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The Frontlines Live from Atlanta
9 Plays12 days ago
The Frontlines Podcast is live from Atlanta with Madeline and Tim talking to hiring leaders from Valvoline Inc., Carter's, and Lowe's!
Sarah White, Head of TA for Valvoline, Jason Smith, Director of TA for Carter's, and Dave Sansavera, Sr. Director of Field TA for Lowe's, share their insights around what's working in hiring frontline talent in today's challenging environment.
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Transcript
Introduction of Guests
00:00:00
Speaker
All right. right, everybody. Welcome to the front lines. We're going to bring up our guest and start off right away. We have Sarah from Valvoline. And to have you guys interd introduce yourselves as we get going. Jason and Dave.
00:00:14
Speaker
Introduce yourself. We'll start with you, Sarah. Introduce yourself. What's your role? How many hires? And we'll go from there. Awesome.
Valvoline's Staffing Strategies
00:00:22
Speaker
Hey, good morning. Sarah Wright from Valvoline Inc. So think if you've ever passed a Valvoline instant oil change, my team staffs those stores in the US s and Canada. 20 years in TA, we hire about 11,000 frontline workers every year and proud partner of Workday and Paradox. um I can describe the last two years as transformation. So excited to chat with you all today and hopefully, if I can, be a resource.
00:00:50
Speaker
Awesome. Jason.
Carter's Talent Acquisition Overview
00:00:51
Speaker
yeah Jason Smith from Carter's, based here in Atlanta obviously, have been in talent acquisition for roughly 13 years at Carter's for a little over four. At Carter's obviously we have roughly 1,000 stores across US, Canada, Mexico. We also have three main distribution centers that we support as well and then our corporate offices also. So for Q1 this year we hired roughly 2,800 employees. and 2,500 of those were in front line positions either in our distribution centers or retail stores. Steve Winickman- Amazing. Jennifer Winickman- you don't know this, Jason knows this already, but one of the very first stores I ever went into as a child, my first memory was a Carter's. Steve Winickman- Winickman- And that was a long time ago. How long has Carter's been around? So this is our 161st year in business. So we've been around since 1865.
00:01:39
Speaker
As I joked with you earlier, I don't think you were one of the first customers. not the year i don't not think i don't think Carter's does this anymore. But I remember i came from a divorced family and my parents got divorced when I was like four. And my dad like had to go buy his clothes. And i remember him taking my sisters. And they would, Carter's had this thing where they could, match like the dads that were dumb, didn't know anything could match. Like here's a green top like label and a green short top. And then those things like actually worked and went together. And that's how they got mended by like child's clothes, you know. Yeah. That's smart. Yeah. That's how I still dress myself today.
Lowe's Hiring Scale Insights
00:02:12
Speaker
So Dave Sansevierro-Lowes, lead the field talent acquisition team. Been with the company a little more than 17 years, two and a half years in TA. um Since February, I'll but just put it this way, how many do we hire? Since February, we've already hired about 75,000 associates in the stores.
00:02:27
Speaker
My team owns all of our store supply chain in our call centers, so about 270,000 of the associates. Amazing. Dave, I'm going to get this wrong, but I think I remember right before COVID, you were hiring around 80,000 a year, and that changed dramatically, right? It's well over 300. Kroger, So before COVID, our peak season, we would hire 50 or 60,000 during peak, right? And then you would move on. And yes, that has absolutely changed. Dave Kroger, Yeah. Dave Kroger, Can everybody take seat?
00:02:57
Speaker
So I'm not like being rude and looking at my phone. Usually when we do a podcast, where I have screens. and And so I have all my notes and show notes and stuff like this. and then you know So now I have to have a phone. So it's like I do no notes. I just wing it. That's what going to You don't wing it. She she memorized everything. so you're going to start them off with a question. am. And we'll you go By the way, like our podcast is conversational. We hope to have it that way. And you know so again, we have some great guests that know a lot of stuff. So we'll we'll go back and forth.
00:03:24
Speaker
Absolutely. So we talked about change and transformation and many of you are going through
Impact of COVID-19 on Hiring Processes
00:03:30
Speaker
that. You have all been through tremendous amount of change over the past few years. But I'd love to hear the one story that really made you realize we have to change this up. We cannot go backwards. This is the deal breaker. We've crossed the Rubicon.
00:03:47
Speaker
Sarah, what was it for you? yeah I think and I'm not meaning to steal your answer from earlier, but i think COVID, right? When COVID hit and we all realized, oh my goodness, the in-store interviewing had to come to us all. And how do we rethink how, one, we attract candidates, but also um hire quickly without meeting in person? And so COVID was great for a lot of things. It was very challenging. I feel like we all need Survive shirts. yeah um after that but it it really sparked innovation because we had to and I think you know once we realized that we could hire without having people physically in stores we started to look at how do we continue to support that as well and the other thing is is like post-COVID we you know Valvoline we were very blessed it was actually two of our most successful years but it just required a lot more work to do that
00:04:44
Speaker
um was the candidate changed, right? The candidate started to tell us they wanted something differently. They expected us to move quickly. They expected us to be transparent in our process.
00:04:57
Speaker
um and and And really, if you're trying to attract the top talent, you've got to accommodate that candidate. So I just think COVID was definitely the catalyst for us.
Valvoline's Operational Adaptation During COVID
00:05:08
Speaker
Sarah, did you guys think, this is, again, I told you I would take you guys off base immediately. So must just my first question is, you said this through two busiest years after COVID, everybody was working at home, they're not driving as much, so why did you, why were they changing their oil more? Like, I'm just like, you know, it's crazy to me that we hear that stat, and you're like, well, why? doesn' It doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, Valvoline adapted quickly. So it's similar to Carter's. We've been in business since the eighteen eighty s right? And so innovation is a part of who we are and safety is a part of who we are. So we quickly had to look at our store operations and say, actually more people had time.
00:05:42
Speaker
So they were driving because they they were not working or they were out of school. And so you saw a lot more people vacationing. And so, but we had to say, how do we make our guests feel safe when they come in? How do we make our family members feel safe? And so we reevaluated our processes within the stores. And so guests would drive in and they wouldn't have to get out of their cars.
00:06:04
Speaker
And that was new, right? And so it was adapting to where we were. And then the demand actually came from, you know, not being, at work or school. yeah Candidates changed. Customers changed, too. They did. Yeah, absolutely. And we still keep we have a lot of those same practices today. Customers told us they enjoy not getting out of their vehicle.
00:06:23
Speaker
I know. And the workers love it more. Stay your butt in the car, please. Jason, what about you? Yeah, so I'll kind of piggyback
Hiring Challenges and Solutions in 2022
00:06:31
Speaker
on what Sarah said. It really started in that 2022 and kind of going back to one of the slides that Josh showed earlier, right, where it's kind of the graph. And that 2022, I think it's two to one, right, as far as, like, number of jobs opening to candidates looking, right? So there's a lot of jobs open. Candidates have a lot of choices. And for us, we had to figure out how do we get to people quicker, right? How do we make things more efficient? So we actually started our distribution centers, right? So our distribution centers never shut down during COVID. They always stayed open.
00:07:02
Speaker
Obviously helping to get the product to our stores, to our customers, to our e-commerce channels, et cetera. And so we do a lot of peak season hiring, right, where we might have to hire 200, 300, 400 people at a time in our distribution centers. We needed to be able to get to them.
00:07:16
Speaker
quicker to be able to get them before they got off the market. And so that's when we really implemented Paradox and that helped us to really schedule quicker, right? One of the things we know Carter just transparently like we know we might not always be the highest paying gig in town, but what we can beat people on is efficiency. How do we get to the candidates quicker? So that's really for us what started our journey using Paradox.
00:07:38
Speaker
It's crazy. Dave. Yeah, so I wasn't with the TA team when we implemented these changes, but I was on the learning side creating the training for it. And it it was obvious from the outside looking in where we were trying to go. And i mean you're going hear a theme up here, right? Getting faster, right? We don't hire miners, so that takes away a large population for us. And so then when you're going after talent, how do you get to them faster? And we knew we had succeeded when in our supply chain, one of our supply chain locations actually nominated Lucy, which which is our hiring assistant for Paradox, nominated her as an associate of the month after we had rolled her out. Just because it really did put time back into the hands of the hiring managers. It was much faster, much more efficient. And I'd yet to talk to a candidate who hasn't said it was incredibly fast and easy to use.
