Conor Volpe and Madeline Laurano discussed the evolution and current state of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) in the context of agentic AI. They highlighted that 1 in 4 companies plan to replace their ATS this year, and only 28% are satisfied with their current systems. Key issues include manual processes, broken integrations, and lack of automation. The conversation emphasized the shift from traditional ATS to more intelligent, agentic systems that improve candidate experience, efficiency, and decision-making. They also discussed the importance of explainability and transparency in AI-driven recruiting processes.

Outline

Introduction

• Conor Volpe welcomes attendees and expresses gratitude for their participation.
• Conor introduces Madeline Laurano and outlines the webinar’s agenda.
• The webinar will cover the current state of ATS, its evolution, and the shift towards agentic AI.
• Conor mentions the importance of feedback and encourages attendees to ask questions via the chat.

Current state of ATS and its evolution

• Conor discusses the history of ATS, noting its existence since the 70s or 90s.
• The webinar aims to provide a reality check on the current state of ATS and its evolution.
• Conor highlights the shift towards agentic AI and the debate between best-of-breed and all-in-one solutions.
• The webinar will also offer advice for buyers, practitioners, and users of ATS.

Research background and frustrations with ATS

• Madeline Laurano shares her excitement about the webinar and the research project.
• Madeline discusses the frustrations with ATS, including candidate complaints and the need for better outcomes.
• The research aims to address these frustrations by exploring an agentic model for ATS.
• Conor and Madeline discuss the poll results, highlighting common frustrations with ATS.

Key findings from the research

• Conor shares key findings from the research, including the high replacement rate of ATS.
• Only 28% of respondents are satisfied with their current ATS.
• The research reveals a shift in buying behavior, with companies looking for more from their ATS.
• Madeline emphasizes the need for a new approach to ATS, moving beyond traditional workflow and compliance.

The role of AI in ATS

• Conor and Madeline discuss the integration of AI in ATS, particularly in screening and sourcing.
• AI is also being used in interviewing, providing transcripts, recordings, and notes.
• The potential of AI to enhance productivity and decision-making in recruiting is highlighted.
• Madeline addresses concerns about AI replacing jobs, emphasizing its role as an enabler of human decision-making.

Adoption of AI and agentic AI in TA

• Conor and Madeline discuss the adoption of AI and agentic AI in TA, with 12% using co-pilots and agents extensively.
• The research reveals a preference for semi-autonomous agents over fully autonomous ones.
• Madeline explains the difference between copilots and agents, emphasizing the importance of transparency.
• The conversation touches on the potential for AI to improve candidate experience and reduce response times.

Best of breed vs. HCM solutions

• Conor and Madeline discuss the shift in the debate between best-of-breed and HCM solutions.
• The new wave of ATS providers offers a platform approach, integrating multiple functionalities.
• Companies are looking for more from their ATS, beyond traditional best-of-breed or HCM solutions.
• The research highlights the need for ATS to address gaps in scheduling, analytics, and candidate engagement.

Evaluating and measuring ATS investments

• Conor and Madeline discuss the need to reframe the value of ATS beyond efficiency metrics.
• The new paradigm includes measuring efficiency, experience, and effectiveness.
• Madeline emphasizes the importance of defining success and working with providers to measure ROI.
• The conversation includes questions to ask vendors about AI capabilities, ethical frameworks, and explainability.

Future of ATS and candidate engagement

• Conor and Madeline discuss the future of ATS, including the potential for omni-channel candidate engagement.
• The conversation touches on the reimagining of modules throughout TA, including CRM, interviewing, and onboarding.
• Madeline shares insights on the importance of addressing candidate stress points, such as lunch during the first day.
• The potential for AI to enhance the new hire experience is highlighted.

Candidate use of AI in resumes

• Conor and Madeline discuss the impact of candidates using AI to assist their resumes.
• The conversation differentiates between using AI to enhance resumes and candidate fraud.
• Madeline emphasizes the importance of transparency and the role of AI in improving the hiring process.
• The potential for AI to identify inconsistencies in resumes is discussed.

Closing remarks

• Conor and Madeline thank attendees for their participation and encourage further questions.
• The webinar concludes with a focus on the importance of AI in enhancing the recruiting process.
• Attendees are encouraged to reach out for more information and follow-up on the research findings.
• The conversation highlights the evolving landscape of ATS and the potential for AI to drive significant improvements.

Conor Volpe 00:03
Hello everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are. Thank you so much for joining us today for this webinar. We are very excited to have you, and I also just want to say thank you for taking time out of your day to spend it with us. We know everybody’s got busy schedules, obligations. We really appreciate you spending an hour with us today. We’ve got a great topic for you. We are going to dive into all things ATS TA recruiting. We’ve got some great research that we’re going to walk you through as well that is all about this topic. And we’re getting into what’s currently working in the ATS world, maybe what’s not so working, and also where it is going next. My name is Conor Volpe. I’m on the product marketing team at Eightfold. Like I said, I’m very happy to be with you, and I’m also joined by Madeline Laurano, Founder and Chief Analyst at Aptitude Research. Madeline, would you mind introducing yourself to everybody?

Madeline Laurano 00:49
Thank you, Conor. Hi everyone. I’m also very excited to be here and grateful everyone took time out of their day to be with us as well. This is a topic we’ve been talking about for quite a while, Conor, for a few years, and it’s exciting to see where the market’s at with the ATS right now and this whole new agentic era. So I’m very excited to have this discussion with you and also to share the research project we worked on together.

Conor Volpe 01:14
Yeah, I think there are a lot of interesting things that you found in the research, maybe some things that we and folks on the line probably knew deep down, and now we have numbers to back up some of the assumptions or conclusions we had. And I think it’s really interesting to kind of get into that. For today’s conversation, we have an outline for you all to help kind of structure where we’re going to be. We’re going to start by talking about the current state of the ATS and kind of doing a bit of a reality check to see, like, where this piece of software that, depending on when you want to start your calendar, some would say, was around the 70s, maybe the 90s. The point is, this is over a quarter century old, very least. So where is it today? In 2025 we’ll do a little bit of a reality check there. And then, as Madeline was mentioning, the ATS, in a state of evolution and agentic AI and AI is everywhere right now, and the ATS is not immune to that conversation. So we are talking about the evolution of the ATS, especially in this world of agentic AI. And then there’s always been this kind of topic of, do I go with a best of breed approach for my ATS and TA stack? Do I go all in one with an HCM?

