MARCH 2020HR TECH OUTLOOK8In MyOpinionCandidate Experienceand the TechnologyGreg Muccio, Director of Talent Acquisition, Southwest Airlines [NYSE:LUV]ByTechnology and Candidate Experience. When I first starting thinking of those words together, it didn't make sense to me how the two might complement each other. Especially at a Company like Southwest Airlines, where we place such a high value on our high-touch hiring process and employee selection. We consider our employees our single greatest asset and strongest competitive advantage. Technology and candidate experience seemed to be in contradiction with one another. As you can imagine, I travel often for work. One day, I noticed the customer traffic at the airport and the way they were interacting with our brand. I was astonished at how few individuals were standing in line at the ticket counter. Most walked directly to the kiosk for self-service. Some bypassed both, having done everything online before arriving to the airport. Why would we--a brand that so highly values Customer Service--want our Customers to bypass interacting with our incredible people? The answer was fairly simple: it is what works best for that Customer. Customers no longer need to wait in a long line just to get a boarding pass or check a bag. We allow them to serve themselves and get to the gate in whatever way is most convenient and comfortable for them. We don't deter them from interacting with our people; we just give them the choice. In the last 365 days, we had over 113 million Customer visits who checked-in online or via our mobile apps. Over 40% of those checkins came from our iOS app. Now our people can shift their focus to travelers who need a little extra help or support.I thought, if this works so well for our Customer experience, why couldn't we do the same for our candidate experience? So about two years ago we began to explore ways that technology could support our talent acquisition mission and improve our candidate experience.
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