The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Recruiting and Talent Acquisition Conversations
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The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Recruiting and Talent Acquisition Conversations
EP 173: Unlocking Value: Latin American engineering teams for US companies with Gino Ferrand, CEO of Tecla
The landscape of global talent acquisition is evolving rapidly, and nearshore engineering teams in Latin America have emerged as a strategic solution for US-based tech companies.
In this insightful conversation, host James Mackey and Gino Ferrand, Founder and CEO of Tecla, explore why Latin American engineering teams are becoming increasingly attractive for companies looking to optimize their hiring strategies in today's volatile market.
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Hi, welcome to the Breakthrough Hiring Show. I'm your host, James Mackey, Very excited for today's episode. We have Gino Ferrand with us today. Gino is the founder and CEO of Tekla and he's gonna tell you all about what Tekla does, and it's gonna be a very exciting episode. We're gonna be talking a lot about Latin American-based teams and how a lot of companies are leveraging Latin-based engineering teams and even recruiting teams to support customers in the US market. So that's something that Gino and I know a thing or two about, so hopefully we'll be able to provide a lot of insight here. But anyways, I would love to just go ahead and say hey, Gino, welcome to the show. Appreciate you being here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hey, thanks so much. I'm really excited to be chatting with you today and, yeah, I think all of these topics are super exciting, especially right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah for sure. It's like, as fast as the world is changing, it's just trying to establish strong strategies is something that I think every executive gets top of mind right now. It's like how do we, how do companies, weather the storm, weather volatility? Companies, whether the storm, whether volatility, you know it's and I think staffing right is a big part of how to do that. And it is, I feel, like volatility. At least a couple of years ago it seemed to be a little bit more dialed into startup and growth stage tech, right when we seen those violent swings. But now it just seems the world's getting crazier and it seems like that's going to expand potentially more into mid marketmarket, into other industries. So it's a time I think a lot of folks are thinking about how do we prepare for that world.
Speaker 2:Totally no, I agree. Besides, it's not just AI, it's not just the economy, it's not just companies trying to be leaner, it's all of these things together at the same time. So I feel like for staffing, it's a pretty exciting time and, like you were saying, for hiring managers it's an interesting time because obviously everyone, I think higher up is trying to put together a strategy of how do we hire lean, how do we save money, how are we effective, how do we use AI to hire intelligently, and so yeah, so many things happening at once. I think I'm sure that everyone can say that about their industry right now.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's not just all those things you mentioned, and it's also not just tariffs. It's also not just cold wars and warm wars and just everything that's going on in the world. It's okay.
Speaker 2:As a business executive, it's like you're trying to lean on data and make analytical-based decisions based on past performance, but then it's like you, everything is.
Speaker 1:It just seems like it's changing precedence. What the heck is normal? Yeah, wait, totally yeah, man. Just to start us off, though, which I could already tell by us already riffing, this is gonna be a lot of fun, but let's just back up for a second. I'd love it if you could tell us a little bit about yourself yeah, I'm originally from lima, from peru.
Speaker 2:I've lived in the states for yeah years now, so most of my life actually in the States, and I, more recently, the last seven years, I've been living in Seattle and really spreading our brand and working with a lot of cool companies there. Now, like I was telling you, I'm personally moving to Austin, but our company is fully remote, so we have about a hundred people right now and that's really all of them distributed throughout some in the U S. We have four, four or five people in the U S, but most of our team is in Columbia and Argentina, brazil, mexico, peru, so all scattered throughout throughout LATAM. But, yeah, I've been running this company for yeah, close to 10 years now and yeah, what? I think that those are like the main things that I usually start off with, but that's why, the latin america angle for tecla.
Speaker 2:It's really because I'm from latin america and most of the team is too, so yeah that's awesome, man.
Speaker 1:Do you ever visit lima anymore? Yeah?
