3rd December 2021 5 MIN READ •Talos Attract •Employer Advice
Recruiting for retail can be challenging, especially during periods of increased consumer demand. You need to hire new employees quickly, while considering their compatibility with both the role and your workplace culture.
Here we outline our top 6 tips for managing retail recruitment – helping you to hire employees easily and effectively.
How to manage retail recruitment:
There are three main focuses of retail recruitment campaigns: attraction, management, and onboarding. It’s important to spread your focus equally across each hiring stage, ensuring candidates are met with a consistent, high-quality recruitment journey.
Here are our top 6 tips for building a successful retail recruitment strategy…
#1 – Promote your unique employer brand values
Your unique employer brand is what first attracts candidates to pursue your vacancies, and encourages them to stay with you long-term. Without a well-defined employer brand image, you’ll find it difficult to fill vacancies with truly compatible candidates.
Make sure your job ads reflect the very best of your workplace. Focus on key benefits, employee testimonials, and the core values of your company. This can include things like your diversity pledge, flexible working allowance, or seasonal bonus schemes.
As a retail business, you’ll likely already have a strong commercial brand reputation. Use this to your advantage; your customer base is a great source of
#2 – Use the right platforms to attract candidates
Recruitment isn’t just about attracting applications – it’s about attracting the most compatible candidates on offer. If your attraction strategy remains too broad, you’ll likely be met with a high volume of unsuitable applications – slowing down your hiring funnel.
It’s therefore important to advertise across the platforms most popular with your target talent audience:
Considering younger candidates
Younger candidates are more likely to engage with advertising content across social media and web-based platforms. Make sure your business has a consistent presence on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, and that new roles are shared across these profiles.
Considering older candidates
It’s important to consider your older candidates when planning hiring campaigns. Social media campaigns, for example, are much less likely to resonate with the older generation.
Consider how you can broaden your search for talent to include older candidates. Post consistently across a wide range of job boards, community forums, and place physical advertisements wherever possible.
#3 – Use an ATS to manage high volumes of applications
When recruiting for a retail business, you’ll likely be met with a high volume of applications. This is why it’s critical to have the best software tools at hand, allowing your team to manage candidates effectively – no matter the size of your talent pool.
Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are the most popular software solution used by retail recruiters. Using an ATS gives you ease of visibility over all of your candidates, allowing you to store, manage, filter, and engage with their data securely.
Modern ATS platforms come with a variety of tools and automations to increase speed and efficiency in your recruitment process. This includes AI candidate screening & progression, automated recruiter scorecards, and even video interview tools!
#4 – Use video interviews to speed up hiring turnaround
Video interviewing is a powerful tool for modern recruiters. Not only do they allow you to hire ‘from a distance’, but they also actively increase the speed and efficiency of your hiring process.
Give candidates the choice between in-person and video interviews. This will allow them to meet with your hiring team at any time, and from anywhere – overcoming time and distance obstacles.
Interviewing virtually also allows you to centralise hiring within one location or head office. Employees won’t need to attend the site in question for their initial interview; your team can meet and assess them from anywhere in the world!
#5 – Map out a fast & effective onboarding process
The recruitment process doesn’t end after candidate selection. It’s crucial to give new recruits the best start possible with your business – promoting their future success and long-term retention.
In retail, this means following a concrete onboarding checklist to bring new colleagues up to speed quickly. Make sure they’re taught how to use equipment effectively before they start their first day, and are made aware of any necessary health/safety policies.
In a more informal sense, it’s also important to introduce employees to their colleagues, physical workplace, and key business stakeholders. This will help new recruits to feel more ‘at home’ during their initial few weeks on your team.
#6 – Hire right first time with candidate assessments
Are CVs really the best way to gather candidate information? CVs aren’t quite obsolete (yet), but they do have their downfalls. Screening hundreds of CVs during peak hiring times takes up precious time, resources and, most importantly, money. The solution? Candidate assessments.
With science-based testing, employers can screen candidates before reaching out and making first contacts. This is invaluable when it comes to filtering out candidates that don’t fit a vacancy’s requirements. Personality and aptitude testing are the perfect tools when hiring customer-facing employees, and help to ensure the position is filled with the right candidates.
Introducing…
Talos ATS: Intelligent retail recruitment software
Want to make retail recruitment easier? Talos ATS is the answer!
We’ve combined all of the best hiring tools into one user-friendly dashboard – giving your hiring team the ultimate all-in-one recruitment platform.
With next-generation ATS, remote hiring tools, advertising management, and assisted onboarding, Talos ATS has all you need to recruit the best new talent.
Talos ATS includes:
- Next-generation Applicant Tracking System
- Multi-platform job-poster
- Recruitment advertising suite
- Video screening and interview platform
- Automated progression of your strongest applicants
- SMS/email update automation for candidates
- Remote onboarding tools
Discover a better way to manage retail recruitment – saving time, cutting costs, and reducing your reliance on staffing agencies:
