Name: Hirevue Webinar: 10,000+ hours saved - How Macy’s reinvented high-volume hiring
Uploaded: 2026-11-12T17:10:39.996Z
Duration: 54 min 4 s
Description: Hirevue Webinar: 10,000+ hours saved - How Macy’s reinvented high-volume hiring

Transcript for "Hirevue Webinar: 10,000+ hours saved - How Macy’s reinvented high-volume hiring": Welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining us as we learn how Macy's reinvented high volume high... Hiring. This is proudly sponsored by Hirevue. If you have questions during the presentation, please pop those in the q and a in your webinar controls and therefore they don't get buried in the chat. Alright. That's all the logistics. It's my absolute pleasure to turn it over to Dina Taylor to get us started. Excellent. Thank you so much, Rhonda, and good morning, good afternoon to everyone. Well, gosh. We know that high volume hiring is a capacity problem as much as it is a recruiting problem. Seasonal hiring is amplified at every... In every single inefficient step. And Macy's was facing a problem that is so similar to, I'm sure, the problem that all of you are either currently facing or have faced, as you've been in this field as well, which is a problem that was consuming so much time and so much effort on a part... On the part of the hiring teams over at Macy's. Today's conversation will really look at the challenge of high volume retail hiring, and how Macy's redesigned its approach based on that trend and what other TA teams can learn from that transformation. So I am delighted and so honored and proud and excited to introduce to all of you Rachel Harris over from Macy's. Rachel, would you like to take a moment to introduce yourself? Hi, everyone. Good morning. Dina, I'm thrilled to be here with you. And, yes, my name is Rachel Harris. I'm the senior director of talent acquisition with Macy's, and my focus is on our frontline hiring for our stores. Awesome. And, you know, Rachel, you are like so many others in frontline and high volume hiring where you are working for and supporting a brand that is just so quintessential. We all know Macy's. We all love Macy's. I am not afraid to talk about it. I proudly shout from the rooftops that my job when I was in college was working in the INC department at the Macy's at the Braheem Mall, which is where I grew up. And then I was promoted to the cosmetics counter. So I'm like that story of I got hired as a frontline hire, and then there was an internal mobility play. I feel like you must run into people all the time that have stories about the brand. Kind of knowing that, what makes your world so unique when it comes to that that challenge with seasonal hiring and the importance of your brand? It it really is. And and our brand is our best asset. You know, the Macy's brand is iconic. And, you know, this year alone, we have the hundredth anniversary of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. We've just celebrated the fiftieth of the anniversary of our fireworks. So there's a lot that Macy's is really proud of. And everyone you meet has a story about Macy's. And I love your story, Gina. It just shows how career progression can definitely happen. But with seasonal hiring, it is the largest talent event as we call it that we do each and every year. And this season alone, when we when we talk about a season, we're talking about fourteen, fifteen weeks of of hiring thousands and thousands of people. And we're just not hiring, you know, just everybody that comes in as hired. We really are competing in very tight labor market with different needs, different roles that we're hiring, different compensation structures. So we really have to move quickly while we're still making quality hiring decisions because every day that open position is there, it really does affect that Macy's brand and that holiday experience we really want our customers to have. So it is just on overload of the amount of hiring that we're... We'll be doing over the next few weeks. Well... And I think it's such an important... But a few things that you brought up there are really important points because, again, there so many that are are kind of in that scenario where it's a brand that's really known. It's a consumer brand. We have to be mindful and thoughtful about the consumer brand as well as the candidate brand and the candidate experience. And it's not just Macy's that's going through seasonal hiring. There are so many other retailers and frontline hiring, scenarios that are also going through that same season. And even something as small as what schedules are available or what that starting wage could be could really impact the decisions that candidates are making. Knowing all of that, how quickly do you move from application to hire in that season, and where do you feel like the pressure shows up the most? Yeah. I would say, you know, if we look at the whole scale, we're less than seven days from that point of application to the point of hiring. And we really have, through all of this, have changed our process. You know, so it was solely about speed for us in the past. This year, it is about equaling speed and quality hiring decisions together. So what we really are mindful of is that candidate experience, that TA experience, and that leader in location experience as well. And how do we blend all that together to move with speed? Because you're right, Dina. Everybody is out there looking for seasonal help, and we love our competitors because that just makes us better. But how do we stay a step ahead, and how do we stay competitive through that entire hiring season? Where do you feel like the pressure shows up the most for the recruiters and the hiring managers? And I I particularly love that you called out kind of the speed and quality because you never wanna move so fast that you're kind of hiring anybody that comes in, but you also don't wanna have so much time that it... So how... Like, where do you feel like that tension sits and where does the pressure land? Yeah. I would say really the the pressure point or maybe as I call it the excitement as a TA person, we love seasonal hiring, is really in that moving through that pipeline, you know, from that application to the review of the... What we call the TA first interview to then getting that candidate to the store leader, what we call people leader, to do that final review. The candidate scheduling can sometimes get in the way. Just the people leader schedule could sometimes be a challenge. So that bottleneck is is a little bit in that scheduling area. And just, again, the volume is sometimes what creates bottlenecks for us as the thousands and thousands of applications that we'll receive, which is a good problem to have. It's a great problem to have, and it it only... Exactly. Like, going back to the brand component too. Right? Like, it's not hard to attract people to come work for Macy's who wouldn't want to. But then then you have those volumes and then kind of managing what those next steps look like. Exactly. Exactly. It really is thinking about how do we how do we thoughtfully move