Danone uses an AI-powered recruitment platform to transform its HR processes

Danone S.A. is a multinational food products company originally founded in Barcelona, Spain. Headquartered in Paris, France, the company sells and distributes products in more than 120 markets while maintaining a broad portfolio of globally recognized brands. Danone's mission is to bring health through food to as many people as possible in a sustainable way.

As a global food producer and distributor, a company like Danone faces enormous pressure to maintain its operations. With such a pressing demand for the products it produces and distributes worldwide, Danone's recruitment processes must be fast, continuous, and efficient.

Previously, Danone relied on five different staffing agencies to hire 10,000 employees across 80 distribution and production facilities. This operation was extremely costly and full of bottlenecks and technical issues. Some of the most critical pain points included:85% of hired candidates came from staffing agencies (rather than their own HR resources).Less than 20% of interviewed candidates were hired.15 days elapsed between the initial job posting and the first interview.10 days elapsed between the first interview and the job offer or decision to hire.Each distribution center followed separate recruitment processes, with no data sharing and no process transparency.

Danone's goal was to reinvent its recruitment process to be internally fed with reliable HR data. Additionally, Danone placed great priority on making the process more engaging, user-friendly, and competitive for prospective job candidates.

"Our main challenge before working with Emi was how to make the user experience fast and easy to use," says Carla Ramirez, Technology and Efficiency Manager at Danone. "Sometimes, connecting with candidates took 15 days or more."

From the very beginning of its partnership with Emi, the Danone team knew they had discovered something groundbreaking. Emi's AI-based recruitment platform not only helped eliminate the cumbersome staffing agency processes, but also helped Danone build closer relationships with candidates."From the start of the first chat conversation until we hire a new team member at Danone, we never lose sight of them. We are in close communication with each one of them. For me, the best thing about Emi is the collaboration they offer throughout the entire process. They help us co-design the best solution, the best platform."

Danone benefits from Emi's native features, such as its chatbot and interview scheduling capabilities, as well as its numerous integrations. These tools facilitate large-scale, fast recruitment, even amid a challenging global hiring environment and growing frontline worker shortages.

Creating an engaging and personalized candidate experience

Danone's candidates now have access to 24/7 chat through SMS, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. Through personalized links, communication is initiated on digital channels, including online job boards and social media. In offline environments, Danone uses flyers, QR codes, and branded distribution trucks to attract candidates to the recruitment process from every possible angle.

Using Emi to automate candidate communication through chat and machine learning allows Danone to offer candidates an engaging experience while maintaining the efficiency that high-volume hiring demands. Emi's AI candidate scoring also enables Danone to identify the best candidates and schedule interviews immediately, which helps accelerate the hiring process — a critical component for delivering a great frontline candidate experience.

Connecting with candidates on their own terms

With Emi, the Danone team relies on a platform that offers candidates opportunities through a chatbot, saving recruiters a tremendous amount of time and effort.

With this chat tool, new candidates can be pre-screened for different positions at Danone's distribution centers. They can also be assigned to the workplace closest to their residence, as well as automatically receive the psychometric assessments they need to complete. Emi's real-time two-way chat also allows candidates to easily coordinate interviews based on their availability and ask questions about the recruitment process.

With a dynamic employee referral program managed and automated with Emi, Danone can increase employee motivation and retention, boost hiring efficiency, and ensure a steady flow of new candidates.

Standardizing the recruitment process across all work centers

Thanks to Emi, Danone has standardized the hiring process for its distribution and production facilities throughout Mexico.

Within Emi's platform, recruiters can generate personalized links for job boards and social media so candidates can be pre-screened. They can also set interview schedules based on their availability that Emi uses to automatically coordinate interviews with candidates. Additionally, Emi helps Danone streamline walk-in candidate data collection, gathering personal data on-site and automatically adding candidates to the recruitment process.

By creating a standardized and unified recruitment process, Emi helps Danone evaluate candidates more quickly and efficiently, while still providing candidates with the experience they expect and deserve.

Improving hiring and growth decisions with detailed analytics

With Emi, the Danone team gains real-time key recruitment process analytics. This information includes source effectiveness, rejection reasons, average hiring cycle duration, candidate drop-off rates throughout the process, and coverage and turnover rates.

With these insights into talent attraction trends and recruitment performance, Danone can allocate resources based on real-time data and make forward-looking decisions as the company grows. Emi also provides Danone's HR leadership team with detailed metrics dashboards to compare performance across different centers. With this data, Danone can remain strategic and competitive in an intense global talent market.

Improvement in key recruitment metrics

By relying on Emi's AI-powered hiring platform to meet its high-volume hiring needs, Danone has achieved significant improvements in key recruitment metrics, demonstrating that the solution is having a tangible impact on hiring success, employer branding, and the bottom line.

Among the quantitative results the company has achieved with Emi's help are:5x more candidates recruited thanks to Danone's HR team initiatives150% more candidates hired after a first interview80% less time from vacancy opening to first interview"Emi's flexible and intuitive platform helped us completely transform our frontline recruitment process."