How to host effective hiring events in retail recruitment

Retail recruiters, let's talk about one of your biggest challenges: hiring multiple high-quality candidates in a competitive industry.

Whether you're staffing up for the holiday rush or maintaining your workforce year-round, you know the importance of finding quality candidates quickly and efficiently. This is where hiring events can help. These events — which can be held virtually and/or in-person — can be game-changers for retail recruiters.

Let's explore how you can leverage hiring events to streamline your process and build a stellar retail workforce.

Why hiring events matter in retail recruitment

Hiring events have become a cornerstone of successful retail recruitment strategies. In metropolitan hubs around the world, brands post ads for hiring events looking to fill up their warehouse sale rosters, increase their seasonal workforce, and more.

In an industry characterized by high turnover and seasonal fluctuations, hiring events offer an opportunity to streamline the hiring process — especially when you have multiple roles to fill. Done well, hiring events allow recruiters to efficiently assess multiple candidates for customer-facing and warehouse roles. They offer a way to quickly showcase company culture while significantly reducing time-to-hire.

For retail businesses, hiring events are particularly useful in the lead up to peak seasons or the opening of new store locations. They enable companies to rapidly scale their workforce.

Perhaps most importantly, well-executed hiring events can dramatically improve the candidate experience. In a competitive job market, your hiring event can help set your brand apart as an employer of choice. It's another way to extend your employer brand and ultimately attract and retain top talent.

Whether you're hosting hiring events virtually or in person, Withe makes it easier than ever for you to qualify, interview, and hire your ideal candidates.

Learn more about Withe

How to run efficient hiring events so you can interview at scale

While hiring events are naturally beneficial for retail recruiters, there are a number of things you and your team can do to make them more effective and get a better return on investment. Consider the following best practices:

1. Plan strategically

In the weeks leading up to the event, you’ll need to make decisions on a variety of elements including:

• Format: Will the event be in-person, virtual, or both?
• Timing: What times will the most candidates be able to attend?
• The registration process: How will candidates sign up? Who do you want to meet and how can you maximize your time with qualified candidates?
• Resourcing: How many interviewers will you need at the event?
• Attendee numbers: What's the maximum number of applicants? If it takes an average of 10 candidates interviewed to find one good fit, how many candidates need to be there?

2. Prepare your team

Brief your interviewers on the roles you're hiring for, the assessment criteria, and event logistics. If you're using a hiring event platform, ensure all team members are comfortable using it. Assign specific roles such as greeters, interviewers, and technical support to ensure smooth operations.

3. Keep the candidate experience top of mind

Whether you're hosting it in-person or virtually, a hiring event is a great opportunity to showcase what it could be like to work at your company. It exposes candidates to people who work at the company, allowing them to ask questions and learn more about where they might work.

Other ways to prioritize the candidate experience are to:

• Make it easy for candidates to request accommodations for the event (and then meet those requests)
• Offer a seamless registration and interview process
• Quickly communicate how they did at the event
• Provide an avenue for candidate feedback

4. Leverage the right technology

You can vastly improve the effectiveness of your in-person and virtual hiring events — and better support your team — with the right technology. Consider leveraging a hiring event platform that manages candidate registration, automatically schedules interview slots, AND lets you write notes on each candidate — all while seamlessly integrating with your ATS. (More on what that looks like below.)

5. Promote your event on the right channels

Marketing your retail hiring event will be key to ensuring that the right candidates attend your events. Leverage your social media accounts and the other channels you know will reach your ideal applicants.

Other useful tactics include:

• Creating a landing page for your event
• Promoting the hiring event on your brand's website
• Extending personal invitations to past hires
• Partnering with local media

Withe helps retail recruiters run successful hiring events

Withe’s hiring event platform connects the dots for retail recruiters hosting virtual and in-person hiring events. Recruiters can use Withe to:

• Seamlessly create hiring events and job postings in just a few clicks
• Automatically manage candidate registration and scheduling — candidates can self serve rather than going back and forth with recruiters
• Track candidate sources
• Automatically queue candidates that sign up while the event is running, so they don't have to wait more than a few minutes
• Run video interviews within the platform itself, and write down notes on a candidate
• Automatically sync all candidate interview data with the ATS — no more paper resumes and manual entry!

As a retail recruiter, you're busy. Withe eliminates a significant portion of the administrative burden as you plan hiring events. Plus, the platform provides much more clarity around where candidates are coming from, allowing you to make informed decisions as your team maps out a sourcing strategy for your brand.

Elevate your retail recruitment with easy-to-run hiring events

In the competitive world of retail recruitment, hiring events can be your secret weapon for building a strong, customer-focused team efficiently. By implementing the strategies we've discussed and leveraging powerful tools like Withe, you can transform your hiring process. You'll not only fill positions faster, but also identify candidates who truly align with your brand and culture.

Whether you're hosting hiring events virtually or in person, Withe makes it easier than ever for you to qualify, interview, and hire your ideal candidates. Learn more about Withe today.