Proactively managing company culture with Jacob Rios of JobSage

Maren Kate
Welcome to Talent+Tech. Today, my guest is Jacob Rios. He's currently the co founder and CEO of JobSage, which is an employer review site focused specifically on company's culture, which I love. And I think it's a really unique angle we're going to dig more into. Jacob is also a native Texan. He's worked in product management and technology for almost two decades. Jacob, welcome to the show.

Jacob Rios
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Maren Kate
Absolutely. So just to kind of kick things off, how did you get to where you are now? You know, founding JobSage, in the space you're in now, take us back to your first job. You know, your first job as either a kid or right out of college, and just the journey that landed you here.

Jacob Rios
I guess I’ll go ahead and start in my first job when I was really young. My first job was actually in construction. So I fixed ceilings, ceiling tiles, I fixed driveways, cement, all those types of things. It was a good job, I loved it. But I think, you know, I come from a pretty humble background. And pretty early on, you know, I really got a credit my parents really pushed me, education was a big thing. And so education is kind of the thing that that helped, you know, kickstart my career. Like many people, maybe again, who come from, you know, relatively humble backgrounds. After that, I was an electrical engineer, I finished engineering, I actually was going to go to grad school in engineering, and ended up being reached out to by a company called Accenture. And they offered me a consulting job. Honestly, when I was going to my interview, I had no idea what consulting was.

Maren Kate
No one ever does at the beginning. I remember when I was young, and people would be like, I'm a consultant, I'd be like, what does that even mean?

Jacob Rios
I literally remember in an interview, they asking me the question, like, what is consulting mean to you? And I think I rambled for two minutes. And then finally was just like, I have no idea. And they told me and I thought, well, that sounds pretty cool. I'll give it a shot. You know, candidly, like the salary was more than my parents or anybody in my family had ever made. And I kind of was semi attracted at the time, to the idea of business. And so I just decided to give it a shot. So I'll go quickly through the next phase. But I would say for the next 10 years, or eight years or so, I did consulting, I went to business school, I finished business school, and I think it was right after business school, or maybe like a year or two out of business school, where I felt like, I've kind of finally found myself in my career. And this ultimately will get to JobSage. What I found is after business school, like you're technically supposed to be maybe like the happiest career wise. And I would say, I was probably the most depressed and most stressed out. And the reason for that I ended up realizing was, I'd kind of been living my life in these like four year increments, you know, it's like, you're in high school, and you just think like, oh, if I can just get into a good college, I'll feel successful, and then you're in college or like, aren't you just get a good job after college, and then it's like, Oh, I could just get into a good grad school. And then I finished grad school, I was like, you know, like, I was still just not really sure what I wanted to do. And, you know, at the time, I love, or I still love music more than anything else. And so, I found myself in a job after business school that I didn't really like. And I really just wanted to go work in music. And I remember having these conversations with classmates around, well, do you really want to go work at some small startup? Like, what if it fails? Is that going to be good for your brand, I didn't even know I had a personal brand. And so, you know, probably some time in my early 30s, I was just like, Screw it. Like, I am no longer going to make decisions four years at a time. All I'm gonna focus on is, can I find a job that every day I work, wake up and like, just love the things that I'm working on, the topics I'm working on and try to work with good people. And I would say from there, that's kind of when my career like really kind of started to take off, so to speak. So I joined a tiny music startup, we were 12 people. We like 100% went out of business a year later, I took a huge pay cut to go work there. But I was like the happiest I had ever been because I woke up and I thought about music all the time. And I got to go visit record labels and yeah, it was really great. That's awesome.

Maren Kate
That seems like a definitive shift to to like to go from that very prescriptive model to, I'm going to lean into what your heart drew you to, but you know what I mean?

