Needing to hire 15,000 employees annually with a complex talent acquisition system and fragmented processes, Eaton partnered with Eightfold AI to transform its recruiting. By implementing intelligent and automated tools, Eaton streamlined the candidate experience, empowered recruiters, and gained better insight into employee aspirations. This initiative delivered significant results, including a nine-day reduction in time to offer, $2.4 million in cost savings, and a 300% growth in its talent network, helping Eaton secure the right talent in a highly competitive market.

Summary

Needing to hire 15,000 employees annually with a complex talent acquisition system and fragmented processes, Eaton partnered with Eightfold AI to transform its recruiting. By implementing intelligent and automated tools, Eaton streamlined the candidate experience, empowered recruiters, and gained better insight into employee aspirations. This initiative delivered significant results, including a nine-day reduction in time to offer, $2.4 million in cost savings, and a 300% growth in its talent network, helping Eaton secure the right talent in a highly competitive market.

The challenge

From technology to transportation, the world runs on power. Perhaps nobody knows this better than global power management company Eaton, which is helping customers around the world solve their toughest energy problems.

However, while the world runs on power, organizations run on people. For Eaton to deliver safe and sustainable energy solutions to its customers, it relies on its workforce of over 90,000 employees, especially on its talent acquisition team, which is responsible for hiring over 15,000 employees every year.

Eaton’s talent acquisition team faced fragmented recruiting solutions (including a number of talent acquisition systems and tools), burdensome manual work, and disconnected workflows that created major inefficiencies. To recruit the caliber of employees needed to power the world and become top players in the marketplace, Eaton needed sharper insights and a more intelligent recruiting process supported with automation.

“We lacked a CRM that was integrated with our applicant management system,” said Didem Önem, Eaton Director of Global Early Career Recruitment and Talent Acquisition Operations. “This was hindering us from tapping into pools of both internal and external talent we generated over the years.”

Önem manages global talent acquisition operations of 160 recruiters and recruiting leaders at Eaton who recruit employees around the world, from engineers to supply chain specialists. Before Eightfold, candidate profiles were stored in one database, job openings in another. The data was there, but recruiters couldn’t use it to effectively match people to roles.

This lack of connected data and insights had a ripple effect. “We weren’t able to retrieve insights on the diversity of applicant pools, source of hires, or the usage of tools which are some examples of the data points that are critical in empowering recruiters, fine tuning recruiting strategies, and measuring functional efficiency,” Önem said.

Eaton’s project team’s first goal was to embed intelligent insights and automation throughout the recruiting process. The team’s next goal was to revamp the candidate experience. “Starting from our career site to the application form, the application was a lengthy process, which was yielding drop-offs, especially with the mobile experience.”

This candidate experience overhaul wasn’t just for external candidates. Eaton’s company culture is deeply committed to inclusion and continuous learning, and in that spirit, its recruiting team sought to give internal employees more visibility into career paths and opportunities at Eaton.

The solution

The project team began their search for a tech solution that would become the connective tissue for their complex technology stack, bringing intelligence and cohesion to CRM, ATS, and recruiting efforts, while transforming the external and internal candidate experiences. “We were happy with Eightfold’s intelligence and automation capabilities,” Önem said. “We wanted to adopt this AI-powered solution, and in doing so we ensured to deploy it responsibly.”

After going through a change management process, the team began revamping multiple fronts at once. “We looked at simplifying and modernizing the entire talent acquisition program,” said Jackie Morgan, Eaton Vice President of Global Talent Acquisition. “It helped us make sure that we were not only implementing a technology that was going to help us meet our goals, but that we were also advancing the program itself at the same time.”

The results

• Giving recruiters an intelligent edge
• Elevating the candidate experience
• Creating an internal talent movement

With Eightfold, Eaton is modernizing and simplifying its talent processes with AI to help recruiters work “smarter” and concentrate on more value-added tasks. This is helping the talent acquisition team ensure the best candidate experiences and quickly identify the best talent with a skills-based approach.