DFDS Professionals is a Gothenburg-based staffing and recruitment service from DFDS, the freight ferry and logistics group. It helps logistics and industrial companies find qualified staff on a temporary, contract, or permanent basis. Most roles are blue-collar, such as truck drivers, port terminal staff, and warehouse workers, alongside white-collar roles in administration, customer service, and planning. The team uses Teamtailor as its ATS.
The challenge: big ambitions, a small team
DFDS started out with around 40 consultants and an internal team of four people. The business was built to grow fast, under leadership that adopts new technology early to make the team more efficient. But screening over 20,000 applicants a year by hand, through CV reviews, phone screens, and chasing candidates, would have consumed the team’s time long before it could scale.
“In the beginning we were three or four people. We didn’t have the time or resources to do all the interviewing ourselves, and we understood that a tool like Hubert would be very time efficient.”
Pierre Morténius, Business Process Manager, DFDS
Customer demand adds pressure. Some customers need a person in place within a week; others can afford to wait longer for the right fit. The team needed a process that could move at whatever pace each customer required, with its biggest focus on the quality of hire.
The solution: structured interviews before the phone call
Every applicant completes a structured, competency-based Hubert interview, with results delivered directly into Teamtailor. Recruiters review the answers before they pick up the phone, so the phone interview can go straight to what matters.
“I check Hubert before I call candidates for a phone interview: what they’ve answered, what experience they have. It means I can have a deeper interview on the phone.”
Sarah Jönsson, Recruitment and Staff Coordinator, DFDS
Hubert also gives the team signals a CV can’t. HubertDetect flags answers that appear to be AI-generated, and the team actively reviews these. The effort a candidate puts into their answers is also a useful signal of motivation. For white-collar roles, Hubert interviews go deeper, and are also followed by an Assessio assessment. Candidates can reuse their Hubert interview for similar positions, which helps the team quickly re-engage strong past applicants when a customer has an urgent need.
Skills over CVs
For roles like truck driving, the team has found that a CV often says very little about how good someone is at the job.
“Some of our best truck drivers would never have stood out from their CV. But they’re excellent drivers, and we are very happy with them.”
Sarah Jönsson, Recruitment and Staff Coordinator, DFDS
Candidates agree;
“I thought the questions were relevant and gave me a good chance to show my skills.”
Candidate, DFDS (rated 10/10)
The team is now exploring whether to drop CVs entirely for some roles and capture all the information they need through the Hubert interview instead.
The impact: better candidates, not just faster ones
For DFDS, speed alone isn’t the measure of success. What matters most is quality: finding people who are the right fit and who stay in the role, delivered at whatever pace each job requisition demands. When DFDS evaluated the process, it delivered on both.
• More interviews end in a hire. The share of interviewed candidates who were hired rose from 33% to 41%, a sign that shortlists are better matched to what customers need. The team credits this to using Hubert more, and more deeply, over time.
• Customers notice the quality. For white-collar roles in particular, customers regularly come back impressed with the candidates the team puts forward.
“Our customers are very satisfied. They say, ‘Wow, you found such a good candidate, how did you do it?’”
Sarah Jönsson, Recruitment and Staff Coordinator, DFDS
• Candidates feel seen. Candidates give the experience a median rating of 10/10.
“You feel more seen, like something is actually happening with your application.”
Candidate, DFDS
• Speed when a customer needs it. When the pace matters, the process can deliver: time-to-hire fell from around 33 days to around 6 days.
• Time back for the conversations that matter. Recruiters freed up an estimated 3,475 hours a year by cutting CV screening and phone screening time, and making face-to-face interviews more focused.
Why it works: the human decision stays human
DFDS is clear that Hubert doesn’t replace the recruiter’s judgment. It gives every candidate the same questions and the same chance, and gives recruiters a consistent, explainable starting point. The final call still comes from talking to the person.
“It’s like dating. You can’t fully know a person when you’re texting; you need to talk to them. Hubert gives us the foundation, and then we get to know the candidate.”
Sarah Jönsson, Recruitment and Staff Coordinator, DFDS
What’s next
As the team keeps growing, DFDS is focused on aligning how recruiters use Hubert and Teamtailor, refining the Hubert interview so it complements the phone interview rather than repeating it, and extending structured assessment further into blue-collar hiring.
“Hubert’s totally worth it. It’s time efficient and effective. You’ll always have your gut feeling, but you’ll have a better basis, and you look at a lot of candidates in a fairer way, because everyone gets the same questions.”
Pierre Morténius, Business Process Manager, DFDS