00:08:24
Speaker
what who do you what do you What's your name of your ah your bot? Lucy. Lucy. Alicia. Alicia. Megan. Megan. i think it's All women. Yeah, it's all women. like We don't like do Pat. We don't know if it's either one. like It is interesting because Josh will say this story too at McDonald's when they did the Olivia thing. People would come in into I have an interview with Olivia. And you're like, oh, that's the wife of the owner of the software. She is famous. yeah yeah You go to conferences, people want pictures with her.
00:08:50
Speaker
my My next question would be we know like the number one job that teens want right now is digital creator. None of us are hiring digital creators.
Attracting Young Workers to Frontline Jobs
00:08:59
Speaker
We're hiring frontline workers. How do we get young people excited or even interested in today's world about going to work for Valvoline or Carters or Lowe's? Like how are your teams like dealing with that from from a foundational level of we have fewer workers coming in we need more of them to be interested, and yet they're all interested in doing what we do by running a podcast or being an influencer. It's so funny when you hear these young kids that are like, I'd like to be the CMO. How are you guys doing that, working on that challenge?
00:09:28
Speaker
Go ahead, Dave. yeah So I think part of it is just making sure, so we have a split hiring process. Some direct hires are in the stores and some direct hires through the recruiting team, but all of it has to do with why Lowe's.
00:09:40
Speaker
Like, why would you come in? what are you going to get from it? And we start on day one trying to pitch that career aspect of it. um you know We're using the technology, you have a chance to solve problems, right? And that's what what you'll hear from our mission statement is, right? We solve problems and fulfill dreams for the home. And so how we're looking for that individual who wants to help solve problems, who wants to get engaged, wants to go through that. And then how do you use technology to do it?
00:10:04
Speaker
The technology is here. So if you're not adopting it as a part of the process and you're not selling it as a part of the benefit, you're missing that audience that that's what they do. when When we were hiring in a call center several years back, it was amazing. We would get people into the room. They couldn't turn on a computer because they're using tablets, right? And so we're like, oh, we didn't we didn't account for that. We have to teach them this is a computer. and here So you push that button, right, to to turn that on to get it to go. So um you have to change with the with the technology and the times, and you've got to market that as one of the, you know, benefits of being with the company.
00:10:40
Speaker
Because you guys, you, Valvoline and Lowe's, you guys, because you're looking to, you don't necessarily have to hire them skilled, but you have to train them skills. You're going to give them a skill that they don't have, so you're going after like that that group. Go ahead, Sarah. Yeah, no, you you are um saying the words that I was getting ready to say. So for, at Valvoline, it's similar. We're selling, it's a launching pad, right? This is your foot in the door for a greater career, and we really try to make that career progression path transparent. Like on our career site and our conversation, and we follow up after they're hired.
00:11:09
Speaker
And it's very real that an individual can start as a technician entry level. We will develop them for their skill. And that's one thing we sell. Like you're getting a real life skill that even if you don't build a career here, you're going to be able to change your oil for the rest of your life.
00:11:24
Speaker
And we're going to develop you. So that investment of the development is key, right? And it should really shouldn't be taken for granted. How many companies really going to develop you from day one and potentially in a year or two year be a service center manager? And and about 95% of our service center managers started as a technician.
Valvoline's Career Development Focus
00:11:42
Speaker
So we're selling skill, we're selling development, we're selling the career path. But we're also selling um a sense of belonging. So in our stores, we call them we're family members. And it it sounds a little cultish when you first join Babylon. Everybody's like, welcome to the family. You're like, what is that? Slow down. but yeah I have a family. But when you really do get into the stores, the camaraderie is there and they become very close-knit. And that's a competitive advantage for us. And Gen I mentioned we hire 72% in Gen z they're looking for that.
