It’s a challenge to keep ice cream cones and coffee flying out the door and great new employees flying in. But Allied Domecq is a streamlined model of hiring efficiency. That’s because it recently began using Projectix ATS by Recruiternet, a Web-based applicant tracking system. Projectix ATS lets QSR attract, hire and retain the best, most-qualified candidates.

Not A Cake Walk
    The hiring process wasn’t always smooth for QSR. It used to have hiring technology that didn’t make the grade. "It met just 10% of our requirements," says Joe Capp, QSR’s director of talent acquisition. That meant that 90% of hiring tasks required excessive paper-pushing. Jobs were posted online and in newspapers, but QSR recruiters couldn’t handle the influx of applicants. Mountains of resumes were deleted without ever being read. There was no way to track how many strong candidates were inadvertently bypassed.

    In October 2001 it was time for a change. Capp’s requirements? A new system had to be automated and vendor-managed, to spare QSR any IT headaches. It had to be Internet-based with an online job board. And, most of all, it had to dramatically improve the workflow of recruiters. The incumbent vendor angled for the upgrade contract, but Recruiternet blew them away, says Capp. "No other system met 80% of our requirements, let alone the 90% that Projectix ATS met." It cost less, he says, and the professionalism of the company sealed the deal.

    In place for a year now, Projectix ATS gets raves from QSR. "Both I and every recruiter on my team that’s worked with any applicant tracking system are in unanimous agreement that this is by far the best system any of us has ever used," says Capp.

Success By The Numbers
    Projectix ATS let QSR slash recruiting costs by $1 million, as manpower, cost and time to fill plummeted. For example, job-specific profile questions automatically place top candidates into first consideration. This Projectix ATS feature alone cut QSR’s time to fill 35%, from 83 days to 54 days. Projectix ATS’s custom database lets QSR track and prioritize candidates for future use too. That reduces the need for additional recruiting efforts and cut QSR’s cost per hire by 65%.

    QSR uses Projectix ATS to generate detailed reports in seconds, with cost and time to hire data, EEO criteria, offers accepted and declined and other key points. That helped QSR slash manual data entry tasks by a whopping 50%, says Capp. And, each QSR recruiter had a unique, easy-to-use Projectix ATS interface. That saves QSR more than $300,000 per year in manpower hours, says Capp, and keeps its productivity at a peak. Plus, since all candidates get responses via automated form letters, the black hole of resumes has been eliminated.

    "We’ve moved from being a reactive, paper-pushing employment function," says Capp, "to being a proactive, talent-acquisition program that is doing direct sourcing and creating pools of talent."

"Both I and every recruiter on my team that's worked with any applicant tracking system are in unanimous agreement that this is by far the best system any of us has ever used."--QSR Director of Talent Acquisition, Joe Capp