Sports brand Courir banks on pre-recorded video interviewing to tackle application overloads

As one of Europe’s biggest sports shoe brands, Courir is constantly on the lookout for new talent to join its workforce or form a new team whenever the brand opens a new store.

Mission: Centralise the candidate screening process

Every time Courir opens a new store, whether in France or elsewhere in Europe, it seeks on average 6 new employees to fill sales, cashier, stock management and supervision roles.

Given that all screening phases of the recruiting process take place at HQ level, and that candidates are hired both nationally and internationally, it was important to find digital tools to manage and assess the high volume of applications received.

Also, given the customer-facing nature of the roles the brand was seeking to fill, Courir needed to find a way to reveal and assess candidates’ soft skills without systematically resorting to in-person interviews.

Implementation: Rapidly process thousands of applications

Courir’s original requirement was to be able process an extremely large volume of applications (nearly 100,000 on average every year). For each vacancy, recruiting teams are required to put forward 3 profiles to future managers. In order to fulfil this objective, it was necessary to reduce the amount of time spent on each application during the assessment stage.

Pre-recorded video interviews have proven to be the perfect solution. They are an effective alternative to telephone interviews, which are particularly time-consuming.

Whereas it only takes 3 to 4 minutes to watch a candidate’s pre-recorded video, scheduling and performing a telephone interview can eat up 15 to 20 minutes of recruiters’ time.

Pre-recorded video interviewing also helps assess candidates’ soft skills. Watching candidates speak on camera allows recruiters to analyse their posture, facial expressions, choice of clothes – all essential elements for shop assistant roles.

Last but not least, pre-recorded video interviewing significantly improves the candidate experience, especially for digital natives who tend to appreciate innovation in recruiting processes. Courir is counting on these initial positive experiences with its employer brand to foster enhanced integration of its future employees and reduce turnover.

Result: A huge drop in time spent screening candidates

Thanks to the 22,269 videos we received, we managed to divide screening time by 8!

Whereas managers used to intervene once the screening phase was complete, they eventually adopted the new method recommended by their HR teams. As a result, pre-recorded video interviewing is now set to be deployed for all hiring, including supervisory roles (team leaders, store managers).

Managers in the field say that candidates pre-selected following video interviews were more diverse and integrate better into the company in the long run. A large portion of talents wouldn’t have been selected had the screening process simply boiled down to resume reading.

What really made a difference for Courir was our video recruiting solution, which is 100% compatible with the brand’s ATS, Talents’in. Together, we developed a feature to automatically send invitations encouraging candidates to submit a pre-recorded video interview. This configuration saved recruiting teams heaps of time given the sheer mass of applications received.