Speaker 2:I go back two or three times a year and trying to travel more to meet up with our teams. We have a pod system, like like everyone works remotely, works from home, but everyone also we have a budget and really that we really try for people to get together in their cities and frequently traveling and meeting up with the teams in different cities and yeah, it's super fun. It's definitely for us it's been a really good setup setup. I know a lot of companies have recently been returning to office and stuff and doing hybrid work setups as well, but for us it's even before the pandemic. It was always remote for us, so I think we've really learned to make it, to make it work yeah, it's, and I definitely have a lot of thoughts.
Speaker 1:I think my perspective on remote and return to office has definitely evolved over the past few years. Maybe that's a topic we can get into as well. It's, yeah, there's lots of stuff to talk about, but let's let's just if you could give an overview on tecla, the services you offer, the customers you work with and anything else that you would feel is important in terms of what makes you guys great at what you do, or some anything that, like potential people would consider you guys would want to know great at what you do, or anything that, like, potential people would consider you guys would want to know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no. So, like I mentioned, we've got about 10 years in this space and basically what we do is we build near shore engineering teams for startups and tech software companies in the US. So most of our clients are growth stage startups. So I would say most of them have some sort of funding, most of them are VC backed, but we work with quite a bit that are bootstrapped or that are doing consulting or agency type of work. But, yeah, most of our clients I think are growth stage startups series A, b, C and then mid-market companies. A few well-known brands too the MLS, major League Soccer that's a company that we work with and there's a few brands like that. But I think most of our clients are engineering teams at companies that are really looking to make the most out of their hiring, and so Nearshore is a good setup for them.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, we run a fully. As I was telling you before that we started. It's a fully managed type of service. The teams that we build are fully integrated with our clients, so to our clients they really feel like any other team member, but in the background we basically take care of everything. So if a company is looking to build a team of five engineers in LATAM, we'll introduce them to candidates that are in our network, have been pre-vetted, pre-screened by our team, have a profile on our platform, and we'll basically do a fully managed white glove service all the way to where, when they're ready to hire, and so when they basically select who they want to bring onto the team, we'll also have a team that manages all of the employment stuff the legal, the contracts, the HR, success management, that like sort of performance support that we like to give companies to make sure that everyone's on the same page, and so, yeah, so basically we handle everything except the actual project management of whatever the team is doing.
Speaker 2:That is handled by our clients, and so that's pretty much how we work, and I'd say that what makes us different is we're definitely more recently taking on a big focus on AI and so really trying to uncover the best, the engineers that have the best knowledge with AI, but also training our teams and investing in tools and resources that candidates can use to get up to speed, because it seems like companies are very much focused on hiring people that can be 10x productivity by augment, by leveraging AI. That and our vetting process. Like we really do quite a bit in terms of, like English testing, soft skills, technical skills, any other sort of assessment that we think is a good fit. So I think that's what companies like the most.
Speaker 2:I think most of our clients are looking for a turnkey service think most of our clients are looking for a turnkey service Like we want. We want to make sure we're interviewing the best people and we want to make sure that, once we're ready, you guys will handle everything in the background and we don't have to worry about EORs or deal and contracts and the benefits and how much is it going to cost at the very end, because I think a lot of companies are typically surprised by how much some of the EORs cost at the very end, like the full sort of ticket. So yeah, so that's basically what we do.
Speaker 1:Cool and just so everybody knows tuning in EORs. Can you tell me exactly what that means?
Speaker 2:Yeah, companies like Deal, oyster, Remotecom, employers of Record yeah, yeah, that's what I meant, employers of Record. Yeah, yeah, so we handle that as part of our service instead of companies having to go through the stack independently. Right, find a recruiter, then find an EOR, then find an HR person who's going to manage the team, and we just blend all of that in.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure, okay, yeah, that sounds good and something I'm very familiar with my services company that I started about a decade ago as well, secure Vision, provides embedded recruiting and RPO solutions, recruitment process outsourcing, but embedded recruiting it sounds probably similar to what you're doing in terms of engineering and it depends.
