Ace Hardware: Differentiate or Die

Differentiating in the Talent Trenches with Ace Hardware

The "Helpful Place" just got a lot more high-tech.

In this episode of HR’s Most Dangerous Podcast, Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman sit down with Stef Nikitas (Director of Talent Acquisition) and Kaleigh Burns (Manager of TA & Ops) from Ace Hardware. As Ace celebrates its 100th anniversary, the team reveals how they survived the "hurricane" of the pandemic by completely rebuilding their recruiting engine from the ground up.  

From a decentralized world of softball sponsorships and paper flyers to a sophisticated $4 million automated powerhouse, this is a masterclass in change management, executive buy-in, and the courage to "differentiate or die".  

🎙️ In This Episode, We Discuss:

• Project Hurricane

• Who is "Grace"?

• The Culture Shock

• Dating the Candidate

• Customer = Candidate

  
  

💡 The Big Takeaway

"In retail, you have to differentiate or you're gonna die." - Stef Nikitas, Ace Hardware

Ace Hardware proves that even a century-old brand can lead the pack in AI adoption by focusing on one simple goal: using technology to be more human..  

Listen to hear how Ace stopped chasing emails and start building a world-class talent brand.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

0:00:24.5 Joel Cheesman: Let's do this. We are the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman, joined always by Chad Sowash as we welcome Stef Nikitas, director of Talent Acquisition, and Kaleigh Burns, manager of TA and Ops, both with Ace Hardware. Ladies, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous podcast.

0:00:43.8 Stef Nikitas: Thank you.

0:00:45.3 Kaleigh Burns: Thank you.

0:00:45.9 Chad Sowash: Ace has been around for a while.

0:00:48.0 Kaleigh Burns: 100 years.

0:00:48.1 Stef Nikitas: 100 years this year.

0:00:49.5 Kaleigh Burns: 1924 to date.

0:00:50.8 Stef Nikitas: Happy birthday Ace.

0:00:51.0 Chad Sowash: Right. So, evolution has happened at Ace. Jingles, slogans, all that other fun stuff, but also obviously, TA. So as we take a look at evolving forward, you had systems in place, you've replaced systems, and within the decade that you've been around, so now you've moved into more automation, maybe even, say, AI, depending on what you're using. You don't just do that just because. Because somebody says, "We want AI, we want automation would be cool," right? Uh, why'd you do it? What was the problem? What were you solving for?

0:01:25.0 Stef Nikitas: Like a lot of, uh, other HR professionals and companies out there, COVID, that's really what kind of slingshot us into where we are today and all the shortages that were starting to happen. Customers weren't comfortable coming into the stores, so then our dot-com business was shooting through the roof, which was phenomenal from a sales side, but again, the manpower. So very quickly we needed to hire thousands of people. And we had not necessarily a broken process at the time, but we didn't have a process that was addressing the challenges we need to get to the table in front of candidates fast. Umm, so very quickly, I happened to be in the right place at the right time and got an opportunity to step onto this committee. We called it Project Hurricane. Fitting, 'cause it felt like a hurricane. And with executive leadership at the table, so your VP of, umm, supply chain, the president of the company, the chief marketing officer, and others decided we needed to address the way we recruit, the way we look at talent, umm, and basically take the entire process and put it under a magnifying glass. And very quickly decided we needed a partnership from a recruitment marketing standpoint because we didn't have any resources in that arena. So that was kind of the birth of TA Ops for us. What's programmatic? What's search engine marketing? Like, we know it and breathe it on the consumer side 'cause retail stores, but we never did it from a talent attraction standpoint.

0:02:42.0 Chad Sowash: Is this when you started to know that you needed technology to be able to do this?

0:02:46.6 Stef Nikitas: Yes. So when Shaker came to the table, we did essentially, like, for the first three of six months, we did a pilot. And we basically took our 15 locations, split them in half. We tried to, like, put on both sides likewise markets and decided, "Okay, this market's staying on Indeed hosted. This market is now going to get programmatic and search engine marketing support through an agency."

0:03:06.9 Kaleigh Burns: Raise my hand.

0:03:07.4 Stef Nikitas: Exactly. And we're going to see and measure on a week-by-week basis. And, like, where we fell wrong, like, we couldn't necessarily compare apples to apples because Indeed was doing a completely different thing compared to what Shaker was doing for us. But we got through it and we essentially were able to show leadership, like, "Here's the value that this is adding. Like, here's where we were before the support, even without Indeed, and here's where we are now as far as the numbers and the hires and the quality, and here's how it's affecting the metrics." And so from that point on, we were able to start building the case, like, "We need to make changes." And it started with, "What's the application look like in Workday?" Right? Like, what do we...

