Hiring employees is never a cakewalk. It requires a lot of time and experience to select the person who perfectly fits in the position. The idea of hiring seasonal workers has mainly started to meet the needs of a client or customer due to the heavy workflow.
This gets implemented in all the businesses but retail business people are the main ones to implement this idea more frequently.
Retail businesses are ever working and there is always a continuous flow of customers in this business. Employee expected to work all the days in this sector and these businesses would have a lot of chaos during the festive seasons.
It’s not easy to handle a swarm of customers with a limited amount of employees. Whenever a customer ignored, the company is naturally losing the customer.
Whether it’s a small-scale or a large-scale business, none of the companies would desire to hire permanent employees to serve people during the festive season. They consider it as a cost-consuming process to hire people just for the sake of high sales during occasions.
Recruiting workers during an occasion makes the task much more problematic due to the competitors present in the market. It is a burdensome task for the companies to lay eyes on candidates so that the candidate not diverted and attracted to the offers and wages of competitors.
To overcome the competition in the market, the company has to follow a few impressive steps which help to nail the process of hiring during seasons.
Tips for Finding Seasonal Workers:
1. An attractive job description:
Job description plays an important role in any business. Capturing the attention of the candidates is the main aim. Therefore, be sure to taste the words before letting them out. Get into the shoes of the candidates to think about the words that attract them.
Describe the job in a most appealing way so that candidates get drifted towards the company rather than moving towards the competitors. The description of the company should have a mixture of words which are both appealing and moral.
Include anything which is eye-catching but nothing which is not beyond conscience. The job description is the first instinct to get workers, so do not ruin it and make it as catchy as possible. Succeeding in the first instinct helps to succeed even at the end.
2. Start early:
Do not wait till the holiday season comes to start the hiring process. Waiting till the last moment results in losing a lot of opportunities. The fault that every company does is waiting until the season arrives. As soon as the festive season arrives, every company is busy in their hiring process.
It is natural that the competition in the retail market is more compared to others. The large scale industries are a big competition on occasions. The big industries would snatch, all the available skillful employees leaving others behind. As there is no choice left, the small-scale industries have to compromise on the leftovers.
Small or Big, just understand that the company deserves the best employees and not the leftovers. Therefore, do not start the recruiting process just when all other companies begin.
Start it a month before the festive season starts. This reduces the competition and the probability of getting skilled and more number of people is high.
Therefore, it requires understanding that being a step ahead is never going to cause any harm.
3. Social media:
Do not overlook social media during the process of hiring. The technology has evolved to a greater extent and the network of people has increased to an enormous number due to social media. People can communicate with everyone including the ones in the remote areas.
Social networking has reached such an extent that it can be used for most of the people related activities. The information spreads faster to a huge number of people without much effort. Thus, make use of social media and share the information in all the social networking sites possible.
4. Target students:
Students should be the main target in the recruitment of seasonal workers. The benefits of hiring students are many. Students get easily attracted for the little rewards provided and the hiring cost would be largely reduced if students are recruited.
They do not demand and do accept easily the proposal given and even tend to spread the message faster than the others.
It is natural that the workers working during festivals should be as swift as possible while serving consumers. They need to juggle with different customers at the same time and negotiation and friendliness should go hand in hand during these seasons.
Hence students can be the best choice to hire as seasonal workers, as they tend to more red-blooded and high spirited.
5. Accept referrals:
Accepting referrals is one process of hiring people which is considered to be easy. The employees themselves can get the hiring job done for the company when the company doesn’t oppose referrals.
Employees understand the requirements and are likely to bring the ones which suit the needs of the company. Therefore never skip the phase of hiring candidates through employees as they would be quite beneficial to the company.
6. Perk them up with benefits:
Providing extra benefits is another way of attracting people to work for the company. Who doesn’t like something which is given for free of cost? It’s a human tendency to get attracted to goodies which are provided for free.
The company can use this idea to be unique among others. The company can announce that each employee gets a free gift from the company as a token of gratitude. The free goodies provided are equally important with the amount of money given.
Benefits need not necessarily be money. Benefits can be extra goodies like chocolates during Halloween, surprise gifts during Christmas, gadgets during Black Friday’s and so on.
