was:

Where else can I make an impact? And oh, by the way, what will people pay for?

So what I quickly started to figure out first piece was executive coaching. I had a fair amount of internal coaching background. I had a lot of people calling me about, would you be an executive coach? Would you come in and do this? It really started around the executive coaching side. 

[00:06:14] And then probably about nine months, towards the end of the first year that I had my business, people started calling me about doing recruiting. And I had very specifically said, I don’t want to be a recruiter. “I don’t want to be third party search. I’ve dealt with it on the other side. I don’t like those people. It’s a slimy business. I don’t want to be part of it.”  (said tongue-and-cheek). So I took a really strong stand for about 10 months until I needed to eat. And then somebody called and I made a deal with them… she called and said, “Hey, I have two searches I need you to do.”

They were both in the HR space. She was building out a team as a new HR director. She wanted me to come in and help her fill these two jobs. And I said, happy to do it. 

Just don’t tell anybody because I don’t want to be a recruiter, but I’ll do it for you as a favor. And oh, by the way, I got paid!

[00:07:05] Then, somebody else did the same thing a couple months later, unrelated to that person, I said, same thing, don’t tell anybody. I would now describe in retrospect:

I was a reluctant recruiter for the first two years of my business. I didn’t want to do it, but it pays well when you do it well.

And then what I figured out during that time, and I think the important part of that story really led into, I figured out that there was a way to do Recruiting, do executive search of the kind of above board not be slimy.

[00:07:36] I don’t know what the right word is for that but it’s to do it and just do it in a way that as if I were inside the organization. It was treating candidates that way the organization would. I just refused to do contingent search. I felt that was not gonna fit well for what I wanted to do. Creating a fee structure that felt good to people. And I just figured out that I could do recruiting in a way that I felt not only good about, but really proud of. And that I could build on. So that, that’s where, that was that evolution from that standpoint.

[00:08:13] Now, doing that work then led back to, in some cases, helping people do recruiting better. Because my whole picture around that was, hey, if I can help you do recruiting better, you don’t have to pay for a search firm. You don’t have to go pay fees, right? I can help you build a strategy, help you build your team, build their knowledge and expertise and how to do their job.

[00:08:29] So I started doing that as well. The executive coaching business continued to build and it still does today. That executive coaching business really then led into many of those clients not only wanting me to work with some of their direct reports as I was working with them, but it was also, Hey, could you turn some of what we’re talking about into, basically the leadership training? Could you get in front of 20, 30 leaders and deliver some of these same messages? Which then evolved into me taking on a pretty strong practice around leadership training which I had never done in a corporate world. I had trained, more technical training on a couple of things. I didn’t really do a lot of training in my corporate life, but just evolved out of this. And one of those lessons. And you were in some ways, I don’t know, necessarily alluding to it in the way that you set the question up, but just in that evolution.  

At some level, you may have something you want to do as an entrepreneur. The market will tell you what they want and then you decide what part of it you want.

I had a whole list of things I could do for my corporate HR life, a whole list of things I never wanted to do, and I still haven’t. There’s areas that were never of interest or necessarily expertise either that I just stayed out of. So it is that evolution that just says, listen to market, the market will tell you what they want and you will decide whether you want to do it or not.

[00:09:53] Ron Laneve: That was an absolutely loaded question and you nailed it spot on, even though we didn’t pre practice that. Because I was hoping that would be your answer. That’s how I learned from some of my mentors that I watched startup businesses and I learned it, on my own, the hard way of the last 8 years, but I still run into people who say, I’m going to do this and this is what I’m going to do and they don’t waiver. I’d say one out of maybe 20 times. It works that way, but mostly it doesn’t. 

And I always ask people, what do you want to do? And what will you do? And what will you do is something you really gotta think about and pay attention to. And sometimes you just have to do it.

