iLABS, a prominent contract manufacturer specializing in personal care and skincare products, has fundamentally transformed its talent acquisition strategy through a two-year partnership with Workable, an advanced applicant tracking system (ATS). This strategic overhaul has resulted in measurable improvements across key recruitment metrics, including a weekly saving of approximately five hours per recruiter, the remarkable capacity for a single coordinator to manage numerous concurrent open roles, the attraction of over 300 applicants for single positions, and the rapid fulfillment of senior-level positions within two months. Crucially, this efficiency gain has also enabled iLABS to eliminate the need for a dedicated in-house recruiter, absorbing the function within its existing HR team without compromising output or quality, thereby delivering significant cost savings and establishing a structural advantage in a competitive market.
The Challenge: Navigating a Complex Talent Landscape Before Workable
Based in Northern New Jersey, iLABS operates as the largest entity within a cluster of affiliated companies, collectively employing approximately 170 individuals. The company’s specialized focus on personal care and skincare products, encompassing a range from cleansers and SPFs to moisturizers, necessitates a highly diverse and often specialized talent pool. Recruitment efforts at iLABS span an unusually wide spectrum of disciplines, requiring professionals such as compounders, chemists, process engineers, quality assurance experts, UI/UX designers, IT specialists, and finance talent. This demand often occurs simultaneously across multiple entities, presenting a significant logistical challenge for any talent acquisition function.
Prior to adopting Workable, iLABS’s talent acquisition efforts were characterized by slowness, reactivity, and an unsustainable dependence on a single in-house recruiter. The entire hiring process was orchestrated by this individual, operating without the benefit of a robust supporting platform. This lack of technological infrastructure meant that administrative tasks consumed a disproportionate amount of time, hindering proactive recruitment and strategic talent pipelining. Compounding these issues was a prolonged and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to implement Greenhouse, another ATS. This implementation consumed nearly the full length of the software contract before the system became operational, only for the contract to expire by the time it was ready for use. This experience left the company with a significant investment of time and resources yielding no tangible benefit.
Furthermore, iLABS was not supplementing its internal recruitment efforts with external agencies, placing the entire burden of talent acquisition on one person. This created a bottleneck that prevented the company from keeping pace with the rapid growth and evolving needs of its manufacturing operations. Francesca Gonzalez, iLABS’s HR Coordinator, who now spearheads the company’s recruitment efforts, vividly recalls the limitations of the previous setup. "We had an in-house recruiter and we weren’t utilizing outside agencies either. It was mostly just on this one person, which made things lag a little bit instead of being as fast as we would hope, especially in our industry." This statement underscores the critical need for a more dynamic and technologically-driven approach to talent acquisition to meet the demands of a fast-paced manufacturing environment. The competitive landscape for specialized talent, particularly in niche scientific and engineering roles within the personal care industry, further exacerbated these challenges, making the slow, manual process a significant impediment to growth.
A Strategic Pivot: The Selection of Workable
The dissatisfaction with the previous ATS experience and the inherent limitations of a single-person, manual recruitment function propelled iLABS to seek a more effective solution. The criteria for a new platform were clear: it needed to be intuitive enough for a lean HR team to operate without extensive training, robust enough to manage a wide array of roles across multiple affiliated entities, and agile enough to facilitate rapid hiring cycles. Workable emerged as the solution that comprehensively met all three of these critical requirements.
The decision to partner with Workable marked a pivotal moment for iLABS’s HR department. The platform’s reputation for user-friendliness, combined with its powerful automation and distribution capabilities, promised to alleviate the administrative burden that had previously hampered recruitment. For a company like iLABS, where HR resources are lean but talent demands are high and diverse, the ability to streamline operations without adding headcount was paramount. The two-year partnership that followed has validated this strategic choice, demonstrating that the same lean team is now capable of handling a greater volume of roles, managing more candidates, and navigating increased complexity than the previous structure ever supported, all while operating at a significantly reduced cost. This transition underscores a broader industry trend where small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly leveraging sophisticated HR technology to compete effectively for talent against larger organizations.
Transforming Operations: Workable’s Impact on iLABS’s HR Function
The implementation of Workable has ushered in a new era of efficiency and strategic capability for iLABS’s talent acquisition. The platform has become the central nervous system for all recruitment activities, enabling the HR team, led by Francesca Gonzalez, to operate with unprecedented agility and impact.
