Tag: HR Technology

Workday’s Big Play: Redefining HR Tech with Bold Innovation and Trust

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date February 12, 2025

In this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m sitting down with the fabulous David Wachtel, General Manager of Talent Products at a little HCM called Workday—maybe you’ve heard of it?—to talk about how the company is taking HR tech innovation from good to downright iconic.

David is the brains behind Workday’s talent suite—recruiting, onboarding, learning, skills, capabilities and more. If it touches talent, it’s got David’s fingerprints all over it. “It’s a space where we actually are impacting people’s lives,” David says. “It matters.”

And let me tell you, this episode is all about how Workday is making that impact bigger and bolder than ever. David tells us all about how Workday is giving customers and partners the tools to build what they need, when they need it. No waiting for updates. No settling for less. And I think that sets an exciting precedent for the entire HR tech industry.

If you want to catch a glimpse of the HR tech ecosystem of the future, don’t go anywhere because this conversation is for YOU.

Extending the Possibilities

First up: Extend. Workday created Extend because they saw a problem: customers had unique needs that couldn’t wait for the next product release or survive on clunky third-party integrations. Extend puts the power in their hands, letting them build exactly what they need, when they need it, all while staying inside Workday’s trusted ecosystem. No red tape, no compromises, just solutions that actually work.

“Extend is a platform that we’ve been working on for the last couple of years that enables customers to build out their own applications and experiences in Workday,” David says. “They get to benefit from all of the data and the security and the privacy and all the great things that we have in Workday.”

But there’s even more to Extend than meets the eye. “It’s good to think of Extend as not just a platform,” David says. “It is, but it’s also an ecosystem and a community.” With over 2,000 apps already live and 8,000 developers tinkering away, Extend is proving that innovation isn’t limited to Workday’s roadmap—it’s whatever you dream up.

Built on Workday: The Next Evolution

Now, if Extend is a playground, then Built on Workday is a marketplace—one where Workday’s partners can strut their stuff. This initiative is giving partners the tools to build, distribute and manage apps right inside Workday’s ecosystem. “Built on is creating the opportunity for Workday to be more of a marketplace, where partners can actually build apps directly in Workday,” David says.

When I say it’s a marketplace, I mean it. Partners can manage and monetize their apps, too—all within the Workday system. “Partners can build an app or a capability set on Built on Workday, and then they can redistribute it,” David says. “They can centrally manage it, they can charge for it, they can make money on it, they can do updates to it.”

This isn’t Workday dipping its toes in the innovation pool: it’s a full cannonball. Eight partners, including ADP and Kainos, are already making waves with apps designed to solve niche HR challenges. And trust me, the demand is real—Kainos already has 500 customers lined up for their app. Talk about validation.

Trust as a Competitive Edge

Innovation is great, but let’s be real: it means nothing without trust. And Workday? They’ve got that on lock. “Being customer-centric is not new to Workday,” David says. “We’ve always prided ourselves on being a very customer-focused business.”

David emphasizes that trust and reliability are baked into everything Workday does. “We think that the Workday brand stands for something. We think it stands for trust. We think it stands for reliability,” David says. “And we’ve always wanted customers to know that if they were working with a customer that was partnered with Workday, they’re good.”

At a time when HR leaders are juggling more tech scrutiny than ever, this commitment to trust is a game-changer. Workday is proving that you can innovate without leaving your customers in the dust.

And let’s not overlook the bigger picture here. Workday is doing more than creating products — they’re setting an example for the entire industry and really showing us what leadership looks like in HR tech.

From empowering developers and partners to elevating customer trust, Workday is leading the charge toward a more collaborative, high-impact future. Every other provider in this space should be taking notes.

People in This Episode

David Wachtel, LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

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

Today’s episode is the next installment of Built on Workday: The Birth of the New HR Tech Ecosystem. And it takes us to the core of my day job as an industry analyst. And let me tell you, we are diving into some real next level insights. Picture this: a conversation that bridges the innovation of HR tech with the practical needs of organizations. And we’re not talking pie in the sky ideas here. No, today we are getting real about partnerships, platforms and the actual work it takes to make HR transformation stick.

I’m sitting down with my dear friend Dave Wachtel, the General Manager of Talent Products at Workday, who leads everything from talent optimization to learning and onboarding, and of course, skills capabilities. We will unpack how Workday is changing the game with its partner ecosystem, what it means to empower customers with tools like Extend, and how Built on Workday might just be the blueprint for the future of innovation in this space. Check it out.

Hello, everyone. Hi, my little blueberries. Welcome back to a very special episode of Transformation Realness. We are coming to you live from the back of a bus in Las Vegas. We’re at HR Tech. And Workday, teeny tiny little HCM company nobody’s ever heard of, has got this sick setup. We are in a full podcasting studio, and I’m sitting down with one of my dear friends, Dave Wachtel. Hi, Dave.

Dave Wachtel:

Hey, Kyle. How are you? Good to see you in the back of this bus.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know. Literally, when you guys told me we were doing this, I was like, “That sounds cool, I guess. We’ll do it.” And then, walking in here is like, “This is amazing.”

Dave Wachtel:

Yeah, it definitely came out better than I think a lot of us thought when we heard the concept of, “Oh yeah, the bus and there’ll be a podcast booth in the back.” And actually, it’s a really comfortable, nice experience.

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s nice.

Dave Wachtel:

Especially as an opportunity to kind of take a step off of the expo floor.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Dave Wachtel:

There’s a lot going on out there.

Kyle Lagunas:

And chill.

Dave Wachtel:

It’s a nice little calm space, for sure.

Kyle Lagunas:

For those who don’t know, who are you and what do you do?

Dave Wachtel:

My name’s Dave Wachtel, and I’m the General Manager of our Talent Products at Workday. So I’m ultimately responsible for the roadmap, the strategy and the execution of everything that Workday builds and sells in Talent. So that’s recruiting candidate engagement, learning, talent optimization and management. It’s the bulk of our skills, capabilities, onboarding, our Journeys product, which is our employee experience overlay, as well as Peakon, voice of the employee.

Kyle Lagunas:

How much sleep do you think you get in a given week? That’s a lot of work, girl.

Dave Wachtel:

Yeah, no, I know. Well, my EA is trying really hard to schedule more of that, sleep.

Kyle Lagunas:

Literally?

Dave Wachtel:

In my calendar.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, my God.

Dave Wachtel:

No. Workday believes firmly in work-life balance.

Kyle Lagunas:

I get that.

Dave Wachtel:

And we try to make sure that we get through all the important work things while simultaneously-

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Dave Wachtel:

… sleeping. Occasionally.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Yeah. And seeing your partner and your kids. Yeah. Oh, yeah, them. Well, you’ve been in the space for a while too. This is not your first leading…

Dave Wachtel:

No, yeah. I actually got my start in HR tech at Cornerstone OnDemand back in 2011. I was one of the early product managers there, and I was the person that got the opportunity to say, “Hey, Cornerstone’s built a lot of stuff in learning.” And Adam Miller, the CEO, is like, “I’d like to make money some other ways, and how can we do that?” And so, I got to experiment in performance management and goals and onboarding. And the thing that really took off was applicant tracking. And so, I actually had the opportunity to build an applicant tracking system from nothing.

And we had a pretty good run there, selling applicant tracking out of Cornerstone. There’s still customers, some pretty big companies using it today. And I did that for almost six years. I felt like I was ready to take a break from HR Tech. I went to Amazon for a number of years. I moved up to Seattle. And then, somehow I found myself back into HR Tech in 2020.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, you’ve got to come back, baby.

Dave Wachtel:

Yeah. Honestly, I don’t know that people would understand that aren’t from the industry. My wife certainly doesn’t understand. But there’s definitely something about it. I enjoy both the creativity, the energy, the relationships and people that I’ve met over time. But also, man, when I was at Amazon, I was helping make fulfillments, deliver your package a couple hours earlier in the Christmastime period. And at a certain point, you kind of sit back and you’re like, “What am I doing?”

Kyle Lagunas:

“What am I doing?”

Dave Wachtel:

“What am I doing?”

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Dave Wachtel:

And I don’t know, I think HR technology is a really cool space because we, not to get all emotional about it, but it’s a space where we actually are impacting-

Kyle Lagunas:

It matters, the workplace matters.

Dave Wachtel:

… people’s lives. It matters, I think when… The biggest things that happen in someone’s lives are they get married, they have a kid, there’s maybe deaths in the family. And then there’s getting a job offer. It changes everything. It moves you.

Kyle Lagunas:

Getting a promotion.

Dave Wachtel:

Getting a promotion. You could move to a different city. You could take on a whole new team and the people that you work with every day. And I think at least what we do in HR tech, we are striving to make those people’s lives even just a little better. And I think sometimes we get it right and sometimes we don’t, but at least we’re in the business of trying.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yes.

Dave Wachtel:

We’re trying to make people’s lives better. I think that’s pretty cool.

Kyle Lagunas:

That is the perfect setup for what I want to talk about. So this week I have this opportunity to do this podcast in here, in the bus. And I knew immediately what I wanted to do. Carl, your new CEO has been really bullish on expanding your partner program, and this is something that is unique in our space. A lot of the traditional HCMs, they want to have total wallet share, right? They want to do it all. They want to go as wide and as deep as they can, right?

And that has been the model for a long time. And you guys are still building a ton of product. You just listed off eight different things that are under you, and those are just categories of product, by the way. Right? But I really like seeing that because this work matters, that what matters most isn’t just like wallet share or competitive environments. It’s actually bringing value to the customers. And so, this week we’re talking about Built on Workday, because the partnership ecosystem, they were already good partners before we got this ramp up. But I think that’s accelerating some of the relationships with existing partners, bringing new innovators to the table. I have to imagine that for you, it’s kind of fun to see.

Dave Wachtel:

It is.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. There’s so many innovators in our space. Now I actually get to work with some more really cool people.

Dave Wachtel:

It’s fun on a lot of different levels. It’s fun on a technical, innovation level. It’s fun on a creating value for our customers level. And it’s fun on a competitive level. And I think, yeah, if you were talking to Workday even four years ago, I think we thought we were very much the center of the universe and we were going to build everything.

And that wasn’t a bad strategy. It was the right strategy at the time. So I don’t look at it and say we were doing something wrong. But the space has evolved, and more importantly, the demands of our customers have evolved. And I still think we think of Workday as being a really important body in that universe, but maybe not the center of the universe. Maybe we’re like the sun. We’re like, we’re still an important part, but we’re a little bit… We need to work with those around us. And at the end of the day, the thing that’s going to make Workday successful is happy successful customers.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yep.

Dave Wachtel:

And to the extent that we can help open that up, accelerate that, make that more possible, we win. We all win and they win. And so, we were kind of moving in the trajectory of enabling partners and integrations even before Carl joined. Some of the things we launched initially in Extend, the original business case on that, predates Carl. But when Carl came in, he really put his foot on the accelerator on making sure that every one of our teams, every one of our technology teams, our roadmaps and our strategy were really moving in the direction of empowering customers to build things on Extend and partners now to build on Built on.

Kyle Lagunas:

What’s Extend?

Dave Wachtel:

What’s Extend? So Extend is a platform that we’ve been working on for the last couple of years that enables customers to build out their own applications and experiences in Workday. They get to benefit from all of the data and the security and the privacy and all the great things that we have in Workday. And they can also leverage the same experience set. So their users don’t necessarily know if they’re using a Workday-delivered experience or if they’re getting something that was delivered on Extend.

And what Extend allows us to do, what it allows customers to do, is if you see something you need in a unique requirement or something specific or something that Workday doesn’t do, before Extend your options were submit brainstorms and wait for Workday to build it, or go buy some partner who’s doing that one little niche thing and integrate it. Extend has opened up a whole-

Kyle Lagunas:

There’s a custom integration for it. Maintain a custom integration for it that’s probably not bidirectional. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Wachtel:

Yeah. And Extend has opened up a whole other layer of innovation for our customers. So for the last few years, you’ve gotten everything that our team has built from an innovation standpoint. And then, you also got everything that customers could build for themselves. And I was just looking at the stats. We have over 2,000 Extend apps live in production. We have a thousand customers that are using Extend that have built things out. And we have over 8,000 Extend developers in the community. Because I think it’s good to think of Extend as not just a platform. It is, but it’s also like an ecosystem and a community. There are over 8,000 people out there who are developing on Extend.

Kyle Lagunas:

Didn’t you guys actually have a Developer Con bring together a bunch of these nerds?

Dave Wachtel:

Yeah. We have DevCon, and it happens once a year. I think it happens in late spring, early summer. And it used to be a small group of people, like a couple dozen at these small roundtables. And the last one they did, there’s full expo floor, and they do 24-hour hackathons.

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s cool.

