Heidi Barnett:
What we really believed in was having these balanced metrics, like, go fast, but go well, right? And so having the quality with the quantity. And we’ve really tried to apply that also with our customers. Time to fill was the only metric, or the one that we talked about most often, but really what we need to be talking about is that quality of hire. Are they going to stick around? And then can they become a source of a candidate for you as well?
Steve Smith:
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Work Tech Weekly. I'm Steve Smith, Managing Director of Growth at Rep Cap.
AI was supposed to make hiring easier, and mostly it just made hiring louder. Candidates can tailor a resume in seconds and apply to a hundred jobs before lunch. Employers answer with automated screens that reject people at midnight. Both sides are acting rationally, and nobody trusts the result. Meanwhile, recruiters have more tools than they've ever had, and they've never felt more buried.
My guest today is Heidi Barnett, President of isolved Talent Acquisition. Heidi founded ApplicantPro, an applicant tracking system she built without venture money. Today it's the hiring side of isolved, a platform that covers employees from the first job ad… all the way to retirement.
We talk about why recruiting should borrow from marketing, and what changes when you treat a candidate like a sales lead. We also get into the small product fixes that can rebuild candidate trust, and why quality of hire deserves as much attention as speed.
And Heidi shares how she ran a company on the Inc. 5000 for 11 straight years while raising four kids, and why she stopped chasing the perfect work/life balance.
If you build hiring tech, or you've applied for a job lately and heard nothing back, this one is for you.
Let's get into it.
Heidi Barnett, welcome to the podcast.
Heidi Barnett:
Thank you so much, Steve. I’m so excited to be here with you today. I’m a longtime fan of your guys’ work and the things that you do for our community, so thank you so much for having me.
Steve Smith:
Well, thank you very much for your kind words, Heidi. I mean, I’m excited to have this conversation today in part because like, you know, just to kind of start off, you know, you were bootstrapping back before bootstrapping was cool. It seems like now there’s a different kind of feeling about venture funding, but, you know, when you started ApplicantPro, you didn’t grab a bunch of VC money and chase after a giant valuation.
You just built a company to 10,000 customers and, you know, building a business the right way, I think. What do you think is the first thing that people get wrong when they hear bootstrap? Do they think it automatically means small or not as serious as a venture-funded company?
Heidi Barnett:
Yeah, I think that’s definitely it. I think a lot of times it is viewed as small or underfunded, right? And I think it’s actually to the contrary. One of the things that bootstrap companies have to do is they have to be really creative, right? You can’t just throw, you know, a bunch of money at ads and billboards and all those things. You really have to get close to your customers and understand what it is that they care about, tuck into their already existing processes, and work side by side with them.
And that’s truly what we had to do at ApplicantPro. We were, and I am, in Utah. And in Utah, we have the Silicon Slopes, right? And there’s unicorns that have come out of Utah. And so we’re fighting for talent in that same way as well.
So, a lot of times when I’m talking to our smaller customers, I’m like, I am you. We are you. We experience the same thing and built similarly to how you have to build without large budgets, without a lot of incoming capital to be able to grow the business. But I think that is what people get wrong. It’s not necessarily small, and it doesn’t mean necessarily disconnected or under-resourced either.
Steve Smith:
Well, you know, when you look at kind of the ATS part of the market, you know, sometimes it does not always have the best reputation. I mean, and then quite honestly, there’s just a lot of bad ATSs out there. I mean, and I know that ApplicantPro had one of the best reps out there.
And I mean, it was very highly regarded, and as a founder, you were very highly regarded in that world. When you think about where ATS is now, you know, and where talent acquisition in kind of the age of AI is very much a jumble and very much, you know, being reinvented.
When you’re looking at where you’re at now and what you can build, what do you think everything that you’ve done before this point is preparing you for what’s coming next as part of isolved?
Heidi Barnett:
A lot of this goes back to that creativity we talked about. You know, we had to be where the customers were, and I think that a lot of people who are providing solutions right now are going in and saying, here’s what we think you should do, right? Rather than saying, show me what you’re doing, or, I’ve sat with you and so I understand what you’re doing. We’re gonna tuck in here and we’re gonna provide extreme value in this area, and then we’re gonna come over here and provide extreme value over here.
