How Five Guys Built a More Efficient Hiring Process with Teamtailor

Five Guys is an American restaurant chain founded in 1986, opening its first restaurant in Arlington, VA. Today, they have 1700+ restaurants in globally. To tell us about their development, we met with Five Guys's French team, Cécile Bouteille, Senior Career and People Manager, and Mathieu Bernollin, General Manager of the Bercy Village restaurant.

Five Guys' goal? Deliver an exceptional customer experience.

As Cécile Bouteille told us, “if we don't have enough people in our restaurants, we won't be able to offer an exceptional customer experience." Her mission is therefore to contribute to the development of the restaurants, by recruiting and developing teams.

We asked her about her experience and how Teamtailor had helped her accomplish her mission.

Empowering Restaurant Managers

Five Guys is unique in that the restaurant managers recruit their own teams. As such, it was essential to set up an ATS solution that was easy to use, especially for people whose primary job wasn't recruitment. Although simple on paper, these specifications proved more difficult to put into practice. Over the years, they tested several ATSs.

The observation was always the same: the lack of usability meant that restaurant managers didn't use them.

As Mathieu points out, they had an “archaic approach to recruitment management... with resumes arriving at any time, which had to be addressed within an unspecified timeframe, when could they be processed? ATSs were used as mailboxes, and managers printed out resumes to process applications. The request to change ATSs therefore came from them (restaurant managers) in order to save time in their recruitment processes."

A Solution That's Easy to Implement and Use

After testing several tools, the teams were, of course, a bit apprehensive. Cécile was quickly reassured about the transition, saying: “I was promised that implementation would be easy, and it was. Everything was finalized in eight weeks in a very straightforward manner.”

Hesitations were also quickly dispelled among the managers. They exchanged a great deal among themselves about their apprehensions and ways of using ATS tools. As soon as they used Teamtailor, they saw a real difference.

Their acceptance was almost immediate. Cécile was able to talk to other recruiters who were surprised to learn that Teamtailor was used in all of their restaurants.

Mathieu now appreciates using an ATS for his recruitment: “It allows us to have several people on it, to save time, to be able to manage all the applications efficiently and to carry out a truly autonomous recruitment process from A to Z.”

Five Guys's Recruitment Processes are Now More Efficient Than Ever

What do candidates expect from a recruitment process? According to Cécile, they "expect speed, responsiveness, good communication and transparency."

According to Mathieu, using the tool has enabled them to improve the candidate experience - which is positively reflected in the feedback they receive from users and candidates. No application goes unanswered. Responses are fast. Communication has become much smoother.

Thanks to Teamtailor, the Five Guys team has been able to create personalized recruitment processes, strengthen team collaboration and save time. The time they save hiring by using Teamtailor, they can now spend on other priorities.

For Mathieu, it means more time with his customers and with his teams. The result? To be able to help them progress much further within the restaurant and accomplish their mission of providing excellent service to their customers.