Case Study: Lyft achieves scalable, efficient, data-driven hiring with Greenhouse Software

How the ambitious startup grew into an IPO enterprise with Greenhouse

Lyft, the ridesharing company that grew to serve millions of riders and drivers, faced scaling problems in 2018 as hiring could not keep pace with rapid business growth. Their legacy ATS (Lever) lacked standardized hiring processes, sufficient permission controls, and reliable reporting — compounding manual work, inconsistent interviews, and an unwieldy 1,200 referral tags — while Lyft prepared to move HRIS to Workday and needed a compatible ATS.

Lyft selected Greenhouse, ran a fast implementation with a cross-functional “green team,” and trained hiring teams to adopt a structured hiring approach (standard interview plans, scorecards, permissions and centralized data). The result was rapid adoption and measurable gains: 96% hiring manager adoption, a single source of candidate tags (down from 1,200), 50% faster referral response time (20 to 5 days), 35% reduction in interviewing time per hire, a 23% increase in hires from referrals, and growth from 2,500 to 4,500 employees in 2018; Greenhouse now manages roughly one million Lyft candidates.

Lyft

Samara Crasilneck

Head of Talent Operations