Ace Hardware’s hiring strategy is grounded in one core principle: a consistent, transparent experience for every candidate—regardless of outcome.
In this episode, Stef Nikitas, Director of Talent Acquisition at Ace Hardware, outlines how her team developed “The Ace Way of Hiring”—a structured, brand-aligned approach that sets clear expectations for candidates, hiring managers, and recruiters.
She also shares how Ace applies technology thoughtfully across the hiring process, and how her team navigates the complexity of supporting multiple business units under a unified talent strategy.
You’ll learn:
Connect with Stef on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/snikitas
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[00:00:00] Stef Nikitas: Being open to change is not just a nice-to-have anymore. It's a table stake at this point, and it's the only way we're going to be able to stay relevant to the talent that's out there.
[00:00:09] Dave Travers: So what does it really take for your business to attract world-class talent today? I'm Dave Travers, President of ZipRecruiter, and on Talent All-Stars, we shine a light on the people and the day-to-day processes behind recruitment and retention at some of the world's most influential businesses.
Our guest today didn't just step into a role at Ace Hardware. She pretty much built the talent acquisition function from the ground up. Stef Nikitas is the Director of Talent Acquisition at Ace Hardware, where she leads hiring across corporate home services and distribution centers nationwide. But a decade ago, she was a part-time consultant.
The company's very first dedicated recruiting resource. In this episode, Stef shares how she scaled Ace's ta strategy from a one-woman show to a data-driven candidate-first operation. She talks about why helpful isn't just a marketing slogan, it's the cornerstone of Ace's employee value proposition, and she goes through the number one trait talent leaders need to develop in a fast-changing world.
Let's get into it, Stef. Welcome to Talent All-Stars.
[00:01:13] Stef Nikitas: Hello. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:15] Dave Travers: So excited to have you here. So much to dig into. I wanna start at the beginning, though, when you were beginning your TA journey, and was there a specific moment, or helping someone get a job, or when it came together for you that this talent acquisition thing was a lot of fun and could be something you could do for a long time.
[00:01:36] Stef Nikitas: Yes. There's a lot to unpack, so like a lot of us in TA, I just kind of fell into it, as we like to say. So my first official job was an office assistant at a janitorial company in Germany when I was just 16. I handled some basic HR tasks, like think about onboarding, payroll, filing workers' comp claims, and kind of at the time, I didn't realize it, but it was my first exposure into the world of what I would later learn to be HR. And when I first moved to the States. A couple of years later, I was 20. My first job was with Pier One Imports' distribution center, and that's where I first experienced the actual recruitment side of things.
Found myself really loving the part where I could help people find opportunities, walking 'em through the applications, scheduling their interviews, getting them hired, facilitating new hire orientation. And that part started to really fill my cup. And while I was working there, I started going to college, community college at the time.
And decided, you know, let's try this HR thing and see what it looks like. On the academic side. While I was going to college, I took on a role with a huge company, Robert Bosch Corporation, initially as an executive assistant. But even in that role, it helped me grow professionally, got me more into the business side of things, and for the individual who was a president that I worked for, started to kind of, not snoop, but get into more of like his direct reports behind the scenes on their incentives and like their bonuses and some of the HR relations stuff. And I'm like, this is really actually something that I can see myself doing. And so really then got into the HR major transition into the bachelor's program.
Learned a whole lot on recruitment, HR, and everything, business that comes along with it. It took me seven years to finish my degree, but hey, I did it. Working full-time. And then right after graduation, I was offered a full-time recruiter opportunity, actually through Bosch. They had an RPO on site, and it couldn't have come at a better time. And then from there, I really moved into recruitment as a career and never left.
[00:03:37] Dave Travers: One of the things that I love along that journey is you start out as an executive assistant, which I love because I also was an executive assistant early in my career, and it changed, and I think it was amazing actually business training seeing both like the behind the scenes about how things happen and also seeing some, getting to see so many people walk in and out of the office be super effective and super ineffective. I got real pattern recognition about some things as a result of that.
Okay, so look back to your career, though. You started not only in doing HR and doing some recruiting, but you started moving up in the world, especially when you got to ACE Hardware. As you started moving up in the world, how was it different? What were the trade-offs of being a manager as opposed to being the superstar individual contributor?
