Global Engineering Consultancy Scales Hiring Volume by 40% and Boosts Applications by 46% with ICIMS AI Talent Explorer and Automation

KEO International Consultants modernized recruiting operations to handle rapid growth, hiring nearly 1,000 people in one year without expanding its talent acquisition team

HOLMDEL, N.J. [April 29, 2026] — ICIMS is enabling KEO International Consultants to do what most talent acquisition (TA) teams would consider impossible: absorb a 40% year-over-year surge in hiring volume, increase applications by 46% and hire nearly 1,000 people in a single year, all without expanding its TA team. To meet the demands of a rapidly expanding global project portfolio, KEO partnered with the leading enterprise talent acquisition platform to deploy ICIMS ATS, ICIMS Career Sites, ICIMS Offer Management, ICIMS Onboarding and ICIMS AI Talent Explorer, transforming a manually intensive recruiting operation into an AI-powered, data-driven hiring engine.

“Hiring close to 1,000 people a year, across 13 countries, with the same team, is only possible because we have the right technology behind us. ICIMS makes that possible,” said Niall Hughes, director of talent acquisition, KEO International Consultants.

KEO International Consultants is a globally recognized civil engineering and architecture consultancy with more than 2,500 professionals across 15 offices in 13 countries spanning Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Because the nature of KEO’s work is project-based and the majority of its regional workforce comprises expatriates, high-volume, high-velocity recruiting is a permanent operational reality.

When hiring volume surged, KEO faced a clear mandate: absorb the growth, maintain hiring velocity and do not add headcount to the TA team. A broader look at the recruiting operation made the challenge even clearer. The career site was not converting traffic into applicants, contracts were being issued manually over email, recruiters were spending more time shortlisting than engaging candidates and senior stakeholders had little visibility into pipeline health or recruiter performance.

Rather than scaling their TA headcount, KEO worked closely with ICIMS to map the highest friction points across the recruiting lifecycle and built a model where automation handled the repetitive work. With ICIMS, KEO rebuilt its career site to align with the company brand, leveraged ICIMS’ responsible AI to surface and shortlist matching candidates in a fraction of the time, moved contract issuance fully digital through a DocuSign integration and developed a structured reporting dashboard to give senior stakeholders visibility into hiring progress and recruiter performance.

“Utilizing ICIMS AI Talent Explorer, we were able to manage this huge increase in our workload, with the same size TA team, and it has given us the ability to identify suitable Tier 1 candidates in a much more timely manner,” Hughes continued.

In one year, KEO’s modernized talent acquisition operation delivered measurable results:

• 40% increase in hiring volume managed with the same TA team
• 46% increase in applications after career site redesign
• ~1,000 people hired in a single year
• 100% of contracts issued digitally via ICIMS and DocuSign

“KEO’s ability to scale hiring at this pace speaks to what is possible when teams are equipped with the right technology,” said Nikki Grigsby, chief customer officer, ICIMS. “By deploying AI and automation across the recruiting lifecycle with intention, their team can take on more, move faster and focus on the specialized talent that drives their projects forward.”

Explore KEO International Consultants’ full story and discover how ICIMS can power exceptional hiring for your organization by requesting a demo.