Dave Wachtel:

And really cool things. And I think one of the neat things about it is not only is it giving customers the opportunity to create that innovation and build those apps that we hadn’t built otherwise. But I said before, one of the things I’m really excited about is the competition. I think it’s making all of us better.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Dave Wachtel:

Because we’re seeing what is possible. We’re seeing what customers could build with capabilities on Workday in places where we might’ve said, “It’s not a big enough opportunity for us to invest in” or “It’s too niche for this one use case.” They’re showing us, these Extend developers and customers through their innovation investment are showing us that these things can get built.

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s pretty neat. And I also feel, look, the reason why I jumped at the opportunity to come and have these conversations this week is because as an industry analyst, a lot of the consideration that we have is what does leadership in this market look like? And traditionally, it’s been market share and customer growth and momentum features that are being released. Those were the tried and true KPIs of what leadership looked like.

For me, and I’m a geriatric Millennial, a little bit of an emotional person, right? I think the ethos of this initiative and the spirit of this strategy, that’s the kind of market leadership that we need, where it is the customer’s needs that are the driver of innovation. It’s not just us trying to grow wallet share or us trying to corner a market. No, we are going to corner the HR market by bringing more impact and more value to them than anybody else. And I want to see every other major provider in our space doing the same thing, because this is something that every customer needs. It’s not like a unique Workday problem, right?

Dave Wachtel:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s why I brought up you being in the space before, because we’ve seen other companies that are like, “We’re going to do all of it ourselves.” Right?

Dave Wachtel:

It is the next phase of innovation I think for our space. I think customers, businesses demand more now than they did before. And especially as you see the CHRO, the Chief Human Resources Officer, and to a certain extent the CFO in the other parts of our business stepping up and having a bigger seat at the table, they not only command more direction, but they have more influence and they command more dollars. And so, to the extent that Workday can be the platform where they can come and get those solutions, even when we haven’t built them, and they can get them sooner and they get them faster and they can use Extend to do that, I think that is the future. AI also, that also plays a huge part in it too.

Kyle Lagunas:

The business doesn’t care that Workday doesn’t see enough opportunity to build that application themselves.

Dave Wachtel:

Exactly. That’s exactly right. Being customer-centric is not new to Workday. We’ve always prided ourselves on being a very customer-focused business. But we’re also a business too, right? And so, there are lots of things that have always made a lot of sense to us.

Kyle Lagunas:

We’re not running a non-profit here and just loving and doving each other all over the place. You’ve got to make priorities. You’ve got to make choices, right? You have limited resources, limited capacity.

Dave Wachtel:

Exactly. And everyone does too. So do our competitors. They have limited resources. And what we’re doing with Extend and Built on Workday is we’re taking the limitations that we have on what we can do, and we’re trying to take those off the table. Right? And we’re trying to make it more possible for customers to build their own things. And we haven’t even really talked about Built on yet.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, talk to me a little bit about Built on then. Yeah. What is it? Because here I thought I came up with an idea. I was like, my story, the thread I’m pulling through here is Built on Workday. And Jen Newman, the Head of Analyst Relations here for HCM, she’s like, “Oh, they’re going to love that. They’re doing a Built on campaign themselves.” I’m like, “Oh, wow, okay.” Yeah.

Dave Wachtel:

I’m sure you’ll get appropriate credit.

Kyle Lagunas:

It was my idea first.

Dave Wachtel:

Yeah. We heard it here first. Yeah, I’ll make sure they know that. But yeah, Built on is equally if not more exciting than what we’re doing with Extend. They’re separate. They’re not the same thing, but leveraging some of the same platform and underlying technology. But Built on is turning Workday into… creating the opportunity for Workday to be more of a marketplace, where partners can actually build apps directly in Workday.

Now with Extend today, when you build an app, you’re building it in that customer tenant. It’s not really reusable. You can rebuild them over and over again. Built on Workday is a different framework. Partners can build an app or a capability set on Built on Workday, and then they can redistribute it. They can centrally manage it, they can charge for it, they can make money on it, they can do updates to it to all the customers that they’re working with.

We announced at Rising last week that Built on Workday is currently in EA. We have eight EA partners that we’re working with already. I’ve got to look at my list to remember them, but we got ADP, Strada, Avalara, Kainos, Cognizant, Huron, Hyland and PwC are all actively building apps. I know that for Kainos, for example, they have over 500 customers already who they’re working with who said they’re going to sign up for the app that they’re building around document management, and more than that. And we think this is a really powerful next step of innovation for Workday.

Kyle Lagunas:

You’re already getting the validation for that. People are wanting these things, which I think is super cool. But all right. Well, so yeah, we’re talking about momentum. We’re talking about all the numbers of all these people getting into this blah, blah, blah. Workday historically with their partner program is very intentional.

Dave Wachtel:

Yep.

Kyle Lagunas:

I want to say calculating. And it wasn’t just like, “Oh, we have a mutual customer? Then you’re a partner.” You guys were very intentional about who you let in. Right? And this is not an open cattle call now, right? Can we talk about how… Because look, people are clamoring. Every vendor wants to be a part of this, right? Clamoring to be a part of it. How are you maintaining the integrity of these partnerships at this scale that you’re moving through now? I think that’s an important part of this being successful too.

Dave Wachtel:

Yeah, absolutely. One of the reasons that we’ve always had such a high bar for partners and people that we put the Workday logo next to is that we think that the Workday brand stands for something. We think it stands for trust. We think it stands for reliability. And we’ve always wanted customers to know that if they were working with a customer that was partnered with Workday, they’re good. For whatever our voice was worth in that conversation, we were able to say, “Hey, yeah.”

Kyle Lagunas:

Legit.

Dave Wachtel:

This is a reliable, legit partner that you can work with. Unfortunately, to a certain extent, that level of rigor doesn’t scale. And in this world where we were talking about before, about needing to create more partnership opportunities and capabilities for our customers, we need to create new programs and new processes. Our partnership program has undergone a complete re-overhaul over the course of the last six months.

It’s something we could go deeper in, but we’re still maintaining a bar of credibility. There’s still application processes. You still need to have mutual customers. You still need to have references. But in order for us to scale, we have to just change a little bit how we’re thinking about it. And we think at the end of the day, we’ll benefit and our customers will benefit from it. And if we learn that there are bad actors or partners that are coming in and doing things they shouldn’t do, I think we’ll be on top of that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. You’re going to have to be, because bringing it all the way back, it’s the customer that matters most. And trust has always been a part of the ethos for Workday, a hundred percent. Moving people to cloud, they had HR leaders, the CTOs, they were really making a big bet on you all. Right? And that’s a really vulnerable moment for them to take that kind of risk.

I think that the trust piece has to be maintained, especially with this. Innovation cycles are absolutely out of control right now. There is just so much that people can build and deliver. And I think that that trust piece, you guys are going to have to be arbiters of trust as well. Right? And it brings a new, I think, responsibility for you all as the core partner maybe, the sun to these different, in the center of this solar system or whatever. And I think that that is, I’m glad that you’re sensitive to it. I expect you to be sensitive to it. And as an analyst, I’ve got to stay on top of you guys about it to know how is this actually going.

Dave Wachtel:

Yeah, and we’d ask you to and the other analysts, the other folks, we work to, and our customers will keep us more honest than anyone. But we do put a lot of value in the brand, in the trust that we think we’ve built. We know it’s easily lost and it’s hard to gain back.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, absolutely.

Dave Wachtel:

And so, as we go through all of this, but I think we can still even elevate the level of trust in some of these things. For example, in Built on, you get access to our AI gateway.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Dave Wachtel:

Where we have a number, I think there’s six or so AI models and APIs that partners get access to that are Workday-powered models. Things like Skills Cloud, for example, where you can now, if you’re a partner and you want to build something really cool in Skills, you can do that through Built on, and you get to rely on… AI is the big topic these days. And we talk a lot about outcomes and the excitement of what AI can do, but I’m in just as many conversations with customers about the concerns and the holdbacks and hesitations about trust and bias and all those things. And we think we can extend Workday trust through enabling you to build apps and partners to build apps leveraging our AI models.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that are vetted.

Dave Wachtel:

Trusted.

Kyle Lagunas:

They’re vetted.

Dave Wachtel:

Exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, again, that’s why I see this as a new type of leadership that I think others need to, they also need to follow this example, especially because innovation’s happening so fast. And I feel like HR organizations are getting really bogged down with deeper technical scrutiny of these products and applications than ever before. It’s stalling innovation for the HR organization. They can’t keep up with these things, right? So I think it just helps them to move faster, to stay on the edge, but do it feeling like they’re going to be okay. Right? It’s not willy-nilly, right? We’re just flying by the seat of our pants.

Well, Dave, thank you for coming. I appreciate you hosting us, but then also just bringing this kind of thought leadership to market. I think it’s really cool.

Dave Wachtel:

Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me. It’s always a great time chatting with you, Kyle.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Bye, Dave.

And that’s all the time we have for today. A massive thank you to Dave for joining me and serving up some serious realness about innovation partnerships and building a better future for HR tech. Workday’s commitment to empowering customers, whether it’s through Extend, their AI gateway or Built on Workday apps, I think it’s setting a new standard for leadership in the space.

Here’s the big takeaway for me. In an era where innovation is moving at breakneck pace, success is about more than flashy new features. It’s about trust, impact and enabling HR teams to deliver real business value without getting bogged down in technical scrutiny. Workday is leaning into this challenge, and honestly, it’s the kind of leadership we all need right now.

Big thanks to Workday for hosting us again and to you, my fabulous listeners, for sticking with me through another deep dive to the guts of HR transformation. I’ll be back soon with more bold conversations, sharp insights, and of course a side of sass. Until next time, stay curious, stay gutsy and above all, stay real. Catch you on the next episode. Bye.

Tags HR Technology, Recruitment, Recruitment Technology, talent acquisition

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Workday: From System of Record to System of Agents

Post author By Madeline Laurano
Post date February 11, 2025

Workday is expanding its AI-powered agent offerings, into a platform called Workday Agent System of Record. Last year, Workday announced four agents: Recruiting Agents, Talent Mobility Agents, Planning Agents, and Optimize Agents. Now, Workday is adding even more capabilities with the introduction of new agents, including Payroll Agents, Knowledge Agents, Contract Agents, and Auditing Agents. Its Agent System of Record will orchestrate these agents with third-party agents in its marketplace to become essentially a “System of Agents.”

The Agent System of Record is designed to automate a wide range of HR tasks, streamline processes, and improve decision-making—all while maintaining a focus on the human element. These agents are tailored to various HR functions.

How Will Workday Go About This?

Workday’s strategy revolves around creating a unified framework in which AI-powered agents work to assist HR departments and organizations as a whole. These agents will be embedded into Workday’s platform, seamlessly integrated into users’ workflows via Workday Assistant. By interacting with both Workday’s core functions and third-party applications, these agents will support everything from talent acquisition to compliance, financial audits, and payroll management.

The key to this rollout is Workday’s system of record, which serves as the central hub for managing not just human employees but also AI-driven agents. By embedding AI into HR processes, Workday enables organizations to automate repetitive tasks, allowing human employees to focus on more strategic and creative endeavors.

Workday will also ensure that organizations can easily access and manage these agents through the Workday Marketplace, where businesses can integrate third-party agents into their system. This will provide businesses with the flexibility to build a tailored digital workforce, creating a highly customizable and adaptable HR ecosystem.

How Will This Impact the Market?

By integrating a growing suite of AI agents into its platform, Workday is positioning itself as the leader in AI-driven HR management solutions. This shift will likely drive increased demand for AI capabilities within HR departments, as businesses seek to stay ahead of the curve and improve operational efficiency.

One of the most important aspects of this development is how it shifts the responsibility for managing AI from IT to HR. As HR systems evolve to include AI, HR will need to manage not just human employees, but also digital agents, data access, and AI-driven workflows. This is a natural progression, given that HR departments are already responsible for sensitive employee data and compliance, making them the ideal stewards of these digital workers. We addressed this as a major finding in our Aptitude Global Trends report.

Additionally, Workday’s “System of Agents” will impact the market by helping companies scale their workforce without adding operational complexity. The system will simplify the process of integrating AI, empowering organizations to expand their capabilities without the typical barriers to entry associated with new technologies.

The question will be how will other providers in HR Tech approach agents now moving forward? Will they compete with Workday or focus on integration instead?

5 Key Points of This Announcement

New AI Agents Introduced: Workday’s expanding “System of Agents” now includes Recruiting Agents, Talent Mobility Agents, Planning Agents, Optimize Agents, Payroll Agents, Knowledge Agents, Contract Agents, and Auditing Agents. These agents will work across different HR functions to streamline processes, reduce manual effort, and increase accuracy.

HR System of Record: The HR system of record is uniquely suited to manage both human employees and AI agents. HR departments are already responsible for managing sensitive employee data, making them the ideal custodians of AI agents and digital workflows. This creates a seamless ecosystem where data security and AI governance go hand in hand.

Managing Costs: Workday is taking a proactive approach to cost management for AI agents. By tracking AI usage and providing transparency on costs, Workday ensures that businesses can effectively scale their digital workforce while keeping operational costs under control.

