Most recruitment process outsourcing providers talk about partnership. NXTThing RPO actually built software to prove it works. After decades of managing hiring for companies, they’ve taken the unusual step of productizing their internal technology — creating Personegy, a high-volume hiring platform that combines AI automation with what they call “candidate care.”
I recently sat down with CEO Terry Terhark and President Jamie Minier to understand this evolution from pure-play RPO to service-plus-product provider. I was struck by their 45% year-over-year growth (bucking industry trends) and how they’ve structured their offering around a fundamental insight: the best hiring technology emerges from actually doing the hiring.
Why This Matters Now
I’ve spent the past decade watching recruitment technology vendors struggle with a consistent problem: they build what sounds good on a demo, not what survives contact with 10,000 applications in four weeks. NXTThing flipped this equation. NXTThing’s leades have been managing frontline hiring at scale for 25+ years, which means Personegy was forged in the chaos of real-world, high-velocity recruiting operations.
Their growth trajectory tells the story. While many RPO providers contracted during the recent market turbulence, NXTThing expanded. The differentiator? They’re not just selling hours and headcount; they’re offering configured solutions backed by technology they control.
This pattern aligns with what we’re seeing across our research in talent acquisition — the most successful implementations combine strong technology with human expertise, rather than choosing one over the other.
Reading the Competitive Landscape
The high-volume hiring technology space has become crowded, with vendors approaching the problem from different angles. Understanding where each player excels helps clarify NXTThing’s positioning.
Paradox (Olivia AI Assistant) offers conversational AI that automates candidate screening, scheduling and basic questions via text/chat. It is designed for high-volume hourly hirng with mobile-first experience and enterprise-focused pricing.
Phenom Intelligent Talent Experience is a comprehensive talent CRM with AI-powered candidate matching and personalized career sites. It is strong on talent intelligence and building candidate pipelines over time, with enterprise-only pricing.
Fountain is purpose-built for frontline workforce recruitment with mobile-optimized applications. It excels at managing surges in hiring volume across multiple locations, with limited functionality beyond hiring.
Eightfold AI provides sophisticated talent intelligence, analyzing 1.6+ million career profiles. It is best suited for strategic talent planning rather than tactical high-volume execution.
Shaker Recruitment Marketing is a full-service recruitment marketing agency specializing in employer branding and attraction. It is a service-based model rather than a self-service technology platform.
3 Technology Innovations Worth Understanding
Personegy’s architecture reflects lessons from managing millions of applications. Three capabilities stand out:
Bidirectional ATS integration. Most CRM tools force recruiters to toggle between systems. Personegy maintains two-way data flow with major ATS platforms, letting recruiters stay in their native environment. The practical impact: recruiters using Phenom often complain they “can’t stay in my ATS and do all the things.” NXTThing solved this by ensuring updates flow both directions in real-time.
Dual scoring system: AI match plus weighted pre-screen. Here’s where they balance automation with legal defensibility. The AI match score helps surface candidates from the database (useful for nurturing), but advancement decisions rely on weighted pre-screen scores based on factual qualifications. For example, if a client requires three years of customer experience and a bachelor’s degree in a specific city, that’s an 85% match — no AI interpretation, just Boolean logic. This gives organizations the efficiency of automation with the audit trail compliance teams require.
AI recruiter assistant (launching version 2). Rather than replacing recruiters, this feature guides their daily priorities:
- Flags red requisitions requiring immediate attention.
- Suggests job description improvements based on performance data.
- Identifies bottlenecks (five candidates stuck at interview stage).
- Automates follow-up communications to hiring managers.
- Triggers candidate sourcing when flow drops below threshold.
The assistant operates on workflow intelligence. It analyzes patterns across thousands of requisitions to identify what typically causes delays.
Organizations That Need This Approach
Personegy’s sweet spot reveals itself in specific operational contexts:
Multi-location retail/hospitality operators. Companies managing 50+ locations with constant turnover benefit from the combination of technology and service. The platform handles automated screening and scheduling, while NXTThing’s candidate care team provides human support when applicants get stuck. Regional visibility into hiring pipelines helps operators understand which locations need intervention.
