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Great Wolf Lodge is a hospitality business. That means the success of their 22 resorts isn’t actually driven by water slides or lazy rivers (although they sure help). No, the heart of the organization lies in Great Wolf’s “Pack Members” — from the traditional hotel concierges to the lifeguards on duty.
They are what make vacations memorable. They are what keeps guests coming back. And, as it turns out, they also probably have a math test in the morning.
“For many people, this is the first job that they ever have,” said Rachel O’Connell, SVP of HR at Great Wolf Lodge.
Their candidate pool consisting largely of teenagers, Great Wolf’s hiring is dependent on connecting with a generation of jobseekers that is notoriously hard to connect with via traditional hiring methods.
“We couldn’t get candidates to respond to our voicemails or come to interviews,” said O’Connell. “Our recruiters actually started manually texting them; the volume was really cumbersome.”
It simply wasn’t scalable, or effective. Great Wolf needed a way to get through to candidates fast, without overburdening their recruiters. So they submitted an RFP for a high volume hiring solution — and met Paradox.
We couldn’t get candidates to respond to our voicemails or come to interviews. Our recruiters actually started manually texting them; the volume was really cumbersome.
Together, a new vision for Great Wolf’s hiring process was born: faster, frictionless, and mobile-first. After initially partnering on a text-to-apply and automated scheduling solution, Great Wolf realized that to achieve the change they needed, they had to fix the root of the problem — in other words, change their entire ATS.
It was a big bet on innovation over the status quo. In the end, it paid off:
How did Great Wolf do it? Well, they stopped manually contacting their candidates.
And let AI do it instead.
How automation creates a human experience.
At this point, things like text-to-apply aren’t exactly taboo (although adoption is still shockingly low overall). But you know what’s a completely new concept? An ATS that is entirely conversational. That’s what Great Wolf built in partnership with Paradox.
Yes, it still serves as a system of record, but it also proactively gets work done for hiring teams while requiring very little work in return. Click a few buttons to open roles, and conversational AI does the rest: screening candidates, coordinating interviews, and handling questions, all via text message. It’s an ATS that’s user-friendly for hiring managers with limited time and candidates with limitless distractions.
“We’ve realized that texting candidates really works,” said O’Connell.
And it works particularly well for Great Wolf’s specific candidate pool. Because everything happens where they already are: their phones. It’s natural. The front end is invisible, the back end is robust for recruiters, and it’s all powered by a conversational AI assistant named Emma.
Emma is the candidate-facing touchpoint of their ATS — she handles virtually all candidate correspondence. If candidates want to apply to a job? They text Emma. If candidates need to reschedule their job interview? They text Emma. When they need to submit onboarding forms? You get the picture.
Familiar. Accurate. Instant.
And in a world where the #1 reason high-volume candidates drop off from the hiring process is because they feel like their time was disrespected, it’s exactly what they want. Because Emma provides Great Wolf’s teenage candidates with a job application that’s easy. And one that comfortably nestles into the flow of their daily life.
“Even if you’re not familiar with technology, you’re familiar with texting,” said O’Connell. “When you’re trying to find younger workers, it’s important to meet them where they are.”
For recruiters, the candidate data is immediately logged back into the Conversational ATS for hiring managers to view at their leisure. In all, it’s a candidate ecosystem powered by AI, using automation to make a hospitality company more hospitable. In fact, 90% of Great Wolf’s hiring process is now automated through Emma, with a positive correlation in interview show rates.
“Emma has allowed our candidates to get gratification very quickly,” said O’Connell. And with increased gratification comes an upgraded candidate experience, and a happier employer base.
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Results that emphasize why being bold is better.
It’s now been three years since the implementation of Great Wolf’s Conversational ATS. And in that time their big bet was affirmed: To see incredible results, they had to make incredible change.
Since implementation, Great Wolf has increased the amount of interviews they’re scheduling by 423%.
And because they’ve increased their interview scale, they’ve been able to decrease their recruitment marketing budget by $700,000 per year.
Yes. $700,000 per year.
Great Wolf is now able to funnel those dollars into their managers, along with dozens of hours back into their week. They can use that time doing what they do best: connecting with people. Which, really, was the goal of this whole change. By implementing automation to make candidates more responsive, Great Wolf’s people can interact at a larger scale than before. Sure, using AI to humanize hiring admittedly seems like a paradox. But in practice, automation has created a more personable process.
“The concept of not talking directly to candidates felt foreign at first,” said O’Connell. “But as soon as our recruiters saw that Emma was actually enhancing the candidate experience, they started to believe this was the way we should recruit.”
The Conversational ATS has given Great Wolf a solution that works for candidates and hiring managers. Now, candidates actually respond and show up for interviews. Recruiters get tons of time back they can reinvest elsewhere. The business saves money. It’s a win-win-win.
And, yes, the water slides are still awesome.
Read Great Wolf Lodge’s full story below:
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