Follett built a more predictable seasonal hiring model with Personegy
Personegy helped Follett centralize high-volume hiring across 1,000+ campus stores, reduce turnover, and turn a massive seasonal hiring surge into a repeatable process with less disruption to store operations.
Proof points
Personegy helped Follett centralize high-volume hiring across 1,000+ campus stores, reduce turnover, and turn a massive seasonal hiring surge into a repeatable process with less disruption to store operations.
Workforce stability: 23% turnover, down from 42% over multiple seasons
Manager capacity: Up to 50% of store manager recruiting time returned to the business
Peak-season scale: 9,000+ hires delivered during a highly compressed eight-week hiring window
The challenge
Follett Higher Education operates more than 1,000 campus retail stores nationwide. Historically, each location managed its own recruiting, placing hiring responsibility on store managers already focused on customers, revenue, and operations.
Peak seasons amplified the problem. Workforce planning varied by location, candidate experience was inconsistent, turnover remained high, and leaders had limited visibility into hiring progress.
The back-to-school season created an especially concentrated challenge, with much of Follett’s peak hiring demand compressed into a short eight-week window. Follett needed a way to absorb that recurring workforce surge without turning peak season into an operational disruption for its stores.
What Personegy did
Personegy became the front-end platform supporting Follett's centralized high-volume hiring model, replacing store-led recruiting with a more consistent, technology-enabled process.
The model standardized candidate communication across locations, translated store-level forecasts into regional hiring plans, and gave the team greater visibility into conversion, onboarding completion, and no-show patterns. Automated offer and onboarding workflows, including required documentation, reduced manual work and helped move candidates through the process faster.
Rather than rebuilding the hiring process each time seasonal demand surged, Follett established a repeatable infrastructure that could be activated as peak hiring needs returned.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Recruiting managed independently by stores | Centralized high-volume hiring model |
| Inconsistent candidate experience | Standardized, automated communication |
| Limited visibility into workforce needs | Location-level funnel and workforce planning |
| Store managers carrying recruiting workload | Up to 50% of manager recruiting time returned |
| Turnover at 42% | Turnover reduced to 23% |
Partnering with NXTThing RPO completely transformed our seasonal hiring strategy. Their ability to scale, combined with automation and candidate care, enabled us to significantly reduce time-to-hire, improve our first day show rates, and relieve our store managers from the burdens of recruitment so they could focus on driving the business. — Lori Hensler, Chief People Officer, Follett Higher Education
The outcome
Follett created a seasonal hiring engine capable of absorbing one of its largest recurring workforce demands with far less disruption to the business.
The organization completed more than 9,000 seasonal hires in eight weeks, while average application-to-start reached 3.5 days and candidate engagement increased by nearly 30%. More importantly, turnover fell from 42% to 23%, while up to half of the time store managers previously spent recruiting could be redirected toward customers and store operations.
The business outcome was not simply faster seasonal hiring. Follett gained a more stable workforce and a repeatable way to manage a major hiring surge without asking individual stores to absorb the complexity.
What's next
Follett now operates with a centralized recruiting engine that connects workforce planning, candidate experience, and store operations.
Peak-season demand remains significant, but the infrastructure to manage it is now established. What once created widespread hiring pressure can be executed as a predictable, repeatable part of the business.
