In 2025 we had almost a 70% increase in applicants — more than we've ever had in the history of the company. But the idea of shifting toward quality applicants, people who are already on our site, already interested, that's what made us think we needed to do something different.
Company Overview
Jason's Deli is a quick-service restaurant (QSR) operator with 170 locations across the U.S. and 4,700 employees, hiring approximately 2,500 frontline and management team members annually.
With constant hiring pressure, Jason's Deli relied heavily on job boards, primarily Indeed, to meet hiring goals. The strategy generated significant application volume, but most people were unqualified or unresponsive. Recruiters and restaurant managers spent hours combing through low-probability applicants, consuming valuable time and driving low efficiency.
High Volume, Low Quality
While job boards reliably produced scale, they also produced noise. Indeed delivered the highest volume of applicants — and the lowest percentage of hires. The majority of applicants were unresponsive or unqualified, creating bottlenecks at the top of the funnel and consuming valuable recruiter and hiring manager time.
Jason's Deli needed to improve applicant quality and reduce reliance on increasing job board spend to hit hiring targets.
Converting High-Intent Career Site Visitors
Jason's Deli found an opportunity in a channel they already owned: their career site. Career site visitors demonstrated significantly higher intent, converting to hires at nearly 5.5x the rate of job board applicants. But while thousands of candidates visited the career site each month, only a small fraction completed an application.
They used Dalia to let visitors easily connect and share their information before leaving, surface matching jobs quickly, make it frictionless for candidates to apply on their phones, use text-first re-engagement to bring interested visitors back to complete their application, and remember returning visitors so they didn't have to start over each time.
"We've seen a huge uptick in applications and hires coming from our career site as opposed to Indeed. And more importantly, the apply-to-hire ratio from our career site versus Indeed? Night and day."
2.6x Lift in Career Site Conversion
Without adding any new traffic, Dalia delivered a 2.6x lift in visitor-to-apply conversion on Jason's Deli's career site. That's 2.6x more applications without any increase in traffic.
The career site's share of total hires grew from 27% to 44%, and Jason's Deli's overall apply-to-hire rate increased by 34%, driven by more high-intent applicants coming from their career site.
Eliminating Reliance on Job Boards
Jason's Deli reduced Indeed spend by 24% for high-volume hourly roles by investing in stronger career site conversion. Applicants from their career site were far more likely to be hired — requiring nearly 6x fewer applicants to produce the same number of hires as Indeed.
As a result, recruiters spent far less time screening unqualified or unresponsive candidates, significantly reducing effort at the top of the funnel.
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