Category: News

By Kyle Lagunas, Aptitude Research

The original article is posted here.

On this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m hanging out with Ahryun Moon, CEO and Co-Founder, and Jasper Sone, Co-Founder and CPO, of GoodTime—a Workday partner that’s redefining how we think about interviews. Let’s face it: interviews are the most dreaded part of the interview process and often painful for everyone involved. But GoodTime is here to bring order to the chaos with smarter tools that streamline scheduling, empower interviewers, and improve the experience for everyone.

We get into how GoodTime orchestrates interviews from every angle, how an interviewer’s preparedness can make or break employee experience, and how agentic AI is creating a smarter, more connected talent ecosystem. 

In this episode, Ahryun Moon and Jasper Sone remind us that interviews aren’t just a box to check—they’re where hiring success begins. From empowering interviewers to building smarter AI ecosystems, find out how GoodTime is helping HR teams step into the future of hiring with confidence.

Bringing Order to the Chaos

The interview process is messy. It’s chaotic. It’s the Wild West of talent acquisition, and it’s been screaming for a glow-up for years. Enter GoodTime. They’re not just smoothing out a few rough edges—they’re flipping the whole script. “GoodTime is an AI platform that orchestrates the entire experience for everyone—all stakeholders in the hiring process. So not just candidates, but also interviewers, TA teams, as well as hiring managers,” Ahryun explains.

GoodTime isn’t just about scheduling (though they nail that too). With tools like candidate and interviewer portals and training modules, they’re bringing intelligence to every step of the process. And they’ve cracked the code on turning raw data into actionable guidance. “We are providing in-depth insights and data in that interview process so that our customers can shorten time-to-hire, be more efficient, and actually do more with less,” Ahryun says.

This isn’t just an upgrade. It’s a full-blown transformation of how interviews happen. GoodTime is helping HR teams take control and make candidate interviews less of a headache and more of a strategic advantage.

Prepping Interviewers for Success

I’m going to let you in on one of the worst kept secrets… most interviewers are winging it. They’re running from back-to-back meetings, glancing at a resume at the last second and hoping for the best. It’s not their fault—interviewers are often overlooked when it comes to talent acquisition tools. But GoodTime is flipping the narrative by focusing on a group that’s critical to the hiring process.

“As an interviewer, imagine if you’re going into this interview and you feel underprepared. It’s kind of like this sense that you should have studied for the test, but you haven’t,” Jasper says. And the consequences of that? A poor candidate experience and wasted time. “Candidates are not stupid. They know that they’re underprepped. So then it really botches candidate experience,” Ahryun adds.

GoodTime’s interviewer portal gives even the busiest hiring managers the tools to get prepped in five minutes flat. Pair that with automatic prep time built into schedules, and you’ve got a recipe for interviews that are actually productive. 

Building a Smarter Ecosystem

Here’s where it gets futuristic (in the good way): GoodTime’s partnership with Workday, leveraging Workday’s AI, Illuminate, is helping create a new kind of HR tech ecosystem. The GoodTime team is optimistic for a future powered by agentic AI. What’s agentic AI? Think of it as AI agents—each specialized in tasks like scheduling, sourcing or internal mobility—working together and talking to each other to deliver smarter, more connected outcomes.

“The opportunity that was really interesting about Illuminate and the ecosystem that they’re building is now we actually have a place for these agents to actually start interacting together,” Jasper says. “There’s a high likelihood that if you build an agent here, you’ll be able to make sure that it and others have access to it at scale.”

For GoodTime, this means evolving into the ultimate scheduling agent. “We would like to become the ultimate scheduling agent that can engage with natural language and then be able to schedule even the most complex interview,” Ahryun says. Imagine being able to coordinate multi-round interviews for executives and high-volume retail hires alike, all without breaking a sweat.

The future isn’t just better tools in your tech stack, it’s creating an ecosystem where yout HR tech works together seamlessly to scale impact. And really, now that we’re seeing that possiblity, why would we ever settle for for less?

People in This Episode

• Ahryun Moon: LinkedIn
• Jasper Sone: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries. Welcome back to Transformation Realness, the only show all about people who are doing their best to make the world of work less shitty and have the guts to share their story: the good, the bad and most of all, the real. This podcast is produced in partnership with Rep Cap and hosted by yours truly, your fearless navigator, Kyle Lagunas, Head of Strategy and Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research, the leading boutique research firm covering HR tech and transformation. Get into it.

For today’s episode, we are back on Workday’s Forever Forward Bus, and we’re diving into a game-changing conversation about rethinking the interview process from every angle. Interviews. The ultimate Wild West of talent acquisition. You know it. I know it. And my guests today, Ahryun Moon, CEO of GoodTime, and Jasper Sone, their product mastermind, they definitely know it too.

We’re talking about how this power couple in their platform are tackling one of the messiest parts of hiring: interviews. From seamless scheduling to empowering interviewers and candidates alike, GoodTime is putting intelligence into every touch point of the process. And with Workday’s partner ecosystem backing them, the stakes and the opportunities have never been higher. It’s another installment of Built on Workday: The Birth of the New HR Tech Ecosystem.

Let’s get real about how to do more with less, deliver better experiences, and make hiring smarter, not harder. 

Hello, my little blueberries. Welcome back to Transformation Realness, coming to you live from the back of a bus at HR Tech. The back of the bus is the coolest place to be, of course. There is a podcasting studio in Workday’s bus. It’s so sick. It is really fun. And I am joined today by two of my new friends at GoodTime, Ahryun, Jasper. Do you guys want to say hi?

Ahryun Moon:

Yeah, definitely. I’m Ahryun, one of the co-founders and CEO of GoodTime.

Jasper Sone:

Nice to meet you. My name’s Jasper. I’m one of the co-founders of GoodTime, and I work on the product.

Kyle Lagunas:

So here this week we are talking about this major push from Workday to expand their partner ecosystem. Look, I’ve been an industry analyst for about 15 years. I used to be very young, and now I’m not as young as I was, but.

Ahryun Moon:

You look young.

Kyle Lagunas:

Thank you. Thank you. I still haven’t done any Botox yet. Gotta get that skincare going. But look, I’ve covered the space for a really long time, and I’ve seen different types of partner programs. I’ve seen a lot especially in the major HCM space. These companies like to build it themselves. They like to maintain that walled garden. And I think that with as much disruption as we’ve been through in the last couple of cycles, that the game has to change.

I’m really excited this week to be able to sit down with some of these new partners that Workday is engaging with and celebrate some of this partnership, the outcomes that are coming from it. I’m really hoping that people aren’t thinking I’m just here stanning for Workday, although I’m happy with this. I want to see others in the space take this and run with it as well.

But yeah, so that’s my setup. That’s what we’re here to talk about. Tell me about what’s going on with GoodTime and Workday as part of this. Maybe for those who don’t know, you all can tell me a little bit about who GoodTime is, what you guys do.