And so, we started with our job ad writer AI, because there are algorithms and things that go along with being able to get visibility with the job boards. And so we wanted to be able to help our customers be able to write a job ad that was tailored to those algorithms. But we had a history of knowing what would show and what wouldn’t show. And we’re close enough to the job boards to be able to hear, hey, they’re making a change to this and making a change to this.
And so those are, you know, that happened very early on. Now you could plug it into ChatGPT and say, hey, tell me, you know, how to write a job ad. But this learned experience oftentimes will trump what our LLMs are actually surfacing. And so we’re able to produce in those ways.
Now, a lot of the pain that people are experiencing is around an overabundance of candidates, whether they’re quality or not quality. There’s just so many candidates. And so what we did was go to work there as well. Within your screening, what we’re now gonna do is show you a fit score, you know, and we’re gonna show you this candidate matching and match score, so that you can start to surface easily those that you wanna talk to, rather than just going through chronologically through those things.
And so those are the types of things that we’re working on. Again, falling into the workflow that already exists in a way that we believe will be highly impactful. Now, I don’t wanna be the one that is, again, telling people how to make decisions, because the humans that are, you know, that are our customers are the ones that should be making the decisions.
So what we’re trying to do are the things that are either repeatable or things that are admin heavy. We’re trying to be able to solve for those. And so it just flows with who we are and what, you know, what is in our DNA. And that’s how I think we’ve been able to really have an impact when it comes to AI with the ATSs.
And you’re right, they are a dime a dozen. I feel like every other day there’s one spinning up and, hey, we’re an AI, you know, forward ATS. I’m like, that’s really cool. Like, let’s, you know, think about what that looks like. And so, but is it actually helping? And the thing that was interesting, I was at SHRM Talent this year, and what I heard from them, I said, you know, we have more tools than ever before. How many of you feel like you’re more overwhelmed than ever before?
And almost every hand raised in that room of just like, the tools are there and they’re using them, but they still have a job to do, and it’s, you know, so overwhelming what they’ve got going on. And, you know, customers are seeing a 300% increase in candidate flow and just trying to wade through all of that. It’s how do you then apply where the pain truly is? And that’s where we’ve tried to focus a lot of our heavy efforts on AI early on.
Steve Smith:
Well, you know, to me, the interesting thing about what’s going on with AI, and I’m really curious to get your perspective, because obviously you’re talking to your customers, you’re spending a lot of time listening to the market, but it seems like AI is making for a worse experience, both for recruiters and for candidates, and that’s something that, you know, the category’s been really grappling with.
What do you think is the answer to that? I mean, based on what you’re hearing, how do you create a better experience for everybody, but still leverage, you know, what is obviously can be a force multiplier of AI?
Heidi Barnett:
Yeah. We’re all primed for disruption. That’s how I feel, like we’re primed for disruption. And a lot of it has to do with the way that our job boards are built, the way the ATSs tuck into the job boards. You’re seeing Indeed make moves almost every single week because they’re trying to get in front of, you know, ghost jobs, ghost candidates.
There’s all these crazy things that are happening that I think even five years ago, I don’t know, last year, I would’ve been shocked at some of the things that are happening in the world. So for me, what we’re trying to do and what we’re trying to build is to get as much information as possible from the candidates and from our companies around the jobs.
And then we’re just trying to surface matches as quickly as possible so that you’re not doing the, I’m writing a job ad and I’m posting an ad and I’m waiting for candidate flow to come in, and then I’m just getting whatever happens to come in. What we’re trying to do is be a lot more proactive in both, you know, matching on the front end and saying, okay, look, tell me in your own words what you’re really looking for, right? I don’t want a list of bullet points. What I really wanna hear from you is what is it that you’re looking for? Then we can make a better match.
Then we also can do the same thing with the candidate side. Tell me, can we apply a video interview that gives me more points of data? Now can we apply an assessment, right, that gives me more points of data, which will then match with the other side? And so, I think that’s really where we’re headed. And it’s gonna take a lot of trust, both on both sides of the candidate side, plus also the company side, to be able to say, okay, you know, this was the way that we were running things.
Now here we are on the other side, and we made a big investment this last year with Indeed Talent Scout, where we built alongside of Indeed, and it was AI surface matching, right? Where it’s surfacing candidates and putting ’em in front of you almost immediately, where you’re not waiting for them to apply.
