Challenges and Objectives
When the U.S. economy was faltering and many businesses were struggling, smart organizations sought ways to reduce their spending. Travel expense for applicants has always been a relatively high expense, and one that has historically been difficult to reduce without a similar reduction in the quality of applicants and a constant level of hiring.
ARINC, a premier provider of communications, engineering, and integration solutions to the defense, commercial, and government industries, sought to reduce its total annual applicant travel expense by 35 percent without reducing its level of hiring. Stacy Silverthorn, ARINC's Manager of Strategic Staffing, is responsible for making solid business decisions to save the company money.
But with more than 80 domestic locations, 600 annual U.S. new hires, and an estimated cost of $1,000 each time a job candidate incurred travel related expenses for in-person interviews, Silverthorn and her staffing team had their work cut out for them.
The Journey
While researching their various options, Silverthorn and her staff discovered GreenJobInterview.com, a Southern California-based company founded by executives from executive search and corporate hiring.
While looking into GreenJobInterview.com's browser-based technology - which the company refers to as Live Virtual Interviews - Silverthorn also saw many other advantages to partnering with GreenJobInterview.com, in addition to the potential cost savings. Among those advantages:
- Increased response rate to hiring
- Fewer schedule conflicts
- A more thorough screening process
- Outstanding customer service
- A secure site with few technological requirements
- Environmentally friendly values
The Result/Business Impact
Using GreenJobInterview.com's Live Virtual Interviews, ARINC cut its 2009 applicant travel expenses by 35%, and hit their goal to reduce costs. As a result, they were also able to increase offers extended to candidates.
Additionally, Silverthorn found that her hiring managers were very willing to use the service and that candidates had a more favorable impression of ARINC because the Live Virtual Interviews allowed for more consideration of their time, while at the same time appearing as a cost-conscious and environmentally responsible company.
"Live virtual interviews have been a huge win for us, cost-wise," said Silverthorn. "I was surprised at how receptive our line managers were to the solution. The team at GreenJobInterview.com does a great job preparing our hiring managers and candidates and making the whole process run smoothly."
Future Plans
The live virtual interviews have been successful for the candidates as well. More than 50 percent of the candidates ARINC interviewed have been extended a formal job offer. And more than a dozen current ARINC employees "aced" their live virtual interview as part of the hiring process.
"We now have the ability to get to candidates quicker using GreenJobInterview.com," said Silverthorn. "Quality candidates are less likely to drop out due to time constraints around trying to coordinate interview and travel schedules. We can also make faster decisions, which as a result shortens our time-to-fill."
ARINC plans to continue to use GreenJobInterview.com and will build awareness of the company by marketing the program internally in an effort to educate some of their recruiters and ease their reluctance. They also will aggressively track applicant dollars saved by those recruiters as well, to create a virtual interviewing metric.
