Tag: HR

AI in recruitment

The Smart Way To Use AI In Retail Recruitment

Posted on | by Excel Recruitment

I’ll admit it. I’m obsessed with Artificial Intelligence (AI). I’ve done every course I can get my hands on. I’ve tested more AI tools than I care to admit, and our business has invested heavily in both the technology and the training to make sure we’re getting the most out of it.

It’s brilliant. But here’s the thing…

Despite all the hype, there still isn’t an AI tool on the market that can walk into a store, meet a manager for ten minutes and instinctively understand the culture they’ve built. It can’t tell when someone says they want “a strong assistant manager” but actually means they need someone calm who’ll steady the ship after a difficult few months.

It also can’t sit across from a candidate and spot that they’re not really leaving because of salary. They’re leaving because they’ve stopped learning. Or because they’re exhausted. Or because they simply don’t click with their manager anymore.

Those are human conversations. Retail is still a people business, and recruitment is still about people. Where AI does shine is taking care of the jobs that don’t need your brainpower, so you can spend more time on the ones that do.

So, if you’re recruiting into your store, here are a few of my favourite do’s and don’ts.

Don’t let AI write your recruitment strategy. Do use it to help build your wish list.

One of my favourite tricks is incredibly simple. Open ChatGPT (or whichever AI tool you like), press the microphone button and just…talk. Describe your perfect hire exactly as you would to another manager over a coffee.

“I need someone who loves fresh food.”

“They’ve got to be calm under pressure.”

“I’d like someone who enjoys coaching younger managers.”

“The deli standards have to be second nature.”

Don’t worry about structure or grammar. Just chat. When you’re finished, ask AI to turn everything you’ve said into a professional candidate specification. You’ll be amazed how much clearer your own thinking becomes.

Don’t copy and paste a generic job description.

Every retailer has them. The same Store Manager job description that’s been sitting on a shared drive since 2018 with a few job titles changed along the way. Your store isn’t generic. Your people aren’t generic. Your next hire shouldn’t be either. Use AI to improve your job specification, not replace it. Ask it to tighten the wording, remove repetition or make it easier to read, but always leave your own personality in there.

Do let AI help write your advert.

Once you’ve created a proper candidate specification, ask AI to turn it into a job advert. Better still, tell it where you’re advertising and ask it to optimise the advert using search terms candidates are actually typing into Google or job boards. A well-written advert won’t magically solve a recruitment shortage, but it will make sure the right people actually find your vacancy.

Do use AI as a second pair of eyes.

I still believe interview questions should come from the hiring manager. However, AI is brilliant for checking you’ve covered everything that mattered in your original job specification. One tip I use regularly is after an interview, dictate your notes into your AI tool and ask it to produce a concise interview summary. Instead of pages of handwritten scribbles, you’ll have clear interview notes for every candidate, making it much easier when you’re comparing your shortlist later.

 Don’t forget about GDPR.

This one matters. If you’re using a free AI platform, think twice before uploading CVs, contracts or personal information. Make sure you’re using an appropriate, secure and GDPR-compliant platform before sharing anything confidential. It’s a fantastic assistant, but it still needs sensible boundaries.

Do freshen up your paperwork.

I’ve seen plenty of retailers still using contracts, policies and documents that haven’t had a proper review in years. AI won’t replace legal advice, but it can absolutely help modernise wording, improve clarity and highlight areas you may have overlooked before your solicitor reviews the final version. Think of it as a really efficient first draft.

Don’t automate the moments that matter.

This is probably my biggest one. Yes, AI can write an offer letter. Should it? Probably not. The best offer letters explain why you’ve chosen that person. Why you think they’ll fit your team. Why you’re excited about what they’ll bring. That’s personal. The same goes for offering someone a job. A phone call will always beat an email. Always. Candidates remember how you made them feel long after they’ve forgotten what the contract said. That’s something no chatbot has managed to master yet.

