Employer Profile

Mars was founded in 1911 and is a private, family-owned enterprise with over a century of history. As a world-renowned leader in food manufacturing and distribution, Mars has a presence in more than 80 countries and regions globally. Mars China was established in 1989, and now has six operational sites, four innovation centers, 47 branch offices, and one Mars Global Food Safety Center Innovation Hub.

Industry: Food

Employees: 140,000

Phase I: Challenge

Mars China sought to establish a candidate-centric recruitment ecosystem tailored to the local market, expanding recruitment channels to social media and mobile platforms. By innovating both independently and collaboratively, Mars aimed to address recruitment challenges such as large-scale demand, diversity, high standards, and uncertainty:

• The Mars recruitment team regularly receives a large volume of candidate inquiries. HR staff must switch between various channels to respond, resulting in high workloads and low efficiency.
• After the initial resume screening, HR staff conduct phone calls to schedule interviews and carry out manual phone interviews. Facing an overwhelming number of candidates, HR cannot respond effectively or progress the process quickly, leading to a poor candidate experience.

Phase I: Solution

• WeChat Recruitment Account: MoSeeker helped Mars establish the official “Mars China Recruitment” WeChat account, which launched in January 2017. Through this recruitment platform, Mars can promote its employer brand and job openings via WeChat, while using content and incentive campaigns to increase follower engagement and attract more candidates.
• AI Recruitment Assistant: In June 2018, MoSeeker and Mars launched the “iMars Assistant,” a smart job-seeking helper powered by our AI conversational technology to guide and support candidates through their application journey.
• AI Interview Assistant: For the 2019 spring campus recruitment program, MoSeeker applied natural language technology to power an AI interview assistant, automating the entire interview scheduling and phone interview process for Mars. This solution dramatically reduced interview communication time for recruiters while enhancing the candidate experience.

Phase I: Impact

• Since going live, the Mars China WeChat recruitment platform surpassed 45,000 followers by December 2019. Each WeChat post averaged over 4,000 views, and job posts received nearly 20,000 views monthly, with almost 1,000 applications per month.
• After launching the AI-powered “iMars Assistant,” WeChat post views soared by 200% in just three weeks, candidate interactions increased sevenfold, and monthly applications quadrupled compared to the previous month.
• During the 2019 campus recruitment campaign, the AI interview assistant successfully scheduled and interviewed nearly 1,000 candidates by phone, enabling Mars to efficiently shortlist 200 candidates for final interviews in a very short time.

Phase II: Challenge

The second phase of Mars’ digital recruitment upgrade focused on campus hiring, which involves short recruitment cycles, high volumes of applications, lengthy processes, slow manual resume screening, inconsistent interview standards, and risks related to question leaks and cheating: 

• During campus recruitment, a massive number of interviews must be completed in batches across broad geographic regions within just two days, with results feedback required in three days. Manual processing alone is not feasible, making digital tools essential for efficiency and effectiveness.
• In the online application phase, HR manually reviews each resume—making it difficult to quickly identify candidates who meet key criteria for interview progression.
• During interviews, assessment standards vary among interviewers, resulting in inconsistent candidate quality. Additionally, cheating or question leaks during or after interviews undermine assessment fairness.

Phase II: Solution

MoSeeker and Mars co-developed an AI-powered recruitment solution, continuously upgrading and iterating the system to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. The solution leverages AI to score resumes for rapid screening and automates candidate evaluation, ensuring a highly efficient initial selection process. Objective, quantifiable interview standards were established, along with a robust anti-cheating mechanism: 

• Resume Screening: During the online application phase, AI evaluates resumes against key competency criteria using model algorithms, swiftly eliminating obviously unqualified candidates to accelerate the process and shorten the recruitment cycle.
• Competency Assessment: The MoSeeker AI Interview system conducts automated, multidimensional competency evaluations, supports multiple languages, and assists HR in efficiently appraising talent.
• Standardization: Interview standards were quantified and unified to minimize human error and bias, resulting in more objective and fair outcomes.
• Anti-Cheating Measures: Sophisticated anti-cheating methods were incorporated in the interview process, including random question generation—with tens of thousands of possible combinations—to prevent question leaks.

Phase II: Impact

• By the end of 2024, the AI campus recruitment solution had helped Mars HR save thousands of labor hours and reduce recruiting costs by millions of yuan, achieving targets both quickly and cost-effectively. Candidate experience was greatly improved, with over 86% of students rating the AI interview positively.
• In the 2023 autumn campus recruitment, more than 40,000 candidates participated, all screened initially by AI. Of those who joined Mars after the multi-stage selection process, 96% had scored highly in the AI interview, proving the solution’s value as a reliable reference.
• During the 2024 spring campus hiring, MoSeeker’s AI resume screening helped Mars HR shortlist 40% of qualified candidates from tens of thousands of applicants in the online application stage. In the first round of interviews, AI further narrowed the pool to 14.4%. With these two rounds of AI-driven filtering, HR could focus their energy on the detailed assessments required in the third and fourth interview rounds.

Carlsberg Launches Fully Automated Interviews

Together, Carlsberg and MoSeeker developed an automated AI interview system that allows immediate interview creation and invitation once a candidate submits their application. Upon completion, the system evaluates candidates multidimensionally using both general and role-specific competency models.