Retailers over the next 12 months will focus on hiring marketing, technology, analytics and design professionals, suggests a new Internet Retailer survey.
Asked to name their top three hiring priorities in the coming year, 34.5% of retailer respondents listed jobs in marketing, 25.3% said information/technology positions, and—in a tie for third—18.4% said positions in research/analytics and web design.
The survey, conducted online from mid-June through mid-July, attracted 85 responses, of which 56 came from retailers and 29 from vendors of e-commerce services and technology. The responses were anonymous. A full story that details the findings and also includes insight from hiring experts will appear in the upcoming August issue of Internet Retailer magazine.
For vendors, the top three hiring area needs were for information technology/software positions (23.0%), in marketing/sales (21.8%) and in client services (10.3%).
E-commerce recruiter Harry Joiner, whose EcommerceRecruiter.com will handle some 200 candidate searches this year, points to changes and trends he’s witnessed in hiring. For one, Joiner over his nine years of e-commerce recruitment says he’s seen a shift from companies seeking technologists oriented toward marketing to marketers who understand the technology upon which e-commerce relies. Companies tend to find the former within their organization, but often recruit the latter from outside, he says.
Joiner says that the hardest e-commerce jobs to fill these days are leadership positions. “I can find plenty of people who understand the nuts and bolts of direct-to-consumer e-commerce,” he says. “It’s harder to find business-oriented leaders.”
The survey also found that when it comes to retaining e-commerce workers at retail organizations, compensation/benefits unsurprisingly came in first, with 32.2%. Next up was company reputation, 28.7%, followed by interesting work environment, 26.4%, and the challenging nature of work, 21.8%.
For vendors, 20.7% cited an interesting work environment, followed at 17.2% by compensation/benefits. In third place, with 14.9% each, were the challenging nature of the work and company reputation.