Integration Challenges: Integrating AI agents into existing workflows can be complex, but Workday is making the process easier by providing a unified platform that supports both native and third-party agents. Through the Workday Marketplace, organizations can easily integrate and manage these agents, overcoming typical integration barriers.

Improved User Experience: The integration of AI agents will significantly improve the Workday user experience. These agents will reduce the time spent on manual tasks, automate decision-making processes, and enhance overall efficiency, allowing users to focus on higher-level tasks and strategic thinking.

By integrating AI agents into its platform, Workday is enabling organizations to optimize their HR processes, automate routine tasks, and create a more efficient, scalable workforce.

Tags HR Technology

Blog

Paradox Acquires Eqtble: Advancing AI and People Analytics in HR Tech

Post author By Madeline Laurano
Post date February 5, 2025

Today, Paradox announced the acquisition of Eqtble, a people analytics provider. With this move, Paradox is proving that it is far more than just a talent acquisition solution—it is a company with a bold vision for AI-driven workforce intelligence.

We’ve been studying the rapid growth of people analytics and the increasing demand for accessible, real-time workforce insights. Our research shows that 93% of companies are increasing or maintaining their investment in people analytics, but confusion in the market persists. Many companies struggle to navigate complex tools, justify costs, and find solutions that empower HR professionals rather than overwhelm them.

Paradox’s acquisition of Eqtble tackles these challenges. Here are three key themes that make this deal so significant:

1. Paradox is More Than a Point Solution

Many still think of Paradox as just a conversational AI tool for talent acquisition—but this acquisition makes it clear that Paradox is building something much bigger. By integrating Eqtble’s expertise in people data with Paradox’s strength in AI-driven automation, the company is creating a seamless, data-powered HR experience.

This isn’t just about recruiting—it’s about delivering workforce insights that help companies hire smarter, retain talent, and drive better business decisions. The ability to pull data from multiple HR systems and present it in a simple, digestible format will transform how HR leaders operate.

With Eqtble’s deep analytics capabilities and Paradox’s ability to make interactions conversational and frictionless, the potential applications extend beyond TA into performance management, employee experience, and workforce planning.

2. Conversational & Generative AI is the Future of HR Tech

HR technology is often complex and difficult to navigate, but employees and managers today expect intuitive, real-time experiences—just like they have in their everyday lives.

Paradox has always been built on the belief that conversations are the UI of the future. Now, by integrating people analytics into a conversational interface, HR teams can simply ask questions and get actionable insights—without needing to dig through dashboards or run complicated reports.

Think about the impact:

Hiring managers can instantly see why candidates are dropping out of the funnel
HR leaders can identify turnover trends in seconds.
Employees can ask simple questions about pay equity or career growth—and get real answers, without waiting weeks for a report.

This is what the next generation of HR technology looks like: AI that works in the background, delivering insights in a natural, effortless way.

3. People Analytics Should Be Accessible to Everyone

One of the biggest takeaways from our research is that people analytics needs to be democratized. Too often, it’s treated as something that requires a Ph.D. in data science to understand. But in reality, HR teams don’t need more complex dashboards—they need easy access to insights that drive real change.

We found that:

39% of HR leaders say their biggest challenge with people analytics is limited expertise.
Many companies still rely on outdated BI tools or homegrown solutions that are time-consuming and ineffective.
Cost remains a major barrier, with companies struggling to justify expensive analytics platforms.

Paradox’s move to acquire Eqtble helps solve many of these challenges. By embedding analytics into a conversational, easy-to-use format, Paradox is ensuring that everyone—not just data scientists—can benefit from workforce intelligence.

This is a major step forward for HR tech. Companies shouldn’t have to choose between powerful insights and user-friendly experiences—they should have both.

Tags HR Technology, talent acquisition

Blog Podcast

Taming the Wild West of TA: How GoodTime Brings Order to Interview Chaos

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date February 4, 2025

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

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

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

Bringing Order to the Chaos

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

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

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

Prepping Interviewers for Success

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

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

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

Building a Smarter Ecosystem

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

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

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

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

People in This Episode

Ahryun Moon: LinkedIn
Jasper Sone: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

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

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

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

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

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

Ahryun Moon:

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

Jasper Sone:

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

Ahryun Moon:

You look young.

Kyle Lagunas:

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

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

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

Ahryun Moon:

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

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

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

Ahryun Moon:

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

Jasper Sone:

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

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

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

Ahryun Moon:

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

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

Jasper Sone:

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

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

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

Ahryun Moon:

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

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, cool!

Ahryun Moon:

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

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

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

Jasper Sone:

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

Ahryun Moon:

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

Jasper Sone:

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

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

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

Ahryun Moon:

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

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

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

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

Ahryun Moon:

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

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh God, yeah. FedRAMP.

Ahryun Moon:

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

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

Ahryun Moon:

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

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

Ahryun Moon:

Totally.

Kyle Lagunas:

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

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

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

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

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

Jasper Sone:

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

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

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

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

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

Ahryun Moon:

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

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, exactly.

Ahryun Moon:

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

Ahryun Moon:

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

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah? What do you mean?

Ahryun Moon:

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

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

Ahryun Moon:

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

Kyle Lagunas:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Ahryun Moon:

That will be a brand new role within TA.

Kyle Lagunas:

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

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

Jasper Sone:

Or potential GoodTime customers.

Ahryun Moon:

Yes.

Kyle Lagunas:

Absolutely.

Jasper Sone:

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

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, interesting.

Jasper Sone:

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

Jasper Sone:

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

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

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, Interesting.

Jasper Sone:

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

Kyle Lagunas:

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

Jasper Sone:

Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

Alright. Bye, everybody.

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

The interview process isn’t just a checkbox. It’s a critical moment that defines the entire hiring experience for candidates and interviewers alike. Platforms like GoodTime, especially with Workday’s ecosystem support, are stepping up to deliver smarter, more human-centric solutions. And let’s be real. This isn’t just about efficiency. It’s about making hiring more equitable, more engaging, and frankly, less of a headache.

Thank you so much to our friends at Workday for hosting this episode and to all of you for listening in. I will be back soon with more conversations that challenge the status quo and bring transparency to the transformation journey. Until next time, stay curious, stay bold, and stay grounded in what matters most, people. Catch you on the next one.

Tags HR Technology, Recruitment, talent acquisition

Blog Podcast

From Burnout to Balance: Donald Knight on Resilient Leadership

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date December 19, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m joined by Donald Knight, SVP of People and Culture at Warner Brothers and formerly Chief People Officer at Greenhouse Software. Donald is the kind of leader who doesn’t just talk the talk‌ — ‌he walks it, even when the ground is on fire. We dive into what it really means to be a people leader at an HR tech company, the rise of fractional HR leadership and why finding your village is critical to thriving in this ever-demanding profession.

Donald Knight reminds us that HR leadership isn’t for the faint of heart, but it’s also one of the most rewarding paths you can take. From navigating the complexities of HR tech to embracing the flexibility of fractional roles, Donald’s insights are a masterclass in resilience, authenticity and leading with purpose.

Do You Walk It Like You Talk It?

Donald breaks down the complexities of being a people leader at an HR tech company into three main layers, and honestly? It’s a balancing act like no other.

First, there’s the classic responsibility every CPO has: shepherding culture and supporting your people. That’s nothing new. But in an HR tech company, everyone on your team has some level of focus on delivering value to HR leaders and teams. “There’s a tendency for everyone to believe they’ve specialized in people, which I think is a good thing, at least aspirationally,” Donald says, with this caveat: “I do think that there’s some nuances around, have you actually walked in the shoes of the folks in the profession?”

Second, your peers aren’t just coworkers‌ — ‌they’re also customers. They expect you to advocate for their needs in product strategy meetings and even help them get better deals on renewals. “There’s an expectation from your peers … for you to be an advocate for them in those rooms, which I think is cool,” Donald says.

Lastly, you’ve got to be the face of the company. As a people leader, you’re expected to evangelize the brand‌ — ‌hopping on planes, speaking at events, and carrying the company’s message out into the world. That’s not just a bonus responsibility; it’s a core part of the role.

It’s a lot of hats to wear, but that’s what makes the job so unique‌ — ‌and uniquely challenging.

Why CPOs Deserve a Medal (or at Least a Nap)

Donald shared a moment that really hit home for me. He was chatting with a fellow CPO who told him, “I went fractional because I want to make more and do less.” Naturally, Donald was like, “Wait a second, unpack that for me.” And what she laid out is something every HR leader can relate to.

She explained that the role is already thankless in so many ways‌ — ‌you’re always doing critical work behind the scenes, rarely getting the recognition you deserve. Then you pile on the chaos we’ve all been living through: pay transparency laws, navigating reproductive rights access, contact tracing, return-to-office policies‌ — ‌the list goes on. Any one of those would be enough to make a sane person lose it, but these all hit HR leaders back-to-back over the last few years.

And it doesn’t stop there. Civil unrest, societal issues, DE&I pressures, layoffs, hiring freezes, hiring overages‌ — ‌plus the ever-complicated relationships with boards and exec teams. It’s not just a lot; it’s everything, all at once.

Fractional leaders have a chance to create impact across more than one organization, and to get the ball rolling in each of those places for a long-term successor to pick it up and run with it.

Donald sees this shift as an opportunity: “That’s why you see not just myself, but other leaders that have taken on either more responsibility or went to a company that’s even larger to help create more impact,” he says. “I think that’s why you see that, because that resiliency, there’s something about being forged through the fire.”

Finding Your Village: How Tribes Keep HR Leaders Sane

The last few years have been a trial by fire for HR leaders. But for Donald, resilience comes from the communities you build and the people who lift you up during tough times. He stresses that no one should navigate these challenges alone.

“The village of the leadership team that I was on, coupled with the village of the directs on my team, coupled with the village I had with people that sat in this role at other companies, that’s what made it easier to do the job every day,” he says.

Donald has found that the strongest villages extend beyond HR. “I’ve had the opportunity to connect with peers in other disciplines, meaning outside of people teams, outside of HR, and I’ve been able to connect with CEOs who value the profession,” he says. “And so I think while the forecast may look dreary or cloudy, there are bright moments and rainbows in this proverbial storm in other leaders.”

If leading through chaos has left you feeling singed, take heart: the fire doesn’t just burn — it forges.

People in This Episode

Donald Knight: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries. Welcome back to Transformation Realness, the only show all about people who are doing their best to make the world of work less sh*tty and who are brave enough to tell their stories: the good, the bad, and most of all, the real.

It’s produced in partnership with Rep Cap Media and hosted by yours truly, the ever-radiant Kyle Lagunas, Head of Strategy and Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research, which as you know is the leading boutique research firm covering HR and transformation.

Special thanks to the team over at Glider AI. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I know I make this seem absolutely effortless, but the talent transformation ecosystem EP wouldn’t be possible without their support.

Kyle Lagunas:

Today I am chatting with a very special person, Donald Knight, who is the Group Senior Vice President of People and Culture at Warner Brothers. He’s out here proving that resilience isn’t just a buzzword: it is a lifestyle. From leading through uncertainty to finding new ways to create impact, Donald’s story is all about navigating the tough moments with authenticity, purpose, and just the right amount of swagger. If you’ve ever wondered how to build your village and keep showing up when the going gets rough, this conversation is going to hit you right where it counts. Let’s dive in.

Donald Knight, hello.

Donald Knight:

Kyle. Thank you for having me, man. This is pretty amazing. I know we’ve been working to try to figure this thing out.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know.

Donald Knight:

I’m excited that we were able to make it happen.

Kyle Lagunas:

I think actually you even had a baby in between us trying to coordinate a pod.

Donald Knight:

I had a phenomenal baby girl. Princess Avery.

Kyle Lagunas:

Avery.

Donald Knight:

Absolutely runs everything in my house. The world centers around her. She’s the first granddaughter on both sides.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, so everyone’s obsessed.

Donald Knight:

Lots of attention on Avery.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, my God.

Donald Knight:

Yeah, lots of attention. We’re playing Charlie Puth in the background.

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s so cute. Well, I want to talk to you, because you’ve had this really interesting opportunity to work as not just a Chief HR executive, but leading a people team in a company that actually supports people teams, which is Greenhouse. And you recently left there, but when we started talking about what do we want to talk about, I wanted to lean into that, especially because of what we all were coming out of at that point, but do you want to talk to me a little bit, what is it like being a Chief People Officer in an HR tech company when everything’s literally on fire in HR?

Donald Knight:

It’s funny. So, let me preface by saying, I know Pat at UKG, Ashley at Workday, Heather formally at Gem, and Kara formally at Lattice, right? So, I will say that there’s a community of us that really rally behind one another to make sure that we’re supportive. I do think it is unlike any other CPO role in the sense that I think there’s three lenses that typically we have to operate through at all times. I think the first one is how do you shepherd culture and take care of your people? That’s rather consistent at every company. The nuance here though is because it’s HR tech, everyone in the organization is prioritizing on how do you deliver value to that group and to that leader? And so everyone… There’s a tendency for everyone to believe they’ve specialized in people, which I think is a good thing, at least aspirationally. I do think that there’s some nuances around, have you actually walked in the shoes of the folks in the profession?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Have y’all done it? Right.

