How Côte cut cost per hire by 71%

The challenge

Côte Brasserie runs more than 70 restaurants across the UK and hires for front and back of house all year round. In 2024 the business was preparing to launch a refreshed consumer website and wanted the careers experience to match it: accessible, modern and recognisably Côte.

The hiring was not in that shape. The talent team relied on credit-based job boards with no performance model behind them and little visibility of return, so budget went on roles and regions that did not need it. Requisitions were created in Talos360, the ATS, and then distributed to job boards by hand, a task that took time and added nothing. Reporting was compiled by hand too, from disconnected systems, at a cost of more than 20 hours a month, and still gave no view across the funnel. The careers site offered generic landing pages and one application route for every role, with no built-in support for disabled or neurodiverse applicants. And because performance data lived in silos, a question as basic as what it cost to fill a front-of-house role in London had no ready answer, so decisions ran on instinct.

What we built

inploi rebuilt the careers site as a fully branded, accessible site aligned with the refreshed consumer brand, with conversational apply shaped by role so that candidates see a role’s requirements up front and the ones who meet them complete the application. Talos360 stayed the system of record: ATS sync keeps live requisitions on the careers site and returns every completed application to Talos360.

Recruitment marketing moved from credit-based job boards to job distribution by segment (front of house, London, sous chef and so on), paid on completed applications rather than on postings. Jobs are promoted to the audiences that need them without anyone touching a job board.

Analytics and attribution brought campaign performance, site analytics and Talos360 data into one view, so the team can see return by source and conversion by stage, and answer the cost-to-fill question for any role in any city.

What happened

After a year, cost per application was down 70% and cost per hire down 71%. Côte cut its monthly recruitment marketing budget by 78% and maintained hiring volumes on it. The reporting burden, once 20 or more hours a month, went the same way as the manual distribution: the talent team now makes decisions from live data across 70 or more locations rather than from spreadsheets. All of this arrived alongside a new, inclusive candidate experience that reflects the refreshed Côte brand, launched in step with the consumer site.

In their words

Helen Kinrade, Head of Talent at Côte, on where the work started and where it landed:

When I joined Côte Brasserie, it was clear we needed to modernise our recruitment strategy: improve the candidate experience, reduce our spend, and gain real visibility into what was working.

The build was fast, collaborative, and genuinely enjoyable. We now have a careers site that reflects our brand, data we can trust, and a more efficient hiring process across the board.