On the Record with Jahanzaib Ansari, CEO of Knockri
Hometown: I was born in Pakistan, then moved to Saudi Arabia. I moved with my family to Canada in 1997.
Three words to describe yourself: Ambitious, resilient, empathetic
Hobbies: Zero hobbies. I go to the gym and sometimes the driving range, but there isn’t a lot of time for hobbies running a startup!
Can you tell us how the idea for Knockri came about?
The main catalyst for creating Knockri was my experience applying to jobs several years ago. I was applying to job upon job and after 3 months, I noticed that I just wasn’t hearing back from employers. As you know, I have a long, ethnic name, and my friend, Maaz, (now cofounder of Knockri) suggested that I anglicize my name. We went through variations of “J” names like Jacob, Jordan, Jason, etc… and within 4-6 weeks, I had a job with my “new” name. After that experience, we wondered how many qualified people were being overlooked during the hiring process and decided that there had to be a better solution. Maaz and I had already worked together as partners in my last company, but we brought in our now-CTO, who is a machine learning scientist. The 3 of us worked with an industrial organizational psychologist to create Knockri, which is an-AI powered, behavioral video assessment that reduces bias and shortlists the best candidates for companies to interview.
What growth opportunities are you most excited about both from a business and from a Diversity & Inclusion perspective?
What most excites me is the number of people for whom we are about to provide fair and equal opportunity in the hiring process. We are currently working on a massive scale for large organizations, such as IBM, Novartis, and the Department of Defense. It is extremely rewarding for us as a company, as well as for me, personally, as a founder.
Can you talk a bit about how Knockri works and how you’ve made the hiring process more efficient?
Absolutely. Knockri is a video assessment tool that addresses diversity from the earliest stages of the talent acquisition process by integrating with a company’s ATS to administer and automatically assess unlimited candidates at scale. At a high level, Knockri makes the hiring process more efficient by automating some of the tasks that take a lot of time to do manually, which frees up recruiters’ time so that they can work on other tasks that help put the right person into the right seat.
Going a little bit deeper, Knockri draws on the field of Industrial-Organizational psychology to design selection procedures that not only predict whether a potential hire will meet expectations on the job, but also produce better outcomes for diversity compared to traditional selection tools. Knockri objectively identifies the presence of foundational skills using advanced natural language processing. We only use an applicant’s interview transcript to determine applicant quality and avoid some of the issues that other vendors have run into over the use of video analysis.
Essentially, Knockri offers the best of both worlds. Organizations can have a scientifically rigorous process for identifying talent while also avoiding issues related to tokenizing the hiring process. On average, we help organizations increase gender and racial diversity by up to 25% using our process for shortlisting the best candidates and reduce time to hire by more than 10X.
An excellent example is the work that Knockri has done with the Canadian Department of National Defence (the DND). In the case of the DND, we completed 232 hours of interviews over a weekend—this would normally take a company 3 months to do. We assess all the candidates, and in some cases in the many thousands, and the ones who are successful on our behavioral assessment make it to the actual job interview with the HR team. Those who are “unsuccessful” and do not move on to a later stage in the hiring process are still provided feedback from us that helps them better prepare for their next opportunity
Do you have any use cases you can share with us?
At the moment, companies are utilizing Knockri with three objectives in mind:
Reducing bias and adverse impact. Adverse impact, in particular, has become a very big problem.
Efficiency. The assessment saves company time and money. Take our DND deployment, for example—if the HR team has to screen 232 hours of interviews themselves, that would likely require 4 recruiters and tons of labor hours setting up interviews, screening candidates, etc… We probably saved them around $150,000 in man hours just by shortlisting candidates from their applicant pool.
Candidate experience. Companies want to stand out and give their prospective employees a great experience. They want to provide a unique hiring experience that’s different than the repetitive, boring process every other company implements.
Where did you grow up and how did that help shape who you are?
I was born in Pakistan, then moved to Saudi Arabia. I moved with my family to Canada in 1997.
I think moving to a new country as a young kid and seeing parents struggle as they tried to figure out a better life in Canada really taught me how to be resilient and ingrained in me a high level of work ethic. As an immigrant, you have to really work hard—often even harder than everyone else—just to prove ourselves. I would say you have to be a 1-2 standard deviation outlier from the norm in terms of hustle and determination.
Who do you look up to & why?
I really look up to David Goggins. He is a retired Navy SEAL and accomplished endurance athlete. I really believe in extreme accountability, which Goggins professes. He also teaches us that if you’re going to do something, you have to do it with full heart, which I really admire.
What has been your biggest challenge as a Founder?
My biggest challenge is that I don’t know when to stop working. I love the hustle and the grind, but I need to get better at finding hobbies and activities away from work. What I've learned over the years is that this job is a marathon, not a sprint. In order to maintain long term, sustainable, peak performance, as a founder and a CEO, you need to introduce down time and make it a priority. I used to think of that as a sign of weakness, but I realize that now it’s necessary for long term, maximum output.
Do you have a leadership style or particular principles by which you run the company?
The company maintains 3 basic principles: accountability, resiliency, and flexibility. I try to display all of these in my interactions with employees at Knockri, because, as a leader, it’s important to show what I value by actions. For example, we reiterate these principles in regular meetings, in materials I send to the team electronically, etc…
How has the company journey changed during COVID and do you think there’s been any “silver lining” to these changes?
We have undoubtedly seen an acceleration in adoption of digital assessments during COVID while everything is being conducted over video. In general, the acceptance of technology has significantly accelerated. Additionally, the murder of George Floyd put a spotlight on the level of systemic bias that exists in our society, and companies are realizing how this translates into the workforce. For a lot of organizations, this put a giant microscope on their hiring processes and put a lot of pressure on them to reform their measures on selection, recruitment, diversity, and inclusion. With our offering of a digital assessment and our ability to significantly reduce bias, we have become a very attractive, technological option for Chief Diversity Officers and HR heads.
While we still don’t know if it’s a long term shift, we’ve obviously seen a lot more remote work options during the past year and a half. Are you seeing an increase in product usage on your end when geography is not as important?
Yes, we are seeing an increase in product usage and adoption due to the shift to more remote work. One of our clients, for example, has implemented 100% remote work for the foreseeable future. The fact that they now want to hire from everywhere means that the entire world has basically become a global candidate pool. While they are mindful of time zones, for the most part there are significantly less geographical restrictions to hiring, and this is greatly changing the game.
Are there any books you recommend your team to read?
High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard
If you had to be stranded on a deserted island with one movie, what would it be?
Pursuit of Happiness or 300 (Sparta).
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Jahanzaib Ansari is the Co-founder and CEO of Knockri. Jahanzaib served as a key advisory member to the World Economic Forum's Global Council on Equality & Inclusion. He contributed his expertise on ethically built AI for selection and assessment to several reports: including "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 4.0 Toolkit" and "Global Social Mobility Index 2020: why economies benefit from fixing inequality". Jahanzaib's company, Knockri was founded because of the discrimination he faced in the hiring process. His company is an AI-powered behavioral video assessment tool that diminishes systemic bias at scale and ensures the hiring of a more diverse workforce. Knockri's partnered with large organizations such as IBM, SAP, Deloitte, Novartis, and many more. To date, Knockri has assessed over half a million candidates and increased diversity by 25% among its customers. Jahanzaib is often invited to share his thoughts on A.I., The Future of Work, Unconscious Bias, and Diversity at major events internationally. He was recognized as Innovator of the year by diversity group Ascend, and has been named among 22 of Canada's most promising young HR professionals by HRD Magazine.
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