Golden Corral

National Restaurant Chain Dishes on its Transformation to Automate Recruiting

Whether it is servers, cooks, bakers or management, hiring the best talent is critical for successful restaurant operations. At Golden Corral, America’s #1 buffet and grill, manual recruiting processes made it difficult to manage a high volume of applicants, maintain records to ensure state compliance and understand where to source for the most qualified talent to optimize recruiting spend.

With nearly 500 restaurants in more than 40 states, continuously recruiting and sourcing for top talent is a number one priority for the leading family restaurant system. As is typical with foodservice organizations, turnover is a constant in the part-time hourly workforce, so having streamlined processes for efficient and effective recruiting is essential.

However, with paper-based staffing processes, the applicant and recruiter experience was cumbersome and it limited visibility into key recruiting metrics such as the sources that produced the best quality of hire. Seeking to improve its recruiting systems and optimize recruiting spend, Golden Corral partnered with Cegid to implement its Talent Acquisition module in order to streamline these critical talent management initiatives.

Without the benefit of an Applicant Tracking Solution (ATS), candidate information was either stored in physical files or in individual recruiter’s email folders. This made it difficult to identify the most qualified candidates and maintain records for EEO reporting. Manual processes also made it challenging to uncover the most effective hiring sources and understand where the company was getting the best return on its recruiting investment.

The Solutions

Recognizing the opportunity to improve its current systems, Golden Corral conducted an extensive review to identify the right talent management partner and selected Cegid based on its system functionality, client care support services, competitive pricing and ability to tailor the solution to meet the company’s unique workflow needs. The Cegid’s team worked with Golden Corral to transform its manual processes to an automated approach that included a revamp of the company’s career site, implementation of Cegid’s Talent Acquisition technology and integration with other key HR vendor technology providers.

Cegid tailored the system to meet Golden Corral’s business needs. This included customized legal applications, language support so applicants could choose Spanish or English when applying, and integrating with the company’s point-of-sale technology and behavioral assessment solutions.

Initially launched for recruiting needs attached to management and corporate owned restaurants, the solution was expanded last year to hundreds of additional stores and users to support hourly workers in the field and at franchise locations. Candidate screening for managers includes job-specific questionnaires that enable recruiters and hiring managers to identify the most qualified talent quickly. Hourly workers complete a behavior assessment that is integrated in the solution so managers only spend time with candidates most likely to succeed at Golden Corral.

The Result

The solution has transformed Golden Corral’s recruiting function from a paperbased process into an efficient approach that enables them to screen candidates and mine their own database for top talent.

In an industry where high turnover is the norm, the solution also helped increase the volume of applicants, giving Golden Corral access to a broader talent pool. Prior to working with Cegid, approximately 8,000 applicants applied for positions with the company each year. Today, Golden Corral has upwards of 40,000 applicants added to its database annually.

In addition to boosting its applicant flow, the Cegid talent acquisition system also increases recruiter efficiency by providing a one-stop source to review candidates for open positions. System reports also provide insight into source effectiveness, revealing that investments in some career boards no longer produced the anticipated results allowing Golden Corral to adjust its recruiting strategy to meet hiring requirements with the best ROI.