3 Tips To Tackle Holiday Retail Recruitment Challenges

Ready or not, the holidays are right around the corner. And with the holidays comes holiday hiring needs—and a lot of them. The retail industry is facing its own unique set of retail recruitment challenges in the wake of the pandemic. While establishments are back online and operating, the industry looks different this year.

As establishments brace for the holiday rush, they are facing a different landscape than even last year. Retail employment was up by 22,000 in July and will be even higher October through December. According to Forbes, “Most retailers put holiday hiring plans together and begin the process as early as September. Last year, the retail sector planned to hire between 500,000 to 665,000 employees for the holiday season. With retail sales projected to be 6-8% higher than last year, the number of holiday openings is expected to increase.” Plus, the current economic climate has shifted the spending habits of shoppers. According to Inc.com, fears of inflation and supply chain concerns are both encouraging shoppers to shop earlier than they normally do.

The bottom line? It’s time to start hiring now.

Below are 3 tips to make sure hiring is nothing but an easy check mark on your long holiday to-do list.  

Rethink how you engage your candidates.

With higher sales expectations comes increased hiring needs—and a lot of positions to fill. While that’s great news for companies, hiring teams have to realize that reaching today’s retail employees requires a different approach than two years ago. Retail employees have faced shutdowns and permanent closures and a general state of uncertainty during the pandemic. Poor communication from company leaders has helped contribute to burnout, and today’s retail workers want to be heard. 

HireVue conversational-AI allows you to hire up to 4x faster by engaging candidates all the way through the hiring process. Technology built for high-volume hiring, like HireVue, is built to find the candidates that will interact best with your customers through a process that can be done in one day. Automation will increase your efficiency and return time to your managers, so they can get back to servicing customers. Simply post a job and let candidates engage with a chatbot that will prescreen and then allow them to schedule an interview. In a 4-6 question video interview, HireVue’s proprietary machine learning algorithms surface the candidates that will interact best with your customers and represent your brand in real, customer-centric situations.

And don’t forget—you can turn your customers into candidates. HireVue’s mobile-friendly solutions allow teams to reimagine how they reach their future employees. Our text-powered recruiting assistant incorporates solutions like text-to-apply, so hiring teams can start turning customers into candidates. Start building the team you need for success—without the stress. 

Hire those who know your business. Skip a lot of the learning curve, and look to rehire your past employees. They know your business and expectations, and they’re a great database to tap into for the upcoming season. HireVue Direct Messaging enables teams to send out seasonal hiring campaigns with a direct link to apply through text from a platform—not a personal phone. Teams can send candidates 1:1 or campaign SMS messages from a secure, compliant platform instead of having to use their own devices. And if you do hire your seasonal employees early in the summer or fall, easily keep them consistently engaged until their start date. 

Fill jobs and shifts fast with on-demand interviewing.

With customers to service and sales goals to meet, when it comes to seasonal hiring, time is of the essence. On-demand interviewing can be the key to quicker hiring by offering a flexible solution for both candidates and recruiters. One Fortune 50 retailer turned to HireVue for its full-time and seasonal hiring needs. By utilizing on-demand video interviewing to replace phone screens and interviews, hiring teams could immediately fill seasonal roles. 

Interested in learning more about hourly and seasonal hiring? Read our blog post on the upcoming surge or download our 2022 HireVue Hourly Hiring Guide.