Alsea reduces its time-to-hire by 83% with automated recruitment

Alsea, founded in 1997, is a multi-brand restaurant operator headquartered in Mexico City. It is one of the largest restaurant companies in its sector. Its operations portfolio includes brands such as Starbucks, The Cheesecake Factory, and Chili's, and it employs tens of thousands of frontline workers across its restaurants.

Although many fast-food restaurants typically face very high turnover rates and a constant need to fill vacancies, this situation worsened due to the labor shortage starting in 2020. Alsea has always considered the future of recruitment as a fundamental part of its business growth. However, it needed to hire more than 200 additional employees to cover its hiring needs and meet its 2022 goals. The options were clear: either Alsea adopted the necessary technology, or it risked getting stuck in an endless cycle of hiring HR staff."We needed to bring on more than 200 people to manage the hiring volume we anticipated. So we needed to find a way to combine our current team with technology to meet this demand."Talent Acquisition & Culture Executive, Alsea

Furthermore, if Alsea did not make significant changes, its restaurants would not be fully functional or reflect the strong brand they represented. The company had to decide what the next step would be to secure its future as a frontline employer in an increasingly competitive labor market.

Before partnering with Emi, Alsea faced the following challenges:It struggled with insufficient critical staff in many of its restaurants, resulting in significant revenue loss.It was unable to meet its coverage goals, causing significant revenue loss at key locations.It was losing some of its best candidates to competitors and experiencing decreased productivity because its time-to-hire was 42 days.It had very high cost-per-hire due to constantly increasing advertising budgets that did not generate a corresponding increase in the candidate pipeline.It wanted to recruit 24/7 to better accommodate the schedules of typical frontline workers, but lacked reliable tools to do so.

Alsea implemented Emi, the automated frontline recruitment platform, to streamline the hiring of more than 26,000 employees for its restaurants. This allowed Alsea to launch its innovative 24/7 text-based recruitment system while solving its main challenges stemming from manual and inefficient hiring practices.

With Emi, Alsea was able to differentiate itself from other employers in the market by offering candidates quick and easy access to new opportunities through SMS or Facebook Messenger. The restaurant company enabled its recruiters and talent acquisition managers to shift from wasting time on tedious, low-value tasks to investing it in employer branding and live interviews. Alsea used Emi to manage the previously manual elements associated with candidate sourcing, applicant screening, interview scheduling, new employee onboarding, and process analytics.

These changes in HR time allocation contributed to a dramatic 20% reduction in turnover, as recruiters were able to choose candidates from a pre-screened pool and dedicate more time to interviewing applicants, evaluating the best fit, and conducting thorough onboarding for new employees.

Alsea experienced several notable changes after implementing Emi, including:Streamlining the end-to-end hiring process.Creating a candidate experience that adapts to applicants' lives.Ensuring adequate staffing across its restaurants.

Here is how these results are reflected in Alsea's day-to-day operations:

Streamlining the end-to-end hiring process

With Emi, Alsea managed to shorten every stage of the hiring process, from application submission to interview scheduling. By helping Alsea attract more candidates, screen applications, automatically schedule interviews, collect documentation from hired candidates, and onboard new employees, Emi was able to reduce its time-to-hire from 42 to just 7 days, representing an impressive 83% reduction.

Creating a candidate experience that adapts to applicants' lives

Alsea's vision of offering candidates the opportunity to apply, respond, and schedule their interviews at their convenience was achieved through the implementation of Emi. Emi's text and social media recruitment allowed Alsea to reach frontline workers wherever they were.

This way, regardless of each person's work schedule, everyone can apply for positions at Alsea at any time and schedule their interviews without needing to struggle to coordinate with the hiring manager. This approach has been incredibly effective, as noted:"60% of our candidates come in outside of business hours or on weekends. These are candidates we couldn't connect with if it weren't for Emi."

Ensuring adequate staffing across its restaurants

Before Emi, Alsea struggled to meet its projections because key locations did not have enough staff for certain specialized roles. Thanks to Emi's automated recruitment platform, Alsea was able to recruit more candidates and evaluate applicants more quickly and accurately, which allowed Alsea to achieve its target of a 98% average coverage rate.