Greg Kihlström, CEO of CareerGig was interviewed via live stream on Radio Free Enterprise Wednesday, August 5, 2020 at 10:00 a.m. EDT.
If you’re a gig worker looking for contract jobs that include benefits, or an employer trying to rapidly locate and onboard verified skill workers, you need to tune in.
For more information: https://www.careergig.com
This is a computer-generated transcription. Please excuse any typos.
My guest today is Greg Kihlström. He’s an entrepreneur, a podcast host, a bestselling author. And now the Co-founder and CEO of an exciting new business concept that is targeted at the rapidly growing gig economy companies called CareerGig. Greg Kihlström. Welcome to the program.
Oh thanks so much for having me excited to talk.
I’m excited to have you because I was surprised to hear that that you were part of the brain trust behind CareerGig and we’ll talk about that in a moment. But we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.
I really think a good place for us to start is to sort of paint a frame of reference for viewers and listeners about coming down to CareerGig by starting with what exactly is the gig economy? What’s Greg Kihlström’s definition of the gig economy?
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, CareerGig fits a piece of that, but really to take it back a step the gig economy is really the part of the workforce that consists of.
Hourly part time project. All of those types of work that is not full-time employment. So this could.
Anything from an Uber driver to a contractor that has a six-month engagement with a large Corporation. This part of the workforce is about it’s. It’s about 36% of the of the US workforce set to grow to about 50% of the workforce by 2027.
And those are actually pre COVID numbers, as we’ll probably talk about later on I, I believe that some of the recent changes and things that though.
Air Force has been going through actually accelerated that.
So where did this come from this gig economy? I remember maybe 20 years ago reading an article in The Wall Street Journal about how employment was moving. More to what it called. At that time, the Hollywood model, you know, you have a director of photography and the best boy and the electrician and a certain group will come together to work on one film.
And then when that film wraps, they all go their separate ways and may or may not meet again in future.
Project How is it that the American economy has shifted so strongly from a more traditional career path with full-time W2 to the gig economy with more and more people working part time and not staying with the same employer for very long at all?
Yeah, I mean that’s a great question. I think this is the we’ve really been on this path for. I would say you know, over 50 years at this point, so the lowest point as far.
There is the amount of freelancers and independent workers in the US economy is was about in the late 70s, so ever since that point we’ve been on this. It started slow at first, but we’ve been on this upward trajectory of more and more independents. And what I’ve seen even in my career.
You know everything from 911 and that financial crisis to 2008 and 2009, and again another financial crisis that way.
And in particular, I think was really the that really is where the gig economy was born. You see, companies like Uber and Lyft and Insta Kart and all of those really coming out of that that 2009 2010 time period. And now we’re in this this new financial crisis with companies furloughing laying off.
Firing employees and everyone really kind of struggling with how do we have stability in a world that seems increasingly unsafe?
Stable and you know how to corporations find that as well as how do individuals find that? I mean, a lot of the things that a lot of the reasons, I guess why people don’t go into either self employment or freelance are things like as a full time employee. You get benefit, you get paid time off, you get all of those kind of perks.
That keep life stable so you can focus on your work. This has been and certainly this is a focus of CareerGig in in solving some of those issues, but as it as it’s become easier to find new work, so things like you know, even back in the day website called Elance. And then you know transitioned into another company and platforms like that really grew from this idea of the online marketplace being away for people to find work.
That really started transforming things altogether and then again you see things like Uber, Lyft, and all those that make.
Easier to sign up as a gig worker. We see this confluence of while now it’s so much easier to find work we still have to solve some of those financial stability and healthcare and all those kinds of stability as well. But a lot of the finding the jobs problem is getting easier and easier.
So as with everything in life, I guess there are advantages and disadvantages for the workers. With the gig economy, a lot of people.
Or pre COVID more people probably than today chose this career path. But today so many people are having it forced on them. You’ve touched on a number of issues that confront gig workers or workers in general in the new economy. What sort of pressures or problems is this new way of doing things?
