How we helped drive retail hiring by technology and grassroots recruitment efforts

We have delivered the end-to-end RPO service for our customer in North America since 2017.

During this time, we have grown their talent acquisition process into a centralised strategy with 4000+ hires.

In 2020, we assumed the responsibility for the recruitment delivery for our customer’s retail function.

We were tasked with hiring over 450 people to operate four new stores across four metropolitan locations that would be the customer’s flagship retail sites.

Each retail location brought a set of new opportunities to develop a unique and customised strategy.

We designed an end-to-end recruitment strategy that started with a deep dive into the market dynamics.

Utilising our Analytics suite, we determined the demographics of hiring locations and how the competition faired in the local markets.

We studied the market to understand how we would need to attract and engage candidates in key markets where there were numerous competitors.

In the pandemic market conditions, there were other local retailers that were closing stores, which meant there would be available talent with similar experience and backgrounds, ideal for the roles at our customer’s locations.

Our experts designed the following robust sourcing strategy that combined:

• Talent attraction was curated through a Customer Relationship Management tool. We initiated email campaigns to thousands of retail candidates and utilised specific engagement content to attract talent, including a one-page electronic flyer that encompassed all key benefits, culture, growth and development opportunities.
• Social media and job boards outreach incorporated social media mining technology and creative job ads to increase the efficiency of identifying best-fit candidates online.
• Media outreach included designed email campaigns, as well as an advertising strategy through Spotify, EventBrite, and radio advertising.
• Grassroots campaigns included outreach to career centres, high schools, universities, local TV, disability organisations, community colleges and centres, and houses of worship.
• Candidate engagement was a focus in the volatile talent market which included high unemployment and government subsidies. It was crucial to understand candidate behaviour and change drivers to then create communications focused on these key elements around pay, benefits, flexibility, growth & development, culture and FUN.

Our sourcing efforts led to large-scale hiring events that brought in qualified candidates to be interviewed by hiring managers on-site, which expedited hiring decisions.

For one such event, we generated over 100 applications resulting in 62 attendees.

Our experts scheduled 47 interviews that led to 28 hires, which was two more than the original hiring goal.

Through our focus on equity, inclusion and diversity, we delivered a 40% diverse applicant pool with 36% diverse hires.