[00:10:29] Ron Bower: So it’s funny you say that. I just had lunch with someone, and this was the conversation is they were debating whether they’d go down this path or not from a consulting path as somebody in the HR Space. And they had a lane like, I want to do this. And I said, great that’s all part of you know being entrepreneurial and just figuring out and rolling with the punches and oh by the way. Maybe along the way as I did found out some things I Wasn’t necessarily part of my plan that I absolutely love doing like.

I’m very deliberate. I don’t do work that I don’t love doing. There is nothing I spend my time doing work that I don’t want to be part of. Or, by the way with people I don’t want to be a part of.

 It’s a pretty cool opportunity when you can do all that.

[00:11:14] Ron Laneve: I’m very lucky that I get the chance to do this with you today, though. So appreciate it. Why we’re on this path. I guess I shouldn’t use that word. No pun intended. Let’s talk about InterviewPath. When did that start? How did you start it? And where are we at in that evolution?

[00:11:28] Ron Bower: So backing up, there were a couple of things. I’m always trying to be a better business owner and learn from other people and read and listen to podcasts. And talk to people who have been doing it maybe differently or longer, sometimes not even longer, but just differently than I am, trying to learn from them.

Early on, one of the lessons that I heard from someone was, Ron:

If you’re ever going to create the life that you say you want, you need to figure out how to make money while you’re asleep. Because if you’re only making money for the hours that you work, you’re going to run out of an upside potential from a revenue perspective.

[00:11:59] And that made a lot of sense. Every year when I would do strategic planning for my business I, that would, that was on there. Figure out how to make money while I’m asleep. And I had some ideas and I played around with it for a couple of years. So there’s that track of the story and I’m going to connect some of these things together. Another part of it, as I was doing some work in that recruiting strategy and recruiting effectiveness place, one of the things that I, a hundred percent of the time, came across was I would be talking to people about current state of recruiting, interviewing, selection, kind of all aspects of it.

[00:12:31] Very few exceptions people would come back and usually they would lean forward and whisper with some version of we’re not very good at interviewing. And this is like:

An HR person as an example. I don’t know what our managers are asking. I don’t know if they’re asking good questions. I don’t know if they’re asking you legal questions and it, I lose sleep over that.

[00:12:49] So at that point, early on I said, oh there’s this software and I pointed them to some really big national level companies that have been around for years that I’ve been exposed to in some of the bigger organizations I worked in. And I would point people to that and say, Oh, you need to go look at this because this software will simplify your life. It’s going to create a good framework for a custom interview guide. You can identify the competencies you want, it’ll tell you the questions to ask and not ask. 

[00:13:18]  So they would, and here’s what happened every single time I did that. They would come back a couple weeks later. Hey, I looked at those companies that you mentioned and a couple of things. I understand A, why you suggested that. Good idea. Here’s the reality. Their software is not that easy to use. It’s clunky and it’s ridiculously expensive. Really expensive. That may be a really big organization, 10,000 20,000 30,000 employee organization might pay for. But many of the people I was working with were noticeably smaller and were like, we’re never going to spend that much money.

[00:13:54] So it took a little while, but I connected those dots together and said, Oh, here’s what I can do. I know what needs to be done. I’ve been a user of it. 

I’ve had to manually create interview guides before. It’s painful. It’s time consuming. It’s brutal. What if I could create a software that solves some of the problems that I just heard from those folks.

[00:14:15] So I said, it’s gotta be easy to use. Great user interface should be SaaS based. No one wanted something on their own computer systems. One of the other things I heard was just how inflexible some of these companies were, like, in adding the competency, adjusting the competency, adding interview questions, and it was, the answer was always no.So I wanted that to be part of the framework, and I wanted it to be really affordable. And the flip side, I actually have used the language around it, needs, I want it to be ridiculously affordable. Just the complete opposite of what others were experiencing. So I did that. And initially it wasn’t even a separate company, its idea. It was going to develop this product to be part of the Brickpath group. My consulting practice would be part of that. I learned very quickly as I started figuring out what this meant, that it really needed to be a separate entity for lots of good legal and accounting reasons.

