KEO International Consultants, a global architecture and civil engineering firm, has successfully scaled its recruitment operations to manage a 40% year-over-year surge in hiring volume. By partnering with iCIMS, the leading enterprise talent acquisition platform, KEO transformed its manually intensive processes into an AI-powered engine. This digital transformation allowed the firm to hire nearly 1,000 professionals across 13 countries in a single year without increasing the size of its talent acquisition (TA) team.
KEO managed a 40% increase in hiring volume with no additional TA headcount.
Applications rose by 46% following a strategic redesign of the iCIMS Career Site.
Approximately 1,000 new hires were completed within a single year.
ICIMS AI Talent Explorer reduced shortlisting time by surfacing Tier 1 candidates faster.
100% of employment contracts are now issued digitally via iCIMS and DocuSign.
The platform provides real-time visibility into pipeline health for senior stakeholders.
As a project-based consultancy with a large expatriate workforce, KEO face a permanent reality of high-velocity recruiting. When project demands sparked a significant surge in volume, the firm's manual processes—ranging from email-based contract issuance to time-consuming candidate shortlisting—became unsustainable. The mandate was clear: absorb the growth and maintain velocity without expanding the recruitment team's budget or headcount.
To address these friction points, KEO deployed a suite of tools including iCIMS ATS, Career Sites, Offer Management, Onboarding, and AI Talent Explorer. This integrated approach shifted the burden of repetitive administrative work toward automation, allowing recruiters to focus on high-value candidate engagement.
The implementation of iCIMS AI Talent Explorer has been central to KEO’s ability to handle the increased workload. The AI surfaces matching candidates in a fraction of the time previously required for manual screening. This efficiency is coupled with a redesigned career site that improved candidate conversion, ensuring a steady flow of talent for the firm’s diverse global projects.
"Hiring close to 1,000 people a year, across 13 countries, with the same team, is only possible because we have the right technology behind us. ICIMS makes that possible," said Niall Hughes, director of talent acquisition, KEO International Consultants. "Utilizing ICIMS AI Talent Explorer, we were able to manage this huge increase in our workload... and it has given us the ability to identify suitable Tier 1 candidates in a much more timely manner."
The modernization of KEO’s recruitment lifecycle has delivered quantifiable improvements across the board. By moving to a fully digital offer management system integrated with DocuSign, the firm eliminated manual delays in contract issuance. Furthermore, structured reporting dashboards now provide executive leadership with critical insights into recruiter performance and hiring progress.
Nikki Grigsby, chief customer officer at iCIMS, noted that KEO’s success demonstrates the potential of AI when deployed with intention. By automating the recruiting lifecycle, the firm can move faster and secure the specialized talent necessary to drive its international project portfolio forward.
KEO International Consultants continues to leverage the iCIMS platform to maintain its competitive edge in the global engineering and architecture market, proving that technology is the ultimate force multiplier for modern talent acquisition teams.
ABOUT ICIMS, INC.
ICIMS is the talent acquisition platform uniting the strengths of enterprise software with the transformative power of AI. More than 4,400 companies across 200 countries — including a quarter of the Fortune 500 — trust ICIMS to find and hire the people who shape their future. With insights from billions of hiring interactions, continuous AI innovation, and a highly extensible platform, ICIMS turns hiring into a true business advantage.
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