Then came the shift mid-2023, something changed. Leadership continued pushing a narrative of transparency, especially as anxiety grew around potential layoffs. We were repeatedly told there were no layoffs planned... until one day, without warning, 150 people were gone. That “transparency” felt like a betrayal. It was the first real crack in what had once been a genuinely great place to work.
From there, things declined quickly. Support staff, especially on the Enterprise side, went from feeling like trusted problem-solvers to being treated like the root of every issue. Metrics became the entire focus. We were micromanaged down to the order of clicks in Salesforce. Timers were implemented for every screen. Metrics were applied uniformly across wildly different clients and product issues, often by people who had never actually done the job. It didn't matter if you had rapport with a client or deep knowledge of their custom setup — what mattered was that you followed the new formula and hit the numbers. The processes and metrics and expectations changed constantly and those changes were communicated poorly.
And when those metrics slipped (as they inevitably did under impossible conditions and constantly changing expectations), the message was loud and clear: “If you don’t like it, leave.” That sentiment was echoed again and again — in meetings, in reviews, and sometimes even in public Glassdoor replies. People were fired, put on action plans that seemed to almost always result in firing, or simply burned out and left. Morale collapsed. Customers noticed. Analysts were demoralized and afraid. Managers who had supported and advocated for us were let go, then talked about disparagingly once gone. Suddenly, it was assumed anyone tied to them must also be a problem.
Support went from being scrappy and solution-driven to being boxed into an inflexible, one-size-fits-all workflow — despite the fact that Bullhorn’s own selling point is its complexity and customizability. It makes no sense to handle a five-minute fix the same way you'd approach a multi-month issue involving dev teams and client-specific configurations. The refusal to acknowledge this complexity is hurting both employees and customers.
Yes, all companies change. But the speed and depth of Bullhorn’s shift — and ESPECIALLY the way it was handled — was heartbreaking. I held out hope for as long as I could. I wanted to grow there, and I tried hard to adapt and contribute meaningfully to the changes. But none of it mattered. It became clear that hitting arbitrary KPIs mattered more than employee wellbeing or customer outcomes.
