With the holiday season quickly approaching, one of the world’s largest employers is getting ready for a huge wave of hiring. Amazon is planning to hire more than 125,000 new workers in the coming months in the United States alone, with more expected worldwide. In addition to the upswing of placements, the warehousing giant is also increasing their starting wage to $18 an hour, far above minimum wage.
According to a recent report, the most in-demand professional right now is the warehouse worker. The news from Amazon follows a trend of a major uptick in warehousing, ecommerce and logistics hiring, which is at an all-time high.
What can staffing agencies do to prepare for this hiring spree? Keep reading to find out.
The rise of ecommerce and logistics
Over the last few years, ecommerce has taken a front seat as the preferred method of shopping, a trend that was only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Reports note the growth the industry saw in one year, would normally take four to six years. As a result, employment in warehousing, storage, logistics and related fields has skyrocketed. There are currently more than 1.44 million warehouse workers in the United States, and the demand for workers continues to grow.
The need to attract large volumes of workers is compelling many companies, like Amazon, to offer job seekers higher wages, sign-on bonuses, benefits, and other perks that have not historically been associated with these roles.
Keeping talent pools filled and ready for deployment
Whether or not an agency is working directly with Amazon on hiring warehousing and logistics employees, the boom of hiring in these fields will be felt industry wide. Warehouse job openings accounted for nearly 20% of total jobs listed in August 2021 in the United States, and those numbers are likely to increase over the next few months.
Having a surplus of qualified candidates ready to be placed immediately is a must, ensuring recruiters keep their contracts in house. Proactively recruiting is one of the best ways to stay ahead of the curve for the next few months of hiring.
Mindscope’s Hot Lists function allows recruiters to group candidates that all share similar criteria together and save them as lists for future use (i.e. a list of warehousing workers with forklift certification). When large volumes of jobs need to be filled, recruiters are prepared with a directory of qualified candidates. In addition, our Boolean search capabilities make sifting through hundreds of candidate records a painless and user-friendly process. Recruiters can search for one or multiple criteria and save those specific searches for the future, allowing them to stay a step ahead of their competition.
Re-placing successful contracts
Contract work is becoming the new normal, with more than a third of workers currently employed as such. Contract work has a wide range of benefits for both the employee and employer, most notably the flexibility it offers.
The demand for contractual warehouse workers is only expected to grow, and workers will be shifting from one contract to another during the upcoming months. For this reason, recruiters need to be adamant about keeping tabs ontheir current contracts, when they are coming to an end and aligning them with their next position immediately. Being able to efficiently monitor and place candidates, is what will keep their top talent in house and out of reach of other agencies.
Mindscope’s Placements module is the perfect tool to address this issue. Recruiters are notified when current placement contracts are about to expire, providing them with enough time to have the person re-engaged or find a new contract. Guaranteeing, the candidate is set up for their next role with little to no downtime, and recruiters lower the risk of them being placed by another agency.
Gearing up for a wave of hiring over the next few months? Mindscope has all the tools to make busy staffing periods smooth and straightforward. Contact us today to learn about our full product offering.
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