How City Wide Facility Solutions Transformed Hiring Across 110 Locations
When your organization spans 110 locations across the United States and Canada, hiring is never a simple task. For City Wide Facility Solutions, a third-generation, family-owned building services management company founded in 1961, the challenge of recruiting across a distributed franchise network was a constant operational hurdle. From night managers and maintenance crews to sales executives and C-suite leadership, the hiring needs are as varied as they are relentless. That is why finding the right applicant tracking system was not just a convenience — it was a business necessity.
The answer came in the form of Workable, combined with the power of Indeed Talent Scout. Together, these tools have enabled City Wide to scale its recruitment operations efficiently, maintain candidate experience at every touchpoint, and drive down time-to-fill to an impressive 16-day average.
The Complexity of Hiring at Scale in a Franchise Model
City Wide Facility Solutions operates through a unique B2B model that partners with independent contractors to manage everything from janitorial services and landscaping to maintenance and specialty facility operations. This structure means that hiring does not happen in one centralized office — it happens across dozens of franchise locations, each with its own staffing needs, timelines, and workflows.
Kelsey Herbig, who oversees talent acquisition for both the franchisee and franchisor sides of the business, is responsible for managing 30 to 50 hires per year at the corporate level alone. That number grows exponentially when franchise locations are factored in. The need for a centralized, scalable solution that could accommodate separate departments and individual user spaces — without charging per-user fees — was absolutely critical.
Without the right technology, this level of distributed hiring can quickly become chaotic. Miscommunication between hiring managers, inconsistent candidate experiences, slow response times, and a lack of data visibility are just a few of the pain points that organizations like City Wide face when trying to grow without a unified system in place.
Why Workable Became the Foundation of Their Recruitment Strategy
Workable provided the centralized ATS infrastructure that City Wide needed to bring order to a complex, multi-location hiring process. The platform's ability to support 110 franchise locations with separate departments and user spaces made it uniquely suited for a distributed organization of this scale. Unlike many competing systems that charge on a per-user or per-seat basis, Workable's model allowed City Wide to onboard multiple stakeholders across locations without ballooning recruitment software costs.
Beyond cost efficiency, Workable delivered meaningful improvements in three core areas: hiring speed, communication automation, and candidate experience.
Hiring Efficiency: A 16-Day Average Time-to-Fill
One of the most striking outcomes of City Wide's partnership with Workable is its average time-to-fill of just 16 days. For an organization hiring across diverse roles — from frontline facility workers to senior executives — this is a remarkable achievement. Fast hiring cycles reduce the risk of losing top candidates to competitors, minimize productivity gaps caused by open roles, and allow franchise locations to operate at full capacity without prolonged vacancies.
Achieving a 16-day average requires more than just posting a job and waiting. It demands a streamlined pipeline, fast communication, quick decision-making tools, and robust sourcing capabilities — all of which Workable provides in one platform.
Automation and Communication: 100% Applicant Response Rate
One of the most underappreciated elements of a strong recruitment process is consistent candidate communication. Research consistently shows that poor communication is one of the top reasons candidates drop out of hiring processes or leave negative employer reviews online. City Wide has tackled this challenge head-on by using Workable's automated and scheduled communication features to achieve a 100% applicant response rate.
Every candidate who applies hears back — whether they advance in the process or not. This commitment to communication not only strengthens the candidate experience but also reinforces City Wide's employer brand. In a competitive labor market, reputation matters, and organizations that treat candidates with respect throughout the hiring journey are more likely to attract high-quality applicants in the future.
The Role of Indeed Talent Scout in Proactive Sourcing
While Workable handles the structural backbone of recruitment, Indeed Talent Scout adds a proactive sourcing dimension that allows City Wide to reach passive candidates — those who may not be actively searching for a job but are open to the right opportunity. This is especially valuable for harder-to-fill roles such as sales executives and senior management positions where the qualified talent pool is smaller and more competitive.
Indeed Talent Scout integrates seamlessly with Workable, allowing hiring teams to source and engage candidates without switching between multiple platforms. Profiles discovered through Indeed Talent Scout flow directly into the Workable pipeline, maintaining a consistent workflow and ensuring that all candidate data is captured, tracked, and accessible in one place.
This integration reduces manual data entry, eliminates the risk of losing candidate information across disconnected tools, and gives recruiters a fuller picture of their talent pipeline from first touch to final hire.
Key Takeaways for Organizations Considering a Similar Approach
City Wide Facility Solutions offers a compelling blueprint for any organization — particularly those operating in distributed or franchise models — that is looking to modernize and scale its hiring operations. Several lessons stand out from their experience:
- Centralization is critical at scale. Without a single source of truth for recruitment data, distributed organizations will always struggle with inconsistency, miscommunication, and inefficiency. A centralized ATS like Workable eliminates these pain points by bringing all stakeholders onto one platform.
- Automation protects candidate experience. Automated communication is not about removing the human element from hiring — it is about ensuring that no candidate falls through the cracks. When every applicant receives a timely response, the organization's reputation as an employer of choice is strengthened.
- Proactive sourcing expands your talent pool. Relying solely on inbound applications limits your access to talent. Tools like Indeed Talent Scout allow recruiting teams to identify and engage qualified candidates before they even think about applying, giving organizations a competitive edge in tight labor markets.
- Cost-effective scalability matters. Hiring platforms that charge per user can become prohibitively expensive as an organization grows. Choosing a system that scales without punishing growth is a strategic financial decision, not just a procurement one.
Building a Hiring System That Grows With You
The story of City Wide Facility Solutions is ultimately a story about building infrastructure that is designed to grow. Since 1961, the company has expanded from a single operation to a nationwide network serving clients across dozens of industries. That kind of growth does not happen by accident — it requires deliberate investment in the systems and tools that make scaling possible.
Recruitment is no different. By partnering with Workable and leveraging the sourcing power of Indeed Talent Scout, City Wide has built a hiring engine that can keep pace with its ambitions. With a 16-day average time-to-fill, 100% applicant response rates, and the ability to support 110 franchise locations from a single platform, the results speak for themselves.
For organizations navigating similar challenges — whether in facilities management, retail, healthcare, or any other distributed industry — the City Wide model offers a clear and actionable roadmap to smarter, faster, and more scalable hiring.