people through that that pipeline and how do we, as a talent acquisition group, provide support to our stores if they get bottlenecked? How do we step in and support them? How do we work with our HR business partners? Seasonal hiring is a team sport. It is not an independent event by any means. So it really is about collaboration and connection with our business. I love that. I I love that it's referenced as a team sport too because it is kind of like, it is that season. You know that it's gonna happen every year. You know that it's coming. Well, let's talk a little bit then about sort of the before and after. Like, we've talked... You've talked about those volumes needing to kind of think through what was once manual and introduce automation technology, but more in a thoughtful way so that the humans are always involved in making sure that it is that sort of camaraderie in that team sport. Maybe walk everybody through the process before Hirevue and what recruiters and candidates were spending most of their time on. Yeah. It was extremely manual, and it was just an overload of of volume. So without having Hirevue with the real estate doc preview and the recorded interview, we... Our recruiters were just spending thousands and thousands of hours combing through the resumes and applications and trying to prioritize was just... It was it was unbearable. It was just too much for one human being to actually do. So what you said is really important, Deah, through every step of the process, a human is making a decision. We are not using technology to do any decision making, but we're using technology to be more efficient in that. And really bringing Hirevue in really served two two things for us that have helped create this efficiency that we have. And the first is the realistic job preview, I think, is one of the best products out there because what it allows us to do is not to sell the job to the candidate, but to give that candidate a real view into what that job is. What is the role? We we love job descriptions, but we also know candidates don't fully read every word of the job description. So how do you turn that job description into a sixty second, ninety second video to say, this is what the schedule is. It is retail. It is night. It is weekends. It is holiday. It is the Friday, Saturday, Sunday after Thanksgiving. You know, we do have scheduled requirements that we make. So we wanna be upfront and honest with that candidate right from the beginning about what that is. We also talk about, you know, specifics of the job. You had mentioned you had worked in cosmetics, and one of the key requirements in cosmetics is you may need to put product on a customer. And if you're not comfortable with, you know, touching a customer, beauty might not be the right the right role for you. So it really is about giving visibility. And if you had that, you know, sixty second elevator pitch, what would you say about the job? And what we have found with that is we found candidates have self selected out. It might just not be the right fit for for that candidate, but we also see the candidates are coming better prepared to the interview because they have some more knowledge coming in of deeper questions to to ask for us. So that realistic job preview really serves two purposes, to help educate because not only are we interviewing the candidate, that candidate's interviewing Macy's, and we want that to be a good experience. And then when you add in the recorded interview, that's an efficiency gainer for us. So that is where candidates can record their interview at any time of the day. It is open twenty four seven for them to really, you know, take the time to share, based on our interview questions, their thoughts and their experiences. Some people get really nervous for interviews, so it's also been a really nice way. We allow them to rerecord if maybe they stumbled over some words or they didn't wanna answer it the way that they did. But that for for us and TA then allows us instead of doing a thirty minute in, you know, in-depth interview, all of that is in a recording where we can take that recording and we can do maybe a five to eight minute evaluation on that recording to determine whether that candidate goes to the next step. So all those little things are adding up to give us a greater level of efficiency to continue going back to that speed to continue to move our candidates through the process quickly. What I love so much about your story in terms of the before and after... I mean, I obviously love so much about the story. But one of the things that always strikes me when you share kind of that evolution of what happened is I'm willing to bet no one internally thought that the realistic job preview was gonna be so powerful. Like, that that probably wasn't the thing that you were, like, looking to get. Right? But then you just spent so much time sharing the impact of a solution like that where you're right. Like, making the job come to life in a way that I'm thinking about my own experience. And now as an adult, I will never in a million years walk out of a fitting room leaving my clothes behind. I will always hang up going forward. Right? Because I I lived that experience. And so I just think it's really striking, particularly for those who are on this webinar today is there's always kind of these extra benefits and bonuses that come out of a process redesign that you're describing that might not have been the thing you were thinking about in the beginning. No. It really wasn't. I think when we thought about this initially, it was the recorded interview. It was where we were going to gain the most, and it is a highly valuable tool. No doubt. But that realistic job preview... Because what's great about the product is it's not a one size fits all. You can create it down to that job level. So a realistic job preview for a selling colleague is different than a beauty or an asset protection or a Starbucks foods colleague. So we were really able to tailor those views into specifically what that job is. So, again, it... It's that knowledge building for the candidate, and I was amazed. It was it was an amazement of how many people did self select out after viewing that. We hope we're retaining them as a customer. We hope they had a great experience. We hope that they didn't feel that that was a waste of their time. But we have found a lot of value in that product. In the survey that we got with the Hirevue product is showing us that people do like the experience. They like that additional education. One of the questions is, would you recommend this to to a friend or somebody? And we are hitting 98, 99% absolutely would. So from a candidate experience, they're also finding a lot of positivity in that experience as well. And from the recorded interview, you would be amazed how many interviews we get between midnight and and 6AM. So that's always, like, some of the fun facts that you get out, but it is really meaning meeting the candidate where they are. It's not about where we are. It is about where that candidate is and what's best