"Greenhouse is the best ATS" says Recruiting Pro

I noticed a LinkedIn post recently by a talent acquisition pro named Jaime Engle. She praised greenhouse as the best ATS so I just had to get her on Zoom to see why. Hear what she has to say about her favorite recruiting tools.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to RecTech, the podcast where recruiting and technology intersect. Each month you'll hear from vendors shaping the recruiting world, along with recruiters who'll tell you how they use technology to hire talent. Now here's your host, the mad scientist of online recruiting, Chris Russell.

Chris Russell:

Hi again, RecTechies. Welcome to the only podcast that helps employers and recruiters connect with more candidates through technology inspired conversations. Recruiting technology is the key to hiring great talent. That's why this show exists. All right.

Jaime Engle started her career in talent acquisition on the agency side, doing full desk tech recruiting at two different organizations before going in-house to a Chicago startup called Uptake. She helped grow the company to over 850 employees. After that, she joined a data science and SaaS consulting firm called Civis Analytics, where she was promoted to a senior recruiter then recruiting manager, and after contracting at Salesforce for a bit, she returned to the tech world at Balto, an AI call assistant software company based in St. Louis, where she helped grow and scale the business as director of talent. She joins me now on Zoom, from Chicago. Jaime, welcome to the show. It's great to have you.

Jaime Engle:

Thank you so much, Chris. I'm so excited. I've never been on a podcast, and I'm honored.

Chris Russell:

First time for everything.

Jaime Engle:

Yeah, today's your lucky day, so thank you for joining us today, and appreciate it. It's not every day you see recruiters praising their ATS on LinkedIn, but that's what you did recently, and that's why I reached out to you. I love recruiters with opinions, and here you are. So I guess before I read that post to the audience, what inspired you to write it? What was the impetus behind it?

You know, I did not think it would strike such a chord. I have been job searching for about six weeks, and it just really jumps out at me, when a company uses Greenhouse, it shows me already a sneak peek into how they view recruiting. So I just thought, "If this is something I'm thinking, as I'm job searching, I wonder if other people are thinking the same."

Chris Russell:

That's interesting. Yes, I think if I was a recruiter looking for work, I'd want to go work for a company that have good technology in place, so I think that's what you're getting at there. All right, let me read what she's wrote, because I think this is great. So it caught my eye, and again, that's why I brought her on the show.

All right, quote, "Greenhouse is the best ATS. Lever is second to Greenhouse, Workday is the worst. I said it, I stand by it." You're not alone in that a feeling either, by the way. "Fetcher and Gem are game-changing sourcing tools, dashboard slash data desk capabilities Gem has to communicate pipeline to leadership is simply..." chef's kiss. "Not all companies need these tools right away, but as you look to scale next year, the investment is worth the conversation. Weigh the cost of these tools and their competitors against an added headcount. Feel free to disagree with me, but I will die on that Greenhouse hill. Just saying."

So that's pretty confident, there, Jaime. Was Greenhouse. Did you have that in place at Balto, when you were there?

Jaime Engle:
I primarily used Greenhouse over the last seven and a half years, but I've also used Workday, iCIMS, Lever and Resumator, which I think Resumator maybe became JazzHR.

Chris Russell:

Yes, it did. Yep.

Jamie Engle:

Clearly, I love Greenhouse. And I think, the opposite of a red flag, it's a green flag for me when a company that I'm applying for, I recognize Greenhouse as the ATS. As I was just saying, when I see they're using Greenhouse, it shows me the company is made, number one, the financial investment required, and on top of that I can assume that scaling and growth is a top priority for them. I was surprised how many people responded and interacted with it, but it confirmed my suspicion that at least in the tech startup world, Greenhouse is by far the most beloved and popular ATS. It's so easy to use, so easy to customize. It's so easy to collaborate with non recruiters, using it, so those are the main reasons I love it.

Chris Russell:

Yeah. You have a favorite feature of Greenhouse. Does something stand out to you?

Jaime Engle:

Oh, yeah. There are two, that I thought of. First, I've been begging for the job kickoff form for years. They just put that in and so now it's the first step of the interview process, so a role is approved. You can send the job kickoff form to the hiring manager for them to fill it out before the intake session. Game changer. It's so awesome. It makes your first intake session so much more productive, and if you get hit by a car, if you quit, if you're sick, whoever steps in can see all that information. It's not in an email, it's not in Google Drive. It's in the system, which is so awesome.

Chris Russell:

Yeah, very cool.

Jaime Engle:

The other thing I like is, the interview prep section in each stage. So I build in my Boolean strings for sourcing into the application stage, so I don't have to keep it in my email drafts. I write interview scripts that flesh out what the role is into my first round phone call, so I'm not tabbing around. And then, I also can build in what to look for, for the hiring manager or the interview panelists' scorecard, to help them better prep, help them be set up for success. And just ensure that they have all the information in one spot right before they do an interview.

