How We Are Social Cut Time to Hire and Unified Global Recruiting with Workable
Recruiting top creative talent across multiple continents is no small feat. For We Are Social, a global social-first creative agency that works with brands like Adidas, Amazon Music, and Lucozade, finding and hiring the right people — fast — is both a strategic priority and a daily operational challenge. After four and a half years as a Workable customer, the agency has transformed its hiring process, cutting time to hire by as many as 10 days and bringing consistency to a recruiting operation that spans the globe.
Who Is We Are Social?
We Are Social is a creative agency built at the intersection of culture, creativity, and data. With offices on multiple continents and a workforce of just over 1,000 employees, the agency specializes in social content and large-scale campaigns that resonate with audiences worldwide. Their client list reads like a who's who of global brands, which means their talent requirements are equally demanding and diverse.
The agency hires across an exceptionally wide range of disciplines. On any given week, their recruiting team might be sourcing a community manager in one city, a global head of research and insights in another, and a content strategist somewhere else entirely. This breadth, combined with a truly international footprint, makes recruiting both mission-critical and logistically complex. The question was never whether to invest in better recruitment infrastructure — it was how to do it in a way that would actually scale.
The Challenge: Global Scale, Fragmented Processes
Before fully leveraging Workable's capabilities, We Are Social faced a problem that many fast-growing agencies know well: inconsistency. When recruiting happens across time zones, languages, and local labor markets, it becomes difficult to ensure that every candidate receives the same quality of experience and that every hiring manager follows the same structured process. Delays creep in. Communication gaps appear. Top candidates accept offers from competitors while waiting to hear back.
For a creative agency whose brand is built on precision, storytelling, and cultural relevance, a disjointed hiring process was more than an inconvenience — it was a reputational risk. The best candidates in the creative industries have choices, and the speed and quality of a company's hiring process often says as much about the employer brand as any careers page ever could.
The Solution: Workable as a Unified Recruiting Platform
We Are Social turned to Workable to bring structure, speed, and consistency to their global hiring operations. Over four and a half years, the agency has embedded Workable deeply into how it attracts, evaluates, and hires talent across every region it operates in.
Automated Candidate Communications
One of the most impactful changes was the introduction of automated, stage-based communications across the full recruiting pipeline. Rather than relying on individual recruiters to manually send updates at each stage — an approach that inevitably leads to delays and inconsistencies — Workable enables We Are Social to automatically trigger timely, on-brand messages to candidates as they move through the process.
The result is a candidate experience that feels attentive and professional at every touchpoint. Candidates receive prompt responses when they apply, clear guidance on next steps after interviews, and respectful notifications when they are not selected. In competitive talent markets, this level of communication builds goodwill and protects the employer brand even among candidates who are not ultimately hired.
Standardized Processes Across All Offices
Workable also gave We Are Social the tools to standardize their recruiting workflows globally. By building consistent hiring pipelines, evaluation criteria, and approval processes into the platform, the agency ensures that a hiring process in one office mirrors best practices across every other location. This matters enormously for a business that needs to make fast, confident hiring decisions without sacrificing quality or fairness.
Process consistency also has compliance benefits. In an era of increasing scrutiny around fair hiring practices and data privacy, having a single system of record that applies the same rules everywhere reduces risk and simplifies reporting.
The Results: Faster Hiring, Better Experiences, Greater Consistency
The outcomes We Are Social has achieved with Workable are measurable and meaningful. Across the three core areas of time to hire, candidate experience, and process consistency, the agency has seen tangible improvements that translate directly into business value.
Reduced Time to Hire by 5 to 10 Days
Perhaps the most striking result is the reduction in time to hire and time to fill — down by five to ten days on average. In practical terms, this means faster offers, reduced costs associated with open vacancies, and a more competitive experience for candidates who are weighing multiple opportunities simultaneously. For roles that are difficult to fill or highly sought after, even a few days can make the difference between landing a great hire and losing them to a competitor.
A Candidate Experience That Reflects the Brand
With automated communications running consistently across the pipeline, every candidate now receives the same high standard of engagement regardless of which office or recruiter is handling their application. This alignment between the agency's creative brand identity and its recruitment experience is not incidental — it is intentional, and it matters for attracting the kind of culturally attuned talent that We Are Social is built on.
What Other Agencies Can Learn from We Are Social
The story of We Are Social and Workable offers several lessons for other creative agencies and global businesses facing similar recruiting challenges. Speed matters, but it cannot come at the cost of quality or consistency. Automation, when deployed thoughtfully, does not make recruiting feel impersonal — it actually frees up recruiters to focus on the human moments that truly define the candidate experience. And a unified platform, used consistently across every market, is the foundation that makes global talent acquisition not just manageable, but genuinely competitive.
For agencies operating at scale, the question is no longer whether to invest in modern recruiting infrastructure. It is how quickly they can get there — and based on We Are Social's results, the answer has a measurable impact on the bottom line from day one.
Conclusion
We Are Social's partnership with Workable demonstrates what is possible when a global creative business commits to improving its recruiting infrastructure. By reducing time to hire by up to 10 days, automating candidate communications, and standardizing processes across all offices, the agency has turned a logistical challenge into a competitive advantage. For any organization looking to hire faster, smarter, and more consistently on a global scale, the We Are Social story is a compelling blueprint.