Jacob Rios
Yeah, absolutely. You know, i’m going to show my age here a little bit, but there's an old song that's called, Everyone's Free to Wear Sunscreen. And one of the lines, it's just like a song that gives you a bunch of advice. But one of the lines is something along the lines of like, don't be too hard on yourself for your failures and don't pat yourself too much on the back for your successes, because half of life is kind of luck at the end of the day. And to me, that was kind of the big takeaway is like, look, I have no idea where my career is gonna end up. But the only way I'm not going to regret it is if I just focus on those two things, like work on something I care about, and try to work with good people. And, and yeah, that like tiny, 12 person startup that totally failed and was probably terrible for my quote, unquote, personal brand, or whatever it is, helped me get a job at this company called Jawbone, which at the time, like everybody thought was going to be the next Apple. And it was, you know, we invented like, the bluetooth speaker, we invented the Bluetooth headset wh invented like the wearables market, that job was great. It got me a job here in Austin at Civitas Learning, that then got me another job at a Aceable word where, you know, which was just another a lot of just really, you know, I would say, like, just companies that were I thought were doing great things. And because I was working on things that I just really cared about, you know, early on, it was music, then it shifted to education. And I tried to just really think about like, Hey, can I just go work for a place where I feel like there's really good people who truly care about their people? You know, I think for me, there's this book called The Happiness Advantage. And I think for me, that really resonated. It's just the fact that, if you focus on the things that make you happy, you're least going to give yourself the best shot of doing okay, right, or being happy at the end of the day.

Maren Kate
I want to make sure that we got it it's work on something you care about, with good people. Is that pretty much the gist?

Jacob Rios
It's as simple as that. So early on, it was music, and it switched to education. You know, the reason I kind of told that story about working some pretty humble jobs was, you know, education really was the thing for me that changed the trajectory of my life and will change the trajectory of my kid's life. So that wasn't hard to get behind. Yeah, so I've been prior to Job Sage, I had been working in the education space for, call it, seven or eight years.

Maren Kate
Do you think the working with good people? Is that did that kind of tie in? To founding JobSage? The idea behind that?

Jacob Rios
Yes and No. It wasn't like the catalyst for starting JobSage. But it was absolutely a reason for jumping in. So the way JobSage got started is, I think, a little bit unique. So I actually wasn't looking for a job or wasn't really looking to start a company. But there's a person, friend, colleague named Dan Graham here in Austin. He runs a few things, but one of them is Notley Ventures? And one of the partners there at Notley. Her name is Kelli Mason. So they kind of incubated the seeds of JobSage, and they wanted to start kind of a DE&I meets Glassdoor, we eventually brought in that to be culture. But you know, this was an idea that they had that they wanted to fund. And they basically, were looking for a CEO to help, you know, fund and start the company. And so I think they talked to, 12 or 15 different people is what they told me, and at the end of the day, they picked me. You know, I think at the end of the day, they picked me because they saidI kind of pushed back on their idea. I asked the hardest questions. And so yeah, they picked me and exactly what you said like the reason I decided to do this was one like, I'm just incredibly passionate about people first culture is I think, you know, selfishly or personally like that feels like that's benefited myself. I've absolutely like felt the pain and I can go into this later, like the pain and anxiety of the problem I think we're trying to solve and then yeah, I just knew I would regret it if I didn't give it a shot. So yeah, it went back to that. It's like well, I know Dan, Kelly was the other partner, I felt really great connection with them. I know they're good people, I love the idea. And my rubric is pretty simple. From there, I was all in.

Maren Kate
I liked that the rubric is simple, too, that's actually really nice. I feel like sometimes people over engineer the way they choose career moves, etc. So, go into, you know, tell the audience a little bit about what Jobs Sage is, what the goal is, you know, kind of the stage you guys are at, and just, the the big vision what you're trying to solve?

Jacob Rios
Yeah, I think we're trying to solve a pretty simple but hard problem to answer. And that's just, you know, what's it gonna be like to work at the company, you know, that I'm thinking of joining our overarching mission is just to bring more transparency to the recruiting process. So, you know, at this point, in the last year or so, I've talked to hundreds of job seekers. And every single one has mentioned this problem that like, unless you happen to know somebody who works at the company, who can truly vet the culture, there is a little bit of anxiety around Okay, what is it really going to be like, when I get there, and, you know, I have all the people I've talked to, like, there's a significant number of people who have told me, I knew within a week, or I knew within a month, or I knew within, you know, the first three months, maybe this wasn't the right place for me, and I kind of made a mistake. So at a nutshell, that's on the job seeker side, at least, and I can talk about the employer side, if you want as well. That's what we're trying to solve. It's, it's kind of silly that like, in today's day and age, I could probably learn more online about the phone that I want to buy. Then I can about the company that I'm thinking of working for.