00:12:15
Speaker
They're looking for that sense of belonging and we really try to make that
Community Engagement and Social Responsibility
00:12:18
Speaker
clear. We want them to be, we're intentional on day one to include them. And then the last thing I would share is that Gen Z also wants to know that they're what they do matters.
00:12:28
Speaker
Right? And so they may be starting in a frontline role just like the rest of us. We need to help reinforce like that's where I started too. um But Valvoline has a strong focus on giving back to communities and our program's called Happy to Help. And when you go into Valvoline and it's an oil change and you you say, you know, i appreciate you doing this, we'll say Happy to Help. But with our community partners, um Every market has their own partnerships and we go and we volunteer at the Ronald McDonald House. So we're partnering with a behavioral health organization to help children. And I think that's really important for retention and um kind of the buy-in and love you know for what you do.
00:13:11
Speaker
Yeah, we sort of got away from this corporate social responsibility, you know, for a lot of organizations. And I think this new generation is going to bring it back. So I love that. And I love that about them. Yeah, I do too. Jason, I'm interested in your opinion on and the, they both have said we kind of have this like, hey, you get hired in.
00:13:28
Speaker
no skill, low skill, you're going become a manager. It's this concept of like, and I think it's McDonald's, if you look at the Fortune 500 CEOs, I think it's like 25% of them had worked at a McDonald's at some point in their career. i just made that number up. um It could be 78, it could be 18. It's a number that you'd be shocked by in terms of how many Fortune 500 CEOs had a career where they worked their, like it was in college or high school.
00:13:50
Speaker
Is it legitimate to think like for these kids to go, oh, you're going to start at a Carter's and one day you'll be the CEO? It's an interesting question, right? So for us, what's a little bit different than what Dave and Sarah do at Carter's, roughly 75% of our store associates are part-time, right? So we're hiring a lot of people that are coming in, maybe they're students, they just want to work part-time. They're maybe moms that are just want like something on the side, things like that. So it's a little bit different of a candidate that we're really recruiting into the stores. um And so it is kind of that first foray into retail.
00:14:23
Speaker
And then how do we kind of get people excited about retail and look at this as kind of a, a career journey and try to get people excited about that. So it's a little bit of a different challenge because we don't always have people coming in saying, i want this as a career. It might just be a short term, hey, this is a six month, I just need something to cover the bills while I'm in school or or whatever it might be. So we have that kind of different type of candidate that we're reaching to. But it is an interesting question and I think the more that,
00:14:50
Speaker
automation and AI and everything kind of comes into play, i do think there's going to be value in that kind of having that personal skill and what you learn when you're working in a store, working in a fast food chain, whatever it might be, and actually interacting with a human, right? And one of the things I lead our college program as well, and one of the things that we've seen is, and it's kind of aging out a little bit, but this generation that they were impacted in high school or in college during COVID, right? Yeah. And they were kind of separated.
00:15:17
Speaker
And so some of these social skills that you learn when you're in high school or you're on a college campus, they've kind of missed out on and they're looking for it, right? And so they actually enjoy the ability to go into a store or to work in an office and be around others because they didn't get that experience. Absolutely. i see that with my own kids. It's pretty crazy.
00:15:36
Speaker
um Dave, I have a question for
Lowe's Internal Mobility and Employee Growth
00:15:38
Speaker
you. I want to talk a little bit about your pull in your background and learning and development with talent acquisition. But internal mobility is a big topic for both, right, for L&D and then for talent acquisition. I'm sure many of you have to think about this within your own organization. But it's very different for frontline hiring.
00:15:53
Speaker
Internal mobility might not be i want to be the CEO. It might be I don't want to work these hours and I can't work nights anymore. Can we just ship? I don't like my manager. I don't like the people I'm working with. How do we move this around? um You've shared a very interesting percentage of internal promotions that you see at Lowe's. Can you talk a little bit about that approach, um you know, around retention and internal mobility?
