Retail

Own the base every
hire comes from.

Applicants, referrals and the store managers Atlas finds all land in one place — and the calling back, the asking and the follow-up run on their own. Weekend availability, youth-protection status and social-insurance status sit on the profile before the roster is set.

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Built for people who never sit at a desk. No login, no app.
Sales floor & tillMinijob & seasonal staffWarehouse & fulfilmentStore management & apprentices
The aisle of a homeware store before opening, shelves stocked and nobody in the shop yet
Zalando Stadt Stuttgart Mainzer Stadtwerke Königsteiner
The problem

Applications yes.
Certainty no.

The fastest market there is.

Retail fills roles in 25 days on average, quicker than any other sector. Whoever answers the applicant first wins the hire.

The slot stays empty.

Booked, confirmed, nobody came. The interview appointment itself was the weak point, not the candidate.

And they leave again.

28% of new retail hires are gone within their first year. Availability, reliability and role fit were never checked up front.

Sources: SmartRecruiters 2025 · Gallup 2024 · AGA-Unternehmensverband 2026

Where to start

Pick the door that
fits your problem.

Screening, referrals and sourcing are three doors into the same base — and the fourth is what keeps the people who came through them. In retail the first conversation leads, because the applications are already there and the certainty is not.

Recruiting & Hiring
Screening Referrals Sourcing Social
A shop assistant in an apron on the sales floor of a homeware store
Start here in retail 01Screening

Who sorts forty applications before the roster is set?

A real phone call the minute the application lands — or a web chat, if that suits them better. The same structured conversation whether there are fifty applicants or five thousand.

25 days is the average time-to-hire in retail, quicker than any other sector. Whoever answers first wins the hire.
Phone callWeb chatVoice or video12 languages
What happens after they apply
1
InviteA personal link by WhatsApp, email or a real phone call. No login, no app, no CV needed to start.
2
GatherWeekend and late-opening availability, youth protection under 18, social-insurance status, §43 IfSG for food retail.
3
AnalyseIdentity comes off the text before anything is scored, and every rating points back to the sentence it came from.
4
KeepWhoever you do not hire for this peak keeps a live profile for the next one.
Weekend availability, youth protection and role fit cleared on the call — each with the quote it came from.
No slot to book, so there is nothing to not show up to.
The same conversation for fifty applicants and for five thousand.
Your team only sees the applicants worth a callback, in your ATS.

Documents are still verified by a human. You just know before the callback whether it is worth making one.

Explore Screening →
02Referrals

Who on the floor already knows who fits the team?

The team knows the floor. Sprad asks your own people, on the channel they already use, and keeps asking after week one.

WhatsAppSMSNo company emailNo login
Referral campaign
Reaches the store on WhatsApp and SMSno login
One tap forwards the Saturday shiftshared link
Reward lands on the first sharepoints
The opening goes to the store it actually fits, not one all-staff email across the whole chain.
Every referral arrives with a colleague's judgment attached.
Your team has a say in who joins it — which is what makes people stay on the floor.
Rewards from the first share, not only after the probation period.
Explore Referrals →
03Sourcing

Who goes looking for the roles nobody applies for?

You brief the role in two minutes. Atlas searches, writes the outreach and pre-qualifies every reply.

A briefing from this field
Store manager · Hamburg
Ran a store, not just a departmentFull time, six-day weeksWeekend and late-opening rota Rostering and stock responsibilityEarliest realistic start
Atlas: “Got it. I'll start with store managers around Hamburg and show you the first matches to vote on.”
Finds the store managers and department leads who never read a job ad.
Outreach runs on Sprad's own verified stack, never through your accounts.
You vote matches up or down, and Atlas learns your taste live.
You meet a shortlist of people ready to talk, booked into your calendar.
Explore Sourcing →
A retail employee on an Instagram job ad
04Social Recruiting

Who reaches store staff who never visit a job board?

Sales staff find jobs in their feed, often on the way to work. Sprad puts your opening there, and the Talent Agent asks about hours and start date on WhatsApp before you call.

+10% on your ad spend, from a €1,000 budget you can split across roles. No package, no fee per job.
InstagramFacebookWhatsApp pre-screeningYour own talent pool
Job ads in the feed of people who are not looking, written and designed for your role.
Every applicant is pre-screened by phone, WhatsApp or web before anyone calls back.
Everyone lands in your own Talent Base, so the next opening starts with people you already reached.
Explore Social Recruiting →
05Growth

Who keeps the people you just put on the roster?