Donald Knight:

But I think that’s a nuance, because everyone in the profession, at other companies, they’re looked at as resident expert on people. I think there’s a nuance there.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, you’ve got a whole culture of people that are supposed to care about the people function, right?

Donald Knight:

So, I think that’s a positive thing. So, I can honestly say that being at an HR tech company, people care about people, but how you express that care is probably going to be nuanced based on your experiences. So, I think shepherding that culture and those people, it’s just a very different role at an HR tech company. I think the second one is your peers then appear to lean on you to say, “Hey, how can you encourage the product to be better? How can you deliver greater value for me and my team?” If they’re up for renewals, they’re like, “Hey, how can you help me get a better price?” And they know that we’re feeling the same compression that they’re feeling in the market, where CFOs and boards are saying, “Hey, you got to really do more with less.” Right? So, I-

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, right. The jig is up.

Donald Knight:

… Yeah. So, I do think there’s an expectation from your peers who are now customers for you to be an advocate for them in those rooms, which I think is cool. I think that’s where the opportunities to be more commercially minded and help influence the product. And we had a phenomenal… Greenhouse, still has a phenomenal Chief Product Officer, although I’m no longer there, in Henry and I appreciate his patience with me and hoping to help try to influence that roadmap.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, why? Do you have some ideas? You got some thoughts?

Donald Knight:

I think the third thing though that is nuanced is then there’s also an expectation for you to be almost like evangelizing on behalf of the brand and all of the women that I just listed, they do that very well for their brands.

Kyle Lagunas:

And authentically.

Donald Knight:

Authentically. But that’s an added element, right?

Kyle Lagunas:

Sure.

Donald Knight:

So, hopping on planes…

Kyle Lagunas:

And you say nuance. I also say pressure, too.

Donald Knight:

Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean especially you’re out there evangelizing. I have to wonder, do you have a bigger target on your back as a people leader? Are people looking at your Glassdoor reviews be like, “Well, is this guy practicing what he preaches out here?”

Donald Knight:

I mean, absolutely, right?

Kyle Lagunas:

“Are they delivering excellence internally?” And you know what I mean? “How can they make me excellent if they’re not actually delivering on the home front?”

Donald Knight:

Yeah, I think there is a heightened sense of “walk it like you talk it,” and particularly in the down moments. So, when you’re growing the company at 40%, 50% year-over-year and everybody’s getting bonuses and equity-

Kyle Lagunas:

Feels good.

Donald Knight:

… values are going up, that’s a good thing.

Kyle Lagunas:

This is rah-rah.

Donald Knight:

I think the true test of the CPOs, and this is where my… I have a lot of empathy for those folks that sit in that role, particularly the role period, but then CPOs at HR tech companies, is think about the down moments, layoffs, heightened senses of churn, slowed growth. These are all things that most companies experienced over the last months, years. It’s a heightened sense when you’re then the CPO at an HR tech company because they’re like, “Hold on. Are you going to walk it like you talk it?” And literally people will pull sound bites from podcasts like this to say, “Hey, well, this is what you said when you met with Kyle.”

Kyle Lagunas:

All right, cut the tapes. I feel that. I mean, that’s rough, isn’t it? I mean, do you feel… Look, we have to sell authenticity, right? Everybody’s looking to see if you’re real, but can you be really real? Maybe with your peeps? Maybe that’s why you started with, “Here’s my tribe.”

Donald Knight:

So, I think to your point, tribes, I call it subscribe to that idea or villages, I would say the village of the leadership team that I was on, coupled with the village of the directs on my team, coupled with the village I had with people that sat in this role at other companies, that’s what made it easier to do the job every day.

And so I was just spending… I left LA to come here, and I was spending a lot of time with some of those folks in person, and I just wanted to thank them for the encouragement, because it is a very nuanced role. I think if I step back a little bit, I think the role of being a chief people officer at any company over the last five years is by far the hardest role, probably next to the CEO, probably the hardest role and I think having spent a lot of time with CEOs, especially some of the ones that were trying to poach me, I have a heightened sense-

Kyle Lagunas:

She popular, huh?

Donald Knight:

… Look, I thank the creator for the favor, but I will say the CEO role is more lonelier than I had anticipated prior to, and I think the CPO role is probably the next loneliest role. And so trying to find those tribes or villages, if you will, to help be supportive. I would encourage all CPOs, especially CPOs of HR tech companies, because you need it.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, I mean, literally you can’t go it alone. You know what’s so interesting? In my podcast last season, I was talking to this guy, John Baldino, he’s the-

Donald Knight:

I know John.

Kyle Lagunas:

… Isn’t he the sweetest? Literally the nicest guy.

Donald Knight:

John’s amazing.

Kyle Lagunas:

But we were talking about complexity with compliance. Literally there is so much coming down, in North America at least, or especially, all of this hangover from COVID and the political strife. There’s just a bunch coming at HR, and he’s worried, because a lot of HR professionals, not just the exec leader, they’re out and they’re burnt out and he’s worried and rightly so. A lot of young people are like, “Hey, you know what? This is not for me.” Right?

Donald Knight:

Yeah. There’s a CPO who will listen to this, because we both know them, but I will preserve their anonymity. She told me yesterday, she was like, “The reason I went fractional is because I want to make more and do less.” And I was like, “Hold on, let me explore that a little bit. What do you mean by that?” She was like, the role is already very much thankless in many regards. And then when you add on the complexities, let’s set aside any of the regular drama of the role.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Of just the work.

Donald Knight:

Of just the work. You talked about compliance. We got pay transparency, access or the lack of access to reproductive rights, contact tracing and return to office. That all hit the same leaders over the last three to five years. That alone just, if you just bucket that in by itself, that’s enough to drive a sane person mad. And then you add on civil unrest, societal issues, DE&I, then add on reductions in force, layoffs, and then add on, “Did you hire too much or did you not hire enough?” And then add on board complexities.

Kyle Lagunas:

And then also add on navigating artificial intelligence now.

Donald Knight:

So, that’s the promise of the future that I hope we’ll make.

Kyle Lagunas:

Because you’re here. You’re still here, you didn’t leave. You’re actually going to an even bigger company.

Donald Knight:

Absolutely.

Kyle Lagunas:

Right?

Donald Knight:

Absolutely.

Kyle Lagunas:

You’re like, “You know what? Let’s do more. Let’s do more and work more.”

Donald Knight:

Yeah. So, what I will say is I do believe that there are people in these roles right now, Kyle, that there, while they have been tested, they have proven to be resilient. And so such a time is this for those folks to be able to continue to rise to the occasion. And I think that’s why you see not just myself, but other leaders that have taken on either more responsibility or went to a company that’s even larger to help create more impact. I think that’s why you see that, because that resiliency, there’s something about being forged through the fire that you’re like, “Oh, I can see what I’m actually made of.” And I think that’s one of the beautiful things of being a CPO at a HR tech company. The takeaways and the learnings that I have from there has directly influenced the way that I’m navigating my current role.

Kyle Lagunas:

You’re like, “You know what? Bet!”

Donald Knight:

Well, so then-

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, look, I am not a cynical person, but I am a very empathetic and sensitive person, and I am a little worried about morale in the HR organization, broad brush, just the profession. But you’re giving me hope. Is there cause to be hopeful here? It’s been rough. It’s been rough, and we’re not even done. Do you feel hopeful?

Donald Knight:

… I do, because I believe I’ve had the opportunity to connect with peers in other disciplines, meaning outside of people teams, outside of HR and I’ve been able to connect with CEOs who value the profession. And so I think while the forecast may look dreary or cloudy, there are bright moments and rainbows in this proverbial storm in other leaders that I have found the optimism, right? Our CEO is one of them.

My onboarding process and even the way that I navigated the first few weeks, I was able to observe how much we’re a priority at our company. And I think I have other friends, like a good friend of mine, Gianna Driver at Lattice, they have a new CEO and Sarah Franklin. Sarah Franklin prioritizes the people function. She understands the competitive advantage that you will have when you have a phenomenal people team. So, I think those are the bright spots, right?

That’s where the optimism is, and I think that’s where it’s on us and really thankful for folks like yourself who are using your time to be able to say, “Hey, I’m going to make sure I focus on the research.” So much so that if you want to be able to demonstrate that resiliency and continue to face that storm every day, I got your back with this data. And also if you’re saying, “No, I need to go fractional.” Can I use this data to then be able to create even more impact in a short amount of time that someone else can then pick up the baton and carry it on?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, sure.

Donald Knight:

So yeah, I think it’s a great time to be in the profession despite how hard it is to be in the profession.

Kyle Lagunas:

And look, if you made it this far, you’ll make it even further. I mean, I’m glad to hear it. I hope that it plays out that way for most and that you’re not just one of the blessed ones, although you are blessed and highly favored. But I also think that it truly is inspiring, because I know several of the people you’ve mentioned and the mission’s there. The passion is there. And I honestly feel like if I’m seeing… And I am seeing more people at that exact level going fractional, not just because they want to work less, … I’m not going to take their words away from them, but it’s like, “I want to do more and not work more necessarily. I want to have impact here and here I’ve actually figured I have a skill set, I have a competency that can have a lot of value in a lot of places. I’m going to step up and do that.” That’s relatively new for us. You have to be all in at that level for a lot of opportunities.

Donald Knight:

Yeah, I totally agree. I think two things I’ll leave you with is at our organization, we have almost five former CPOs.

Kyle Lagunas:

Really? Okay.

Donald Knight:

Almost. And the ones… The cool part is in each function that they’re in, they have up-leveled the function when they arrive, so I’m told by my peers. So, I do think that there’s this living life on purpose and still finding ways to create impact, particularly at a larger scale, I think is pretty phenomenal. I think the second thing I would say is my former Chief Revenue Officer in Sean Murray, who’s a phenomenal human being, he used to be the Chief Revenue Officer at Salesloft. And I think the cool thing about that is he walked through this before.

What we’re doing for our discipline and being a CPO at HR tech company, he had done that being a Chief Revenue Officer at a sales organization and the cool thing about it’s now he’s a CEO, and so what it tells me is that resiliency will play out over time to be able to help you create even more impact, and you might even get a more outsized role to be able to drive those types of successes and wins and so I think that’s where my optimism lies, is in those leaders and in those examples.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. It’s not just blind aspiration.

Donald Knight:

Exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s informed, as we would expect. Well, dude, thank you for spending some time with me.

Donald Knight:

No, thank you for having me.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’m literally so excited for this next role for you. I hope you don’t forget us little people.

Donald Knight:

No, there’s no such little people and no, we’re connected, man. Thank you for having me for real.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, thanks for coming on.

Donald Knight:

All right.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’ll catch you later.

Okay, that is a wrap y’all and if you’re anything like me, you’re going to need a minute to digest everything Donald just laid down, because whoa. That was a lot. We covered burnout, the rise of fractional leadership and why it’s critical to roll with your tribe or your village, whatever vernacular works for you.

Honestly, if leading in HR today feels like getting thrown into the fire, Donald just reminded us, or at least me, that sometimes it’s the fire that forges you. I’ve got so many notes from this conversation. Big love to Donald for keeping it real with us today and for reminding me that it’s okay to want more impact without selling your soul. If you made it this far, you’re already ahead of the game. That’s all the time we’ve got for now. Don’t forget to like and subscribe, rate and review and tell your fellow humans, because this realness isn’t going to spread itself. Catch you on the next episode of Transformation Realness. Until then, keep it real and keep it moving.

Tags burnout, fractional leadership, HR Technology, Leadership

Blog

Breaking Through the Noise: How HR Tech Vendors Can Build Better Partnerships in 2025

Post author By Madeline Laurano
Post date December 16, 2024

It has been an interesting year in HRTech. At Aptitude, we do a lot of research and speaking but we spend a lot of time on advisory with corporate clients as well. We have seen some things work for vendors…and others that do not.

The HR technology market is more crowded than ever, and 2025 promises to be a year of both opportunity and challenge for vendors. HR leaders are demanding more from their technology partners—not just in terms of innovation, but also in transparency, outcomes, and partnership.

Here is some advice for vendors looking to stand out in 2025.

1. Stop Copying Your Competitors—Focus on Your Clients

One of the biggest problems in HRTech is the tendency to copycat competitors rather than listening to what clients actually want. Too many vendors repeat the same buzzwords and promises, making it hard for HR leaders to see what truly differentiates one solution from another.

Advice:

Listen to Your Clients: Use customer feedback, surveys, and interviews to shape your offerings. Don’t just assume that what works for others will work for you.
Be Bold About Your Strengths: Highlight what makes your product unique and relevant to your target audience, even if it’s not the “trendiest” feature on the market.
Avoid Empty Buzzwords: Words like “intelligence”, transformative,” “seamless,” and “experience” mean nothing without examples.

