Case Study: Hard Rock Hotel doubles global workforce and scales high‑volume hiring with iCIMS

How A Leading Hotel, Casino And Café Chain Expanded Globally By Hiring Brand Advocates To Deliver Their World-Class Guest Experience

Hard Rock International, a global hospitality brand with venues in 75 countries and more than 40,000 employees, set out to accelerate expansion after its acquisition by the Seminole Tribe. To open dozens of new cafes, hotels and casinos while preserving a consistent, guest-focused culture, the company faced a high-volume recruiting challenge: hire roughly 25,000 staff across multiple regions, improve candidate engagement and assessment, streamline onboarding, and maintain accurate, compliant data worldwide.

Hard Rock centralized recruiting under Seminole Hard Rock Support Services and built a unified talent platform using iCIMS UNIFi, integrating applicant tracking, onboarding and TextRecruit with third‑party tools for assessments, programmatic job posting and I-9/E-Verify. Automation and mobile-first communication boosted efficiency and sourcing quality — texting raised response rates from about 50% to 75%, assessments saw a 90% completion rate, onboarding and compliance were digitized, and the global workforce doubled over 11 years.

Hard Rock Hotel

Meaghan Ryan

VP of Global Talent and Team Member Relations