Hiring works better when everyone’s on the same page.

So I've been in talent acquisition, hence the gray in my beard for two decades at this point. In the course of that career, I've implemented no less than eight different applicant tracking systems. So going from that transition eighteen years ago where we're managing candidates in a spreadsheet or in a Unix system to even put a date on it, to an actual interface has been part of my career. So, I've worked with everything from Brass Ring to iSIMs before I came here and now of course SparkHire. When I came through the door, had departed using a tool which was one of the most effective tools at that time for me, that I was hoping that what I was inheriting was going to be at least equal to. And within a four week snapshot, I told Sally I appreciated that she had made the commitment that she did for SparkHire, because the functionality was actually easier for me in changing workflows and executing offers. So I was pleasantly surprised in that process. I'd also had done, I know I told you seven to eight different applicant tracking systems in my career, but I had been in charge of the RPOs for those systems. So looking at it from every perspective, how does it connect with our IT, what systems does it connect with, it was very nice not to come in and have to rebuild something when I joined this organization, basically leverage the tool that we had, optimize it, and then of course spread it to the rest of the team.

The catalyst was the organization and the time saver because as normal, I joined the team, recruiting was my number one focus, but I still have the rest of my job. And so I think it really was like, how can I keep doing this, but also do all of the other things that I've taken on and be effective in it? And it really was like, how seamless could this be? And again, like I said earlier, I wanted to make sure that the product that I launched was as seamless for the hiring managers because I'm gonna be in it all the time, so I'll learn it, whatever it is. They're not always in it. They're only in it when they're hiring. Now our COO, our senior directors, they're in it pretty often because they're involved in that. But our directors, our associate directors, it really is just depending on when they have a hiring and it might be six months in between. So I wanted to make sure that it was as seamless as possible. And then from my history prior to joining ADM, I worked for a recruiting agency and so I would work with clients and they used all of the ATSs and they all were, you know, had good parts and not so great parts. And the first time I met with Adam and he rolled out, he, like, sold me. I was like, it's everything I ever wanted. It was like you guys went into my brain and organized it exactly the way I wanted it. It's so easy. It's so easy to navigate. If you haven't been in it in six months, it's pretty easy to pick it up and things like that. So I think those were the reasons why I was ready for it. And I think I've said this to Josh before, like my CEO approved it at the holidays. And I was like, that was my Christmas present that year because it's just been I'm not kidding. If you're listening to me and you think they've paid me, I literally just love this product because it has made my life so much easier.

Were previously doing, it was a very manual system. When I first came on, we were using and it was great for the size that we were at. We were at about eighty five to one hundred five, give or take a view. And it was great for housing candidate resumes and the HR side. It was user friendly, visually appealing, but that wasn't going to get us to where we wanted to be in terms of growth. So with that, I pitched the idea to our C suite that we needed a new system. We needed a system that, one, was going to be updated with The Times. Obviously, didn't know AI was going to boom the way it did, so I'm glad we chose SparkHire. You all kept along with the trend. But I knew I needed a system that was going to house data. So similar to it was going to show me data, which didn't do. I needed a system that was going to be a platform to where I can house interview notes. So that was another deciding factor because that was sent out manually through a SurveyMonkey link. A lot of the candidates' salary and information was housed on Excel. I needed a way to blend that Excel and that systems data. And I needed something that was still user friendly and I can train the hiring managers on that wasn't going to take a big bulk of my time. Because like I mentioned, I'm a one man show.

I think there's two pieces that I noticed pretty regularly. And one of them is just kind of the workflow automation or the ability to move very seamlessly between steps. So in an HR system, you don't necessarily always have the ability to move between steps pretty seamlessly or with certainty. There's some manual follow-up required. There's manual kind of information gathering and then scheduling and checking schedules and kind of coordinating all of that. So I think that's probably the first. The second for me that just feels very different is the ability to communicate with the candidate in a way that's proactive and branded and also kind of automated. So I'm able to send very concise, branded, organics interaction emails to my candidates, but in a way that aligns with a candidate experience that gives them all not the playing field. Or maybe take some durability out of that communication process and interview process. So my candidates have a pretty similar experience. They're being asked to do the same things. They're being evaluated on the same qualifications and expectations. And so I think that we're able to really effectively remove some of the bias and remove some of the variability in the interview process because we're all people, and we're all coming at this with our own personal experiences and our own personal bias and our own personal expectations. But because we have an applicant tracking system that lays out those expectations so clearly, it lays out that feedback so clearly, I'm actually able to brief my team on what my expectations are for their time and their interview schedule so they know kind of that core set of questions, that core set of information that I want them to spend their time on. And so they're not having a really straightforward conversation with you, but then when they talk to Josh, they're having a great day and they're just so happy and they're like talking about racing or sports. So we're able to really give a lot of feedback or give a lot of information upfront in context. And so we all are kind of starting from that same place so that we can have a really form expectation or a really uniform evaluation of all of these candidates. And I think that a lot of the HR systems that we see, kind of lack that background because the focus really isn't the interview process. The focus is bringing them in as an employee. What are the functionality that they need as an employee? Where to submit their time off? They need to do all of these things once they're here? But having a tracking system that's it's connected. It's still integrated, but it's operating separately, and it was intended to really focus as an applicant tracking system. It's more robust. There's more opportunities to really give that background in that feedback and all of the information so that we can do all of those stages really well. We can still give our employees all the information that they need. We can also give our candidates all of the information that they need. And we're still connecting. We're still integrating. We're still able to utilize all of those functionalities. We can just do the upfront piece better.