How TruGreen reduced its time-to-interview by 95% – increasing its applicant pool by 85%

The world’s leading lawn care company was losing 85% of its applicants to a lengthy application process until it integrated its applicant tracking system (ATS), Workday, with the Indeed platform.

Key takeaways:

• TruGreen's use of disconnected systems created a long and confusing recruitment journey.
• Indeed's ATS Sync for Workday syncs TruGreen's jobs and Screener Questions directly from Workday to Indeed and then sends applications and responses back into Workday.
• TruGreen reduced its recruitment process from 2 – 3 weeks to 1 – 2 days.

As Talent Acquisition (TA) Operations Manager at the leading lawn care company in the US and UK, TruGreen, Veronica Caraballo knows the headache of an inefficient recruitment system. But with one change to the recruitment process, Caraballo reported that TruGreen was able to reduce their candidate drop-off rate by 85% and accelerate their time-to-interview by up to 95%.

'Research indicates that the average employer uses 16 human resource tools,’ says Dave Anderman, Indeed Senior Director of Product Marketing. But juggling several separate platforms amid recruitment can create a poor candidate experience that deters jobseekers, as TruGreen experienced. When the company switched from a tedious process to an integration between applicant tracking system (ATS) Workday and Indeed, however, the benefits were immediate and exceeded expectations.

When an employer integrates their ATS with Indeed, their open job posts sync directly to the site and applications completed on Indeed flow back into the ATS. Here's how TruGreen replaced the manual management of data with automation, freeing time and energy to invest where it matters – connecting with candidates.

In addition to Workday, Indeed recently enhanced its capabilities with large ATSs like ApplicantPro, iCIMS and Workable. Learn more about integrations in the Employer Resource Centre and explore the 300+ partnerships available on the new Integrations Hub.

A long and winding recruitment journey

TruGreen serves more than 3.4 million residential and commercial customers throughout the UK and USA, with recruiters covering up to 600 consistent job openings, many of which are high-volume opportunities like sales and customer care roles. 

TruGreen relies heavily on Indeed to deliver its required candidate volume, tapping into the millions of active jobseekers on the site each day. For candidates to move through the hiring funnel at TruGreen, though, their information must be in Workday.

Historically, the lack of connection between Indeed (the source of candidates) and Workday (the system for managing jobs and applicants) resulted in a clunky and inefficient process:

1. First, the recruitment team would manually copy jobs from Workday into Indeed.
2. Applications were parsed from Indeed into TruGreen's candidate relationship management system (CRM), where the recruitment team assessed candidates.
3. Finally, to get promising applicants into Workday, recruiters would either manually transfer the data into the ATS or contact the candidate directly and ask them to complete another application via Workday.

In these cases, recruiters would often need to contact applicants several times via email, text and phone to get a response. Jobseekers were understandably confused, assuming they were hearing back about an interview, not to complete another application.

This process took up to three weeks, causing some sought-after candidates to move on to other opportunities. In a survey by CRM company Bullhorn, 66% of candidates say they've given up on a promising opportunity because it took too long.¹

'We had 200 candidates come into our CRM for each requisition on a daily basis,' says Caraballo. 'But by the time we filtered through and contacted them, only about 20 or 30 were moving over to actual applicants.'

To solve this inefficiency, TruGreen's Indeed representative recommended integrating Workday with Indeed. They put the TruGreen TA leadership team in contact with other employers who had recently completed integrations and provided the recruitment team with a test environment to learn how it would work. With this first-hand knowledge and experience, TruGreen gained the confidence to make the change.

Simplifying the application process

The transition took three weeks, including the testing period and two training sessions for supervisors and recruiters. 'With the instructions Indeed provided, we were able to follow the steps to integrate the Indeed platform into Workday super easily,' Caraballo says.

The new, simplified solution looks like this:

1. TruGreen's team posts jobs on Workday, and Indeed automatically syncs them to the site.
2. Jobseekers easily apply on Indeed, and Indeed sends the applications to Workday, including responses to Screener Questions.
3. Recruiters identify which candidates fit their criteria within Workday and use Indeed Interview to schedule same-day or next-day virtual interviews.

Automatically syncing all jobs from Workday and receiving completed applications back eliminates hours of redundant work for TruGreen hiring supervisors. The enhanced capabilities with ATS Sync for Workday also help maintain data integrity that can be lost when manually transferring information.

Integrating your ATS with Indeed helps your team spend less time manually entering data or switching between hiring systems and more time connecting with jobseekers.

With ATS Sync, TruGreen’s job postings achieve the same performance results they did when posted directly on Indeed. Indeed Apply allows candidates to send their CVs and other application materials from the Indeed site in one click. Employers who used Indeed Apply received five times more completed applications.² The TruGreen team also uses the feature to sync candidates who respond to their Indeed Hiring Events to their ATS.

'That was a game changer,' says Caraballo. 'It used to take us a little bit over two to three weeks just to get someone to fill out the application, start interviewing them and getting them into the background checks. Now, after using Indeed Apply Sync [for Workday], that process can be done within one to two days.'

Productive work allows for meaningful work

Since completing the integration, TruGreen has increased the speed of its recruitment process without sacrificing candidate quality. Candidates' hiring stages sync from Workday to Indeed, helping improve the quality of candidates matched with jobs on Indeed over time. Adding Screener Questions to integrated jobs also ensures a complete application – and jobs with Screener Questions are 50% more likely to result in hiring someone.³

'Along with a candidate’s application, their Screener Question responses sync from Indeed to Workday,' Caraballo says. 'This helps our recruiters go through pre-screened candidates and quickly determine if they should be moved forward.'

And this responsiveness is key, as 54% of candidates may withdraw from a recruitment process due to poor employer communication. In Indeed’s recent Ghosting in Hiring Report, 25% of US jobseekers cited poor communications by the recruiter as a reason for ghosting.

Though sync capabilities vary by ATS, Indeed has worked with more than 300 global platforms to make integrating with your preferred systems as easy as possible. These include Platinum Partners like ApplicantPro, iCIMS and Workable. Platinum Partners have the most robust integrations available for Indeed users and receive prioritised integration support.

'As a Platinum partner, we get early access to new integrations,' says Trevor Schueren, Senior Product Partnership Manager at Workable. 'We are able to work with Indeed to provide our joint customers with more of a connected platform solution.'

'Indeed Integrations drive efficiency and speed for both the jobseeker and the employer,' says Anderman. 'Recruiters can reduce the time spent entering data and spend more time making human connections.'

Find detailed information for over 300 ATSs on the Integrations Hub and connect with your Indeed representative to get started. ATS Sync for Workday and the Integrations Hub are currently available in many major markets, including the UK, US, Canada, France and Germany.

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Sources

¹Bullhorn, Grid Talent Report, 2023

²Indeed data (worldwide), tracking on non-Indeed Apply applications may be limited

³Indeed data (worldwide), average over March – May 2023