AI is changing recruitment, and I’d encourage every retailer to embrace it. Used well, it can save hours every week, improve consistency and remove a lot of admin. Just don’t confuse efficiency with connection. Use AI to give yourself more time to meet people, not less. Because at the end of the day, recruitment isn’t about finding CVs. It’s about finding people. And thankfully, that’s still something humans are pretty good at.

Why use a recruitment agency

Why use a recruitment agency?

Posted on | by Excel Recruitment

Having grown up in the world of independent retail, our Director of Grocery Retail, Nikki Murran, has first-hand knowledge of the difference employing a recruitment agency can make in the quest for good staff. Highlighting the advantages in the article below.

With many retailers still reeling from the cost increases they have shouldered in the last couple of years it’s understandable that they may take pause before committing to paying a recruitment fee for a new hire. Now, I may be biased, (actually I am definitely biased) but, from over a decade of experience and client feedback I absolutely see it as money well spent. Here are the reasons why:

Industry experts and market insights

When you partner with an agency, you should choose one who are specialists in their field. Or, have a specialist department that recruit for your field. My team all come from grocery retail. We all know a good store manager when we see one, we all know the difference between a deli manager and a deli supervisor, a scratch baker, and a confectioner. In the same way that my colleague who runs the fashion department can recognise the difference between a high street retailer and a luxury one! It’s what we do!

Having an industry expert recruiter on your side means they always have a read of the current market. They should keep you updated on salary trends in the market or what candidates are looking for to make a move. They should give you direction, guidance, or feedback when you register a job, making sure you are putting your store in the best position to attract the best candidates. This is surprisingly rarely about money – often it’s some flexibility around shift patterns, contracted hours, job titles, or review periods. But the point is, a good recruitment partner will help you frame your job to make it as attractive as possible, without forcing you outside of your budget!

A good rule of thumb here is if a recruitment agency hasn’t compiled a salary survey specific to your industry each year for the past couple of years, they are unlikely to be a real expert in that field.

Employer branding

With the Irish market hovering around the perfect unemployment mark the last couple of months – now is more important than ever to make sure your brand as an employer is landing well. A good agency will likely have a read of the market perceptions about your brand and will give you some honest feedback when asked. A great agency will help shape your employer brand message and project it out into the market.

We make it a point to find out all the great things about your store and role and use these to help attract the best candidates for you.

Talent pool

If you are advertising for your current open role, chances are you are confined to candidates who are job-seeking this week, candidates who are applying for roles that match their experience, candidates who are applying to the salary range you have on offer, and candidates who managed to find your job ad amongst 100’s of others. It’s a pretty narrow field when you think of it like that.

Excel Recruitment has over 90,000 candidates on our database. The vast majority of placements we make, come, not from candidates who apply at the right time, for the right role. Rather, they are from candidates who applied over the last year or so and spoke at length to a recruiter about their experience and skill set and what they are looking for in their next move. When we get the right role in – we then reach out to the right candidate – it’s like a jigsaw! So, we deal with a much larger pool of candidates for your job than you could likely hope to.

We also love the saying “Great people know great people.” Most of my own placements come through recommendations, clients recommend me to each other, and candidates do the same. In fact, most of my conversations seem to start with “such and such” passed me on your number!

Bang for your buck!

I grew up in the world of independent retail. When our family store was looking to recruit a new store manager, maybe 15 years ago now, I knew the money to cover that was coming, not from some head office fund, but out of the store’s bottom line. With this in mind, I was sure that we should try to find the right candidate ourselves before trying an agency.

We spent a considerable amount of money on advertising; in a newspaper, two online job boards and on a radio station. We spent hours sifting through applications and met every applicant who had ever worked in retail management. It was all a waste of money and time. When we reached out to Excel Recruitment (plug, sorry – but we did!) they had candidates for us within a week. The guy we hired increased the margin within 6 months, and more than covered the fee we had paid.

