Medical distributor: high-volume hiring case study

Challenges

High volume recruiting meets high stakes

McKesson, the leading medical distributor in the United States, works every day to make better care possible for patients. With 40,000+ healthcare-related organizations depending on the company for medical products and pharmaceuticals delivered accurately and on time, warehouse roles in its distribution centers are business critical. Meeting the demand for this vital talent led McKesson to partner with Cielo to support recruitment operations for over 160 centers with Cielo’s High Volume RPO solution.

A blend of external partners and resources was previously used for the more than 6,000 annual hires needed to support McKesson’s distribution centers. But with both demand and attrition continuing to increase, it became clear that hiring more staff and “throwing people at the problem” wasn’t allowing McKesson to deliver on its commitments to its partners.

Solutions

Propelled by partnership

Working together, McKesson and Cielo created the shared vision of a recruitment process focused on candidate quality and an unmatched hiring experience.

Building an effective high volume recruitment strategy meant analyzing the geographic markets for McKesson’s key distribution centers. The team evaluated real-time labor data for each of the centers to understand the current talent supply and demand, top area competitor salary ranges and average time to fill for similar roles. This revealed that on average there were 50% more posted jobs than active candidates, driving time to fill numbers to over a month.

The discovery reinforced the need to quickly capture the attention of talent in competitive markets and provide an optimal candidate experience to easily move interested talent through the process. McKesson and Cielo maximized one integrated technology system to support this hiring journey – advertising, application, assessment, interview self-scheduling, and reporting.

Targeting top talent

Using the programmatic advertising component of Cielo’s High Volume RPO solution, ads were placed on the most popular websites and social media channels for the target audience. AI and powerful algorithms optimized the distribution of the job ads, scaling investment up or down based on candidate throughput in the recruitment funnel – moving spend from under-performing to over-performing channels based on interest to application rates.

Impact by the numbers

5x

More candidates

Programmatic advertising generates numerous more candidates than standard online recruitment advertising.

>70%

Completion rate

McKesson’s mobile application rate far surpasses the standard online application rate – only 9%.

72%

Interview attendance

Candidates showed up to scheduled interviews in droves – outpacing the typical industry average of 50% no-show rates.

Sealing the deal

To create a smooth online experience and keep candidates’ attention, McKesson and Cielo used a seamless process to move interested talent into the application and screening process directly from digital advertising.

One critical change? Removing the need for interested candidates to immediately create a personal profile, which many online application systems require before a candidate is even given all the information about a position. This clumsy process leads to incredibly high drop-off rates.

But a mobile-first platform changed that. McKesson’s candidates could now click on an ad or send a text that would allow them to immediately complete a simple seven-minute three-step process: assessment, personal information and self-scheduled in-person interview.

Boosting on-site hiring

When McKesson wanted to open new distribution centers instead of staffing existing locations, the team designed a unique approach to on-site hiring events. This approach would allow McKesson to fully staff a new location within a short timeframe.

With proven practices for boosting attendance at hiring events, the team launched digital advertising just seven days before each event to minimize candidate dropout. For candidates that completed the integrated application and assessment in advance, they would arrive and move right through the interview processes and into on-site drug screens and offers. Walk-in candidates could complete the short assessment and schedule a same-day on-site interview and drug screen.

Results

Big changes, bright results

For both hiring events and the standard recruitment process, a speedy interview-to-offer process helped minimize losing candidates to other opportunities.

A SHRM benchmark shows it takes an average of 13 days to conduct interviews and make a final decision. But McKesson’s new recruiting process made it all happen on the same day, within an average of one hour. This new way of working for both interviews and offers sped up the overall time-to-fill and saved hiring leaders time, giving back hours to spend on other critical job responsibilities.

Through programmatic advertising and a new mobile solution for application, assessment and interview self-scheduling, McKesson’s quality of hire increased while attrition fell. Several other key performance metrics also improved:

81% of centers experienced an increase in 90-day retention, 20 centers had zero turnover in the first 90 days.
Delivered an average interview-to-offer ratio of 1.5:1 – saving hiring leaders time and talent acquisition spend and resources.
Decreased time-to-offer to less than 36 days in addition to a 90% offer to accept rate – proving the success of the candidate generation tactics, valid skills assessments and speedy offer process.

Caring for the community

In the face of the global pandemic, McKesson’s commitment to supplying its customers and protecting the safety of employees has only strengthened. Now more than ever, the success of McKesson’s talent acquisition extends far beyond its own organization, directly impacting the critical supply chain addressing the national crisis. McKesson and Cielo continue to focus on providing the right talent for warehouse workers and drivers.

To reignite recruitment and speed up the hiring process, the background process was simplified and policies have shifted to allow new employees to start immediately while their background screening is being processed. Together, McKesson and Cielo, its dedicated talent acquisition partner, are committed to building the workforce that can efficiently move supplies to frontline caregivers across the country.

About the client