Domino’s HR Tech Transformation

Pizza, AI, and the Noid walk into a podcast… and yes, it gets weird.

In this episode of The AI Sessions, Domino’s HR tech boss Matt King dishes on:

• Why speed isn’t just a hiring goal—it’s literally the brand (because nobody’s waiting 45 minutes for a “hot, fresh” ATS).

• How Domino’s escaped the clutches of Kenexa BrassRing (aka the AOL dial-up of recruiting systems) and slid into SmartRecruiters’ DMs.

• Franchisees with strong opinions (shock!) who actually helped shape Domino’s tech stack—and occasionally roast bad AI “match scores.”

• Winston, SmartRecruiters’ new AI sidekick, and why trust is harder to earn than a free breadstick.

• Chatbots that know when to ping you and when to shut up, because nothing says “brand value” like not sounding like a jerk.

• And the ultimate question: should Domino’s resurrect the Noid as its candidate-facing chatbot? (Spoiler: we’d apply just to see that chaos unfold.)

If you like your AI talk topped with sarcasm and pepperoni, this one’s for you.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel Cheesman: All right, let's do this. We are the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Riding shotgun is Chad Sowash, and this is the AI Sessions Frontline Series as we welcome Matt King, Director of HR Technology at Domino's. Matt, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast.

Matt King: Pleasure to be here, fellas.

Joel Cheesman: Glad to have you here. A lot of people will know Domino's Pizza, but they may not know Matt King. So give us the elevator pitch on you and what you're doing at Domino's.

Matt King: It's been a long journey. So I got my start in educational technology and made a big career pivot a few years ago, and went into HR technology, and found myself at Domino's. And I manage our HR tech stack. So I manage our SaaS applications, hiring, learning systems, workforce management systems, talent systems, and I also help manage our core HCM. And one thing that's interesting about our tech stack and the way we deploy it to our US system is we play both in the corporate space and the franchise space. So we have managed deployments of some of these platforms to our franchisees. Make them available to them as well.

Chad Sowash: Make it available to them, but they don't have to actually use it? Is that what I'm hearing?

Matt King: It depends, yeah. So in the case of our learning systems, they're optional for our franchisees to use. For our hiring systems, to help us create brand unity and a centralized branding experience for potential Domino's employees, either at our franchise organizations or for our corporate organizations. We do mandate the use of an ATS solution, smart recruiters, and we have a centralized career site that covers the whole brand.

Joel Cheesman: And Domino's was tech before tech was cool, right? I mean, they were doing mobile ordering before anyone else. Does that mentality permeate into the recruitment set?

Matt King: Yeah, it certainly does. You know, we have a lot of technology differentiators in our brand, and our hiring technology, recruitment technology, is no different. But we've been on an interesting journey. Like, I think that one of the things you observe is there are changes in how you think about the engagement of candidates, the level of engagement that's appropriate to have with candidates. Sometimes you want a lot of human touch. Sometimes you want a lot of automation. It's hard to really connect those two things. So we kind of ebb and flow in terms of the amount of automation that we enable. And one thing that's interesting about our business, too, is it's not just automation. It's not just ease of candidate experience that we think about. It's also extensibility to our franchisees because these are independent business owners. Our franchisees are incredibly entrepreneurial. They're incredible operators. They're coming to us all the time with ways that they've optimized their hiring processes that we're considering for our corporate locations as well. So we want to make sure that we're giving them tools that are forward-facing, really cutting-edge, but also have a lot of flexibility for them to manipulate them to satisfy the needs that they have as unique independent businesses. And that can be a real challenge.

Chad Sowash: So being in the... How many corporate stores versus franchises? What's the percentage around?

Matt King: Yeah, so we have about 7,100 locations in the United States, about 21,000 internationally. In the United States, it fluctuates, but anywhere between 250, 300 corporate stores, and then the rest is franchise.

Chad Sowash: Yeah, so the bulk is franchise. So, has there been kind of like a draw for people wanting to use AI in your space to be able to help them actually prospectively become a standard throughout all of Domino's? Because we're seeing restaurants using chatbots at the drive-through. I mean, they're all over the place. So, is this almost kind of like a cool factor they might be able to get into now? And it might allow you, from a corporate standpoint, to get more standardized across all the franchises? 

