Seasonal Hiring: Quality vs Quantity

Written by Karsen McKinney.

Tis the season of “I need more people!”

Quarter 4. Year-End. The Holiday Season = Production, Production, Production! It doesn’t matter if you’re a small retail business or a large distribution center. If you’ve got product to produce, sell, or distribute at this time of year, you start to feel like a mad man. From setting production goals to putting your plans in place for the actual how of it all all while wrapping up your year-end, no matter how many times you’ve done it, you still feel caught by storm.  Somehow in all that, hiring and training new employees can easily trample the other implementation plans you had. Your goal? Don’t let it.

Is it okay to sacrifice quality during seasonal hiring?

In order to get people working and move on to bigger things, you might be tempted to overlook warning signs of low quality employees.  Is it worth it? Let’s consider the things that come along with poor quality employees or even just a culture mismatch:

• low productivity
• high absenteeism
• negative coworker experiences, oh yeah and…
• on the job injuries.

If you keep quality as a priority even when you need several people, you will be able to get these people ready & in action much quicker and much more efficiently.

Screening seasonal hires just as you would permanent hires will save you time and money in the long run. Your seasonal staff may be a great fit for your company and deliver results that earn them a permanent position.

Do you need to increase your manpower by a significant amount? Start with these tips to hire quality.

1. 1. Maximize your recruiting efforts.  The unemployment rate is low, which presents a hurdle for hiring in bulk this holiday season. You’re going to need to use a variety of tools and methods to reach applicants.  We recommend social media, job fairs, referral incentives, and digital advertisement to begin. Does this sound like more than you can manage right now? We’re ready and equipped to bring you quality candidates for your project size.
   2. Set a clear process for taking applications and screening applicants. Outline expectations for applicants to make the process easy and accessible. What types of testing are you using to weed out candidates that do not fit your criteria? You need a way to qualify candidates. When hiring in bulk, we recommend doing on-the-spot interviews during your first point of contact with applicants. Then, pre-screening them in groups.
   3. Have a system in place to track your applicants. Make sure there are ways to note the tasks that have been completed in your hiring process for each applicant. All of your information should be in an easily accessible, central location. Our recruiters work alongside a comprehensive applicant tracking system to streamline tasks and decrease turnaround time.

HireLevel can scale and customize our staffing strategy to your project size. Hiring a large amount of employees can be overwhelming not to mention time consuming. With the ability to screen over 150 candidates per day, HireLevel amplifies the quality and quantity of candidates we bring in the mix while reducing costs and turnaround time.

Whatever seasonal hiring might look like for you, we will get to know your business goals and bring you the right people who will do the best job for the duration of their role.

If you would like more information about our services, contact us today so we can help you take your business to a HireLevel.

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