Laszlo Korsos, the CEO and co-founder of the hiring network platform HeadRace, is receiving Slack’s Visionary of the Year Award for deeply integrating both internal processes and external collaboration in Slack.
Democratising the recruiting process for everyone involved, HeadRace empowers boutique recruiters to tap into the network effects of the industry, supporting them with the back-office services and proprietary technology that they need to grow their business efficiently and focus on clients’ needs. More than just a recruiting automation tool, HeadRace is fundamentally transforming recruiting to offer more transparent talent searches, better-aligned incentives and efficient outcomes for employers big and small, including Domino Data Lab, BetterUp, Swimply, Bloomberg, StellarFi and more.
Before adopting Slack, HeadRace operated a three-sided marketplace across multiple, disparate tools. People would use video-conference apps to try to match recruiters to employers, then cc those who couldn’t make it on a disjointed email – a less-than-ideal experience.
Since candidates are active in the job market for only short windows of time, recruiters make investment decisions on razor-thin timelines, and opportunities are fleeting. To optimise efficiency and scalability after launching a private beta in June 2022, Korsos advocated for Slack to support HeadRace’s rapid growth as the company raced towards making the platform readily available in March 2023 and raising $6 million in seed funding.
Recognising that the right answer at the right time could mean the difference between success and failure, Korsos harnessed the power of Slack to push the odds towards success. The team now leverages Slack to jump on every opportunity, whether that’s an employer choosing between multiple candidates in the HeadRace app or the HeadRace team responding to a customer’s request for crucial information: Actions on the HeadRace app trigger actions in Slack, creating seamless notifications.
Operating a global business across multiple time zones, from California to Latin America to the Middle East, it’s imperative that all internal and external stakeholders are on the same page. HeadRace wrote customised code using Slack APIs to create channels that automatically send Slack Connect invitations to recruiters and employers, facilitating contract negotiations and candidate calibration. When they’re onboarded to the HeadRace platform, every customer receives a welcome from a HeadRace Slack bot, and has a reliable Slack Connect touchpoint throughout their experience.
To address the challenge of managing multiple recruiters, Korsos helped the team implement a command that automatically spins up a channel for every recruiter-company interaction in its HeadRace Community workspace. This streamlines communication and keeps all relevant information easily accessible, enabling clients to transparently track recruiter performance and improve efficiency. The HeadRace Slack bot also triggers alerts to both recruiters and employers about candidate submissions and status updates, ensuring that all parties maintain visibility on every stage of the process – and can make quick decisions when the time comes.
‘We find the operational leverage we get from Slack, in combination with the fluency it allows us, creates exponential efficiencies. Getting work done without having to formally compose an email with salutations, having a single source of truth to check for all updates, and being able to take immediate action in the same place is an incredible benefit.’
As power users of threading, the HeadRace team can easily reference projects and conversations as needed while keeping channels organised. They also super-charge their tech stack by integrating Figma, Asana, Datadog, GitHub and Senty directly into Slack, helping them speed up work by reducing context switching.
Because all the key players are in Slack, HeadRace no longer needs to pay for Zendesk. Now, their in-house customer service and help management teams save time, money and back-and-forth. For every recruiter or employer onboarded, the company creates a designated support channel where any situation can be immediately swarmed or triaged, no external tools required.
By bringing HeadRace operations into Slack, interactions across the lifecycle of every employer and recruiter are personalised and timely. With everyone and every process in one place, clients can monitor and evaluate the performance of different recruiters while aligning faster on goals, which leads to better outcomes for all parties. As its users scale, so too can HeadRace, ensuring that communication and coordination is seamless no matter how fast they grow.