Chris Russell:

Yeah, I've always liked Greenhouse because they were one of the first companies ever to put the apply form on the actual job description page, versus having to click apply, go to another page. They really streamlined that aspect of it and I've always loved them for that, just going back to some years, now.

Jaime Engle:

Yeah. One thing I was surprised by was the love for Ashby. It sounds like the new cool kid on the ATS block. I had heard of it in one interview, and I wasn't at all surprised how much people hated Workday, but I was surprised how many other applicant tracking systems there are that people hate, that I've never heard of or used. Oracle, BrassRing, SuccessFactors. I was surprised how much people love Lever, and even the debate between Greenhouse and Lever, but honestly I've used that one before. And the functionality does feel similar to Greenhouse, so maybe I do get it.

Chris Russell:

Yeah, they kind of both come out at the same time, almost, in that same group of players came up around similar times, versus the old guard out there. But that's pretty cool.

How much texting were you using in recruiting? Particularly with Greenhouse, and how... One of the things I've been harping on in ATS is that just, they're not that... Where's that text first mentality from these guys, in terms of just making it easier to communicate with candidates? Talk to me about how you use texting in recruiting, and how some of these ATSs do, as well.

Jaime Engle:

So I don't use texting too much for cold outreach or sourcing, but I do use it a fair amount when I've established a relationship with a candidate to help move the process faster. So scheduling, giving them quick feedback, quick logistical question and answering. But I've not used it as much as some of my younger counterparts, swear by it. At first, I thought it was a little invasive, but honestly once you've had that first call and they know who you are, they know your number, they'll probably respond. I've had a lot of success just moving things faster through the funnel using texting, rather than getting buried in email.

Chris Russell:

You mentioned Gem and Fetcher in your post, so let's start with Gem. Tell us, tell the audience what it is, and why you like it so much.

Jaime Engle:

Yeah, Gem is really interesting and robust. I just used it for the first time at Balto, and it's an email sequencing tool to help set up cold outreach email sequences, or email campaigns for prospects.

One thing I love about it is this send-on-behalf-of feature, so instead of coming from Joe Schmo recruiter, I can send it on behalf of say, the VP of engineering. From his email address. All he has to do, I do send him the copy ahead of time so he can sign off on it, and he has to click like, "I'm okay with this," but the response rate goes through the roof. Of course, when you're hearing from the person who'd either be your direct manager, or your boss's boss. "Hey, I picked you, I saw you," and I just had tons of success with that.

And then usually, that would be the first message and then the second message would be like, "Let me intro you to Jaime," and I'd be CC'd, and of course it's me the whole time. But that was really a great way to just up my open rates, and those reply and interested rates.

Chris Russell:

That's cool. Yeah, I like that. I like that feature. That sounds like a game changer. What about Fetcher?

Jaime Engle:

Well, the other thing about Gem we didn't use as much, but there was really a lot of functionality behind the dashboarding and data visualization aspects of it. You could look at pass-through rates, you could look at just overall trends and data of the last whatever time period, and that was really effective to explain our success rates to non recruiters, and to the leadership team. That was something that I'd never seen before. Often, in recruiting, it's just spreadsheets on spreadsheets and just a really long paragraph of text in an email. So this was a really compelling way to show the work we were doing to our leadership team.

Chris Russell:

Nice. Do you remember any sort of the numbers, in terms of the response rates you were getting from candidates?

Jaime Engle:

Oh, I wish I did. I should have written that down. I can't say I remember what the numbers were, but I remember, just the stark... Maybe 30% difference, in the message coming from me versus coming from a direct hiring manager.

Chris Russell:

Yeah. LinkedIn In Mails, are those dead? What's your opinion on this? All I'm getting is just basically pitches these days. It's just like... What's the feeling among recruiters out there about it?

Jaime Engle:

I think they're a dying art. I think LinkedIn, generally, people are... They're on it less. Recruiters are always in it, just like we're always in the ATS, but I do understand the texting instead of an InMail. I just, I've received a few texts as cold outreach, and it feels spammy to me. But that's also because I've not really received good, customized text outreach. Honestly, I'm so old school, I prefer a cold call. Cold call me, pitch me with your real voice, be brave, know something about me. And I actually started chatting with Pave, a compensation benchmarking software solution, because they had a terrific cold call. And I was on the way, picking up one of my kids from daycare, and I was like, "This company has it."

I was so impressed and I ended up doing a demo, getting pricing, really cool solution. We didn't end up going with them because of budget issues, but yeah, I just really respect a good old fashioned, well-executed cold call.

Chris Russell:

Okay. That's if you pick up the phone though, right?

Jaime Engle:

Yeah, most people probably don't. I've cold called before, so I enjoy the banter.

