The past few years have been challenging for the retail job market, with retail employers struggling to find and retain employees. According to a recent survey from Capterra, a staggering 86% of SMB retailers find that hiring is growing more difficult year over year.
While the retail recruitment landscape is riddled with challenges (which we outline below), you can overcome the obstacles and staff your retail business for success—with the right plan and hiring strategies. Continue reading to see just how you can do this with a simple five-step recruitment plan.
Step 1: Identify Your Hiring Needs
Before you begin your hiring process, the first thing you will need to do is identify the roles that you need to fill. Typically in retail, you will be looking for part-time and/or full-time sales associates, seasonal staff, a manager, and possibly an assistant manager.
Your need for part-time, full-time, and seasonal sales associates can be difficult to pin down. How you break down your hours between full- and part-time associates and managers will depend on who you can hire, the size of your operation, scheduling, and budget, as well as how you ultimately want to hire.
- With full-time associates, you get a lot of dependability but will have to offer benefits. They are also harder to come by but easier to maintain than part-time associates.
- Part-time associates, on the other hand, are typically easier to hire but can be less dependable and typically offer less flexibility for scheduling.
- Seasonal associates are essential to keep your store running smoothly during the busiest times of the year, but they can be less dependable than even your part-time staff and might also expect seasonal perks, like holiday pay.
To get a more precise measure of your needs, I suggest making a mock schedule for the week (including sales or events). Fill out that schedule, and determine the number of hours you need people to be on staff. Don’t forget any ecommerce-related tasks you need to fill.
Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday SALE | Saturday | Sunday | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Opening Shift (9 a.m.-5 p.m.) | 3 people (24 hours) | 3 people (24 hours) | 3 people (24 hours) | 3 people (24 hours) | 6 people (48 hours) | 4 people (32 hours) | 4 people (32 hours) |
Closing Shift (5 p.m.-10 p.m.) | 3 people (15 hours) | 3 people (15 hours) | 3 people (15 hours) | 3 people (15 hours) | 6 people (30 hours) | 4 people (20 hours) | 4 people (20 hours) |
Ecommerce | 1 person (2 hours) | 1 person (2 hours) | 1 person (2 hours) | 1 person (2 hours) | 1 person (4 hours) | 1 person (4 hours) | 1 person (2 hours) |
In the example above, there is a total of 356 hours of labor to fill your schedule. You might break it down like this:
- 1 manager (40 hours)
- 1 assistant manager (40 hours)
- 5 full-time associates (200 hours)
- 6 part-time associates at 15 hours each (90 hours)
- Total hours: 370
Based on the mock schedule and projected staff docket above, it might be tempting to think that you will only need that projected number of associates to keep your store consistently staffed. This, however, is not the case.
In retail, you should have excess part-time staff so you aren’t short-staffed due to vacations, sick days, or lack of availability. In my experience, we strove to hire about 40 hours of excess part-time help for when we were missing a full-time associate or a few part-time associates. This helped us strike the right balance of reliable staffing and the ability to offer consistent shifts to all of our workers.
Remember, you do not want to overhire, as you will only be able to provide your part-time staff with limited shifts. Overhiring will create a frustrating and financially untenable situation for them.
This would mean, then, that you might need:
- 1 manager (40 hours)
- 1 assistant manager (40 hours)
- 5 full-time associates (200 hours)
- 9 part-time associates at 15 hours each (135 hours)
- Total hours: 415
You should also consider hiring additional seasonal workers in the summer and during the holidays to accommodate higher traffic, greater staffing needs, and more travel and vacation. You can learn more with our guide to Hiring Seasonal Employees.
You can use our free schedule download below to create a mock schedule for your store so that you can identify your needs and start creating a hiring plan.
Thank you for downloading!
In addition to determining your staffing needs based on store hours, you should also consider your budget. One of your biggest recurring expenses is going to be payroll; in fact, a widely cited stat says that retailers should be spending somewhere between 10%–20% of annual revenue on payroll. To avoid overhiring and skyrocketing payroll expenses, you should determine what you can reasonably spend based on your projected annual revenue before you begin the hiring process.
The first thing you should lay out is how much you will pay your salaried workers. This will be based on the competitiveness of the market you are in, the level of experience you are looking for, and your revenue. From there, you should set your hourly wages, again based on your industry and job market. With those numbers set and a general idea of how much you can spend on payroll annually, a little bit of math will make it clear just how many people you can hire without sacrificing your bottom line.
The retail CEOs we polled stated that finding qualified employees is just as difficult as navigating the competitive hiring environment. The solution? You might need to give a more enticing wage than the other retailers in your neighborhood if you truly want to differentiate yourself from the competition and swiftly snag the best retail applicants.
