Beyond the Resume Stack: Leonardo's Formula for University STEM Recruiting

When thousands of STEM graduates submit resumes for competitive aerospace positions, traditional screening methods quickly become obsolete. Security clearance requirements, technical specialization demands, and overwhelming application volumes create a perfect storm that can cause top talent to slip through the cracks.

Global aerospace and defense organization Leonardo recently reimagined their early careers hiring process by implementing Phenom X+ Screening, transforming how they identified passionate candidates among massive applicant pools. 

Craig Drysdale, VP of Talent & Engagement at Leonardo, partnered with Markus Hertlein, Senior Product Manager at Phenom, to demonstrate how strategic technology adoption can turn recruitment challenges into competitive advantages. Their updated hiring strategy resulted in a process that cut time to hire while delivering superior candidate experiences across their 450 annual early career hires.

Watch the entire session here, or read on for the highlights!

Understanding Leonardo's Recruitment Scale

Leonardo operates as a global aerospace defense organization with approximately 50,000 employees worldwide, including 7,000 based in the US. They have pioneered technological innovation for over 50 years, from designing the first airplane to fly over Mount Everest to leading radar technology development and serving as a key partner in next-generation fighter jet programs.

Their talent acquisition strategy focuses heavily on early careers programs, requiring them to identify and hire approximately 450 new graduates annually across the UK. "We wanted to focus on our screening adoption, particularly for what we call early careers — hiring people from school, college, and university to come and join Leonardo," explained Drysdale. "It's a huge number, it's a huge undertaking, and we are privileged to be able to give people what is typically their first step into the workplace."

Their Previous Challenges with STEM Recruitment

Explosive Application Volume

Leonardo's most significant challenge actually emerged from their success in attracting candidates. "Before working with Phenom, we typically attracted about 12,000 applications for our 450 positions," Drysdale explained. "In the first year that we used Phenom fully, the career site attracted 60,000 applications."

This 5x increase created both opportunity and operational complexity. "When you scale a team to be dealing with 12,000 applications, receiving  60,000 provides complications," noted Drysdale. The sheer volume overwhelmed their recruitment infrastructure while potentially causing qualified candidates to get lost in the process.

Strict Security and Compliance Requirements

Beyond volume, Leonardo faced industry-specific challenges that most organizations don't encounter. "We have very strict security restrictions around who can work within Leonardo and what programs they work on," Drysdale emphasized. These security clearance requirements demanded early-stage verification processes that needed seamless integration with their screening workflow, adding layers of complexity to candidate evaluation.

Identifying Passion Beyond Similar Credentials

Traditional resume screening proved inadequate in evaluating STEM graduates with remarkably similar backgrounds. Even fit scoring becomes challenging with early-career candidates, as most applicants present nearly identical credentials — leadership roles in university societies, part-time retail experience, and strong academic performance, shared Drysdale. This credential uniformity made it nearly impossible to distinguish truly passionate candidates from simply qualified ones. That's where X+ screening can help. 

What Makes X+ Screening Successful

Three-Pillar Technology Strategy

Leonardo implemented a comprehensive approach using three core Phenom components to address their recruitment challenges. "We used three main parts of the Phenom system to move our early careers programs forward: Campaigns, the Fit Score, and X+ Screening," Drysdale explained. "For us, X+ Screening has been the game changer."

Campaigning enabled targeted outreach to students in relevant courses, while Fit Score helped prioritize candidates automatically. However, Phenom X+ Screening became the element that allowed Leonardo to efficiently screen thousands of applications, identifying top candidates with a genuine passion for aerospace technology.

Automated Screening Workflow

"The first step in the hiring process is the automation of the screening invitation," explained Hertlein. "All candidates with an A or B Fit Score are automatically invited and moved forward to the screening stage of the hiring process."

Leonardo leveraged three key screening components. "The transition from the legacy screening product into the live screening product has been massively beneficial for us, both in terms of functionality and candidate experience — it's dramatically changed from what it was before," detailed Drysdale.

Video Integration

Video screening has proved particularly valuable for Leonardo's high-volume environment. "When you've got thousands of applications to review, video becomes key in terms of identifying the people who have real passion for what they want to do at Leonardo," emphasized Drysdale. In addition, X+ Screening’s summaries and transcripts accelerate review processes while maintaining assessment quality, allowing candidates to move forward in the hiring process.

Full System Integration

Leonardo achieved seamless integration between their ATS and the Phenom platform. "For early careers, recruiters don't go into the ATS at all," Drysdale explained. The integration creates a streamlined workflow where jobs originate in the ATS, candidates move through the complete hiring process in Phenom, and return to the ATS only for offers. This eliminated duplicate data entry for recruiters while maintaining workflow continuity across their technology stack.

Measurable Results 

Leonardo's adoption of Phenom X+ Screening delivered measurable improvements across multiple hiring recruitment metrics while enhancing both recruiter efficiency and candidate experience. Key impact metrics include: 

• 5x application volume increase - Successfully managed growth from 12,000 to 60,000 applications annually 

• 70% completion rate - High candidate engagement with the screening process 

• 40% automated disqualification - Immediate filtering of ineligible candidates through knockout questions 

• Record-high acceptance rates - Improved offer acceptance due to enhanced candidate experience 

• 4.6/5 candidate satisfaction - Consistently high ratings across Phenom's customer base

• $500K operational cost savings - Reduced additional system costs and insourced team operations

• 530+ hours saved annually - Automated email/SMS communications eliminated manual outreach tasks

The operational improvements generated significant organizational benefits. "Our finance team is happy with the savings. We've driven out a lot of manual processes and additional systems," noted Drysdale.

In addition, the transformation enabled Leonardo's team to focus on strategic initiatives rather than administrative tasks. "The team is now spending more time on things like our inclusion agenda — getting women into STEM. We also do more in terms of our campus outreach and university and school outreach," he explained. 

The Future of Continuous Innovation

Leonardo continues expanding the use cases of their Phenom investments, with plans to implement more granular customization. "Today, we group roles — tech jobs together, manufacturing jobs together, and we provide a similar screening experience," noted Drysdale. "The capability within the system allows us to go down to each job and tailor the screening per job. When we look forward to future iterations of our early careers recruitment, that's something we're going to be focused on."

For organizations managing high-volume jobs, Leonardo's experience demonstrates how strategic technology adoption can transform overwhelming candidate numbers into competitive advantages. Their success with Phenom X+ Screening proves that the right platform can simultaneously improve efficiency, enhance the candidate experience, and maintain rigorous quality standards essential for specialized industries.

Drowning in applications but can't afford to miss top talent?

See how Phenom X+ Screening helps organizations like yours turn overwhelming volume into hiring advantages.

▶️ Watch the X+ Screening Explainer now