2. Clarity Over Complexity

HR leaders are juggling a lot of tools and responsibilities—they don’t have time to decipher vague messaging or sift through overly complex product descriptions.

Advice:

Simplify Your Messaging: Be direct about what your product does, how it works, and the specific problems it solves.
Show Outcomes, Not Features: Instead of listing technical specs, share stories and data that illustrate the results clients can achieve with your solution.

3. Transparency Builds Trust

HR leaders are making high-stakes decisions when they invest in technology. They need to know what’s coming next and whether your solution can grow with their needs.

Advice:

Share Your Roadmap: Clients want to see the future of your product and know that their investment is secure. Regularly update them on new features and upgrades.
Be Honest About Limitations: If your product has gaps, acknowledge them and explain how you’re addressing them. Clients will appreciate your honesty and accountability.

4. Prioritize ROI and Outcomes

Every HR team is under pressure to do more with less. They’re not just looking for flashy tools—they need solutions that deliver measurable results and help them make a business case for investment.

Advice:

Provide Clear ROI Metrics: Show how your product reduces time-to-hire, improves retention, saves costs, or drives productivity. Use client success stories to back up your claims.
Focus on Problem-Solving: Instead of leading with what your product can do, lead with what it will solve. HR leaders need partners who address real challenges.

5. Strong Implementation is a Dealbreaker

The best product in the world means nothing if it’s poorly implemented. You may think this falls solely on the client but it does not. A product that doesn’t work because of poor implementation will ultimately reflect poorly on you. Support them in this process.

Advice:

Own the Implementation Process: Guide clients every step of the way, providing hands-on support and clear timelines.
Measure Success Post-Implementation: Follow up to ensure the product is being used effectively and that clients are achieving the outcomes they expected.

7. Leverage Strategic Partnerships

No single vendor can do everything, and that’s okay. The best HR tech providers recognize their limitations and form partnerships to deliver more comprehensive solutions.

Advice:

Fill Your Gaps Strategically: Partner with complementary providers to offer clients a seamless experience without overextending your resources.
Collaborate on Innovation: Joint partnerships with other vendors can lead to new features and integrations that benefit everyone.

8. Rethink Services—Deliver What You Promise

If you offer managed services or HR support, make sure you’re delivering real value. Misleading clients about the scope of your services will erode trust and damage your reputation.

Advice:

Define Your Services Clearly: Be explicit about what’s included, and don’t overpromise. You don’t want to charge for services and not provide them at the end of the day.
Focus on Adding Value: Go beyond the basics by offering strategic advice and actionable insights.

2025 is the year for HR tech vendors to rise above the noise. By focusing on clarity, transparency, and client outcomes, you can build trust and loyalty in an increasingly competitive market. Stop copying your competitors and start listening to your clients. Be honest about what you offer, invest in implementation, and prioritize long-term relationships over quick wins.

HR leaders are looking for partners, not just products.

Tags HR Technology, talent acquisition

Blog

Announcing Aptitude’s Human-Centric AI Council: A New Initiative to Put HR in the Driver’s Seat in AI Innovation

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date December 11, 2024

I’ve been getting lots of requests for predictions this time of year, and it’s been an absolute whirlwind of a year in our industry. AI is everywhere all at once—and we’re only just beginning to see how much it can do in HR and talent.

After 15 years tracking innovation cycles in HR technology and research trends in talent, I can honestly say I have never seen things move as fast (or as dramatically) as they have in the 24 months.

We are, quite literally, at the cusp of total and complete transformation of how HR and talent functions operate. And I’m not sure we’re quite ready for it.

Here’s why: For the last three years Aptitude Research surveyed HR and talent leaders about the greatest obstacles they face when it comes to the adoption of AI, and the leading response every year has been gaps in the HR organization’s understanding of AI and automation.

Figure 1 – Obstacles to Adoption of AI in HR, 2024

But the future of HR is undeniably intertwined with AI. As we look to 2024 and beyond, AI is poised to become the largest area of tech investment within HR, with 61% of organizations planning to increase their AI investments this year. While the opportunities presented by AI are vast, however, the pace of innovation has far outstripped the guidance and clarity many HR leaders need to confidently determine where and how to utilize AI.

And in the absence of established best practices, the potential pitfalls AI presents to HR—issues like the introduction of bias, lack of workforce readiness, lack of clear ROI—are stalling HR innovation at a pivotal moment. Lacking technical expertise and AI literacy, more and more HR and talent teams are being relegated to the stakeholder seat when it comes to AI and tech innovation.

My big question—and something I’ve been talking about with HR, talent, and tech execs all year—is, “How can we ensure the ethical, effective, and equitable use of AI in HR if HR doesn’t have a seat at the AI table?”

So… Yeah. It’s clear that AI will play a central role in the evolution of HR, but I’m worried that we’re headed down a path where HR leaders and talent professionals are offering input from the sidelines when it comes to how we utilize these rapidly evolving capabilities.

In a perfect world, we are working closely with our colleagues in IT, Legal, Compliance, and Operations to ensure AI is implemented and adopted in a way that serves the needs of businesses, the well-being of the workforce, and the fair and equitable treatment of candidates. But in reality, HR is increasingly relegated to the stakeholder’s seat–that decisions about how AI is adopted are being made by others. And now, more than ever, it’s critical that HR is in the driver’s seat.

So what are we going to do about it?

Announcing Aptitude’s Human-Centric AI Council (HCAIC)

Today, I’m excited to share we’re embarking on our own HCAI Initiative with the launch of a new program: the Aptitude HCAIC, a deeply collaborative, practical, and forward-thinking effort dedicated to supporting HR leaders in the responsible, ethical, and effective utilization of AI in HR.

Whereas we’ve hosted Research Councils in the past—bringing HR and talent execs and consultants together to shape and inform Aptitude’s Research agenda—this is a more focused effort dedicated to empowering HR and talent teams in the evaluation, implementation, and utilization of AI.

We believe AI should augment human workers and enhance human experiences—not displace human workers or over-automate important interactions. And who is better to inform and share best practices in this way than talent, HR, and technology leaders who have experience doing these things?

To ensure that AI technologies in the HR space are human-centric—prioritizing workforce well-being, fairness, equity, and productivity as we embrace the future of work.

Our Council is founded on three core principles: leadership, trust, and accountability. We’re starting strong with 10 founding members, all exec-level HR and talent practitioners who have been navigating these challenges and opportunities firsthand in global enterprise organizations.

At the heart of this Council is a commitment to ensuring that AI solutions are developed with human-centric values in mind. We want to move beyond just making HR processes more efficient—we want to ensure that AI enhances HR stakeholder experiences (candidates, employees, etc.), fosters equitable people practices and processes, and drives positive organizational outcomes.

As we move forward, our Council will focus on creating a framework for ethical AI practices, which will include establishing clear guidelines and standards for vendors and practitioners alike. By leading the way in this space, we aim to raise the bar for AI solutions that will have a lasting, positive impact on both the workforce and the organizations that rely on them.

It’s a mighty effort we’re undertaking—and we can’t do it alone. That’s why we’re also thrilled to announce our initial underwriter, GoodTime, whose support will help us get things off the ground. Together, we have spent the last couple of months assembling a collective of visionary and expert practitioner leaders who are committed to ensuring that AI in HR doesn’t just drive exceptional results, but also aligned with the values of fairness and inclusivity.

To kick off this exciting initiative, we’ll be hosting our inaugural “Session Zero,” where we’ll workshop the HCAIC’s first-year agenda. This session will bring together our founding members to identify key challenges in the AI adoption process, crowdsource best practices, and create a roadmap for the future for this effort.

Together, we’ll lay the foundation for an initiative that will (hopefully) help to shape how our industry approaches the integration and augmentation of AI into HR.

Ramping Up: What’s Next for Aptitude’s HCAIC
The HCAIC’s mission is not about regulation or lobbying—though these will be important efforts for our industry in the future. Rather, we’re more focused on empowering HR and talent leaders with the knowledge, tools, and connections to utilize AI responsibly and effectively. This Council’s value is built on collaboration, education, and practical guidance to ensure AI enhances the human elements of human capital and talent management

As part of our ongoing efforts, we’ll host virtual- and in-person meetings to connect, build relationships, discuss emerging topics, and set the agenda for our quarterly summits. These quarterly deep-dive sessions will tackle specific issues including discussions of what’s working, what’s not, and what we need to get ahead of, and will also identify opportunities for co-innovation between solution providers—on their own and with their partners.

We’ll also host “town hall” webinars to share notes with our colleagues, produce annual white papers to share key insights, highlight emerging best practices, and offer guidance on the most critical AI and HR trends. Our work will culminate in quarterly memos that share the Council’s perspective with the wider industry.

A Call to Action for HR and Talent Leaders: Join Us
The shift toward AI-powered HR is not just a trend—it’s a movement, a snowball effect that is already reshaping the way we work. We are inviting HR and Talent leaders, Technology and Change Management experts, and HR solution providers in Tech, Consulting, and Services to join us as we navigate this transformative journey. By coming together, we can ensure that HR isn’t just a stakeholder but a driving force in the conversation about how AI will shape the workforce of tomorrow.

Together, we believe we can create a future where AI is not only powerful but human-centric, where innovation is guided by ethical standards, and where HR has a clear and confident voice in shaping the technologies that are transforming the industry.

Join us in leading the way forward. Help us ensure that AI in HR serves people—not just processes. The time to lead from the practitioner’s seat is now.

Tags AI, HR Technology, Human Resources, Innovation

Blog Podcast

Trust, Tech and a Little Skepticism: Making AI Work for People

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date November 22, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, Kyle Lagunas is joined by Opal Wagnac, Senior Vice President of Market & Product Strategy at isolved. With her sharp insights and fresh perspective, Opal doesn’t hold back on what it takes to bring enterprise-grade solutions to businesses of all sizes while keeping it real about AI’s potential — and limitations. At the center of her approach is a mission to ensure that technology serves us, not replaces us. “Technology is not going to solve all your problems,” she says. Sometimes you just need a real human on the other end of the line.

Opal is passionate about helping small and mid-sized businesses compete with larger organizations by providing them with practical, enterprise-grade tools. For isolved, this means not just providing tech but supporting SMBs every step of the way as they integrate and utilize AI effectively.

Recorded live at HR Tech 2024, this episode dives deep into the challenges and opportunities of using AI responsibly, especially for small to mid-sized businesses. Tune in as we explore why trust, empathy and a little skepticism go a long way in keeping HR real.

AI Isn’t Magic, Honey — it’s the New Electricity

Opal kicks things off with an electrifying comparison — literally. She compares the dawn of AI to electricity, noting how every revolutionary tech has a bit of a rough start before it becomes a staple. “There’s this fear, there’s this trepidation,” she says. “And at one point, electricity had the same fear and had the same trepidation.”

Like electricity, AI needs understanding and adaptation, not fear. Just as we don’t think twice about whether a restaurant has electricity, AI will eventually be a standard‌ — ‌but only if we integrate it thoughtfully.

For Opal, this AI evolution calls for a good dose of healthy skepticism. Instead of blind trust, she’s all about asking the tough questions: “We need more critical thinkers,” she insists. “And I emphasize that word critical. Criticize the AI. Please do. Just to make sure that you’re also not creating the same repetitive mistakes.”

AI’s real value is in how seamlessly it can serve human needs — but it’s on leaders to ensure the technology remains human-centered.

AI Needs Real Change Agents, Not Just Cheerleaders

For Opal, trust in AI-powered HR solutions doesn’t mean blind acceptance‌ — ‌it’s about thoughtful implementation and a willingness to question the tools themselves. “To me, HR is a change agent,” she says. “So accept your role as a change agent and start making some changes. So even if the AI is telling you X, Y, Z, start challenging it.” This stance is at the heart of isolved’s approach, where Opal emphasizes that real progress in HR requires actively questioning AI’s outputs to ensure they’re serving the right goals.

Opal underscores that while enterprise-grade AI solutions can support SMBs, they also need to be backed by real human support and an ethical framework. By layering technology with hands-on consulting, isolved ensures that their clients feel equipped to handle AI’s capabilities without compromising on human connection.

Diversity for the Win: No Room for One-Track Thinking Here

Opal’s big on shaking things up and bringing in diverse perspectives‌ — ‌because if everyone thinks the same way, innovation doesn’t stand a chance. She encourages HR leaders to expand their circles and take advice from unconventional sources. “Learn from other people’s mistakes,” she advises, “because you won’t live long enough to make them yourself.” Her point? The best solutions come from a wide variety of voices, and pigeonholing people based on titles only limits what’s possible.

Opal underscores that HR leaders need to look beyond the obvious. By valuing each person’s unique journey and experiences, HR can foster a more inclusive and adaptable workplace culture. “They didn’t just fall out of the sky and be an HR generalist. There was something else before that, too,” she says. “So for the most part, when you’re engaging with someone, you’re getting the whole person and all of the experiences that make them.” That’s why she encourages everyone to dig into diverse perspectives, and the innovation will follow.

