Planet cut time-to-hire by 47% with Greenhouse

What once felt messy and reactive is now structured and strategic. Greenhouse gave Planet the tools to hire niche, global talent with confidence while improving speed, compliance and collaboration.
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Fast facts: Key results

• Reduced time-to-hire by 47%
• Increased team capacity by 30%
• Increased offer acceptance rate by 8%
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About Planet 

Founded in 2010 by NASA scientists, Planet develops and operates a fleet of Earth observation satellites that capture near-daily images of the entire Earth’s landmass. Today, the company has 920 full-time employees across 28 countries, making it a truly global team.

Their mission is bold: to make change on Earth visible, accessible and actionable. The work is often urgent and complex, from tracking wildfires to monitoring deforestation. That’s why Planet hires niche, highly skilled talent who are mission-driven, collaborative and eager to solve challenging problems at scale.

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The challenge

Before using Greenhouse, hiring at Planet was “chaotic,” as Clarence Lal, Senior Director of Talent, put it. The team was scaling fast and needed to fill incredibly specific, global roles. “Our roles are complex – with different geographies, licensure requirements and salary structures,” Clarence added.

The problem? They were working with disconnected tools, busy spreadsheets and inconsistent workflows that made hiring with confidence difficult. This led to several hiring challenges, including:

• ‍Manual reporting slowed decision-making: The team managed hiring via spreadsheets and hallway conversations, slowing the process and leading to misalignment between finance, talent and HR.‍
• Inconsistent, subjective interviews: Without a structured process, hiring leaned heavily on referrals and gut instinct, which often resulted in bias. Planet needed to move beyond like-minded hiring to bring in more diverse perspectives.‍
• Regulatory and compliance risks: Hiring globally meant dealing with complex regulations, like Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Without a system that supported these compliance steps, the risk of missed requirements grew and hiring was delayed.

Planet needed a system that could scale globally, support compliance, create consistency and free the team to focus on what matters most: hiring great people.

We were reliant on spreadsheets tracking our hiring plans. There were constant changes, and it became very time-intensive, with multiple individuals working from finance to HR to talent, on just tracking how we were performing against the plan.

^{– Clarence Lal, Senior Director of Talent at Planet
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The solution

To meet the urgent demand for specialized global talent, Planet needed a hiring system that was structured, compliant and scalable. Greenhouse gave the team the consistency and automation they were missing – transforming hiring from a patchwork of spreadsheets and gut decisions into a process they could trust at every step.

With Greenhouse, Planet was able to:

• ‍Build compliance into every role: Custom fields ensured critical details, like salary ranges, licensure requirements and region-specific regulations (EAR, ITAR) were captured from the very beginning. This made every job requisition consistent and compliant, no matter the location.‍
• Reach and nurture niche talent pools: Using Greenhouse CRM, the team created targeted pipelines and re-engaged past candidates – helping them find the right specialists faster, even when only a handful of people worldwide were qualified.‍
• Create a single source of truth for headcount tracking: By integrating with headcount365, the talent team gained instant alignment with finance and HR, enabling executives and board members to access real-time updates and make confident hiring decisions.

Together, these changes turned hiring into a strategic advantage. 

Greenhouse has helped us create a system with a process in place that leads to objective decisions and uncovering the right talent for the right roles – and not relying on bringing in like-minded or the same type of mentalities.

^{– Clarence Lal, Senior Director of Talent at Planet 
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The results

When Planet first partnered with Greenhouse, their hiring process was unorganized and reactive – spreadsheets, missed regulations and long delays made it hard to bring on the highly skilled talent they needed to fulfill their urgent mission. Today, the picture looks completely different. Hiring is faster, more structured and more collaborative, giving the team confidence that every role is set up for success.

The impact has been measurable:

• ‍47% faster hiring: Average time-to-hire was nearly cut in half, helping teams fill mission-critical roles without delays.‍
• 30% more team capacity: Automating repetitive tasks like scheduling and applicant filtering freed recruiters to focus on finding and engaging top talent.‍
• Higher candidate acceptance: A more structured and candidate-friendly process improved offer acceptance rates by 8%, ensuring Planet could secure the niche, global talent they needed.

Greenhouse didn’t just make hiring easier for Planet – it gave them a smarter, faster way to bring on the right people who power their mission to make change on Earth visible, accessible and actionable.

Previously, it was chaotic, but our hiring system is now described as a machine. We all understand the blueprint for the process and we have all bought into the mindset to be true partners.

‍^{– Clarence Lal, Senior Director of Talent at Planet}