September 16, 2026
from-ad-hoc-to-best-practice-how-the-beauty-tech-group-built-a-modern-recruiting-operation-with-workable

The Beauty Tech Group, formerly known as Currentbody, stands at the forefront of the burgeoning beauty technology sector, redefining personal beauty routines through innovative devices and advanced skincare solutions. Operating four distinct brands—Currentbody Skin, Zip Beauty, Tria Laser, and Currentbody Skin The Clinic—the group leverages cutting-edge technologies including LED, radio frequency, microcurrent, and laser to deliver professional-grade results in the comfort of consumers’ homes. With an expansive e-commerce footprint reaching over 80 countries, and a robust business-to-business division boasting partnerships with esteemed luxury retailers like Harrods Beauty, the company has firmly established itself as a significant player in the global beauty market. This impressive scale is supported by a diverse team of over 200 employees distributed across strategic international offices in the UK, US, China, India, and Japan, necessitating a sophisticated and efficient talent acquisition strategy.

Navigating the Challenges of Rapid Global Expansion

Prior to its partnership with Workable, The Beauty Tech Group faced significant hurdles in managing its talent acquisition processes. David Smith, the Talent Acquisition Manager, characterized the previous recruitment approach as "quite ad hoc, quite reactive." This meant that hiring initiatives often originated from direct conversations between team leaders and the Chief Financial Officer, lacking a formalized structure, consistent candidate journey, or a centralized system to orchestrate the entire process. The organization did possess an applicant tracking system, but its effectiveness was limited, leading to slow, undefined processes and a suboptimal candidate experience. Both hiring managers and prospective employees encountered inefficiencies that became increasingly unsustainable as the business expanded across multiple geographies and specialized disciplines—ranging from high-volume influencer marketing roles to niche positions in regulatory affairs, performance digital, and multilingual customer support. The absence of a cohesive, scalable system created bottlenecks that threatened to impede the company’s ambitious growth trajectory.

The Strategic Imperative for a Robust Recruitment Infrastructure

The decision to integrate Workable stemmed from a clear recognition that achieving best-in-class recruitment practices required a foundational shift towards proper infrastructure. As David Smith articulated, "That’s why we wanted to partner with someone like Workable, to make sure that we’ve got the processes in place for the best practice when it comes to recruitment and hiring." Having evaluated multiple applicant tracking systems throughout his career, Smith was particularly impressed by Workable’s comprehensive nature. "It just has everything there. It’s all in that system – from the very start of us creating our careers page through to the applications, interviewing, and offer or feedback. That’s the real game changer. It’s all there." The platform’s seamless integration with essential communication tools like email and calendar solidified its value proposition as a singular, authoritative source of truth for the entire recruiting function, promising to eliminate information silos and streamline workflows.

Transforming Talent Acquisition: Key Workable Implementations and Benefits

Workable has fundamentally reshaped The Beauty Tech Group’s hiring landscape, introducing a defined, repeatable process that spans the entire recruitment lifecycle.

Streamlined End-to-End Recruitment Process: The platform provides a unified, connected environment that manages every stage of recruitment, from the creation of dynamic careers pages and application submission to candidate screening, interviewing, offer management, and the final handoff to the HR system. This interconnectedness ensures consistency and efficiency. David Smith highlighted its comprehensive nature, stating, "It links with your emails, with your calendar, so it gives that one system and that one kind of source of truth." Upon a successful hire, the integrated system automatically alerts the HR team, ensuring a seamless transition without the need for manual communication or potential information loss.

Revolutionizing Interview Scheduling: Time Savings and Efficiency: For Rachel Harrison, TA Business Partner specializing in the influencer marketing function—a team critical to the group’s commercial success and experiencing rapid expansion—coordinating interviews was a major time sink. Managing multiple candidates, numerous hiring managers, and various pipeline stages manually presented an immense logistical challenge. Workable’s self-scheduling feature proved to be a transformative solution. "With Workable’s self-scheduling system, I save around twenty hours a week," Harrison revealed. This automated capability allows candidates to directly book into available calendar slots, with the system intelligently coordinating across the schedules of multiple hiring managers simultaneously. This level of synchronization would be virtually impossible to achieve manually at the pace required by a high-growth team, freeing up substantial capacity for the TA team to focus on more strategic, value-added activities such as candidate engagement and pipeline nurturing.

Ensuring Quality and Consistency: The Role of Scorecards: To maintain a high standard of candidate evaluation and ensure alignment with hiring objectives, David Smith rigorously employs Workable’s scorecards during every prescreen call. For a recruiter who acknowledges the profession’s natural inclination towards conversational interaction, this structured approach is invaluable. "It keeps you on track because it means that you’re asking those key questions so that you can provide that information to hiring managers," Smith explained. Post-prescreen, hiring managers receive an immediate alert and can access the detailed scorecard directly within the system, eliminating the need for cumbersome handoff emails and minimizing the risk of information being misinterpreted or lost. This ensures that decisions are based on consistent, objective data.

Elevating the Candidate Experience in a Competitive Market: In today’s highly competitive talent market, every interaction a candidate has with a company reflects on its brand. Workable’s suite of tools enables The Beauty Tech Group to deliver, in David Smith’s words, "a smooth and consistent journey." Automated email templates ensure timely, professional communication at every stage of the recruitment process, marking a significant improvement over the slow, often inconsistent outreach that characterized previous systems. Rachel Harrison specifically noted automated candidate communications as a key differentiator from other ATSs she had used, emphasizing that "Other ATSs that I’ve used haven’t really had that kind of ability." This capability is crucial for maintaining a positive brand image and attracting top talent.