Madeline Laurano 03:49
You found that maybe that paradigm is shifting a bit. It’s not quite as black or white as it used to be. And then for one of the last sections, we’ll spend some time talking about how we’ll look ahead and maybe have some advice for everybody on the line who considers them, a buyer, a practitioner, a user of the ATS, what should you be looking for? And then also perhaps demanding as the ATS is shifting and evolving. And finally, if we don’t drone on too long, we’ll spend some time on Q&A at the end. But of course, one thing I would mention is, please, by all means, as we’re going along, drop your questions in the chat, in the Q&A. There should be a widget, I believe, on the right hand side for all of you. By all means, there’s something we’re getting into. If you have a question, a comment, if you need help with anything going on with on 24 our team is here behind the scenes as well to be able to help you, so please just drop it in the chat. And like I said, we will try our best to answer some questions, or at the very least, get to them at the very end. And like I said, if you have any technical or questions like that, we are here to help. So I do want to get into the research. But before we do that, I would love to just kind of get a bit of a pulse check from all of you and maybe brush off the cobwebs first thing in the morning. If you could change one thing about your ATS today, what would it be? We have some options for you again, just kind of want to get a pulse check. Maybe think of it as a little bit of an icebreaker. But if one of your answers isn’t here, throw it also in the Q&A. Use that chat widget to kind of provide your own answer. And while you’re thinking about that Madeline, would you mind just giving a little bit of background on the actual research, right? Like, what we’re kind of going to be going through and talk about, like, where this came from, and just giving people, again, some background on the main thing they’re gonna be talking about

Madeline Laurano 04:09
today. Yes, absolutely. I love the poll question, because we asked that in the survey too, and it’s so interesting. I mean, my guess is all of the above for everyone with all of those options, but I’ll share you know, one of the reasons we did this project was because of all of the above. You know, I think I’ve been setting the ATS market for two decades, which is a long time, and there really has not been a ton of change. You know, we’re seeing typically, the same cast of characters year after year. Companies feel very frustrated with the ATS. Recruiters are incredibly frustrated with the ATS candidates are starting to recognize the names of different ATS providers and complaining about them when they apply for a job. It’s a system that historically has not been one that people loved, but it’s not going away. It’s, you know, we call it the bread and butter of the TA tech stack, because it’s the one. Workflow. It’s the compliance engine, and we need it to be able to move candidates along through the process. But you know, given all the frustrations people have and the amount of money spent on the ATS, we really need to think about a different way of not only evaluating providers, but thinking about the outcomes we get from the ATS. So we did this report to really look at how this model and this market can change in an agentic era, because it sort of addresses, not sort of, but it absolutely addresses, all of those poll questions and those poll options you showed before. I mean, with an agentic model, you’re able to improve the candidate experience, improve the recruiter experience, provide greater transparency, better communication, better integration, and it solves for a lot of those frustrations that we saw in that previous slide in the poll question. So that’s really the reason that we decided to tackle this topic, was because we’re at this moment in time where all of those frustrations we’ve been talking about for two decades and longer now, you know, really have an opportunity to be addressed.

Conor Volpe 06:06
No, it’s, it’s really well said. I know we’ll get into kind of the ATS is a required part of the tech stack, and probably like most would say, the original piece of software for TA and recruiting, and kind of how that has probably impacted how people use it and think about it today. But yeah, I mean, I think all of these are very fair answers and also just goals of the ATS. I think we’ll be getting into how fair they are to expect of the ATS, but let’s see what people answered. So it looks like we’ve got a bit of a smattering at the top. Some are looking like I would love my ATS to better help me with candidate experience. I would love to make it easier for the people inside the organization, using it, like recruiters and hiring managers. And then something that I think we’ll get into today, particularly is on that automation integration point of view as well. And then we had a few useful insights, speed up time to hire, not cost and complexity, at least not with this group. Anything that you notice out of some of those top answers? No.

Madeline Laurano 07:03
I mean, I think it’s great to see that, you know, price isn’t number one, or people aren’t entering price into the chat to say that’s what they want to see. There’s more here, there’s more value that people want. I mean, to me, the crazy thing is the better automation integration. That’s definitely what we see in the research we do with interviews and with surveys, and it’s shocking that we even have to say that so much of the ATS work is manual work, searching for candidates when the search doesn’t work and you actually have to manually search through that system to find candidates. It’s incredibly frustrating to have integrations that don’t work or are broken, or systems that can’t even report, you know, basic numbers, like the number of hires made in the past year. It’s, you know, a tale as old as time when we’ve been talking about forever, and it’s still this number one point of frustration.

Conor Volpe 07:53
So that’s probably a good jumping off point to the first, I think, area we wanted to discuss, which was, let’s talk about the ATS today. And I think one of the things I mentioned at the top was, one of the reasons I really liked this research was you were able to put numbers on things that, I think, again, many of us probably knew in our heart of hearts to be true, but now there’s actual numbers behind it, right? So like, for example, you found that one in four companies plan to replace their ATS this year. And then over half of those, half of the people surveyed, all said we also have multiple ATS is, by the way, and roughly half of those were like, and I’m taking a look at my ATS see like, what it can do, what it should do, maybe what I want it to do. And I think all of these are kind of aligned with I’m taking a really hard look at my ATS. And there’s another number two that I think is really important, which is that you found that only 28% of people are actually satisfied with their ATS. So there’s this undercurrent of, guess you could, suppose you could say dissatisfaction with the ATS, but I think these are the three big things that you called out in particular, what did you make of some of these findings?

Madeline Laurano 09:00
Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, this is an area that’s very mature when it comes to technology. The ATS has been around for a long time. You know, these systems have been designed a certain way a long time ago and are still designed that way. So to see such high replacement one in four, that’s a really high replacement for a market that’s so mature, but it’s something to your point, like we all sort of felt that, and we see that, and it makes sense for a lot of companies, and we’ll get into this when we talk, you know, a little bit about shifts in buying behavior. But for a lot of companies, they start to look at a transformation, or their tech stack, and they start with the ATS. And I think where we need to get to is flipping that model. So if you’re in that one in four category, and you’re thinking about replacing your ATS, going just the traditional path of going to another system, you might be dissatisfied with and likely will be, is not necessarily the path you have to go on, and it also isn’t the only option anymore. Now there are better options, more. Providers offering agentic and intelligent systems that can actually solve for, again, those frustrations we saw in the previous slide, but also, you know, possibly be systems that do other things beyond just a workflow and beyond just a compliance engine.

