Back 

“The good news is that organizations now have more requisitions,” says Brenda Hodge, vice president of marketplace solutions for Peopleclick. “The bad news is that there are fewer quality people on the market, so organizations have to work to attract and select the right ones.” Hodge notes that replacing a bad hire can cost a retailer thousands of dollars.

Another key issue for any retailer is turnover, and software that guides the hiring process has become extremely important because it enables an employer to draw from a broader candidate pool. And the next potential hire’s information is already stored, so filling the vacant post will take significantly less time than having to recruit anew.

Competition is largely what’s behind the push to automate hiring. Only within the past five years or so has sophisticated technology been used in a broad sense in retailing, primarily because of the expense associated with updating old systems. For example, a retailer might have as many as a half dozen different databases on a like number of operating platforms, and the push for integration generally begins with operations functions.

High-tech plus
Now it appears to be human resources’ turn to go high-tech, but experts warn retailers against becoming complacent and leaving too much of the hiring process to computers.

“You can have the system in place, but unless you have recruiters who are in the field finding the best people, managing the information coming back and responding in a timely manner, it does no good,” says Katherine Toll, director of customer optimization retail execution (CORE) practices at management and consulting firm Kurt Salmon Associates.

“And you can’t rely wholly on passive recruiting, which is waiting for the person out of a job to walk in and fill out an application. You have to have intrusive recruiting, too, which is getting to know who are the best and brightest for your store – even if that means walking into your competitors’ stores.”