[00:15:07] I followed all that advice from really smart people who get paid to do those things. And I created a separate company, and I went out, I found a software developer, I found a friend who’s a PhD in IO psych to help me develop a competency model, grabbed a room full of recruiters, and we created a bunch of interview questions that we thought people would ask. and then just literally as I went, figured out how to start up a software company which doesn’t sound like the right way to go about it, sounds like you should probably know that before you start but I literally just figured it out. As I went and just kept building. That was the beginning of the whole thing was connecting all that together. 

[00:15:46] Ron Laneve: That’s an excellent story. I appreciate that. And I do want to expand a little bit about on the last thing you said, the key building part, so you and I’ve been talking about InterviewPath for a few years now. And I’ve seen the demo in a few different states. It blew me away the 1st time, but it was even significantly more advanced than the last time, just a couple of months ago. Again another loaded question, but, can you talk a little bit about the continuously building part and how you get through that? When is it done? Is it ever done? 

[00:16:19] Ron Bower: 

I don’t think anything is ever done. My whole career has been built around that everything can be better than it is today.

That’s not a dissatisfaction or saying that things are bad today. I happen to believe that everything can be better, whether it’s me as a business owner, as a father, grandfather partner, I’m in a never ending mode of improvement is at least a goal. From a business perspective, what that meant was the right idea is you create a minimum viable product MVP and I didn’t even know that language when I started. What I figured out backwards was I mapped out for a software development team what my vision was and they came back and told me how much it was gonna cost to do that. And I said, I can’t afford that right now. What if we cut it back to here? 

I created a minimum viable product. Didn’t realize that’s what it was at the time. Which is, it’s a product that will do the core of what you want it to do. And maybe there’s one bell and one whistle, but that’s it and you stop there and then you go figure out whether people are going to buy it or not.

And so that’s what I did. I, so I went out, built it, started talking to people, started doing demos, literally on a laptop in Panera just having conversations with people started buying it.

[00:17:31] And as, and then it was a combination of listening to people. And there was my own vision of there’s still a lot more I want to do with this business and with this product. But as money came in, literally every penny that came into the business for the first several years, every dollar that came in went right back into the business. Add more functionality to software. Build more marketing. Add more competencies. Add more interview questions. And it was just a cycle that just continued. And it really still continues today. That we have a product roadmap that’s could be, it’s essentially years ahead of us that, and we just continue that cycle of build it, grow it, listen, react, add some new functionality based on what people are asking for, which has been a blast. And I love spending my time in that space, just figuring out what that is and what’s next that, makes my eyes light up every day. 

[00:18:29] Ron Laneve: As I mentioned, I’ve seen it, I haven’t necessarily used it, but strongly believe it’s a very compelling product and any company that isn’t using it should especially from a interviewing process standpoint, because you and I both know that’s a pretty big weakness for most companies of any size.

[00:18:48] Ron Bower: If I think about just some of that evolution and even as the product was evolved in the beginning, it was very much about this mission that said, I can help you improve your quality of hire. I happen to be, I believe there’s one good measure in recruiting. There’s only one measure that matters in recruiting. It’s quality of hire. I don’t care how fast you fill a job. You know what your time to fill is. I can fill jobs with crappy people really fast. It’s been the way I looked at it. So I’ve always, I’ve been a big believer in quality of hire and which is how long do people stay? How well do they perform? How long do they stay? That to me is what matters. 

[00:19:24] And I believe that InterviewPath is going to be part of that solution. Ask better questions, get better results. Ask the questions that are aligned with the job, your culture, but like what you aspire to be. 

