HRTech Interview With Neil Costa, Founder & CEO at Hireclix
Neil Costa, Founder & CEO at Hireclix chats about the many ways in which hiring teams can build better candidate experiences in this HRTech Series interview:
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Hi Neil, tell us about HireClix’s hrtech journey so far and a little about your latest feature QuickApply?
HireClix was founded in 2010 with a simple mission: help employers navigate an increasingly complex recruitment marketing landscape to bring their employer brand and jobs to the right candidates. Over the years, we’ve evolved from recruitment advertising services into strategic consulting, advanced analytics, and full-service career-site solutions which integrate with any applicant tracking system (ATS) and be customized for any employer’s brand. Our team now supports clients worldwide with employer branding, programmatic recruitment advertising, innovative career site development, and an analytics platform which shows return on investment (ROI). Our whole approach is built to help HR teams improve their employer brand and build a better candidate experience, so the hiring process feels more like a consumer-grade e-commerce experience.
A critical part of that journey has been listening to job seekers. Our 2025 Candidate Experience Survey found that 36 % of job seekers drop off because the application processes are too long or poorly designed. To tackle that, we’ve launched several enhancements over the past year, including Second Chance Pages that direct candidates from closed jobs to similar open roles, personalized Recruiter Hub landing pages that humanize interactions with HR teams, and, most recently, our Quick Apply feature.
Quick Apply lets candidates submit an application directly from the employer’s career site without being forced to log in to an applicant tracking system (ATS) or complete an extensive and cumbersome series of forms. It integrates with all major ATS platforms and can be turned on for all jobs or just select roles which need more applicants. By passing candidate data directly into the ATS from a HireClix career site, Quick Apply removes friction when the intent of the job seeker is highest. Early adopters are easily seeing 2X applicant conversion rates and better employer‑brand perception because the application process respects the candidates’ time. The other benefit to our Quick Apply solution is that it can be added to specific roles on your career site. It is not a one size fits all approach. For example, if you don’t need more applicants for the receptionist job but you do for the scientist or systems engineer, you would add Quick Apply to the positions that need the most help. This will allow the recruiter to get the short form data and connect with candidates faster.
Can you talk about how today’s applicant tracking systems still don’t power seamless processes for end users (job seekers) and what employers should do to beat this issue?
Too often, application processes are built around an employer’s compliance needs or the inability to update old systems rather than a positive candidate experience. Candidates are bounced from a chain of job boards to a poorly designed career site to a clunky ATS which takes a lot of wind out of their sail. In many cases, the candidates are forced to create a login, upload a résumé, then retype much of the same information. This negatively impacts quality applicants because they expect a smoother process, creates a risk that they may drop out of the application process, and consider other options beyond this employer.
I think there has been a systematic underinvestment in the candidate experience by CHROs and it is creating risk for their colleagues in the C-suite. So many companies have missed the boat in building a strong career site to engage and capture their number one asset – people. I like to create visuals in my head and for too long, employers have neglected the front door to their house for potential employees. Imagine having an amazing house that people love but the front door has a crooked frame and the doorknob is just about to fall off. This is how many career sites lose great people. If you convince them to come through that door then the application process is like walking through a series of traps (while blindfolded and with your hands tied together) just to get inside and complete the application. Employers can fix this by rethinking the process from the candidate’s perspective:
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Simplify the application:
Consider the baseline application rate you have today and find a way to double it by removing redundancies and being mindful of the candidate experience. Features like the HireClix Quick Apply make this easier for companies using an ATS like Workday or iCIMS since the system injects a shorter set of key information directly into the ATS, dramatically reducing application time.
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Prioritize mobile-friendly applications:
Today’s job seeker expects a mobile friendly site with responsive design for any device and a quick application process with clear, concise and only the necessary forms so they can apply while on the go.
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Communicate in a smart & proactive manner:
Easy scheduling, automated messages and text updates keep candidates informed, reduce anxiety about next steps, and show respect for their time. This is also done in a mindful way so they don’t feel like they are getting spammed by you all day and all night. If it is easier to engage during the application process, then it is a fair assumption that the workplace will be operating in a similar way.
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Personalize and re-engage:
Who doesn’t love being recognized when they return to a store or a restaurant. Bringing a friendly and personalized experience to your career site without stepping over the line and violating privacy concerns is a must at this stage of the game. Making sure you cut or severely limit your use of cookies while still bringing personalization via local browser storage can improve your candidate experience and be respectful of today’s privacy challenges.
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Saving interested candidates:
Another thing to consider is how to save interested and qualified candidates you may have historically lost when a job closes. Maybe they found an old email from a recruiter, or they saw a dated post on LinkedIn, but the job has since been closed. This is typically a dead end, and you lose out on that prospect converting to an applicant. We help clients redirect them from the old links, automatically serving up similar open roles (HireClix Second Chance Pages) to keep them engaged, and provide easy ways to connect with recruiters for questions.
