How Wolt Scaled its Workforce with Volume Hiring in SmartRecruiters

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Cover the basics to improve efficiency

After a $160 million round of funding in 2019, Wolt was tasked with scaling the organization across Europe. Little did they know this would mean increasing headcount 15 times over within three years.

When it came to building scalable processes, Shaun Rudden, then Talent Acquisition Lead, quickly realized that Wolt’s application tracking system was not up to the task. Scheduling interviews was especially painful: their system of record couldn’t schedule group interviews and didn’t support candidates to self-schedule changes. On top of that, it was difficult to track the metrics needed to analyze and optimize their TA function. “It seems so obvious that interview scheduling and analytics are two things an ATS should do well,” Shaun said. Wolt went shopping for a new ATS, and found SmartRecruiters.

Implementing SmartRecruiters was a game changer for volume hiring. We scaled from 1,000 to over 6,000 employees without the need for a bigger recruiting coordination team.

– Shaun Rudden,
Head of Talent Excellence

About Wolt

  • Industry: Platform Commerce
  • Region: EMEA
  • Employees: 6,000
  • Offices: 23 countries and 250+ cities
  • Headquarters: Helsinki, Finland
  • Hiring Model: Decentralized

Wolt is best known for its app-based food delivery service. From its headquarters in Helsinki, Wolt develops a wide range of technologies from local logistics to retail software and financial solutions. It also operates Wolt Market grocery stores.

Wolt was founded in 2014 and was acquired by DoorDash in 2022. DoorDash operates in 27 countries today, 23 of which are with the Wolt product and brand.

Better collaboration supports volume hiring

When implementing SmartRecruiters, Wolt’s goal wasn’t only quantitative improvements, such as more hires in less time and better conversion rates, but also qualitative factors such as hiring team collaboration. With SmartRecruiters, Wolt now had the means to customize hiring teams to specific roles. The simplicity of the system drove engagement with hiring managers and interviewers alike. “It’s been completely seamless from scratch,” Shaun said.

Once Wolt had the process down in one market, it was easy to build out the teams in each additional market. To refine hiring processes, Wolt utilized recruitment marketing data and introduced AI.

We’ve been able to hire for over 50+ stores now just using a team of four recruiters. It’s a testament to how well the system works.

– Shaun Rudden,
Head of Talent Excellence

Data speaks the language of business

The struggle with spreadsheets is over for the Wolt TA team because data from SmartRecruiters integrates with their business reporting tool. “There’s no more scampering around trying to pull different pieces here and there from clunky dashboards,” Shaun said. “The data is speaking the language of business in the way we like to present it.”

Now that Wolt is part of DoorDash, another phase of growth begins. Without the volume of hires Shaun’s team made between the last round of funding and the acquisition, Wolt would not have succeeded. With SmartRecruiters, “You just go straight into the system to find what you need, and the business can use it as they see fit,” Shaun said.

Key Outcomes

  • 15X headcount growth
  • 30,000 candidates interviewed
  • Recruiting team grew from 10 to 65
  • Time to hire decreased from 118 to 45 days
  • Team handles 14,000 applications per month

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About SmartRecruiters

SmartRecruiters powers Superhuman Hiring™ by freeing talent acquisition teams from legacy applicant tracking software, and equipping them with next-gen AI functionality. SmartRecruiters' platform serves as the hiring operating system for 4,000 customers, including Bosch, LinkedIn, and Visa. Companies with business-critical hiring needs turn to SmartRecruiters for best-of-breed functionality, world-class support, and a robust ecosystem of third-party applications and service providers.

For more information, visit www.smartrecruiters.com/winston/


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