Grow Your Own Future: How Holganix Streamlined Its Hiring Process with Spark Hire

In August 2025, Kate Michael started as a new recruiter at Holganix, an agricultural biologicals company, tasked with an ambitious goal: build out the team with the best in the business, but fairly quickly, she recognized that the existing hiring process felt disconnected.

Her team had historically had trouble getting recruiting momentum, spending too many hours chasing down hiring manager feedback and candidates who’d been lost in the shuffle of emails and spreadsheets.

Though there were tools in place, the hiring process wasn’t as good as it could be…with better-aligned hiring systems.

Turns out, her foresight and previous experience with various ATSs, including Spark Hire, would set the company on a new path for more streamlined recruiting, faster hiring of the best-fit candidates, and a better candidate experience.

Here’s how they did it!

Understanding the Industry and Job Roles

Taking a personal step back, Kate’s path to Holganix was unique: her husband had been a customer for three years, using Bio800 on their family farm, before joining the team as their new recruiter. 

She brought a unique assortment of experience, including 13 years of agriculture experience, 10 years in seed, and three years in technology (and, lucky for us, three years of experience using Spark Hire in her previous role).

At Holganix, the majority of the roles Kate and the team were tasked with hiring for were remotely-based sales positions across an expanding territory – Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nebraska, and Texas, with plans to add South Dakota, Kansas, and Indiana the following year.

Beyond sales, they also regularly fill technical positions like environmental scientists, logistics specialists, and operations roles.

Bumpy Hiring Terrain Turned Smooth Landscaping

As mentioned, there was quite a bit of hiring frustration for the Holganix hiring team, who knew that there had to be an easier path forward. Kate was the perfect person to help them take the leap of faith for a better hiring system.

Challenge 1: Too Many Manual Processes

Kate and her team’s frustration wasn’t in the aggressive hiring targets (they were excited about that) — it was about a system that fundamentally didn’t solve their core challenges.

Holganix was using an applicant tracking system, but it didn’t have the automation and collaboration features a widely dispersed, remote team like hers needed to keep things moving efficiently for her hiring managers and candidates.

“It didn’t notify me when [candidates] applied,” Kate discovered. “So I’d have to manually search for them. Then, once I had that initial call or screen, there was nowhere for me to put any notes or feedback. I’d also have to manually put them into the next step, schedule all of the subsequent meetings, etc. It just wasn’t working.”

After spending a few months trying to make their existing software work by building internal tools like a project management board for tracking candidates, among spreadsheets and many email threads, the team decided to take a step back and examine if maybe it was time for something better.

“We were spending half of the day on administrative work, and it wasn’t yielding me anything,” Kate realized.

Challenge 2: A Lack of Candidate Visibility

Kate wasn’t only dealing with a poor system — she was dealing with a system that couldn’t organize the overabundance of applications they were receiving in a way that she – or her hiring managers – could easily review and keep track of.

Without a proper system, qualified candidates were slipping through the cracks.

Challenge 3: Reporting That Lacked the Insights They Need

The lack of detailed reporting capabilities was also making it nearly impossible for the team to review their hiring metrics and understand where they could be better.

Reporting on hiring metrics such as end-of-week numbers, weekly projections, and pipeline status — metrics most leadership teams require insight into, as well – required manual data gathering across multiple systems, which was again, burning too many invaluable hours for Holganix’s busy hiring team.

Challenge 4: Jeopardizing its Brand Reputation

Agriculture is a small world. 

“The number of people who work in agriculture in the US is relatively small compared to the population. Less than 2% of people are farming, and about 4% work in agriculture,” Kate explains. “And then when you start to break into who’s working in biologicals, that market is extremely small and niche.”

In a community that tight, word travels fast about companies that don’t follow up with candidates. 

Kate was fearful that Holganix, a company that she was so fond of as both a customer and employee, was at risk of developing that reputation.

“It was important to me that we not have a reputation as a company that ghost candidates or doesn’t follow up well or takes forever to hire.”