[00:19:36] Number two, I knew enough from the other side, and make the life easier, simple, more impactful for a recruiter, recruiting teams, so that they weren’t spending their time trying to make up questions or track down managers responses, any of that, just simplify their life. There’s clearly a compliance part, depending on the organization, that’s a big win. It’s never been a driving force. It’s always on their radar. And it’s always been very much about how do we create a great candidate experience. We wanted this tool to ask good questions, meaningful questions, thought provoking questions that get to the core of who you might be as a candidate, how well you might fit in the organization how well aligned are you with our culture and that you enjoy the interview.

[00:20:19] If you walk into five interviews in companies, you walk around five different conference rooms. And every room, somebody asks you the same exact question, there’s a problem. That’s just a horrible experience. That was the initial goal. And the really cool thing we’ve also figured out that we can help people do is actually define their culture that they want and what they want to aspire, what they aspire to in their culture and then provide them the core competencies that support that.

[00:20:47] So I’ll give you a couple of examples of what that means. People say all the time, we want a culture of trust and we want a culture of accountability. I say, great. I can train you on that all day long, but if you really want a culture of accountability. Hire people who are accountable. It’s an overly simplified example and it works.

[00:21:07] It’s way easier just to hire people who can effectively answer a question about a time they made a mistake at work. What did they learn? What did they do differently? We all have made mistakes. Were you accountable, were you not? So doing that or helping people that are trying to drive what we refer to as cultural intelligence.

Can you work well with people that don’t look like you, sound like you, talk like you, are from where you came from? Went to school where you did, drive what you drive, all of that.

A year or two ago, we were working with somebody and they were all in on buying InterviewPath. And through those conversations, they came back and said, Oh, by the way, we have this initiative. This was a manufacturing organization that was growing quickly through acquisitions all over the country. And they had a phrase that they were trying to drive an enterprise mindset. They wanted people to do their jobs at any level in the organization. They wanted people to do their job broadly. Not just about what was right for their job, their department, their division, their city, state, whatever. So they had this idea around enterprise mindset and we really don’t have any, we don’t have competency around that, but we’ll go create one.

[00:22:14] And we’ve done that a number of times. We’ve added 20, 25 competencies since the first release of the product where we had 49 competencies when we first started. And we just continue to add them. And that was when we literally started from scratch and said, okay, what does that mean? Let’s create a definition. What does it look like to be great at that? What’s it look like to be, “does not meet” on that. Let’s go create 30, 40, 50 interview questions about that. Somebody could ask to figure out, where people could give examples where they’ve made decisions that were in the best interest of an organization, not just their own department as a simple example of that.

[00:22:52] So that’s been a really cool evolution of the product. 

Is beyond just helping people with the interview, it’s really helping people drive and create a culture that they want. That’s been a blast!.

[00:23:05] Ron Laneve: And that’s something also that AI and ChatGPT can’t actually do either. Might be able to generate a bunch of interview questions, but not tie it back to the culture and create a cohesive plan. So thank you for that. That was fascinating. And I love that story. Can we switch gears a little bit to tapping into more of your talent experience. Same questions. I always ask all my guests, for students thinking about going to college or students in college thinking about, heading out to the workforce, what advice would you give them on, I guess what opportunities exist in the market, how the market’s changing, what things would, should they focus on while they’re in school. 

[00:23:47] Ron Bower: Yeah, so at a starting point, as businesses evolve and people are sometimes surprised, it’s like college majors are the same. The number of people you’ve ever talked to, what major did you start with? What major did you end with? And then what did, what happened to your career? Now, so a couple of things that I would tell somebody who’s in school.Start with something. And, whether it’s accounting, IT, I don’t care what your kinda core-like technical skill let’s call it, whatever that may look like. Whatever that core thing is make sure along the way, take as many classes and 

get as much experience you can in, around communications. Being able to communicate with people in writing, verbally, leading meetings. Take classes wherever you are, learn how to do public speaking, learn how to run a small group of people. You’re just always going to need communication skills.

