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Hiring is hard. Your tech shouldn’t be.
When it comes to our technology, that core principle guides every decision we make—from the smallest enhancement to the biggest investments.
It may seem like an obvious standard. But in an era defined by more—more features, more rollouts, more bells and whistles—it’s one that’s surprisingly easy to lose sight of.
Hiring teams are already navigating rising applicant volume, tighter timelines, shifting business priorities, and higher expectations from both candidates and hiring managers. The last thing they need is technology that adds complexity, creates noise, or forces them to work around the very tools meant to support them.
We believe technology should earn its place in the hiring process.
It should reduce friction, not introduce it. Surface clearer signals, not bury teams in data.
And help recruiters move with confidence—knowing where to focus, when to act, and what actually matters next.
That’s the lens we brought to our most recent Lever design enhancements. This wasn’t about making things flashier or chasing the latest trend. It was about making the day-to-day work of the people using our product easier.
To share how—and why—we made these improvements, we sat down with Employ’s Chief Product Officer, Dara Brenner.
First things first, Dara, can you talk us through design enhancements that were made to the Lever platform?
There are quite a few big UX/UI design improvements leveling up the Lever platform:
1. A modernized interface
We’re refreshing the navigation along with some of the most critical elements within the experience to give our customers a more streamlined, intuitive experience. Think improved contrast, updated colors, and cleaner navigation that give you:
- Reduced eye strain during long recruiting days.
- A product experience that feels as modern as your team.
And the best part? There’s more of these improvements rolling out in the near future.
2. Faster, more flexible job posting
Posting your job is the first step in moving a requisition from internal planning to external momentum. We believe that process should be seamless.
With our latest enhancements, teams will be able to:
- Easily adjust postings with our improved text editor with structured formatting.
- Drag and drop sections and application questions.
- Seamlessly reorder content.
- Better align postings with how your team actually works.
3. Smarter application management
With this launch, we’re also introducing enhanced controls for application questions—designed to reduce repetitive setup, lower compliance risk, and create a clearer, more consistent experience for candidates.
What exactly will this look like? You’ll be able to:
- Set default application questions.
- Leverage drag and drop features to reorder questions.
- Send applications directly to sourced candidates.
4. Improved Visibility into Your Automations
And finally, we’re leveling up your Automations Hub. We know the Lever automations save critical time throughout the day. That’s why we prioritized these enhancements; to make your automations work even harder for you, without adding complexity.
So, with this launch, we’re bringing you:
- A refreshed look and feel.
- Search, sort, and filter capabilities so you can quickly find what you’re looking for within your workflows.
- Easier workflow management with new grouping functionality.
- Clearer visibility into which automations are tied to each customer application question.
When making these improvements, how did you decide which customer pain points needed immediate investment versus longer-term focus?
Generally speaking, when we roll out a new release, upgrade, or enhancement, we always look at a combination of impact and urgency. Some challenges show up as daily friction; things that slow teams down every single day or introduce unnecessary risk. Those are the areas we prioritize first, because even small improvements can have an outsized effect on recruiter capacity and confidence.
At the same time, we’re always thinking a few steps ahead. We pay close attention to how hiring is changing—application volume, AI-driven risk, shifting expectations around speed and transparency—and invest early in areas where teams will need stronger support over time. It’s a balance between solving what hurts now and building toward what teams will need next.
Customer conversations are part of that process for every release. But this rollout, in particular, was shaped directly by our customers’ honest feedback. We heard where teams were getting stuck, where processes were stalling, and where friction was showing up in day-to-day workflows.
And we used those insights to explore solutions that would directly solve those pain points. We brought early concepts back to customers for validation, tested them within real hiring workflows, and refined the experience before rolling these enhancements out more broadly to Lever’s customer base.
What aspect of these enhancements are you most excited about and why?
What excites me most is how much mental space these enhancements give back to recruiters. TA teams aren’t in this role to manage calendars, chase feedback, and update paperwork. They’re here to find the very best talent and build real connections with those candidates.
To truly focus on that work, teams need to offset recruiter workload with the right tools and technology. When systems are designed to remove friction and handle repetitive tasks, recruiters can redirect their energy toward higher-value conversations and strategy.
Trust is a critical part of that equation. When recruiters know their platform is surfacing early signals, reducing risk, and protecting the integrity of the hiring process, they don’t have to shoulder that burden alone.
That confidence creates capacity. And capacity is what allows teams to move from managing processes to driving outcomes.
At the same time, we’ve made the experience itself easier and more intuitive to use. That combination—stronger trust and a smoother experience—is what makes these enhancements especially exciting for me.
We’ve had some pretty significant product launches recently. How does this launch weave into those previous launches?
That’s a great question. And honestly, this launch is a continuation of the same story we’ve been telling for the last year.
In our recent releases, we focused on bringing clarity and confidence back to hiring. In late 2025, we introduced innovations designed to reduce noise across the funnel—helping teams manage rising application volume, surface stronger-fit signals earlier, and move candidates from first touch to first day with more structure and less guesswork.
Then, just recently in February, we doubled down on responsible, human-centered innovation. We made it clear that AI in hiring only works when it’s transparent, actionable, and built to support better decisions—not replace them. That means always-on governance, explainability, and insights that actually move teams from dashboards to action.
This latest launch weaves directly into that foundation.
As we continue to launch these really big, sort of market-shifting innovations, we’re also assessing the day-to-day progression and how we can help make even those small moments more seamless, more effortless, and more aligned to how hiring teams are showing up.
We’re continuing to build toward a hiring experience that is:
- More signal-driven.
- More connected.
- More trustworthy.
- And more focused on outcomes, not just activity.
And so, building off of that, how do these improvements ladder up to your broader product vision? And how do they set the tone for what’s next?
These improvements are a direct expression of our broader product vision: building hiring technology that brings clarity, not complexity, to an already demanding role.
At Lever, we believe the best recruiting software fits naturally into how teams work. That means unifying workflows, surfacing the right signals at the right time, and helping recruiters and hiring managers make confident decisions without jumping between tools or second-guessing the data in front of them. In other words, we’re trying to give recruiters time back in their day to focus on the innately human elements of their job. Those elements that can’t be replaced by technology, but that often get overtaken by the tedious manual work.
The enhancements in this release build on that foundation by reducing friction in everyday tasks and making insights easier to understand and act on.
They also set the tone for what’s next. We’re continuing to invest in technology that’s intelligent by design—where automation supports human judgment, data guides decisions instead of overwhelming them, and the platform adapts to the realities of modern hiring.
The goal isn’t to add features for the sake of it, but to create momentum for TA teams. Helping them move faster, work smarter, and focus on the human element of the work that truly drives hiring outcomes.
Ready to see how Lever helps TA teams like yours level up their recruiting processes? Schedule a demo today.