for them. I love it. Let's talk a little bit about the... You you mentioned the efficiency gains. You mentioned, obviously, the the kind of... Some of the benefits. Obviously, Macy's is hiring all year round, and so the volumes that you are dealing with kind of continue on all year round. They're just really magnified in those... In that seasonal hiring. Can you share a little bit with everybody how seasonal hiring really does magnify all the problem statements that you've been talking about? Yeah. So if you think about seasonal hiring, the number of people that we will hire in the next fifteen weeks equals the number of our regular colleagues we hired in in a twelve month period. So if you think about taking twelve months of hiring and putting into essentially three months of work, every little thing, every little delay is just magnified 10 times over. And going through holiday last year, you know, and utilizing HireVue, it really brought to life a lot of that of where we had opportunities to get better as we relooked at our process again this year. Where we saw the bottlenecks was our stores were just getting hundreds of candidates, and they couldn't manage it. So it was about how do we help bring the quality candidates, you know, to the forefront to put them right in front of the people leader. But it is... You know, Dina, I love to call holiday hiring, like, the super... It's a team sport, but it is the Super Bowl of hiring. You work all year for for this event, and it is so critical to the business to have the the talent there, which is what we find exciting about it. It is our way to contribute to to the business. But it's... It it is complicated and easy at the same time. And it is, like I said earlier, it is a team sport of having... It is just not TA delivering it. It is our HR tech team. It is our store leaders. It is our compensation team. It is our our customer support center. So it really is about the coordination of all of those teams, but the technology to help us be able to level this out and move the levers of the candidate flow into the store has really been game changing for us. Awesome. Well, before we segue, we're gonna dive deeper into what Rachel just shared, as far as kind of how the different parties are working together and what that process looks like. Before we dive into that, Rhonda, if we could flip to our first audience poll, which is which part of your high volume process consumes the most recruiter time? And it is a single choice option. Gosh. I feel like probably the easy button would be to pick all of them since I know all of these are ones that take up a lot of time. But if attendees can go ahead and pick an option... I don't really know how I would answer that. I feel like it would probably... For me it would be screening. It would be screening for you. Yeah. It would be screen. Yeah. Because you're right. You guys don't have the volume problem. They sit there, though, and then how are you... Thankfully, no. Yeah. We don't have the volume. It is about how do you manage through that that volume. Alright. Maybe if we give it at five seconds, then we close out the poll and see where we're at. Okay. Oh, look at that. Okay. I was gonna do too. Yeah. So reviewing the applications, conducting those initial screens, coordinating the interviews. You know, this is interesting though because it really is so much of the bulk of what you've been talking about, Rachel, in terms of what you've really been thinking about kind of optimizing and introducing some efficiencies because I bet now... And we're gonna talk about it more, but now your team is more freed up to do that following up with candidates. Yep. Okay. Alright. Well, let's talk about kind of the the process overall. There's an element of retail hiring any environment that's decentralized, which is, you know, hiring managers are really department leaders, store leaders. There are individuals who wear so many different hats and are responsible for so many different things. They are not responsible for recruiting and hiring a 100% of the time. That is one component of a very long job description. One of the biggest changes that you guys made was shifting hiring decisions away from TA over to the store leaders. So maybe share a little bit more about that. What drove that decision? What are you hoping to accomplish? And that might sound counterintuitive, like, you gave them more work. But what we did, historically, just for context, is the TACOE really was hiring about 50% of our entry level store roles. And at the time where we had implemented that a few years back, it really was we thought we were helping the stores be more efficient. We would do the interview. We would make the hiring decision. We would extend the job offer, and then the candidate would go to the the... Excuse me. The new hire would go to the store for for day one. But what we were missing in all of that and really what we learned was connection, that there was not a connection between the person that they would be working for and that candidate. So, really, it was about how do we how do we really create that connection and who is best and closest to making that determination of what success looks like, and it is that people leader. They're closest to the business. They're closest to the team. They're closest to the culture and the customer experience that they're trying to create. So what we really wanted to do was focus what we call TA at the top of the funnel. How do we drive Indeeda to what you said, the the candidate attraction? How are we focusing on candidate attraction? How are we focused on passive candidate sourcing, you know, a level of screening that we do? And then, really, we still keep an interview within talent acquisition, which is the first interview. And the intent of that was to take away the hundreds and hundreds of candidates that the stores had to manage through the screening and figure out who would maybe be the best fit. We now really are looking at it more as we create curated list of the top qualified candidates to then send in to the people leader. So where they might have had 200, if you think of our flagship of Herald Square, the massive store, they could have had two, three, 400 people in that list at any given moment. And of that, they maybe only wanted to interview 50. What we're doing now to add value to the business is we're finding those 50 for them. So their time is spent on interviewing those 50, creating that connection, and allowing TA upfront to create that curated list for them. So it might have sounded like, well, you just gave hiring back and you added more more work. We actually moved the bulk of the work over to TA, and now our leaders are focusing on the best of the best candidates that we have. And, you know, it might seem counterintuitive at first glance, like, when you read the headline, but, actually, what it feels to me like you did was create so much credibility for both parties. Like, recruiters became responsible for finding quality talent. Hiring leaders were responsible for making the hiring decision. It feels