Human Resources Blog - Spark Hire
Empower Everyone in the Hiring Process with Playbooks

The Speed to Hire Show – Empower Everyone in the Hiring Process with Playbooks

 

Episode 8 – Stephani Studebaker, Built In

Since 2011, Built In has paved the way for startups to tell their stories and build connections that launch innovative and passionate companies toward success. As a blogging and social platform, Built In gives new companies a space to share their passions, values, and visions. And as a revolutionary recruitment technology, it provides a unique channel to source top talent in the tech industry through content.

Built In consistently seeks ways to break ground for new recruitment communication and connections. The hiring team at Built In recognizes the significance of empowering employees to be innovative and agile in their quest to develop and improve hiring processes and facilitating candidate success with interview playbooks.

This episode of The Speed to Hire Show features the Director of Talent at Built In, Stephani Studebaker.

Key Takeaways

  • [2:21] Consistently look for ways to empower your team – when hiring slows down, shifting the focus in leadership to retention helps to develop skills and improve engagement
  • [8:06] Share your employee value proposition at every touchpoint with candidates – from the careers page to early screening communication through the interview process, ensuring candidates connect with the benefits of working with your company keeps them engaged long after they are hired
  • [12:34] Develop an accurate candidate playbook – communicate timelines and expectations of the hiring process to candidates clearly before they advance to the next stage
  • [15:29] Provide a clear understanding of how the interview translates to the job responsibilities – preparing candidates to succeed in the interview process ensures the best-fit talent is hired for each role

Audio Transcript 

JOSH TOLAN: And so, Stephani, to get things started, why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself? 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: Yeah, so I am the director of talent here at Built In. And a little bit of background because I feel like most of us who have ever been in a talent capacity never went to college or thought– never went into college thinking that we would become talent acquisition, HR, et cetera. 

So I’ve always been in some form of talent acquisition after leaving school. I’m going to age myself here. But I graduated during the recession of 2009 and so took the first job I could get, realized that I was driven by this sense of helping people identify what their strengths are and what they could do with their career. 

So I have always since then been in some sort of talent acquisition capacity, whether it’s working as a director of talent at an organization or selling talent solutions to talent folks at different organizations. I’ve always had this passion and alignment of helping people identify what they want to do with their careers. 

JOSH TOLAN: Awesome. And tell me, how did you come to Built In? And for folks that don’t know what Built In does, maybe you can give a little background there as well. 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: Yeah, I’ll talk high level about what Built In does and then how I got there. So Built In essentially is a community where tech professionals can come to learn about industry trends, gain skill sets, network, and then most importantly, learn about companies outside of what a job description can typically provide. So we talk about the value many times of employer branding. And that is what companies have a chance to do when they sign up with our platform, is highlight and showcase their company in a way that a job slot can’t. 

And so I first came across my now manager, Kelly Keegan, back in 2019 before the pandemic hit and had an extreme interest in what was going on at Built In. They were growing rapidly, had a great grasp on what was needed with where the market was going. And we hit it off. And I started working with them about two years ago as the director of talent. 

JOSH TOLAN: Awesome. So right in the height of the pandemic. How have things changed over the last couple of years since you’ve been there? 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: Oh my word. Well, drastically. And one of the fun parts about working at a smaller organization is you can be agile. You can flex into new roles and responsibilities outside of what you would even imagine. And that’s actually one of the things that we look for with a lot of the folks that do come on board with us, is this heightened sense of wanting to try new things, wanting to stretch their skill set, that intrinsic motivation that you can’t train someone. 

So with that, to answer your question as to how things have changed, like many tech companies right now, economic conditions are challenging. And we are monitoring the market conditions very, very closely. So in terms of overall how my role has changed is prior to this past year, I was heavily focused on talent acquisition and leading our talent acquisition efforts, leading a team of six. 

Since then, since things have slowed down, like many other tech companies, my main focus and shift right now is focusing on talent retention and making sure that the folks that are at our organization feel empowered. We’re up-leveling their skills. We’re identifying new opportunities of ways that they can flex within the organization to make us stronger and more agile as we weather the economic conditions. 

JOSH TOLAN: And yeah, I think that’s a great point. Like in rough markets like it is today, not a lot of teams are thinking that way. They look at their talent acquisition team as purely, we use them for recruiting. So when hiring slows down, what do they do? 

