Sheetz, Inc. Delivers Convenience for its Managers with Deploy Solutions Enterprise Talent Suite

Sheetz, Inc. is a self-proclaimed mecca for people on the go, with 329 retail locations, featuring made-to-order quick-service restaurants and espresso bars in addition to their retail operations. The innovative convenience retailer is a recognized leader in its industry, even challenging local restaurants and coffee houses while building its loyal customer base.

Sheetz also understands how technology can transform, even redefine, one’s business. According to Susan Schwaderer, Manager of HR Administration for Sheetz, If you visit one of our stores, you’ll see technology everywhere, like touch screens for ordering food. It’s something we’re very proud of. We like to try new things in the stores and be ahead of the curve.

The company’s commitment to innovation, convenience, and quality does not apply only to customers, but also to employees. The Sheetz Human Resources team faced the challenge of enabling store managers to spend more time servicing customers and employees, and less time interviewing unqualified candidates. With a workforce of over 11,000 employees ñ jobs spanning food preparation, baristas, and retail ñ and high turnover that is common among similar chain stores, Sheetz turned to Deploy Solutions, a leading provider of enterprise talent management solutions, to help improve its recruiting and hiring results.

With Deploy, Sheetz has automated its application process, pre-screening applicants so only qualified candidates are interviewed by its busy location managers. This approach has also: improved quality of hires; significantly reduced data entry and paper volume; and improved Sheetz’s ability to turn information into actionable, business intelligence, such as tracking where better applicants come from and sharing applications with other local stores in need. Before using Deploy, our managers were not sharing paper applications. We may have had one fully-staffed store, whereas another nearby store might have been desperate for applications, said Schwaderer.

To automate the application process, applicants can apply through Sheetz’s career website or over the phone using Deploy’s interactive voice response (IVR) system. The move away from paper applications has had no ill effects on applicant submissions, Schwaderer notes, with 84% of applicants applying online and 16% applying via IVR. Applicant data no longer needs to be re-keyed, helping eliminate errors, and background check and drug testing verification results can be viewed by store managers, on average, two days faster.

The elimination of paper applications and manual pre-screening is saving our managers a great deal of time. They are no longer flipping through stacks of applications, sorting, and maintaining applicant files. Everything they need is at their fingertips and they can tell exactly where each applicant is in the pre-hire process, from initial contact through final ’eligible or not eligible’ result, said Schwaderer.