It’s August 2023. Fontainebleau Las Vegas, the sister property of the iconic Fontainebleau Miami Beach, is set to open in December. All that’s left to do is hire 6,500 frontline workers.
Hiring that many people in that short of time would be difficult for any organization. But Fontainebleau Las Vegas had an extra challenge. Their luxury brand, built across decades in Miami, is founded on elevated hospitality experiences. So their hires—all 6,500 of them—had to match that culture of excellence. It wasn’t just about speed; it was about getting every hire exactly right.
Thankfully, Las Vegas is a city where this type of challenge is possible. Resorts on the strip operate as mini cities, featuring dozens of different role types: culinary experts, blackjack dealers, hair stylists, entertainers, housekeepers, managers, etc. As a result, skill sets run deep, but so does the competition. To succeed in their mission, Fontainebleau Las Vegas would need a plan. And some modern technology in their hiring process.
Building the face of Fontainebleau Las Vegas.
“We didn’t want to be every other strip property,” said Sara Piper, Fontainebleau Las Vegas’ Executive Director of People and TA. “In the spirit of innovation, we reached out to Paradox and said, ‘Let’s figure out how to do this together.’”
With their culture defined, Fontainebleau Las Vegas and Paradox worked together to build an end-to-end hiring engine, all powered by an AI agent named Morris. Since Morris would be handling most of the candidate communication, the team wanted to ensure he embodied the resort’s culture to a tee. That started with a collaborative ideation process: designing Morris’ appearance, vocabulary, hobbies, and even his favorite sports teams. After 20 design iterations, it was time to put Morris to work.
We wanted candidates to feel like Morris was a safe space.
Executive Director of People and TA
Attracting and converting candidates with a career site.
To attract candidates, Fontainebleau Las Vegas partnered with Shaker Recruitment Marketing to build and manage a career site that leverages Morris as a 24/7 widget. Morris now handles most of the hiring process’ administrative work, answering questions and matching candidates with specific open roles based on their experience and preferences. In three months with Morris, Fontainebleau received over 300,000 applications.
Morris also serves as Fontainebleau Las Vegas’ candidate funnel, turning applications into simple conversations. Through a series of short texts, Morris collects candidate information to determine their qualifications. And across the different role types at the resort, Morris asks custom tailored questions to every candidate. That way, recruiters spend time interviewing people who are experienced enough to deliver the service befitted to their brand.
Plus, with 24/7 availability, Morris always responds immediately no matter when candidates interact. In Fontainebleau Las Vegas’ case, 41% of communications came after normal business hours.
Morris' ability to house candidate conversations took a lot of the administrative burden off of our TA team.
Executive Director of People and TA
How Morris schedules two interviews at once.
Once qualified, Morris schedules candidates for a “Culture Audition” where recruiters conduct group interviews to ensure cultural fit. To schedule these interviews, Morris texts candidates possible times. Once they choose a date, Morris configures candidate information into Fontainebleau Las Vegas’ ATS. After the Culture Audition, recruiters decide who moves to the next interview. Morris schedules that interview in the same way—this time using each recruiter’s availability as a baseline.
Morris helps us achieve scheduling efficiency. We input what we want our schedules to look like, and Morris takes it from there.
Executive Director of People and TA
Morris’ ability to auto-schedule interviews took the burden of phone tag off of the TA team during their high-octane sprint. Instead, they just had to focus on interviewing and hiring the right people.
“We wanted to make sure that our focus was on filling roles with someone who fit within our culture and would put guests first,” said Piper.
Conversational ATS as a system of record.
Every candidate that interacts with Morris is sorted seamlessly in Fontainebleau Las Vegas’ new system of record: Workday Paradox Conversational ATS. Built for high-volume recruiting, the ATS integrates directly with Fontainebleau Las Vegas’ career site, their CRM, their outside partners, and of course, Morris. At the pace Fontainebleau Las Vegas was hiring, this lack of friction was crucial.
And while the ATS is robust, it’s also simple for recruiters to operate. They can toggle jobs on and off with just a tap—and set volume limits to limit over-sourcing and increase candidate optimization. If they want to manually take action on any of their candidates, they can in a few clicks.
We would've needed hundreds of people to review 300,000 applications. Morris helped keep our workflow seamless.
Executive Director of People and TA