Store managers’ roles at five-year high, says Retail Human Resources boss
22 October 2013
Despite a drop in footfall in September for UK retailers, the sector is busily hiring for store management and head office roles, according to the managing director of a specialist retail recruiter.
Tue, 22 Oct 2013Despite a drop in footfall in September for UK retailers, the sector is busily hiring for store management and head office roles, according to the managing director of a specialist retail recruiter.
Peter Burgess of Retail Human Resources (RHR) says: “We have seen first-hand that vacancy levels for store management positions as well as a full raft of head office based positions is now at its highest levels since September 2008.”
He adds: “There is also a revival in salary increases which have been static for the last four years.”
This comes as figures produced by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Springboard, released yesterday, show a 2.4% drop in September footfall compared with September 2012, comparing with a 0.5% rise seen this time last year, compared with 2011.
BRC director general Helen Dickinson says the figures “are clearly a concern this close to Christmas”, but notes they are comparing against a cold-snap in the post-Olympic period last year, whereas a milder September this year “has slowed the uptake of autumn ranges”.
Meanwhile, job site Totaljobs has seen an increase of 5.5% in the number of retail and wholesale roles advertised on the site between September last year (8,891) and in 2013 (9,385), although applications to these jobs has dropped by nearly a fifth to 237,998.
Finally, the Reed Job Index for September saw retail jobs increase by nearly a third against the same month in 2012, although salaries dropped slightly.
www.reed.co.uk/resources/cms/downloads/jobindex/reed-jobindex-september-2013-report.pdf
Peter Burgess of Retail Human Resources (RHR) says: “We have seen first-hand that vacancy levels for store management positions as well as a full raft of head office based positions is now at its highest levels since September 2008.”
He adds: “There is also a revival in salary increases which have been static for the last four years.”
This comes as figures produced by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Springboard, released yesterday, show a 2.4% drop in September footfall compared with September 2012, comparing with a 0.5% rise seen this time last year, compared with 2011.
BRC director general Helen Dickinson says the figures “are clearly a concern this close to Christmas”, but notes they are comparing against a cold-snap in the post-Olympic period last year, whereas a milder September this year “has slowed the uptake of autumn ranges”.
Meanwhile, job site Totaljobs has seen an increase of 5.5% in the number of retail and wholesale roles advertised on the site between September last year (8,891) and in 2013 (9,385), although applications to these jobs has dropped by nearly a fifth to 237,998.
Finally, the Reed Job Index for September saw retail jobs increase by nearly a third against the same month in 2012, although salaries dropped slightly.
www.reed.co.uk/resources/cms/downloads/jobindex/reed-jobindex-september-2013-report.pdf
- Click for more news and views from the retail recruitment space from Recruiter.
