The philosophy behind BambooHR’s product strategy focused on “trying to make the complex simple” when thinking about the end user. We asked BambooHR’s Product Manager, Jonny Rejholec what this means in practice.
Complex calendars: BambooHR’s dream to free users of manual scheduling burden
"Most people get into HR because they care about people. They’re interested in helping their companies become better places to work,” shares Jonny. However, scheduling places a significant burden on users, who spend not just hours, but days per week on it. On the other end were candidates, often left waiting weeks for their interviews, or worse, ghosted because companies were crushed under the administrative fatigue of scheduling.
This did not fit with the picture BambooHR had in mind for their users. “Part of our philosophy is really leaning into helping companies be more strategic, even with their operational tasks and HR to try to improve that employee experience.” Upon realizing candidate experience is inseparable from smooth scheduling, BambooHR set course to address this.
"People’s days are managed by their calendars,” explained Jonny. “One of the greatest gaps right at the top of our product was scheduling." That’s why giving users the ability to take better control of them was the basis of BambooHR’s mission to transform their scheduling offering. With this in mind, a partnership to add a more streamlined scheduling functionality within the BambooHR environment was a natural next step in a bid to improve recruiter experience.
Enter Cronofy’s integration.
Streamlined scheduling for recruiters without having to leave their ATS
BambooHR’s product focus has been putting emphasis on improving their hiring module as a priority to alleviate the effects of scheduling burden for both companies and candidates.
Scheduling is a core part of the hiring process from your first phone screen, all the way through to doing your reference calls.
"Throughout the hiring process, there was this need to be able to schedule with various individuals involved. It was a top need if we were going to make our customers' lives better and easier," added Jonny.
Embedding a good candidate experience throughout the product was at the forefront of what BambooHR wanted to deliver to its customers and enable them to hire better.
“We know that a candidate who has a good experience is more likely to accept an offer,” Jonny explained simply. "And a candidate who has a poor experience is less likely to accept an offer, but also more likely to talk about it. In the short term, that hurts because you lost that candidate. In the long term, it really hurts because they talk about it online, they share it and it hurts your employer brand."
Cronofy’s Candidate Expectations research shows that candidates value respect for their time above all else, and perceive disorganized interview processes to be a precursor of things to come.
As an embedded scheduler partner, BambooHR joined forces with Cronofy to drive the feel and outcome for the implementation to deliver exactly what their users needed.
The partnership with Cronofy was a natural fit and allowed BambooHR to add key features to their offering at a quicker pace without having to bear the engineering burden. “We didn't want to do all that heavy lifting on our own. Cronofy has a great support staff, it has the tech, and the tech is easy to work with,” shared Jonny. “The user experience is great. All those things really aligned with what we were looking for. Cronofy has not only the simple features, but also the advanced features for scheduling; it works for all various types of customer needs."
As a future-forward organization, BambooHR were on the market for a solution that would serve their diverse customer base for the long term.
Thousands of hours saved across organizations with just a couple clicks
The results of the partnership blew expectations out of the water with record-breaking numbers.
We saw value right away. Within the first month, we had hundreds of customers sign up for this integration. It was the number one fastest growing integration on our marketplace.
"We see thousands of interviews being scheduled through the integration,” spoke Jonny on the positive customer response seen since the offering went live. “That equates to hours and hours being saved for organizations."
This efficiency had positive knock-on effects for candidate experience — thanks to the time reclaimed, BambooHR users now had hours of free time per week to give candidates the personal touch they crave, and to close roles faster after being freed of administrative burden.
With Cronofy, scheduling within BambooHR now happens in a few clicks, rather than hours of back-and-forth emailing. “It has made us happier here at BambooHR, made our customers happier, and our candidates too.”
For BambooHR, the mission to give companies a platform enabling them to hire better continues. “We’re on a mission to do great work here. We’re also not only trying to set people free to do great work, but we want to help them get there,” shared Jonny when asked about what’s next on the horizon. “The future of our products will be aligned to that purpose, and our partnership with Cronofy is testament to that.”