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. 

4 Ways to Hire a Seasonal and Temporary Workforce Online

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

Last week in my post, Seasonal and Holiday Workforce Hiring Guide, we discussed holiday staffing best practices to help you prepare and staff your location whether it be a store, restaurant, or hotel during the busy seasonal shopping season.  For many, that busy seasonal happens to be the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.  Retail companies like Macy’s are hiring 80,000 seasonal associates this year.  Appropriate planning and strategy can use a number of different sources to hire and staff quickly and easily including online.

Online hiring and recruiting is also commonly called e-recruiting with the ‘e’ standing for electronic.  As our online and mobile access increases in importance and more job seekers and consumers spend time online, e-recruiting is a great way to reach your candidate base allowing you to stand out from the competition. 

How to Recruit Online for Holiday Staffing

• ·      Go Where the Job Seekers Are.  Whether it’s on Facebook on an online job seeker forum for local job seekers, it’s important to go where the candidates are.  This has been an effective strategy for me since 2001 when I first started using chat rooms, forums, and dating websites to source and engage job seekers online. 

• ·      Build a Talent Network.  Consider creating an online community to target, recruit, and build relationships with your prospective holiday job seekers.  You can use an external social networking platform like Facebook or Twitter.  You can also build and cultivate your own using a customized talent network. 

• ·      Engage Your Network.  Much online conversation between employers and job seekers is one way.  Apply for this job or learn about us online.  Participate in online conversations like jobrelated Twitter chats, ask questions, and look for feedback to establish relationships.  Stand out from your job seeker competition by focusing on engagement with a subtle nudge towards your career opportunities and holiday hiring needs. 

• ·      Create Content.  Obviously, if you are reading this you are familiar with blogs.  They are a great way to build relationships with readers who may or may not be job seekers.  By focusing your target by topic and keyword, you can reach job seekers through search engine optimization and online search.  Provide them with answers to their job seeking or questions about your company.  Ask your own employees what questions they have to start building and targeting your blog content either through written or other mediums like video. 

E-recruiting Strategies for Seasonal Staffing and Beyond

Hiring online or e-recruiting is a great way to engage any type of job seeker audience especially your holiday workforce during this busy time of year.  By having online relationships you can tap into the power of your social and online networks also increasing your candidate referrals and online press and exposure increasing the number of quality candidates and interviews.  

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.