Captain D’s believes in doing things the “D’s Way,” a process of preparing food that emphasizes taking extra care to deliver the best product. Doing things the “D’s Way” isn’t always easy—it requires restaurant team members to be highly trained, passionate, and hard-working. Which means that to maintain their differentiator, Captain D’s needs to attract and retain top frontline talent.
Which all starts with how they hire.
Captain D’s suffered from an untenable turnover rate.
Captain’s D’s had a turnover problem. At an annual rate of 211%, restaurants often had a rotating door of team members, forcing managers to make 12,000 new hires every year or risk understaffing.
When restaurants are understaffed, current team members have to pick up more work—if they become frustrated and quit, the customer experience drops rapidly, which leads to fewer customers and less revenue. When Captain D’s analyzed their hiring process, they realized that their turnover issues started far before Day 1.
“Thirty percent of our hires were never great fits for the organization,” said VP of Human Resources Sean MacMillan. “That doesn’t just negatively affect cost savings and ROI, but culture as well.”
Captain D’s realized that if they could identify best-fit candidates early in the process, then they could improve their turnover rate alongside their customer experience. And their hiring managers could spend more time with the best candidates, rather than split their energy across hundreds of extra candidates that were likely to churn.
It takes a unique person to work in our restaurants. We can build more restaurants, but we can’t create more of the right people to staff them.
Senior Director of Talent Acquisition & HRIS
Supporting managers with Workday Paradox Conversational ATS.
To tackle their turnover challenges, Captain D’s implemented Workday Paradox Conversational ATS, an end-to-end hiring platform that supports restaurant managers and automates 90% of the hiring process. To apply for a job, candidates now chat with an AI agent named Maya, who screens them for minimum qualifications via chat or text. If the candidate is qualified, Maya texts them a link to begin the short, visual-based Traitify personality assessment. And once the candidate has been reviewed by the manager, Maya automates the scheduling process by texting them open interview times based on managers’ calendars.
With Maya handling the administrative hiring work, managers are able to spend the majority of their time where they’re most valuable: on the floors of their restaurant. When managers are focusing on hiring duties, they’re spending time actually talking to candidates and finding out who fits the culture of the company.
We’re now bringing on people that are suitable for the role, people who are cut out for the role, people who will excel in that role.
VP of Human Resources
Captain D’s now makes better hires and saves money doing it.
By making the application process faster and more accessible with Maya, Captain D’s minimizes candidate drop-off and casts a wider net for their managers to interview. Combine that with the Traitify personality assessment spotlighting ideal fits, and Captain D’s has reduced their annual turnover by 75% across 287 corporate-owned locations. With more employees staying on board, managers have been able to shift their focus from hiring as many frontline workers as possible to hiring the best fits.
“Last year, we hired 12,000 people—this year we’re on track to hire 8,000,” said MacMillan. “Our hiring managers don't have to spend time and money training people that wouldn't be great fits. We’ve gone from a hiring perspective to a selection perspective.”
Needing to source, hire, and onboard fewer people impacts Captain D’s bottom line—they’re saving hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.
"Hires that don’t stay with us for two months will each cost us a couple thousand dollars,” said MacMillan. “Hiring the right people saves us money that we were losing."
We don’t have to find new people constantly anymore. We're making the right decision almost every time.
Sr. Director Talent Acquisitions & HRIS