Centralized High-Volume Hiring Process Drives Success for McKesson

McKesson, the country’s leading medical distributor, 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 their 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.

Meeting Business Demand
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 their commitments to their partners. Working together, Cielo and McKesson created the shared vision of a recruitment process focused on candidate quality and an unmatched hiring experience.

Market Analysis
One part of building the effective recruitment strategy included 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.

This 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. Cielo and McKesson maximized one integrated technology system to support this hiring journey – advertising, application, assessment, interview self-scheduling, and reporting.

Programmatic Advertising
Using the programmatic advertising component of Cielo’s High Volume RPO solution, ads were placed on the most popular websites and social media channels among 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.

A programmatic advertising approach generates on average 5x more candidates than standard online recruitment advertising.

Application, Assessment & Scheduling
To create a smooth online experience and keep the attention of candidates, McKesson and Cielo used a quick, seamless process to move interested talent into the application and screening process directly from digital advertising. One critical change was 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 of the information about a position. This clumsy process can lead to incredibly high drop-off rates. With a mobile-first platform, McKesson’s candidates could 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.

Only 9% of applicants that start an online application finish it. McKesson’s mobile application process has an average completion rate of over 70%.

Hiring Events & Instant Job Offers
When McKesson was looking to open brand new distribution centers versus staffing existing locations, the team designed a unique approach to on-site hiring events that could staff up an entire team to operate 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 those 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. Additionally, walk-in candidates could complete the short assessment and schedule a same-day on-site interview and drug screen.

The results were impressive, with as high as 72% of candidates showing up for their scheduled interview, compared to the typical industry average of 50% no-show rates.

For both hiring events and the standard recruitment process, in order to capitalize on top hourly talent, 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. Cielo and McKesson’s new process made all that 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.

Caring for the Community During COVID-19
In the face of the global pandemic, McKesson’s commitment to supplying their customers and protecting the safety of employees has only strengthened. Now more than ever, the success of McKesson’s talent acquisition extends far beyond their own organization, directly impacting the critical supply chain addressing the national crisis. McKesson and Cielo continue to focus on getting the right talent in the door for warehouse workers and drivers. The emphasis has been on over-hiring for these critical roles to remove any possibility of being understaffed and unable to meet the growing demands. In order to ramp up recruitment and speed up the hiring process, the background process has been simplified and policies have shifted to allow new employees to start immediately while their background screening is being processed. Together, McKesson and their talent acquisition partners are committed to building the workforce that can efficiently move supplies to frontline caregivers across the country.