[00:24:47] The other that I think might not be as obvious, and maybe it’s somewhat related, but there’s a number of schools, and I have a bias for Ohio University, where I went to school. They happen to have this fantastic program. It’s a sales school. But basically they had this curriculum, it was a program that was developed, they had some big individual sponsors that were alumni, I believe, and then a number of corporate sponsors that said we need people to come out of school with sales skills. I don’t care whether they’re a math major, IT major, HR major, I don’t care what their major is, people need sales skills. And what does that mean? To me, that’s just influence. And they created great internships, and they created great curriculum. And, a program to the point, it ended up with, a designation on your diploma, even though it wasn’t a major. But, I recruited out of those programs. 

[00:25:40] The other more broadly today, which clearly is evolving right in front of us and right around us is, I don’t care what your background is, you better understand how AI impacts it, right? So whatever either direct education you can get or whatever self taught learning you want to do you need to understand how AI fits in. How it’s going to impact your life, your career, and what’s going on. It’s not going away. It’s going to get bigger, faster, smarter. Not without some concerns . I’ll give you that. That’s a whole other podcast probably. But you better know what’s going on. I think, and that becomes a way to differentiate yourself as well.

[00:26:20] Ron Laneve: Those are three of the five things I told my son. He better focus on when he goes to college. So I’m going to make him watch this and tell him it’s not just me. So then and then similarly for experience talent? You’ve interviewed a lot of people in your career, like I have. And we’re in a weird market right now. As you and I were talking about, supply and demand has changed, employment is supposedly low, but there’s, still a lot of a lot of jobs open, what would you tell somebody, who’s experienced? It doesn’t matter if they’re an accountant or software developer or a marketer? You know how to go about that job search how due they differentiate themselves in the interview process and maybe even if you have an anecdote or two that was memorable, you know potentially show.

[00:27:04] Ron Bower: Where candidates used to complain about getting ghosted by recruiters, now recruiters are getting ghosted by candidates and some amount of that might be payback. But the reality in today’s world, sadly as it is, I think it’s a differentiator to follow up, follow through and just be honest with people. If you’re not interested in jobs, say so. If you’d rather them talk to somebody else to say, so just be honest.

Don’t just ghost people because here’s the reality. Recruiters know each other, they compare notes, they talk to each other, and wherever you are listening or watching this you’re in a small town, I don’t care where you are. It’s not a six degree of separation in the world anymore. It’s two to maybe three. Your reputation is going to get out there. Maybe it’s easy, people are always trying to figure out how to present themselves and in the end like to me it’s just It’s simple advice, but sometimes missed. Just be you. 

Whoever you are, just be you. That’s really easy to do. You don’t have to prepare for that. You don’t have to pretend. You don’t have to think about. Just be you. Be honest, be transparent.

[00:28:09] I think being able to differentiate yourself, with your business savvy, not just your technical savvy and whatever it is you do. It’s that broader understanding of business and how it works. That to me is a differentiator for most people. I’m going to throw in there is, especially as a leader, you better understand AI. And what its impact is on your job, on your function, on your industry, and you don’t have to be an expert. You don’t have to be able to write chat GPT prompts. I’d recommend you go for it. Play with it and try it and understand how easy it might be either as an employer or as a parent you better understand what it’s doing because it’s going to catch up with us fast.

[00:28:58] Literally to the point, just where, this is part of the evolution of InterviewPath. I don’t believe that AI is a competency. It’s a technical skill, yes, but we’ve started building interview questions into many of our competencies that are specific to AI as it relates to change or leadership or resilience or learning or just a number of different things because our customers are asking for it. They’re starting to interview for that. 

[00:29:25] Ron Laneve: Ron, this has been excellent chat. I really appreciate your time. There’s a lot of great knowledge you shared and I can’t wait to share. So thanks again. I’m glad we were able to make this happen. 

[00:29:35] Ron Bower: Thanks. I appreciate it. It’s a lot of fun. See you soon. 

[00:29:39] Ron Laneve: All right. See you soon. Take care.

October 18, 2023