Conor Volpe 10:19
And I think that’s a good question to maybe kind of like, poke a little bit at which is like, Why? Why do you think the ATS has remained such a cornerstone of the TA tech stack? And I think some of this might be able to be explained by just human nature. We’re all used to it, right? It, like I said, was probably the original system and a TA tech sack. So some of this might just be the bad term for to be, like human stubbornness is some of the someone else’s be inertia, right? Like, this is what I’m used to. It’s always going to be there. As we said, it’s not going away. But why? What do you make of it being such, still such an important part of the TA tech stack?

Madeline Laurano 11:00
Yeah, I think for a lot of companies, it’s safe, right? We’ve always had it to your point, like, this is what we’ve always had and what we know, and we’re not going to replace it and have nothing that means, you know, and I think in our minds, that means we’re going to be even more of a manual process. We’re just going back to, you know, Excel spreadsheets and paper and notes and emails. And that’s not going to work for companies either. So they feel this is the option that they need to have. And they look at their peers and other companies, and they’re using them as well. The nice thing about where we’re at in the market now is, you know, I don’t believe the ATS is going anywhere. I don’t think we’re going to have a conversation in a year and say it’s obsolete. We don’t need it. I think we’ve had conversations about this, like it’s absolutely going to be here, and we do need it, but it doesn’t have to be the same as it was. It can be new, it can be different, and it can be something that actually works within the recruiter workflow, not something that works against it, and can integrate and can provide better automation, can provide a better experience without waiting for a whole new UX. I mean, that was kind of the cycle that a lot of providers have been in is, let’s work on our UX for the next three years and make it better. And it’s a little bit better, but by the time we get to three years now we expect, you know, different behaviors as we operate as people, and that’s not a positive UX anymore. So we just have to get out of I think their traditional ATS. I think the ATS isn’t going anywhere, but we don’t need a traditional ATS. We can start to think very differently about what the system can do.

Conor Volpe 12:33
Yeah, I think there’s perhaps almost a mismatch in expectations for the ATS, like when, when people go and say, I need to replace my ATS. I think people have a wide range of what they hope their ATS can do. And I think I know something you and I have talked about in the past, which is like it’s almost like there’s a dichotomy here, which is, I want my ATS to do everything under the sun, and I ask it to maybe do too much. Then there are others who go, Look, I know I need it. Maybe I’ll invest a little bit in it, but I’m going to surround it with all these other capabilities and processes. But it’s almost like there’s this dichotomy going on. I think that kind of shows up in this stat that you found too, which is that 90% of people in the market are either increasing their spend on their ATS, or it’s remaining the same. So despite the fact that only 28% are like that, I’m satisfied, I’m good with my ATS, and the budget isn’t going away. People are still investing in this software, and I think to some degree that’s again, maybe because folks have a mismatch in expectations when they see the three letter acronym ATS and what they’re expecting from it. Because this was a pretty interesting takeaway, at least for me, that, Oh, wow. It’s not that people are moving away from this. To your point, the ATS is going to remain but, I mean, the money is still there, and the budget is still there.

Madeline Laurano 13:56
And I think with new players like eightfold, the ATS can do more. And there’s a comment here in the Q&A from Megan, and she’s saying, you know, that they implemented Eightfold because of the gaps with the ATS. And I think that speaks to this slide in many ways, because you know, if your traditional ATS had the gaps that we’ve talked about, what you have to do as a company is now find budget to buy many other things to fill the gaps that the ATS doesn’t do, and then worry about the integration and the automation on top of an ATS that isn’t working. But to flip that model and to think very differently about the ATS and say, what are the things I need to do within talent acquisition, and how can technology support that? And maybe there’s a different type of ATS that’s not a traditional ATS that can do many of those things, not looking for gaps to fill those things. If that makes sense. Yeah.

Conor Volpe 14:53
No, it does. And like I said, I think, I think this stat was at least to me. Uh, surprising. I’m curious, from your perspective, as you were, as you were doing this research and compiling this report, was there anything you found about the current state of the ATS, that current state of the ATS, finance state a little bit better. That was actually surprising for you. I mean, like I said, there was so much goodness that kind of came out of it, but was there anything that kind of caught you off guard? And you went, like, oh, I wasn’t really expecting that, but lo and behold, I’m staring the number in my face.

Madeline Laurano 15:25
Yeah, this and I think a lot of the pricing has gone up for a lot of the larger ATS providers, the HCM providers, ERP providers, pricing has gone up, and that’s a trend we’ve seen over the past few years. So that’s been a little surprising, given how many different systems companies are using and started using during the pandemic. But to see, you know, I think a lot of those traditional ATS providers are trying to win deals, or even in some ways, retain clients by increasing pricing.

Conor Volpe 16:02
Yeah, yeah. So we spent a little bit of time talking about the ATS today, and again, maybe putting some numbers on things we all knew in our heart of hearts to be true. But one of the things we did want to talk about was, as you were kind of mentioning, there’s an evolution going on with the ATS right. And I think you put together this great visual of where the ATS started to where it is now going from a system that was built on workflow and compliance, and it’s gone through a couple different iterations. So now we’re talking about one that needs to not only have AI in it in order for it to be effective in today’s day and age, but also to start to take advantage of some of the latest and greatest in terms of agentic AI. So I guess my question for you is, like, how, how do you see this evolution of the ATS going again? I mean, it’s been a quarter century, really since this has kind of come onto the market, probably even more. But like, this has taken a while for us to get there, but this is something that you called on your research. That was research that was a really important piece for people to kind of wrap their heads around in this evolution of the ATS.

Madeline Laurano 17:10
Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting, and it’s sort of, it feels like it almost happened overnight, this intelligent agentic ATS that we’ve seen because, and it almost really has, you know, I think if we look at where the ATS has been, there have been moments that have been a really big deal on this evolution of the market. Like mobile was a really, really big deal when mobile became a big thing, whether it was mobile apply or kind of having a whole mobile first experience for the ATS, that was a huge deal and very different type of ATS, but for a lot of companies that were still using the ATS the same way and a lot of the same challenges and gaps that would come from the ATS just transferred over to a mobile experience as well. This changes both things. It changes how we deliver, you know, to companies and the outcomes we see, but also it changes that whole experience. So this, to me, is the most significant evolution that we’ve seen, you know, since, since I’ve been studying this market, and, to your point, with the evolution that we’re in right now, I think we’re, we’re kind of just getting started with this in some ways.

