Case Study: City of Chicago achieves 75% faster, automated hiring with Oracle Cloud HCM

City of Chicago automates recruitment process to rapidly identify and hire top candidates 75% faster

The City of Chicago, one of the largest municipal employers with more than 34,500 staff, was inundated with recruiting volume—reviewing over 300,000 applications a year (as many as 35,000 for a single vacancy)—while operating under strict municipal and union hiring regulations. Its manual, two-step screening process was time-consuming, risked inconsistency, and limited the city’s ability to expand the talent pool and fill positions quickly and fairly.

By deploying Oracle Cloud HCM’s Talent Acquisition/Recruiting Cloud, Chicago automated and standardized recruiting workflows, created auditable referral lists and role-based access controls, and implemented an automated two-round screening and auto-ranking process that cut manual screening needs by about 90%. The city reduced average time-to-fill from roughly one year to ~90 days, achieved multi-million-dollar annual cost savings, and improved compliance, transparency, and operational scalability.

City of Chicago

Christina Batorski

Deputy Commissioner, Department of Human Resources