What Most Companies Get Wrong About Their HR Tech Stack | Phil Strazzulla

Phil Strazzulla has seen the HR tech market from almost every angle possible. An investor at Bessemer Venture Partners who then got his MBA from Harvard, Phil taught himself to code, built an HR tech product, and spent years doing fractional HR, including helping one company grow from 300 to 3,000 employees in 15 months.

Through all of it, he noticed the same pattern: HR teams were overwhelmed, and the part that overwhelmed them most was figuring out which tools to buy. So he started a blog. That blog became SelectSoftware Reviews, which now serves 100,000 HR professionals a month with independent tool reviews, a weekly newsletter, and a free advisor service where any HR team can talk to someone about which tools actually fit their situation.

In Episode #28 of Xobin Talks, host Aman Kumar Tiwari explores what companies often miss when choosing HR tech. They also discuss how to build a hiring stack from scratch and what the future could look like for talent acquisition technology.

What Has Most Changed About How Companies Evaluate HR Tech?

Phil starts with something behavioral rather than technical: the bad experience.

Phil: "The number one factor is their experience with HR tech, which usually is quite negative. A lot of companies are gun-shy because they've had a bad implementation, customer experience. They've just had negative experiences with these technology platforms."

That skepticism exists alongside a genuinely improved market.

Phil: "In the last five or ten years we've seen a lot of new entrants that have actually really good software. The biggest trend for me is that it's become easier to create software. APIs make integrations easier. We have a more tech-savvy workforce with millennials becoming more in senior positions now. And so the adoption has just really increased."

The average organization now runs roughly 16 separate HR and recruiting applications, and 68% operate on disconnected platforms (HR.com, 2025, via Pin). The challenge has shifted from "can we find software that works" to "how do we choose between 200 ATS options and know we picked the right one."

If You're Building a Hiring Tech Stack From Scratch, Where Do You Start?

Phil's answer is clear: start with the ATS, then build around your specific candidate.

Phil: "First, think of your applicant tracking system as the main system that runs your talent acquisition process. From there, you can decide whether you need a CRM as part of it. Many talent acquisition teams may not yet have the processes or resources to get real value from using a CRM alongside their applicant tracking system."

Build Around Who You Are Actually Hiring

Everything beyond the ATS depends on your candidate persona.

Phil: "When you hire deskless workers, a mobile-first application can make the process easier. For high-volume hiring, focus on speed and consider adding a chatbot to handle initial interactions. When hiring senior sales leaders, take a different approach. Focus more on outbound sourcing, candidate nurturing, and CRM tools to manage relationships."

78% of TA teams run an ATS; only 21% run a recruiting CRM, leaving passive-candidate pipeline value on the table (HR.com, 2025, via Pin). Most teams nail the ATS and stop building. The value comes from what surrounds it, and that depends entirely on who you're trying to hire.

How Should HR Leaders Evaluate Whether a Tool Is Actually Right for Them?

This is where Phil is most direct. The three-check framework he describes is simple, but most companies skip at least one step.

Check 1: Are You in Their ICP?

Phil: "A few weeks ago, I spoke with a company that has 100,000 employees. They were considering three ATSs. Two were built for organizations of that size, while the third was mainly aimed at SMBs. The SMB-focused product looked polished, and I can imagine the sales rep thinking, 'Landing this customer could be worth five quotas.' So, of course, they would want to close the deal. But if that 100,000-employee company chose that solution, it could turn into a complete disaster."

The fix is simple: ask the vendor directly whether you're actually in their ideal customer profile, not their aspirational one.

Check 2: Do the Features Match Your Actual Needs?

Phil: "Different ATS platforms focus on different needs. Some help with assessments, while others focus on employer branding, sourcing, or integrations. You also need to consider the features you actually need."

Match features to your specific hiring challenges rather than evaluating against the longest feature list.

Check 3: Think Total Cost of Ownership

Phil: "Do you want the cheapest one or is this actually going to cost you more money because you're going to spend more money on recruiter fees or you're going to have to hire extra people to run the recruiting processes? There is a question of total cost of ownership."

When a Tool Seems Suspiciously Cheap

Aman raises something many HR buyers quietly wonder: if a tool seems very cheap for what it offers, is something wrong?

