Victoria Aldred, 7 February, 2023
Founder and CEO of Konfir, Chris Milligan, a serial tech entrepreneur explains how success is due largely in part to a growth mindset and the power of perspective.
The QUT Alumni Team sat down with Chris to discuss new trends in HR, and more generally in the employment space, and gain invaluable insight into how to continuously build on previous successes.
What is Konfir and what led you to its creation? What do you love most about your job?
Konfir is a platform that helps people to progress more easily through their life events by making the access and sharing of income and employment data seamless. Individuals need this data to prove previous employment when getting a job, show income and employment when renting a house or proving employment and affordability for all kinds of financial products. After building a previous HRtech company (Adepto), I saw the opportunity to deliver better solutions for verifying income and employment data in Europe.
What I love most about building companies is the blank sheet of paper, with no instructions, rules, a safety net or limits. I find it exciting and motivating to be able to really do and create whatever you want each day.
Given your extensive experience and background in the HR and employment sector, how has technology transformed the global employment space?
Just add the pandemic to the mix and employment looks completely different to when I left university. I think the biggest change is how work is getting done. The technology to live and work from anywhere has been around for some time but the acceptance of that as “normal” has only just caught up. This has meant that companies can find the best talent anywhere in the world to deliver what they need, and good talent can find opportunities easily. This has changed a lot of local market employment dynamics and put “traditional” businesses on the back foot. The expectation of the workforce has changed for good, and I’m seeing lots of companies struggle to adapt to that. I’ve always been a fan of work/life integration, remote working and global teams, but it requires a very different kind of leadership, communication, culture and planning.
What trends in recruitment or employment should QUT Alumni be keeping an eye on?
Skills based everything. The way that work is broken down, people are assessed, and companies’ hiring focus is purely based on skills and capabilities. The role you may have one day to the next will increasingly change but the skills you use will be constant. Everyone should be considering the skills needed in the areas they are interested in and be proactively investing in developing these themselves.
What do you think the impact of AI will be on recruitment in the future?
AI is replacing the mundane tasks that people have had to do, such as, writing job adds, reviewing CVs of applicants against job ads, and now even taking the first video interviews and evaluating answers based on facial expressions and other indicators. To cut through, you’ve got to go back to building relationships, being creative and demonstrating a commercial understanding of the business you are wanting to work at. You’ve got to communicate how can you make them, or save them money?
Given the rise in hybrid, asynchronous and flexible working arrangements, what opportunities do you see for international careers?
I’ve worked all around the world since leaving QUT. There are opportunities everywhere for people with the right mindset and work ethic. A lot of developing countries are now exciting places to work and on a macro level most developed countries now have a severely aging population exiting the workforce. The only way these countries are going to survive are through migration of skilled workers.
What does it mean to have a total talent agenda, for both employers and employees?'
My last company, Adepto, was a platform helping businesses to see all of the talent available to them (internal, past, present and future), the idea being, if you can see the skills of all of the types of workers around you at all times, when work comes up, you can easily match the person with the right skill to the right piece of work, regardless of how someone is “paid”. I fundamentally believe the world is becoming more and more like this and the people who succeed won’t be worried about what type of contract they have, but how their skills are developing in line with industry needs.
What is one goal you'd like to achieve - professionally or personally - in 2023?
In 2023 I am aiming to achieve profitability with Konfir and to continue to grow sustainability – having just as much fun with the team as hard work. Personally, I just try to make each year bigger and better than the last.
What advice would you give other entrepreneurs around making connections and building relationships when it comes to securing seed funding to grow a business?
Having raised multiple rounds of investment myself, and invested in over a dozen businesses, I think that having an open growth mindset is the most important aspect. I often meet people who aren’t willing to consider other options, change their plans, look at something from a different perspective and I wouldn’t invest in that. The path to building a business is very windy, and will never work out the way you plan so the only way to ensure success is to be adaptable, approachable and open to support and feedback.
What is one skill you couldn’t live without and why?
I’m not sure if it’s a skill but I think “perspective” is crucial to a successful life. There will always be wins and losses but the reality is, you can change what those wins and losses mean to you based on your perspective and the narrative you tell yourself. Taking something as a positive or negative and going again is the difference between those who will succeed and those who won’t.
Do you have a question for Chris? Connect with him on LinkedIn.