OUI.sncf capitalizes on Pipler's AI search to transform recruitment

OUI.sncf, pioneer of French e-commerce and e-tourism site leader, has recently chosen Pipler, the Yatedo-based search engine for HR candidates based on Artificial Intelligence, to complete its device for sourcing candidates and recruit over-solicited and penurious profiles.

Eighteen years after its creation and one year after making a major change from Voyages-sncf.com to OUI.sncf, the pioneer of French e-commerce and e-tourism sites leader continues to grow with an increase of 12.5% ​​for transactions in France and Europe in 2018. OUI.sncf anticipates and supports its development today by ensuring that it can enrich and renew its talent capital in a highly competitive skills market. In fact, each year, OUI.sncf hires an average of 250 new employees and 60 to 90 student contracts.

"We know well that we are facing a shortage of key talent in our industry, including profiles of experts in mobile development and the data trades," says Arnaud Schoumacher, Recruitment Manager, Human Resources Department, OUI.sncf. "Through these hirings, we have strong ambitions to enroll the leading French e-retailer in line with the expectations of its customers and at the heart of SNCF Group's digital strategy."

The culture of open innovation has always been at the heart of the group's strategy, and is also supported by the Acquisition of Talents and Employer Brand division, which is made up of seven people and operates for the entire Group. The OUI.sncf HR team is investigating all the digital opportunities at the recruiting department in order to refocus on its business core: the human.

"It's been 3 years since I discovered Yatedo, in Test and Learn mode. Very quickly, I understood the potential of this complete sourcing solution that collects public information in Big Data, regardless of the platform where it is hosted. The search interface allows us today to identify profiles combining multiple skills and to precisely refine results across a wide variety of powerful filters based on Pipler's intelligent algorithms and filters," Schoumacher explains. 

Ready to integrate the solution, it was in January 2019 that the team acquired the mature Artificial Intelligence solution for Pipler recruitment.

OUI.sncf uses Pipler for its most complex research, requiring seniority and technical specificity; profiles that are very difficult to identify via traditional sourcing channels. 

Pipler is indeed the only people search engine in the world able to extract, synthesize, and structure public information from the web. Its latest innovation based on Artificial Intelligence makes it possible to identify the best talents before everyone and among more than one billion profiles in the world - that is to say nearly 60% of the world population online. These new predictive indicators also provide a clearer and more in-depth view of CVs. It is enough to go on a profile of a talent to see the indicators relating to its course, its specialization, its potential. No other solution today allows access to this fine knowledge of candidates. 

If OUI.sncf is also exploring the potential of Inbound Recruitment, co-optation, or social networking, it has been several years since the recruitment team stopped working with job boards to target potential candidates; the task being too tedious and offering too little transformation. The sourcing meanwhile represents today 10% of the recruitment time at OUI.sncf; in particular to detect penurious and over-solicited profiles in IT or outside IT. 

"We are aware that there are a lot more businesses in tension today - including IOS Android developers, data analysts, web analysts, business analysts or even the data trades - and  we need to have an approach in advance of phase and innovative to capture them before others!" Schoumacher posits. "It is for us to find sheep 10 legs, especially in the region, and these talents can not be captured by job ads! Pipler's intelligent filters enable us to approach candidates before they engage in active job-monitoring initiatives. This approach also allows us to adopt a more personalized communication with candidates who might not have taken the step of a recruitment contact as soon as possible, nor did they spontaneously think of OUI in their approach."

Pipler now allows OUI.sncf to have a powerful and fast tool to identify talents through multi-platform search. The simple and intuitive solution is also interfaced with the group's ATS and allows the teams to share the fishponds. Ultimately, by automating the search, the solution allows the entire team to have more time to refocus on its true value: the Human.

That's what Schoumacher aims to achieve, as he comments:

"Even though we have innovative tools like Pipler, we do not forget that this is not a decision-making tool but a decision-making tool. Artificial intelligence does not and will not do all the work of the recruiter, who must use his discernment to refine or validate his final decision. We consider these tools as relevant indicators that need to be humanized and handled with the tweezers to be closer to reality. I do not forget the excesses that occurred at the time with the overexploitation of recruitment tests or graphology... These tools simply offer us more time for the human relationship! Let's be honest, sourcing as such, if it is indispensable, has no added value!"

For Schoumacher, Artificial Intelligence now allows talent - finally - to change trades by redistributing time on tasks with high added value. Regarding the job being recruiting for: the AI ​​makes it possible to place the candidate - the Human - at the heart of the recruitment process by freeing the recruiter of time-consuming tasks such as sourcing. 

"AI will not kill our jobs! Remember the end of the Minitel and the arrival of websites, the trades at the counters of the stations have not disappeared! They have evolved towards the service and the human accompaniment of the customers! The trades do not disappear but change; and it's a very good thing!"

For Arnaud Schoumacher, the arrival of new technologies in the recruiting department also enables human resources to return to its strategic position at the heart of business development and enhance its activities: moving from the cost center to the role of Business Partner. 

"I've been waiting for this revolution for a long time," concluded Schoumacher.

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