Why Great Hiring Still Beats Great Strategy with Daniel Chait CEO Greenhouse Software

This series was recorded live at HR Tech 2025 inside the HR Executive studios on the expo floor in partnership with the WRKdefined Podcast Network.⁠ Make sure you’re subscribed to the full series⁠ and ⁠visit HRExecutive.com⁠ for the news, analysis, and insights shaping the future of work.

Hiring has never been louder, faster, or more chaotic. Daniel Chait breaks down why great hiring still comes down to disciplined systems, data, and the courage to say no to feature-chasing. This is a real look at how Greenhouse thinks about customers, product, and what “great at hiring” actually means in 2025.

In this episode we speak with Daniel Chait, CEO of Greenhouse about founder lessons, product vision, hiring discipline, fraud in the talent market, and why recruiting teams need better data to earn real credibility with the business.


Key Takeaway
Great strategy dies fast if you cannot hire the talent to execute it
Listening to customers without a clear product vision creates a bloated, incoherent platform
New Greenhouse Analytics puts real hiring metrics in the hands of recruiters and leaders
Most TA teams still cannot answer basic questions on attrition, time to fill, or funnel health
Fraud, AI generated resumes, and deepfakes are reshaping how employers vet candidates
Real Talent focuses on signal, identity, and reducing noise in overwhelming pipelines
High volume and professional hiring are converging on similar experiences and expectations
Being right is not enough in legal or business fights if the time and cost kill the company

Chapters
00:00 Why great hiring beats any strategy on paper
02:00 Daniel’s path from programmer to founder
03:40 Discovering hiring as an engineering problem
05:27 Ambitious, collaborative customers as the ideal partners
06:55 Balancing customer asks with a clear product vision
09:40 How Greenhouse stays out of the “feature soup” trap
11:42 New Greenhouse Analytics and what it unlocks
13:31 Why most companies still lack basic recruiting data
15:19 Data as the language that earns TA a real seat at the table
17:39 Launching “Real Talent” to combat fraud and misrepresentation
19:16 AI resumes, spam pipelines, and candidate frustration
21:01 Helping real candidates stand out in noisy markets
21:46 My Greenhouse, job alerts, and the “dream job” signal
23:18 Convergence of frontline and salaried hiring experiences
24:34 One system to support all types of hiring
26:33 Where automation stops and human touch still matters
28:41 A painful early lawsuit and the cost of being “right”
31:24 How that lesson now shapes partnership and customer decisions
33:35 Final thoughts and where to learn more about Greenhouse

Guest Info
Daniel Chait, Co-founder & CEO, Greenhouse
Website: https://www.greenhouse.com

Host
Christy Honeycutt, Host Inside the C-Suite Podcast
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christyhoneycutt

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