Maren Kate
How do you get the existing team of employees to first of all give feedback? And then obviously, you know, with reviews of any site type, the important thing is that it's authentic and real feedback. What is the process to to create that flywheel? How did you start it? And how do you continue to grow it?

Jacob Rios
Yeah. So the thing that makes us different, and the thing I'm really excited about is, our approach towards working with employers is very proactive. So we work with employers from basically day one where, you know, there are other major online review sites out there for employers. And I would say like, a lot of those sites tend to be reactive and how they work with employers, in terms of like, you know, there might be some reviews that show up on that site, and then you engage with them, right? So for us, it's the complete opposite, we just go to an employer from day one, with the basic message of like, look like in today's day and age, like if you want to hire the best talent for yourself. Transparency is important. realistic expectations are important. And the ask is basically, you know, just if you want to do those two things, you know, show jobseekers that you're transparent, hire the best people for you hire people who have realistic expectations of what it's like, so that they don't quit six months later, right? Because retention is a huge part of hiring successfully, then, you know, let's work together. And so the companies we work with, we call them trusted employers, they they basically send our JobSage survey out. So you know, the five topics around inclusion, flexibility, feedback, purpose and growth, and they give every employee the opportunity to, to share their experience of what it's like working there. And then we just build public profiles. And so far, you know, early in the company that was, that was kind of the big question of like, Are there going to be companies who do this? Are there enough? And, you know, we signed up, I think, 10 or 15, fairly quickly, and that's, that's kind of when we thought like, Oh, we're, I think we're onto something. And so yeah, like, if you go to our site, and you look at the review section, roughly more more or less like their, the completion rate of our survey is around 50% of the employees. And so you get just so much more of a comprehensive view and to accompany a transparent review, because part of the deal is we're not going to modify any reviews that come in. And so you don't you basically avoid the what happens for most review sites, which is that kind of U shaped right where you get only the super angry or the super happy people leaving reviews.

Maren Kate
What do you see as the biggest challenge in, because it's like, obviously, this is something that every employee or candidate when they're looking at a job, would love to know, honestly, what other employees at the company think of the various angles of culture, you know, flexibility, inclusion, growth, etc. And so it's one of those things where everybody obviously wants it. What do you see as the biggest roadblock to, to getting that kind of mass adoption? So whether someone's applying for a small startup or a large company, they can go to JobSage and be able to see, you know, an honest look at what working there looks like.

Jacob Rios
So just to make sure I understand the question is the question just like, how does Jobs Sage think about expansion? So let's see. So we're doing a few things. I'm trying to figure out I mean, just think about like the best way to try to say this succinctly.

Maren Kate
You can always say it nonsuccintly too.

Jacob Rios
Okay, sounds good.

Maren Kate
I think when we're talking about growth, especially at startups, it's always a circuitous kind of road.

Jacob Rios
Yeah, for sure. And especially like, at the end of the day, I mean, you can kind of think of us as a marketplace where we have to kind of grow both sides of the, you know, the job seeker side and the employer side in terms of awareness. So, I guess, to try to make a long story short, I did read a ton about like, hey, how do marketplaces get started? And looking at some of the successful ones in the past?

Maren Kate
like, what was the pitfalls? And what were the kind of patterns of success?