Matt King: I think so. I think in terms of the candidate job search and application experience, my perspective on this, and I think that our corporate recruiters share this perspective, is that conversational applications is essentially table stakes in our space now. That's no longer sort of cutting edge or cool. I guess it will always sort of be cool. But we started with a candidate-facing chatbot that allows for job search application, answering screening questions all within that one experience. What I'm seeing there is, there's kind of two evolutions I'm observing. One is just that experience has gotten a lot better. So it's not quite as scripted. It doesn't feel like it's automated responses to very specific prompts.

Joel Cheesman: The decision tree is leaving.

Matt King: Exactly. And it feels a lot more human.

Joel Cheesman: That was a dad joke, Chad, leaving.

Matt King: Well, the other thing that's nice about it, is that it gives you opportunities to add in additional validations that weren't possible before. Like this doesn't look like a real social security number, that kind of thing. I say that in a nice way. But the other thing that I think we're starting to see is the workflow orchestration that happens, that's conversational assistant-assisted. That really touches the recruiters and the orchestration of the candidate experience as they go through the hiring process. Because our goal is to get the initial touchpoint with the candidate into the applicant tracking system as quickly as possible. We don't want to bombard them with a 20-question application and capture all this information up front. We want to capture it only if we need it. And I think for the most part, that's been our objective is appropriate information at the appropriate time. Capture it through an omnichannel, multichannel experience that meets candidates where they're at.

Chad Sowash: So from the recruiter standpoint... I mean, because we always talk about candidate experience. We never talk about recruiter experience, right? And that's pretty important because we want to keep them around. We want to make sure that their job doesn't suck. So, on that side of the house, have you seen that this could make a much better recruiter experience? And then how are you currently structured? Do the recruiters only hire for corporate? Do they also help out with franchise? What's that dynamic look like?

Matt King: Yeah, it's interesting. So our recruiters don't advise or support our franchisees in any particular way other than best practice sharing. So if we're doing something in the corporate space that we think is beneficial for franchisees to be aware of and think about whether they want to adopt for their organization, we certainly will make that information available. And our recruitment team has relationships with our franchise recruitment teams that operate within these franchisees. Beyond that, I think that we've really endeavored, especially after the switch to smart recruiters, to bring franchisees much more into the mix in expressing their needs to our vendor partner. So we've had on-site sessions where we've brought in some of our major franchisees to speak directly with smart recruiters. Brought in their entire recruiting teams, and had them speak directly with smart recruiters' product teams. And that has been a pretty unique experience because we can make a lot of assumptions sitting at corporate headquarters about what our franchisees need. But I think the thing that I always keep in mind is the persona of the franchisee. It's a privilege to some extent to be a dedicated recruiter. But these franchisees are responsible for the P&L of their entire business. They may have a recruitment team. They may not. They may be a single store operator who's doing everything from recruitment to managing their store to ordering food. So there's a lot on their plate.

Joel Cheesman: You highlighted speed, and I think that's incredibly important. My guess is if Domino's takes too long, I'm at Pizza Hut, or Papa John's, or McDonald's, or any other sort of fast food or hourly job. But I know that you're also very aware of your brand and what Domino's means and the promise. I mean, even when we were kids, it was like 30 minutes or less, which I know has changed. Those things stick with you, and I think that they stay with you in the job search experience. So how do you balance speed, but then also the experience is something that Domino's supports?

Matt King: Yeah. I guess I would start by saying it is a balance. And I think across the entire US footprint, it's hard to find one size fits all. Because, as I mentioned, there's variations in how franchisees choose to run their hiring. I think that in terms of how we identify as a brand, there are certain things that are core tenets of who we are. Operational efficiency, speed, customer service. These are the types of things that we tend to select for in terms of our hiring as well. And every franchisee and every business unit and corporate makes some of their own decisions about how to prioritize those different factors. But that's the DNA of the brand. It's customer focus. It's amazing product. It's hiring at the speed of our business, and our business moves very, very fast operationally. So I'd say that l because that is part of who we are, that focus on efficiency, that focus on accuracy.

Joel Cheesman: It almost sounds like speed is the brand.

Chad Sowash: The speed is the brand.

Joel Cheesman: You're killing two birds with one stone. Not only are we fast, but we're supporting the brand with efficiency.

Matt King: Exactly. But I think the other thing too is like you walk into a Domino's store, and you expect the store to be clean. You expect the people to be friendly. You expect your pizza to be made with a smile. You expect the same pizza every time, and you expect the same level of value every time. And so I think that there is a representation of that in how we choose to run hiring as a corporate entity and our franchisees choose to run hiring. And I think one of the things that really helps us create the centralization point is the brand-wide career site because that allows us to tell the EVP within the context of our branding. Our career site tells the story of who we are. It tells the story of what we're about. It tells the story of our history. It tells the story of prospective candidates of like if you're into these values, if you're into these priorities in a job that you work, there's opportunity here for you. And so I think regardless of how franchisees choose to structure their hiring processes or how we do on the corporate side, you can still tell the same story about what it's like to work in a Domino's store. And I think that's really critical. And I think part of the reason that having a centralized employment branding focus at least at the high level has been really advantageous for us.