Conor Volpe 18:10
So I think that’s one of the reasons we’re talking about it today, is to try to help provide some insight guardrails like, what, what is, what does it mean to be an intelligent or agentic ATS? And I think one of the things that’s probably important to talk about is like, there is, there is AI in ATS is already right? And I think some of that is based on what the ATS was based on in the first place, right? Which is, it was an engine or is a piece of software built for workflow and compliance, and that means that it’s actually kind of ripe for some of the uses of AI and eventually, agentic AI. But where are you seeing some of the I guess we can call it early in the grand scheme of the ATS, but like, the use of AI already in ATS is across the market. Like, where are you seeing companies take advantage of that and kind of work it in for their recruiters and TA staff?

Madeline Laurano 19:08
Yeah, I think the most significant use of it right now is like screening and sourcing, and those would be the two areas and companies are using that, and they might not even realize that they’re using that already. I think a lot of even traditional systems are using AI during the screening process, maybe not ethically or responsively, but they’re using it. So I think those are kind of the two areas where, you know, it’s already pretty much mainstream. The area I think we’re seeing more and more traction, and I think will continue is around interviewing. So whether that’s intelligent interviewing or scheduling, or being able to manage that process through AI providing transcripts or even recordings notes. We talked a little bit about some of this on our pre call, I think that we’re going to. More and more of that as well.

Conor Volpe 20:03
And I think, as I was mentioning, this is where, because the ATS was originally built for workflow, there is so much potential for AI. I mean, I think I hope for many folks in the line, one of the messages they’ve been seeing out in the market is a lot of vendors will use the Hey, like we want AI to help take some of those rote, manual, not high value tasks off the hands of your recruiters. And this is true, not even in HR, but across all kinds of different AI solutions for different parts of the business, different industries, departments. The first wave is, let me take some of the stuff that isn’t really valuable for your teams to work on and take it off your plate. And some of the things that you were mentioning Madeline, I think fall into that bucket. These are tasks that ultimately, we’d love for our people to spend less time on so they can spend more time just talking with candidates. Like that’s where I think recruiters that’s where people want recruiters to spend their time is to be able to engage with candidates, get to know them better, get them into the building right, and spending a lot of time on some of these manual tasks, or to your point, like coordinating calendars is not, is not where we want recruiters to spend time. And that’s why, when we think about it again, like the reason an ATS was built, the fact that it was built for workflow, well, it means that hopefully more and more of the processes that we do in the ATS can be aided by AI. I think that’s, again, why I saw this, this evolution to be so important. It’s almost like those bookends tell a really important story, yeah, and I think there’s, you know, it’s interesting, because there’s still so much fear out there about AI replacing jobs.

Madeline Laurano 21:34
You know, we talk about it, and I think we all think we’re all comfortable using AI now, but there is a fear, and it’s real, and it’s real for a lot of roles and for a lot of people. And recruiting is not immune to that. And when I look at the role that AI can play, to me, it’s just such an enabler of recruiting, and what that human element of what recruiting is and why it’s so important. And if you think about the two ends of the spectrum of AI, one being productivity and the role it plays there, and one being decision making, AI is just an enabler of the decision making and the communication and the engagement. It’s not replacing that. It’s just making it easier while taking on all that productivity work.

Conor Volpe 22:21
Well, let’s, I mean, I think that’s a good like, let’s dive into that a little bit. I mean, I think hopefully the promise of AI is to help recruiters, to assist recruiters with their tasks and productivity, but also still keep this a very human task. And what I mean by that is we still want humans to be making the decisions at the center of all of this. And I think there’s a nice little dovetail here, and we think about candidate experience. You mentioned that there’s essentially capability for agents to help do some of the sourcing and early interviewing of candidates, and that’s out there right now. That might sound like taking jobs or taking parts of jobs that recruiters do today, but I think recruiters need to scale. They can’t do 1000s of interviews with candidates, and mean all the other end of that is there are lots of candidates who don’t get an interview, who wait three months and then get a rejection email, sometimes, if they’re lucky, meanwhile, in this world of where, if there are agents who can do some of these interviews, not only does the candidate feel like they actually maybe got a bit more of a fair shake, but also hopefully the organization can better understand each candidate that does apply, if they can get a chance to talk to an agent. So I think that’s an example of perhaps your point of keeping this like human touch in the world of recruiting, and using AI and agentic AI to do that, and I think that has a really important impact on the candidate experience, which we saw was one of those things from the first poll that people are really interested in their ATS improving. But does that? Does that resonate with you?

Madeline Laurano 23:57
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it goes against maybe what we’re trained to think, which is that AI or technology shouldn’t be more human, but it actually is making the process more human. I’ll give you an example too. There’s a company we did a case study with. I’ve told this story so many times. If anyone’s heard it, I apologize, but there’s a company we did a case study with, and they were tracking time to fill, which is an obvious metric in talent acquisition. It was on the poll question you had up earlier, and their time to fill is 40 days, which is very standard and not a bad metric in talent acquisition in 40 days. But they started to track on top of that time to respond, the time to respond was 90 days. So they’re now responding. They’re filling a position in 40 days. And all those people for this, you know, job, have no idea that that position has been filled. Have no response. Could have felt that they did very well in the interview process, felt that they had a very strong application or resume or whatever it was, and didn’t hear anything to me that is not human at all, and it’s not. The fault of the employer. It’s not the fault of recruiters or managers. They’re too busy. It’s just not something that’s sustainable to be able to communicate to every single person. But AI can do that. It can scale, and it can provide that human element that, you know, ultimately, people can’t do when you’re dealing with high volume, or when you’re dealing with, you know, juggling many, many things during the day, it’s, you know, again, it’s that that candid experience comes into play when you think about AI, and that’s, you know, one example. There are many others of that. But to me, it’s a much more human experience. If you know, the best candidate experience is if you get the job, and that you can’t deny that, that’s number one, but for 90 something percent of people, they’re not going to get the job. So what is a great candidate experience if you don’t get the job, and if you don’t get the job, to me, the best candid experience is that you were treated fairly and you’re given a lot of transparency through the process. And unfortunately, we as humans can’t do that, and we can’t provide that when we’re dealing with so many different things. AI can provide that.

