How ISS North America Cut Time-to-Hire by 85%

At ISS North America, we knew our hiring process was holding the business back. Slow, manual and difficult to navigate, our average 65-day time-to-hire process was losing candidates before they ever reached a recruiter. The fix required more than new software; it demanded a fundamental re-think of what candidates deserved from the very first interaction.

What followed was an 85% reduction in time-to-hire, a 97% application completion rate and more than 10,000 recruiter hours returned to higher-value work. Here’s how we did it.

The Problem Wasn’t Just Speed

ISS North America's frontline workforce spans airports, hospitals, corporate campuses and manufacturing sites. With 80% of employees in hourly roles, filling open positions quickly is not optional. As Lisa Mitchell-Kastner, Chief People and Culture Officer for the Americas, put it, "Our clients need us. Every day that you don't have a person here is one day that we're not going to fulfill the client’s demands and expectations."

But the challenge went beyond time. Because many candidates have limited technology experience or English proficiency, a process that required desktop access, multiple logins or English-only instructions was not just inefficient, but also exclusionary.

"If you provide a candidate experience where the system's clunky and challenging to navigate, it's not on mobile, it's not quick, it's not in their preferred language — you put that candidate potentially in a position of shame," said Alice Fournier, Chief Information Officer for the Americas.

We needed something different. Not just faster, but earnestly welcoming.

Building a Candidate Experience Around Belonging

The solution centered on Paradox's conversational AI, deployed as "Iris," as the new front door for every ISS NAM candidate. But before a single feature was configured, the team anchored the project to a set of non-negotiables:

Applications had to be completable (in minutes) from any mobile device
The experience had to work in a candidate’s preferred language
Candidates had to be able to engage and schedule interviews at any hour

Iris handled everything from initial screening through interview scheduling and onboarding paperwork, all through a familiar text-based interface. No logins or desktop required, just a conversation.

The design thinking extended to recruiters as well. By automating interview scheduling, status updates and paperwork, the team freed recruiters to focus on the moments that actually require human intervention. "We considered, what are the moments where we need a human to engage with another human? Let's be intentional about protecting these moments," Fournier said.

Partnership Made It Possible

One of the most consequential decisions we made had nothing to do with technology. The decision to run this project as a genuine partnership between HR and IT leadership was critical, with Mitchell-Kastner and Fournier working side by side from the earliest planning stages through launch.

"What organizations need are technology people that profoundly understand business needs and businesspeople that profoundly understand how technology can serve their function or business," Fournier said.

The implementation team was lean by design: 1.5 full-time employees supported by two executive sponsors. Daily standups, rapid testing cycles and a shared willingness to fail fast kept the project moving; changes made at 9 a.m. were retested by 4 p.m. The project hit technical roadblocks and integration challenges with legacy systems, but what kept it on track was a culture of psychological safety for the implementation team and a shared commitment at the executive level to see it through.

What Comes Next

We are not treating this as a finished project. The team is already exploring an always-on HR support tool that could instantly handle the most common employee questions, as well as expanding automation across other HR processes while actively protecting the touchpoints that require human judgment.

The principle driving that work is the same one that drove the hiring transformation: technology should serve people, not replace the experience of being seen and heard by them.

To learn more, read the full report from Paradox.

Lisa Mitchell-Kastner

Chief People & Culture Officer

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