Putting on the employers, what problems are they facing in this brave new world?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the biggest umbrella to look at is just the need for flexibility and to be able to scale up, scale down. Lots of industries have seasonal you know, like retail is a big example of an industry that has always had this seasonal need. To, you know, Holidays that scale up and down afterwards and things like that. But what we’re seeing is not only.
Is it even getting more volatile in the retail industry? But it’s every industry is now needing to address this so.
Whether it’s covid or some other or some other ramifications of financial crises, so on and so forth, companies just need to find a way to get really highly skilled or specialized talent in a way that is flexible enough that they’re not bringing on a bunch of full time employees and then firing them three months later. I think that’s.
That’s a big need in the in the workforce right now, and I’m finding detective employees that are comfortable with that mean.
So again, we need to solve some of those. Those of those employee and consumer challenges.
Great, alright, well that’s a perfect way for us to transition back to what my next question was going to be. Let’s go back to the realm of the gig workers, the employees and we’ve discussed the problems that they face. What? How does CareerGig solve their problem? Well, let me let me just stop for a second.
What is CareerGig? What caused you to create it and why?
But how do you foresee it’s at a very high level? Its functionality in this new workplace?
Yeah, absolutely. So. The Keurig really solves a lot of what I’m talking about or what I’ve been talking about on both sides of the equation, so you can’t have happy contractors and freelancers and you know 1099 employees without taking care of.
The rest of their lives and and.
I’ll get to that in a second, but an on the on the company and employer side. They need to solve this this way of finding how do we get contractors on boarded and know exactly what their skills are. Know that they can handle the work that we’re going to give them when you think about traditional employment, they say it takes about 90 to 120 days to really become onboarded into your.
Into your job. Well, if you hire contractors, hourly workers part time you don’t have.
Of 90 to 120 days. Sometimes you have a matter of hours. If not, maybe a couple of days to really get them on board it. So what CareerGig does is really addresses both issues, so we find highly skilled, verified talent. So what verified means is we give skills assessments. We do background checks, we make sure.
That you know you went to the school. You say you did. You have this sort of patience. You need all of you have the work experience that you say you did.
And even customize some of the onboarding and assessments to make sure that it’s absolutely what an employer is looking for and then match those with the companies that are looking for them. So and then on top of that, on the Freelancer side to take care of the rest of their life so you know you’re an independent. You don’t. You can’t rely on company health benefits.
You can’t rely on retirement plans and all those things that might be provided. 401K’s hired by a company. You’ve got to get that.
On your own, and so you’ve got a few options, but not a lot on the healthcare side. Maybe you go through ATA and you can do that. Sometimes the price thing is is OK. A lot of times it’s expensive and you kind of get what you can.
I’m sorry to interrupt you, but you could go through to get insurance.
Oh the affordable.
Care Act or Obamacare is the sign of.
This office OK.
Right, yeah no, no.
Problem, so that’s and that’s it’s.
Good that that exists it. It solves. It solves a lot of challenges, but these exchange.
Changes you know one of the things that we offer also is counseling to freelancers on what’s the best use of those dollars that that you need to spend on health insurance and retirement and all that so we help solve that. On top of that, even we contribute some of our fees into helping freelancers pay for their premiums. So all of that kind of adds up to, you know.
You find work you can get paid easily through our platform and then you can get benefits. So we really we really addressed all of those things.
Well, and we clearly there’s a lot of layers to that onion as far as the benefits and insurance and all that kind of jazz that we don’t have time to go into, but I’m sure that people can learn more about it on your website and elsewhere. But absolutely, let’s talk for a minute about the employers again.
They have options as well in terms of how they do the types of things that you’re talking about. They need to find qualified, vetted.
Quality workers quickly that they can bring into their system, and I imagine they have other options available right now. How does CareerGig compare and contrast to that, and why would they want to choose CareerGig over other options?
Yeah, that’s a great question, so we fit an interesting niche between.
So if you look at, there’s kind of two ends of the of the platform or of the of the offering, so there are on the low end. I’ll say there is.
The upwards and fibers and these. These gig work platforms that you know what they’re great for. If you need to spend $50 on a designer for something that’s great, but they’re not great for highly skilled specialized engagements where you need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars.
And you need to have a high degree of trust in them, and then on the higher end of that there are staffing companies that do a great job.