0:03:42.7 Kaleigh Burns: It was long.

0:03:43.8 Stef Nikitas: It was too long.

0:03:44.3 Kaleigh Burns: It was too long.

0:03:45.4 Stef Nikitas: Umm, it took the candidate too long.

0:03:45.7 Chad Sowash: For high-volume roles.

0:03:47.2 Stef Nikitas: Yes, warehouse specialists.

0:03:47.8 Kaleigh Burns: Yeah, definitely. That's what we needed the most. We needed warehouse specialists, forklift drivers, umm...

0:03:53.3 Chad Sowash: And they're needed everywhere. So therefore, how long were they trying to... I mean, how long was the application process for, for Workday?

0:03:58.2 Kaleigh Burns: Yes. They were put out... You know, Indeed hit up easy, like, Indeed had that Easy Apply right around then, so people could literally apply to 50 jobs in one minute.

0:04:07.6 Joel Cheesman: How much was competition a catalyst for change? Because you've talked about the pandemic...

0:04:12.2 Stef Nikitas: Is the big crush.

0:04:12.6 Joel Cheesman: You have some well-funded, well-known competitors, and that typically is something that drives people to change.

0:04:17.9 Kaleigh Burns: Yeah, 100%.

0:04:18.5 Joel Cheesman: So were they making similar changes, and what impact did that have?

0:04:21.0 Stef Nikitas: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

0:04:21.9 Kaleigh Burns: Yeah, I would, I will say too, it's one thing I love about Ace Hardware is that we have been around for 100 years. So we're very self-aware that we need to be continuously upgrading, changing. It would be easy to be like, "Well, we're going to do the same thing for 100 years. It's worked for 100 years. Let's continue that." That's not how we see it. It's continuously, "How can we be more helpful? How can we do this better? How can we be more efficient? What are we talking about here?" So it's never been a foe to say, "Well, how do we improve that?" Right. "Great, we did it this way before, but how do we improve that?" And, uh, I think it's really helpful to have leadership that's open to it.

0:04:56.7 Stef Nikitas: Yeah.

0:04:56.8 Kaleigh Burns: 'Cause when you talk to some of the people here, even at, like, Client Board, when you talk to them, they're, they'll say their number one challenge is leadership. I don't feel like we always have that. Like, they're really, they really contend on, "We hire the right people to be in the right jobs to do this, and we want to evolve and change and be around for another 100 years."

0:05:13.1 Stef Nikitas: Yeah. Our big, umm, like, umm, John Venhuizen, our, umm, CEO and president, always says at every meeting I've ever been to, be it a leadership meeting, a conference, whatever, "In retail, you have to, you have to differentiate or you're gonna die." And we took the same approach in this project when we were looking at talent acquisition, because for us, our customers are our consumers. So if we screw it up, it's gonna affect the business at the end of the day.

0:05:36.9 Kaleigh Burns: When it be an Ace.

0:05:37.7 Stef Nikitas: And Ace is a helpful place for a reason. It's not just a jingle, a slogan that we slap under the logo and then there you go. We live it, we breathe it. It's part of the very fabric of the organization. So, like, everything that we do internally, externally, has to reflect that. And so when we were going through this project, very quickly it became apparent, like, not only do we need to change the application, but how do we get to candidates faster?

0:05:59.8 Chad Sowash: Yes.

0:06:00.1 Stef Nikitas: And so Shaker had made a recommendation of Paradox. And we were like, "What's Paradox?" And that's how the whole journey started to get us to where we are today, where we have a fully automated system now in place to engage with candidates the moment they come to our website. The moment they are interested in having a conversation, they will talk to Grace. That's our, our version of Olivia. And more often than not, we have candidates showing up looking for Grace 'cause they think she's real. Umm, we actually have some funny stuff that we pulled out of conversations 'cause people, thinking she is real, they ask her out, they wanna have dinner with her, they ask her personal questions. It's actually kinda cute. Umm, but I don't know how we managed to do this, to this day, we don't have a single recruiter called Grace. So at any point in our process in HR, when somebody talks about Grace, we know immediately who they're referring to.

0:06:49.3 Kaleigh Burns: Referring to. We've been able to keep that under wraps.

