With over 900 stores and 43,000 employees, Hobby Lobby is the largest privately owned arts-and-crafts retailer in the world. On a mission to help people live creatively, the company offers more than 70,000 products ranging from home decor to crafts, to seasonal pieces, and more.

Hobby Lobby is rapidly expanding. Hiring a minimum of 300 store leaders a year, they need a recruitment solution that delivers on volume. In fact, Marlin Gayfield, Assistant Director of Management Recruiting says, “We aren’t just opening one or two new stores a year, we’re opening 50. And to do that efficiently, we need hundreds of qualified applicants all over the country.” However, despite using several different recruitment tools, they struggled to attract enough applicants—especially in hard-to-hire regions with low brand recognition.

Hobby Lobby turned to ZipRecruiter to increase their applicant pool and brand exposure. ZipRecruiter’s powerful AI matched them with thousands of qualified candidates they were previously missing out on. Their dedicated ZipRecruiter team helped analyze monthly data and adjust their strategies to drive more traffic in hard-to-hire regions. They also utilized ZipRecruiter’s Resume Database to proactively reach out to candidates during store openings and busier holiday seasons. Relying on ZipRecruiter as one of their primary recruitment tools, Hobby Lobby successfully opened and staffed 50 new stores across the nation. They saw a significant boost in employer brand awareness and sourced hundreds of qualified candidates monthly.