So it’s great that you guys are pivoting some of your focus more on retention and making sure that you keep the people that you’ve got really, really happy when times are slower from a hiring standpoint. And then you’re still building a pipeline in the meantime. And when you guys do press the gas on hiring again, you’ve got the team and the foundation and the pipeline to really be successful. 

I think the mistake a lot of companies make is they just completely shut it down and stop all recruiting and don’t put attention back on to employee retention. So that’s great to hear you guys are doing that. You mentioned a little bit about the makeup of the team. What does it look like today? What are the different roles? What’s everybody responsible for? 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: Yeah, we have five individuals right now on our people operations team. We have some that are focused on DEI. Kelly Keegan, who I mentioned earlier, is our VP of people. So she oversees all the people function. I’m focused heavily on talent, which encompasses talent acquisition as well as retention. 

We have a recruiting manager who’s focused on the day-to-day of making sure that the roles that are open, we’re still getting a lot of talent and bringing candidates through the pipeline and closing the roles that are open. And then we have a general people ops specialist. 

JOSH TOLAN: Got it. And how big is the company now? 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: We have 175 employees roughly give or take right now with a few more open roles. 

JOSH TOLAN: Nice. So with your current focus on retention, can you share a little bit about some of the things that you guys are focused on? 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: Yeah, there are quite a few things. And a lot of it begins with– for a lot of companies right now, it’s going to begin with your employee value proposition, that EVP, and making sure that the individuals that are there can fall back in love with your company. Again, we have this heavy focus on making sure that those that there are loving what they’re doing, are loving being here, and still feel challenged and motivated, and engaged at work. 

So we have a big focus right now on rebuilding our employee value proposition and rolling that out to our organization. Additionally, I have a heavy focus right now on our leadership team. We know that a lot of make or break for an organization falls within the manager and director level. 

I compare it almost to a stone thrown in a very still lake. The managers have the biggest ripple effect on an organization. What they do matters. And so we have set aside time. We have a whole playbook right now for our managers this year. But it’s going to be individual coaching and development as well as monthly forums that we host focused on a different topic every month. 

So this past topic, it was delivering feedback effectively for your teams. We also have future forums designed for, how do you show your employees appreciation? There’s this theory of five love languages. There are five languages of appreciation within the workforce that we’re going to be– being able to describe better to our managers to cascade down to their teams. So there are quite a few things that we’re doing right now. Those are just some of the high-level highlights of what we’re focused on. 

JOSH TOLAN: Yeah, that’s great. Are you for the training and coaching that you guys are doing? Are you using anybody from the outside? Or are you building all of those programs internally? 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: It’s a good question. We’re exploring the idea of some outside. But we’re really focused on what we have here internally and being able to build things out internally with, again, talking about flexing the new muscles for folks. 

It’s bringing in managers who might have developed a skill set that we don’t have and asking them to lead sessions or really depending on our people team to grow and develop some of the forums here. So again, exploring outside opportunities but really leaning heavily on the great resources that we have here internally already. 

JOSH TOLAN: Yeah, that’s awesome. I mean, I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer to that. I think there’s benefit in looking outside because you get outside perspective. But flexing that muscle internally then allows you to build programs that are repeatable. 

So it’s like as you bring in new managers, they can run through those same exact programs. And you can continue to iterate on them versus if you bring somebody in from the outside, it’s like, can we run our training? And then do we bring them back in three to six months to do it again? Or how do we structure it? So I think a mix of both is usually good. But it’s great you guys are building some things out internally. 

Speaking about the EVP, employee value proposition, you bring up a really good point about making sure that employees are continuing to fall in love with your company. I think on the talent acquisition side, that’s where a lot of companies put a lot of effort and resources as like, how do we make people fall in love with us to join the company? And then they get on board. And maybe some of that messaging isn’t continuous throughout the employee life cycle. 

So how are you guys merging the two strategies? How are you messaging candidates about what it’s like to be at Built In and why they should join Built In. And then how does that play out? Once they’re on board, what are some of the things you’re doing to get them to continue to fall in love and continue to align with the EVP? 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: From the TA side or from the talent attraction side, it’s a lot easier to answer. It’s being able to publicize that on your website. I mean, case in point, that’s the number one thing but also being able to talk about it in every step of the candidate process. Not only do we have on our website just a general, like, what are our perks and benefits? What are our values? What’s our leadership team like? But we also incorporate that into every step of our recruiting process. 

