Most talent leaders think their biggest hiring challenge happens after a job goes live —finding qualified candidates, screening resumes, conducting interviews. But those of us who’ve spent time inside these organizations know there’s a pattern that costs companies millions in lost productivity and missed opportunities. The real problem begins much earlier, in the chaotic coordination between hiring managers, compensation teams, and recruiters before a single candidate ever sees your job posting.
During a recent conversation with leadership at DataPeople, this coordination challenge became crystal clear. Built with the belief that candidates deserve a more human hiring experience and recruiters deserve a more effective one, DataPeople has emerged as a compelling solution for organizations struggling with the pre-posting chaos that undermines their entire talent acquisition strategy. Their AI-powered platform doubles recruiting productivity by helping teams write incredible, inclusive and compliant job ads without all the back-and-forth, with customers like DoorDash, Coda, Remitly and Givaudan along with hundreds of other customers using DataPeople to write inclusive, effective job ads in 80 countries.
The Hidden Bottleneck Killing Your Time-to-Fill
The data tells a sobering story. While most organizations focus their hiring technology investments on applicant tracking systems and sourcing tools, they’re ignoring the upstream inefficiencies that create cascading delays throughout their entire recruitment process. Teams waste weeks cycling job descriptions through multiple stakeholders, debating requirements that may not even attract the right candidates, and struggling to ensure compliance with evolving pay transparency laws.
This coordination challenge has created a significant market opportunity. Several platforms have emerged to address different aspects of job description optimization and bias reduction, each with distinct approaches and limitations:
- Textio — Powers performance feedback and job posting optimization with AI trained on millions of real-world hiring outcomes and performance reviews. Their strength lies in predictive analytics for language effectiveness, but their focus extends beyond job descriptions into broader HR communications, which can dilute their specialized capabilities for the pre-posting workflow.
- TalVista (now part of Clovers) — A conscious inclusion decision support platform that identifies problematic words within job descriptions using algorithms fueled by scientific and research-based data, with features for redacted resume reviews and structured interviews. While their bias detection capabilities are robust, their recent acquisition by Clovers suggests a strategic shift toward interview technology rather than comprehensive job description workflow management.
- Ongig Text Analyzer — Flags biased language in job descriptions across 12+ types of bias including gender, age, race, disability, LGBTQ+ status, and offers more inclusive suggestions with real-time feedback. Their bias detection is comprehensive, but the platform primarily functions as a checking tool rather than a complete workflow solution for cross-functional collaboration.
- Applied — An applicant tracking system with a focus on diversity, equality, and inclusion that includes a job description bias tool checking for gender-coded words. While their bias checking capabilities are valuable, their primary focus remains on the post-posting applicant management process.
- Gender Decoder — A free tool that checks for subtle linguistic gender-coding in job advertisements, identifying masculine and feminine coded language. This simple tool addresses one specific bias type but lacks the comprehensive workflow features needed for complex organizational requirements.
Each platform addresses important pieces of the job description puzzle, but they typically focus on language optimization or bias detection as standalone functions rather than solving the fundamental coordination challenge between hiring managers, compensation teams, and recruiters.
Where DataPeople Breaks New Ground
DataPeople’s approach differs fundamentally from these point solutions. Rather than treating job description creation as a writing or bias-checking exercise, they’ve built what they call a productivity platform that addresses the orchestration challenge at the intersection of multiple stakeholders.
- Workflow Integration Beyond ATS Connectivity — Their platform features near real-time bi-directional integration with systems like SmartRecruiters, with job post content and process details automatically synced so teams are always up to date. This goes beyond simple data exchange to maintain workflow continuity across different functional areas.
- Global Compliance Engine — DataPeople’s platform operates in over 80 countries with proprietary data from 35 million unique job posts collected since 2015, providing guidance tailored to local markets while maintaining global consistency. This addresses the complex compliance requirements that often cause delays in multinational organizations.
- Data-Driven Content Optimization — Unlike platforms that focus solely on language guidance, DataPeople provides enhanced editing guidance on job titles, language, requirements, and other important content, with recruiting analytics that measure the impact of every job description on inbound hiring funnels. This connects pre-posting optimization directly to post-posting performance metrics.