Big thanks to Opal for keeping it real on AI, the need for trust, and why HR must step up as change agents. Her takeaways? Don’t just follow the tech‌ — ‌challenge it. AI might be the new electricity, but it’s nothing without the people guiding its use. For all you HR pros out there, remember: it’s up to you to make these tools truly transformative. So stay curious, keep asking questions, and let’s get real about shaping a future where tech serves us‌ — ‌not the other way around.

People in This Episode

Opal Wagnoc: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries, te-he-he. Welcome to another electrifying episode of Transformation Realness, the only show all about people who are trying to make the world of work less shitty and have the guts to share their story. The good, the bad, and most of all, the real. It’s produced in partnership with Rep Cap and hosted by none other than yours truly, the magnetic, magnanimous, magnificent, Kyle Lagunas, head of strategy and principal analyst at Aptitude Research, the boutique research firm leading the charge in HR tech and transformation. Get into it!

Today I’m joined by somebody who knows a thing or two about shaking things up. Opal Wagnac, Senior Vice President of Market and Solution Strategy at isolved. Opal’s on a mission to help businesses of every size access enterprise-grade solutions. And if you thought AI was just a fancy buzzword, well, buckle up. From electricity to the internet and now AI, Opal’s got stories and analogies that’ll make you rethink everything you thought you knew about innovation cycles. And yes, Roomba is named Zaza, because of course it is. You’re going to hear all about it. All right, this conversation is full of laughs, insights and a healthy dose of truth bombs about what it really takes to drive change in HR today. Check it out.

Okay. Hello everybody. My little blueberries. We’re back with another special episode of Transformation Realness. We are coming to you live from HR Tech 2024 in the Glider AI booth. And I have with me another very dear friend. Opal? Do you want to say hi to everybody?

Opal Wagnac:

Hi everyone. I’m so glad to be here. My name is Opal Wagnac, and I am the Senior Vice President of Market and Solutions Strategy at isolved.

Kyle Lagunas:

And what’s isolved?

Opal Wagnac:

isolved is a HCM provider, not just of product, but also of services. Really servicing the SMB in the mid-market space. And we cover everything from a bevy of products and solutions, from HR services to talent acquisition services, as well as the full scale of HCM.

Kyle Lagunas:

So just a little bit of stuff. No, I love it. And honestly, isolved is a bit new to me. I had a really great briefing with them a while ago, last month or so. But I was really excited to see you on stage for the opening session at Women in HR Tech, and especially when you were sharing with me a little bit about the first point of view of, look, we’re living in crazy times. Innovation cycles are just going rampant. But I really loved the story that you told about electricity. Can you tell us about that? Yeah.

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah, absolutely. So, of course, when the question comes up about, well, how are we supposed to embrace AI? And it’s always like that new thing. It’s like, oh my gosh, there’s this fear, there’s this trepidation. And at one point, electricity had the same fear and had the same trepidation. What do you mean light is coming out of the ceiling? What do you mean that I’m holding to this candle and I’m walking around one room to the next? Where’s this light coming from or how does it work? Electricity, I can’t see it, but I see its effect.

And I’m like, okay, you don’t see wind either, but you see its impact. And so with electricity it had to go through this enormous learning curve. And I believe it was Andrew Ng who said, like, “AI is the new electricity.” And so it literally had to get to a point where, here we are, if I’m making plans to go to dinner with you, I’m not going to ask, does the place have electricity? You would probably look at me like I had three heads. And so I understand where Andrew Ng was coming from with really trying to embrace AI. But if I look at electricity, I don’t know about you Kyle, but I wasn’t around when electricity was discovered.

Kyle Lagunas:

No, me neither. I’m very young.

Opal Wagnac:

I can’t remember what that learning curve was about. But I can read about it. However, in our lifetime we’ve seen the internet. So to me, I look at the AI — as AI as the new internet. Where there was a time where it’s like, what do you mean I can talk to someone in real time that’s in Singapore? And so actually we had a laugh about it, what was your screen name again?

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, my first screen name was “Hello.” Because I didn’t know that I wasn’t chatting yet. I just got prompted with a box and I wrote Hello.

Opal Wagnac:

Wow. Very original. So Hello being your new screen name to talk to people. Mine was Talk and the number 2 Opal.

Kyle Lagunas:

See, you already had the acronyms. I love it.

Opal Wagnac:

I was just trying it out, but just thinking about it…

Kyle Lagunas:

You were cool from the beginning. Don’t play.

Opal Wagnac:

Thank you. Thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

I really like it, especially because I think the electricity allegory, there was a lot of fear around electricity. People didn’t understand it, they didn’t know how it worked and so they didn’t trust it.

Opal Wagnac:

Right. Right.

Kyle Lagunas:

And I feel like especially in the HR organization, which has been historically extremely risk-averse, that the perceived risk and danger with this has really stalled, I think, some meaningful innovation. It’s like if I use AI to create a new drug, a new pharmaceutical drug, no one really understands that. But if I’m using AI to create a more data-driven performance management program. Or if I’m using AI to implement more equitable pay practices. Like everybody gets paid, everybody has performance reviews. We know what that is. And so it’s like the exposure, the level of connection to these perceived risks, the use cases for AI in our space, it’s actually a ubiquitous understanding of the stuff.

Opal Wagnac:

100%.

Kyle Lagunas:

Like, hey, this could actually be really disruptive. But I think we don’t know how it’s going to work. And so we’re not sure, candidly, whether we can trust HR to figure it out. You know what I’m saying? It’s like there’s this point right now where it’s like, what are we going to do here? Is HR going to take this and run with it? Can they? And I think they can.

Opal Wagnac:

I think they can too. Because when it comes to our own personal lives, AI is all over the place. We talk to Alexa to ask them, okay, what are those stats of Michael Jordan doing against LeBron James? Or even sillier things than that. So even using everyday natural language processing in our daily lives. I look at my kids. My kids are never going to ask, “Well, what are your AI solutions?” They don’t know what AI is, but they know the absence of AI.

Kyle Lagunas:

At four years old they’re asking if you have Wi-Fi. They’re coming up to me at my house, my niece and nephew. Like, “What’s your Wi-Fi password?” I’m like, bro.

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly. Exactly. So even the Roomba, right? We gave her her name. Her name is Zaza.

Kyle Lagunas:

Zaza?

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah. Yeah, Zaza. Because she earns her keep. And not to try and genderify her with that name but we felt that Zaza was very fancy. Instead of Jeeves, we felt Zaza.

Kyle Lagunas:

She’s a fancy girl.

Opal Wagnac:

She’s a fancy girl and she does a lot. And I think about all the type of innovation that goes into that. So this is the world in which they live in. So my kids will never look for a movie. Netflix better recommend. Even their friends are recommended to them. So living in a world of recommendations, and that is their day to day. I can definitely find areas within HR very easily. It’s easy for me because I look at a lot of the things, a lot of the questions that we’re constantly asking.

I was actually overhearing a conversation with one of the sales leaders and she was trying to help her son. It was like adulting 101. I was eavesdropping on it. So this was very interesting. You’re going to laugh at this one. And so of course, he’s like 26 years old, so he needs to get off his mommy’s insurance and get a real job. And so he got a real job. Check. And now he is going through the whole enrollment process. And he starts to freak out. He’s like, “Mom…”

Kyle Lagunas:

Because it’s complicated.

Opal Wagnac:

“… what Is a deductible? What is that? I never learned in college? What is that?”

Kyle Lagunas:

What’s home insurance and what’s a lifetime maximum?

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly. So all of these things during the enrollment process. And then he’s like, “Wait a minute, I got to count how many times I’m going to get hit by a bus next year to figure out how much I’m going to spend to go to urgent care? How morbid is that?” Right? So in thinking about it, you know what, he wasn’t wrong. Because he’s lived in a world where things have been recommended to them.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Served up to him.

Opal Wagnac:

Literally served up. HR already knows, I know that you’re a single male. I know that you have no children. I know that you’re a nonsmoker. I know so many things already about you. As a matter of fact, I know who you really are, not your street name, but I know your government name. You know all of these things, and yet you won’t even serve up to me, what’s the recommended plan?

Kyle Lagunas:

I actually only have a legal name. I don’t have a street name.

Opal Wagnac:

You don’t have a street name?

Kyle Lagunas:

No.

Opal Wagnac:

We got to give you a street name because-

Kyle Lagunas:

Don’t be fooled by this ink.

Opal Wagnac:

No, listen.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’m actually a square.

Opal Wagnac:

You have street cred, my friend.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’ve got some rizz.

Opal Wagnac:

You’ve got a Kyle high vibe.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, listen, let me back it up because I really like where you’re going with this. You and I had been in this space for a while, right?

Opal Wagnac:

Yes.

Kyle Lagunas:

And you are new into this role, and I’m actually really excited for this role for you because we need really passionate but also informed voices that are really pushing this narrative forward, that are challenging the industry. Especially from the solution-provider side, especially focused on SMB and mid-market.

Opal Wagnac:

Yes.

Kyle Lagunas:

Everybody’s ignoring this whole… Which is the hugest employer market in the world.

Opal Wagnac:

It is.

Kyle Lagunas:

And we’re all talking about enterprise issues. So I love this for you.

Opal Wagnac:

Thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

But look, you and I know that AI, we’ve been talking about AI in the space for a while. And not even that long ago, three years ago, it was a buzzword. We were just talking about it as a future thing.

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

And literally overnight it has become ubiquitous.

Opal Wagnac:

Of course.

Kyle Lagunas:

You’re saying, I’m not going to ask if a restaurant has electricity. I’m not going to ask if HR is using AI. I want to know, how are you using AI?

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah. So this is your new baseline if you think about it, right? So many of us work for SaaS companies. Your company wouldn’t exist if the internet wasn’t there, right? So many of us have jobs. My job didn’t exist 45 years ago. So just even thinking it through, we’ll now have to be at the cusp of like, well, what are the new jobs going to be if AI is the baseline? So if the internet was the baseline, here we are today. Can you imagine if AI is the baseline?

As a matter of fact, I don’t even think we’ll put those two letters together again. Because no one even says the internet anymore. People just say Wi-Fi. It augments itself from one generation to the next. So I can only imagine what my kids are going to call it. They may call it, I don’t know, the internet went to the what? The cloud?

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, do we still talk about the cloud?

Opal Wagnac:

I know, right?

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, look, before we even get there, I feel like HR is feeling this pressure. We have to get to a point of literacy. The business is asking us all these questions about AI. And like, I don’t know, girl, I’m an HR expert. I’m not an AI expert. But I honestly am feeling this massive paradigm shift where, and this is the tough part for HR, is being an HR expert’s not enough.

You have to know how this stuff works and how this stuff doesn’t work, what it does and what it doesn’t do. Because we do, in order to be effective leaders and effective stewards of the trust of the workforce, we have to make sure that we are actually using these things effectively. And ethically. And so we do need to get better versed in these. It can’t just be the internet. It can’t just be AI. We need to really start to figure this stuff out.

Are you finding in your role that you are having opportunities to answer some of these questions and lean into some of these things? What are some of the stuff that you’re really trying to get done at isolved?

Opal Wagnac:

Right, right. So just looking at the world of, especially like you mentioned before, when you’re looking at AI, you’re looking at all of these solutions. We should not stop questioning. Just because it’s there, we need more critical thinkers. And I emphasize that word critical. Criticize the AI. Please do. Just to make sure that you’re also not creating the same repetitive mistakes. And now all you deal is-

Kyle Lagunas:

You can’t take anything for granted.

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah, just take it and you’re systematizing it too. And if we’re really going to try and truly be these change agents, to me, HR is a change agent. So accept your role as a change agent and start making some changes. So even if the AI is telling you X, Y, Z, start challenging it. Okay, is this what we want for the future? Especially in an area like here at HR Tech, you see a lot on talent acquisition. And there’s been so much that has been done. At isolved we’ve done a tremendous amount of work around talent acquisition, especially even though we’re servicing the SMB and that mid-market space.

Kyle Lagunas:

Which is underserved, to be honest.

Opal Wagnac:

It’s very underserved. And I believe it was a stat like 99% of all businesses in the U.S. have less than 500 employees. So just think about that. Yes, there is a churn rate, but there’s also a much more impressive growth rate too. And so if they’re also trying to fish from the same pond as those larger enterprises, they should be able to get the same good talent.

Kyle Lagunas:

They have the same problems. They might not be at the same scale, but it’s…

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

Right?

Opal Wagnac:

So everything is fair game for them too. So they deserve the same type of enterprise-grade solutions, so to speak. They deserve the right type of AI solutions.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, you know what they deserve, what they also need? Is to know they can trust their partners.

Opal Wagnac:

Oh, 1000%.

