The Technology Edition of GoodTime’s 2024 Hiring Insights Report reveals a major acceleration in hiring tech adoption. Despite challenges with talent retention and longer time-to-hire, tech companies improved hiring goal attainment through thoughtful use of AI and automation.
San Francisco – February 13, 2024
The 2024 Hiring Insights Report: Technology Edition, published today by GoodTime, reveals a major acceleration in tech adoption, with 91% of the tech sector’s talent acquisition (TA) leaders planning to increase their investment in hiring technology in 2024.
After surveying 525 talent acquisition leaders across sectors, this new edition of the 2024 Hiring Insights Report focuses on the 100 respondents in technology and highlights a significant increase in hiring goal attainment. However, the report shows the sector also faced persistent challenges with talent retention, lack of qualified candidates, and an escalating time-to-hire.
Key tech sector hiring trends from the report:
On average, TA teams hit 58.2% of their hiring goals in 2023, up from 51.7% the previous year.
41% of TA leaders cite talent retention as a top challenge.
45% of companies said their time-to-hire increased in 2023.
Nearly half (49%) of tech companies conducted layoffs in 2023.
The tech sector leads in hiring goal attainment
Of all sectors analyzed, tech ranked highest in hiring goal attainment. We compared the sector’s focus areas to all other industries and found that tech companies were:
78% more likely to utilize AI for hiring efficiency.
45% more likely to have upgraded their hiring technology.
18% more likely to have improved their candidate experience.
Planning for more human-AI collaboration in 2024
When asked about key focus areas for 2024, tech TA leaders pointed to:
Increasing personalization in the hiring process (49%).
Utilizing AI for hiring efficiency (42%).
Optimizing automation in the hiring process (42%).
“Too often AI and automation are perceived as being at odds with human-centric experiences,” said Ahryun Moon, CEO & Co-Founder of GoodTime. “Our report shows that tech’s TA leaders have adopted a different perspective. I’m glad to see they recognize that automating time-consuming, mundane tasks empowers them to prioritize and enhance the human element in their hiring process.”
GoodTime helps talent acquisition teams hire up to 50% faster by automating interview scheduling, candidate communications, and more. Hundreds of the world’s leading companies including Slack, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Lyft, Shopify, and HubSpot trust GoodTime to accelerate their hiring process while maintaining a best-in-class candidate experience.
With advanced features like multi-day and panel interview scheduling, SMS and WhatsApp communication, workflow automation, intelligent interviewer selection, and powerful data and benchmarking reports, we’re helping enterprise companies cut their time-to-hire in half.
Learn more at goodtime.io.
Media Contact
For more information or to arrange an interview with Ahryun Moon, please contact:
Jake Link press@goodtime.io
Unlock tech’s top hiring strategies in 2025
Our study of 100 tech TA leaders reveals how to hit your hiring goals in a challenging market.
Despite layoffs in the tech sector making headlines nearly daily in the first month of the year, one of the biggest takeaways from GoodTime’s 2024 Hiring Insights Report is that we are still in a candidate-driven job market.
With fierce competition for talent predicted for 2024 and layoff anxieties still looming, I consistently advise companies that it is now more crucial than ever to dedicate resources to protecting and improving their employer brand.
Below, we’ll explore how strategic use of automation can not only enhance your employer branding but also position your company to attract and retain top talent in 2024’s competitive landscape.
Unlock 2026’s top hiring strategies: Insights from 500+ TA leaders
Be the first to uncover deep hiring insights specific to your sector — straight from the highest-performing TA teams.
A company’s online reputation has a tremendous amount of swaying power for candidates as they consider prospective employers.
Each week I speak with dozens of candidates, and I always ask what’s most important to them in their next career move. Over the last three years, their answers have increasingly strayed away from compensation-based responses to more culture-based responses, such as prioritizing companies that offer good work-life balance and ample opportunities for career growth, development, and mentorship. Candidates care increasingly about the kinds of people they’ll be working with, whether or not they’ll be backed by supportive teams, and how upper management communicates goals and expectations with the rest of the company.
The risks to your employer brand: The impact of online platforms
So where do candidates look to see if their prospective employer checks these boxes? Sites like Glassdoor and Reddit.
It takes a company years to build and implement the policies, practices, and philosophies that shape its employer brand. Unfortunately, it only takes a few minutes for an unhappy employee or a handful of people affected by a reduction in force (RIF) to take to one of these many online opinion platforms and effectively undo years of reputation building.
It’s a delicate task to maintain a positive employer brand in an era where information spreads at lightning speed. Each phase in an employee’s journey contributes to the overall narrative that forms your company’s brand in the public eye. As much as positive experiences can bolster your reputation, negative ones, especially those shared publicly, can cause significant damage.
This is where strategic employer brand management comes into play. It’s not just about crafting a positive image; it’s about genuinely creating a positive experience that resonates with both current and prospective employees. This experience, when handled correctly, turns employees into brand ambassadors, spreading positive narratives that counteract any negative feedback.
The role of hiring automation in enhancing employer brand: Addressing interview process complaints
People take to Glassdoor and similar platforms not only to share about their time working at a particular company, but also to talk about their experience during an interview process.
Some of the most common interview process complaints that I hear from candidates are:
The process was too lengthy
Too much time passed in between stages
Companies failed to give timely feedback
There was generally poor communication throughout the process
The good news is that all these common complaints can be addressed with the right interview automation tool. These tools don’t just accelerate the hiring process. They also create positive, memorable experiences that directly impact your reputation among candidates. Plus, they free up time for you to focus on those essentially human elements of hiring.
By automating elements of interview scheduling and candidate communications, TA teams are getting back more than 30% of their time all while protecting the company’s employer brand and providing a white-glove candidate experience.
Source: 2024 Hiring Insights Report (GoodTime)
The future of HR and talent acquisition: Prioritizing employer brand
To attract top talent in 2024’s competitive landscape, employer brand should be top of mind for all HR and TA leaders. However, recent trends suggest a worrying shift. The de-prioritization of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) efforts, a cornerstone of a strong employer brand, has been noticeable in many organizations. This, combined with an uptick in employee layoffs and terminations often conducted without adequate outplacement services, paints a concerning picture. Such actions can inadvertently erode trust and goodwill, which are essential components of a strong employer brand.
To meet hiring goals and retain talent, companies must adopt a holistic approach to reputation management. This involves actively managing every touchpoint in the employee lifecycle, from initial contact to exit. Best-in-class automated solutions can play a pivotal role in this strategy. By leveraging automation, companies can streamline recruitment processes, enhance communication, and provide a more engaging and candidate-friendly experience. Automation tools can also aid in gathering and analyzing feedback, allowing for real-time adjustments to recruitment strategies and employer branding efforts.
In essence, employer branding in 2024 requires a nuanced understanding of the evolving job market and employee expectations. By aligning their values with their practices and leveraging the right technology, companies can not only attract top talent but also foster a culture of loyalty and advocacy, essential for long-term success in a competitive landscape.
The 2024 Hiring Insights Report, a study of 525 talent acquisition leaders, reveals a persistent struggle with talent retention, a need to automate repetitive tasks, and the strategies top-performing teams used to hit hiring goals in a challenging market.
San Francisco – January 31, 2024
After a trying year that tested talent acquisition (TA) teams in every sector, GoodTime today published the 2024 Hiring Insights Report to reveal top challenges, how TA is evolving, and how top-performing teams hit their hiring goals.