The platform’s strength lies in recognizing that effective job descriptions require more than inclusive language — they need strategic alignment between compensation frameworks, role requirements, and market positioning. Their approach involves reducing effort with intelligent guidance distilled from over 100 million jobs and outcomes while accelerating execution by offering proven examples and starting points for every new hire.
Who Actually Benefits From This Coordination Approach
DataPeople’s intersection strategy creates value for several distinct organizational profiles, each facing different aspects of the pre-posting coordination challenge:
- High-Growth Technology Companies (100-2,000 employees) — These organizations typically struggle with scaling their hiring processes while maintaining quality and consistency. DataPeople’s automated compliance features and template management help them standardize job descriptions across rapid team expansion without losing the agility that drives their growth.
- Global Enterprise Organizations (2,000+ employees) — Companies operating across multiple countries benefit from DataPeople’s global platform that tailors guidance to local markets while maintaining consistency. The platform helps them navigate complex pay transparency laws and cultural nuances without requiring separate solutions for different regions.
- Regulated Industries (Financial Services, Healthcare, Government) — Organizations in compliance-heavy sectors gain value from DataPeople’s ability to embed regulatory requirements directly into the job description workflow. This reduces legal review cycles and ensures consistent adherence to industry-specific hiring regulations.
- Organizations with Complex Compensation Structures — Companies with detailed job leveling, complex equity packages, or sophisticated benefits structures benefit from DataPeople’s ability to integrate compensation data into job description creation. This reduces the back-and-forth between HR, compensation teams, and hiring managers that typically extends time-to-post.
- Talent Acquisition Teams Managing High-Volume Hiring — Organizations hiring at scale appreciate DataPeople’s ability to create consistency among hundreds of job descriptions while maintaining brand alignment. The platform’s template management and workflow features prevent the quality degradation that often accompanies high-volume recruiting.
Each of these customer types benefits not just from better job descriptions, but from the reduced coordination overhead that DataPeople’s platform provides. The time savings compound across multiple stakeholders, creating productivity gains that extend well beyond the recruiting function.
Market Position and Strategic Outlook
DataPeople occupies a unique position in the talent acquisition technology landscape. While most vendors focus on either the sourcing challenge (finding candidates) or the processing challenge (managing applicants), DataPeople has identified and addressed the coordination challenge that precedes both of these more visible problems.
Their competitive advantage lies in understanding that job description optimization isn’t fundamentally a content problem—it’s a workflow problem. DataPeople’s mission centers on making recruiting more empathetic and equitable, impacting tens of thousands of candidates every day in 80+ countries. This mission-driven approach has attracted customers ranging from tech startups to Fortune 500 companies across diverse industries.
The platform’s data foundation provides another strategic advantage. With over 35 million unique job posts collected and annotated from about 40,000 companies worldwide since 2015, plus real-time candidate search behavior and outcomes data, DataPeople has built proprietary insights that would be difficult for competitors to replicate quickly.
Looking ahead, the increasing complexity of hiring regulations—particularly around pay transparency and DEI compliance—creates tailwinds for DataPeople’s approach. Organizations need solutions that can adapt to changing requirements without requiring complete process overhauls. DataPeople’s platform architecture, which embeds compliance and best practices into the workflow rather than treating them as add-on features, positions them well for this evolving regulatory environment.
The broader trend toward cross-functional collaboration in hiring also supports DataPeople’s value proposition. As organizations recognize that effective recruiting requires tight coordination between multiple teams, solutions that facilitate this collaboration become more valuable. DataPeople’s focus on the intersection of hiring managers, compensation teams, and recruiters addresses this trend directly.
Bottom line: DataPeople has identified a genuine productivity bottleneck that exists in most organizations but receives little attention from technology vendors. Their platform approach to solving coordination challenges, combined with their substantial data foundation and global compliance capabilities, creates a compelling value proposition for organizations struggling with pre-posting inefficiencies. As hiring complexity continues to increase, their focus on workflow optimization rather than point solutions positions them advantageously in the evolving talent acquisition technology market.
