How GardaWorld Leverages SMS to Humanize Their Volume Hiring
GardaWorld was looking for a way to help humanize and instill dignity into their high volume hiring process.
As one of the top security companies in the world, GardaWorld hires a lot of hourly employees. Hiring in this world can feel highly transactional and can leave candidates feeling like a number. When it was time to revisit their volume hiring process, GardaWorld wanted to create a process unlike any others in the industry.
Their goal was to create an experience that allowed their candidates to feel like part of the family from the get-go. No matter what, they aim to create a process that makes getting from application to paycheck easier than ever.
“Garda has a limited pool of candidates to hire from, so experience matters. Even if a candidate isn’t hired now, they could be a great hire in the future. And they'll remember how you treated them.”
The Set-Up
As GardaWorld aims to cultivate their talent pool, they wanted to create a process that made it easy to funnel in new candidates and stay in touch with older ones. They had their eyes set on finding a way to ensure every applicant had a positive experience.
Their goal was to create a process focused on building and maintaining relationships with their candidates, and they kept their eyes on a few metrics to do this.
Speed to Post
The time from applying to a role, to starting at your assigned post. The goal was to get this stat below two weeks.
90 Day Losses
They wanted to create a process that engages candidates long term, to reduce turnover in the first 90 days.
Overall Attrition
GardaWorld seeks to design a process where every team member is so valued they couldn’t fathom leaving.
The idea was to create a memorable, transferable, and highly personalized experience for every applicant.
With specific intricacies involved for each position or state, they were looking to build a solution that made it easy to manage the specifics so they could focus on humanizing every interaction.
The Solution
When it came to finding a solution, they wanted to create processes to keep a people first approach. They were looking to:
- Cultivate a process where technology was an enhancement, not a replacement
- Instill respect and dignity into the candidates working their way through the application process
As GardaWorld sought out a better process, they were looking to automate reminders and scheduling, prompt their candidates to check their emails when they have action items, simplify the process, and streamline next steps.
The heart of this process improvement was to show their candidates how much they value their work and their service.
In order to develop processes that conveyed those emotions, they chose to focus on simplifying the steps and making it as easy as possible for someone to get from application to paycheck.
As they rolled this process out, they made an effort to balance automation and humanization. Through leveraging texting, they created automated reminders for phone screens, interviews, and other events like their first day!
This technology enhancement helped them increase their interview sit rate, and made it easier for them to quickly advance candidates in the process.
“In our society today, we value information and connection now. We have to meet candidates where they are, and adapt to what the candidates need and want. Texting has become the perfect tool to meet these objectives.”
- Scott
Not only did they see an increase in participation for their in-person interactions, but they also noted an overall increase in their candidate engagement as applicants found it easier to ask or answer questions via text. With open lines of communication to their recruiters, the process had an entirely new and engaging edge to it.
How They Built This
When it came to designing this process, they used data to drive decisions and then let strategy come into play once they had a direction to follow.
It looked like:
- Assessing the hiring process as a whole and pursuing clarity around which areas of the system resulted in the biggest drop off.
- Using strategy to solve the root of the problem once they understood the causation.
Once they reviewed the metrics that matter, they started asking questions such as:
- What is our current applicant to hire ratio?
- How can we increase that?
- Where are our candidates dropping off?
After they had answers to their questions, they knew where to start designing the process.
GardaWorld uses SMS automation to increase candidate engagement, remind applicants of upcoming events and next steps, and prompt them to take action before they become disengaged.
They are opting to create a process with intention. Their goal is to remove as many burdens and jumping off points as possible. They continuously look for ways to make it easier on their candidates to become a member of the family.
As they have rolled these changes out branch by branch, they have reviewed branch specific data to ensure the transition is smooth, seamless, and positive.
This change wasn’t solely on the candidates side, as they rolled these new processes out to their internal teams, they were excited to hear their recruiters loved it!
“Grayscale allows our Talent Acquisition and HR Teams to contact candidates seamlessly without having to leave our Applicant Tracking System.”
With buy-in from the team, and candidate engagement skyrocketing, GardaWorld is well on their way to creating a volume hiring process that’s undeniable.
