Background

Burger King, the second largest fast-food hamburger chain in the world, needed to address the operational recruitment challenges it faced at all of its establishments worldwide. Every day, more than 11 million customers visited its restaurants around the world, and the chain was struggling to fill vacancies quickly enough to meet the needs of its customers.

Challenges

As an international restaurant company, Burger King makes active recruitment decisions in countries around the world. While having a global presence has its commercial advantages, such a wide range of markets can complicate recruitment processes, especially in a mass 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 on such a large scale, most of Burger King's HR challenges are related to standardizing the recruitment process between different restaurant locations.

Before Emi, these were some of the obstacles that Burger King faced:

• Operating with a recruitment process that required branch 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 and high-volume operational recruitment process.

Solution

To streamline and standardize the recruitment process, Burger King's HR team wanted to reduce the time branch managers spent on recruitment tasks and create a better experience for candidates.

The Burger King team realized that these objectives had the potential to contribute to a more proactive and organized recruitment culture. By using Emi's recruitment platform, powered by Artificial Intelligence, Burger King has been able to automate time-consuming tasks, such as selecting candidates and scheduling interviews, while providing a better experience for candidates.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the restaurant sector has also faced a significant shortage of employment and staff worldwide. By standardizing its recruitment processes with Emi, Burger King gained an advantage in terms of hiring and a tool to avoid interruptions in its daily business operations, which is especially important because these operations are directly related to achieving exceptional customer service.

“Emi helped us to shorten our recruitment process, decrease our early turnover and increase our number of applications, providing candidates with a better experience throughout the process.”

‍Sabrina Martins, Burger King Human Resources Manager

Results

Optimize the assignment of candidates to the vacancies that are ideal for them

One of the ways in which Burger King tried to improve the recruitment process was to facilitate the search for new jobs and the application process. He managed to do this with Emi, placing QR codes inside its branches that attract new candidates in an organic way. This strategy uses the strength of the Burger King brand to communicate its new job opportunities.

Emi also helps Burger King candidates locate the best branch for them based on the ideal distance to their home or university. Emi automatically assigns a set of optimal settings for each candidate. Improved assignment reduces frustration and commute time, ultimately improving employee engagement and retention.

Eliminate wasted time through effective pre-selection

The Burger King team recognized that before Emi, it was wasting an enormous amount of time on inefficient processes that didn't really meet all of the candidates' needs. With Emi's automated pre-screening and 24/7 chat options, recruiters can now replace telephone interviews with personalized processes that are tailored to each candidate.

Emi helps Burger King answer any questions candidates may have. The platform serves as a point of contact while candidates wait for news about the next steps. With Emi, candidates are notified in a timely manner about the hiring decision and always know where they are in the recruitment process. This clear and transparent communication enhances the candidate experience and is vital to meeting the standards of excellence that characterize Burger King.

Automate recruitment processes to support busy recruiters

In the past, Burger King recruiters spent several days a week communicating with candidates to coordinate interviews. Now, the automatic coordination of interviews through the Emi platform helps managers at each branch to recover hours in their work week.

Hiring managers can easily manage candidate pools and interview top-rated candidates who haven't received a previous offer. Emi also allows recruiters to send automatic notifications to previous candidates when new positions are available that are more suitable for them.

Standardize 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 specific job requirements standards and ensure that candidate selection criteria are transparent and well-defined.

The Burger King HR team relies on Emi to measure and monitor important key performance indicators (KPIs) in order to fully understand the entire funnel of the recruitment process. Emi improves visibility, providing real-time access to HR data and easy-to-use indicator dashboards, keeping everyone aware of the objectives and progress of the recruitment process.

Since partnering with Emi, Burger King's HR team has also achieved:

• Recover 10% of branch managers' working time previously spent selecting and scheduling interviews.
• Recover between 5% and 10% of the time that the HR team previously spent coordinating interviews.
• Accelerate coverage time by 30%, saving 5 days on average.
• Increase the number of candidate applications by 4 times, reaching 10,000 new candidates per month.
• Increase the attendance rate at first interviews to more than 90%.