The festive season brings a surge in customer numbers, but it also puts significant pressure on hospitality businesses, requiring more help.
We understand, and we are ready to help.
In this blog, we have detailed how you can optimize your recruiting and onboarding processes with recruitment software, also known as applicant tracking systems (ATS), to help make seasonal recruiting easier (plus you can use these tips to make general recruiting throughout the year simpler too!).
The unique challenges of seasonal hiring
The seasonal period is unlike any other.
Customer expectations and demands are skyrocketing while many hospitality businesses struggle to find limited talent, creating specific challenges:
- Tough competition: You’re not just competing with other hospitality venues as retailers, logistics companies and pop-up events are all looking for temporary staff from the same talent pool.
- Short and sharp season: the window for holiday trading is concentrated, meaning you have little time to train and prepare new starters.
- Skill requirements: to meet seasonal demand, you may need staff with specialized skills, such as making cocktails for celebration parties or even ice skating attendants for temporary rinks.
- Maintaining morale: The festive season is demanding for everyone, with long hours and high pressure taking its toll on new and permanent staff.
Four ways software can support hospitality recruiting
Let’s start with the practical advice.
Here are our top tips for using software to help you manage recruitment during your busiest periods.
Vacancy authorization
Thanks to automation, recruitment software helps reduce the time-consuming vacancy authorization process, avoiding bottlenecks that often occur in manual processes.
For example, if a vacancy is pending approval, recruitment software will send automatic reminders to relevant people, helping to minimize delays.
Within the system, you should also be able to get a clear picture of where each of your vacancies are, allowing you to quickly spot delays to avoid delays.
Role advertising
When advertising your role, recruitment software can also be useful.
This software allows you to post job vacancies across multiple platforms with just a few clicks, reaching a wider audience more easily.
Notes: You can even completely automate the process for recurring or frequent roles!
Plus, with recruiting software, you can easily manage and monitor responses from multiple channels in one place, helping save time and ensuring you don’t miss out on potential candidates.
Application form
The overall goal of your application form is to ensure that you have enough information so that you can make an informed selection decision, without asking candidates to jump through hoops or wasting a lot of time.
However, the level of information required can vary significantly from one role to another.
This can be made simple through the use of intelligent software.
Recruitment software provides customizable templates so you can quickly prepare forms that collect all the necessary information without overwhelming or losing quality applicants.
Short list
If you are experiencing success and are inundated with applications, recruitment software can also help.
The system can quickly highlight items that do not meet minimum requirements and help rank items that do.
Plus, you can quickly see if candidates have the specific skills or experience you’re looking for, ready to advance to the next stage.
Five additional tips for hospitality recruiting
While software should be the backbone of your recruiting process, there are additional steps you can take to address seasonal demand.
Build relationships with local schools
Local schools, colleges and universities can be a great source of talent.
Connect with these institutions to find students interested in hospitality, recreation, and tourism.
Offering internships or opportunities to learn on the job can make your business very attractive.
Clear job description
Make sure your job description is clear, outlining the duration of the contract and expectations of the role.
Some seasonal staff also feel that they are not offered the same benefits as permanent employees.
Work to nip these perceptions in the bud.
Offer flexibility
Seasonal work is often attractive because of the flexibility it provides.
Try to meet this demand for flexibility by offering different shift patterns and supporting a healthy work-life balance.
This is a simple way to keep your team happy and motivated.
To increase flexibility, consider an Earned Wage Access (EWA) solution, which allows staff to withdraw a portion of their salary before payday – this can be a great benefit for seasonal workers.
Create a positive environment
Fostering a positive and inclusive work environment can help improve morale and increase retention among your seasonal and full-time teams.
As a starting point, recognize and reward outstanding performance, organize team social events, and set up clear communication channels.
Reflect and adapt
Review and reflect on your recruitment strategy, identifying what is working well and what can be improved.
Learning from your experiences and making adjustments will improve your efforts in the long run.
Orientation: preparing staff for success
To set your new hires up for success, make candidate engagement your number one job, moving them through the final leg of the hiring journey through a highly complex process.
Use recruiting software to provide a digital onboarding portal – something personalized that welcomes them to the team, outlines what they need to do, houses all the necessary documentation and gives them plenty of opportunities to get involved before their first day.
You can also improve your onboarding process by using software to automate much of the journey, such as sending important documents and supporting online signatures.
Automating these mundane but important tasks will also help overcome common obstacles, such as lack of communication or delays in the process.
Map out a good onboarding process
We often advise businesses to start with the basics and map out what their onboarding journey looks like.
Consider the following as a template:
- Verbal offer to candidate
- Reference
- Qualification and licensing checks
- Background check
- Occupational health examination
- Offer authorization
- Generate contracts
- Sign the contract
- Provide important information to new employees
- Start date, company documents, training links, etc.
- Request important information from new employees (new start form, banking details, uniform sizes)
- Confirm the candidate as an employee and send the details to the HR/payroll system
Make HR simple with IRIS
Hope the above is useful for you!
At IRIS, we understand the pressures that hospitality businesses face, which is why we proudly recommend our human capital-focused HR solutions.
Our systems and services are designed to empower businesses, giving them the tools they need to succeed.
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