Background

Since its founding in 1923, this retail chain has become a benchmark in the Mexican retail sector, operating in 17 states and employing more than 22,000 people nationwide. The company also manages multiple distribution centers, logistics support services, and wholesale and retail programs to fulfill its mission of providing value to society.

Challenges

Even in the midst of a global pandemic, the company considered that 2020 would be the right year to centralize and optimize its HR operations. The company's goal was to stop using a dispersed team of 300 recruiters across the country who worked in isolation, and to transform operational recruitment into a single, coordinated effort.

The retail store company envisioned a centralized talent attraction strategy to support its complex mass hiring operations for more than 2,500 stores across Mexico. Some of the most pressing needs associated with this transition were:

• Hire tens of thousands of operational retail workers
• Manage communication and interview coordination with 2,780 store managers simultaneously.
• Assign candidates to certain stores based on priority and urgency.
• Collect candidates' documentation in secure digital formats.
• Reduce the hiring cycle time from its current seven-day duration.

The HR team also recognized the value of collecting organized data from candidates to build key performance indicators (KPIs) that better reflect a detailed, nationwide recruitment process.

“Emi came at the right time because we were looking for a technology that would help us simplify our processes,” said the chain's Head of Talent Management.

Solution

When companies need customized solutions to manage a high volume of recruitment, Emi offers a continuous support service to get the job done. Emi helped this retail chain launch a recruitment platform with 24/7 chat to automatically pre-screen candidates, coordinate interviews and analyze the feedback received.

“With the 24/7 chat, Emi allowed us to have an agile and easy-to-use tool to quickly attract our candidates and begin their recruitment process.”

The chat function offers advantages for both candidates and recruiters. With greater transparency and clarity throughout the recruitment process, candidates have a seamless experience from submitting their application to their onboarding process. At the same time, recruiters can more efficiently identify the most suitable candidates for each position. And in a labor market that competes for candidates, this ability to hire efficiently is critical to business success.

Results

Creating a Centralized Recruiting Process

Emi offers the company's talent attraction team the ability to follow each candidate's process in real time. It also allows recruiters to proactively address any issues that arise during the recruitment process.

When the company expressed its desire to centralize its recruitment process dispersed across its different regions, Emi created detailed analyses and dashboards with real-time metrics. These reports helped the company's talent and HR leaders understand the state of the recruitment process both regionally and by store.

Now, the retail chain can efficiently assign candidates using accurate, real-time recruitment data, something that wasn't possible before implementing Emi. By integrating Emi's platform with Emi's human resources information system (SIRH), all candidate data captured with Emi is automatically synchronized and stored in the company's HR records system.

Automating time-consuming tasks

With Emi, retail store managers can take advantage of the live chat feature 24 hours a day. This tool allows them to coordinate interviews based on their availability and provide feedback to candidates after the interview.

The chat-based solution is also used to gather information about candidates who arrive at the store to hire them on site right away. Thanks to Emi's automated recruitment platform, the talent acquisition team can accelerate coverage time, a key factor for operational and hourly candidates when determining where to work. The team has also gained tangible information about who the best candidates are and in what roles their skills could be best used.

Building a Strong Candidate Pipeline

Thanks to Emi's integration with the company's social networks and digital campaigns, the retail company can now attract and interact with more candidates by doing so where they already are: on the social platforms they already use.

Now, candidates can interact through a live chat to complete the pre-selection process quickly. This includes coordinating upcoming interviews with store managers, updating the status of the recruitment process, and uploading necessary documentation.

Emi also offers simplified tools to help candidates who come to stores intending to apply for a position. With Emi, the company's recruitment team can manage candidates who arrive without an appointment, organize job fairs, and easily manage alternative communication flows to help candidates submit their applications anytime, anywhere.

Improved speed and quality of recruitment

As a national company that employs thousands of retail workers across Mexico, the ability to streamline recruitment processes and shorten waiting times for candidates is essential. Given the growing shortage of operational workers, the company must be able to respond professionally and proactively so as not to lose the best candidates.

“With Emi, we can now find the type of candidate we are looking for in the retail sector, a type of candidate who, if we don't contact him and hire him quickly enough, will simply go to the next company to get a job.”

Using Emi as the basis of its operational recruitment strategy, this retail company has been able to:

• Shorten the candidate hiring cycle by 45%
• Reduce the time taken to collect candidate documentation by 97%
• Increase by 50% the number of candidates who interview a store manager and are subsequently hired

“The fact that Emi has collaborated so closely with us, from configuration and implementation to achieving the results we have seen, and that it continues to support us, has undoubtedly been a great added value for us.”