Where Were all the Retailers?

Last week I was with EasyWebRecruitment exhibiting at the CIPD show in Olympia again. Although the number of visitors appeared to be down on previous years, it was still a success in regards to introducing online recruitment to new companies.Year on year more people seem aware of EasyWeb and the friendly faces on the stand, which is nice!

The one question I was left asking after the show was ‘where were all the retailers?’ In recent years a large percentage of visitors have been HR staff from UK retailers. Apart from our friends at ASDA and a couple of, shall I say, “retail gurus” we didn’t hear from anybody within the retail sector this year, they were either not present or avoiding us!

I would like to think the former is the case, but why? I know that the retailers I work with are nearly all looking at implementing some form of Applicant Tracking System with an aim to reducing their recruitment spend. You’d think that in the current climate they’d all be interested in reducing their costs and increasing their efficiency more than ever.

Interestingly Ri5 reported that on day one of the Recruitment, Resourcing and Performance Conference all but one of the case studies where from either the Public or Charity Sectors. We know that these sectors are making more hires than others right now, but wouldn’t now be the perfect time for companies not actively recruiting to be looking around for better recruitment methods in preparation?