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Scotty AI
New Case Story | Hunkemöller

Reducing time to hire by 50%
with mobile-first, AI-driven recruitment

Reducing time to hire by 50% with mobile-first, AI-driven recruitment

When a customer feels the energy in a Hunkemöller store, they don't just shop, they want to join. We helped Hunkemöller orchestrate that moment into a fast, fair, and candidate-first hiring journey, now live across seven European markets.

Watch the journey

INDUSTRY

Retail

REGION

7 markets across Europe
NL · DE · AT · CH · BE · FR · LU

INTEGRATIONS

Workday + WhatsApp + Outlook

SCALE

~700 Stores

Challenge

High-volume shouldn't mean low-touch

In retail, your candidates are your customers. Growing volumes, manual coordination, and rigid assessments made it harder to move fast, and harder to stay fair.

Slow first replies

Manual first contact create a poor candidate experience and let strong candidates drift away.

Admin over customers

Coordination and scheduling pulled store teams off the floor.

Hires that don't stick

No predictive fit check meant avoidable turnover and mis-hire cost.

A disconnected flow

Application, assessment and HRIS weren't linked, so data and momentum leaked at every step.

We needed a hiring journey that respected candidates’ time and worked at the speed of our stores, without compromising fairness or quality. This change allows us to do that at scale.

Daphne Koning-Olde Dubbelink

Daphne Koning-Olde Dubbelink

Global Recruitment & Employer Branding Manager at Hunkemöller

Read full interview

The solution

Meet Bowy.
Your AI recruiter

Bowy is the "brain" that keeps Hunkemöller’s hiring moving. She doesn’t just automate steps; she connects conversations, assessments, calendars, and systems so hiring keeps moving, even when reality doesn’t follow the plan.

Never tired

Infinite patience

Always on-brand

Available 24/7

Instant reply

The moment someone applies, Bowy says hello on WhatsApp or via voice call. She handles the introductions and pre-screening chat instantly.

Game-based insights

Candidates instantly see whether the role they applied for matches their competencies, through Equalture’s short, engaging game-based assessments.

Easy booking

Bowy checks store calendars and books the interview automatically. She even handles reschedules if plans change, keeping everything synced in Workday.

Scotty AI orchestrator

💬 WhatsApp conversations (voice & text)

⚡ Instant, human-like responses

📅 Interview scheduling, rescheduling & reminders

🌙 24/7 availability

🔗 Orchestrates ATS, tools & channels

🤝 Human handover when needed

The rollout

From one market to seven in five months

Starting from a single-market pilot, the Bowy + Equalture flow scaled across Europe — each market with its own language, compliance logic and calendar rules that had to work before a single candidate said hello.

🇳🇱

January 2026

Netherlands pilot

The first market, to go live setting the blueprint for every rollout that followed.

🇩🇪🇦🇹🇨🇭

April 2026

DACH launch

Germany, Austria & Switzerland. Germany is now the largest market by conversation volume.

🇧🇪🇫🇷🇱🇺

June 2026

Belgium, France & Luxembourg

Dual-language rollout completing the 7-market footprint.

Seven markets, one agent, and 140 years of history behind it. Recruiters didn't disappear, they stopped doing repetitive first-contact work and got back the parts of the job that need a human.

The result

What this means for the business

75%

Completion rate

75% of candidates finish the game-based assessment, up from 22% with the previous tool.

80.7%

Screenings that finish cleanly

80.7% of started screenings finish clean, no chasing, no drop-off.

50%

Faster time-to-hire

Time-to-hire in the Netherlands dropped by half.

29%

After-hours conversations

29% of conversations happen after hours, 18% on weekends.

Ready to let Scotty do the work?

Hunkemöller redefined their retail journey. Let us show you how to automate your complexity and put your candidates first.

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