You need to fill, you know full time position or you know the permanent placement type thing or even maybe a long term contractor gig or something like that where we fill them. There is finding people finding them quickly, finding them and verifying that they can do again what they say.
But they say their skills are. We can assess that and verify that we can do background text ID verification. All of that very quickly. Unlike with staffing companies that.
They do a good job, but they take it takes a lot of people, a lot of overhead. Their fees are often exorbitant. You know 30% of someone first. Your salary, those kinds of things that becomes very, very cost prohibitive to a company that needs to be nimble and move quickly. Our fees are a fraction of those. Some of our fees even go into paying for benefits.
For these people, that’s another doesn’t. That’s another aspect. Those companies that really want to help these contractors. They may not be able to give him full time jobs. They can.
Actually help their contractors have health retirement, other benefits at no additional cost. To them. We take, you know, we take on some of those peas in the Freelancers get access to discounted benefits as well. So in that in that niche there’s some players in the middle of the market. You know in.
In a similar enough space on the sourcing side, let’s say you know they have market places where you can find work, but they’re not doing what we’re doing as far as autumn.
Meeting and beating up background tracks and their reputation management. Part of that. I guess it’s another way of saying the background and assessments. That’s another thing that we do much better and quicker and cheaper than others.
Now, what types that you mentioned earlier in defining the gig economy and cake workers and so forth? Things like.
Uber and Lyft drivers, but I imagine that the skills and the tasks are all over the place and may well get into very.
Highly skilled jobs. What types of jobs are you filling and what types of jobs are employers looking to fill through a marketplace like CareerGig?
Sure, yeah, the.
The the main.
We work across many industries, but I think the main ones that we’re finding are we’re making a lot of traction in our things like healthcare, where you’ve got, you need to verify registered nurses and things like that technology where there are.
Either industry certifications or company specific or platform specific certifications. We are making some headways into things like retail and hospitality, where there’s just a very pressing need to find people again, do the background checks on them and then make sure make sure they’re good.
But very quickly and easily, and that that’s more of a volume, I need to find 200 people in South Florida and I don’t have time to go.
The recruiting firm or things like that, so other so a few others like manufacturing another one where there’s very specific skills that are needed so there’s a few areas like that. We’re finding a lot of traction.
I was just seeing where you know Tesla as an example is growing like mad and opening manufacturing plants as well as software offices, all kinds of different things. So for a company like them like they just throw out a number, well we’re hiring 5000 developers in office.
When do you guys do to the automation and? Isn’t there AI a certain layer of AI involved with that you do? Does this allow you to be able to handle that kind of volume request?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean so we can. You know we can find those people again. We can create a customized assessment so you know if Tesla is looking for, you know 2000 people that have this exact experience. We can not only ask that question on the on.
Application but also say, OK, we’ll prove it and, you know, take this assessment and show that you can do that. We can create that customized for you. Know for a company based on exactly what they need and.
And therefore, you know, circumvent this this whole thing. It’s time to productivity. Is a key metric that companies are looking at. And if we can even it if we can improve that by a couple of days, that can be millions of dollars and productivity savings.
Yeah, that’s interesting. I can see that. And wow, we’re just the everything is moving so quickly these days. I mean, it’s just amazing, but I, you know, sort of a first principle of creating a market is the free flow of information and that it’s correct information relative to pricing and quality and all that kind of jazz.
An it sounds as though that’s sort of baked into CareerGig that from I would imagine both an employer and a gig workers perspective they have.
Get correct information. Timely information about what’s happening on the other side of the table that will help them make the best decision.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the traditional model of online ratings and reputation. I really feel like it’s broken and so you know an example of this. That’s a call too many competitor names, but you know, you go to you, go to an Upwork or a fiber and again find platforms for what they are. But if I see someone with a 5 star rating
First thing that comes to my mind is not necessarily. Oh wow. They’ve earned all of those stars. But how easy is it to gaining that that platform or you know someone that gets down to two stars because you know even through no fault of their own, they messed up a couple of jobs. You delete your profile. You start over and all of a sudden you can get back up to five stars.
