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Growth by Design Talent's Newsletter · Oct 30, 2025

A framework for intentionally building your tech stack

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Growth by Design Talent · Growth by Design Talent's Newsletter

To our Talent Community,

From our informal conversations with TA leaders, it’s clear that teams have an efficiency imperative. Talent leaders are being asked to do more with the resources they already have. And the numbers back it up—in our recent benchmarking survey with Gem, 87% of companies said they expect headcount growth but 39% of recruiting teams will stay flat or shrink.

At the same time, executives insist that teams be AI-forward by the end of 2026. (We’ve written about this before!). We also saw in the survey that 43% of teams manage 4-6 recruiting tools, yet 61% of respondents still cite lack of automation as their number one pain point. We’re at the precipice of many more AI tools, and the ones that are already on the market might not play nicely with the other tools in your tech stack. Even if you’ve been using a tool for a few months, the ROI may not be clear yet, and the market is changing dramatically every six months or so.

All of these factors contribute hugely to the challenge of tool selection. In some spaces, like interview intelligence, there might only be two viable choices. But for something like top of funnel app review, there are many options with similar capabilities.

The two most important questions that you need to align on before starting to evaluate tools are: what pain points are you solving for? And what criteria will you use to determine if a tool is the right fit to solve that specific problem?

Before diving into this framework, we encourage you to pause and zoom out. It can be tempting, when you hear that all of your peers are using a particular tool, to head right to procurement and start lobbying to buy it. But, it’s important to first define your particular use case, audience, and points of friction that need to be addressed. Taking a beat to get clarity on the needs will make it easier to choose what’s best for your team.

Step 1: Start with business problems, not tool categories.

Where are you seeing the most pain in your recruiting process? Where are your recruiters, sourcers, recruiting coordinators, and other talent leaders spending the most time that’s leading to very little ROI? These are the fundamental questions we recommend starting with.

There are several ways to get this information, some more time-consuming than others.

  • Go on a “listening tour” with hiring managers, interviewers, and recruiters. Ask them live: what are your pain points? What are some of your most repetitive tasks? And what do you wish you could dedicate more time to?

  • If you’re a leader, get into the weeds and own one requisition to understand the pain points yourself.

  • Look at your metrics, like time to hire and time to fill. See if you can find other places where bottlenecks exist.

  • Map your current state process to identify if inefficiencies are a process, technology, or enablement problem.

  • If you have the capacity, conduct a time study to surface insights into areas of lag and wasted time.

Once you’ve identified what your problem areas are, prioritize which ones would give you the biggest leverage if they were solved. Then, begin to identify what types of tools create solutions against those problems.

Step 2: Build your technical requirements list.

Before evaluating vendors, nail down your must-haves and why they matter for your team. This will enable you to head into a demo and ask the hard questions that will get you the information you need to make an informed decision. Your requirements should cover:

  • Integrations: Does it connect natively with your ATS, HRIS, and calendar system? You’re trying to eliminate manual work, not create new friction points.

  • Security, legal, and privacy compliance: This is often where AI tools hit roadblocks. Involve your legal and security teams early. If your company doesn’t allow certain AI capabilities, you need to know before investing time in vendor conversations. (More on AI in the next step as well!)

  • Budget: Set your range upfront. Remember, the cheapest tool that doesn’t solve your most time-intensive problem will cost you more in the long run.

  • Automation depth: What level of automation do you actually need? Full end-to-end? Assisted workflows? Be specific.

  • Support and scalability: How does the vendor handle support as you grow or need different features? How do they plan to scale? How willing is the vendor to partner with you on influencing the roadmap?

  • Implementation and enablement: How much lift is required to get your team trained and adopting the tool?

  • Global needs: If you hire internationally, you’ll want to check on GDPR compliance, data retention policies, language support, and whether the tool fits local norms.

Step 3: Align on AI principles.

A lot of teams we’re in touch with need AI usage principles that are specific to recruiting, with an eye towards the experience for candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers. Whether you’ve got principles already, or are still forming them, remember that AI is a co-pilot, not the pilot. You’re the decision-maker.

We recommend thinking about graduated autonomy: AI can assist at the front end (screening, scheduling, sequencing), but humans make the final calls on candidates. If you’re drafting up principles from scratch, start brainstorming on these questions:

  • What do you want candidates to know, do, and feel?

