From 1,097 Applicants to 171 Placements: Scaling Talent for the U.S. Open

How HSS Combined AI-Powered Recruiting, Human Expertise and Onsite Execution to Rapidly Build a Qualified Workforce for One of the World’s Premier Sporting Events.

The Challenge: Scale Quickly. Deliver Immediately.

The U.S. Open transforms the 47-acre USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center into one of the world’s most demanding live-event environments, welcoming more than one million fans over three weeks.

KBS already provided year-round facility support at the venue, bringing established site knowledge and an existing client relationship. But the U.S. Open dramatically changed the demands of the operation.

Following service challenges with the previous event cleaning provider, the client needed a solution capable of rapidly scaling its workforce while maintaining service across hospitality spaces, restrooms, grounds and other high-traffic areas. The event required coverage across three shifts, all while working around active tournament operations.

KBS turned to Hospitality Staffing Solutions (HSS), a KBS company, to bring specialized high-volume recruiting and event staffing expertise to the operation. US Open Case.

The challenge wasn’t simply finding enough people.

HSS needed to find the right people—and do it quickly.

The Recruiting Strategy: Building a High-Volume Talent Pipeline

HSS launched a multi-channel recruiting strategy designed to reach candidates throughout the New York market.

Recruiting efforts included Indeed, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, employee referrals, job fairs and Talroo, ultimately generating:

1,097 U.S. Open Applicants

Generating applicant volume was only the beginning.

HSS needed a way to quickly engage more than a thousand prospective associates, evaluate their qualifications against the needs of the event and identify the candidates most likely to succeed onsite.

That’s where HSS’s technology-enabled recruiting process went to work.

AI-Powered Recruiting, Available 24/7

Every applicant enters HSS’s 24/7 AI-powered recruiting workflow, allowing the screening process to begin almost immediately after an application is submitted.

Applicants receive a text message inviting them to complete a voice-based prescreening call. During that conversation, the AI recruiting system asks a series of qualifying questions tailored to the position, including factors such as:

Work authorization | Certifications | Relevant experience | Job-specific qualifications

The system then evaluates the candidate’s strengths and potential gaps against the requirements of the position and assigns a qualification score from 1 to 5.

Candidates scoring 3 or higher qualify to advance to an in-person interview.

Available HSS office interview times are integrated directly into the system, allowing qualified candidates to schedule their next step immediately. Because the technology operates 24/7, applicants can begin moving through the recruiting funnel without waiting for traditional business hours.

Technology + Human Expertise 

HSS’s recruiting technology isn’t designed to replace recruiters. It’s designed to make them more effective.

Applicants who don’t complete the initial AI prescreening are moved into HSS’s human-run call center, where the recruiting team uses proprietary technology to continue outreach and bring prospective candidates back into the screening process.

Candidates who successfully advance then meet with an HSS recruiter for an in-person interview.

During those interviews, recruiters use validation questions to go beyond what’s listed on a résumé. They confirm the candidate has real, hands-on experience and evaluate a candidate’s familiarity with job-specific tasks.

That human validation helps ensure candidates don’t advance simply because they check a box saying they have experience.

The result is a recruiting process that combines the speed and scalability of AI with the experience and judgment of human recruiters.

1,097 Applicants → 267 Interviews → 171 Placements

For the U.S. Open, HSS’s recruiting process transformed a pool of more than a thousand applicants into a targeted event workforce.

1,097

Applicants generated

267

Candidates advanced to interviews

171

Associates placed

HSS’s technology-assisted prescreening narrowed the original applicant pool by approximately 76% before the interview stage, allowing recruiters to concentrate their time on candidates whose qualifications were more closely aligned with the positions.

Of the 267 candidates selected for interviews, 171 were ultimately placed—approximately 64%. 

Instead of treating high-volume recruiting as a numbers game, HSS used technology and human expertise together to identify and advance candidates whose experience, qualifications and availability aligned with the demands of the event.

Turning Recruitment into Event Execution

Recruiting 171 associates was only part of the challenge.

Those associates had to become a functioning workforce inside a massive, fast-moving live-event environment.

HSS worked alongside KBS leadership as part of an integrated operation coordinating staffing, coverage and service delivery throughout the tournament. The broader operation mobilized approximately 200 employees across multiple shifts.

Teams supported critical areas throughout the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, including:

VIP & Hospitality spaces | Stadium Restrooms | Portable Facilities | Grounds Sweeping | Spill Response | Sitewide Trash Removal

This required close coordination between recruiting and onsite operations to help ensure the workforce HSS recruited could be deployed where and when it was needed.

Recruiting built the workforce. Operations turned it into execution.

Performance That Earned More Responsibility 

The strongest evidence of the program’s success came before the U.S. Open was even over.

After seeing the team’s initial performance, facility leadership expanded the scope of work during the tournament, asking the team to take on additional VIP suite cleaning.

The results included:

Exceeded client expectations during one of the year’s most demanding, high-profile events.

Earned additional scope during the tournament based on the team’s performance.

Received direct recognition for onsite leadership, communication and execution.

Opened discussions to support 90 hospitality suites in 2027.

Demonstrated a repeatable KBS + HSS model for sports and event environments.

One Organization. Two Specialized Capabilities.

The U.S. Open demonstrates the advantage of bringing together KBS’s facility-services expertise and HSS’s specialized recruiting and staffing capabilities.

KBS brought established site knowledge, operational leadership and the existing client relationship.

HSS brought the recruiting engine required to rapidly build a large temporary workforce—including multi-channel candidate sourcing, 24/7 AI-powered engagement, intelligent prescreening, human call-center support and recruiter validation.

Together, those capabilities created an integrated solution capable of responding when workforce demand changed dramatically.

For stadiums, arenas and major-event venues, that model offers something beyond access to temporary labor.

It provides a repeatable workforce strategy built to scale.

1,097 Applicants.

267 Interviews.

171 Placements.

One Workforce Built for the U.S Open. 

Ready for What’s Next?

From major sporting events to stadiums, arenas and entertainment venues, HSS combines technology-enabled recruiting, experienced people and onsite operational expertise to rapidly build qualified workforces when demand surges.

Whether the need is 20 associates or hundreds, HSS has the recruiting infrastructure and human expertise to help turn workforce demand into execution.