Chad Sowash: So talk about choice because there are plenty of platforms that are out there. You've chosen Smart Recruiters. You obviously did due diligence around that. What was that process? What did it look like, number one? And then from a not just corporate but also from a franchisee standpoint, I mean, how much did they get to weigh in? And then also what's the penetration rate right now for usage? What does it look like? 90% franchises are using, 100%. What's that look like?

Matt King: Yeah. So, the selection process. It helps to understand where we came from. So we were on Kenexa before. And we had a victory...

Chad Sowash: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Kenexa Brass Ring, 37 other names. Yeah.

Matt King: Yeah, and it was like IBM, Kenexa BrassRing on Cloud, which when we implemented it was... I wouldn't say it was a cutting-edge system, but it was relatively modern compared to what else was in the space. The problem was we grew a lot of other technologies around it and integrated them. And so what we ended up with was a very unwieldy tech stack. And so you'd have your automation layer. You'd have your communication layer. You'd have your core ATS. You would have the recruiter-facing hired score-driven overlay to Kenexa. And it all sort of worked, but it was very expensive. It was incredibly unwieldy to maintain. And it was, candidly, just quite expensive. And so what we were looking for was... Well, we were seeing a lot of movement in the ATS space into more integrated solutions where a texting engine, a communications automation engine, CRM, these things are sort of baked into the offering. And so we found that in Smart Recruiters. We did a lengthy RFP process. You asked about franchise involvement in that process. When we source technologies like this, typically we'll have franchisee focus groups that will weigh in on behalf of the system. And they're deeply involved in the requirements definition and design and validation of the solution.

Joel Cheesman: You're saying the franchisees have an opinion on that stuff.

Matt King: They absolutely have an opinion. They do. They do. And they call out things that we miss. Because they're on the front lines. They see things we don't see.

Chad Sowash: Day to day.

Matt King: Day to day. And the other thing, too, is we can be very prescriptive about how we want hiring to work for the people that work for Domino's Corporate. We can't be prescriptive about that for our franchise operators. They have different needs. And you don't know what they are until you bring them in. The great thing is Smart Recruiters was fantastically receptive to having those conversations. So it was almost like we were doing two implementations simultaneously, one for corporate, much more prescriptive, much more buttoned up in terms of the rigidity of our hiring processes, and then one for our franchisees, which was about maximizing flexibility. And by and large, that's what we've gotten. Smart Recruiters, I think, has been on a journey of evolution. I think they've learned a lot from us and vice versa, especially in the high volume space.

Chad Sowash: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, you're actually helping them through the piloting of Winston, which we've seen Winston all over the place lately. Talk a little bit about that, especially the genesis of that conversation of, hey, we're looking to do a big pivot. I mean, they literally were modeled off of legacy systems, and they're pivoting very hard into Agentic. Was that exciting for you, knowing that they were your platform? A little risky, maybe? Talk a little bit about that, because you got involved.

Matt King: Yeah. I mean, I have a sort of internal debate raging all the time of like...

Joel Cheesman: Me too.

Matt King: Am I a Luddite about this stuff? This is about KFC or...

Joel Cheesman: Chipotle or Taco Bell. It's usually the two. The fight within. Sorry, Matt. Go ahead.

Matt King: No, I feel your trauma, man. Yeah. I mean, I think that... Look, I mentioned earlier that I think that conversational application experiences are table stakes now. I don't think that those are edgy or cool or differentiating. And I think what has been reassuring, I think, about the realization Smart Recruiters has had about their position in the market is I think there's a pretty important space there for them to occupy. You're going to have your big enterprises that have Workday, and they're going to use Workday as their ATS, but they're going to have a really nice candidate-facing front end, and they're going to optimize the recruiter experience with other bolt-on tools. But what about companies that are in a position where they're either in the process of choosing a new enterprise ERP, new HCM, they may not want to invest in something like Workday because it's a little bit bulky for their needs. They want to go with a tier 1.5 or tier 2 HCM vendor.

Chad Sowash: More nimble, maybe?

