BELAY: Hires ‘higher caliber’ candidates 62% faster with Fountain Hire
Results
62%
167%
1,000
About
BELAY is a high volume staffing agency that uses proprietary matching processes to pair clients with virtual assistants, bookkeepers, social media managers, and accounting professionals.
BELAY’s success hinges on rapid, efficient hiring. By adopting Fountain Hire in October 2021, they streamlined their workflow, empowering their team to achieve first-rate results. Lisa Lotus, Talent Operations Coordinator, joined the BELAY Talent team in September 2022 and quickly became an advocate for Fountain’s robust features.
Three problems, endless solutions
According to Lotus, the BELAY team sought to scale hiring operations in three main areas:
• Automation
• Integrations
• Robust reporting
After researching multiple solutions to address their three key areas of concern, they landed on Fountain Hire, a hiring solution that showed potential to go above and beyond their existing issues.
“Before Fountain, we had one system for the applicant demographic questions, one for video interview questions, one for skills assessments, and one for background checks,” Lotus said. “Now, due to integrating those platforms with Fountain, the recruiters do not have to leave Fountain for demographic questions, video interview questions, or background checks. Additionally, with the Zapier integration, our hires are entered into our CRM automatically.”
One automation that has greatly elevated manual work for the team is the “applicant’s ability to be able to go in and schedule their interviews,” said Lotus. Thanks to this feature, recruiters no longer have to go back and forth with applicants to schedule interviews.
The final feature that dramatically improved BELAY’s processes was Fountain Hire’s robust reporting and analytics.
“Fountain Hire’s integrations of skills assessments and background checks provide our team with the critical data points needed to make informed hiring decisions quickly, ensuring we secure the best talent.”
Building a qualified talent pipeline with less effort
BELAY dove into Fountain Hire’s functions, quickly learning how to save time.
“Fountain Hire’s integrations of skills assessments and background checks provide our team with the critical data points needed to make informed hiring decisions quickly, ensuring we secure the best talent,” Lotus said.
On the automation side, Fountain Hire enabled them to set up automatic knockout stages that prevent unqualified candidates from moving forward in the hiring funnel, rather than having the recruiters manually review each candidate and make this decision.
“BELAY rapidly adopted Fountain Hire’s capabilities, maximizing efficiency gains,” Lotus said. “Customizable knockout rules ensure only qualified candidates progress in the hiring process, significantly reducing the administrative workload for recruiters. For example, geographic restrictions are automatically enforced, optimizing both recruiter time and the candidate experience.”
These automations combined with integrations create a more seamless process for both BELAY recruiters and job candidates. With Fountain Hire’s calendar integration, for example, candidates can access recruiters’ schedules and select days and times for interviews based on the open slots. Candidates can complete their video interview stage in Fountain Hire without leaving the system, switching tabs, and figuring out how to return to their application.
“Fountain’s Scheduler 2.0 provides a welcome upgrade to both our candidate and recruiter experience,” Lotus said. “Applicants find the self-scheduling functionality eliminates time-consuming back-and-forth communication, and recruiters can focus on high-value interactions. The flexibility to easily adjust schedules further optimizes the process for everyone involved.”
Like most companies that hire frontline workers, BELAY’s talent needs ebb and flow. With Fountain Hire’s Zapier integration, BELAY can collect qualified applicant information and start to build a talent pool they can pull from when demand is high.
“The quality of candidates reaching our recruiters has increased due to pre-screening steps,” Lotus said. “We love that their candidate profile saves all their relevant information, their uploads, and their resumes.
“Fountain Hire also empowers us with valuable insights into past applicants. The ability to review previous interactions and notes facilitates data-driven decision-making and optimizes our overall talent acquisition strategy.”
BELAY’s final breath of fresh air came in the form of Fountain Hire’s reporting and analytics:
“Before implementing Fountain Hire, we lacked actionable insights into our recruitment process,” said Lotus. “Fountain Hire’s analytics illuminate areas for improvement, allowing us to proactively refine our funnel and deliver a seamless candidate experience.
“Something I genuinely appreciate about Fountain is having that ability to go in and make dashboards, and look at things from a bird’s eye view,” Lotus said. She noted that the ability to filter by stage allows the Talent team to see the greater timeline of candidate activity and identify trends based on this activity. This also can influence sourcing decisions as well as where to improve the applicant experience.
“Fountain Hire’s automation empowers us to provide a seamless, informative candidate experience.”
Multi-stage automation saves 1,000 hours
Before Fountain Hire, BELAY was hiring an average of 40 contractors per month. Now, they’re hiring as many as 107 per month, an increase of 167%. This increase is a direct result of the tremendous time savings Fountain has created.
Lotus said, “Fountain’s automation capabilities significantly enhance our team’s efficiency. In Q4 2023 alone, automated text messages freed up an estimated 1,068 hours, allowing recruiters to focus on more strategic talent acquisition initiatives.”
These time savings extend to how long it takes an applicant to move from the initial stages to the final hiring stages, which decreased from 26 days to 10 days with Fountain Hire.
Automated rejections delivered more quality hires, too— knockout stages rejected more than 25,000 applicants because they did not meet job requirements, which means those who did make it through were qualified and better suited for the job. Because BELAY knows that the candidates who reach them are qualified, they can use these interactions to have more meaningful conversations about role fit.
“Fountain Hire’s automation empowers us to provide a seamless, informative candidate experience,” said Lotus. “Applicants receive consistent updates, reducing uncertainty, while our recruiters focus on strategic engagement with the candidates they interview and hire—a significant improvement over industry norms.”
When deciding how best to design their workflow to get maximum results, BELAY’s Talent team found Fountain Hire’s customization opportunities to be the game-changing feature they needed.
“We love the ability to customize our stages in Fountain Hire,” Lotus said. “We’ve been able to build in-house assessments,” and make other alterations “to create a recruitment process tailored to our specific requirements.”
When the BELAY team needs assistance, Fountain’s Customer Success team is all ears, striving to grow and improve right alongside their customers.
Lotus highlights BELAY’s appreciation for Fountain Hire, stating, “We appreciate Fountain Hire’s ongoing development and their willingness to adapt the platform based on our needs. This flexibility is crucial in a dynamic talent acquisition landscape.”
