How Foundever Transformed Global High-Volume Hiring with Maki’s AI-Powered Skill Assessments
Introduction: Rethinking Hiring at Scale
In an era defined by speed, globalization, and talent shortages, few challenges are more complex than high-volume hiring. For Foundever, a customer experience (CX) leader operating across 45+ countries and handling 9 million daily customer interactions, the task of attracting and assessing thousands of candidates each week had become unsustainable.
Traditional methods were slow, inconsistent, and overly manual, limiting recruiters’ ability to deliver a modern, fair, and engaging candidate experience. To solve this, Foundever partnered with Maki People in early 2024 to implement AI-powered, skills-based assessments that would redefine efficiency and quality across its global talent acquisition (TA) function .
The Challenge: Complexity at Global Scale
With 170,000 employees, operations in 60+ languages, and 750+ client brands, Foundever’s TA organization faced an immense logistical puzzle.
Recruiters processed millions of applications per month—often hiring up to 2,000 customer service representatives in a single weekend. Yet outdated systems and rigid workflows made it difficult to maintain fairness and consistency across regions.
As Irena Flego Maric, Global Talent Acquisition Leader at Foundever, explained:
“Hiring at scale in some of our markets is not just a logistical challenge—it’s a strategic one.”
To overcome this, Foundever needed a new model focused on skills over CVs, and experience over administration .
The Solution: Tailored Skill Assessments Powered by Maki AI
Following a global RFP involving leaders from the Philippines, Colombia, and India, Foundever selected Maki People for its ability to deliver localized, customizable assessments and integrate seamlessly into existing HR ecosystems.
Maki enabled Foundever to:
- Build role- and region-specific assessments that accurately reflect client and market requirements
- Integrate evaluations from multiple vendors into a unified experience
- Use AI-powered translation and contextualization to deliver localized, engaging assessments
This created a fully personalized recruiting journey, designed not just to evaluate skills, but to immerse candidates in real-world scenarios .
A New Way to Assess: Realistic Situational Judgment Tests
The collaboration led to the creation of interactive Situational Judgment Tests (SJTs)—AI-powered assessments that simulate live customer interactions.
In these short, 30-minute experiences, candidates converse with a region-specific avatar that mirrors a real customer, evaluating social intelligence, empathy, and problem-solving under pressure.
“Instead of reading a PDF and taking a test, candidates are responding to customers in real time,” said Flego Maric.
This innovation brought the hiring process to life—measuring not just what candidates know, but how they think, act, and communicate in real-world settings .
The Technology: AI Recommendations for Recruiters and Candidates
Each candidate’s performance data—from typing speed to language fluency and cognitive reasoning—is analyzed by Maki’s recommendation engine, which automatically generates a hiring recommendation for Foundever’s recruiters.
The insights are then:
- Synced directly to the applicant tracking system (ATS)
- Displayed visually via dashboards with detailed skill breakdowns
- Shared transparently with candidates, giving them feedback and insight into their performance
“It’s useful for candidates to get acquainted with our roles… maybe they’ll realize this is not for them—or they’ll feel even more motivated,” said Flego Maric .
This transparency not only improved candidate satisfaction but also reduced mismatches and early turnove
The Results: Efficiency, Quality, and Candidate Delight
The impact of Maki’s assessments was immediate and measurable.
- 200,000+ applicants assessed within six months
- 7% improvement in quality of hire in the Asia-Pacific region
- 100% on-time fill rate in key markets
- 95% of candidates rated the process positively
- 99% reported a better perception of Foundever as an employer
By shifting to skills-based hiring, Foundever reduced turnover, improved productivity, and elevated its employer brand globally .
Looking Ahead: Automating the Future of Talent Acquisition
Building on this success, Foundever’s TA team is now exploring end-to-end automation. Next steps include:
- Automating pre-screening conversations using Maki’s conversational AI
- Streamlining interview scheduling for faster turnaround
- Reducing recruiter admin time, freeing them to act as strategic talent advisors
“Recruiters will focus on helping candidates find their best role—doing what AI cannot,” said Flego Maric .
This vision embodies a new paradigm in HR: technology handles the process, humans elevate the experience.
Lessons for TA Leaders
Foundever’s journey highlights key takeaways for organizations pursuing skills-based hiring transformation:
- Assess for what matters most. Identify the competencies that truly drive success for each role and region.
- Simulate reality. Interactive SJTs reveal qualities no CV or multiple-choice test can.
- Design for fairness. Localization, translation, and realism build candidate trust.
- Adopt AI progressively. Start internally, learn, and expand responsibly.
- Automate intelligently. Use AI to reduce repetitive work—not human connection .
Conclusion: The Future of High-Volume Hiring Is Here
The partnership between Foundever and Maki People proves that AI-powered skill assessments can transform high-volume recruitment into a science of fairness, efficiency, and experience.
By focusing on skills over CVs, local context over generic tests, and human connection over automation for its own sake, Foundever has set a new benchmark for global hiring excellence.
In a market where speed and empathy rarely coexist, Foundever—and Maki—show that with the right technology, they can.
Source
Based on “Foundever Uses AI-Powered Skill Assessments in High-Volume Hiring” by The Josh Bersin Company, 2025