How OmniCable and Sweetwater Sound Transformed the Way they Hire

In today's competitive job market, attracting and hiring top talent is more critical than ever for organizational success. However, many companies are held back by outdated HR systems, disconnected tools, and manual processes that create inefficiencies and a poor candidate experience.

During a panel discussion at IAMPHENOM, Cora Walker, Head of HR at OmniCable, and Jordan Applegate, Senior Director of HR at Sweetwater Sound, shared their compelling stories of how they transformed their hiring process.

Watch the entire conversation on-demand here, or review the key takeaways below.

Bearing With a Broken Hiring Process

Both organizations faced significant challenges in their talent acquisition efforts. OmniCable, a specialist distributor in the wire and cable industry with 900 employees across 16 locations, relied on a single recruiter managing paper applications in a file drawer. Requisitions took up to four days, and there was no visibility into the process for hiring managers.

Sweetwater, the nation's leading online retailer of music instruments and audio equipment with 2,500 employees, was using an old custom-built applicant tracking system. While known for delivering an exceptional customer experience, Sweetwater struggled to extend that same branded, consumer-grade experience to candidates. The recruiting process was bogged down by a heavy manual workload for recruiters and lacked automation.

Key Factors that Lead to a Breakthrough

Realizing the critical need for change, both organizations turned to Phenom to overhaul their talent acquisition processes spanning the full talent life cycle for all relevant personas.

With an AI-powered platform, they realized they would be able to automate routinely manual and time consuming tasks – while unify the entire talent journey, including:

Attracting and engaging candidates
Nurturing leads into applicants
Changing statuses and reporting for compliance purposes
Fast-tracking interview scheduling
Extending offers
New hire onboarding

One of the biggest wins was the ability to launch branded, personalized career sites that finally aligned with their desire to create a consumer-like experience. Sweetwater worked closely with the Phenom team to customize page templates and maintain a consistent look and feel so that candidates still felt like they were on the main Sweetwater site.

From a Real Struggle to Real Results

Hiring managers were able to become much more engaged thanks to intuitive, mobile-optimized tools for posting jobs, reviewing candidates, and coordinating interviews. At OmniCable, job requisitions that took four days can now be completed in just 90 seconds, and over 80% of hiring managers actively use the platform when they have open roles. This self-service approach has expanded the recruitment team and reduced reliance on agencies.

On the recruiter side, Phenom's advanced automation capabilities have been a game-changer. Sweetwater created automated workflows triggered by hiring stage changes to instantly send assessments and schedule interviews. They also integrated Phenom with their Indeed job postings to automatically parse and process the hundreds of resumes received, something that used to take hours of manual effort. As a result, Sweetwater was finally able to meet their aggressive seasonal hiring targets for the first time.

In addition to improving efficiency, Phenom has enabled both organizations to provide a modern, consumer-grade candidate experience. From intelligent chatbots on the career sites to digital offer letters with e-signature, every step is designed to be easy and engaging for candidates. Sweetwater is excited to soon have a fully digital onboarding process as well, thanks to a planned integration between Phenom and Workday.

Adopting Phenom Hire has empowered their recruiting teams and hiring managers to focus on what truly matters: building authentic human connections with candidates. By allowing technology to handle the administrative aspects of hiring, recruiters have more time to really get to know candidates, understand their aspirations, and guide them to the right opportunities.

The stories of OmniCable and Sweetwater powerfully illustrate how a single platform can be truly transformative, especially when put in the hands of results-driven leaders and their teams.

The Next Stop on the Road to Refinement

As OmniCable and Sweetwater continue their journey, they see even more opportunities ahead to consolidate their systems, broaden the extent that their team is leveraging automation, and further enhance talent experiences. Key priorities include building out robust talent pipelines and cultivating candidate relationships through ongoing engagement.

If your organization is getting minimal impact and subpar experiences due to legacy systems, struggling with a disconnected hiring process, and expending far too much manual effort – a modern, unified solution can help you hire faster, better – and at scale. Discover how you can take steps towards a talent transformation by learning more about what Phenom Hire can do for you. If you’re interested in seeing the technology in action, request a personalized demonstration today.

John Harrington