Finding Better Retail Industry Employees With Video Interviews

In the retail sector, employee turnover is a huge concern. We all know great employees are hard to find, so it can be even more heartbreaking when they leave your retail organization.

Whether it's a hard-working store employee, manager, or cashier, your retail organization needs top-tier employees. Hiring workers who will be the right fit and stick around is difficult, which is why more companies are turning to the video interview to find great talent.

In fact, six out of 10 companies are currently utilizing the video interview in their hiring practices to find the right people. So what are the main concerns facing the retail industry and how can the video interview help your company acquire top talent interested in sticking around? Let's take a look at some of these concerns.

The Retail Industry and Hiring: What Are The Challenges?

Before looking at how the video interview can provide solutions for reducing employee turnover, we first need to look into the hiring issues facing the retail industry. Because many of those employed in retail jobs are part-time workers, turnover is a huge concern.

These employees don't feel as if they're part of the organizational family and often bolt when better opportunities present themselves. Many retail employees aren't looking for career jobs but merely jobs to help pay the bills right now. So instead of looking forward to a long career in the organization and moving up the corporate ladder, these employees are looking forward to nothing more than their next paycheck.

These are some of the obvious roots of the high employee turnover evident in employees holding retail jobs. But before we delve into hiring better fitting employees using the video interview, let's take a look at some of the cold, hard facts.

In statistical form, here are the reasons employers and hiring managers in the retail industry need to conceive of a way to cut down on employee turnover:

How Do You Use Video Interviews To Find Better Retail Employees?

So how can you reduce employee turnover and keep great talent in their jobs using the video interview?

Evaluate More Job Seekers:

One of the major benefits of video interviewing is the ability to see more job seekers in a shorter amount of time. For instance, in a one-way virtual interview, employers pose written questions job seekers then answer on video. These video responses give employers a personal feel for the candidate, while allowing the interview process to be more portable.

Because employers can view these job seekers' responses at any time, these interviews can be worked around even the most busy schedule. Plus, you can watch 10 video screens in the amount of time it takes to perform one phone screen! For an industry with high turnover like the retail industry, this is a great way to save time while hiring.

Look for Corporate Culture Fit:

Job seekers who fit into your corporate culture will be more likely to stick around than those who just aren't the right fit. In the video interview, pose interview questions to find out what your candidate's ideal corporate culture would look like. Make sure you are very, very honest about what your retail organization's corporate culture is really like on a day-to-day basis.

Remember you can always train for skills, but it's much harder to fit a square job seeker into the round hole of your corporate culture. Those who fit into your organizational environment will be more likely to stick around and reduce your employee turnover.

Offer a Career Path:

As the statistics above have demonstrated, many retail employees are leaving their jobs -- and the sector -- because they just don't see a viable career path. They're not leaving for high salaries, they're leaving for increased professional opportunities. So if you want to keep more of your top performers around, offer a viable career path.

Use your interviewing opportunity to express exactly how a great candidate can turn from a part-time or hourly employee into an organizational all star. Make the career path easy to visualize and easy to navigate. Offering a clear career path directly in the video interview, as opposed to just a job, will make your hires more likely to stick around.

Employee turnover can be very costly in the retail industry, which is why you should embrace video interviewing to help you hire workers who will grow with your company.