JustEat shifts to a new Recruitment Strategy

JustEat grew by over 230% during the pandemic. But as the world opened up, inflation grew and other economic factors took hold, it was difficult to predict what the impact would be on their business and what the next inevitable disruption would look like.

The business knew they needed to protect themselves against future headwinds. They needed to become agile and able to flex with constantly changing demands. This meant the ability to hire more people, more quickly, and more effectively.

A Mindset Shift

JustEat is a tech business with an enormous logistics operation. Functions like Customer Care were previously outsourced, but with the use of technology they’ve been able solve transactional issues, allowing their teams to focus on high-value activities. JustEat then applied this mindset to the way in which they looked at hiring and how that is supported. 

“There was an increase in the volume of hiring that was needed for the business, with up to 900 hires needed per year globally, just for Customer Service. So rather than having an army of recruiters, every time the TA team got more reqs, we tried to think about how we can be smarter in our approach to hiring. We wanted to do it in exactly the same way that we did in our Customer Service world. It was the same mindset of removing friction and low-value tasks for candidates and recruiters, creating the capacity for the high-value stuff. This is when we came to HireVue”, said Barrie Brown, Talent Acquisition Manager, JustEat.

What JustEat wanted to do is to free their recruiters to be able to converse with candidates and create a heartfelt connection, and that starts by understanding what candidates want and need. It was about selling the JustEat vision and giving the recruiters the empowerment and the time to do that.

A Global Approach

Operating out of twenty countries, JustEat has a strong presence across Western Europe and also owns Grubhub in the US. They have a footprint in Australia and Canada under the Takeaway.com brand with MenuLog and SkipTheDishes. 

Previously, each country had its own individual process. Recruiters would do a phone screen and a language test was then emailed out to candidates. That was sent back to a hiring manager to manually mark. The hiring manager would then coordinate with the recruiter to say whether or not they passed that language test, and if they did then they would be booked in for an in-person interview. The process had many bottlenecks and was open to bias.

JustEat were struggling to fill some roles and the initial assumption was they were not getting enough applications – but the TA team suggested that might not be right. In some countries, 70% of applications were declined at CV. So they took a step back, re-engineered the process, and then figured out what technology they needed to make it a reality.

“We’re moving from experience-based recruitment to hiring potential, because we give these people full training. You know we’re hiring these people for what they can become, which is a real significant shift in our organization, but it ties into a bigger strategy base, which is moving to a talent management system based on skills as opposed to pure experiences”, said Barrie Brown, Talent Acquisition Manager, JustEat.

They’ve now moved away from using CVs to assess and screen applications. They still have a CV as part of the application process, but it is only used to help create the Workday profile. That then triggers the HireVue chatbot to send out screening questions. Assuming that a candidate rules themselves in, they will then progress to the HireVue online assessment, which is a cognitive ability test. Candidates then self-schedule an in-person group assessment – again using the HireVue chatbot – and that’s where JustEat creates the extra capacity to connect properly with an individual. The new process reduces the time by 50%, from 14 to 7 days, creating an opportunity to sell the vision. With the first intake of 30 CSA’s in the UK alone, over 2 weeks of recruiter time was saved.

Trusted Hiring Technology

JustEat went through a selection process and reviewed a number of different vendors. An essential criteria was being able to integrate into Workday. They were also looking for someone that could support them across all twenty-five countries. 

“It was the global scale and nature of HireVue, the assessments they offer, and also the support infrastructure that resulted in us making that decision. There is a level of confidence that you have dealing with an organization like that. We’ve done a full global roll out and that has gone very smoothly. The technical integration with Workday has also been absolutely seamless. Our completion is 85%, which is actually higher than our old process, and we’re able to process a much higher number of applications. But most importantly it’s about maintaining the quality of the candidate experience – and we’ve been able to improve that too, which currently sits at 93%,” said Barrie Brown, Talent Acquisition Manager, JustEat.

The Future

Now that JustEat is live with HireVue supporting the Customer Service hiring, they are looking at how they can continue the long term evolution of volume hiring across the business. Next, JustEat is looking to bring HireVue into the business to support their Sales team in hiring, where there is a significant amount of early-life attrition and a very manual process. For every leaver in the Sales team they experience 5 months of non-productive time.

The biggest contributor to the early life attrition is that hiring managers for these roles are generally hiring for the first time in their careers, and have a tendency to hire in their own image. JustEat is looking to HireVue to give them stronger data to support these interviews and therefore make more informed decisions.