Ahryun Moon:

Yeah, definitely. So GoodTime is an AI platform that orchestrates the entire experience for everyone, all stakeholders in the hiring process. So not just candidates, but also interviewers, TA team, as well as hiring managers. Our core is being able to schedule extremely complex interviews for corporate roles, but also using the same technology, we now schedule high volume retail roles as well.

So the scheduling and then the brain and engine behind that is really our core. But on top of that, we’ve also built out what we call the experience layer. So we have something called candidate portal, interviewer portal, interviewer training, all those to really prep the people who will be in the interviews to put their best foot forward. And on top of that, we have an intelligence layer.

So typically what we found is the process of interview is where data is severely lacking. So we are actually providing very in-depth insights and data in that interview process so that our customers can actually shorten the time to hire, be more efficient, and actually do more with less, but with data-driven decision-making.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, I love it. I mean, honestly, the interview process is kind of the Wild West in talent acquisition. It’s an area that continues to just need so much support. I feel like it’s interesting how many people that interview that aren’t trained to interview. And the hiring organization really has no insight into what people talk about and how it goes. Interviewers themselves don’t know really how they should effectively run these things, right?

Ahryun Moon:

Totally, yeah. Actually, Jasper can talk more about our experience.

Kyle Lagunas:

These stakeholders need support, and a lot of these tools we build are just for the recruiting sake. You guys are engaging other stakeholders, right?

Jasper Sone:

Absolutely. I think one of the things that from the flip side of that, as an interviewer, imagine if you’re going into this interview and you feel underprepared. It’s kind of like this sense that you should have studied for the test, but you haven’t. And oftentimes this is not their only job. This is part of the many different facets of their job. And so really understanding for us that it wasn’t just the administrative components of setting up the interview to make them successful.

It’s actually all of the actors that are around the interview itself. That was the key moment for us as we started building out more and more of these products around interviewing. As much as companies have done amazing jobs to enhance their overall candidate experience, you can’t help but wonder how much of the experience is actually determined inside of the interview.

Kyle Lagunas:

100%. 100%. It’s not even just that so many of these interviewers are… I love that notion of I didn’t study for this test, but the reason I feel like that happens, meeting culture is out of control these days. And so somebody that’s interviewing in Canada, I’m running from one meeting that ended right before this was scheduled to start, and hopefully we wrap up on time.

And then I also have another meeting immediately after this. And so for the talent acquisition organization, we need to enable that interview experience. It’s not just automating the interview scheduling process. There is a lot of efficiency to be gained there, but we need more impact than just that.

Ahryun Moon:

Oh yeah, absolutely. So actually that’s why I think the scheduling aspect and as well as experience really go hand in hand. So things like, hey, let’s always make sure that there’s 10 minute buffer before the previous interview. We can actually programmatically set that up within GoodTime, so it just happens. And then the experience portion, the interviewer portal, what it does is it actually helps interviewers prep within five minutes.

And that’s literally what they do, or they go into the interview and they’re reading resume, looking up LinkedIn. Candidates are not stupid. They know that they’re underprepped. So then it really botches candidate experience. So really I think those components really go hand in hand. That’s why we built out the platform that way.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, honestly, I feel like we have accelerated some of the innovation in this space. We’re realizing that we can support more of this experience. It’s really cool to see how much product you guys have built. I feel you have built a lot really recently. Are you getting any sleep, Jasper?

Jasper Sone:

Fortunately, yes, but the innovation I think comes with changing technology availability, but also customer support as well too, because a lot of the needs come directly from our customers. And so it’s amazing over the last probably three or four years, so many things have changed in our lives and these changes come with new problems, new solutions that need to match those problems.

And so we’ve been very fortunate to be at the crux of that. And it’s amazing to see companies like Workday as well to take advantage of this opportunity. That’s really huge in building out an ecosystem for all these players to actually start interacting together.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, that’s the perfect segue. Because like I said, historically, these major players have tried to build it all. If you had a shared customer with them, they would, yeah, here are API’s, but I’m not going to have a bidirectional with you. And for something like jumping in and enhancing the interview experience and it doesn’t have bidirectional integration with my ATS, none of this is connected. I just can push some stuff towards them. I don’t know. I feel like that is a broken experience.

It limits the amount of value that you all can bring as solution providers to the problems you’re trying to solve. So it’s cool to see Workday being like, all right, actually we’re never going to build what GoodTime has. And we do see that our customers want some of these capabilities. So yeah, let’s be partners. Let’s talk a little bit about how have you seen your experience as Workday partners, how has it made an impact on the Workday customers that you have?

Ahryun Moon:

Definitely. We actually have been Workday partner for a while now, about five years.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, cool!

Ahryun Moon:

Our first Workday customer is a very popular social network. And since then, in the last five years, just frankly, they’ve been a really amazing partner and also they have really good API, so we can actually have bidirectional sync and everything, but not a whole lot of proactivity in terms of partnership.

But in the recent one year, I think things completely changed. They’re a lot more engaging. We are engaging with them more. We are brainstorming together also on what we can do to actually bring more results to our customers, mutual customers. At the end of the day, I think we want to bring that result to our customers and make them more successful.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, that’s the name of the game, isn’t it? Look, it’s been a rough couple of cycles as solution providers in this space. It’s also been rough for the practitioners. But I have been saying consistently, the company, the vendors that are being customer obsessed, the ones that are prioritizing the customer’s needs over any other political environment or co-opetition or whatever, they’re winning, right?

So they’re starting to lean in and collaborate with you. Jasper, how’s that going for you? Because you have the product organization under you, right? Yeah. So what’s that like? Are you nerding out with these people? Are you coming with a bunch of ideas and they’re like, “Yeah, go ahead.” Just talk to me about that collaboration on that side.

Jasper Sone:

Yeah. I think what’s really amazing about the opportunity is just simply just the platform itself. And then in conversations, essentially you can really understand whenever you work with these businesses that care about their customers, you have an immediate opportunity to click with them. So I think any product discussion that you have, it makes sense. And you can clearly draw lines and say, “Hey, we’ve been trying to solve this problem, but this is not our wheelhouse. How can we help?”

Kyle Lagunas:

They’re being open about that, which I also love.

Ahryun Moon:

Actually, yeah, we had a really nice meeting with Workday and they said, “We’re not building GoodTime. We are not investing into building something like GoodTime. We actually would love for partners like GoodTime to actually help our customers.” So they’re very open about it, which we love.

Kyle Lagunas:

Have you guys had an opportunity to look at I think that they productized the name of their AI strategy now, which is Illuminate? Yeah, yeah, because I’m thinking about Agentic AI, which I wasn’t even talking about 18 months ago, but this is a real thing all of a sudden. How are you looking at your product roadmap and thinking about, all right, now I know what I can build into Workday? You probably have, I don’t know, a new toolkit to play around with.

Jasper Sone:

I feel like one of the things that was really amazing about the AI space is I remember talking to my AI professor in college and he basically said, “Where we’re at today wouldn’t be around for another 50 or 60 years.” And this is a very educated individual in this space, but that’s how humans are very… It’s very hard for us to understand exponential growth. And so it’s happened really quickly.