These little things would attract people to a larger extent and make them drift towards the company without moving towards the competitor’s companies. These gifts wouldn’t cost much to the company but tend to bring the number of employees.
7. Repeat the same employees next year:
During the recruitment of employees, do mention that they will be called for the next season too. This will provide trust upon the company to the candidates and they feel secured to work with the company and are likely to join the company.
They even spread the brand name to different employees which also acts as one form of advertising.
The company need not compromise in taking the same employees the upcoming year when unsatisfied with the current performance. It could be clearly mentioned that only candidates who have done their best would get a chance of working the second time.
8. Reach out to other small-scale businesses:
Whenever in need, there is nothing wrong in reaching out to the other small businesses in search of employees. Small-scale businesses sometimes have many contacts and they can help in getting extra employees for the company.
Therefore do not hesitate to ask for a helping hand from the other business people as their suggestions and advice can be considered in finding the right employees. It is more likely that the workers referred by them will be reliable as they would prefer the one’s which previously worked for them. Thus, do not miss even a minor chance of getting an extra employee.
9. Interview process:
The interview process is the only way to check the caliber of the person. Here are a few profound points to make the interview process much effective and efficient.
Easy to mingle:
An introvert cannot be expected to speak and move along well with the customers. An ideal employee should be able to be friendly with the employees. Advice and suggestions are expected from employees most frequently, hence it is necessary to select candidates who can easily be socialized but within a limit.
Treat every customer as the first customer:
During the busy days, there would be a lot of havoc and chaos in the workplace. There would be distinct customers visiting the workplace. It requires that each employee meets the expectations of the customers.
The things which customers expect are greetings, helping them to find products, providing them with necessary information about the product and sometimes suggesting the best product in the market.
All the mentioned points are the basic things asked by a customer. It is easy to handle few customers at the beginning but people tend to lose patience as time passes by. The employee has to understand that, the information might be provided for the 100th time to the customer but it is the first time for the one who is receiving it.
It requires that the employees do not lose patience in giving information to the customers. Candidates who are aggressive and impatient cannot handle customers not only during the festive season but also in dull days.
Therefore the hiring staff has to differentiate between an impatient person and the one with patience so that the employee treats every customer as the first customer.
Should be able to negotiate:
It not only requires that the person is calm and friendly but also has to be able to negotiate. Being friendly doesn’t serve the purpose of getting hired and the candidate should also be able to negotiate whenever required. Therefore, negotiation and friendliness should go hand in hand for an employee.
10. Billboards:
Use billboards at places which people regularly gather for the purpose of advertising. The places which frequently used by students would accomplish the task much effectively.
The reason behind this is students are the ones who react faster for seasonal working jobs. They would mostly be in their holiday vacation during the festive season. Hence, it would a perfect time for them to work.
Thus, these billboards can be placed in areas where there are schools and colleges. Targeting such areas is a great way of advertising the business. The information written on the billboard should be attractive enough so that people would rush up to the workplace to get hired.
11. Contact external agencies:
There are many external agencies available in the market to look for the employees the companies need. These agencies offer a helping hand to contact and filter out the available people and act as a medium between candidate and company.
The agency takes care of everything and conducts interviews for the company to differentiate between profiles which are suitable and which are not for a particular job.
12. Offer certificates:
A lot of students get attracted to a company when the company is offering certificates. This turns out to be a good proof for the students as they assume that the holidays and the hard work of them didn’t go in vain.
Students who chose marketing as their career would take this as a golden opportunity and assume that they have wisely spent their time. Therefore offering certificates does no harm to the company rather helps in getting more number of employees to their business during the busy days.
13. Be good with employees:
Although this is not considered as a step of hiring, it is considered as a step to retain the employees who have been hired. Failing to achieve this step results in facing more number of obstacles in the festive season.
Since this is a seasonal job, understand that the company requires the employee more than the employee requires the job. A candidate may find another job whenever dissatisfied but it would be a daunting task for the company to replace the lost employee. The efforts placed in hiring the employee has to be maintained to retain the employee too.
Do not differentiate between regular and seasonal workers as both of them hire for the need of the company and are serving for the company. Whenever differentiated there is a chance employee might leave the job.
