- Challenge: The global COVID-19 pandemic led to increased demand for home furnishings. This led Hearth & Home Technologies, a leading hearth provider, to accelerate its hiring efforts. However, disparate solutions and manual processes deterred efficient high-volume hiring and led many critical roles to remain unfilled.
- Solution: Jobvite’s native candidate engagement capabilities — notably, our built-in text messaging functionality — helped Hearth & Home more easily connect with niche job candidates and schedule interviews with them, all from a single platform (i.e., not several tools) and in a matter of minutes, not days.
- Results: Candidate response rates from Hearth & Home’s targeted email and SMS campaigns increased 50% in the first year using Jobvite. This helped the business add more headcount across the company quickly and efficiently and, in turn, capably meet the growing demand for home hearth installations and products.
Hearth & Home Technologies is a U.S.-based manufacturer that brings warmth and comfort to homes with inviting and innovative fireplaces. The company sells to customers through multiple channels, including retailers, specialized dealers, and builders of new construction.
The pandemic brought on difficult changes for every industry and company, and Hearth & Home was no exception. The business saw a marked increase in demand for their products, as people hunkered down in and worked primarily from their homes. This increased demand meant that they would need to increase production. That meant there was a need for rapid hiring.
Today’s manufacturers all compete for the same pool of high-quality candidates and race to fill roles to meet increasing production demands. Like many of these companies, Hearth & Home was not prepared for the sizable number of positions that they had to fill (and quickly).
At one point, they had nearly tripled the number of open requisitions, which represented a significant bump for them, when compared to pre-pandemic req numbers.
These headcount needs ultimately led the organization to research new recruiting software that would enable them to hire top talent at volume in a short timeframe while still ensuring they provided a great candidate experience to each active and passive prospect they engaged.
Hearth & Home leverages Jobvite to “meet” candidates where they are and hire top talent
Many professionals in manufacturing talent networks do not own a personal computer and often struggle to access to WiFi, both of which hinder active job searches and their ability to be discovered by recruiters looking to hire them for seasonal, part-time, and full-time roles.
Hearth & Home found it hard to communicate and engage with leads through traditional channels — cold emails and phone calls — and needed a way to connect with these prospects.
“We needed to be able to get to people where they were on the devices that they were using,” said Hearth & Home Director of Talent Acquisition Steve Lewis.
Simply put, the business needed a way to make the apply process easier for candidates, and a way to make it easier for recruiters to engage with these mobile-dependent candidates.
With over 1,000 “members” (as Hearth & Home refers to their employees) and a need to fill many additional engineering and production roles, the company looked to Jobvite for help.
Before Jobvite, Hearth & Home had a manual, disparate talent acquisition process that included sourcing from job boards and reaching out via email or phone. When candidates agreed to discuss openings, their recruiters had to then use another system to schedule interviews.
Moreover, the TA team struggled to find a way to let their candidates apply via mobile devices.
Candidates often took two or more days to respond to messages, as they weren’t often on available during standard work hours. But, the Hearth & Home recruiting team knew that these top candidates do always keep their phones on them and are constantly checking them.
The business soon recognized the best way to reach them was through texting. “We needed to be able to get to people where they were on the devices that they were using,” said Steve.
A mobile-optimized candidate experience and texting helps Hearth & Home connect with and convert more high-quality hires
The Hearth & Home talent team knew that they could adapt to the changing industry and offer a quality candidate experience to stand out against their competitors with our ATS.
In order to quickly fill the open production roles in order to meet growing demand for their products, they instituted a mobile-optimized candidate experience and application process using our enterprise applicant tracking system with candidate relationship management capabilities.
“We leaned on the people at Jobvite for understanding how we needed to evolve our ‘apply’ process and deliver a better candidate experience,” said Hearth & Home Talent Sourcing Specialist Wendy Blodgett-Verdouw.”
Combining Jobvite’s smart recruiting technology and a solid understanding of their talent market, Hearth & Home leveled up their talent acquisition processes — and results.
By knowing what was important to and the behaviors of their manufacturing candidates, the company leveraged Jobvite’s Intelligent Messaging, which allowed the recruiting team to send text messages to candidates, making scheduling multiple interviews in a day a breeze.
Responses from candidates immediately improved nearly 50% for Hearth & Home after adopting Intelligent Messaging and leveraging our ATS’s other candidate engagement capabilities.
These high conversion rates allowed Hearth & Home’s recruiters to more effortlessly converse with target candidates of interest, get immediate replies from them, and easily schedule interviews with prospects all within the Jobvite platform and in a matter of minutes, not days.
Jobvite’s fully integrated TA suite also allows Hearth & Home to seamlessly collect and use insights in their recruiting process and implement a more data-driven recruiting approach.
Specifically, Steve explained how Jobvite’s ATS and Onboard feature provides considerable value for every talent team member and was a big part of their decision to work with Jobvite.