But one of the problems that wasn’t solved was you have all of these cool technologies swirling around and businesses taking advantage of them, but where do they all come together? For us, I think the opportunity that was really interesting about the Illuminate and the ecosystem that they’re building is now we actually have a place for these agents to actually start interacting together that there’s a high likelihood that if you build an agent here, you’ll be able to make sure that it has access and others have access to it at scale essentially that’s necessary.

Kyle Lagunas:

A huge part of scale and adoption is also trust as well. I was talking to somebody else here at the show and even the larger players in our space, not like the Workdays and Oracles of the world, but even an established player like GoodTime, the IT teams at these enterprise companies are still going to think of you as “some random startup.” So why would I give them access to this or that? Why would I integrate more deeply with this?

You guys are getting involved in having access to their most sensitive systems, which is their scheduling, their email. That’s a really sensitive space. I have to imagine that now having… Not just now, like you said, five years, but having that partnership with Workday, they’ve said, “Hey, not only do these people have a product that we think is valuable, we also trust them. We have vetted them. You can trust them too. They’re our partner. They can be trusted as your partner as well.” Are you finding that ethos in your customer engagements with Workday?

Ahryun Moon:

That’s actually a really good point, and I think that’s an amazing validation that our customers will absolutely trust. When we were at Workday Rising last week, a lot of customers actually came by and said, “Hey, we want to actually turn on this AI feature,” whether it be within Workday or within GoodTime.

And they’re like, “I actually need to get some soundbite so that I can actually have a logical conversation with my security team.” I think everyone is really at the forefront in trying to utilize AI, but at the same time, IT and security. It’s a brand new horizon for them. But yeah, I think having that partnership with Workday and Workday validating our [product] as a very safe vendor means a lot to our customer.

Kyle Lagunas:

It definitely does. Because look, the exponential growth that we have seen in innovation — by the way, we’re 18 months into widely adopted GenAI — HR teams can’t keep up with this. Because not only are they I think they’re struggling with some literacy around AI, they don’t really know how these things work, the increased scrutiny that’s coming from these security and compliance teams, HR and talent acquisition is struggling to overcome because they’re struggling to inform and respond to these questions.

And so it slows down their own innovation agenda because it’s like, I don’t know how this AI agent works. I just know that it is going to deliver value for me. That struggle to overcome those objections, I think, stalls us, which is why I’m excited then to see this is a really good time for Workday to open up this partnership so that their customers can find the right partner for the problem that’s in front of them, find the right solution and move quickly, more relatively quickly.

I mean, I study adoption trends and we saw a huge pause in AI enabled HR initiatives over the last year because this increased scrutiny from these AI councils.

Ahryun Moon:

We actually have met even some people from government, and you know how governments are, slower.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh God, yeah. FedRAMP.

Ahryun Moon:

But even they were saying, “Hey, with AI, it’s not a matter of a few years of adoption. We need it now. Within a few months we need it.” So I think everyone understands the urgency of it. I think we just have to… Probably it’ll take a few months for everyone to be on the same page. And then if you want completely 100% security, you don’t use any SaaS. No Workday. No GoodTime. No nothing. Right?

You work in your own silo. But it’s all about calculated risks and also working with vendors that actually do care about the security of the data. And I think that at GoodTime, for example, we care deeply about it. We make sure that our engineering team has a very good stance on it, and also make sure that we do not process any PII through the AI and so on. So as long as you calculate the risks and know that the ROI is there, then I think the industry will come.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, I also just see alignment between your all’s philosophy and your own self-regulation for AI as well as Workday’s. I really love the advisory board that you all have built, the Human-Centric Advisory Board for… Human-Centric AI Advisory Council. I’m really excited to be working with you guys to take that and build a new coalition. What does human-centric AI mean for you guys? And I want to share with people about this coalition we’re going to do.

Ahryun Moon:

Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of people, especially in HR and TA, are very afraid that AI will take their jobs and be replacing humans. And the process of HR and TA are just innately human. We are hiring humans. So what we believe in is using AI to really augment humans, not to necessarily replace and just make the entire process very robotic and process candidates like we are doing paper pushing.

We do not believe in that. We do believe in elevating experience using AI, elevating efficiency using AI, and also augmenting people so they can make better decisions with data. So that’s what HCAI is all about. And there are actually quite a lot of HR leaders in the industry that really believe in that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, you guys have a sick crew of people that have joined you. I’m like, wow, work. Okay, these are some real legit leaders, right?

Ahryun Moon:

Totally.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, the industry needs it. There are HR leaders that I think are more expert and just I think a little savvier when it comes to AI. And I think you all are engaging a lot of them to come and help you sit down and think through, making sure that things are human-centric, but they don’t really have a vehicle to share what they’ve learned and how they’ve gotten over these objections and how they’ve kept their AI agendas moving forward in these really chaotic times.

I mean, I think that’s where when you all came to me about you’re doing your advisory board, that’s really for GoodTime. There is some thought leadership there, but you want them leaning in on your own product roadmap. Well, I’m looking at it and I’m saying the number of AI projects, the urgency to get the enhancements, the impact from AI is so real, but the HR and TA teams are stuck.

I wanted to bring some of these folks together and say, well, let’s crowdsource some best practices. Let’s sit down as respected colleagues and look at the EU AI regulations and say, how can we adapt this to make sure that these are fit for purpose in HR and TA, and how can we create a shared standard for the industry to pick up? If you guys create technical documentation for these evaluations, you’re doing that entirely on your own.

And they’re going to scrutinize it because you put it together. But if we can put together here’s what standards are for ethical and human-centric AI, if we can put together here is an RFI template that you should send out to every potential AI partner that’s fit for HR, I feel like those kinds of shared practices, it really is going to rise the tide. And so when you’re getting scrutinized for AI, you’re not going to be out there on your own.

You’re going to say, no, actually, Aptitude’s certified us as a human-centric AI provider. And we have, which by the way, it’s like 40… I don’t know how many people we’re going to end up having in this coalition, but 40 expert HR and talent acquisition technology leaders have leaned in to say that this is what we’re all aligning to. I feel like that just helps you guys move past and get more of that trust going with external stakeholders in IT and compliance.

Jasper Sone:

And as founders, I think one of the things that we think about is oftentimes you’re working on things that people haven’t built before, and that’s what the entire industry is in right now. Together we are working with a technology that we haven’t mastered yet. It’s so important when you’re doing these things to have these voices in the room that have been in the industry for so… Collectively, there’s probably multiple centuries worth of HR knowledge in the same room.

And then you couple that with technology, and I think that’s when you can make… Even before the standards come out, we can make interesting standards available so that even though we are going to obviously learn from those and take advantage of those first, but these can eventually become standards for the entire HR industry as well too, which I think will be very powerful in helping jumpstart the adoption of new AI technology.

