How Ramp Rapidly Hires Top Technical Talent with Ashby

When you’re hiring as rapidly as a company like Ramp, the last thing you want is an ATS that creates friction in the hiring process. We caught up with Ramp’s Madison Eastman, formerly in People and Talent, and David Kwon Yi, Senior Technical Recruiting Manager, to discuss the ways in which Ashby enables speed and operational efficiency. 

Problem: Disconnected Data Hindering Mobility 

In thinking over whether or not to migrate from their legacy ATS and sourcing tools to Ashby All-in-One, Madison and David shared a few considerations that were top of mind.

• Detached Data: With sourcing data in one tool and interview data in another, Ramp struggled to pull a complete picture of candidate passthrough rates. 
• One Size Fits All: Ramp’s various recruiting pods wanted a process that molded to their unique needs but were forced into the one model their former ATS was designed around. 
• Routine Friction: For a team with high volume hiring, the day-to-day friction that tasks in their former ATS created made hiring feel like a chore for hiring managers. 

Ramp was instead looking for a recruiting solution that would provide visibility into core hiring metrics, allow for flexibility and customization, and fit more seamlessly into their existing workflows across the organization. 

“Our engineering recruiting team is really focused on hiring the best engineering talent. That means a lot of patience and adjusting our processes when needed. Our engineering hiring managers are super involved in making sure we’re hiring the right people, and that’s where we need an ATS that supports a difference in process.”

— Madison Eastman, Former People & Talent at Ramp

One example of the mentioned differences in process: Ramp’s talent team previously lacked the ability for multiple recruiters to share one funnel as well as an easy way for all engineers involved in interviewing to have full visibility into the history of a candidate with us.

Solution: A Customizable ATS That Molds To Your Needs

After already using Ashby Analytics as an add-on to their previous ATS, the Ramp team decided to migrate their full talent stack onto Ashby. Beyond the ability to consolidate their data into one source of truth, they wanted improved visibility, control, and automation of key components of their individual workflows. 

1. Full Pipeline Visibility

In any given quarter, technical recruiters are consistently responsible for engineering pipeline sourcing. Hiring at this volume while delivering a great candidate experience and having reliable data as candidates moved through the funnel is critical. 

“My favorite thing about Ashby is the actual visual of the pipeline and custom alert capabilities. You can actually see who the leads are and know if the sourcing we tried works. On one end, we can very easily see where people are in our email sequences, who is just sitting there, or who we haven’t touched yet. On the other we can see what the active pipeline looks like — who has been scheduled? Who is awaiting feedback? Before we had to click through every single candidate.” 

— Madison Eastman, Former People & Talent at Ramp

2. Enabling Continuous Improvement

Ramp’s talent team overall stands out for their ongoing commitment to optimizations and process improvement. For team members like Madison and David, seeing the immediate impact of their experiments is critical.

“We love trying new recruiting strategies. So if we, for example, are trying something new with outreach, we want to see how that flows through the whole pipeline. Before we had our (sourcing point solution) data and (former ATS) data separate, which meant I spent 50% of my time pulling and making sense of data. Now hiring managers and recruiters have passthrough rate data available to them right on the job, saving us tons of time and making everyone involved more data-oriented.”

— Madison Eastman, Former People & Talent at Ramp

3. Advanced Evergreen Hiring

Oftentimes, ATS’ optimize for net new job postings over evergreen hiring cycles. To reach their ambitious targets of hiring the top 1% of engineering talent, Ramp needed Ashby to customize their recruiting process to their hirings needs. 

“Sometimes we reject an engineering candidate who got all ‘yes’ at onsite. Even if we aren’t moving forward, Ashby has made it easy for us to go back into this historical data and have our sourcers build a list to reach back out to. We’ll even pull lists of engineers who rejected us and look at where they ended up to evaluate if we’re looking at the right talent. Did they go to a company we admire?”

— Madison Eastman, Former People & Talent at Ramp

David added that this historic and connected data allows them to dig into the most granular level of insight to inform proactive outreach. This sophisticated approach to evergreen roles sets the Ramp team apart.  

“Even as detailed as — say we spoke to a Joe Smith last year and didn’t hire that person because their technical communication was one mark off of what we felt comfortable with. With Ashby, we can look at all the folks who scored similarly to Joe, draw a big list, and reach out to them all again to see if that competency improved upon. With other ATS’s that aren’t that robust, the ability to draw that data and work off of that data was not possible.”

—  David Kwon Yi, Senior Technical Recruiting Manager at Ramp

4. Customization That Powers Hiring Velocity

Growing from 500 to 700 employees from just August 2023 to January 2024, the pace at which Ramp is hiring requires an ATS that feels effortless. 

“Ashby’s ATS feels like an extension of ourselves, almost like a third arm. Using it on a day-to-day basis, you just don’t realize how powerful Ashby is until you take a step back and think, man, what was I using before? Being able to work and operate smoothly without actively thinking about it has been extremely helpful.”

—  David Kwon Yi, Senior Technical Recruiting Manager at Ramp

Ramp’s engineering hiring relies on screening for a set of competencies, which at high volume can become difficult to navigate. Ashby’s ability to create customized lists from how engineers scored on competencies, cater feedback forms based on that rubric, and help hiring managers with built-in application reviews all contributes to Ramp’s hiring velocity. 

“Ramp hires based on archetype, meaning beyond pedigree we look at personalities and see what sets an engineer apart from the ten-thousand others that apply. Ashby’s powerful features allow us to create customized application screening questions whether a high volume or low volume model. This allows our top of the funnel to move a lot faster.”

—  David Kwon Yi, Senior Technical Recruiting Manager at Ramp

Rather than an ATS task feeling like a chore, Ashby’s Slack integration helps their Slack-heavy culture receive custom alerts to get the information they need at the right time they need it. And with scheduling existing natively in the platform, coordination is no longer a bottleneck. 

Impact: Accelerated Hiring, Candidate Evaluation & Hours Saved 

Beyond the tangible savings on time (Madison previously spent 50% of her time simply pulling data to make sense of pipeline), Ashby has empowered Ramp’s team to make nimble yet informed decisions. The platform itself has been straightforward to understand for recruiters and hiring managers alike.  

“It’s built so that it’s not only easy to use, but it allows us to just increase our throughput and move a lot faster — especially in a startup where velocity is key.” 

—  David Kwon Yi, Senior Technical Recruiting Manager at Ramp

These benefits compound over time and in totality have caught the attention of stakeholders across the organization.

“When we first launched Ashby, I sent my CSM Morgan all these screenshots from all the positive feedback we heard just from launch. Our executive team — especially our CTO — couldn’t believe that an ATS could be this good. Nobody liked (former ATS) but now they actually wanted to be involved and use the ATS.”

— Madison Eastman, Former People & Talent at Ramp

Ramp’s Hiring Excellence

Madison spoke at Ashby’s 2023 Keynote to share how operational efficiency and stakeholder engagement improved since the team adopted Ashby. Hear her three minute success story below.

Interested in how Ashby can help level up your technical hiring? Request a demo.