Five thousand one hundred and ninety-six franchise-owned salons. That’s a lot of haircuts. More importantly, that's a lot of hair stylists. How do you find them all? Screen them? Schedule them? Hire them?
It’s not easy.
But Regis Corporation — one of the global leaders in beauty salons — has found a way to hire more stylists than ever while reducing the amount of work for their recruiting teams. Hint: it just might be a conversational recruiting assistant that’s automating time-consuming tasks.
Chief People Officer Michael Ferranti recently joined Recruiting Brainfood founder Hung Lee to share Regis’ story: how they utilized to recruiting automation to empower their teams and free them up for more impactful work.
Here’s five main takeaways from their conversation:
1. Focus on speed-to-hire.
What do Gen Z and Millennials want more than anything else in a hiring process? Instant gratification.
Growing up with technology all around them has instilled AI, automation, and instant gratification into the lives of younger generations. In the hiring process, this translates to wanting faster screening, shorter applications, less time to schedule interviews. In short: faster time to hire.
“Stylists don’t look for a job until they are two months to graduation, or three months after graduation,” Ferranti said. “The most important thing right now is that you need to be where they interact. And then once you get them you need to speed-to-hire them very quickly.”
2. Choosing the right vs. wrong social media.
The TA industry, for very good reason, has flocked to LinkedIn as the go-to social media platform for years now. It makes sense right? That's where people look for jobs?
Not for all industries. Ferranti pointed out that a majority of their candidates are living on apps like TikTok and Instagram, not LinkedIn. These candidates are finding connections, conversations, and ideas about their industries on instagram — so why would salon franchises spend the time trying to connect with them on LinkedIn?
All in a measure to eliminate friction in the hiring process, employers have the ability to capture candidates with job advertisements and text-to-apply conversations to bring them down the funnel…. quickly.
3. Understand your audience.
Companies like Regis don’t have the luxury of hiring just anyone. They need licensed, technically proficient stylists that are fit to provide a quality service to their customers.
But even more than that, Regis understands that hairstyling isn’t just a career for its stylists, it's also a passion.
“We are losing a lot of our great stylists out of the industry because of the great resignation. So, every single person we get [to apply], we need them — and we need to retain them,” Ferranti said.
Franchise owners need tools that take away administration work so they can actually spend the time to figure out the behaviors and attitudes of the candidate audience. No longer are the days where there is an extreme influx of candidates. They are scarce. So to actually convert from this smaller pool, there has to be a great understanding of how to connect, talk with candidates, and showcase how a career with Regis can support the stylist in their passion and career.
4. Eliminate ghosting (as much as possible).
Every recruiter has experienced ghosting. Whether it's a few missed interviews or a chronic problem of candidates dropping out of the hiring process at a certain point, it's a pain that is felt by all recruiters. But there are ways Regis and other organizations can eliminate this, saving recruiters from hours of wasted time.
Implementation of Olivia, Regis’ conversational AI assistant, meant that candidates can reach out 24/7 with questions, be served up personalized content, get screened for roles, and much more. If you schedule the interview right after candidates express interest, send reminder messages, show personalized content, and let them easily reschedule if they need to — candidates show up 93%+ of the time.
It’s all about focusing on candidate experience. Especially for Gen Z and Millennial candidates, this instant gratification on a mobile experience is imperative to make sure your candidates not only show up, but stay interested throughout the entire process.
5. Automate interview scheduling.
For a business that is based on human-to-human interaction, automation allows organizations like Regis to hire 10,000 to 15,000 stylists a year with a process that still feels personalized and unique to each candidate. "We didn’t want to lose the candidate experience by going recruiter-less. Olivia has helped us achieve that."
Olivia works all day and through the night without getting tired, allowing franchise owners to move away from the responsibility of answering candidate questions at night or even scheduling interviews. Scheduling automation takes away the administrative tasks and matches available times for the candidate and hiring manager to meet for the interview.
Regis has noticed that when stylist candidates speak to Olivia, 94% of people actually finish the conversation. This completely broadens the funnel of convertible candidates, but with automated conversational AI doing the BS (boring stuff).
Interested in seeing their full conversation? Watch the recording here:
