Tyler (01:16):

Oh, I see some people sending in the chat. We got Puma. Hey Jacqueline. Hey Cassie. Hey Elizabeth. Got a MC representing. Welcome all Chicago. Hey Sarah. Sarah was just on a webinar with us last week, so special shout out to her. Hey, Karen. All right, we will get started. Quick introduction to myself. My name is Tyler McVey. I work on the marketing team here at Paradox. We are super lucky to have Rachel Allen from 7-Eleven here today discussing hiring made convenient how 7-Eleven is saving their store leaders 40,000 hours per week using conversational AI and representing the Josh Berson company. We have Stella Ioannidou joining us there. I got a thumbs up on that one. Stella worked with Rachel and her team to actually tell the story of seven Eleven's hiring transformation. If you haven't read the Josh Burston case study, we'll be sure that everyone has easy access to that.

(02:28):

Following the webinar today, if you have to pop off early, we'll be sure that everyone gets the full recording of the webinar so you won't have to miss anything. And like I said, we'll try to get as many questions answered today as possible. For those that don't get answered, feel free to follow up. We'll have people reaching out tomorrow with the recording, like I said, but feel free to ask them directly or reach out to the email that you received tomorrow. And now I will pass it off to Stella and Rachel to get us started.

Stella Ioannidou (03:03):

Alright, so looking forward to this discussion. Thank you everyone for joining. Rachel, I first so honored to have interviewed you and have captured this discussion and this amazing story. Can you tell us a little bit about the organization? Of course everyone knows the organization, but just for the good of the order for the good of the universe, tell us a little bit about the organization and the specific challenges that you were faced with and what had you turned into thinking differently about how you bring in new talent into 7-Eleven?

Rachel Allen (03:44):

Sure. So my name is Rachel Allen, senior Director of Talent Acquisition for 7-Eleven. So 7-Eleven is a big, massive global brand. So most people have heard of us know what we are, but I work specifically for 7-Eleven Inc. 7-Eleven Inc is actually US and Canada only. And what a lot of people don't know is we actually are owned by seven and nine Holdings, which is a Japanese company. So while we're a big massive global brand, we have 85,000 locations in 19 countries. The work that I'm talking about specifically today and what Stella and I were able to chat about before is specific.

(07:08):

Oh my goodness. It's a Monday and even my laptop knows it's a Monday. Nice. It's been a Monday all morning. Okay. So what we'll be talking about specifically today though is specific to 7-Eleven Inc. Which is US and Canada, which you'll see there. We've got the 13,000 locations between US and Canada. We do a lot of high volume hiring and that's specifically what we were trying to solve for and what we're going to be talking about today. And you mentioned some of the challenges. So typical challenges that a lot of organizations were facing, and you can see them here, we were having a slow manual process and especially when you're talking about our store leaders at the store level, when you need to move at the speed of light, it was taking way too long. And because of that, we weren't getting to our folks fast enough. And as a result, we had a lot of no-shows. There was a lot of candidates that did ghost us and I know that was happening across the board, but I think part of it was we weren't getting to our candidates fast enough and what we realized, same to that note of not getting,

Rachel Allen (09:12):

All good. In the same vein of not getting to our folks fast enough, what we realized is some of our competitors were, and what was happening is whoever was getting to folks first were winning the talent. And so there were obviously other challenges mixed in there, but these were some of the three main ones we were facing. It was slow, it was manual. We were being ghosted the no-shows and we were losing to our competition down the street who were getting to our candidates faster. Throw in to that, we also did a massive acquisition of Speedway and so we did a 21 billion acquisition and that was during the whole COVID-19 time. We were trying to incorporate and integrate 3,800 corporate stores from the acquisition of Speedway. So in addition to the normal challenges that almost everyone was facing, we decided to throw in one more complication, make it a little bit harder.

(10:10):

It was a really great successful acquisition, but it did add some other challenges when it came to Tech Stack and how we had two totally different models in how we did recruitment and how we supported our stores from the recruitment part. So also on top of all that, what you're seeing here is we were facing the typical challenges that other companies were when it came to the recruitment space. And then we're also trying to look through the lens of our store leaders and all the things that they have on their plate and how can we help them and enable them to be able to speed up their hiring and the quality of hire because our store leaders do so much. So at 7-Eleven we all get the opportunity to work in a store no matter what your role is. So I have worked in a store myself a couple of times now and I don't know how they do it. They have so many hats, so many jobs from setting the vault to taking an inventory, to cleaning the restrooms, to greeting our guests so they have so much on their plates already. And so we're trying to figure out how we can simplify things for them versus making it harder for them.

