Retail

11-Jun-2008

The biggest problem facing retail recruiters is a lack of candidates with relevant management experience, according to agencies in the sector.

Despite a raft of job cuts across the board by major retailers, the search for talented staff remains at a premium, pushing up salaries.

“Retail has expanded so much over the past few years, it’s hard to find talented candidates,” Kate McCarthy, managing director of medium-sized retail agency McCarthy Recruitment, told Recruiter.

One technique McCarthy has used to address the shortage is sourcing candidates from the hospitality and banking sectors.

Large retail recruiter Retail Human Resources (RHR) has taken a similar approach. Peter Burgess, RHR’s managing director, says: “We look to other industries like hotel and catering; they are used to the hours and the service elements.”

Skills shortages have caused headhunting to become the most common method of sourcing management candidates.

“We headhunt at all levels, from supervisors to regional managers,” says McCarthy.

And Louise White, managing director of niche retail staffer Oyster Recruitment, told Recruiter: “Everybody has got a bit wise to headhunting — candidates are moving for pay rises.

“Big companies are so worried about losing staff they will pay £4,000 or £5,000 more to keep store managers. It’s raising the salary bracket.”

White says Oyster has just experienced its best three months ever in terms of revenue.

Tim Danaher, editor of trade publication Retail Week, told Recruiter: “Salaries have been progressing quite well for senior management roles, despite the fact that times are a lot harder. The tactic is to incentivise people quite heavily for success.”

The downturn in the economic climate has certainly had a detrimental effect on retail sales.

A survey from the Confederation of British Industry found that 47% of retailers reported a fall in sales volumes compared to the same period last year, with only 17% experiencing an increase.

The survey also highlights a trend in dismissals, with 25% of respondents saying they had cut jobs over the past three months — the highest rate since March 2003.

Danaher says cuts are being made by major retailers to improve efficiency and maintain profit margins.

“They are being quite ruthless at head office level and looking at how they can cut out layers of management,” he says.

MFI is the latest retailer to announce cuts. Retail Week reported that the troubled furniture retailer is cutting a third of its head office and central support staff, amounting to approximately 117 positions.

Overall, however, the job cuts haven’t had a direct effect on the amount of placements recruiters are making.

“You would expect it to be slowing down and tightening up [in response to the economic climate], but it hasn’t. There doesn’t seem to be any recruitment freezes,” says Burgess, who adds that RHR is planning to triple the size of the business over three years.

The pressure to find highly-skilled managers who can deal with an economic downturn is keeping recruiters in the retail sector buoyant.

“When times are challenging, there becomes a real premium on good staff. There’s a lot of competition for people who can deal with these tougher times,” says Danaher.

Reed.co.uk’s salary index, which tracks the number of job adverts posted online, shows 6,400 retail positions advertised in England during March, the same number as the previous year.

Scotland mirrored the trend, remaining at around 420 positions, while the number of positions advertised in Wales dipped slightly, from 240 to 210.

Sourced from reed.co.uk’s salary index

christopher.goodfellow@centaur.co.uk