Elevo is a private education company that partners with California schools to provide extracurricular enrichment for young students. Instructors are dubbed coaches (a play on the P.E.-focused classes), and Elevo’s entire business model is dependent on being staffed with enough of them.
“We hire seasonally so we need to find a massive amount of coaches very quickly,” said Megan Schuck, who now serves as Director of Talent Communication and Platforms at Elevo. “We have about 6–8 weeks to find, interview, onboard and train up to 100 coaches for a program.”
Because hiring occurs in short sprints, Elevo’s process has to be highly efficient. But a hyper-manual hiring process slowed them down—it took two weeks just to schedule an interview—and left recruiters with minimal time to assess candidate fit. As a result, some hires were not aligned with the unique demands of the coaching role, which led to high short-term turnover.
While some turnover is inevitable in challenging roles, Elevo believed that moving candidates through the process faster would help them identify stronger fits.
It was important we improve because it doesn’t just affect our revenue. It affects our students.
Director of Talent Communication and Platforms
A robust, AI-powered plan for change.
Elevo now leverages Workday Paradox Conversational ATS as an end-to-end solution that automates administrative work throughout the hiring process. The Conversational ATS is built for high-volume recruiting, offering a simple backend that makes mass action effortless at scale. This works especially well for seasonal hiring like Elevo’s—recruiters can initiate jobs with just a few taps and let conversational AI handle the frenzy of incoming monotonous work.
“Our previous ATS took a lot of our recruiters’ time with administrative processes,” said Schuck. “Our new solution automates the work and then provides recruiters good background information before phone screens.”
At the center of Elevo’s new process is Maya, a 24/7 AI agent that handles applications, Q&A, and interview scheduling via text. By quickly engaging and advancing the right candidates, Elevo gains a clear edge in hiring and retaining top talent.
“Prior to Paradox, scheduling was a huge challenge,” said Shuck. “This solution has been a huge enhancement in our time-to-fill.”
It’s important our recruiters spend time getting to know applicants, instead of doing all the administrative work.
Director of Talent Communication and Platforms
Painting the right picture.
Beyond asking specific screening questions, Elevo also uses Maya to set the right expectations by sending curated “day in the life” videos to candidates. By showcasing what it’s actually like to be a coach, Elevo can convince ideal candidates to apply while persuading ill-fit candidates to look for a different opportunity.
“That way our hiring teams can spend time with the people who we can actually retain,” said Schuck. “People who are going to be better fits.”
And Elevo's hiring team has significantly more time to spend with those better fits as well, since the administrative hiring work is automatically handled by Maya.
Automation plus human interaction equals more ideal candidates.
Ultimately, Elevo uses a multi-pronged approach to hire ideal candidates quickly. First, they leverage AI to automate the administrative work of candidate screening and expectation setting. Workday Paradox Conversational ATS lets them perform these actions at scale.
With administrative tasks off their plate, recruiters can then focus on building real connections and making better hires. It’s this balance of automation and human touch—not one or the other—that gives Elevo its edge.
“We launched on a Wednesday. By Friday our recruiters had calendars filled with 15-20 interviews,” said Schuck. “We went into the weekend thinking, ‘Okay, we made the right choice. This is amazing.’”
Workday Paradox Conversational ATS transforms our ability to hire the coaches we need.
Director of Talent Communication and Platforms