The independently conducted survey of 525 talent, HR, and recruiting leaders across the U.S. shows that hiring teams have faced colossal challenges and pressures that have forced them to evolve quickly to meet the demands of today’s market.
Key findings from the 2024 Hiring Insights Report:
On average, TA teams hit just 51.3% of their hiring goals in 2023.
Contrary to perceptions of an employer’s market, 44% of TA leaders said hiring became more competitive in the last 12 months, and 27% reported a lack of qualified candidates as a primary hiring challenge.
A significant 34% of TA leaders cite talent retention as a top challenge.
99% of TA teams are now employing AI and automation.
Talent teams still spend 35% of their time scheduling interviews alone, among other easily automated tasks.
Layoffs have significantly affected employee morale. Companies that experienced layoffs in 2023 were about 83% more likely to report fair or poor engagement from employees.
Learning from top-performing TA teams
GoodTime’s report dives into what top-performing teams (defined as those who hit 75% or more of their hiring goals) did differently than the rest of their peers. The report reveals that the top performers were:
40% more likely to focus on upgrading hiring technology.
24% more likely to prioritize candidate experience improvements.
23% more likely to invest in improving overall efficiency.
A major adjustment in return-to-office (RTO) efforts
After persistent tensions around stringent RTO mandates, it seems companies are letting up a bit and compromising with mixed or hybrid working models. TA leaders reported a massive shift from a fully in-office workforce to a mostly in-office approach, with a mix of fully in-office, fully remote, and hybrid workers.
Of the 525 companies surveyed, only 16% were fully in office in 2023 (compared to 62% the previous year).
78% of companies surveyed were mostly in-office, with some hybrid or remote workers.
Just 1% of respondents said their company was fully remote.
A struggle to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I)
The previous year’s Hiring Insights Report found that 28% of companies planned to make DE&I a measurable priority in 2023, but this year’s report shows that only 24% followed through on that goal. Overall, the number of companies prioritizing DE&I has fallen two years in a row now.
What’s even more concerning is that DE&I is likely to be deprioritized further, with only 24% saying it’s a focus area for 2024.
TA teams are becoming more resilient
While 2023 presented immense hiring challenges, the report also surfaces major opportunities and optimistic trends among TA professionals.
45% said time-to-hire remained flat, with 10% saying it decreased.
On average, TA teams saw a 7% lift in hiring goal attainment over the previous year.
90% said they would rate their overall recruiting process as ‘Good’ or ‘Excellent.’
“This is our third year publishing this report, and positive trends are starting to emerge: Hiring tech adoption is accelerating and while teams are getting leaner, they’re also evolving and becoming more resilient for the next set of challenges that come our way,” said Ahryun Moon, CEO & Co-Founder of GoodTime. “TA professionals honed their ability to spot top talent faster. They made processes leaner and smarter. And for many of the leaders surveyed for this report, those actions are paying off. We hope that by sharing these insights, we can help struggling TA teams tap into their resilience in the year ahead.”
GoodTime helps talent acquisition teams hire up to 50% faster by automating interview scheduling, candidate communications, and more. Hundreds of the world’s leading companies including Slack, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Lyft, Shopify, and HubSpot trust GoodTime to accelerate their hiring process while maintaining a best-in-class candidate experience.
With advanced features like multi-day and panel interview scheduling, SMS and WhatsApp communication, workflow automation, intelligent interviewer selection, and powerful data and benchmarking reports, we’re helping enterprise companies cut their time-to-hire in half.
Learn more at goodtime.io.
Unlock 2026’s top hiring strategies: Insights from 500+ TA leaders
Be the first to uncover deep hiring insights specific to your sector — straight from the highest-performing TA teams.
We’re hitting the ground running in 2024 and already crossing some major items off your wishlist! In our latest round of product updates, we’re excited to share:
Calendar View: Review your schedule options & plans on a complete calendar spread before confirming your interviews.
Auto Graduation: Take your training efficiency to the next level by automating the graduation of completed trainees.
Candidate Portal 2.0: Flex your Candidate Portal with embedded YouTube videos, attachments, and complete customization settings.
Plus, we’ve got a sneak peek at Hire for High Volume’s new dashboard and company-wide scheduling links for GoodTime Meet. Let’s dive in!
Watch the January 2024 GoodTime product updates webinar or keep scrolling for highlights
Candidate Portal 2.0: YouTube, files, new settings, and more
Last month, GoodTime launched the Candidate Portal and this month we have taken it to the next level with custom settings, YouTube integration, and file attachments.
Why this is awesome: With these enhancements, there is no content of the portal you can’t control and with video, attachments, URLs and text, the candidates will have every opportunity to succeed!
Auto Graduation from training paths
GoodTime’s interviewer training module now offers the option for trainees to automatically graduate after completing their training paths.
Why this is awesome: One of the easiest ways to hire better talent is to schedule faster and that means having more interviewers. Auto Graduation does just that!
Introducing Calendar View!
After extensive research with our users, GoodTime is elated to announce the first version of our Calendar View in the scheduling flow.
Why this is awesome: See the whole scheduling situation in one frame, rearrange options to suit your exact needs, and get conflict updates in an instant! Creating the perfect interview has never been faster or required fewer clicks.
Company-wide scheduling links in GoodTime Meet
Enterprise users can now remove their name from their link URL. These links can be shared as “read only” with your entire organization.
Why this is awesome: Not tying a link to a specific user’s identity makes for a more versatile and shareable link. Your guest does not need to access the name of the link owner, especially when the link may be a round robin for many different attendees.
What GoodTime features will you take advantage of next?
We want to help you evolve and take full advantage of the latest upgrades and improvements to our platform. Check out the GoodTime support center for tutorials and tips to help you stress less and get more done!
Before we wrap up for a short winter break, we want to update you on some last-minute gifts we dropped for GoodTime users. This year, you made the nice list and we’re crossing a ton off your wishlist, including:
Candidate portal — Keep candidates engaged and provide information they need to feel confident for each interview
CSV / Excel Downloads — You asked, we listened. You can now download all reports to CSV. Happy spreadsheeting!
Customized Scheduling Flow — You can now brand and fully customize your scheduling flow!
Bulk Uploading Tool — You now have the ability to bulk update your data for Tags and users right inside the platform
Plus a whole lot more. Watch our full video walkthrough of this month’s new features below, or keep scrolling for a quick look at the highlights.
Watch the December 2023 GoodTime product updates webinar
First, a quick look back at 2023
We’re proud of what we were able to accomplish with you this year. We want to take a quick moment to shoutout some of the highlights!
429 customer feedback sessions
The GoodTime Product Team went to work, attending 429 customer feedback sessions to focus on building products that help teams do more with less. We took one of our core pillars #put-the-customer-first to the next level, meeting with 8+ customers a week to better understand their needs and prioritize products that will help teams hire the right candidates faster with more efficiency.
Why this is awesome: Every single feature we released this year had multiple points of feedback from customers starting from prioritization, design, and research all the way to post-launch feedback. As a result, we were able to release faster with fewer wasted cycles.
88 product releases and 81 updates
One of our mottos going into 2023 was #build-fast. Based on amazing customer feedback, we launched 88 product releases like High Volume, Automation, Interview Days and Candidate Portal as well 81 refreshes and updates to major portions of our products like Insights (Benchmarking, New Reports), Core Scheduling (Algorithm improvements, Interview Blocks, Improved Error Messaging), Training (Trainee Distribution, Reporting, Auto-Tagging / Untagging), support for 11 languages and so much more.