0:06:51.2 Stef Nikitas: Yes.

0:06:51.6 Chad Sowash: So you say fully automated. What does that actually mean? When the candidate hits the site and then when, where does it automated through? Scheduling, I mean, all the way through?

0:07:01.0 Stef Nikitas: Yeah.

0:07:01.2 Chad Sowash: What's, what's the automation, uh, look like?

0:07:02.6 Stef Nikitas: Let's say Kaleigh comes on our career site and she's looking for a job. Umm, Grace pops up and then she has to, you know, 'cause legal always wants to make sure we're, we're in the good, so privacy policy has to be accepted in order to do the engagement. And then Kaleigh can ask questions about Ace, about our culture, about our benefits, policies. I mean, we send internal employees if they have a question about something to talk to Grace, let alone candidates, 'cause she has a wealth of knowledge. And, umm, so let's say she has all of her questions answered, she's interested in a job, she can basically tell Grace, "Hey, I'm looking for a job in Dallas. What do you have available?" So Grace will serve her up opportunities. She can look at the jobs and then from there she can decide, "I'm gonna apply." And then Grace will have that conversation, same as the application in Workday, and basically solicit the same information through a chat function. And if Kaleigh has something going on and can't have finished that conversation, she can come back to it. If it takes her 24 hours, Grace might poke her and say, "Hey, you wanna finish your application? Come back to us."

0:07:59.3 Stef Nikitas: And then once that application goes into Workday, or let's say she submits it, it goes into Workday. And then a recruiter will be able to view the application and decide to take action from there. So if they have the information, Kaleigh looks great on paper, I wanna talk to her, Grace will reach out to Kaleigh, introduce herself, and then schedule that phone screen. Let's say it's with me. Grace will look at my calendar, offer her up availability and then Kaleigh can pick the time that works best for her. And that's the big difference that we didn't have before. Before it was the back and forth via email, voicemails, phone calls, texts, whatever, trying to chase each other.

0:08:33.1 Joel Cheesman: I'm a happy Ace customer. There's one really close to my house. And it, it always feels, every time I've gone into one, there's a guy who looks like he's been changing his own oil for about 30, 40 years.

0:08:45.1 Stef Nikitas: Yeah.

0:08:45.3 Joel Cheesman: Which I like 'cause I know the, like, he's, he's, he's got the, got the scars, right?

0:08:51.0 Chad Sowash: That's the persona.

0:08:52.5 Joel Cheesman: And so this may be a false perception, but it feels like you skew a little older, uh, demographically compared to your, your competition. How did, assuming I'm right, how did that change going automated and a chatbot? And did that, was that hard for your typical candidate to deal with? Were there, was that a challenge or no?

0:09:12.7 Kaleigh Burns: Not the candidates. It was... Internally, it was a huge culture shock. Because the tenure at Ace is awesome.

0:09:19.3 Stef Nikitas: Yes.

0:09:19.4 Kaleigh Burns: It's really, really something to be proud of.

0:09:21.6 Chad Sowash: So you had to go through, I mean, this, again, change management. So you had to go through a rollout of education.

0:09:26.6 Stef Nikitas: Yeah.

0:09:26.7 Chad Sowash: Hope that is adoption. And not meet me.

0:09:30.9 Stef Nikitas: So we had education with positive intent. Yes. So for us, it was kind of almost like a triple change, right? Because we were changing the role of the recruiter, we were changing the systems, and then we were changing the behaviors and the tasks that everybody was doing in the process. Umm, and we thank God we have a organizational development department and we had a resource, umm, who was phenomenal in the process. Yeah, Kathy. She helped us. Like, she is completely outside of HR and TA, like, social. So we had to get her up to speed on a lot of things, but by the end of it, like, she understood the product and the process as much as we did, and she helped us then take on her design.

0:10:09.3 Kaleigh Burns: From someone who didn't know it...

0:10:11.6 Stef Nikitas: Yeah.

0:10:11.7 Kaleigh Burns: And could say, wait, when y'all say this, that's internal language. I don't know what that means.

0:10:15.6 Stef Nikitas: Yeah.

0:10:15.9 Kaleigh Burns: You're not making sense to me. Great. Let's change it.

