How we balanced human and machine in an automated hiring programme

Our customer, a leading snack brand, sought an automated solution that was high tech and low touch to match their current automation goals and support their high-volume hiring needs.

Initially, we presented a tech stack including several hiring automation tools and allowed us to build five integrations between our ATS and the customer’s HR systems.

Unfortunately, the model produced low candidate engagement and resulted in high candidate drop-off in the recruiting process, low ratings on hiring manager satisfaction surveys.

We needed to redesign quickly to provide a solution that still focused on automation but also increased human touchpoints and elevated our roles as hiring advisers.

On the candidate side, we built the following touchpoints into our process:

• Direct sourcing phone calls to high quality candidates on hard to fill requisitions
• SMS reminders to candidates throughout the process with a phone number and contact in case they have questions
• Selective use of CallFire and SlyBroadcast to call candidates at critical stages of the recruiting process. Pressing a number connects candidates with a member of our CSR team
• Phone calls with scarce skill set candidates to schedule on-site interviews
• Direct interaction with candidates to organise hiring events across the country

For the hiring managers, we realigned our support team and created a new Recruiter SPOC (Single Point of Contact) role.

This involved a major change management initiative to train the Recruiter SPOC team and hiring managers in the field.

With this new organisation, we made several enhancements including:

• Dedicated Recruiter SPOC for hiring managers to immediately address portal questions
• Created a “Skype Federation” communication system so employees from each company can use Skype to connect with SPOC team
• Developed Trusted Advisor training for the SPOC team to better identify challenges before the hiring manager brings them to our attention and pinpoint various ways SPOC can partner with managers to solve those challenges

Overall Hiring Manager satisfaction improved from 37% to 70%.

Our support rating increased from 33% to 85% and resolution of challenges increased from 30% to 75%.

Time to Start dropped 17% and the number of open positions aged over 45 days reduced 40%, both after six months.

We continuously evaluate new tech in the marketplace and the effectiveness of the programme’s tech stack, leading to the recommendation of removing portions of the technology that wasn’t providing optimal results.

Based on data analysis and our partnership, our customer agreed to off-boarding the tech and redesigned their internal process.