like a very distinct role and responsibility with not a lot of stepping on toes. Is that what you saw? Yeah. It's very clean. And the other thing that we added into to our model is we have regional support now. So I have leaders that are dedicated to each of our regions with teams under them. So, we have a team that is focused solely on our stores in our East Region. Think of East Coast based locations. And that is very different where, historically, we might have been hiring for California one day, and you might have been hiring for Texas the next. But now we have really created that localized expertise of where do we need to add more resources or, you know, where can maybe we pull some resources back and move them here. So that was a key change, and the the businesses felt that in such a positive way that it's not being done to them. We're not forcing candidates on them. We are doing this together and really creating a collaboration of of trust between the two teams. We're trusting they're gonna make great hiring decisions. They're trusting we're gonna find them the best candidates that are out there. Well... And I'm... I I know I can speak on behalf of everybody who is on the webinar today. Change is so hard. Building that trust is so hard. How do you think you did it? Like, how did you accomplish winning winning everybody over and gaining that credibility and trust? Yeah. First and foremost, we have great leaders that sometimes make that easy. But you're right, Dana. It was the hardest part of what of what the change was, but it was really building the trust through the results. You know? But it was also involving people. We involved our chief stores officer right from the beginning and then her senior leadership team and our regional leaders to really make sure we had that senior level support of the magnitude of this change. And then it really was about piloting the process. We did not put a new process in every store at one time. We really took three very specific divisions, and we did a pilot. And it had all different size stores, urban stores, rural stores, flagship stores, and we went to the stores. We went to the stores and talked to the leaders. We sat with them to understand where their pain points were. We understand, you know, really what was getting in their way or what would they like. And then as we think about expanding, what would their peers need to make this successful? So that's how we developed, you know, really our change management plan was through collaboration and a lot of conversation and a lot of just, you know, rebuilding things and creating confidence in the process that, like I said earlier, it was done with them and not to them, and that was really important for us to create really what we call a frictionless process all around. It does sound like... I mean, one of the tenants that we were talking about, Rachel, when we first kicked off was the importance of Macy's that... How meaningful and powerful it is. There's an element from what I'm hearing you describe is how you treat your consumers, how you treat your candidates. It's also how you treat one another. Like, you wanna uphold the brand standards. You wanna make sure that there's transparency internally as well. We do. Yeah. That's really important. You know, when we were making the hiring decisions, a lot of times we would hear, well, that was a TA hire. And that was a very fair statement to make. And now with the people leader owning their decision, you know, what we're hearing is more of, I love who TA is sending us, or I'm not getting enough qualified candidates. And then really having that conversation of what skills are they missing, that's that curation and that's also with, you know, thinking going back, you know, of how we create the real estate job preview videos. If we're hearing we're not... I'm making up an example. We're not seeing this skill set in beauty candidates. You know, we can go back and look at the realistic job preview. We can go back and look at the job description and the interview guide to make sure that we are always aligned to the needs of the business and how how all that is flowing through. So I do really love that our process is very frictionless at this point and very collaborative. It is not all bubble gum and roses. I will honestly say that. We definitely have areas that we still have a lot of work to do. You know, as new leaders are coming in, how are we onboarding them into this new process? That's all part of change, and that's all part of that collaboration that we have together. Totally. Well, how did you decide kind of knowing that... And I I really can't underscore it enough because it's I know how important it is to you and your team and all of Macy's, but so many of our customers as well just making sure that the human is always in the loop. The technology never makes the final decision. Technology is here to augment and not replace. Knowing that, how did you decide which parts of the overall process should be leveraged by technology and which parts would still be really, really focused on the human? Again, knowing that they're always intertwined. Exactly. It really started with conversations. Conversations with my team of if you had a blank piece of paper and no budget restrictions, what would you do? You know? And I think that's really important is to listen to the colleagues that are in it every single day that are are clicking the keyboard and making decisions. And then the same thing with the store side. We spent about six months before any pilot and any decisions were made really thinking about and talking to them of what's in the way. What is what is causing pain? And then we spent a few days in in an office with some store leaders and and really started mapping out what future state could look like. And it was really about listening to what was most important to the business. And a couple of things came up right away. The screening was definitely one of the biggest, you know, friction points that we have, and we're not perfect. And, Dina, do you know we're gonna be testing some other things with Hirevue to help continue to become even more efficient in that, but we've made a lot of strides utilizing the Hirevue tools that we already have. And then as as everybody on the call indicated, scheduling is still a friction point and I... You know, again, with Hirevue partnership, we're gonna test some things to help with that as well. But what was key and what was our our guiding principle was technology will never make the decision. Technology is a great tool in your toolkit, but the humans know what is our culture. The humans know what is that connection point for our business. So that was really important to keep that, and every single group we spoke with said the same thing is our people leaders need need to make the decision. Talent acquisition should come down the funnel to get to the best of the best. So it really is that art and science of how do you use technology to enable and create efficiency in your process and how do you use the art of a human being to help paint