Westside Children's Therapy

Overview

Westside Children’s Therapy, a pediatric outpatient provider serving children across the Chicago suburbs, needed a more efficient way to screen applications for both high-volume entry-level roles and specialized clinician positions. As hiring demand grew across its clinics, the team turned to Indeed Smart Screening to help recruiters identify stronger-fit candidates faster, reduce manual review time, and improve confidence in who to move forward.

Westside now uses Smart Screening within its Paycom workflow to evaluate applications earlier in the funnel, helping recruiters focus attention on qualified talent while supporting the company’s larger growth goals across care delivery and community expansion.

Background

Westside Children’s Therapy is a pediatric outpatient clinic with 30 locations across the Chicago suburbs. The organization supports patients across a range of disciplines including ABA therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, counseling, and diagnostics.

The company hires for a broad mix of roles, including master-level clinicians who require specific degrees, certifications, and licensure, as well as high-volume entry-level roles such as Registered Behavior Technicians (RBTs). Westside uses Indeed across its hiring needs.

Hiring success is closely tied to Westside’s mission. When critical therapy roles remain open, those they cater for may not be able to begin services, longer waitlist times, and the organization’s ability to expand care into new communities is constrained.

The challenge: Manual screening slowed down a high-volume recruiting team

Before Smart Screening, the application review process was time-consuming, particularly when recruiters had to spend extra time evaluating candidate information. The burden added up quickly. Alejandro Camargo, Lead Talent Acquisition Specialist, estimated that each application review took about 2 to 5 minutes, depending on the role type, and recruiters could review roughly 10 to 25 applications per day while also balancing interviews and other responsibilities.

That manual effort was especially challenging for a five-person recruiting team hiring for roughly 100 to 150 open roles at a time. The pressure was highest for hard-to-fill positions such as physical therapy roles and Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) roles, where hiring delays directly affected patient access and business growth.

The solution: Smart Screening helped Westside prioritize fit earlier

Westside adopted Smart Screening on February 1st as part of its 2026 engagement with Indeed. Smart Screening was integrated with Paycom and configured role-specific requirements and screening questions through Indeed’s dashboard. From there, the team began receiving AI-powered candidate summaries, Smart Fit Score™, and responses that helped them evaluate alignment before the first conversation.

Starting with the score

For Westside, one of the most practical advantages of Smart Screening is the ability to surface useful information earlier in the review process. Instead of relying only on a manual resume scan, recruiters can begin with a summary, fit score, and candidate responses that help clarify whether an applicant aligns with the role before a first conversation takes place.

The score also gives the team a practical way to sort through applications when volume spikes. In Alejandro’s description, low scores can quickly signal an obvious mismatch for roles that require specific licensure or education, allowing recruiters to move on faster and focus attention on stronger-fit applications.

The team first launched Smart Screening on its high-volume RBT role, then expanded use to additional positions as they refined the setup and saw value in the tool’s customization.

For Westside, the ability to tailor scoring criteria by role was especially important. According to Alejandro “It’s a very valuable tool, something that can be customized to your needs.”

The team also iterated after launch, testing which questions were most useful and adjusting criteria over time to improve results.

Customization by role helped the team expand usage

Another theme that came through in the interview was role-specific flexibility. Westside did not adopt Smart Screening as a one-size-fits-all workflow. The team started with its high-volume RBT role and then expanded the tool to other positions as they refined the setup and identified what worked best.

That mattered because the hiring mix at Westside is broad. Some roles are entry level and high volume, while others require specific degrees, certification, or licensure. According to Alejandro, the ability to set individual scoring criteria and application criteria by role was one of the most valuable parts of the product.

Alejandro described an active optimization process after rollout, testing which questions were most useful and tweaking what needed to be adjusted. This made Smart Screening part of an evolving recruiting workflow rather than a static implementation.

"We were able to quickly identify which candidates are top of our list for the skills and experiences that we’re looking for."

Alejandro Camargo, Lead Talent Acquisition Specialist
Westside Children's Therapy

The results: Faster review, better prioritization, and more confidence in candidate quality

Since implementing Smart Screening, recruiters are reviewing applications faster and identifying stronger candidates earlier in the process. Smart Screening changed how the team triages applicants at the top of the funnel by helping recruiters review applications more quickly, identify relevant skills and gather key indicators before ever speaking with a candidate.

Evaluating faster, with more context

With Smart Screening in place, Westside has been able to review applications at a quicker rate and identify the skills and experiences they are looking for earlier in the process. That has made it easier to determine which candidates should be prioritized immediately when there is an influx of applications.

This matters because Westside’s recruiting environment is not low volume. The company has five recruiters supporting roughly 100 to 150 open roles at a time, which means even modest efficiency improvements can create meaningful capacity for the team. In that context, Smart Screening is not just a convenience feature; it helps the team use recruiter time more deliberately and spend less effort on applicants who are clearly not a match.

That earlier visibility helps recruiters focus on the candidates most likely to succeed. “It allowed us to identify high quality candidates that we should reach out to immediately when we have an influx of applications.” Alejandro also pointed to stronger candidate quality in interviews as one of the clearest signs the product is working. “We are seeing higher quality candidates as a result of utilizing this tool.”

Faster identification supports more confident prioritization

A recurring theme in the conversation was confidence. Smart Screening did not just help Westside move faster; it helped recruiters feel more confident in how they prioritized candidates. Because recruiters can see skills, experience indicators, and responses before the first call, they can enter the next step with better visibility into candidate fit.

In practice, that means less time spent digging into obvious mismatches and more time spent engaging candidates who appear better aligned from the start. The quality impact also shows up later in the funnel. One of the biggest operational gains has been time saved during application review. For Westside, that time savings has been especially useful in high-volume hiring environments, where recruiters can use Smart Screening to assess application alignment more efficiently and quickly identify applicants who do not meet the required skills, education, or licensure requirements. According to Alejandro:

“The time saved by our recruiting team has been very impactful. When candidates don’t meet the required skills or education, I can quickly see that from the summary and application score and move on to the next application.”

Westside has also seen directional efficiency gains since implementing Smart Screening. Alejandro estimates that the tool cut screening time roughly in half and improved application-to-interview efficiency by about 25%. While these figures are directional rather than based on formal reporting, they reinforce the broader impact described throughout Westside’s experience: faster review, earlier prioritization, and more efficient use of recruiter time.

Beyond day-to-day efficiency, Alejandro tied these improvements to broader business outcomes. Faster and better candidate identification helps Westside support internal growth, serve more families, and expand into new locations and communities.

Supporting growth without adding more friction

The operational value of Smart Screening is closely tied to Westside’s broader business goals. The company is growing, hiring across multiple disciplines, and working to increase the number of families it can serve across its clinics and communities.

That makes hiring speed and quality more than internal recruiting metrics. When hard-to-fill roles stay open, it can limit capacity, slow growth, and make it harder for the organization to meet demand. In that context, better early screening supports not only recruiter efficiency, but also broader operational and growth goals.

The workflow fit also mattered. Westside implemented Smart Screening through Paycom, allowing the team to bring scoring, questions, and candidate summaries into an existing recruiting process rather than forcing a wholly separate motion.