When you’re opening dozens of new stores every year and hiring thousands of frontline workers, the math adds up fast. For Quality Automotive Services (QAS), the second largest and fastest growing Valvoline Instant Oil Change franchise, that reality meant conducting tens of thousands of interviews annually — each one requiring manual text outreach, knockout questions, and scheduling coordination from a small recruiting team already stretched thin.
This traditional approach couldn’t keep up with Quality Automotive Services’ needs. And with ambitious growth plans ahead, the company needed a solution that could handle massive interview volume while maintaining the quality and candidate experience the brand is known for.
It’s why Quality Automotive Services became the latest organization to deploy AI Interviewer — a decision that’s set to unlock thousands of recruiter hours and transform how the company connects with talent across hundreds of locations.
Learn how agentic AI expedites and simplifies the hiring process with AI Interviewer.
The challenge: Fast growth meets recruiter capacity limits
Quality Automotive Services operates a nationwide network of service centers, with plans to open 30 new locations every year. Each store employs frontline technicians and service advisers — roles essential to operations that also come with high turnover rates common across the automotive and retail sectors.
The scale was staggering. Between natural turnover and ambitious expansion plans, Quality Automotive Services’ small recruiting team faced a growing interview volume that they needed a solution for.
Quality Automotive Services’ existing process relied too heavily on manual work. Recruiters would individually text candidates to ask about basic requirements for the roles. Those five to eight questions per 1,000+ candidates across the organization quickly added hours to recruiters’ workloads.
Quality Automotive Services’ need was clear: a solution that could act as additional recruiting capacity, automating repetitive early-stage work while preserving the human touch for later-stage conversations.
“Like most traditional companies, we were relying on our recruiting team to source talent and manually run them through a screening process that took countless hours each day,” said Brad Gragg, Vice President of Human Capital, Quality Automotive Services.
Why AI Interviewer stood out from the competition
Quality Automotive Services evaluated several AI screening tools and various extensions to supplement its existing systems. All fell short on requirements, including the ability to handle screening questions via text, automate scheduling at scale, and deliver truly end-to-end automation rather than just another point solution.
AI Interviewer became the clear frontrunner for three reasons:
- Complete automation from first contact to scheduling. AI Interviewer handles basic eligibility checks and candidate screening in one flow, eliminating a majority of manual recruiter touchpoints. For Quality Automotive Services, that is projected to translate to unlocking the equivalent of nearly four full-time employees worth of capacity.
- Rapid deployment and instant value. AI Interviewer is ready to go. There is no lengthy implementation or months of configuration — just immediate capacity relief.
- Responsible AI that meets compliance requirements. With operations in states like Colorado and Utah that have specific AI-compliance requirements, Quality Automotive Services needed a solution built on enterprise-grade responsible AI principles. Our SOC 2, ISO 42001, and FedRAMP Moderate authorizations, along with third-party bias audits, satisfied the company’s due diligence requirements.
The decision came down to depth versus surface-level automation. Quality Automotive Services recognized the value of productive AI that improves hiring outcomes, not just efficient AI that speeds up broken processes.
“Eightfold emerged as the clear choice for QAS due to its streamlined candidate engagement features,” said Gragg. “By leveraging instant text messaging, automated knockout questions, and virtual screenings, we can scale our operations effectively without the need for additional head count.”
How AI Interviewer works
AI Interviewer is built to transform the candidate experience and recruiter workflow from the moment someone applies for a role.
Here’s how it works:
- Instant engagement after application. As soon as candidates submit an application, AI Interviewer automatically invites them to begin a text-based or video-screening interview. No waiting for recruiter availability, no scheduling back-and-forth — just immediate next steps.
- Conversational, structured screening. AI Interviewer conducts a conversational initial screening using role-specific questions tailored to technician and service adviser positions. It asks about relevant experience, availability, licensing, and capabilities — evaluating only what candidates say, never analyzing facial expressions, tone of voice, or emotion.
- Smart summaries and candidate scoring. Recruiters receive structured interview transcripts, highlight summaries, and AI-generated scores that help them quickly identify which candidates to advance. No more manual note-taking or trying to remember details from hundreds of text conversations.
- Human judgment is always in control. AI Interviewer augments recruiter decision-making but never replaces it. Recruiters can review full interview transcripts, add context, override AI recommendations, and ensure candidates with accessibility needs receive appropriate accommodations.
For Quality Automotive Services, this means the recruiting team can focus on building relationships with qualified candidates rather than sending thousands of screening texts and coordinating schedules.
Why AI Interviewer matters for high-volume hiring
High-volume hiring in frontline roles comes with unique challenges. Companies are often hiring across multiple locations, managing shift-based schedules, dealing with mobile-first candidates, and racing against competitors for the same talent pool.
AI Interviewer directly addresses these challenges:
- Fairness and equity at scale. Every candidate gets a standardized, bias-audited interview based on their skills and experience — not their availability to answer a phone call during business hours or how quickly they respond to a recruiter text. This levels the playing field for career switchers, caregivers returning to work, veterans transitioning to civilian roles, and others who might otherwise get screened out.
- Speed without sacrificing quality. For candidates, use of AI Interviewer means hearing back in hours instead of weeks. For employers, it means filling critical frontline roles faster and reducing costly vacancies.
- Support for diverse candidates. With 22-plus languages supported, AI Interviewer ensures that every voice can be heard and every story understood — critical for organizations hiring across diverse communities.
- Enterprise trust and platform power. Unlike experimental point solutions, AI Interviewer is built on the same agentic talent operating system trusted by a third of Fortune 500 organizations. It also provides the security, compliance, and responsible AI governance that enterprises require.
What’s next for Quality Automotive Services and high-volume hiring
Quality Automotive Services’ deployment of AI Interviewer represents more than solving an immediate capacity problem. It’s a strategic investment in scalable, equitable hiring infrastructure that can grow alongside the business.
As Quality Automotive Services continues to open new stores and hire thousands of frontline workers, AI Interviewer will help the company maintain consistent candidate experiences, reduce recruiter burnout, and ensure every qualified candidate gets a fair opportunity, regardless of when they apply or for what location.
“QAS is committed to sustaining our history of rapid, year-over-year growth,” Gragg said. “To achieve this without increasing head count, we required a highly scalable solution. Eightfold enables us to engage the entire candidate pool at high velocity, ensuring we meet operational demands while strictly adhering to our financial forecasts and bottom-line objectives.”
For other organizations facing similar high-volume hiring challenges, whether in automotive, retail, hospitality, or health care, Quality Automotive Services’ story demonstrates what becomes possible when you combine responsible AI with genuine candidate care.
You don’t have to choose between speed and fairness, scale and quality, or automation and human connection. You can have it all and your candidates, recruiters, and overall business will be better for it.
Get started with AI Interviewer today. Learn more about how you can deliver faster, more equitable hiring powered by trusted enterprise AI.