How Temple University Health System Scaled Hiring 69% with Recruiting AI Agents

WATCH: Lauren Gordon, CHRO at Temple University Health System, and Take2 Co-Founder Kaushik Narasimhan walk through the impact of Temple's rollout of Take2's AI agents.

The Challenge

Temple University Health System hires about 2,500 people a year, and every one of those candidates needs to be someone who can work on site at one of its hospitals or clinics. Jobs were taking a long time to fill, and the common belief was that qualified people weren't applying fast enough.

But they were. Temple was drawing about 4,000 applicants a month – far more than any recruiting team could personally reach. Like many healthcare organizations hiring at high volume, Temple did what it could and reached as many applicants as time allowed. "You're really leaving a lot of talent on the table," says Lauren Gordon, Temple's Chief Human Resources Officer.

• Recruiters could only consider about 20% of the candidate pool. That left large numbers of qualified and potentially qualified candidates who were never contacted at all.

• Resumes couldn't separate candidates in high-volume roles. Some postings drew 200 applicants, and clicking through resumes made it "pretty hard to differentiate a qualified candidate one from another."

• Recruiters and hiring managers rarely sat down together. Lauren sees most "hard-to-fill" jobs as a mismatch between the job description, what the hiring manager wants, and what the recruiter thinks they're doing – a problem that's "only solved by people getting together and really hashing out" what the job actually is. Recruiters had no time left for those conversations.

Temple set out to use AI agents to do two things: interact with every candidate who applied, and make time for recruiters to work with hiring managers. Doing that with people alone would have meant a much bigger team.

"The fact of the matter is that we'd have to add about 25 people to the recruiting team to actually touch every single candidate. And 18 of them would have to do nothing but screen all day."

– Lauren Gordon, Chief Human Resources Officer, Temple University Health System

See why healthcare's leading talent acquisition teams recruit with Take2. Book a demo →

The Solution

Temple evaluated three AI tools that, on the surface, appeared to do the same job: a generic tool attached to a CRM, a tool built only for nursing recruiting, and Take2.

Take2 won on breadth inside healthcare. Nursing is a big share of Temple's hiring, but its highest-volume roles sit outside nursing, in environmental services and the other support roles that keep hospitals running.

"What we really liked about Take2 was that it was built for healthcare, but every healthcare role. [It] didn't make sense to me to implement something that was just a nursing tool."

– Lauren Gordon, CHRO

Temple also wanted proof at scale, and Take2 had already worked with health systems Lauren knew.

Temple went live with Take2's AI Interviewer across a dozen roles, from technical clinical positions to high-volume support roles:

• Technical clinical roles. Temple picked clinical positions where precision matters most. As a fully unionized organization whose nurses union has 11 different collective bargaining agreements, Temple needed screens that got the clinical detail right. The roles "came out of the box, trained," and Temple tuned them from there.

• High-volume roles. These are positions that draw hundreds of applicants for a handful of openings, where a resume says little. Every applicant gets a text right after they apply and can take a structured voice screen – about 15 minutes on average – right then or at whatever hour suits them.

• Full results in the recruiter's hands. About 45 minutes after someone applies, the recruiter has the full transcript, the recording, and a scorecard with a score.

Implementation moved faster than Lauren expected – five weeks from kickoff to go-live.

"To my great surprise, we were live in five weeks. [I] actually still can't believe that that happened. It never happens."

– Lauren Gordon, CHRO

Temple now runs about 3,600 applicant screens a month, up from roughly 650 before.

See why healthcare's leading talent acquisition teams recruit with Take2. Book a demo →

The Results

Temple is making more hires with far less work per hire. Since implementing Take2, the number of external hires has risen 69% compared to the previous baseline. Recruiters used to advance about 30 candidates to hiring managers for every hire. Now they advance about seven, which makes every candidate who reaches a hiring manager about 4x more likely to be hired.

"For the hiring managers to have an experience where they see seven highly qualified people and choose one of them is just a better experience all around."

– Lauren Gordon, CHRO

Applicants get a first conversation fast. Applicant screens went from about 650 a month to about 3,600. Most come back complete about 45 minutes after the application, and 61% happen after hours – "meeting a candidate where they are," in Lauren's words, without recruiters coming in early or staying late to make it work.

Candidates rate the experience 4.7 out of 5. The question Lauren hears most about the program is whether candidates mind talking to an agent. The score answers it.

"This is a pretty sophisticated agent that really does, after the first couple of questions, start to feel like you're speaking to a person."

– Lauren Gordon, CHRO

Recruiters went from skeptical to sold. Going in, Lauren called it "a little bit of a 50-50" whether recruiters would feel threatened. "They love it." They review the strongest candidates first – anyone scoring 80 or 85 and above – check whether they agree with how the rubric scored, and move those candidates through fast. Then they read transcripts for the next tier down, looking for people who might fit a different opening. They come away knowing far more about each candidate than a resume could tell them.

"[Recruiters] love it. Now they get to go in and review the strongest candidates first … anybody that gets a high score … they're moving those candidates through pretty fast."

– Lauren Gordon, CHRO

Why It Matters

For Temple, the gains in recruiting efficiency add up to a care story – one that runs through every person involved in a hire, from the applicant to the patient on the other end of every open role.

It starts with candidates. With 61% of screens completed after hours, a nurse coming off a night shift or a support worker heading in at 5 a.m. can talk to Temple when it suits them.

Recruiters come next. With screening off their plates, they spend their days on the strongest candidates and on the hiring manager conversations that get stubborn roles filled.

"We talk about nurses and physicians working at the top of their license. Our recruiters are now working at the top of their skill set."

– Lauren Gordon, CHRO

Lauren plans to grow the recruiting team from here, so more recruiters can spend more time with more hiring managers – which is, in her words, "where I want them spending their time."

Hiring managers get time back as well. With seven candidates to a hire instead of 30, they spend far less time reviewing and interviewing, and far more of the people they meet are worth hiring.

Temple is now adding more of Take2's agents to take the same load off the rest of the recruiting cycle. Alongside the AI Interviewer, the AI Sourcer finds candidates for hard-to-fill roles, the AI Scheduler books interviews on recruiters' calendars, the AI Verifier checks licenses and certifications, the AI Reference Checker runs reference calls, and the AI Onboarder handles new-hire paperwork before day one.

Put together, Temple is making more hires from stronger shortlists and moving candidates through faster. For a safety-net health system, every one of those hires is a shift covered at the bedside.

See how Take2's AI agents can transform your recruiting operation. Book a demo →