Jacob Rios
Yeah, so without risk of sounding too, kind of, quote, unquote, businesses, I apologize here in advance. The overwhelming kind of takeaway from a bunch of stuff I read was, you gotta focus on one side or the other first, right. So again, this is the non technical, or the somewhat business sounding stuff, like the supply or the demand. And then the other thing was, really think about this concept of single player mode. So like, how can you deliver value to a company or a job seeker, even if, the full network is not built out? So for us, in terms of like, supply and demand, like for us, you know, we're focusing, you know, in our case, on the supply side, so meaning at least an RSI like, we're we're choosing to focus on employers where I think a lot of review sites that exist out there or are starting up they tend to focus on, let's go get job seekers, and let's go get, job seekers to leave reviews, like we're, we're kind of taking the opposite approach of going for employers. And so our belief of the way we think this will grow is focusing on employers and then focusing on single player mode for employers. So when we talk to an employer, our our value to them is not necessarily bringing them 100 new candidates that they can look at, like we're proud of the site traffic we have on our site like it's growing pretty significantly. But will we say instead is the value and we're very clear about this, because expectations are important for us, right? I don't want to be hypocritical is like the value we are providing is helping you close the candidates that you're already speaking to right giving you just a super authentic and transparent way to share your employee experience so that you give yourself the best chance of closing those candidates. And so because of that value, the way that the companies we work with use us is, you know, they'll put their jobs age profile and their email signature, they'll link it to job descriptions, right. They'll just share it with candidates when they're interacting with them. And so, in some weird way, it's the employers because we're able to give them this kind of quote, unquote, single, single player value of who are helping us create the awareness on the job seeker side. The closest analogy I can give you is like maybe OpenTable. So OpenTable, you know, they just kind of gave away their reservation software for free if you're familiar with OpenTable like you can make a restaurant reservation. I use them all the time. Yeah. And so the way they got started was, you know, they would they gave this away to restaurants and then whenever you called your favorite restaurant, you want to make a reservation they were just like, Well, why don't you go check out OpenTable and that's how you can make a reservation for us. It's kind of the same for us is like if you're thinking of applying to zenbusiness or data.world, you know, they'll never really gonna tell the candidate like, you know, if you want to learn about culture, the best place is to go look at our JobSage page where we've given every employee the opportunity. And so my hope is that that will create awareness on the job seeker side. And then at some point, we'll get to a place where a candidate won't want to apply or won't accept to accept an offer unless they are on JobSage.

Maren Kate
I like that. I love the idea of single player mode. That actually makes a lot of sense. That sounds like the this solution or one of the solutions to the chicken and egg problem of marketplaces.

Jacob Rios
Absolutely, yeah, it's, yeah, 100%. Agree.

Maren Kate
And then what happens when and I won't name names, but I did go through some of the reviews. You know, there's a lot of companies where you're reading through, and the reviews are mostly in the fours across the various categories, I'm looking at right now. Inclusion, purpose, growth, flexibility, feedback. And then obviously, there's overall, what happens when companies send that out? And their employees respond, and it you know, it's doesn't look great? Do they come back to you? Are they like, Hey, can we take this down? Or instead? Is it like a moment where they're take take stock and maybe make some changes? What have you seen so far? Because obviously, like you want, it's going to be really, it's going to really work when you do have reviews that are honest, that are like, hey, there actually isn't flexibility? Hey, there's not much of a growth path. That's how it'll be the most useful to jobseekers.

Jacob Rios
Yeah, absolutely. So, let's see, There's a few ways to answer this. So far, no one has come back to us and said, like, hey, like, Oh, we don't like this, can you take it down? Or this is going to be a problem for us? And I think part of that is, again, like, we are pretty clear upfront, like the expectations are that if, like, we don't want to modify, right, like, the most important thing for you, as a company, and even for us as a company is like we have to maintain jobseeker trust. And at least right now, I would say like, the companies that you see on our site, we are attracting companies, I would say who do feel pretty confident about their culture. So they're not, you know, they're a little bit less worried about the dynamic that you're happening, which to us is great, right? Like, that's a great litmus test is like just the fact that they're willing to do this. And they feel fairly confident that whatever comes back is going to be positive, or at least transparent enough that it's going to help the recruiting efforts. You know, because we have had companies who we've talked to, and they've, you know, they've said no, right, and they've said, like, probably now is not the right time to do something like that. And that's okay. Right. We respect that. So that's kind of one part of the answer. The other thing is, I would say is, you know, for us context is important, right? And we're all looking for different things. And so, you know, we give companies like the opportunity to provide responses to various categories. You know, so like, we have one company on there, Aiqueous. They score relatively low, on flexibility. So you know, even though they do a lot to encourage vacation, can sometimes have you read the comments, like, you know, there's comments, I'd like to encourage it, but it feels really hard to take vacation, because I feel like I'm letting my teammates down. So, and the CEO just got on there and said, like, this is great feedback. Like that is absolutely right. This is part of the reason why we're hiring and we're trying to make it better. And I'm obviously highly biased, right. But I think if I'm applying to a job, like having hearing that from a CEO, like if they were talking to me as a candidate, like, look like this is a chance. Yeah, right. But we're trying to make it better. I mean, that's, I'm gonna feel so much better by joining that company versus, you know, the opposite. Right.

