How Udacity scaled global hiring without adding recruiters

Udacity, a pioneer in online education, is building "University by Silicon Valley" - a new kind of online university that teaches the actual programming skills employers need today.

Designed with industry partners, Udacity's programs deliver employer-endorsed credentials at a fraction of the cost and time of traditional education.

With teams across six countries - the US, UK, Germany, India, UAE, and Egypt - Udacity's Talent Acquisition team plays a crucial role in sustaining this mission by hiring world-class instructors, engineers, and operational talent to power its learning platform.

Udacity's small but mighty Talent Acquisition team was faced with an impossible challenge: high application volume, complex screening logic, and limited bandwidth.

• Overwhelming volume: Some roles received 700+ applications in a single day, overwhelming recruiters and delaying shortlists for hiring managers.
• Manual screening bottlenecks: Recruiters struggled to keep up with resume reviews and scorecard logic - often having to choose between speed and quality.
• Global hiring complexity: Operating across six countries meant diverse hiring requirements and candidate expectations, further compounding delays.
• Candidate experience concerns: Long waiting times left candidates in limbo, hurting engagement and employer brand.

Udacity wanted to keep its talent team lean and highly productive - scaling capacity through smarter automation rather than additional headcount.

Udacity implemented Ryan, Screened's AI recruiter, to automate resume screening across all geographies.

• Automated precision: Ryan evaluated thousands of resumes daily, applying consistent criteria across markets and surfacing the most relevant candidates within minutes.
• Smarter scorecarding: Ryan applied a structured, criteria-based approach that hiring teams could fully customize per role - yet stay consistent. This eliminated guesswork and bias, ensuring every candidate was evaluated on clear, job-relevant standards rather than intuition.
• Full Greenhouse integration: Recruiters could review AI-screened results, fit scores, and tags directly in their ATS - no system switching required.
• Candidate-first automation: Ryan ensured timely candidate updates and reduced idle application time, improving engagement and transparency.

Ryan effectively became an extra recruiter on the team - available 24/7, consistent, and scalable.

• Massive capacity gain: Udacity processed thousands of applications per week without adding headcount.
• Faster turnaround: Hiring managers received qualified shortlists in hours instead of days.
• System efficiency: Greenhouse integration reduced manual work by over 60%, freeing recruiters to focus on strategic hiring and stakeholder management.