  • What do you want recruiters and hiring managers to know, do, and feel about your team’s use of AI?

This creates your principles, which might sound like “AI tools must create a level playing field for all candidates” or “We’re transparent about our AI usage.” As part of the principles, you should define your ‘watchouts’—think of these as the ways AI could go sideways and damage your candidate experience or hiring outcomes. These potential pitfalls could include having silent automation that would erode trust or pruning your funnel too early and missing some excellent candidates.

When you go into vendor assessment, you’re going to ask questions based on these principles and watchouts. Things like: Does this tool let us train it to avoid over-pruning our funnel? Can we be transparent about AI usage with candidates? Does the tool make decisions or just provide recommendations?

Step 4: Weigh your options.

So, you’re ready to start taking meetings and seeing demos with vendors. Now what?

  • Solicit recommendations from your peers. We saw in the Gem survey that 82% of respondents trust peer recommendations!

  • Ask specific (not open-ended!) questions. Instead of “which ATS do you like?” share your specific use case, budget constraint, and other needs. What worked for your peer’s tiny, pre-seed start-up might not work for your series C company. Ask things like, what drove your decision? How are you measuring ROI? What pain points were you trying to solve for?

  • Check off product features from your needs assessment for every tool. Which tool has the most checked?

  • See if there’s a pilot or sandbox option—if you can try out the tool live with your team for at least a week, this can be really helpful.

Step 5: Pick your metrics, pilot if possible, and then evaluate success.

We couldn’t write this without talking about using data to drive your decision. If you’re able to pilot a tool, you’ll want to know if it works by the end of that pilot. But, are you going to decide based on vibes, ad-hoc feedback from your team, or specific metrics? Where and when it’s possible, we always recommend collecting data and taking note of the current state, so you can compare success (or failure!) post-pilot.

Think back to the pain points you’re solving for, and establish metrics that will give you a baseline to measure impact over time. For instance, if the time it takes to schedule interviews is the problem you’re solving for, make sure your team is tracking the amount of time they’re spending to schedule interviews both before the pilot and while testing out the tool.

The AI tooling landscape will keep evolving, but your framework doesn’t have to change. When you anchor on real problems and clear principles, you’ll make smart decisions no matter what shiny new tool hits the market next quarter.

—

Mike, Adam, Jill, with special thanks to Allison Slater Rasch, Katie Wagner, and Caroline Kessler for their contributions to this month’s newsletter.

Guissu Baier joined GoFundMe as their Chief People Officer!

Thomas Evangelista joined Zip as their VP, Business Recruiting & Recruiting Operations!

  • CodeSignal’s Beyond (November 6, 2025 | San Francisco) Step into the future of people strategy at CodeSignal Beyond. Don’t miss this one-day event packed with playbooks, ideas, and connections.

    • Register here and save 50% with the code GBD50

Behind the Growth delivers the mentorship conversations that usually stay behind closed doors – practical wisdom from leaders who’ve built the talent functions we all study and admire. We’ve dropped two new episodes since our last newsletter:

In Episode 3, we hear from Megan Panzer Kageleiry, whose path took her from merchandising at major retailers to leading people strategy at Bain Capital Ventures. She shares her simple yet powerful framework to evaluate new opportunities, as well as the question that reframed her entire approach to career decisions.

Episode 4 features Ambra Benjamin, whose journey took her from retail at Nordstrom to VP of Global Recruiting at Datadog. Learn about her approach to sustainable leadership through sporadic time off and no-meeting days, along with how she navigated moving from peer to manager.

Listen now on Apple and Spotify.

Did we miss your career change? Let us know: hello@gbdtalent.com

📚 Playbooks

  • Your Guide to Evaluating and Selecting an ATS: A guide with helpful process frameworks, and evaluation templates to help you make an informed decision about selecting the ATS that is the best fit for your company.

  • Navigating an IPO: A guide to help you navigate your team through the IPO process. It includes tools and tactics to prepare your team, proactively communicate to pending candidates, and evolve your recruiting operations to support the shift in business.

Credit for preview/thumbnail image: Rohit Choudhari on Unsplash

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