(00:00:05) - Welcome to The HR Tech Spotlight podcast. I'm Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. The HR technology market is crowded, and we know it can be hard to find the best software solutions for your business in the sea of sameness. On this podcast, we shine a spotlight on some of the best up and coming technology options out there. Check it out if you are interested in learning about new, innovative solutions available in the market. And if you are with an HR tech company and interested in being considered for a guest spot. Stay tuned for details at the end of the show.
(00:00:45) - Welcome to the HR Tech Spotlight. This time we are taking a look into Fountain and all-in-one high-volume hiring platform that empowers enterprises to find the right people through smart, fast and seamless recruiting. Throughout the candidate journey, the platform enables companies to find, qualify and convert more applicants to accelerate high-volume hiring. I'm excited to have Alicia Hunt, vice president of marketing for Fountain, joining me today to talk about the platform.
(00:01:13) - Hello, Alicia.
(00:01:14) - Hi, Deanna. Thanks for having me on the podcast.
(00:01:17) - Yes, the pleasure is all mine. So let's start out talking about your background in the HR tech space.
(00:01:25) - Yeah, absolutely., you know, I've been working in B2B tech, for about 15 years now across companies, large and small., and I actually joined Fountain a couple of years ago, and I was really inspired by the mission of the company. Our mission is to open opportunities for the global workforce, and I was really excited about the software that they were building that focuses specifically on hourly or frontline workforce., if you think about the hiring process for hourly workers, that process is really different than how it would be for hiring for salary or knowledge worker roles. That process is much more straightforward, you know, can you show up on Monday? Can you pass a background check and can you can you provide a driver's license? It could be that simple. So I was really inspired by the mission and the work that Fountain's doing and excited to tell the story, to the broader market.
(00:02:17) - Speaking of telling that story, tell us a little bit more about what Fountain does. Obviously, I, you know, gave a little intro that doesn't do justice to all of the functionality that your solution brings to the market.
(00:02:29) - Yeah. Fountain is a solution for frontline workforce. Our core solution is really rooted in the recruitment and hiring of frontline workers. But we also offer a lot of solutions that focus on post-hire around onboarding, compliance and retention., a recent jobs report that I looked at estimated that there's 78 million hourly workers in the US right now, and that's more than half of all the workers that we see in the country right now. And these are people that stock shelves, you know, deliver packages. Our cashiers at stores, our cooks, and all of these people are essential to keeping the economy moving forward., some of our customers are Sweetgreen and Stitch Fix and we help and some we have two of the largest, delivery and logistics companies in the world., and all of that helps them hire people faster so they can keep their, their operations staffed and running smoothly.
(00:03:24) - What is a big challenge or problem that you're seeing facing HR departments today, specifically for the type of companies that you work with?
(00:03:34) - A lot of people, come to us thinking that they have a sourcing or an applicant volume problem. They think, you know, we're both marketers, right? You think about the marketing funnel. It's kind of similar to the hiring funnel. Yeah. You think if I just spend more money on job boards and put more people into the funnel, I'm gonna I'm gonna, you know, more leads are going to come out at the bottom., it's the same with hiring, right? So if I just spend a ton on job more, it's automatically going to mean that I hire people faster when we actually look at the conversion throughout that hiring funnel. So, you know, making sure that you're meeting those hourly workers where they are on a mobile device, 86% of people now applying for hourly roles are using their phone. You know, back, you know, 20 years ago, it might have been you walk into a fast food restaurant and you asked for a piece of paper, and maybe you talk to the hiring manager, maybe you don't.
(00:04:28) - , but now we see that hourly workers are applying on their phone, but they're also applying to 15 to 20 jobs at a time. So they're looking for someone that's going to hire them as quickly as possible. They're looking to get to that next paycheck. So really making sure that we're optimizing that experience for that end candidate so they can get to that job in that paycheck faster.
