Key Strategies and Tips for Attracting and Hiring the Best.
Spring is one of the busiest hiring seasons of the year. With hospitality and tourism businesses gearing up for warm weather hiring, and many additional companies vying for the best high school and college grads, now is the time to make sure you’re ready to attract and hire top new talent.
So expect tough competition this spring—and start planning your strategy now for attracting and hiring the best. To get a jump start on spring hiring and stay ahead of the competition, try our 5 easy tips.
Some Hiring Strategy Tips that Can Go A Long Way
- Snag the best talent early
Now is the time to do a quick check for delays and inefficiencies in your screening process. Any lags and weak links in your system can mean that by the time you get to hiring, the best candidates may already be at work—dazzling someone else’s customers.
The crux of effective seasonal hiring is to quickly screen applicants to a manageable and qualified group. There are a number of online screening tools that are easy to implement and can quickly streamline your recruiting and screening process. These tools not only cut your time and cost to hire, they also increase your access to quality applicants and improve your accuracy in pinpointing top candidates.
- Treat your applicants like customers
The image you project to applicants during the hiring process makes a powerful statement about your business. To reflect your brand as a dynamic, progressive company, you need to start building that foundation when you hire.
Today in our media-rich environment, applicants expect more. Why not give them a truly engaging, interactive experience? For example, more and more businesses are using simulation-based screening tools. Simulations not only provide the highest level of accuracy in predicting job success, they also provide a fun and realistic way to introduce applicants to the job. New technology also enables you to easily customize standard screening tools by adding key information specific to your company. Applicants that are engaged and excited about your company are more likely to connect with your customers, and they’re more likely to become customers themselves.
- Ditch time-consuming screening interviews. Go virtual!
If you’re still spending hours conducting phone or in-person screening interviews, you’ll likely be burned out by St. Patrick’s Day. No shows, late arrivals, delays, and time over-runs add to the stress and hassle of interviewing. Repetition and fatigue also take a toll on interviewer effectiveness and reduce the quality of each interview.
Virtual Interviews are an affordable and effective solution to the constraints of live interviews. With virtual interviews, scheduling is no longer an issue. Multiple interviews can be conducted simultaneously—anytime, anywhere. And with virtual interviews you can review interviews on your own schedule and at your own convenience. By switching to virtual interviewing, you take control of your time, schedule, and results.
- Listen for their smile
Sometimes we are so caught up in the hiring process that we forget our customers. Whether you’re hiring seasonal workers or full-time employees, remember—these are the people who’ll work directly with your customers. You might have the best product or service in the world, but if a customer has a bad experience with one of your associates, you may never see that customer again.
Providing world-class customer service starts with a smile. That smile is as important over the phone as it is in person. So when screening candidates, don’t just look for that smile, listen for it in their voice.
- Switch to just-in-time learning
With seasonal jobs, you can’t rely on traditional onboarding training methods to get your associates up and running quickly. Classroom training and “information dumps” just don’t work when you have a limited amount of time to introduce new employees to your company, your process, and your products.
With new simulation-based learning tools, new hires can practice and perfect their skills with virtual customers before they ever interact with your real customers. Imagine the change in your business if each new employee had the expertise to handle your most difficult customers or solve the most complex customer issues. According to Chief Learning Officer magazine, “Compared with traditional classroom learning, simulations help participants master content and new behaviors 40-70 percent faster.” When time is limited, just-in-time learning delivers just-in-time results.
Hiring Strategies Can Go a Long Way
With an efficient, engaging, accurate, just-in-time hiring and onboarding process, you can breathe easier this spring knowing the each new team member has what it takes to hit the ground running and to provide stellar service and support to your customers.