0:10:18.3 Stef Nikitas: So, like, her instructional design background came in that every time we were talking about something, she's like, okay, let me think about how to communicate this, how to train this. So, like, when it came time for us to roll it out, we were purely relying on her to get the message out because she was a part of the entire process. That was the game changer to get everybody on board. Did we get 100% adoption? No, you never do. Nothing's ever perfect. You're always going to have people who still have legacy mindset who are resistant to change, and that's fine. We still have to coach and mentor those people and poke them and prod them along the way. And I would say now we're in a really good spot. Are there opportunities? Absolutely. There always is, right? For improvement and growth and kind of what's the next best thing. But right now, I feel like from where we were 2019 to where we are now has changed us completely and made us so much better.

0:11:06.3 Chad Sowash: After you've had this, this piece of technology, this process in place, have recruiters finally kind of like seen the light and said, wow, I only have to do a lot of this crappy work I used to do. I can focus on actually talking to people.

0:11:19.8 Chad Sowash: They're there now.

0:11:21.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:11:21.2 Stef Nikitas: But you know what? Last year at this time when I was here at Kleinboard, we had just moved into our new headquarters. And within a month, this happened so randomly too. Everybody was on Cloud9. And then on Monday morning, we all get a message, don't log into your computer. And we very quickly found out that ACE had a data breach. We were one of the fortunate companies.

0:11:44.1 Kaleigh Burns: I sent you a text and I was like, was it Grace?

0:11:48.0 Stef Nikitas: So we didn't know, right?

0:11:49.0 Kaleigh Burns: Oh my God. Did we do this?

0:11:50.1 Stef Nikitas: We weren't allowed to log in.

0:11:52.0 Kaleigh Burns: Did we break Ace?

0:11:54.9 Stef Nikitas: But Grace essentially as a result of that, went down because all of our, our entire ecosystem went down.

0:12:00.1 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:12:00.2 Stef Nikitas: Uh, and they had to rebuild. And it basically, for seven days, worked non stop, three shifts, 24, seven at corporate. We weren't allowed to go to the office. Nobody was allowed to be on VPN, log into systems. Like, we basically worked off our phones, which, as a recruiter, that's hard. And, umm...

0:12:15.9 Kaleigh Burns: Shout out to them for closing.

0:12:16.6 Stef Nikitas: I came, I became the client board around this time last year and we were trying to reconnect Grace. So for about 10 days we were down and didn't have the automation. We were able to get back to work day, but then everybody had to go back to the manual way of doing it. And that's when we saw...

0:12:32.2 Kaleigh Burns: At this point, we had Grace for how long? How long did they...

0:12:35.0 Stef Nikitas: About 10 months.

0:12:35.6 Kaleigh Burns: Yeah. So about 10 months. They've been utilizing her, learning, utilizing.

0:12:39.0 Stef Nikitas: We took away their toy and that's when they freaked out. Our team channel was on fire.

0:12:44.8 Chad Sowash: Oh, yeah.

0:12:45.7 Stef Nikitas: We hatched it. We had recruiters tell us, I don't know how to do my job anymore. We had recruiters tell us, how do I schedule interviews now? We were scratching our heads, like, what do you mean you don't know how to schedule interviews?

0:12:55.3 Kaleigh Burns: So, and that's the thing. It's like, that's the beauty, because that's the, that's the result. It was, did not happen overnight. And I solely remember being a recruiter when they showed us the first video and they were like, you guys look at this. And we were like, okay. And all of us are like, did they just show us that, like, they're gonna lay us off? Like, is that what, is that what they showed us? And I... We have our corporate vice president of HR, Marigonado. She always says something that's very, very, very, hits home with me every time. And it's going into things with positive intent, not negative intent. And so trying to remember those words that she says going into a positive intent. And we're looking at this video, and I'm like, I think it's gonna be great. Let's do it. Yeah, let's... I think it's been great. I want... Are we doing project teams? And of course, she's like, hold on, you know? And I'm like, uh, put me on project team. I'm ready. So we get there. Months go by. Things have changed. I'm now on the TA Ops team, and we're talking to these recruiters, and I'm telling them, you guys, I'm a recruiter, too.

