Scheduling meetings burns productivity. Automation can help. | Protocol

“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.

The Deprioritization of Diversity and Its Impact on Hiring

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.

How to use tech to help recruit better candidates | FAST COMPANY

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.


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 Co-founder Ahryun Moon: Featured TA Tech Leader

GoodTime's Co-founder Ahryun Moon.

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.

Half of companies didn’t meet hiring goals last year | CFO Dive

Read the original article here.

Dive Brief:

  • Companies fell short of their hiring plans in 2021, with 50% of human resources (HR) pros surveyed saying their hiring goals weren’t met last year, according to a survey by GoodTime.
  • The hiring process has also lengthened. Sixty percent of HR pros surveyed said time-to-hire has increased in the past 12 months. Hiring managers are struggling to keep up with backfill hires amid the Great Resignation, the survey noted.
  • Retention remains a top challenge for HR pros, but especially so for those with remote work, the survey said. Notably, while 34% of mostly or fully remote companies surveyed said they struggled with a lack of qualified candidates, only 22% of fully or mostly in-office companies said the same, pointing to the downsides of a widened talent pool, GoodTime said.

Dive Insight:

Hiring woes have followed employers throughout 2022. At the beginning of the year, local chamber of commerce leaders reported that businesses in their respective regions were struggling to find new workers and that a lack of workers was the biggest factor affecting their local economies.

GoodTime’s report notes the difference between in-office hiring and remote hiring, which may reflect ongoing tensions regarding the choice between moving to a hybrid or fully remote structure versus retaining a mostly in-office workforce. Employers may underestimate the power of flexibility as a company benefit; an August 2021 PwC survey showed that while employees saw flexible work scheduling as a top incentive of their jobs, employers assumed “company purpose and values” were a top incentive.

Hiring has gotten harder over the course of the pandemic, lengthening already tough time-to-hire. But virtual hiring stepped up to bridge the gap, according to employers surveyed by Indeed, especially at the pandemic’s height. Respondents to the survey said they would likely retain virtual hiring processes in the future, as they tend to shorten time-to-hire and improve candidate experience.

To combat troubles with hiring, experts recommend that employers broaden their search nets in a variety of ways. One strategy is to drop college degree requirements from certain job listings altogether, especially as alternative means to gaining work experience emerge.

Companies That Prioritize Candidate Relationships Improve Hiring Performance, According to New Report

SAN FRANCISCO, May 16, 2022 — Businesses continue to find it difficult to hire new employees given the various headwinds caused by a number of factors ranging from increased demand for talent, an increased number of workers embracing freelance or part-time work. While the hiring landscape became more competitive, businesses also faced a lack of qualified candidates due to the supply/demand gap. Increased selectivity among job seekers played a part, too.

GoodTime today announced its findings from its first annual Hiring Insights Report to gauge the current landscape in talent acquisition. GoodTime surveyed 560 HR, talent, and recruiting leaders across the U.S. to hear about their most critical hiring challenges—and how they’re meeting the demands of modern candidates in a changed hiring landscape.
  
The report highlights the challenges of hiring during both the Great Resignation as well as the emerging Distance Economy, focusing on what companies are doing, not doing, or are planning to do to hit their hiring goals.
  
The high-level findings from the GoodTime Hiring Insights Report include:

  • 50% of hiring goals were not met in 2021
  • 60% surveyed said the time-to-hire increased in the past 12 months
  • 46% surveyed said the No.1 hiring goal in 2022 is to create genuine relationships with candidates
  • 36% said they consider improving candidate relationships a priority but struggle to execute
  • 31% said they made DEIB a measurable priority in the past 12 months

Companies far from hitting their hiring goals

It’s hard out there for HR and talent leaders. In 2021, companies fell 50% short of their hiring goals and felt the sting of the Great Resignation, evidenced in part by the number one reported hiring challenge: retaining top talent. As employees resigned for greener pastures, companies scrambled to backfill roles, hiring 108 new employees, on average, in 2021. According to the GoodTime Hiring Insights Report, respondents averaged just 50% of their hiring goals in 2021. To make matters worse, 60% of HR and talent leaders report that it is taking longer to fill an open position in 2021 than in previous years.

