So you want to recruit the top 1% of engineering talent? You’re going to need to do something different—and that’s why Terminal.io exists. They source, screen, and deliver top tech talent to fast-growing teams like Nextdoor, Gusto, and Hims & Hers in global markets outside of the US—so they can get amazing remote technical talent on board easily (learn more about Terminal here).
Recruiters like those at Terminal are under a lot of pressure—they need to deliver amazing candidates to hiring managers in an increasingly competitive market. To do that, they need to run highly effective and efficient interview processes. And that’s why they turned to Pillar.
Kerri McKinney was brought into Terminal to lead global sourcing—and was aiming to differentiate their recruiting process from their competitors.
“We're really trying to set ourselves apart,” said Kerri. “My boss said, ‘Kerri, go find what we need to make our process faster and better and more innovative. So when I saw Pillar— and I’ve seen a lot of sourcing and recruiting tools—I knew they were on to something!”
Kerri encouraged her recruiters to include Pillar’s interview intelligence on their pre-screen interviews with candidates. This quickly led to less busywork on calls and more focus on giving candidates a phenomenal interview experience.
“The recruiters...can really focus on listening to the candidate instead of having to multitask while taking notes."
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“The recruiters love that the tool transcribes their prescreens so they can really focus on listening to the candidate instead of having to multitask while taking notes," noted Kerri.
And Kerri’s team is glad to have Pillar too. Claudia Hernandez is a Manager of Talent Acquisition at Terminal, leading a team of recruiters responsible for Latin American recruiting operations. Said Claudia, “Pillar helps a lot. If you miss any part of the live conversation, you can go back and validate. When you review again, you can calibrate the candidates against one another—so you know if they have the right skills and motivations for the role.”
Pillar also empowers recruiters and hiring teams to collaborate in new ways. Recruiters at Terminal take highlights from their interviews and share them with hiring teams, so that frontline leaders can get a sense for the candidates they’d like to progress to the next round.
“Having the ability to record and share interview clips with our hiring teams has been a game-changer in getting good candidates into the process and speeding up our time to hire.”
Pillar has been especially helpful for all Terminal’s recruiting abroad, Kerri added. “We hire a lot in Latin America, and the ability to share clips with our New York and San Francisco-based clients is helpful. It lets them know how strong their English skills are, look past any cultural differences, and just focus on the candidate.”
Pillar is improving key metrics across the board for Terminal’s recruiting team.
“Having the ability to record and share interview clips with our hiring teams has been a game-changer in getting good candidates into the process and speeding up our time to hire,” said Kerri.
First off, it’s saving time for frontline recruiters like Claudia’s team and hiring managers alike. Claudia notes, “For one of our clients using Pillar, we’ve cut a step out of our interview process and shortened each of the interviews—saving hours.”
Their secret? Sharing highlights of previous interviews. “Our clients are more comfortable when they can hear directly from candidates—their experience, their communication skills, what they’re looking for, what they’ve done— instead of just reading a transcript or a resume. It’s more helpful for them,” says Claudia.
And Terminal is saving time and effort in more ways than one. Submission-to-offer ratio—the number of candidates shared with a hiring team that it takes to result in one job offer—is a key metric for recruiting efforts at Terminal. Since implementing Pillar, Terminal has halved the number of candidates needed to fill a role.
What’s caused this shift? Recruiters are more effectively sourcing the right people—and they’re using Pillar to review their interviews and send only the best possible candidates to hiring managers. And on the other hand, the hiring teams can more quickly and thoroughly evaluate those candidates through highlights in Pillar and spend their time on the best-fit candidates.
That means that Terminal and their clients are getting more talented engineers in the right seats—with less time and effort.
“Pillar is needed. It’s solving a problem and it’s insanely helpful, especially for remote companies,” Kerri concludes. “It’s super beneficial for my team. If recruiters at every company, whether SMB or enterprise, were using it, they’d speed up their hiring significantly.”
