How to Balance Time to Hire and Quality of Hire

Time to hire tells you how fast a seat got filled. Quality of hire tells you whether it stays filled. Heidi Barnett, President of isolved Talent Acquisition, makes the case that hiring teams need to track both, especially now that AI has made speed cheap on both sides of the process. Heidi bootstrapped ApplicantPro to 10,000 customers without venture money and kept it on the Inc. 5000 for 11 straight years. She explains why employee referrals became ApplicantPro’s number one source of hire, and why she’d hold an automated rejection for 24 hours before sending it. On this episode of Work Tech Weekly, Steve Smith talks with Heidi about treating candidates like sales leads and where AI belongs in the recruiting process. She also shares how she stopped chasing perfect work-life balance while raising four kids and running a company. For Heidi, a fast hire only counts if the person stays. Topics covered: Why time to hire needs quality of hire next to it What recruiting can learn from a marketing funnel Where AI should speed up hiring, and where people should make the call How a 24-hour delay on rejections can rebuild candidate trust What small HR teams in high-turnover industries need from hiring tech ⏳ In this video: 00:00 - Intro 02:19 - Bootstrapping ApplicantPro 04:21 - Where AI fits in the ATS 11:11 - From inbound to outbound recruiting 11:56 - What recruiters can learn from marketing 15:06 - Shipping product with discipline 17:25 - Hiring for SMB and high-turnover industries 20:47 - Time to hire vs. quality of hire 22:51 - Rebuilding candidate trust 29:51 - Running a company while raising four kids 35:13 - Mentoring women into leadership Sign up for the Work Tech Weekly newsletter: https://go.repcap.com/en-us/work-tech... Learn more about Rep Cap: https://www.repcap.com