Stella Ioannidou (11:29):

Rachel, as you said earlier, throw into that complex landscape and acquisition and it's not just an acquisition of course it's a huge acquisition, it's a huge move. But there was also a big contrast in how talent acquisition was perceived from how 7-Eleven was viewed to how Speedway was viewed. How did you tackle that and what type of friction or what type of opportunities did you see arise from that contrast or joining of two different talent acquisition approaches?

Rachel Allen (12:02):

Yeah, that's a really great question. You're right, it was very different between the two brands. On the Legacy 7-Eleven side, they had been primarily franchised over 90% at one point even whereas on the legacy Speedway side it was all corporate stores. And so the volume of support on the Speedway side was always a lot different because you're actually hiring into corporate stores. On the Legacy 7-Eleven side, we don't support any hiring for our franchise locations. So where we did have to support was a much smaller volume. And so it was a really great opportunity to see the level of volume and the level of support that Speedway was able to provide their stores. But it was very different models. So on the Legacy seven side, we had one tech stack on the legacy Speedway side, another tech stack. So add to all of that.

(12:59):

We're in two totally different tech stacks too. Why not? And what on the legacy Speedway side, they had a decentralized model in that they had several hundred recruiters in the field that reported into operations into hr that did some on the ground boots on the ground recruitment versus on the legacy 7-Eleven side. Historically the population of corporate stores were smaller and our store leaders owned their own recruitment on that side, but without great technology to support. So there was a lot of frustration from our store leaders on the Legacy 7-Eleven side. So we actually did go try to mimic the legacy Speedway side first and brought in several, we brought in a hundred recruiters on the Legacy seven side to mimic how we were supporting the stores on the Speedway side and it went really well. And down the road though a business decision was made to get closer to really hold our stores more accountable to their labor optimization.

(14:21):

And that meant owning their talent and really knowing who they were bringing in and that type of thing versus having a recruitment team totally handle it from beginning to end. And so that's when we started to go through the changes that we did. But thank you Tyler. If you take a look at the slide on the screen right now, something that we realized when we were really looking into how the recruitment was being handled is that it's a vicious, if they're understaffed, then the work that needs to be taken on is taken on by the staff that is still there. So they're overworked, they're frustrated, they're frustrated that they're having to take on more, which then leads to greater turnover. So it starts with just being a little understaffed, but then there's frustration which turns into greater being understaffed, which then ultimately leads to poor customer service. And as anyone in retail knows that our customers are North Star and if anything is in any way hindering the customer experience, we need to act on that quickly. And when it does hit the customer experience, then you do see a decrease in revenue. So we knew that if we could solve for some of the staffing, it would be a huge win and it helped enable us to get closer to our operations as well.

Stella Ioannidou (15:44):

I hear you. And the transformation had a lot of unification that came into, it's not about, you mentioned the tech staff and in the system, but it's also the recruitment processes, it's also shifting the hiring responsibilities. And I'm wondering transitioning hiring responsibilities from a field recruiter to a store manager. That's a significant shift because we saw the profile those people to handle everything and anything,

Rachel Allen (16:17):

Dunno how they do it.

Stella Ioannidou (16:19):

And on top of that we're taking about a huge change process for them to also manage their own hiring. So how did you manage that change? What support did you look for? What type of skills they needed to gain? How did you support them during that transition?

Rachel Allen (16:41):

Yeah, I think change management is so undervalued and the importance of that is almost more important than the actual implementation of anything. And we never slow down enough to speed up in the end. If you slow down in the beginning to really think about what your change management strategy is, it makes all the difference in the world. And so that was a big focus for us. We had a strong communication campaign. We let a lot of people understand that a business decision had been made and this is why and this is why we believe in it and here's how we're going to empower you to be successful in this new transition. And here's the timeline of it. This is what you can expect, this is what it's going to feel like for you when in the absence of information people make up their own stories and those stories are always 10 times worse than what the reality really is.

(17:38):

And so we took the position of being very transparent in the changes that were coming and forthright in what it meant for everybody and what it would look like. It's still a big change. So we also, in addition to the communication aspect and the education piece, we also had a very strong hypercare strategy. So we wanted to educate as much as possible and understand what was going on over communicate as much as possible. But then we also had a lot of support leading up to during and after and I think that made an incredible difference. And without the change management, any kind of large change or implementation, it just doesn't happen.