In retail, losing one costs more than finding one: a departure costs €33,000 to 43,000, and 28% of new hires are gone within their first year. The same base that got someone hired is the one that keeps them: what they can do, what they want next, and how the first weeks on the floor are actually going.

FeedbackHear from the floor before people quietly leave. PerformanceReviews your store managers actually finish, drafted by Atlas. SkillsFrom the till to shift lead to store management, paths built on real work.
Why screening leads here

The first answer
decides the hire.

In retail the applications arrive. What is missing is certainty — and time. Every hour between the application and a real conversation is an hour the store down the street is using.

78% of candidates prefer an AI-led first conversation over waiting weeks for a human one.
What your store manager opens
Weekend & late-opening availabilitycleared
Youth-protection statuscleared
Social-insurance statuscleared
Peak-season availabilitystill open

Every rating points back to the sentence it came from, identity comes off the text before anything is scored, and each criterion is scored three times independently — the median counts, so one outlier run cannot move the result.

60% of applicants abandon a long application form the ones you want leave first
12 interview languages, one process for the till, the warehouse and store management the report always comes back in yours
28% of new retail hires are gone within their first year the mismatch was there before the roster was
Explore Screening →

Sources: SSRN field study 2025 · fokus›digital 2026 · Gallup 2024

From this field

Bijou Brigitte
already runs it.

Over 1,000 employees across European retail locations, everything run from the Hamburg headquarters. Bijou Brigitte publishes no figures for this programme — so we show none, only what they say changed.

Colleagues at a table looking at a screen together
Bijou Brigitte · Retail

Employees have a say in selecting their future colleagues.

Finding staff for the store locations was the hard part, and willingness to work shifts and weekends was the obstacle. Regional managers now review and assess applications directly in the tool; the number and the quality of applications both went up, and the programme itself became a reason to stay.

Bijou Brigitte
Read the story →
One Talent Base

Every road leads
into the same base.

Whoever applies, gets referred or gets sourced keeps one living profile — owned by them, readable by you. Every door makes it richer, and your ATS stays in the loop. The seasonal hire you could not keep in December is the shift lead you need in spring.

How the Talent Base works →
Your Systems
Talent Market
Your Modules
Jana Rieger
Tom Reiter
Priya Sharma
Jonas Berger
Lena Berger
David Schmidt
Sourcing Screening Referrals Performance Your HRIS Your ATS
Owned by the talent
One Talent Base
Living profilesDeep contextAlways in sync

Living profiles

Talent keep their own profile current, because it works for them too. So your pool never ages: whoever worked your last peak is reachable and current before the next one starts.

Deep context

More than a CV: weekend and late-opening availability, youth-protection status, social insurance, till and stock experience, evidence from real conversations. Every rating links back to the sentence it came from.

Always in sync

Sprad runs both ways with the ATS and HR system you already have. No migration, no second tool to maintain — your team keeps working where it always has.

FAQ

What this field asks.

What does “own the base” actually mean for us?

Everyone who ever applied, was referred or was sourced sits in one place that belongs to you — not in an inbox, not in a spreadsheet, not in an agency's system. The profile itself belongs to the person, which is why they keep it current. You can search it, you can see the evidence behind every entry, and you can take it with you if you ever change your ATS.

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 and 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.

Can it handle a seasonal hiring spike?

That is the case it is 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.

Our apprentices are under 18. Does the process account for that?

Yes. Youth-protection rules for 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.

What about minijob and working-student contracts?

Social-insurance status is checked in the conversation — minijob, working student or full social insurance — so payroll gets it right from day one instead of correcting it later.

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 group works council, 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.

Every fourth new hire leaves within a year. Can this help?

A structured conversation before the roster surfaces the mismatches — weekend work, late openings, the physical side of the floor — that otherwise only show up months in. After the hire, feedback and skill paths are what keep people; that is the fourth door.

Do we need all the doors at once?

No. Most retail teams start with screening, because the applications are already there. Referrals and sourcing switch on later, on the same base, without a new setup.

See it on your own role.

Fifteen minutes, your vacancy, your numbers.

Book a demo → Try it live