A career site that drove $1.8 million in savings.

Welcome to The Conversation, a monthly-ish musing on all things hiring fueled by conversations with the world's top talent leaders. We're chatting with leading lawn service provider TruGreen about green (you know, money) — saving it, making it, and managing it. Plus, a webinar that proves a great career site is worth it's weight in pixels, and a candid convo between two TA leaders with 30 years of frontline hiring experience. 

How has AI helped solve longstanding hiring challenges?

We are very seasonal. A lot of our 17,000 annual hires are made in the first five months of the year. When we compare our most recent hiring sprint to last year, we were able to essentially hire the same number of people with significantly less interviews. That speaks to the quality of candidates coming in — our AI assistant Trudy ensures that the people we’re interviewing are qualified. And since adding Trudy, we’ve obviously needed less manual labor. We were able to get rid of the RPO we were working with altogether, saving $1.8 million in the process. That’s a $300 decrease in cost-per-hire. And again, speaking to the quality of the candidates, it’s really helping us with our retention. The people that we’re hiring aren’t just qualified, they want to work here.

Innovation can be expensive. How does talent acquisition fight for a bigger budget?

You have to make sure that talent acquisition has a seat at the table. You have to create value for yourself — that is fundamental. A lot of the time, businesses are very financially driven; because talent acquisition is a non-revenue generating department, many people don’t truly understand how we work and how having the right people in place can be a make or break aspect of the company. So you have to make sure that everyone in the company understands your value, and be able to quantify that value, too. Does that mean you have to brag a little about the things you’re doing to make an impact? Sure, but it’ll ultimately be worth it. I think that people are the heart of any business. If you have the right people and you treat them well, then everything else will come. 

And it seems kind of crazy to me whenever I have to explain that to other people — they should already know the value of their own people. But sometimes you have to break it down for people that are in finance that maybe don't understand the people side of things and just let them know the opportunity cost for not having the right person in place. And it’s important to remember that you’re not in it alone. I’m always talking to my peers about what’s working for them and where they’re looking to invest. I think a lot of the time you’re going to get a good answer if you aren’t afraid to ask the question.

Read the full 5 question conversation with Jessica Manucy, PHR, GPHR : Here.

We've gotten on our soap box the last few years and told anyone who would listen that talent acquisition can be a major business driver when done correctly. But for organizations in the service industry, it's literally their business. When people are the product, every hire affects the bottom line. TruGreen realized that if they wanted a better end result, they'd have to start at the very beginning: their career site.

By transforming it into a lean, mean, hiring machine (with an experience driven by an AI assistant), TruGreen reduced their time-to-schedule from seven days to one, increased applications by 300%, and saved $1.8 million in overall recruiting costs in just 12 weeks. 

Now that's a major business driver. Much more below. 👇

Read the full story: Here.

"Every since I was a little kid, I just wanted to help people." As a senior HR business partner at Hamra Enterprises (a restaurant operator with 200+ locations nationwide), Aaron Einhorn is living his dream. He probably never thought that he'd be getting help from AI.

Aaron recently sat down with another people-centric leader, Jennifer Gullo , the director of talent acquisition at Coca-Cola Bottling Company UNITED, Inc. (the first and largest bottler of Coke products in the United States) to discuss AI through a people lens, their shifting perceptions on using technology in the hiring process, and how AI is actually allowing them to do more of what they love by amplifying human connection.

Watch the full conversation: Here.

For a company like TruGreen, seasonal peaks aren't just about growing grass — they're about rapidly growing a workforce to meet demand. That high-volume, rapid-response hiring can be a major challenge. If you’ve been reading this email (and we really appreciate that you made it this far, by the way), you know that TruGreen tackled this head on, and saw some truly fantastic results. If you’re interested in hearing more of their directly, join us tomorrow on July 24 to learn why the grass is always greener when you have a career site that converts.

Register now.