Recruiter advice; find a better company than Walgreens, most companies are - Recruiting Manager Walgreens Employee Review

1.0
Jul 29, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

People are friendly The "penny wise but dollar foolish" culture teaches you to put yourself first and the company second, PLEASE remember this when negotiating your offer. (Keep this in mind, Walgreens matrix for annual merit increase averages 1.5% to 2%, inflation is much higher)

Cons

Recruiting is at the bottom of the totem pole in the company, responsibility falls onto the recruiting team to bridge gaps of broken processes, 20 year old Applicant Tracking System, NO CRM and HR Information Systems process is not transparent for Hiring Leaders, HR, Finance or Recruiting. Recruiting finds out about open positions when the HRIS team builds the jobs to be posted, could be up to 2 weeks after the hiring leader requested the role to be filled (Process: Hiring Leader can't request job to be posted until the person leaves the company (Hiring leader could have known for a month they were leaving but can't request job to be built until person is off payroll), the job to be posted is built by the HRIS team NOT Recruiting and recruiting is not copied on any of this). Within 24 hours of requesting job to be filled the hiring leader is wondering when Recruiting will contact them to do an intake and start recruiting (Broken Process: Recruiting does not know the following; someone has put in their notice to leave, the Hiring Leader requested the job to be built and posted (can't request until after they leave to be out of the payroll system), the job is in building process with HRIS, job created, manual ATS approval process of Hiring Leader, HR Director and Finance Officer approve job to be posted finally the ATS alerts Recruiting of the job to be filled.) BAD work life balance, everyone (hiring leaders in particular) are so busy doing tasks there is no time remaining for talent acquisition, talent development, talent management or team building. Reactive culture, not proactive, you drown in emails leaving no time to focus on key responsibilities, your team's talent development or your own development. Finance controls all decisions (penny wise but dollar foolish). Finance budgets business unit/department payroll by open jobs not by the headcount ORG Chart that has already been approved . Their thought process is, the longer they leave a job open, the more money they save in payroll with NO regard to that department, business unit, stores, DCs and entire company destroying their performance, culture, work life balance and happiness. They rely on "Cascading" communications quite poorly from the Executive level to VP level and below. This puts HR and Talent Acquisition in the cumbersome position of communicating the denial to SVP, VP, Sr. Director, Director, Sr. Mgr & Mgr hiring leaders who frantically need to backfill an open critical position because Finance won't approve a critical role to be filled. Typically all leaders in the chain drop everything to loop in everyone on a huge email chain that escalates to the C-Suite level for approval to backfill already approved headcount. Resistance to remote work, requiring people to relocate to the Chicago area (HUGE Expense to the corporation "Dollar Foolish", reduces ability to attract exceptional diverse talent, increases time to fill open critical roles adversely affecting employee value proposition, company performance, work life balance and happiness).

Explore other reviews about Walgreens

5.0
Jun 3, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Work with your schedule if you are in school.

Cons

Low pay. I need to be able to multitask, run the cash register, and operate the Photo Booth lab at a fast pace.

3.0
Jun 25, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Can be a fun environment. All in whom your staff is. Operating photo was fun and building projects for the customers. Learning about pharmacy operations.

Cons

Work life balance and low pay for what is expected. Not having enough payroll to effectively run a store. My store ran FE on a 320 hour a week budget. That was barely enough to get buy and meet the expectations put out by the company. I was never able to keep a full leadership staff. When a leader called out, I had to stay. There were days I was called away from my own dinner table. SM's were forced to be in the pharmacy for more than half of their day regardless as to what is happening in the FE. I worked over 50 hours a week and barely got to spend time with my family. If I wasn't at the store I was getting a phone call and having to go back to the store.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All