‘Tis the season! You hear that on holiday music and out wherever you are during the holiday season. Just like it’s the season to spend time with family during the holidays and prepare for holiday gift-giving and present exchanges, it’s also the season for certain industries to prepare for a seasonal high-volume hiring campaign.
Maintaining candidate quality during seasonal hiring can be challenging because it’s usually conducted using a high-volume recruiting approach, which can sometimes compromise quality if the right strategies aren’t implemented. We will teach you tactics to find a balance between the need for speed and preserving candidate quality during seasonal mass recruitment.
Define Your Criteria Upfront
The first step to achieving quality hiring during peak seasons is to craft a clear and concise job description so your recruitment criteria are defined upfront. What skills are necessary for these seasonal recruits to have? Do they need a high school diploma or some type of college education? What prior job experience should these recruits have under their belts?
If you are multiple cashiers to help out in your department store during the holidays, define the traits they should have. This may include problem-solving ability, strong communication skills, patience, dynamic teamwork, and friendliness. Once you have clearly defined your hiring criteria, incorporate the details into the job description with simple language that everyone understands. Avoid using technical jargon so that potential entry-level employees are not discouraged if they do not understand it.
For example, if you are hiring for a cashier, don’t say in the list of duties, “Operate a POS system to ring up customer orders.” Instead, you can say “Operate a point-of-sale (POS) system to scan customer purchases”. This simple edit you are not taking for granted that everyone reading the job post knows what the acronym for POS stands for.
Leverage Technology to Scale Recruitment
Maintaining quality in bulk hiring during seasonal campaigns involves utilizing technology to achieve scalability in recruitment. AI-driven applicant tracking system (ATS) technology can propel your company forward by hastening time-to-hire while maintaining candidate quality. Application screening and resume parsing utilize keywords based on skill sets, educational background, prior job experience, and other variables to discover top-quality candidates quickly and efficiently with more success than manual methods.
Other AI-driven solutions like pre-employment testing platforms and chatbots to conduct initial candidate screenings also help to refine candidate quality because they automatically sift through large volumes of applications to discover the best of the best applicants. These AI-based recruitment tools reduce bias throughout the hiring process and enhance diversity and inclusion as more candidates from different backgrounds are onboarded with the company utilizing these technologies.
Build a Talent Pool in Advance
About a few months before you know your company needs seasonal employees, implement tactics to build a talent pool in advance. This helps to get ready for the seasonal hiring rush without having to do so much extra preparation in the weeks leading up to the mass recruitment campaign.
According to SHRM, seasonal hiring efforts for 2024 dipped back down to pre-pandemic levels. Hence, while not as many seasonal employees are needed now in contrast to the height of the pandemic, it’s still essential to build a talent pool in advance for upcoming seasonal hiring spikes.
Keep evergreen job postings available on your website and integrated job boards and social media platforms. This way, candidates can apply for the seasonal position at any time of the year. This strategic approach builds your candidate pool throughout the year so you have access to quality candidates before the seasonal high-volume hiring campaign even starts.
During the off-season, maintain communications with your top-quality candidates so they are ready to onboard during your seasonal spike in customer demand. Taking these steps to pre-fill these positions in talent acquisition for seasonal demand reduces pressure on the recruitment team while maintaining higher candidate quality.
Use Employee Referral to Maintain High-Quality Candidates
Besides evergreen job postings to attract high-quality seasonal candidates throughout the year, consider implementing an employee referral program if you do not have one already. Employees who suggest possible candidates for jobs in a company have a higher likelihood of recommending potential new hires that are a better cultural and technical fit than those onboarded with general talent acquisition or high-volume recruiting efforts.
The virtual employee referral program should be easy to use with seamless navigation so current employees can recommend potential new hires without navigating complex input features. Incentivizing current employees to recommend potential new hires can hasten your time-to-hire if both the recommending employee and recruit receive a bonus after the new employee’s first 90 days with the company.
Streamline the Interview Process
Seasonal high-volume hiring efforts need a streamlined interview process. The overall procedure needs to be thorough to ensure candidate quality, but taking the time to streamline it reduces unnecessary time spent on applicants who are not a good fit for the company’s roles or overall culture.
Streamlining with tactics like conducting video interviews for dual candidates or having virtual or in-person group interviews can hasten time-to-hire. Virtual interviews are convenient for candidates and recruitment personnel so they do not have to expend gas to meet up at the facility to conduct interviews in person.
Group interviews are convenient for the recruitment team so that all top-quality candidates are interviewed in one session rather than in separate interviews. The recruitment team can also examine how these potential candidates would work together in a seasonal work environment by how they discuss interview questions together in a group interview setting. Candidates can get something out of the group interview experience, too as they showcase their collaborative skills among the other interviewees.
Focus on the Candidate’s Experience
The candidate’s experience is the backbone of high-volume hiring. A more positive candidate experience for multiple applicants that go through the hiring process with your company means you will increase your employer brand over time. Improve the candidate experience by having an easy-to-navigate application platform, integrating video interviews, and offering regular updates to candidates throughout recruitment. For example, after an interview, send a personalized thank you note for their time in interviewing with you and provide a timeline for when the final hiring decision will be made.