Manufacturing operations with seasonal surges. Organizations that swing from 200 to 2,000 hires quarterly need platforms that scale without breaking. Personegy’s burst capacity, combined with NXTThing’s staffing model, handles volume spikes that would overwhelm purely self-service tools. The automated shift selection and verbal offer features compress time-to-start from weeks to days.
Healthcare systems managing frontline and clinical roles. The ability to configure different hiring workflows within one platform matters when you’re simultaneously hiring certified nursing assistants (high volume, quick decision) and specialized clinicians (longer cycle, more screening). The dual scoring system lets organizations automate the former while maintaining human judgment on the latter.
Companies dissatisfied with pure-play technology vendors. If your current ATS or CRM creates more work than it eliminates, NXTThing’s service-led approach provides a safety net. You’re not just buying software. You are getting a team that’s managed hiring at scale and knows where automation breaks down. Their candidate care offering essentially functions as professional services, built into the platform rather than charged separately.
For organizations evaluating whether this approach fits their needs, Brandon Hall Group’s advisory services can help assess the trade-offs between pure-play technology and service-integrated solutions, taking into account your specific hiring volume, geographic distribution, and internal team capabilities.
Strategic Positioning: Where NXTThing Stands
Three observations about their market position:
- They have made a calculated bet that service-led product beats pure-play technology in high-volume hiring. In our Excellence Awards program, we consistently see that winning organizations credit their success to vendors who provide more than software; they provide partnership. NXTThing bundles both, which helps to explain their retention rates and expansion growth.
- NXThing is building from actual operational requirements rather than market perception. Personegy’s roadmap — moving from bolt-on CRM to standalone ATS with job broadcasting and offer management — follows their clients’ requests to consolidate systems. This organic evolution contrasts with vendors who chase feature parity through acquisition or rushed development.
- Their RPO background creates an interesting go-to-market challenge. Technology buyers often discount RPO providers as software vendors, assuming their product will be secondary to their service business. This is exactly the type of positioning challenge where Brandon Hall Group’s Smartchoice® Preferred Provider Program helps vendors craft messaging that resonates with buyers, establishing credibility beyond traditional category boundaries.
The competitive landscape suggests NXTThing is right to position around configuration flexibility and service integration. Paradox and Fountain win on pure automation efficiency but struggle when organizations need human escalation paths. Phenom offers sophisticated intelligence but at enterprise complexity and cost. Eightfold excels at strategic workforce planning but wasn’t designed for tactical, high-volume execution. Shaker provides marketing expertise but requires ongoing agency engagement rather than owned technology.
NXTThing sits at the intersection — technology capable enough to automate repetitive tasks, service-integrated enough to handle exceptions, and priced for organizations that aren’t Fortune 500 enterprises.
Looking Ahead: The Critical Question
Here’s what I’m watching: Can NXTThing successfully market technology while maintaining their service DNA? Their product roadmap is ambitious (versions 2 and 3 by year-end), which suggests confidence in their technical capabilities. The upcoming features — self-service career site builder, conversational voice apply, advanced AI chat — put them in direct competition with pure-play technology vendors
But they have one advantage those vendors don’t: They’re still doing the work. Every day, they’re managing hundreds of thousands of applications for clients. Every integration challenge, every candidate drop-off point, every recruiter frustration — they see it in real-time across dozens of implementations.
For organizations tired of explaining their hiring reality to vendors who’ve never managed a hiring surge, NXTThing offers something increasingly rare: people who understand your problem because they’re solving it for themselves, just at scale.
For NXTThing, the path forward involves not just building great technology, but telling that story effectively. The case studies they’re building — 15,000 annual hires at one company, expansion with a major insurer, multi-location operations at scale — provide the proof points buyers need. Recognition through programs like Brandon Hall Group’s Excellence in Technology Awards help establish their credibility as a technology vendor.
Want to learn more about how organizations are balancing AI automation with human touch in talent acquisition? Explore Brandon Hall Group’s research on emerging practices in high-volume hiring.
