Reflecting on Winning Brandon Hall's Gold Award for Best Advance in AI for Business Impact

There’s a Julia Child quote I love — one I’ve used several times with my daughters before a big hockey or soccer game.  

“The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It’s doing something you appreciate, something you believe is worthwhile.”

The smartest leaders I’ve ever been around don’t do what they do to win awards. They do it because they believe in their work. They do it because of the mission they’re pursuing or a goal they’ve set for themselves. Awards are simply validation that the effort was recognizable and meaningful.

At Paradox, we’ve always tried to approach our work the same way. Awards aren’t what drive us. Our clients drive us. Their success drives us. Creating better, more transparent, more respectful experiences for candidates drives us. Awards are often a byproduct of the effort we’ve put in on the journey to create something meaningful for our clients and their people.

Of course, that's not to say awards aren't meaningful. When they're backed by organizations that put real thought and research into the companies they honor, awards can act as a worthy milestone — validation that the work you're doing matters. ‍

Building a Company to Create Impact‍

Last week, the Paradox team was honored to learn we’d been awarded Gold and Silver awards as part of Brandon Hall Group’s 2020 Excellence in Technology Awards. The Gold award was our first from Brandon Hall — and it came in a category we care deeply about: Best Advance in AI for Business Impact.

Those last two words are the ones that matter. Business impact. ‍

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We like to say internally that we measure our success in client hugs (or virtual high-fives during COVID times). Building truly impactful software is hard work. It takes a high degree of client centricity and partnership (or what we call “having a high give a damn”). You have to care about your clients’ goals and the problems they’re trying to solve first, and then create solutions that address them.

We’re proud and humbled to be recognized by Brandon Hall Group for that work, but we have to thank our clients first for trusting us with the opportunity to serve them. ‍

Stepping Off a Skinny Branch

Our founder and CEO Aaron Matos has this core belief that I find powerful: If we help our clients get the people thing right, they can build teams that change the world.

I’m proud to be part of a company that’s exemplifying that belief in how we’ve assembled our own team — including the high bar we have for growing and supporting that team as we scale. Fundamentally, we’re inspired by the opportunity to play a role in helping our clients do the same — creating magical candidate experiences with a little help from our AI assistant Olivia.

A couple weeks ago, Aaron accepted another award on behalf of the Paradox team — Exceptional Innovator from the Greater Phoenix Chamber's annual IMPACT awards (there’s that word “impact” again).

In his acceptance speech, he summed up our purpose well:

“Being recognized as an innovator matters to this company. One of our values is to create the future. And creating the future is about innovation — about stepping off on a skinny branch and doing things that have never been done before.”

It takes vision and confidence in the team — and the solution you've built — to believe you can step on that skinny branch and not plummet to the ground. But it also takes clients who are willing to take that leap with you.

So, to our team and our clients: Thank you for your trust.

These awards are a nice pat on the back, but they’re just one checkpoint in a much longer race we’re running to help transform recruiting alongside you.

Consider this a small token of appreciation from the entire Paradox team for running that race with us. There isn’t an award on the planet we’d deserve to win without your partnership and support!

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