To fill thousands of work-from-home roles annually, a global retail leader needed to move beyond traditional hiring. By partnering with Cielo to activate Workday Paradox, the company transformed its contact center recruitment into a fast, conversational experience — slashing hiring cycles by 50% and solving high early-stage attrition at the source.
Challenges
The company faced a perfect storm of hiring obstacles. Time to hire had ballooned to 36.5 days for entry-level contact center roles, and candidates were dropping out at alarming rates throughout the process. Early-stage attrition hovered around 50% at the 90-day mark, with many new hires leaving within the first two weeks.
The challenges were multifaceted:
Managing high-volume hiring at scale (4,000-5,000 annual starts) across 16 approved states
Navigating multiple approval layers that slowed offer extensions
Coordinating interviews across 24/7 operations with hiring managers on different shifts
Manual processes causing candidate drop-off during critical hiring stages
Late-stage schedule misalignment driving day-one no-shows and immediate post-training attrition
The company needed more than just process improvements. It needed a strategic partner that could diagnose the root causes and recommend solutions that work within cultural and operational constraints.
Solutions
The team knew that hitting ambitious goals required rethinking the hiring journey from the ground up.
Partnering with Cielo helped connect everyday operations with Workday Paradox technology — co-creating a recruiting engine built for long-term scalability.
Streamlining the hiring journey
Cielo and the company collaborated to identify and strip away friction points across the hiring journey:
Automated candidate screening: Deployed Workday Paradox to instantly screen applicants against the 16 approved work-from-home states, recruiters focused only on qualified, location-eligible talent.
Removed approval roadblocks: Eliminated three layers of hiring manager offer approvals, saving 1.8 days.
Relocated administrative tasks: Moved the WOTC tax credit form from pre-hire to post-hire, saving another 1.8 days.
Automated offer delivery: Implemented verbal offer extension through customer configured rostering technology cutting 0.9 days from the process.
Integrated documentation: Replaced manual DocuSign processes by building work-from-home agreements directly into Workday, saving 1.7 days.
Bulk interview scheduling: Leveraged Brazen for group hiring manager interviews, eliminating 5.9 days.
Global RetailerBy reimagining our Workday environment as a candidate-first platform, we didn't just fill roles — we built a more resilient workforce.
Reducing attrition through candidate self-scheduling
The breakthrough came when the team identified a critical disconnect contributing to attrition. Candidates were accepting roles without knowing their shifts.
The solution? Implement candidate self-scheduling through rostering technology before their start date.
The shift to self-scheduling gave candidates autonomy over their schedules and eliminated the surprise factor that had been driving early attrition.
Optimizing Workday with CTC data insights
To solve early-stage attrition, the team layered smart candidate touchpoint correlation (CTC) data over Workday disposition statuses. This wasn't just about more data; it was about creating a cause-and-effect narrative that showed leaders exactly where and why candidates were dropping out.
By tracking specific operational signals — such as time-in-stage metrics, engagement triggers, and experience sentiment — the team shifted from reactive hiring to proactive decision-making. This visibility empowered recruiters to act on "at-risk" candidates in real-time and gave hiring managers funnel views that exposed specific operational constraints.
Adding CTC data turned Workday into a high-fidelity reporting engine, enabling the action needed to stabilize the workforce and improve long-term retention.
Results
The transformation delivered remarkable improvements across every metric that mattered.
Hiring efficiency: Accelerating the path to productivity
50% reduction in time-to-hire (from 36.5 to 18.4 days):
Doubled the speed of talent delivery, allowing operations to scale at the pace of market demand.100%+ fill rate for all hiring classes over a one-year period:
Eliminated "understaffing risk" and ensured 24/7 contact center coverage.4,073 successful starts:
Demonstrated the ability to maintain high-quality standards even at a massive global scale.
Quality and retention: Building a resilient workforce
38% decrease in 90-day attrition:
Significantly reduced the "sunk costs" of early-stage turnover and stabilized team culture.50% reduction in first-quarter no-call, no-show rates:
Validated that giving candidates autonomy over their schedules directly increases commitment and reliability.
These results highlight the impact of strategic consultation paired with purposeful technology integration. The team grounded every technical move in the client’s unique operational culture, ensuring automation directly empowered the workforce while optimizing the end-to-end process.
The collaboration between Cielo and the company’s leadership served as the catalyst for success. By working as an extension of the client team, Cielo moved beyond off-the-shelf features to identify high-traction opportunities and navigate complex internal workflows. This data-backed, collaborative approach turned a challenging hiring landscape into a sustainable recruitment engine.
About the client
This organization operates a large-scale customer support network, delivering assistance to a broad base of consumers through multiple communication channels. With a geographically distributed workforce and continuous, around-the-clock operations, it requires robust hiring capabilities that effectively balance efficiency and candidate quality.
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