Stella Ioannidou (18:26):

I hear you and then I understand or I assume is when you said, listen, we need new type of technology to come in and support us. We kind of need something more than just bringing in merging two different TA systems. We kind of need artificial intelligence here. So can you tell me about what inspired, what sparked the decision to implement AI and what can you tell me about Rita and the role of Rita in this shift?

Rachel Allen (19:01):

Yeah, absolutely. So you're right, the business decision was made before the technology was ever in the picture. I think that's also something that's important to call out because a lot of times we will make a change based on a technology we want to make happen. There's the shiny new object and you go find this really cool technology and you do that first and then figure out how you fit all your stuff into it. I think it really makes a big difference to understand what you're solving for and then go find the technology that provides the solution that you need versus finding the technology first. So this business decision was made without any technology in place. It had been decentralized. The hundreds of recruiters had been decentralized. So at the time of this business decision, it was also, hey, it's also going to land in your world now.

(19:54):

So now you own all of it and as a center of excellence. So I knew that technology was going to be key in being successful of this transition and the fact that it was landing in my lap. So we immediately knew that AI was going to be what we needed to do because we needed to automate as much as possible. And you mentioned instead of the merging of two tech stacks, so I want to call out, there was in scope to move in a certain direction technology wise, and we had to do a tactical pause and assess, does this make sense even though we were already planning on it, does it make sense to maybe scoop this world out and do something a little bit different and thinking of what's actually best for the business? And so we did. And so we decided we needed a completely separate solution for our stores regardless of Legacy Speedway or Legacy 7-Eleven.

(20:56):

So we went with the AI layer over both tech stacks. So we went live with this new solution being powered behind the scenes by two totally different tech stacks, but the user experience for our stores, they didn't know any better. They just thought that it was all the same, which was important for us. So a lot of work behind the scenes but made it more simple for our store leaders and that's what we wanted to do. And through this AI solution, we were able to automate 95% of our process, which was huge for us. And we really wanted a mobile first experience. And when we're thinking about our candidates and then something, it was on the slide prior to this, we're a 24 7 organization, yet our recruitment is not when someone's applying, when they get off of work or if they're studying or between jobs, maybe they work multiple jobs, they're applying at 3:00 AM There's no one there to be able to engage or interact at that time.

(22:04):

So we really wanted a solution that could be 24 7 like our stores are. And then also for those in the audience that are familiar with the TA world, one of the biggest complaints and barriers for our candidates is always having to have a password login no matter what technology they're applying into. So we knew that we did. Yeah, right. That's always something you hear about. And we knew we didn't want that at the store level. So what technology could provide us a solution where it was easy access for application for our candidates and then how did it a solution that could help power up the multiple technologies that we had behind the scenes. And then that's where we landed on paradox and we named our assistant Rita, and her name is Rita because it stands for recruiting individuals through automation, which

Stella Ioannidou (22:57):

I love nerd about Rita. I love it.

Rachel Allen (23:01):

And that's what she does. So she recruits our individuals through automation and she's been a great success for us.

Stella Ioannidou (23:09):

Well, I mean when you say it's been a great success, it kind of feels like an understatement because it's literally saving 40,000 hours per week. This is like a staggering figure. What can you tell me about the impact that this has had? Of course, automating, realizing and automating 95% of our recruitment process, that's an aha. But this is the bottom line, this is the impact, this is the money slide as we call it versus So what can you tell me about the impact that this has had on teams and operation beyond hiring perhaps?

Rachel Allen (23:50):

Yes, it was like I mentioned, a big success and usually when you're implementing technology, you hear a lot of griping and we knew it was a success when first of all, we didn't have a lot of volume coming into the hotline that we set up separate for this. I mentioned hypercare. So we created a hotline that was with contractors purely to support this transition, but we had to start calling into the stores directly and say Everything all right, what's going on? And they're like, this is great. We love Rita. Rita's awesome. And so we knew it was a huge hit from there. But the 40,000 hours a week I mentioned again, all the hats that our store leaders wear, they don't have the time to spend a whole bunch of time posting a position, looking through hundreds of resumes, reaching out to the candidates, scheduling interviews when people don't show up, scheduling new interviews or needing to reschedule and they don't have time.

