May 19th, 2022
Seasonal Hiring Tips for Employers
As an employer, the summer season means its time to ramp up your hiring plan to prepare for seasonal hiring. While you may not have unlimited time, hiring the right people matters. Remember, even though these workers are temporary, their impact on your clients is not.
Therefore, you must find ways to meet your seasonal hiring needs without ruining your brand. Recruiting qualified candidates, training, and onboarding them is no small task. For this reason, we’ve listed a few tips to make your seasonal hiring plan a success.
Ten Proven Tips for Tackling Your Seasonal Hiring Needs
1. Create a hiring plan
Having a hiring plan ensures your hiring managers understand their roles. Working with a staffing agency is recommended as they know the industry better and will help you execute this plan.
A few things to cover in this plan are:
- The number of job ads you intend to put out
- The current state of the job market
- The skillset you are looking for in job seekers
- The intended timeline
- The cost per hire metric
2. Make your hiring process efficient
A LinkedIn study on hiring timelines of 400,000 individuals found that it took at least 30 days for companies to make a hire. Those in the engineering specialty had the most extended wait period of 49 days. Those in the administrative field had to wait 33 days, the shortest time out of the fifteen sectors included in the study.
We can’t stress enough the importance of reducing this time-to-hire. A proven strategy is to decrease the time it takes to review applications and screen plus interview applicants on a rolling basis.
3. Seek employee referrals
Employee referrals help speed up the hiring process and are an underutilized source of top talent. Research shows that employee referrals provide a smaller talent pool than job posts. However, organizations are eighty-five times more likely to recruit referred job seekers than those from job boards.
An excellent approach would be to tell staff to post open job posts on different social media platforms. Consider a reward program for staff who have brought in new talent. Incentives include bonuses, gift cards or paid trips.
4. Consider boomerang recruitment
Another way to ramp up your talent acquisition efforts is to rehire former staff. Due to the pandemic, companies had to furlough workers. Consider bringing them back to fill these seasonal job openings.
Also, if you had hired college students during the previous summer season, find out if they are available. Boomerang workers are a perfect resource because they require a shorter training time, which is essential when you need to fill positions quickly.
5. Find out availability during the pre-screen process
Finding out whether job applicants are available early in the recruitment process can save you time and money. Using an applicant tracking system will help you include specific dates. As a result, you can sieve out those who don’t meet your seasonal hiring requirements in the pre-screening stage.
6. Seek out people with existing experience
Recruiting candidates with relevant experience is another way to step up your recruitment efforts. Like former employees, these groups won’t require extensive training as newbies would. Some questions to ask are whether they understand the company brand and products. Plus, find out if they have interacted with customers before.
7. Be creative with your interviewing process
Meeting your seasonal hiring goals requires creativity, mainly when dealing with countless candidates. Consider holding virtual interviews instead of one-on-ones to promote efficiency and limit contact, as we are still dealing with COVID-19.
8. Strive to provide a positive candidate experience
The “candidate experience” is more than a catchphrase. It is an essential aspect of employer branding and determines whether your company can attract top talent. For instance, Shortlister found that 80% of people who had a negative application experience would openly warn others to stay away from the said company.
Don’t lose quality candidates due to something that is within your control. Instead, make the required changes to improve the candidate experience throughout the hiring process. Finally, don’t forget to create a realistic view of the prospective work environment and responsibilities.
9. Standardize and update your onboarding process
Offering seasonal hires a standardized onboarding process helps strengthen the company’s brand. It also increases engagement and allows scalability.
10. Be thorough like you would when recruiting full-time employees
One mistake employers make is thinking short-term when filling seasonal roles. Do not compromise. Instead, higher staff who are a good cultural fit to promote business growth.
Partner With an Expert
The seasonal recruiting and hiring process does not have to be overwhelming. As the industry changes, it would be wise to partner with an employment agency in Fort Lauderdale that will help implement your hiring plan for the summer season.
PrideStaff employment agency will undertake every step of the hiring process, from posting jobs with the proper job descriptions to shortlisting candidates.
We will also fulfill your administrative and clerical staffing and call center needs. Need our help? We are one call away. Contact us at 754.800.2850 to learn how we can help meet your seasonal hiring needs with a free consultation.