Seasonal Retail Hiring Strategies: Scaling Your Team for Peak Demand
Much of retail hiring depends on the season that is approaching. Learn some of the ways you can scale your hiring practices and prepare your team for success.
Proper staffing plays an important role in any company’s success. When it comes to retail, having a well-staffed store ensures better customer service, optimal operations, along with productive and happy employees. Planning ahead is key to achieving these end goals and ensuring your business runs smoothly and maximizes its profit.
In this article, we’ll dive into some strategies that successful retailers have used when planning their hiring for peak seasons.
In search of a solution now? Career Now Brands specializes in high-volume hiring, and RetailGig is your one-stop-shop for custom-branded, scalable hiring campaigns. Visit us here to learn more about how RetailGig can maximize your hiring and save you money. Be sure to return to this article for some additional tips and tricks to optimize your store’s seasonal hiring!
Forecast Your Hiring Needs as Soon as Possible
It goes without saying that finding the right staffing requires the right planning. Retailers are most often busiest during peak holiday season, which usually takes place around the holidays, beginning mid October and lasting throughout the new year. Also, stores get noticeably increased traffic around back-to-school season, taking place mid-July and lasting throughout August.
Programmatic job distribution can have a monumental impact on retailers needing to hire for these busy periods. Simply put, programmatic job distribution is an automated recruitment strategy that uses data-driven algorithms to post your open jobs across multiple job boards, driving numerous applications in an efficient, cost-effective manner.
Our product, RetailGig, is backed by advanced programmatic job distribution and developed by leading recruitment marketing experts. Learn more about RetailGig here!
Optimize Your Job Postings
A large part of getting the right talent is ensuring that your listings are targeting the right audience. Doing so can seem challenging, especially for smaller businesses, however there are simple ways to go about making sure your job listings are correctly optimized to reach and engage your ideal applicants.
Use clear and concise job titles, such as “seasonal sales associate” or “holiday cashier”. Keep your job listings simple and transparent to attract the right potential applicants. This includes highlighting key responsibilities of the position, providing any necessary shift scheduling information (e.g. “weekend availability”), along with information regarding pay.
As a leader in digital recruitment marketing, we’d be remiss if we didn’t encourage keyword usage. Keywords are relevant words or phrases you can include to maximize the visibility of your job listings across the most popular search engines. Keywords can be found in job titles, but can also appear in a job description. Think “night-shift manager”, “retail jobs with flexible schedules”, or even location-specific information, such as “New York seasonal retail role”.
Leverage Multiple Channels
Featuring your jobs across multiple channels plays an essential role in increasing your visibility as well. The word “channels” refers to the different websites or platforms that are used to reach a wider pool of potential talent. For instance, retailers can advertise positions on job boards like RetailGig or LinkedIn, as well as on search engines like Google.
Many companies also feature their jobs on social media such as Facebook, as well as their own company’s website. These are some of the many ways companies go about expanding their reach to attract the right applicants.
Our products make advertising your jobs across multiple channels simple. To learn more about Career Now’s unique approach to omni-channel marketing, book a quick, no-obligation demo here!
Simplify Onboarding and Training Processes
Once your candidates are actually hired, you’ll also want to make sure your onboarding process is as simple, quick, and enjoyable as possible. Provide thorough, yet timely training to ensure your employees hit the ground running and are well prepared for peak season traffic. Make sure that leaders are engaging with your new hires as well, answering questions and addressing any concerns they have. Great communication makes for a great work environment.
By simplifying your onboarding and training, you not only prepare your employees to better handle the demands of this year’s peak seasons, you also increase your chances of retaining some of this talent for years to come. Seasonal workers tend to return to stores they had an enjoyable experience at.
Stay Connected with Committed Seasonal Workers
As the season comes to a close, you may want to maintain a database of high-performers who have expressed interest in returning during other peak-seasons. Having a list of reliable employees who are ready to return can be helpful in more ways than one. It can give you a more accurate gauge of the number of new employees you’ll actually need to hire when next season rolls around, and it can also reduce onboarding time and extraneous spend.
In addition to reduced hire time, minimized training costs, and improved efficiency, staying connected with seasonal staff can boost overall morale and employee satisfaction. With happy employees and streamlined operations comes an overall better experience for customers and employees alike.
Key Takeaways for Building a Successful Seasonal Workforce
In summary, building a strong seasonal workforce can be key when it comes to long-term success. Not only can implementing these strategies reduce stress around hiring, but also your overall cost-per-hire. Planning ahead, optimizing your online job listings across different channels, and making your onboarding process as smooth as possible are just some of the many ways to ensure your staff is set up for success.
As we’ve detailed in this article, you don’t need to be an expert in all aspects of recruitment marketing to implement success strategies. However, if you’re seeking a little extra assistance, Career Now Brands has your back. We’re pioneers in cost-effective hiring campaigns that generate maximum ROI. Let’s connect here to discuss how we can take your recruitment to the next level.
Sally W.
