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The Digital Executive
Reinventing Recruiting: David Windley on AI Agents, Human Judgment, and Future of Talent | Ep 1151
00:12:34
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Do you work in emerging tech? Working on something innovative? Maybe an entrepreneur? Apply to be a guest at www.corazon.com brand welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is David Windley. David Windley is the CEO and Executive Chairman of Hoot Recruit, an AI powered talent sourcing platform that is transforming how recruiters find and engage the right candidates. Hoot Recruit aims to fundamentally change the recruiting process by creating an AI agent for candidate sourcing, focusing on enhancing human expertise rather than replacing it. Hootretruit's proprietary full agentic AI platform can instantly parse job descriptions, discover qualified candidates from public profiles and provide detailed assessment scoring clients leveraging the platform experience results like 4 times faster hiring and spend up to 95% less time on manual sourcing activities. Hoot Recruit was also recognized as Nashville Technology Council's Tech Startup of the year in 2024. Well, good afternoon David. Welcome to the show.
- [01:18]
B
Thank you for having me.
- [01:19]
A
Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. You're in the Silicon Valley, Los Altos area. I appreciate that. I'm in Kansas City, so we're just two hours apart and I do appreciate that every time a guest makes the time to schedule and get on the calendar. So thank you. And David, jumping into your first question, you've had a long career as a Chief Human Resource Officer Chro at companies like Yahoo, Microsoft. Before launching Hoot Recruitment, what was the moment when you realized that the recruiting function itself needed reinventing and how did your HR experience shape you to build a recruiting tech company?
- [01:59]
B
Great. Yeah. First, just to clarify, I was Chro Yahoo. I was an executive in HR at Microsoft. I did not have the very top chro job, but let's say the number two HR job there. As far as the question, you know, when did I see that that we need to disrupt? I guess recruiting is over time, as the AI technology has gotten better, I could see where various aspects of the recruiting process could be sped up and also done with quality through AI technology. And so that's when at the time I was at IQ Talent Partners, a previous company of mine that we started using these technologies and then started building a platform to embed these technologies for my recruiters and sourcers. So you know, I would say it was around the 2015, 2016 timeframe where I really saw the future of technology impacting the recruiting process.
- [03:09]
A
Thank you and I appreciate your backstory. Obviously a lot of stories that come out of the podcast here as you saw some gaps or there was a problem you wanted to solve and in this case the gap in the recruiting process and some of the platforms. And I'm glad that you came in and took your experience and saw that gap in your knowledge and applied that towards fixing this whole process. I think it's important. So thank you. And David Hoop recruits new full agentic AI platform enables instant job description parsing, real time candidate discovery scoring and human in a loop refinement. How do you design the architecture such that the AI acts as a true agent but still ensures recruiters remain in control of the decision making?
- [03:53]
B
Yeah, good point. I mean there are a lot of startups in this space using AI in the recruiting process. We have purposefully built our platform, our process if you will, to make sure that the human in the loop is involved with key areas of judgment along the process. So not leaving it 100% to the AI to execute all the way. Where we believe the AI is very good is in maybe looking through resumes at a much faster speed than the than humans can. Summarizing the profiles, matching the profiles, tasks such as that we ask the AI to do parsing the job description as you described, doing a search across the Internet for profiles that are matched to your search specifications, doing an assessment of those profiles against the search specification and providing a summary for the user. We leave it up to the user to make the ultimate judgment if this is a good candidate or not, for example. Right. So what we tried to do is create an architecture where the AI is utilized, where it can be very productive but leave the critical judgment points with the human user in the loop.
- [05:26]
A
The thank you, I appreciate that. I think that's so important. AI is out there everywhere now, probably in every recruiting platform now as you'd mentioned, but your platform is deliberately working with that human in the loop. And I like how you said AI is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, doing a lot of the searching and so forth, but at the end of the day it's that human who really reviews the data, that summary and makes that critical judgment, whether that data is accurate or it's a candidate they need to follow up on. So I really appreciate that. And David, who recruit claims clients can hire four times faster and spend 95% less time on manual sourcing. Considering that speed often sacrifices quality, how do you ensure that in accelerating sourcing you aren't compromising and candidate fit, culture, alignment or some long term retention?