Why this is awesome: The economy shifted suddenly in 2023 and with the change came new needs. Releasing quickly and iteratively helped us identify new problems and build products to solve them. This allowed our customers to schedule over 1.8 million interviews with an average of 22.1% fewer people to help on their teams.
150+ hand raisers for early access
Thank you so much! The response from customers to our product release announcements was overwhelming. This year we had over 150 teams volunteer to try out products in early access and provide critical feedback to help us improve our products prior to launching. Not only was this a show of general excitement but proved that the investment in early customer feedback sessions paid off.
Why this is awesome: Expert-level feedback from excited customers allowed the Product Team to focus on features that really mattered and allowed us to uncover issues prior to launching to production. #fix-fast.
Now, on to this month’s updates!
Introducing the Candidate Portal!
Candidates now have a one-stop shop to access all the essential information in the new GoodTime Candidate Portal. Here they can see how to prepare, who to speak to, points of contact and so much more.
Why this is awesome: Candidate experience is key to locking down top talent and the Candidate Portal takes this experience to the next level.
CSV/Excel downloads
Now you can download all of your report data as a CSV!
Why this is awesome: You’ve been asking for this one for a while. Now you can slice and dice your data in any way you like. Happy spreadsheeting!
Customized scheduling flow for high volume
With our new brand themes feature, you can now customize your scheduling flow and apply different customizations at a template level.
Why this is awesome: Customize the logo, background images, colors, and individual content of your scheduling flow to provide the right information to your candidates.
Bulk Uploading Tool
Our new Bulk Uploading tool allows you to import .csv files and update data for users, meeting rooms, and tags.
Why this is awesome: This new uploading process makes it quick and easy to update a large amount of data. We also provide a visual review process to ensure your upload is accurate and notify you when the update is complete so you don’t need to wait around in the platform.
Even more updates to Hire and Hire for High Volume!
For Hire:
Summary row for Lead Time Report
A summary line for all values has been added to the Lead Time Report so that a total overview is more accessible.
For Hire for High Volume:
Update pending interview automation
When updating interview templates associated with workflows, you can choose to update all pending interviews with your new template changes.
Bulk message via last communication channel
When bulk messaging with many candidates, you can utilize the Last Channel tab to send your message through both SMS and Email (whichever channel you last communicated on).
Internal candidate scheduling enhancements
Added Lever Support for this feature and enhanced our Internal flagging logic for Greenhouse and Workday to be more accurate.
Paste message blurbs and interview scheduling requests
You can now ‘paste’ message blurbs into the messenger and modify the message before sending to your candidates. Similarly, we now offer ‘Send without Sending’ which allows you to make one-time adjustments to your interview or message to send to the candidate, but not override your current template.
GoodTime Meet updates
Company default scheduling links
Company Admins can now create default scheduling links that everyone at the company can automatically start with.
Why this is awesome: New teammates are ready from the moment they log in to start utilizing scheduling links. This makes the platform even easier to get started as well as gives Company Admins the control they need to maintain consistent experiences.
Delegated account access
GoodTime Users can now assign someone else at their company to delegate their account. This gives the delegate access to create, edit, and update links as well as update common settings like business hours.
Why this is awesome: Allows for complete management of accounts, allowing EAs and coordinators to help manage scheduling links on behalf of others.
Multi-duration links
Scheduling links can now share multiple time duration options for guests to search from.
Why this is awesome: Your prospect, customer, or candidate may not have the full 45 minutes to chat with you this week, but 30 minutes will work. Now you can provide guests the ability to choose the amount of time they want to meet for.
Are you making the most of GoodTime’s latest features?
We want to help you evolve and take full advantage of the latest upgrades and improvements to our platform. Check out the GoodTime support center for tutorials and tips to help you stress less and get more done!
The end of 2023 is approaching fast, but our Product team isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. We’re pushing out plenty of GoodTime updates for you to be thankful for, including:
Lead Time Report – Move fast to secure the strongest talent! The Lead Time Report shows you how close in time interviews are booked and how rescheduling affects the wait.
Training Report – Training Paths are used to maximize your organization’s interviewing capacity. With the all-new Training Report, you can track the performance of each path to understand where focus needs to be placed and be better prepared for upcoming demands.
Customized Automations– Customize the default automations to meet the needs of your organization!
Event & Interview Day Scheduling – Our dashboard has gotten an overhaul along with more functionality to support more types of events.
Internal Candidate Scheduling – Visually see when you are communicating and scheduling with internal applicants.
Plus a whole lot more. Watch our full video walkthrough of this month’s new features below, or keep scrolling for a quick look at the highlights.
Watch the November 2023 GoodTime product updates webinar
Lead Time Report
The GoodTime Lead Time Report helps you track how far into the future your confirmed interviews are scheduled.
Why this is awesome: The number 1 way to lock down top talent is to schedule fast. Monitor the lead time by job type, coordinators, and specific roles to identify areas where improvement is needed.
Training Report
The Training Report is finally here – a one-stop shop to track enrollments, graduations, path volume, and average time to graduate!
Why this is awesome: If you want to plan accurately for hiring the right people, it all starts with training the right interviewers. The Training Report ensures that you monitor the progress and react properly in order to meet your hiring goals.
Enrollment and Graduation emails
We are all about automating your work for you! Now you can let GoodTime automatically notify your trainees when they are enrolled in your program, and when they graduate!
Why this is awesome: With automated tagging & untagging, enrollment emails, graduation emails, and auto-enrollment into the next path! All it takes is that first enroll and your company is on its way to fully autonomous & perpetual training. In other words, endless opportunity!
Event & Superday scheduling
The Interview Day dashboard has gotten an overhaul along with more functionality to support more types of events!
Why this is awesome: Dashboards are now personalized to individual users running events. We also now support multiple interview blocks for presentation interviews and removing interviewer groups from blocks.
Internal candidate scheduling
See inside the scheduling workflow when you are communicating and scheduling with an internal applicant.
Why this is awesome: Tailor your communication and scheduling based on whether a candidate is a current employee or an external applicant.
Customized automation
You can now customize the default automations to meet the needs of your organization!
Why this is awesome: Adjust the content, timing, and if a certain automation is disabled/enabled to cater to the unique needs of your workflows.
Even more updates!
For Hire:
Automatic fallback to current user as coordinator if none is specified
If no coordinator is specified in your ATS and you start scheduling an interview, GoodTime will auto-select you as the coordinator to save time.
New variable: $interview.interviewlength
With this new variable, you can insert the total length of a multi-panel interview into your communications.
Revamped Replace Trainee sidebar
The sidebar for switching trainees has been completely revamped and now shows important information such as which tag the interviewer came from, load limit status, and better functioning conflict control.
For Hire for High Volume:
Text forwarding to email
When candidates send SMS or WhatsApp messages, users receive emails notifying a candidate has sent a message. We’ve also made our messenger mobile-friendly so you can reply to messages right from your phone. This setting can be disabled if you do not want to be notified via email.
Workday Chrome Extension
Workday ATS users can now use our GoodTime Chrome Extension to open candidates up directly inside of the ATS. Workday users can also now message candidates and schedule interviews without having to leave the ATS
Are you making the most of GoodTime’s latest features?