Speaker 1:We have customers where we're literally we oversee talent acquisition, we have head of talent in place, managing the solution end to end, and then we have like bigger customers right, where it's a different point of impact, right, or a smaller customer that maybe doesn't need that much support, where we're really just plugging in a high performing recruiter. Our model is we bring the recruiters, we bring the technology needed to recruit, we bring, like, the best practices and process and, generally speaking, it's, I would say, like more solutions oriented where it's okay, there's a hiring plan. We got to hire, like they might say, we have to hire like 500 engineers, right, okay, here's how many recruiters we're going to do. Here's the tech we're bringing to the table, here's the process we recommend. We're going to plug these folks in for the next 12 months, and so it's probably it's probably a very similar emotion to what you guys are doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah definitely pretty familiar with what yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think with that, your type of service, I'm sure that some companies are more looking for the final outcome too. Right, oh, we were doing all of this because we need to increase headcount by 30, 40 people and with us, I think, most of our clients really just really measure the results and based on the and based on the person's output, but still they manage like building a product is different than we need to hire 50 people, which I guess can be a little more objective, but yeah, but definitely very similar yeah, similar in some ways, and I think it'd be cool to start about the benefits, like the near showing going to latin america.
Speaker 1:I'm a huge advocate of hiring in latin america for several reasons. First and foremost from a price perspective. It is a little easier from a budget standpoint for US-based companies and I frankly I don't I think probably the best companies they don't really look at it as let's pay the least amount of possible, it's hey, let's come into a market where the rates are lower than in the US and let's come in top of market to get the best people.
Speaker 1:And so it is a cost saving motion to an extent, but it's also a value creating motions, it's not. I don't think people should look at it as cost saving. It's ROI. It's like how do we get the best investment and so smart investments? There is a cost element right, but there's also like the return, and the return of getting the best people in the market is also huge, right. So it's. I think it's that combination of factors, like kind of pillar number one or the reason that I, for instance, a part of my team is in Latin America and that's a core part. I was like I want sustainable pricing, I want significant ROI, I want the best people on my team.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, absolutely. I totally agree. I think that obviously, the value of having people work in a real time, in real time mode because of the time zones, I think that's a huge plus and, totally to what you were saying, I think that most of our clients are coming with that perspective because, obviously, companies that are looking to build like a call center with 200 people obviously theilippines, india, there's still places that can be a lot more yeah, a lot cheaper. But, like you were saying, I think that for some teams it really makes sense to get the most value possible and I think that's what you can get with latin yeah, I think the times are.
Speaker 1:Things are really important for you to consider. Just look, just look. I built a subsidiary in Romania, in Eastern Europe, and I've also helped customers build out engineering teams in Poland in different regions. Right, we helped a firm AFF, irm but then tech company. First we helped them hire 500 people in the United States. Then the tech market crashed, then they moved engineering to Poland. Then the tech market crashed, then they moved engineering to Poland. We helped them with that too.
Speaker 1:Look, reality is like something is lost a lot of the times at scale with different time zones.
Speaker 1:I still have a few folks in Eastern Europe and they're incredible and they've been with me almost a decade, but I don't see it as a solid scale strategy. Typically, I think the more transactional the work, the more junior level the work, the more potentially it's okay. But there is still things that it's hard to operate very quickly and in an organization where folks are operating in different time zones, the reality too, it's like when you start to look at and this is like something that I think a lot of people miss when it comes to the time zone, it's like you're it's harder to get mid to senior level people because if they're more competitive on the market, if they're senior level, they're at that point they're probably going to have kids, they're probably going to have a home life, they're going to be trying to balance those things and so your talent pool of people that are going to be willing to do that, even if you pay them more money yeah is going to shrink significantly.
