#HRTechChat: Heidi Barnett on ApplicantPro’s Evolution and Integration with isolved

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As workforce expectations evolve and hiring challenges mount, the need for seamless, scalable recruitment strategies has never been more critical—especially in industries where speed and simplicity make or break business outcomes.

In this episode of #HRTechChat, 3Sixty Insights’ Dylan Teggart sits down with Heidi Barnett, former CEO of ApplicantPro and now President of isolved Talent Acquisition to discuss the recent merger between the two companies—and what it means for the future of talent acquisition.

Heidi brings her marketing-first mindset to HR, unpacking how ApplicantPro’s streamlined, high-conversion applicant tracking capabilities are now being scaled through isolved’s expansive HCM platform. Together, they explore the rising pressures on HR teams in SMB and mid-market companies, the realities of modern recruitment in high-turnover sectors like restaurants and healthcare, and the critical role AI and automation play in supporting overworked managers.

From applicant matching and video screening to managed recruitment services and mobile-first candidate engagement, Heidi explains how isolved and ApplicantPro are combining forces to help businesses move faster, hire smarter, and reduce operational friction—without sacrificing human connection.

What makes recruiting harder than ever in today’s labor market? How can AI actually restore humanity in the hiring process? And how can HR tech providers meet the needs of growing businesses across a fragmented talent landscape?

Tune in as Heidi shares practical insights on speed-to-hire, employee retention, and why the future of recruiting is both tech-driven and deeply human.

Our #HRTechChat Series is also available as a podcast on the following platforms:

See a service missing that you use? Let our team know by emailing research@3SixtyInsights.com.

Transcript:

Dylan Teggart 00:00
Hey everyone. It’s Dylan Teggart here with another 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat podcast today, I’m joined by Heidi Barnett, hey, Heidi.

Heidi Barnett 00:08
Hey, Dylan. How are you

Dylan Teggart 00:10
pretty good. It’s great to have you here. I know there’s a lot of new for you. You know, ApplicantPro recently merged with isolved. But before we get into that, tell the people out there a little bit about yourself, and then we’ll dive in.

Heidi Barnett 00:25
Sure those stories kind of intertwine. So I can tell talk a little bit about myself and also about applicant Pro and how that’s evolving here. So I’m Heidi Barnett, former CEO of ApplicantPro, moving into a new role with I solved as we have brought the companies together. I live in Utah and love to hike and mountain bike and spend time outdoors. My background actually is in marketing. So I from college all the way through my first job, all the way till now, I’ve focused heavily on marketing principles, and that’s one of the reasons why I fell in love with HR and hiring in particular, because I feel like it takes a lot of the marketing principles that I learned in love from college and early in my career into being able to utilize that and to help a lot of companies to be able to hire smarter. So yeah, there you go. A little bit about me, and I’m super excited to be here with you, Dylan, to talk a little bit more about hiring and how everything all fits together.

Dylan Teggart 01:31
Yeah, happy to have you here too. And just to set this all up, do you mind giving people a little bit of background on applicant Pro and then, yeah, find out the recent news, sure. So applicant pro started out as an applicant tracking system that was really our core software. It was built in order to respond to some of the needs in the market. There were a lot of really big players, and we really needed something to fit in the market that was kind of in that small to mid sized space that was very efficient, easy to use. We could get up and running right out of the gate. And so we built I applicants, which then later became applicant Pro to be able to satisfy that need. And we have been in business for over 15 years, and have really evolved from there. Spent a lot of time working with job boards to be able to optimize the job board visibility and to be able to help with conversion. I talked a little bit about marketing principles applied there, but then after that, we started looking at hiring more holistically around what are some things that need to be present or that companies were asking us for and so we spent quite a bit of time, energy resources, building out integrations that go really deep within the hiring scope. So starting out with, you know, job ad writing, job posting, we do video interviewing, we do assessments, we have a direct placement or recruiting service, and that brought us into some of the conversations that we had early on with I solved as as partners, and we were starting to, you know, share deals back and forth, mostly from our side, being able to refer a payroll provider. And then we built out integrations that allowed for us to more deeply and seamlessly work together in the software. And then after that, I solved bought a stake in applicant Pro, and that’s where our story really began from an ownership perspective, and then has progressed from there. And then recently, we made the decision to integrate the applicant pro business into the I solved world in order for us to really take out any of those other seams or things that were, you know, friction points for us from an organizational perspective, and also to really enhance the overall experience for our customers, we had, you know, we it’s pretty cool, because the way that we did the integration, we’re going to continue to have a standalone side of the business. So if someone doesn’t need a full HCM experience, they have the option to have an entry point there. But if they want a full integration or full experience with HCM, or, you know, time and attendance, or 401, K, or all the different modules that I self has, we have that as an option as well. So it’s kind of cool how we’re doing that, and then also seeing myself really lean in on investment on both sides of the house, it’s been just a really cool experience for me, from being someone who loves business and being a student of business, but also from the perspective of watching our company of applicant pro continue to evolve and become even bigger and better, I would say, and also answering the needs of the market. You know, there’s a lot of consolidation around an all in one, and so now I feel like we have the ability to be able to offer that in a more seamless way that can really help companies who are wanting singular login to have everything feedback and.