We want to help you evolve and take full advantage of the latest upgrades and improvements to our platform. Check out the GoodTime support center for tutorials and tips to help you stress less and get more done!
Recruiting pros, when you think about AI, what’s the first tool that comes to mind? If you’re like most people, it’s ChatGPT. From the moment it surfaced, it dominated headlines, causing a frenzy of positive and negative opinions.
It’s certainly the most prevalent and accessible AI tool out there, but it also has its limits. For example:
Not bad, but not great either. Don’t worry — this article is written by a real human being.
Yet, even before the ChatGPT craze, AI recruiting tools had already made their way into businesses across the globe. And it continues to grow at lightning speed. In 2017, only 20% of businesses used AI in some sort of capacity in their business according to McKinsey’s Global Survey on AI. Today, that number has more than doubled.
While Forbes reports that only 26% of companies have leveraged AI to support talent acquisition, for those who have, the results speak for themselves.
85% say it saves time and increases efficiency
44% say it helps them find top candidates
30% say it helps reduce biased decisions
18% say it increases diversity among candidates
If this tells us anything, it’s that more talent teams need to jump on board with tech and automation to help them find their best workers.
And this is truer now than ever before. Our 2024 Hiring Insights Report shows that on average, talent teams are hitting just half of their hiring goals. Likely due to recent team reductions and leaner budgets, talent teams are struggling to do the same amount of work with fewer resources.
They need extra hands — a problem technology can solve. AI won’t replace recruiters, but help them hit their goals with less time and resources. But when it comes to tech for recruitment, it can be hard to tell what’s beneficial and what’s just a good marketing ploy.
So where do talent teams begin?
Stay tuned as we cover the top 6 AI recruitment tools every talent team should know about.
Unlock 2026’s top hiring strategies: Insights from 500+ TA leaders
Be the first to uncover deep hiring insights specific to your sector — straight from the highest-performing TA teams.
We may be biased, but for good reason. With GoodTime Hire’s AI-powered interview scheduling, teams hire up to 50% faster. And in today’s hiring landscape, faster is always better.
But that boost in efficiency comes from much more than basic scheduling. GoodTime offers quick communication through text and WhatsApp, workflow automation, candidate screening questions, actionable insights, and interviewer coordination so teams can scale and fill high-volume roles in half the time.
But don’t take my word for it. Allie Scheu, Recruitment Coordination Manager at Hubspot can back me up. After implementing GoodTime for her team, she stated, “GoodTime makes the process so much easier for the recruiting coordination team because it really eliminates a lot of the back-and-forth that we would have been previously going through between interviewers, candidates, and hiring managers.” You can read HubSpot’s full story for more details.
Want to see GoodTime in action? Check out our on-demand product tour.
Top 3 benefits
Easily handles high-volume hiring: In a world where teams are trying to do more with fewer resources, GoodTime offers a solution. By providing seamless automated solutions, teams can focus less on the cumbersome details and more on getting talent through the door faster.
Prioritizes relationships: While GoodTime’s intelligent automation takes care of tedious tasks, such as back-and-forth scheduling, talent teams now have more time to focus on creating relationships with the candidates that matter. Speeds up hiring: GoodTime Hire greatly reduces time-consuming work, allowing talent teams to hire at a much quicker rate. And with the average time-to-hire sitting at 44 days, there’s no better way to get ahead of the competition than this.
You know as well as I do that it takes hours and hours to screen resumes, just to find one well-matched candidate.
SmartAssistant’s AI-powered recommendation service does this for you. Using powerful custom algorithms, SmartAssistant easily finds and scores talent, recommending the best match at lightning speed.
It also helps eliminate subjective opinions. Yes, even the most well-intended recruiters can let bias seep in. When reviewing information, this tool does not analyze personal data (such as name, age, gender, etc). Nor does it factor past hiring decisions into the algorithm. Instead, it focuses on the competencies that matter.
Top 3 benefits
Increases productivity: With rapid applicant screening, SmartAssistant discovers talent in just minutes — giving recruiters more time to work on other important tasks.
Boosts discoverability of candidates: Sometimes good candidates get lost in the weeds. With SmartAssistant, every candidate is evaluated the same way, giving everyone a fair chance to be seen and heard.
Expands team diversity: When biased opinions are not a part of the sourcing decision, your company gets a better chance at well-rounded, diverse hires. And this is critical for company success.
3. Search queries, prep, and drafting emails: ChatGPT
You know I had to include this one on the list. Only surfacing in November of 2022, ChatGPT is still in its early days. Yet, it’s created ripples across every industry. Hopefully optimistic, recruiters joined the crowd to see how ChatGPT could help them speed up their efficiency.
And it didn’t disappoint. While ChatGPT is certainly not perfect (keep in mind that many still use the free version), it’s certainly eliminated extra steps for the recruiter. Here are a few ways recruiters use Chat GPT to speed up their hiring process:
To level up search queries: Using ChatGPT, recruiters can generate Boolean search strings to help them find the best candidate.
To prep for an interview: Based on a specific prompt, ChatGPT can generate a list of interview questions for a specific role.
To draft email communication: ChatGPT can act as an email subject line generator, and even create entire emails for a variety of scenarios, making candidate communication quick and seamless.
Top 3 benefits
Saves time: ChatGPT creates answers to prompts in seconds and helps talent teams speed up their time-to-hire.
Reduces manual effort: Many talent teams spend hours writing emails or developing interview questions. Now talent teams can use ChatGPT to do their tedious tasks. And while ChatGPT is still not perfect, talent teams can quickly make edits and move on to the next task.
Minimizes cost: ChatGPT offers three plan options. Many businesses choose to stick with the lowest plan, which is free. Even the next plan level is very affordable, coming in at $20 a month. For talent teams who are trying to do more, but reduce costs, ChatGPT is a great option.
Curious how a real TA leader uses ChatGPT? We spoke with Dubi Ben-Shoham, Head of Talent Acquisition at Socotra, and he shared how he utilizes it for repetitive or templated candidate emails. You can watch a clip from our conversation below.
Before offering a job, it’s important to verify that a candidate is who they say they are. That’s where Checkr comes in.
This AI-powered platform saves hours of administrative work by verifying employee information — in just seconds. While traditional employment verifications can take up to 10 days, Checkr can complete it in less than 90 seconds. Checkr processes a mind-blowing 1.5 million + background checks per month, without sacrificing accuracy or compliance.
For Jackie McKewon, HR Generalist at Deploy HR, Checkr has been a huge time saver. “As a result of bringing Checkr on board, our team has more time back in their days to focus on candidate retention programs, improving the onboarding experience, and the candidate onboarding process,” she raves.
Top 3 benefits
Improves accuracy: When records are processed manually, there’s a greater risk of mistakes. Checkr’s tool categorizes data clearly and consistently so records are always accurate and up to date.
Maximizes time: Checkr saves talent teams time by doing the hard work for them.
Lessens Administrative burden: Talent teams can spend days getting background checks, drug testing, and verifying reference checks. Checkr greatly reduces the administrative workload so teams can focus on hiring faster.
HackerRank AI makes technical hiring a dream. It provides screening and interview technology that is solely focused on the technical hire. With skills-based assessments, developers can prove their capabilities using the latest technologies. And talent teams can adopt an extensive library of technical skills, giving them the insights they need to make the most informed decisions.