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s one thing that I think is really interesting about y’all’s approach is you really are layering in best practice consulting and professional services with the technology too. I’ve seen, and you have too, a lot of people in the space, you can build a mousetrap and you got to hand over the mousetrap with the book to implement it. And sorry, I’m a technology vendor. You do what you need to do. I did my part, which was give you the software. I really like seeing you guys committed to helping your customers succeed.

Opal Wagnac:

Absolutely.

Kyle Lagunas:

Especially knowing you and your passion and your opinions. We need it. Right? It can’t be kid gloves. Like I said, the problems that HR leaders face in a global enterprise, the scale might be bigger, but we are facing those problems on the home front too.

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly, exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

And we need have somebody that’s going to help us navigate this next level.

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah. Because technology’s not going to solve all your problems. Let me say that again for the people in the back. Technology is not going to solve all of your problems. So there’s going to be some times where you actually want to get on the phone and not be prompted. You actually want to speak to a real human because you’re dealing with people. It’s a very dynamic world that HR basically has to serve. And our tastes, our styles, everything changes. So if everything is constantly changing, you’re also going to need to deal with some very complex issues.

And the beauty about what isolved does is that we do not shy away from that service model. We recognize the fact that yes, there’s plenty of our customers. We have over 177,000 customers. So we take our same learnings from those customers and we produce HR services. Especially even understanding the notion that once upon a time, it was very easy for you to find someone that had 20 years of HR experience. That has been cut in half.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know.

Opal Wagnac:

So where do you find the expertise to move your business forward?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Opal Wagnac:

As a business owner, you recognize that there is a need and there is a void. So looking at HR services, looking at talent acquisition services. You know you want to be able to acquire talent. However, actually to really be successful in talent acquisition, you need to be able to market. You can’t just take your job description and plop it out there on Twitter. Good luck with that. You need to be able, like, sorry, you need honey to catch some bees.

Kyle Lagunas:

That is part of the problem, right? I mean, because guess what? They’re competing for talent, not with their direct backyard competitors, they’re competing with those big budget companies too. Right?

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly. Exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, let me ask you then, if you are going to give one word of advice to folks to navigate this next year ahead, what would it be?

Opal Wagnac:

Well, definitely, I would say expand your circle. Because one thing about just being locked in, you’re never going to understand the problems that you’re about to face. And at the same time, I always tell my kids, learn from other people’s mistakes because you won’t live long enough to make them yourself. So that’s one part of it.

The other part of that is the diversity of thought. Also look around you. I think that there is a lot that we can do there, just even by expanding our circles ever so slightly. We don’t have to look that far. But really doing things in a way that, “Well, she’s not an HR expert, so why would I ask her?” Oh no, you should definitely ask her. Or, “She’s of a different generation.” No, you should definitely ask them too.

And you’ll be surprised that whenever we tend to pigeonhole people based off of their title, the truth is they didn’t just fall out of the sky and be an HR generalist. There was something else before that, too. So for the most part, when you’re engaging with someone, you’re getting the whole person and all of the experiences that make them.

Kyle Lagunas:

You know what this is giving Kamala… You didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree.

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah, you sure did…

Kyle Lagunas:

No, I really love it. I have actually seen, because I’ve been on the conference circuit all year long, and this is the most disruptive year I’ve seen.

Opal Wagnac:

Wow.

Kyle Lagunas:

But I also love seeing the community. People are coming together. They are sharing their war stories and their successes and learning together. No HR person is an island. Find your people. Find us. We care.

Opal Wagnac:

Yes. We’re here.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, we have a lot of opinions. I don’t know.

Opal Wagnac:

You’re never short of them, and neither am I.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, thank you for coming and chatting with me for a little bit. If anybody wants to find you, they can hit you up on LinkedIn?

Opal Wagnac:

Yes, absolutely. You can find me on LinkedIn.

Kyle Lagunas:

All right. Thanks, babe. I’ll catch you again soon.

Opal Wagnac:

All right, love you.

Kyle Lagunas:

And just like that, folks, another fantastic conversation in the books. Huge shout out to Opal for dropping some serious wisdom and for reminding us that tech is only a tool. At the end of the day, it’s the people who behind it who make the real magic happen. That means you. Whether you’re running a global enterprise or a 50-person small business, it’s clear we all face the same challenges. The only difference: scale. And as Opal said, the key to navigating it all: expand your circle. Because let’s be real, none of us are going to live long enough to make every mistake ourselves.

So if today’s episode got you thinking about AI, or had you Googling deductibles mid-show, know that you are not alone. These are the conversations we need to have. And if you’re still curious, definitely hit up Opal on LinkedIn. Check out isolved. She’s the kind of person who tells it like it is, and then helps you figure out what to do next. I absolutely adore you, even if I candidly don’t remember how to pronounce your last name. I’m sorry, Opal.

Anyway, thanks for tuning in my friends. Remember, transformation doesn’t always happen overnight. And you don’t have to go it alone. Keep it real, keep it curious, and keep asking questions, whether it’s from your Roomba, your kid, or Alexa. We’ll catch you on the next one. Until then, stay kind, stay curious, and for the love of Zaza, don’t forget your Wi-Fi password. See you soon.

Tags HR Technology, Recruitment Technology, talent acquisition

Blog Podcast

Hiring Assessments That Do More Than Just Check Boxes

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date November 20, 2024

In this episode of Transformation Realness, I sit down with Satish Kumar, the innovative CEO and co-founder of Glider AI, a leading skill validation platform. Satish’s background in education tech brings a fresh perspective to HR, blending rigorous assessment standards with hands-on practice for real-world tasks.

And it’s exactly what the industry needs right now. With candidate fraud on the rise, companies are facing challenges they hadn’t prepared for, and it’s impacting hiring quality at every level. Satish explains how Glider’s tools give hiring teams the confidence they need by validating both technical proficiency and integrity in candidates.

This conversation with Satish is loaded with insights for anyone who wants to make their hiring process more transparent, strategic, and future-focused. Whether you’re struggling with candidate fraud, looking for ways to use assessments as part of a long-term talent strategy, or just curious about what’s next in HR tech, this episode will give you plenty of ideas to chew on. Grab a coffee, tune in, and let’s get real about what assessments can do for your team!

Are They the Real Deal? Why Candidate Authenticity Matters More Than Ever

Let’s talk about authenticity — something we’d all love a little more of in hiring, right? With remote and hybrid work now the norm, it’s harder than ever to know if your candidates are the real deal or just playing the part.

So, how does Glider AI help? They’re not just doing traditional assessments: they’re creating a process that gives you confidence in the authenticity of every hire. It’s about knowing that the person behind the screen actually has the skills they say they do. “Our goal is to … give you the confidence there’s no cheating at all,” Satish says. No second-guessing, no crossed fingers‌ — ‌just a system that’s built to help you hire the right people, every time.

And it’s more than just a skills check. Glider’s assessments include hands-on tasks that mirror real job responsibilities, giving you a real-time peek into a candidate’s problem-solving abilities, work style and creativity. In a world where hiring remotely is here to stay, Glider’s tools are like having a truth serum for candidates.

Hiring for Today, Planning for Tomorrow

Now, here’s where Glider’s approach gets even cooler. Most companies treat assessments as a pass-or-fail moment, but Satish takes it a step further. Instead of just thinking short-term, Glider’s assessments are designed to be the start of a bigger conversation about a candidate’s future at the company. “We can chart that journey for the candidate,” Satish says. Imagine using the same data to help new hires grow into roles they haven’t even applied for yet!

Glider’s assessments gather insights on broader skills and career potential, which is gold for HR leaders trying to build a talent pipeline. So, instead of just hiring for the role in front of you, you’re creating a development roadmap that keeps employees engaged and moving forward.

This approach is all about setting employees up for success from day one and giving them a vision of where they’re headed. It turns a one-off assessment into a strategic tool for long-term planning and career development, helping companies keep top talent and reduce turnover. Glider’s assessment data becomes more than just a hiring tool‌ — ‌it’s a foundation for a talent strategy that goes beyond the present.

Straight From the Frontlines: Learning From the People Who Make Hiring Happen

Here’s one thing I love about Satish: he’s not just a tech advocate: he’s motivated by understanding people. Glider’s approach to building assessment tools isn’t just theoretical. Satish is out here connecting with real HR leaders and practitioners to learn about the daily challenges they face in hiring. In fact, that’s his main reason for sponsoring this season of Transformation Realness: “Learn from the practitioner, listen to them, what they’re doing — and at the same time, share that knowledge with the world,” he says.

Satish is all about hearing the gritty details‌ — ‌the obstacles, the breakthroughs and everything in between. This isn’t just lip service, either. Satish genuinely believes that Glider’s tools should reflect the reality of today’s hiring challenges, and he’s making sure the product evolves to meet them. This real-world input means Glider stays adaptable, evolving as fast as the hiring landscape changes.

Satish’s commitment to continuous learning and genuine connection means Glider AI is a platform that’s rooted in the real experiences of people in HR. In a world full of tech that promises to “revolutionize” hiring, it’s refreshing to see a company that’s grounded, practical and truly dedicated to making hiring better.

People in This Episode

Satish Kumar: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries and welcome back to Transformation Realness, the only show all about what’s going on in the world of work: the good, the bad, and most importantly the real. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s been a minute since our last little episode. I have been on the road pretty much nonstop speaking at industry conferences, moderating executive summits, and sitting down with some of the most innovative solution providers and forward-thinking HR and talent leaders, literally, in the world. Did you miss me? Are you ready to get learnt and turnt? Are you ready to get real? Well buckle up buttercup: we’ve got a lot to cover.

We’re also trying something super new, this very special season, I’m calling the Transformation Ecosystem EP. And it features quickfire conversations recorded live from HR Tech conference in Las Vegas. We have practitioners like Donald Knight, chief people officer at Warner Brothers. We have solution providers like Rebecca Carr, CEO at SmartRecruiters. And we have extra special guests like Keith Sonderling, former commissioner of the EEOC, and my personal bestie, Madeline Laurano, my stunning business partner, the founder and principal analyst here at Aptitude. Can you even?

We also have our first-ever sponsor. Oh my God. The Transformation Ecosystem EP was made possible thanks to underwriting from the team at Glider AI. I know I make this all seem absolutely effortless but, to be honest, Transformation Realness is a serious labor of love. And working with an expert team like Rep Cap, it ain’t free y’all. You’re going to love this season. And I get to keep doing this work because Satish and Joseph at Glider believe these conversations are worth amplifying. I’m so humbled by their support. Okay. But enough from me, let’s jump into our first episode. And never forget to like and subscribe.

Hello, my little blueberries. Welcome back to Transformation Realness. The only show all about people who are doing their best to make the world of work less shitty, and they’ve got the guts to share their story, the good, the bad, and most of all, the real.

It’s produced in partnership with Rep Cap Media, and hosted by yours truly, the ever so glamorous, definitely down to earth, Kyle Lagunas, head of strategy and principal analyst at Aptitude Research, the leading boutique research firm covering HR tech and transformation. Get into it.

Today’s guest is a very special, Satish Kumar, CEO and co-founder of Glider AI, which, as you all know, was the underwriter of this extra special EP. He’s the kind of entrepreneur I love talking to: bold enough to tackle big challenges, but grounded enough to know exactly where things can go wrong.

Satish and I dig into Glider’s unique approach to skills validation, and why it’s more than just a way to weed out unfit candidates. It’s about building real opportunities for growth. Satish’s background in education tech, also, adds a really cool twist to the conversation. Think of it as teaching for the corporate world, but with more swag.

So, if you’ve ever wondered how to assess talent beyond checking boxes, or how to sniff out candidate fraud before it tanks your hiring funnel, you’re in the right place. Satish and I have a lot of tea to spill. Let’s dive right in.

Hi, Satish.

Satish Kumar:

Hello.

Kyle Lagunas:

How are you doing?

Satish Kumar:

I’m doing great.

Kyle Lagunas:

You want to introduce yourself to everybody? Who are you?

Satish Kumar:

Hello, everyone. This is Satish Kumar. I’m the CEO and co-founder of Glider AI. Glider AI is a skill validation platform for talent acquisition and talent management.

We are here to validate the candidate quality, combat candidate fraud, and provide practice-based learning for your employee. Through our sophisticated assessment platform, intelligent interview tool, we are able to solve candidate quality issue, and provide enterprises value on the investment on the skills.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, super cool. Honestly, this is not your first foray into the space of skills either, right? Like you found a new opportunity to solve some problems here, but you’ve been an innovator for a while. What did you do before you got into HR tech?

Satish Kumar:

Great questions. Not many people have asked me this. I come from education technology background. In fact, I ran my last edtech company for nine and a half years, and there, I was trying to identify the mastery of kids in the K-12 classroom. And that was the most satisfying part of my professional journey, actually.

And from there, when the company got acquired by a private equity firm, my two co-founders went with the last one, and I was the crazy one to start anew, but in the process, I am bringing all the pedagogy. In fact, I have the IPO of the last company as well, and we built a lot more things on top.