0:13:59.0 Kaleigh Burns: This is not taking your job. It's meant to take things off of it. And then we took a step back because they just weren't hearing it and they weren't... We even, uh, we had people who were on the project team that weren't interested. They wouldn't show up to calls. We had people who were on the project team who actually ended up, like, not even trying to utilize Grace. And we were like, what are we doing wrong? We realized we kept focusing on what Grace was taking off of their plate and not, uh, like, what she's going to add to you. So we reversed, took a couple steps back and replayed it and came back and told them, okay, this is the new plan, and this is how we want to recruit at Ace. We want to focus not only on the skills that that person has, but I want you to also get to know your hiring managers. I want you to know Jim Bob, Jim Bob and Suzy Cream Cheese. Those are my pick people. So Jim Bob and Susie Cream Cheese, those are your two hiring managers. I want you to get to know them so that when Candidate A comes in and you're doing that phone screen, because Grace has already set all this up for you, you actually have the time to do a phone screen that allows you to realize that candidate A has the skills to do both of these jobs, but Canada A is a better fit for Jim Bob.

0:15:07.4 Kaleigh Burns: They're going to do better together. You think that candidate A would grow more there? I said, that's the new style of recruitment that we're going to do here. And then it clicked for them. "Oh, so I have something else to do?" Yes. Like, I want you to utilize that time. We're going to utilize this software to get you out of there and talking to the candidates, being the brand, being helpful.

0:15:28.4 Chad Sowash: Being human.

0:15:29.0 Kaleigh Burns: Yeah.

0:15:29.6 Stef Nikitas: Exactly.

0:15:29.7 Kaleigh Burns: Like, we're not trying to take that away. We're assisting you. And now they're like...

0:15:35.1 Stef Nikitas: Don't take my toys away.

0:15:36.1 Kaleigh Burns: Don't do it.

0:15:37.3 Joel Cheesman: What has automation meant to you in terms of maybe pulling back budget on things that you used to do, whether it was promoting jobs or things internally? Talk about the dollars and cents of of going into automation.

0:15:47.9 Stef Nikitas: Before we got into COVID, I think we had less than a, uh, four or $500,000 budget in TA. It was also very decentralized, right? Right. Umm, the distribution centers, we weren't worrying about them, they weren't worrying about us. They were kind of their own snowflakes.

0:16:02.0 Kaleigh Burns: Printing flyers.

0:16:02.5 Stef Nikitas: Yeah, they were doing their own thing.

0:16:04.0 Kaleigh Burns: Like, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, we maybe spent like 1,000 bucks a year or we would sponsor a softball team or something like that, and that was an extra 1,000 bucks.

0:16:12.2 Stef Nikitas: Yeah. Four years later, I just got my budget approved and we're roughly 4 million.

0:16:17.8 Joel Cheesman: Okay, so say more to that.

0:16:18.6 Stef Nikitas: So that shows you. I mean, that includes enterprise-level agreements with like LinkedIn, something we didn't have before. Now I have a license for every recruiter to go out and, uh, TalentNeuron, you know, like having market intelligence so that, uh, my recruiters are not just be reactive, they can now be talent advisors.

0:16:35.1 Joel Cheesman: So where most organizations are spending up here and see ways to, like, take money off, you guys were sponsoring softball teams and realized what, what these tools could do and said, "Let's up the budget and get to where most organizations are."

0:16:51.5 Kaleigh Burns: We had, we had to play catch-up. And, uh, we're thankful for a leadership team that listened. And, and we said, "You guys, whoa, are we behind? Whoa, whoa, whoa, are we behind? And this is what we need to do." And they said, "Where do we go? How do we get there?" We truly, leadership down to every single person that wears a red vest, to every single person that works in the warehouse, want to be around for another 100 years. We had to do that. We have to make that change. And that meant that we were going to have to put some things in place. So we're continuing to try to build the brand and continue to be that, which means we have to spend money to get quality candidates in the door.

0:17:28.7 Stef Nikitas: And it really goes back to this whole COVID, and I hate to belittle COVID constantly, but I mean, it was kind of World War III in our lifetime, umm, like, from, from that standpoint. But I think it really showcased to our leadership team, like, talent and recruitment is important, right? Like, it's no longer something that you just kind of, like, shove to the side and hope that they get it.

0:17:45.8 Chad Sowash: It's essential.

0:17:47.2 Joel Cheesman: Yeah.

0:17:47.4 Stef Nikitas: It's an essential function in order for the business to operate. You have to have the right people in the right seats at the right time to support the business and the retailers for us at the end of the day, which means that you can walk into your Ace Hardware and have the guy in his oil shirt serve you.

0:18:01.5 Chad Sowash: Yes, overalls and...

0:18:02.6 Stef Nikitas: Exactly. But the product needs to get to the store somehow, right? And I think when that clicked, like, we're putting millions and millions of dollars into consumer marketing, we need to do the same thing on the talent management side to get candidates to the table, because our customers are our candidates.