[00:04:23] Stef Nikitas: Yeah, there was a lot of transition with that, so I think going back to Ace. I had, my son stayed home for a bit, so I was kind of in a world of transition before ACE came knocking. And when I started at Ace, we really didn't have anything in terms of talent acquisition. I was the first recruiter that came in. And really helped showcase what a dedicated resource, first of all, can do.
So really kind of like starting at the basics with Ace, the HR business partner function handled all the recruitment in addition to whatever else they had going on, right? Like nowadays, it's unimaginable for an HR business partner to also do recruitment. But back then, it was fairly normal in like the early two thousands.
Now, fast forward is this 2015 when I started at Ace, and they did it all, and we had 62 openings, which now I laugh at that number, but back then it was the record number for them, and they were just maxed out. So I came in, took it off their plates. Coming from the world of high-volume recruitment with Bosch, you know, coming into Ace, private organization, retail versus manufacturing, being able to showcase how to do it, all that.
And then over the years, been able to really take on more and more and more, not just be a one-trick pony, but actually really showcase a TA function. And that kind of opened doors and really created more of that. This is a place that I can create kind of, sounds weird, my legacy. Now that I look at it, 10 years ago, yeah, I kind of really created something back then.
I wasn't sure where this was gonna go. It was kind of a blank canvas, and so that transition into leadership eventually was both exciting and terrifying because I knew the department inside and out, because I created it. I knew the players pretty well, but I didn't really necessarily know the leadership thing.
I would say for me, it was the transition from influencing the leader to now. Being the leader that influences the leader, not the individual contributor. And so I would say the biggest learning curve was how to use what I knew. To my advantage to advocate for what would now be my team and not just myself anymore.
So, taking that step back from like what I learned with the executives, think through it in terms of your data, your metrics, what's the storytelling you wanna put behind it? What am I fighting for? What's the ROI? What's the end goal? What's the Nirvana state I wanna go to? And then really putting that together in an organized manner in front of those leaders. To get what I need to move forward, be it for my team, for myself, or for the function.
[00:06:47] Dave Travers: I think there are a couple things there that I love. One is. Being open about how scary it is when you're starting, like it is a big transition to being responsible for others and the work they do. And usually, you're elevated because you're really good at the work you do, and now you're responsible for other people who do it to a different standard and a different way.
And that's really difficult. But you talked about the leadership thing, and I wanna double click on that. Give yourself 10 years ago, as you're starting this journey, or the person today who's moving up in the world and taking on leadership informally and leading a project or formally taking on a team, give me your best advice on, like, how do you start that journey? Cause it feels really scary.
[00:07:27] Stef Nikitas: I mean, I was there right like six, seven years ago, right before COVID, when I wanted to do more, but I didn't know how. So I would say this works for a lot of people, but it also, a lot of it depends on the manager that you have that you're working with. The organization that you're in, right?
Is it a flat organization? Is it a multilayered matrix, international, local, tiny, nonprofit, public, right? All of that plays a factor in it to kind of understand. Like at Bosch, I knew where I was. I couldn't go any further. At Ace, though, because of that blank canvas and the need for a formalized function, I very quickly with my manager, learned, the more I can advocate for the function, the louder I can get about what it is that we need to move the needle forward. And why. The better it ended up working for me, and it kind of almost made me, I don't know if it made me, in my mind, I was trying to make myself indispensable, right?
Like when we think recruitment at Ace, we think Stef; she is the go-to. She's the subject matter expert. She knows the answers, she knows the people, she knows how to do it, where to do it, all that. And so I continued to build on that. And for me, COVID was kind of like. The blessing that really catapulted me into my function today.
But at the time, I was like, act like a sponge. Ask the right questions. Have the right people in the room. When you're showcasing your skills, get that exposure to those executives, to those key players, because the next time they have a project. Your name's gonna come up. And that's exactly what happened because with COVID, we created a special project, and my name came up, and that is why I sit in the seat today, because I was able to demonstrate that I can do more.
The way you talk about it, it's brave to take on the new thing. When you don't know, you never are gonna know exactly what you're doing when you take on a new responsibility, and it never gets easier as I hear you talk about it, but you do get used to how hard it is. Like, there is something about that, and I love how you describe it very humbly, but I think it's very brave how you put yourself out there and took on that project, and now look at you leading a talent function for a huge company.