Consider obtaining the correct retail talent working in your store as soon as feasible instead of worrying about how $2 per hour per employee would influence your bottom line when it comes to payroll. This will enable more sales (and more revenue) today and could save you money on replacing problematic recruits in the future.
–Matthew Magnante, Content Writer & Strategist at Fitness Volt
If you run into a large discrepancy between what you can spend based on your annual budget and the amount of staff you need in-store, you will need to balance the books somehow.
You have three options here:
- Take a realistic look at your scheduling plan and whether it is really necessary to have such a large staff.
- Ask yourself whether you have set your wages too high and look to your competitors and what they are offering their employees.
- Create a plan to make more money. If you are paying your employees fairly and need the large staff to man your sales floor, your revenue will need to grow to make ends meet.
Need to calculate how much you will spend on payroll? Check out our guide to calculating payroll costs.
Step 2: Create an Appealing Job Listing
Once you have assessed the roles you need to fill, it is time to write a job description that will help you attract great candidates. You are in competition with other SMB retailers along with big box stores to attract the best candidates. So, your job description needs to be appealing to win candidates over the competition.
A job description explains the duties and requirements of the positions for which you are hiring. A thorough job description will help put everyone on the same page regarding expectations, benefits, and perks. Your job description should be clear, honest, and comprehensive to avoid misaligned expectations or disgruntlement in the future.
For retail roles, here are some of the areas you should cover in your job descriptions to ensure you are providing a clear picture of the role you are hiring for:
Area | What to Include |
|---|---|
Required Skills and Experience | Clearly define the experience and skills you expect candidates to possess for the position. |
Availability | List the expected weekly hours and any necessary holiday, weekend, and evening availability. |
Customer Service | Cover customer service responsibilities, including assisting customers daily and complying with customer service policies. |
Computer/Technical Skills | List any technology-related requirements, such as conducting transactions using point-of-sale (POS) software, running reports, and conducting inventory management. |
Cleaning | Detail responsibilities for keeping the store clean, organized, and well-stocked. |
Brand Representation | Clearly explain the expectations associated with representing your brand. |
Policy Compliance | Be clear that you expect full policy compliance from employees. |
Work Environment and Culture | Explain the work environment, including whether the role is team-based or solo, the team activities involved, and attitude and tone expectations. |
Wages and Benefits | Be clear about the hourly rate and salaries in your description and define PTO and other benefits that you provide. |
Perks | Promote your employee perks, including discounts, schedule flexibility, and other benefits. |
The specific items under these job areas will be different depending on the role you are seeking to fill and your unique business needs. This list, however, is a great checklist to make sure you don’t leave anything out and provide a thorough and accurate job description.
Another way that you can work to overcome the competitive job market and attract good candidates is to offer flexible schedules and perks. While you can demand certain amounts of time from your staff, one of the biggest things that will draw people to retail jobs is the ability to have flexible work schedules that can accommodate their personal lives.
You can include something in your job description like “accommodating scheduling as long as you provide two weeks’ notice” or “we will work with your schedule as best we can.”
Do not mislead candidates and make bold promises, but try to include something that shows that you will work with your staff’s personal schedules to the extent possible. In my experience, as long as you have adequate staff and a strong team environment, most people can get the time off they need without sacrificing store coverage.
Another way that you can attract good employees is by offering perks and benefits. For hourly retail employees, this looks like a store discount (ranging anywhere from 25% to 60%), team building activities, and other perks like free meals and other fun offers.
For salaried workers, you should also offer paid time off, 401(k) matching, and insurance coverage.
According to the Washington Post’s 2023 Ipsos Poll, employees ranked the top five most important aspects of a job as:
- Pay and a good manager
- Health insurance benefits
- Retirement benefits
- Friendliness of co-workers and amount of vacation
- Opportunity for advancement
While in an ideal world, you would be able to find the perfect candidate with the exact experience, skills, personality, and availability you are looking for, the current job market makes that untenable. If you want to overcome the challenge of finding skilled candidates and actually fill the positions you need to fill, you will need to expand your job requirements and criteria.
Expanding what you are looking for in a candidate allows you to cast a wider net but does not mean you have to sacrifice overall performance. Say a candidate applied to your store with event planning, customer service, and project management experience. If you required all job candidates to have retail, POS, and managerial experience, you would pass up on a candidate with great potential.
Also, looking beyond the most obvious resumes will allow you to enter a less competitive hiring arena.