(24:50):

I mean just the amount of time that goes into it, you don't realize it until you do a time study into exactly what they're doing with this. And the amount of savings of time was just huge. It was mind boggling for us even. We were just so thrilled that we were able to give that back to the stores. What was really cool about it too is I'd mentioned in the beginning we were losing to our competitors who were getting to the talent faster. So a happy accident, we improved the quality of the hires that we were getting just out of being able to get to the top talent faster. So that was really great feedback that we were starting to get from the stores of not only can I do this 10 times faster, but I'm also getting better people. And you can see there 85% of our applicants are scheduled within the hour of starting the conversation with Rita.

(25:41):

So the way we set it up is we asked our store, well, we provided a timeframe. For example, Tuesdays, Thursdays between two and four people may show up your stores if you have your posting toggled on, people may just show up for interviews, so be ready. And then we taught them how to adjust what their time is and how to turn off the posting so that they can turn off the flow of people coming in the door. So the candidates are self-scheduling. So based on that timeframe that we said the stores are available, the candidates are working with Rita to set up their time, and then they work with Rita to reschedule if they need to. And when we started this before, and this is based on the data we could get, so that's another thing that's not on here that's a huge win, is we have a lot more visibility into accurate data of our candidates.

(26:35):

So if you think a lot of high volume folks usually use an evergreen wreck, for example, and it's just always on, well, how do you know how long it's taking to fill that wreck? How do you know if that store really does have a need or not? Well, now we're in a position where we can look at any point and see how many are turned on and we know they have a need and we have a real feel of what our talent needs are at the store level, and we also know how many are turned off. And then in addition to that, we can actually see how long it takes someone to get through the process where we never had access to that before. So when I say the before number of over 10 days to hire, that's probably being nice. It probably took longer than that, but we based it on the data that we could get, but we are now in less than three days for us to get anyone hired whenever a store needs it.

(27:26):

So it was some huge results. Our store leaders were extremely grateful, thankful they kept calling into the hotline sometimes just to say thank you, which was interesting. And then we've also had some that are like, I can't wait to meet Rita. She's so great. She's wonderful. And we're like, well, remember Rita's your AI assistant, she's not really there, but I'm so glad that you like her so much. So it was a lot of fun. And the best part right, is to be able to go to our leadership and say, Hey, look what this technology did for us and to celebrate that win with the entire organization was really cool.

Stella Ioannidou (28:08):

Well, sure. And we have a say at bursting fall in love with the problem, the technology will come later or just focus on the business problem, focus on how you envision, for example, the role of TA moving forward. If that consists of rethinking the process or if that takes on implementing ai. That's a different part of the equation. But right now with your experience through Rita and the response and the huge impact it has had on the bottom line, how would you feel or how would you describe the role of AI in talent acquisition? A lot of people and organization and TA experts are trying to see where AI could fit, what type of problems it could solve. How do you define it based on your experience and especially when aligning it to broader business goals?

Rachel Allen (29:03):

So I think everyone started with the low hanging fruit of the automation piece of it and what administrative tasks are taking up recruiter's time or hiring manager's time that can be automated by the ai. And that's where we started too. That's why we started with on the high volume side. And what's cool about it though is we've been able to reinvent what the role of TA is in that support, and we were able to enhance the role of those NTA and the recruiters and we were able to repurpose some of the recruiters that we had out in the field into other, within talent acquisition. So for us, it's enhanced what the value that the recruiter can provide from more of a business partner and a strategic side of it versus bogging them down with the time of the administrative stuff. So that's been a huge win even within TA and not just the rest of the business and the time sent for our store leaders, but for our recruiters, we were able to create different roles, new roles, and move folks into that. And I'm excited to see where we can go next. What is that one next level, how can I provide an assistant to my recruiters even more? How can they each have their own Rita to help them in the process and what can that look like? So I think that's where we want to start going into the future. But I think within talent acquisition, ai, the low hanging fruit is the repetitive stuff, the administrative stuff, where can you automate, how can oh use it for job postings, rewrite the job postings,

(30:53):

Those types of things is where we're using it right now, but I think it's going to add even one more level and help assist with sourcing even and that type of thing down the road.