[00:09:33] Dave Travers: Okay, so now the other big complexity, you know, we're all facing this technological complexity. The other thing about your business is you have corporate, you have distribution centers, and you have. All these stores with people running these stores who are, you know, a little independent at times, and also they're carrying the Ace brand, and you're looking to make sure they have the Ace candidate experience.
How do you judge when to say, this is how we're gonna do it uniformly, and this is what we're gonna trust one of the locate a distribution center or a store to do it their way.
[00:10:05] Stef Nikitas: It all kind of goes back to COVID, which I feel like is, is kind of at the center of a lot of this. So when COVID first started, we were very quickly deemed an essential business. We had, at the time, probably around 5,500 stores nationwide, and very quickly had to hire on the back end in the distribution centers, like roughly 3000 people. We were very siloed, very decentralized at that point. We didn't all share the same process, the same systems, or even the same team.
So we created a, we call it Project Hurricane. We love references to disastrous events and East. So Project Hurricane was essentially, how do we centralize and quickly adapt in the world of COVID to move forward in order to hire these people very quickly? And that was kind of the birth of how we are set up today.
Because we started out kind of this disjointed process. Everybody kind of jump in and just go recruit basically. It worked to a certain extent, and then through this committee, which involved a lot of our senior leaders. At the suite table, we very quickly found out, okay, we're gonna need to change the way we recruit, the way we brand, the way we market, and the way we onboard candidates.
Because it was during a time when people were scared to come to work, people didn't know if they could come to work, right? Like. Quarantine. What's quarantine? What are mask mandates and school like? Kids are home from school. Like, how do people work in that environment, in jobs where they don't have the luxury to do it from home?
If you work in a warehouse, you gotta be there. You can't like have the forklift in your living room with tracs stacked up three high, and so we had to come up with a creative way to first look at lessons learned from how have we been doing it, and what are the pain points? Where do we need to make changes?
Who is doing the recruiting, and how are we doing the recruiting? And I would say over seven months, very quickly. Uh. Through data analytics, lots of conversations figured out. Okay? Like, make it as simple, strip it down to as easy as possible for candidates to apply, 'cause we were seeing dropoffs, right? The harder the process is, the less likely a high volume population.
We'll spend the time in filling out your application. So that was the first step. Then how do we advertise our jobs? Okay. Bring in some vendors to help us with digital recruitment, marketing campaigns. Got that all cleaned up. Then recruiter training. How do we find 16 processes and make it to one? What's the easiest way to move candidates through?
Figured that piece out, got everybody trained, and move that forward. And then the last piece was, okay, how do we measure what we're doing is coming through in data? Are we getting hires that are sticking with us? Are we hiring faster? Are we getting more completion rates in terms of applications? Is our application volume going up?
Are hires going up? All those data components, factoring that in. And yes, there were like adjustments we made along the way, but a lot of what we did during that time, we still have in place today and continue to build on it. So. Now we have it all under one umbrella, with the exception of retail. We have one process that we're working towards. We are centralized in many ways, but then very much vertical driven in how we execute, if that makes sense.
[00:13:19] Dave Travers: Absolutely. So I know you recently talked at a summit about the Ace way of hiring. What was the insight that said, I need to define this? We need to define what this means as an organization, and it's not just the best way of hiring, it's the ace way of hiring. What makes it the Ace way of hiring?
[00:13:36] Stef Nikitas: Yes. I'm really proud of the Ace way of hiring. It kind of started back when I started, and I was still a recruiter, but it started essentially with a simple question: what kind of hiring experience do we want our candidates to have or walk away with, regardless of the outcome?
And more importantly, how do we make sure that that experience reflects us as a brand? Because, like many organizations, our customers are our candidates and vice versa. So Ace, again, being known as the helpful place, right? But we realized recruitment needed to mirror that spirit. So we developed an Ace way of hiring process as a branded, transparent approach to guide candidates through the journey with us from the first touch all the way through the offer, or even a respectful decline. And we mapped out every stage of the process and aligned it to clear expectations. 'Cause transparency is king these days when it comes to candidate experience for the candidate, for the hiring manager, and a recruiter.
