Because they centralize recruiting for all 175+ of their restaurant locations, Southern Rock Restaurants essentially runs a “one-person recruiting department.” And that one person, Director of People Analytics and Recruiting Courtney Dempsey, was facing a hiring bottleneck. Tasked with the burden of administrative hiring work like screening and interview scheduling, Southern Rock’s hiring process moved too slowly for their frontline candidates. As a result, drop-off plagued the company.
To counteract this drop-off, Southern Rock had to increase their job advertising spend. And even with the additional investment, they weren’t seeing a positive ROI. To optimize their hiring, a bigger change was needed.
Using AI to reduce candidate drop-off.
To help fix their hiring issues, Southern Rock implemented Workday Paradox Conversational ATS, a modern candidate attraction platform driven by Savannah, the organization’s AI agent. Savannah takes the administrative burden off of Dempsey and Southern Rock’s restaurant managers, engaging candidates and answering questions 24/7 while automatically handling the screening and interview scheduling process over text message.
Since Savannah meets candidates where they are and provides answers in real time, applicants remain engaged in the hiring process, reducing candidate drop-off. This improved hiring experience also extends to interview scheduling—since implementation, Southern Rock has seen a 30% decrease in interview no-shows. With more candidates being funneled through the hiring process, Dempsey has been able to spend less on job advertising and spend more time with candidates.
With pinpoint accuracy, I can determine what day is the most effective to post a job advertisement. We can maintain a hundred percent status—we went from 80%, not even two months ago, to fully staffed.
Director of People Analytics and Recruiting
Automation scaling for results.
Savannah has helped Southern Rock reduce their spend on job boards while simultaneously increasing the amount of applicants. Previously the organization was spending $65,000 per month on Indeed, and still receiving less than 1,000 applicants in return. With Savannah they’re receiving 42,000 applicants per month while only spending $6,000—saving $840,000 annually.
Workday Paradox Conversational ATS is a game-changer.
Director of People Analytics and Recruiting