As a result of the pandemic, retail companies and brands are confronting an ongoing sea of change. Hiring well, and fast, matters more than ever. As employers recruit new and past candidates, they must come to terms with everything that has changed since February.
Job seekers have new expectations
“Coming through this pandemic, wellness is the key concern,” says Apploi CEO Adam Lewis. “This is not just a nice to have anymore, it’s a must..”
After wellness, job seekers have a few other key expectations. Lewis identified these common sentiments during the hiring webinar conversation:
- Candidates want more from a job than just money: healthcare benefits, education and training, and additional perks
- They expect easy access to job boards and open positions, including constantly updated communication from the hiring company
- They are looking for flexible shifts
- They want hiring managers to focus on career progression
Lewis adds: “I think a job seeker is probably the most vulnerable and needs transparency and structure more than ever. That transparency will go a very, very long way.”
Here’s some additional essential reading on the subject of hiring:
- Apploi: 5 ways to find healthcare workers in a challenging hiring environment
- Human Resource Executive: 5 tips to help recruiters survive the coronavirus crisis
- Inc.: How to get your staff off unemployment and back to work
- HR Technologist: 15 tips to hire talent during and after the coronavirus pandemic
What companies can do to streamline hiring and recruiting
As companies focus on hiring and recruiting for the rest of 2020, embracing new technological tools will be essential. This is especially true in the retail sector. “To do a lot of this stuff well, technology is going to need to be adopted,” says Lewis. “We’ve probably fast-forwarded adoption of technology by ten years, just in the last 2 months.”
There are a few ways you can update your hiring processes to help in this environment.
- Focus on your career sites, job titles, and job descriptions
- Remove any frictions in the application process: make everything as seamless as possible
- Embrace mobile recruiting, hiring, and onboarding
- Use modern communication forms like texting and video
- Digitize all your documentation and onboarding forms. This can speed up the time-to-hire by over 80%.
As Lewis concludes in the hiring webinar: “As you’re starting to think about reopening and rehiring, putting in some of these strategies now, everything from the messaging to the workflow, is really going to be absolutely critical.”
Watch the whole Apploi webinar on hiring and preparing your brand for the future. And here are some more expert links related to the big changes impacting the retail industry right now:
- Harvard Business Review: The pandemic is rewriting the rules of retail
- Forbes: Retailers, don’t blame the coronavirus for your operations challenges
- Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM): How to Practice Covid-19 Safety When Reopening Your Retail Business
Interested in learning more about how you can recruit, hire, and onboard healthcare staff quickly? Contact us today for a free demo of our end-to-end talent management solution.