Heidi Barnett 05:00
Worth we’ve got that now in a way that can really change the market, but also really help customers to have the best experience possible.

Dylan Teggart 05:10
Yeah, I know. Sorry, no, I know. I solved this, looking to move a bit into the mid market, but also simultaneously, the greater market whole seems to be focusing a lot more on consolidation, you know, kind of cost, consolidation, product consolidation, people just being a bit more careful with how they spend their money. So and that, and a big part of that is recruitment, you know, which we’ll touch on a second, recruitment is getting harder, so costs are going up for that. So how do you feel that applicant pro fits into ourselves move to mid market? Yeah,

Heidi Barnett 05:46
this is a good question. Um. I feel like in many ways, they’re very similar, because we take the company size and they also take the the HR team or the recruitment team size as well, and into that um equation, as we talk about these things, and it’s it’s interesting. We’re seeing smaller and smaller HR teams, even in the larger maybe bin market, because they still have to keep their costs down as well. And so more is being asked of our HR professionals, and there’s being more that is that they’re responsible for, and so in that they’re needing technology that’s easy to spin up, easy to use, and actually does what it’s supposed to do. And so with the applicant tracking system, we have really spent a lot of time in being able to do that, and that, I believe, hits not only the SMB, but also mid market, and you know, that easy to use, fast, to implement budget friendly, and then, as we talk a little bit later in our conversation around AI and how we’re really looking to utilize anything that is repeatable for us to be able to add the technology to automate all those things, I believe will really help. It should help fill that gap and and satisfy both the SMB and the mid market in these ways, also, as people grow in their own businesses, they have integration needs, right? And there’s a lot more where they’re you know, now I’m looking for an HRIS, or now I’m looking for a learning management system. The cool thing is, is that we function small to mid size US, where our core is moved up, we can work really well in that mid market. And then as people grow and progress, we have all the different tools within the HCM to make it easier for them to manage this entire, you know, higher, to retire cycle, all in one place. And so, yeah, I think that hopefully that answers, you know, it really does. We have a really solid base in the SMB. It’s not that big of a step over to mid market. And then as we continue to grow, our companies continue to grow, we can also supply and help based on those needs there as well.

Dylan Teggart 07:57
Yeah, I think one thing us at 360 always admired about isolf, is that they kind of have always really focused on solidifying and really getting the nuts and bolts of a certain stratosphere of the market just right. And then I think with this move up to mid market, we’ve been very excited to see where things kind of go. Because as I, as I call it, they’ve been solidifying their gains in that SMB and smaller business category for a long time, and I feel like they’ve been plugging all the holes in that, and now they’re ready for that move up mid market. So it’s going to be, it’s going to be exciting to see what happens. But looking at kind of the whole picture here, the whole environment we’re looking at. You’ve been in this, you know, in this recruitment game for a while. What do you think is causing recruitment to get harder? You know, I know return to work is going to be a factor. But, you know, there’s some unrest in the hiring space. So what do you think is, what do you think set this up? And what do you think is our pathway out of it? If, if even there’s a pathway out of it, and where do you think technology can help fill the gaps here