Creating meaningful relationships with candidates is key

Antiquated pre-COVID tactics—flaunting nap rooms and massage chairs—are, and will continue to be—ineffective in wooing top talent. Today, 46% said creating meaningful relationships with candidates is more important than ever. Among the leading candidate-focused hiring practices include flexibility in scheduling during the interview process and demonstration of the company’s culture, mission, and values. Providing office tours and free lunch during the interview were also noted but considered ‘relics of the past.’

Retaining top talent is the number one challenge

Some assume that fully in-office companies have the most challenging time retaining talent; however, that wasn’t the case. Sixty-three percent (63%) of fully-remote companies selected “retaining top talent,” far above the average (30%). And while 34% of fully or mostly remote companies struggled with a lack of qualified candidates, only 22% of fully or mostly in-office companies reported the same challenge. While the Distance Economy widens the talent pool, it also widens the employer pool, making it more critical for remote and hybrid companies to take meaningful steps to retain, attract, and win candidates. As a result, HR teams expect to struggle to retain top talent and attract qualified candidates in the year ahead.

Hiring landscape more competitive

HR leaders disagree on whether the hiring landscape has become more competitive. Forty-seven percent (47%) of HR leaders agreed that “the hiring landscape has become more competitive due to an increased demand for talent.” This sentiment aligns with most headlines and analyst reports. However, the No. 1 selected item (45%) among Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs) was “the hiring landscape has become less competitive due to an increase in available talent who have recently quit their jobs.” Directors were 34% less likely than CHROs to agree (32%). Employees who are more closely involved with day-to-day recruiting work have a different perception of business functioning.

DEIB in the Hiring Process

The findings in the Hiring Insights Report cast a dull light on the state of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in the hiring process. Thirty-one percent (31%) of companies made DEIB a measurable priority in the past 12 months. Thirty-eight percent (38%) of companies plan to make DEIB a measurable priority over the next 12 months. While this is a 7% YoY increase, DEIB is at the bottom of the list. Further findings showed that commitment to DEIB was the least selected item (32%) in response to the question, “Which of the following do you communicate to candidates during the hiring process to attract top talent?”

“Winning the war for talent moves beyond the one-sided, staged candidate experience to the two-way, genuine candidate relationship. Companies that take a human-centered approach to talent acquisition are 2x more likely to achieve financial goals,” said Ahryun Moon, CEO & Co-Founder, GoodTime. “The report findings clearly show that winning talent through outdated methods like free lunches and ping pong tables are over. Companies need to put more emphasis on cultivating the candidate relationship if they want to create impactful hires in today’s Distance Economy.”

“If you aren’t offering candidates an environment where they can grow their career, your target hiring goals will continue to grow right with your attrition rate. As a result, you could be forever chasing an unattainable goal,” said Pete Lawson, Talent Acquisition Leader, GoPuff.

To download the full report, visit goodtime.io

RecTech Podcast | Interview with Ahryun Moon

Chris Russell

TO LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST, CLICK HERE

A headshot of GoodTime CEO Ahryun Moon in the title card of the RecTech Podcast

GoodTime is used by over 300 leading companies like Spotify, Slack, and Box, to drive better results from their most important meetings. The GoodTime Meeting Optimization Engine automates scheduling, ensures the right people are in the room, and provides actionable insights to meet smarter……their flagship product, Hire, allows organizations to win top talent faster.

GoodTime CEO and Co-Founder, Ahryun Moon joins me on Zoom from…San Francisco.

