Burger King reduces its time-to-fill and improves candidate experience with automated recruitment

Burger King, the second largest fast-food hamburger chain in the world, needed to address the frontline recruitment challenges it faced across all its locations worldwide. Every day, more than 11 million customers visited its restaurants around the globe, and the chain was struggling to fill its vacancies fast enough to meet customer demand.

As an international restaurant company, Burger King makes active recruitment decisions in countries around the world. While having a global presence has its business advantages, such a wide range of markets can complicate recruitment processes, especially in a high-volume hiring environment.

In one region, for example, Burger King has 180 stores that process 3,500 job applications and 110 new hires per month. Operating at such a large scale, most of Burger King's HR challenges are related to standardizing the recruitment process across its various restaurant locations.

Before Emi, these were some of the obstacles Burger King faced:Operating with a recruitment process that required store managers to spend too much time on HR-related tasks.Receiving negative feedback from candidates due to a poor experience during the process.Managing a complex, high-volume frontline recruitment process.

To optimize and standardize the recruitment process, Burger King's HR team wanted to reduce the time store managers spent on recruitment tasks and create a better candidate experience.

The Burger King team realized that these goals had the potential to contribute to a more proactive and organized recruitment culture. By turning to Emi's AI-powered recruitment platform, Burger King was able to automate time-consuming tasks such as candidate screening and interview scheduling, while offering candidates a better experience.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the restaurant industry also faced significant employment and staffing shortages worldwide. By standardizing its recruitment processes with Emi, Burger King gained a hiring advantage and a tool to prevent disruptions to its daily business operations, which is especially important because these operations are directly tied to delivering exceptional customer service."Emi helped us shorten our recruitment process, reduce our early turnover, and increase our number of applications, providing candidates with a better experience throughout the process." Sabrina Martins, HR Manager at Burger King

Optimizing candidate-to-vacancy matching

One of the ways Burger King sought to improve its recruitment process was by making it easier to find new jobs and apply. It achieved this with Emi by placing QR codes inside its stores to organically attract new candidates. This strategy leverages the Burger King brand to communicate new job opportunities.

Emi also helps Burger King candidates find the best store for them based on the ideal distance from their home or university. Emi automatically assigns an optimal set of locations for each candidate. This improved matching reduces frustration and commute time, which ultimately improves employee engagement and retention.

Eliminating wasted time through effective pre-screening

The Burger King team recognized that before Emi, they were wasting an enormous amount of time on inefficient processes that did not fully meet candidates' needs. With Emi's automated pre-screening and 24/7 chat options, recruiters can now replace phone interviews with personalized processes tailored to each candidate.

Emi helps Burger King answer all the questions candidates may have. The platform serves as a point of contact while candidates await news about next steps. With Emi, candidates are promptly notified about hiring decisions and always know where they stand in the recruitment process. This clear and transparent communication improves the candidate experience and is vital for meeting the standards of excellence that characterize Burger King.

Automating recruitment processes to support busy recruiters

In the past, Burger King recruiters spent several days a week communicating with candidates to coordinate interviews. Now, automatic interview coordination through Emi's platform helps store managers reclaim hours in their work week.

Hiring managers can easily manage candidate pools and interview top-rated candidates who have not received a prior offer. Emi also allows recruiters to send automatic notifications to previous candidates when new positions become available that are a better fit for them.

Standardizing HR standards to facilitate recruitment decisions

Any successful recruitment initiative requires everyone involved to be on the same page. With Emi, Burger King has improved its ability to standardize position-specific requirements and ensure that candidate selection criteria are transparent and well-defined.

Burger King's HR team relies on Emi to measure and monitor important key performance indicators (KPIs) to fully understand the entire recruitment funnel. Emi improves visibility by providing real-time access to HR data and easy-to-use metrics dashboards, keeping everyone informed of recruitment objectives and progress.

Since partnering with Emi, Burger King's HR team has also achieved:Recovering 10% of store managers' work time that was previously spent on screening and interview scheduling.Recovering 5% to 10% of the HR team's time previously spent on interview coordination.Accelerating time-to-fill by 30%, saving an average of 5 days.Increasing candidate applications 4x, reaching 10,000 new candidates per month.Increasing first interview attendance rate to over 90%.