An international, bilingual campaign – with 80× return
Randstad Enterprise needed to fill an urgent warehouse requisition in Mexico – but the recruiter assigned was based in India and didn't speak Spanish. Using Popp's multilingual conversation engine, they engaged 200+ Spanish-speaking candidates in just three days, placing 20.
Org Type
RPO
Sector
Light industrial
Region
Global
Start Date
2024
“Popp has allowed us to scale in a way we hadn't imagined previously, particularly across the time-intensive tasks of screening and scheduling.”
Alistair Schirmer
Global Head of Digital Innovation, Randstad Enterprise
The challenge
A Spanish-language brief, with no Spanish speakers
A global pharmaceutical company needed to fill Warehouse Supervisor roles in Toluca, Mexico. The requisition was time-sensitive and required candidates with specialised experience in things pharmaceutical manufacturing, hazardous materials handling, and SAP-based inventory control. The tricky bit: the Randstad sourcer assigned to the account was based in India and did not speak any Spanish.
The traditional fix – hiring a bilingual contractor – would have cost thousands of dollars and taken weeks to find & onboard. Browser-based translation tools were too slow for real-time candidate engagement and couldn't handle voice notes, the preferred communication format for candidates in this market. But the requisition couldn't wait.
The approach
WhatsApp in Spanish, reviewed in English
Popp's conversation engine engaged all 218 candidates via WhatsApp in Spanish, and candidates responded with text and voice notes in their own language. Popp transcribed the audio, translated everything to English in real time, and presented the qualifying responses to the India-based sourcer in a single dashboard – no copy/paste, no browser tabs, no bilingual intermediary.
This solution decoupled the hiring layer from the language layer. The sourcer focused entirely on qualification, reviewing answers about pharmaceutical experience, SAP proficiency, and hazmat handling, while Popp handled every word of Spanish. A single person, successfully screening hundreds of candidates, in a language they didn't speak.
WhatsApp conversation between Popp and a candidate in Toluca, with the candidate choosing to converse in Spanish.
The result
218 screened – 20 placed three days later
In three days, the single India-based sourcer engaged 218 Spanish-speaking candidates via WhatsApp, with a 96% completion rate. From there, 20 candidates were placed for the Warehouse Supervisor role. This generated five-figure revenue for Randstad, and an 80× return on investment for this activity.
The engagement proved that hard-to-source, language-dependent requisitions don't require language-matched recruiters. Randstad has since expanded Popp across 13 similar campaigns spanning Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Ireland, and more – and runs the same model across dozens of enterprise end-clients globally.