Kyle Lagunas:

I think so too. I mean, we need it. We really do. I mean, it’s like being an HR expert or being a TA expert is not enough, knowing my processes, knowing deep subject matter expertise and policy. And I’m not trying to undermine the value of that level of expertise, but I know and firmly believe that’s not enough anymore. We actually do have to be literate with AI. I do need to at least know functionally, generally, how do these things work, what do they do, and what do they not do.

You had mentioned calculated risk earlier, that a lot of companies are taking more calculated risk. I don’t know that I see that. I see a lot of TA and HR teams that assume risk and they don’t actually calculate any of it. They just avoid it. They’re like, “Ugh!” We do a survey, what’s the leading obstacle for adoption of AI and HR? Guess what? Bias is there. We’re afraid of bias.

I’m like, well, the actual number one obstacle of adoption of AI is a lack of understanding of AI in the HR organization. You guys work with project leaders. They’re working with you on the implementation and they know how to do this. That’s not enough to have one expert at the project level. You need to have all of TA, all of HR that knows what these things are.

And that lack of literacy I think is just a big challenge for us because that’s inhibiting that calculated… I need to know what the risk actually is so I can decide if I’m avoiding it altogether or if I’m mitigating it in some other way. You know what I mean? It’s just like that lack of literacy is just a huge obstacle for us.

Ahryun Moon:

I think that’s why HCAI is super exciting. I think it could be an opportunity for education for HR leaders so that they have the knowledge. Which means if they have the knowledge, they can have a very reasonable conversation with security leaders also.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, exactly.

Ahryun Moon:

So it’s not like, hey, I want this software, and they say, why? And then you cannot really have a good sound bite there. So I think that’s why HCAI is really interesting and I think we’ll do some really great work together. So very exciting.

Kyle Lagunas:

I think so too. I mean, gosh, it’s like getting in front of the security team, getting in front of one of these AI councils, and they’re like, what is this? How is this going to work? What risk are we going to have? And TA is like, here’s the documentation that they gave me. I don’t know. That’s not my job. We really need to empower these people a lot.

Ahryun Moon:

Also, I think with AI, I think TA work may shift just my little crystal ball.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah? What do you mean?

Ahryun Moon:

I feel like there will be more different roles that will be generated within the TA team that actually understands and can harness the power of AI. There will be a lot of agents, for example, that will be doing different things. We are going to go towards scheduling. We would like to become the ultimate scheduling agent that a user can engage with natural language and then be able to schedule even the most complex interview with all the execs and 10 interviews back-to-back.

We can understand because we have the brain and the engine that we built out, and we would love to create an agent like Illuminate. That’s why it’s super interesting to us. We would love to create an agent that makes GoodTime ultimate scheduling agent.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, you’re talking about what your vision is building out, something that is going to be much more conversational with something?

Ahryun Moon:

Assuming their agent, like scheduling agent, sourcing. And so if there are multiple specialized recruiter agents, then someone has to be able to coordinate that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Ahryun Moon:

That will be a brand new role within TA.

Kyle Lagunas:

I do wonder if we’re going to have AI engineers and AI architects in the TA team, because we’re going to need it. I mean, that’s what we see with automation today. It was all rules-based. Anytime you have a use case for an automation you want to create, you’re going to build a new recipe. Who’s maintaining all these recipes? We don’t even have recruiters dispositioning candidates in the ATS. Who’s taking care of this.

No, I think that will be really interesting, and I think it’ll come up in TA first. We’ve always been at the edge, mobile, social. Here’s AI, we’re going to do it again. But let’s come back to land the plane partnership with Workday is maturing. Now it sounds like it’s accelerating. You’ve got a lot of ideas yourself. They’re bringing ideas to you. What is something that you think is uniquely available to Workday to customers that are also GoodTime customers?

Jasper Sone:

Or potential GoodTime customers.

Ahryun Moon:

Yes.

Kyle Lagunas:

Absolutely.

Jasper Sone:

We saw this in our early mutual customers, but Workday being not just an ATS, not just an HCM, not just a finance platform, enables them have all sorts of technology together. And one of the things that is very interesting is very early on when we started working with some of our mutual customers, we saw these individuals building out software on the side that actually tied our two systems together in different ways.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, interesting.

Jasper Sone:

And so the most exciting part about this opportunity for me is this growing feasibility of us to be able to actually make those ties more natural inside of the system. And so I’m very excited about the opportunity to continue to tie in deeper. And what this will ultimately translate to is instead of every customer having to write custom software to build out certain types of data pipelines between the two systems, whether it be connecting their HCM to their ATS to us, or vice versa, now there can be standardized systems that enable them to do this with a button click.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, there’s new foundational layers here too. We’re not just talking about application to application. We’re talking about skills, as an example. Tying skills relevancy from the learning space to the ATS space to the interview scheduling space, making sure that we’re actually assessing an interview for the skills that we do need. That recruiting team is having the same skills language as the learning and development teams are having. I think there’s foundational aspects now that are also going to accelerate some of that growth. You’re not just connecting one new app to another app.

Jasper Sone:

And I think the longer term arc on that is as these systems get to grow together and mature together instead of being in silos, now those types of interesting problems that once were problems because of the silo can now become opportunities for businesses to make better decisions.

One of the things that we love about the GoodTime scheduling algorithm is it considers many different aspects whenever it makes decisions to try to mimic that of a human being making the same decisions. Things like your training status or your availability, your work hours, your likelihood of declining an interview even.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, Interesting.

Jasper Sone:

And so when we do these things, we have all the data that’s inside of our system, but there’s also data that’s outside of our system as well, too, that can be interconnected to help the system make even better decisions. That’s what we are really interested in. We built a really solid foundation to enable us to take in an unlimited amount of parameters. And all of a sudden, here’s a solution provider that has the ability to send in an unlimited amount of parameter results. I think the opportunities are endless.

Kyle Lagunas:

So interesting. Well, I’m really excited for you guys. I’m also excited for just the HR practitioners in the space that have this opportunity to partner with who they want and have that trust and keep that AI innovation going. Thank you both for joining me today. It’s so good to see you. Can’t wait to sit down with you again.

Jasper Sone:

Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

Alright. Bye, everybody. 

And that’s a wrap. A massive thank you to Ahryun and Jasper for a conversation that was anything but good. It was great. From bringing structure intelligence to the interview chaos to tackling one of the biggest bottlenecks in talent acquisition, they are proving that thoughtful design and a little AI magic can go a long way. Here’s what I’m taking away.

By Tom Starner, HR Executive

The original article is posted here.

The coming year will present significant opportunities to truly turn artificial intelligence loose on the talent acquisition space, according to a new report. And the efficiencies the tech offers, researchers find, couldn’t be more needed.

The fourth annual Hiring Insights Report from GoodTime, which automates interview management tasks, queried more than 500 U.S. talent acquisition leaders about the pressing challenges and emerging trends shaping the hiring landscape today.

Significantly, TA teams reported meeting only 47.9% of their hiring goals in 2024 on average, the lowest rate recorded in the past four years.