It almost moves it from a marketing perspective, like from the inbound to outbound, right? And so it’s like I’m gonna be more proactive in going outbound and taking a look rather than sitting and waiting to see what comes in. And both have a place, right? And both are great, but I think that’s more of like what I’m thinking that this future will hold. And that’s what we’re trying to build, is how do you get matches more quickly and more deeply.
Steve Smith:
Well, what’s interesting is that the whole, you know, hiring is just marketing mantra has really kind of been central to the way that you built your product and the way that you’ve gone to market. And the whole, you know, kind of inbound, outbound comparison, I think, is incredibly apt, because you see that in marketing right now.
We’re in an environment where it used to be everything inbound, and now it’s very much becoming outbound. So I think that’s interesting that you’re applying that same idea to what is going on in recruiting. Do you think that there’s other lessons that recruiters can learn from marketing to allow them to either do their jobs better or to use the products better?
Heidi Barnett:
I do. I think that even just the overall strategy of building a marketing funnel, and you think about a lead, if we treated our leads like we treat our candidates, we wouldn’t be in business, right? That’s what a lot of people right now are. They don’t care, or they feel like, you know, jump through all my hoops. I don’t care. I feel like I’m back in college where you have to, like, beg your way into all these things, and that’s how candidates are feeling.
And there is a high level of frustration. All you need to do is log into LinkedIn and you’ll see that people are just very frustrated. They aren’t getting any responses. They’re not getting, you know, there’s no humans involved with it. They feel very, very disconnected.
And so the ones that are standing out, and the strategy that we teach, is for them to, right from the job ads, start to make those connections and lay the foundation for what it is that you’re going to do. You know, is it a five-step process? Are you going to leave the job open for 30 days? Is it, hey, you know, this application will take three minutes and someone will contact you within a week? You have to keep to those things, right?
But when you think about a marketing funnel, we’re taking them from just learning about the concept all the way through. But we’re trying to convert them, small conversion steps, right? We’re not trying to take them from, hey, I just learned about you, to buying. That would be great. Some people are ready, but not all are. And so we wanna move our way through.
And so you’re seeing things like employer brand become a much more important principle. Indeed, Glassdoor, there’s a bunch of others that have company profiles that sit there. And you think about how we buy. I go on Amazon, I find something that I like, I immediately go to the reviews, right? And we’re seeing our job seekers do that same thing. So some of these marketing principles that are tried and true, you’re going to see people, I think, return back to, and those that are doing it well are the ones that are getting the talent, are getting them excited.
And then that tees off the onboarding experience. And that also shows the tenure of people and how long they stay and their job satisfaction as well. And so I think that, you know, some of these marketing principles can truly be used from the very beginning, from good content all the way through the process, to get us out on the other side, to have a happy experience of conversion or, you know, becoming a sale or becoming a customer.
Steve Smith:
I’m kind of wondering, too, is, like, we’re also in this product environment where product roadmaps are shrinking, and there’s a rush to get products into market. And it seems like the way that you’re approaching it is basically setting some standards for, is this product actually ready to go into market, and not just, “Hey, we need to ship something this week or this...”
Heidi Barnett:
It says AI...
Steve Smith:
Yeah, because AI.
Heidi Barnett:
...on it.
Steve Smith:
Yeah, so, I mean, how do you draw that line? How do you say, “You know what? This product is not ready yet. We need to, you know, send it through another sprint. We need to get this right.” I mean, because obviously it’s just like you’ve established some standards around the company and the product from, you know, bringing that founder sensibility in there.
It seems like it’s harder than ever to say, you know, no to just shipping something, even if it’s not ready. How do you draw that line?
Heidi Barnett:
Takes discipline. And it’s funny, I have frustration still with our product team. I’m like, can’t this happen faster? And also still understanding the fact that we want something to come to market fast enough, right? Because you’ve heard that philosophy. If you’re not embarrassed by V1, you didn’t ship fast enough.
Right. But I think that it is, at what cadence are you shipping? What are the things that you can feel proud of? You know, I sat in a product meeting last week, and it was, you know, MVP, what are we talking about, MVP? Is there enough value in the MVP? What is our fast follow that comes immediately after that from a sprint perspective for us to then get to that next iteration?
