Giant Eagle’s Soaring Success with Hiring Event Automation
Getting a candidate to a warehouse interview sounds simple, but it isn’t. At Giant Eagle, some warehouse facilities require passing through a security gate just to reach the building. If a candidate doesn’t have the right directions, safety requirements, and point of contact ahead of time, they don’t show up — or they end up in the lobby while the hiring manager is on the floor waiting.
For a family-owned grocery chain with 200+ locations and six warehouses to staff, that kind of logistical friction at scale was costing real time and real interviews. Michael Bell, Talent Acquisition Manager at Giant Eagle, joined us at IAMPHENOM 2026 to walk through how automated event scheduling changed the operational picture across their warehouse recruiting program.
Watch the full session here, or explore the highlights below.
What Are the Biggest Challenges with Warehouse Hiring Events?
Previously, Giant Eagle’s warehouse scheduling ran on a combination of manual follow-up and a legacy scheduling tool that created more problems than it solved. The tool had a critical flaw: it sent candidates an open, unsecured link that anyone could use to schedule. Previous applicants could re-book months after ghosting. Candidates could schedule multiple times. There was no capacity limit, and the system had sent incorrect information alongside those open links during tech failures — sometimes forcing the team to cancel interview sessions entirely.
Meanwhile, each recruiter was processing 300+ weekly applications for a single building, handling all interview coordination on top of sourcing, screening, and follow-up for every other role in the facility. With warehouses requiring specific safety directions, unique entry points, and site-specific preparation details, every interview invite was its own manual task. At one facility, the workaround spoke for itself: "We had a building at one point that had a flag in front of it that said, ‘Interview Here,’" Bell shared.
Related: Check out the High-Volume Hiring Playbook for Modern Workforce Challenges
How Did Hiring Event Automation Solve Scheduling and Communication Problems?
Giant Eagle implemented Phenom Recruitment Events with a focus on three outcomes:
A branded, self-service scheduling experience for candidates
Automated communications that eliminated manual follow-up
Capacity controls that put the team back in charge of their interview days
Candidates who passed the application questionnaire were immediately registered for an upcoming event and received automated communications covering directions to the specific facility, safety requirements (including the closed-toe footwear requirement many warehouse candidates didn’t know about), reminders, and a unique QR code for check-in.
The events were set up as private sessions tied to specific warehouses, with site-specific templates for each facility. Expiring links closed the door on candidates who’d gone dark months earlier trying to slip back into the process. Scheduling analytics surfaced reschedule reasons and expired invite data, giving recruiters visibility they’d never had before. And when a recruiter had to call out unexpectedly, another team member could step in immediately: everyone registered had already received their reminders, and the event details were visible to any authorized team member.
The shift in hiring manager buy-in was also notable. By consolidating interviews into dedicated weekly sessions, the team significantly reduced disruption to warehouse operations. Hiring managers show up for the tour and the interview, and that's it. “Very rarely do we actually have to reschedule our interviews,” Bell said. “They will take that over having 30-minute interview holds a million times over the calendar.”
What Results Can You Expect from Automating Warehouse Hiring Events?
Once Recruitment Events went live for Giant Eagle’s warehouse hiring, the impact was immediate across show rates, hiring speed, and recruiter capacity:
15% increase in interview show rate
18% faster time to hire from events
2 days saved per hire
20 hours returned to recruiters weekly
~50% show rate among registered event candidates
~30% hire rate from all registered candidates
The 15% improvement in show rate was a direct result of automated, facility-specific reminders replacing the manual follow-up that candidates sometimes never received. Knowing where to go, who to ask for, and what to wear eliminated a category of no-shows that had nothing to do with candidate interest. The 20 hours returned to recruiters each week was time that went back toward sourcing and interviewing for roles that genuinely required human judgment — not administrative chasing.
The 18% faster time to hire reflected how quickly candidates could move once the scheduling bottleneck was removed. Qualified candidates were registered and informed automatically. Sessions ran on a consistent cadence. The process was predictable in a way it hadn’t been before, and predictability at scale is its own form of competitive advantage in retail hiring.
Where Is Giant Eagle Taking Its Recruitment Event Strategy Next?
The warehouse program is the foundation, but it’s not the ceiling. Giant Eagle is now expanding its event model to the supermarket recruitment team, using the learnings from warehouse group scheduling to design recurring interview days for frontline and high-volume store roles across its 200+ locations. Retargeting campaigns for candidates who registered but didn’t reschedule are also being built out. And the team is developing a more systematic ROI-tracking framework for internal events, job fairs, and community-based hiring events.
Bell’s advice for teams considering a similar move? Start with the biggest pain point and iterate. “Sometimes the simplest automation created the biggest impact,” he shared. “For us, that was the interview reminders, the confirmations, the details.”
In a business built on nourishing communities, removing friction from a candidate’s path to a job interview turns out to matter quite a bit.
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