Seasonal Hiring Best Practices in Retail

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

The holiday shopping season is one of the busiest of the entire year. Black Friday, the official start to the mayhem and madness of shoppers flocking to reduced prices while wanting to get their shopping done early. By this time recruiters have slaved for months, like they do every year, to make sure positions are filled and season hires have passed all the necessary tests to start working. In order to be successful at seasonal hiring here are a things that every recruiter needs to follow:

Start early. When hiring a mass influx of staff it’s important that recruiters allow themselves enough time to hire effectively. You’ll want to make sure new employees are ready to start working right when the peak season hits.

Train. One of the most important things you can do is make sure all the employees you hire are trained efficiently. I’m not sure what’s worse, waiting in line for an hour or getting to the register and your cashier not knowing a single thing. Ensuring proper training about your company, procedures and culture will keep everyone from bickering and destroying the culture by gossip and childish behaviors.

Recruit former employees. In order to save money on time and recruitment opportunities take a few and call past seasonal employees and see if they are interested in working again. You save money in training, time during the interview process, and less applications to wade through.

Don’t compromise your standards. During the holiday seasons a customer expects nothing but exceptional service. 99% of the time they’re not going to know that an employee isn’t a permanent employee. The quality of service the receive will dictate if they finish shopping and complete a purchase within your store. When hiring temporary employees it’s important to never compromise your standards because even temporary employees can ruin your brand image.

Plan the interview process. With massive staff increases the interviews can get a little hectic and scheduling that mean interviews can be overwhelming. Develop a plan to handle the increased number by asking for other managers in your department to conduct some of the interviews. Before doing so make sure to develop a standardize list of questions so they avoid any type of possible legal problems.

Every one of these suggestions will help recruiters gain the upper hand on their competition when it comes to seasonal hiring. It’s important to keep your standards as high as they are despite hiring temporary workers. When training leave enough time to explain everything important to your company so that they’re able to carry on your values.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs. 

Photo Credit. 

Seasonal and Holiday Workforce Hiring Guide

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

Fall is upon us.  And yet for many companies in the retail, hospitality, and restaurant industries, the holiday and seasonal hiring is just beginning.  So while for some the holiday season is a time to slow down, reflect, and cut loose, it’s the busiest time of year for many other managers and employees alike.  This 2012 holiday season is expected to see an increase of 700,000 workers many of them working in the industries I described above.  Kohl's a popular discount department store is expected to increase seasonal hiring by 10%.  As someone who’s spent the bulk of her human resources career working in these high volume and seasonal industries, it can be tough.  It’s extremely important to plan in advance when developing your holiday and temporary hiring strategy.  Customers of these industries expect store shelves to be stocked, quick checkout, correct and delicious orders, and customer service to be delivered. 

Holiday Staffing Best Practices

Planning your holiday hiring strategy is essential to end the fiscal year with a bang.  It’s more than just mass and speed interviewing candidates.  It involves planning, communication, and recruitment marketing to find the right job seekers to fill those open positions driving sales and the customer experience.

• ·      View Last Year’s Sales.  Pull your last year’s weekly sales as well as the number of employees hired by department and job.  If available, talk with your management team about what the challenges were last year and where gaps existing and begin to plan your temporary staffing plan looking at sales per hour for the entire location and different departments. 

• ·      View Your Location’s Sales Forecasts by Week.  It’s important to understand where and when payroll hours are being added.  In a retail setting, you would hire stockers and truck unloaders as the holiday product push begins so store shelves can be filled.  Cashier and sales positions are hired later and are trained just before sales begin to increase from average levels. 

• ·      Tiered Hiring.  Don’t hire everyone at once.  In these types of industry verticals, payroll is life.  Interview and offer job seekers immediately building a candidate war board with expected start dates based on sales predictions.  Over hire by 10-15% knowing that background checks will fail and job offers won’t work out. 

• ·      Host a Job Fair.  Nothing feels more productive than scheduling yourself and your managers a one day 4 hour block of 30 minute interviews.  With 10 managers, you can knock out 80 interviews making job offers on the spot.  This goes a long way in hiring quickly and efficiently.  Managers can schedule their time appropriately in a single four hour interval instead of being pulled away in 30 minute meetings that always seem to be inconvenient. 

• ·      Recruit Your Customers.  The best seasonal workers are often regular customers at your place of business.  Share your holiday staffing openings with them using bag stuffers and signage around the store.  Find creative ways to reach your audience using a talent network or my favorite, holiday hiring signs posted in the stalls of the bathroom. 

• ·      Communicate.  Communicate.  Communicate.  I learned quickly my first holiday season that it’s important to set clear expectations and communication guidelines with your team especially those that are temporary workers.  Make them aware of the hour requirements including evenings and weekends, but make sure to make the interactions, engagements, and announcements fun.  Happy employees are productive employees and can make a difference between an awesome or okay holiday sales season. 

Successful Seasonal Staffing with Temporary Employees

Developing a holiday hiring strategy takes work, research, and a team effort going beyond human resources and working directly with general managers and the rest of your company’s store management team.  Work with them to understand their objectives and point of contention to make sure that your 2012 holiday staffing plan goes off without a hitch.  

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media.  She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs. 

Photo Credit.