CVS has seen rapid growth within the last quarter, and It announced in late March that it planned to hire 50,000 people in part-time, full-time, and temporary roles to keep up with demand.

The drugstore chain CVS has kept store locations open as an essential retailer during the coronavirus pandemic due to being a leading provider of consumer cleaning supplies, over-the-counter medications, and prescriptions.

CVS said the pandemic caused more customers to order things such as 90-day prescriptions, opting for early refills of medications, and buying a larger volume of household goods and health items. In an earnings call earlier this month CVS Stated that The company’s same-store sales in pharmacy were up 9.3% and same-store sales in the front store were up 8% in the quarter. Prescription volume was up sharply, by nearly 10%.

Recently, Jeffrey Lackey, VP of talent acquisition at CVS Health, told HR Dive, “All of us were facing an unprecedented reality, “We realized that we needed to create an accelerated hiring process that allowed us to be able to get support to our front lines quickly and with compassion.”

It’s estimated that CVS has roughly 200,000 front line employees and including store associates, pharmacists, nurses, and other workers, and this group needed extended ability for expanded leave, which prompted CVS to increase their employment by roughly 50,000 employees. To meet the ambitious recruiting goals amid the COVID-19 pandemic, CVS has implemented a virtual talent acquisition process and focused on streamlining hiring of furloughed employees from corporate business partners. Both of these initiatives came to fruition in just days thanks to overtime work of about 40 individuals, according to Lackey.

As of now, since launching their “accelerated hiring initiative,” CVS has had over 1.3 million inbound applications and has over 60,000 candidates hired or in the hiring process. According to a CVS Health spokesperson, “In a pre-pandemic month, that latter number would be closer to 10,000.”

Additionally, CVS is one of five major U.S. retailers that plan to add more drive-thru COVID-19 testing sites. The drive-thrus are staffed by CVS employees. It plans to open the new sites in store parking lots and plans to have nearly 1,000 across the country by the end of May.

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