'Tis the season for small businesses to hire temporary holiday workers

It’s that time of year again. With customers eager to shop and sales goals to meet, time is of the essence when it comes to seasonal hiring. Here are some tips from Amanda Hahn, chief marketing officer at HireVue, to ensure hiring is nothing but an easy check mark on your long holiday to-do list.

What are the best ways for businesses to find qualified seasonal holiday workers, and fast?

• Ensure you have a pipeline of past employees to skip a lot of the learning curve and streamline your hiring plan. They know your business and expectations, and they’re a great database to tap into for the upcoming season.

• Make your experience mobile-first. About 80% of candidates are already searching for jobs on their phones and (let’s put in a stat here about the response time vs email). Offering text-powered chatbots to engage with candidates and schedule interviews not only creates a positive candidate experience but more importantly accelerates your hiring process–allowing you to start making offers quicker.
• Be flexible. In 2022, approximately 50% of HireVue interviews are completed outside of regular hours and on the weekends. When looking for seasonal workers, it’s important to remember many candidates are students or have full-time jobs already, so interviewing during a typical 9-5 setting may not be possible. By utilizing on-demand video interviewing to replace phone screens and allowing candidates to take interviews when they are free, hiring teams can fill seasonal roles right from recorded interviews.
• Automate interview scheduling. When speed matters, time wasted scheduling and rescheduling interviews will cost you candidates. Hiring technology tools can automate manual tasks, so hiring teams can focus on interviews and offers.

How is an already challenging labor market impacting holiday hiring?

As businesses brace for the holiday rush, they are facing a different landscape than even last year. Retail employment was up by 22,000 in July and will be even higher October through December. With retail sales projected to be 6-8% higher than last year, the number of holiday openings is expected to increase.

Plus, the current economic climate has shifted the spending habits of shoppers. Fears of inflation and supply chain concerns are encouraging shoppers to shop earlier than they normally do.

In what ways should companies be rethinking how they engage with prospective hires?

Reaching today’s seasonal workers requires a different approach than two years ago. Retail and hospitality employees have faced shutdowns, permanent closures and a general state of uncertainty during the pandemic.

• Today’s workers want to be heard. Poor communication from company leaders has helped contribute to burnout. To regain that trust, employers need to take a different approach to communicating transparently about expected job responsibilities.
• Automation will increase your efficiency and return time to your managers, so they can get back to servicing customers. Simply post a job and let automation help with candidate engagement.  A chatbot can assist with prescreening, interviewing and an interview. Automated scoring of candidate responses to on-demand interview questions can also speed hiring by surfacing the candidates that will interact best with your customers and represent your brand in real, customer-centric situations.

What hiring tools and technologies are helping to streamline this process for hiring teams?

• Conversational-AI and text recruiting allows you to hire up to 4x faster by engaging candidates all the way through the hiring process.
• Scored or unscored on-demand interviews allow candidates to interview on their team, speeding up their time to get in front of hiring teams.
• Direct messaging tools enable teams to send out hiring campaigns for situations like season hiring allowing you to engage with pools of candidates with a single outreach – and on a platform, not a hiring manager’s cell phone.

 Technology built for high-volume hiring, like HireVue, is built to find the candidates that will interact best with your customers through a process that can be done in one day.

What else do you think small business owners should know?

September and October are peak seasonal hiring months, and we’re seeing our expected increase in holiday hiring amongst our customers.

• We saw a 168% increase in interviews in the consumer goods sector that was driven by a hiring campaign from a beloved apparel and footwear brand.
• And our retail segment was up 10% due to hiring from companies that include a major outdoor retailer and department stores.

Join our LinkedIn group, ALM’s Small Business Adviser, a space where small business owners can gather to network, have discussions and keep up with the trends and issues affecting their industries.

Related:

• ACA responsibilities for companies employing seasonal workers
• Hourly workers shift focus to immediate financial needs as inflation takes hold
• ICHRAs: A way to unlock better health care benefits for hourly, part-time or gig workers