When plans were announced for the opening of luxury resort and casino Fontainebleau Las Vegas, skepticism abounded. The project was nearly 20 years in the making, after a series of stops and starts—so some people doubted the property would actually open its doors, said Kim Virtuoso, chief people officer at the company.
That was among the obstacles the small talent team faced as it built its recruitment marketing strategy, Virtuoso told attendees at HR Tech this week. While the property was opening as a sister site to the Fontainebleau in Miami, it was an entirely different market with no notoriety in the Vegas area, making a “copy and paste” approach to hiring impossible.
Starting in the summer of 2023, the team had just four months to hire 6,500 people across a range of diverse roles—which Virtuoso said was a significant challenge but also created the opportunity to think outside the box and leverage technology to drive candidate experience.
Working with consultants at DB Schenker, the talent team built out a career site and launched a radio and billboard campaign in Las Vegas and feeder markets. It also took to social media to showcase early employees: “We had to dispel this idea that we weren’t going to really open our doors and that we had real employees,” Virtuoso said.
Next was a partnership with Paradox, with a focus on leveraging AI to create a quick, seamless candidate experience.
Walking candidates through the entire application process was Morris—a conversational AI persona named for the architect of the original Miami property.
“Morris became the face of talent acquisition” and the “architect” of candidate experience, Virtuoso said.
Morris asks candidates all application questions, from work history and screening to personality assessment, powered by Paradox’s Traitify. The tool parses all of that data into an application form; in most cases, all candidates have to do at that point is review for accuracy.
That efficiency became critical for both candidate and recruiter experience when Fontainebleau saw the volume it was working with: At first, the company expected 80,000 applications, and ended up getting 300,000.
With automation, the entire application process was able to be delivered in three minutes—and candidates “loved” the experience, said Sarah Piper, executive director of people and talent acquisition at Fontainebleau Las Vegas. More than half of the 300,000 candidates took a survey at the end of the application, reporting a 93% satisfaction rate.
AI in hiring: capturing the competitive edge
Morris also handles candidate communication and interview scheduling. The tool’s constant availability allows HR to circumvent candidate frustrations with recruiter response time—particularly important in Las Vegas.
“In a 24/7 town, we have candidates who are working swing and overnight, and they can interact with Morris [any time], with communication on the spot, and we don’t have to risk dropout from them getting no response,” Virtuoso said, noting 41% of candidates communicate with Morris after typical working hours. “That’s been a real competitive advantage for us.”
AI also became a force multiplier during a moment of crisis. About a month before the property opened, and one week before its Talent Center was to launch for onboarding activities, the parking lot at the location was sold to accommodate visitors to the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix.
The team had just seven days to move sites and notify candidates of the change. Enter Morris—who sent emails and texts to all candidates. AI was also deployed to comb all company sites and update the Talent Center address. When the new location opened, not one person went to the old site.
“It was stressful—but successful,” Piper said.
A new role for recruiters
Leveraging AI in hiring has been an “absolute game changer,” Piper said. Beyond driving the successful hiring of 6,500 workers in 113 days for the property’s opening, the technology is allowing Fontainebleau to reimagine the role of recruiters.
Without the administrative burden of standard recruiting practices, Piper said, Fontainebleau’s recruiting team can focus more on understanding and conveying the entire value proposition the company is delivering to employees. This extends beyond competitive pay to family-friendly benefits like a childcare stipend and family-planning support, leading wellness offerings and pay transparency.
“They can have these more meaningful conversations with candidates now and really sell the whole package,” she said. Recruiters are becoming a voice at the table in benefits design and delivery, Piper said, noting she envisions future opportunities in succession planning and talent management. “We’re able to make our recruiters so much more valuable with the help of AI.”
It has been critical for the function’s leadership to empower recruiters to also rethink—and not fear—the role of AI in their work.
“We tell them, ‘AI is your sidekick,’ ” Virtuoso said, noting they can offer up Fontainebleau’s own AI success story that the technology can help recruiters operate faster, in a more agile way and deliver more informed decisions for the business. “But [recruiters] are still the ones who make those decisions; we still need our people. They just get to make higher-level decisions now.”
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