What does that mean at the end of the day? It’s just. It’s a. It’s a vanity number that you can that you can show we’re going for something much deeper with that.
That’s where you know the start for us really is where we are now, which is doing, you know, getting verified backgrounds on people and saying again, this isn’t just what I want to say about myself on my social media profile. This is verified information. We’re building technologies based on blockchain and several other things that are really going to take a reputation management.
Even further, and you know, I’ll be excited to talk about that. Hopefully in a few months.
That’s great, I look forward to hearing about that.
Now I want to tell a funny story to our viewers and listeners about how I became aware of CareerGig. You and I were introduced to virtually. I don’t know 12 to 18 months ago or something like that and we worked together on a marketing project and then after that it was like, well you.
Know nice knowing you.
And we could we kind of were on each others email distribution lists, and so whatever. But then completely disconnected from that several months later, I guess. Just recently, last month or so.
I get I start seeing things about this new idea CareerGig and I’m seeing things about it on Facebook and LinkedIn and news items. And you know all over the place an as I read into it, as is obvious, I was very interested in what CareerGig was up to. I thought it was a neat idea. Then one day I got an email from Greg Kihlström talking about the launch of CareerGig.
An I was like who you know I didn’t know there was any connection and then I go to the website and I find out that you’re Co Founder and CEO. What where did this come from? Greg? I mean you’ve got so you have you know local legend in the local tech and marketing community and you’ve been involved in a lot of different.
Businesses and concepts and activities. Where did CareerGig come from?
Yeah, I mean, I think the.
I’ve definitely been I’ve been involved in a few different things over my career, but I mean I, I do see.
Yeah, common trajectory over all of these things and what I’ve tried to do is really the I’ve written a series of books and I have my own podcast called the Agile World. What I’ve tried to do over the series of those of those books is really talk about a bigger issue and I think a good trend positive trend that’s happening in the world which is.
Shifting the power dynamic from large entities and large organs.
Relations to the individual. And so yeah, I wrote a book called the Agile brand which talks about that even from a from a customer centric standpoint. I wrote the agile consumer which talks about increasing power in the hands of the consumer based on more choice and easier access.
And CareerGig is really I think, along that continuum of.
There’s nothing wrong with large corporations and companies they hire a lot of people. They put a lot of money into the company. They’re great, but what can we do to empower individuals to have better lives? And, you know, it’s not just about work. Work is how we earn our living and how we put food on the table. But if we can empower individuals to have better lives, to be able to have more flexibility of what they do when.
They do it.
And how they do it then? I believe everybody wins. Companies that have happier employees or contractors and the people doing the work or happier and they’re going to give better customer service. They’re going to create better products. And really, I I see it as a win win, so that’s that’s really where this this idea was born out of is.
How do we kind of dive deeper and give more power to the individual?
That’s great, and when you’re, you know, identifying a true problem, a real need in the marketplace and coming up with innovative an effective solution that is the clear path to business success. And I think it’s wonderful that you identified this problem and came up with a solution.
That works for everybody around the table, thank you.
Greg, we’re just about out of time. I’m wondering. I imagine people watching this or listening to the audio file will be curious how they can learn more about you. Perhaps connect with you, keep on top of what’s going on with CareerGig. What’s the best way for somebody to connect with you?
Yeah, absolutely. So two things. I would say. I mean definitely going to careergig.com and check us out. You can sign up as both a freelancer as well as a company so.
Definitely recommend doing that and then I would say I’m very active on LinkedIn. Connect with me, send me a message and then let’s talk.
Great, well, I often like to ask before we sign off. We talked about a lot of different stuff. Is there anything that I haven’t asked you or a thought that’s come to mind that you’d like to share before we go?
Now I think we I think we.
Pretty much covered it, no, I appreciate the time to be able to be able to talk about this. I feel like we’re really onto something here and I love to be able to in a way, do something that’s helpful in this very difficult time for so many people. It’s a difficult for companies, and it’s difficult for individuals and.
I feel like we’re doing.
Something to help out.
Greg Kihlström, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thanks so much for having me.
Thanks again to Greg Kihlström and thank you for joining us until next time. I’m Frank Felker’s and I’ll see you on the radio.