Speaker 1:And that was a problem that we had in romania, where it's look, I could offer folks some folks like even almost close to double, and it was like, look, I just I'm not gonna do that, and so you get limited. Now you get the ambitious kid in their 20s, sure, but it's just. I think it also depends on, like, the seniority too. Like I think for, for instance, like for some SDR motions, legion motions, okay, you can get folks that are junior level, put them through a three week bootcamp, put them on a customer account or whatever it was, just have them start to reach out to customers, whatever that model, I think, that kind of transactional junior level motion, just where it's like you're just go junior level people and maybe they make it, maybe they don't, and you're just like funneling new pipeline. Maybe that works, but for for I don't know, I think, seniority, at the end of the day, what I'm saying is a long-winded way of me saying I think if it's mid to senior level roles, time zone really starts to matter more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, and I mean I do think that not to generalize, but having been in and provide ideas and challenge and be a part of the team in how US companies, I think, work, where people can be outspoken and there's a collaborative way of getting to the best product possible or the best ideas possible, and I think that is easier sometimes in certain countries. I do think that you can find people that are more willing to take on that role, and other times I think it's like you were saying, teams where you're putting on a hundred person team to do something a bit more transactional and it is maybe because we were talking a little bit about AI is those are the types of things that companies are wondering how that's going to affect some of those strategies. So, hey, we need 100 people, very low cost, to do this type of mechanical, turk type of chore, and I think that's what I think we're seeing a lot of companies try to use AI for very quickly.
Speaker 1:And it's interesting though, for the outsourcing, low-cost labor versus AI. There are certain regions of the world, though, like where salaries are still less than the AI solutions right.
Speaker 1:So that is still is something that was counterintuitive to me, but something that's come up in a few conversations lately where it's like there's still like this balancing act because a lot of these AI solutions like their pricing is based on usage right, like the api calls, because most of them like they're not building ai algorithms, like at that foundational level, like they're leveraging tools like chat, gbt or open ai's api's right, and so whenever there's a call made to the systems, like it's like there's a usage pricing that is occurring and so a lot of these organizations it's certainly a lot cheaper than, I would say, us talent, near shore talent.
Speaker 1:But there are some regions of the world for super transactional work where, at a junior level, the AI solutions are going to still come in at a higher price point level. The AI solutions are going to still come in at a higher price point. So that'll just be interesting to see over time how much lower are those usage costs going to be from those API calls, because most of the AI agents, the vast majority of AI products being built, are at that application, at that AI agent level and leveraging open AI stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think it's still a little bit of a longer term investment for the companies that are trying to go with the agentic model instead of okay, let's say that they are using that to replace certain teams that they had offshore. I think it's still. We're still not there yet and, like you were saying, a lot of the usage, too, is thrown away on top of it, too, like it is expensive, and a lot of it you have to throw away because you have to do multiple times to refine to get the level of product that or the level of outcome that you are trying to we're trying to get. Yeah, I think it's still in the. I haven't talked to many founders or companies that have are using a GenTech AI which is like where it's like completely replaced a department or like something that they were doing wholly, but but I think that's definitely. I think CEOs are trying to be like the first ones to be able to do that Right, because then they can get some advantage for a bit. So it's interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is really fascinating. Yeah, I getting back to just seeing if there's anything else on the Latin America benefits, right, so we talked about ROI. As opposed to just thinking cost savings, thinking in terms of ROI, I think Latin America is the best. We talked about culture. I agree. I think Latin America culture and United States culture mesh very well in many different ways. I think behaviorally, the way that top performers, executives in the United States think very much so aligns with top performers and executives in Latin America. I think that I think there's a lot and I think, of course, you can find folks that are behaviorally and culturally aligned anywhere in the world Like you can. It's just about like probability. There's just more. I think like I think Latin America, you more I think like I think latin america, you're more likely to consistently find people where it's a good mesh.