(00:04:49) - Yeah, that makes sense. And I love how you compare it to the marketing funnel, because if you stop and think about it, you know, when you're in recruiting employees, it absolutely is a marketing play there. There are so many options for them to go work at, and you want the best of the best to come and apply for your organization. You've got to do something to be able to drive that activity. And like you said, throwing more dollars at it doesn't necessarily accomplish that because they're looking at other options. And they do have options these days.
(00:05:23) - Plenty of options. Yeah. And there's so many open roles now.
(00:05:26) - And I feel like. The power is in the candidate. Now they they have so many options of jobs they can apply for and so many different types of work that they can do. And so it's really about making sure that you're creating the right experience and helping them find the right job for them as quickly as possible.
(00:05:44) - And obviously the easier it is for them to apply for that job, the better, right? Because to your point, we used to walk into a McDonald's and ask for a paper application and fill it out on the spot, or take it home and fill it out and bring it back. And that's not the way the world works anymore. Now it's an instant like, apply, get an interview. You know, maybe even same day you got a job. You don't need to worry about the other 20 applications you already sent out.
(00:06:11) - Exactly. And then, you know, a good example of that is a company, a customer called fetch. They do package delivery., and they adopted some of, you know, our, our Fountain ATS as well as our, our conversational AI tool.
(00:06:25) - And it's helped them hire people in like less than eight minutes. Which is crazy because like sometimes it takes days if not weeks for customers to hire people.
(00:06:35) - That's crazy. And I just think of the time savings for those hiring managers who, you know, previously had to sort through everything and make those calls. And that's a lot of work.
(00:06:46) - It's a lot of work, especially when you think about hourly roles at such a high volume, when you're looking at hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of candidates that you have to sort through, you want to make sure that you're optimizing those hiring workflows and making them as efficient as possible, and empowering those recruiters to spend human time on those meaningful moments around interviews or onboarding or getting people trained up like you don't need them to be manually scheduling interviews with thousands of people using their time.
(00:07:17) - , absolutely. I mean, that would be a nightmare, right?, so when you think about Fountain and the market and the options that are out there, what would you say is your company's unique point of view or differentiation in the market?
(00:07:32) - Our differentiation is really around thinking about hiring for frontline different than hiring for salaried roles.
(00:07:38) - So every organization has an applicant tracking system, and they think that one size fits all, fits all is appropriate for all types of workers. But if you think about, like I mentioned, hiring for hourly, that process is fundamentally different and it needs to be simplified and optimized for those candidates., but it also needs to be customized by role and location. So if you think about hiring a cashier in San Francisco is going to be very different than hiring for a cashier in rural Montana. So you want to make sure that you're building the right workflows that not only support the candidate experience, but also support the type of role that you're hiring to make you, you know, your business more efficient and get people staffed in the right places you know, as quickly as possible.
(00:08:26) - If I'm a hiring manager and I've got thousands of open positions, like, what should I be thinking about as I'm looking at managing that whole process today?
(00:08:41) - It's really about looking at the type of role and the location and what are those needs based on those roles and locations.
(00:08:51) - So making sure that you're building out the workflow that's specific to that, to those hiring processes., and. Making sure that you're focused on efficiency, within each of those steps. So identifying what are the essential qualification steps that are needed for that role. And then how where can you automate process to make it to move that candidate as quickly through the funnel. So the recruiter saves as much time and can route those roles to the right locations.
(00:09:28) - And what type of companies would you say are the perfect fit for your solution? You've obviously talked a little bit about some of the types of organizations you work with, but let's let's look at this like bigger picture.
(00:09:39) - We actually support, both enterprise organizations across all different verticals, delivery, logistics, retail, food and beverage, health care, surprisingly, a really big industry for us. There's a constant demand for traveling nurses in home, adult home care., so yeah, we we definitely support all kinds of industries that are hiring at a high volume.
(00:10:04) - And what would you consider a high volume?
(00:10:09) - , hundreds, thousands. We support customers that are hiring hundreds of thousands, you know, throughout seasonality, like if you had a package delivered over the holidays, it was probably, you know, that person was probably drowning., and today we've helped, our customers process over 90 million applicants and help them hire 14 million, people around the globe. So it's really at a high scale.