Unlocking Recruiter Efficiency:
Francesca Gonzalez now single-handedly manages the full recruiting lifecycle for iLABS and its affiliated companies. At peak capacity, she has successfully overseen up to eight concurrent open roles, ranging from entry-level manufacturing positions to highly specialized senior technical searches. Remarkably, she does not perceive this workload as overwhelming, a testament to Workable’s transformative power. The key to this heightened productivity lies in how Workable intelligently distributes and automates the coordination tasks that would otherwise consume a significant portion of her time.
Once a role receives internal approval, it is immediately launched on Workable. Gonzalez then efficiently onboards the relevant hiring manager with a brief, tailored orientation that accommodates their individual schedule and preferred level of involvement. This flexibility is critical; some managers engage daily, meticulously reviewing candidates and providing real-time comments, while others prefer to check in periodically on Gonzalez’s compiled notes. Workable seamlessly accommodates both engagement styles, eliminating the need for Gonzalez to manually manage these differing approaches. This adaptability ensures that hiring managers remain engaged and informed without adding to the HR coordinator’s administrative load.
The efficiency gains delivered by Workable are far from marginal. Gonzalez estimates that the platform saves her approximately five hours per week. This recovered time was previously spent on labor-intensive manual tasks such as drafting and sending individual emails, copying templates, relentlessly tracking down hiring manager responses, and tediously re-entering candidate information across disparate systems. Annually, this translates to roughly 260 hours of administrative work, which can now be redirected towards more strategic activities like proactive candidate engagement and fostering stronger relationships with hiring managers.
The automation workflows are central to these savings. Gonzalez heavily relies on stage-based email triggers, which ensure timely communication at every step of the hiring process. Self-scheduling links, directly synchronized with her calendar, eliminate the back-and-forth typical of interview coordination. Perhaps most impactful is the automated rejection notification workflow, which Gonzalez personally configured to ensure every applicant receives a timely response at every stage of the pipeline. "Workable makes my life more streamlined… it is amazing, especially when I’m juggling so many roles at a time," Gonzalez affirms, highlighting the platform’s critical role in managing her demanding schedule. She adds, "I love the automation features. I can just send the email right away. My availability is already set. I don’t have to waste time managing my schedule. It links directly to my calendar." This level of automation is crucial for a lean team operating in a high-volume recruitment environment.
Expanding Hiring Capacity Without Additional Headcount:
One of the most profound business impacts of Workable has been iLABS’s ability to significantly increase its hiring capacity without the necessity of additional HR headcount. The fact that a single coordinator can effectively manage multiple concurrent open roles, spanning diverse functions and seniority levels, demonstrates an extraordinary improvement in operational efficiency. This capability allows iLABS’s lean HR team to operate at full hiring velocity, directly supporting the company’s growth objectives without incurring the substantial costs associated with expanding the human resources department. In a competitive economic climate, the ability to scale recruitment efforts through technological leverage rather than proportional staffing increases represents a significant strategic advantage. This model of lean, tech-enabled HR is becoming a benchmark for modern businesses aiming for sustainable growth.
Optimizing Candidate Sourcing and Application Management:
Workable’s robust distribution capabilities have proven invaluable for optimizing candidate sourcing. For general roles, the platform delivers high candidate volume at scale. A recent quality assurance supervisor position, for instance, attracted over 300 applicants, demonstrating Workable’s broad reach. For more specialized positions, such as a food scientist requiring a nutraceutical background, the platform effectively surfaces a targeted pool of qualified candidates. In both scenarios, Gonzalez leverages Workable’s advanced filtering tools and automatic disqualification questions to significantly reduce the manual review of unqualified applicants. This is particularly crucial for an on-site company like iLABS, which often receives applications from individuals located well outside its immediate geographic region. The ability to quickly identify and filter out unsuitable candidates ensures that HR time is spent on genuinely promising prospects.
For senior-level searches that necessitate external agency support, Workable provides a seamless solution. Gonzalez utilizes a duplicate job posting strategy: one public-facing and one internal. This allows her to consolidate all agency submissions and direct applications into a single, unified system. This streamlined approach was instrumental in filling a senior product manager search within a remarkable two months, showcasing Workable’s ability to facilitate competitive placement speeds even for specialized and hard-to-fill positions, leveraging both internal and external sourcing channels effectively.
Enhancing Candidate Experience: Communication as a Cornerstone:
Francesca Gonzalez’s personal experience as an applicant to iLABS, through Workable, profoundly shaped her approach to candidate experience. She distinctly remembers the ease of self-scheduling her phone screen, eliminating the typical back-and-forth coordination. This positive personal encounter directly influenced how she meticulously built out the candidate-facing side of iLABS’s recruitment process.