0:18:17.2 Chad Sowash: Dig, dig into that a little bit further because, uh, your customers are your candidates. You are community-focused. Ace always has been community-focused. So what did you do? Did you actually approach marketing and say, "Look, we are touching all of our customers who are actually having possibly good or bad, uh, experience with us. How can we work together or maybe even get some more budget to ensure that these individuals are having a much better experience?" Hence, you know, automation, Olivia.

0:18:50.4 Stef Nikitas: Yeah, this was all part of that Project Hurricane I talked about earlier. The Chief Marketing Officer, she helped us really build the business case around helping our, the rest of our leadership understand that our customers are our candidates and we need to marry both sides. And like, what we put out, exactly, what we put out on the recruitment side needs to mirror the consumer marketing side. Like, it might be a different type of message going after a candidate versus a customer. Like, we're not promoting a product, right? We're promoting an experience. Like, you want to be a part of Ace, and here's why, and here's how we contribute at the end of the day. And it was, how do we get that message out? So the, that's when we finally both, both sides started to talk the same language and we started to exchange resources. And that's what got us essentially to where we are today.

0:19:35.1 Kaleigh Burns: I was like, "I want up there." But talking about dollars and cents, that's, that's what made this Project Hurricane, made me realize, like, I want to be part of the change. Like, I want to be part of that. Dollars and cents, we just wrapped up budget season and Velocity, what is their name? Velocity Sourcing?

0:19:50.8 Stef Nikitas: Yeah, it was like a sourcing partner.

0:19:52.7 Kaleigh Burns: Yeah. Love them. They're amazing. We budget for them and we do this every year. We, we've always kept it the same, and it's a substantial cost. So we budget for them. In this past year, having Paradox, we spent less with our sourcing partners than we ever have. And when we were talking about it, I was like, "It's because our recruiters have the time to..." I really feel like, okay, maintenance mechanic, that's something we probably would have used Velocity before. We have specific equipment in our distribution centers. We have very, very specific equipment, and a lot of times we have to outsource our help and bring in people on contract, and they have to have specific experience. So we'll use a, uh, sourcing partner. But guess who's doing it today? Our recruiters, because Paradox is allowing them to, because they're not stuck on the phone rescheduling because they had to call in sick on Tuesday. She just rescheduled all of them.

0:20:43.5 Chad Sowash: And also, those individuals might not have completed your long application before. So now you have access and vision into more of a, a much larger job seeker population than you did before.

0:20:56.1 Kaleigh Burns: Yeah, I love it.

0:20:56.9 Chad Sowash: Then, then you get your recruiters to work, so they have more leads to go off of, which they probably didn't have before. That's...

0:21:05.1 Joel Cheesman: And what, what is, what is that bigger net meant in terms of diversity and inclusion? Have you seen your candidate pool, uh, very much more than it had in the past?

0:21:13.2 Stef Nikitas: Yes. 'Cause now we're able to put a lot more eggs in different baskets, right? Like before, we would have not a whole lot of eggs and not a whole lot of baskets. We're able to diversify our dollars more than we've ever been able to, because we can do programmatic campaigns, we can do search engine marketing, we can do social media, right? Like, there's so many different platforms. And then more of that out of home advertisement, where we do billboards and Quantcast and other media that, quite frankly, probably until 2020, we didn't even know what that... What it meant or was because we just didn't have it. Like you talked about earlier, like the competitors, a lot of our distribution centers, probably all of them, are in rural communities across America. And in those communities, you don't have a big talent pool to pick from to begin with. And then when you're in an industrial park where there's 10 other distribution centers from...

0:22:00.8 Kaleigh Burns: You can literally walk out the door and walk to another one.

0:22:02.6 Stef Nikitas: Yeah.

0:22:02.7 Kaleigh Burns: And be like, hey, are you guys hiring? Yeah, we are.

0:22:04.8 Stef Nikitas: Yeah. And it's companies that have triple, quadruple budgets to what we have, even today, how do I compete with that? Right. So we really needed to figure out how do we get the eyeballs that we want at the right time in the right places onto our jobs to help fill our funnels and to hire our goals at the end of the day?

0:22:23.4 Kaleigh Burns: And we always say. What do we always say is like the angle John Benheisen gets, the end goal is to hire the right people.

0:22:29.0 Stef Nikitas: Mm-hmm.