And that is very much applicable to this market, because, earlier, I was tracking the mastery of kids in the classroom, now, I track the mastery of professionals in corporate world.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, super cool. And I mean, HR tech is a really dynamic space, right? It’s a really interesting space. How long has Glider been in business? Because I only actually met you earlier this year at Transform. Stacia Garr introduced us, which I’m very grateful for.

As an analyst, I look at a lot of products, and I see a lot of interesting ideas, but when we sat down, I knew that you really had something different. And I do think that your background coming from proctoring in a different space, like delivering innovation in a different space has really helped you have a much more nuanced point of view on the market.

But, yeah, how are you feeling about… I mean, skills is everywhere. How do you feel like you guys are standing out in the market?

Satish Kumar:

So, one of the key part that I say that, in the world of remote work or hybrid work, when somebody say, “Hey, this person is great, good quality,” well, it has to mean two things. The candidate is competent, and genuine, because a lot of candidate fraud happens in this hiring process, what you don’t know what you don’t know. But once you find even one issue, then, you question what happened to other thousand candidates that have gone through the process?

And our goal is to create, by design, a process through technology that will give you the confidence that there is no cheating in the process at all, and then, have all the audit trails available so that it gives you the comfort.

Kyle Lagunas:

I would, also, say that, from my point of view, former talent acquisition executive, I needed to have the right tool to make sure that we were effectively assessing for the skills that we needed. Right? I mean, I actually need to make sure that I had something that was going to give me the right insight on whether somebody could do the work that I needed them to, or not.

I mean, there have been tech assessments for a long time, but there’s some really unique stuff that you guys have with Glider. Do you want to share some of that?

Satish Kumar:

So, one of the key part that we offer as part of our solution, is that it’s a hands-on task. Assessment has been there since ages, right? But what you do inside that, how you do it matters. And how confidently the outcome will give you the proficiency level of individuals can only be driven by how you assess.

So, our approach has been we can simulate the client technology stack for the tech roles, or for functional roles, the kind of job they will be doing after joining the company. And then, we say, “Hey, if anybody can do this task, they should be given opportunity to proceed further in the interview process.”

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, see, that’s really interesting. Like, honestly, I don’t think that you are far away, then, from assessing for the job that somebody’s applying for now. But then, also if you look and see where do people in this role go next in the company, why don’t I go ahead and see how much potential do I already have for what’s next.

So, let’s assess for right now, but then, also, let’s go ahead and get some data and see where is Satish right now for being software developer two, software developer three, or running a product management team, right? Like why don’t we just go ahead and get that going?

Satish Kumar:

Since we have done so many evaluations, we understand that what is the need for role A versus role B versus role C that could be in the progression path. So, we already understand that part, right? So, if I have to recommend person A, “Hey, you are at level A,” but you know what, the real need for level two is this, because we already assessed other people and have been successful at level two.

So, we can chart that journey for the candidate further, showing that this is the area you need to…

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, I really do love it, especially because, look, we invest a lot of money in the assessment. Whether we’re talking about technical assessments, behavioral assessments, there is a lot of spend that goes into these things, and I have rarely seen an organization that uses that insight, that information from the assessment to build a development plan to onboard those people.

Like we really use it to decide if we’re moving you forward or him forward or her forward, and then, that’s it. And so, it’s really cool to see you guys are designing a product that’s going to have that, it’s designed to have that extended value. It’s designed to help get that person onboarded into a development plan. That’s super cool.

Satish Kumar:

Thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

Can I ask you a different kind of question?

Satish Kumar:

Sure. You’re always on for a surprise, I know that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, it’s kind of a weird one, but like, I have never podcasted in somebody’s booth before and it means a lot to me that you all were willing to sponsor this, and I have to ask, why did you like, sure, we’ll have Kyle sit in our booth and talk to a bunch of people, but, yeah, again, thinking budgets are finite, resources right now are really precious, what made you think that this might be worth it?

Satish Kumar:

I think the primary reason was that, while we are at HR Tech conference, which is a large conference, there are so many practitioners out here already, and they have their own experiences in the domain that they work in. Wouldn’t it would be great if we can capture their thinking process brain while they’re there already, as against scheduling them one by one outside?

And you happen to be here offering this help, hey, I can pick their brain, what they’re doing in this skill world, and because that’s core to us as well. So, for me, primary: learn from the practitioner, listen to them what they’re doing, and at the same time, share that knowledge with the world as well. And who better could do than you sitting here at one place, so thank you for that.

Kyle Lagunas:

No, honestly, I have to say vendors don’t get enough credit for underwriting the community that exists. These moments are not possible without underwriting from vendors like Glider. And I think that you should be proud of that. I mean, not only are there practitioners here that you want to hear and learn from, this is an opportunity for them to have, like, to stand out in the market, right? And to have an asset for their own career brand.

I mean, look, I sat down and had a really cool conversation about skills, and I was at HR Tech Conference. No, I didn’t speak at the conference, but I did sit down with this really cool analyst, Kyle. You know what I mean?

Satish Kumar:

Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

Like you’re underwriting something that’s really important. So, I think it’s super cool. You should give yourself credit for it.

Satish Kumar:

Thank you. You rightly said that even practitioner got to showcase what they have been doing, get this in a platform to share with the world. So, not just learning for me, but saying learning through the world as well.

We always want to do better, right? And they’re the real practitioner who can share things that wouldn’t otherwise, and doing just Zoom remote doesn’t cut it. Being there live, face-to-face makes so much difference to get the nuggets out of…

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, I think so, too. And it’s like, it’s a connection point. Right? And I mean, people come to this, yeah, they come to sit in some sessions, yeah, they come to learn about what the new vendors are building, and what that cool tech looks like, but they really are wanting these moments where we can sit down together and share some ideas, and like, I don’t know, wax philosophical, right?

Well, and I hope that you get dollar-for-dollar ROI. I know ROI is like, everybody’s under that pressure. But I did want to ask that question, because this is something that is, I think, important for the space, and I appreciate you making it possible.

Satish Kumar:

Thanks to you.

Kyle Lagunas:

What do you think we’ll do next year? And I mean not just mean you and me, but what do you think is going to be happening at this show next year?

Satish Kumar:

I think this show is already so big.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Satish Kumar:

I think we need little more structure how vendors like us can get more time with the practitioner. I mean, what we did here was just to get to that part, right? And thanks to you that you’re willing to do that here. But, in general, this show is so big. I think there has to be some structured way for the practitioner to participate, [get] time with the vendors who are showcasing there. Right?

And one big challenge here is that, because all the talk track are on the second floor, for them it’ll take time out of those and come and show which vendors are waiting…

Kyle Lagunas:

And they wander around aimlessly, maybe, see somebody that’s nice to them, like the name of a company doesn’t really dictate what they do. I’m 20 minutes into a conversation with somebody, and I realize this isn’t relevant to me. Do you know what I mean? Like that happens.

No, I think there is a lot of opportunities, especially like everything’s changed, the way that we engage, the way that we learn, the way that we shop for new partners, it’s all changed.

I would like to see some opportunities where, maybe, these shows evolve a bit more to enable some more of that, too. I think that the old playbook is not going to cut it anymore. It’d be cool to see what maybe they can dream up.

Satish Kumar:

Can I suggest something on that?

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, yeah, please.

Satish Kumar:

Maybe, there should be a track where vendors can have some hands-on labs.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Satish Kumar:

And have people walk in and try it out. And they should promote that as well, right?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Satish Kumar:

As against sharing just the pitches, right?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Satish Kumar:

And some people are-

Kyle Lagunas:

I know, it’s like the pitch stage, right? Where you show them your demo. That’s not hands-on. That’s not really making eye contact and getting to know people.

I think that could be cool, especially workshops. People want to come and not just hear things, they want to interact with some of these ideas.

No, that’s cool. Well, if anybody from HR Tech is listening, we’ve got some ideas for you, babies.

Satish Kumar:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know. Come and find us. Well, thanks again, Satish. It’s been really fun so far. I’m looking forward to learning more here while we’re at the show.

Satish Kumar:

Thank you, Kyle.

Kyle Lagunas:

Appreciate you so much. See ya.

Satish Kumar:

Thank you. Bye.

Kyle Lagunas:

Just like that, we’ve reached the end of another incredible episode of Transformation Realness. A huge thanks to Satish for joining me, for coming through, and sharing his insights. Because let’s be real, assessments have been around forever, but Glider AI is one of those providers that’s, actually, making the work smarter and not harder. And Satish, thanks again for making this very special season of Transformation Realness possible.

All right, well, some quick takeaways. First, trust, but verify. Candidate fraud is a lot more common than bad coffee at the office. Second, assessments shouldn’t just measure potential, they should help to unlock it. And finally, if your tech isn’t building a better talent pipeline, what are we even doing here?

Thanks for tuning in, my friends. If you enjoyed this episode, leave a review, tell your work bestie, and shout it from the rooftops. I’ll take whatever promo I can get, honestly. I’m pretty desperate.

Until next time, stay curious, stay sharp, and stay real, my little babies. We’ll catch you on the next one. Bye.

Tags HR Technology, talent acquisition

Blog

Chipotle: A Lesson in TA Transformation and Change Management

Post author By Madeline Laurano
Post date October 30, 2024

New Hartford, New York - Aug 18, 2019: Night View of Chipotle Mexican Grill Restaurant, Chipotle is an American Fast Food Brand Specialized in Grill & Mexican Food.

Chipotle’s recent adoption of Paradox’s AI-powered hiring platform is more than an HRTech investment—it’s a strategic shift in how the quick-service restaurant (QSR) sector approaches hiring, employee engagement, and business growth. As companies like Chipotle evolve with smarter recruitment technology, they’re setting a new standard for efficiency and impact in high-volume hiring. Here are some of the standout lessons from Chipotle’s journey with Paradox and what it means for the future of talent acquisition.

1. High-Volume Hiring Has Better Options: Traditional ATS systems have not been able to support high-volume hiring needs in a way that provides a positive experience to hourly workers. Today, there are better options, and we found that 1 in 3 high-volume companies are looking to replace their ATS. They want more personalization, consistency and an overall faster process that only comes from automation.

2. Change Management Done Right: Managers Want to Adopt It Now

In an industry where rapid adoption can be challenging, Chipotle’s rollout of Paradox has been a change management success story. Managers have embraced the platform enthusiastically, even requesting to start using it immediately. This high level of buy-in is essential, as frontline managers are integral to hiring success. The swift adoption mirrors what McDonald’s experienced in its own shift to Paradox, underscoring that when the value is clear, buy-in follows.

3. A Catalyst for Business Transformation Beyond HR

While Chipotle’s adoption of Paradox is making waves in HR, it’s also part of a larger, company-wide transformation. This effort is not just about hiring efficiencies; it’s part of a broader business initiative that includes improving the customer experience, driving revenue, and expanding the brand’s reach. Finance, HR, and communications teams have all collaborated to bring about this shift, illustrating the power of cross-functional partnerships. Chipotle’s commitment to advanced technology reflects a holistic strategy where recruitment innovation goes hand-in-hand with brand growth and financial performance.

4. Automating for Efficiency, But Humans Still Drive Final Decisions

One of the key strengths of Paradox’s platform is its ability to automate time-intensive hiring processes, such as application screening and interview scheduling. However, it’s important to note that human decision-makers retain control over final interview and hiring choices. This balance between AI-driven efficiency and human judgment allows Chipotle to streamline its hiring process while preserving the personal touch essential to selecting team members aligned with its culture and values.

5. Achieving a 75% Reduction in Time to Hire: Significant ROI for QSR

Reducing time to hire by 75% isn’t just a noteworthy metric; it’s a game-changer in the QSR world, where speed is vital. This reduction directly translates to cost savings, better staffing coverage, and improved customer service—all critical components for restaurants. With hiring streamlined, Chipotle is able to meet its staffing demands faster, ensuring that locations remain well-staffed and prepared to serve customers during peak times. For QSRs operating on tight margins, the efficiency gains from AI technology represent a strong return on investment.

6. Leading the Industry in Smarter Hiring Technology

Chipotle’s adoption of Paradox underscores a significant industry trend Aptitude Research has identified: one in three high-volume companies is considering replacing their traditional ATS, and 62% of hourly workers report never receiving a call back after applying for jobs. Chipotle’s approach tackles both issues head-on, allowing the company to engage with candidates promptly and create a positive, responsive hiring experience. This strategy not only helps attract talent but also serves as a powerful statement to the industry about the evolving role of technology in QSR hiring.

Chipotle’s integration of Paradox is more than a recruitment strategy—it’s a blueprint for how companies can use technology to drive holistic business success. Chipotle’s example demonstrates that investing in intelligent, automated solutions pays off in higher engagement, faster hires, and meaningful cost savings. With this approach, Chipotle is setting a new standard for QSRs, showing that when technology and strategy align, the results can redefine an entire industry.

Tags HR Technology, talent acquisition