How retailers can speed up their hiring timelines

At Michael Page Retail, we see that the companies which struggle to hire as quickly as they’d like often have overly complex talent acquisition processes in place, with too many people involved.

Inevitably, this results in an unnecessarily long wait to bring talent onboard. Research from LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team, based on an analysis of 400,000 confirmed hires on the LinkedIn platform, found that the median time to hire ranges from 33 – 49 days, depending on job function. Even in supposedly fast-moving fields like customer service, the slowest 10% of hires can take 70+ days.

Often, companies will first attempt to use their internal talent acquisition team before switching to a preferred supplier list. Not only does this waste valuable time, but it also devalues the role to candidates who see it left open and unfilled for months on end.

This is a big problem in a fast-evolving sector like retail, but it is possible to move to a more time-efficient hiring process. Here, we’ll be sharing some top tips on how to make it happen.

Develop an overview of your hiring needs

It’s important to know when you’ll be more and less likely to need fresh talent. For instance, traditionally, many companies introduce new hiring budgets at the start of the calendar year. Meanwhile, early January typically sees hiring managers return to work after the Christmas holidays and focus shift back to key projects following the festive slowdown.

For those reasons and more, January and February tend to be the busiest months for hiring. This creates both problems and opportunities for hiring managers. On one hand, the high level of hiring activity means that top talent is in even greater demand than usual. This can lengthen the recruitment process as candidates weigh up offers from multiple employers.

But on the other hand, the market will likely be busy your company comes at the same time every year. If you take the time to plan your hiring needs and get budgets signed off in advance, you can steal a march on the competition.

At the same time as assessing your timelines, it will be important to reflect on the type of talent you need. This will depend on your market model, when you see the most business, and what your key goals are.

For a comprehensive guide to hiring for your specific market model, read our breakdown today.

Assess the market

We are in a significantly candidate-driven market. Government figures show that 12.7% of businesses are finding it more difficult to fill job vacancies, rising to 15% in retail and construction, 23% in health, and 30% in hospitality.

For this reason, it pays for hiring managers to assess the state of the talent market before starting the recruitment process. Andy Schofield, Managing Consultant at Michael Page Retail, commented:

Find out early whether or not the sort of candidate you need is actually available in the market for the price you can afford – decide where you are willing to compromise. Then you won’t have to pause and change the process halfway through.

This can be a substantial time-saver. If your budget doesn’t allow you to hire the right talent, it’s better to know before you start the recruitment process than when you’ve already drawn up a shortlist of unaffordable candidates.

Of course, it’s also critical to ensure that you’re finding the best people your budge will accommodate. For some expert guidance on this, check out our guide to finding top retail talent.

Use contractors to meet immediate needs

With talent in tight supply, employers have increasingly leaned on temporary workers to fill their short-term demands. No wonder, therefore, that nearly three in five UK contractors are expecting to secure more work in 2022.

This approach works to an extent, but it also has drawbacks. Contractors are often (but not always) more expensive than hiring a full-time employee, and it can be more difficult to build a strong sense of culture throughout your organisation if you rely too heavily on contractors.

As such, Andy suggests working with contractors when you have an immediate need, but to get ahead of the game when it comes to hiring permanent staff.

Re-engage previous candidates

When it comes to sourcing talent to fill vacancies, hiring managers often overlook an extremely rich talent pool: previous candidates. You may not have offered them a job when you first spoke to them, but they could still be a perfect fit for your team.

In reality, there are any number of reasons why a previous candidate might not have been the right choice at the time. Perhaps their salary demands were too high; perhaps your hiring needs were different; perhaps you simply spoke to several highly qualified people.

The biggest advantage of re-engaging previous candidates is that it can make for a more efficient hiring process, saving you time on getting buy-in and introducing them to the company. Remember to sell your company and the benefits it can offer. Hybrid working, for instance, is proving extremely popular with retail candidates right now and could help you attract the people you need.

Retain a recruitment partner

Working with a trusted recruitment partner is an obvious way to add efficiency to your recruitment process. Recruiters have the skills, network, and bandwidth to scour the market for talent that perfectly fits your hiring needs.

However, to get the biggest benefit, Andy recommends retaining your recruitment partner.

Having a recruitment partner on retainer is very effective, as they will then have the time to set up pipelines.

Leave the leg work to your recruitment partner

Another benefit to retaining a recruitment partner is that you can leave them to handle some of the most important and time-consuming elements of the hiring process.

For instance, recruiters can assess whether or not a high-quality candidate will actually accept your offer if or when you make it, and take the lead on arranging interviews. With research from Cronofy finding that 43% of candidates globally have dropped out of a hiring process because of delays in scheduling interviews, employers simply cannot afford to leave this to chance.

Furthermore, your recruitment partner is best placed to ensure that a potential hire will be a good “cultural fit” for your organisation. Employees who buy into your culture and values are more likely to feel engaged, motivated, and happy. This is an important point, with research from the University of Oxford showing that happy workers are 13% more productive.

In other words, handing over these key responsibilities to your recruitment partner doesn’t just save you time; it also gives you a better chance of hiring candidates who add real value to your team.

What’s next?

Building a more timely recruitment process is always a challenge, no matter the conditions of the talent market. Fortunately, we have all the insights required to make your life easier, from understanding the top considerations for candidates searching for jobs, to learning how to carry out an efficient skills audit.

Looking to hire top retail talent? Get in touch with Michael Page Retail today to start your search.

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