Phil: "There's a chance your organization can uniquely get value from a tool relative to the market. There's a chance it's mispriced. There's a chance that this is a newer company and maybe they haven't raised their prices yet. And if that's the case, I would try to get something grandfathered in. A good example is Wistia. I was one of Wistia's early customers. I had a plan that cost me $25 a month for about ten years. Today, that same plan would cost around $2,000 a month. Because I joined early, Wistia kept my original pricing and grandfathered me into the plan."

If you find something early and mispriced, lock it in.

How Do AI Assessments and Structured Evaluations Actually Change Hiring?

Phil's view here is enthusiastic but conditional: these tools work in the right hands with the right setup.

Phil: "In the hands of the right talent acquisition teams, these are really phenomenal tools that give more context than just the resume and allow for more efficient matching between employers and potential employees. In a world where you're getting inundated with resumes from GPT-assisted candidates, you really need a way to get to the core of who are the 10 or 20 best people that you should actually be spending time with."

The Candidate Experience Warning Most Vendors Skip

Phil: "It's really important to understand how do you set the right expectations for these assessments? How do you let the candidates know why they should be doing this? You don't want to lose your best candidates because they're upset that you sent them an assessment."

Recruiters spend an average of around 23 hours per week screening resumes for a single high-volume role, and AI screening platforms can cut that dramatically, often down to a couple of hours, depending on volume and setup. The efficiency case is strong. But the experience wrapper around the assessment determines whether your best candidates actually complete it.

How Important Is Standardizing Evaluation Across Countries and Roles?

Phil's answer is unambiguous: very, on three distinct grounds.

Phil: "It's very important from a compliance perspective as well as an ethical perspective as well as a business perspective. You don't want to allow for an individual's bias to creep into the interview process."

The Human Nature Problem

The business argument is where Phil gets most specific.

Phil: "From a business perspective it's important because you want to hire the best people and unfortunately as people, we are not always good at figuring these things out. We see somebody that went to the same school as us, that's from the same town, that has the same religion as us, whatever the case may be, and there's a bond there. That gives somebody an edge relative to somebody else where those criteria are not as important relative to what somebody actually brings to the organization."

Structured rubrics force decisions onto what actually matters, performance-relevant criteria, rather than what feels comfortable: personal connection.

What Should HR Teams Prepare for in the Next Three to Four Years?

This is the most counterintuitive answer in the episode.

Phil: "Honestly, I think most HR and talent acquisition teams can make the biggest impact by getting more value from the tools they already use. That will likely remain a key opportunity for the next few years."

That's not him being contrarian for its own sake, it's what he actually sees across the 100,000 HR professionals his platform serves.

Phil: "Most teams use an ATS mainly to store interview notes and manage applications. However, they often leave its automation and AI features unused. Many teams also miss opportunities to connect their systems properly, especially for better data and reporting."

The problem isn't that teams lack tools. It's that the tools they have are connected poorly and used partially.

The One Question Worth Asking Your Vendor Right Now

Phil: "How do I get my account manager to help me understand best practices? What are other teams doing? How do I be one of your top quartile customers in terms of the value that I'm capturing from this tool? That should be the question you're asking on a regular basis."

Most SaaS vendors can tell you exactly what their best customers do differently. Asking that question directly is faster, cheaper, and often more valuable than evaluating any new tool.

What Is the Best Way to Keep Up With the Fast-Changing HR Tech Market?

Phil's last answer isn't about software at all.

Phil: "The most important step is finding a community where you can learn and keep up with rapid changes. You might do a webinar about how you leverage AI for talent sourcing and the speakers have really good insights, but you're going to find 10 to 20 really good nuggets in that community aspect of the chat. Find that group of people that you can continuously learn from because everything is just continuing to change and it's going to change at a more and more rapid rate."

Vendors and analysts give you one layer. Practitioners sharing what's actually working in real time give you a completely different one. Both matter, but the practitioner layer moves faster.

About Phil Strazzulla

Phil Strazzulla started his career as an early-stage software investor at Bessemer Venture Partners before getting his MBA from Harvard Business School. He taught himself to code, built an HR tech product, and spent several years doing fractional HR, including helping a company grow from 300 to 3,000 employees in 15 months. Noticing that every HR team he worked with struggled most with the tech buying process, he started SelectSoftware Reviews as a personal blog. It now serves 100,000+ HR professionals a month with independent reviews, a weekly newsletter, and a free advisor service where any HR team can get personalized guidance on which tools to evaluate.

Connect: LinkedIn | Website: selectsoftwarereviews.com