How Socha Capital Speeds up Time-to-Hire with an All-in-One, AI-Native ATS

Socha Capital is a fast-growing wealth management firm headquartered in Austin, TX serving ultra-high-net-worth entrepreneurs. With a scrappy team and ambitious growth goals, the firm needed a modern recruiting foundation that could handle niche hiring needs, streamline operations, and scale without adding unnecessary overhead.

For Laura Morris, Head of Talent, the challenge was clear: hiring had been managed through spreadsheets, email threads, and SharePoint folders. Manual scheduling, scattered notes, and hours of repetitive work were slowing the process to a crawl.

Results at a Glance

• Faster pipeline velocity: Candidates move between stages in seconds instead of hours of back-and-forth.
• Simpler scheduling: Faster bookings and smoother candidate experience with the help of AI-Assisted Scheduling.
• Greater hiring confidence: AI Scoring gives Laura more reliable candidate information at a glance, helping her move faster and make the right hiring decisions.
• Better candidate + interviewer experience: Built-in AI Notetaker captures every conversation automatically, allowing the Socha Capital team to hire more objectively.
• Single source of truth: One central place for candidates, interviewers, notes, and reporting.
• Seamless implementation: Migrated from CSV files and candidate packets — enabling Laura to get started right away.

“…the biggest impact for us has been time-to-hire and speed at which we're able to move candidates from one stage to the next. With Kula, I'm able to move at a really rapid pace.”
_{— Laura Morris}

When Laura joined Socha, there was no ATS in place. Recruiting operations lived across Excel files, email threads, and SharePoint folders. Every candidate touchpoint required multiple manual steps: emailing back and forth for availability, sending separate calendar invites, and tracking progress across static spreadsheets.

💡 “Prior to us using Kula, we didn’t have an ATS at all. It was a lot of manual tracking, a lot of Excel documents and SharePoint folders. Just about every recruiter will say how manual everything can be — scheduling, emailing, tracking. That was the biggest frustration.”

The result? Long days, administrative bottlenecks, and less time to focus on strategic hiring initiatives.

Laura evaluated Teamtailor, Greenhouse, Workable, and Kula. Her criteria were clear:

• All-in-one functionality: A single system that could handle scheduling, notes, sourcing, and candidate management.
  
• Scalability: Affordable for a small team today, but capable of growing with Socha’s ambitious hiring goals.
  
• Ease of use: A modern platform recruiters and hiring managers could adopt quickly.

Greenhouse, though powerful, felt too heavy for a lean team and required bolt-on tools for features not available natively. The decision ultimately came down to Teamtailor vs. Kula.

💡 "It was a really tough call between Teamtailor and Kula. Teamtailor looked a little cheaper up front, but it would have been more expensive as we scaled."

“What pushed Kula across the finish line was that everything is native to the platform — notes, scheduling, sourcing — plus the cost was right. I also love that it’s an AI-based platform built by recruiters.”
_{— Laura Morris}

Rolling out an ATS without a legacy system to migrate could have been messy, but Laura found the process seamless with Kula.

💡 “I just had a bunch of candidate files and some CSVs. The team did an incredible job of getting that into Kula. It wasn’t your normal ATS-to-ATS transition, and they made it easy.”

Her implementation partner, Eleni, was a highlight of the process:

💡 “I can’t speak highly enough about my implementation partner, Eleni. I actively looked forward to my conversations with her every week."

“Honestly, the Kula team is one of the top reasons I’m so satisfied with our choice.”
_{— Laura Morris}

Post-launch, Customer Success continued to provide hands-on support.

💡 “Being a sole TA person can feel a little isolating. Having Eleni and Erin as partners has been a lifeline for me as I’ve navigated this new role.”

Since going live, Kula has become the backbone of Socha Capital’s recruiting workflow:

✅ Scheduling that used to take hours now takes seconds.
Candidates receive automated self-scheduling links directly from the pipeline, eliminating endless email chains.

✅ Interviewers have a single hub for prep.
All candidate details, resumes, and notes live in one place.

✅ AI Scoring helps Laura prioritize the best candidates first, saving valuable time on niche, hard-to-fill roles.

💡 “…I’m able to use some of the insights like the AI Scoring to better identify who I should spend my time with on the front end. Being able to move faster and have a little bit more reliability in the information that I’m seeing just from a quick glance makes it a lot easier for me to move candidates through, make the right hires, and be able to have more confidence in the information that I’m getting."

✅ AI Notetaker makes interviews more human by capturing insights automatically, freeing Laura to focus on the conversation and genuinely connect with candidates.

"Knowing that the interview notetaker is automatically there with every interview — and not just mine, my leaders’ interviews too — makes it really easy to capture the insights from conversations. That is probably my favorite feature, a game changer in just how I can connect with candidates.”
_{— Laura Morris}

Laura knows firsthand how overwhelming it can feel to choose the right ATS, especially when you’re starting from scratch.

💡 "It’s daunting. Give yourself some patience and grace — there are a lot of options and it can be overwhelming at first. Reach out to your network, but don’t stop there. Kula didn’t come recommended to me, but I found it through research, and I’m so glad I did.”

Her advice for others evaluating platforms:

• Go beyond recommendations: Your peers’ favorite tool may not fit your team’s size or goals.
  
• Prioritize native features: “If you’re serious about AI-driven recruiting, make sure the features are truly native — not bolt-ons.”
  
• Take the subjectivity out of it: Use side-by-side comparisons or even Excel formulas to keep evaluations objective.
• Weigh long-term scalability, not just upfront cost: The cheapest option now may become the most expensive as you grow.

“At the end of the day, what mattered most to me was finding a platform that would scale with us and let me spend less time on busywork and more time on the conversations that matter. Kula has done that.”
_{— Laura Morris}

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