The COVID-19 pandemic and the Reno area’s growing importance as a distribution center for Internet retailers are likely to create a lot of temporary jobs this holiday season.
How many is a lot? Just one company — Radial — said a couple of days ago it plans to hire 1,000 temporary workers to fill and ship holiday orders at its e-commerce fulfillment center at the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center.
That’s a lot of people, but the state Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation estimated late last month that 16,700 residents are currently looking for work in Washoe County — a figure that translates into a 7% unemployment rate. (In April, when pandemic-related layoffs peaked, the Washoe unemployment rate was 20.4%.)
And a fair number of people with fulfillment-center experience appear to be available.
The state estimates that about 16,600 people in the Reno-Sparks area are working in warehousing and transportation jobs these days. That’s a decline of more than 4,000 since the start of the year, although hiring has been picking up in recent weeks.
For its part, Radial has no doubt it will be able to hire 1,000 temporary workers in fairly short order.
“We’re experts at this, and that’s why we start planning our strategy early,” says Mitch John, director of operations at Radial. The company has been scaling up for the holiday rush at its fulfillment center east of Sparks every year since 2009, and it works with several Reno-area staffing agencies to get a workforce together.
John says the company doesn’t require experience in distribution, and it expects to hire workers this year who previously held jobs in hard-hit sectors such as restaurants and brick-and-mortar retail.
“Our holiday hiring is also a great opportunity for Reno residents working in industries impacted by the pandemic to switch career paths,” he says, noting that the company expects to provide “significant opportunities” for seasonal employees to move into full-time positions this year.
The company employs about 190 people year-round at the distribution center. Radial contracts with retailers such as Hallmark, Godiva Chocolatier and Untuckit to provide e-commerce and transportation services.
While Radial has experience hiring about 1,000 seasonal workers a year for the Reno-area center, John notes that the pandemic makes things different this year. Drive-through job fairs, low-contact interviews, and socially-distant or virtual training — not to mention reliance on online hiring — all will play key roles.