A lot of times, when you think candidate experience, it's not just the candidate. You gotta get your hiring manager along the ride with you. So in this case. It's kind of like a triangle. You got the candidate, the recruiter, the hiring manager, and then it's about transparency, consistency, and communication.
So for things like timely updates, sharing the why behind decisions, being upfront about pay and benefits, making sure every candidate feels seen and valued. It's not just a transaction, right? For a lot of these individuals, it could be a life-changing event if they get the job that they're going for. And from a branding perspective, it reinforces who ACE is.
Human, approachable, and focused on service. From a business perspective, it creates a more predictable and scalable experience across all the verticals, corporate distribution, wholesale, international, and home services. And then when your hiring process feels that it's intentional and respectful, your candidates, even those that don't get the job, leave the brand as advocates, they now may become a consumer.
So, in short, Ace wave hiring is about putting the candidate in the center. While staying aligned to our goals and our values, and then it will help us continue to elevate both the candidate experience and the performance of the individual in the job later, 'cause they'll come in and they're already engaged in the brand in Ace, and then excited about their job.
[00:15:50] Dave Travers: There's so much wisdom in there. I love that. But the insight that the candidate is a consumer for a consumer business like Ace is so smart and so obviously true. And what I love is what you talked about, the respectful decline, because the industry jargon often is rejected at that phase. But when you're thinking about this as somebody who's already your customer and you want them to leave, the vast majority of the people you get to apply are not gonna get a job offer.
And so you want them to leave a more passionate advocate as a consumer than they began, but I've never heard before the word respectful decline. How do you think about that? How is it different than a rejection? How do you define what that experience is like in a respectful decline?
[00:16:32] Stef Nikitas: I think as customized and as personalized as you can make the messaging to the candidate, and to your point, right? Like if you, even in high volume, you may only be hiring, like let's say we get 200,000 applications a year, you may only hire for 15,000 jobs. That still leaves a huge chunk of that 200,000 who are not gonna get that job right. And yes, you're gonna have masses that just don't qualify off the bat that are gonna get mass positions, right?
But those that we engage with in the process, those are the ones where we really focus on doing more of that respectful decline, where if you've had a conversation with us, be it on the phone in person, you've made it through the finalist stage, you're a silver medalist, whatever the case is. We try to make sure that it is a phone call. It is a personal email. It is not a system-generated mass message that comes to you. Thanks, but no thanks. But more meat to the message, I guess, and more of that brand to come through. More of that human piece of it. To say like, yes, I talked with you. Unfortunately, you didn't make it through the process. I can't necessarily share all the reasons as to why.
Because obviously there's a legal component to it, right? But we try to give as much feedback as we can when it's warranted. To the candidates, so that they know we see you as a human. You are not a number in the 200,000 applications that we look at every year.
[00:17:50] Dave Travers: Yeah, the form letter or the never responded to don't feel like a respectful decline. I love that. Okay. We always finish these episodes with a rapid-fire section, so I want you to envision yourself at corporate headquarters, and you're getting in the elevator, making a cup of coffee, and all of a sudden, the CEO walks up to you and is like, you know, Stef, you're the expert. Interviewing and hiring. I interview people all the time for executive roles, potential roles, to be a board member, whatever. Give me your best piece of advice. Help me become a better interviewer. What would you say?
[00:18:22] Stef Nikitas: I think a lot of times, and I know this is like specific to the CEO, but a lot of hiring managers, going to interviews, looking for reasons to say no to the candidate.
We see that a lot, and I think you see that a lot across multiple organizations. And so, like a lot of times, and I would say the same thing to our CEO, go into an interview with more of an open mind. While you may have interviewed 500 people this year, your candidate has maybe only interviewed 3, 4, 5 positions or with five, six different individuals in their job search.
So you're gonna come in with a very different expectation on how the person should act, the answers they should say, how fluid the conversation should be, how many nerves you think they should have as part of the interview. Whereas the candidate will obviously be intimidated by your CEO title. The candidate will be intimidated just by being in an interview period or in like the situation, depending on what level they're interviewing for.
