The Power Of Obsession

Hello and happy Friday!

Good morning to everyone who has yet to use the statement “revisit after the New Year.” If no one’s told you yet, you’re the glue that’s keeping your company together.

If the name Chris Connors doesn’t ring a bell, don’t be alarmed. I’m the co-founder of candidate.fyi, an all-in-one candidate engagement suite that helps you create a better hiring experience for your candidates and increases efficiency for your recruiting team.

I wanted to start this email by getting you caught up to speed: Since our big public launch in October, I’ve heard several candidate.fyi customers, community members, and investors tell me they want to follow along in our journey.

So, I thought this would be a great chance to revive the company’s newsletter and have a direct conversation with one of our most important stakeholders: you.

In this first issue, I want to share the history of Amazon’s customer-centric philosophy and how it inspired much of what we’re doing in the recruiting space today.

Let’s get into it…

CANDIDATE.FYI CORNER

COMING SOON

During our launch about a month ago, we announced our upcoming end-to-end scheduling product. Now, we’re just weeks away from the rollout… And we couldn’t be more excited.

Our next product release is going to eliminate one of the most time-consuming processes for recruiting teams. We’ve spent months collecting feedback from Talent leaders and looking for opportunities to improve on the solutions that already exist.

From that, we built a new feature from the ground up. Coupled with our candidate portal and pulses, it’s bringing every candidate engagement touchpoint under one roof.

Keep your eyes out for an announcement in the coming weeks!

THE POWER OF OBSESSION

When Jeff Bezos first founded Amazon, he shared his lofty mission with the world: To become the Earth’s most customer-centric company.

This philosophy is so deeply ingrained in Amazon’s company culture that, during most meetings with senior leadership, Bezos would keep an empty chair at the conference table to remind attendees of “the most important person in the room.”

This way, the customer would always “have a seat at the table.”

Despite its popularity today, this doctrine of customer centricity wasn’t popular when it first became a core pillar at Amazon. If you go back and watch those old interviews with Bezos, you’ll see a young, enthusiastic founder speaking passionately about his customer obsession. But, also in those videos, sitting across from Bezos is often a skeptical journalist asking questions about the viability of a business with such a seemingly-outlandish company culture.

But, now, over 20 years later, the skeptics have been proven wrong. Not only has Amazon’s customer-centricity produced one of the most valuable companies in the world, but this philosophy has been immortalized in business textbooks, case studies, and startup lore.

This philosophy—this obsession—is something that my co-founder and I have always deeply admired.

How much could you accomplish as a business if you were obsessive over the experience of a single stakeholder?

When we started this company, we decided to find out. 

In the early days building candidate.fyi, our team decided that we would hold the same reverence for our most important stakeholder: The candidate.

Every product feature, every web page, every internal process was designed to help our customers create the best candidate experience possible.

And, almost a full year into this massive endeavor, we’re beginning to see the true impact of this philosophy.

We’ve watched our users leverage candidate.fyi to build extraordinary experiences for their candidates, customized to individual industries and roles. The result?

When recruiting teams obsess over their candidates, their candidates obsess over them.

I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard from TA leaders where a candidate was so impressed with the interviewing process, they went out of their way to publicly praise the company, even if the candidate didn’t get the role. 

So, how do you replicate this “obsession” in your own recruiting process?

• Listen to what candidates value and seek their feedback on their experiences

• Think objectively to make sound, fact-based decisions

• Create new value for candidates, without being asked

• Delight candidates by exceeding their expectations

After all, going above and beyond for your candidates has countless second- and third-order effects. Take one of our customers, Tropic. 

After completely reinventing their hiring process, Tropic now boasts some incredible accomplishments:

• They have a 62% candidate survey completion rate (40% increase from their existing point solution survey tool)

• They have a 5-star rating on Glassdoor

• They’ve received mountains of positive feedback and testimonials

• They’ve received several awards for “Best Workplace”

And, most importantly, they have some of the happiest employees I’ve ever met.

It’s no wonder they’re absolutely crushing it as a company. They focus EVERYTHING on the candidate, employees, and customers.

Want to be like Bezos? Choose obsession.

COMMUNITY RESOURCES

In this last section, I plan to add helpful resources, interesting stories, funny social media posts, and extracurricular reading that I think you might enjoy.

What We’re Reading: Talent Trailblazer recently wrote a blog post explaining why candidate.fyi is shaping the future of recruiting. I’m a little biased, but I think they might be onto something 👀
You can read the post here!

We Released Our Data: If you didn’t know, candidate.fyi recently conducted a meta analysis of all our data related to candidate surveys and the interview experience. We expected a certain outcome, but what we found blew our greatest expectations out of the water. See it for yourself.

And finally… Introducing candidate.fyi’s first Employee of the Month:

A Message From Our CEO, Kyle

As I sit down to share a few thoughts with you, I can’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of excitement and exhaustion – all for the best reasons.

Firstly, I’m thrilled to announce the newest addition to my life – a baby boy who joined our family just four weeks ago. Needless to say, the lack of sleep has become a new normal, but the joy this little one brings makes every bleary-eyed moment worthwhile.

In other news, our team recently achieved a significant milestone. Last month, we proudly unveiled candidate.fyi to the public. The journey to this launch has been nothing short of remarkable, filled with tireless efforts and unwavering dedication from our incredible team.

At candidate.fyi, we’re not just satisfied with ordinary accomplishments. We’re pushing boundaries and developing a game-changing product that promises to redefine how businesses engage with prospective candidates. The intersection of innovation and candidate experience is where we thrive, and we’re dedicated to reimagining this landscape.

The road ahead is both challenging and promising, but with the passion and commitment of our team, I’m confident in our ability to revolutionize the industry.

Thank you for being a part of this journey with us. Your support means the world as we strive to make a lasting impact in the world of recruitment and candidate experience.

Until next time,

Chris Connors
Co-Founder, 
candidate.fyi 

Want to learn more about what we’re building at candidate.fyi? We’d love to show you!