On the flip side, once the candidate is closed and they come on board here and they are part of our group, what we’re talking about now is being able to incorporate that. And we talk about training the managers, is letting them managers– giving them the tools and resources they need to know our EVP, to know what sets us apart from other organizations so that if and when their direct reports come to them, thinking about another opportunity outside the organization, they’re able to know what sets us apart. 

And sometimes right, sometimes it makes sense for somebody to leave. They might have outgrown them. They might have circumstantial things that make them want to leave the company. But with that, if there’s somebody here that we can retain and we really believe that they should be here, how do we, again, introduce our perks, our benefits, our values, how do we find that alignment there? And most of that will come through the power of the manager and really working on those development conversations with their directs. 

One other thing to note on that, we have this big focus right now of shifting our focus of performance reviews into this idea of full-out development check-ins. Performance reviews tend to be somewhat antiquated, a little stuffy in the way that most companies go about those. So if you imagine every six months, you get nervous. You have to think about what you did over the past six months. 

And most of the time, those are manager-led where the manager is the one lane into what the employee has done well, what they should be improving upon, et cetera. We want to shift everything all together and put the power– imagine it is like the driver’s seat. We want to put the direct report in the driver’s seat of their own development. 

And instead of thinking of it as a performance review, we really want them to focus on a development check-in. Where do you want to grow over the next– instead of six months, over the next three months? How do you want to develop? How can I help facilitate that as your manager? And introducing that as a way that the company can come alongside you. And we believe in making you better while you’re here. That is at the root and the heart of our EVP. So that was a little sidetrack into some of the things that we’re focused on right now from a tactical standpoint. 

JOSH TOLAN: Yeah, that’s great though. Yeah, I think too often performance reviews are like a manager writing up a report of, this is what the person did well. And this is where they can improve. And that’s kind of it. I think it’s really important to have both sides of it where you have an employee, first of all, self-reflect on the previous period since the last review. 

But also think about, looking forward, what are areas they’ve identified for themselves that either they can grow in like areas to improve or things that they want to grow in. And it’s the manager’s job to think about those things as well. And then the performance review becomes more of a collaborative session. Of course, you’re going to give feedback on where somebody can get better and where they’ve been doing really well. 

But ultimately, it’s about looking forward because the goal of that should be to come out with an action plan whereas an organization and as individuals, we get better as a result of this conversation. And we’ve developed a path to do it. So it’s great you guys are taking a lot of those steps. 

If we jump back a little bit to the hiring process, you mentioned you’re communicating the EVP and different aspects of it at every step of the candidate process. Because you guys are doing such a good job of messaging that and continuing to hone that messaging and making sure it’s front and center for your current employees, are you guys leveraging current employees as part of that messaging in the hiring process to candidates? Whether it be you’re letting candidates talk to existing employees, whether it be you’re sharing content from existing employees in the hiring process, how are you bringing that all together? 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: One of the things that we’ve developed for our candidates, it’s not only our website. But we’ve developed a candidate playbook if you will. And this isn’t new to us. We’ve taken this from some of those other great forward-thinking tech companies, but allowing candidates, once they start with us in the selection process, to really get an idea of what they can expect throughout the interview process. 

So in our candidate playbook, it does highlight not only what they can expect within the interview process but who they’ll be meeting with and links to their LinkedIn profiles, some background on those folks so that they go into every interview knowing, OK, this is who I’ll meet with. 

Additionally, we try our best to open it up for questions even outside of the interview. So what I love personally is when a candidate says, hey, I love meeting with this person. Could I schedule 20 minutes with them to talk about the job just on a one-off? And so that is something that shows initiative by the candidate. But also I love seeing that because they really want to get into all the questions that they didn’t have answered in that interview. 

And sometimes we’ll set that up proactively if we feel like that candidate has unanswered questions from the interview of being able to partner them with somebody that could answer questions outside of the typical process. So those are a few ways that we go a little bit above and beyond for our candidates going through the process. 

JOSH TOLAN: Yeah, love it. I think there’s huge value in– obviously, candidates are going to connect with the interviewers, which obviously includes a hiring manager. But I think there’s huge value in connecting candidates with sometimes people that aren’t involved in the interview process and definitely aren’t the hiring manager. 

