Streamlining High-Volume Hiring with JobSync and First Student

Chris Hoyt:
Man, I love these. I love when we can get together and spotlight what’s working in the space. I’m Chris Hoyt, President of CareerXroads. I’ve got our co-founder Gerry Crispin with me, and today we’re joined by Alex Murphy—he’s the head honcho over at JobSync. And Alex, you’ve brought a guest to walk through some of the cool stuff you’ve launched. Want to do the honors?

Alex Murphy:
Absolutely. Chris, Gerry—thanks for having us. I’m excited to showcase what we’ve been working on. I love talking about our platform, but it’s even better when we can bring in a customer. Zach Larson is our newest live customer—we’ve been live for about eight or nine days. Zach leads strategy, analytics, and innovation at First Student.

Chris Hoyt:
Zach, tell us a little bit about First Student.

Zach Larson:
Sure. First Student is the largest private student transportation company in the world. We have about 65,000 employees—mostly yellow school bus drivers. We transport the most precious cargo: kids across the U.S. and Canada. Fun fact: We move more people each day than all airlines combined.

Alex Murphy:
No big deal, right? Largest private bus driver employer in the country. There are real problems to solve there, and we’ll dive in. Chris, mind if I jump into the talking points?

Chris Hoyt:
Before you do—give us the 30-second pitch. What is JobSync?

Alex Murphy:
Sure. At JobSync, we believe hiring is the most important activity any business does. Everything else—product, sales, marketing—depends on who you hire. We focus on reducing friction in the hiring process—whether that’s bad candidate experience, inefficient recruiter workflows, unclear spend, or missing data.

Our platform is modular. You can start with one piece and add others over time. It’s highly integrated—we partner with Workday, SAP, Oracle, and others. Security is a priority. And we’re transparent: no hidden markups, commissions, or data hoarding.

We want to deliver an incredible experience with real cost savings. One of our mature clients, Allied Security, saw a 150% increase in organic applications and saved over $5M in overtime.

Zach Larson:
We went live with Workday a year and a half ago—great ATS and HRIS—but the candidate experience had friction. Candidates had to click from the job board to our site, then create an account and password before applying. For high-volume roles, that process led to a 95% drop-off.

Now, candidates go straight from the job post into an easier application flow. We capture lead info and text consent early, re-engage drop-offs, and mirror our Workday experience without requiring login upfront.

Alex Murphy:
And by capturing text consent properly, we avoid TCPA fines—$1,500 per message. We built it to be compliant, secure, and fast.

Zach Larson:
Since launch, volume has exploded. We’ve already seen more applications in a few days than we used to get in a month. Conversion on the career site is over 40%, and in some sponsored campaigns, it’s above 80%.

Chris Hoyt:
I love the subtle but smart field design. Asking for legal first name separately from preferred name helps with downstream background checks—without hurting conversions.

Alex Murphy:
Exactly. Asking for legal names helps avoid issues with autofill or nicknames. The conversion rate on that page is over 99%, so it doesn’t slow people down.

Zach Larson:
It’s also helped in places like Quebec, where laws require content in both French and English. Our site detects user language preference and switches automatically.

Chris Hoyt:
Anything else you’d call out?

Zach Larson:
It aligns with job board designs—familiar and simple. Our marketing team loves how well it matches our brand guidelines, and candidates find it easier to use.

Alex Murphy:
That’s critical for consistency across platforms. For example, we support native apply integrations like Indeed Apply and ZipApply. Same questions, same experience—higher conversions.

Let’s switch gears. We haven’t launched this yet for Zach, but we’re introducing our Amplify module, which helps manage ad spend more precisely.

Zach Larson:
Our current strategy focuses on small audience jobs, overperformers, and unattractive roles. Amplify will help us target underperformers with 1:1 campaigns and tighter budget control.

Alex Murphy:
The industry norm has been bundling jobs into one campaign, where the best ones get all the spend. That leaves holes. Amplify lets you sponsor specific jobs with clear targeting—like radius targeting on Indeed. It’s simple, transparent, and live.

Zach Larson:
And we’re already seeing fewer small-audience jobs now that the application experience has improved.

Chris Hoyt:
Let’s talk about the AI screening agent—Velocity.

Alex Murphy:
Velocity kicks off screening immediately after apply. Candidates can engage right away or at a more convenient time. It starts with disclosure—“Hi, I’m an AI agent”—and proceeds like a real conversation. It logs anything it can’t answer, and recruiters can follow up.

Zach Larson:
We’re in the early stages, but we’re excited. We’ll use Velocity to identify key candidate traits—like having a CDL—and either fast-track them or escalate to a recruiter. It’ll help manage volume and keep candidates engaged.

Alex Murphy:
This is still alpha, but it’s already handling complex tasks like scheduling, re-calling if a line drops, and remembering past interactions. The tech was developed by a partner, Ethan Bloomfield, and we’ve integrated it fully into our platform.

Zach Larson:
We’re also exploring how to train the model better over time. It’s not a one-time lift—it gets better with more data.

Chris Hoyt:
And important callout—Velocity doesn’t make hiring decisions. It’s binary. Did the person meet a requirement or not? No biased scoring. No résumé ranking. Just efficient screening.

Alex Murphy:
Exactly. It’s transparent, measurable, and designed to remove friction—without pretending to be human.

Chris Hoyt:
This is great. Alex, Zach—thank you both. And for anyone interested, check out JobSync in the CXR Marketplace. We’ll post this spotlight in the CXR Library as well.

Zach Larson:
Thanks, everyone. Gerry—looking forward to your application!

Chris Hoyt:
We’ll wrap here. Thanks for watching.