How your startup is getting lapped by companies who know how to hire

Our initial beta customers have been working really close with me and the rest of the team to shape the product. So, the benefits have been around automating parts of the process that are annoying and manual right now. An example: most of our customers have one centralized person (out of 10-40 in the company) that does all the scheduling, sourcing, coordinating with recruiters. We looked at her process (done in google docs) and tried to automate as much as possible. The result: you can now schedule interviews directly from our gmail widget, select a person from your org, a candidate, and a time and we book the meeting on the respective calendar, notify the interviewer about the interview, send them the resume/coverletter and evaluation form and then bug them every 24 hours after the interview to ensure the feedback is logged. The estimate was that by simplifying this process to 3-4 clicks we save her ~ 20 hours of annoying work per week.

The tool has been built around simplifying work flows like this. We're still hashing out all of them, but our central thesis is: 99% of recruiting time is done through the inbox so why doesn't your ATS/CRM live there with you. Over the next couple weeks we're moving the functionality from the web app into the gmail inbox, when that is done we'll officially launch.

Honestly, I think the main benefits of Foundry are as follows:

- We've studied workflows across dozens of companies from Palantir to Facebook to small companies and built the tool around optimizing workflow and collecting data.

- When you come to us we have an out of the box process that works well (we'll show you data) that is somewhat customizeable to your particular company's process. So you start with a good base and the tool reinforces good behavior. This is the part of the tool we're building on the most: how to convey/reinforce best practices in the hiring process.

- Everything is in your inbox: no context switching/learning a new system.

- In the early stage I work closely with all our customers and as we learn new best practices/tips we pass those on to you.

- Lastly, I honestly think that using something like Foundry forces you to think critically about your process (as opposed to winging it), by giving you a framework you end up with a process that works more efficiently.

Our hope is that once we get more data around hiring we can push that knowledge out to everyone, so that company's stop losing hires due to the problems listed above. If you have any questions about your process or want some friendly advice about what you're doing well/poorly I'd be happy to chat, email in my signature.

This one is important. Recruitment leaves impressions on the candidates. You better make sure the impressions are positive ones, because they matter a lot.

The world is small. An unsuccessful candidate might get successful elsewhere. Their opinion about your company might soon affect its future. Other candidates passing on your offer because they heard your process sucks is just the most obvious and immediate way, obviously there are others.

This communicates you have options, and that they are going slower than you'd like. Clearly this only works in certain situations and can be dangerous if executed poorly.