Takeaways
- GardaWorld learned how you can successfully use tech to keep volume hiring human-oriented
- They leverage data to help to inform and direct strategy efforts for maximum impact
- GardaWorld created a process to showcase how they value their employees by treating candidates with respect from the get go
When it comes to using technology in volume hiring, it’s easy to get caught up in automation. Without having a guiding light like humanizing the process, it’s possible to do more damage than good.
GardaWorld started this journey with a 22 day application to paycheck timeline. Now? That process only takes 17 days. They are on track to continue trimming and polishing the process to reach their goal of 14 days.
With the use of technological enhancements in their process they are on their way to reducing 90 day turnover.
“Employee Engagement and Retention begin in the hiring process. The best TA strategy is to keep our people, and our new uses of texting are helping us on this journey.”
- Scott
Sure, reinventing the system can feel like a lot of work. At what point does it become mission critical to take a serious look at your overall attrition? Only you can answer that, but for GardaWorld they felt it was time to deliver a white glove service to their volume hires.
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How Dick’s Sporting Goods is Eliminating Candidate Ghosting
Dick’s Sporting Goods (DSG) found themselves struggling with candidate ghosting in their volume hiring process. As it got increasingly harder to fill reqs and adequately staff their retail locations they went looking for a solution to eliminate ghosting in their application and onboarding process.
We sat down with Rick Jordan, a Senior Director of Talent Acquisition, at DSG to learn more about the way they approached changing the dynamics of their hiring process to limit candidate ghosting.
"Candidate ghosting is the result of the market versus how engaging your process is. When someone ghosts us, it’s because they found it easier to pursue the process somewhere else."
– Rick Jordan
With this viewpoint, as they were exploring options, it was mission-critical for them to create a solution to enable a high-touch, scalable, and personalized experience for every applicant.
The Set-Up
When Dick’s Sporting Goods reached out to learn more about what we do here at Grayscale they wanted to address some very specific issues in their high volume hiring process.
They were seeing a record numbers of candidates disappear throughout the hiring and onboarding process. Instead of just finding more candidates to put in the pipeline, they wanted to take a proactive approach at understanding why they were falling off the radar in the first place.
"We believe people are core to our business. Our goal is to build really solid relationships with everyone we interact with, so how do we automate that?"
Their hypothesis was that by leveraging automation, they could significantly limit the amount of ghosting they were seeing.
They studied their reporting and came to a few conclusions. Let’s break these down.
- Lack of speed. When it comes to keeping candidates engaged, they are looking to move. If you’re too slow to respond they won’t stay engaged and will pursue a process they find captivating.
- Confusing or complicated processes. If you’re making too many asks, or not giving enough direction, candidates will get lost in the process and move on to a place where they feel seen.
- Misaligned market compensation. Candidates are looking for competitive salaries to match their worth. If it’s possible, revisit your compensation structure, though this is usually the hardest force to work against.
Dick’s realized the two things they could quickly and easily change to help minimize ghosting were speed and process. So they got to work!
The Solution
After reviewing some data points, they sat down to simplify and refine their high-volume recruiting process as a whole. They developed three main goals.
- DSG wanted to find their own perfect balance of leveraging automation while sticking close to their human-centric roots
- They wanted to assess every ask of their applicants and trim the process down to include only the highest value requirements
- From there, they wanted to move as many necessary but lower value tasks into onboarding, or on the job training to help simplify the process and keep candidates engaged
When it came to finding the right balance of automation and humanization, they wanted to use tech to accelerate the process, not remove the human elements.
For them, this project became about getting really clear on the exact things they needed to know about candidates. No more filler questions or mindless hoops!
It was time to transform high-volume hiring through creating the simplest process they could.
With an end goal of reducing their ghosting, they made sure the updates they were making to the process enhanced the experience, in place of extending it or convoluting it.
How They Built It
- Dick’s Sporting Goods uses data to encourage engagement and lean into the platforms their candidates are more accessible on
- They aim to leverage automation to enhance in-person, 1:1 interactions, instead of to replace them
- Dick’s Sporting Goods intentionally worked with the local teams to roll out this process for a seamless and streamlined candidate experience
When it came to reimagining a system where candidates moved seamlessly through the process, they decided to let data be their guide.
They sat down and reviewed their major drop-off points, their time-to-fill, their application expectations, and the engagement metrics around the communication formats they used.