In most cases, that ends up being a peer who’s in a similar role already in the company because they can have a transparent, off-the-record type of conversation that has no impact on the hiring process. And it lets the candidate gets their questions answered. What’s your employee share? What’s going on within the business? 

It ultimately helps a candidate make a decision like, is this a place that I can align with and where I want to be? And I think as an employer, that’s what you want. You don’t want somebody just saying yes because it’s a job. And I want to move to the next step of the hiring process. You want them to truly be aligned with your employee value proposition. And I think a great way to do that is by connecting two people, a candidate and somebody within the organization. So it’s awesome to hear you guys are doing that. 

I love the idea of a candidate playbook. Are you guys doing anything in that to — aside from preparing them and being transparent about what the hiring process looks like and what different steps are and who they’d be meeting with — is there anything you guys are doing outside of that to prepare them to be successful in those steps, like things they should research or things they should prepare before that type of interview? 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: Yeah, and it’s a great question. And the answer is it depends upon the role. What we found– while we try to streamline our process as best as possible, there are certain roles that are going to require more or different types of processes. 

So for example, our engineers, most of the time, they’re going to– when they do an on-site with our team are going to have some sort of live coding activity that they’re doing alongside with our team. So that’s simply an example of ways that we best prepare candidates. And we give them ahead of time an idea of what this exercise looks like, what tools they’ll be using, the links to everything in advance, and specifically what we’re looking for in that. 

On the flip side, if we think about our sales process, many times by the time you get to a team interview, which is typically our third interview, there’s some sort of role-play that will provide an advance and will let them know who those folks are that they’re meeting with, what the scenario is, what the questions are. 

And then many times, our recruiter will call in advance and make sure that they’re ready and prepared and see if they have any questions in advance in preparation for that. Sales is a little different because it’s like really thinking on your feet. Especially for our engineering teams, we want to prepare folks as best as possible for what to expect. 

JOSH TOLAN: Yeah, and I think by offering up the playbook or a conversation with a recruiter to make sure that the person is prepared. When it actually comes time for the interview and you get to see the prep work they put in and how they perform, I would imagine there’s some type of correlation with the most engaged candidates that people that are really bought in hopefully are doing the most prep work and come and just blow you guys away. 

So I think it’s good because in the real world, once they’re on board with you guys, hopefully, you’re setting them up for success in their job by providing them with some guidance and the managers coaching them and giving them some clarity on expectations and things like that. 

So it’s important to do that in the interview process versus I feel like too often companies don’t do that. And so somebody shows up for an interview and they’re like, OK, what do you got for me? I don’t really know what to expect. And that’s just not how the real world works. So I feel like you get a better sense of how somebody prepares and thinks about their preparation and goes about their preparation, and then ultimately how they pull it all together in the actual interview. 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: You know what’s interesting on that too? And this was fascinating to see during the Great Resignation. What we realized was a lot of candidates, if they were interviewing with us, chances are they were interviewing with probably five other companies. 

And it wasn’t like we set the bar lower. But I had to go to all of our hiring managers specifically with our sales and say, we aren’t the only one they’re courting right now. We aren’t the only one they’re considering. And so don’t be surprised if they don’t appear as excited about us as we are with them because they are keeping their cards close. They’re considering a lot of other options. They might be a fabulous candidate. But don’t hold it against them if they don’t come out and say, I want to work for you, I’m very excited to work for you because they’re considering their options. 

Now, it’s interesting because you want somebody that wants to work there. But during the Great Resignation, we almost had to change our mindset with the candidates coming in that they were getting a lot of interest elsewhere. And we had to bring our A-game just as much as they did, and we still do. But I’ve never seen such a 180 in the tech space as I have in the past year in terms of candidates really bringing their A-game now as opposed to a year ago. 

JOSH TOLAN: That is interesting. I mean, it’s highly relatable to a sales process. Of course, as a salesperson, you’re going to want the warmly that comes into a sales conversation or a demo that’s like ready to buy before you even talked about the problems that you solve and the benefits of your product, and so on and so forth. 

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to end up being the highest value, long-term customer for you. There are going to be customers that come in. And they’re in a competitive buying process. And they’re looking at a bunch of different providers. And they’re going to hold the cards close to the vest. 