Heidi Barnett 09:09
that I feel like, in some ways, we’re in the middle of a weird, perfect storm. And you’re right. I’ve been in the hiring space for a while, lived through COVID, through all of that, and with COVID on the hiring side, I mean, one day everyone stopped hiring, and then as soon as things started opening up, we had this massive pent up demand, and everyone needed to hire their entire staff back yesterday, right? And so there were all those inflection points, and I feel like we maybe are entering, or are in the midst of something else is very similar to that, and so you’ve got the return to Office, which is making it more difficult for companies to recruit. I read a statistic the other day that 30% if you have remote in your job description, you’ll get 30% more candidate flow. Just people are more. Are excited about remote work. It provides a better work life balance and so but companies are pushing people back into the office for their own reasons, but if it’s going to be more difficult to recruit, if you don’t have remote or hybrid even in the job description, our our independent research says that HR professionals believe that 69% of them believe it will be more difficult to hire than the previous year. And so you’ve got a lot of that uncertainty. So I think that we’ve got this underlying economic uncertainty. You’ve got wage inflation. You’ve had a bunch of tech companies that are doing layoffs. You know, you could debate whether or not we’re in a recession or not in a recession, or knocking on the door of a recession or coming out of a recession, but either way, we’re seeing a lot of companies kind of pause on moving forward with programs or, you know, trying to figure out what they need to do. And so that is just creating this unsettled feeling and unrest in the hiring space. At the same time, we’re having an overabundance of candidates in some areas, which is interesting, because they’re on on the flip side, there’s an under, there’s not there’s we’re struggling with candidate flow on the other side. So you’re looking at, you know, your retail or your hospitality, manufacturing, a lot of those on the ground jobs are really struggling to get candidate flow. A lot of our smaller medical facilities don’t have enough candidate flow. And some of that has to do with skills gaps. You know, people are willing, but maybe they don’t have the education or whatever is required. And so it’s a really interesting storm, like perfect storm, like I stated before, where we have these cases where we have this over abundance of candidates, but then we also have, on the other side, not enough candidate flow. But you also have people that are applying for multiple jobs at one time. Our job boards are working to make it easier for people to apply, which is fantastic if you’re a candidate, but you could go through and apply for 20 jobs. And you know, in the matter of 15 minutes, if you have everything set up properly, and indeed, and so what that’s creating is just where we used to have, you know, 10 qualified candidates, before companies will have 100 qualified candidates, and within 24 hours, and then, you know, we’ve got just, I think there’s just a lot of different aspects that are coming in here to make it more difficult than ever before, to really recruit. I think you have companies also that have big budgets, you know, that are coming in and stealing away a lot of the candidates, in particular in some of our remote areas where there’s not as much available candidates to come and work. So anyways, there you go. There’s a lot happening, I guess in the recruiting space, that makes it difficult. I’m not hopeless, though, in this I think there’s quite a few tools that can really help to enhance the candidate experience, to make it easier for our HR professionals to manage the candidate flow. So they’re looking for either on the side of needing more candidates or on the side of having too many. So I’m not feeling hopeless. You know, I think that if we ever were to say, I don’t know, the economy is bad, that’s just where we are. It takes the control, takes the control out of our hands. But that’s not really what I believe is happening. I think we really need to, or we have there. There are things we can do. There is hope that we can have in the future of it coming, but it doesn’t, you know, downgrade or downplay the experience that people are feeling that it’s going to be more difficult than ever before.

Dylan Teggart 13:42
Yeah, for sure. I feel like, like you said generally, the word on the street, or the word in the statistics is, you know, for white collar, white collar jobs, there’s way too many candidates and companies are just having major issues screening people I’m getting, you know, I still get emails from jobs I applied to two

Heidi Barnett 14:03
years ago where you’re getting a decline, or getting a decline

