How Tech is Changing the Face of Retail Recruiting

How Tech is Changing the Face of Retail Recruiting For the fast paced and ever-changing world of retail recruitment, there have been major transformations for both employers and candidates that have seen technology pushed to the forefront of everyday communications and management. Digital solutions are changing the way we work, but how successful are they and how do they improve operations within temporary retail recruitment? Candidate: The rise in affordable technology and the evolution of the multichannel jobseeker has played a large part in the way retail recruitment has had to change. In order to stay successful, seasonal retail recruitment has had to keep up with the changing needs of its target demographic young people who are, in main, students. Retail recruitment has taken much inspiration in its evolution from the way marketing channels have adapted in order to target their main demographic. A focus on social and a switch to more advanced software platforms, which can comfortably host mobile devices, has been at the forefront of this change. Social is becoming an ever ingrained process within the advertisement of retail vacancies. Temporary recruitment is a costly process; social has so far provided retail recruiters with easy access to their preferred candidates as well as free job advertisements. Job boards have had their own battle with technological advances over the years. But the defining point in the online job board’s short history has been its ability to deal with changing technology and device needs. Mobile recruitment grew from the iPhone’s release in 2006 and has climbed in popularity ever since. The development of affordable tablet devices and ongoing improvements in smart phone technology has caused fundamental changes to the way people conduct their job search. Due to these advances, improvements in job board technology have seen focus switch to platforms which are responsively designed, with a focus on mobile apply functions, in order to suit the new, multi-channel job seeker. With candidate job search seeing such big technological changes, how have employers used the advancements in technology to adapt their work processes to suit modern day recruitment? Employer: There is a continuing growth in the importance of information being available on the go, meaning cloud services are becoming an increasingly important tool within the retail recruitment space. The ability to be constantly connected to vital information to help your business run smoothly is imperative to the success of retail recruitment campaigns. Cloud services are allowing HR the ability to vary their working range, as well as allowing information to be accessed quickly and easily, halving problem solving time and allowing focus to shift to operational aspects of the businesses. With retail recruitment dealing so heavily with temporary staff and seasonal trends, software has had to evolve to keep up with the needs of the industry. Services which organise and store large amounts of candidate information are making seasonal recruitment efforts much easier than previous years. Streamlining reams of paperwork into quickly accessible electronic files is providing retailers with an easier way to track their employee’s journey, improving not only productivity but also staff learning and development. Real-time systems are also improving compliance management, by offering an easier way to meticulously monitor paperwork. These systems are allowing HR to plan and manage potential liability risks involved with hiring temporary staff, in a quick and simple way, reducing the ripple effects that can arise from human error. Monitoring and capturing data is becoming increasingly important to managing business structures. Different software programmes and cloud services are now allowing retail recruiters to gain better visibility of their practises, which in turn is providing them with more time to monitor and evaluate working processes, to ensure the best results company wide. Improvements and the future: Technology is providing employers with more time and more money. These improvements are in turn increasing learning and progress opportunities for temporary employees, offering the retail workforce more skills and more opportunities for the future. With such a huge change over a short space of time, who knows what technology within recruitment will be able to further change over the next five years. Author: Craig Aston is the Managing Director of Flo, who provide cloud based recruitment software, designed and built specifically for the temporary recruitment industry.