How to achieve a 76% hiring success rate in a business built on human interaction
With Skillvue, Europ Assistance transformed pre-screening from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage and is now extending the model to internal skills mapping.
Europ Assistance
Financial Services
Generali
~€1.5B
4,300
Hiring
In a business built on human interaction, the quality of who you hire translates directly into the quality of the service.
Europ Assistance, part of the Generali Group, is one of the world's leading providers of assistance and travel insurance services. Its growth is constant: operations are expanding into new markets and converging with Generali Care into an integrated hub worth €5.3 billion.
In Italy, it operates with a business model built on the quality of human interaction: 24/7 assistance, claims management, multilingual customer care. Hiring and developing the right people is a critical lever for the business to function and grow, especially given the instability of the insurance labour market — characterised by rising turnover rates and a salary gap with fintech and consulting that makes attracting top talent harder. In this context, every wrong hire costs more and every right person who stays is worth even more.
Thousands of applications, two seasonal peaks, 3 people in the recruiting team.
Europ Assistance Italia's hires are concentrated in two seasonal peaks per year, generating volumes in the order of thousands of applications in just a few months. For assistance and customer care roles, soft skills are the top predictor of success — problem solving, customer orientation, stress management — but are completely invisible in a CV.
Need to manage seasonal peaks
Hiring concentrates in two seasonal peaks per year, generating thousands of applications in just a few months that need to be managed by the same 3 people the HR team employs all year round.
No visibility on growth potential
The old process only evaluated immediate fit. Europ Assistance was looking for more: identifying from the first step the soft skills predictive of future growth, to give line managers visibility on how a person could develop over time.
The decisive soft skills are invisible in the CV
Problem solving, customer orientation and stress management are the top predictor of success in assistance roles — but completely invisible in a CV.
HR time was trapped in screening
Recruiters spent most of their hours on introductory calls and manual filtering. Yet half the candidates who passed the first filter lacked the necessary skills.
What needed to change
Scale pre-screening without scaling the team: manage thousands of applications with 3 FTE, freeing recruiters from screening to focus on interviews and potential evaluation
Make soft skills visible from the first step: objective data on cross-functional skills and English language needed to be available before any human intervention in the process
Build a fair and defensible process: AI as support to the recruiter, not a substitute — human-in-the-loop at every stage, bias reduction
Select for potential, not just fit: identify candidates with skills that make them employable for internal growth and future roles
AI Assessment with Skillvue
Skillvue was integrated into Europ Assistance Italia's hiring process as the first structured step of the funnel, managing pre-screening across multiple profiles and geographic locations. Deployment is recurring, tied primarily to the two annual seasonal peaks.
Assessment is done independently as the first step
After applying, every candidate completes the assessment from any device, phone or laptop.
Structured report for the recruiter
The HR team receives an objective, in-depth skills analysis. The first interview is based on data, not impressions.
Human-in-the-loop at every stage
The team maintains full decision-making control; Skillvue data informs, it does not decide in place of the recruiter.
Key Metrics & Impact
The measurable outcomes Europ Assistance achieved through Skillvue across its hiring processes.
Visibility on potential from the first step
For the first time, HR and line managers have structured soft skill data on every candidate before the interview. Not just "hire/don't hire", but information on how a person can grow over time.
Recruiters freed for high-value work
The time recovered is invested in in-depth interviews, potential analysis and collaboration with line managers — activities that directly impact hiring quality and retention.
Positive candidate experience across all age groups
Score of 4.5/5 on experience, usability and communication. A significant result given a candidate pool spanning ages 18 to 64 with very different levels of digital familiarity.
From hiring tool to talent intelligence partner
When the recruiting results proved that Skillvue could scale quality and speed simultaneously, the next steps in the talent lifecycle were immediately put on the table. In 2026, Europ Assistance is extending Skillvue to internal skills mapping.
Mapping against the "We IMPACT" leadership model — 5 leadership skills assessed across 3 seniority levels (Line Manager, Manager of Managers, Senior Leader).
Personalised assessments on the Europ Assistance model — calibrated to the specific skills framework, with psychometrically validated behavioural indicators
From hiring to succession planning — skills data feeds individual development paths, career planning and succession readiness