Hiring›Industries›Retail

Forty applications. Who stays?

Voice screening for retail: Sprad checks shift availability, youth-protection status and role fit the moment someone applies — before the roster is set.

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Retail
Atlas · live transcript 02 / 08

No login · No calendar · Works typed

What gets cleared hereWeekend availabilityYouth-protection statusForklift licence
25.7 %

staff turnover in retail, up from 21.0 % in 2022

AGA-Unternehmensverband 2026
28 %

of new retail hires leave within their first year

Gallup 2024
25 days

average time-to-hire in retail, fastest of any sector

SmartRecruiters 2025

Who this is for

One word, four problems.

01

Sales floor & till

Weekend and late-shift readiness, cash handling, German level for customer contact.

02

Minijob & seasonal staff

Social-insurance status, availability across peak season, genuine short-notice fit.

03

Warehouse & fulfilment

Forklift licence, picking experience, shift model behind the shop floor.

04

Store management & apprentices

The roles retail can't fill fast enough — plus youth-protection rules for under-18 trainees.

Volume market

Applications yes. Certainty no.

Every fourth new hire is gone within a year, and each departure costs €33,000–43,000. Nobody checked availability, reliability or role fit before the slot was booked.

95 %
95 %
95 %

They all look the same

Applications in volume — and no way to tell them apart.

14:00—
 
No-Show14:00
 

The slot stays empty

Booked, confirmed, nobody came. The appointment was the weak point.

 
 
 

And they leave again

Hired in spring, gone by summer — the fit was never checked.

In the conversation

Cleared before the roster.

  • Shift, weekend and late-opening availability
  • Youth-protection rules for apprentices under 18
  • Social-insurance status for working students and minijob roles
  • Forklift licence or driving licence B where the role needs it
  • §43 IfSG food-hygiene briefing for grocery and food retail
  • German at B1–B2 for till and customer-facing roles
  • Availability across seasonal peaks (Christmas, sales periods)
Interview reportJana Rieger · Retail · 06:41Decision-ready
Weekend availabilitycleared
Youth-protection statuscleared
Forklift licencecleared
Peak-season availabilitystill open

Evidence · 03:12„I can do Saturdays, and I already carry my forklift licence.“

Synced to your ATS

How it runs

From the posting to the pool.

Step 01

The role goes live

In your ATS. We bring a lean one along, but most teams keep their own — career page, job boards and QR code all run off the same posting.

See the module

Step 02

Your own people get asked first

The opening goes automatically to the employees it fits. One tip, one link, done — no form, no bonus paperwork.

See the module

Step 03

The application lands

From your career page, your ATS or a QR code. The candidate portal is created automatically — no account, no password.

See the module

Step 04

Conversation and screening

Voice interview plus CV and skills screening, in the person's own language. What comes back is decision-ready: score, hard facts, competencies, every rating with the quote it came from.

See the module

Step 05

An active talent pool

Everyone who applies keeps a live profile and a free job and career agent. The profiles stay current — you see when someone with a given background is looking again, and new openings match or notify automatically.

See the module

Try it live

Hear it yourself.

Three minutes, no login, no calendar. You play the candidate — Atlas asks what it would ask yours, in this industry's language.

Start the conversation →No microphone? It works by typing too.

Module mix

Three, not everything.

01

One yardstick for everyone

CV and skills checked against the role criteria on arrival — every score with the quote it came from.

 02

Minutes, not days

The conversation happens when the application lands. No slot, no scheduling, nothing to miss.

 03

Reach them where they are

WhatsApp, email — or a real phone call. No app, no login. The channel decides the participation rate.

 04

A pool that stays current

Everyone you don't hire keeps their profile and updates it. The next opening starts warm.

Security & AI ethics

Built for enterprise. Ready for everyone.

A human decides — the AI never does. Identity signals are removed before any evaluation, and every rating hangs on a quote from the conversation.

Data protection & security

GDPR-compliant and EU-hosted on ISO-certified hosting — your data never leaves Europe, and we never train models on it.

