UST: 100% Digital Recruitment Driving Speed, Compliance, and Candidate Delight

Company Background

Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California, UST is a global digital transformation solutions provider with revenues of USD 1.7 billion and more than 30,000 employees across 30+ countries. For over 25 years, UST has partnered with Fortune 500 companies to deliver human-centered digital transformation, embedding innovation and agility into business operations worldwide. With deep domain expertise across industries including financial services, healthcare, life sciences, and manufacturing, UST continues to evolve as a purpose-driven enterprise building technology that touches billions of lives.

As its global footprint expanded, UST identified talent acquisition as a strategic priority. The company needed a scalable, compliant, and digital-first hiring model to support business growth, strengthen governance, and deliver a world-class candidate experience.

Navigating the Shift in Recruitment Strategies

UST’s talent acquisition processes prior to transformation were heavily manual and inconsistent across regions. Recruiters relied on offline tools and emails for core activities such as sourcing, duplication checks, interview scheduling, feedback collection, and offer management. Documentation processes were fragmented and required candidates to resubmit forms at multiple stages, frustrating applicants and increasing dropouts.

Hiring managers had limited visibility into real-time candidate pipelines, which slowed decisions and extended turnaround times. Vendor coordination was email-based, creating duplication and inefficiencies. Compliance and audit gaps further exposed risks in highly regulated industries where UST operates, such as healthcare and financial services.

Extended time-to-fill hindered UST’s ability to deploy talent quickly into revenue-generating projects. Candidate experience suffered from delayed communication, lack of transparency, and redundant document requests. These challenges underscored the urgent need for a comprehensive transformation to digitize recruitment end-to-end, reduce costs, and elevate employer brand.

Integrating Systems Thinking and Technology

UST partnered with RippleHire to implement USource, a high-performance AI ATS tailored to its global hiring needs. The approach was holistic, embedding automation, compliance, and scalability into every stage of the recruitment lifecycle.

USource unified sourcing, screening, interviewing, offers, documentation, and onboarding within a single digital platform. Robust duplicate checks ensured source credit accuracy for referrals, vendors, and job boards, creating trust and accountability. Gamified employee referrals (LinkUs) boosted participation by enabling employees to share roles across email, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp, turning the workforce into brand ambassadors.

Automated interview scheduling with calendar sync reduced recruiter effort while improving panel and candidate experiences. Hiring managers could submit feedback instantly via mobile-friendly dashboards, improving speed and consistency. Candidates received automated, transparent status updates, eliminating the frustration of manual follow-ups.

Offer management was fully digitized with compliance-ready templates across geographies. Pre- and post-offer documentation was integrated into the system, ensuring candidates uploaded once and recruiters had complete audit trails. Vendor experience was transformed with real-time visibility into submissions and candidate progress, replacing offline tracking.

Tredence’s Innovative Four-Stage Hiring Process

Stage 1: Demand and Sourcing
Integration with UST’s workforce planning system ensured recruiters only acted on approved demands flagged for external hiring. Vendors and employees submitted referrals directly into USource, where duplicate checks created fairness and accuracy in source attribution.

Stage 2: Screening and Engagement
Recruiters benefited from AI-powered resume parsing and automated shortlisting rules. Candidates and referrers received real-time communication, improving transparency and reducing manual effort. Engagement extended to social channels, tapping passive talent pools and niche communities.

Stage 3: Interview and Feedback
Digital scheduling, automated panel notifications, and system-driven reminders streamlined interview coordination. Hiring managers provided feedback instantly through mobile dashboards, reducing processing from ten minutes to two. Candidates enjoyed a transparent, consistent process with fewer delays and greater trust.

Stage 4: Offer and Onboarding
Automated workflows created offers in three minutes, compared to thirty previously. Pre- and post-offer documentation was integrated into a single process, cutting submission times from up to a week to just one day. SmartOps, UST’s background verification platform, integrated with USource via APIs, ensuring compliance, speed, and governance.

Tredence’s dedication to transforming hiring

4.86/5

Candidate feedback rating

3 Minutes

Time for offer creation (reduced from 30)

2 Minutes

Time for interview feedback (reduced from 10)

2 Minutes

Time for vendor candidate submission (reduced from 10)

1 Day

Time for post-offer document collection (reduced from 3–7 days)

Real Time

Candidate & vendor status updates

30%

Reduction in time-to-fill

RippleHire AI ATS Drives Remarkable Results

The measurable outcomes of UST’s transformation were significant. Candidate experience reached 4.86 out of 5, reflecting the transparency, speed, and professionalism embedded into the journey. Offer creation, once a 30-minute task, is now completed in three minutes. Hiring manager feedback is provided in just two minutes instead of ten, while interview processing and vendor submissions both fell to two minutes. Documentation that previously took up to a week is now completed in a single day.

Recruiter productivity rose sharply, with automation eliminating manual tasks and enabling them to manage higher requisition volumes. Hiring manager satisfaction improved due to transparency and mobile-first tools. Vendor partners benefited from real-time dashboards, reducing email dependencies and ensuring fairness. Most importantly, UST achieved a 30% reduction in time-to-fill, accelerating workforce deployment into strategic client projects and directly contributing to revenue growth.

Road Ahead

UST views this Brandon Hall award-winning initiative as the first phase of its recruitment modernization journey. Next steps include integrating HireSage, UST’s homegrown AI-powered search and match engine, to further improve job-fit accuracy and reduce screening time. Post-offer candidate engagement will be enhanced with system-driven nudges, predictive insights into joining probability, and proactive alerts for business leaders in case of risk.

The organization also plans to expand gamified referrals, deepen AI-led sourcing, and leverage predictive analytics to strengthen workforce planning. These innovations will ensure UST continues to lead in human-centered digital recruitment, balancing compliance, speed, and candidate delight.

Conclusion

UST’s recruitment transformation demonstrates how a digital-first, system-driven approach can deliver speed, scalability, and compliance while elevating candidate experience. By reducing process times from days to minutes and achieving a candidate feedback rating of 4.86 out of 5, UST has created a future-ready hiring model that directly supports its business growth.

This Brandon Hall award-winning case study stands as proof that when recruitment is reimagined with technology, empathy, and governance, it becomes a strategic enabler of enterprise success