How Natural Grocers Scaled Its Hiring Process Without Scaling Its Team

Key Takeaways

• Natural Grocers uses hiring events to attract qualified applicants while giving candidates the flexibility they want.
• Indeed Hiring Events attract 13% more applicants from underrepresented populations than a standard job application process, while its screener questions support a skills-first hiring approach.
• When it switched to virtual interview events, Natural Grocers dramatically reduced its time to hire, saving hours of labor and thousands of dollars.

A successful hiring process is ultimately about adaptation and efficiency. Indeed research shows that candidates crave flexibility, from the interview to the working environment, and talent attraction professionals need efficient ways to reach those candidates before competitors do. The challenge, as one senior talent acquisition (TA) strategist at national organic grocery chain Natural Grocers puts it: “How can we get the most candidates in to interview for the most positions they're suited for, and quickly?”

Delivering a successful experience for candidates and TA professionals alike is at the heart of Indeed Hiring Events (IHE), which automates manual tasks to help employers efficiently find and engage qualified, interview-ready candidates.

Natural Grocers has successfully used IHE to hire in remote areas and meet high-volume hiring needs across its 170 locations. Here’s how IHE can help simplify and expedite your hiring process, with strategies and takeaways from Natural Grocers’ experience.

Look Beyond the Resume to Minimize Interviewer Bias

Talent is universal but opportunity is not. That’s why it’s important to take a skills-first hiring approach at every stage of the process. Otherwise, you may filter out the more than 12 million monthly job seekers on Indeed who are “STARs,” or skilled through alternative routes.¹

A resume doesn’t reflect a candidate’s full set of skills, experiences and value they can bring to a role. In addition, unconscious bias can affect judgment, so relying on application materials alone isn’t the most comprehensive or objective way to assess candidates.

To hire for skills and minimize human bias while improving efficiency, you can standardize your hiring process by using the same set of criteria — such as interview questions, interview scripts or scoring rubrics — for every candidate. With IHE, you can add screener questions to ensure your candidate pool has the skills and experience required while also looking beyond their resume.

“Every single one of my hiring events has screener questions,” says the Natural Grocers TA strategist. “They ensure you’re only looking at people with the skill sets you need, which is great to quickly bring in a high volume of qualified candidates.”

IHE is proven to bring in 13% more applicants from underrepresented minorities and underrepresented genders than a standard job application process,² so you can expand your reach to overlooked talent.

Reduce Your Time to Hire with Automated Communication

The majority of workers agree that waiting too long to hear back about next steps is the biggest pain point during initial communication with a potential new employer.³ But when you use automation to handle menial tasks like follow-ups and scheduling, it closes this gap and dramatically reduces your time to hire.

With IHE, employers save an average of four hours per job opening, and 90% of users agree that Indeed Hiring Events automation tools save time.^4,5 Natural Grocers relies on it for tasks like sending calendar invites and text and email reminders.

“The event promotion, clear and consistent communication and amount of candidates we get with Indeed Hiring Events doesn't compare to any other vendor I've tried — especially for the cost,” the TA strategist says. “When there’s a sudden hiring need at a store, I can create and run a successful hiring event in a week and quickly fill the open positions.”

And when a potential hire is eagerly and anxiously awaiting next steps after an IHE interview, prompt and responsive outreach can make or break the relationship.

To stay organized, Natural Grocers uses the summary that IHE automatically generates after an event. “The event spreadsheet makes my job so much easier because it has all the information I need,” says the strategist. “It includes who we interviewed for which position, the recruiters' notes about the candidate and their contact information, making follow-ups easy.”

Boost Your Brand Reputation With a Better Candidate Experience

A packed schedule can decrease a recruiter’s focus and engagement, escalating stress levels — and impacting the candidate experience. “You’d think you want as many candidates as you can get, but that's not always the case — it makes our small team of recruiters have to rush through interviews. They don't get a chance to connect with the candidate,” says the TA strategist. “Then, candidates who have waited for the opportunity don’t get a good impression of Natural Grocers.”

Most job seekers receive only one interview for every six applications in the traditional hiring process. But within 10 days of their first RSVP to an Indeed Hiring Event, over 96% of job seekers get an interview.⁶ Plus, to avoid overwhelming its recruiters, Natural Grocers uses the product’s RSVP limiting feature to set a maximum number of interviews per scheduled time slot. This streamlined process can leave a positive impression on candidates and make your company stand out from the competition.

With virtual events, our team can quickly fill open positions from our home office in just half a day. That frees up hours of work and saves thousands in travel expenses.

Natural Grocers’ Senior TA Strategist

And with virtual interview options, your team can work smarter, not harder, from anywhere. Before using IHE’s virtual platform, Indeed Interview, Natural Grocers would fly recruiters out to store locations to assist with staffing issues or grand openings. “With virtual events, our team can quickly fill open positions from our home office in just half a day,” says the TA strategist. “That frees up hours of work and saves thousands in travel expenses.”

With the right technology and strategies, your team doesn’t have to sweat the little things. Instead, they can focus on what they’re here for: making a genuine connection with your next potential hire.

Contact your account manager to learn more about Indeed Hiring Events.

Natural Grocers is a member of Indeed Insiders — learn how to become a member of the community to have your voice heard on employer issues and ideas.

Sources
¹Indeed data (U.S.)
²Indeed data (U.S.), Jan. 2023–May 2023. Based on applicant demographic data collected from the ~28% of jobseekers in our sample who voluntarily provided demographic and after controlling for employer, normalized job title and location.
³Harris Poll survey of U.S. hiring managers with 2,000+ employees (n=300) and employed adults, ages 18 and older (n=1107), conducted on behalf of Indeed, February 2024.
⁴Indeed survey, U.S. (n=188), Jan.–Feb. 2024. Percentage is among respondents that cited “IHE automation tools accelerate the hiring process for quicker job offers.”
⁵Indeed Survey, U.S. (n=300), Jan.–Feb. 2024
⁶Indeed data (U.S.)