But there’s more. HackRank AI also provides a live coding option. This way, developers can show off their skills in real time. This is especially important since a growing number of developers and technical recruiters we speak to say technical interviews aren’t effective.
For talent teams focused on technical hires, HackerRank AI makes finding and interviewing candidates seamless. Here’s what Jon Duggins, Director of TA at DraftKings, had to say: “Screening candidates through HackerRank has helped us rapidly and accurately identify the skills of candidates, and therefore find and hire the technical talent our team needs to innovate.”
Top 3 benefits
Mitigates bias: Certified assessments are built to ensure fairness. Unlike subjective evaluations that may be influenced by biases, technical skills assessments focus solely on the performance of the candidate.
Ensures honesty in performance: When assessing candidates, this AI-powered tool automatically detects plagiarism, making sure that only those with the best skills get through.
Discovers most in-demand tech skills: HackerRankAI has an extensive library of tech skills, helping talent teams assess and hire with confidence.
Although SeekOut offers many recruiting services, it focuses on one, main theme: using data to discover talent.
One benefit of SeekOut is its ability to quickly identify and close skills gaps. Their AI-powered search engine uses data to understand current employee skills, experiences, or career goals. Then, using this data, talent teams can make targeted decisions around their sourcing strategy, like planning for new roles or training existing employees.
Beyond that, SeekOut gives access to 800 million public profiles and matches applicant competencies with the roles they best fit. Then, it sorts these applicants based on how qualified they are for the role.
Top 3 benefits
Improves efficiency: With SeekOut, talent teams quickly get the insights they need to hire the best-matched candidate for the role.
Increases diversity: This powerful search tool finds the most diverse, hard-to-find talent. And talent teams have total control over how they filter candidates, helping them focus on what truly matters — skills.
Creates unity across teams: Finding top talent is always easier when every member of the talent team is on the same page. With SeekOut, teams can easily share and discuss insights.
What AI recruiting tools does your team need?
Now it’s your turn. What AI recruitment tools would best benefit your team’s specific needs? Begin by asking questions like, “What is our ultimate goal this year?” or “What are our current challenges?” Then find the tool that works best for your team’s specific needs. It’s a challenging time to hit hiring goals right now with leaner resources, and adding recruitment automation is your best bet to getting ahead.
If you’re still not sure where to begin, try GoodTime Hire. Our interview scheduling software gives teams the edge they need to hire up to 50% faster.
Upgrade your hiring journey with AI
GoodTime’s AI agents orchestrate the entire hiring journey — screening, scheduling, messaging, and more — so talent teams hire faster with a better candidate experience.
We need to talk about the modern recruitment funnel. And we will. But I explain the stages and steps you can take to optimize your funnel, let’s take a brief look at the state of recruitment in general.
Here’s an uncomfortable truth: GoodTime’s 2024 Hiring Insights Report found that for years, TA teams have struggled to hit just half of their hiring goals.
There are no convenient excuses for this underperformance, either. Numbers of job seekers have remained roughly the same, while job openings have dwindled. So in theory, hiring goal attainment should be ticking upward, right?
But of course, it’s not quite that simple. The report also speaks to skills gaps in available candidates and increased demands of potential hires as significant obstacles.
So how can companies turn things around? What “secret sauce” can ensure you meet your hiring goals while ensuring your candidates are of the highest quality?
Let’s take it back to the basics: A well-defined, fine-tuned recruitment funnel.
Unlock 2026’s top hiring strategies: Insights from 500+ TA leaders
Be the first to uncover deep hiring insights specific to your sector — straight from the highest-performing TA teams.
When it’s working correctly, your recruiting funnel is a self-replenishing candidate pipeline to ensure top-quality candidates can fill roles in your organization as needed. Typically, the recruitment funnel can be broken down into seven stages:
Awareness
Interest
Application
Consideration
Interview
Offer
Hire
Below, I’ll break each of these down in more detail.
The 7 stages of the recruitment funnel
A recruitment funnel can’t help you achieve your goals unless all seven stages are clearly defined and you have a shared understanding within your TA team. You might want to adjust these definitions a little to suit the unique hiring process steps of your organization, but for the most part, your recruiting funnel should look something like this:
1. Awareness
This stage involves creating and spreading awareness about a job vacancy and the organization among potential candidates through various marketing and advertising channels.
Here, you’re introducing visitors to your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and your organizational mission, whether candidates are suitable for the role or not.
You’ll want to go beyond just the basic job posting and actually inform candidates about your organization, sell them on your company, and convince them they’ll be an ideal fit.
This is also an opportunity to capture names, emails, phone numbers, and other basic candidate information to bolster engagement further.
Use social media – especially LinkedIn – to make your employer brand more visible and transparent. For instance, the banner on your LinkedIn Company page can spread general brand awareness to promote upcoming events, celebrate awards, or use other ways to project/promote your identity.
Make sure to highlight the benefits that are a priority to your target candidate group (e.g., parental leave, childcare subsidies, and student debt relief).
You can also use platforms like LinkedIn to show off your employee experience and attract new applicants. HelloFresh does a great job at this. Take for example, their “day in the life at HelloFresh” video series, which lets users see what the offices actually look like, what perks they can expect, and what the general vibe of the company is, all before they even have an intro meeting.
2. Interest
In this stage, candidates express initial interest in the job opportunity or the organization by engaging with content or outreach efforts.
Drive interest by crafting compelling job descriptions. Techniques include addressing candidates in the 2nd person (referring to them as “you” instead of “they” to make it more personal).
Call your company “we” to make your candidate feel like part of the company.
Use active voice. Make your candidates feel like they’ll be part of the action. “The objective is to convert sales and satisfy customers” isn’t clear about who will do what. Conversely, “You’ll interact directly with customers, build relationships, and convert sales” is more direct and impactful.
Make sure to also write clear, descriptive job titles, craft an honest and transparent “About us” blurb, and be precise about role responsibilities.
3. Application
The application stage is when candidates formally apply for the position by submitting their resumes or applications, indicating a strong interest in the role.
A simplified application process is one of the best ways to keep potential candidates engaged and interested. Note how 60% of job seekers quit while they’re completing applications due to complexity and length.
These days, it’s crucial to make the application process mobile-friendly is crucial since 52% of job-seekers look for roles on their phones. You want to be where your top candidates are.
User-friendly application interfaces are a must. Select typography and color schemes carefully to align with your company’s brand. Colors and thoughtful formatting should be used to highlight the most important elements of an application and establish a visual hierarchy. Make sure to keep things simple visually. You want the process to be as easy as possible to avoid any confusion or unnecessary labor for the applicant.
4. Consideration
At this stage, recruiters review applications and qualifications to determine which candidates merit further consideration for the position.
48% of candidates claim employers failing to communicate with them about their candidacy is a top-five frustration when seeking a job. Regardless of a candidate’s chances for landing a role, don’t ghost them – word spreads. While you’re at it, always send confirmation emails to show candidates you’ve received their applications. It prevents unnecessary back-and-forth over email and helps them see you as an engaged employer.
As discussed in our article on tech hiring challenges, AI tools can streamline personalized communication, showing consideration to candidates without bloating your workload.
In the consideration phase, it’s important to set clear expectations about your hiring process from the start. Consider publishing a FAQ section on your careers page, answering queries of would-be applicants proactively.
5. Interview
Candidates who pass the consideration stage are invited for interviews, where they are assessed further for their fit and suitability for the role.
