Dive Brief:
- Following in the footsteps of its parent company, Amazon, Whole Foods Market is holding a National Hiring Day on Nov. 2 in order to add 6,000 employees to its payroll, the company said in a statement. Each Whole Foods U.S. location will interview candidates, and some will make job offers on the spot. Candidates can also apply in advance online.
- The event is aimed at hiring full- and part-time employees for both seasonal and permanent positions. Openings exist for cashiers, culinary experts and prepared foods specialists, and the company counts flexible scheduling as well as a 20% employee discount among its benefits offerings.
- The event appears to be modeled after Amazon Jobs Day in August of this year, which aimed to hire 50,000 workers in one day. The e-commerce company netted 20,000 applications on the day of the event, and HR Dive reported long lines of applicants at its Baltimore, Maryland warehouse. Amazon says it plans to add 130,000 workers by 2018.
Dive Insight:
With the holiday hiring season upon us and unemployment rates at 4.2% (as of September), the competition for seasonal employees will be particularly fierce. Target is increasing its minimum wage to $11.00/hr in the hopes of filling 100,000 jobs in stores and warehouses nationwide. Macy’s plans to add 80,000 for its Bloomingdale's and Macy’s stores, while JC Penney plans to add 40,000.
Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion this year added to their global headcount of over 540,000 employees worldwide. A large part of their increase this year included the 85,000+ Whole Foods family. For the first time this past quarter, the company reported revenue from “physical stores” at $1.3 billion.
In the past year, the grocer ran into a couple of legal snags, including allegations that managers in the mid-Atlantic region cheated workers out of bonuses. In June, a federal appeals court upheld a 2015 ruling against Whole Foods in a case brought by the National Labor Relations Board regarding employees' electronic recordings in the workplace.
The arrival of Amazon could provide an interesting turnaround. A perennial candidate for disruptor of the year, Amazon's summer hiring fair drew quite the amount of attention, and the same is true of its ongoing search for a second North American headquarters ("HQ2"). So far, the latter has drawn proposals from over 230 cities.