Pluralsight: Builds a Highly Scalable Recruiting Team and Process

Company

Pluralsight is a company with big plans, especially when it comes to achieving hiring success.

The rapidly expanding online education service, which specializes primarily in software development, had a staff of only 250 in 2015, increasing to roughly 500 in 2017. However, their growth plans do not stop there; by 2018 they want a payroll of 2,000 employees. That’s an increase of over 500 percent from their 2015 level.

“The first time I presented metrics to our executive team, their first response was ‘Oh? There are actually hiring success metrics we can use? This is excellent!”
Ethan MedeirosSenior Technical Recruiter

Challenges

A task like this isn’t easy, especially for the single recruiter Pluralsight assigned to it. To achieve this goal, they would need a top-notch applicant tracking system that can easily handle the volume of hoped-for applications.

Unfortunately, the first two systems Pluralsight used were woefully inadequate for the task, with a poor user experience, no automation of basic functions and no analytics or measurable feedback.

This meant the recruiter had to spend more time chasing down hiring managers than actually dealing with candidates and applications. As Ethan Medeiros, Senior Technical Recruiter, lamented:

“These systems were horrible. It was like working with a glorified spreadsheet. We could not track our candidate volume, get any insight data into how we were hiring, and these systems could not scale to handle our rapid growth.”

Solutions

Faced with this roadblock, some companies may have simply decided the task was not possible on the scale desired. Luckily, Pluralsight didn’t give up on their goals but instead sought out SmartRecruiters, a full talent acquisition platform that could comfortably handle their requirements. Here’s how:

• SmartRecruiters provided an all-in-one solution on an easy-to-use, clean and efficient platform. The improved visibility allowed hiring teams to quickly locate candidates in the process, as well as create replicable hiring processes that could handle a large number of applications.
• Pluralsight now had access to all the data they’d ever need, allowing them to make their sourcing, and entire operation, more efficient in terms of manpower and cost.
• The built-in collaborative features of SmartRecruiters mean that single recruiter is no longer alone. Pluralsight would eventually expand their number of recruiters to three, while their general hiring community would eventually contain over 100 members. This allowed Pluralsight to draw on all the skills, insights and talents of their entire workforce.
• SmartRecruiters allowed Pluralsight to set up consistent interview and feedback processes, resulting in quick and decisive decision-making. Pluralsight took particular advantage of SmartRecruiters scorecards feature, allowing all hiring managers to work off the same interview and applicant criteria.