Chris Russell:

Nice. Gotcha. How about Fetcher? What does that tool do for you?

Jaime Engle:

Yeah, Fetcher was a sourcing tool. You used it in conjunction with LinkedIn, but it would source candidates from... You would put in all of these requirements, and the job description keywords. It was pretty robust. And so, I would say every week or so, they would send you anywhere between 10 and 50 candidates. I would say 75 to 80% of the candidates were pretty close to the mark, and then you could plug in the candidates from Fetcher, into the Gem email sequencing. So really, combined, the tools were awesome.

Personally, I am a little more picky than Fetcher. I liked to just do the sourcing myself on LinkedIn, plug them into Gem, but that's just me. Some of my other teammates really, really liked Fetcher, and for the lower level, like client services, client success, less technical roles, they did a better job and had a higher hit rate with strong candidate profiles, than I think... A lot of the roles I was looking for were data science, engineering, heavy principal, really senior, niche technical positions that I feel like I would just do a better job finding the exact right candidate. But the lower level roles... Not lower level, but the less difficult roles, I think Fetcher had a better success rate.

Chris Russell:

At your last role, did you rely at all on any kind of job postings through Indeed or LinkedIn? It was it more just sourcing, as far as just filling roles?

Jaime Engle:

We had an incredibly high referral rate. I think 65% of my hires in one calendar year were referrals.

Chris Russell:

Really? Wow.

Jaime Engle:

Also. Yeah, it was pretty wild, actually. It was also a really low turnover company, so I think that helped, just the street cred of the company was really positive. But we actually didn't pay for LinkedIn Recruiter, and we didn't pay for LinkedIn job postings. We only used the free LinkedIn postings and LinkedIn would scrape, I think, or I guess I'm not entirely sure how it works. But Google would... I feel like I'm [inaudible 00:14:38]...

Chris Russell:

Scrape the site? Your site?

Jaime Engle:

Yeah, it would scrape the site, and so it would be on Indeed and LinkedIn, and Google, and maybe one other place that was for free. And that worked fairly well for us.

Chris Russell:

Interesting. So it seems like you probably worked mostly in the tech startup world, I wanted to get your take on all the layers happening there. And is it just a matter of those companies just over-hiring during the pandemic? Is that what happened?

Jaime Engle:

I think so. I think there was a salary boom, maybe 10 to 15% higher than the real market value for a lot of positions. It was definitely an employee-led market, and then it shifted to an employer-led market. I couldn't believe, in the last six months, the increase in caliber of candidate across the board because of all these tech layoffs. It's difficult to say what exactly caused it, but I was just really surprised how impressive every candidate was that was inbound, because of the layoffs.

Chris Russell:

That's interesting. Okay. What's missing in recruitment tech? One of my questions is, is there a tool you think should exist today that doesn't? Do you have any ideas there?

Jaime Engle:

Yeah, so I mentioned the comp planning tools earlier, so I know some of these solutions exist. I've not had the chance to work with them yet, but compensation benchmarking and succession planning, I did demos and got pricing info about some of those solutions. I was super impressed with Welcome as a comp planning solution. It was really shockingly similar to Carta, Pave and Benefits, but was significantly cheaper than those options, and you could pay for it monthly. Which gave companies the option to utilize it as needed, maybe in their annual comp review cycles for a month or two, and then turn it off. And then turn it on again when they needed it again, probably six or nine months later.

The other one sort of related to that, I'd love to see that I've never seen, is a workforce planning, headcount planning software, that could be created by execs shared with the recruiting team and plugged into the ATS. In my dream recruiting world, it would be edited in real time, approved by the budget owner, and appear in Greenhouse after it's been approved by all the big cheeses. Have you ever seen something like that?

Chris Russell:

I have not. No.

Jamie Engle:

I would love it.

Chris Russell:

There you go vendors, so there's some free product advice for you.

Jaime Engle:

Yeah.

Chris Russell:

All right Jaime, let's talk about your recruiting skills a bit. What's the most creative way you were able to contact and source a candidate in the last few years? You got a creative story that comes to mind?

Jaime Engle:

Yeah. For me, it starts with the power of my network. I keep in touch with so many people that I've met maybe one time, or never, in real life. I'm super connected with the venture capital community in Chicago, so we'll pass each other talent. If it doesn't work out for one of my companies, but someone in the portfolio company is hiring, we'll talk about that. We'll talk about trends in certain areas of tech that are coming up, or on the downward trend, from a sourcing perspective. So I just try really hard to always be networking, not only when I need a job, but I think it comes pretty naturally to recruiters to just always be checking in with candidates that didn't work out, or candidates who showed so much interest and so much follow up. But similarly, just keeping in touch with other people that are similarly well connected and just being really intentional about that.