Today, every applicant who does not advance in the hiring process receives an automated rejection notification. This workflow, personally configured and activated by Gonzalez, ensures consistent and timely communication. Prior to Workable, such communication was often inconsistent or entirely absent, leaving candidates in limbo. Now, it happens at every stage, without exception, regardless of the outcome. "I was able to implement the automation workflow so that any time a candidate got rejected at any stage, they got that email notification pushed out," Gonzalez explains. "At least they know. ‘Am I still considered? Am I not?’ That communication is actually happening now." This commitment to transparent and timely feedback not only improves the candidate experience but also enhances iLABS’s employer brand, a critical factor in attracting future talent in a competitive market.
Streamlining Post-Offer Processes: The Power of Integration:
Among all the features Workable offers, the integrated background check functionality stands out as one of Gonzalez’s most valued tools. The ability to initiate background checks, monitor their status in real-time, and download the results directly into a candidate’s confidential profile eliminates the need for an entirely separate platform. For a coordinator managing multiple active pipelines simultaneously, removing this "context switch"—the need to jump between different software systems—compounds into significant time savings over the course of a week. "Requesting background checks through Workable is literally my favorite thing," Gonzalez enthuses. "I love that it goes straight to their profile. I love not having to have another website and another login. It saves me so much time." This seamless integration exemplifies how Workable streamlines the entire recruitment workflow, from initial application to pre-boarding, maximizing efficiency at every touchpoint.
Fostering Seamless Hiring Manager Collaboration:
The adoption of Workable across iLABS’s diverse cohort of hiring managers, spanning from first-time directors to seasoned executives in their sixties, has been remarkably consistent. This widespread acceptance is largely attributable to the platform’s intuitive design, which requires minimal instruction. As a result, Gonzalez spends considerably less time explaining how to use the tool and more time effectively managing the recruitment process itself.
The outcome is the establishment of a shared organizational standard for talent acquisition. Instead of repeatedly re-explaining workflows each time a new role opens, the entire team operates from a common baseline, with clear, established expectations for both HR and hiring managers. This consistent framework ensures efficiency, reduces potential misunderstandings, and fosters a collaborative environment. "I am fairly confident it’s probably one of the best ATS systems out there. I speak so highly of it every time I talk to my hiring managers," states Gonzalez, reflecting the strong endorsement the platform has received internally. This ease of adoption is a critical success factor for any technology implementation, especially in organizations with varied technical proficiencies among users.
Broader Business Impact and Strategic Advantage
Two years into their partnership with Workable, iLABS boasts a recruitment function that is demonstrably faster, significantly better organized, and considerably more cost-effective than anything the company’s previous structure could support. The key metrics tell a compelling story: a single HR coordinator effectively manages up to eight open roles concurrently, recovers approximately five hours of administrative time per week through intelligent automation, and consistently delivers a candidate experience that rivals organizations with substantially larger recruiting teams.
The most significant return on investment, in Francesca Gonzalez’s own assessment, is the complete elimination of the dedicated in-house recruiter position. The workload previously handled by this role has been seamlessly absorbed by the existing HR team, fully supported and empowered by Workable, without any decline in output quality or efficiency. While specific salary figures were not provided, industry data suggests that the average annual salary for an in-house recruiter in the Northern New Jersey area can range from $60,000 to $90,000, not including benefits. By eliminating this position, iLABS has realized substantial annual cost savings, directly impacting its bottom line.
For a growing contract manufacturer like iLABS, which operates in a competitive industry and vies for highly specialized talent within a densely populated regional market, this is more than just an operational improvement; it represents a profound structural advantage. The ability to efficiently attract, screen, and onboard top talent without inflating HR costs positions iLABS favorably for sustained growth and innovation. This efficiency allows the company to allocate resources more strategically towards product development, operational enhancements, and market expansion, rather than being bogged down by inefficient administrative processes in HR.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Talent Acquisition at iLABS
The success story of iLABS and Workable serves as a powerful case study for how mid-sized enterprises can leverage advanced HR technology to overcome traditional recruitment challenges. As iLABS continues to grow and expand its operations, its reliance on Workable will likely deepen. The platform’s ability to provide data and analytics on recruitment performance offers further opportunities for optimization, allowing iLABS to refine its hiring strategies continually.
The sustained investment in an efficient and empathetic hiring process also reinforces iLABS’s reputation as an employer of choice. In an era where talent scarcity is a significant concern for many industries, having a streamlined and positive candidate experience can be a decisive differentiator. By demonstrating a commitment to professional and timely communication, iLABS not only attracts top talent but also cultivates a positive brand image that can contribute to employee retention and overall organizational success. The partnership with Workable has not merely optimized a function; it has strategically positioned iLABS for continued prosperity in a dynamic and competitive market.