Stella Ioannidou (31:05):

I know you're excited about what the future holds, but before we head into the future, looking back

Tyler (31:11):

Through

Stella Ioannidou (31:11):

The impact, the experience, the feedback you've received, the work that you've done to manage the change and at the same time take into consideration the change from a human-centric perspective, the perspective of the store manager, is there anything you feel you could have done differently in this TE transformation

Rachel Allen (31:33):

Transf? Yeah, I thought a lot about that. And what's interesting is in the moment I did, in the moment when things were happening, I wished there was more time perhaps or things like that or we could roll out slowly versus doing the big bang. But then after the fact, looking back, I wouldn't change any of it, which is crazy to think, but it all worked out the way it was supposed to. And I think that's because of the large change management strategy and that type of a thing. We took something what we call a tactical pause mid stride in that we had a certain timeline that we had said we would hit, and that timeline initially was May. So we have something within 7-Eleven, we consider our busiest season a lot of retail. It's during the holidays, ours is the summer, so we have the 90 days or the a hundred days of summer, and that's where it's the busiest.

(32:34):

And at first we thought, okay, let's get it out there by so that they can use it to help support them through the a hundred days of summer. Then I had my in-store experience where I worked in the store in probably April, and I came back and I said, I don't know if that's the right decision now that I've been in the store. Maybe we wait until they get through that. And so we talked to operations and said, we can go live in May, do we want to change that? And we both agreed that we should wait. So we ended up waiting until October. And in the moment I was concerned of that, it looks like you're not making your deadline. It looks like it was delayed, the perception of that. So in the moment I was concerned, but it was a strategic tactical pause on purpose. Sometimes you have to slow down to go faster. And that was one of those situations. And in the end, looking back, I was really grateful that we did that route. I think that really helped with the implementation as well because it wasn't one more thing that we were trying to throw on our stores right before the a hundred days of

Stella Ioannidou (33:38):

Summer. Right, right. The stress and the amount of work and all the prep work that they had to do. I love that. So looking ahead, what's next? What's coming? What should we expect from 7-Eleven and TA and perhaps more ai? I don't know.

Rachel Allen (33:57):

Hopefully. Yeah, so we're actually going to be piloting soon assessments within the store level process. So within Paradox and through Rita, we're actually going to add assessment. We were challenged with, okay, this improved our quality, can we improve it anymore? And we were like, let's look into it. So we are going the route of adding some assessments to help fine tune the candidates. We're also hoping to increase retention through that. So if we can get that profile just right, will it mean that we can keep folks in the store longer? And then if we can keep folks in the store longer, we have the ability to grow careers versus just a job and we want them to be able to see what that long career can be. We've had a lot of executives here that started in the store, but we need folks to stick with us to have that career progression.

(34:51):

So if we're using assessments to maybe identify the profiles that work best, we can help build out some greater careers, which is exciting to me. We finally did consolidate our tech stack, which is exciting. It just happened. So all family of brands are what a milestone. Oh my goodness. It was a long time coming. We went several years in two totally different tech stacks. So as a leader of people, think about that. You're doing performance appraisals in two different places. You're doing PTO in two different places. You're doing goals in two different places. It was a lot. So not just the hiring, there's a lot of other stuff. So really excited that that's happened. And now that we are consolidated in one tech stack, now we're like, Ooh, okay, now what can we do on the store support center side or the corporate side of recruiting?

(35:44):

We did add in automation for interview scheduling with this consolidation, so we did add that. So now our recruiters use Rita for to help 'em with their automating with the scheduling so our candidates can self schedule and things like that. So that's really great. And then I mentioned before, I really want to figure out how I can provide my recruiters on the corporate side, their own personal assistant to help them with the recruitment side of things to free up the energy. The whole purpose is to free up the energy of the recruiters to be those talent advisors and to be those business partners. We've been talking about that for years. But with the way it's a volumetric thing to be a recruiter and often the squeaky wheel gets the attention and due to the way the volume happens, it's hard to set aside time to be that real strategic talent advisor other than lowering the volume of res that a recruiter has. But we all know we want to do more with less. And lowering res per recruiter means having more recruiters, and that's not always the easiest solution per se. And so how can we use technology to free up the energy of our recruiters to focus more time on being those talent advisors and strategic business partners? So that's where we're looking to go with this in hopefully the near future.

