KinderCare’s Guide to Automating Events: How to Hire in 24 Hours & Optimize ROI

As companies compete for post-COVID talent, hiring events continue to be a crucial strategy to get roles filled as quickly as possible. But traditional models aren’t enough — especially for a company like KinderCare Education, whose workforce comprises many frontline workers.

Derek Murphy-Johnson, former Senior Manager of Talent Attraction at KinderCare, found out firsthand that “having to recruit during COVID made this [hourly recruiting] challenge even more complex. In today's climate, it's all about speed.”

By adopting Phenom’s suite of AI-powered talent experience tools, including career site, CRM, an events feature, and automated campaigns, KinderCare was able to hire 30-40 people from a single event — all while spending less than $50 in advertising.

Watch the full session below, or read on to find out how KinderCare tackled their employee shortage through next-level automation.

The Need for Quick and Easy Hiring Events

KinderCare is the largest childcare education provider in the U.S., with 34,530 employees across their family of brands and more than 2,000 locations in 41 states. In the wake of the pandemic, however, “We closed most of our locations and only had a few hundred locations open that were used to support essential workers,” Murphy-Johnson revealed. When restrictions lifted, KinderCare’s recruiters and hiring managers “needed to find a way to hire mass amounts of people.”

Already a Phenom customer, Murphy-Johnson’s small team of two leaned heavily on their Candidate and Recruiter Experience tools to simplify and expedite their hiring events.

With their CMS, they easily built event templates to feature on their career site using branded KinderCare images and communications explaining why candidates should participate in their hiring events — and ultimately join KinderCare. From there, they relied on their ATS-integrated CRM to engage best-fit candidates for areas of need.

Automated Yet Hyper-Personalized Candidate Messaging

To deliver hyper-personalized communication to candidates and past applicants, Murphy-Johnson used several different email and text campaigns set up and managed through their Phenom CRM.

Murphy-Johnson and his team then messaged candidates based on their specific interactions within the Phenom system. Candidates who registered for a hiring event received an automatic response two hours later asking them to select an interview time and enter more information about themselves.

From there, the system’s event feature automatically set an interview status for the candidates. Murphy-Johnson then created several drip campaigns that increased or decreased the messaging frequency depending on whether the candidate interview status was in progress or already scheduled. He also automated pre-event and post-event personalized SMS communication, as well as follow-up surveys.

“We know that in today's world, time to engage and time to connect with your candidates is critical,” Murphy-Johnson stated. “Candidates who are already registered are getting more information about our culture and why our employees love working at KinderCare.”

Customer Use Case: How a Popular Restaurant Chain Hired 1,000+ Workers in One Week Using Phenom

Top Tips for More Effective Hiring Events

Murphy-Johnson shared the following top tips gleaned from his experience running effective hiring events:

Leverage tech to stay organized and keep up with requests
Create paid Google and Facebook ads to increase visibility
Use email campaigns for longer messages and text campaigns for quick reminders and details
Use email automation to create a great experience and reduce work for TA teams
Share RSVPs 24-48 hours prior to the event with the interview team so they can engage candidates before the event
Survey hiring manager feedback for future events

One of the most important lessons learned from this process? Personalized pre-event communication from hiring managers means greater candidate engagement and attendance: “Once somebody gets into a hiring event and hears from that hiring manager before the actual event, they're more likely to stay engaged leading up to the event the next day.”

Astonishing Results

The benefits of hosting hiring events with Phenom’s help? In just a week and a half, a single event resulted in:

160 applicants
70 interviews
40+ hires for critical positions

“We're able to host hiring events, advertise them on Google and Facebook, and hire 30-40 people at a single hiring event — all while spending less than $50 in advertising,” Murphy-Johnson marveled.

“If you’re considering how to scale hiring events or how to hire hourly at scale, I would highly encourage you to look at the hiring event feature with Phenom. It’s super easy to use, and you don’t need to have a giant team. There’s two of us supporting 40,000 people at any given time. If we can do it with two people, you can do it.”