Speaker 2:yeah yeah, exactly that's what we've. That's what we've always seen, and we work with a lot of companies that are interviewing folks in the us and also in other countries, and so I think that we've always seen that, that comparison, and have seen the the actual proof of that. But, yeah, definitely still, like you were saying, roi, especially for projects where it's a growing company and you're building a really cutting edge product. I feel like you're getting a great deal hiring very senior people in Latam, and that's where I think you get the most ROI. Or that arbitrage is when you can find someone that has 10 plus years of experience and is actually just a super senior engineer that if they were in the US, that would be making hundreds of thousands and big com packages and all this. I think that's where you see the biggest advantage and I think that's going to still be the case.
Speaker 2:But especially with AI, because I think that's going to decrease some of that arbitrage for, like, more junior stuff. Right, if, like, it's someone in the US that can use AI to put out five times the output, then all of a sudden that arbitrage might be a little bit less with junior people in LATAM or using AI or something like that, but that's yet to be seen, I think. But definitely for the senior level roles. I feel like that's where companies are like wow, this is the difference is crazy, cause it just as you go up that seniority level, I feel like that's it gets exponential. I think right, cause finding a person like that in the U? S is impossible, whereas if you put up a junior posting for a developer in the U S like you will get a lot of candidates. So I think we can't lie to ourselves. There's a lot of candidates looking for work here, yeah for sure, For sure.
Speaker 1:I have folks in Latin America that are earning like US salaries. I mean, I just I want the best people. I do like some of the recruiters that I have that I know are in Latin America. I know they're literally like the top recruiters in Latin America and also it's I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't know if this is the way it is on the engineering side too, but it's a lot of what we do is very much so referral based, it kind of like back channeling based, where it's like we're talking with one recruiter and we're like all right, who do you know? And it's that's how we've really built out the team and we have hired people like from cold outreach. But a lot of it's like top players know other top players and yeah, there's a big enough talent pool to be able to scale it, but it's also small enough for people know each other, like they, they know the other and like recruiters that supported premier kind of top notch us-based tech companies and so yeah and like, at least with our business, I feel like the first line of the first strategy is which region you're going to be hiring in.
Speaker 2:And, like we were saying, latam is a great one and obviously a lot of companies are onto it already, so it's like old news. But the second one is the right partner and the right company. And, at least in terms of Tecla and how we work, we don't start billing the client until the person is working. So there's no search fee, there's no fees to get started to look at candidates, to interview or even to hire. And so a lot of the times when companies come to me, they're talking to us and they say, oh, we're interviewing a few companies, I'm like that's great because really like that's the second line of, okay, you've picked latam. But the second line is you make sure you work with the right company. But a lot of the times I'll tell them like, start interviewing people that this company can actually intro you to, because a lot of companies, everyone will say they have the best talent. Right, Everyone's going to say that. But there actually is a big variance between who companies can introduce.
Speaker 2:I'd say, at least in the engineering space, like we've worked with a lot of companies that came to us and we're like, look, we've been trying to fill this for six months and we get scared because we're like, crap, that might be a client that is just super picky and really isn't looking to hire. But then we started working with them and they're like, oh, like we, this is the type of candidate we were looking to interview. So, like those hard to fill engineering positions, those are my favorite, because I do know that the 30 other recruiters in LATAM for engineering talent they can't fill those roles. Like they might be able to find you a mid-level React developer I think probably a lot of companies can. But yeah, those hard to fill are still like a competitive advantage, but you don't know it until you start interviewing people. So I always tell companies like, actually interview people with that company, because otherwise you're really just getting sold on potential of them having the best talent, which everyone will say.
Speaker 1:I think it's also. It's like that's really where your audience like services. You got to evaluate, in my opinion, opinion, you got to understand who's in the leadership seat, like you got whose point. Who's making the decisions on the delivery side? Is it the chief customer officer, coo, ceo, who's doing it?
