Rory Brandon, Talent Acquisition Manager at OneTrust, shares how BrightHire helped his team improve consistency and strengthen the hiring process
How Rory Brandon uses BrightHire to help his team improve every day
When Rory Brandon joined OneTrust more than six years ago, the company was still in its early growth phase. Hiring was moving quickly, and the talent team was focused on building the structure needed to support that growth.
Over time, Rory helped shape how hiring operates across the organization. Today he manages Talent Acquisition for global go-to-market hiring and leads a distributed team across the United States, London, and Madrid. His focus has remained consistent throughout that growth: building systems that help recruiters run strong interviews and make confident hiring decisions.
Rory’s work sits within a broader org-wide BrightHire rollout led by Harri Stenning, Head of Global Talent Operations. Where Harri’s focus is on interview quality and data at the program level, Rory’s is on what happens inside his team every day.
You can read more about how OneTrust is using BrightHire across the organization in the full OneTrust case study.
Building stronger interview foundations
As the company scaled, the talent team introduced Hiring Foundations — an internal program that every interviewer completes before participating in the hiring process. The program ensures that interviewers understand how to assess candidates consistently and how to contribute meaningful feedback during hiring discussions.
BrightHire entered the process shortly after. The team first adopted BrightHire’s AI note-taking capabilities to support recruiter screens. Recruiters no longer had to split their attention between the candidate conversation and capturing detailed notes. Interviews could stay focused on the candidate while BrightHire generated structured summaries. As the team became more familiar with the platform, usage expanded to hiring managers and additional interview stages.
Aligning earlier in the hiring process
One of the ways Rory’s team now uses BrightHire is during role discovery calls. These early conversations between recruiters and hiring managers define what success in the role looks like. BrightHire captures the discussion and allows the hiring manager to review the recording afterward, ensuring alignment on the profile before interviews begin.
The discussion is also stored centrally so the hiring team can return to it throughout the process. That shared reference point helps keep interview questions consistent and ensures that interviewers are evaluating candidates against the same expectations.
Developing interviewers through peer feedback
As Rory moved into a leadership role in 2025, he began focusing more intentionally on how recruiters develop their interviewing skills. One initiative that emerged was a peer-to-peer interview feedback program designed to help recruiters learn from one another.
Over a 30-day period, recruiters pair up and review two interview recordings each week. Using a structured framework, they provide feedback in three areas: what worked well, what stood out, and what they would approach differently next time.
Watching your own interviews can feel uncomfortable at first, but the exercise quickly became one of the most valuable development tools on the team. Recruiters began sharing interviewing styles, refining their questioning techniques, and learning how to guide conversations more effectively.
The program also introduced a light element of friendly competition. The team tracks interview performance metrics and maintains a leaderboard that highlights progress and improvement across the group. They set a minimum overall interview quality score of 75, and within two months, every recruiter on the team had surpassed that benchmark, with many achieving scores above 90 — as they competed to claim a spot in the top five.
Supporting a culture of continuous improvement
Rory often describes great recruiters as professionals who treat interviewing as a craft. They review their work, learn from peers, and look for ways to improve with every conversation. BrightHire supports that mindset.
Instead of relying on memory or anecdotal feedback, recruiters can revisit interview recordings, review summaries, and reflect on how interviews unfolded. The platform provides a consistent record of conversations that teams can use to refine how they evaluate candidates and collaborate during hiring decisions.
What began as a tool to simplify interview documentation has grown into something more meaningful for Rory and his team. It now plays a role in how interviewers learn, coach one another, and improve their approach to hiring. For Rory, that evolution reflects the broader goal of the talent team at OneTrust: strong hiring outcomes begin with strong interviews, and building great interviewers is one of the most effective ways to achieve both.
“The best talent teams treat interviewing as a skill that can be developed. BrightHire helps us create the visibility and feedback loops needed to improve.”
— Rory Brandon, Recruiting Manager, OneTrust
