Background

The second-largest fast food hamburger chain needed to address frontline hiring challenges that their global locations all faced. Every day, more than 11 million guests visit their restaurants worldwide, and the organization was struggling to fill open roles fast enough to meet the needs of their customers.

Challenges

As an international restaurant corporation, Burger King makes active hiring decisions in countries all around the world. Although a global presence has its business benefits, such a wide array of markets can complicate recruitment processes—especially in a high-volume hiring environment.

In one region, Burger King operates 180 stores that process 3,500 job applications and 110 new hires per month. On such a broad scale, most of Burger King’s HR challenges relate to the standardization of the recruiting process between separate restaurant locations.

Before Emi, Burger King’s most significant pain points included:

• Operating with a recruitment process that required store managers to spend too much time on HR-related tasks
• Fielding negative feedback from candidates due to a poor candidate experience
• Managing a complex, high-volume recruitment process for hourly workers  

Solution

To streamline and standardize recruiting, Burger King’s HR team wanted to reduce the time HR managers spent on recruiting tasks and create a better overall experience for job candidates. 

Collectively, the team at Burger King recognized how these goals had the potential to contribute to a more proactive and organized recruitment culture. Turning to Emi’s AI-powered recruitment platform, Burger King has been able to automate time-consuming tasks like candidate screening and interview scheduling—while also delivering a better candidate experience.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the restaurant industry has also faced significant employment and staffing shortages globally. Standardizing its recruitment processes with Emi has given Burger King a recruiting advantage and protection against interruptions in daily business operations—especially as those operations relate to providing exceptional service to customers.

“Emi helped us shorten our recruitment process, decrease our early turnover, and increase our number of applicants, providing a better experience for candidates all along the process.” Sabrina Martins, HR Manager at Burger King

Results

Optimize job matches for every new candidate

One of the ways that Burger King sought to improve the recruitment process was by making it easier to find out about new jobs and apply to them. With Emi, Burger King accomplishes this through in-store QR codes that attract new candidates organically. This strategy uses the strength of the Burger King brand to showcase new job opportunities.

Emi also helps Burger King’s candidates locate the best fit according to the ideal distance from a home or university address. Emi automatically assigns a set of optimal stores for each candidate. Improved matching reduces frustration and commuting time, ultimately improving employee engagement and retention. 

Eliminate wasted time with convenient pre-screening

Before Emi, the team at Burger King acknowledged how much time was wasted on ineffective processes that didn’t truly meet all of a job applicant’s needs. With Emi’s automated pre-screening and 24/7 chat options, recruiters can now replace phone interviews with personalized processes that accommodate each applicant.

Emi helps Burger King answer all questions that candidates may have. The platform serves as the point of contact while candidates wait to hear back on the next steps. With Emi, applicants receive a timely hiring decision and always know where they stand in the hiring process. This clear, transparent communication improves the candidate experience and is highly valued by Burger King standards.

Automate hiring processes for busy recruiters

In the past, Burger King’s recruiters were losing multiple days a week going back and forth with candidates to coordinate interviews. Now, automated interview scheduling through the Emi platform helps store managers reclaim hours in their work week.

Hiring managers can easily manage candidate pools and view highly-ranked candidates that weren’t given a previous offer. Emi also allows managers to send previous applicants automated notifications when new, better-fitting positions become available.

Unify HR standards to foster easier hiring decisions

Any successful recruiting initiative requires everyone involved to be on the same page. With Emi, Burger King has enhanced its ability to unify specific standards for position requirements and ensure that recruiting selection criteria are transparent and well-defined.

To build a complete understanding of the entire recruitment funnel, Burger King’s HR team leverages Emi to measure and track important recruiting KPIs. Emi improves visibility with real-time access to HR data and user-friendly analytics dashboards, keeping everyone up to speed with recruitment goals and progress.

Since partnering with Emi, the HR team at Burger King has also been able to: 

• Reclaim 10% of store managers’ work time previously spent on screening and scheduling
• Recover 5-10% of the HR team's time previously spent on interview coordination
• Accelerate time to hire by 30%—saving an average of 5 days
• Grow candidate applications 4x, resulting in 10,000 new candidates reached monthly
• Boost the attendance rate for first interviews to over 90%