Reflections on Joining HireQuotient
It's been 30 days since I joined forces with HireQuotient as its Chief Evangelist, and I'd like to share some early reflections. After spending the last decade as an analyst covering the RevTech marketplace and, most recently, as an operator leading a revenue enablement company, I am excited to extend my journey into the Future of Work. As organizations of all shapes and sizes reimagine their workforces and envision innovative technologies' role in partnering with that workforce, I can't imagine a more dynamic place to be. While change is afoot, one thing remains constant: every thriving organization needs access to the best talent it can get.
As a client, I had already observed the power of HireQuotient's EasySource recruiting platform. As a team member, I am talking to customers and digging deeper into the solution as I embark on my journey to becoming a power user. By leveraging AI and automation, the EasySource solution allows users to compress, personalize, and automate the first three-quarters of the candidate recruitment process—effectively allowing one recruiter to handle the workload of many. Based on your prompts, the AI will identify a specific talent pool; you then create hyper-personalized and omnichannel outbound workflows - including messaging across email, LinkedIn, and text. The platform then does skill-based prescreening, and your workflows facilitate engagement with your top-tier candidates (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 : Typical recruiting versus EasySource's AI-powered recruiting
The beauty of this approach is that it creates better experiences for all constituents and enables quicker and better business outcomes. Drawing from multiple databases, like Google X-Ray, public profiles across social networks, applicant tracking systems (ATS) and so on, the system casts a wide net with narrow specifications to identify passive and active candidates, handles the pre-screening, and engages with the candidate. The recruiter offloads these downstream activities, allowing them to spend time interviewing only the 5-star candidates.
Once the recruiter has a set of highly qualified candidates, the system then auto-generates profiles that are shared with the hiring manager (see Figure 2). Because of how granular you can get with your skills requirements, the hiring manager knows they only see, interview, and advance the highest quality candidates, thus saving their time and the time of their "directs" or other internal professionals participating in the interview loops.
Finally, because of the deep research conducted before candidate outreach, employers can target only the candidates with the highest probability of being "a fit." With a smaller pool of only highly qualified candidates, the recruiter's time is freed from the now automated lower-value activities; every candidate can have a white-glove experience regardless of whether or not they are hired. The employer's brand equity is protected because the candidate had high-quality and respectful interactions with the company.
Figure 2 : Auto-generation of professional, objective, and informative profiles
Immersing in the HireQuotient Culture
My excitement over harnessing AI for next-gen talent acquisition has evolved into a deeper understanding of HireQuotient's broad and bold mission of leveraging AI to make human interactions more meaningful. Since I met Smarth and the team, I was struck by HireQuotient's company culture. While the technology is elegant, solves real-world problems, and delivers quantifiable business outcomes, every team member's passion, drive, and unwavering commitment to this mission and every customer inspires me. Not only have I heard this from customers, but I have personally experienced the team's customer-centricity as a new hire. Day or night, no matter my question, someone on the team is always nearby, ready to offer whatever help and assistance I need. And they do it with expertise and kindness.
Those of you who have followed my work over the years know I am deeply committed to seeing more underrepresented professionals rise to the top of their organizations. I believe every company's board, leadership team, and employees should naturally reflect the world around them and their customers. Smarth's vision of leveraging AI to support hiring teams without adding bias deeply resonates with me.
The EasySource AI research model allows the recruiter to break down any criteria into highly objective questions, which, combined with accurate information across all credible data sources, contributes to more effective and inclusive screening.
One of the challenges with sourcing candidates only from LinkedIn is the potential inaccuracy and/or lack of detail in their profiles. This is exasperated when companies do keyword parsing. For example, let's say I want to hire a VP of North American Sales, and I specifically want to see candidates who have scaled a SaaS business from $5M to $15M in ARR. Traditional recruiting tools will overlook candidates who have not provided that level of specificity in their profiles. Our platform goes deeper into the unique experience of each candidate and then leverages other data sources like Crunchbase to map the candidate to revenues over time. It then provides insights into whether or not that candidate likely contributed to that scale-up.
Listening and Learning
It should be no surprise that a key focus of my first 30 days has been listening to and learning from our customers. As a former analyst, I know the value of keeping my ear to the ground. My conversations have focused on understanding our customers' business challenges and opportunities, why they purchased EasySource, and how it's going for them with the tool; I ask if there are things our team could be doing better and what if any, new features they are interested in having access to. And, of course, happy customers are our best advocates, so I am inviting our customers to partner with me in spreading the word.
In addition to speaking with customers, I've also had the opportunity to talk with many former colleagues and current and future business partners. In today's world, where prospects are independent and inundated with information, embracing a nearbound strategy will be crucial to accelerating HireQuotient's growth. While I look forward to more and deeper conversations around partnering, I am pleased to have found many intersection points with executives and companies with whom I have had long-term relationships. These interactions have underscored the various applications of our platform, from supporting high-growth tech startups to assisting established enterprises in filling critical roles with speed and quality.
Championing Innovation
In my role of showcasing our innovative technology, you will continue to see and hear me out and about at industry events, as a guest on some of your favorite podcasts, as a webinar participant, and most recently, as a Hard Skills Exchange Panelist who had the opportunity to interview the very first Evangelist, Guy Kawasaki on his concept and book Think Remarkable
Final Thoughts
My first 30 days at HireQuotient have been full of learning, growth, and excitement. Every interaction and milestone has reinforced my belief in our mission and the transformative power of our technology. As we continue to innovate and push boundaries, I am eager to contribute to our journey, helping organizations find exceptional and diverse talent as we collectively embrace The Future of Work.
Thank you for joining me in this reflection. Stay tuned for more updates as we advance our mission of leveraging AI to make human interactions worldwide more meaningful.
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.