As they teased out what this could look like, their goal was to create a system that allowed them to create more intentional relationships with their applicants.
From there, they took scissors to the process, and worked with their local hiring managers to create and implement changes to optimize for efficiency and humanization.
It looked something like this:
Takeaways
- Dick’s Sporting Goods believes automation should enable your human interactions not distract from them
- With team being a core value of their company, they strive to create meaningful conversations in the hiring process
- When creating new systems and processes, they ask, “what would help our hiring managers do their jobs better?”
As Dick’s Sporting Goods has upleveled their volume hiring process, they have seen a significant drop in their candidate ghosting!
During this time of revitalization, Rick Jordan kept one thought central.
“I’m thinking about how I can make the application process as easy as Apple Pay! How do we make our process feel as easy as auto-populating all the important information at checkout. What can we do to make it easier, so we don’t lose the sale?”
When it comes to auditing and iterating on these processes through time, DSG uses the data in their systems to continue testing and refining their processes for perfection.
How Amazon Pharmacy Leverages SMS & Automation to Create a Best-in-Class Candidate Experience
Amazon Pharmacy was looking to facilitate an incredibly high volume hiring process while maintaining their company value of being customer (and candidate) obsessed. The workload quickly became unmanageable for their recruiters, and they began looking for ways to create an automated candidate communication system.
They wanted to create an automated system to support their recruiters as they adjusted to a new volume in order to keep pace with the growing demand for their services.
"At this time, Amazon Pharmacy’s main goal was automation.”
Zack Tucker, Amazon
The Challenges
They wanted to create a system that accomplished very specific criteria.
- Amazon wanted to get to a place where one recruiter could handle upwards of 1000 candidates
- They needed something that both provided scalability and a unique personal touch
- Their recruiters needed a way to increase their response rate with candidates and keep more applicants in their pipeline longer
- It was imperative that they give every single candidate an unprecedented experience
When hiring at scale like Amazon Pharmacy was, it can become increasingly difficult for the company’s recruiting team to maintain a personal relationship with each candidate.
A single recruiter could be responsible for over a thousand applicants in order to hire at the scale they needed to fulfill demand.
With that in mind, these recruiters were primarily reaching out via phone calls and emails. This left the process painstakingly slow and outdated. Top it off with the lack of personal attention each candidate was getting, and it left their best applicants feeling forgotten about!
These historic communication methods resulted in poor response rates and left the applicants without good instructions regarding what they needed to accomplish next.
It was no longer optional to revisit their recruiting tech stack! They needed something that would help automate and personalize their candidate experiences so their recruiters could work more efficiently.
The Solutions
Amazon Pharmacy's formula for success:
- Leveraging SMS to engage with candidates throughout the hiring and onboarding process
- Automating the candidate journey for consistent, personalized nudges to keep them moving quickly through the process
- Seamless ATS integration meant the team didn't have to leave their ATS to make this all a reality
When Amazon Pharmacy integrated Grayscale into their ATS, Lever, it’s no surprise to use that they saw a positive impact within the first few days! It was now easier than ever to ensure candidates moved quickly and efficiently through the process without getting stuck with questions or getting confused and jumping ship.
"Automation from Grayscale is one of my team’s favorite features.”
Prior to finding a scalable system, it would take two recruiters almost a whole month to hire 12 candidates. Now, Zach is hiring like a pro.
“With Grayscale’s help, I hired over a hundred and fifty people last winter on my own.”
So, what are the lasting impacts Amazon sees in their recruiting process?
- Scalability. Now, Amazon Pharmacy can handle a ratio of 1000 candidates per recruiter thanks for the automated candidate communication provided by Grayscale.
- Increased engagement. At each stage in the hiring process, Amazon has set up personalized, automated touchpoints via SMS. The automated messages keep candidates engaged and drive a 51% response rate and 6-minute response time on average.
- Consistent candidate experiences. When hiring at scale it can be hard to ensure your candidates are experiencing a consistent, best-in-class experience. With templated communication, a seamless integration with their ATS, and robust automations, every applicant experiences an identical high-touch process.
Amazon notes that being accessible via SMS helps create an open communication channel allowing the candidates to connect with the team directly and quickly when they need assistance.
