How Altura Uses Ashby’s AI to Deliver a More Human Candidate Experience

Altura is a collaborative AI company in Amsterdam building the next generation of bid management tools. Trusted by leading enterprises across technology, professional services, and construction, Altura helps teams work smarter together. That same philosophy carries into how the company builds its own teams.

As a tech-forward organization, Altura believes AI should enhance human work. For the Talent function, that meant designing a hiring process that felt thoughtful, transparent, and deeply personal to candidates, while still being operationally sustainable as the company grew.

When Olivia Marder joined as Talent & Culture Lead, she knew the tooling behind that experience mattered just as much as the intent.

Problem: A High-Intent Hiring Process Held Back by Manual Work

Before Ashby, Altura’s candidate communication relied heavily on manual workarounds. Recruiting processes were largely ad hoc and reactive, with outreach, feedback, and follow-ups requiring repeated manual effort and rework to maintain quality and consistency. While the team cared deeply about candidate experience, delivering that level of personalization took significant time.

More importantly, the process made it harder for hiring managers to engage consistently and, as a result, for recruiting to operate as a true strategic partner.

Olivia describes the tension clearly:

“Before Ashby, hiring data and ATS's weren’t treated with the same rigor as tools like CRM's internally. With Ashby’s intuitive experience, clear visibility into hiring trends, and AI simplifying key steps in the process, hiring managers are way more engaged. The tool has empowered data-driven conversations, stronger ownership from managers, and clearer alignment on real challenge areas. For example, showcasing the delta between recruiter and hiring manager screen to align on what we’re actually looking for.”

— Olivia Marder, Talent & Culture at Altura

The historic lack of data, operational efficiency, and simple product UI resulted in friction and accumulating hours keeping Olivia from what she was hired to do: assessing mutual fit, building relationships, and guiding candidates through a thoughtful process. Ashby enabled scalable, informed hiring decisions and elevated recruiting into a strategic driver of Altura’s growth.

Solution: AI That Gives Time Back and Improves Quality

Ashby gave Altura a unified system that reduced manual overhead while raising the bar on quality. One of the biggest shifts came from AI Generated Feedback Summaries, which fundamentally changed how feedback was captured and shared.

Instead of writing feedback only at the end — or struggling to consolidate verbose interview notes — recruiters and hiring managers could now capture input throughout the process and rely on Ashby’s AI to synthesize it into clear, structured summaries.

For Olivia, the value wasn’t speed alone; it was how that speed was reinvested.

“Because Ashby has saved templates and AI-generated feedback summaries, we actually spend more time with candidates, not less. We’re able to add really robust, tailored details and personalize communication in a way that feels specific to them. The AI helps consolidate complex information, but human judgment and my own human voice are still very much there.”

— Olivia Marder, Talent & Culture at Altura

With feedback easier to draft, review, and refine, the team began sharing it earlier and more consistently, so candidates could get feedback as they progressed in the hiring process and be better prepared for subsequent calls. That shift alone improved clarity for candidates and alignment internally. 

“A lot of candidates have told us how much they appreciate the feedback because it doesn’t feel AI-generated at all. It’s very personalized. And when the person they’d actually be working with is clearly engaged and responding, that has a huge impact on how they feel about Altura.”

— Olivia Marder, Talent & Culture at Altura

It also changed how hiring managers showed up. With automations in Ashby handling stage-based emails and feedback workflows, managers could move candidates through the pipeline themselves, leave thoughtful input, and stay engaged without relying on recruiting to push every step forward. This was essential for lean, startup recruiting teams to drive ownership and engagement across the hiring team. 

“Because of the automations and the way hiring managers own the process in Ashby, we’re spending 30–40% more time actually engaging with candidates through custom feedback, relationship building, and really evaluating mutual fit. Hiring managers are more excited to use the tool and more invested in moving candidates through each stage.”

— Olivia Marder, Talent & Culture at Altura

Impact: Better Prepared Candidates and a Stronger Employer Brand

The most meaningful results showed up in the candidate experience. With clearer interview goals defined upfront, candidates arrived more prepared and more confident.

“We spend a lot of time at the top of the process carving out the goal of each interview touchpoint. Candidates feel like they know exactly how to prepare for every stage, and that alone has cut candidate questions before interviews by about 50%.”

— Olivia Marder, Talent & Culture at Altura

That care extended even to rejected candidates.

“We’ve seen great Glassdoor reviews specifically mentioning how thoughtful the rejection experience was. That’s something we’re really proud of.”

— Olivia Marder, Talent & Culture at Altura

Overall, by removing friction, consolidating feedback, and giving recruiters and hiring managers time back, Ashby helped Altura deliver a candidate experience that reflects who they are as a company: collaborative, intentional, and human.

“Ashby lets us be tech-forward while still being people-first. The AI creates space and we use that space to build better relationships with candidates.”

— Olivia Marder, Talent & Culture at Altura

Ashby’s VP of People and Talent, Jim Miller, recently sat down with Olivia to chat about how Altura chose Ashby for scale. Hear more from Olivia here:

Ready to build a high-touch hiring experience that scales? Request a Demo.