"We wanted the best team available to help us with a rapid expansion – and iCIMS’ Customer Support proved second to none."
-- Direct, Talent Acquisition,
Rite Aid Corporation
Rite Aid Corporation is one of the nation's leading drugstore chains, operating more than
5,000 stores in 31 states and the District of Columbia.
Today, with thousands of stores and more than 100,000 employees representing the Rite Aid brand, talent acquisition is a top priority for the retailer. Yet the organization was not always equipped with the proper resources to support talent management or corporate growth.
Two years ago, recruitment was synonymous with data entry and paper passing. Recruiters struggled to keep up with high volumes of candidates, tipping towards 100,000 applications each year. Powered only with spreadsheets, recruiters felt their efforts were adding little value to the organization. Feeling more like administrators than talent managers, HR felt pressure to meet federal compliance standards, but lacked the technology and time to do so effectively and confidently. Adding to these concerns, an acquisition of the Eckerd Pharmacy chain was on the horizon. Rite Aid HR was faced with a challenge.
“In 2006, with 3,300 stores and 65,000 employees we were barely getting by in recruitment,” Rite Aid’s Director of Talent Acquisition, Tom Sheehan, said. “We saw the organizational changes coming, and knew our processes simply wouldn’t scale to survive the acquisition. It was clear we needed support for this huge transition.”
Rite Aid went through an extensive evaluation process to source and assess prospective talent management platforms. “We saw this as a chance to change the perception of Rite Aid recruitment from the inside out,” Sheehan said. “A lot of systems deliver the same core features,” Sheehan said. “So we sought to find best service – who could clearly show Rite Aid they understood our sense of urgency? Who could strategically yet easily implement the system?”
While evaluating a number of providers, Sheehan assessed his own organization’s prior experience with iCIMS, a talent platform provider based in Hazlet, NJ. A small division of Rite Aid used the iCIMS platform for its talent management efforts and could speak to their customer experience. Receiving a 5 star review of iCIMS’ service teams led Sheehan to his final decision.
“iCIMS proved they could accommodate our needs and could easily support our growth,” he
said. “We felt extremely confident in their service team’s ability to not only deploy our system,
but help us define a strong process using best practices.”
After rolling out the iCIMS Talent Platform, Rite Aid absorbed the Eckerd drugstore chain, jumping from 3,300 stores and 65,000 employees to 5,000 stores and nearly 113,000 employees. The platform scaled to meet the needs of the acquisition and supports multiple hire types within one system – a key cost saver for Rite Aid, since the organization doesn’t have to purchase, implement, or train users on multiple interfaces to manage corporate hires, store managers, and pharmacy interns.
Sheehan feels all of the project goals were met by selecting iCIMS.
“Our recruiters have moved from administrators to talent managers, our processes are OFCCP compliant, and our ability to support our candidates has significantly improved.”
In fact, Rite Aid’s Career Center, which is powered by iCIMS, scored the highest among the retailers profiled in the April 2008 “Best And Worst Of Career Web Sites” report published by Forrester Research. Looks like iCIMS provided Rite Aid with a cure for its recruitment pain, side effect free.
Key Benefits:
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One cost-effective platform to support corporate, store, and pharmaceutical intern hiring programs
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Scalable technology to support growth from 65,000 employees to 113,000+ employees
Strong reporting tools to maintain OFCCP compliance
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Ability to produce KPIs, specifically Time-to-Fill metrics