Ahryun Moon, GoodTime’s CEO and co-founder, explains that the sinking success rate is attributable to several factors, including persistent hiring bottlenecks, increased time-to-hire and rising candidate expectations that are straining hiring efficiency across industries.

On the upside, Moon says, the report surfaced key opportunities for 2025 and beyond, including greater use of AI and automation, tools that streamline hiring and a renewed focus on candidate experience—strategies that top-performing teams are already embracing to stay competitive. The survey found that 99% of talent acquisition teams now use AI and automation to some degree to streamline hiring, with 93% planning additional technology investments in 2025.

“The data makes it clear: Talent teams can’t afford to stay stuck in the hiring struggles of 2024,” Moon says, adding that the path forward demands “bold investments in automation and AI” to eliminate those bottlenecks and meet hiring goals faster.

AI + human: Revolutionizing talent acquisition

Moon points out that 60% of employers reported increases in time-to-hire last year, which should be a wake-up call for talent teams. The culprit isn’t a lack of effort; rather, she says, the issue is outdated tech and processes that can’t keep up with today’s hiring demands.

“The good news is that these delays aren’t permanent,” she says. “The top-performing TA teams are automating processes with AI, moving faster and still delivering the personalized hiring experiences that top candidates expect.”

While AI will be a key to talent acquisition success this year, focusing on “efficiency alone isn’t enough,” Moon adds. “The teams that will win in 2025 are those that balance speed with exceptional, human-centric hiring experiences.”

The 2025 Hiring Insights Report also revealed that hiring challenges varied significantly across sectors. For example, healthcare was the only sector to report year-over-year improvements in hiring goal attainment, reaching 56%. Conversely, the retail and manufacturing sectors faced some of the starkest struggles, with hiring goal attainment dipping to 36%—the lowest in three years.

Without a rethought talent acquisition strategy, these TA teams could continue to face a “perfect storm” in 2025—shrinking resources, increasing complexity and high candidate expectations, adding that the drop in hiring goal success reflects systemic bottlenecks like scheduling delays and poor communication.

“If your hiring process still revolves around email chains and manual scheduling, you’re playing a losing game,” Moon says, adding that the top TA teams don’t just automate tasks—they reimagine how hiring gets done entirely. That means cutting out inefficiencies and adopting new AI and automation tools that let recruiters focus on what they need to do best: build relationships.

“It’s time for talent acquisition to evolve from reactive firefighting to proactive strategizing,” Moon says. “Investing in human-centric AI tools that eliminate bottlenecks frees up recruiters to focus on high-value activities like engaging candidates and raising the bar on quality of hire.

“The teams that thrive in 2025,” she says, “will be those that not only wholeheartedly embrace AI but also remember that hiring is a fundamentally human endeavor.”

By Chain Store Age

The original article is posted here.

The next frontier for artificial intelligence use in retail appears to be talent acquisition.

That’s according to the fourth-annual Hiring Insights Report from AI-focused hiring firm GoodTime, which revealed that 99% of talent acquisition teams now use AI and automation to streamline hiring processes, with 93% planning additional technology investments in 2025​.

Just under half (47.9%) of talent acquisition teams met their hiring goals in 2024 on average, marking the lowest success rate recorded in the past four years​. Sixty percent of organizations also reported longer time-to-hire last year.

Healthcare was the only sector to report year-over-year improvements in hiring goal attainment, reaching 56%. The retail and manufacturing sectors faced some of the highest struggles, with hiring goal attainment dipping to 36% — its lowest in three years.

Of the top-performing hiring teams (who hit 75% or more of their hiring goals in 2024), 48% reported improving the candidate experience, while 40% utilized AI to make hiring more efficient, and 35% decreased the time-to-schedule process.

“The data makes it clear — talent teams can’t afford to stay stuck in the hiring struggles of 2024,” said Ahryun Moon, CEO and Co-Founder of GoodTime. “The path forward demands bold investments in automation and AI to eliminate bottlenecks and meet hiring goals faster. But efficiency alone isn’t enough. The teams that will win in 2025 are those that balance speed with exceptional, human-centric hiring experiences.”

By Deepa Damodaran, HR.com

The original article is posted here.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a speculative trend or a passing buzzword—it’s already here, reshaping industries across the board, and talent acquisition (TA) is no exception.

As per GoodTime’s fourth annual Hiring Insights Report, 99% of talent acquisition teams now use AI and automation to streamline hiring processes, with 93% planning additional technology investments in 2025.

For many in HR, particularly within recruitment, AI’s impact is becoming increasingly tangible. As automation transforms how companies source, screen, and engage with candidates, questions surrounding AI’s future role in TA are growing louder: Will AI replace hiring managers? How should recruiters prepare for the inevitable changes ahead?

While there is no clear-cut answer to these concerns, one thing is certain: in the coming years, the way we think about recruitment and hiring will undergo a fundamental shift.
The early stages of recruitment, from sourcing to screening to scheduling, will become increasingly automated. AI-powered platforms are already capable of scanning resumes, assessing candidate suitability based on predefined criteria, and even conducting initial interviews. As a result, many of the entry-level recruiting roles we know today could become obsolete, while others will evolve into something altogether new.

This transformation brings both challenges and opportunities for talent acquisition professionals. While some fear that AI will completely replace human recruiters, the truth is more nuanced. Recruiters who embrace AI as a tool to enhance their work—rather than a force that diminishes their role—will find themselves at the forefront of a more strategic, value-driven approach to hiring.

Recruiters and hiring managers must adapt to this evolving landscape by becoming experts in AI-driven recruitment tools and learning how to leverage them for better efficiency and accuracy. The role of the recruiter will shift from managing mundane administrative tasks to focusing on higher-level activities, such as relationship-building, employer branding, and strategic workforce planning.

Rather than seeing AI as a competitor, TA professionals should view it as an ally that will free them from routine tasks and allow them to focus on what truly matters: finding the right talent and fostering connections that drive organizational success.

As AI continues to shape the recruitment process, we may see the emergence of new roles within the HR ecosystem, such as talent consultants or talent business partners. These professionals will bring a blend of technical expertise and strategic thinking, helping organizations make more informed decisions about how and where to apply AI. Their job will be to ensure that AI is being used ethically, effectively, and in a way that aligns with the company’s overall talent strategy.

While the future of AI in talent acquisition remains uncertain in many ways, one thing is clear: recruiters who fail to embrace the changes may find themselves left behind. AI is not something that can be avoided or delayed. It is the future, and the future is now.

By BARBARA ORTUTAY, Associated Press

The original article is posted here.

Ahryun Moon got into programming because she wanted to automate the tedious parts of her job as a financial analyst. She did, becoming an engineer first, then founding GoodTime, a startup that helps businesses schedule job interviews and more, in 2016. Moon spoke with The Associated Press about automation, diversity among startup founders and how the pandemic changed job interviews. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

“For female founders, I think it’s harder. An investor I know told me that while no one talks about it, there is a ‘female founder discount’. If we can fix that, that could really generate a new, larger community of female entrepreneurs.”

Ahryun Moon

Q: How did you start GoodTime?

