Proves Applied AI Can Scale High-Volume Hiring and Personal Connection

Phenom, an applied AI company that helps organizations hire faster, develop better and retain longer, announced Rally House earned the Brandon Hall Group™ Gold Award for Excellence in the ‘Best Use of AI for Talent Acquisition’ category. The recognition celebrates Rally House’s innovative hiring transformation using Phenom’s applied AI and automation to accelerate recruitment, reduce costs and enhance candidate experience during a period of rapid expansion.

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Phenom announced Rally House earned the Brandon Hall Group™ Gold Award for Excellence in the ‘Best Use of AI for Talent Acquisition’ category. The recognition celebrates Rally House’s innovative hiring transformation using Phenom’s applied AI and automation to accelerate recruitment, reduce costs and enhance candidate experience during a period of rapid expansion.

As Rally House expanded from 140 to nearly 300 stores, the company faced a critical yet common retail challenge: scaling recruitment without proportionally increasing staff. In response, they worked with Phenom to roll out solutions that would make the biggest impact for their industry-specific needs. Their solutions included mobile-first QR code applications placed throughout stores, AI-powered chatbot screening, predictive hiring campaigns and automated interview scheduling — all designed to remove friction while preserving transparency and fairness.

Rally House took this a step further by using real-time data and predictive insights — including sports betting odds during playoff seasons — to launch geo-targeted hiring campaigns before demand surged, enabling them to staff new locations even before construction was complete. Most importantly, the solution maintained a human-in-the-loop approach that empowered store managers and scaled recruiting operations efficiently, ensuring AI enhanced rather than replaced the personal touch that defines Rally House’s culture.

Key results that earned Rally House the Brandon Hall Group recognition include:

• 5,800+ interviews automatically scheduled in just three months, dramatically reducing time-to-interview from days to hours
• 10,000 hours saved through automation (equivalent to five full-time recruiters) freeing store managers to focus on operations and customer service
• 7,992 employees successfully hired in 2024 through automated workflows, proving that AI-driven processes deliver real outcomes at scale
• 122% cost savings achieved through reduced dependence on paid job advertisements and more efficient sourcing strategies

“The time saved, the candidate quality that we’re surfacing to the top and our ability to differentiate from our competitors — that’s something Phenom’s applied AI has helped us do. It’s helped us add a personal touch at scale, which is absolutely essential in high-growth retail environments like ours,” said Bryan Brazil, Talent Acquisition Manager at Rally House.

“This year’s Excellence Award winners exemplify the transformative power of strategic human capital management. Through their innovative approaches to talent development and employee engagement, these organizations have not only achieved remarkable business outcomes but have also redefined what it means to create truly people-centric workplaces. Our comprehensive evaluation process has identified these programs as benchmarks for organizational excellence and innovation,” said Brandon Hall Group Chief Operating Officer Rachel Cooke, HCM Excellence Awards® program leader.

To learn more about Rally House’s award-winning use of AI in HR, visit here.

To get a behind-the-scenes look at Phenom’s proprietary AI and automation built for specific use cases, watch AI Day on demand at ai.phenom.com.

About Rally House

Rally House and Sampler Stores Inc. is a family-owned specialty boutique that offers a large selection of apparel, hats, gifts and home décor representing local NCAA, NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and MLS teams in addition to locally inspired apparel, gifts and food. Proudly based in Lenexa, Kansas, Rally House operates 275+ locations across 22 states.

About Phenom

Phenom is an applied AI company that helps organizations hire faster, develop better and retain longer. By uniquely combining proprietary industry-specific AI, agentic AI, automation and personalized experiences, its Intelligent Talent Experience platform helps companies fundamentally reshape their HR processes and strategies for scalable and sustainable transformation. Driven by a purpose to help a billion people find the right work, Phenom takes a holistic approach that unifies the entire talent journey, augmenting human capabilities and creating a symbiotic relationship between technology and talent.

Phenom has earned accolades including: Inc. 5000’s fastest-growing companies (6 consecutive years), Deloitte Technology's Fast 500 (4 consecutive years), 11 Brandon Hall ‘Excellence in Technology’ awards including Gold for ‘Best Advance in Generative AI for Business Impact,’ Business Intelligence Group’s Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards (3 consecutive years), The Cloud Awards 2025/2024, The A.I. Awards 2024, and a regional Timmy Award for launching and optimizing HelpOneBillion.com (2020).

Headquartered in Greater Philadelphia, Phenom also has offices in India, Israel, the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom.

For more information, please visit www.phenom.com. Connect with Phenom on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

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“The time saved, the candidate quality that we’re surfacing to the top and our ability to differentiate from our competitors — that’s something Phenom’s applied AI has helped us do,” said Bryan Brazil, Talent Acquisition Manager at Rally House.