How Okeedo relieves healthcare and recruitment pressure with AI
Unburdening care
They translate that mission into practice with various concepts, with Okeedo always focusing on empowering healthcare teams with the right people. One of their fastest-growing concepts is Kookeedo. Because Kookeedo employees provide meals for clients, it creates new energy at the care institution where they operate. Residents are happy with the delicious food and carers and nurses have one less job to do.
Okeedo is making great strides: they’ve already won the FD Gazelle Award five times. With this rapid growth, the need for committed Okeedo staff for care homes is also increasing. Diangeny Felesie, a recruiter at Okeedo, explains: “The candidates we’re looking for don’t need to have experience in the care sector, as long as they know their way around the kitchen and have an affinity with the target group! So we mainly look to see if candidates enjoy working with people and cooking for groups, but it’s difficult to filter for that at the initial stage. That means our target group is quite broad and the strict selection criteria are limited. With such a broad pool of applicants, manual screening takes us a lot of time, especially when the quality of the applications isn’t great. When we started looking for solutions, we soon came across MrWork !”
"The MrWork AI Agent is a top invention! It saves so much work. During peak periods, there were up to 90 responses waiting for me to call after and then it would easily take me 2 full days. Because the AI Agent already performs an initial qualification, I only have to follow up the relevant candidates. I peaked that in half a day."
Diangeny Felesie, recruiter at Okeedo
Set up your own campaigns, more results
About a year ago, Okeedo knocked on MrWorks door. The reason? "Until then, our recruitment campaigns were run by a marketing agency, but we preferred to do this in-house. We know exactly what the work entails and can tell the funny stories, an external party is more likely to fall back on generalities. When we discovered that we could set up and adjust campaigns ourselves via MrWork 's software, we were immediately excited," says Diangeny.
Operating the buttons themselves - setting budgets, creating content - sounded very good to Okeedo. When they heard that all candidates would also come in at one place, they were won over. Diangeny explains: "Candidates respond to us via the job site, lead forms in campaigns or WhatsApp, for instance. At first, this caused fragmentation: we had to follow up responses from all kinds of channels. Now all candidates arrive in MrWorks multichannel inbox. That gives peace of mind and overview."
Diangeny had a good sense that their campaigns would improve if they were at the helm themselves: conversion rates have increased significantly since then.
1.5 days per week saved by AI colleague
In the case of campaigns, Okeedo actually pulled it off, while in pre-screening they deliberately opted for helpers - from smart technology. "The MrWork AI Agent is a top invention! It saves so much work. In peak periods, there were as many as 90 responses waiting for me to call after and then it would easily take me 2 full days. Because the AI Agent already performs an initial qualification, all I have to do is follow up the relevant candidates. I peaked that in half a day," said Diangeny.
And what do candidates actually think about talking to AI instead of a human? Diangeny is very positive: "Of the hundreds of candidates who have already interacted with our AI Assistant, only 3 have said they would like to talk to a human only. We are transparent about our AI Assistant, though. I think that helps in its acceptance."
"I can be very brief: since we have been managing our campaigns ourselves and investing more time in them, the inflow has increased and the quality of responses has improved. Very happy with it!"
Diangeny Felesie, recruiter at Okeedo
An unexpected but very welcome side effect is that Diangeny now gets in touch with candidates much more often than before: "Many of our candidates respond via lead forms, but were then poorly contacted. Constantly trying to make contact takes time and it's not the most fun either - constantly leaving a voicemail. Because the AI Agent now makes the initial contact, we actually filter out those who don't respond. We get the candidates who really want it and they do just pick up the phone."
Room for work that makes a difference
Because Diangeny now spends 75% less time screening candidates, she has more room to optimise campaigns and respond to moments and themes. "I now deploy seasonal or thematic campaigns more often, for instance around carnival in North Brabant or nationwide at Christmas. This ensures that in quiet periods - when we sometimes didn't get any response before - we now generate as many as 20 to 30 applications," Diangeny says enthusiastically.
They also pay more attention to content. Visuals are creative and varied and texts hit the right chord with their target audience. Diangeny says: "I can be very brief: since we manage our campaigns ourselves and invest more time in this, the inflow has increased and the quality of responses has improved. Very happy with it!"
AI is the future, but recruiters remain indispensable
Besides the MrWork AI Hub, Diangeny also uses AI for other work: "For writing texts, AI is very useful, but I mainly use it for inspiration and always write it in my own words afterwards. If you use AI texts indiscriminately, the candidate will see and feel it immediately. On the contrary, we find that authenticity catches on enormously and AI cannot offer that, in my opinion."
"I don't believe in AI taking over recruiters' work completely. More technology and innovation is good, but it has to deliver results and not at the expense of quality. Besides, AI works with the frameworks it is given - fairly black and white. A human is much more nuanced. That's why I see AI as a tool, not as my replacement," Diangeny explains.
"I am proud that we now do our recruitment marketing entirely ourselves, thanks to the support of smart technology. This has resulted in more applicants and increased quality, so Okeedo continues to grow. We are going to continue that trend nicely in the coming period!"
