I started my career in frontline hiring. Cashiers, retail managers, temp workers, manufacturing roles, material handlers, you name it. Folks without a digital profile. People who don’t exist online in the obvious places. People without LinkedIn profiles, resumes on indeed, or profiles on monster. I’m talking hard to fill roles.
And I had to get real creative and implement new technology into the recruiting workflow. Mobile optimized ATS. SMS solutions. Press conferences and pop ups to complement job ad spend. We busted out the stops.
So now, ten years later, it’s still pretty obvious frontline hiring is jacked up. The good news? Grayscale is one of the few companies actually rebuilding it from the inside out.
I went out to SAP Connect in Las Vegas to spend time with Ty Abernethy, founder of Grayscale, and what struck me immediately is how much of his perspective comes from living the pain of high-volume recruiting. Not the glossy tech startup offering 75th percentile comp for a household name B2B SaaS side of recruiting, but the real frontline world. Think Retail, healthcare, manufacturing, logistics roles where applicants flood reqs, managers are stretched thin, and candidate experience still feels like an afterthought.
Ty started his career in that chaos, hated how transactional it felt, and never forgot how deeply broken the process was for candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers. That empathy is baked directly into the product.
Hanging out with Ty and the team I learned about how Grayscale integrates inside systems like SAP, Workday, Greenhouse, and UKG. But what makes it compelling is how simple it feels for the end user.
Instead of overwhelming teams with more dashboards, they built AI agents that do the actual work: screening, scheduling, nudging, updating, and coordinating. All of this through natural language. Recruiters get a personal assistant that handles the repetitive tasks. Candidates get real-time communication and fast movement. Hiring managers get support without needing to touch a bulky ATS. And because everything happens conversationally through text or voice, it’s pretty frictionless.
Part of why Building the Talent Machine went out was to sit down and interview soem of Grayscale’s key customers. And the companies using Grayscale today are processing tens of thousands of hires a year with less ghosting, faster screening, and dramatically cleaner manager workflows. One client onboarded nearly 50,000 new hires using Grayscale. That’s insane. And what stands out most is how human-centric the whole system is and how much their customers love working with them.
Ty isn’t building AI for AI’s sake. He’s building tools that let people show up more human in the moments that matter. The candidate finally gets acknowledged. The recruiter finally has breathing room. The frontline manager finally gets support without slowing down their entire day.
And because so much of the process is automated behind the scenes, teams can screen everyone, respond faster, elevate the best candidates, and reduce the silent drop-off points that cost companies millions.
This is the direction recruiting is heading: fewer clicks, more clarity, and a shift toward conversational workflows that meet people where they are. It’s rare to find a founder building this thoughtfully, quietly, and without the noise that dominates most of HR tech. After spending time with Ty and the Grayscale team, and sitting down with their customers, it’s clear they’re solving the right problems for the right teams at exactly the right moment.
Frontline hiring isn’t going to get easier. Trust me, that’s where I cut my teeth in recruiting. But it can get a whole lot better. And companies like Grayscale are proving what that future looks like.
Check it out today: https://grayscaleapp.com/