Scaling for Public Listing: The Premier Plan Advantage: A pivotal moment for The Beauty Tech Group was its transition to becoming a publicly listed company. This strategic shift brought with it heightened reporting and governance requirements, necessitating a more robust and compliant talent acquisition framework. Recognizing that their existing Workable plan would no longer suffice, Rachel and her team proactively upgraded to the Premier Plan. This upgrade introduced a formal requisition process—a significant operational enhancement for hiring teams—alongside advanced reporting capabilities. These new features are essential for supporting meticulous resource planning, accurate budgeting, and comprehensive headcount visibility, all critical demands for a publicly traded entity. The rollout of this enhanced plan was described as seamless, a testament to the support provided by a dedicated Workable account manager throughout the transition.

A Premium Brand Experience from First Touch: Beyond operational efficiencies, the candidate experience remains a paramount concern for The Beauty Tech Group. Rachel Harrison articulated this philosophy, stating, "Candidate experience is really important to us given the brand that we are, the premium feel that we have, and we want to ensure that candidates in our process are getting that feel." Workable’s customizable careers site serves as a vital platform for the team to articulate the company’s core values, showcase its vibrant culture, and provide a comprehensive overview of opportunities. This not only prepares candidates effectively for the interview process but also reinforces the premium brand positioning that The Beauty Tech Group diligently cultivates across all its market interactions.

Quantifiable Impact and Strategic Outcomes

The implementation of Workable has yielded tangible and significant business impacts for The Beauty Tech Group, demonstrating a clear return on investment.

Rapid Team Growth: In the eight months since Rachel Harrison joined The Beauty Tech Group, the influencer marketing team, a crucial commercial engine, has expanded dramatically from 34 individuals to over 50. This represents an impressive 47% increase, achieved concurrently with the broader organizational demands of navigating a public listing and aggressive expansion into new international markets. This rapid scaling would have been considerably more challenging, if not impossible, without the streamlined processes facilitated by Workable.

Significant Time Savings and Capacity Building: The efficiency gains are stark. Self-scheduling alone has reclaimed an estimated 20 hours per week for the recruitment function. This meaningful capacity has been redirected towards more strategic activities, allowing the TA team to enhance candidate engagement, build stronger talent pipelines, and contribute more proactively to the company’s growth initiatives rather than being bogged down by administrative tasks.

Enhanced Global Scalability: With over 200 employees distributed across the UK, US, China, India, and Japan, The Beauty Tech Group operates a complex, multi-market hiring operation. Workable provides a single, unified platform that seamlessly supports this intricate global footprint, ensuring consistency in processes and data across diverse regions and time zones. This centralized approach is critical for maintaining operational coherence in a rapidly expanding international enterprise.

Improved Hiring Manager Satisfaction: Feedback from hiring managers across the organization has been overwhelmingly positive. They consistently cite Workable’s ease of access to candidate profiles, simplified CV review processes, and efficient interview scheduling as features that have noticeably improved their overall experience. This positive reception underscores the platform’s user-friendliness and its ability to integrate smoothly into existing workflows.

Meeting Public Company Demands: The upgrade to Workable’s Premier Plan was instrumental in enabling The Beauty Tech Group to meet the rigorous requisition management and enhanced reporting requirements incumbent upon a publicly listed company. This strategic move ensures compliance, transparency, and robust data for critical resource planning and financial oversight.

Expert Perspectives and Industry Recognition

David Smith’s assessment of Workable is unequivocal: "In the past, I’ve used multiple ATS systems, and for me, Workable is certainly one of the best." This endorsement from an experienced talent acquisition professional highlights Workable’s effectiveness and superiority in a competitive market for recruitment technologies. Rachel Harrison’s specific praise for automated candidate communications further underscores the platform’s ability to deliver a superior candidate experience, a critical factor for a premium brand like The Beauty Tech Group.

Broader Implications: Talent Acquisition as a Growth Engine

The success of The Beauty Tech Group’s partnership with Workable extends beyond mere operational efficiencies; it underscores the critical role of talent acquisition as a strategic growth engine. In the fiercely competitive beauty technology sector, where innovation and market agility are paramount, the ability to rapidly identify, attract, and onboard top talent is a fundamental prerequisite for sustained expansion. For a company whose products promise transformation—in beauty, in technology, and in the daily routines of consumers across more than 80 countries—having a talent acquisition operation that can not only match but also anticipate that ambition is not merely a desirable asset; it is a foundational necessity. Workable has empowered The Beauty Tech Group to scale its human capital effectively, ensuring that its innovative spirit is continuously fueled by the right talent, enabling the company to maintain its competitive edge and achieve its global aspirations. The structured approach to hiring, enhanced by technology, provides the stability and foresight required for a publicly listed company operating in a dynamic global market.

In conclusion, The Beauty Tech Group’s journey with Workable illustrates a compelling case study of how strategic investment in advanced talent acquisition technology can transform recruitment from an "ad hoc" function into a powerful, scalable, and indispensable component of a global enterprise’s success. Workable has proven to be a pivotal partner in enabling The Beauty Tech Group to build high-performing teams, optimize operational efficiency, and solidify its position as a leader in the global beauty technology landscape.