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Heineken was founded in 1864 and has since grown to the second beer brand across the globe. The brewery has more than 300 beer and cider brands along with world-class low- and no-alcohol alternatives.
Heineken was struggling to keep up with the influx of high-volume hiring needs due to the labor reforms in Mexico over the past few years. These changes resulted in more than doubling the number of frontline workers Heineken needed to hire as employees. This exponential change in open requisitions made existing manual processes all the more painful to manage.
"We needed a solution to help simplify our process of recruiting for so many roles across different locations with a small team. Our recruiters can't be everywhere all the time, which is why we needed Emi." Jorge Davila Martinez, Talent Acquisition Leader
Before finding Emi, Heineken struggled with the following challenges:
Heineken enlisted Emi, the frontline recruitment automation platform, to address the multitude of challenges they faced.
The pandemic pushed many in-person operations to go digital. For Heineken’s hiring processes, this was certainly the case. With the support of Emi, Heineken was able to move to the platforms that candidates were already familiar with, including WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Applicants are now able to apply through Emi’s recruiting chatbot that intelligently collects information and routes it into existing ATSs.
This greatly reduced the amount of paperwork, manual processes, and candidate time spent that was historically associated with the application process. And, because the time required per candidate was reduced, the team was able to scale their operations without having to hire 2X more HR employees. Additionally, because the form-free application process was so simple and intuitive to digital natives, Heineken saw its talent pipeline increase immediately.
Additionally, Heineken saw that being limited to communication during normal business hours elongated the hiring process. The team found that 73% of candidates’ conversations with Emi occurred outside business hours. Without Emi, those communications would’ve been entirely reliant on individuals communicating during a typical workday.
Heineken didn’t stop at simply rethinking the early stages of the hiring process. Heineken leverages Emi’s direct communication system in the early stages of onboarding. The hiring team would send training videos and materials to new hires to help give them an understanding of what their tasks were and how to complete them. This helped reduce the time needed for onboarding on the first day and greatly improved the new hire experience.
Heineken experienced several impressive results after partnering with Emi, including:
Here is how these changes have impacted the organization:
By utilizing Emi to streamline every step of the hiring process, Heineken’s talent acquisition team was able to cut their manual work by over 10,000 hours in 2022. This allowed them to focus on building the employer brand and acting on their talent acquisition strategy.
Now, the hiring team can see, at a glance, how each of their locations are performing. They can discover insights, like what talent acquisition tactics are most effective, what channels are producing the most candidates, and what stage candidate drop off is highest. With this information, Heineken’s leadership can better allocate resources to the efforts that are effective and forecast accurately.
With the help of Emi screening profiles, the Heineken recruiters can now spend more time nurturing best-fit candidates rather than spending that time simply trying to source them.
"Emi has helped streamline applicants coming in from 200+ unqualified to a qualified group of 20." Jorge Davila Martinez
Not surprisingly, finding better-fit candidates faster has led to other positive ripple effects beyond the hiring process. Heineken has seen a 62.5% reduction in turnover year-over-year which is, in part, due to the team being able to find and hire the best candidates for open positions.