that full picture. But, gosh, I think the approach makes so much sense because what you ended up getting, it's almost, you know, the credibility, the trust that you had internally from your teammates, the experience that you have with your candidate, upholding the brand. It's almost like the the approach of kind of considering the art of the possible, but making sure you had all your stakeholders together and then building it together and hearing that feedback so meaningful, while certainly making sure, of course, that the human is always involved. But you kept the human involved even during the decision making process of building the process, which I think is important. I mean, as a talent acquisition leader, I could have easily designed what I thought the best process would be and implemented it and then, like, okay. We're gonna call it a day, and that would have gotten us nowhere. It was about taking the time to do this right and to do this through genuine hospitality and through collaboration. I love it. It's it's... Again, it's really cool to hear a process that, kind of amplifies the brand standards both internally and externally. It's how you treat one another and how you treat Absolutely. Those externally outside the brand too, which is great. Yeah. Well, maybe take a moment. Now we've talked about what led you to needing to optimize and update the process. We talked about how you got everybody on board and some of those early results that you've seen. Maybe share with everybody, what that redesigned recruiter and candidate journey looked like from application through hiring. One thing I always kind of share on this one is you went from 12 questions to three questions. That's a big issue. Like, how'd you do that? So maybe walk through... Walk everyone through that. Yeah. So what we would, previously, we would have a novel of questions that we would, you know, thinking we could use that as prescreening to help kind of screen through that a little bit more. Then the candidate would go through a phone interview with a TA person, and then we would make a decision whether or not we would hire them. If it wasn't a role TA was hiring for, it went to a list that went to the store and just sat on that list until the store, you know, made an action to call that candidate in. So you had a lot of confusion of who's hiring for what role, what process are they going through, and then really just, again, thinking about how do we get to one simple simple way of of doing this process. And it was... It just... It became clear as we were we were overcomplicating a lot, going down to three questions. Now there are some rules that have a couple more than that now, but really thinking about and that listening to the business of what is most important to them. And 12 questions looks great, but if it wasn't getting us any value, then they were 12 wasted questions. So we really were thinking about, as we went through that redesign of the questions, what got us the most value out of those questions. And then how does our team that does that first review interpret those three questions to the roles that they're screening for? How do we then build that into our interview guide? So it it is that constant building block of not repeating the same question 10 times to every interview, but how do you how do you create that solid foundation? And then how through all these different experiences do we create and strengthen that that foundation of the experience for the candidate? Do you feel like... You mentioned candidate experience in kind of candidate surveys in general. Changing the number of questions must have made this process faster. We know the candidates are still gonna have a conversation with TA. Yeah. Have you heard any feedback from the candidates about the speed or or how how their feedback has been regarding that, the update to... Updated experience. Excuse me. Yeah. Our people leaders are hearing it most of all when they're making a job offer. You know, they're hearing this was really easy or, you know, I I feel really good about my decision. You know, they don't feel that they were just pushed through a process. They really felt that they had connections along the way. You know, are there some candidates that think maybe we take too long? Probably, there are. But the candidates have been very receptive to this change to what really you could say is an additional interview step being added in, one with TA, one with our people leader. But the candidates that have come in since we made this transition are coming to day one feeling more informed than they were before, feeling more connected to their leaders than they were before. So all of those have been really good things. I I... Part of that, I I really... Because I get asked the question a lot too, is, like, do people like having technology early in the process? Like, candidates, they apply. They really wanna have a conversation. And my answer is always, the chances of getting a conversation right after you apply is just so slim because of the volumes. And so I just think it's important for everybody to hear, like, your perspective on, you know, technology to help add efficiencies doesn't necessarily mean it's less personal. In the scenario that you're describing, it's actually more personal. It's it's exactly what I'm gonna say. It is more personal. If you think about that starting point of the realistic job preview, that is not personal to the candidate but personal to that role. You know, we're not saying, hey. Come work for me. See, we've got all these great benefits. You know, we really are telling you what you're doing in... Or what you would potentially be doing in that role. Then you talk to a human in town acquisition where we are really evaluating for the candidate's interest and their qualifications and helping them understand the opportunity. Then they're going to a a store leader in the location that they're going to be working, and that leader is then having that specific conversation. So if you think about it from... Again, we use the phrase genuine hospitality. They're getting even more touch points with information and connection today than they did a year ago. Love it. It's... I think it's so important to kinda share though the the personalization, the human touch point of it. It can be so easy to get distracted by technology being technology when really technology can make us more human because it gives us gives us more of that space. Yeah. There was one point a few years back, Dina, where we had a direct to offer process. And I know a lot of other companies have done similar where you would do an application, you would answer all of these questions, we would review it and make a hiring decision with no conversation at all. You know? At the time, it was the right decision. That's just not how we want our candidates to experience coming into our organization any longer. We want that connection with them. Isn't it so interesting how the pendulum can swing? Kind of... It's like fashion, Monday's day. Right. Text day's day's all, you know, little practical