- [06:20]
B
Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. It sort of goes back to the previous question or how we've designed it. In other words, the productivity gains are in those areas where it just takes the human a long time to go through. And like I said, for example, without the AI searching capabilities, a human would look through various sources, let's say LinkedIn or other places online, and look through profile after profile after profile. Right? Hundreds, maybe even thousands for certain jobs. But the reality is they probably don't get to a thousand because it takes so long. So they don't even review all the potential profiles that could be a match. Right. It's just too arduous of a task. So that's where the productivity gains come from. And in fact, using AI to make you more productive, let's say you have the same recruiter, right. That otherwise would have had to do that. The AI can do that in fractions of seconds, really, and deliver that to the recruiter. So now the recruiter can spend more time on those qualitative areas of recruiting. Right. Doing a more in depth interview with people, making that human judgment call whether this person is the right candidate or not. And so I think the great thing about this AI technology and if you create the process with the recruiter, with the human in the loop, is you can get both, you can get great productivity improvements across the total process while also enhancing the recruiter's time and ability to do the qualitative things of keeping the quality up. So it's not an either or. Right. The fact that you have more productivity means you're giving up quality. I think quite the contrary, is that you take that same recruiter, you make them more productive so that they can spend more time to make sure there's quality.
- [08:23]
A
Thank you, I appreciate that. And you did kind of unpack that a little bit. The productivity gains, like maybe that 95% less time right. On manual sourcing are in the areas of searching, matching, going through that just a ton of data that AI does very well. And of course this allows recruiters doing that qualitative review more time to spend with the candidates and interviews and that sort of thing. And what I took away is it's really a symbiotic relationship here between human and the machine. And I think that's great. So thank you. And David, the last question of the day. You've also been an advocate from work from anywhere, measuring by outcomes rather than hours. How do you believe talent sourcing and recruiting technology can support a future of work that is more flexible, inclusive and outcome focused? And what do you hope boot recruit will contribute to that in the future?
- [09:17]
B
Yeah, I don't know if they're directly related, but I do think a lot of the technology will allow people to be more productive, ours included. For recruiters. I think the main thing there is that depending on the type of work that people are doing, you know, most of the knowledge work, you're producing some sort of outcome. Right. And that is what we should be measuring versus time at a certain place. Right. And if the type of role can be accomplished anywhere, I think we should give people the flexibility to do that. Now, I understand there are parts of our roles as knowledge workers that it is beneficial to be in the office, so to speak, or at some location collaborating with our fellow workers. And so I think there's a balance and I think that's what's happening now. Right post Covid. There was work from work, away from the office all the time and there was a crowd that said we all had to come back. I think the reality is, and most people are settling into more of a hybrid nature, right? There might be sometimes, or for key meetings, we're going to have a design session meeting. We want to be on the whiteboard, so to speak, going back and forth. And yes, you can do whiteboarding virtually. It's not the same, Right. Being in person. So there are certain aspects of roles depending on the jobs that, that you want to be together, but it's not 40 hours a week. Right. And so I do believe that it behooves companies to be smart about their flexible work arrangements because the knowledge worker, the valued knowledge worker will have options and the market will ultimately dictate the flow of talent. So that's where I stand. I think let's be smart. I am personally an advocate for the certain types of roles and most knowledge worker roles that we should be flexible and allow people to do their job anywhere and measure them on their actual performance, not on time that you see them.
- [11:36]
A
That's great. Thank you and I appreciate that. And I think the pandemic obviously that influenced a lot of this nowadays, this remote work. But the technology and the culture, company culture is certainly allowing for more smart and flexible workplaces. Right. So depending on that type of work, as you mentioned, what they're doing, where they're at, the type of role, at the end of the day, the outcome is the goal, not the eight hours or the 40 hour work week. And I think that's so important. And it doesn't really matter if it's returned to office or not. I mean, at the end of the day, let's get some, let's build some strong engagement and excitement around the company, no matter where you're at and what you're doing. So I like that. I like your insights. And, David, it was certainly a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
- [12:23]
B
Great. Thank you. I appreciate it.
- [12:25]
A
Bye for now.