TOPICS DISCUSSED

1. One of the best brand names in HR tech…give us a quick history of the company…

2 Are meetings broken? how to make meetings more effective.

3. Many meetings are virtual now…How have zoom meetings affected your product?

4 Implementation process?

5. Success stories?

6. What trends are you seeing when it comes to talent acquisition?

7. From a sales perspective, how is the market selling into HR… ?

8. What will be the long-term consequences of the Great Resignation?

9. What are some suggestions to companies to drive higher hiring rates?

10. Are you hiring? Any conferences GoodTime will be at?

GoodTime Unveils New Brand Identity to Reflect Company’s Vision and Direction to Make Meetings Smarter

GoodTime Introduces the World’s First Meeting Optimization Engine to Remedy Lack of Productivity Valued at $400B Dollars in Time Wasted

GoodTime Logo

San Francisco – April 25, 2022GoodTime revealed a new corporate brand today, reflecting its vision to deliver smarter meetings and better outcomes for companies worldwide. As part of the rebrand, the company introduced its Meeting Optimization Engine, the world’s first of its kind, to support GoodTime’s mission of creating a future where every minute counts. 

The Meeting Optimization Engine

GoodTime’s Meeting Optimization Engine helps customers get better results from meetings through automation, relationships, and insights. First, it uses automation to intelligently coordinate meetings across time zones and calendars, without the usual back and forth. Then, it helps attendees build better relationships during the meeting. Whether interviewing a critical hire or solving problems for a customer, GoodTime makes sure the right people are in the room at the right time so collaboration and connection come naturally. Most importantly, GoodTime provides intelligent insights so companies can take the right actions before, during, and after every meeting.

“There are lots of scheduling automation tools in the market, but no one else is optimizing business meetings to ensure the right people are in the right room at the right time. This is why so many people are in meetings and don’t know why they’re there. With the GoodTime Meeting Optimization Engine, we’re turning time-wasting meetings into smart meetings that get you to your goals faster,” said Ahryun Moon, CEO and Co-Founder, GoodTime. 

Trends and Challenges With Meetings

According to a 2019 study, U.S. companies are estimated to have lost $399 billion in that year alone due to inefficient meetings resulting from numerous factors ranging from poorly organized meetings to loss of focus on projects to confusion. Today, the stakes are even higher.  

In the last two years, companies have gone from 40 to 66 million daily meetings in the U.S. alone—even though most attendees think they’re a waste of time. And given the remote working culture in today’s global society, the amount is expected to increase. With less than one-third of knowledge workers coming to the office every day, meetings are often the only way coworkers can interact face-to-face. That said, meetings need to be relevant and purposeful for every attendee to fuel company culture, and not hinder it. 

Two Products, One Mission

For talent acquisition teams, the competition for talent is only getting worse. Candidates have more opportunities than ever and winning top talent requires an approach beyond simply moving additional candidates through the hiring funnel. It requires building meaningful relationships with each candidate. To overcome this challenge, the company’s flagship product, GoodTime Hire, delivers Candidate Relationship Intelligence to help teams automate coordination, build genuine connections with candidates, and surface insights to continually optimize the hiring process. Powered by the Meeting Optimization Engine, GoodTime Hire gives teams an edge in a highly competitive talent market. 

The company’s second product, GoodTime Meet, is the new generation calendar built for everyone in the new era of work-life autonomy where getting people together is harder than ever — different time zones, asynchronous working hours, and online or in-person meetings. Meet helps hybrid and remote teams simplify scheduling and take back control of their calendars. As part of this launch, the company brings GoodTime Meet under the Meeting Optimization Engine umbrella, alongside GoodTime Hire.

Making Meetings Smarter

With over 7 million smart meetings scheduled to date, and used by over 300 leading companies, GoodTime helps companies of all sizes get better results— from hyper-growth startups, to unicorns, to Fortune 500s. 

  • For Box, recruiting coordinators now spend 40% less time scheduling interviews
  • For Pinterest, talent acquisition teams reduced time-to-fill by 50%
  • For Patreon, recruiters doubled the amount of interviews they could schedule per day

“GoodTime [Hire] is a great accelerator for the hiring process. By leveraging the platform and putting more control into candidates’ hands, we’ve eliminated what’s normally the most time-consuming and frustrating part of the process,” said David Moore, VP of Recruiting, Box.