Speaker 1:and what's their methodology like? How do they approach operations, onboarding customers, transitions of staff members? It's really the execution, I think, at that delivery, lead, delivery, executive level. That should really dictate which vendor you ultimately move forward with. Senior engineers. They're hard to find but, like ultimately, with the right system and process, should be able to plug in If somebody transitions out due to personal reasons or they accept another job or whatever. It shouldn't be a big deal. Like the right services company should be running effectively enough where they can plug somebody else in and not skip a beat. That's one of the things too.
Speaker 1:It's like cause we work with people. Our businesses are people businesses and people can be unpredictable. You could hire like a senior engineer with 10 years of experience who's delivered on past customers can get references from previous direct managers. Everybody says the greatest engineer they've ever worked with. They can go on a customer account and a lot, because people enter different chapters in life. There's just things happen right, like sometimes stuff doesn't work. So what I tell customers is like we happen right, Like sometimes stuff doesn't work. So what I tell customers is like we usually get it right. We usually get it right, but sometimes the difference between a good agency and a great agency is what an agency does when it doesn't go right. How do you manage that and how do you manage it and protect the customer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1:That's the type of stuff where it's I don't know if they all, like folks, necessarily think about it that way, but when I'm evaluating service like services companies, it's I want to know who's running the show on the delivery side.
Speaker 2:That's going to that's going to inform me on what it's going to be like to work with them Exactly.
Speaker 2:I think that companies that have very good processes, those are the type of companies that, when it comes to people and staffing, I think that those are going to be like long term long term better, better partners. And yeah, we've talked to a lot of clients that come to us and they say we already have a team in LATAM, but, like our current partner, maybe they have retention problems or maybe scaling is quite common too, where they're like, yeah, like we build a team of two or three, but it seems like we can't scale with this company for some reason, and so we've heard that quite a bit too. So, yeah, definitely, company for some reason, and so we've heard that quite a bit too. So, yeah, definitely, it's like the space is so commoditized but at the same time, it's like it's people business. So the, the you have to find the best people, not just the end outcome, like the final candidate, but work with the best people as like a partner yeah for sure, man.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more. It's. It is a commoditized space and I don't think we should be holding ourselves up. It's not. I think it's. There are senses like differentiators, but let's be real. What really differentiates a great service company, it's people business, it's the people, it's the process, it's how the company is operating. That's like I, and I believe in this model through and through. Like I'm building up an outbound sales team for secure vision, my services company, and I'm leveraging a firm like ours that does that, does this, for sales development and account executives. Right, that does an embedded model.
Speaker 1:And the way I chose it was not by going on a bunch of websites and looking at little differentiators when it's how legitimate are they? It was okay. Who's running the show? I got introduced to somebody that I knew produced results for a CRO that was very successful. That's an advisor to my company. It's like I'm on the phone directly with a co-founder of this, of this organization, and we're talking strategy and I'm seeing how much I'm learning from him and I'm looking at things like how responsive they are, how urgent, like their sense of urgency, those types of things to, and what their onboarding plan is to really decide okay, is this the right provider?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Are they looking out for me? Are they just telling me what I want to hear? Are they also telling me about risk, like when you're saying, like interview people before placing them, like that creates another layer for you to deliver on right, because then you have to do that.
Speaker 2:But it's also a trust building motion where you're like, hey, we're going to show you what we got exactly yeah, yeah, once we get like a client to actually go through a process, then they see how easy it is and the level of talent they can interview. Then they're like, oh, these guys are actually able to deliver on what they're promising. And I think, like to what you were saying, like it's the opportunity. Cost is something that sometimes I think that the people overlook. Right, they're like looking to be within a specific hourly rate. They're looking to be maybe find the partner that is the cheapest or that is gonna get them the best cost advantage, but then you know it's gonna take you three more months to hire someone. That maybe you're not to be able to scale past that. One or two people maybe they'll leave. They have retention problems, like and then all of a sudden your competitors are building their product way faster and then they get to market and then they make millions and millions of dollars more than you did, and all because you were trying to save like $5 an hour and so like a lot.
