Challenge

A family-owned grocery chain of more than 8,000 employees and 81 stores based in North Carolina experienced growing pains due to its rapid expansion from a small business into a large retailer. It found that its HR and recruitment functions couldn't keep up with its growth. Needing to improve the chain's recruitment model and hiring practices, the company's Director of Recruitment chose RCI Recruitment Solutions to develop a best-in-class talent management strategy that would identify the best possible candidates for various positions, save the company time and money, and guide its future direction.

The grocer's one-dimensional approach to recruitment was a major concern. As a very operations-driven company, it spent almost $1.7 million in print advertising, using it as the sole recruitment method. As the Director said, "Less than 50 percent of our candidates came from ads, yet 100 percent of our ads were in newspapers."

Additionally, the company developed no applicant pool: it obtained applicants, rejected applicants, and discarded applicants. Every time the grocer needed to hire, it had to start fresh from the beginning.

The company team also had a concern about their lack of an employer brand. Applicants did not know who the company was and what it was about, and recruitment communications did nothing to overcome that defect. While the company possessed a great consumer brand, they did not promote one as an employer.

The company also kept no job descriptions or job profiles, offered no effective method for candidates to apply through the website, couldn't track the applicants who did apply, developed no standard processes for staffing up new stores, and didn't train the people who conducted applicant interviews. It also promoted all HR coordinators from within store management, which created a department deficient in HR experience altogether.

Working in true partnership, RCI and the grocery chain embarked on a year-long journey to achieve a set of ambitious and daunting goals.

Solution

RCI began its task by establishing a baseline of needs. It completed a detailed Talent Management Audit to assess the company's current practices and identify areas of concern. It also completed an Employer Branding Audit that discovered a significant disconnect between the company's corporate and field recruiting. To address this issue as quickly as possible, RCI became the chain's agency of record, which allowed it to monitor the company's recruitment and sourcing initiatives, and help maintain consistency.

RCI identified every critical recruitment process missing from the company's model. It discovered and marketed the grocer's new Employer Brand and wrote 300 job descriptions to match that brand. RCI also established a new applicant tracking system that provided a technological method for tracking applicants and building an exponentially-growing applicant pool. Additionally, RCI took steps to change the organization's print-only advertising model, beginning with the design of a comprehensive Employee Referral Program that attracted the peers of previously successful applicants. To generate even more applicant traffic and to proactively identify qualified candidates, RCI used its proprietary Talent Locator technology, which establishes and maintains a qualified candidate flow for even the toughest-to-fill positions. Finally, RCI developed an interview guide and a customized assessment questionnaire to make sure applicants received the best interview possible.

After installing best-practice recruitment methods at the heart of the organization, RCI set its next priority on easing the process of staffing new store openings. RCI facilitated a series of Open Houses to run in conjunction with the store openings and developed a manual to direct the step-by-step process for the events.

Through the first year of the partnership, RCI and the grocery chain focused on centralizing the recruiting function; in the ensuing months, they focused on overhauling the company's employer website to match the Employer Brand and on composing a complete recruitment manual that spoke to a diversity-inclusion strategy, training and development programs, and general information on the company and its benefits. The manual also contained a series of questions and answers for candidates and the tenure and testimonials of various employees. Both the website and the manual were a complete marriage of the retail and the employer brands.

Result

The partnership's success is reflected in the numbers. Since partnering with RCI and implementing its core competencies, the grocery chain experienced a 74% reduction in total recruitment costs, reduced its cost-per-applicant by almost 93%, and increase the number of applicants by a whopping 250%.

Additionally, the company's website, which previously had an applicant drop-off rate of 49%, began generating an ever-growing pool of applicants that the company could tap into whenever it liked. At last count, the number of applicants in this on-demand source of talent totaled over 145,000 individuals. The organization had to hire more recruiters to manage the increase in numbers.

The new Open House process proved successful as well, improving the quality of applicants and significantly reducing the cost of recruiting for new store openings. Prior to partnering with RCI, the company spent an estimated $75,000 to staff a new store, and even then, its efforts often resulted in an understaffed location. Today, new stores open fully staffed and the recruitment cost is as low as $13,000.

"I look at RCI as a partner," said the company's Director of Recruitment. "I wouldn't do anything on my own without the RCI team first taking a look at it."

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