Customer Stories
Databricks

How Databricks scaled 10x without compromising on quality of hire

90k+

interviews scheduled each year

10x

growth in hiring in five years

25%

reduction in cancellations

Industry

Software Development

Location

San Francisco, CA

Company Size

5,000-10,000

ATS

A fast-growing global workforce

The Databricks story is one of massive growth.

Increased demand for AI solutions has led to significant year-over-year (YoY) growth for Databricks, a platform that simplifies and democratizes data and AI to help data and AI teams solve the world’s toughest problems. Databricks has a client base of more than 10,000 organizations, including many Fortune 500 companies, and their impressive growth meant they needed a way to quickly hire the best possible talent.

The Databricks team used to rely on manual processes, which left information scattered across multiple spreadsheets and created a lot of administrative work for the team. [b] These challenges were magnified as Databricks scaled, and the team knew something had to change.

“When you’re 400 people and you hire the next 400, it feels hard,” said Jonathan Reyes, VP of People and Talent Acquisition Operations at Databricks. “But it’s much harder when you’re 4,000 people and you hire the next 4,000.”

Using AI agents to optimize hiring

Given their industry and expertise, partnering with AI-driven technology was a top priority for Databricks.

“We believe in AI,” Jonathan said. “When it comes to hiring, we want to move really, really fast. AI is an incredible tool to help us move faster across that lifecycle.”

They discovered GoodTime, a platform designed to meet the complex needs of talent acquisition teams worldwide. With an emphasis on human-centric AI that augments human abilities, GoodTime aligned perfectly with Databricks’ values.

GoodTime gave Jonathan and his team the features and support they needed to craft an ideal hiring experience — for candidates and hiring teams alike.

“GoodTime is a key partner to us,” Jonathan said. “If we’re going to reach our hiring target this year, we’re going to do it because we have partners like GoodTime.”

High-touch experiences at scale

When any company is hiring at scale, it’s easy for teams to overlook two things:

Clear communication about expectations and outcomes
Transparency around processes

These oversights can leave hiring managers overwhelmed and candidates feeling like they’ve been ghosted.

Using GoodTime, the team created new workflows and automations that propel candidates through the hiring process faster while crafting a world-class, high-touch hiring experience.

“It’s an important tool on both sides of the equation to create transparency, ownership, and accountability for all parties,” Jonathan said.

Candidates feel a greater sense of control and transparency because they can monitor the hiring process through GoodTime. On the back end, increased visibility and automation help hiring managers know exactly where they need to be, how they need to show up, and what they need to do. With GoodTime’s AI agents identifying the right interviewers, auto-rescheduling, and surfacing insights behind the scenes, the Databricks team stays laser-focused on what matters: connecting with talent.

“GoodTime has allowed us to increase the productivity and output from our recruiting coordinators in a measurable way,” said Jonathan. “More importantly, it’s increasing our capacity. Now, our coordinators engage in communications and create a higher touch feel with our candidates.”

More data and insights reduce time to hire

Not surprisingly, data is at the heart of everything Databricks does. GoodTime gives them the opportunity to collect more measurable data than they could before.

“Data is the most insightful piece, and one of the most important things we get out of GoodTime,” Jonathan said.

Databricks uses this newfound data to tweak their processes, ultimately reducing the time spent on scheduling and the overall time to hire. These changes go a long way to boosting the overall velocity that’s so crucial to operations.

“When you’re in hypergrowth and hyperscale, you want to do things as quickly as possible,” said Jonathan. “We’re not just growing. We’re growing really, really fast. And GoodTime allows you to move a candidate through the funnel seamlessly.”

The team easily manages key hiring components like targets, communication, training, and scheduling. They can set and track measurable targets through GoodTime, and by doing so, they can see whether they’re on the right course.

“We use an equation to work out how many people we are going to need at each stage and how fast we need to move them through the funnel in order to get to that target,” said Jonathan. “That is really important when you’re in the situation that we are at Databricks, where growth is our principle and the most important strategic goal.”

The company now conducts around 90,000 interviews each year, with about 15% of those needing rescheduling. While recruiters and hiring teams are now much more efficient, they see even more room for improvement.

“We know that we can get essentially two people’s worth of work by reducing reschedules by even 5%,” said Jonathan. “We’re trying to be efficient with our team as well as accelerate the hiring process.”

Managing growth with stellar experiences

In 2020, Databricks had just 800 employees. By 2025, the company grew to 8,000 employees — that’s 10x growth over five years. GoodTime makes that growth much more sustainable, leading to better experiences and outcomes.

“GoodTime is an AI-powered tool that allows us to not only quickly engage and keep our candidates informed, but also create and accelerate a smooth process and design an experience to reflect what it’s like to work at Databricks,” Jonathan said.

Because of this, GoodTime is more than just another part of the Databricks tech stack. It’s an essential piece of their overall hiring strategy.

“The advantage of GoodTime is that it’s been able to scale with us as we go through our journey of growth year on year. And I think that’s become a critical and significant reason why we continue to partner with GoodTime,” Jonathan said.

Where we landed

90k+

interviews scheduled each year

10x

growth in hiring in five years

25%

reduction in cancellations

AI for more human hiring.

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