Really, in a management or specialist role, when you compare the cost of the placement to the value that candidate will bring to your bottom line it’s a no-brainer! Especially considering if you don’t hire someone you don’t pay anything!

Hassle-free

Time is the one thing every retailer I know is short on. Using an agency means that after one detailed phone call, you have a team of recruiters working on your role. They will advertise your job, source candidates, sell them the benefits of your business, set up interviews, follow up on feedback, offer the job at your direction, deal with messy counter offers, and complete verified reference checks. They basically take most of the pain out of the recruitment process for you!

You can check out this feature in the most recent edition of ShelfLife Magazine here. For more information call us on 01 814 8747 or email nikki@excelrecruitment.com

You can view all of our live jobs here

Cost of replacing employees

The True Cost of Replacing an Employee

Posted on | by Editorial Team

Our CEO, Barry Whelan, featured in the April edition of ShelfLife magazine to discuss the true cost associated with replacing employee’s. Check out what he had to say below:

Encouraging an employee to reconsider their decision to resign from a company, can help save a great deal of time and money further down the line, writes Excel Recruitment’s Barry Whelan.

Ireland is in the midst of the “Great Resignation” with employers witnessing a higher churn in employees then most can recall. We know there is a staff crisis in hospitality, but there is also a looming crisis for labour in the retail, industrial, warehousing, transport, and health sectors. Workers are leaving their jobs in record numbers and new roles, due to demand with the re-opening of society, are being registered at a faster rate than we have ever witnessed in Excel. This is leaving businesses scrambling to replace employees, often at a major cost to the business.

Job postings consistently rising

The trajectory of job postings for the retail sector is on a consistent upward trend, having more than doubled from 1,578 in February 2021 to 4,258 in February 2022 (data courtesy of Indeed). Retail will be the next sector to be faced with a serious and damaging staffing crisis, akin to that currently being suffered in hospitality.

The industry data paints a stark picture – between 2019 and 2021, the number of retail job seekers per retail job vacancy had been increasing year on year. However, since then it has dipped significantly and in February 2022 there were 39 job seekers per job, down from 78 job seekers per job in February 2021. What’s more, the number of employers with active retail job vacancies has now nearly tripled in the 12 months to February 2022 when it stood at 1,360 employers – up from 488 employers in February 2021.

Re-evaluating priorities

Over the course of the pandemic many people were out of work and/or on reduced hours – they had more time on their hands to really look at their careers and their life, and what they want from both. As a result, we’ve seen thousands of workers change careers, upskill in their current industry, and/or just make the decision to strive for a better work-life balance.

That dynamic, combined with the fact that the industry has also missed out on approximately two years of new candidate intakes – due to workers either leaving the sector during Covid because of lockdowns and working restrictions, or indeed leaving the country – has left supply as a major issue, which continues to deteriorate.

The true cost

Depending on the complexity and seniority of a role, the actual or real cost of employee turnover can be estimated to be between 33% to a whopping 200% the employee’s annual salary.

Before allowing an employee to resign without any effort to get them to reconsider, employers should be aware of all the possible costs of replacing an employee.

The more obvious costs such as advertising, the recruitment process, executive and human resource professionals’ time spent interviewing, recruitment agency costs, background or reference checks, rejection of unsuccessful applicants or indeed interim temporary workers hired to plug a hole, all add up to a considerable number of man hours and burn rate interviewing.

But these are not the only costs; you must consider lost productivity, lost sales, lost turnover, lost knowledge, and new hire learning errors along with training time. These are the hidden costs of losing good employees.

Whiplash changes

The talent market has undergone whiplash-like change in the last 18 months, with companies shedding their workforce last spring and then spinning into a hiring frenzy this summer. It’s no surprise that many employees are looking for new opportunities or at least revaluating their career priorities.

Oftentimes, when an employee looks to leave, they should not be retained, as fresh talent can often add unmeasurably to a business. However, management need to understand the total cost of ownership in employee disengagement and attrition before making a decision not to try to retain talent.

