From building machines to building Apple iPhones, Roman Piszcz (Founder of Quotebeam) has a lot of experience in creating products and helping businesses find real solutions. It was from his personal passion for creating a better way for companies to purchase products. This week on Workforce 4.0, host Ann Wyatt sits down with Roman and Nikki Gonzales to discuss in more detail about his passion for entrepreneurship, what it means to hire "intraprenuers" and how start up companies can leverage the interviewing process to identify and hire leading talent. Roman and Nikki also share their unique perspectives on the benefits of remote work, how automation and machine learning apps empower people to focus on more meaningful work and why providing tools for ownership is crucial to organizational success in the digital era.

In This Episode:

-03:06 Roman's Journey and QuoteBeam's Origin

-18:03 Exploring The Spirit of Entrepreneurship

-29:59 Evaluating Candidates Via An Interviewing Question About Climate Change

-31:03 Unlocking Interview Tactics To Assess Critical Thinking

-31:56 Hiring Fresh Graduates: A Unique Approach

-36:05 The Future of Workforce and Technology

-38:57 The Evolution of Communication

-55:47 Building and Retaining High-Performing Teams

More About Roman Piszcz:

Throughout his career, Roman always designed machines using two principles: simplicity and performance. These two principles brought about the inception of Quotebeam. Although the machines he was designing were using state-of-the-art technologies, Roman realized that the process of designing them was extremely fragmented and inefficient. Recognizing these engineering and procurement gaps in parts search, sourcing, and vendor collaboration marked his first efforts in automating these processes. During the five years before taking Quotebeam full time in early 2021, Roman led a team at Apple’s iPhone & Core Technologies manufacturing operations. That experience amplified his belief of the importance of data transparency and supplier collaboration, and led to the beginning of Quotebeam as a company. Learn more and connect with Roman here.

About Nikki Gonzales:

Nikki has a unique mix of skills including growing SaaS startups and direct experience as a field Sales Engineer in industrial automation for Festo and Keyence. After a series of meetings over a few years from Silicon Valley to Seattle, a couple of babies, a global pandemic, and a move to Texas, finally the stars aligned for Nikki to join Quotebeam full time! She’s always loved problem solving and building things, so it led to a career in engineering sales spanning technologies such as Machine Vision, Pneumatics & Mechatronics, Computational Electromagnetics, and AI & Data Analytics, to name a few. Learn more and connect with Nikki here.

The Future of Work (and this Episode) Is Brought To You By Secchi:

Secchi is a revolutionary workforce engagement tool created for organizations to make data-driven frontline decisions in real-time. By measuring and combining multiple people-related lead indicators, Secchi provides in-the-moment visibility into individual frontline employee performance, team performance, engagement/turnover risks, and positive employee behaviors all while removing the traditional barriers of administrative burden on leaders. To learn more about Secchi, check them out here.