This is a common problem that many hiring teams don’t even recognize until it’s too late. 

A poor candidate experience (brought on by a misalignment in your hiring process and/or tools) can actively damage your organization’s reputation and thus your company’s ability to attract the best talent.

Kate recognized this and wouldn’t allow it to be the case for Holganix.

Building a Case for the Right HR Tech

Kate had previous experience with many ATSs, Spark Hire included, so it wasn’t difficult for her to spot the challenges they were facing and what she really needed to improve their hiring process.

She started by calculating the headhunter fee savings if she could source even half the roles herself. She then quantified critical items such as the time lost to manual reporting and prepared for questions about ROI, implementation timelines, and budget impact.

Kate then approached her leadership team with a simple ask:

“I’ve got a system that I love. I know how to use it. I know how it functions,” she explains. “I know the integrations.”

Kate had processed applications, scheduled interviews, collaborated with hiring managers, and generated reports using Spark Hire (among many other applicant tracking systems). She knew its integrations, its workflow capabilities, and its reporting functions, and all her experience told her Spark Hire could solve the hiring challenges Holganix was facing with its previous ATS.

The Nutrients Needed for Recruiting Success

Once the team came to the ultimate decision that it was time to make a change, Kate took a step back to ensure that Spark Hire’s ATS, Recruit, truly had everything she needed to solve Holganix’s core challenges, so they could focus more time on strategy and building the very best team they could.

Here’s what they needed:

• The Fundamentals: Holganix’s hiring team needed automatic notifications when candidates applied, a workflow that seamlessly moved people through the process, and a place to store notes and feedback with easy viewability.
• Seamless Collaboration: They needed their hiring managers to have the ability to give and review feedback without endless phone calls and follow-up emails.
• Essential Integrations: The new system had to work with their existing HR tech and tools — payroll, team communication, etc. The last thing they needed was more disconnected systems.
• Automated Reporting: Kate and the team needed reporting capabilities that were automated, so they and the leadership team could easily identify what was and wasn’t working.
• Consistent Candidate Evaluation: Ensuring hiring managers are evaluating candidates fairly, eliminating the potential for unconscious hiring bias, is essential in talent acquisition. This meant structured processes and clear interview criteria.

Holganix found this in Spark Hire.

Where Better Hiring Blossoms: Recruiting with Spark Hire

The transformation was immediate. 

“Everything is taken care of. Everything is customized to the experience that I would like our hiring managers to have and our candidates to have.”

Holganix was quickly implemented with Spark Hire, allowing Kate to stop spending half her day on administrative tasks and redirect that time toward strategic work — sourcing candidates, building relationships, and having meaningful conversations with potential hires and her hiring managers.

What Kate loves most about Spark Hire’s system is how it has eliminated the endless phone calls and follow-ups that used to bog down hiring decisions. 

“Spark Hire gives me the ability to show the leadership team what’s going on at all times with very little effort,” she says. “We’re all looking in the same place.”

In addition, the real-time feedback system means hiring managers can provide input when it’s convenient for them, rather than Kate having to track them down.

The drag-and-drop interface lets Kate customize the workflow each role needs. She can set up and automate the reporting, tailoring the experience for both hiring managers and candidates without requiring technical expertise. This flexibility is crucial when managing everything from sales roles to environmental scientists to operations positions.

Every candidate now receives timely communication and updates, protecting Holganix’s reputation in their tight-knit industry. The automated workflows ensure no one falls through the cracks, and the structured process means every applicant gets fair consideration.

The Future of Talent at Holganix

Kate’s already thinking about future enhancements. 

For example, she envisions incorporating AI-powered interview summaries, another feature offered as part of Spark Hire AI, which could compile hiring team feedback into actionable insights without the need forlate-night manual work.

As Holganix continues expanding into new territories, the ATS can scale with them, supporting the diverse mix of roles they’ll need to fill.

Ready to partner with an HR technology company that helps you grow the way that you need to — with people at the center?

Reach out to Spark Hire for a demo today.