‘Stay’ interviews

There are two recent trends that are worth looking at. The first is the ‘stay’ Interview. Here, instead of the usual six-monthly appraisal, companies engage with employees asking them why they continue to work for them and what they need to continue to do so.

Intercom, the Irish-founded tech communications platform with more than 800 employees, is a great example of this, with managers holding special meetings with each of their team members encouraging them to stay.

Boomerang employees

The second trend is boomerang employees: employees who return after leaving a company. A new LinkedIn Workforce Insights survey shows that this keeps rising.

Boomerang recruits amounted to 4.3% of all job switches last year, up from less than 2% in 2010, according to LinkedIn data. Fully trained, culturally compatible employees returning to their employer can’t be a bad thing!

If you would like to check out the full April edition of ShelfLife magazine you can do so by clicking here.

Why Retail Needs Great HR Managers

Posted on | by Aisling Rafferty | Leave a Comment on Why Retail Needs Great HR Managers

Excel Recruitment has established a dedicated HR recruitment department to further support our client’s needs. Head of HR Recruitment Sean Thomas breaks down just some of the reasons why great HR talent is a necessity not a bonus for retail businesses.

With
only 4 months left in 2019, we’re continuing to see excellent growth in the
economy and the market shift towards full-employment. We are seeing people
prosper, building sites all over with new homes being built, banks’ lending again
and young couples finally becoming homeowners. Excellent right? While retailers
across the country have reaped the benefits from all of this positive growth,
such a buoyant employment market is causing headaches for retailers of all
sizes when it comes to recruitment.  An
experienced HR Manager can support owners and organisations in all industries
but below are just a few reasons why retail in particular should make HR a priority.

The customer is key

To
state the obvious, exceptional customer service is at the centre of any
successful retail business. The key to this is the front-line employees, the
people who are in direct contact with customers both instore and online. They
are the public face of the company and often, what customers remember most
about their experience of a brand. They are essentially ambassadors of the
brand and key to achieving customer service goals. This means making sure that
the workforce is properly trained in the appropriate skills and happy and
motivated to deliver exemplary service. This is where a solid HR team can
shine, not only in devising, co-ordinating and implementing complete 360
training for in-store teams but also in terms of ensuring employee engagement
and motivation, devising incentives for rewarding and recognising key staff or
planning team bonding exercises.

Turnover

Retail
can have a high rate of employee turnover due to seasonal demand, employing
high numbers of students who work part-time and then move on or people working
their way up the business quickly. High staff turnover can be time consuming
and expensive for businesses and can impact customer loyalty if customers keep
seeing a new face every time they enter your store. A solid HR management team
can keep turnover to a minimum by managing the interviewing process, asking the
right questions to ascertain how a potential hire will fit in with the existing
team and communicating the role and its responsibilities and requirements fully
to candidates being interviewed.  This way, there’s no surprises when the
candidate starts a job, for either them or the employer.

Seasonal Demand

Retailers
often experience fluctuations in staff numbers, such as needing to add
temporary staff in the run up to Christmas or summer to cope with increased
footfall. This can be stressful for businesses without sufficient HR support
trying to recruit large volumes of people quickly and for full-time workers who
may have to assist new colleagues thrown into the thick of it. Again, a
specialist and dedicated HR manager is the best person to manage this process,
highlighting to permanent staff what’s expected of them and onboarding
temporary workers successfully.

For
both head office roles and on the floor in the stores, we are seeing exactly
how important it is having a strong HR manager with expertise in reward,
L&D and recruitment.

A strong
L&D leader can develop talented members of the team, giving them the
confidence to take the reins in the business or take up specific support roles
in other areas of the business. They can also assist a business in motivating
and retaining their top performers, leading to internal promotions and
increasing harmony within the store.

If you have any HR recruitment requirements or are an HR
professional on the lookout for a new move, get in touch with Sean today
at sean@excelrecruitment.com or call 01-8148747