“Once we implemented Grayscale, our engagement numbers went way up, and all of our data looked a lot better. We saw the biggest change in the shape of our funnel, instead of experiencing a large initial drop-off, we see candidates regularly get farther into the process!”
One of Zach’s favorite features is the simple integration with their ATS making it easy to follow up with candidates who are falling behind in the process before they get too disengaged and ghost.
“Grayscale is so user-friendly. It has a very simple interface, and the responsiveness and customer service has been top-notch. It is definitely one of our best integrations.”
Bringing It All Together
Their seamless process in action:
- Amazon Pharmacy created a human-first automated candidate communication system
- Amazon Pharmacy improved their candidate experience and enhanced their candidate engagement scores
- They found a long-term partner to help them scale their high-volume hiring systems
We all know that technology is impacting and transforming almost everything we know.
Why stick with outdated methods of communication? Leveraging a channel like texting can go a long way in revolutionizing your hiring process to ensure you don’t lose top talent due to process failures.
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If you’re ready to attract and retain top talent in your pipeline, it could be time to chat with us about how we help create an unparalleled hiring experience. Get connected.
How Upwork is Doubling Down on Candidate Experience with Grayscale
Upwork makes it fast, simple, and cost-effective to find, hire, work with, and pay the best professionals anywhere, any time.
They are the top marketplace for freelancers, where businesses connect with freelancers to work on projects from web and mobile app development to SEO, social media marketing, content writing, graphic design, admin help and thousands of other projects.
The Challenge
Upwork was looking for a way to improve their candidate survey scores and cutting time to fill by creating a high touch candidate experience.
While many companies were scaling back or abandoning their candidate experience initiatives in the wake of COVID-19, Upwork decided it was time to double down.
Dan Collins, their Director of Talent Acquisition, implemented Grayscale with two clear goals: 1) positively impact candidate survey scores, and 2) reduce time-to-fill.
Dan and his team were looking to automate much of their communication, determined to create a high touch experience throughout their process regardless of recruiter bandwidth, regardless of whether a candidate was selected to move forward or not.
“We were looking to automate our communication as much as possible, while keeping the recruiter in the driver seat.”
- Akilah Hicks, Talent Acquisition Operations Manager
The Solution
After vetting the market, Dan and team selected Grayscale to power their texting and automate their communication. They integrated Grayscale into their ATS, and within days they were up and running, texting with their candidates inside Greenhouse.
In the first 30 days of leveraging texting, it was clear to Dan that they were seeing the results they set out to achieve.
“We have already positively impacted candidate survey scores on our process and time-to-hire metrics."
- Dan Collins, Director of Talent Acquisition
The recent global pandemic has only increased Upwork’s use of texting, as they find new and creative ways to engage their talent, keep candidates warm and automate more of their process.
"Adding Grayscale to our toolbox has been our best investment in the past twelve months."
- Dan Collins
Bringing it All Together
Upwork set out with the goal of improving their candidate experience, which they accomplished, and then some. They’ve realized this is a season where they can take big strides to transform their employment brand in ways that will have lasting impact once the global pandemic subsided.
Leveraging a channel like texting, while automating critical communication points in your process, can help deliver a consistent, high touch candidate experience that scales to meet the needs of your business – however they may evolve over the coming months.
If you’re looking to double down on candidate experience like Upwork, we’d love to help.
How EyeCare Partners Cut Time-to-Fill by 27% in 30 Days with Grayscale
EyeCare Partners is a large and rapidly growing family of Optometry and Ophthalmology practices, with over 450 locations across 20 unique brands in 13 states.
The Challenge
EyeCare Partners is in a highly competitive talent market, recruiting for doctors, nurses, optical and retail staff.
Candidates would unexpectedly disappear from the interview process, ghost recruiters for interviews, not respond to emails, and land a job elsewhere before the team could finish the hiring process.
Quality candidates would apply and then just disappear.
The recruiting team needed a way to get in front of more qualified candidates in the market, as well as keep the ones that did apply engaged.
“We were missing out on great talent even after they were applying. We needed a way to get in front of the right candidates faster than our competitors.”
- Kirby Cole
The Solution
EyeCare implemented Grayscale’s conversational recruiting platform, enabling texting capabilities integrated into their ATS, Greenhouse.