Chris Russell:

Gotcha. What's job hunting like, right now? Give me your perspective as a recruiter having to job hunt, and some of the frustrations you may be feeling in that.

Jaime Engle:

Yeah, I mean, Q4 just always sucks. It sucks even more to be laid off during Q4. December slows down wildly, once you hit December 20th, business is pretty much over.

Chris Russell:

Yeah.

Jaime Engle:

Q1 is always better. February and March, I imagine there's going to be a boom. That said, I've been looking for about six weeks, and it's been a lot more encouraging than I expected. I've had a lot of really great interviews. I think a huge part of your job search is figuring out what you don't want to do. There have been a lot of conversations I've had that, "Could I do this? Yes. Do I want to? Probably not." And that's okay, because I think companies want you to be pumped about the role, and you should have in your head a certain threshold that you're looking for. No job is going to be a hundred percent perfect, but is it 80% perfect? Could you do it for two to three years? Those are the kind of chunks and factors I think through.

Chris Russell:

Yeah, that's interesting. How about just in terms of applying? Are you getting frustrated with some of these older ATSs out there, or just anything that comes to mind there?

Jaime Engle:

I literally can't believe how annoying it is, to have to set up an account every time I apply for a company that uses Workday. Most of the time I just see it, and I navigate off, and I don't apply for that job. Because I can't handle it, because I know it would be my problem, if I worked there.

Chris Russell:

I was just helping my daughter job search the other day, she's 19, she's looking for something part-time, right? And she had to go apply on the company website, create an account, of course. I think in this case, it actually had to give her a PIN, do a PIN number instead of a password, which I thought was decent. But anyway, they asked her to fill in this questionnaire, not a questionnaire, but a few questions. And one of the questions was just, "Tell us about your last two jobs and why you left," and they gave her a little text area to type it in. So she typed it in, and she hit submit, and it came back as an error saying, "Oh, it only takes 256 characters in that field."

Jaime Engle:

Oh, geez.

Chris Russell:

Shortened it. So she shortened it once, it didn't work. They didn't tell her how many characters she had written, of course.

Jaime Engle:

Well, that's the worst...

Chris Russell:

Tried it again a second time, it still was too long. Tried it the third time, still too long. I'm sitting there, I was trying to explain to her, "This is why companies can't hire so well, right now."

Jaime Engle

Absolutely. And honestly, that question is so much better suited in a real life conversation...

Chris Russell:

And it was for just a retail job, or something.

Jaime Engle:

... it's not a yes or no question. Yeah, that's super weird.

Chris Russell:

And this is...

Jaime Engle:

The other thing... Yeah, sorry. Go.

Chris Russell:

It was a big national brand, too. It was like, "What are you doing? I don't understand."

Jaime Engle:

Yeah. The other thing related to that, just ease of use for candidates, that Greenhouse still hasn't really mastered. Candidates and recruiters. Their mobile app is not very good.

Chris Russell:

Yes.

Jaime Engle:

I can't do hardly anything on my phone, and that feels like a miss. It feels like it should be easier for me, while I'm on my phone, to move a candidate to another stage. Or to do more than just look at the activity feed. I think that's something that needs to be improved.

Chris Russell:

I think you're right there. I think we need more mobile apps from these ATS companies, to help you do your job better. It's just simpler, it's easier, it's faster.

Jaime Engle:

It's 2022. How is it not mobile friendly?

Chris Russell:

I know. I mean, we're all... Well, that's a long story, but yeah. Numerous research around mobile applying, and things like that, but yeah. Vendors still have a long way to go when it comes to both mobile apply for the candidate, and just the overall recruiter experience that they give you guys.

Well, vendors. There you go. There's some good advice from a recruiter in the trenches. And Jaime, I want to thank you for joining us today, but tell us what you're looking for as far as your next gig. What do you want to do?

Jaime Engle

Yeah, for sure. I'm casting a pretty wide net. What I'm looking for is a chance to help grow a high functioning recruiting function, at a company with a smart, emotionally intelligent leadership team at the helm. Bonus points if they've successfully exited in any way before. I'm passionate about partnering with business leaders to equip them to build resilient, productive teams quickly. So that's the feel.

Chris Russell:

Awesome. Well tell the audience how to find you.

Jaime Engle:

Oh, you can find me on LinkedIn. Trying to post most days. I was trying to post every day, and then I was like, "This is a bit much. I'm going to relax."

Chris Russell:

Nice. Well, Jaime Engle, from Chicago. Appreciate your time today, and thanks for joining us here on RecTech, your first podcast appearance. So congratulations, you're in the books.

Jaime Engle:

Thank you, Chris.

Chris Russell:

All right. That will do for this episode of the RecTech podcast, be sure to follow us on the socials, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, At RecTech Media, see every podcast and video blog we publish. Thanks for listening, everyone. And remember, always be recruiting.