Transcript
Mark:
Welcome to People Tech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. I’m Mark Feffer. My guest today is Kelly Minella, the head of recruiting at Calendly. She has a unique view of talent acquisition and scheduling. We’re going to look at both and see how they fit together, and we’ll get a close look at Calendly’s vision for the future. All on this edition of People Tech.
So, your acquisition of Prelude tells me that you’re sort of moving toward talent acquisition as a vertical. What’s the plan with that?
Kelly:
Yes, so recruiters have always been a profile or vertical that Calendly has been supportive of, and it’s typically been useful when it comes to those one-on-one type of interview scheduling, but in the recruiting space, you know that the rest of that process that goes deeper and into later stage interviews gets more complex because more and more people become part of the interview panel. So, Calendly realize that there was an opportunity to even better serve our recruiting customers, and when doing so, realize that if we could really solve and eliminate the friction that those complex Tetris like scheduling, things come into play, that we’d really be able to delight our customers and make everything about their roles more efficient and more streamlined and honestly easier to set them up for success and their opportunities. So, acquiring Prelude is something that I think is going to just even more benefit our recruiting customers and just continue to make their lives easier and set them up to be successful in their roles.
Mark:
And is Calendly the very popular tool among recruiters. I mean, did you have a large number using it or are you still building that market?
Kelly:
I’d say it’s popular and it’s something that I can’t even imagine how I used to do my job without Calendly. And when I do come across a recruiter who hasn’t used it, I want to share it to them just because it makes my life and my day-to-day so much better. And I know that if there was ever a world where I didn’t actually work at Calendly and millions of years from now I’m onto maybe a next adventure that I would have to use Calendly in order to do my job because I just know the difference of pre-Calendly life and Calendly life.
Mark:
Moving into recruiting the way you are, is this a new approach for you? Has the company done this before with other verticals or is this sort of the beginning of a new era for Calendly?
Kelly:
The company realizes that if you really want to be the best solution, that one stop shop, that not only do you need to be broad, but you have to go deep and that’s how you really are able to support all the needs of your customers. You don’t want it to just be surface level because when things get more complex, then potentially they’re going to look elsewhere. So, if you’re able to not only be broad, but go deep in those verticals, then you’re going to be able to better delight your customers, better serve them, and keep them with you for the long haul. So, it’s a strategy that I’ve seen them do in other verticals like sales, customer success teams, and I am selfishly super, super excited that we are now doing that deep dive into recruiting.
Mark:
Now, what kind of capabilities do recruiters need that don’t come with standard Calendly?
Kelly:
So, it’s when you move past the typical one-to-one scheduling. So, Calendly previously served the needs of a recruiter candidate conversation or a hiring manager candidate conversation, but a lot of recruiting processes have interview panels. Where there, the candidates meeting with multiple other people from the business. Typically, it happens in a very condensed timeframe when majority of companies were having interviews on site, it was all in one day, and so you really had to play around a lot with availabilities and coordinating many different moving pieces. Virtual, similar, right? There is more flexibility in terms of, it not necessarily all having to be on the same day and whatnot, but there’s still that complex, multiple moving parts, multiple people involved that really, we are now able to solve. It’s something that we had streamlined and made the early stages of an interview process really efficient, and now we’re able to continue doing that deeper into the funnel and that’s super exciting.
Mark:
And, I mean, can you think of any specific functions or tools that you want to offer to recruiters?
Kelly:
How long do you have? No. There’s a lot that you can really do to optimize your workflow with Calendly. First of all, how are you setting up your event types. Are you making sure that you’ve got your availability set up to allow for candidates to easily schedule with you? The time zone piece we saw for, which is really great, especially as more companies are hiring across many different time zones across the world, you’re able to set up your specific event type so that you are able to give information ahead of time to candidates so that they’re able to best prepare for the conversation and that you can utilize that time even more productively when you do connect with them. Now, deeper into the funnel with Prelude, it really saves a whole lot of time on the back and forth when it comes to rescheduling, sometimes the last-minute things pop up for both the candidate or the hiring teams. And the way that we are able to navigate that and make that feel like such just a seamless, easy process really makes a huge impact on a candidate.