AI ethics & human control

Identity signals are stripped before scoring, every score points back to the quote it came from, and no rejection is ever automatic.

Read our AI ethics →
In your sector

Hiring and pay grades are co-determined under §99 BetrVG, shift scheduling under §87 (1) 2 — and for chains the group works council signs off centrally, not each store.

Trusted by regulated and public-sector organizations
Stadt StuttgartMainzer StadtwerkeLVM VersicherungKönigsteiner

Integrations

Runs on the system you already have.

Sprad docks onto your ATS — data flows both ways, results land where your team already works. No migration, no rip-and-replace.

softgardenGreenhouseSAP SuccessFactorsWorkdayPersonioLeveriCIMSSmartRecruiterssoftgardenGreenhouseSAP SuccessFactorsWorkdayPersonioLeveriCIMSSmartRecruiters
TeamtailorAshbyJOINd.vincirexx systemsonlyfyconcludis+and almost any other systemTeamtailorAshbyJOINd.vincirexx systemsonlyfyconcludis+and almost any other system

No ATS at all? We bring a lean one along, free to use — with a career page and Google-for-Jobs markup.

Pay per use

Pay for conversations that happen.

No seat licences, no minimum term, no setup fee. One credit balance covers screening, interviews and sourcing — every action shows its price first.

Exact rates are on the pricing page — in the demo we run them against your real volume.

  • CV & skills screening — cents per application
  • A completed voice interview — a few euros, billed by the minute
  • Volume packages bring the price per interview down further
Talk through your volume →

One platform · every step

Discover the full recruiting suite.

This page is the entry point. Referrals, sourcing, screening, interview, portal and pool share one agent and one data model.

Employee referrals

One tap in WhatsApp turns every employee into a source — referrals fill faster and stay longer.

Active sourcing

When nobody applies, we go looking — with evidence behind every claim we make about a candidate.

CV & skills screening

Every application measured against the same role criteria the moment it arrives, never against each other.

Voice interview

A structured conversation with follow-up questions — by phone, WhatsApp or browser, in 12 languages.

Candidate portal

Every applicant gets their own space: where they stand, what comes next, honest feedback instead of silence.

Talent pool

Everyone you don't hire keeps their profile and a free career agent — so the next opening starts warm.

FAQ

What this industry asks.

How is this different from a standard applicant-tracking screen?
Most ATS screening reads a CV once. This is a conversation — it asks about weekend availability, forklift licence, food-hygiene status, and records the answer with the exact quote it came from. That is the check that predicts whether someone actually shows up for the shift, not just whether the CV matches keywords.
We're a chain with dozens of stores. Do we need sign-off from every local works council?
No — a central rollout is a matter for the Gesamtbetriebsrat, not each store committee individually. We provide the documentation template that covers both the group agreement and, where a store still wants its own, the local one.
Our apprentices are under 18. Does the process account for that?
Yes. Youth-protection rules (working hours, night and weekend limits) are checked as a hard fact for every applicant under 18, separate from the general shift-readiness question, and flagged before scheduling.
Can it handle a seasonal hiring spike?
That's the case it's built for. Volume applications get the same structured conversation whether there are fifty or five thousand, and your team only sees the ones worth a callback.
What about minijob and working-student contracts?
Social-insurance status is checked in the conversation — whether someone is on a minijob, a working-student contract, or full social insurance — so payroll gets it right from day one instead of correcting it later.
Do we have to change our current hiring system?
No. Sprad connects to the ATS you already run, and if you don't have one, ours is free to use.
How does this hold up legally in our sector?
Hiring and pay grades are co-determined under §99 of the Works Constitution Act, shift scheduling under §87 (1) 2 — usually tied to the Verdi retail agreement. For chains the group works council signs off centrally, not each store. Documentation for both levels comes with it.

See it on your own role.

Fifteen minutes, your vacancy, your numbers.

Book a demo →Try it live
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Sources: AGA-Unternehmensverband 2026 · Gallup 2024 · SmartRecruiters 2025