Dylan Teggart 14:07
and or like, the position no longer exists, but it’s I don’t I don’t even care if it’s two years ago. I have a job or two. Sometimes I think even one was almost three years later. So that’s clearly a massive screening problem, and some of these are very big companies, and you’re kind of wondering, what’s going on? How many people were ahead of me, first of all, in that pipeline. But also, what system are you using that is so poor that you only got to me right now, and because it’s clearly an automated email. So not that much thought was put into it. But like you’re saying, at the other side of things, you have this other problem where certain industries, like restaurants, hospitals, they need people desperately, because that has become more competitive, more of the economy has relies on them more than ever. And I think COVID really highlighted that. So people are applying to jobs. They’re looking for jobs constantly or or in certain industries, have more option than ever, and you can apply to them these jobs in a lightning, lightning fast way. But that’s leading to degradation of experience across the board, it seems like for people. But then again, maybe their expectations were unrealistic for certain industries, and maybe they just thought they could walk into a job and just get it, you know, like it was the 1970s and just get a get a job, right off the bat. But from your perspective, you know, so it’s, it seems like if you don’t have enough candidates, it’s a sourcing issue, but if you have too many, it’s a screening problem. In what way do you think you can you know, especially for, let’s say, a restaurant. Why is that speed so important in hiring and for industries like that, and for hospitals or something like that. And how do you feel like we can kind of bridge the gap between these groups that are moving fast or kind of a quickly moving target? And how can we nail them down? How can people nail them down? And as the someone who’s in hiring, what would be your first steps to solve that?

Heidi Barnett 16:24
Yeah, I think lot You asked a lot of different questions there, so I’ll try to remember which ones, but tell me if I miss any of them. But really talking about speed, let’s talk about speed first. And I think that speed is important. And I actually had quite a discussion with someone the other day who’s like speed to hire is the wrong statistic. And I believe that that’s probably true. If you are just the first person that walks in the door I’m going to hire. But I don’t see companies doing that. What I see them doing is because they’re overwhelmed with so much candidate, so many candidates in certain spaces, they’re not getting back to the candidates, right? So you’re losing candidates. That would be a good potential fit. The other thing is that if you don’t have enough candidates, a lot of times, you have enough employees, right? And so you are wearing multiple hats, and you’re trying to run a lot of different things. I think about our QSR, or I think about even fast casual, where they’re running front of house, back of house, someone you know walks off the job. They have two no call, no show, and they’re in the back doing, I mean, they’re, they’re cooking, they’re they’re answering the phones or doing all these things. And so speed to hire in those cases will make a difference in them, either being able to keep their doors open or, you know, not, not being able to service their customers in a proper way. We have a restaurant chain in town, and there’s often a sign that says, Sorry, we don’t have any staff. We’re closed for the night, and it leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths, and it doesn’t, I mean they they’re missing out on on their ability to make money. And so speed to hire is is really important in those hourly wages or hourly employees, and then also those where it’s directly tied to your ability to get revenue right. And so, you know, texting, I think that this. There’s some crazy statistics around texting. It’s like 45% response rate versus a 6% on email. So one of the things that we recommend, and we have built in into the applicant tracking system, is a way for you to text your employees. So comes in and we get there’s quite a few things that will help you to find those candidates that are the best quality candidates. Last year, we built a candidate matching and it takes the job description and the resume and it pairs them up and gives you a quality score, and it will give you, you know, what are the skills where they’re strong on and maybe some areas where they’re not so almost visually, you can see which candidates you should reach out to first that would possibly be the best fit. Then, once you’re in the system, you can go in and be able to text them immediately from there and it, and obviously, pick up the phone and those things. But we’re, if you’re texting, you’re actually getting through faster than a phone call. And so those are some things that really will speed up the ability to get in touch with candidates. And then, you know, what does that mean for companies? Is that, I think one thing we don’t talk about when we’re talking about recruiting is the people that are actually showing up to work. Those are the ones that you want to make sure stay, that you want to keep happy, and if you don’t have enough help, they’re the ones that get burned out, right? And they’re, they’ll just walk away from the job. You’re in even more of a world of hurt. And so I think that those are the things that we should consistently be hiring, consistently be looking and be able to act quickly on the things on the candidates that are a good fit, you know, being able to see them first and then really. Being able to jump in and contact them right away, I think makes a huge difference in being able to operate the business in a way that needs to be to maximize profits overall.

