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Streamline Your Seasonal Hiring Strategy

June 15th, 2012

The summer is here and as the warm weather arrives, your staffing strategy moves into high gear. Maybe your team undergoes a cyclical shift that corresponds with the academic calendar. Or maybe your business model moves according to seasonal rhythms. Fields like landscaping, outdoor recreation, and summer tourism depend on intense staff fluctuations during the beginning and end of the vacation season. Regardless of the nature of your business, if you’re getting ready for a whirlwind staff turnover and an urgent, chaotic hiring process, try these tips to keep things under control and on track.

Organize your Seasonal Talent Management Strategy: Summer Hiring Tips

1. Lay the Groundwork Beforehand

Will you be staffing your counters with teenagers around the clock starting next Monday? Next year, begin the process in April, or even March. Remind your contacts that you’ll be hiring. Reach into your network and make it known that you’ll be looking for talented employees and reliable, committed help. Do your friends have ambitious teenage children? Are you close to college, trade school, or any other source of committed and soon-to-be-searching employees? If yes, give these potential employees a heads up long before the season begins.

2. Get Help

You don’t have to tackle the entire hiring project on your own. Delegate some of the application sorting to your assistant managers, or reach out to an expert staffing firm (like Merritt) to take some of the rush and risk out of the process.

3. Make Use of Your Impressions

Don’t make assumptions or stereotype your candidates (doing so will cause you to miss out on talented, invaluable help.)  But don’t ignore your impressions. A young applicant with questionable tattoos may be the best thing ever to walk in your door. But if you feel a strong hunch, don’t ignore it. A candidate who shows up ten minutes late for her interview doesn’t need to be given a second chance. Just make your decision and move on.

4. Set the Bar High at the Beginning

Don’t understate the challenges of the job to potential applicants. In fact, if you have no shortage of applicants, overstate them. This will encourage self-selection among your candidate pool and make your job much easier.

5. Put In what you Expect to Get Out

A stich in time saves nine. For every extra hour you spend on application sorting and background checks, you’ll sidestep future problems, avoid headaches, and limit the losses that tend to result from hasty, inefficient hiring. If you’re going to waste a little time on staffing this summer, waste it now. Don’t run into a staffing crisis a month from now that you could have prevented with a five minute reference check.

Contact an employment agency in CT at Merritt Staffing for more help with your seasonal hiring strategy, and have a profitable summer!

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