runway. Yep. Exactly. Totally. But it feels like right now your pendulum's a good balance. It's right in the middle. Right? So not... No technology or not all technology. It's a it's a good balance that's right there. Yeah. I think that balance is important. That's always gonna stay core to our guiding principles is how do we find that right balance to really ensure that that candidate is having a great experience. We want our customers to have a great experience. We want our candidates to have a great experience. We also want our leaders to have a great experience, and we wanna make hiring fun. I mean, I think, you know, maybe it's naive of maybe because I'm a TA, but I think this is one of the greatest jobs in HR and any You get to give people jobs. You know, that is life changing for so many people, and we hear a lot of those stories of... Through this experience, I was able to go on vacation, or I could send my kid to school now, or, you you know, I could just buy that great handbag now that I have the employee discount. And then there's just such power in employing people, and we wanna make it as easy as possible for them. Completely. I mean, what an honor it is to be able to change people's lives like that completely. Yeah. And... Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit about some of the results that you've seen. Yeah. Which is fun. I love the results. It is the fun part as well. Yeah. You have eliminated a lot of manual screens, and you have given your teams a lot of hours back. Yes. What did that do to your team? Like, how... What did that empower your team to do with all that time? It really is a reinvestment of the time. How do we use that time in a much more productive way? So I spoke earlier about the regional structure. You know, we were never able to have the time to really get to that diagnostic level of, hey. What's happening in... And it's my... It was my home store, King Of Prussia, location versus, you know, what is happening in our Houston location. And now our our team has the time to do that. And to just even hear how our team is speaking about the business and speaking about their source, it's so personal to them for those stores to succeed versus click, click, click, click, click through all of the resumes. We still do have a level of manual screening. It's one of the things that we're gonna work with Hirevue on of how do we completely possibly eradicate that manual screening, at some point. Again, keeping the human at the decision point, but it was the reinvestment of value add work versus non value add work. And that connection to the stores to help them drive their process with the best talent is the best way we could have reinvested those hours. I love it. I mean, again, talk about keeping that human in the loop, but also making it a human experience so they have an opportunity to do more, with their time. What do you... What does that make you think of in terms of capacity? Like, what's the value of getting that capacity back? Again, to your point, like, they're more invested in the store, they're more invested, but I just... It... I can't help but wonder if it's an opportunity also to transform the role of the recruiter. It's so timely that you say that. It it is a conversation we're having. What is the next wave of the recruiter? I mean, all of us are probably inundated with emails of webinars and whatnot on, like, the future of AI and recruiting. We don't have the answer to that yet, and we're gonna create the best experience for Macy's. I definitely will never, this is Rachel, never see a day where the recruiter is not somehow involved in the process. You have to have a human at some point within that process. But I think all of these tools and technologies that are here to help, it is finding out the best way to blend them all together. So I don't know what the role of the recruiter looks like in the future. I think a recruiter on a frontline standpoint is gonna look very different than those hiring a professional salary population. You know, what does a recruiter in a storage organization look like versus a distribution center? So I think the role of the recruiter really is coming to this point of, you know, having that conversation of we've got the process right now, but is... Are the roles still right and meaningful and adding value? So that is probably one of the topics we're we're thinking about the most right now. I am really curious about that one too. I think that's an interesting one. Rachel, you mentioned also, which obviously, we... I... We are so passionate about kind of this, need to balance speed with quality. You never wanna move so fast that you're not being mindful of who you hire and the decisions that you make, but you also can't go so slowly that you lose out to the competition, the world in general. Yeah. Looks like you saw an early lift in quality of hire compared to Indeed or other sourcing mechanisms. What did that tell you about how effective this was? It was... It tells a couple things. First and foremost, we love Indeed, and they're a great partner to us. Us. So always wanna say that, but it reinforced that the quality really does improve when you create a process that helps candidates understand the role. You know, if you're on any of the job boards, you're reading a job description and making a decision whether or not you wanna invest your time into applying to that. And, you know, for us, it really was about if we slow down and take the time to... Through the realistic job preview, through the TA conversation, really talk about that role to make sure that that is a fit for what that person is looking for. You know, the the candidate that's not as invested, they're they're they're looking for just a job and they're not looking for really providing exceptional service, this might not be the right the right fit. Or it might be. They might learn more and get really excited about the role. So I think that it really is about the more transparent and the more information you can provide the candidate upfront, which is what we've been doing, we are definitely seeing a different level of a candidate coming in to the organization because they have that knowledge. It's not, you know, the days of when I'm gonna date myself. You would walk around the mall and fill out an application and every retailer that was there. You know, you're putting time into learning. We're putting time into investing and having that conversation with the candidate. Well, I'm sorry. Oh, no. Please continue. Oh, I'm sorry. You know, I I would say, and this is this is where I definitely get excited is not only we're seeing a difference in the quality of the candidate, we're seeing stronger offer acceptances. We're seeing more people show up for day one. You know, everybody knows that ghosting, you accept the offer and then they never show up. We are seeing phenomenal results with that. And most importantly, retention. You know, are they staying past thirty days, sixty days, ninety days, one year? And we are seeing positive movement in all those metrics, which leads us to believe