00:16:18
Speaker
Yeah, so it's a big part of our overall process. And so our CEO did start as an hourly associate in the home improvement industry, right? And he speaks about that quite often with all of our associates. And he's out there visiting. He he spent the month before he actually started with Lowe's traveling stores and talking to customers and and associates in stores. His wife said, you're spending an awful lot of money for somebody who's not getting paid right now.
00:16:41
Speaker
um But what do we do? So, you know, right now about 92% of our people leaders are being promoted internally. And that's everything from a department supervisor through our stores, right? So about 85% of the store managers started at Lowe's in some other position moving through. We have a very you know routine process where we go through and are constantly looking at talent and updating a system, a pipeline, that talks about who are they, are they mobile, are they interested in what roles, where do we see them going, what are their development plans, and what's their timeframe for getting there. And our team leans into that as a part of our hiring process. So if something gets posted, we're going to be looking and saying what's your internal pipeline and why are you not hiring one of those.
00:17:22
Speaker
or vice versa, you don't have an internal pipeline, why are we not taking that wreck and going to find you somebody for it? So it's this integrated talent approach through when we walk them through the front door, what are you doing to keep them so they don't walk out the side door?
00:17:35
Speaker
i think that's the legitimate career path, though. When you think about I got i got hired in at a Lowe's as an hourly worker, whatever that might be. I became a manager. I became a general manager. Now I'm running. What's the average revenue of a box of yours?
00:17:49
Speaker
Ballpark, 50 million a year? oh yeah yeah, it could be anywhere from 40 million to 100 million. Yeah, so like you're now, you went from literally hourly person up to I'm running a 50 or 60 or $70 million dollars business. When I was at Applebee's, the average box was like 3.5 million, but it was the same thing. You're like, look, you can come in as a cook or a server or a bartender And within a few years, you could be running your own business at $3.5 million. dollars like That's ah's a career path that's legitimate. And like you said, 85% of those people potentially then could become a general manager. like it's It's crazy. Yeah.
00:18:21
Speaker
yeah yeah I mean, you're basically running your own Fortune 500 company at that point, right? Yeah. and leading 120 to 200 people in the store depending on the the size of the store and the footprint and where they're at. So it's ah an incredible amount of responsibility for it and just making sure that we're growing the people who understand the business from inside.
00:18:41
Speaker
But let's say you don't want to stay within the business, and you're not into the retail, and you want to go somewhere else. right We just announced $250 million dollars to train 250,000 people into the trade
Investment in Trade Skills Training
00:18:53
Speaker
skills. And so, you know, you come to us and you work for us and we put you through the program and you stay with us, we benefit.
00:18:59
Speaker
You have expertise in the business and what you're doing. And if you go somewhere else, hopefully we benefit because you'll shop with us. yeah We put you on that path and where to go. yeah Right? we We are heavily involved from a social responsibility in recognizing what's needed, and then how do we support that?
00:19:15
Speaker
That's amazing. That's amazing. Sarah, know you guys are testing the shift scheduling thing, which is this weird like art and science and witchcraft for like managers
AI-Driven Shift Scheduling at Valvoline
00:19:24
Speaker
of stores, right? Right. And it takes way too much time. So it's saving you guys a bunch of time. When you think about the savings that they're getting from having AI build shifts out or build schedules out,
00:19:35
Speaker
What do you expect then that that manager's gonna be able to do with that extra time? like What are those things that they're gonna be doing? Yeah, I'll start with sharing. like When we were considering the shift scheduling, the problems we were trying to solve, um there were two mate well there were three major problems. One is um saving on labor.
00:19:54
Speaker
We saw an opportunity, there was a certain percentage that we wanted to do reduce the cost of labor. And what was happening there is our area managers um who were telling, you know, recruiting, we needed to add more to a certain store, great expertise. But sometimes it's a little bit of a gut feel versus really understanding where the demand is in the store. And and so it's just scheduling.
00:20:17
Speaker
tells us exactly it's integrated with our POS. these This is your shift. This is how many people what you need at certain times. And this is what their schedule should look like. um The other thing that we were trying to save on was was manager time. right It became very daunting and overwhelming for our managers. And there's an emotional connection. right like this person wants this many hours, this person wants many hours. God, it's so personal, right? Yeah. It gets combative. It does. It's so tough on the managers, and it takes a lot of time. And then the other is, what's the right mix of part-time, full-time?
