Sourcing Challenges
Portillo’s faced hiring challenges in smaller town markets, where traditional job boards like Indeed were failing to provide enough candidate flow for its front-of-house and back-of-house roles, including crew members, cooks, and cashiers.
Without a steady pipeline of candidates, many locations were operating below full capacity, directly impacting efficiency and customer experience. Portillo’s needed a way to get in front of a broader audience and expand its employment brand beyond job boards.
Adding to the challenge, Portillo’s was competing with other restaurants and retail businesses for the same pool of job seekers. With a nationwide labor shortage in the hospitality sector, the company needed a competitive edge to attract talent before they actively started job searching.
Solution
Portillo’s recognized that younger job seekers weren’t necessarily browsing job boards but were highly engaged on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Many of these potential hires weren’t actively looking for jobs but were open to new opportunities when targeted in the right way.
To tap into this passive talent pool, Portillo’s launched multiple targeted hiring campaigns through Hireline in Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois, focusing on hard-to-staff locations.
Hireline’s platform enabled Portillo’s to place job opportunities directly in front of passive candidates, engaging them before competitors could capture their attention. By utilizing Hireline's programmatic job ads and streamlined application tools, Portillo’s was able to boost engagement and drive immediate applicant flow.
Results
Portillo’s experienced a 200% increase in candidate flow across its hardest-to-staff locations, ensuring that more applicants were available for hiring managers.
Additionally, time to hire was reduced by 60%, allowing restaurants to fully staff their teams more quickly and improve operations.
Among the markets targeted, Indiana locations saw the most dramatic hiring improvement, with previously understaffed locations filling roles at record speed.
By engaging passive job seekers early, Portillo’s tripled its candidate pipeline and attracted applicants who weren’t actively applying elsewhere. With minimal overlap between Hireline’s leads and job board applicants, Portillo’s successfully expanded its hiring reach and positioned itself ahead of the competition in key markets.