How Chicago Trading Company Supercharged Campus Recruitment

Company: Chicago Trading Company, derivatives trading firm, 380 employees

Hiring: Trading assistants, software engineers, associate quantitative analysts, interns

Campus hiring goals: 20 summer interns and 10-15 full-time hires

Schools: Big Ten, Harvard University, Carnegie Mellon University, The University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, Princeton University

Talent acquisition staff: 4

We partnered with Yello in 2015 because we hold a shared value—prioritizing the candidate experience. With a small team, we also wanted to improve efficiency through technology and optimize our candidate pipeline. We streamlined our process, while improving the candidate experience, in the following ways.

At recruiting events, we housed all event information in spreadsheets that we updated every season with new events. It was a very tedious and manual process.

Now we manage all events in Yello. Whether it’s a career fair, information session, tech talk, social event, on-campus interviews or Super Saturday, we use Yello to manage events from year to year.

Mobile technology has also changed our approach on campus.

Prior to Yello, we collected resumes and wrote comments on the back, giving each candidate a rating. The recruiter followed up and encouraged top talent to apply. Collecting piles of resumes to bring back to the office and sift through by hand was inefficient, and too often after sorting evaluations, the resumes would sit in a folder, untouched.

Yello’s technology allows us to engage with top candidates immediately. There’s no more paper copy of the resume involved, and we can evaluate the candidate right from the mobile app, send them a follow-up message via text or email and encourage them to apply.

The app also allows us to tag younger candidates (freshmen and sophomores) for future outreach. One way we’re engaging with that pipeline now is by hosting an event to educate women about careers in trading and opportunities at our company. We visited our talent database in Yello to identify women who we previously met and are now ready to explore opportunities.

Scheduling interviews used to be challenging.

We would send the career center an email with the application deadline and scheduling close date. But each school’s timeline was different, and it was a tedious process with lots of email back and forth.

Yello’s scheduling solution brings us directly to candidates, empowering them to self-schedule interview times. We’ve also streamlined in-office interview days, creating a schedule to slot candidates and easily navigating requests to reschedule.

Video interviews solved our communication issues.

Pre-recorded video interviewing (PRVI) helps us gauge whether or not a candidate will be a strong fit with our culture and determine their interest level in CTC.

We record ourselves talking about the company, show how excited we are to get to know the candidate and the student sees a face so it has a more personal feel than email. PRVI allows candidates to complete the interview on their own time without setting up a phone screen. Our candidates are impressed with the video technology, and it reassures them that we’re utilizing tech in smart ways.

Our recruiting funnel is more precise.

The Yello software also helps us optimize our recruiting funnel with filtering questions or knockout questions like GPA or relocation. During a single campus recruitment season, our team narrowed a funnel of 1,889 applicants to 22 accepted offers.

Text recruiting has been a game changer.

We use text campaigns to drive registration at campus events and communicate about on-campus interview dates. As students wait in line to talk to a company representative, we ask them to text a shortcode. They immediately receive a text with a link to pre-register. When they reach the front of the line, we refresh a tablet to access all their information. It streamlines the career fair process, enabling our team to meet more candidates, while limiting the time candidates must spend in line.

Being strategic in campus recruiting, while providing a positive candidate experience, is critical to our organization. We’re pleased to have a technology partner that enables us to efficiently recruit top student talent, while ensuring every student has an engaging experience with Chicago Trading Company.