Hireology was founded in 2010 with the mission of empowering business leaders to build their best teams. This year, we’re excited to celebrate 10 years of helping organizations across industries attract top talent, hire qualified candidates and seamlessly connect employees with their HR systems.
Since we launched 10 years ago, we’ve expanded to partner with more than 7,000 customers, and we have these dedicated customers to thank for our continued growth and success.
To commemorate this milestone, we reflected on a few key lessons we’ve learned over the years, outlined below – including anecdotes from several Hireology team members. These lessons are applicable to any business leader looking to set their team up for long-term success.
1. Intentional core values drive business success
The first step we took when starting Hireology was creating intentional core values. If anyone were to look at the first meeting agenda we ever set, the first item on that agenda was discussing our core values.
Based on this agenda point, we set out to decide who we wanted to be, how we wanted to conduct ourselves as a business, and how envisioned our company culture – before deciding on other important aspects of the business. And making core values central to our business strategy has been critical to our success since day one.
It doesn’t matter what business we’re in. We could make software to help people with the hiring process. We could make boats. It doesn’t matter. Our core values are the rule book for how we conduct ourselves, no matter the business we’re in.
“Most companies, at best, slap on a wall, some words that they use to describe their culture or core values. But at Hireology, our culture and core values are intentional, we talk about them frequently and they’re truly something we care about as an organization.”
– Debra Senra
Senior Vice President of Revenue
Our core values are central to everything we do – they drive business decisions, they’re highlighted at the beginning of every all-weekly company huddle, individual employees receive weekly “shout outs” and employees who most exemplify our core values receive awards at our annual kickoff each January.
Here’s an overview of the five core values that have powered Hireology business success in the past 10 years – and will continue to do so in the next 10 years – and beyond.
Pathological optimism
We know growing a successful business is hard. We have significant problems to solve, and if it was easy, more businesses would be doing what we’re doing. We’d have far more competitors than we do today.
Pathological optimism means that we believe we are going to overcome these challenges. We believe in the possibilities of our business and that no matter what gets thrown at us, we can take it on.
Eager to improve
Every day, we learn something new at Hireology. The economy continuously shifts and customers need new solutions to solve their biggest problems.
Our jobs are always changing, and eager to improve means if we need to hear something that’s going to help make us better, we embrace that opportunity. Nobody on the team is going to get defensive and instead, we’re going to lean into it with our team’s and our customers’ best interests in mind.
“For me, eager to improve is just not being complacent in your role and always looking for new and exciting ways to improve yourself, your team and the overall company and not being afraid to speak up and voice your opinions.”
– Julie Lombardo
Senior Manager of Customer Success
Create wow moments
This core value comes from an understanding that the difference between mediocre or just merely good, and truly exceptional customer experience comes from just a little bit of incremental effort.
We are in the business of creating wow moments. It’s one thing to just provide software. It’s another to provide solutions that customers’ needs both through software and creating wow moments through our interactions with customers.
Own the result
This means Hireologists take responsibility for the results that we as individuals achieve, whether it’s a good result or a bad result, it’s ours. We own that.
Own the result helps ensure we don’t run away from things that might have failed to meet expectations. Instead, tying to another core value, it makes us eager to improve. Sometimes we fall short but these mistakes offer a great learning opportunity. We don’t make mistakes or explain all the reasons that were out of our control for why something happened. Instead, we talk about what we can control, and get through it together.
It also means celebrating wins. Winning is fun for everyone, and celebrating those wins is part of the culture here.
No assholes
The no assholes core value means life is too short to surround ourselves with anyone other than teammates and customers that we really like and respect.
Because of this, there is a zero tolerance here at Hireology for disrespectful behavior or treating people poorly.
This also means that we get to choose who we want to work with, when it comes to both customers teammates. No assholes means we’re all in this together. Let’s treat each other respectfully. Let’s have fun. Let’s have each other’s best interests in mind. Let’s not make this personal. We’re all here to get better and to win. And, let’s stay focused on that.
“The core values are instrumental in keeping this company around for as long as it has been. Because it is something that through the course of the time, economic upturns, downturns has been consistent and that general operating model and that philosophy is timeless and is resilient.”
– Michael Williams
Senior Product Manager
2. Focus on what you’re good at
What has made us successful in the past 10 years and will continue to contribute to our success is a relentless focus on a few things at a time. And so, we choose to focus on opportunities where we know there’s room to navigate and room to fail. And when we succeed, the rewards are great.
We focus on solving businesses’ biggest problems by helping them build their best teams. We could have built a job board or taken another direction in the hiring space. But around 2010 when we were launching the business, there wasn’t a hiring toolkit available to small- and -mid-sized business owners.
Anyone who has ever been in a manager role in which they’ve had to hire people knows how challenging it is to run an efficient process. We started out helping make the hiring process easier on customers with simple tools such as interview guides and we’ve expanded to include solutions to manage the entire recruitment marketing and hiring process, automate certain steps and seamlessly connect new hires with HR systems such as onboarding, payroll and scheduling.
Along the way, we’ve been dedicated to industries that face challenges with hiring qualified talent. Rather than targeting every possible industry with our solution, we’ve had deep focus in a few key industries over the years. We started out focused on the franchise industry and a few years later expanded into automotive. Now, we’re also focused on helping business leaders across healthcare verticals build their best teams.
By focusing on a few key markets and truly understanding them, we can build solutions to help our customers overcome their top recruiting and hiring challenges – rather than casting a wide net across every possible market and only understanding each market at a surface level.
We have an opportunity to serve hundreds of thousands of businesses here in the U.S. and around the world that really need what we offer. And it’s exciting to think about the growth possibilities and outlining a strategy to reach additional target verticals.
3. Employees are any organization’s top source of competitive advantage
Our success is the sum total of the people that work at Hireology. We have to build a great product, and we have to grow and keep customers. But, none of this is possible unless we have the right employees here in this organization. And, what it takes to be successful over the next 10 years begins and ends with our ability to make this company the absolute best place we can possibly make it to work and to thrive.
Hiring the right employees is core to our overall business strategy and the number one priority on the list right now. We use our own products and solutions to ensure we’re attracting and hiring the best employees possible, and keeping them engaged once they’re on board.
[On the interview process and first days on the job] “It was really important to me to find a culture that was welcoming and inclusive and inviting. I came from one like that, so I challenged myself to find something similar and it’s even better than I could’ve imagined. From the first day I walked in, I was greeted at the front door and it continues to be like that. The people I work with are some of the most kind-hearted people I’ve ever met in my life.”
– Nicole Boven
Senior Customer Success Manager
Looking ahead to the next 10 years
Success for Hireology over the next five, 10, 20 years starts with an acknowledgement of what it takes to make that success possible. Future success is going to take us being honest with ourselves, being honest about the things that don’t work and being honest about the things that do work.
As a company, we must also be willing to take calculated risks and learn each step of the way to really helping the company grow. The team as a whole needs to focus on helping the company not only maintain our current course, but improve and get better and continue to grow, embracing any challenges we might face along the way.
Thank you to all Hireology customers and employees for an incredible decade! We’re excited to empower our customers to drive continued hiring success in 2020 and beyond.
Not working with us yet? See how Hireology can help you attract top talent, hire qualified employees and seamlessly connect new hires with your HR systems. See a demo today.