Matt King: Yeah, exactly. But they really need super high quality, minimize the complexity of your tech stack, ATS solutions. And I think Smart Recruiters is poised to really be impactful in that space. In terms of the design relationship, from the moment Winston was a glint in the product team's eye, we've been, I think, on the same page that this is something that is necessary to make sure that they remain competitive in this space. There are a lot of brands and companies out there who want to take the same approach we did, which was, we want one vendor we can work with who can do all this stuff reliably. And so what are the things that are going to make you competitive if that's what people are looking for? Conversational application, recruiter enablement, both of those things are the places where I see the most value in Winston and seem to be the places that are focusing.

Chad Sowash: How important is the asynchronized messaging versus synchronized? Because it seems like we try to push really hard on the synchronized to get everything done, human to human, but then we're going chatbot and it's more async. And we can do more to try to enrich profiles and things like that, ask questions later on down the road, not to mention nudge them and remind them their first day is starting in a couple of days. Is that a big step for Domino's and the franchisees to think that, "Okay, we want real people having real messaging. If a chatbot takes over, it might not feel as real?"

Matt King: It's a really hard question to answer because I think that it depends on how well the chatbot works and what you use it for. I don't think that automating a notification that we're waiting on your background check invitation to be completed is something that a candidate feels is an important moment of human touch.

Chad Sowash: Yeah.

Matt King: You don't want the chatbot to be a jerk about it. You don't want it to be totally cold. It has to fit into your employment branding persona...

Chad Sowash: Right.

Matt King: But that's not something that you need human touch for.

Chad Sowash: Right.

Matt King: Where I think I see the line being drawn is there is a moment of human interaction during the interview that's really important. Because part of what I think we and our franchisees are selecting for is somebody who's going to represent the brand well, right? Somebody who presents well, presents as Domino's. And that takes many forms, but it's very hard to discern that from automated screening. It's very hard to discern that from somebody typing in like, what's your perspective on customer service and having an AI script churn on that.

Chad Sowash: Yeah.

Matt King: Those are vibes you get from interacting with a human being, whether it's through a video interview or an in-person interview. So I think it's about the moments where you choose to use it, right? Some asynchronous makes sense, some synchronous makes sense. It just depends on the feel you're trying to create for your brand and how you drive selection based on that.

Joel Cheesman: Going back to the franchisees for a second, not only are they probably opinionated on what you're going to do, they're opinionated on what they think you should be doing into the future. So, what is Domino's wish list for what it wants to be doing from a recruiting standpoint? Let's call it two to three years from now.

Matt King: That's a great question. The first thing I would say is it's in our interest and in our franchise's interest to deliver optionality that allows franchisees to push the limits of what's possible within our brand. We have driven so much innovation in our brand with the help of our franchisees—product innovation, operations innovation. They're critical partners. It is not a top pushing down on these things. It is the corporate entity working with our franchisees to enable this. I don't think that you get that kind of innovation coming out of our franchisees without providing the optionality for our franchise operators to try things, make mistakes, and maybe discover new things that work better. So, for us, it's not just the need for us to deliver solutions that allow them to run their businesses the way they want.

Joel Cheesman: Yeah.

Matt King: It's also the need to create a sandbox for them to try new things that help us to innovate hiring across the whole brand through their feedback and through their willingness to try things, make mistakes, to adjust. It's just that entrepreneurial spirit. If I'm thinking about what I want the candidate and recruiter experience to be a few years from now, I think that that's where I'm comfortable making some predictions about where that's gonna go. I do think that the perceived necessity on high human touch, retaining some actions as manual actions that take place, and the avoidance of automated screening for certain things, I'm talking pre-interview, I think that it's likely that there's gonna be some softening on that. You see it happening across our industry. It's always useful, I think, to take a snapshot, comparison snapshot of where we are versus our competitors in terms of our willingness to entertain those solutions.

Joel Cheesman: Yeah.

Matt King: I think the critical thing is, well, how do you build the trust there? So as we work with SmartRecruiters, as an example, we were early adopters of their matching tool. So this is like pre-Winston. I forget what the name of it was, but it gave you a match score. And so we found that this thing didn't work very well, in all honesty. Our franchisees said, "Hey, this doesn't match up to what this candidate actually is. It's producing summaries that are completely nonsensical. Must have been using LinkedIn tech."

[overlapping conversation]

Joel Cheesman: Not good, not good.

Chad Sowash: Yeah. [laughter]

Matt King: It's like it's saying that we require a motor vehicle report for this position in the job description, and then it's assessing what the candidate has put into the application, and it's saying the candidate has never worked for the Department of Motor Vehicles...