A: I decided to throw accounting and finance behind me and really pursue engineering. For about three years in San Francisco, I just decided to create a bunch of websites, web apps, mobile apps, and so on. The other founders of GoodTime are engineers, too and we decided to go to a bunch of hackathons. The last one we went to, we won, and the person giving out the awards was a recruiter. She said in passing that she spends most of her day scheduling interviews, rescheduling interviews, tracking people down when they don’t show up, and so on. And I was thinking, “Oh, what if I can automate that for her?” That’s how GoodTime was born.

Q: What kinds of companies use GoodTime, and who would you like to see as your audience as you expand?

A: Brand names like Airbnb, Dropbox, Sparks, Shopify, Snap, Salesforce, and so on. Right now, I would say early adopter technology companies are using GoodTime but we really want to expand to the rest of the market.

Q: Is there anything you took away from how our use of technology changed or accelerated during the pandemic and how it applies to GoodTime?

A: At the beginning, it was kind of chaotic. No one knew what was going on. But quickly, people, the industry, really adapted to the new mode of working, which is remote interviews — which actually, at that time, was a foreign concept.

“How can you hire someone that you’ve never met in person?” was typically how people thought. Then that quickly changed. People adapted and GoodTime was really crucial in that a lot of our customers said “Now that interviews are over Zoom and you are not coming into the office, candidates actually want to do the interviews over multiple days instead of all on one day.” So GoodTime can support breaking that down to multiple dates so that it’s catering to the candidates’ needs.

Q: What can you tell us about your experience starting a company as a woman, since women still make up a small fraction of founders? In 2021, companies founded solely by women garnered just 2.4% of the total capital invested in venture-backed startups in the U.S., according to PitchBook.

A: While I was fundraising, I realized there’s a trend that female founders don’t get the same valuation that a male counterpart may get. And it may be because of the way we pitch, the way male founders pitch, and so on. The impact of not getting the valuation that you deserve is that if you raise a small amount of money at a lower valuation, then it’s harder to grow at the same rate as male founders can grow their companies.

You know, female founders help out other female founders. But if you get the valuation that’s lower than what you really deserve and you still have to raise a certain amount of money to grow the company, then you end up actually selling a lot of your shares. So your portion of the company shrinks really dramatically after each fundraising event. What that means is you cannot do a secondary round, meaning you don’t have any money to actually invest back into the female entrepreneurial community, which creates a negative cycle.

So a lot of male founders actually end up becoming investors, angel investors, because they can get a really high valuation. For female founders, I think it’s harder. An investor I know told me that while no one talks about it, there is a female founder discount. If we can fix that, that could really generate a new, larger community of female entrepreneurs.

Q: There’s a lot of talk about automation replacing people’s jobs. Has that been your experience? Do you feel that jobs are in danger because of the products that you build?

A: Recently, I met with one of our users and she said, “Hey, I was hired as a recruiting coordinator, but I was able to do my job in two hours every day instead of taking the full eight hours. Within two months, they actually promoted me into a recruiter position because I got my job done so fast.” So we see people getting promoted because of the time, and what we automate is the portion that humans really shouldn’t be doing.

“We want to replace Google Calendar, Microsoft, Calendly or any other software out there that’s utilized for meeting coordination,”

GoodTime co-founder Ahryun Moon

The original article can be found here.

In her time as a financial analyst for chip company Freescale Semiconductor, the tasks Ahryun Moon hated the most were the mundane things like inventory analysis, which took up most of her time.

In her frustration, she learned to code and automated this process for herself and her entire team. That, Moon said, ended up saving her team a month of time each quarter, and led her to a realization: Automating mundane tasks can make a world of difference in productivity.

Moon is the co-founder of goodtime.io, an enterprise software company that automates workplace processes. GoodTime’s two main products are Hire, its flagship software that schedules interviews with candidates from start to finish, and Meet, which automates scheduling meetings based on people’s jobs and availability. Since the company’s inception in 2016, it’s notched major clients like Zoom, Pinterest and Patreon. Now, she wants GoodTime to challenge calendar giants like Google and Microsoft for users’ attention.

Moon sat down with Protocol to talk about the power of automation, tips on how to make meetings more efficient and the pandemic being an accelerant for the company’s growth.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Tell me about the beginning. What was the inspiration to start GoodTime?

I come from a financial background; I was a financial analyst. At one point, I felt like there was a pattern in the work that I did, and it dawned on me that I could probably automate the work that I was doing. I learned Python and I created a software that was able to automate a really large portion of my work. It was really eye-opening for me. Then everyone in the finance department actually adapted my software. It saved the entire finance team about a month of work per quarter, and we were able to bring financial results to the business division a month earlier every quarter.

After, I decided to really change my career into engineering. I [taught] myself how to code for three years, using free resources online. Then, just kind of for fun, [GoodTime’s] three founders — myself, Jasper [Sone] and Peter [Lee] — we decided to go to a bunch of hackathons together. We thought it would be nice to make some money on the weekends.

The last hackathon we went to was the Launch Hackathon, put on by Jason Calacanis. And we won. We had to go to the Coinbase office to get the [reward]. We had coffee [with a recruiter, who was in charge of giving us the reward] and she said in passing that she spends more than half of her day scheduling and rescheduling interviews and wasting a lot of time doing that instead of actually recruiting. And that kind of dawned on us: What if we can automate that part away?

So at the time, I just told the other two founders to quit their full-time jobs. Let’s just do this and see what happens. That’s how GoodTime was born.

I want to talk a little bit about your flagship product, Hire. How does it work?

Hire automates the entire coordination of the interviews. Whether it be extremely high volume, simple interviews, just one-on-one with the recruiter, or really complex interviews as well, like when a candidate for a final interview has to meet with eight different people from eight different departments. The recruiter or coordinator just has to click a couple of buttons, a candidate would get an email telling them to pick a time that works for them. Then their agenda is in there, interviewer profiles are there. Everything that they need, including Zoom links.

Using interviewer data — such as their training status, their location, their diversity and inclusion status and so on — we can pick the right interviewer to be in each interview, and match them with the right candidate.

I can imagine that your products are really remote-work friendly. How did the pandemic affect your business?

During 2020, things changed overnight. Everything went remote, and that’s when GoodTime became extremely valuable to our customers. Before then the last interview was always in person, because hiring managers didn’t feel comfortable hiring people that they’d never met. So when that went away, you still had thousands of interviews that were supposed to be in person.

Then in 2021, everyone was hiring like absolutely crazy. Automation became really, really important. Corporate America has really learned the lesson that you can’t just throw more people at the problem anymore. People leave all the time, churn is crazy. So digital transformation, automation technologies aren’t just lip service anymore. That’s the tailwind that we utilized in 2021, and we really grew rapidly.

 Ahryun Moon with co-founders Jasper Sone (middle) and Peter Lee at a hackathon in 2014 before they started goodtime.io.Photo: goodtime.io

Things have changed a bit since 2021, though, specifically in these last couple of months. How have things changed for your clients in terms of hiring amid the downturn?

