While COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on many retailers worldwide, others are prepping for a holiday season that’s expected to be busy but hardly business-as-usual.
Social distancing measures, high unemployment numbers, and the untested experience of Christmas shopping during a pandemic are sure to make the fourth quarter of 2020 a complicated time for retail HR departments. Retailers that hope to close out this year successfully will have to make efficient speed-to-hire processes a top priority in order to mitigate all the potential roadblocks.
Seasonal job openings are going to be hit with record numbers of highly qualified candidates who are desperate for work. That means, the best workers won’t stay on the seasonal job market very long. Retailers that need to scale up staffing quickly will also have to vet candidates quickly amidst new recruiting and hiring protocols. There will be no time to waste establishing new, unpracticed procedures or slogging through old, labor-intensive ones. Weary and hurried in-house HR teams need help and the most important aspect of hiring—pre-employment screening— is where corners can get cut and business security put at risk.
The best solution may be to hand off repetitive pre-employment screening processes to third-party services that specialize in retail background checks. Teams who specialize in background checks know how to manage issues like delays on criminal history data retrieval caused by court systems that are closed or offering limited services, changes to drug testing requirements due to evolving marijuana use laws, and securing references when previous employers have permanently closed.
When background check solutions cater to the specific needs of an industry, they can provide the best recruiting and candidate screening outcomes. ClearStar offers retail background checks via mobile communications that comply with privacy and security laws while offering exceptional candidate care that boosts speed to hire and saves retail HR teams time, money, and unnecessary risk.
