Article

'Â… and to all a good kiosk

Retailers generally seek extra help around the holidays, and job-processing kiosks streamline the process. Those kiosks have come in handy during the current holiday season, as a weaker economy has thrown more potential workers into the holiday job pool.

February 18, 2002

Some retailers need people to hawk Christmas trees. Others seek dynamic salespeople to convince teenagers they need the latest trendy athletic shoes or the killer new video game system.

It is the holiday season, a time of joy and love and unbridled capitalism. The latter element leads many people to chase extra spare change for their holiday shopping sprees by taking second jobs. Most of those jobs are at the very places they hope to shop at: the retailers who face a flood of extra shoppers at this time of year.

And with the external crush of consumer traffic comes the internal rush, the one not seen by the general public normally; the rush of people seeking jobs.

For many retailers, the job-hiring process has become smoother in recent years thanks to applicant-screening kiosks. As a general rule, these machines accept job applications, ask a series of basic questions, and weed out the hopeless from the helpful.

These machines do not generate direct revenue to retailers, but the cost savings that result from streamlining the job-hiring process are appreciated.

"It's definitely been a time-saver for our manager," said Sonya Mitchell, Blockbuster Video human relations project manager. "They don't have to waste time having to interview people that don't meet our minimum requirements."

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Job-screening kiosks combine the initial steps of the application process - the application itself, skill testing, background checks, and tax screenings - into one step. Generally, a job applicant completes a paperless application that is sent to a processing center, with the results sent back to store managers.

The job-hiring kiosk not only streamlines the initial application process, it also separates the capable from the hopeless. By doing this, employers are able to focus on interviewing those that actually have a shot at landing a position.

One of the leading processing centers is Unicru Inc., which supplies technology solutions and back-end processing support for more than 20 national retailers, including Target, Blockbuster Video, and The Sports Authority. The company has more than 13,000 on-site application centers and also offers job listings at its Web site.

Unicru chief executive officer Robert Gregg said the process has become streamlined to the extent that store managers are fully prepared to interview or reject an applicant within minutes.

Unicru's Electronic Application Center is designed to shave time off the job-applicant process.

"In less than five minutes (after an application is filed), hiring managers are able to view and print applications, interview guides that include suggested follow-up questions, and pre-populated tax forms," Gregg said.

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Blockbuster, of course, does not readily spring to mind as a retailer in need of extra hands during the holidays. The company's core business - video rentals - is a fairly static industry whose sales spikes are generally seasonal by weather (more sales in the winter when people are staying inside, etc.) rather than seasonal by holiday.

And Mitchell is extremely blunt when it comes to describing Blockbuster's holiday hiring practices.

"We hire who we need," she said.

But that does not stop people from seeking employment, she said, and the holiday time is as busy for Blockbuster - which has hiring kiosks at all of its roughly 4,300 domestic stores - as it is for other retailers when it comes to dealing with job applicants.

"You're going to have application flow increase during the holiday season time," Mitchell said. "Whether it is people seeking extra holiday money or kids coming back from school, you're going to see it."

It appears to be a retailer's market when it comes to seasonal hiring this holiday season. With the economy struggling for the first time in a decade, more people are seeking holiday employment in order to pay the bills and drop a few extra presents under the Christmas tree.

"This year it's been unbelievable - we've overhired by 50," Murray Williams, manager of a Target store in Minneapolis, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "We have waiting lines at our hiring kiosks."

The lines grow longer

Such stories do not surprise Gregg. From his position at the processing end of the retail hiring chain, Gregg is seeing the seasonal hiring storm turn into a blizzard in 2001.

"In October we handled more than 400,000 applications," he said on Dec. 6. "For three straight days last month we processed more than 30,000 applications. At our peak during those days, we were processing 45 applications per second. These numbers are up 50 percent from last year. In comparison, we processed between 18,000 and 20,000 applications those same three days in 2000."

Retailers accepted more applications in October and November, and they are not facing a job-hiring crisis in December. Unlike past years, when many workers earned what they needed for Christmas gifts long before Dec. 25 and split the scene, seasonal employees are giving their temporary employers holiday spirit right up to the end of the season.

"What our customers are saying is that their turnover isn't as high as it was last year," Gregg said. "The economy is having an influence on how long people stay on the job."