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Strategies for Recruiting Seasonal Employees
By monster.com Staff (Reprinted with permission) If your business relies on a seasonal workforce, it’s important to source, hire, and onboard seasonal employees who represent the best that your business has to offer. Many pitfalls plague employers who need to supplement their full-time staff for the summer, for tax season, the holidays, or for any other portion of the year when business peaks. Most of these troubles stem from a failure of the company’s leadership to devote enough energy and resources to assembling an optimal seasonal workforce. Are you willing to take a fresh look at your operations to see where you might
improve your seasonal hiring? Consider these 11 tactics for recruiting seasonal employees when the annual rush is on.
1. Write Better Job Descriptions Take time to ensure that your job descriptions for seasonal hires are accurate, complete, and up-to-date. “We have clients using job descriptions that are four or more years old,” says Nels Wroe, partner and product director at SHL Group, a vendor of talent-assessment tools. Consider asking the author of the job description to spend a few hours shadowing an employee in the relevant position. When it comes to seasonal hiring, your customers won’t forgive poor service simply because it’s rendered by a seasonal worker.
2. Source Candidates Who Only Want Seasonal Work Recruiting seasonal employees will go much more smoothly if you can mine rich veins of candidates who just want to work for the season. “We have tapped into graduating university students who are taking time to figure out what they want to do,” says Jennifer Lemcke, chief operating officer of Weed Man USA, a lawn-care franchisor. Often these candidates would prefer the temporary nature of seasonal work compared to a longer-term commitment.
3. Dedicate More Resources to Successful Onboarding If your seasonal staff is large, you should consider paying more attention — and money — when it comes to how you train new employees. “One of the most common mistakes is throwing seasonal hires on a sales floor with minimal training or onboarding, viewing them
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as a way to fill a schedule rather than as company representatives to serve your customers,” says Wroe. Giving seasonal employees the sink-or-swim test could hurt your bottom line at season’s end.
4. Consider Tools for High-Volume Hiring and Screening If you’re hiring for many seasonal positions, you’ll probably benefit from using a talent management system. “Our candidates have doubled or tripled over the last few years, so we need tools to manage the flow,” says Kyle Martin, manager of talent acquisition at Vail Resorts Management Company in Broomfield, Colorado. Wroe says that with seasonal hires, “you have a very limited window to get a return on your hiring investment. Assessments let you select workers who will get up to speed more quickly.”
5. Hire for Attitude as Much as Aptitude Most seasonal work is about being flexible and getting up to speed quickly, rather than bringing to bear an elaborate skill set. “All of our training is so in-depth, we don’t necessarily need someone with experience,” says Lemcke. Instead, many employers who engage in seasonal hiring will look for dependable workers who are able to focus on higher level skills like safety and customer service.
6. Give Preference to “Same Time, Next Year” Candidates Hiring a brand-new force of employees during every busy season can be exhausting and inefficient. If you’re able to select for candidates most likely to return for another season, do so. It’ll streamline the process when you start recruiting seasonal employees the following year and can build a little more predictability into your planning.
