Seasonal hiring is essential for businesses to maximize their profits during the holiday season or whenever the increased work puts a strain on their current teams. One way to decrease the workload is to hire new workers that could handle the occasional pressure.
However, the real challenge is to make the right choice even when you have to hire short-term employees. Why? Because the risk is even higher with seasonal employees that have to keep up with the pace.
So, how would you ensure that you’re hiring the right people during a crucial time of the year? As a recruiter or employer, you probably have experienced challenges when it comes to seasonal hiring. If your business relies on seasonal employees or workers, it’s important to have a sound strategy that covers sourcing, hiring, and onboarding temporary employees.
Whether you want to hire for recurring annual events or the holiday weekends, it’s high time to build a seasonal recruitment strategy. Building a seasonal workforce on time and in accordance with the company standards will not be an uphill battle if you create a flexible talent strategy.
In this post, we will give your 5 tips on how to build a strong seasonal recruitment strategy for your organization:
-
Build a talent pool of seasonal workers
Your seasonal recruitment efforts are likely to attract many applicants. This means you have to deal with applications during irregular periods. Do you have the tool and time to go through all those applications while making sure great candidates don’t slip through the net?
The lack of a process and a robust tool is one of the reasons why recruiters scramble around for the right candidates. So, if you really want to nail your seasonal recruitment strategy, implement the right applicant tracking system that enables you to build talent pools based on your unique needs.
It will not only enable you to attract the right candidate but also segment them into different talent pools based on their skills, work preferences, location, and availability. When you build a talent pool of seasonal employees, it becomes easy and time-efficient to hire the right candidates. You can add your previous temporary employees to your talent pool and engage them whenever needed.
Hiring seasonal employees will be a smooth ride if you learn how to source candidates who only want seasonal work. For example, students prefer to work for the season.
-
Remarket to the right audience
Remarketing isn’t just for your customer acquisition strategy. You can use this marketing technique to fulfill your talent needs. However, you need to build a database of prospective employees using a talent management solution.
Once you’ve implemented a system, the next step is to create the right messaging and engage different talent groups within your system. For example, you can create a group of people who applied for seasonal work in the past years. And now that you need to hire seasonal workers, it’s time to engage them with custom, personalized messaging.
A good CRM or ATS would allow you to improve your messaging based on A/B testing, click-through rates, and other metrics. When it comes to remarketing, you can also use SMS to get your message across. SMS marketing usually generates a higher response rate, especially if you want to attract young adults. Your message may contain a call to action and a reminder for upcoming job opportunities and when to apply for them.
-
Leverage social media
Whether you want to attract short-term or long-term employees, it’s highly recommended to use social media as one of your HR weapons to attract and engage talent. You’re missing the boat if social media isn’t a part of your seasonal recruitment strategy. A majority of recruiters now use Linkedin and other channels to search for candidates and fill in positions.
Your previous seasonal employees are not likely to abandon social media. So, this is an opportunity for you to create fresh social media content and engage them. Again, make sure to use the right technology to attract candidates on social media platforms.
It’s not viable to browse through social media platforms manually, though some platforms make it easier to filter candidates based on certain characteristics. Nonetheless, the only way to move forward is the use of an automation tool that could screen candidates and automate the rest of the process.
-
Plan ahead
As a recruiter or HR manager, you probably have some idea about the time when you need extra help. It is advisable to consider planning a season ahead. Your competitors have probably started planning for next season already.
If you still have time, work on fundamentals such as determining where most of your seasonal employees are likely to come from. Are they fresh graduates or experienced professionals? Plan ahead to save time and headaches.
If your old recruitment methods aren’t working for you, it’s high time to get rid of them. As a part of your overall recruitment planning, be sure to assess whether or not your current methods are producing the desired results. For instance, if your website is outdated, redesign it and create a career page.
-
Use referrals
Some organizations need the best employees for peak seasons. It’s critical for them to hire people who have experience and know what they’re doing. Since you’re going through the busiest and most stressful time of year, you have to hire people that can get the job done efficiently. One way to hire competent employees quickly is through referrals. So, feel free to ask for referrals from your current employees.
Final thoughts
The holiday season is probably a crucial time for your company to make the money and hire the right candidates. Make sure to plan and have a sound seasonal recruitment strategy in place. Hire people who are willing to work overtime and be flexible with their working hours. It might be a good idea to retain employees who get accustomed to your company culture.
Lastly, it’s imperative to adopt innovative HR tools to meet future recruitment challenges. So, equip your HR team with the right talent acquisition tools.