About GoodTime

GoodTime helps people and companies drive better results from their most important meetings. The GoodTime Meeting Optimization Engine automates scheduling, ensures the right people are in the room, and provides actionable insights to meet smarter. Its flagship product, Hire, allows organizations to win top talent faster with Candidate Relationship Intelligence. Over 300 leading companies like Spotify, Slack, Pinterest, Okta, HubSpot, and Box have scheduled more than 7 million smart meetings with GoodTime. Learn more at goodtime.io.

GoodTime’s Ahryun Moon on Candidate Experience and the Future of Work

Editor’s note: The original interview with WorkTech is from July 2021. Watch it in full here.

GoodTime CEO Ahryun Moon met with WorkTech’s George LaRocque to discuss how GoodTime does more than just automate the administrative aspects of the hiring process for TA teams. Ahryun discusses her experience raising funds in a pandemic, the GoodTime roadmap, and the impact GoodTime delivers on diversity and inclusion in recruiting.

“Candidates get almost a consumer-like experience when they schedule an interview.”

— Ahryun Moon, CEO at GoodTime

At its core, the hiring process revolves around hiring managers, based on availability and the employer’s timeline. With the rising demand for talent, especially tech-enabled hires, the pitfalls of the traditional recruitment model cannot be ignored any longer. Companies that take too long to hire miss out on high-caliber candidates, leading to potential candidate frustration and the risk of reputation damage. Paired with shifting priorities and more employees placing happiness over a pay raise, there’s a need to reshuffle the dynamics for better hiring.

“GoodTime transforms the interview process. First of all, we’ve completely removed the hassle of emailing back and forth. Candidates get almost a consumer-like experience when they schedule an interview,” Ahryun shared. 

Placing talent at the forefront of recruitment, GoodTime Hire makes the process easier for both recruiters and candidates alike. Besides scheduling automation, the platform goes one step further by using an AI-powered algorithm to provide tailored experiences.

Unlike legacy scheduling tools, GoodTime’s ultimate goal is to transform the way that interviews are made and conducted – starting from pre-interview processes like training.

“Our technology tracks the interviewer database, so you can store your interviewer’s relevant attributes. Based on those attributes, you can schedule the right interviewer to the given candidate,” Ahryun continued. 

Along with that, the platform provides interviewer training to fully equip hiring professionals with proper training. The system also uses data and insights that you wouldn’t get from an agent.

How this plays into the paradigm shift in the employment market is that candidates now get a say in who they speak to and their comfort levels. It also puts an emphasis on how interviews are a two-way street. Both parties play a part in contributing to a successful meeting. To illustrate this, Ahryun brought up an instance where clients would question the lack of female hires due to rejection, while not actually honing in on the root of the issue: when these candidates meet with an all-male board and get turned off by the job environment.

Scaling Relationship Building

“The real magic happens when candidates meet with interviewers, they hit it off, have amazing conversations.” Ahryun stated, when talking about how organizations scale their operations by building larger candidate pools and overlooking the actual candidate experience. On the other hand, an unstructured process leads to breakdowns and recruitment woes while scaling operations.

Building an optimal environment for candidates could also ramp up diversity and inclusive hiring, an important aspect for companies to stay relevant today. Inclusive hiring is a concept that has been long overdue, and can bring about multiple benefits to any organization. A more diverse workforce brings about a wider range of perspectives and skill sets, leading to more ideas for problem-solving and better decision making. Yet, some corporations still face issues in hiring diverse candidates. 

“Filling the top of the funnel, that’s definitely number one priority and one of the most important aspects. But usually those candidates don’t necessarily get a fair chance through the process, or at the end they decline the offer because they wouldn’t see themselves working there,” Ahryun explained, indicating the need to cater to candidates and improving first impressions. 

Raising Investments in a Time of Economic Volatility

GoodTime ended their investment round in November of last year. In a time of uncertainty and the global pandemic in full force, this was a challenging round for the company, Moon states. At the same time, with national conversations surrounding diversity and corporations seeing turnovers and new hires, it was time for a step toward a more inclusive workforce. 

This year, however, valuation is through the roof. “It’s pretty crazy now,” Ahryun said.

