Here’s How To Rock Your Candidate Experience — A Case Study with Sweetwater Sound

High-volume hiring is critical to the success of Sweetwater Sound’s business — prompting the retailer to find a solution defined by intelligent automation to drive more efficient recruiter functions.

Also essential? Hands-on freedom to tailor a candidate experience that would remain true to Sweetwater’s employer branding and values while generating quantifiable results.

Find out how they’re leveraging Phenom to reduce the time to schedule interviews from 5 minutes to 5 seconds while increasing candidate engagement and completed applications.

Check out the full case study!

The Challenge

As one of the world’s largest online retailers of audio and musical equipment, Sweetwater realized its home-grown approach to HR technology was limiting recruiters’ ability to quickly get high-quality talent through the door.

For Jordan Applegate, Senior Director of Recruiting for Sweetwater, the challenge was to increase efficiency by finding a third-party solution while preserving hands-on control over the talent experience.“

We reached a point where we knew we needed smart automations to keep up with our hiring demands and stay competitive in the market,” he shared.

The Solution

When Sweetwater found Phenom, Applegate recognized a solution that would solve the need for speed — with tools for application review and selection, interview scheduling, and candidate outreach — while also allowing the freedom to tailor a candidate experience that would remain true to Sweetwater’s employer branding and values.

“The ability to retain control over the candidate experience really won us over,” Applegate said, highlighting the following capabilities:

Phenom Career Site, CMS and Hosted Apply. With Phenom Career Site and CMS, the Sweetwater recruiting department can create and publish their own career site content — without leaning on other teams, or being locked into vendor-specific templates. “We didn’t want candidates to know they’d left us and went to a third-party tool,” Applegate said. “With Phenom, we can keep our own branding and maintain a seamless experience for candidates.”

Phenom CRM and Campaigns. The CRM gives recruiters one system of record for candidate information, so they can track interactions in real time and create targeted campaigns that catch attention with personalized content. Using templates allows recruiters to “humanize” their communications with candidates, according to Applegate.

Phenom Talent Analytics. The ease of tracking and surfacing KPIs and metrics saves Applegate time and effort when it comes to monthly reporting. He also noted that metrics on CRM usage helps him improve the performance of his own team members.

The Results

“We’ve already seen a modernization that allows substantial time savings and eliminates system fragmentation,” shared Applegate.

Stand-out results include:

More efficient high-volume hiring. Phenom automations were instrumental to Sweetwater during the holiday peak, Applegate said, with a single recruiter processing more than 500 applications per week. “Using Phenom really set us up for success. We processed more applications and leads than ever before.”

Faster interview scheduling. “Moving through the interview process efficiently so we can make decisions on top talent quickly is a huge part of the success of our business,” said Applegate. By using the recipe automation feature, the team has whittled phone interview scheduling from a multi-step process to one click. “In terms of time saved, “that’s 5 minutes down to 5 seconds,” Applegate estimated.

Stronger candidate engagement. With more consistent branding thanks to the user-friendly CMS and Hosted Apply, Sweetwater increased their completed application rate by 82%. “The ease of dropping in polished content has improved our branding capabilities. We’re showcasing culture-specific images and re-engaging more candidates than ever before,” Applegate said.