we have the process right for right now. We're never gonna stop that continuous improvement mindset. You know, how do we continue to iterate this to get stronger and stronger over the next few years? Well... And I think that's an important... I was gonna bring up the, higher rate that was up from 8%. It's a wild swing in terms of an improvement in higher rate. And I think that also goes to show that, like, again, there's sourcing, you're attracting, you're generating a lot of interest, but then what happens after you do that and what happens after that interest is there? That's what's so important. So it sounds like, actually, it's... Your sourcing strategies are very sound because that pool is getting so big, and now your screening and qualifying strategy is also proving out, which is really exciting to see. Yeah. And what we did with this transformation, you know, not just in talent acquisition, as we were redefining this process, we also relooked at how we onboard people, and we have an amazing team under our talent COE that focuses. So we did this together. It stayed connected. So it wasn't, okay. Hey. You're hired. Now now go to day one. It was how do we continue that experience through onboarding so that candidate from the point of application through the point of when they're ready to actually go to the the sales floor as a fully ready to go colleague felt the same. It felt connected. It didn't feel like this was my TA process. This was my onboarding process. It just felt like a continuum. So that was really important for us as well as to make sure that experience didn't feel fragmented along the way. Awesome. Rachel, one of my favorite staffs, and you have so many staffs, one of my favorite ones. You mentioned it a couple of times in terms of folks interviewing between midnight and 6AM. Yes. People submitted interviews during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which tells me they watched... They were watching TV thinking I want to go work there, and they had an opportunity to go submit their application and apply. But what does that tell you about the importance of how you engage with your candidates? I think it comes back to the beginning of the brand. You know, the Macy's brand is such a strong brand. They do watch the parade bank. You know, like, we hopefully all do watch the parade. And it is that that connection that they wanna be a part of that. You know? Just a little snippet about a parade. It's it's... Our employees are in the parade. You know? I have several members from my team who are not gonna be in the parade this year, and that is a way to be part of the parade. And I think that it goes back to meet the candidate where they are. We're not closed on Thanksgiving from accepting applications and allowing... And if that's the time that that candidate can can complete that recorded interview because, you know, it's the most convenient for them. Our shop is open for them to be able to do that. So we do see a lot of applications come in during the Thanksgiving Day parade, which is which is great to see. And also during the fireworks, we saw a nice lift this year in applications as well. So cool. And I think that's... It's so cool. It's fun. There was an audience question that came in that actually segues really nicely, into our next section. So I'm gonna ask the audience question, but it's... It really ties into what we've been talking about here, which is what has the feedback been among the team during the transition. You've shared a little bit, in terms of how you've built it and what that's look like. But, you know, thinking about those results that you just shared, how have your store managers, your people leaders, your own team members, what have they been telling you? I I feel like I'm dreaming because it's better than what I could have ever had expected. You know, I would say overall incredibly favorable. Where we are still facing challenges is in the really tight labor markets. You know, if you think about Hawaii, there's only so many people that live on the island. And when you have open jobs to fill, you really do have to think about that differently. Or if you think about, you know, the Minneapolis market is an incredibly tight labor market. So the conversation has has changed and the strategy is not, you know, get people in there, but how do we find the right people and what do we do differently? And that kinda goes back to, you know, the process is allowing us to have those more strategic conversations, and that's where from our regional leaders, from our senior leaders, they are finding the most value is now we really do have that collaboration of thought partnership of recognizing the business need. You know, my team is very well versed now in what's our sales plan look like? What are the stores that are being planned and being l y? We never had the capacity to be able to do that before. It was just moving people through through the process. So, again, that reinvestment in hours was a reinvestment to connect our team back to the business. Awesome. There... There's one other question that came in that, again, really nice segue into our next kind of portion here as we close out our time together, which is really centered on what you and your team have learned. And I think it's a reasonable question because you talked about going from the 12 questions to three questions. You got everybody in a room. You were designing the art of the possible together. The question from the audience member is how did you decide what screening questions were the most relevant to hire a good candidate? Great question. It was through a lot of dialogue, and it was about listening to the business. You know, one of the questions that we have for stores is really about the schedule. And that might seem really basic, but when you have a retail schedule, it's tough. And our our our teams do amazing things, but you do have to be honest with what that schedule is. So it really was about almost that that customization down to the business need of what was most important to them, but also providing that transparency to the candidate of... These are really important things. So I'll be honest. They change sometimes. We might tailor them. We might add a few more here, or we might, you know, change the wording of this question. Always working with our legal partners, always working with our store leaders and our HR business partners, but it really is about listening to the business and what is most important to them. You know, when we hear feedback, they can't work the schedule, they can't work the schedule, they can't work the schedule, that made it very clear that it had to be one of our three questions. So, really, it is about service and that... I'll call it more that an operational of of the schedule is really where we wanted to put our focus because they are core to what we need in a retail colleague. You made a really good point there that I really don't wanna skip the past because I think it's so important, which is the questions can change, the process can change, the people can