Retail Recruitment in 2023

Recruitment in the retail sector is a complex process. What makes it unique from the recruitment processes of other industries is because of its specific demands and challenges. In the past years, the industry experienced a seismic shift that left many retail businesses still finding their footing in the market. Hence, the retail sector has become an even more dynamic and demanding industry than before. You need to invest in the right recruitment tools and techniques if you want to adapt to the constant changes in the sector.

You need robust HR software that can automate and streamline your retail recruitment process. Nowadays, there is various HR software designed specifically for retail businesses. Each of these offers different tools and features to make your recruitment process more effective and efficient than before.

What is retail recruitment?

Retail recruitment simply refers to the hiring process of retail businesses. At first glance, retail recruitment may seem the same as any other recruitment process from other industries. But the truth is, retail recruitment is a complex affair that can easily drain your time and resources if taken for granted. Its high staff turnover rates mean retailers need to have a high volume of hiring at a time. In fact, a study by Statista shows that there are about 6.59 trillion people working in retail just this year alone.

Another common challenge for retailers is attracting the right candidates for the position. Working in the retail sector requires technical skills and cross-functional experience. Hence, many retail businesses struggle to find the right people for the job.

Fortunately, there are strategies you can implement to overcome these common recruitment challenges. For example, some retail businesses consider hiring from other industries other than retail to keep up with their high turnover rates. They also maintain a strong talent pool where they can always reach out to potential candidates during their hiring period. And nowadays, you can use social media to recruit talents and promote your brand online.

Retail Recruitment Challenges

Assessing challenges is one of the first crucial steps in formulating a strategy. Here are some examples:

• Job Nature: More employees are now more interested in work-from-home arrangements, hence, the lack of availability for applicants.
• Higher market competition: The decreased number of people wanting to work in stores coupled with the increased number of people quitting or finding remote jobs heightened the competition among companies to lock in the best talents.
• Technology skills: Modern processes and technology require employees to have a new set of skills to operate.
• Employee Retention: Many employees in retail don’t plan on staying in it for too long. They’re often treated as a stepping stone to kick start their career, thus, the retention rate is higher.

How to Build a Successful Retail Recruitment Strategy?

Now that you’re aware of the common issues you’ll face, you can better prepare a recruitment strategy for your company. Recruiting retail employees means appealing to the needs of hourly workers. Here are some key components of successful retail recruitment strategies:

1. Define your hiring goal from the very beginning: It could be to improve candidate experience, hire a certain number of new staff, or prioritise certain skills from candidates.
2. Determine with a clear role and skills from potential hires: This could help you save time in the future in finding the right fit for the position.
3. Keep communication honest: Make sure you describe clearly what you’re looking for in the job advert.
4. Source candidates in appropriate channels: Whether that’s LinkedIn or dedicated job sites, depends on various factors.
5. Have a multi-channel presence: So you don’t miss out on potential highly-skilled individuals.
6. Offer careers, not jobs: Try to formulate growth plans and career tracks to attract career-driven employees.

4 Retail Recruiting Best Practices

You may quickly become proficient in retail recruitment, select qualified candidates, and reduce turnover by implementing a few straightforward suggestions.

Let’s look more closely.

• Decide What You Need to Hire

It’s crucial to establish your hiring requirements before you get started.

1. Do you, for instance, need to fill a new position?
2. Do you need to hire someone to replace a recent quitter?
3. Does the position require experience? How many of the available positions must be filled?

You can decide what kind of candidate(s) to look for, how many candidates to interview, and their qualifications by responding to these questions. This is particularly crucial if each role calls for a particular skill set.

• Create Catchy Job Descriptions

The first thing prospective applicants look at when deciding whether to apply to your organisation is the job descriptions.

Writing job descriptions that sell the position and encourage applicants is crucial if you want to draw in a large talent pool.

The following details should be included in your description, which should be clear and succinct:

1. Job Title: What is the job’s title?
2. Experience: Does the position require experience, or is it entry-level?
3. Responsibilities: What exactly will this person be expected to undertake on a daily basis?
4. Pay and benefits: Are there any perks like a relocation package, paid time off, or health insurance?

• Use an Applicant Tracking System You Can Trust

An applicant tracking system is a crucial piece of equipment in your recruitment toolbox. You may handle and monitor all applications as they come in with the use of an ATS.

It must be simple to use and smoothly synchronise with other hiring tools. Never accept an ATS that lacks these three crucial components:

1. As candidates go through the hiring process, the stage they are in can be promptly updated on an interactive digital board.
2. Recruiters and hiring managers may swiftly browse through resumes and use artificial intelligence to extract the most useful information thanks to a user-friendly interface.
3. the capacity to compile “hotlists,” or a list of prospective future prospects, and export information to communicate with internal

• Simplify the hiring procedure

Do not devote all of your time and energy to the job interview process. Consider beginning the process with a virtual interview to make it easier.

