[author: Danielle Horn]
If you’re reading this: It’s time to start your holiday hiring process.
That’s right, believe it or not – the holiday hiring season is here, which means you and your teams need to be on your A-game to make it a successful year for your business and a pleasant experience for your customers.
Whether you’re in retail, hospitality, or another high-volume industry – you know the rush is coming and we’re here to help you hire successfully for the holidays.
First, let’s discuss why we need to over-hire for the holiday season.
Why Hire Seasonal Workers?
There are many reasons folks in retail and hospitality expand their teams over the holidays, including the obvious ones like accounting for scheduling when people are taking time off for vacation or sick time.
Smart hires during the seasonal holidays are crucial for businesses to handle the increased demand and maintain customer satisfaction. With a surge in sales and customer traffic, additional staff is essential to ensure smooth operations and prevent overwhelming existing employees.
Well-selected seasonal workers can enhance customer service, expedite processes, and contribute to a positive shopping experience. More importantly, strategic hiring can uncover potential full-time candidates who demonstrate exceptional skills and align with the company culture.
Ultimately, smart holiday hires not only bolster short-term performance but also lay the groundwork for long-term success.
The top three reasons why teams are hiring seasonal workers are to:
- Support with the high volume of customers
- Improve customer service experience & processes
- Enhance operational efficiency
With that said, there are also common challenges HR leaders need to account for when going through the seasonal hiring process. Things like high turnover, skills shortage, and competition for top talent come to mind.
There are ways to overcome these seasonal hiring challenges that can help you find the perfect employees to help your business thrive during the chaos.
How to Accelerate The Seasonal Hiring Timeline
In order to have a scalable seasonal hiring process, you need to invest in the right applicant tracking system that allows you to connect to all of your systems. This includes everything you use from application to post-hire.
Choosing a system that integrates with the following will set you and your new employees up for success in a timely manner:
- Job Boards
- Social Media
- Payroll/HRIS
- Training/LMS
- Background Checks
- Candidate Assessments
- Work Opportunity Tax Credits (WOTC)
- POS
Bouncing between multiple systems is a way to slow you down and can make the entire process feel daunting & tedious. Through meaningful integrations, your systems of truth will receive real-time updates throughout the process, so you don’t have to spend time copying and pasting information from one place to another. When you avoid that, you also avoid costly human error.
Access your entire talent management ecosystem from a single platform to stand out from the competition this holiday season and beyond.
Best Practices for Posting Seasonal Hiring Roles
You’ll want to make sure you’re being thoughtful about your job descriptions in order to find the best-fit candidates to fill your seasonal roles.
Our friends at Indeed provided some great tips for writing your seasonal job descriptions, including:
- Relevant Keywords: Ensure you’re using the word “seasonal” or “temporary” with the start and end dates so that the applicant knows that this role is only for a certain period of time.
- Knowing your needs: Be specific about what exactly you need – what skills are required in order to be considered & successful for the position
- Highlight benefits: As mentioned earlier, seasonal candidates are finding very competitive positions on the market, so be sure to share any discount, perks, etc. that will help your role stand out amongst the competition.
Leverage Referrals From Your Top Talent
Do you already have wonderful employees that have proven themselves during the busy holiday season? Or maybe, you have repeat seasonal workers who come back year after year.
Either way, let them know you appreciate them and trust their judgment by offering a referral incentive. Some of the best candidates can come through referrals from your current talent pool – and when people are incentivized, they’re even more likely to share the seasonal openings with their friends and network.
Some ideas for an employee referral program can look like:
- A bonus after the referred candidate completes a successful holiday season
- Increased discount or a one-time freebie
- An extra day off
Ask your employees what motivates them and do your best to frame your referral rewards around those things.
So You’ve Found The Best Seasonal Employees, Now What?
Yay! You’ve gotten the hard part over: you found your perfect seasonal employees and they accepted their offer.
Well, not so fast. The hard part isn’t over yet.
You still need them to show up, be successful, and have a great experience during the holiday season.
Enter Onboarding.
Onboarding is a vital part of the hiring process for any role, and especially for seasonal workers. Some processes may change during the holidays and will need to be outlined during onboarding to ensure your employees are set up for success.
You’ll want to provide relevant training that is digestible & realistic for your new hires to get off to a fast start, while feeling confident and empowered to do their job day one.
Having something as simple as a checklist for necessary equipment access, uniforms, system information, etc. will be a great way to set your team up for a fruitful season this year and moving forward as well.
If you want to learn more tips like these, we’ve got a full list you can bookmark here.
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