Leading convenience store chain hires 50% more candidates with Emi

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 runs multiple distribution centers, logistics support services, and wholesale and retail programs to fulfill its mission of adding value to society.

Even amid a global pandemic, the company considered 2020 the right year to centralize and optimize its HR operations. The company's goal was to move away from a dispersed team of 300 recruiters across the country working in isolation, and transform frontline recruitment into a single, coordinated effort.

The retail chain envisioned a centralized talent attraction strategy to support its complex high-volume hiring operations across more than 2,500 stores throughout Mexico. Some of the most urgent needs associated with this transition were: hiring tens of thousands of frontline retail workers; managing communication and interview coordination with 2,780 store managers simultaneously; assigning candidates to specific stores based on priority and urgency; collecting candidate documentation in secure digital formats; and reducing the hiring cycle time from its then-current duration of seven days.

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

When companies need customized solutions to manage high-volume recruitment, Emi provides continuous support 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 feedback.

The chat feature offers advantages to both candidates and recruiters. With greater transparency and clarity throughout the recruitment process, candidates have a seamless experience from application submission to onboarding. At the same time, recruiters can more efficiently identify the best-suited candidates for each position.

Emi offers the company's talent attraction team the ability to follow each candidate's progress 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 geographically dispersed recruitment process, Emi created detailed analytics and real-time metrics dashboards. These reports helped the company's talent and HR leaders understand the status of the recruitment process at both the regional and store level.

Now, the retail chain can efficiently assign candidates using accurate, real-time recruitment data — something that was not possible before implementing Emi.

With Emi, retail store managers can take advantage of the 24/7 live chat feature. This tool allows them to coordinate interviews based on their availability and provide feedback to candidates after the interview.

Thanks to Emi's integration with the company's social media and digital campaigns, the retailer can now attract and engage more candidates by meeting them where they already are: on the social platforms they already use.

Using Emi as the foundation of its frontline recruitment strategy, this retail chain has been able to: shorten the candidate hiring cycle by 45%; reduce candidate documentation collection time by 97%; and increase the number of candidates who interview with a store manager and are subsequently hired by 50%.