And so it really is about discipline. It’s about understanding your customers to be able to say, is there enough value or not? And talking to them, including them in part of this development work that we do. But I think that more than anything, it takes that, take a breath, go back to what’s worked so far, and have that discipline that sits with you as you roll out new products and feature and functionality.
Steve Smith:
Well, let’s talk a little bit about the market here real quick because, you know, you’ve been focused really on the kind of the SMB and mid-market part, which, it seems like a lot of growing, you know, companies, period, and ATSs have also kind of looked at that as a way station on the way to getting to the enterprise. But it seems like there’s now more of a sensibility that, no, the problems of the SMB and the mid-market are either unique because of the industries they serve or just because of the size of the organization.
So when you think about, like, you know, the service industry, restaurants, you think about healthcare, you think about high-turnover industries, what are you seeing, and what have you learned over, you know, over your career, but also in this moment, about what do they need that maybe enterprise buyers don’t, or what is unique about how you need to address solutions for that segment?
Heidi Barnett:
I think one of the main things is that they don’t have large HR organizations that can help them. And so a lot of times we’re seeing small, you know, HR departments of one or two, and they’re trying to wear all the hats that are required, and with more demands than ever before. I think leadership is wanting more reporting. They’re wanting more visibility, they’re wanting more involvement.
And so I think that’s different that you feel than when I’ve been on calls with enterprise customers where, you know, they have an entire room full of HR professionals that are there to help navigate the different areas. And so I think that’s unique and drives a lot of the needs that they have. I want my system to be intuitive. We want it to be heavily useful in the different places that they’re working on. We want our teams plugged in to help them. We want them to get to a human, basically. We want them to talk to us and have us to be able to help them.
And so, and then also solving the unique needs that they have in high turnover, you know, where they want to post a job and have it be evergreen because they’re consistently hiring. Well, that’s not gonna work. We can’t do that. So what’s another solution? So, you know, in the system, we have it tell them if their job’s getting old and it’s time to rewrite, and right there, they can go into the job ad writer AI and rewrite it, right? So trying to make it so that everything is within their regular workflow, to make it easier for them.
And then also, you know, if you hire the right people, they don’t often walk out the door as quickly. So helping them to really, truly understand what that looks like, and helping them even from the jump, the job ad all the way through. How can we help you get the right people in the door so that you’re not having to turn around and recruit in the next 90 days?
You know, I was at a healthcare conference just this weekend in Florida, and, like, the stats are crazy on that, that 90% of healthcare workers walk out the door in the first 90 days. It’s wild. So they’re just, you know, consistently trying to get more and more people in the door that are a good fit. So, anyways, they have unique challenges in their own right.
Steve Smith:
And all of that is interesting to me because it seems like for years it’s all, you know, unfortunately been about time to fill, but quality of hire is something that sometimes gets overlooked. And, you know, when you think about high-turnover industries and what’s the ROI of a better hiring process, well, if, you know, you’re able to reduce turnover from they’re here for 90 days to they’re here for 180 days, or maybe they’re here for 240, that’s a significant ROI in and of itself.
Do you believe that a better hiring process can actually deliver a better quality of hire? And is that something that you, when you’re having those conversations, you’re bringing that up?
Heidi Barnett:
Yes, absolutely. I believe it delivers a better quality of hire. And so what I tried to do at ApplicantPro, and what we really believed in, was having these balanced metrics, like, go fast, but go well, right? And so having the quality with the quantity. And we’ve really tried to apply that also with our customers.
It definitely is, you know, time to fill was the only metric, or the one that we talked about most often, but really what we need to be talking about is that quality of hire. Are they going to stick around? And then can they become a source of a candidate for you as well? You know, employee referrals is something that has had its turn, and people talk about it, and then they, you know, sometimes it’s like, well, but then there’s all this bias associated with it.
Okay, great. Or treat your employees like marketers, and they go out and shout from the rooftop, share a link out to the world on social media, and then you’re getting more people in the door. So our number one source of candidates when building ApplicantPro was Indeed. Our number one source of hire was our employee referrals, and they had a longer tenure.
You know, they stay a lot longer, and I think that those are the types of things that will heavily impact how long people stay, their job satisfaction, and the quality of the work that they do as well.
Steve Smith:
So, you know, another thing I wanted to ask you about, because you brought up bias a little bit earlier, is, you know, just the real anxiety that is palpable in the market around, you know, candidates are afraid that AI is not working for them, it’s actively working against them and screening them out and perhaps not treating them fairly.