Maren Kate
And that they're listening. Yeah, I totally agree. You're talking to 100 candidates this year, something or maybe even more? What do you think the biggest mistake that you're seeing candidates do today when they're applying or trying to find their next job? And what would be some advice you would give someone who's who's looking to, get their next role?

Jacob Rios
I just kind of give you my own personal advice. You know, I've talked to a lot of candidates, but I I didn't ask that question specifically. So I can't give you like, you know, super, like detailed data about that. But what I would say is, I might sound a little bit repetitive is just be transparent with the candidate, right. And this is obviously like, I don't know what the right word is, but it's scary to do, and maybe in some sense can feel kind of like a privileged situation to be in. But I'll just tell you my own personal example, right, like, early in my career, you know, when I had kids, you know, I would hesitate to bring up my kids and the fact that, you know, that really did affect my flexibility until like, the very end of the job process, right. So once I got the offer, and they were excited, then I would say, like, Hey, I've got kids, like, I'm going to need to leave work by five, because it's really important to me to like, see them for dinner and put them to bed. And so at least, this is not what you're asking me. But like, at least the advice I give myself is, you know, it seems scary. And, you know, if I ever have to look for another job again, hopefully I don't, and that JobSage, like, contributes to what I hope it contributes to the world, it would be that advices like, it feels scary. But the more transparent, you can be back upfront, the more time you're gonna save, and the better chance you're gonna give yourself of finding, you know, a really good place to work,

Maren Kate
A well aligned place. I agree. Yeah, we often say that to employers, you want to craft a job description and communications that speak to the right candidate, but also, you know, turn off or help other candidates opt out, because the vast majority of people are not going to be a fit for the role for your culture, you know, for specific requirements. So it's good as a company to let them know that early on, and then it's good I think, what you're saying is a job seeker to do the same when you're talking to companies like, Hey, this is where I flourish, but these are the things that you need to be aware of. And if that's a deal breaker, then better to know that now.

Jacob Rios
Yeah, absolutely. And it can be scary, because, you know, it’s stressful not to have a job or to really want a job. And, but yeah, I think in the end, it's for the better.

Maren Kate
What opportunities, roles, what companies, what industries, are you still seeing really actively hiring when you look at the employer side?

Jacob Rios
You know, it definitely has slowed down some. But the companies that we're attracting right now, at least on our platform, so I can't speak for everybody, but are the I would say, smaller to mid sized growing tech companies. And these companies, they, you hear kind of the word like we're being more strategic with our hiring. But what we're finding is that there are still a lot of small to midsize tech companies who probably, you know, the last two or three years have been, you know, obviously, like just very high growth, a lot of money has been raised. And so they need to hire. So, although we have definitely felt that a little bit, maybe one or two companies have said, you know, hey, we're gonna slow down our hiring probably now's not the right time to focus on this. You know, it still seems okay. But time will tell.

Maren Kate
Okay. Yeah, that's definitely good to hear. And I think that is kind of true, what you've seen as well. So okay, final questions, which I always love to ask, first of all, what is and you can have more than one answer to this. What's the favorite podcast or book that you have read, listened to in the last year?

