Grupo Saona automates its selection with the support of AI

In Spain, more than 50 million hours are spent each year evaluating CVs and screening candidates before being interviewed. This task is essential to start any selection process, but it involves a lot of time in repetitive tasks that consume the workday of selection professionals, preventing them from engaging in higher-value activities that require a more humane approach.

We study the case of Saona Group, the renowned Mediterranean restaurant chain. With 60 establishments distributed in 11 provinces and more than 1,300 employees, facing the turnover of the hospitality sector, handle very high hiring volumes. In this context, appointing staff exclusively to make the first curricular selection through telephone calls was difficult to scale.

“The volume of hiring was very high and having people purely dedicated to this type of hiring was very difficult. We used to check the candidates by phone and this ends up being a little demotivating for people because it doesn't provide much added value”, explains Carmina San Julián, Director of People and Culture at the company. For this reason, the company decided to invest in the automation of the initial phase of the process with the support of HR Bot Factory.

Why did you decide to digitize your selection processes?

“We needed to somehow cover the candidate screening part in order to give restaurants quality resumes. In addition, the digitalization of recruitment has saved us a lot of time and has taken away just the part that didn't provide us with value”, explains Carmina San Julián.

With the support of AI in the initial part of the selection processes, human resources teams receive applications with a first filter that allows them to focus their time and efforts on the following phases of the process to ensure a good hiring.

How is the candidates' experience with your chatbot?

“We have noticed that the report is that almost 100% of people who sign up for the offer participate and screen, so We don't fall out of candidates and it helps us filter CVs”, comments Carmina San Julián.

Recruiting chatbots not only simplify processes for professionals, but they also significantly improve the experience of candidates who interact with them. This improvement is especially positive, as companies that invest in the candidate experience experience a 70% increase in the quality of hires.

‍The introduction of a chatbot powered by Artificial Intelligence makes the process more efficient, since it allows us to review 100% of applications quickly. After that, all the information about each of the candidates is collected in an ATS that human resources professionals can access to see how candidates fit the skills and knowledge they need.

In this way, Grupo Saona's Human Resources team is freed from repetitive tasks that are automated and can dedicate their time to tasks that really provide value in the recruitment phase and need the humanized touch.

More and more companies are betting on the innovation that artificial intelligence involves in their recruitment processes. This digitalization not only streamlines processes, but also provides a higher quality in recruitment and an improvement in the employer branding of companies.