Stella Ioannidou (37:10):

Love it. And this is a big theme research wise for us, we did a big study on talent acquisition priorities and what's top of mind for a lot of TA leaders and currently becoming letting go of that role, that kind of a fulfillment center role, and

Rachel Allen (37:26):

Moving

Stella Ioannidou (37:26):

Into the role that actually advises hiring managers or a business unit leads to shifting the conversation from how many of which role to what type of talent do we need? Why do we need it? Do we need it for now or can we plan ahead for our talent leads looking ahead. So this is a major, major, major theme right now with over 70% of TA leaders

Rachel Allen (37:56):

Thinking

Stella Ioannidou (37:57):

How they can transition into that. No one's there yet, but they're thinking that shift as a very big

Rachel Allen (38:08):

Priority and it's trying to, it's a behavior change, not just with talent acquisition, but the entire business. We need the business not to think of our recruiters as order takers, but as a true partner from the beginning and sharing that foresight rather than waiting until a rec is open or a rec is needed, and then you talk to your recruiter, how do we become so ingrained and get a seat at the table from the beginning of the conversations and really own workforce management and being a part of that? It's going to take some change with the business mindset, not just TA's mindset. So it's a challenge, but I think it's the right one to go after.

Stella Ioannidou (38:50):

Okay. I think it is time for q and a. Someone is excited about the recording to be shared. I think Tyler already mentioned that. Yes, everyone will be receiving this recording, right?

Tyler (39:03):

Absolutely. Yep. Everyone will be receiving the recording likely tomorrow via your email, and then it'll be up as an on demand recording on our website, so you'll be able to see that.

Tyler (39:17):

Okay.

Tyler (39:18):

Feel free to type in the chat or in the q and a if you guys have any questions. Maybe to kick us off, Rachel, something that caught my ear is kind of post, post those results that you obviously saw, but I'm sure you shared that with executive leadership as much as possible. Tell us a little bit about what that reaction looks like. Obviously we're seeing more executives and more leaders being involved in TA and seeing it as an opportunity for growth and for driving revenue and for finding efficiencies. So tell us a little bit about how or what that reaction looked like.

Rachel Allen (39:59):

Yeah, we couldn't wait to share. Yeah, you're not wrong on that one, right? Everyone's always excited to share some results like that. So we got in front of the executive team as fast as we could with it. I think the coolest part of it was exactly what you talked about is an engagement and an interest in what we're doing more and highlighting it and bringing it up in other ways of sharing as an example to other organizations of tying it back to our strategy map as an enterprise strategy map and the impact that you can have even when you're not for US operations or at a store level. Everybody here can impact the experience of the core for us, which is operations. So seeing them use it as examples with other functions and highlighting it and giving accolades and praise has been really great. But I think the most exciting part is an active engagement on what is going on in the TA space and wanting more frequent updates and excited about and what's going on.

(41:07):

But then also being seen as our team is seen as subject matter experts in our space now and the credibility it built for our team was really awesome to see. So it's like, okay, well if they're saying that this is what they're seeing out the market, it really must be like that, right? The credibility that it gave, the talent acquisition team as a whole was very exciting all the way from our CO down. So it was a really big win. We got a bigger seat at the table, our feedback is heard, it's asked for. It's been a really cool experience overall.

Tyler (41:45):

That's wonderful to hear. Looks like we have a few more in the chat, and James is wondering about the assessment that you'll be using. And I know you mentioned that's tradify via paradox, but any insight Rachel on what was intriguing there?

Rachel Allen (42:00):

Yeah, so it is through paradox and what was intriguing there is that we had assessments on the non-store side and they take a long time. And when you're thinking about the profile that you're trying to find within the store, we didn't want an assessment where we were going to lose all of our candidates. So what's really exciting about this one is it's less than two minutes long. It's very quick and there is the correlation of the quality based on the research that they have from other clients, and that's what we're going to map it up to as well. So that's what we plan on doing is looking back and tying back, did it actually present the quality of candidates we expected as well as helping with the retention? But that's our hypothesis and we hope to prove it, but we were excited around this assessment because it was right for this profile time, attention wise and for what the role is. So it's less about add, can you do this math equation? And it's more about can you see yourself in this kind of an environment? Do you like this or do you like this? That type of thing. So it felt right for what we're needing to do at the store level.

Tyler (43:17):

Yeah. Thanks Rachel. Hope that helps James. And on the timeline, Rachel, did you carve this into phases when you were thinking about it in your head? Koran is asking?

Rachel Allen (43:30):

Yeah, so in my head we were going to do lots of waves so that you can learn from them and then adjust. And all of the implementations I've ever done previously, that's very necessary. By doing that technical pause that I mentioned of not doing things by May and waiting until October, it did mean that we weren't going to be able to do the waves we had thought. And so we just had one wave that was really our pilot, I would say in that case. And then we went big bang, and I was scared to do that, and in my head I thought we would have a lot more waves, but in the end it worked out really well. Like I mentioned, we were having to call to the stores and say, hello, how's it going in this case, no news was good news. And then they started to really talk about how great it was.

