How Lush made high-volume seasonal hiring more consistent

For the Talent team, the tipping point came as in-person shopping was picking back up at LUSH’s retail stores after the COVID pandemic. The company had high goals for Christmas that year, so the Talent team needed to fill their shop floors with the best people, quickly.

But the previous system just kept getting in the way. It wasn’t bringing in enough candidates, because it didn’t integrate with job boards. Their careers site didn’t convey the modern, innovative feel of the brand. And the system was slow and constantly had bugs and other issues.

“That was the boiling point of, we really have to get a better tool to make sure we have the best Christmas,” says Billy.

So they decided to make a switch, and chose Pinpoint. They were under a lot of time pressure with the holiday season approaching. But after implementing Pinpoint, they instantly saw more high-quality candidates coming through, thanks in part to connections with large job boards and better visibility on Google search.

Pinpoint helped Lush set up a beautiful new careers site that felt more on-brand. And helped train everyone on the system so they could jump in and start recruiting quickly. With Pinpoint’s support, Lush was able to implement quickly, in time to make the hires they needed before the Christmas rush.

Even when hiring at high volume, candidate experience is a top priority for Lush. Their best candidates tend to be people who are already fans and customers, says Adam.

So they want their selection process to be as customer-facing as possible, incorporating experiences on the shop floor and testing out customer-facing skills as much as possible.

With their previous system, each store was going about this in their own way, and so the hiring process was very different from one shop to the next. Hiring managers didn’t have confidence in it, so they would use manual workaround like Google forms, paper applications, and emails outside the system.

All of this led to an inconsistent candidate experience.

But with Pinpoint, the Talent team is able to provide a balance of flexibility and structure for hiring managers, leading to a better candidate experience.

Another reason the candidate experience has been smoother and more consistent is because Pinpoint helps the Talent team collaborate better. In their old system, they weren’t able to see the history of messages to the candidate, but now it’s all in one place on the candidate profile.

So everyone in the Talent team can see what’s going on with each vacancy in real time. This helps ensure every candidate is getting consistent communication, and helps the Talent team with holiday cover.

Lush is fortunate to have hiring managers who are very engaged. They even have a group chat where they share ideas and discussion across all locations.

So when the Talent team implemented Pinpoint, a lot of hiring managers were open to at least giving it a try. And when they did, they instantly saw the difference.

Pinpoint’s support with implementation and training also helped. “The Pinpoint team did a really good job of helping onboard managers, provide resources and training,” says Adam.

Karen says they’ve offered to follow up with one-on-one training sessions with managers, but most of them don’t need it because the system is so easy to pick up as they go.

Pinpoint allows the hiring managers to have some flexibility to do things their own way, while also bringing a little more consistency and structure to the process. This is essential because LUSH shops can be very different—from smaller local stores to prominent stores on some of the biggest high streets in the UK.

So the skills that staff need to succeed at those stores can be quite different. Pinpoint lets them find that balance between consistency and flexibility, for example, by tailoring the questions on their application forms.

The team frequently get positive feedback from former candidates—when they come to shop in the store as customers. “We hear quite a lot from people coming back in shop and saying, I had an interview here and didn’t get it, but I’m in your shop again,” says Adam.

In spite of the positive feedback, the Lush team still want to keep improving. That’s one reason they love Pinpoint’s candidate surveys. Getting feedback directly from candidates has been a valuable way to identify opportunities to improve the process, says Victoria Mears, Talent Lead at Lush.

In the future, the Talent team hopes to expand Pinpoint to other regions to facilitate internal mobility and create a consistent candidate experience around the world. “So wherever you’re looking for a job in the world, you’ll go to one singular careers page and you’ll get the same experience. That’s the dream,” says Karen.