5 Pillar Accomplishments I’m Thankful For This Year

November…it’s the month that we’ve become used to reading a number of “what I’m thankful for” posts. So, I know it might seem a little cliche that I’m writing one of my own, but I’m using it as an excuse to reflect on all the great things the Pillar team has achieved this year. I don’t take the time to sit back and reflect often enough, so here goes…here’s 5 Pillar accomplishments I’m thankful for this year.

1.) A Number of Customers Onboarded

This year, which has been a tight year for many HR tech companies, we’ve brought on more customers than we ever have before as interview intelligence continues to establish itself as a “must have” platform for TA teams…from those looking to implement structured interviews to those struggling to receive feedback from interviewers in a timely manner and beyond.

Not only am I excited by the number of new teams that are using Pillar, but I’m equally as excited about the feedback we receive about the impact our AI platform is making on their hiring process. Here’s a few snippets of what some of that more recent feedback has been: 

• “Recording interviews has been a game-changer for us. Going back to the tape on candidate responses has allowed us to make hiring decisions based on real data, not gut feeling.”
  
  
• “85% of interview feedback is now submitted in 48 hours or less. Being able to collect high quality candidate feedback in real time has positively affected our time to hire. The faster we receive feedback, the faster we can move candidates through the process.”
  
  
• “We know that structured interviews are much more reliable for predicting job success. Pillar’s Interview Copilot has enabled us to consistently administer structured interviews, providing a fair and equitable interview process to every candidate.”

2.) A Record Number of Product Releases

Brainstorming with the team on how we can continue to bring new features to our users is one of the best parts of my job. A lot of great ideas have come out of our product roadmap sessions, and throughout the year, we released many of them including:

• AI-Generated Interview Summaries
  Summaries find the most critical moments/clips from an interview. They come in outline, Q&A, or write-up form, providing more flexibility when consuming and sharing what was discussed in every interview.
  
  
• Interview Insights Center
  Making the right hiring decisions is paramount to building a thriving and successful team. The Insights Center provides hiring teams with everything they need to run a successful interview process...because after all, great teams start with great interviews. Insights include interviewer talk time, candidate sentiment, interview guide completion, and more. Check out the insights here.
  
  
• Interviewer Coaching
  Pillar detects and flags potential moments of bias or concern within interviews…then proactively suggests adjustments that could be made so future interviews can be more fair and equitable. The goal is to coach your team and help them grow as interviewers - leading to better candidate experiences. 
  ‍

There’s a lot more on the horizon for 2024 that I can’t wait to share with you.

3.) Launching the AI Skim

Over the summer as I was out speaking to hiring teams, one of the biggest questions I heard was..."As a talent leader, how do I best use AI in my business?". At that time, I thought it would be helpful to put together an AI news roundup that pulled together the latest insights and updates on all things AI to keep talent acquisition and recruiting leaders at the forefront of such a rapidly evolving landscape.

So, we launched the bi-monthly AI Skim where I always share the top 5 articles that I think will be most helpful to readers. We just published the tenth edition last week (I’ll link it here if you’re interested in taking a look). Over the past few months, I've enjoyed all the great feedback I've received from all of you and always remain eager to hear how else I can be helpful as you all think about implementing AI across your organizations.

4.) Exhibiting at RecFest

We attended a lot of great events this year (Transform, Unleash, HR Tech, etc), but nothing tops the US’s first ever RecFest in Nashville. This is the first event we’ve made a big splash at, and I have to say our team killed it. From decorating cowboy hats and making friendship bracelets to serving Pillar Punch and snapping pictures in front of our flower wall, we were proud to be a part of such an exciting event within the TA community.

5.) Welcoming Amazing Webinar Guests

One of the things our team prides ourselves on is delivering high quality webinar content, and we can’t do this without amazing guests. I’m really proud of the lineup of speakers we had this year and know our audience walked away with a ton of great takeaways from each and every session.

I’ve got a long list of people to thank here, but I’m super appreciative to Matt Charney, William Tincup, Cara Brennan Allamano (Lattice), Emily Zahuta (Lattice), Caitlin Connors (iCIMS), George LaRocque, Gerry Crispin, Tim Sackett, Q Hamirani (Paper), Torin Ellis, Rocki Howard (Diversology), Israel Gutierrez (former Axios), and members of the Crunchyroll people team for joining us this year. You can binge watch all of our webinars on our YouTube channel here. I’m looking forward to welcoming even more amazing guests next year!

There’s so much to be thankful for this year, and everything I’ve mentioned today wouldn’t be possible without the rockstar team I have behind me. We continually inspire each other to move fast and achieve great things, and we’re happy to play a role in helping businesses build better teams.

I hope this inspires you to think about what you're thankful for during this holiday season, and I’d love to hear about it! Send me a DM here.

Wishing you an amazing Thanksgiving break ahead,

Mark Simpson
CEO & Founder