Greenhouse helps KeepTruckin manage the road to rapid growth

5 mins, 42 secs read time

KeepTruckin has experienced phenomenal growth over the past 24 months. In this short period of time, KeepTruckin has increased its employee headcount by over 800%, opened seven new office locations and added two new business lines. With more growth on the horizon, KeepTruckin needed an ATS vendor that could help them meet the demand of an increasing number of candidates and interview touchpoints. Faced with their current ATS contract expiring, KeepTruckin looked to Greenhouse to roll out a scalable platform in weeks -- not months -- to help support this expansion.

From truck stops to transforming an industry with modern solutions

KeepTruckin was founded in 2013 with a clear mission - to improve the safety of America’s trucking industry by building reliable and easy-to-use technology for drivers. Co-founders Shoaib Makani, Obaid Khan and Ryan Johns began KeepTruckin after spending endless hours at truck stops and having in-depth conversations with drivers about their biggest challenges. Fast forward five years, and more than 50% of American trucking companies use KeepTruckin products.

Headquartered in San Francisco, KeepTruckin has been a driving force behind bringing the fragmented trucking industry online and helping fleets make smarter business decisions through data. No stranger to scaling quickly, KeepTruckin’s current network comprises over 250,000 trucks and 50,000 for-hire carriers.

Rapid expansion, with no signs of braking

In April 2019 KeepTruckin announced a successful round of Series D funding of $149 million, which helped it achieve unicorn status with a valuation of over $1 billion. KeepTruckin plans to use its latest investment to develop new technology, open new global offices, and continue to hire top talent. Using its recent funding round as momentum, KeepTruckin’s plans to double its current workforce are aggressive, but achievable, with the right ATS system in place.

Several years ago, with fewer than 100 employees, KeepTruckin selected another cloud-based ATS vendor as its recruiting platform. The ATS vendor seemed promising at first, but the KeepTruckin team found the platform was no longer able to scale to meet its needs. Recruiting Operations Specialist Eileen Chien said, “hiring managers found our previous platform hard to navigate, and its mobile capabilities and reporting functionality were limited.”

As the ATS vendor contract expiration date loomed, KeepTruckin considered its options. The KeepTruckin team led a rigorous RFP process with multiple vendors and Greenhouse stood out as being a company that would allow the team to work smarter, not harder. Laser-focused on finding a partner for rapid expansion, KeepTruckin inked a deal with Greenhouse in May of 2019.

Challenge: Being agile in a short timeline

No one wants a partner who over-promises and under-delivers, but from day one it was clear that wouldn’t be the case with Greenhouse.

Initially, KeepTruckin’s VP of Talent and Recruiting Operations Specialist voiced concerns frequently raised by companies looking to make a change. Questions naturally came to mind, including: “will hiring managers feel empowered to navigate the platform” or “can this new ATS system provide a consistent experience for candidates around the world?”. Yes, Greenhouse could help KeepTruckin scale to 2,000 employees, but what about 10,000? Most importantly, would there even be enough time to implement a new platform in a matter of weeks?

Solution: Implementation at lightning speed

An implementation for a company of KeepTruckin’s size is typically expected to take 15 weeks, but KeepTruckin couldn’t wait that long. Designed to be flexible for growing companies like KeepTruckin, a Greenhouse onsite Professional Services consultant arrived at KeepTruckin three days after signing the contract to help them plan for their new recruiting platform rollout.

We decided to go with Greenhouse because of the reporting capabilities and how customizable the platform is. Ultimately we felt that Greenhouse would partner with our team every step of the way and be a key part of how KeepTruckin’s recruiting ecosystem is able to scale with growth.
– Eileen Chien, Recruiting Operations Specialist

Over the next five months Greenhouse and KeepTruckin forged a relationship built on hard work and close collaboration. The Greenhouse sales, engineering, implementation and customer success teams jumped into action right away and quickly devised an accelerated, phased implementation to show KeepTruckin how to get the most out of its brief implementation timeline. Not only was Greenhouse able to meet KeepTruckin’s aggressive timeline, but the Greenhouse team was able to complete the implementation ahead of schedule and in a fraction of the time.

Results: Creating consistent candidate experiences

With over 10 global offices, KeepTruckin’s Recruiting Team and all hiring managers now have a more comprehensive view into candidates and their status in the hiring process within the Greenhouse system. Being able to standardize the interview and overall candidate experience across its organization has empowered KeepTruckin to execute a more structured hiring process and improve calibration across their teams.

As we continue to scale, we want to make sure that we are empowering our hiring managers to understand and use all of the functionality that Greenhouse provides. We would like our hiring managers to understand our recruiting process through Greenhouse so that they can be true partners to our recruiting team.

The future of KeepTruckin and Greenhouse: Building a partnership for success

As with any implementation of a new technology or process, this phase of change management sets the foundation for success in the future. Thanks to daily check-ins with the Greenhouse team to address any and all questions throughout the implementation process, KeepTruckin met their implementation head on.

According to Chien, “Our implementation process was condensed into just a few weeks to meet our needs. It was an intense process and I definitely felt supported by the Greenhouse Customer Success team throughout - shoutout to Tony Huynh, Seong Kim, and Harriet Ukaoma! There were many decisions we needed to make, but working with the Greenhouse team, I definitely felt like I was able to set up the platform properly with their help.”

KeepTruckin is now full operational in Greenhouse and is experiencing the benefits of its many integrations with other HR and Talent-related software vendors. Greenhouse is still active in helping KeepTruckin achieve the best experience possible by having a dedicated Greenhouse customer support manager to provide ongoing support through bi-weekly meetings.

Over the next several months, executive business reviews and monthly reviews will keep the implementation and adoption moving smoothly. In the next phase of organization-wide implementation, the KeepTruckin Talent team will focus on teaching recruiters and hiring managers about interview attributes, providing a deep dive into reporting functionality, tagging and other valuable capabilities within Greenhouse.

As KeepTruckin grows, Greenhouse will be a partner to help the company scale, empower its hiring managers and recruiters and provide consistent candidate experiences. Backed by Greenhouse, KeepTruckin’s rapid growth trajectory is smooth and manageable.