Company

Founded in 1980, Sigma has emerged as a global leader in the food industry. With a broad portfolio of over 50 brands, Sigma’s products range from dairy to packaged meats to refrigerated and frozen meals. Sigma currently owns 210 distribution centers and 70 production plants, employing over 45,000 people worldwide. The multinational corporation operates in 18 countries across Latin America, Europe, and the United States.

Goals

With over 120 employment sites across Mexico, the talent acquisition team at Sigma needed a more efficient recruitment process for frontline workers. Before discovering Emi, Sigma’s HR teams were sourcing all job candidates offline through local newspapers and large physical banners displayed outside of job sites.

Sigma’s recruiting team also faced the following issues:

• Only 20% of candidates were advancing after their first-round interview.
• HR site leaders had to interview all candidates—even those who arrived at recruitment sites with no pre-screening or background information.
• Recruitment specialists lost 60 hours per month due to a lack of structure and processes.
• Candidates waited up to 3 hours before meeting with an interviewer due to a lack of coordination.
• Disjointed hiring processes provided very little data or metrics to compare recruiting performance across job sites.

“Before finding Emi, the challenges we faced during the recruitment process were related to our business size, dispersed locations, and the need to standardize processes in order to find the right candidate profiles,” says Javier Lozano, Talent Acquisition Manager at Sigma.

Solution

To overcome these high-volume recruiting challenges, Sigma enlisted Emi to automate its existing hiring processes. This allows Sigma to keep pace with a growing candidate demand for better hiring and recruitment processes—while also more efficiently hiring a large number of employees for the right roles.

For Sigma, one of the most significant changes since partnering with Emi has been the freedom to focus on higher-value tasks and priorities. Because the talent acquisition team spent so much effort compensating for disorganized recruiting processes, they had little time or resources left for activities that contributed to strategic recruitment objectives.

“We've left the transactional activities (like applicant tracking and pre-screening) to Emi, and we're now able to focus our resources on activities with greater value to the organization.”

Sigma relies on Emi to streamline essential HR tasks like pre-screening, candidate intake, and interview coordination. Emi’s features pave the way for a streamlined recruitment process that helps Sigma save time, money, and effort.

Results

Designing a positive candidate experience

With Emi, Sigma’s regionally dispersed candidates now have access to a simple 24/7 chat system that syncs with SMS, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. This expands communication channels so that applicants have access to the information they need, when they need it.

In an offline capacity, Sigma leverages flyers and QR codes to attract potential candidates to careers with the organization. These options combine both physical and digital features to meet candidates where they are on the job hunt.

Removing roadblocks for job candidates

Before implementing Emi, Sigma’s applicants would often arrive at interview sites with very little preparation or screening. Not only was this a hassle for candidates—who had to wait up to three hours to be seen by an HR team member—it also created unnecessary stress for HR. 

With Emi, candidates are now automatically pre-screened for various open positions throughout the company’s distribution and production facilities. Candidates can also schedule on-site interviews with Sigma’s HR team members based on their availability.

Emi’s applicant-friendly features ensure candidates no longer wait hours to meet with an interviewer. This reduces candidate frustration and enables Sigma’s HR team to quickly make enticing offers to qualified candidates—accelerating hiring speed and improving hire quality.

Standardizing HR processes across all employment sites 

Using Emi, Sigma has been able to standardize and easily monitor the recruitment process across all its job sites throughout Mexico.

Within the Emi app, the HR team can connect their job boards, social media postings, and offline campaigns to funnel all candidates into the screening process. Recruiters can also automatically screen applicants who attend walk-in job fairs or arrive at job sites with QR codes in hand. This process reduces wasted time and allows recruiters to prioritize interviews with candidates most interested in and suitable for open roles.

Improving candidate satisfaction scores

Even though corporations like Sigma need to make smart hiring decisions to fill thousands of open roles, it’s also important to create a positive candidate experience for each individual. A positive recruitment culture boosts employee retention and leads to more direct referrals in the future.

Using Emi’s chat-based application, Sigma now asks candidates to provide feedback on the recruitment process. This outlet allows candidates to be open and honest about their recruitment experiences. 

By measuring and tracking the candidate feedback and sentiment within Emi, Sigma can ensure it stays focused on delivering a candidate-centric recruitment process. Emi helps Sigma create a candidate-friendly experience that sets the foundation for a healthy work relationship with features like live chat, intelligent interview scheduling, and automated FAQs.

Driving data-backed recruitment results 

Sigma’s HR team now has access to live analytics and metrics that weren’t previously in view. Insights into vital recruitment KPIs like source efficiency, candidate satisfaction, hiring cycle time, candidate churn, fill rate, and employee turnover help Sigma allocate resources based on real-time performance data.

Using Emi’s detailed analytic dashboards, Sigma’s talent acquisition team can also compare hiring performance across its many plants and distribution centers. This helps HR shape its recruiting strategy for long-term growth.

Since implementing Emi, Sigma has been able to: 

• Reduce employee turnover by 20%
• Achieve an average candidate satisfaction score of 4.75/5
• Shorten time to hire by 30%—from 12 to 8.53 days

“Without a doubt, we know that the applicant experience has improved, regardless of whether we're recruiting a plant operator, a self-service salesperson, a retail team member, or a warehouse employee.”

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