Conor Volpe 26:12
And I think that’s, I think that’s really well said. And I think what the phrase that I keep coming back to is, like, essentially a different version of what you said, which is, like, I think everybody just wants a fair shake, right? They want to feel like, shake, right? They want to feel like I was, I actually was evaluated, right? Like someone took a look at me in some way, and by having some kind of interaction, even if it’s with an agent, it’s like, well, the company actually now knows something about me beyond the resume I submitted. And I think the cool part about working in this space is that everybody has been a candidate, right? Like everybody has had that experience, it can feel a bit dehumanizing to just send in a resume, and then, to your point, 90 days later, get a rejection email and go, cool. I don’t know if anybody saw me, had anything to do with me, or if it was just they already got their candidates in the first five days, and it took them 90 days to get back to me, and that was it. So having some ability to interact, I think really kind of rounds it out, especially for the candidate, absolutely. And speaking of all of this, companies who are already using AI and agentic AI to do some of this, I think you had some really interesting findings that there are companies out there who are doing this quite extensively. Some like, I think 12% said, Yes, we’re using co pilots and agents extensively. But if you look at the 12 and the 38 for a limited capacity, half of folks are going, yeah, no, we’re using it right now. And I think probably many of that 38 would say in a follow up, and we’re trying to figure out how to use it more extensively across TA and HR. But I thought this was, again, one of those things that maybe we knew that a lot of companies are trying it out, but for only 16% to go, No, we don’t really plan to do this. I think that was also very telling from the research.

Madeline Laurano 28:01
Yeah, I agree. I was surprised by this one, too. And I think, you know, there’s such a difference between old AI in our traditional ATS systems and then this kind of new agentic era that we’re in with copilot and agents. When you’re using a copilot or you have an agent, you know, experience, it feels like, you know, there’s a lot of transparency around that. You know you’re communicating with AI through the process. Sometimes you don’t know when you’re using a traditional kind of the old school ATS. You don’t know how matching and ranking is happening, or why these numbers and recommendations or categorizing candidates is even happening. There’s no transparency around it. You don’t know if it’s AI or just an algorithm . This, to me, is very transparent. So companies, I think, in the past, when we’ve asked these questions, they’ve sort of been all over the place, and we’ve seen everything from everyone saying they’re not using it to everyone saying they are using it. This, to me, also speaks to the fact that it’s, it’s very obvious to companies what this is and when they’re using it, you know, within their tax systems, yeah.

Conor Volpe 29:08
And I think if we did this a year from now, these numbers would probably look pretty different. It really feels like the pace of the adoption of these is just continuing to accelerate. And I think before we go like, I know we’ve we’ve talked, I should say, before we go too far down this path, we’ve talked plenty about agentic. Ai already. I think it is important to try to define it a little bit for the folks out there, because I think some of these terms are thrown about pretty loosely. And so we think about the difference between like, copilot and an agent, generally speaking. And look, some companies in some places will have different definitions, but I think generally speaking, copilot is something that’ll help you generate content, right? Like you think about ChatGPT, if you put in a, “Hey, can you help me write this email to my co workers?” It can generate that content for you. The difference between a copilot and an agent is an agent can then help make decisions for you. It can be you. To some degree autonomous. And this is where I think people are trying to figure out, perhaps, how autonomous agents should be. And you asked a question about this, right? Specifically in TA, which is, hey, if you’re thinking about agents in the TA tech stack, what are you expecting? Like, how autonomous are these? And you’ve got a few different categories here. But I think this was an interesting question, because, again, I think there is something we have to acknowledge, like there’s an underlying level of fear, of trepidation with folks going, I do not want to turn my job or my function over to agents. And really only 8% of people are expecting that, right? Most are saying I needed to be assistive. I needed to be semi autonomous to, again, do some of those rote, manual tasks that my recruiters spend way too much time on right now, and that’s where the semi autonomous comes in. But the vast majority of folks are saying semi autonomous, assistive. I’m not looking for it to just kind of with some guardrails, be fully autonomous. But again, I thought this was a really important kind of call out from the research, and an important one given the conversation around AI agents going on right now. So I don’t know what, what else did you make of when you saw this and you’re compiling this and you saw these numbers, what stuck out to you?

Madeline Laurano 31:18
Yeah, it didn’t surprise me. I think companies don’t want there’s a lot of fear around being fully autonomous. And there’s, you know, most of the systems are, most of the agents we’ve seen are semi autonomous, and as they should be, that’s what you know, we see, even when we do profiles for vendors. So yeah, it didn’t surprise to see the assistive and I think the other piece that you talked about, too, is just, I think there’s a lot of confusion. A lot of people are calling AI agents that aren’t agents. I like your definition a lot. I think it’s very clear and it’s simple. I mean, I think for if you know, if you’re a company, kind of going through this process now, and you’re trying to figure out, Okay, do I use AI? Do I buy a system? Can my system do this already? We’re interested in agents. I think even, like, a very simple way to think about it is outline, what is the work that has to get done within a like, what are the things, if you’re looking at just one area, you know, maybe it’s interviewing as an example. Like, what are the things that you know you have to do in that process? And can that work fully be done? Some of that work fully be done by an agent. And what is the work that can be done fully by humans or with assistance from, you know, AI, in some ways, and an agent should take on whatever that task is, or whatever that work is, fully an assistant or a co pilot should be able to provide support and guidance in helping you do that work. Both are huge for productivity, but the agent is actually doing that piece of work or that task, and then the copilot is helping support you through it. And I think for a lot of what we’re seeing right now in the market, even a lot of the announcements that have been agentic announcements, agentic announcements have just been more assistants and copilots instead of true agents. So, you know, I think we’re seeing more of that. I mean, you’ve come out with a truly agentic model and interviewer, and we’re seeing, you know, some other providers doing the same. But it will be interesting to see how this changes even in a year from now?

Conor Volpe 33:24
Oh, 100% I mean, we were talking about, you mentioned already, like, this is going so fast, right? If, to your point, if we were to do this later, a few months to a year from now, like, I think this would look, this would look different. And also it’s, I think to your point, there’s confusion, because people are moving so fast, both practitioners and customers, as well as vendors, are just moving really quickly. Joe dropped in a question I think is a good one to call out. It’s probably a bit of a nuanced answer. But what would you say is the difference between the assistive buckets and the semi autonomous bucket? Like, how are we drawing the line between the two of them, and there’s probably some nuance there, but what’s your take?

Madeline Laurano 34:04
Yeah, so the semi autonomous is really about agentic AI. And I think for a lot of the announcements we’re seeing, it’s kind of what role can this agent play in it? For a lot of the assistants, it’s a copilot or a chat bot or a conversational AI experience that can help support, you know, answer questions. Some are just fed through an FAQ. Some are actually AI and conversational. But ultimately, I think, with both options, whether it’s the assist, you know, assistive model, or the semi autonomous the decision making, and this is so important, the decision making is being made by a human. And that is, it’s absolutely important. It’s an important distinction, and it’s absolutely the way it should be. At the end of the day, the final decision should be made by a human. You know, we’re doing some research now where we’re looking at the fortune 100 and. Through that process and saying how, what percentage of them actually do fully like auto reject candidates using AI. And it’s, it’s actually very low, if any, because at the end of the day, a human is going to step in and make that decision. And that’s, and that’s how it should be.

