Imagine never applying for a job again. Instead, you’ll join a talent community where you’ll be deeply understood not just for the skills you possess but the values you hold. And once there, you’ll be matched with the perfect opportunity in your ideal company.
As the cofounder and chief products officer of LiveHire, an ASX listed company, Antonluigi Gozzi (better known as Gigi) is developing his company’s technology to do just that. He also believes it’s only a matter of time before we all have an AI-powered virtual assistant helping us as well…
John: Antonluigi Gozzi, better known as Gigi, is the co-founder and Chief Products Officer at LiveHire, now an ASX-listed company that wants to change the future of work. The story of his company’s rise during the WA resources boom, its subsequent listing, and its current drive to become a world-leading technology business in the human resources sector is absolutely remarkable. So is Gigi; he’s a true Renaissance man. Gigi, welcome to Customers Matter.
Gigi: Good morning.
John: I’d like to turn in a moment to how you founded LiveHire, but first, I’m hoping you could share a little of your personal story. Where did you grow up and study, and how did you become so interested in the future of work and how we go about finding jobs?
Gigi: I grew up in Italy, so I’m originally Italian. I acquired a significant education and became an engineer. I studied engineering for about seven years. To tell you the truth, I was deciding between engineering and philosophy. I found engineering quite challenging and figured I could go back to philosophy afterward, whereas the other way would have been much harder. I became an engineer at 25 and started to travel the world, working in Anglo-Saxon countries. I spoke German, Spanish, and Italian, of course, so I left English as the last thing to learn. I knew I had to do that, so I came to Australia to learn English and to work in an English-speaking country.
John: The English might say you don’t learn to speak English in Australia.
Gigi: No, they don’t think I speak English at all. I really enjoyed being in Australia, exploring the world, and learning how the world is becoming all connected. That globalization really inspired me to jump into the world of technology.
John: How and when did you and your co-founder, Mike Haywood, meet, and how did you come to found LiveHire? You have this philosophy and engineering background, you found yourself in Australia, and you got interested in technology—but how did that lead to founding a company?
Gigi: I believe that with technology today, there’s a bit of a renaissance. In the hands of every engineer who can code, you can produce a product that gets used by billions of people. People have an infinite power to “engineer work” through technology. When you do that, you can create things that never existed before at scale. That is what has been new about the last twenty or thirty years of technology; it is changing everything we do. I had the benefit of being on the cusp of the “before and after”: before and after technology, before and after mobile phones. That makes you want to change things and bring something that is not there yet. When I met Mike Haywood, he was an entrepreneur in Australia during a booming time—not just an economic boom, but an “ideas boom” where people believed they could achieve a lot. Together, we looked at about fifty or sixty potential businesses to build from scratch based on technology. Many of those exist today in some form, but none was big enough or scalable enough for us. One day, I said to Mike, “Let’s look at the world slightly differently.” The biggest industry in the world is people, and that industry hasn’t been truly transformed by technology yet. Travel has, banking has, but people and hiring haven’t. Work is so important to our lives. I remember when I wrote the first forty-page presentation of our business idea, I was trying to map the various technologies that exist in the world. Work defines our mental health and state of mind. I thought if we could use technology to empower the flow of talent and lead people to the next step in their careers, that would be great.
John: It’s amazing. I love the concept of LiveHire: a software platform that essentially allows anyone to identify a company they may wish to work for, even when they’re not looking for a job or that company isn’t hiring. It enables both parties to understand each other and makes for an improved hiring experience, whether you’re the company or the candidate. How did that idea take shape?
Gigi: We studied the business model intensely for about seven months to test how it would work. We knew we were onto something simple. The concept was straightforward, but it hadn’t been done. You know you’re onto something when everybody says, “I wish that existed.” But then you need to think about how it will work. Is it a marketplace? Is it an auction site like eBay? Is it a job board? How do you bring technology to a future state you want to create? Technology is pervasive; it brings people together and defines behaviors. What humans do best is communication and interaction. Any technology that empowers people to interact gains life. Think about Airbnb: you’re not just talking to a machine to find a room; you’re talking to Wendy on the other side of the world who wants to invite you into her house. Those technologies create ecosystems. We started designing a technology from the ground up that was completely different from anything that existed. We knew it would be a long journey. You don’t just go to an agency, build a website, and become a successful business. You need a very strong vision of how the technology is going to be different from the ground up. We are building a technology-based network.
John: Thinking about what’s wrong with the way we find work today, what is your vision for the future? What is wrong with how hiring happens?
Gigi: Nothing is “wrong,” per se; things just change slowly and then very fast. In a world that’s hyper-connected and moving at high speed, companies are changing faster than people’s skills can change. Some people can redeploy themselves easily, but others get left behind. We are entering an era of “mega-rounds” of layoffs. The largest telecommunications company in Australia is firing a third of its workforce this week. That suggests a third of the people weren’t productive or their skills weren’t what was needed anymore. Rather than just cutting people from a P&L perspective, you need to think about the individuals. These people have families and mental health needs. What’s wrong is that things are moving faster than people can adapt. You need to create a version of “future visibility” for every individual and every company, establishing relationships and letting artificial intelligence help define career paths based on future objectives.
John: This is a really interesting case study. Telstra has just announced it’s going to sack nine and a half thousand people, though they’ll hire another one and a half thousand. How does LiveHire help those eight thousand people?
