Hire for scale and season without missing a beat.
UPPER is the autonomous recruiter for CPG and retail employers — automating high-volume hourly and seasonal sourcing while running precision passive search for scarce corporate, digital, and supply-chain talent, all in one compliant loop.
Quick answer
UPPER is autonomous AI recruiting software built for CPG and retail. It runs multi-channel sourcing, scoring, and outreach as one loop — automating instant application review for high-volume hourly roles while reaching passive digital and category-management talent — so retail and CPG teams fill seasonal surges fast and close the 63% skills gap CPG employers report.
A holiday hiring surge, staffed without the scramble
Illustrative scenario
A regional retailer needs 400 seasonal associates across 20 stores in three weeks, on top of backfilling chronic hourly turnover that runs as high as 60%+ annually. The old playbook — post widely, manually screen thousands of applications, chase no-shows — buries recruiters in volume while the best candidates go stale waiting for a callback.
With UPPER, instant application review and automated first-contact fire the moment someone applies, scoring fit and scheduling interviews without a recruiter touching every resume. By week two, the team isn't drowning in applications — they're reviewing pre-screened, scheduled candidates and filling the roster ahead of the seasonal deadline.
Illustrative example based on UPPER's designed workflow; not a specific customer engagement.
Built for how retail and CPG hiring actually works
Retail runs on volume and churn; CPG runs on scarce, specialized corporate talent. UPPER is designed to handle both without forcing one playbook onto every req.
Automated screening scores candidates against real job fit signals up front, reducing the early-attrition churn that keeps recruiters refilling the same seats.
Instant application review, automated scheduling, and first-contact outreach compress a hiring cycle that once took days into hours, freeing recruiters for final interviews.
AI-driven matching surfaces adjacent-industry talent — tech or consulting professionals with transferable digital and analytics skills — that keyword search misses.
UPPER mines ATS/CRM history for previously screened "silver medalist" candidates before paying for new sourcing on repeat hourly and seasonal roles.
Built for teams hiring 400 associates and 4 category managers in the same month.
One autonomous loop — source, screen, reach — scaled for volume and tuned for scarcity, in the same platform.
What speed + fit looks like
Illustrative outcome scenarios modeled on UPPER's workflow and the 2026 CPG & retail talent data. Real customer results will be published as our beta cohort matures.
Multi-store regional retailer
Replaced manual seasonal-hiring review with automated application triage and self-service scheduling ahead of a holiday surge.
"We used to dread the seasonal ramp. Now the roster fills itself while we focus on the stores that need extra attention."
Illustrative scenario · benchmark: Walmart AI hiring case study, 2025Mid-size CPG brand, talent team
Used skill-graph matching to surface adjacent-industry digital and analytics candidates for category-management roles that traditional keyword search missed.
"We finally found candidates outside the same three competitor rosters everyone else was fishing from."
Illustrative scenarioUPPER Industry Report
The data behind volume hiring and the skills gap.
A designed, cited field guide: seasonal hiring shifts, the 26.7% turnover crisis, the CPG skills gap, and the 5-move playbook for scaling hourly hiring while winning scarce corporate talent.
↓ Download the free PDF Read online →Questions retail and CPG talent teams ask
Why is retail turnover so much higher than other industries?
Mercer's 2025 US Turnover Survey put voluntary turnover for retail and wholesale at 26.7% — the highest of any sector measured, roughly double the 13.0% all-industry average — driven by wage competition, early attrition (43% of hourly hires leave within 90 days), and structurally high-churn frontline roles.
Is seasonal hiring shrinking in 2025-2026?
Yes — NRF forecast just 265,000-365,000 holiday seasonal hires for 2025, the lowest level in at least 15 years, down from 442,000 in 2024, even as holiday sales were projected to surpass $1 trillion for the first time. Retailers are leaning more on existing staff hours than net-new seasonal headcount.
What's the biggest talent gap in CPG right now?
63% of CPG employers cite skills gaps as their primary barrier to growth, and 42% expect talent availability to decline further over the next five years — concentrated in digital, e-commerce, and data-analytics roles as companies navigate an active M&A and portfolio-realignment cycle.
More industries we serve
Run your first wave on a real seasonal or corporate req.
Open one hourly or corporate req and watch UPPER source, screen, and reach candidates automatically. First candidates in minutes — no setup, no scraping.