Mike Fitzsimmons

In a world where 45% of hires fail within the first 18 months, matching talent to the perfect workplace is almost magic. In this episode of Before It Happened, our host Donna Loughlin tells the story of Mike Fitzsimmons, co-founder and CEO of Crosschq, a cloud-based service that combines human intelligence and AI to reinvent how companies hire. Crosschq’s mission is to better match companies and talent through what it calls human intelligence. The idea is that a good hire helps both the employer and the employee, plus it leaves a positive impact on the community.

Listen now and learn how Mike is revolutionizing the art of hiring by putting the human factor back into human resources!

Before any world-changing innovation, there was a moment, an event, a realization that sparked the idea before it happened. This is a podcast about that moment — about that idea. Before IT Happened takes you on a journey with the innovators who imagined — and are still imagining — our future. Join host Donna Loughlin as her guests tell their stories of how they brought their visions to life.

Jump straight into:

(01:40) - Mike’s youth, college inspiration, and his very first job at Circuit City — “I signed up immediately and a few weeks after college, I was on my way to open up a call center.”

(07:25) - Why hiring is so hard and the birth of Crosschq — “Hiring and retaining talent is hard, you learn that pretty early if you're aware and paying attention.”

(13:50) - Poor hiring is a worldwide issue — “You should stop reporting on quantity and then filling seats quickly. We have to start thinking about quality.”

(18:03) - Human Intelligence Hiring — How Crosschq helps companies find the best talent -

“We get content and data from people, for people and convert that into actionable data and insights that companies can use.”

(22:11) - Bias vs. Equity: How to neutralize profiling — “Age, ethnicity, sex. All of those biases still exist. We're going to help bring data to the table to help convince companies and lead them to try to reduce as much of that bias as they can.”

(25:15) - COVID-19 and the impact Crosschq has had on the community — “We provide our service for free to companies like 70 million jobs, which is the leading platform for Anti-Recidivism in the US. We're trying to help people that are trying to help themselves.”

(31:10) - What Mike has learned from the pandemic — “I've been just so impressed by how absolutely tough all of us are and how everybody's persevered.”

(33:27) - Changing the culture within companies — “We have to be hyper-aware at keeping folks engaged and engaging in a real and meaningful fashion.”

Episode resources

Connect with Mike on Twitter and LinkedIn

Learn more about Mike’s company Crosschq

Read Michael Fitzsimmons of Crosschq: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Began Leading My Company

Read Mike’s interview with Natfluence

See Mike’s profile on the Forbes Next 1000 list

Before IT Happened is produced by Donna Loughlin and Studio Pod Media with additional editing and sound design by Nodalab. The show coordinator is Deanna Morenci with audio engineering provided by Dave Clarke-McCoy. The Executive Producer is Katie Sunku Wood. All episodes are written by Jack Buehrer.

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