High‑Volume Hiring Without Losing the Human Touch featuring Stef Nikitas

Welcome back to the Don’t Tell Me About Yourself Podcast. We are at Unleash America in Las Vegas at the Shaker booth, and we are sitting with Steph Nikitas. Hello, ladies. >> Hi. I’m with Ace Hardware Corporation. I’m the Director of Talent Acquisition. Very excited to be here. Well, thank you so much for being here. We’ve heard already that you are a busy very busy person here. Um you’re speaking later today. What are you going to be talking about? >> at 1:00, I’m going to talk about high-volume recruitment and uh you the use of AI. Okay. Can you give us some like tips and like some sneak peeks of what’s going to be in your discussion tomorrow? Yeah, it’ll be about our journey and how we adopted uh Paradox AI into our recruitment process, and we call her Grace. Um so, everybody within my organization knows when we talk about Grace, it’s uh our chatbot. And uh she has changed the way we recruit since uh COVID. It’s been phenomenal. >> Amazing. I’d love to hear just a little bit more about that. Can you dig into that? Like, what aspects um is Grace helping with? Yep. Um we started with um how do we we call it moving the cheese because in essence the the elements of recruitment don’t change, right? Like, you still have to have a phone screen. You’re going to have to have a manager interview. You’re still going to have an offer, pre-employment, and all the steps in between. Um we needed to figure out during COVID when we needed to hire very fast um and a lot of people like from a volume perspective, how do we do this more efficiently? And so, we looked at our application process, which was very much pre-COVID um slow. Yeah. And uh try to go after Indeed easy apply, make it as easy as possible for the candidate to get their application in, and then by adding AI in, we were able to cut down on uh no-shows for the interviews because the scheduling was now in the candidate’s hands instead of the manager dictating, “I’m available on this day at this time.” The candidate got to pick when it worked for them. I love that. >> Yeah. We talk a lot about just the experience that the candidates have. It sometimes gets lost, especially when we’re improving things or building efficiencies. Um I am curious. Um you mentioned all the wonderful things Grace is helping with, but is there any guardrails or boundaries for you about what Grace isn’t allowed to do? Yes, 100%. That’s actually a really good point, especially right now. Everybody’s running to adopt AI, right? And you have a you have uh in in my world, it’s legal, IT, data privacy teams all start showing up and start asking massive amounts of questions because now legislation is here in comparison to even 3 years ago, right? So, is the AI making decisions? How is it interacting with the candidate? What information is being exchanged? Um is there potential for information to get leaked out into another system? Where are the integration points? Who’s the controller and who’s the processor? So, at this point, I feel like I can write a book about it. Um having to answer so many questions, but at the same time, it’s good that we’re doing it because we’re protecting the company, right? We’re trying to protect the brand, and we’re trying to protect the candidate, too. So, um I would say at the end of the day, a lot of patience to get through it, um but really the big um game-changer is like taking that administrative back and forth Right. that has like rocked our world. Right. I think you made such a great point, too, about like the decision-making because that’s We won’t name them, but we’ve seen a few people in the news, right, for, you know, lawsuits or inquiries into that explainability of the decisions. >> Yeah. So, we often say, you know, the the companies that win with AI won’t be the ones who automate first. They’ll be the ones whose processes are worth automating, right? So, are your decisions explainable? Do they make sense? Would they make sense regardless of AI or not, right? So, And for us, every decision is still made by a human, by a recruiter. There are companies that have it fully automated. You can apply and you show up the next day and you’ve never met a human. But our brand is not set up that way. We’re Ace to Helpful Place for a reason. It’s like our core pillar of our culture. It’s how we operate as a company, and we’ll never have AI make decisions. Mhm. So, in a way that’s job security for me and my team. Yeah. Cuz we’ll always have a recruiter that’s going to guide the candidate through that process. >> Right. And how refreshing is it that a tagline that you have for your company is actually how it is internally? Yes, 100%. >> and probably rare. Um it could be. I would say in um obviously, take a different organizations probably have different slogans. In Ace’s um case, we are um how do I phrase this? Our candidates are our customers. Yeah. And our customers are our candidates. So, I have to have that brand promise follow through on the employment side the same way that a can’t that a uh consumer would in the stores. >> Yeah. Because it’s what the brand stands for. Uh what a the the world would be a better place if every company viewed candidates like that. You know, too. Um that’s that’s amazing. Um can you walk us through something in your industry that most people completely misunderstand? I think retail in general. Um a lot of people think retail is easy. Retail is just like just find someone to do the job. You’ll can you can teach them. But even in high-volume recruitment, unskilled, skilled, you’re still going to need the right fit, right? In our case, it could be soft skills because of the customer service and human interaction component in warehouses for the company where you don’t interact with a customer, it could be taking care of the product that goes to the stores that eventually lands in the customer’s cart. Um at corporate, the way my recruiters interact with the candidates is a reflection of the organization and the brand promise of being the