Step 3: Promote Your Openings
Once you have written an enticing job description, it’s time to post and promote your listing. You want to be sure that you do this strategically so you can reach the right audiences and get your listing in front of relevant candidates.
Here are a few things you should consider when posting or promoting your open position:
In simpler times, you might have put your job in the local paper and called it a day. With technology and new loci of entertainment popping up every day, placing a newspaper ad is no longer enough to reach people and find a person for the job. These days, you have to consider a plethora of different recruitment channels:
- Job boards: Places like Indeed or LinkedIn get a lot of traffic and are a popular place for people to start their job hunt.
- Social media sites: Consider posting on your feed and running social media ads to catch the attention of scrollers and attract talent via social channels.
- Your business’s website: You should post your job listing on your business’s website so that anyone that comes to your site sees that you are hiring.
Ruby Jane included a “We’re Hiring” tab prominently on their website to capture people that are already familiar with the brand and exploring the website. (Source: Ruby Jane)
- Physical postings in your neighborhood: Put out flyers so that local traffic sees your posting.
- In-store flyers: Post your listing in your physical store for your customers to see you are hiring. In my experience, the best places to put in-store job flyers are in your fitting rooms (if applicable), at the checkout counter, anywhere there is seating, and on mirrors. These are all places where customers are paused.
- Word-of-mouth and staff promotion: Ask your staff to promote your position among their friends and family and use your own network for word-of-mouth promotion.
- Employee referrals: Ask your staff for recommendations of qualified candidates. They know what their job requires, so they will have a good idea of who would be good at it and capable. You can even offer cash rewards for successful referrals.
- Local newspapers/online publications: Post your listing in your local paper and online publications to help capture more local traffic and awareness.
- Local events: Attend local events and promote your openings with posters and word-of-mouth. This is a great way to connect with people who are already engaged in your neighborhood.
I would suggest placing your listing in as many recruitment channels as you can. If this is not tenable, prioritize job boards and in-store promotion. Job boards are where some 50% of people start their job hunt, and in-store promotions allow you to reach people you already know are interested in your brand. From there, I would consider how effectively each channel would work to reach your ideal candidate.
For example, at my store, we looked for people who cared about fashion, had a more boho style, and were sweet and confident with customers. We found that the best way to reach this particular group and, by extension, attract strong candidates, was to run ads on Facebook and Instagram because that was where our particular fashion-focused audience was easiest to reach and tended to congregate. Consider where you can access your ideal candidates and focus your job postings in those locations.
Another thing you can do to make retail recruiting more effective is to utilize recruitment marketing. The objective of recruitment marketing is to increase the number of viable applicants.
Businesses use recruitment marketing strategies to find, attract, engage, and nurture talented candidates for open positions—anything that will make your company more visible and thus attract more applicants. Here are a few examples:
- Brand marketing: If you can make your brand more appealing, you will be able to attract better talent.
- Digital marketing and advertising: When you spend money on advertising, you will gain more recognition and be able to reach larger audiences and attract job candidates from a larger pool of talent.
- Social media marketing: Leverage social media to engage with people and attract candidates.
Most small business owners will do their recruitment marketing in-house, but if you are doing a large hiring push, consider hiring a recruitment consultant such as Robert Half to help streamline the process and delegate this task.
Another thing that you should consider as you are posting your job is how easy it is to apply. Anything that makes the job application process easier for potential candidates will increase the rate of application.
Some things that you can do to make the application process easier include:
- Uploads: As opposed to requiring applicants to fill out a resume and cover letter form, simply require applicants to upload their own resumes. Most people already have a resume prepared, so requiring them to rewrite what they already have is frustrating and can be an application deterrent.
- Consider waiving cover letters for part-time positions: While they are helpful to give you a better sense of your prospective hire, cover letters, especially for part-time positions, are cumbersome for applicants and can be a waste of time for hiring managers.
- Create a QR code for in-store applicants: For people who learn about your job while they are shopping for you, it is helpful to include a QR code on your job flyer so they can apply on the spot or at least have a clear plan forward once they get home.
- Offer phone interviews: Make it easy for candidates to schedule their initial interviews by offering to do them over the phone.
- Check your mobile application: Be sure that your application form works for mobile devices to maximize how easily people can apply.
- Keep physical resumes in-store: For in-store shoppers, have resumes they can fill out while they are shopping.
- Provide a resource for questions: On your job listing, include your hiring manager or owner’s contact information so that applicants can easily reach out with any questions or concerns.