How do you address that at a product level, but also, you know, with your customers? How do you build more trust into the experience and try to take some of that anxiety out of the whole process?
Heidi Barnett:
Yeah, it’s been really interesting to watch. You know, I’ve seen people very vocal on, I submitted an application at 9:00 PM, and at midnight I was rejected. You can’t tell me there’s a human involved with this, right? And I understand the sentiment. We have knockout questions that a lot of times are applied, right?
But I think there are some things that we can do as technology providers to be able to say, look, even though they’re knocked out, what if we wait 24 hours to knock them out? Would that establish trust? That’s not hard, right? That is not a hard thing to do. But it will allow for people to feel like the world isn’t against them.
Right. And so those are small things, I think, that we can do. I don’t know if we can gain the trust of candidates back from a technology perspective. I think it almost has to happen at an industry perspective or at a micro level, and I think as an industry, we need to be better about those things to be able to say, look, candidates are a really important part of this process, right? We’re not trying to keep them out, right? We’re wanting to cast a wide net, bring them in, nurture them through the process. You know, this is why I talk about marketing principles when we’re talking about this, is that we want them to be nurtured, to feel connection, right from the very, very start.
With companies, we’re coaching our companies to focus on candidate experience, right? To be able to send communication. These, again, aren’t hard things. They’ve been built into the fabric of the ATS from the very beginning. A rejection email, a, hey, congratulations, we’re moving you on, now we’re going to ask more of you, right? This emotional bank account is a really important concept that we sometimes forget when we’re dealing with candidates.
And then that communication, I think, just goes a long way. And then keeping our promises. If you say you’re gonna contact someone about a job offer, please do it, right? Or tell them, hey, we got stuck in the process and someone’s out sick, whatever it is, we’re going to move this forward a couple of days. People don’t expect perfection, but what they’re really begging for, truthfully, is communication in the process, especially when they’re feeling desperate.
So many reductions in force have forced people who have never been unemployed, you know, to sit in a place where they’re three months, six months, sometimes longer. And it’s taking a lot longer to get people in roles. And so I think that there is a responsibility of the technology providers, but also it really sits with the companies to be able to say, look, treat people as humans. Let’s communicate, let’s talk to them. Let’s move them through in a proper way. So, those are a few thoughts I have around it. What are you hearing, Steve? Are you hearing the same thing?
Steve Smith:
Yeah, I mean, when you hear it from, like, the candidate side, there’s a sense of, I’m worried that AI is creating an unfair process. But then when you also think about sort of the arms race between candidates and hiring managers, and it’s just like, you can screen candidates at a higher volume and maybe better and maybe faster.
And if you’re applying marketing principles, it’s just like, yeah, there are knockout questions. And you think about from a candidate side, it’s never been easier to tailor the perfect resume, the perfect cover letter for a job at volume, so you can apply to more jobs, and quite honestly jobs that you’re not suitable for, you’re not even qualified for.
So it’s just like, you know, I sort of wonder, it’s just like, is there also a little bit of a candidate aspect to it of, you know what, if you applied for 100 jobs yesterday, you were probably not qualified for all of them. You know, maybe you were qualified for 20 of them, but there was probably 80 that you weren’t, but you’re just trying to get your numbers up because you’re trying to get to a job, and this seems like a rational approach to it.
So isn’t it also a rational approach on behalf of the, you know, the hiring manager or the hiring entity? And I think, but you brought up a good point. It’s just like, you can still use all of these principles, but it’s just like, how are you communicating? When are you communicating?
You know, maybe some of this is also a product of, in some categories, a tighter labor market. You know, you have a lot of people who, you know, you think about, you know, people who are in white-collar industries right now. A lot of people, because of the nature of the economy, it had been really easy to move from one job to another. And you have people who have never been out of work for six or nine months long term, and it’s, I mean, it’s an emotionally difficult experience.
And so, you know, but is this something that’s transitory? You know, if we see a better hiring environment in the next year or two, how much of what is going on in this conversation, I think, is, you know, it’s a fair question. How much of this is just part of what’s going on either with the technology or the transition, but how much of it is just sort of a moment in the market?
