How AI Is Improving Quality of Hire for Retail

Hiring the right candidates quickly is crucial in the retail industry. Scalable processes are a must to secure the talent you need, when you need them—while maintaining a high quality of hire.

Background checks can help you select the right candidates for every role, leading to shorter time-to-productivity, lower turnover, higher employee engagement rates, and lower onboarding costs. However, delayed hiring decisions due to inefficient background check processes can result in losing qualified candidates to your competitors.

Checkr’s Every Check Counts survey found that end-to-end turnaround time is ranked as the top area in need of improvement by large retail employers. Modernizing your background check process with modern, automated, and integrated workflows can help you evaluate talent faster so you can scale your team, especially during peak hiring seasons.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how large retail employers rate their hiring efficiency and quality of hire—and how AI can help you improve both.

Between seasonal hiring demands and turnover rates as high as 60%, quickly identifying and hiring high-quality candidates is imperative for meeting your business goals. It’s no surprise our survey found that elevating the quality of hire is a top priority for large retail employers, right alongside minimizing employee turnover—demonstrating how these two goals go hand in hand.

Background checks are often a key tool that employers leverage to gain valuable insights into a candidate's history and qualifications (in addition to maintaining compliance). Large retailers say they run background checks primarily to improve the quality of hire and maintain a safe work environment—critical goals for most organizations.

Retail employers largely agree that running background checks is a successful strategy for improving their quality of hire, but show less confidence than all employers we surveyed across multiple industries.

While 69% of surveyed employers from all industries said they’re confident that running background checks improves their quality of hire, only 57% of retail employers said the same. More than one in 10 retail employers (14%) said they’re not at all confident that running background checks improves their quality of hire.

This detracting sentiment may likely be related to the biggest pain point large retailers face in the background check process: The time it takes to run a background check and get results with your team’s tech stack.

Every second counts when retail workers tend to accept the first job offer they receive. If your talent acquisition team is using manual processes to order and evaluate screenings and spending large amounts of time following up with candidates—you may be missing out on the key benefits of an efficient screening process.

Nearly one in four (24%) retail employers say their background check process is not efficient, compared to only 15% of surveyed employers overall. Retailers know it’s important to improve efficiency, ranking it as the top way to improve the background check process over the next 12 months.

Retail employers primarily measure background check efficiency by accuracy of results and turnaround time—both of which are crucial for quality of hire. Inaccurate background check results impact your ability to make informed hiring decisions, while long turnaround times may lead to candidate churn.

Automating repetitive tasks is a strategic way to streamline the recruitment process and improve hiring outcomes. Our survey found that retailers would most prefer to automate classifying and filtering report data, followed by adjudication processes and selecting screening types for specific roles.

The good news: These key automations are absolutely achievable for retailers hiring at any scale with modern screening technology. So if these efficiency drivers are sitting on your team’s wish list, it’s time to start a conversation with your background check vendor (or new potential vendors) about the advancements you need to stay competitive.

AI-powered technology and integrations can play a crucial role in these automation efforts, enabling you to speed up the hiring process without sacrificing quality. Savvy TA leaders are asking their background check providers what solutions the provide for automating the above key tasks—and switching to a more forward-thinking partner if they hit roadblocks.

Retail employers are the least likely to seek out background check vendors that offer AI tools. While 62% of surveyed organizations say they’re more likely to choose to partner with a vendor that offers AI tools than those who don’t, only 46% of retailers said the same.

My team is more likely to choose to work with a background check vendor that offers Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools than those that do not offer AI tools.

Low adoption for AI-enhanced background checks is a missed opportunity in the retail industry. AI can help you evaluate top talent faster—and often with better accuracy. This is particularly important for large retail organizations that need to be able to hire at scale, often across dispersed hiring teams.

For example, AI-powered workflows can help you:

Delegating your manual tasks to AI enables you to focus on strategic decision-making. For example, Checkr offers pre-set screening packages for different roles, so all the right checks are ordered with a single click. Automated data retrieval enables you to get background check results faster, and customizable, programmatic adjudication tools show only the records you want your hiring team to review for each role. Plus, our easy-to-read reports clearly highlight what needs to be reviewed and what doesn’t, so your team can quickly make informed hiring decisions.

With the above solutions, many companies are seeing AI adoption pay off with improved time to fill, candidate experience, cost per hire—and quality of hire.

Time-to-fill for full-time retail jobs in 2024 is six weeks—nearly a week longer than last year. Companies that can speed up their hiring process and extend offers faster will have a competitive advantage in the talent market.

Modern, AI-enhanced retail background checks can help you build a more efficient recruiting process that keeps your top-choice candidates engaged. In fact, 66% of retail survey respondents agree that optimizing a background check process for accuracy and efficiency is essential to providing a positive candidate experience. Checkr’s modern background check platform helps retail companies achieve greater end-to-end efficiency and keep candidates in the pipeline. Get in touch now to learn more.

Get more insights

How Background Checks Unlock Improved Quality of Hire

Large organizations weigh in on the impact of background checks on their hiring programs.

Learn more

About the author

Jen Dewar writes about HR technology with a focus on educational content for HR, talent acquisition, and DEIB professionals. She is passionate about diversity and inclusion, lifelong learning and development, and treating people like people throughout the candidate and employee experiences.