0:22:29.4 Kaleigh Burns: And we keep that line of sight. So is what we're doing now getting us to the end goal of hiring the right people for the jobs? Because that is how we will stay.

0:22:37.8 Joel Cheesman: You feel like the tools you're using now put you on an equal footing with some of your bigger competitors?

0:22:43.6 Stef Nikitas: Yes and no. Right. It depends on who we're talking about. Like, there are some companies out there, we're never going to be them. We're never going to compete with the Amazons of the world, as long as...

0:22:51.7 Kaleigh Burns: We don't want to be the Amazon. Because I don't want to hire someone in, in that, I think hiring someone in 10 minutes is great, but I want them... We want to have a conversation with them.

0:23:01.6 Stef Nikitas: Yeah.

0:23:01.8 Chad Sowash: They're targeting people so fast. You're going to get them money.

0:23:04.5 Stef Nikitas: Right.

0:23:04.6 Kaleigh Burns: Right. We want to, we want to...

0:23:05.6 Kaleigh Burns: And we see, care about turnover. We care about turnover.

0:23:07.8 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:23:07.9 Stef Nikitas: Yeah. And we, we've been able to really reduce turnover during COVID when there was a labor shortage and all the other factors to where we are today, where things are a little more calmer despite being in an election year and the economy and all that. But it has drastically changed. And so to answer your question, yes and no. It depends where and who we're talking about.

0:23:26.5 Kaleigh Burns: I think it sets us above. I think it gives us an edge. I think that we have the... We've always been personable. That's always been something that we've taken care of. There was a reason we weren't staffed is because we were spending too dang long talking to people, trying to, like, figure out what job they would be perfect for? We've always done that. So now when you add in the technology that's making these recruiters have the time to be able to do that, still be personable, give 110% to every single candidate that comes in, not only is our impression and our brand just getting better and better, we've got the technology to make sure that you can apply under two minutes. I tested it on my husband. If he can do it, anybody can do it. Love him, but he's a firefighter. He doesn't do... He's like, I don't do technology. So if we can snag them, they're fast and we can still be personable?

0:24:12.3 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:24:12.5 Kaleigh Burns: No, you can't catch up with us.

0:24:14.0 Chad Sowash: So retention wise, say that you've got great retention rates, but it can always be better. Are you going to start or have you started using Grace to do pulse surveys or things of that nature to be able to go down funnel and get more of a pulse of, of what's going on so that you can focus more on higher retention or, and/or keep the types of retention rates that you have right now because you never know what the landscape looks like when you go.

0:24:37.4 Stef Nikitas: Yeah. With Grace, yes. Umm, we just launched, umm, employee survey, umm, not employee survey.

0:24:42.4 Kaleigh Burns: Ratings and feedback.

0:24:43.2 Stef Nikitas: Ratings and feedback.

0:24:43.8 Kaleigh Burns: Employee referral.

0:24:44.7 Stef Nikitas: And referrals, yes. So with the feedback, it's within 24 hours after your interview. It doesn't matter if it's a virtual on site, a phone interview, an interview, you get a survey with three questions to basically ask about your experience. So we're starting small right now. We're doing kind of a crawl, crawl, walk, run approach on this. And eventually we're going to survey the recruiters, we're going to survey the hiring managers because we want to start building some KPIs around are we being successful in what we're doing? Right?

0:25:10.3 Kaleigh Burns: How do we measure that? What does that look like? And I think, like, you have to take in consideration that Grace in general, we, we want to be able to utilize her in every way possible. Like we want that. But at the end of the day, our goal is still for employee referrals to always be our number one source. If employee referral is not our number one source, we're doing something wrong. Distribution search. Why is it not your number one source, Ace, you know, home services. Why is it not your number one source? What are we doing? That's something that we hold ourselves to. So being able to utilize the technology within the goals that we already have set. The employer referral program has been, it's been a, it'll be a huge game changer. I can't tell you how much, how many hours myself specifically and some of our team spend tracking down employee referrals and things of that sort. And we have workdays, don't get me wrong, but having people remember their workday ID is very challenging.

0:26:03.9 Stef Nikitas: Or like spelling somebody's, even spelling right.

0:26:05.4 Kaleigh Burns: Yes. I don't know what his name is. I call him Chuck, you know? I don't know.

0:26:10.3 Joel Cheesman: It's Susie Cream Cheese.

0:26:11.1 Kaleigh Burns: It's Susie Cream Cheese. Yeah.

