Whether you are a member of a large retail company or a small business just starting in the industry, it’s no news that there are always retail hiring challenges afoot. From enduring high employee turnover to enduring trouble staffing a store during peak seasonal spikes, these industry-based hurdles are constantly present daily in the workplace.
Identifying these obstacles can help to reform an angle in your candidate sourcing methods, maybe even to the point of possibly considering outsourcing to a recruitment agency. Hiring in retail isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, so let’s evaluate the issues that could happen with internal recruitment before choosing whether to partner with a hiring services provider.
Difficulty In Finding Qualified Candidates
Finding the most qualified candidates in customer service, management, or sales positions can be one of the most difficult retail hiring challenges to conquer, especially if no recruitment agency is involved. It’s a struggle to find candidates who not only fit the basic qualification requirements but are also a cultural fit within the company.
Screening applicants, analyzing resumes, and conducting interviews can be time-consuming for an in-house recruitment team. While automating these tasks with an applicant tracking system (ATS) can expedite the hiring process, it still invokes an administrative burden on the recruitment team to maintain these automated activities.
Enlisting the help of a retail hiring service can increase candidate quality. Recruitment agencies specializing in retail hiring know the best qualifications and skills these professionals should have to adequately staff stores with the best talent.
Increased Time and Resource Investment
Retail is one of the high-volume hiring industries where more time and resources could be spent on recruitment if conducted internally. This is one of the retail hiring challenges without outsourcing that can get pretty dicey as it kills operational efficiency as the recruitment team is spending more time on hiring tasks instead of taking measures to enhance the candidate experience.
The recruitment team could be spending so much time conducting background checks, analyzing applications, and reviewing resumes that it could cause heightened labor costs. Depending on the speed and efficiency of a recruitment agency, they could have hiring done in a reduced time frame in contrast to internal recruitment efforts which can cut recruitment costs in the long run. Hence, you would have to weigh the pros and cons of internal recruitment vs. recruitment agencies.
High Employee Turnover
One of the other most potent challenges in retail recruitment is high employee turnover. The retail industry naturally experiences high turnover because of low wages, not as many career development opportunities and hard-to-fill shifts being on nights and weekends.
Continually having to recruit and train new employees only for them to leave within a few months to a year or two puts much unnecessary strain on retail businesses. If the company does not have the infrastructure necessary to handle high-volume hiring, this can exacerbate retail hiring challenges. This is why it’s important to automate recruitment tasks with the appropriate hiring technology.
Difficulty In Managing Hiring Spikes
Peak hiring spikes, primarily at the end of the year with Black Friday and Christmas shopping, are some of the most difficult retail hiring challenges to conquer. The sheer volume of applications that can come in just for a seasonal position can overwhelm an internal hiring team if they do not have the right technology to streamline application and resume review.
NRF reported that retailers hired about 400,000 to 500,000 seasonal employees in 2024 throughout America. Compare that to the 509,000 seasonal hires retailers onboarded in 2023. These statistics showcase how important having a strong seasonal hiring strategy is for the retail industry.
Limited Access To A Broad Talent Pool
Internal recruitment limits retailers from a broader talent pool. Candidates can only be sourced by the company’s local and digital advertising and other marketing efforts. Niche roles can be difficult to fill with a limited talent pool.
Partnering with a recruitment agency could enhance the talent pool by reaching out to candidates within a wider geographic area. These individuals beyond the local sector may have enhanced qualifications and skills that could make them higher-quality candidates.