00:20:51
Speaker
Yep. Right? And so what you don't want to do is hire everybody full-time, and then you only give them part-time hours, because then you see turnover, and then you also don't want to overpay for pull full-time, and there's benefits involved when we could be targeting maybe college students. Yep. Right. You can come in part time. Jason, I want to ask you about impact.
Measuring ROI in Technology Investments
00:21:11
Speaker
We talk a lot about outcomes and impact and a lot of companies invest in technology. In our research, we found that only one in two measure ah ROI.
00:21:19
Speaker
And it's a tricky thing when you spend millions of dollars on technology. But you all have seen tremendous impact from implementing Workday Paradox on your whole hiring process. So Jason, I wonder if you can share any of those outcomes or the impact that you've seen.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think for us, so we have Paradox now implemented across all three areas, right? So corporate, retail, and distribution center. I think the biggest thing is kind of going back to what we talked about earlier is the speed, right? So one thing i think everyone's hearing, no matter what industry you're in, is we want, you have more to do, less time to do it, less resources to do it, et cetera. So how do we help empower our hiring leaders, no matter where they're at, whether they're in our store, distribution center, corporate environment, like how do we empower them to be able to hire quicker and take some of that burden off of
Improving Hiring Efficiency at Carter's
00:22:08
Speaker
them, right? So for our retail, um I'll just give the example of like our retail associate, it takes roughly seven hours from the time a hiring leader looks at the candidate application in Workday and says, I wanna interview this person. They move him forward in Paradox. The candidates then scheduled for an interview within seven hours, normally within a three-day time period.
00:22:29
Speaker
Then they're coming on store, making a hiring decision, we're moving, right? So I think that's the part where we're really having the biggest ROI is it's allowing, kind of going back to what Sarah was talking about, it allows our hiring leaders to focus on training other people, giving excellent customer service, being out on the floor and not having to call through a bunch of candidates and look at a bunch of candidate applications that, Maybe they want the hours we're offering, maybe they don't. Maybe they want the wage we're offering, maybe they don't. And then you're going so much back and forth.
00:22:57
Speaker
This is allowing them to have kind of ah a wider scope and still be able to take care of their responsibilities from a hiring perspective. I tell people all the time that AI scheduling might be the easiest thing to implement, theoretically, because it's low risk in terms of, like, security. yeah But all three of you had to deal with that combination of, like, how do you actually then get the manager to set the schedule so the people can actually interview?
00:23:19
Speaker
So i wonder, unlike all three of you, how did you guys start that? or what And what what was the process? Yeah. So we have two different processes within Paradox. One is for our frontline hourly, and the other is for our corporate. So frontline hourly, the um for technician roles, the candidates do a virtual interview with the recruiter. So we leverage the top of the funnel for automation. So the recruiters only interact with qualified candidates, but every candidate that um at the top of the funnel receives messaging of where they are in the process as well as disposition. So solving a a lot of candidate requests just through the automation. But you want your recruiters to focus with the high impact activities, right? And so the recruiters are interviewing, doing virtual interviews through a link that served up through Paradox and no more FaceTime or Google Duo. it was just just a lot of issues with with candidates logging in just with that. but
00:24:14
Speaker
And then from there, our our recruiters, and so the scheduling part is we own our calendars, and so it's very easy from a recruiting standpoint. um Our technicians,
00:24:26
Speaker
We then send the notes over to the hiring managers and the hiring managers make a hiring decision based on the conversation with the recruiter and the interviewing notes. We're averaging five and a half interviews to one hire. All right, but but our recruiters can do it because they're not focusing on the top of the funnel where candidates aren't qualified, only the qualified candidate frees up time.