Now, that's also generic. You have people who are very good at interviewing, but I would say for the majority, candidates are very nervous, and they get more nervous the more they want the job, and the further into the process they ge,t and the higher level, their opposite is going to be. So I always tell candidates to be their authentic self.
It's okay to say if you don't know the answer to something. It's okay to defer if you don't have it in the moment, but don't try to be something you're not. I would tell the CEO, this is what I tell candidates, and I would expect you to do the same thing. Be authentic. Be yourself in the interview and don't find reasons to say no to the candidate.
Find reasons on why you would wanna say yes to the candidate. Come in with a different perspective, and it will change the way the conversation will go because of how the individuals are both approaching the interview. Like I always tell candidates, yes, it's an interview, it's potentially about a life-changing situation depending on what you're going for.
But at the end of the day, it's just like two people talking like you and I on a podcast right now, that I don't know how many people we're gonna listen to, but I try not to get that in my head because I'm sitting across from you and we're having a conversation. We're two humans. It's the same thing in an interview, and I think having that mindset accurately set up on both sides does a lot for the conversation. So I would tell the CEO the same thing.
[00:20:42] Dave Travers: I think it's so powerful as an interviewer to think about how do I not just philosophically be open to how I want a candidate to be their authentic self. For instance, talking about what a struggle was or some project that wasn't successful. You don't want them to hand-wave their way through it and say something was a big success when it wasn't, if it comes up in an interview.
[00:21:03] Dave Travers: So how do you embody that yourself? It's one thing to be open to it or say that's what you want. It's another thing to demonstrate that. And like find a way to tell a story about something that's like kind of not going perfect right now, or something we really struggled with a year ago. You're gonna get a lot more out of that from the interviewee if you exemplify that as an interviewer.
So one more rapid-fire question. Same scenario, you're walking up. To, you know, grab a cup of coffee, but this time it's the rising star within the organization. It could be on your team or something else, but again, they're looking at you as the talent expert and saying, you know, Hey Stf, what do you think is the one skill that we need more of two or three or five years from now than we have today in our organization, given the way the world's going, what is it we need more of than we have today?
[00:21:53] Stef Nikitas: I would say being open to and adapting to change. HR and TA often gets labeled as being slow, outdated, and equated. And honestly, sometimes that's true.
It's fair, but I would say at our core, we're here to protect the business. We're here to reduce risk, and we're here to especially TA to help build organizations. So the challenge is for some talent leaders like myself, they're still clinging to the way things have been done for the last 20 years, and that it just won't work in the next three to five years for them, whatever reason.
But the pace of change is accelerating. Candidate expectations are evolving very fast. We saw that during COVID, especially, and it hasn't changed. If anything, it's continued. People are more informed, more values-driven, more selective than ever. They're researching your company, they're looking at your brand, they're looking at the experience.
They're looking on Glass Door. What are people saying about you right before they even apply, and if they feel that what they're seeing out there before they're even applying is already outdated or clunky. It keeps growing. So if we're not embracing new tools or new mindsets, or smarter ways of working, we're gonna fall behind and we're gonna fall behind fast.
And we're seeing it with some companies out there. But that doesn't mean throwing out the fundamentals. It just means you have to evolve with purpose. So being open to change is not just a nice-to-have anymore. It's a table stake at this point, in my opinion, and it's the only way we're going to be able to stay relevant to the talent that's out there.
I love that answer 'cause I'm a big believer that as human beings, all of us, myself included, are always thinking about the big change that's going on, and we just gotta get through this one project. We're redefining this thing. We're switching out the technology over here, and if we just get through that, then we'll be through the hard part of change.
And I remind myself, 'cause then I'm always reminding other people that this is actually the slowest it's ever gonna go. Like to your point, the world is accelerating and embracing the fact that it's going to keep changing, and we're gonna have to keep adapting with it is really important. Stef Nikitas, it is so clear why you're a Talent All-Star. Thanks so much for joining today.
[00:23:56] Stef Nikitas: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:24:01] Dave Travers: That's Stef Nikitas, director of Talent Acquisition at Ace Hardware. We'll drop her LinkedIn profile in the episode notes so you can connect and learn more about her work. And just a reminder, Talent All-Stars is also available on YouTube over on ZipRecruiter's official channel. I'm Dave Travers, thanks for listening, and we'll see you right back here next week.