When it comes to handling the holidays, retailers used to have their process down pat — but not anymore.
This year, employers are looking to fill nearly one million positions left open by the pandemic, according to hiring platform, Modern Hire. Business and executive coaching firm Challenger has tracked 939,300 seasonal hiring announcements from retailers, transportation firms, grocers and warehousing companies — including Walmart and UPS — up 11% from last year.
COVID-19 has had an outsized impact on the retail industry, irreparably altering industry hiring strategies and holiday staffing processes, according to Mike Hudy, chief science officer at Modern Hire.
“We thought [the disruption] was a temporary thing, but that wasn't the case,” he says. “Peak season and off-peak season used to have their own staffing process set up. What's happened is that it's become different degrees of peak, which has really led companies to rethink the way they hire.”
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Overall spending over the holidays is expected to register as the largest single-year increase on record, according to the National Retail Federation jumping from the typical 8.5% to a historic 10.5%.
However, if retailers and companies can’t keep up and employ enough staff to mitigate potential losses, they’ll face long-term trouble, Hudy says. That means many companies are going into overdrive.
“This is the super bowl for the retailers,” Hudy says. “There's extra pressure to get creative. How do we staff this large number of openings that we always have during this peak season? Gone are the days where you would open a position and you’d fill it in a matter of weeks— it's down to days and hours.”
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The change has been so drastic that ModernHire has seen clientele shorten the application process down to an hour between when a job seeker applies and when they’re offered their seasonal position. For companies wanting to follow suit, they need to redefine their hiring criteria and engage applicants quickly, working them through the process efficiently and removing the barriers that would previously stand in the way — such as the number of experiences and education requirements.
“Right now it's more about transferable and generalizable skills,” Hudy says. “I don't care where [employees] got them, do they have what it takes to get the job?”
