Case Study: Savers®

Savers Recruiting Team was in need of a change

Savers® is more than just a global thrift retailer offering great quality, gently-used clothing, accessories and household goods. Savers is a community champion and revolutionary recycler, operating more than 300 locations with 21,000 employees.

Devoted to reducing the textile waste footprint, The Savers® Rethink Reuse(R) business model of purchasing, reselling and recycling inspires a smarter way to shop. As a result, Savers keeps more than 700 million tons of reusable clothing and textiles from reaching landfills every year. Savers purchases used clothing and household items from it’s more than 100 nonprofit partners providing them with unrestricted revenue to help support their missions. Shopping at Savers does not directly benefit any nonprofit.

Over the past 65 years, Savers has experienced substantial growth, which came with its fair share of growing pains and operational challenges. This included the need to hire more workers for its retail locations, warehouse and corporate headquarters. However, their current recruiting process stirred up a mountain of headaches.

“The software we were using was cumbersome, taking around 30-45 minutes for a candidate to apply for a job”,
said Lea Bedford, People Services Center Manager. With Jobvite, Candidate data was easier to capture and allowed for collaboration among stores.”

As a result, this led to low applicant pools and long time-to-hire rates, causing more high-quality candidates to fall through the cracks. This left Savers in need of a solution that improved recruiting efforts.

Jobvite offers solutions to Savers

With a desire for a more efficient system, Savers rejuvenated its recruiting process with Jobvite.

Jobvite allows Savers to use a more candidate-centric Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that streamlines the entire hiring process – increasing hiring effectiveness and velocity. With built-in automated intelligence across the candidate journey, Savers can make decisions, save time and close hires more quickly.

“Leveraging the automation aspect of Jobvite was instrumental. It allowed us to really engage with candidates effectively and shrink time-to-hire,” said Bedford.

Savers also took advantage of Jobvite CRM to fine-tune sourcing efforts based on which jobsite locations were driving the largest pool of applicants.

“The sourcing aspect of Jobvite was really important to us, as it gave us the ability to see where our best sources were and understand where we should invest,” said Bedford. “We were able to make better spending decisions based on the data being pulled from Jobvite and refocus strategy on efforts that were driving results.”

And, without an organized onboarding system in place, Savers used Jobvite ATS and Onboard to provide new hires with a personal onboarding portal. The digital onboarding solution makes the entire process easy, efficient and digital while contributing to overall productivity.

Meaningful change and maximum impact with Jobvite.

Adding Jobvite to the Savers® hiring repertoire completely reignited its recruiting efforts.

Before Jobvite, Savers was receiving roughly 6,000 applications per month across all store locations. After only one week of simplifying and automating their recruiting efforts, Savers received more than 25,000 job applications and have received nearly 100,000 since the beginning of May, filling more than 1,200 unfilled jobs. Overwhelmed with joy by the large number of high-quality applications received, Savers actually had to turn job postings off.

“Our old system took so much time for someone to apply. With Jobvite, candidates could apply for a job in less than two minutes. As a result, we saw an increase in hiring effectiveness and a decrease in time-to-fill by nearly 30%”, said Bedford.

And the success between Savers® and Jobvite is just beginning. Changes within the company’s recruiting and onboarding efforts will continue to impact other initiatives within the Savers® human resources department, as it has never had one system for streamlining information. With Jobvite, Savers will continue to recruit, engage and onboard top talent unlike ever before.

Evolve Recruitment Marketing increased Savers candidate pool

Jobvite’s Evolve Talent Acquisition Framework helps TA teams deliver world-class results. From initial assessment to specific action plans, Evolve empowers TA leaders to identify and prioritize areas for improvement so that no effort is wasted. Teams, processes, technologies, and strategies are optimized over time, and organizations emerge stronger, more efficient, and better able to adapt to the needs of the ever-evolving talent marketplace.

The Evolve framework offers four levels of talent acquisition maturity. Companies who take a more proactive recruitment marketing approach like Savers, can mover from a Level 1 to a Level 2.

About Savers

At Savers®, we believe good style is more than how you put together your closet and home for yourself, it’s about how your clothing lifecycle affects your neighborhood, and your planet. As a for-profit, purpose-driven retailer, the Savers® family of thrift stores provide a wide selection of must-have secondhand clothing, accessories and household goods at an affordable price and keeps more than 700 million pounds of reusable goods from reaching landfills each year. Learn more at
www.savers.com and join the #RethinkReuse conversation.