Dylan Teggart 20:13
Yeah, and I think something you touched on a couple sentences ago is with those people you hire that are great hires. You want to make sure they’re working with people they actually feel like are pulling their weight, especially in a place like a restaurant where it is such a team dynamic, and you have someone who’s maybe been working there a year or two, but they just feel like all the people that are getting hired are just not up to par. So what’s that? Eventually they’re going to say, what’s the reason I’m even sticking around here? So it’s interesting how, even for retention, it can really affect how people view their workplace, you know, their desire to continue working there. Because in this highly competitive market, you’re going to be having people that are being pulled to maybe more lucrative or seeming, me, seemingly more lucrative opportunities?

Heidi Barnett 21:03
Yeah, well, you think about it, no one likes to be the the group project at school. You’re the only one that did anything. No one likes that, right? And if it translated, translates into your employment, that’s not great either. So there are cultural pieces right? Where you can if you’re a fun place to work or good place to work, those things can translate into people wanting to bring their friends over, or others. I think about another restaurant that we have here in town. They have just the best workforce. Music’s on, they’re happy they’re serving. They have great employees that are there. And so one day I was I mentioned the manager. I said, Hey, you know, this is fantastic. I can feel the energy of your team. You know, you’ve got a lot of great workers here. And he said, we work really hard on that. And I think that it has to do with, you know, how management treats them, how they’re showing up. There are those deep cultural pieces that you can’t you can say something on a poster of here’s what we stand for, but how you interact with them makes a big difference. You know, he said he hired two extra people in order to be able to allow them all to have a weekend, night off, and for them all to be able to go to prom, which was like two big things that these younger workers were looking for. And it just took him hiring a couple of additional people in order to be able to have the workload and the staff to cover them. You know, yeah,

Dylan Teggart 22:27
it makes a huge difference, especially for even just little things like that, just kind of identifying that the person working for you has needs and exists is important, right? Yeah, yeah, and it, but it’s interesting, because it does kind of tie into what I feel like is becoming more of a trend, and white collar or corporate workforce is referrals to almost the point that external hiring is whittling down because everyone’s just being hired by someone they know. Hey, Jim knows Bob. Let’s get Bob, because I know I can vouch for him. It’s going to circumvent the need for all these platforms people are inventing it investing in does that necessarily lead to the best candidate or the best talent? Probably not all the time, but maybe, like you’re saying, will lead to a better interpersonal dynamic within the team, yeah, but kind of focusing on restaurants a bit more, because I know I solved looking at that quite a lot. And also in our independent research at 360 insights, we look at quick service restaurants quite a lot. So they have a unique problem, because they’re both simultaneously, have too many candidates, but also the candidates have near unlimited choice in this current economic environment that we’re in. So what are some of the technology that I solved is developing that can help play into QSR strategy, and what are some hiring challenges that customers are bringing to you guys that they really want to tackle. And, yeah, so I’ll leave it. I’ll leave it there, because I could ask an extra question. I’ll add it on later. I was like, Don’t add a

Heidi Barnett 24:11
third. I’m gonna forget you’re great. Yeah. So our customers had come to us with some needs around. You know, while we talk about having it our systems be user friendly and really quick to spin up and and we provide a lot of resources for our customers to be able to navigate the systems we were we were told that it was, there was just too much that they didn’t need it, right? And so what we did was we sat down with quite a few of our customers to figure out what it was that they wanted to see. They didn’t want a full recruiter experience, where a recruiter will go out and hire for them, but they didn’t also want this, like DIY. I’m going to teach you, train you and hand it over. To you, what they wanted was somewhere in the middle. We call it done with you, or a managed version of it. And so what we do for a lot of our qsrs is that they just reach out to us and tell us that they have an opening and a need. And let’s say that it’s a line cook. And so they say, we have, you know, our cook just left, we’re ready to hire, and we collect some pieces of information for them. We actually write the job ad for them, and we actually write versions of the ads to help keep them really relevant on the job boards and across job boards, and to make sure that it’s a right fit, because sometimes we’ll write an ad and it won’t be the quite the right fit. So anyways, we write the ads for them, we post the ads on their behalf, and then we do the initial screening for them as well to be able to say, You know what, these are low, medium and high based on the criteria that you’ve given us. And at that point, we’ll spotlight those candidates for our companies, and then our managers will just hop in and preview that candidate right away. Along with the service, we have a video interviewing portion that comes along with it, and so if the video interview has been completed, they can click to watch that. It reduces the phone screen and can give them a quick view of, oh, this person is somebody that I want to talk to. And that point, they’re in the they’re in the profile, they’re ready to go. They can just text them directly, call, email, whatever they’d like to do from there, we have templates that can help with that as well to really streamline it. And so the goal is to help them not to have to be recruiters, but they can still be involved with the recruiting function of it, you know. And so it’s been a really big win for our customers that want to be involved with the process, want to move quickly, but then also don’t want to learn how to be a recruiter, how to manage the, you know, the algorithm that goes with the indeed job board, or getting visibility, or the rules around that. And so that’s, that’s what we’ve been working on for several years. It’s just really been on the applicant pro side, and now we’re really starting to open it up more to I solved customers and and those that are coming in and really needing help in this area with it, what they’re finding is faster hiring with less time investment, because, you know, we do a lot of those pieces for them, and then they’ve got access to us and the team to be able to help, and they’re seeing, seeing that, you know, speed to higher, but with the quality as well. So they’re getting the best of both worlds on that. And it’s been a real big game changer for a lot of our QSR customers. But also Home Services seem to do really well with it. We have dentists, orthodontists, veterinarians, anyone that’s like running both the front end and back end of the business and needs help hiring and isn’t like, you know, doesn’t have an HR team that’s on the ground that can help them recruit.