The bottom line is that recruiting technology should remove barriers, not create them. By prioritizing speed, simplicity, and communication, employers can reduce drop‑off, attract higher‑quality applicants, and strengthen their employer brand, all goals that have guided our HR tech journey and continue to shape our innovations at HireClix.
Catch more HRTech Insights: HRTech Interview with Stan Suchkov, CEO and Co-founder of AI-native corporate learning platform, Evolve
Can you talk about some leading SaaS brands that offer great candidate experiences and what top takeaways you’d highlight based on it?
To be honest, I get my inspiration from consumer sites that are creating amazing and fluid e-commerce transactions. I don’t feel like our job search and application processes should be any different from how we transact in the rest of the digital world. When I make a purchase on Amazon, Nike or Best Buy, I am trying to think of ways our team at HireClix can learn from the user experience and apply it to our industry. That is what will lead to a great candidate experience.
A few thoughts around the future of HRTech and the top trends that will dominate HRtech in 2026 and beyond?
Obviously, my focus within HRTech is on the talent acquisition and recruiting site of the house and there is so much going on in this bucket that I am excited about. I genuinely believe this year has to be about being better for employers. The labor pool is shrinking for several reasons, and the best employees are going to have more options than ever. I believe talent acquisition will be impacted by AI, smarter search functionality, better matches, and an easy application process. Anything less will serve as a ding against an employer and impact application rates for the candidates who explicitly searched for what it takes to work for the brand. In addition, we will need to see employers come up with smarter use of advertising and sourcing dollars to find channels and tools to support their hiring. So many organizations lack the visibility into what they get for the investments, so they are stuck on doing the same things again and again. Employers who commit to creating clear visibility into their ROI will have the most flexibility to test and learn about new solutions in advertising, in sourcing, in their candidate experience and in their talent acquisition operations.
AI will also have a huge impact on HRTech in both the “front of the house” and the “back of house” operational processes. By the end of 2026, most job seekers will be at least testing what it is like to find and apply for roles through AI tools. If your career site and job postings aren’t optimized for AI, your candidate flow and talent pipeline will take a hit in this “front of house” area. Using AI to impact the “back of the house” will be about labor efficiency. Can I do more with the same or fewer resources? AI solutions that make a TA leader’s life easier and their team more effective will win the day.
On the flip side, in the coming year, recruiters will have to emphasize who they are and what they are selling on behalf of their employers, due to the gains in automation via AI functionality. As we all know, recruiting is a sales job and with the demographics shifting to fewer workers, getting the best will matter more. The smartest recruiters will step out from the shadows and shine a spotlight on themselves to help their organizations earn the trust of the best talent.
Five top of mind thoughts you’d share with our HR and HRtech readers before we wrap up?
As an overall theme I think all HR leaders need to “Find a way to Be Better in 2026”
When it comes to advertising and targeting candidates, everyone needs to be better at tracking their investments and being able to tell a story around ROI. CFOs won’t support the TA mission without hard metrics on what works and what doesn’t work.
The best candidates (whether it is white collar, blue collar or healthcare) need to have an easy path to getting from expressing interest in your jobs and brand and moving to a full applicant. Career sites and application processes need to be assessed, and a better candidate experience needs to be a priority. Employers swing from too many candidates to not enough candidates and the candidate experience needs to be dynamic enough on a job-by-job basis to better screen the masses while also welcoming and making it as easy as possible on those jobs that get very few candidates.
TA operations need to find ways to leverage AI for back of the house operational efficiency while also keeping an eye on potential risks and lawsuits on using AI in ways that expose the company. Making sure you focus on back of the house operational gains will lead to recruiter labor efficiency. Adding in smart sourcing AI tools will also add gains but could cause exposure.
Diversify your source of applicants by getting your jobs ready for ChatGPT, Claude.ai, and Perplexity. Just as employers need to be better at getting in front of job seekers on Google by improving how they showcase their opportunities for Jobs in Google, finding ways to get your jobs out to the AI agents will lead to better applicants.
The frontline recruiters need to build their brand and be visible to candidates. Amid all the automation and AI, we firmly believe humans matter – a lot. Making it easier for them to showcase the reasons people should join the company will be paramount to their success in hiring the best people.
BONUS – Make sure you know your investments in recruiting tools, technology and advertising so you can talk about ROI with your CFO and other C-Suite executives.
Read More on Hrtech : Digital twins for talent: The future of workforce modeling in HRTech
[To share your insights with us, please write to psen@itechseries.com ]
HireClix is a global recruitment advertising agency that helps clients – including Fortune 500 HR departments – apply the power of on-demand recruitment marketing, creative design, and strategic consulting services to improve their recruiting processes.
Neil Costa, is Founder & CEO at Hireclix
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