Harnessing AI for Next-Gen
Talent Acquisition
Hiring Tech Is Having Its Moment
Macroeconomic challenges continue as technological innovation advances faster than ever. Organizations reduce staff, ask more from existing employees, and reallocate headcount spending toward Generative AI (GenAI) initiatives. Agile efficient mindsets prevail as companies of all shapes and sizes seek to accomplish more with fewer human resources.
Today's chief executive officers (CEOs) must deliver exciting growth with smaller workforces. To achieve this, they need access to the very best talent, and that talent must have the desire and skills to partner with transformative technologies. Enter the agile technology-enabled workforce, where every worker—including the CEO—must augment and scale their contributions to the business in concert with technology.
Today, hiring tech is having its moment. Use cases are increasing as executives can no longer rely on large cadres of internal recruiters to replace ongoing staff churn and contract with expensive retained search firms to fill executive and other strategic positions. It' exciting to envision what's possible as human resource (HR) professionals embrace innovative tools like marketers and sellers have for the last decade.
HireQuotient Transforms Talent Acquisition
I first met Smarth Sidana at SaaStr 2022. I was immediately taken by his deep understanding of the technology landscape and his passion for and commitment to building and leading a transformative AI company. We had a dynamic conversation at the event. Then, we met for breakfast the following day to discuss how hiring would soon benefit from tools with embedded automation and mature AI and how to ensure AI would help hiring teams without adding bias.
Smarth had a clear vision that AI could support hiring teams if it leveraged data across platforms to make highly objective decisions, summarize outputs, track data to help support ROI examples, and quickly and accurately automate workflows. Like the sales tech founders that preceded him, Smarth envisioned that these tools would minimize time spent on administrative and lower-value activities and transform day-to-day operations for his personas.
Please “meet” HireQuotient, a purpose-driven AI company that believes in simplifying the recruiting process, finding exceptional and diverse talent, and fostering more meaningful conversations between recruiters, candidates and executives. The company's cutting-edge technology, supported by a dedicated and customer-obsessed team, empowers recruiters to concentrate on impactful activities such as nurturing relationships with candidates, preparing executives for interview loops, and negotiating and closing candidates rather than spending their off-hours sifting through countless resumes.
For anyone who is or has been a hiring manager, depending on the type and level of the role, it can take weeks or months to fill a critical position. Interviewing subpar candidates can be excruciating, and the opportunity cost of unfulfilled positions, especially in sales, marketing, and engineering, can often be unrecoverable.
1. identify passive and active candidates they may not otherwise be able to find and from that pool,
2. sift through the resumes and profiles of hundreds of applicants to find the top 1% candidates for the team to interview. The innovation here is you can add your most complex requirements.
For example, “I want a VP of Sales who has scaled a business from $5 million to $15 million, has ten years of SaaS experience, and lives on the West Coast.”
My Journey as a HireQuotient Customer
In the spring of 2023, I joined a well-known revenue enablement company as its co-CEO. In that capacity, my job was to raise capital, increase the company's brand equity, and supercharge its go-to-market (GTM) organization and talent. While we recently closed a sizable round of funding, our new financial partner wanted us to run and grow the business efficiently. I had numerous roles to fill, from chief customer officer to demand generation manager to a continent-based sales rep in Europe. My challenge was I had only one internal recruiter, and I didn't have a budget to spend on an external search firm - even for the highly strategic roles.
Amidst these challenges, my interest in HireQuotient quickly transformed into a compelling need to explore how the company could help me achieve my goals. I reached out to Smarth, and we struck a deal. The team at HireQuotient impressed me not just with their Easysource tool but also with their dedication to our mutual success. Their support was instrumental in helping me fill critical positions and elevate the talent within our organization.
I conducted 7-10 searches with HireQuotient with two primary use cases. For the first use case, I had two internal candidate referrals which I wanted to supplement with additional diverse external candidates. Out of 700 plus applicants the HireQuotient team quickly identified the top 1%; my recruiter spoke with only the best of the best top 1% and then sent finalists my way.
In the second use case, I had to find that proverbial “needle in the haystack.” We needed to hire a sales rep in Europe - but on the continent instead of in the UK, where I had many contacts. Additionally, we needed this rep to speak German, English, and other languages; we required the rep to have experience working in revenue enablement and understand the inner workings of our most strategic software partner. The HireQuotient team helped me close this search in weeks.
Filling these two roles alone saved me and the company time and money while providing a high-quality candidate experience along the way.
Joining Forces with HireQuotient
After having such an impactful experience as a HireQuotient customer, I am thrilled to announce that I am now joining forces with the company. I look forward to working with Smarth and the team to help companies transform their talent acquisition strategies and to scale up Hire Quotient's business in North America.
Many of us understand that AI agents are the future of Cognitive-as-a-Service and outcome-as-a-service. HireQuotient is well-positioned to lead in these categories.
When I asked Smarth what outcome he aspires to achieve for HireQuotient, he answered, NASDAQ! That is his BHAG and what keeps the HireQuotient team motivated to deliver the best possible outcomes for every customer.
Let's embrace the future of talent acquisition together!
Write to me at mary@hirequotient.com if you want to explore the impact of AI in hiring or talk about it further.