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Think about the ideal hiring experience.
You’re probably imagining a high-touch, 1:1 conversation between recruiter and candidate. The latter is moved through the process quickly, with the former available at any point to help guide the candidate across any speed bumps or hiccups. And ultimately, the candidate is either hired or dispositioned in a way that makes them feel respected — maybe even enough to want to apply again.
Of course, that’s a 1:1 recruiter-to-candidate interaction. As organizational scale increases, that type of high-touch communication becomes harder.
Now think about, say, 1:25. That’s tough. 1:100 is very challenging. And 1:8000?
That also seems impossible, doesn’t it? Far from it, actually — Compass Group is able to hire 8,000 people for every recruiter on their team. It’s all because they give each recruiter a super-sidekick that helps knock out thousands of hours of work: an AI assistant named Olivia.
And as Josh Bersin’s new report states, Olivia’s also helped Compass upgrade their entire hiring experience:
- They’ve reduced a nine-minute application to one that takes under three.
- They’ve achieved a 600% increase in applicant conversion.
- They’ve increased application completion rate to 85%.
This is Compass’ story.
Josh Bersin’s findings on Compass Group.
Recently, leading industry analyst Josh Bersin set out to discover how Compass is able to achieve such an impressive hiring ratio. Over a multi-month long process, he and his team examined Compass’ hiring process, including interviewing Shay Johnson, their VP of TA.
“Speed is everything,” said Johnson. “When you are hiring at the volumes we are… [you need to] make that experience seamless, fast, and fluid.”
A foodservice leader hiring worldwide, Compass’ recruiters typically support 1,000+ open requisitions at once. And manual hiring processes made that unmanageable.
At such a large scale, it’s impossible for each recruiter to provide every candidate with a great experience. And the steps Compass took to mitigate that (e.g. having candidates create custom logins) slowed the process down, leading to drop-off.
Speed is everything. When you are hiring at the volumes we are… [you need to] make that experience seamless, fast, and fluid.
Compass sought a way to speed up their hiring process without increasing their headcount or the burden on their current recruiters. And that search just happened to coincide with the beginning of an AI revolution. In 2018, they partnered with Paradox to become an early adopter of conversational AI.
Bersin reports how their AI assistant, Olivia, now automatically handles most of Compass’ administrative work. Screening. Scheduling. Answering questions. These tasks were black holes for recruiters — things that had to be done but didn’t need to be high-touch to be done well. Compass has just 20 recruiters; why waste their time with calendar tetris?
Instead, Compass’ recruiters can be talent advisors — engaging in deeper consultations with hiring managers, offering tailored advice on market trends, and designing more effective hiring strategies. In other words, doing things that they’re much more capable of than AI.
See, Compass has designed a system that enables both AI and recruiters to play to their strengths. AI handles the things that just need to be done fast and right, while Compass’ humans handle the delicate recruiting work that really makes a difference.
All together, they’re able to hire 160,000 people every year with just 20 recruiters. Which sounds like a pretty ideal hiring experience to us.
Just go ahead and read the actual report.
We could wax poetic about Compass Group’s AI transformation for at least another 200 words. At least! But we know you’d prefer to hear Josh Bersin’s take on it.
Download it here.
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