The last couple of months have been filled with uncertainty. It’s not like there’s a clear signal for a recession, there are no clear signals in terms of the job market, because typically a recession is accompanied by job loss and high unemployment rate, which is absolutely not the case. The job market is stronger than ever.

I don’t have a crystal ball, I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen in the future. And I think that’s how our customers feel. Which means they’re in a somewhat of a hunkering-down mode. But what we’ve heard from our customers is that they are actually doubling down on GoodTime and automation technology in general. They’ve learned the lesson from 2020 where it felt like the whole demand curve shifted overnight. But then, within about a quarter or two, we saw our usage spiking like crazy. So everyone is telling me that, based on their experience in 2020, within a quarter or two they’re going to have to hire like crazy again.

How has your company managed to snag major clients like Zoom, Box and Pinterest? What’s drawing them in?

I think it’s changed over time. So when companies were hiring like crazy, they really needed to automate the entire process so that they could get the candidates in the door faster. The market still is extremely competitive — there are 1.9 jobs per candidate — meaning those candidates get snatched up from the market really quickly, within just a couple of weeks. So our software with automation can really help them put their candidates through the entire interview process quickly and get to the offer stage very quickly. You want to be the first offer on the table, and the best.Recently another benefit that has actually come up quite a lot from our customers is actually payroll savings. So when they use GoodTime, a recruiting coordinator can actually double the output, meaning you don’t need to hire as many recruiters to do the same job.

So GoodTime’s other product, Meet, automates the process of scheduling meetings. Do you have any tips on making meetings more efficient?

The first pillar is automation, so that you don’t waste time trying to book that meeting that works for everyone. Relationship is the second pillar, meaning you want to have the right people in each and every meeting, people who can actually add value in that meeting.

The last one is insights and data on meetings. Typically, meetings fall into some kind of process, whether it be sales meetings or customer success meetings or job interviews and so on. You want to try to see a pattern across the entire process and see if you can improve the quality of each and every one that happens in that process, which means you need to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of those meetings and continue to improve upon them.

What do you hope the future of GoodTime looks like? What are your goals?

We’d love to see GoodTime getting bigger adoption. We want to replace Google Calendar, Microsoft, Calendly or any other software out there that’s utilized for meeting coordination. We do sit on top of Google Calendar and Microsoft Calendar, but what we want to steal from them is people’s attention.

We would love for GoodTime to be one of the heavy hitters in that market. The number of meetings on everyone’s calendars is growing — everyone is meeting more than ever. So I would love to see the meetings market getting a lot more attention. Calendars are one of the last spaces that haven’t really been transformed yet in the corporate world.

Nat Rubio-Licht is a Los Angeles-based news writer at Protocol. They graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in newspaper and online journalism in May 2020. Prior to joining the team, they worked at the Los Angeles Business Journal as a technology and aerospace reporter.

Courtesy of ERE.net Original article can be found here.

For decades, companies have enjoyed a talent marketplace where employees generally enjoy the stability of their current job and a robust pipeline of talent every year. If your employee left to take a more lucrative position somewhere else, there were dozens, if not hundreds, of candidates eager to take their place. 

But this dynamic has been shifting over time, as more people switched jobs more quickly, were less inclined to take a job they did not want, or were open to nontraditional opportunities like consulting, freelancing, or other gig work. In other words, the Great Resignation.

Covid was not the cause of the Great Resignation; it was the accelerant. It’s now a seller’s market where potential employees are interviewing with more companies, receiving more offers, and making decisions quicker. 

Indeed, GoodTime’s recent 2022 Hiring Insights Report reveals that talent leaders are now struggling to keep up with hiring demands. The normal supply of job candidates has dried up, and those looking to join companies have new motivations. Inducements like bonuses, gift packages, and other one-directional perks no longer work when candidates are more interested in a meaningful job and a greater sense of community.

Unfortunately, many companies are using an antiquated playbook. Specifically, a key reason why employers are struggling with talent acquisition and retention is their approach to diversity.

Deprioritizing Diversity

According to the report’s findings, the biggest talent challenge companies are facing is retaining their employees. Not only that, they expect that to continue as their biggest challenge over the coming year. While it’s true that external forces have made hiring more challenging (by virtue of fewer candidates for more open roles), companies that struggle may have a slight misalignment of priorities. 

Surveyed HR, talent, and recruiting leaders said the quality of hire was their most important metric (24%), while only 13% cited diversity of candidates. While this makes sense on a practical level, failing to prioritize diversity may hasten employee resignations, as well as make it more difficult to hire quality candidates going forward.

Not Meeting New Candidate Demands

While 90% of respondents agreed that conveying company culture to candidates is important, only 53% said they actually did so during the hiring process. That’s a clear misalignment. 

Additionally, only 31% of companies have been making diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) a measurable priority in the past 12 months, while only 38% of companies plan to make it a measurable priority over the next 12 months. Organizations really should do better.

The Way Forward

Remember: Candidates are interviewing companies just as much as the reverse. Talent executives need to tap into the diversity of their workforce and empower employees to make the case for why their company’s culture and approach to DEIB make it a rewarding workplace to join.

Ultimately, companies should prioritize DEIB because it’s the right thing to do. But even beyond that, the data is clear: Potential and existing employees all say DEIB is a huge priority. And many companies that struggle to recruit employees may not realize their lack of communication on this pertinent issue is the cause. Thus, employers need to first address their DEIB initiatives and then communicate what steps they’ve taken. Otherwise, they will continue to lose out on talent.

Technology cannot replace human recruiters, but it can make it easier to connect with candidates.

The original article can be found here.

BY AHRYUN MOON

For years, talent acquisition professionals have warned about impending talent shortages due to shifting job requirements and more people exploring the gig economy and other unconventional ways of working.

The COVID pandemic turned out to be the great accelerator of the shortage, and the Great Resignation ensured its lasting impact. But even before the pandemic, there was a huge imbalance between open positions and available workers, flipping the recruitment model on its head. Now, best practice hiring processes are more important than ever to keep talent happy and fill open positions.

Ultimately, this shift has reinforced how important developing relationships are when looking for employees, which may have fallen to the wayside when companies received thousands of applications per position. Candidates became lines on a resume instead of fully formed humans that companies spent time getting to know.

Recent data demonstrates the power employees have. Both job openings and employees who quit reached record highs in March 2022. Many hired candidates do not show up to work – as many as 20% of those hired at some companies. Reasons cited include “the hiring companies had previously ignored them after interviews or applications.”

It’s clear companies have some work to do in a candidate’s market. A recent study we conducted of talent acquisition leaders in the U.S. found almost half (46%) of those surveyed said cultivating meaningful candidate relationships is their number one priority for the next year.

Candidates, not companies, are now in control of the hiring process. Candidates are now interviewing at four times the rate versus before the pandemic and are more likely to have multiple offers when talking to your company. In addition, we’ve found candidates are making decisions faster (often within 15 days). They won’t wait for a company that does not respect their time or does not try to get to know them.

Candidates pay close attention to how a company treats its employees. A candidate’s first meaningful conversation must happen with a human; otherwise, you send the message that you do not prioritize building real relationships with your employees.

Companies struggle with cultivating positive candidate relationships through Zoom and a slide deck. Considering you are likely hiring new employees without meeting them in person only reinforces the need for technology to aid human interaction, not replace it.

And we know to make time to cultivate these relationships, we need a smart tech stack that improves efficiencies to make it happen. With such uncertainty and the importance of getting recruitment right, more companies are investing in technology to win at recruiting. An estimated $24.6 billion will be spent on HR software by 2026.

That said, technology can also hinder the hiring experience, especially for companies committed to more equality. For example, companies should avoid over-reliance on technology that scans résumés to automatically vet candidates or risk missing under-the-radar workers who lack traditional credentials, but more than make up for it in hard work, passion, or ingenuity. And while advances in natural language processing and machine learning can power chatbots that can interact with prospects, you will send the wrong message to candidates if you force them to interact with a computer instead of a human.

Technology cannot replace humans during employee recruitment, which is about putting in effort to build a relationship.

The good news is that technology can help companies manage many administrative tasks and make it easier to connect with candidates so recruiters and hiring managers can focus on building those all-important relationships.

3 WAYS TECHNOLOGY ENHANCES THE HIRING PROCESS

Automation. Candidates are moving fast; companies need to move faster. By automating things like scheduling and enabling sharing of candidate assessments, companies can more quickly move towards an offer and meet candidates on their timelines. By eliminating any time lag in the hiring process to expedite decisions, you can find, meet with, and make an offer to the best candidates. Companies spend too much time manually scheduling candidate interviews with multiple executives, who have to dig through emails for résumés and then compile notes to share with the hiring manager. By minimizing the set-up work, both candidates and employees interviewing them can focus on establishing a connection and asking the right questions.

Stronger relationships. Technology can help companies connect candidates with interviewers that can best forge strong relationships during the recruitment process. Left to manual routines, recruiters often pick the interviewers they can depend on or know will accept the scheduled time. This leads to overuse and detracts those employees from their actual jobs. It also fails to demonstrate the company’s diversity or potentially misses using the perfect employee to interview a specific candidate based on shared interests or diversity. Automating this process finds the right interviewer based on the unique candidate situation and ensures no one employee is overbooked on interviews.

Insights. Companies are always searching for better insights into their hiring processes. Absent automated technology, companies must ask candidates to provide feedback about the process manually, and someone must compile and analyze the data. By automating surveys that ask candidates how they are feeling at any given point of the interview process, companies can measure their recruitment approach and then take actions to continuously improve the process.

Technology is an aid, not a replacement, for human interaction in your HR or recruitment process, so you must use it wisely. It cannot and should not replicate the human experience you provide candidates that entice them to join your company. What it can do well is demonstrate your commitment to using automation for good, building relationships and harnessing insights for a better employee experience.

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Ahryun Moon is the cofounder and head of company strategy at GoodTime, which creates a tool to optimize meetings. Her mission is to build automation that frees time people from manual tasks and helps build connection.

GoodTime’s Co-founder and Head of Company Strategy Ahryun Moon met with Recruiting News Network’s Editor in Chief Martin Burns to share her perspective as a leader in the TA space. Ahryun dove into the solutions that GoodTime Hire’s Candidate Relationship Intelligence provides to customers, along with the future of the industry.

The original interview with Recruiting News Network can be found here. Read on for the TLDR.

The Beginning of Ahryun And GoodTime

As an immigrant from Korea, belonging to a small minority of female SaaS founders, and without a large network in Silicon Valley to tap into, Ahryun started GoodTime from ground zero. She recounts having to learn everything the hard way, including earning trust from investors, customers, and employees. But Ahryun took every challenge that came her way in stride.

“I found it exhilarating to face those challenges and to prove myself every time,” she said. “Who wants to have it easy? What is life without challenges?”

GoodTime arose from an encounter that she had with a recruiter. Earlier in her career, Ahryun met a recruiter who complained about the time that it took to manually schedule interviews. Bam—a “eureka” moment. GoodTime was born.

During GoodTime’s early days, Ahryun spent time as a shadow recruiter for several companies—some of which are now GoodTime clients. She gained a deep understanding for the difficult job that recruiters take on. Ahryun knew that GoodTime would be crucial to lightening the workload and creating better connections with candidates.

“While I’ve had a winding path to GoodTime, I absolutely would do it all again,” Ahryun said. “The messages I get from our customers about how they can finally do the jobs they love doing—the rewarding work of meeting with and getting to know candidates. I’m so happy we’re helping companies and candidates find the right situation for each other.”

GoodTime Hire’s Candidate Relationship Intelligence

GoodTime Hire, the company’s flagship product, helps TA teams stay ahead of the competition in today’s fiercely competitive job market. Hire tackles three issues: automating interviews, building better relationships with candidates, and developing deeper insights into the interview process. These issues all intertwine into Hire’s Candidate Relationship Intelligence solution. Hire provides TA teams with the automation, candidate relationships, and insights that they need to reach their goals.

“Our goal is to be the foundation of a technology stack that empowers both companies and candidates, and we encourage others to keep building meaningful solutions that make this process easier.”

— Ahryun Moon, Co-founder and Head of Company Strategy at GoodTime

One of Hire’s newest features is Candidate Pulse. This feature measures candidate sentiment and granular feedback after each interview, making this candidate feedback extremely actionable for talent teams. By gathering feedback and making candidates feel heard, Candidate Pulse further improves recruiter-applicant connections.

Challenges Along the Way

In the face of failure and challenges, GoodTime has turned every stumble into an opportunity to learn. For instance, the team recently released a revamped interviewer training module, equipped with an elevated training management system. Ultimately, they underestimated the success their customers had with the previous version of the module.

Ahryun has found that the biggest challenge in closing deals with clients is inertia. Often, companies convince themselves that the way they currently run their recruitment process is either the right way or good enough.

“But I can point to our clients, some of the most innovative companies in the world, and say they understand how powerful it is to automate the interview process and maximize hiring efficiency to compete in this insanely hyper-competitive job market,” she said.

The Future of the Recruiting Industry

Ahryun sees clear changes coming to the industry. Employees no longer want to stick around at jobs that they don’t like. They’re also not joining new companies unless they feel a strong fit.

She added that companies must act fast to refine their recruitment process and avoid getting overpowered by the competition.

“Companies need to demonstrate immediately in their recruitment process their culture, the relationships they develop, and how they use technology to enhance their employees’ jobs, not replace them,” Ahryun said.

GoodTime’s tech solution elevates both companies and candidates in today’s tumultuous job market.

What’s Next for GoodTime

Most recently, GoodTime released their 2022 Hiring Report, jam-packed with the latest HR trends. GoodTime surveyed 560 U.S. talent leaders to uncover the most pressing challenges facing their teams, and what should be done to attract and retain top talent. The report can be downloaded here.