Tips for retail HR professionals to manage seasonal recruitment demand
Are you challenged by seasonal recruitment demands in retail? You’re not alone. It’s common for organisations in the retail industry to need more team members before Christmas, or during summer. For fluctuating recruitment demands, here are the best strategies to manage seasonal recruitment.
It’s important to be able to meet customer needs when your business kicks into seasonal overdrive. To ensure this year’s seasonal shift is as cost-effective, stress-free and productive as possible for you and your team, use these strategies to manage seasonal recruitment.
Start by identifying the number of team members you will need in which locations and departments. Understand which areas of your business will need extra support based on data from previous years and factor in growth throughout the year to create a plan. Consider issues you’ve faced previously and set a plan to plug these holes preemptively.
Then, use smart attraction and hiring methods. Because seasonal employees may not remain in your business over the long term, advertising, hiring and onboarding costs through traditional methods can sometimes outweigh returns. But there are a number of strategies to cut down on the time and resources it takes to attract, screen and hire candidates.
Some smart attraction and hiring methods you could use include:
- An employee referral system – offer rewards and incentives to current team members for every successful referral they make to you (after all, great talent knows great talent!)
- Advertising in-store – a low-cost way to win applications from customers who already know, like and trust your brand
- An effective Candidate Management System – allowing you and your hiring managers to work collaboratively to screen candidates with ease in a single location
- Talent pooling – reach out to candidates who have previously expressed an interest in working with your organisation
- Delegating tasks to your front-line managers
- Using Group Assessment Days to assess and hire candidates in bulk.
You may need to screen hundreds of applications, so being able to digitally screen, compare and invite candidates to be interviewed will save you time and effort when recruiting high volumes.
Lastly, ensure you’re hiring the right person for the role. Hiring the wrong person whose values do not accurately match your company can cause massive issues and negative brand consequences. This, combined with the stress of the seasonal period, means you can’t afford to suffer from mis-hires or allow customer service to deteriorate.
Effectively screen candidates to ensure their values and experience matches what you are looking for. Ask quality questions to gain insight into candidates’ character and how they will perform in your team.
For more information about talent attraction or support to manage seasonal recruitment needs, call us on