change. Right? Like, in no world... And I know you well enough now to know this to be true. In no world are you saying, this is our process for seasonal hiring, always and forever, and this is how it's gonna go. Right? Like, you've built something that's scalable and more agile than that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even thinking about this new process coming into seasonal hiring, you know, we are very passionate about one to one interviews that the people leader need. That is not doable for a compressed fifteen period... Week period of of seasonal hiring. But it wasn't our forcing a process on them. We gave them tools if they'd like to do a group interview. Here's how you can deliver an excellent interview, and it's your choice, leader and store, how you want to interview and bring these colleagues in. So this is all... And, Dina, you do know me well enough to know. It is always a continuous improvement mindset, but it's also always about listening to the business. We are here to serve the business. The business is not here to serve what we design as a process. So that's really important and something that, you know, I'm always talking to my team about as we think about what is our purpose here and it is to serve the business, to make sure they're hitting their business goals. I think that's just so important. I mean, I think it's important for TA in a decentralized high volume world like yourself. But, gosh, I do wonder if that's just like a a good kind of mantra for TA in general, which is how to think about how we partner with our hiring managers and hiring leaders in order to make those smart hiring decisions. Yeah. And I would say it's it's being open to feedback. You're never gonna get a grant all the time, you know. So it is sometimes hearing the tough message of, like, hey. Applicant volume is down. What are you all doing about it? And, you know, it's not about saying, well, we, you know, we deployed all this and we're done. It's really being that surgical deep dive into, okay, what is really causing this issue in this market of why we're seeing a decline in applicant flow? And then then it's, you know, is it rate? Is it retention? Is it this? Is it that? So it is kind of, you know, peeling back the layers out of onion. And this new process and this technology is allowing us to get to that level of business support. Amazing. Well, we only have... I mean, this was a fast fifty five minutes. We only have a few minutes to go. I know. It really sped by. Good day. Let's let's wrap this up. I mean, I feel like you have so generously shared so many wonderful learnings and so many kind of great anecdotes and and kind of stats and ideas for everybody on the line today to take away. Maybe share kind of in a couple closing thoughts. First and foremost, what's the biggest lesson you learned, through the transformation? Don't assume that every decision and every step adds value. Really thinking about... And and taking that hard look at your own processes to say, yeah. We've done it this way for ten years, but is it adding value? That is definitely the... One of the key lessons. The other is really about change management. You know, don't take that for granted. That is probably... You can design a great process, so you can have all the technology in the world to help you. But if you don't have a good change management plan and you don't have that collaboration, it's it's really gonna be very, very challenging. They would be the two biggest things, but also... And it is a plug for you, Dina, and Hirevue. Use your partners. You know, that was really important for us as we we brought you guys in early to say, here's what we're doing. You know where we're trying to go. And you guys have been thought partners with us on how do we how do we get there. And, you know, we're not there yet. We're still talking and working on some other things. And pilot, I think, is another key learning is is where you can pilot pilot and be open to feedback. Good then otherwise. That feedback is what's gonna help to strengthen that that muscle and that end result. Love it. I also think you... I'll I'll throw in my observation, just from the Hirevue seat and having, again, the great honor and privilege to partner with you and so many others. It's also acknowledging that everybody has different starting points and different goals in place. And so it's like hearing you... And and you mentioned it, Rachel. Like, some people wanna go full blown automation and go as fast as possible, and others are not quite there, and others might not never be there. But it's this element of what's the problem that is need solving and what are the way... Right ways to solve it. And so to your point, partnering, hearing, listening, being thoughtful, being creative, being respectful. I think those are just really important human components to make this work and work well. Yeah. And I I would say within my own organization, it was also about having fun. You know, you're you're doing a lot of heavy lifting of this work and a lot of listening and redesigning, and you have to have fun along the way. And you have, you know, you have to know that where you're gonna get is only gonna make us better and stronger. Love it. Well, my my closing question for you, and I'll also give folks in the chat one more opportunity to throw any additional questions in there. But if anybody listening today wants to find their own version of those ten thousand plus hours in savings, where should they start looking? I would say start mapping out every step of your process, and you really will begin to to see and ask yourself that question. Does this step improve the hiring decision? Does it add value? And if the answer is no, then, you know, put that posted on the board of how do we software it then and how do we make it better? And it sounds really simple, but there's such power in in just really taking the time even if it's the smallest click. You know, I click set up in payroll. You know, if you can remove a click, what are you saving in in cost? But really mapping out your process is key to to getting started, but also collaboration with your your key partners. And for us, that was our HR business partners, our legal team, and our technology team. I feel like they come along with me almost everywhere I go because they're so key to what we do. Amazing. Rachel, thank you so much, for taking the time. Hopefully, you felt like this went by as fast as I did. It went by. It was great. Good. Awesome. It was so fun to hear all of the goodness that you and your team have been working on and really truly wildly impressive. Like, just what an amazing accomplishment, over the last several years and what you have cooking for this next, seasonal hiring campaign. When does seasonal hiring kickoff for all of you? Pretty soon? Our... It has, and our first national hiring event is tomorrow. So Right. You know, that is really our biggest... Our big kickoff, and then, we get going. We get going. Awesome. We get going. Well, thank you again so much, and thank you to all of the attendees who were on.