Conor Volpe 35:18
I think one of the phrases that we use at Eightfold is we try really, really hard to have the products that we come out with ultimately boost human potential, right? So, like, forgive me for using a marketing phrase. I am a marketer by trade, but I think there’s, there’s truth to that, right? Like we want, ultimately, the agents, or even some of the AI products that we use and come out with to help people, right, to help recruiters, to help employees, to help candidates. Like, that’s how we see things. And again, like, I know that we’re kind of on the cutting edge. And when I say we, I mean the broader we, the industry is on the cutting edge of some of this stuff. So it’s important to be clear about our definitions, but that’s how we see things at Eightfold, as we want our products to ultimately help the people who are out there using them. So that’s kind of how we see it. So we spent a good amount of time, and that was great. I’m talking about the evolution of the ATS and how it is now in this AI and agentic phase. I think the next thing we want to get into a bit was this, I think there’s been this classic model of, do I go best of breed, or do I kind of go all in with my HCM vendor? And I think something you were finding is that that is shifting a bit. I don’t want to say it’s quite broken, but, like, I don’t think it’s quite as black and white as that used to be. Because I think, as you’re kind of mentioning, the next wave of ATS is to bring this intelligence with them, right? And they do also bring that connectivity. But what did you find, as you were kind of going through then, I think you mentioned this in the report, that it’s not quite as, like, I said, black or white, zero or one, as it used to be with HCM versus best of breed.

Madeline Laurano 37:07
Yeah, it’s completely changed, and it also feels like it’s changed overnight. It always has been like, do I go best of breed? Do I go with our HCM provider? And it feels like it’s it versus TA or HR. And that’s changed a lot. You know, in the past, when we’ve seen, you know, there have been stages like 2007/2008 or we saw new ATS providers kind of emerging in the market out of nowhere, and they were providers that, you know, kind of almost were startups that decided to become ATS providers and develop an ATS and enter this crazy world. That’s not the case anymore. This whole new wave of ATS providers are providers that are platform providers that offer a lot of value through an intelligent model, an experience model, and, you know, moving to an agentic model to say, you know, we are this platform that has done what the ATS cannot do, but it makes sense for us to be an ATS and provide that experience as well. And that’s that’s a big shift from just a bunch of startups entering the market to say, these are established providers that, you know, offer a platform on top of an ATS, or, you know, to integrate with an ATS to say, we can, we can also support this as well in many different in different ways. And then the shift really becomes, okay, am I buying a traditional, best of breed, free provider, or my HCM to say, instead, no, I want more. And I think it’s that, it’s that conversation that’s going to really be changing how companies look at ATS moving forward. I need more. I need more than what a traditional best of breed can do. Because even if I don’t like my large ERP HCM provider, I know I’m not going to like the best of breed either. There’s probably five different people that work on our team that have used most of these providers at different companies and have had issues with them. There’s a lot of the same gaps in those providers that you’re going to see in the traditional HCM, ERP providers to say, I want more and I expect more. I think it’s a very appropriate time in the market to be asking for more, especially as what we talked about earlier. When the prices of the traditional best of breeds and HDM providers are going up, you should expect more. And if that provider is not going to give it to you, we’re seeing a whole new set of providers coming in and saying, “We will.”

Conor Volpe 39:36
And I think this is again, some of the data points that you found in the research, which actually pretty, I think, closely reflects what we had in the poll at the top. But these are still pretty significant gaps that I think people are feeling from the ATS. And to your point, there’s no silver bullet, right? There’s not like, it’s obvious there’s not an obvious best solution, but there are still areas that people would love. It’s. Improved, and I mean, almost 50% calling out scheduling. That’s, again, something that maybe ideally AI and agentic AI could help with. But I think this kind of connects to what you’re talking about with best of breed, versus HCM, versus some of these, like new providers and startups and whatnot. So I don’t know if there was anything else you wanted to go into there, but I thought this kind of dovetailed nicely with what you were getting into.

Madeline Laurano 40:22
I think this just a minute on the scheduling piece, because it’s so interesting to me. The scheduling is a huge frustration. Like, if you can put in your comments in the Q&A, and I’ll read them, I promise. If you are frustrated with scheduling, you are absolutely not alone. This has been something that companies have been dealing with for a very long time. There are providers now that are whole like a category of providers just doing scheduling. You’ve got every ATS trying to tackle scheduling and making big announcements here. You’ve got CRMs doing scheduling. You have, you know, providers. AI providers do scheduling too. But ultimately, at the end of the day, if your hiring managers block off their calendars and won’t allow any time for interviews, that challenge is still going to be there. And I think that’s, you know, I don’t have a solution for that. I don’t have, you know, forecast into how that’s going to change, but it’s almost just more of a validation that that is frustrating and it’s it’s more of a challenge of what’s happening internally than it is with where technology is at in that department, and analytics.

Conor Volpe 41:38
I think finding, having some ability to see the effectiveness of what your team is doing, but also seeing the effectiveness of the tool itself. I’m not surprised to see that up on the list. But then, even as we were kind of talking about the potential for AI and some of these candidate facing functions, right? If you think about candidate engagement and sourcing like those are two ones where, yes, they’re currently gaps. And I wonder if, as things go along and people find more and more ways to use some of these solutions, we will see AI start to address some of the gaps that ATS is currently have that people are feeling in the candidate engagement and sourcing arenas, that’s when I’ll be very curious to kind of monitor.

Madeline Laurano 42:21
Absolutely, yeah. And I think, like we said, like the agentic intelligent model solves for all of these different areas. It really does. And if you’re going to go, let’s just say, as a scenario, you’re going to go either traditional ATS, best of breed, or ERP, whatever it is, and you’ve got these gaps in your ATS, and you’re going to then go out to RFP and look for a scheduling solution, look for people analytics platform that can pull that data together. Look for some type of engagement or experience platform, or CRM, or invest in sourcing solutions. All three of those categories are creeping up to the million dollar deal size area. So you’re not only spending now on your ATS, but now you’ve got to invest in four separate systems that might not integrate with the ATS and are going to cost a lot of money. So why not expect, again, more from your ATS?

