How Valet Living Scaled to 25,000 Hires a Year Without Adding Headcount

When you're hiring 25,000 people a year, inefficiency doesn't just slow you down — it costs you candidates.

Valet Living, a national provider of amenity services to the multifamily housing industry, knew this better than most. With a workforce that's 90% part-time frontline workers and over 20,000 applications coming in every month, their recruiting team was stretched thin. Recruiters were spending their days on manual SMS and email outreach, burning out, and still struggling to move candidates fast enough.

The result? It took an average of three and a half days just to schedule a phone screen. Recruiters could only get through about four hours of calls per day — and even then, 50% of candidates dropped off once they learned more about the specific demands of the role.

Something had to change.

The Problem: A Decentralized, Manually Intensive Process

Valet Living's recruiting model was hybrid and decentralized — which meant inconsistency, wasted effort, and no real mechanism for scale. With 20,000+ monthly applicants and a need to move quickly on frontline roles, their team was essentially trying to do enterprise-level hiring with spreadsheet-era tools.

Recruiters were burning hours on outreach that could be automated. Candidate communication was inconsistent. And without a structured way to set expectations upfront, the phone screen had become a high-dropout stage — candidates often self-selected out after learning what the job actually entailed, but only after a recruiter had already invested time in them.

The Solution: Centralized, Automated Screening with Humanly

Rather than hire more recruiters, Valet Living partnered with Humanly to centralize their process and automate the work that was eating up their team's time.

The solution was built around their specific workflow — not a generic tool dropped into an existing process. Key elements included:

• Automated SMS and email nudges that keep candidates moving through the funnel without recruiter intervention
• A realistic job preview video embedded early in the screening flow, so candidates understand what the role involves before they get on a call
• Intentional screening questions that educate candidates and confirm genuine interest and fit
• Bilingual support in English and Spanish, reflecting the needs of their frontline workforce

The approach wasn't just about saving time — it was about improving the quality of every conversation that did happen.

The Results: Faster, Leaner, and Better Hires

The impact was significant across every metric that matters in high-volume recruiting:

• Time to complete a phone screen dropped from 3.5 days to 19 hours
• Recruiters went from 75 to 140+ hires per month — nearly doubling output
• 75% less time spent per candidate on phone screens
• Phone screen-to-offer conversion improved from 50% to 75%
• Early 30-day turnover trends improved, suggesting better candidate-role fit
• Advertising spend decreased as improved efficiency reduced reliance on paid channels

The centralized model also gave Valet Living's leadership clearer visibility into recruiting performance and made it easier to manage quality at scale.

How They Got Buy-In: The Pilot Approach

One of the most important parts of Valet Living's success was how they rolled out the new system. Rather than flipping the switch across the entire organization, they launched a pilot in select markets first — validating the technology, refining the process, and building internal confidence before going broader.

That deliberate approach made all the difference when it came to stakeholder buy-in. They also updated recruiter KPIs to reflect the new workflow, recognizing that changing the process means changing how you measure success.

What This Means for High-Volume Hiring Teams

Valet Living's story is a reminder that the answer to a volume problem isn't always more headcount. Often it's a better process — one that removes friction for candidates, reduces manual burden for recruiters, and ensures the right people get to the right stage faster.

If your team is managing thousands of applications a month and still relying on manual outreach, there's a better way.

Interested in learning more? See how Humanly can help you streamline your high-volume hiring.