One, staying within the process and not falling out just because of that friction, making it through to potential offer stage. The other thing that I feel like the tool really does is create not only an awesome candidate experience, but an awesome hiring partner experience. You have to think about like you’re asking people’s times within the business that hiring isn’t their full-time job. It’s one component, so you want to make sure you’re setting them up for success too. And so, the way that we’re able or the product is able to utilize their time smartly and efficiently. We’re reducing any type of interview fatigue or interview burnout, which a lot of times that leads to potentially poorer hiring decisions. So, utilizing tools like this that are really thoughtful of your time sets up the conversation to be more productive, to make sure that it’s fair, it’s accurate. You’re evaluating correctly both sides and that you’re making really wise hiring and very informed hiring decisions.
Mark:
I’m just thinking, and I’m sort of making some assumptions here, but I’m wondering if this direction is going to change Calendly’s attitude toward partnerships and integration. I mean, I’m thinking about what are you thinking about plans for working with an ATS, for example?
Kelly:
Yes, so that is something that we are heavily focused on. We want to make sure that we are setting up all of our customers for success and what their specific tech stacks are. So, I know we do have applicant tracking system integrations, our internal one we utilize, and it’s made a world of a difference. You’re able to see that a candidate either has or hasn’t booked via Calendly. You send Calendly links on hiring manager behalf, which is incredibly convenient, and then you’re able to see when they’ve booked. It also automates all the scorecards being sent out. I mean, there’s just so much that goes into it, so yes, integrations are key and they’re ways that you can really ingrain yourself in a company’s tech stack. So, I know that we do it specifically as recruiting team at Calendly and every day giving feedback to our internal teams of things that we see, that we feel like they should be exploring or could potentially be even more optimizing for. So, yes, integrations are key. It’s how you can set up all different customer for success.
Mark:
And we’ve been talking about Calendly, in even future products are seem to loop back to the idea of a calendar and scheduling. And I’m just wondering if you see any possible expansion of your product line, interrelated areas that aren’t quite the same?
Kelly:
I’m confident our leadership team is being very thoughtful of that. We want to be the one stop shop. We want to make sure that we’re really thoughtful of that full meeting lifecycle. So, I think sometimes when people think of Calendly, the first type of problem it solves that comes to mind for them it’s just that actual meeting, getting the meeting scheduled. But there’s a lot of work that goes into scheduling the meeting and all the prep work before the meeting, during the meeting, how can we best support that? And then, all of the work that comes out of a meeting, so we really want to be thoughtful about that full meeting lifecycle and supporting all of those needs for our customers.
Mark:
I wanted to shift gears a little bit. Every article I read about Calendly talks about your big competitors being Google and Microsoft, and that makes sense given a lot of the tools that they have. Now, I think Calendly’s valuation is something like three and a half billion dollars, which is pretty great, but Google and Microsoft’s obviously are bigger. And I’m wondering how do you compete against behemoths like that?
Kelly:
That’s a great question. What I’ve seen and what the leadership team has shared with me is they’re thoughtful of that. They’re not ignoring what you just said. And I think that’s something that maybe differentiates us from other tools that have similar type of comparison competitors. We are constantly trying to look ahead and be thoughtful about what could be coming our way and then just know that we need to continue to do our best and we can’t rest. We have to always be looking to improve and iterate and how can we best serve our customers. Googles, Microsofts, their competing product is just one of many. And so, because we are fully dedicated to this, I think our customers can trust that they’re getting our full attention. Whereas maybe that’s not the case for some of those competitors, but it’s definitely something that is always top of mind for our leadership team, and they are very thoughtful of when it comes to our planning and the decisions for the future.
Mark:
Well, Kelly, thank you very much. It was great talking with you and I hope we’ll talk again.
My guest today has been Kelly Minella, the head of recruiting at Calendly, and this has been People Tech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. We’re a publication of RecruitingDaily. We’re also a part of Evergreen Podcasts. To see all of their programs, visit www.evergreenpodcasts.com. And to keep up with HR technology, visit the HCM Technology Report every day. We’re the most trusted source of news in the HR tech industry. Find us at www.hcmtechnologyreport.com. I’m Mark Feffer.
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