Jacob Rios
Let's see. You know, I stopped listening to podcasts. But it's kind of funny enough, you bring that up. I just recently listened to one. I’m going to pull it up. I think it's called the it's called the Huberman Lab. Yeah. Huberman lab. He's a professor, I think of neurobiology at Stanford School of Medicine. Oh, and yeah, he just gives these like incredibly, research based advice on all types of topics around health, mental health, so on and so forth. So the ones I've looked at recently, or listened to recently, here's one was on sleep so I thought, I have trouble sleeping and I've had it for a while especially now trying to start a company and I thought I knew all the good tips around like good sleep hygiene, but I actually learned a ton more from him. I also recently listened to one of his around grief and how to process grief and I thought that one was really good. And then one I kind of regret hopefully this is okay saying on the podcast, but like, one I regretted listening to I recently read one about alcohol and just how terrible alcohol can be sometimes for you. I wish I had unlistened to that one.

Maren Kate
Okay, that's interesting. I love that. What was one of the reasons that you said you stopped listening to podcasts? Is it just a time suck or something else?

Jacob Rios
Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's a good question. I just kind of switched to Audible. So Audible is mostly what I listen to, you know, I've got three kids, four dogs. So the only time I can listen to stuff is, either going for a run or doing like house house chores at the end of the day. But yeah, I don't know, I just switched from podcast to starting to consume more books.

Maren Kate
That's funny. I've done something similar recently, where I've actually listened to audio books, since they were tapes, pretty much that I rented from the library when I was a kid. I'm a huge audio person, especially for books. But I tend to go in cycles of getting really into specific podcasts. And then shifting back to the audiobook side of things. And I'm actually back on the audiobook side of things. I've narrowed my podcasts down. And then any books that you've read recently that have tickled your fancy.

Jacob Rios
Yeah, I used to consume a ton of business books, but ever since trying to start JobSage, I'm so burned out by the end of the day, and just tired. I've just completely switched to entertainment. So I mean, everything from like Harry Potter to just looking at my thing now, you know, like the The Martian, Project Hail Mary , The Kite Runner. Yeah, just kind of anything and everything in terms of like, yeah, so that's me on the on the audio side, it's just entertainment.

Maren Kate
I think that is important in the early stages of a startup to is, you, I've done it both ways. And I feel like you get burnt out a lot faster. And you also don't necessarily get the full breadth of ideas and inspiration, when you are in the startup world, the business world all day. And then nights and weekends, you're listening to business books and everything you can, it can either like, burn you out on one side or create an echo chamber on the other.

Jacob Rios
Yeah, I found that part of the sleep thing is I just can't shut my mind down. And then actually one called leadership in turbulent times. It's by a woman, I’ll mess up her name, at least off the top of my head. I want to say Doris Kean Goodwin, but long story short, she wrote a book, she’s known for writing these really great biographies of former presidents like the Lincoln movie was based after her. But then she wrote this, this last book, which was basically like looking at what are the common leadership principles that these presidents had, and then trying to tell focus a book on that. And the number one thing that she pointed out and really emphasized in this book was that every president that she talked to, like really focused and cherished their downtime. So, you know, like Lincoln, during like, the intense part of the Civil War, like, just went, like, on vacation or something like, I'm gonna probably butcher this, and if there's historians listening, they're gonna call me out, but like, you know, he went off into the woods for like, two or three weeks to his cabin, like, and just basically, like, thought a lot, right and walked through the woods. And that's how the way they tell it, like, that's how it came up with, like the Emancipation Proclamation, right. Teddy Roosevelt, like, sacred to him was like, happy hour with his friends and his family. Right. So to me, like that really resonated. And so like, for me, it's, at the end of the day, like, I'm doing the dishes, I'm gonna just entertain myself or, you know, I'm going to be with my kids. And I'm going to shut everything off and just be present. And yeah, it is helpful for a lot of things.

Maren Kate
I will definitely link that in the show notes. And I'm going to pick that up. I think that's excellent. That sounds really really interesting. Awesome, Jacob. It's been so great to have you on the show. I'm really excited to continue to follow JobSage and say, you know, see your growth. I think it's something that needs to be out there in the world. And glad you all are tackling that. How can people find more about you and JobSage online?

Jacob Rios
Yeah, you can just go to our website,jobsage.com. Sage, like somebody who's gained knowledge. And there's a contact form. I think that's probably easiest. I still check that or somebody on our team checks that every day.

Maren Kate
Awesome. All right. Thank you so much, Jacob.

Jacob Rios
Alright. Thank you. Appreciate it.