Heidi Barnett:
It’s a weird time. It just is a really strange time to be in hiring, and I have all the sympathy in the world for candidates who are in this perpetual cycle of applying and not hearing back. And then having companies who are just inundated with, you know, with an overwhelming number of the same resume.
You know, you talked about that, and a lot of times I’m like, this is like the vanilla ice cream effect. Like, everything looks like vanilla ice cream. And so how do you differentiate it? And so this is where I encourage my friends who are looking for jobs, like, get human. Go send a handwritten note, contact someone from the company, spend time standing out.
You know, go and, like, post on LinkedIn, but don’t make it just AI drivel that you can tell, reading the first two sentences, that it’s AI. Get human. Because I think that people need to feel that connection to you, and that’s how you’re gonna stand out and be different. Anyways, it’s a tricky time.
Steve Smith:
Let me ask you a few more questions just in terms of kind of shifting more to kind of the, you know, the founder stuff and the human stuff. You know, you’re a mom of four who had a company on Inc. 5000 for 11 straight years. It’s just like, that is, you know, both of those individually are impressive. Together, I don’t know how you did it.
I mean, how are you able to balance that? ’Cause it seems like a lot of entrepreneurs can sometimes sacrifice things at a family level, and/or know that they’re doing it and feel guilty about it. So, I mean, when the rubber hits the road, how are you able to manage that?
Heidi Barnett:
Well, there is definitely guilt still there, right? There’s that mom guilt. But I think that the day that I realized that work-life balance didn’t feel like standing on a beach ball... I imagine work-life balance having everything perfectly stable, right? And you’re just holding very still. That’s balance to me.
Right? And so I felt as though I was standing on a beach ball trying to keep everything perfectly balanced. And the day I realized it didn’t have to be that way, that I could still have a rewarding career and I could still be a very active and involved parent, it made it easier for me.
And so I started looking at it instead of, you know, a moment to moment, I started looking maybe at a week-long basis and saying, okay, you know, from a weekly perspective, was I able to attend to these, you know, my children’s needs in these ways? And was I able to, you know, focus on marketing and sales and all the different components that came with the business?
So, and I did it in varying ways, right? Sometimes I had, like, a marketing day, and sometimes I had a sales day, and sometimes I had, you know, family night where we would hang out and do some things together as a family. And other times it would come at a more, like, micro level, where it was an individual child or an individual problem within the business.
And I think for me it was, I always wanted to be a mom, and I always wanted to run a company. And I think that the cool thing about this day and age is that I didn’t have to choose, right? I was able to do both. There was a lot of therapy, a lot of things that had to come with that process, right? Because it is very demanding.
There, again, you know, it kind of ties back to what we’ve been talking about as a theme throughout this podcast, is that there’s functions within my home that I can outsource, right? I don’t need to clean my own bathroom to have me feel like I am a homemaker. Right? But there are things that I didn’t give up, and it’s the same that we were talking about with AI, is like, where will it have the highest impact? Where’s that pain? Let’s go ahead and attack that.
So I don’t go grocery shopping. I have groceries delivered. You know, that’s one of those things where I could easily give up. I can shop at 5:00 AM when I’m ready, when it’s time for me to do that. And then, you know, having a massive support system around me to really help with the things that I need. But a lot of it is getting clear about what it is that means motherhood to me. What is it that means, you know, CEO to me?
And there are things that you have to let go. Delegation is heavy in business, and having strong leaders around you with heavy trust makes it so that I can step away when I need to. Also, I think the other thing is allowing ourselves to have a period of 24 hours, right? Where I didn’t need to concentrate all my work between eight and five.
A lot of times, especially in the early days of building ApplicantPro, at 8:00 PM after everyone put their kids to bed, everyone’s Google Chat would light up, right? We’d all be green lights and everyone’s working. And it was very rewarding. But I think that for me, especially when my kids were young, when it felt like a really lonely time for me, I found solace and belonging in building companies, and it added to my overall satisfaction and happiness with my life.
And I think my kids have really appreciated it as well. You know, I have one daughter and then three sons. And watching her, the way that she was able to see a woman run a company or be a CEO or those types of things, I never saw that. And so having her be able to see that front and center has been really fun.