The funds have been used to refine GoodTime’s solutions and fuel the expansion of the team to over 60 members. According to Moon, “The hiring scene is changing so rapidly. The ‘future of work’ is a remote and hybrid type of work. We want to make sure our products help the journey.” Thus, the investments were used to further innovate and bring fresh ideas to life with a bigger team.

As hybrid and remote working transition from the ‘new normal’, to just normal,  GoodTime also seeks to provide the appropriate training for hiring in these areas. As more companies move towards a data-driven hiring strategies, Moon and her team are refining GoodTime’s data and insight features.

Customers who come to GoodTime acknowledged the complexity of the reality of work, and want to embrace this through their solutions. Leading by example, GoodTime aims to continue adapting to the new environment, hiring high-quality talent across geographical borders. 

The Future Is Candidate-driven

“Personally what makes me really excited is our product. We’re really excited to bring additional innovations. We try to keep our ear to the ground and try to work closely with our customers,” Ahryun said.

“As we figure out the best practices in this new world, we want to bring new innovations to our customers – interview training, additional insights, as well as new innovations around remote and hybrid hiring. We’d love to be the new transformation of this new hiring and crafting of a new candidate journey.”

To watch Ahryun’s full interview with WorkTech, click here.

GoodTime Solves the Multimillion-Dollar Problem of Untrained Interviewers 

Hiring experience solution dominates the market with enhanced interviewer training to help talent acquisition teams win top talent quickly, legally, and cost-effectively.

GoodTime Interviewer Training

SAN FRANCISCO—(BUSINESSWIRE), GoodTime, the leading AI-based hiring experience solution, with clients such as Box, Shopify, and Zoom, has added enhanced interviewer training functionality to its features set to remove bottlenecks, reduce time-to-hire, and ensure a great candidate experience, no matter who conducts the interview.

GoodTime’s platform reduces time-to-hire by as much as 50% while saving as much as $500,000 per year in talent acquisition costs. The newly enhanced interviewer training feature is the culmination of significant work to give hiring teams the most advanced interviewer training management system available. New features include:

  • A redesigned interface for faster, scalable management of interviewers, training paths, progress, graduation, and more
  • Enhanced intelligence and automation that handles training complexities, including trainee prioritization, scheduling, and tagging graduates
  • Alerts and visual indications of tasks needing action, interviewers ready for their next phase, and schedule conflicts

When interviews aren’t conducted properly, they fail the company, the hiring team, and the candidate. In 2020 alone, the EEOC secured nearly $440 million dollars from nearly 68,000 discrimination cases. The GoodTime team identified three critical areas where the interview process falls short:

  • Not enough speed
  • Lack of communication
  • Bias

Jasper Sone, co-founder and CPO, stated, “Hiring post-COVID is a game of scalable personalization. It’s all about the candidate experience. Right now, open jobs in the market more than double the number of qualified job seekers, which requires hiring leaders to focus on speed and quality. Our interviewer training feature improves both by identifying bottlenecks in interview processes, and automating the process of training interviewers to fill the gaps. Not only does this new functionality decrease time-to-hire by up to 50%, but it also ensures that every interview is an opportunity to properly represent a company’s brand.”

Interestingly, there is a gap in understanding how interviewer training affects hiring goals. About 82% of employers believe that a candidate’s negative experience in the hiring process has little to no impact on their business. And yet, 72% of recruiting leaders worldwide agreed that employer brand has a significant impact on hiring.

GoodTime’s enhanced interviewer training is used by the world’s top tech companies to improve candidate experience, avoid legal issues, mitigate bias, and land top talent faster.

To learn more about how GoodTime empowers interviewers and elevates the hiring experience, visit GoodTime.io.

About GoodTime 

GoodTime enables talent acquisition teams to create an efficient, equitable, and personalized candidate experience that lands top talent faster. GoodTime is the only HR tech solution that can help advance diversity initiatives, fostering measurable impact for every candidate. See why the world’s top talent acquisition teams, including Zoom, Instacart, and DropBox, rely on GoodTime to slash time-to-hire metrics, and deliver up to 50% savings on hiring expenditure. 

© 2021 GoodTime

Contact

Cynthia Wakeford

cynthia@goodtime.io