Step 4: Find the Best Candidates
With your job listing successfully posted, you will hopefully receive a flood of applicants for your open position. While major retailers will have a hiring manager and advanced software solutions to sort through the noise and find the best applicants, small businesses don’t often have that luxury. However, being able to find and respond to the best applications efficiently will help you get to the most qualified candidates first.
Here we will go through some of the ways that you can sort through your applications effectively and select the best people to fill your open positions.
There are two main ways that you can sort through job applications to find the most suitable candidates. You can either opt to do the process manually or you can use an application sorting software.
- Manual sorting: If you opt to use sort through your applications by hand, we recommend either requiring applicants to apply with a standard application form so you can go through them quickly or downloading all of your applications onto a searchable interface, like Google Docs or Microsoft Word, so you can use a search function to find applications that include the most relevant skills. You might also consider using a hiring manager, as application sorting can become a full-time job.
- Application sorting software: You can also opt to use an application sorting software to automate your search. Most sorting software allow you to pay for their services on a job-by-job basis. You can then program the software to look for specific skills and qualifications. The software will then deliver you the most relevant applications, saving you time and money.
Once you have selected the top candidates, it’s time to vet them—which typically happens through an interview. When interviewing candidates for any customer-facing positions, it is best to include a floor interview in your interviewing process.
A floor interview comes after your initial conversation, where you have gotten to know the potential candidate and determined they would be a good fit. During the floor interview, you invite the candidate back to work a mock shift, where you can observe how they work with your team and customers alike.
This acts as a final test for applicants, and if they demonstrate that they are personable and represent your brand well, it is time to hire.
Some of the things you should be looking for include:
- Confidence approaching customers
- Enthusiasm
- Personability
- How they keep busy during downtime
- How they fit socially with your existing staff
- Willingness to ask questions
- How they are dressed/represent your brand
Step 5: Onboard to Set Your New Hires Up for Success
Onboarding is initial employee training where you provide new employees with a comprehensive understanding of their role and your business. Effective onboarding will not only help you to improve the efficacy of your storefront but it will also help you to retain your employees and get you out of the hiring cycle. In fact, a frequently cited stat says that effective onboarding can improve employee retention rates by 82% and productivity by 70%.
For retail, there are a few key areas that you should include in your onboarding training:
- Customer service: Teach new hires how you want them to greet and interact with your employees when they are shopping, need help, or completing a purchase. You should also teach them about all of your customer service policies.
- Product knowledge: Train new hires about your products so they are equipped to answer any employee questions and sell your products.
- Computer procedures: Show your new employees how to ring up a sale, open company emails, use reporting tools, and any other relevant computer procedures.
- Opening and closing procedures: Guide your employees on how you should prepare the store for opening and closing each day.
- Inventory management: Show your employees how you organize your backstock, receive new shipments, and take inventory counts.
- Cleanliness and organization standards: Make sure that your new hires understand how everything is organized as well as the cleanliness standards they are expected to maintain.
- Employee policies and expectations: Be clear about what you expect from your staff as well as what they can expect from you.
If you want to learn more about the best ways to onboard your staff, you can check out these resources:
Here, we will take a look at a few retail training pointers that will help streamline your onboarding.
When onboarding your employees, you should provide them with reference materials, both digitally and physically. Writing down all your store policies and procedures will give employees something that they can look to throughout their time at your business and a sense of autonomy on the job. Having everything written down is also a great way to hold both you and your employees accountable.
In addition to giving each new hire their own personal onboarding materials, you should also keep an onboarding binder at your cash wrap. This ensures that there is always a copy of all shop procedures and policies whenever people need it.
You should design a sequential onboarding program that extends at least 90 days, at which time you can review their performance and officially conclude the onboarding period. Typically, onboarding stages look something like this for a retail employee:
Stage 1: Weeks 1–4 |
|
Stage 2: Weeks 4–8 |
|
Stage 3: Weeks 8–12 |
|
A very useful training tool that you can utilize when onboarding is checklists. Checklists will help you stay on track and have a clear picture of what your new employee knows already and what they need to review. This also provides a place where new hires can reference what they have learned, making it easy to identify topics they want to review.
I recommend using the written policies and procedures you provided to your new hires and their job descriptions to write your checklists. This will ensure that you cover every topic and prepare your employees for every aspect of their new role.
At the end of the day, most of what your associates and managers are doing is interacting with customers and maintaining your store as a team. You should be sure, then, that floor experience plays a big role in your employee onboarding process. I would recommend that floor time account for 90% if not more of the onboarding process. Little time should be spent training behind closed doors or off the floor, if possible.
This will ensure that at the end of their training, new employees can feel confident on the floor, working with your customers and the rest of your team, and doing store procedures along the way.
