Introduction
Given the name recognition of the San Diego Padres, the Major League Baseball organization has never struggled to drive applicants. But hiring was still a challenge. The organization’s people team struggled to stay organized, move efficiently, and make smart hiring decisions amidst an overwhelming amount of applicants. Read on to learn how the San Diego Padres turned to Hireology to revamp their processes and hit their hiring efforts out of the park.
The problem
By 2017, the organization knew it was critical that they modernize their processes and better organize their hiring data and they knew they needed a strong hiring platform to do so. Enter Hireology.
The Hireology solution
Hireology’s centralized recruiting and hiring tools made streamlining and accelerating the hiring process a breeze for the Padres’ people team and hiring managers. From prescreen surveys to candidate texting, the organization relies on a range of Hireology features to make better hiring decisions faster:
Prescreen surveys
One way the Padres were able to save time during the initial application review period was with pre-screen surveys. With Hireology, they could create custom surveys for each role asking questions about critical requirements — such as training, experience, or availability. If an applicant fails the screen, they’re automatically disqualified, leaving only qualified applicants left for the team to review. Pre-screen surveys give the organization’s recruiters and hiring managers the power to quickly move forward with candidates who meet the role’s requirements and ultimately shave days off the overall hiring process.
Candidate texting
Candidate texting has also helped the team move faster on the very best candidates. For most job seekers, it’s tough to find time to call you back or sift through cluttered email inboxes to get to your message. But texting cuts through the noise. The team found that by texting candidates via Hireology, they received almost instant responses and could move great candidates through interviews, background checks, and other steps much faster. In some cases, the team can make a hire just two days after they interview someone thanks to the time saved with candidate texting.
“Texting has made all the difference for us. It is like night and day.”
— Christina Hall, Director of People and Culture — Event Staff, San Diego Padres
Centralized candidate database
When faced with thousands of people who apply to their roles — many of which apply to dozens of roles at once — the Padres’ people team really needed a way to better track and manage all of their contacts. That’s where Hireology came in. With Hireology’s robust applicant tracking system that includes tagging, commenting, and search features, the team is able to keep everyone who has ever applied to a role at the Padres organized and easily managed within one central system.
Now, hiring managers can see if someone has applied to multiple roles previously and why they were declined for those roles. Or, they can more easily transfer candidates from one role to another based on the candidate’s experience and background. Previous communication with each candidate, hiring manager comments, background check results, and more are centralized within the system. Ultimately, this leads to faster time-to-hire and better hiring decisions for each role.
What’s more, Hireology’s centralized ATS also makes it really easy for leaders and cross-functional teams to all gain visibility into the Padres’ hiring efforts as a whole. If someone wants to see where the team is with a certain role, they can easily view the status of the candidates with the click of a button.
A home run
The results of Hireology’s partnership with the San Diego Padres speak for themselves. The organization has seen a drastic decrease in time to hire, has increased the number of hires year over year, and drives significantly faster responses from top candidates since beginning to work with the best applicant tracking system. Moving forward, the organization is looking to adopt more Hireology features, such as automated offer letters, to add even more efficiencies to the process.
