8 E S S E N T I A L S F O R S AV V Y TA L E N TA C Q U I S I T I O N T E A M S

RETAIL RECRUITING

REINVENTING

03: Introduction04: Stores Remain Critical to Retail Sales Growth06: 8 Essentials to Reinvent Retail Recruiting11: Building a Continuous Talent Delivery Loop for Retail14: Conclusion

This E-Book examines the current challenges and opportunities faced by retail employers and offers 8 essential practices that talent acquisition can use to reinvent retail recruiting for better hiring outcomes.

While all industries are grappling with unprecedented levels of disruption, perhaps none more so than retail. Our continued transition to online shopping, dubbed “the Amazon effect,” coupled with the rapid automation of retail operations means that every single retail role now requires technical aptitude in order to succeed on the job. However, many retail employers cite a lack of technical skills among their biggest hiring challenges, even at the store level—a 2018 Indeed survey finds that “70% of retail employers expressed difficulty finding in-store candidates with the appropriate technical experience.”

In addition to an increasing demand for technical skills, America’s historically low unemployment rate is complicating retail recruiting efforts. While recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the retail sector lost jobs due to factors such as e-commerce expansion, the overall labor market remains extremely strong.

Given that the best retail workers will have numerous options to consider, particularly as holiday hiring heats up, how can even the most well-known brands overcome competition for retail talent?

I M A G I N E

Based on 2019 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly 15.7 million Americans work in the retail trade. While these workers range from software developers and marketing executives to store and inventory managers, retail sales roles still account for a significant share of industry jobs—an estimated 4.1 million in 2018.

Our tight labor market has made filling all retail positions difficult, but high turnover within retail sales presents an added challenge. A 2018 analysis by LinkedIn of data for more than half-a-billion professionals finds that retail sales turnover reached 19.3%, and only 35% of those who left a retail job remained in the sector.

HOLIDAY HIRING: HO-HO-HOW?

News headlines may be quick to note that online sales continue to break records each season, yet in-store sales still account for the majority of holiday sales. Bain & Company’s Holiday Recap and Technology Trends for 2019 briefing points out that “more than 80% of total sales” during the 2018 holiday season were in-store. One main reason is that retailers are using their physical stores more strategically, operating and staffing them to accommodate the growing number of customers who prefer to purchase items online and pick them up in the store.

So, it’s not surprising that talent acquisition teams within the retail industry are asking how they can quickly adopt a more modern approach to hiring retail talent.

TA teams know they need to reinvent the way they recruit retail workers—they just don’t know where to begin. Whether it’s a corporate recruiter working to attract applicants for critical IT roles or busy store managers in need of every possible advantage, there are tools that can help by reducing time spent on low-value recruiting tasks while simultaneously improving the candidate experience.

1. Jobs Find MeChatbots for Common Candidate QuestionsAutonomous Talent DeliveryCustom ATS WorkflowsSelf-scheduling TechnologyAutomated RemindersCandidate Relationship Management (CRM) SoftwareAdvanced Analytics

Job seekers can tap into a broad range of career and employer information, but it’s your career website that they

flock to for an in-depth understanding of what it’s like to work for your brand. And, no matter what type of role they seek, they all have high expectations for the career website

experience—namely one that resembles their online experience as consumers.

A “Jobs Find Me” approach ensures that your career site delivers a super-personalized experience from the first touchpoint. How? Information that a candidate quickly

provides regarding skills, experience level, current job title and more can activate AI-driven job recommendations and

custom content for new and returning candidates.

Imagine your career site recognizing candidate preferences for part-time versus full-time roles, as well as evening and

weekend shifts with each visit. It’s this level of personalization that will have a huge impact

on converting talent fast.

Are part-time workers eligible for benefits? Which ones? Do you use an online scheduling system for in-store shifts?

What’s your telecommuting policy for corporate employees?

Here’s another question: How much time do recruiters and store managers spend answering the same questions from

job seekers? Thanks to advances in natural language processing, chatbots are now extremely effective in

managing basic questions, so integrating this technology into your career website is highly recommended.

Chatbots can save time for everyone on your recruiting team, especially store managers for whom recruiting is just one of

many responsibilities they juggle daily. But the advantages of chatbots also extend to job seekers looking for quick

answers to their most basic questions.

JOBS FIND ME CHATBOTS FOR COMMON CANDIDATE QUESTIONS

Artificial intelligence is rapidly making inroads across all aspects of hiring, furthering an organization’s ability to

identify and capture talent—both internally and externally—to fill pipelines with in-demand talent. Retail recruiters can leverage AI-driven automated talent matching and delivery

solutions, allowing machines to search for talent against specific job criteria, automatically providing relevant

matches while eliminating low-value task work.

Automated talent delivery offers significant value for both corporate and store positions. For example, corporate recruiters can use the technology to source internal

candidates seeking relevant advancement opportunities, while store managers can leverage it to automate the

process of identifying retail associates currently working for top competitors and invite them to apply.

Think about how different the hiring process is at the store level than it is for corporate roles. At a store, the manager likely conducts only one interview with each candidate and speed matters tremendously. ATS workflow configuration

can make—or break—a retailer’s hiring success.

If you’re considering the purchase of a new ATS, make sure you select one that makes customizing all of your workflows

easy. If you have a strong system in place, confirm that you’re getting the most out of your workflows for all hiring needs. If you’re not, work directly with your vendor to audit the enhancements that are required to make the system

work better in support of your hiring processes.