Dylan Teggart 27:52
Yeah, I feel like, for a lot of these smaller businesses, or even medium sized businesses that maybe don’t have a fully fledged HR department or recruiting department, recruiting team, I should say, taking work off of their plate. You know, maybe through AI or agentic AI is kind of been the big trend. Because I think people are really realizing a lot more that there’s a lot of that has to go into the human development side of things you know, developing that managerial relationship where you know, you know your staff, you need to hire two more people because your staff has prom coming up for they want to have the weekends off. You don’t really get to know that. If it’s a colder interaction, or it’s just you’re dealing with a interface where you type in that in, you know, you get that through having a coffee on a break and hearing, oh, what do you got going on this weekend? Oh, I wanted to do this, but I didn’t have time because I had to work. Yeah, and then maybe the light goes off, if you’re a good manager that you gotta figure solve that problem, because maybe somewhere else does, or you like this person so much you want to help them. And kind of going into that theme of taking things off their plate so they can focus on stuff like that. Where do you feel that AI and agentic AI even is really starting to fill some of those roles, taking some of those mundane tasks off the plate of a manager in recruitment?

Heidi Barnett 29:20
Yeah, yeah, it’s this is the this is the story, right? Everyone’s trying to figure out how AI will interact with us as humans, and what it can do to help us. I think there was a fear early on, as it made its way into the mainstream that it would be replacing everybody’s jobs. And I don’t believe that that’s the case. It will be replacing some people’s jobs, but from a recruiting perspective, really, what I feel like is that when we utilize AI properly, it will help us to be able to get the human connection back. It will maybe automate and streamline some of the tasks that are consistently on our. Updates from a recruiting perspective, things like resume screening. You know, I talked about candidate matching before, and how it can help us to be able to see, really, to see visually who we need to talk to and quickly interview scheduling is another piece that can be really helpful us also being able to have a talent pool when you’re ready to post a job. Can you post a job and pull from talent that you looked at before that maybe wasn’t the perfect fit for a role, but you liked them from a perspective of in my next role or another, you know, to be able to hire them down the road, being able to surface some of those things, I think, will be really helpful our keyword matching to be able to match the resume to those things that are on the job ad side. And then job ad AI, like we talked about, this is another mundane thing. A lot of Not, not a lot of people know what they need to write or how they would display best on a job board. And so those are the kinds of things that I like to look at from our perspective as we’re looking to serve and to really adopt more AI functionality within our software is, how do we automate those things that are maybe mundane, or those things that are repeatable, and being able to open this up for people to still have interaction with human interaction, right? Like you mentioned, sitting down for coffee with somebody, or building trust or or having, you know, stay interviews, or something similar to that, those are the things that matter, and that will really help. One of the things that I’m hearing, and we had the great resignation a few years ago post COVID, where people had held and were then leaving their jobs in a wave, because they were, you know, not satisfied. Were in an interview just last week, I heard someone coin or talk about the phrase this, it’s the great stay, right? And rather than the great resignation and people are holding within their jobs now that can be great for us because it means we won’t have to replace current talent, but it also can be a bad thing if they’re not happy where they are, and so that’s why I feel like AI can be a really important tool for us to be able to automate some of the things that are more mundane and less human, to allow us to focus on those things that are more human, for us to spend time talking to those that are staying and making sure that they are happy with their workplace, so they feel connected to the other employees, they feel connected to leadership. Those kinds of things, I think, will make a really big difference. And so that’s that’s the goal when we talk about AI, is, how can it be highly impactful, and how can it free up time and space for people to be able to have more of that human interaction that will make a difference?

Dylan Teggart 32:48
Yeah, I think it’s very well said, and I think the more we go down this path of AI, the hopefully the more people remember that is that that’s kind of the key to all this working, and that’s where AI should really help us, and where we should be leveraging technology to let us just chat a bit more. Simply put

Heidi Barnett 33:09
earlier, you said, you know, sometimes we forget that these are humans. You know, that people have lives outside of work and that there are things that that they care about, and so, you know, it makes a big difference. Recognition is, is one of the main ways that we keep people in the door and happy. People work hard for the most part and want to do good by the company, but if they’re never recognized it, you know, they start to to feel burnt out or under appreciated. At that point, they pick up their head, start looking around for other opportunities, and we just don’t want that, especially for our top performers,

Dylan Teggart 33:45
for sure. And I think a little bit goes a long way a lot of the times with just that kind of thing. You know, it’s the maybe not the big reward at the end of the year, but the little, little compliments can also be an effective way to just keep someone around, understanding their needs and kind of addressing them, whether it be through hiring a good team that surrounds them, or just through, you know, hiring the right amount of people so they can have some time off or get a shift covered. Yeah, so just looking at the time here, I think we’ve covered a lot of lot of information in depth here. Is there anything else you’d like to mention before we wrap up?

Heidi Barnett 34:25
No, I think, I think it’s if you’re not utilizing AI at this point, it’s probably time to start playing around with it. I think that’s one of the things that, as I’ve been on trade show floors and talking to people, you get this sense of people want to use it. They’re somewhat concerned by it, and this isn’t across the board. A lot of people have jumped in with both feet, but if you’re not, it’s time. There are a lot of different ways that you can interact with AI in order to be able to help. So I would suggest starting with one of those. You know, maybe. Mundane task. Or, Hey, can you summarize this resume? Or, you know, can you help me rewrite this email? A lot of those things as you start diving in, start to feel a little bit more comfortable with it, and being able to figure out how you interact with it, to be able to help you to improve. So, I think that’s it. Dylan, it’s just a little plug for get in there. Start working on it, play around with it. It can, it can honestly make a big difference in the things that you do on a day to day.

Dylan Teggart 35:26
Absolutely, yeah, demystifying it through just applying it to simple tasks that I think is essential, and I think is going to help remove the kind of smoke and mirrors people feel that there may be around some of the AI technology. Because, yeah, just imagine if you have 10 resumes to look through, how quickly, kind of dissolving it into a couple sentences could how much time that could save you. It’s going to save you, you know, at least 10 minutes a resume. Yeah, and that could be, you know, over an hour for someone who’s busy, right? Heidi, well, thank you very much. And if anyone wants to reach out to you for any more questions, what’s the best place for them to do so

Heidi Barnett 36:09
I would give my email here, but probably would get in trouble for that, just if we have a lot of resources, both on applicantpro.com, and I solved hcm.com that’s probably the best place to start working there, take a look around, and we’ve got chat that we can help, help you with. And then also, you know, if you want to have asked questions around this podcast in particular, they can route you to me. So I think that would be fantastic, but reach out. The thing is, is that we’re here to help you. Know, any questions that you have, we’d love to help you navigate your own individual situation around recruiting. So we’d love to chat

Dylan Teggart 36:45
Awesome. Well, thank you everyone for tuning in and Heidi, thanks again for joining. Of

Heidi Barnett 36:49
course, thanks. Dylan.

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