And so I think it’s easy to misinterpret a candidate’s engagement and excitement with– they’re going to be the best employee for us versus somebody that’s maybe a little bit more reserved about their– they might be really excited. But maybe they’re keeping it closer to the vest. And it’s your job on the talent acquisition team to really uncover who’s going to be the best person for this job based on a variety of factors. 

So that’s interesting that you’ve seen that play out and that you’ve seen of the back and forth where it’s like, in a competitive market from an employer standpoint, candidates have a variety of options. And then on the flip side, everybody’s excited. Everybody wants the job. Everybody loves Built In. Everybody wants to work there. You stay in the middle and not get swayed too much one way or the other just based on the perceived eagerness of that candidate. So that’s great. 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: Exactly. I couldn’t agree more. 

JOSH TOLAN: And so can you– I know you mentioned the hiring process is different for different roles. Sales is going to be different from engineering. But generally, can you walk me through what the hiring process might look like at Built In? 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: Yeah, general template, we don’t want to go beyond four separate meetings. That’s the general rule here because speed of hire time kills all deals. We want to make sure that we get what we need while that candidate is with us. And all of our interviews minus the sum of our senior leadership are going to be held via Zoom. And it’s amazing what Zoom has been able to do for our speed of our process. 

Think about back. I even think back to 2019 when everything had to be done in person. And there were eight different steps. And you had that luxury back then, now we don’t. Now we need to speed it up. And so typically, a recruiting process for us, regardless of the role, is going to include a recruiter screen on the phone, which is about 30 minutes. 

Then it will include a hiring manager Zoom meeting for 30 minutes. Then we’ll pull the team in to make sure that there’s a values fit with our organization, get alignment on the individual from multiple parties. So there will be some sort of team meeting and then the final one with either a hiring manager or additional VP leader at our organization. That’s general. 

And of course, every role is going to be different. But that’s our general rule. And again, we don’t want to go beyond four because you’ll lose people. And also we should be able to get the information we need in theory by four interviews with someone. 

JOSH TOLAN: 100%. And I think we hear it all the time. It’s like even with recruiting here at Spark Hire, we’ll have candidates that engage in other processes with other companies. And we’re very similar. And we try and keep it to like compress the stages as much as possible, obviously ensuring we’re still getting the information we need to make a decision. 

But we hear all the time candidates are engaged. And they’re like, I’ve been in like five, six, seven interviews with this company. And it’s taken weeks and weeks and weeks. Like at first, I was really excited to work for them. But the lag of the hiring process and just the number of hoops I’ve got to jump through, number of people I’ve got to talk to, just A seems like overkill. 

B is like, I got to get a job. I can’t wait two, three months to get a decision back on whether or not I’m going to work there. And three, it gives me this impression of an organization that just has too many chefs in the kitchen, can’t make a decision, has too many steps, inefficient. 

And that probably speaks to some things that once you come on board with that type of company, maybe there’s a lot of red tape to get things done or constant approval processes or just things take way too long. And if as an employee I value agility to your point earlier in this call like, that’s not going to cut it for me. And so I think a candidate can see that directly in the hiring process. So it’s important to keep things as compressed as you can. Given you’re at Built In– 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: One thing to note on that is– 

JOSH TOLAN: Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. No, go ahead. 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: One thing to note on that as well, when it came, so back during the Great Resignation in 2021, we noticed we were getting a huge drop-off between our hiring manager interviews and our team interviews for our software engineers. And because of that, we have this wonderful VP of engineering who was so forward-thinking. 

We came to him with this problem. And he said we’re requiring a take-home coding challenge rather than an in-person. And we realized that this extra step or this extra homework, if you will, for our candidates was causing many to leave. 

And so we quickly shifted the process and what was for our engineers four different interviews or four separate interviews, we condensed into three and did an in-person coding challenge, which changed the game. And it sped up our hiring process significantly so that we can make faster and better decisions while the candidate was still very interested. 

So I can’t stress enough how important that is and how much I appreciated his leadership in stepping in and saying like– recognizing the problem when we brought it to him and making a solid change to the hiring process because of that. 

JOSH TOLAN: Yeah, and the way you’ve got to think about it is it’s not about removing things like, OK, we’re just not going to do this anymore because then you’re removing a data point that you’ve already agreed upon was important for you to make a decision. It’s about figuring out ways to consolidate steps and compress time. 

