If you’ve ever searched online for a “plumber near me” or “electricians within 10 miles,” chances are you’ve encountered one of Neighborly’s sub-brands. A nationwide franchisor of home services, Neighborly connects consumers with quality services through over 30 distinctly branded entities. With so many sub-brands, Neighborly franchisees need to hire hundreds of licensed frontline professionals every year.
There’s just one problem, and it’s a big one. Over half of America’s skilled trade employees are nearing retirement age. As a result, the trades industry is seeing a mass exodus of people. Faced with a smaller candidate pool, Neighborly realized they either had to change how they hired or risk organization-wide understaffing.
The conversational AI solution to hiring.
To combat the candidate shortage, Neighborly implemented Workday Paradox Conversational ATS, a dynamic candidate attraction platform powered by AI. Now, administrative work like screening, interview scheduling, and onboarding is automated by Maya, Neighborly’s AI agent.
When applicants are interested in applying for open Neighborly positions, they can scan a QR code or text a shortcode to engage with Maya, 24/7. Maya vets candidates to verify qualifications for Neighborly’s various skilled roles, all through text, and answers any questions along the way. When applicants are deemed qualified, she syncs with franchise owners’ calendars to schedule an interview—without any manual input from the franchise owners.
It’s taking us approximately half the candidate volume that it was previously taking to make one hire.
Director of Deployment
Neighborly reaches better candidates, faster.
With the recent drop in candidate volume, each applicant’s value has increased dramatically. Maya’s 24/7 availability combined with the simplicity of the conversational application process helps Neighborly capture candidates faster and convert them at a higher rate. Case in point: It used to take franchise owners five days to schedule an interview. With Maya, it takes nine minutes.
After increasing their hiring efficiency, Neighborly hasn’t seen a decrease in candidate volume. No, despite the labor shortage, franchise owners have actually seen a 71% increase in applicants. And even still, franchise managers have had to do less monotonous work.
“We can now truly spend time with the candidates because of what the automation offers—[Maya can handle] a lot of the administrative legwork that we spent so much time on before,” said Neighborly Director of Deployment Craig Gjelsten.
Since implementing the Workday Paradox Conversational ATS, Neighborly has successfully met its hiring goals while also achieving significant cost savings. Neighborly has seen a 54% decrease in cost-per-hire, a 20% decrease in cost-per-applicant, and a 7% decrease in interview no-shows.
Several franchisees started asking how to turn Maya off because they were getting too many candidates.
Director of Deployment