Within days, Kirby’s team of 8 recruiters was texting with candidates at every stage of the process, starting with sourcing, all the way through to onboarding. They immediately felt an impact in their response rates. Using email, response rates were around 2%. With text messaging, response rates jumped to 45%.
Response rate wasn’t the only thing that improved. Candidates were responding to recruiters within 8 minutes.
Part of EyeCare’s hiring process requires candidates to take an assessment. Typically, they saw a 54% completion rate. After adding Grayscale, 78% of candidates were completing the assessment; a huge win for the team, as it meant much fewer candidates bouncing from their process.
Within 30 days of rollout, EyeCare Partners shaved 7 days off their time-to-fill across all requisitions.
“Not only has Grayscale helped us get to candidates faster, we've been using it to invite candidates to hiring events, which has increased attendance and hires.”
- Beth Mans
But the work wasn’t done. Another one of Kirby’s goals was to lower the barrier of entry for candidates, ensuring their hiring process was dead simple so more candidates opted in.
EyeCare rolled out Text-for-Jobs, Grayscale’s ‘text apply’ functionality at hiring events and all 450+ locations. Candidates could now text in to learn more about opportunities and apply, all via text message. Almost overnight, candidates started pouring in for their jobs.
On average, EyeCare receives 150 new candidates per month through this channel, and they anticipate having upwards of 2,000 new candidates by the end of the first year.
Bringing it All Together
EyeCare Partners had a great process in place when they approached Grayscale. They had a fantastic ATS in place (Greenhouse), paired with a very tight, effective recruiting process. But they felt they could be more effective. We find most talent acquisition teams are in the exact same situation.
If you’d like to explore how Grayscale could help tighten up your process, we’d love to chat.
How Centria Leverages Grayscale to Address their Acute Hiring Needs
Centria Healthcare is Michigan’s leading provider of in-home healthcare. Their largest division, Centria Autism Services, is the nation’s leading provider of Autism support and therapies, with over 3,500 employees operating across 10 states.
We’ve had the pleasure of working with Centria over the past year, but the nature of our work shifted dramatically with the onset of COVID-19.
The Challenge
Many of Centria’s patients are of the highest acuity, suffering from conditions like respiratory failure. It was paramount that they were able to keep them out of the hospital during this time, not only for their own safety – but to keep hospital beds free for COVID-19 patients.
Their goal during this time is to keep patients safe while maintaining the same level of exceptional care that patients need day in, day out.
Since the onset of pandemic, Centria Healthcare has been all-hands-on-deck for recruitment of field staff, including Registered Nurses (RNs), Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs), Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs), and Home Health Aids (HHAs) to help address this need.
With so much uncertainty and the need to not only hire new staff, but to ensure continuity of care for their current staff who may have to quarantine, Centria was faced with a huge hiring challenge of critical importance.
The Solution
Brandon DuBois, Director of Operations and Healthcare Recruiting, and his team, had to move fast to address this need head on.
Brandon felt it was so important to keep an active and engaged candidate pool, to support their existing patients, while having adequate staff ready to accept new patients from a discharging hospital at any time during COVID-19.
To help address this challenge, he turned to Grayscale.
“We are utilizing Grayscale’s texting platform all hours of the day to follow up on with our recruited and onboarding staff on interview and documentation status.”
- Brandon DuBois, Director of Operations & Recruiting
If this challenge wasn’t enough, Brandon’s team had to move from an in-person orientation process to a completely remote one, and his recruiters have now become the hub of onboarding and new hire experience.
"We would not be able to keep up with our current pipeline and interview volume without Grayscale."
- Brandon DuBois
Bringing it All Together
Centria Healthcare and their team of amazing recruiters are working tirelessly to serve patients in need every single day, fighting the good fight against COVID-19 in their corner of the world.
And in the process, they’ve been able to create a highly effective high volume recruiting and onboarding process that’s delivering a high touch experience for their candidates and employees.
“We have found that relationships and casual conversations through texting have served us well throughout the past month.”
- Brandon DuBois
If you finding yourself dealing with acute hiring needs like Centria, or you’re facing other business challenges as the result of COVID-19, we’d love to support your team during this time.