Gigi: That is a very good question. We would love to help those people. They need the help of a whole network. LiveHire has hundreds of clients looking for people. The interesting part is how they match. A company wants visibility into what’s possible. I can guarantee that a portion of those people who are right for one company would be perfect for another. Once you establish those connections, you let people do what they do best: meet and find their future employer or employee. At LiveHire, we believe you have to help both parties. First, you help the company find the right person, and then you help the person find the right company. You do that by making them visible to each other. In the past, job boards were the only way to find work, but that is an advertisement-based model. It’s like advertising for someone to sell you a car; you’re going to get hundreds of results, but most are not what you want. You want to find exactly what you need. We open visibility by creating private networks where your information doesn’t just go everywhere. As soon as that happens, you lose control of your career.
John: When first grappling with LiveHire and its alignment of organizations, individuals, and values, I thought it was almost like “Tinder for business.” What do you think of that description?
Gigi: The company that built Tinder built many networks. The designer there invented things that changed human behavior, like “scroll down to reload” or “swipe right” to make decisions. That company was based on bringing people together. The same designer is now working on human mobility. These are profound changes applied to a specific need. Just as Jeff Bezos didn’t want to sell DVDs or books his whole life—he wanted to bring people and merchants together—Tinder wanted to bring people together with convenience. We want to do the same for work. Technology is amazing because one system can cater to an infinite amount of variables. I can find any book or any place to stay through one system that caters to everyone. LiveHire needs to be that central system that can cater to any job and any person.
John: You’re the founder and major shareholder, and you’ve just appointed Christy Forest as CEO for the next leg of your journey. Where do you hope to take the company in the next five years?
Gigi: We want to be a global technology company. We want a future where people can move through their careers effortlessly, seeing potential opportunities in front of them. This requires us to bring the major organizations of the world together to adopt this way of finding and staying connected to talent. We are going to build technology that is incredibly intelligent, helpful, and available on everyone’s devices every day.
John: You talk about a future that is “fit for humans,” yet you are a technology company. How do you think technology will shape the future of work—for better or for worse?
Gigi: That is a big debate that won’t be resolved quickly. I’m not a “futurist”; I’m a “now-ist.” You need to be in the now because all the trends are happening right now. Companies like Apple and Google have spent tens of billions of dollars on artificial intelligence. That technology is already in the pockets of every person. It didn’t replace you or your job; it works with you to make things better. We build technology to help people, but in this rapid world of change, if you don’t stay with it, you will be left behind.
John: Let’s get even sharper on artificial intelligence. What is its specific role in the future of work?
Gigi: Artificial intelligence is fantastic. Machine learning is now available for everyone to plug into any problem. We plug it into the future of work to understand what you want to do, match you in real-time with the right opportunity, and predict a company’s next steps. It can identify when it is time for a company to look for someone new and when it is time for you to look for something new. AI understands intentions. Effectively, everyone’s job will involve relinquishing some control to AI so it can make decisions for you. That is a big step, but it will happen slowly through the small decisions you make every day until you become a little bit dependent on it.
John: In a practical sense, if I’m a hiring manager or a job seeker, how does AI help me?
Gigi: A couple of years ahead, for jobs that are somewhat commoditized, you will just ask the computer to find a person for a role. The machine will find all your contacts, evaluate your relationships, identify who is available, communicate with them, book them in, and sign a contract. They could be in the job the next day without you doing anything other than making the final decision. For individuals, it will be even more pervasive. I can ask my AI assistant, “What should I do next?” When I met the VP of Google for Work, he said the most common search regarding jobs is “jobs near me.” People are already asking AI assistants for help. AI will soon handle the details: “I want this job at this company. Here is my experience. Apply for me.” The future of automation and AI is very clear and very near.
John: It’s interesting because as a candidate, a robot vetting me sounds scary. But you’re saying I can also use AI to vet the people I might want to work for. We are both armed.
Gigi: Exactly. It works because it works at scale. Google recently demonstrated an AI that can book a hair appointment by speaking to the receptionist. They didn’t just build an answering machine; they built an AI that talks and does things for you. They went for the masses. I think AI is more likely to help people en masse than just helping individual businesses.
John: What does this world of AI mean specifically for LiveHire and the people you serve?
Gigi: It is very important. A company needs one system that understands all their data regarding people and relationships. Then you use AI to provide high-quality matching and process automation so the machine works in symbiosis with the recruiter. Currently, the machine is just a tool; it isn’t intelligent. We bring intelligence to the platform. We allow people to provide information to a company privately so they can be seen in the right ways. We don’t just ask “What do you do?” but “What do you want to do? What makes you special?” Once we understand your objectives and your connections, we can use AI to match opportunities in real-time. You will get a “tap on the shoulder” more often, and your investment in your profile will pay off.
John: Gigi, I think many people underestimate how important it is to make the right hiring decision. How significant is it when putting someone in a role?
Gigi: At LiveHire, we believe hiring is by far the most important thing companies do. Hiring is the renewal of your organization. Every three or four years, you have turned over most of your staff. These people define your future. Choosing the right person is a strategic decision. What is the most important job of every manager? Picking the right people for their team. What is the most important job of a board? Picking the right CEO. Hiring is the most important part of every company and every job. To do it well, you need machines that give you visibility and AI at your fingertips to understand intentions. This isn’t just for companies—finding the right partner or friend is the most important thing people do in their personal lives. We are social animals; we want to find people who are right for us and our organizations. LiveHire helps you with that.
John: Fantastic. Thank you.