Rachel Cupples is a senior corporate recruiter for Textio, an HR software company that removes bias from hiring and workplace language. A recruiting pro for nearly a decade, she keeps a “book of dreams”—a wish list of work she’d like to tackle “in a perfect world, if I had extra time.”

It’s definitely not a perfect world, but lately, she’s had time to check off a few items.

“I currently am not carrying a [requisition] load,” she said, though Textio is still hiring in other departments. “What I’m working on is building diverse talent pools for the future. I’m reaching out to potential future ‘textios’ (that’s what we call ourselves)…and being support to our other two recruiters behind the scenes.”

Industries like tech and finance are facing the consequences of overhiring amid the pandemic. Recruiters are working in uncertain economic times, amid potential layoffs and hiring freezes, disrupting their workflow and adding to worries that future layoffs could affect them.

“Executives lay off people in their organization that they deem unnecessary in a difficult time, and there are things talent acquisition pros can do to be perceived as and to be more necessary,” Laura Mazzullo, East Side Staffing’s founder, said.

Mazzullo, who works with companies to train and develop their recruiters, spoke with HR Brew about what internal recruiting teams can do to make sure top brass knows the many ways talent acquisition brings value to the organization.

Audit the hiring process. Start by reviewing the TA process itself: What works and what doesn’t?

Ensure job descriptions, postings, and interview questions are unbiased, said Mazzullo. Clear competency criteria and interview scorecards can help with the latter, she said, by helping interviewers find the right candidates based on skills rather than gut “fit” and “feel” responses.

Read more here.—AD

On Tuesdays, we get into the weeds with the founders of HR tech startups. Want to tell us about your company? Get in touch here.

Theo Margolius is the co-founder and COO of Otta, a job-search platform for tech workers that aims to help candidates and employers find their perfect match. Since its founding in 2019, Otta has raised $23.9 million from a variety of investors, including Tiger Global Management and Founder Collective. We spoke to Margolius about how his platform works, the importance of connecting candidates with employers in a seamless fashion, and the future of HR tech.

What product or service does your company offer?

We’re building a better way to find a job in tech. We are a jobs platform that helps candidates find work at fast-growing, innovative companies, from early-stage startups to large tech companies like Stripe and Spotify…We believe that candidates needed to be put first, and incumbent businesses in the recruitment and career space weren’t doing that. We’ve built a job search that really attracts ambitious job-seekers, and created an even better way for recruiters and hiring managers to find top talent.

What specific issue in HR does your company intend to solve?

We’re trying to raise the bar for how tech companies treat employees in the hiring process and beyond, when they become employees. We promote companies that share salary ranges, we help companies prioritize diversity when they’re hiring, [and] we’re empowering women with knowledge around pay gaps. More immediately, we’re helping tech companies with the struggle to hire great people. Companies currently solve this problem by spending hundreds of thousands of hours sourcing. We believe that that’s an inefficient way of doing it.

How do you think the HR tech field will evolve over the next five to 10 years? Read more here.—SB

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Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: The amount of US visas issued jumped 73% from 2021 to 2022, representing a return to pre-pandemic levels. (CBS News)

Quote: “This kind of misclassification deprives these players of their statutory right to organize and to join together to improve their working/playing conditions if they wish to do so…Our aim is to ensure that these players can fully and freely exercise their rights.”—Jennifer Abruzzo, NLRB general counsel, on the agency’s ruling that NCAA athletes should be classified as employees (Politico)

Read: Online mental health services are not all they’re promised to be, according to a number of patients across a variety of providers. (the Wall Street Journal)