0:26:11.7 Joel Cheesman: She's on the database. What's going on.

0:26:13.5 Chad Sowash: Where's Susie?

0:26:14.2 Kaleigh Burns: So, there... It's, it's a huge, huge. It will literally I, I was thinking about the other day, I was like, it's going to save me at least two to three hours a week.

0:26:21.4 Stef Nikitas: Yeah.

0:26:22.2 Joel Cheesman: What else is on the shopping list? Now that you got more money, uh, what are you looking to add in the near future, tech-wise?

0:26:28.4 Stef Nikitas: My big focus for '25, now that I have the team completely centralized, I want to really focus on elevating the recruiter, right? Like, we've, we've added all this technology, we've, we've done all these changes. So how do we now focus on the human to make them better? How do I get my recruiters to not post and pray, but actually get out and talk to people, right? Find people. I can spend the $4 million and I can, I can get candidates in the pipeline. Like, we're really good at that now. We know that Grace is doing exactly what we need her to do. We'll, we'll continue to make refinements and improvements to her to make her even more natural and more helpful and more on-brand. But like, how do we train up the humans behind the scenes, right? So that's a big focus. So like, the KPIs is gonna be a big thing. The candidate experience is gonna be a big thing. We want to be known to give a, a world-class, white-glove experience in the recruitment process. Am I gonna be able to compete with Amazon on their budgets? No. Can I distinguish myself in how I treat my candidates and how they go through the experience and how employment is potentially for them? That's where we're going after, because that is a niche that I can create that other bigger companies potentially cannot.

0:27:35.0 Joel Cheesman: You commented, "We'll never be Amazon."

0:27:37.6 Stef Nikitas: Yeah.

0:27:38.1 Joel Cheesman: But looking at automation in a different way, Amazon is on, is on a fast track to robot... Put robotics in a lot of those positions. How do you think about that? Uh, my view of Ace is that I'll never walk into an Ace in my lifetime and a robot will help me find, you know, the, the light bulbs that I need. So, so do you look, do you look, do you look at their embracing that as an advantage for you to maybe get some of those folks that are looking for a more human experience?

0:28:05.7 Stef Nikitas: When you think of a consumer, right, like, let's take me, a female, 41-years-old, I have to go into a home improvement hardware store because I need to get something, let's say I have a plumbing issue at home for whatever reason and I need to replace a part.

0:28:18.6 Joel Cheesman: I have lots of plumbing issues at home, but that's a, that's a different show.

0:28:21.1 Kaleigh Burns: Do you? Hey, I'm in charge of Ace Home Services now. We have great plumbers.

0:28:26.8 Stef Nikitas: We can send a plumber.

0:28:27.7 Joel Cheesman: Keep going, sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you.

0:28:28.0 Stef Nikitas: Umm, but let's say I go into a store and I'm buying... I'm trying to look for something, right? Like, the distinguishing factor, take a female, you, you walk in, you don't know what you're looking for. You're standing in a big-box store like a Home Depot, a Lowe's, whatever, and you have, one, no idea where you're going. You, you finally find someone, they help you go to the aisle, or they tell you what aisle to go to, and then once again, you're in that aisle with 50,000 choices by yourself.

0:28:52.3 Joel Cheesman: Yes.

0:28:52.4 Stef Nikitas: And then if you need help, you're standing there again waiting for potentially another 10, 15 minutes until somebody comes to help you. But then the type of help and customer service you're getting is not necessarily what you need either.

0:29:03.9 Joel Cheesman: Right.

0:29:04.4 Stef Nikitas: Do that with Ace. You get greeted when you walk in. You get the magical question, "What can I help you find today?" The person walks with you to the aisle of what you're actually looking for and then gives you that in-aisle customer service, helpful, that you need when you don't know what you're looking for. Does that mean that you're potentially spending two to three more dollars on that product? Absolutely. We are not a big-box, right? We don't have that volume. But I got exactly what I needed, I got the customer service, and guess what? Now I'm gonna come back to that store because I had a good experience.

0:29:32.2 Joel Cheesman: Thanks for joining us, ladies. That was Stef Nikitas, director of Talent Acquisition, and Kaleigh Burns, manager of TA and Ops from Ace Hardware. Ladies, thanks for joining us today.

0:29:46.8 Stef Nikitas: Thank you for having us.

0:29:48.2 Kaleigh Burns: Thanks.

0:29:50.6 Speaker 1: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast-forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch Big Booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap, because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.