Chad Sowash: Yeah. [laughter]

Matt King: So... [laughter] There's some trust rebuilding, is my point. And so I think the thing is we're just very mindful of that, right? As we work with SmartRecruiters, the message has been, "Look, the outputs of these things have to be things we can trust. They have to be consistent. We have to know how you got there." And most critically, you can't rely on us to train that. We're always training these tools through our interactions with them, but it's got to be better out of the gate. And so they've been very receptive to that feedback as we've gone through the Winston journey period, right? The ability to show the math has been critical.

Matt King: The other thing that I'll say is in terms of the design partnership, they've been very assertive about bringing us in early and often. So we have a lot of touch points with their design team. We shovel a ton of feedback to them. I think a lot of it sometimes may be a little bit overwhelming, but they always receive it very graciously. And then we're given the opportunity to kind of battle test these things and test environments. And typically they give us the optionality to do like limited deployments of them and basically test them at a pilot capacity ahead of time.

Matt King: And so that for us is like, that really gives us the foothold to say, "Yes, we think this is something that can scale. We think the trust factor is there." We've had an opportunity to bring in our council and legal teams and privacy teams, and they've had a chance to pick apart the solution. So that to us is like, it makes us feel more confident that we may land in a position with Winston where we can actually deploy this thing and actually use it.

Joel Cheesman: The future is in QR codes, Matt. I want you to remember that your next meeting.

[overlapping conversation]

Matt King: QR codes, that is the comeback story of the decade. [laughter]

Joel Cheesman: That's what I'm saying, that's what I'm saying. 

Matt King: Yeah, I'm all about it.

Joel Cheesman: Chad doesn't agree with me. I'm glad you're on my team, Matt.

[overlapping conversation]

Chad Sowash: I totally agree with you. I was always on board with QR codes. Always. Even before COVID.

Joel Cheesman: Can I ask the question I've wanted to ask Matt?

Chad Sowash: No, I do, I do, I do...

[overlapping conversation]

Joel Cheesman: Okay, you go first.

Chad Sowash: Stuffed crust or traditional?

Matt King: New York style.

Chad Sowash: New York style.

Matt King: Yeah.

Joel Cheesman: Ooh. Topping choices?

Matt King: Pepperoni. OG.

Joel Cheesman: Straight pep?

Matt King: Straight pep. Maybe some banana peppers if I'm feeling fancy.

Joel Cheesman: And when is the Noid coming back?

Matt King: Ooh. I mean, I...

Joel Cheesman: Bonus points if you say the new chatbot is named Noid. [laughter] But I won't push you on that.

Matt King: So, I think the Noid—but this is my personal opinion—I think the Noid would be a fantastic candidate-facing representation of our brand. 

[overlapping conversation]

Chad Sowash: Talk about a throwback, right? I mean, just awesome.

Matt King: People love the Noid.

Chad Sowash: Yes.

Matt King: Yeah, the Noid is great. I mean, he... You know, he's... 

Joel Cheesman: Kids love the Noid.

Matt King: His morals are debatable. I don't know if I can support an entity...

Chad Sowash: [laughter] "His morals are debatable." [laughter] Have you seen that on a strip? [laughter]

[overlapping conversation]

Joel Cheesman: And I know you're a fan of this show, Matt. Our morals are debatable as well.

Matt King: That's why I knew I would get this question. [laughter] Look...

[overlapping conversation]

Joel Cheesman: Are you gonna dance around this or really answer "the Noid coming back" question?

Matt King: Oh, well, I mean, I don't...

[overlapping conversation]

Chad Sowash: He wants it back.

Matt King: Truth be told, I don't know. I think it's a fantastic idea. If anyone's listening to this, I mean, you've got your...

Joel Cheesman: You make it happen, Matt. You tell them Chad and Cheese want the Noid back and make it happen.

[overlapping conversation]

Matt King: I'll see what I can do. I mean, we do...

[overlapping conversation]

Chad Sowash: You tell 'em the Pep and Cheese Podcast. Pep and Cheese podcast. [laughter]

Matt King: Would you be satisfied if the Noid is the candidate-facing chatbot in the Winston deployment?

Joel Cheesman: Amen. We will pump that shit up on the show every week, Matt, every week.

[laughter]

[overlapping conversation]

Joel Cheesman: All right, let's leave it there, Matt. Thanks for hanging out with us today. This has been the Chad and Cheese Podcast for Joel Cheesman, Chad Sowash. This has been the Sessions AI Frontline Series. We out.

Chad Sowash: We out!