Conduct interviews with your shortlist of candidates. While three interviews should be enough, this number can change based on who you’re hiring and for what position.
Interview scheduling software like GoodTime closes the gaps between hiring stages, making communication and interview scheduling with candidates much more efficient. In fact, it can help TA teams reduce your time-to-hire by up to 50%. Read Pinterest’s story to learn more.
Ensure a positive candidate experience by giving them information about the process. Prepare your hiring team to ask the most effective questions that help avoid unconscious biases.
And never ever skip an intake meeting. Trust me. That’s your chance to align with the hiring manager on what a good fit for the role looks like. An efficient intake meeting sets the entire process up for success.
Just as important is the post-interview debrief. Debriefs are how you make sure you’re evaluating candidates against the right criteria and are an important opportunity to coach and align with hiring managers.
Want to learn more about coaching hiring managers for interviews? We asked Socotra’s Head of Talent Acquisition, Dubi Ben-Shoham, about his process for coaching and training interviewers, including behavioral interviewing techniques. Watch his advice in the clip below.
6. Offer
After successful interviews, a job offer is extended to the chosen candidate, outlining the terms and conditions of employment.
The first thing your chosen candidate will read in your offer is the compensation. Be transparent with the starting base salary in either pay-per-period or hourly amounts, payment frequency, payment methods, and stock options/bonuses.
Next on your chosen candidate’s priority list will be your benefits. Include anything pre-negotiated (e.g., healthcare plans, relocation assistance, insurance, vacation time, and wellness benefits).
If you do end up negotiating on compensation, Indeed suggests these employer negotiation strategies:
Research industry standards
Set a range
Determine candidate expectations
Spearhead the negotiations yourself
Expect a counter
Consider a signing bonus
Understand the significance of your benefits
7. Hire
Once the candidate accepts the offer and completes any required background checks or paperwork, they officially become an employee of the organization.
Your new hire onboarding process – and its overall soundness – will dictate whether your new hire succeeds and sticks around. Nearly 70% of employees will stay with a company for three years when the onboarding experience is on point.
Forbes suggests “Preboarding” new hires. This effort entails engaging and communicating with soon-to-be-starting employees before they begin, keeping them excited about the new opportunity. Send company swag (e.g., notepads or water bottles with your logo) and encourage them to ask questions. Email them an onboarding schedule to ensure the smoothest first day possible.
Also, get the initial paperwork out of the way ASAP. Include other team members as “welcoming crews” to help new hires immediately feel part of the team. Job shadowing is another suggested onboarding tactic, as is making the first day an exciting event (consider taking the new employee out for lunch).
Optimizing the recruiting funnel
Conceptually, optimizing your recruiting funnel sounds excellent. But getting from concepts and hypotheticals to concrete results is no simple task.
For one, you wouldn’t be alone if you felt like the net you’re casting in the marketplace isn’t wide enough. Moreover, gaps often exist in available data to help find specific candidates.
While we’ve established the benefits of brand recognition, enhancing this organizational and recruiting facet has its obstacles.
Choosing the right Applicant Tracking System (ATS) — along with the right add-ons and integrations — helps you overcome all these challenges.
Data-driven decision-making will prove crucial in developing a high-functioning recruitment funnel. The ideal tech stack allows you to view and analyze complex recruitment data, identifying the differentiating skills of top performers within your organization.
Isolating success factors within your data enables you to create more targeted and well-defined postings. It also allows you to assess skills and screen candidates more granularly.
This information will also shed light on recruiting funnel weaknesses. Your dashboards should paint more thorough and specific pictures of your preferred candidates, developing a more personalized and headache-free experience for potential hires.
Seeking constant improvement and feedback through the hiring and recruitment funnel will help cultivate long-term success.
4 key challenges in recruitment funnel management
1. Attracting best-fit candidates
We discussed in the introduction how skills gaps are increasingly prevalent in potential candidates. Yes, plenty of job-seekers exist, but the increasing demands of today’s workplace mean fewer potential candidates are qualified for the roles to which they apply.
When you’re pressed for time and need to hire someone ASAP, you’re in a position where you can’t make an optimal hire.
Avoid this lose-lose situation by following the tips above. For instance, investing in your employer brand might not feel like a priority, but it really pays off in the long run.
At a basic level, writing more engaging job postings highlighting attractive benefits and compensation will go far. The truth is you’ve got to be prepared to shell out some cash for quality hires at the end of the day.
These individuals keep their ears to the ground, are typically highly skilled (they already work somewhere, after all), and are in high demand. They have all the leverage and have a long line of recruiters chasing after them.
How do you differentiate yourself from all other recruiters? A bolstered employer-brand identity and sterling reputation will go far in attracting passive talents.
Moreover, employee referrals can make a massive impact. Passive candidates don’t respond much to job ads since they aren’t actively looking. So, a connection through an employee and their network can catalyze your recruitment efforts in this area.
3. Implementing data-informed decision making
Recruitment metrics and data are vital to your hiring process. However, many recruiters and hiring managers find themselves stuck using spreadsheets and manual calculators that stifle progress more than provide insights. It’s important to establish a realistic recruiter capacity model to make sure your plans are attainable.
Data-driven recruitment strategies will ensure you hire the best people, and you can streamline these efforts with automated or AI technology. This way, HR workloads won’t skyrocket, and everyone can work with quality data that helps make informed hiring decisions.
4. Hiring fast enough
The clock keeps ticking when a position is vacant. The company loses money every second you haven’t hired someone.
Unfortunately, making snap decisions increases the likelihood of an ill-informed hire when you must recruit top-performing people to stay ahead of your competitors. Moreover, stretching out the recruitment funnel can make quality candidates disinterested.
So–you must hire quickly, but you can’t rush your decision. That’s a conundrum if we’ve ever heard one.
Implement text messaging in your recruiting funnel
Use pre-screening questions to fast-track quality candidates
Incorporate automation to expedite the interview process
Recruitment funnel metrics and benchmarks to watch
Time-to-hire efficiency has proven itself a pain point for many hiring professionals trying to foster a thriving recruitment funnel.
In a recent chat we had with Skyla Lambeth, Recruiting Operations Manager for Collective Health, she shared “It’s crucial to monitor candidate time-to-hire data. Pay close attention to pass-through rates, understanding how many candidates are required at the top of the funnel to make a job offer. Additionally, it’s vital to assess how many candidates successfully progress from the on-site stage or panel interview, especially when multiple people are involved in the interview process.”
The GoodTime 2023 Hiring Insights Report points to 71% of industry leaders claiming an increase in time-to-hire in 2022, an uptick from 60% in 2021.
43% of respondents spoke to heightened candidate demands. Then, when unicorn candidates are discovered, the competition is fierce.
Consider this statistic: Three-quarters of hiring managers say reputation impacts their recruiting ability. Moreover, 83% of potential candidates are hesitant to work with companies with bad reputations.
Jackie Dube, the Chief People Officer at The Predictive Index, explains that Glassdoor ratings can only be good–and stay good–if you have “a structured, efficient hiring process.”
“For your candidate experience and Glassdoor ratings to be good (and stay good), a structured, efficient hiring process is essential.”
-Jackie Dube, Chief People Officer at The Predictive Index
There’s a reason why 37% of survey respondents have prioritized upgrading automation and technology in their hiring process.
