How a Major Airline’s TA Team Saves 10,000 Hours Per Quarter

In the airline industry, minutes matter. A five-minute delay at the gate cascades into missed connections, frustrated passengers, and lost revenue. The same principle applies to talent acquisition, where every hour spent on manual talent acquisition tasks is an hour not spent on finding the best people to keep 500 daily flights running smoothly.

We sat down with the Director of Talent Acquisition Processes and Systems at a major airline to find out how they transformed manual recruiting operations into an automated engine that saves the talent team 10,000 hours every quarter.

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When Talent Acquisition Volume Meets Velocity

With more than 100,000 employees keeping planes in the air and passengers satisfied around the world, large airlines face hiring challenges that would ground most TA teams.

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Consider what happens when they open flight attendant positions. The application window stays open for just three or four days, and in that brief period, 15,000 applications flood their systems. Every application needs review, every qualified candidate needs screening, and the best candidates need interviews scheduled quickly before they accept other offers.

In an era of instant online booking,  recruiters at this company were playing phone tag with thousands of candidates, simply trying to schedule an interview.

"Our recruiting systems were like Frankenstein's monster," the airline's director of TA explained. "We needed to change that to keep up with hiring volume."

The challenges compounded across the candidate journey:

• 17-minute applications that caused drop-offs at critical stages

• No automation for basic communications like application acknowledgments, status updates, and thank-you notes

• Disparate and disconnected vendors for tools, from video interviews to online assessments

• Legacy Applicant Tracking System (ATS), which wasn’t built for rapid pace and deep integrations for advanced automation

The frustration was also strategic, not simply operational. While recruiters spent their days coordinating interviews and chasing down candidates, they had no time for the work that actually improves hiring: building relationships with top talent, partnering with hiring managers, or analyzing what makes employees successful.

Reaching the Right Recruiting Altitude with Phenom

The airline began its journey with Phenom in 2022, starting with a career site launch and gradually expanding adoption through pilot programs. The approach was meticulous and methodical: test, refine, and scale. By December 2024, the team achieved complete adoption of its solutions.

"We are really excited to achieve 100% adoption. It was a major milestone for us," she emphasized, highlighting the complete organizational buy-in.

Phenom implementation addressed their challenges and created growth through the following foundational solutions:

• Phenom Automated Interview Scheduling to eliminate manual phone calls and calendar coordination

• Phenom Intelligent Automation to manage multi-stage processes from application to hire

• Phenom Career Site using Phenom Design Studio to guide candidates to relevant opportunities

"We're ending relationships with auxiliary vendors we don't need any longer because Phenom gives us an all-in-one solution," she noted. This consolidation meant eliminating their vendor for video interviewing and other standalone systems, creating a unified recruiting experience.

To make the most of their ATS, the airline company strategically integrated Phenom to enhance its existing infrastructure. A bi-directional hiring status integration allows the airline company to maintain its core HCM system of record while adding the automation and candidate experience capabilities they need. 

Related: Driving Impact with Talent CRM Strategies

Key Win #1: Automated Interview Scheduling 

Automated Interview Scheduling was the airline’s first major win. The impact extends beyond simple calendar management. For high-volume roles like flight attendants, the airline company configured the system to handle complex workflows. "For flight attendant recruiting, we have up to 30 recruiters collaborating on a calendar," she explained. "The system balances loads across recruiters and assigns appropriately. It's a really nice feature."

After candidates pass the initial screening, the system automatically sends them to an informational video session. Those who attend receive automated invitations for one-way video interviews. Each step flows into the next without manual intervention. "Interview scheduling is a game changer," she emphasized. 

Key Win #2: Interview Intelligence

The airline company also piloted Phenom Interview Intelligence with impressive early results. "Interview intelligence is a great tool and such a time saver," she said.

According to the senior leader, the tool's transcription capabilities were "spot on”, a critical benefit when conducting thousands of interviews where every detail matters.

Beyond accurate transcriptions, the tool provides real-time coaching for hiring managers during interviews, something that traditionally required extensive training and recruiter oversight. For an airline with interviews happening across multiple locations, this capability standardizes quality while reducing training burden.

The Impact: Sky High ROI 

Sometimes a single metric tells the whole story. "Interview scheduling may not seem like a huge automation, but it saves us 10,000 hours a quarter, and that's a lot of time," she revealed.

The full impact?

• 10,000 hours saved per quarter with automated interview scheduling

• 750% increase in interviews scheduled

• 30% reduction in time to complete screenings

• 12% increase in completed applications

The automation efforts have freed up the equivalent of 20 full-time positions every three months. Those recruiters can now focus on building relationships, improving processes, and tackling strategic initiatives.

Beyond the headline numbers, Phenom Talent Analytics fundamentally changed how the company approaches recruiting optimization. "We're leveraging the data in Phenom to make decisions and define our journey forward," she explained. The team can now see exactly where candidates drop off in the application process, right down to the specific page. This visibility enables targeted improvements rather than guesswork.

Charting a Clear Course Ahead 

The transformation that took place wasn't just about technology; it was also about finding the right partner for the journey. "Make sure you have a good relationship with your Customer Value Manager (CVM). They're the ones who can help and guide you," she advised other HR leaders considering similar HR tech roll-outs.

When the airline company needed specific functionality, like shared calendar capabilities for flight attendant recruiting, Phenom worked with them to build it. This collaborative approach extended to internal teams as well. The airline company created custom training materials tailored to different user groups to match the varying recruiting needs of each group. 

Looking ahead, the airline roadmap focuses on three key areas of optimization:

Process refinement: The team continues examining workflows to remove inefficiencies. "We're looking at these processes and asking, 'Where else can we automate to help our recruiters be more strategic and reduce manual intervention?'" she explained.

Application streamlining: The airline aims to reduce its 17-minute application time to match the 11-13 minute industry benchmark, making the process faster and more user-friendly without sacrificing necessary information.

Candidate retention: The airline plans to implement features such as saved applications, allowing candidates to return and complete their submissions later, improving overall conversion rates.

For HR leaders facing similar challenges, her experience-driven advice was this: "I highly recommend you don't fly the plane before you build it. Take time to understand workflows. Document your processes. Listen to your teams. And find partners, not just vendors.”

Give your TA team 10,000 extra hours per quarter. See Phenom Automated Interview Scheduling in Action