(44:22):

So we had a pilot and then a big bang, and the pilot was probably March, April, and then we were going to do very quick or maybe it was a little bit earlier than that, and we were going to do very quick consecutive waves after that to be live by the end of May. In the end, we just waited for everything else. In October, I guess we broke up. Canada was separate, so we did US and we did Canada, but it was all within a couple of weeks. Weeks we did it all and it went really well.

Tyler (44:54):

Yeah, I'm

Rachel Allen (44:54):

Sure most implementations, I still recommend the wave. So

Tyler (44:59):

Jennifer is asking about what your recruiting model looks like now. Are your recruiters still field-based or have you centralized the function or did you create new roles within ta?

Rachel Allen (45:10):

Yes, yes and yes. So I mentioned when the business decision was made that it also landed in my shop to oversee store level recruiting. So we do now manage it as a COE. So we are a COE to the stores. And so we do own the technology, the training, best practices, the support. We still have a hotline and that's going to stay permanently. We have a hotline that's specific to hiring at the stores and they can call us directly. And that's been a huge hit versus having to call into another hotline where they have to press one for this too for that. And it handles a lot of subjects. Ours is purely for hiring, and that's been really helpful. So now I have a team for field recruitment and our field recruitment team supports store leader and above. I have a corporate recruitment team, and that's everything that's not out in the field in ops and everything.

(46:07):

Think of finance, marketing, merchandising, hr, that's all within a team. And then there's this TA operations team within the TA operations team is the folks that support the store level as A COE, but then they also do all things recruitment that isn't owning a rec. So budget tech stack, vendor management, data reporting, everything that's non rec holding sits in this TA ops team. And within the TA ops team is where we have the store, store level COE. So some of those roles were new after this. Most of the ops roles were new and the way that we did that, we did repurpose some of the roles that were out in the field into the field recruitment team and then some into the store support center recruitment team. But I more than doubled the TA team after this. Then before when it was only supporting just store leader and above the team was about less than half the size it is now.

Tyler (47:21):

And Jennifer's also asking if it's your TA ops team is based in the us

Rachel Allen (47:26):

Yep. They're mostly in Enon, Ohio, which is where Speedway was headquartered. So most of the majority of my TA ops team came through talent that we got when we got Speedway.

Tyler (47:43):

And then I see one last question in the q and a chat, any suggestions for candidates who are otherwise strong but struggle simply with the technology side of it? And I think something interesting there Rachel to discuss is maybe just the inclusivity and the accessibility of Rita obviously available in dozens of languages on the phone any of the day, but maybe if you could discuss the impact there of what that can do for a candidate.

Rachel Allen (48:13):

Yeah, I'm really glad whoever asked this did because that was one of the things that we wanted to solve for. We did feel like some of the ghosting or the drop off of our candidates was also just due to it being hard to apply, hard to get their name into the hat. And for several reasons that Tyler, you mentioned what we really love about Rita is any candidate can start speaking in any other language and she starts replying in that language. Or you can ask Rita, do you speak whichever language and she'll start responding to you in that language. And so that's been really helpful. We have stores all across the nation and we have a very diverse pool of talent that works at our stores. What we love about that is our stores represent the communities that they're in. That's really big for us. And so we wanted to make sure that the folks in our communities that could work in our stores could have the easy access to actually apply to get that opportunity. And so this technology has really made it simple, again, that password piece with most applications that can be hard in itself. And then you're like, nevermind, this is too difficult. So I think it's made a big difference in being able to reach some of that talent that maybe we didn't before.

Tyler (49:29):

That's awesome. Stella, any final questions as we start to wrap up with Rachel? I'm sure I'd love to maybe just hear your reaction of, I know obviously you worked with the 7-Eleven team when writing the report, which I'll be sure to send in the chat here, but I'm sure when you see that 40,000 hours per week, it's kind of hard to believe. But what was your maybe initial reaction like

Stella Ioannidou (49:55):

One of the big takeaways for me and for us when we're capturing that story is of course the impact and the numbers, but it's the whole concept of we fell in love with the problem, we understood what we were trying to solve for and then we said, okay, is there a technology enabler? Is there a people enabler? Is there a process enabler and coming and bridging all three together to solve for the problem at hand? The challenge at hand, we see a lot of clients and organizations we speak to getting mind boggled by the technology element so much that they kind of lose track of what it is they are solving for. And don't get me wrong, many solutions like the paradox one are pretty easy. The teams are very supportive. There is no way you can not achieve to roll this out. But thinking only about the technology and a lot of organizations we speak to senior executives, they're feeling like pushed to, Hey, what are we doing on ai?