Improved efficiency in hiring will functionally enhance your recruitment funnel. It will also bolster your brand identity as an employer. Employees don’t take kindly to being victims of the runaround.
While your goal is never to treat a potential hire poorly, inefficiency and oversights in your recruitment funnel can cause these hiccups.
Turn your recruiting funnel into a recruiting flywheel
A strong recruitment funnel is great, but you know what’s even better? A flywheel.
Turning your recruiting funnel into a recruiting flywheel involves shifting from a linear and transactional approach to a continuous and relationship-centered one. In a flywheel model, candidates are not just seen as one-time hires but as potential advocates and sources for future talent.
By providing a positive candidate experience, nurturing relationships, and fostering a strong employer brand, you create a self-sustaining cycle where engaged employees refer top talent, reducing recruitment costs, and improving overall retention. This approach emphasizes the long-term benefits of building a talent community rather than simply filling immediate job openings, ultimately making your recruitment efforts more efficient and effective.
The first time I used ChatGPT, I was naive. I went to play with it expecting the same output I’d get from the AOL chatbots I used to talk to in the early 2000s. Then, like everyone else, I had that moment of “Oh. Damn. This is not a toy.”
Of course, ChatGPT and the sudden flood of AI tools that have exploded along with it aren’t without their flaws and their risks, but the reality is that AI isn’t coming to the recruiting industry. It’s here.
With 77% of companies either using or thinking about using AI, many recruiters fear that tech will eventually replace them. But will it really?
The short answer is not quite, but here’s the main thing I want you to take away: Recruiters can not afford to ignore AI.
I spoke with the experts to find out everything you need to know to ride the wave of AI recruiting without being swallowed by it, so let’s dive right in.
Why AI won’t replace human recruiters
There’s no denying that the rapid growth of tools, like ChatGPT, makes it feel like AI is positioned to take over the world. Yet despite this ominous outlook, there’s one thing that tech cannot replace: human touch.
AI is here to make recruiting more human
Jonathon Wall, a Principal at the Cassillon Group and a seasoned recruiting leader with over two decades of experience, believes that technology has the potential to make recruitment more human. How? By handling the mundane tasks that keep recruiters from doing what they love most – connecting with people.
“We should be leveraging automation and AI to do those things that aren’t fun,” he shared. Many recruiters are bogged down by repetitive tasks and system updates, often referred to as “administrivia” by Wall. By automating these, recruiters can focus on their true passion: fostering relationships.
“Recruiting is a very defined process and a lot of the what I call ‘administrivia,’ it’s the stuff that recruiters don’t like… They kind of keep us from doing the things that really are our superpowers. We’re people people.”
So yes, tech may be replacing recruiting tasks, but it’s not replacing recruiters. It’s simply assisting them so they can find top talent, fast. Here’s proof: a Mindedge study shows that 76% of employees who recently had advanced technology introduced to their office say that it made their jobs easier. Another report shows that on average, AI saves employees 2.5 hours per day.
For the recruiter, this is good news. While technology takes over tedious tasks, like back-and-forth scheduling, recruiters can focus on cultivating personal, empathetic interactions so candidates feel understood and connected.
If you’re uneasy about the boom in technology, we’d suggest reframing your perspective. It shouldn’t be “Will AI replace human recruiters?” Instead, ask yourself, “How can AI enhance what I do?”
So let’s look at the positive role AI plays in talent acquisition and how recruiters can harness it to stay ahead of modern challenges and thrive at work.
Join a community just for talent pros
GoodTime Talent Innovators is an online community for TA professionals to engage in discussions, network with one another, and discover exclusive events.
“The reality is that if you’re not upskilling, you’re not learning how to use these tools… watch out, because somebody is,” Jonathon told us, highlighting the urgency for recruiters to adapt to the technological advancements.
With many in the industry eager to sharpen their skills and leverage new tools, those who delay are at risk of being left behind. As Jonathon puts it, “All those recruiters who are sitting on the sidelines… they’re upskilling because they’re trying to future-proof their careers. And so if you’re not future-proofing right now, you’re probably falling behind.”
It’s no surprise that AI recruiting tools are at the top of the agenda for nearly all recruiting conferences in 2024. If you don’t have time to skim through all the industry publications, I’ve got you back. Here are the main AI tools recruiters should be aware of:
Interview scheduling
There’s nothing more frustrating than back-and-forth manual scheduling, especially when different time zones and work schedules come into play.
But what if you could schedule an interview in minutes with just the click of a button?
AI-powered interview scheduling software lets you do just that. They suggest the best interview times based on interviewers’ schedules and candidates’ availability.
GoodTime helps TA teams to hire up to 50% faster by automating interview scheduling. It plugs into your existing ATS, automatically shares scheduling links with candidates, and then sends calendar invites, agendas, and reminders — freeing up hours of time for recruiters and RCs. No more back-and-forth. No more wasted hours waiting for a response.
It can take hours for a recruiter to weed through job boards, social media, or networking events just to find qualified leads. Not only does it eat up time, it also limits the number of candidates recruiters have time to reach out to.
This is where AI candidate sourcing tools have helped recruiters regain hours back into their day. These tools search through endless databases and online platforms to find candidates that match specific parameters, like job skills or location.
Look at Entelo, for example. This AI-powered tool helps recruiters find candidates filtered by different groups — such as gender, ethnicity, or veteran status. It also quickly reviews candidates’ social media profiles to learn more about them. Then, it recommends candidates who are a great fit for the job qualifications and the workplace culture. Talk about hours of saved effort!
Resume screening
One job post can easily lead to hundreds of resume submissions. There’s no doubt that sifting through all those resumes can be incredibly time-consuming — up to 23 hours according to one report.
AI resume screening tools can cut that time down immensely by quickly scanning resumes and extracting relevant information (such as experience, education, skills, and certificates) to identify the top resumes that fit the job criteria.
Although resume screening is promising, it’s not 100% foolproof. Why? One report shows that a whopping 93% of people lie on their resumes — and resume screening tools are not equipped to spot a lie.
Thankfully, there’s technology that can ensure candidates have the skills necessary to do the job. This leads us to our next tool: skills assessments.
Skills assessment
Let’s take a minute to think about this practically. You would never hire a hairdresser without asking them to demonstrate a cut or color. You would never bring on a graphic designer without asking for a portfolio of their work. So why then, do so many companies hire talent without first validating their skills?
Skills assessments evaluate work performance potential rather than completely relying on resume claims. With 52% of TA leaders reporting that the hardest part of their job is identifying the right candidate, there’s no question that skills assessments are on track to quickly solve that problem. From game-based assessments to coding assessments, recruiters can have candidates prove their skills so only the most qualified candidates move forward.
Personalized engagement
While you can never fully replace human-to-human engagement, you can leverage technology to keep the conversation going when recruiters are not around.
Think about it this way. When a candidate works a full-time job, when are they able to submit a resume? Likely, not until later in the evening — when most recruiters have already left the office. So how can this candidate quickly engage with a recruiter without having to play the back-and-forth email game?
Text message recruiting platforms can create a solution to this problem. These tools engage with candidates, answer FAQs, and provide updates about the hiring process — all while minimizing the manual lift on the recruiter.
We’re a hustle culture, where immediate is now expected. Texts have an open rate of 90% and are often read in the first 3 minutes. So if you weren’t already convinced that automatic mobile-first engagement is necessary, you should be now. Companies need to provide a continuous stream of communication that keeps the candidate engaged from start to finish.
