When Advantage Solutions ditched forms and logins for a chat-to-apply interface, they saw a variety of hiring metrics improve. But not every metric is created equal, and Advantage was quite strategic in making sure that they looked at the right statistics before deeming conversational AI a success.
We recently sat down with Advantage’s VP of Talent Acquisition Operations Katy Shaddock to talk about which metrics really matter in frontline hiring, and how AI can make a difference in more ways than one.
Tell me about how Advantage uses AI automation in your processes to accomplish your hiring goals.
Katy Shaddock: When we think about our hiring goals, we really are thinking about how to get one million people into the top of our funnel every year. To that point, we leverage real-time data to assess where we're getting the best outcome from our recruitment marketing dollars, so we can focus our spend into the channels that are most productive for us. Then once candidates are in the funnel, a critical part of Advantage’s frontline recruitment strategy is using automation to get them through the process.
It's honestly easier for me to tell you what we don't automate than it is to tell you what we do. When candidates first engage in the hiring process, they talk with Alix, our virtual assistant. He takes candidates through the job application process and gets them to a point where a recruiter can perform the interview. Since Alix works 24/7, we know that about 34% of our candidate contact takes place outside of business hours. But they’re still able to go through all the different steps on their terms, accomplishing the tasks that are more administrative and don’t need a human involved. We really focus our automation on ensuring that when our humans do have to intervene, that contact is impactful. Everything else is automated, all the way up to the post-offer process with our onboarding concierge and compliance team.
Beyond taking tasks off of your recruiters’ plates, what advantages does AI bring in helping to hire the specific candidates you’re looking for?
KS: Our candidates are our retail customers — they’re using their phones to buy products and order services. When they’re applying for a job, they need to be met in the same way. If I'm a candidate on a retailer’s website, I am very quickly and easily able to select products, know which shelf they're on, and make a purchase. Then if I want to apply for a job, I'm transported back to 2009, and I'm trying to fill out forms with my thumbs. That's a terrible experience. We don't want people having the terrible experience of trying to fill out forms with their thumbs — we want them to have a natural chat-to-apply conversation. Then they don't even know they're actually filling out an application because it’s so intuitive. Being able to present and offer that same type of speedy experience that meets candidates where they are is a really critical part of making our company culture resonate.
When you’re measuring the outcomes of your hiring process, what metrics are you using to define success?
KS: The Advantage frontline talent acquisition measurement of success is not that we fill all of our positions. We actually want to have more positions available — that means our business is growing. If we have more positions open, then we're serving our clients well and they're trusting us with more business. So instead, we need to measure the qualifiers that tell us candidates are going through the hiring process in a way that supports the business. If we were filling jobs, but we were taking too long to do it, or we were losing too many candidates at critical points in the process, then that would indicate to us that we’re not fulfilling the needs of our clients.
Being able to present and offer that same type of speedy experience that meets candidates where they are is a really critical part of making our company culture resonate.
Ultimately, there are three main places that we look at. The first is engagement: Do we have the right volume of people who are coming in? Then once we get candidates through the initial screening process, it’s all about the interview and selection. Do we have enough people in the right places with the right skill sets to fulfill our business needs? Then the third part is getting people through the conversion process from “offer accept” to hire. If we can get people in the door, but we can't get them to offer, then we have a challenge in our process.
What was it about Paradox that sold you on us being a partner for your hiring needs? And what results have you seen since implementing?
KS: Advantage needed a solution that would help support our frontline hiring needs and also work with our legacy technology needs. In that regard, the Conversational ATS was the best solution for Advantage. When we first implemented, we immediately saw our time-to-fill decrease by two days, which is obviously great for frontline roles. And then over the last three years, we’ve continued iterating, improving, and optimizing the Conversational ATS to find the processes and opportunities that would help us achieve our goals. Specifically, we’ve looked at where people were getting stuck so that we could help either automate a way to get them through or identify that spot as a place for another impactful human intervention.
Are there any specific parts of the process that you want to highlight as key wins?
KS: In talent acquisition operations, one of the areas that we're responsible for is pre-hire onboarding and compliance — which is getting candidates from the point where they accept an offer to the point where they’re integrated into the HRIS and can begin work. Between those two points, there are a lot of moving parts. In addition to the background check, we're also taking the candidate completely through the I-9 and E-Verify process, as well as acknowledgements and authorizations: payroll forms, tax selections, et cetera.
Since implementation, we've been able to trim that timeline down to about three calendar days. Within that, most of our candidates move very quickly through that process. It's all automated up to the point where someone in our pre-hire onboarding compliance team is auditing to ensure that all the steps have been completed correctly. So a candidate who accepts an offer on Friday night is able to move forward and take care of all the steps that they need to complete in order to be ready for day one. They're not waiting for someone else to give them a form or to sign off on a document. That's all automated — but they're still experiencing a great hiring and onboarding process through the tools that we've been able to provide through Paradox.
