Tips for Hiring Staff for the Holiday Season

Is your business gearing up for the busy holiday season? The holiday shopping season can start as early as mid-October between purchasing candy for trick-or-treaters, groceries for family gatherings and Thanksgiving, and retail shopping for the perfect holiday gift. Stores will start to get crowded and businesses need to prepare by hiring their seasonal staff members. 

This time of year as a business owner or manager can be overwhelming, here are a few tips to make hiring for the holiday season a little less stressful. 

 

Start early!

Start posting all of the staff positions that are needed for the holiday season on popular job boards as soon as you know how many employees and what positions you will need to fill. Starting early can allow you time to receive more applicants. This will reduce the stress of last minute hires as things get down to the wire.

 

Provide employee perks

In a competitive hiring market, providing employee perks can increase your number of applicants and create happier employees. Providing an employee discount to sell your products and merchandise to these new employees comes as a bonus to you as well. Attract more employees by providing a signing bonus and keep your employees happy by providing retention bonuses. 

 

Make your application process mobile-friendly 

At a time where it is crucial to receive many applications, making the process mobile friendly will make the process not only easy for candidates to apply but for management to keep track of all applications in one place. Some popular mobile-friendly job sites include; Indeed, Monster, Glassdoor and Snagajob.

 

Plan your recruitment and interview process

Does your business provide enough space for mass hiring/training events? If not, consider renting out a private office space or conference room for a few months to ensure you can efficiently interview, hire and train your candidates. Businesses like Office Evolution allow for you to rent meeting rooms by the hour and private offices by the month.