So even if that in-person interview where they’re doing some live coding and maybe speaking with some people within the nation is technically now longer in duration than your previous in-person meeting, you’ve consolidated two steps into one. 

And those two steps, since they happen at different times, that stretches out by days, if not a week. And now you’ve compressed that into maybe 30 more minutes. But it’s all done in the same day. So you keep candidates engaged. You get them through the pipeline faster. And ultimately, you’re able to offer them faster than other employers. 

One of the things I wanted to circle back to is given the services of Built In and the importance that Built In places on employer branding, I know you mentioned you’re integrating employer branding and your EVP all throughout your candidate communication at every step along the way. How have you found that to improve time to hire? Because a lot of people, they won’t tie those two things together. But I definitely think there’s a strong relationship there. So I’d love to hear what you guys have seen. 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: There’s absolutely a strong integration. I compare it to– when was the last time you went to a restaurant where you didn’t look at the menu in advance? Probably didn’t happen, right? Or when did you plan your last vacation, where you didn’t look at the Airbnbs available. So candidates do their homework. And they do their homework to extreme detail. I think I read that the average candidate looks at seven different websites about your organization before they decide to apply. 

So step number one if you think of the top of the funnel, you have to bring your A-game from an employer branding perspective. The candidate needs to know what you offer, how you’re different, what you can do for them during their time with you. So top of the funnel, that’s step number one. 

It speeds up your process because you are getting high-quality candidates coming to you that already have a sense of who you are without having to ask those questions in the interview. And so they already know, like, oh, Built In, you offer half-day Fridays. Oh, you provide remote work. You have flex scheduling. These are all questions that would come up in a lengthy interview process that we’ve addressed those questions right off the bat. 

So that comes to mind is one of the biggest ways that it speeds it up, is simply getting all of those questions answered and a sense of who you are for the right people to come to you rather than you having to go to every single candidate out there. 

JOSH TOLAN: That’s an excellent point, educating the candidate, educating the buyer, very similar things. You often go to software websites. And I say this because I’m in the software as a service business. And it’s like requesting pricing and filling out this form and all these obstructions just to get to information to learn if I’m even interested in proceeding down the path of a sales conversation with this company. 

Similarly, in the hiring process, too many companies put all these obstructions up front. And it’s like filling in our long job application, then waiting to hear back. It’s like they wait until the recruiter actually connects with the candidate to start giving them information. And that might be a week later, two weeks later. 

So first of all, too much time has passed. And second of all, you’ve probably eliminated people that don’t even enter your pipeline because they just can’t find information on you. So having a constant presence, controlling the narrative, being all over so when they go to find all these different sources about your company, you’re present. 

And so them being able to find that fast, gets them to apply fast, gets them engaged and bought in right out of the gate. And when you have a more educated candidate, they’re more engaged. And it’s easier for you to move them along the process faster rather than them like, I don’t know about this company. I don’t know enough information yet. Do I want to engage in extra steps just to keep learning? Whereas you guys have done that right up front. So love what you guys do. 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: And it’s amazing how the candidate experience from the application time can turn people on or off to whether or not they want to apply. I won’t say the name of the company. But prior to coming to Built In, I considered a talent acquisition leadership position at another organization. 

And as soon as I went to go apply, their job looked great. It was posted. I went to it. But it took me to their external site, external software. And the system was so antiquated that I was like, I don’t even want to work at this company because if I’m going to be in charge of talent acquisition and I’m asking people to do this, first of all, I would need to overhaul and change this whole thing right away. 

But candidates, you’re going to lose 90% of the people before you even get a chance to meet with them. So that matters. Absolutely as a candidate, I’d be looking for that sort of thing in terms of what the companies have to offer from the get-go. 

JOSH TOLAN: Yeah, for sure. Well, this has been great. Really, really helpful for me to learn more about a company that I love and built. And we’re a customer of yours. And we definitely leverage the employer branding content all throughout not only to attract candidates but also all throughout our hiring process, so definitely a big fan. So thanks for sharing tons of insight. And just, yeah, I really appreciate you coming on. 

STEPHANI STUDEBAKER: Absolutely. Thanks for the invite. It’s a joy being here. It’s great speaking with you, Josh. 

JOSH TOLAN: Yeah, likewise. 

 

Josh Tolan

Josh Tolan is the Founder and CEO of Spark Hire, a video interviewing platform used by 6,000+ customers in over 100 countries.