Conor Volpe 43:15
And this again, dovetails very nicely with one more piece of data that you found in your report, which is the CRM and ATS investments, right? And I think again, it’s not as black and white as it used to be. I have a best of breed or an HCM approach, and more and more people are figuring out more solutions to add on to their stack. And the one that jumped out to me on this slide was not so much. 35% standalone CRM, not so much. 28% CRM and ATS, but the 15% go, I don’t know, like I just, I use what I use, I suppose, or I bought what I bought. I don’t know how to define it, but I have something right. And I thought that was actually very telling. It kind of goes back to where we started this whole conversation, which is where, like, an ATS kind of a loaded three letter acronym. But ultimately, and you mentioned this, it’s about like, what are you trying to solve with TA, right? Like, break it down to, what are you trying to actually do? What are the goals that you have? And maybe I’m going a little a level or two too deep on this, but that’s how I kind of interpreted the 15% it’s like, I don’t know if I have a CRM. I don’t know if I have an ATS. I do, don’t I? Does it matter at the end of the day? I don’t like it, I don’t know. I would just love to get your take, because that’s thing that stuck out to me, is that that 15% I kind of, my mind started racing, and it might even be higher than that.

Madeline Laurano 44:34
You’re 100% I 100% agree with you. But I think that, like in this, you know, just, I think aligns with what you said, is that companies aren’t using their CRMs. They’re buying these huge systems and spending a lot of money on them, and then they’re not even able to use them because they’re just too complicated. They’re too manual, the traditional CRMs. So I. Think that’s, you know, I think speaks to your point too. It’s like this, I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t even know if it matters. I’m not used to this thing. We’ve had it for six years. We’ve run one campaign in six years. It’s, you know, does it? It doesn’t matter. I don’t even know if we’re using our ATS or another provider. I couldn’t even tell you.

Conor Volpe 45:20
I thought that 15% of my mind started racing. But I thought it was, I thought it was pretty telling. So our last topic for the day, before we try to get some some questions, and again, if we don’t, we don’t go too crazy on this, is we want to talk about, like, all right, looking forward for the folks on the line who consider themselves buyers, right, who consider themselves practitioners like what, what is, ultimately the advice for these folks. And I think one of the questions that we wanted to get into was, if you’re thinking about how to evaluate your investment in your ATS, I think many will use efficiency metrics, right to do so. But as you mentioned, there’s kind of a new paradigm that we talked about right, this evolution of the ATS. And why don’t I put that back up? And it’s probably not best measured through efficiency. People probably need to kind of rethink how they’re measuring their ROI. So how, how do you think folks might need to start kind of reframing the value they get out of the ATS. Do you have any guidance for people who kind of want to get on this journey?

Madeline Laurano 46:29
Yeah, and, I mean, I think efficiency is important, so I wouldn’t even, like, shy away from it, because it’s important, and it’s for some companies, quantifiable and you can share it. But I think, like, if I think about the three kinds of buckets of success or outcomes from what this new ETS should be, it should be efficiency, it should be experience and it should be effective. And there’s a lot of different ways to think about, you know, how to measure those? I mean, experience is the trickier one, but, you know, there’s certainly ways to do that, and that’s a whole webinar in itself. But like, effectiveness, it’s like quality of higher are you thinking about, you know, again, we looked at kind of that, that gap slide, where you seeing all these gaps, like you can actually save money in your organization, if you’re looking at more of an intelligent agentic ATS that can do more for your company and solve for a lot of these challenges or these gaps in your traditional ATS, you’re ultimately saving money in the long run. There’s different ways to really look, I think, at that effectiveness, experience, efficiency model. But I think, you know, it’s really important to do two things like, one, define what success looks like for your organization. Everybody. It’s different. You know, it’s having conversations internally. Look at what’s worked, what hasn’t in the past. What have you not measured? What should you be measuring? And then work with providers like every provider should be able to support you, thinking about, you know, measuring ROI, or thinking about what outcomes are going to get. Look at case studies that they’ve done, look at how they’ve worked with other customers. It shouldn’t feel like you’re just on your own trying to put that together. And a really good provider and a really good connection that you have there should be able to support you in that as well.

Conor Volpe 48:17
I think that the last part you were getting, and I think it is important, because, let’s say that we’ve landed the message right, that the ATS is now in this intelligent and agentic era. I think the kinds of questions that people will be asking of vendors and providers changes. So to your point, having, having the people that are the folks on the line are working with kind of brings some of those stories to them. Are really important. Are there any other questions that you might recommend that some of the leaders on the line ask their vendors to try to evaluate, like the intelligence capabilities or the AI capabilities, or, because I think you’re absolutely right, like asking for case studies, ROI models? Yes. But is there anything else you might like to put in people’s ears? They go, Okay, I’ve got this in the back of my mind. Of my mind as I’m taking a look at my ATS, yeah, it’s important.

Madeline Laurano 49:07
We’re publishing like our CRM index. We’re going to publish our ATS index in a few months, and we look very closely at providers and provide a lot of questions. And I bucket it in three. I love three. I love three. I don’t know why, but I bucket it in three categories again. And the first is like, company, like, ask questions about this company, this provider, the heritage of this provider, what does the leadership team look like? What’s their expertise? Start to ask questions about the product. And that’s not just, you know, so easy to just like, get an RFP or find some template and put it together and send it out, but start to ask questions, especially if AI and this kind of agentic ATS is something that’s important to you. Ask questions about ethical AI frameworks. Ask questions about humans in the loop controls. Ask questions about third party audits, and what the approach is there, see if your vendor is transparent about that information, and. And a lot of you know where AI is being used, and we talked about this use case is screening. There’s a lot of matching that’s happening within an ATS today, and it’s important, and it’s valuable, and there’s a lot of benefits there. But so many providers are not being transparent on how that matching is being done. They’re not providing any explainability. And if you’re looking at matches, and you have absolutely no idea why the first 20 candidates came up as the first 20 candidates, there’s a problem there. So get really critical with your questions around AI, we’ve got a list of questions. If anybody wants them, I’m happy to send them. Providers will work with you on some of those as well. There’s a lot of information out there, but it’s really important. And again, like it’s shocking to me, as we went through these ATS demos, how many of the traditional ATS providers include the matching and zero explainability in that process?

Conor Volpe 50:56
And I think that’s maybe a layer even behind, like, this slide, right? Well, even if something is autonomous, semi autonomous, assistive, the explainability is so important to any of these categories, right? So, like, I think that’s almost like, if there was another line or two under this, it would be, yeah, it’s assistive, but has to explain, like, how it’s helping you. It’s semi autonomous. It has to explain how it’s making its decisions. It’s fully autonomous has to be fully auditable in how or why it made its decisions. Like each step along this, wherever you are in that maturity curve, that explainability is still super, super important. So I think we’ve covered all the topics. I’d love to make sure we get to some more of these questions, because there’s a few in the hopper that makes sense to kind of get into so let’s go ahead and tackle this first one. And someone was asking about, basically, where might candidates engage in this age of AI? Is it a text based interview? Will it be a video chat like, where do we think this will go as more and more agents or AI are doing some of this first hand interviewing with candidates. Is there a world where there’s a video version of me interviewing, you like, it’s kind of, I don’t know, what do you see?