An associate helps a customer find a perfect sweater.
Retail Recruitment Challenges
The retail recruitment landscape has undergone lots of changes over the past few years, leaving many businesses with unfilled positions, short-staffed stores, and high turnover rates. Here we will take a look at the current challenges facing the retail industry, so you can better understand what you are up against when you are devising a recruiting strategy.
Competition
One of the top reasons that retailers cite when asked about the challenges facing the retail recruitment landscape is competition. This comes in the form of local competition, with 82% of SMB retailers saying that their competitors’ pay and benefits offerings make it difficult to compete for workers. There has even been a new trend in the SMB landscape to offer hiring bonuses, with 42% of small businesses adding this incentive to their hiring strategy.
Along with competition against contemporaries, SMB retailers also face competition against big box retailers. When pitted against retail giants like Walmart, Target, and other industry leaders, SMBs typically find it difficult to compete against their budgets, benefit offerings, and recruitment technology. Scheduling flexibility, pay, good management, health and retirement benefits, and advancement opportunities are some areas you should pay extra attention to.
Shifting Employee Expectations
Another major challenge that retailers face is rising employee expectations. As a result of generational differences, the long-term effects of COVID-19, and rising costs of living, workers expect more from their employers. This comes in the form of greater demands for flexibility, higher wages, benefits, and power differentials. Greater employee demands mean higher employer expenses and greater concessions to attract candidates—ensure that you stay abreast of these trends.
Finding Skilled Labor
Sourcing skilled labor has also become increasingly difficult for retailers. Many retailers need candidates with several years of experience in customer service or the in-person workforce, in general.
However, 78% say that finding workers with the right skills for the job is a top challenge, 76% are having trouble finding candidates with relevant experience, and 70% can’t find candidates with sufficient education.
In response, retailers are having to make concessions. Forty-five percent of SMB retailers are currently hiring candidates with less skill, experience, or education than they had wanted in order to overcome the skilled labor shortage.
As we learned above, expanding your hiring criteria opens you up to more potential candidates, but doesn’t mean you’ll have to compromise on performance.
Inadequate Technology
One way that companies are able to find and hire the best candidates is by using recruitment technology that can scan online applications, filter out insufficient matches, and automatically pair employees with their best applicants.
Many smaller retailers, however, do not yet have hiring technology either because it is relatively new to the market or they don’t have the capital to invest in it quite yet. In fact, only 37% of SMBs have upgraded or purchased new software specifically to address recent hiring challenges.
However, as retailers continue to realize the need for increased technological investment, 81% say they are currently or plan to upgrade their software in the coming year to stay competitive in the retail recruitment landscape.
High Turnover
While employee turnover or low employee retention challenge is not necessarily one that retailers face during the recruitment process, it can be mitigated by good recruiting strategies and can prevent your hiring process from becoming never-ending.
Last year, 77% of American employees said they were searching or are open to considering new job opportunities. Ninety percent of them said that a pay raise would incentivize them to switch jobs.
High turnover rates are costly for businesses, deplete company culture, and push retailers back into the hiring process over and over again. Taking steps to avoid losing your staff is essential to the success of any business.
The Remote Reset
As you know, working in retail requires working in person—coming into a store at a set time, working directly with co-workers, performing manual tasks, and providing in-person service to customers. While working in person at a set location used to be the way of all jobs, the world has changed substantially and now more than 40% of Americans work remotely in some capacity.
And, working remotely is also what people prefer. In fact, 66% of employees say they would apply for a new job with a lower salary if it allowed them to work remotely. There is no getting around the in-person nature of retail work, so you will have to find other ways to make your job listings appealing.
Seasonal Demand Fluctuation
Another challenge that retailers face in their recruitment process is seasonal fluctuations in staffing needs. Typically, around the holidays and during the summer months, retail businesses see higher traffic and need additional staff to meet their needs. However, finding staff willing to sign a short-term contract on a just-in-time basis is very challenging.
While you might have to pay seasonal workers more and offer incentives to get them interested, having the hands you need to support seasonal traffic is essential and will help boost loyalty and capitalize on seasonal sales. Learn more about seasonal hiring with our guide to Hiring Seasonal Employees.
Bottom Line
Recruiting retail candidates can be a challenge, especially in this day and age. With the job market more competitive than ever and turnover becoming an increasingly pressing problem, many businesses, especially those that rely on part-time and seasonal labor, are in the hiring process 24/7 to prevent running into staffing shortages.
Now more than ever, you have to be strategic with your retail recruiting process. This step-by-step guide can give you the tools you need to beat the competition and fill your open positions seamlessly.
