Every interaction with an organization shapes the candidate experience. This includes searching for jobs on the career site, applying for jobs, and interviewing with recruiters and hiring managers.
Organizations that can construct a positive, engaging candidate experience also have to be able to scale the process for thousands of candidates.
“We are mixing speed with a personalized approach,” said Grace Cecilio, Manager of Sourcing & Talent Acquisition at Dexcom, in an online conversation with Eightfold AI. “We’re trying to institute a new way of interviewing by cutting down on interview teams and helping people be more confident with decision-making.”
Understanding how Dexcom combines speed and scale with a personalized approach prompted a conversation between Cecilio and Jason Cerrato, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Eightfold AI.
Here’s more from Cecilio, who unpacked how her team uses talent intelligence and actionable data to inform decisions at every stage, from sourcing qualified candidates to personalizing communications and setting realistic expectations with hiring managers. (Ed note: This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.)
The ability to attract top talent starts from the very first interaction with a candidate. Learn how leading organizations like Dexcom are using AI to deliver amazing talent experiences, from awareness to offer, that will have candidates buzzing.
Jason Cerrato: Every organization is different. How is the talent acquisition team structured at Dexcom?
Grace Cecilio: While it feels embedded since we partner closely with business leaders, there are currently three layers within our talent acquisition team. We have recruiters, sourcers, and talent acquisition leaders.
We also have a new function: talent acquisition operations, which will create the foundational processes and systems for our ever-growing needs. We’ve always operated as a startup with a “get stuff done” mindset, but now we need to make repeatable and scalable processes.
J.C.: What does the candidate experience mean to you at Dexcom? What does it mean to you personally?
G.C.: Our North Star is the customer experience, which we want to be reflected across the employee and candidate experience.
The connection to the product and mission attracted me personally to Dexcom. So many of us have family members affected by diabetes. I get heartwarming stories from candidates daily.
J.C.: Can you tell us about Dexcom’s journey over the last few years?
G.C.: In the past five years, we’ve grown 30 percent year-over-year, from 2,000 people to 6,000 people. It’s a rapid pace of growth.
We’re dealing with a different talent landscape. It’s fast-paced and competitive. Candidates are picky, and they have lots of options. They’re doing their research with their network and online. And they’re looking for companies that will care for them and treat them with respect.
Most recruiters have 30+ requisitions at any given time. To fill requisitions with engaged, qualified, and talented people, we need the right tools and technology to double our productivity, change behaviors, and help people be more confident with decision-making.
J.C.: What tools or process updates have generated the most impact?
G.C.: The most impactful technology we have implemented is the AI-powered career site and its matching capabilities. From the get-go, when the candidate lands on the Dexcom career site, they can upload their resume and automatically get matched with a job instead of searching through 400 open positions worldwide.
Related: Vodafone attracted 144 percent more female applicants with its AI-powered personalized career site. Learn more about Vodafone’s story.
We want to attract high-performers to work for us. Who has time to go through a lengthy application process? We want to make it quick and easy.
Within the Eightfold platform, the calibration tool helps us in the intake meeting with a hiring manager by providing us with match scores of the top five or 10 candidates we can use as a benchmark.
J.C.: In your process, who is involved with calibration?
G.C.: I love this question. We’ve fine-tuned this process, but our sourcers and recruiters lead the intake meeting. Knowing the business group, sourcers and recruiters fill in the calibration form on Eightfold with as much information as possible.
Within the meeting, the biggest bang for your buck is to show a hiring manager how small the talent pool is and align expectations.
When you calibrate your requisitions, there’s a higher chance for a candidate to get matched.
J.C.: How are you using HR analytics to guide decision-making?
G.C.: With HR analytics, I can check on how my requisitions are doing. If I tweak a job description, I can see how much traffic it’s getting. If other requisitions get a lot of hires quickly, how can I emulate what that recruiter is doing?
The career analytics and talent analytics dashboards are handy for the sourcing team. We can see the flow of the funnel: messaging, response, and open rates. And we can see which of our niche positions needs more applicant flow.
We’re also using the diversity dashboard even more, which helps us work closely with ERG teams. We get a lot of questions about our approach, so the data helps drive those conversations.
When engaging candidates, Eightfold goes beyond matching jobs to people. The AI can also match content to candidates to refine who would be the best-targeted audience for that particular campaign.
J.C.: We talk about going high-tech so you can go high-touch. What has this freed you up to focus more on?
G.C.: The hardest part is writing a good message and, less so, compiling names. I can focus more on developing strategies for pipelining and creating custom personalized outreach plans. How can I create meaningful conversations with the talent community versus just sending them a general email?
There’s also something to be said about email as a first touchpoint, but we’re also able to test out texting candidates, which gets responses faster. But, again, we need to make sure to keep it short and sweet and, of course, professional.
Ready to learn more about Dexcom’s results using artificial intelligence to personalize the candidate experience and scale recruitment practices? Read the Dexcom case study.