(51:01):

Where is our AI agenda right now? What type of initiatives do we have around ai? Which is a big discussion enterprise wise, but AI and technology is just a piece, a means to an end to solving a critical business challenge. So when you combine the right technology element with the right use case and you manage the change element, you think, okay, maybe let's not roll this out amid the biggest high season area period of time in all our stores. Just allow people the time they need to understand what the change will look like, have a dedicated support system for them to kind of reach out, don't press one, two or three, just call someone and someone answers the line. This approach to the problem and seeing it through the lens of the store manager is the most unique, let's say thing about this whole story, and of course the outcomes speak for themselves. The staggering percentage of simplifying the recruitment processes. I mean, I don't know a lot of organizations who are able to simplify 95% of the recruitment process, but that only happened because there was an analysis of what the process looks like and what the impact would look like. If we bring AI in then through the lens of, okay, what is the day in the life of a store manager look like? What type of 5% would be the highest impact and in what specific moment of truth do we want them to come in and engage? Right?

(52:48):

So I know I say this in many, we hear this in many stories of clients. The seamless element of the experience offered by the solution is pretty evident. A lot of your clients that we speak to, including Rachel and 7-Eleven, have told us that everyone wants to meet the conversational AI assistant everyone was doing. So Rita, what a great girl, or she helped me, where can I meet her or say thank you for providing me with that job? That speaks volume designing and experience that doesn't feel like techie.

Tyler (53:29):

It doesn't

Stella Ioannidou (53:29):

Feel like we brought up a bot, we brought something, a tool, and then it's like a decision tree type of engagement. These are a couple of the most intriguing elements of that story. And of course the thoughtfulness that went into how do we solve it. And on top of that, let's do a merger and acquisition because we kind have to, and then let's rethink how we bring the whole tech stack together, the complexity, we think about it now when we discuss it as if it's something that happened, but the complexity of being able to pull that off is amazing, and I think it's one of the most fascinating parts of that story. The combination of all the elements and the orchestration and that particular moments in time and everything happened, not magically, but when they should to make sure that the experience of the rollout, because they only had in a big bang, you only have one chance to pull this off. So if you do this, the orchestrated so well, then it's like seamless and nobody calls. They said, okay, is it a good thing? Did it not work or did they love it? What happened? Right? Are the, if I were to summarize the most intriguing, interesting parts of that story,

Tyler (54:50):

Absolutely. Really well said Stella, and obviously we're so grateful to have both of your brains on this chat today. And thank you everyone for popping on and working with us as we fight through some tech challenges. But I'm so happy we have on a Monday

N/A (55:08):

Discussion, such a Monday,

Tyler (55:10):

Still an amazing discussion that came out of this. And so super grateful for you, Rachel, and thanks for I will tell your story.

Rachel Allen (55:17):

I was going to add one more thing after Stella said what she did. One of the really neat things that we saw from the change management role or in the change management plan is we built champions,

(55:31):

Right? So they got excited about what was coming versus this happened to me, I didn't want this. And then you get the challenge. We built excitement of what it was going to do, what was in it for them. We listened to their voices of what they wanted to see, and we built these champions, and so they helped us carry it across the finish line. That was one of the coolest parts to see was all of these champions not excited about it and happy that it was successful. That was a really neat part of that. I forgot to mention that part. And the conversational aspect is what was so intriguing of the solution we went with through paradox was that experience that Stella highlighted of that feeling, the relational, conversational aspect of it was really great. So sorry to say a couple more things.

Tyler (56:22):

No, love it. Yeah. Well, we can keep going for another

Rachel Allen (56:25):

Hour. I know.

Tyler (56:27):

Well, thank you. Thank you all that are still on here and obviously like we said, we'll send that out the recording. I did send the report in the chat and so this is one that Stella and Rachel both worked closely on and got to share the full story. But thank you again, Rachel and Stella and all that joined. Everyone, have a good Monday, good rest of your week.

Rachel Allen (56:52):

I hope your Monday's better. Have a lovely rest of your week. Everyone. Have a great rest of your week. Thank you so much.

‍