Not all interviews can, or should, be done in person. Even if a candidate is in the same geographical area, it can take a tremendous amount of time to drive back and forth to multiple interviews.
Not only do video interviews save the candidate time, they also give recruiters hours back into their day.
Video interview tools often come with a pre-recorded or a live option. With pre-recorded videos, talent teams can send pre-selected interview questions to the candidate who then responds on their own time. If they’re a good fit, talent teams will often schedule a live interview session where they can continue with a more personal interaction.
The downside? Async or AI-driven video interviewers can definitely come across as colder, so consider how they fit into your process and how you’ll maintain a personal touch.
Predictive analytics
Last, but definitely not least, is automated reporting and analytics.
When everything is said and done, recruiters want to ensure their numbers are up. Reporting tools are constantly looking at what has been successful — and what has not. Recruiters can use these analytics to identify trends, make data-driven decisions, and predict hiring success.
“If you’re not future-proofing right now, you’re probably falling behind.”
-Jonathon Wall, Principal, The Cassillon Group, Inc.
Why AI in recruitment is your golden ticket
It should be pretty obvious by now that AI plays a critical role in talent acquisition. While recruiting technology doesn’t fully replace the recruiter, it does benefit them. Here are the top three advantages recruiters will see when switching to automation:
1. Saved time
Hours drafting emails, back-and-forth scheduling, searching through pages of interview questions….it’s no wonder that the average time-to-hire is on the rise. Plus, 60% of candidates leave the hiring process because it’s taking too much time. That’s a lot of missed opportunities.
When recruiters leverage AI tools, they automate and optimize various tasks that would otherwise require significant manual effort — and in turn, greatly speed up the hiring process. This is a win-win for both candidates and recruiters alike.
2. Improved candidate experience
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again — hiring tech does not remove human touch. It enhances it. When a recruiter can offload their most time-consuming tasks to automation, they have the bandwidth to connect with the most desired candidates.
And it benefits candidates too. A quick and seamless process — where they feel seen and heard — creates an atmosphere that says “You matter.”
Jonathon emphasized this point to us, saying “By leveraging AI and automation… you can have better quality human interaction, automate the mundane so that you can have more face time with people.” The crux of his belief is paradoxical yet profound: to make the recruitment process more human, one might need to automate more of it.
3. Reduced bias
Even the most well-intended person can unintentionally form biased opinions. Technology reviews candidates based strictly on skills and qualifications, reducing the risk of subjective decisions. This means everyone gets a fair chance, no matter who they are or where they come from.
Win talent faster with AI-powered, human-driven recruiting
Ahryun Moon, CEO of GoodTime, summed up our conversation with Jonathon Wall perfectly saying, “It may sound counter-intuitive, but if you automate more, you can actually make your process even more human because you can have that time back to spend with your candidates.”
Embracing AI and automation in recruitment is not about replacing the human touch, but rather enhancing it. As the landscape continues to evolve, recruiters equipped with the right tools and the right mindset are set to revolutionize the industry, one meaningful connection at a time.
AI is poised to take over much of the recruitment process. But it’s not something we need to fear. Instead, let’s accept technology and evolve with it. Let’s explore what AI has to offer and how it can make the hiring process easier — not just for recruiters but for candidates as well.
Schedule a demo to learn how Hire can level up your AI game so you’re free to focus on hiring the best possible talent.
We did it again. GoodTime just got smarter, better, faster, and stronger — so you can do the same. This month, we’ve crossed more features off your wish list and made them a reality, including:
Cancellation & Reschedule Reasons Report – Last month, we introduced the ability to record the reason for the rescheduling and canceling of interviews. Now, you can access the results in a super simple, but powerful report.
Pulse Benchmarking – The brand new Pulse Report now offers benchmarking! GoodTime is now the only objective way to measure & compare candidate satisfaction against the true industry standard.
Training Revamp – The Training module has been overdue for a refresh, and with the help of trusted customers, we have made a series of powerful improvements.
Event and Interview Day Scheduling – Candidates can now self-schedule for events and Interview Days. Utilize our new request availability workflow to automate scheduling these types of interviews.
Screener Questionnaires – Leverage knock-out questionnaires to pre-screen candidates before scheduling.
Plus, there’s more! So let’s dive right into it. As always, you can catch our full video walkthrough of this month’s new features below, or keep scrolling for a quick look at the highlights.
Watch the October 2023 GoodTime product updates webinar
Cancellation & Reschedule Reasons Report
The GoodTime Cancellation & Reschedule Reasons Report shows a precise breakdown of what caused both actions. You can dissect the data by high-level reasons, and detailed reasons.
Why this is awesome: Anyone can agree that reschedules and schedules are necessary, but not great. Drilling down to what causes them is the first step to improving your process.
Auto-tag trainees upon enrollment
Now you can configure your training paths so that trainees are automatically assigned a tag upon enrollment.
Why this is awesome: Trainees are best nominated for interviews through the use of tags. Auto-tagging trainees when they enroll eliminates a whole step of the training process by automating it according to your specific needs.
Pulse benchmarking
The brand new GoodTime Pulse report now offers benchmarking!
Why this is awesome: The Pulse score is the most objective and standardized way to track candidate experience and helps you improve over time. But only GoodTime benchmarking allows you to measure that improvement objectively against the true industry standard.
Event & Superday scheduling
Candidates can now self-schedule for superday and interview day interviews using the same Request Availability flow they love and know!
Why this is awesome: Even more automation is brought to our Interview Day scheduling flow! No more Excel spreadsheets and manual emails to get scheduling done.
Screener questionnaires
You can now create custom questionnaires that exist in the scheduling flow! Use this to collect important information from candidates and disallow candidates who are not a good fit from scheduling their interviews.
Why this is awesome: Save a ton of time for recruiters, hiring managers, and candidates by pre-screening them before scheduling!
Even more improvements!
For Hire:
Custom labels for Interview Blocks
Now you can label your blocks “GTIB…” or “GoodTime Interview Block..” followed by anything you need.
Improvements to tag-picking logic for Request Availability
– Increased randomization
– Increased pool size
Specific Time for 4 days or more
While multi-day options were historically limited to 3 days or less, now you can configure the most complex interviews over however many days & weeks you need.
Training Path names
Now you can easily see the training path names for alternates when pulling out the “change trainee sidebar”.
For Hire for High Volume:
Multiple candidate creation
We now support multiple candidates with the same phone number and email address. This supports creation and messaging to these candidates instead of a popup alerting you a candidate already exists
Interview day enhancements
You can now update interviewers after an interview has been scheduled. This will automatically update the interviewer across all interviews.
You can also schedule with empty interviewers and update after scheduling.
Enhancements for Settings & Templates
Leverage variables to place the candidate’s resume and interviewer scorecard wherever you want in the calendar invitation ($Candidate.Resume.URL and $FeedbackForm.URL)
Use the new Zoom Meeting ID variable to provide interviewers with the Zoom ID when in meeting rooms ($Interview.Zoom.MeetingId)
Generate the video links inside of the location field with our new setting
Now display OR and AND between pills across the application
Are you making the most of GoodTime’s latest features?
We want to help you evolve and take full advantage of the latest upgrades and improvements to our platform. Check out our support center for tutorials and tips to help you stress less and get more done!
Efficiency
Experience
Intelligence