(00:10:37) - What impact have you seen organizations that work with your company experience? So what kind of results are coming out of organizations that are working with Foton?
(00:10:47) - You know, one of the key KPIs that a lot of our customers look, look at are going to be around decreasing time to hire. So a good example of that is Bojangles. They're a fast food restaurant based in the South., we help them manage 750 of their restaurants. And through the power of automation and Fountain, we help them decrease their time to hire by 80%. So before Fountain, it was taking them, on average, 30 days to hire people in their restaurants.
(00:11:13) - And after Fountain, we brought that down to five days, which is just incredible when you're trying to staff those many, that many operations., and we also help them identify those efficiency points throughout the hiring funnel and reduce their job board spend by 86%. So it's really made an impact on not only ensuring that those locations are staff, but improving their bottom line when it comes to recruitment.
(00:11:38) - What is the future vision for Fountain?
(00:11:43) - We want to become that full-suite solution, that platform for frontline workforce. So everything that is specific to hourly work, we want to make sure that Fountain helps support that, whether it's recruitment and hiring, onboarding, engagement surveys, making sure that employees are connected and they they know what they need to do to be successful at their job., even full lifecycle is maybe they hired for the season. They can come back the following holiday season and work for that place because they're already trained and qualified for that role. So anything frontline is really the future for Fountain.
(00:12:21) - And what things should someone purchasing this type of technology take into consideration as they're evaluating the options that are out there, including phone.
(00:12:32) - I think people should consider.
(00:12:34) - , that hiring for frontline is different. A one size fits all solution isn't going to work for hourly workers the same way it's going to work for, knowledge or salaried workers., and also thinking about a solution that can easily integrate to your current tech stack. You know, I was talking to an analyst recently and they said on average, HR teams have anywhere from 7 to 78 different software tools, which blew my mind., but looking for things that easily integrate to your tech stack, complement your existing process, but also, help you optimize efficiency for the types of roles that you're, you know, you're requiring to hire for in your business.
(00:13:17) - What would you say are the biggest hesitations that you're seeing companies have when it comes to implementing, or a solution similar to it?
(00:13:27) - We see a lot of hesitation., interestingly, around I, I think there's still some hesitation to adopt.
(00:13:38) - They're not quite sure of how it can actually help their process, but we found that I can be super helpful when it comes to optimizing that efficiency. So automatically scheduling interviews, writing job descriptions for you, pulling market pay rates for you dependent on that area. All of those things can help free up recruiter time and help them be more efficient and spend time on, things that are going to be really meaningful and impactful, rather than the mundane task work that recruiters are faced with every day.
(00:14:10) - So what final thoughts do you want to leave our audience with?
(00:14:14) - Final thoughts? I think, just keeping the end candidate experience in mind and making sure that you're building process that not only makes it easier for your recruiters, but makes the entire process easier for your candidates. Keeping them engaged, keeping them happy, and keeping them excited about your brand is going to ensure that they want to stay longer and support your business.
(00:14:36) - Excellent. Where can our listeners go to learn more about Fountain Fountain.com? All righty.
(00:14:44) - Alicia, thanks so much for joining me on the HR tech Spotlight today. That's a wrap for this episode. Be sure to check out Foton. The links will be posted in the show notes. Have a good day, everyone.
(00:15:01) - Thanks for listening.
(00:15:02) - To this episode.
(00:15:03) - Of the HR Tech Spotlight podcast, where we showcase some of the best up and coming HR technology options in the market. If you are an HR tech company leader who would like to be. For a guest spot on this program. Please contact me via GrowthMode Marketing.
(00:15:21) - Or reach out to me Deanna Shimota on LinkedIn. And if you found this show informative, subscribe to. And leave a review.
(00:15:30) - This is Deanna with GrowthMode Marketing signing off. Thanks for listening. We hope you'll tune in again next time.