00:24:47
Speaker
um From, i will say on the corporate side of that, we're still working through our calendar hygiene with our managers. And I would say that's the toughest part. It's a lot of change management of saying, hey, your calendar has to be free on these days. Otherwise, it's still a lot of going back and forth and coordinating calendars. So I think it's a common theme, you know, with what I'm hearing from other employers. a cool thing is though,
00:25:17
Speaker
We have a greater challenge because we do a lot of panel interviews. So it's not just one hiring manager. It's typically five. There is a Teams chat that pops up and allows the hiring managers to say, hey, this is what my availability is and kind of chat through that and then find a common time. So there's some really cool tools that I think it's more on our change management side than I think it is on the technology side. David, you kind of smiled when she, like the manager hygiene like thing. what How do you guys do that? yeah Yes, it really depends. So an early level, like when we started this, it was all of our entry level positions, our high volume roles. And what we did was we set up round robin panels. So any assistant store manager, their calendars had to be managed to have some availability and then Lucy can just plug into that. And then we manage our no availability report, right? So if you don't have anything, we can take a look at that and say you need to open up more. you know
00:26:08
Speaker
We have a position in the stores who actually controls all the staffing. So that's what their position is, right? They're more or less like a captain, a scheduling and staffing administrator. um They're the brains. They're really the hubs.
00:26:19
Speaker
And, you know, as I started learning the TA space and going out and walking stores and talking to them, the best ones were the ones who basically just told the ASMs, leave your calendars alone. Don't touch them. yeah I own them, right? To open those up to to kind of go through. and and so um they've really gotten to the point now where they understand the importance of having the availability up there.
00:26:42
Speaker
Now that we're moving into a little bit higher level roles and some more targeted spaces, what we know is not every rec is equal. And so we're working with our Paradox partners to just say, if an ASM has five hours open for interviews,
00:26:54
Speaker
it Lucy doesn't know which one's the priority and we just put first come, first serve in there. And we're saying I got to be able to target for a sales specialist or a department supervisor. That's a priority hire for us. And so we're starting to work on the targeting process that has reserved that one hour for this rack and only people from this rack can go into that time frame in order to help us prioritize those hires.
00:27:16
Speaker
Yeah, quick round-robin. I'll get you guys out on this because we only have a couple minutes. um The feature, AI feature within the TA space that you you haven't either used or seen yet but you want to use. Jason, I'll start with you.
00:27:29
Speaker
I think for us, if a candidate applies to one job, let's say they apply to a retail associate role in our store in Alpharetta, how do I make sure that they've also, we can see them for roles in Sandy Springs, Dunwoody, Roswell, like the surrounding area. So they're not having to apply to every different position. I still, that's something we have to Yeah, because AI should reach out to them and say, hey, by the way, have five other stores too. Any of these would interested, right? Right, within 20 mile radius or 15 mile radius, whatever it is, would you also be interested in working here? How do we kind of share that talent and be able to get to it instead of making them apply to multiple roles? That's an easy one. Workday, get on there. Well, it lets them. Workday definitely. I think Lowe's does that where I can show you other ones. But I think what you're saying is actually just apply once instead of maybe just go and apply multiple times. And then it just says these are all the rules. Nice. Dave? Yeah, I plus one that, right, the intelligent matching from the wonder if that's on the pitch fest. No, just kidding.
00:28:23
Speaker
Should be. sure here So a strong focus of ours is an employment assessment. So I've mentioned earlier our recruiters are interviewing five candidates to get to one hire. So we're in a pilot right now, but we're also looking at other assessments too. What we're seeing in our pilot is it's a personality assessment that's aligned with our high performers. um And so they're serving up a score. and We're not letting that eliminate, but it is allowing us to use that decision point. In two of our three markets, we've gone from five interviews to one hire to three interviews to one hire. And then we'll be tracking the retention to see if it helps to improve. And so that's the space we're going to continue to innovate in because when you think about a growing company and you want to drive efficiencies, if I can free up my recruiter's calendar third of the day,
00:29:14
Speaker
we can grow and add more stores without actually adding headcount and then not overwhelming them as well. That's amazing. Yeah, that's great. Thank you guys so much for being on. Everybody, make sure you connect with them on on LinkedIn. Y'all, that's the Frontlines podcast. This is what we do.
00:29:28
Speaker
Thank you so much for being out here today. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thank