helpful place. And if a candidate has a crappy experience, they’re going to stop shopping at our stores. And I would say especially in retail, a lot of times outsiders don’t understand what it means when we say our candidates are our customers and vice versa. It is very important. You got to take care of both both sides cuz it can impact your bottom line. Yeah. That’s amazing. Um is there in your role, is there a general metric or data point that you rely on the most right now for your business? Well, that’s a good question. I think um time to offer is probably a big one for us right now. Um and in different segments or business units of the business, it means different things. Like, in corporate, 30-day time to hire is fine. But in high-volume recruitment, you know, anything beyond 6, 7 days is bad. Like, in retail, that can that can feel like a year if it takes you 7 days to seat a candidate. >> Right. >> it’s gets close to that, but it’s not quite as drastic. But it impacts the operation. So, I would say time to fill. Yeah. Yeah. Um what is one thing and What? Sorry. What is one thing talent leaders need to know in the year ahead? I agree. Right now, we’re all talking about AI. Yes, we are. >> So, I know everybody is on this transformation journey of where does it fit in? How do we use it? Where does it help, complement? Like, instead of just like, “Let’s just get AI.” Like, “Okay, what are you trying to solve for? What are you What’s your problem?” Start there, right? Like, a lot of people just keep running to get the AI without ever identifying what it is that they’re trying to fix, solve for, or add into the process. >> Yeah. And that was really important for us when we were looking at it, and I’m continuing to go down that path right now to transform my team. The next thing for us is a CRM because I need to be able to communicate more at scale with the masses in my environment. Um but you talk to different people, they don’t understand how CRM is necessarily used because it’s not the same way in every organization, right? So, I would just say like intent is a big piece right now for leaders in TA in the next year, 18 months even. What’s the next step? Don’t just run to get the AI. Figure out what you need it for. Yeah. And with that in mind, can you talk about how your relationship with recruiting and TA um what that relationship looks like with your technology teams at Ace Hardware? Like, what what does that partnership look like and how do you roll that out successfully? So, a lot of it in in my world is tied to Workday, which is actually managed by our HRIS team. Um so, IT is not necessarily as involved. They get more involved when we start doing integrations and like more at the contract stage. >> Yeah. In some cases, when we get into like the implementations, they’re a big part of my CRM project right now to make sure I find the right vendor. Um other than that, they’re more like a business partner setup where we have regular check-ins and just keep each other updated. And then my compliance team is actually more front and center to make sure I’m aware of any legislation changes and how it would impact us from a technology standpoint. And then again, because those systems that I have like Paradox, Workday, and the future CRM are going to be managed through the HRIS and my team. So, IT isn’t necessarily a part of the day-to-day there. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Which is not the same for every company. >> Sure. Right. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. And then are there um any changes that you see coming in this year ahead that you’re hoping to implement or make in your role? >> The The CRM is Yeah, it’s the first step. Um we’re trying to fully scale into a talent intelligence platform eventually so that I can connect the dots from like the top of the funnel, getting them in through recruitment with the CRM. I want to add a better internal mobility program where I can also identify skills that somebody has or is missing, and how do we then get them up to speed for a role potentially? >> Cool. To really help more for that internal mobility piece, which I feel like is so important in today’s age. Um and then from a workforce planning, workforce management standpoint in the future, I would love to be able to identify, okay, these are the skills our internal workforce has today. Here’s what we need for a project, a function, whatever the case is in the future, and how do we identify that cuz we have 15, 20,000 employees outside of our stores. Yeah. How do I look internally first before I even spend a dollar advertising any type of job, right? Right. And then in the future, that will help set us all up from a HR, OD, and TA standpoint to be more proactive versus reactive, right? In my world, I don’t do anything until I have a wreck. Sure. But how can I actually plan ahead for something I know is coming like a retirement, someone’s moving, a reorg, whatever. Yes. A system like that would really help me tie the the recruitment outcomes to the business strategy. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, having that forward vision, that’s yeah, amazing. Um that’s fantastic. Where can people learn more about you or can they see some of the things that you’re talking about? Tell our listeners where they can find you. Uh so tomorrow I’ll be speaking here at um Unleash. Um I’ll be uh what is it? On Thursday, the 18th at 1:00 p.m. Shameless Pub. I’ll be talking with Rachel Allen from 7-Eleven about high volume recruitment and the use of AI in that process. Wow. Um so a little bit about our journey and um how Paradox is helping us. Um I’m also on some other podcasts with you ladies. Um a couple of others. Um everything is linked on my LinkedIn, Stephanie Kittus. Um yeah. That’s fantastic. Well, we know that you’re extremely busy and you have so many great conversations to have. So we really appreciate you taking time to sit down and talk with us. >> Thank you so much for having me, ladies. >> Thank you. Enjoy the conference. Thanks.