A global leader in contract foodservice — and one of the largest employers in the world — Compass Group faced hurdles with high-volume recruitment, a complicated technology infrastructure, and the necessity for more effective candidate outreach. With the immense challenge of hiring over 160,000 entry-level workers in the US each year and managing 13,000 to 17,000 job postings at any given time, Compass Group’s small team of 20 recruiters struggled to keep pace.
A manual hiring process that crippled efficiency.
Compass Group’s 550,000+ global employees serve over 5.5 billion meals per year. Operating at such a massive scale is no easy feat, and Compass Group’s lean TA team found it difficult to offer ideal hiring experiences to candidates.
Both recruiters and hiring managers were manually handling many aspects of the hiring process, including screening and interview scheduling. This manual intervention was time-consuming and prone to errors, leading to inefficiencies. Additionally, the slow process resulted in losing candidates to competitors who could offer faster hiring experiences.
Compass Group sought a way to both simplify their tech stack while accelerating their hiring process. But critically, they also wanted to ensure that their recruitment didn’t feel impersonal or robotic. Compass Group’s mission is founded on providing great service to customers — and they wanted to bring that same positive experience to their candidates.
Speed is everything. When you’re looking to hire at the volumes and roles we’re hiring for, and you’ve got massive competition, a part of the driving force is making that experience for the candidate seamless, fast, and fluid.
VP Strategic HR Partnerships, Compass Group
The answer: Conversational AI at scale.
To streamline their processes and maintain a personal touch, Compass Group implemented Workday Paradox Candidate Experience Agent. Compass Group now leverages an AI agent named Olivia to automate the early stages of the application process. Screening. Candidate Q&A. Interview scheduling. Olivia turns each application into a simple text conversation, helping convert candidates into applicants in minutes. And with her ability to engage talent 24/7, Compass Group ensures that drop-off stays minimal.
To mitigate change management, Compass Group seamlessly integrated Olivia into their existing ATS and HCM, empowering their recruiters with the benefits of automation without burdening them with the task of learning new technology.
We wanted everything to happen in line with the conversation, so that from a candidate’s perspective, you can never really tell where an application starts or ends, and you’ve just moved on to another step in the process.
VP Strategic HR Partnerships, Compass Group
Turning a career site into a candidate conversion engine.
The organization also implemented a Conversational Career Site, built and managed by Paradox so Compass’ recruiters can spend less time updating webpages and more time with candidates. This conversion engine features modern design elements to capture and engage frontline talent: a mobile-first user interface, a simple layout, and a quick way to apply to open roles.
Compass’ career site now features Olivia as a widget on every page, where she serves candidates relevant content and matches them with jobs based on experience and location. When a site visitor is ready to apply, she offers the same conversational process that funnels candidates into the interview stage of the process.
All a manager has to do is submit a requisition and candidates will be popping up on their calendar.
VP Strategic HR Partnerships, Compass Group
Automation that brings newfound purpose to recruiters.
By empowering their recruiters with conversational AI, Compass Group achieved significant business outcomes, including reducing their time-to-apply from nine minutes to under three, while increasing candidate conversion by 600%. Compass Group is now able to manage massive hiring volumes, resulting in a remarkable 1:8000 recruiter-to-hire ratio.
But more than that, Olivia’s ability to seamlessly handle routine processes empowers Compass Group recruiters to serve as talent advisors. In other words, they’re able to do more valuable work: engaging in deeper consultations with hiring managers, and offering tailored advice on market trends, competitive salary benchmarks, and effective hiring strategies.
Because of our size and scale, we put tools into people’s hands to make smart decisions and do things in a simple way.
VP Strategic HR Partnerships, Compass Group