Customer success stories

American Heart Association

How the American Heart Association’s innovative hiring approach creates a healthier world.

Headquarters:
Dallas, TX
Founded:
1944
Revenue:
$1B
Company size:
3,500
Industry
Nonprofit
iCIMS products:
Applicant tracking system
Candidate relationship management

The American Heart Association’s mission – to help people live longer, healthier lives – draws in more than 225,000 new candidates a year, many of whom are also volunteers, survivors, and donors.

However, less than 1% will be hired.

For AHA, success depends on cherry-picking the right talent while creating an exceptional experience for all candidates, whether they’re hired or not.

Here’s how AHA combined talented people, a detail-oriented hiring process, and the right technology to push boundaries and reengineer their entire talent acquisition process.

1,000+

hours (or 6 months) of productivity saved per year

50%

more time spent by recruiters building relationships with candidates

200%

increase in sourcing activity

Mobile phone screen displaying American Heart Association career opportunities

American Heart Association’s approach

AHA’s hiring process is designed to free up recruiters so they can spend their time sourcing and building relationships with hard-to-find talent.

“We looked at how we could enable the talent attraction team to be a better business partner – to source and attract more qualified candidates and manage the process in an extremely efficient and positive way.”

– Vice President of Talent

Lead with a strong employer value proposition

American Heart Association encourages applicants to be a part of #TheAHALife. It’s a culture and lifestyle that AHA promotes at events, on its career portals, in job descriptions, and across social media.

People know American Heart Association as a consumer brand. From an employer brand perspective, we have to reinforce that our mission is really who we are. It’s what drives our company – our grassroots, our science, the guiding values we uphold.

Sally Pabin

Vice President of Talent

Invest in candidate relationships

AHA’s high volume of applications – between 600 to 650 daily – makes for a sourcing goldmine. For each hire the organization makes, AHA typically ends up with several highly qualified runners-up. AHA uses talent pools to stay in touch with those silver medalist candidates, keeping them engaged and ready to apply for future positions.

Laptop screen showing a list of recruits in iCIMS' Talent Cloud recruiting platform

Use automation to free up recruiters

AHA built efficiencies into its recruiting workflow to relieve pressure on recruiters. Automated tasks save recruiters time and limit the amount of administrative work they do in the system.

Embedding automation into our workflow frees up time. It allows recruiters to do more interviews, source passive candidates, and engage and build relationships with candidates we otherwise wouldn’t have access to.

Dennis WIlson

Director of Talent Acquisition and Attraction

Foster career growth with a talent exchange

To help internal talent develop skills, AHA repurposes iCIMS Career Site technology so staff can advertise project opportunities on a separate, internal project portal.

The Talent Exchange Portal brings employees from around the organization together to form teams with the skills necessary to tackle unique projects. Employees contribute to different areas of the organization, build relationships, hone skills, and flex muscles they might not use otherwise in their typical day-to-day.

A large group photo of American Heart Association employees

Working alongside iCIMS staff on every step of the system configuration and go-live process resulted in a final product that met and, in some cases, exceeded the original scope of the project. iCIMS staff made themselves available and brainstormed with our team to create solutions that have added real and lasting value to our recruiting workflows.

Dennis Wilson

Director of Talent Acquisition and Attraction

Download the full American Heart Association story

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