AUTONOMOUS TALENT DELIVERY CUSTOM ATS WORKFLOWS

We know from personal experience how convenient self-scheduling technology is, whether you’re in need of a tune-

up for your car or a dentist appointment. This same preference holds true for hiring, so use your ATS self-

scheduling technology for phone screens and interviews.

Self-scheduling eliminates tedious and repetitive tasks, such as playing endless rounds of phone or email tag. By

automating the email calendar invitation and confirmation process, this time-saver can be particularly useful for

high-volume roles. The interviewer’s availability is automatically updated as candidates select their preferred

time slots. Response rates among candidates are often higher as well, simply because they also find self-

scheduling more convenient.

Automated reminders are another ATS function that can deliver tremendous value to your recruiting function by

speeding up the hiring process. From candidate assessments and interview feedback to job and offer approvals, automated

reminders on both the employer and applicant side are highly effective in moving candidates through the pipeline

more quickly and converting them to hires.

In addition, many employers are tracking the results of their reminders and demonstrating the tremendous impact this automation has on shortening time to hire averages and,

thereby, reducing the costs associated with both recruiting and with openings that can sometimes go unfilled.

SELF-SCHEDULING TECHNOLOGY AUTOMATED REMINDERS

Talent communities—created and managed through robust CRM software—play an essential role in converting leads into applicants, applicants into candidates and candidates

into hires through personalized nurture campaigns, landing pages and targeted messages.

While most of your store-level candidates will be active applicants ready to make a change today, having intuitive

CRM technology in place provides much-needed support to managers in the field through the development of talent

communities. Targeting repeat customers, silver medalists and alumni or creating a holiday talent community aimed at

those who specifically seek out retail jobs during holidays can be a winning alternative to traditional recruitment

marketing approaches. Nurturing these individuals until an opportunity arises at the right time and location will provide

store managers with an instant pipeline of interested and qualified candidates that they can then usher quickly

through the store’s hiring process rather than starting from scratch with an expensive paid media campaign.

The most effective recruiting enterprises thrive on sources of rich, timely and actionable information. They use insights to

decide where to go next, how to make better talentdecisions faster, and how to drive greater efficiency

in their operations and processes.

Retailers should be tracking and analyzing career website, ATS and CRM data to reveal store-level recruiting success,

allowing store managers to see what’s working at other locations. Corporate recruiting teams can host regular

internal webinars to highlight what’s working for the stores and share tips that everyone can

leverage for better retail hiring outcomes.

CANDIDATE RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT(CRM) SOFTWARE

ADVANCED ANALYTICS

These 8 essentials are far more than a collection of recruiting tools and functions designed to improve hiring efficiency. They’re key components of an entirely new model of recruiting—the continuous talent delivery loop.

As the demand for the best qualified, interested and available talent continues to rapidly evolve, retailers that implement new recruiting models

like continuous talent delivery, where personalization and engagement represent the most critical success factors, will be far more effective in

securing the talent they need to realize business growth.

BUILDING A CONTINUOUS TALENT DELIVERY LOOP FOR RETAIL

• Technology plays a major role in supporting key candidatetouchpoints while ensuring that communications and engagementmaintain the forward momentum that’s needed to deliver moreinterested, qualified and available talent.

• Audience segmentation is used to attract and nurture the verybest talent—as opposed to simply available talent—because itmakes the creation of personalized communications andexperiences possible.

• Talent acquisition teams build pipelines instead of matchingtalent to requisitions, seeking out the best talent across theentire market and keeping them engaged throughout their journey.

• Comprehensive data collection and analysis bring together abroad set of data points for the meaningful insights needed tocontinually advance recruiting efficiency and effectiveness andsupport business results.

The traditional recruiting funnel model is on its way out. This is good news because the underlying premise has always been a numbers game, one that assumes that the hiring process unfolds in succession and choices must be made solely on the given applicant pool for a specific requisition. The emerging recruitment models support a full lifecycle approach to talent engagement that recognizes there’s no longer a beginning and end point. The focus becomes quality over quantity with candidates entering an organization’s pipeline through various channels, where they are strategically segmented, prioritized and nurtured.

Among the characteristics of the loop model that are most critical to talent acquisition success:

HIRE

ATTRACT

RE-ENGAGEENGAGE

AI Job Recommendations& Personalization

Career Website/Employer Brand

Pipeline Management

Employee ReferralCampus & Events

Chatbot

Landing Pages/Microsites

PipelineConversion

Auto Nurture & Drip Campaigns

Internal Mobility

Silver Medalists

Apply to Job Interview Management

Offer Management

Onboarding

Video Interviewing

AI Talent Sourcing

Chat/Text/EmailChannels

THE CONTINUOUS TALENT DELIVERY LOOP

Given the highly competitive labor market, talent acquisition teams should look for opportunities to reinvent their recruiting strategies and provide store managers the expertise and support they need to be more effective at in-store recruiting. Fortunately, for those ready to embrace new approaches,

there are strategies and tools—as well as emerging recruiting models—that brands can adopt to secure the retail talent needed to thrive in a complex recruiting environment.

Contact us today to experience how GR8 People can revolutionize the way you attract, engage and hire the world's best talent.

GR8 People is 100 percent purpose-built to deliver the unfair advantage companies demand to compete fortalent around the world. It is the talent platform that brings CRM, recruitment marketing, applicanttracking/hiring, and onboarding together; connecting entire talent ecosystems with one-experience toperform branding, sourcing, recruitment marketing, hiring, strategic communications and so much more.

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