Video interviews give you a great first impression of the prospect and help you decide whether they merit an in-person interview.

Bring the candidate into the shop for an in-person interview once they have passed the initial screening so you can watch how they behave and interact with customers and other team members.

Make a list of behavioural inquiries to ask each applicant who shows up for a face-to-face interview.

Creating a predetermined list of questions helps speed up interviews and is a wonderful method to gauge how prospects will perform in the position. You can examine a candidate’s behaviour with behavioural questions to see how they react under duress and deal with various scenarios.

These typical behavioural interview questions are listed below:

1. Describe a moment when you had to deal with an irate client.
2. What would you do if someone wasn’t contributing their fair share to a project you were working on?
3. Describe a situation where you had to show leadership.

How HR Software Can Help With Retail Recruitment?

HR software is programs designed to assist HR professionals with their daily tasks—from managing employees and documents to centralizing HR processes like recruitment. Through the different HR software tools, you can fully digitize and automate HR functions, allowing more flexibility for your company and employees.

Perfecting retail recruitment with HR software

HR software is also the perfect tool to help retailers hire the right people for the job. Depending on the HR software, it provides robust interview and candidate management features to help you keep up with high staff turnover rates and the high volume of hiring.

With that, here’s how you can perfect retail recruitment using the software.

• Digitize recruitment process

Digitization plays a critical role in retail recruitment. According to PwC, 53% of the global population believes that digital technology will continue to transform the way people think and behave over the next years. With HR software, you can fully embrace digital transformation for your recruitment process. it centralizes all candidate data and hiring tasks in one platform so that you can easily access them when needed.

For example: HR software can help manage all your job postings and compile all applications from different sources at once. Depending on the HR software, it can also automatically filter out unqualified candidates and provide you with a short list of applicants showing the most potential. You can then use the software to reach out to the candidate, keep track of their progress throughout the hiring process, and assess their performance. In short, you can do the entire recruitment process entirely digitally thanks to HR software.

Create a more seamless and immersive digital experience for your HR team by investing in project and resource management software. This helps them manage individual workflows and collaboration within the team. This Celoxis review lets you know of the benefits of such software for your business.

• Create attractive job advertisements

In this age of content, it’s important that your job advertising could stand out from other postings on the internet. But more than that, you need to make sure that it attracts the right people for the job. While there are many techniques to optimize your job ads, HR software can also help you cast a wider net to attract the right talents.

You can use HR software to manage all your job ads across multiple channels. From social media sites like Facebook to branded career sites like LinkedIn, HR software makes sure that your employer brand remains consistent and will shine through. In just a single platform, you can update job descriptions or status across all job boards. You can even propagate your jobs to multiple sites with just one click. This way, you can focus on recruiting rather than advertising.

• Source better candidates

Sometimes, attracting candidates isn’t the problem. It’s how and where you can source better candidates for your retail recruitment. The retail industry is constantly evolving. Retail job positions are changing too. This means demand for new skills, new experiences, and new technology. You need to know where and how to find qualified candidates for your retail recruitment.

One of the most important HR tools for recruitment is candidate sourcing. This feature centralizes your talent pool of candidates so that you can easily access all candidate applications. It sources candidates directly from job boards, emails, social media, or your websites, making it easier to sort through all potential hires and narrow down your list.

• Understand your target applicants

To attract the right candidates, you must know what would entice them to apply, where to find them, and how to convince them to submit their applications. In other words, you need to understand your target applicants.

Fortunately, HR software allows you to leverage data and analytics to improve the way you recruit for your retail business. You can use it to determine the latest trends in retail recruitment that appeal to your chosen demographics. It also lets you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your current retail recruitment process and pinpoint the areas where you need to improve.

In a way, HR software shares some features of CRM programs. But instead of managing customer relations, it manages your relationship with staff and candidates. Whereas CRM software stores all customer information, HR software stores employee and candidate information. Depending on the CRM system or HR software, it can also analyze data and provide you with reports about customer/candidate behaviors and demands.

• Automate where you can

Retail recruitment tends to involve mass hiring due to its high staff turnover rates and growth rate. This is where a company hires a large workforce in a short time. So instead of just one job position, you have several vacant positions to fill. This can be a challenging task considering how hiring just one person can already take up so much time and effort. So just imagine hiring several people at once.

One of the HR tools best practices is to automate various tasks in your recruitment process. You can automate application screening, job post management, and candidate management to reduce your HR team’s workload. This allows them to interview and assess several candidates for different positions all at once.

The right software for you

The best HR software has a lot to offer to your retail business. Aside from perfecting your retail recruitment process, it can also help you with employee management, onboarding, training, and ensuring a safe working environment in the company. So go ahead and explore which HR software is right for you.