And yeah, watching my boys want to be entrepreneurs and have that spirit of entrepreneurship from the very get-go, I think that for me it allowed for a deeper experience for them. But it came with a lot of sacrifice, and a lot of times the sacrifice was me personally, right? Where I talk about, like, yeah, there was therapy in there, there were things where there were a lot of nights burning both ends of the candlestick. But at the same time, I think you can have a big, bold, beautiful life and not have it be in one segment.
Steve Smith:
Well, you know, one more question I wanted to ask you before we wrap up, and, you know, thank you for the conversation today and for such thoughtful answers. Obviously, it’s just like, I mean, you can come into a conversation like this and you can give the right answers, but I mean, it’s clear that you’ve really thought about it and been reflective, and I appreciate that. So thank you for that.
But, you know, one last question I wanted to ask is that, you know, you’ve mentored a lot of women into leadership roles. And, you know, part of being a mentor is sometimes you’re giving advice, at least in my experience in mentoring. Sometimes I’m telling people, “Don’t do the things that I did,” or give them a piece of advice that I did not follow myself.
Did you find yourself in that same position, or do you feel like, “No, I did the things I could’ve, should’ve, and I want people to benefit from my experience”? Which is it? Is it like, “Okay, I’ve learned some things,” or is it, “Don’t do the thing that I did”?
Heidi Barnett:
Yeah, I think it’s mixed, but definitely I led with my experience. I mean, you’re seeing me today talk about, you know, a lot from my heart, and I think that’s what I would do too, is don’t do this thing that I did, or, you know, also, I did this and it helped me. I’m wondering if it will help you as well.
I had a friend who called as she was selling her company, and she said, I feel at a complete loss. Like, I don’t know what to do. And for me to say to her, this is pretty normal. From my experience, this feels normal. And have her almost take, like, a breath. Like, oh, okay, like, this feels normal. And then it was like, start a pottery class, go for a walk, you know, pick up another hobby, where things that I did or wish I had done better.
And so being able to provide some of that same with women in leadership roles, to be able to say to them, you know, you should take the day off and just go be with your kids when you feel like there’s a heavy level of overwhelm or something like that. I was able to provide that because I saw it in myself, you know?
And then I think just helping women navigate a man’s world in tech has been really rewarding as well. And one of the messages that I share with them oftentimes is that we try to fit a mold, and when we don’t feel like we fit, we’re still trying really hard. Instead, let’s show up in our own unique way and add to the conversation.
And I think that I’ve always appreciated people who are different, who think different, who challenge me in different ways or give me different ideas. And so that’s one of the things that, you know, again, from a philosophy standpoint, I’ve shared. But there’s definitely been that undertone of don’t do what I did, learn from this.
And hopefully it’s helped some of the women that have risen, you know, and have even left ApplicantPro or grown within the ranks there. And also women that I’ve been able to influence outside of my company to be able to find their own way and to be able to find a rewarding career and motherhood, not mutually exclusive. So.
Steve Smith:
Well, Heidi Barnett, thank you so much for the conversation today. It’s been great on so many levels, and hope to have you back sometime to continue the conversation.
Heidi Barnett:
Thank you so much. I appreciate it, and thanks for not holding back. We had a lot of good questions in there that challenged me to think and to, you know, go back to some of our early building days, and also, you know, challenge some of the ways that we build product. I think that it’s important. And like I said earlier, it’s a tricky time to be looking for a job and to be in hiring with so many changes and disruptions happening.
But I think, you know, it’s a buckle up and, you know, see what happens. I think there’s some fun years coming ahead of us here.
Steve Smith:
Thank you so much.
Heidi Barnett:
Yeah. Thank you.
Steve Smith:
Hiring has a communication problem, and AI turned the volume up on it.
No sales team would survive treating leads the way the typical hiring process treats candidates. Leads get nurtured and followed up with. Candidates get a knockout question and then silence. (And yes, that one is on employers.)
The fixes aren't glamorous. Hold an automated rejection for a day before it goes out. Put the process in the job ad, and then keep the promise.
Candidates don't get a free pass, either. Send a hundred AI-written applications and you look like everyone else in the pile. The ones who get hired will be the ones who show up as people.
Time to fill was never the right finish line. A fast hire who walks out in 90 days is just an expensive way to start over.
AI will keep making it easier to apply and easier to screen. The employers who win on talent will be the ones candidates can trust.
If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to Work Tech Weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. And I'll see you next time.