Speaker 2:Like sometimes you do deal with clients that are so focused on what's the markup exactly, like how much are you making? And it's while company, while you're doing that like your competitors already, like working with senior people and especially right now with AI, it's like so many companies are trying to work very fast in integrating some of these AI technologies and building new AI technologies and it's, I think but it's always been the case in tech Like you have this opportunity, cost that it's oh. You can't just eventually hire and eventually get to the product to where you need it to be Cause it's okay, there's 10 other tools that are like building faster than you, and it's always been like that. I don't think that's new, but but obviously with like how much companies are trying to be lean and profitable, I think it's creating sometimes this hyper focus on maybe saving a few bucks an hour instead of okay, now, like you don't have those three senior engineers to be building, and that just compounds. Like you don't have them, so then you can't get to that next milestone, so then you can't hire more salespeople to get more clients, to get more revenue, and then hire more engineers and grow and it compounds.
Speaker 2:And I've been seeing it because we're hiring go-to-market people in the US for Tecla and we, like you were saying, we also use companies like ours and try to use companies like recruiting companies and pay those fees to make sure that we're getting like the best talent, and fast, because if you make a wrong hire then all of a sudden you're in Q3 and you've done nothing of what you were trying to do and then your competitors are way ahead. Yes, it's definitely worth it working with companies that can get you the right talent in and fast.
Speaker 1:For sure, man for sure, and I think we had time for one more topic or something that I would love to dive into that you actually brought up before our call is getting into evaluating engineering talent for AI proficiency, yeah, and so I would love to learn. I think of a question I have, and I do hire engineers for a software company that I just started, and it's my first time being a founder of a software company, which is cool.
Speaker 1:But, it's like a newer emotion. But I am at this point like an engineering hiring manager. I'm not technical. I understand it conceptually as well as I need to to be a CEO. But I am curious, like how are you evaluating somebody's proficiency in AI? Are you, are you only, do you really only consider somebody proficient if they've worked for an AI native product, whether within a larger organization building a new AI native product, or at a AI native like startup? Or are there other other ways? Like you don't really care as long as they're using it and leveraging it? Like, how do you think about measuring somebody's proficiency?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, right now, to give you some like insight into that, like we really have a lot of, I would say that the vast majority of companies coming to us are still not saying, ok, we need AI capabilities, we need to vet this in the job descriptions and everything like that. We need to make sure that they have this experience. So that's the truth. It's like I don't think it's completely overtaken like our hiring process or something like that it's completely overtaken like our hiring process or something like that. But but definitely what I'm seeing a lot of is like these ceos of larger companies are starting to do that and the trends how quickly trends move in the tech space, like silicon valley and everything. It's like once the seat, like the ceos of google and meta, like once the bigger people are saying this is what we're trying to do, then all like vcs then say startups, you have to all do this in my portfolio, and then that's how it all happens. And so we are like let's say that about 15% of our current clients are looking to really vet these capabilities.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I mean we're working with some startups now, actually, where they've requested that they have experience working with ChatGPT on a daily basis for code generation or for QA or for testing and Cursor some really cool tools that are coming up in the space that are allowing for faster development, and I think that's how we're vetting right now is making sure, first of all, that they do use it on a daily basis, even if it's just ChatGPT, and then we are now trying to get more into okay, which tools are you using Like cursor? Is it like a full IDE type of co-pilot, and which tools specifically? But at least right now we want people that are using it for some of like their day-to-day. I would say. I think that that's enough for us right now.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, that's really helpful to know that. I think that's some solid insight for folks. Look, I look. This has been a ton of fun, Gino. I've definitely learned some from you. I appreciate your contribution to the show and for our audience. I know this is going to be a really valuable episode for everybody tuning in. I really appreciate you, man. Thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks so much, man. It was great meeting you and great chatting, and I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1:Okay, Sounds good, and hey for everybody tuning in. Thanks so much for joining us and we'll talk to you soon. Take care.