Madeline Laurano 52:11
I think all the above. I mean, we’re seeing already, like the text based and the, you know, the video too. And, you know, I think the big kind of evolution with this has been the voice too, like the, you know, kind of being able to communicate that way. And it can be multiple channels. But I think, like, like any interview or any evolution we’ve seen in that process, I think there needs to be an omni channel approach, whether that’s humans taking the omni channel approach, or whether that’s agents and AI taking an omni channel approach. And so I think all of it, yeah, I think you’re right.

Conor Volpe 52:50
And I think that last part you hit is, is the most important part, which is we still need to reach candidates, wherever they are, in the ways that most resonate with them. And I think part of the promise of AI and agentic AI, and when it’s done well, is it will help you do that ultimately. So we’ll see what kind of form it takes. But I think it’s, it’s wherever, reaching the candidates, wherever they are, and in the way that makes the most sense to them, ultimately, having those options. One of the other questions we got was about, frankly, reimagining modules throughout TA. And we kind of mentioned that there are these blurred lines from the ATS CRM, or just what I use to do my recruiting to do ta. But are there any things that you see the word is reimagined, like, are there any other modules within TA that you see kind of getting reimagined as we talk about this evolution of the ATS, are there other ones, right for some changes?

Madeline Laurano 53:51
Yeah, I love these questions. I think absolutely yes, all of it, everything, I think CRM like we’re seeing. CRM getting reimagined like we’re seeing, we’ve been talking about the interview process quite a bit throughout this I mean, it’s part of the ETS, but also there’s, like, a whole other module or market for interviewing, and that’s being completely reimagined. The assessment world is being re-imagined. Sourcing is absolutely being reimagined by, you know, happening now through AI that’s absolutely the future of sourcing and recruitment marketing. So I think everything, it feels like everything’s being reimagined right now, even onboarding, like, and I’ve told this Conor, you’ve heard this already too, like, when we do research to new hires on like, what is a great, you know, new hire experience, or what is not a great new hire experience. And the number one stress point that comes out in the surveys we’ve done is pre covid, and it’s happening again now. What is lunch like? What happens at lunch? Do I bring my lunch? Do I buy lunch? Is my manager taking me out to lunch? There’s a financial impact because lunch is expensive, and I don’t want to. Food, and there’s a social impact, because I don’t nobody, anybody at this new company, and I don’t want to sit alone when I’m eating my lunch. So, you know, to have that answered through a conversation, through AI, versus me getting anxiety all evening the night before, or sending an email to my manager the night before and asking a question that might not feel like something I want to ask, is life changing. So I think everything’s being re-imagined now too, and I don’t think that means you need to look at your TA process or the technology you’re using to throw it out the door right now. I think everything’s changing, and right now, you’ve got options, and that’s a great place to be in. There’s options to improve the experience, to see better outcomes in the way that you’ve been recruiting, and better technology to do it than we’ve seen in the past. So doesn’t mean you need to overhaul or feel overwhelmed. It means when you create your process and when you’re going through your transformation, the options that you need are going to be there, and they’re getting better and better and better.

Conor Volpe 56:04
We’ve only got a few minutes left, so I think hopefully we have time for at least this last question. But I really like this one that we saw, which was the topic of, what if a candidate uses an AI to, like, assist their resume? Right? Like, how, how should, I guess, the question is, like, how should we think about it? Why wouldn’t a candidate do that, or an applicant do that rather, and does that impact the hiring? What are the knock on effects of that? And I think it’s an interesting topic. Like, do you have, do you have your two cents on that?

Madeline Laurano 56:39
Yeah, I definitely do. And I know we’re in agreement on this, I think candidates should be using AI. It would be silly. I think if we expected that, they wouldn’t. But there’s, you know, I think we’re going to see it more and more. It’s not going anywhere. I think companies are getting more used to this idea that candidates are going to be using AI through the process. But there’s a big distinction between candidates using AI to be able to help them articulate their value better or their experience better. And there’s a big difference between candidate fraud. They’re not the same thing. And that’s the tricky piece, because candidate fraud is very real. It’s a huge challenge right now, and it’s a huge challenge on a very minor level when, you know, individuals or bots are kind of involved, and then it’s a huge deal on a very global, broader level, when there’s issues with security. So, you know, I think making that distinction between candidates should be using AI. And you know, we’re gonna see more transparency around that, and we have to think about the fact that they’re gonna use AI in their jobs as well.

Conor Volpe 57:51
And candidate fraud, yeah, I think where, where we land on it is roughly the same, right, where it’s like candidates absolutely should be using AI to enhance their resumes, but ultimately, hopefully, what that makes the resume is better able to be parsed by the systems it’s uploaded into, and also better for you and I, if we were hiring managers to read it and figure out what who this person is, the skills they have and the impact they’ll be able to have on the organization. But ultimately, to your point, there’s a big difference between making a resume more readable, more digestible, more impactful, and then maybe saying things that aren’t true. So that’s the part that there is the distinction, but even in that ideally, the systems that we’re using have are, frankly, are smart enough to be able to sniff out, hey, look, it’s unlikely that Conor knows Portuguese. I know he said he’s fluent on his resume, but we haven’t seen too many people with his background, the positions he’s had, and the places he’s lived, no fluent Portuguese. So maybe worth a question in the interview when you get a chance to sit down with him like fluent Portuguese. So that’s the kind of thing that systems can still call out, is if there’s something that’s unlikely that a candidate has, you can still raise that flag, and that is a way to even if someone is a victim of an innocent thing, like a hallucination, right, that they now put in their resume and didn’t catch it, ideally, a system or even a recruiter smart enough to kind of pick that out, but that is all we have time for today. Madeline, I really appreciate this, and I hope the audience does too. You were kind enough to put some ways to get in contact with you here as well. If anybody has any follow up questions and wants to hear more about the report, they can get in contact with you there. But again, I just want to say thank you to everybody for taking time out of your day. Madeline. Any last words for anybody?

Madeline Laurano 59:38
No, I love this conversation too. Conor went by very quickly, but I appreciate you and inviting me to be part of this webinar. And thank you to everyone for attending and the great questions. Thank you.

Conor Volpe 59:54
It was our absolute pleasure. All right, take care. Everyone. Bye.