How hospitality can simplify seasonal hiring

The festive season brings a welcome surge in customers, but it also places significant pressure on hospitality businesses, requiring more hands on deck.

We get it, and we’re here to help.

In this blog, we’ve detailed how you can optimise your recruitment and onboarding process with recruitment software, also known as an applicant tracking system (ATS), to help make seasonal recruitment easier (plus you can use these tips to make general, year-round recruitment simpler too!).

The unique challenges of seasonal recruitment

The seasonal period is unlike any other.

Customer expectations and demands skyrocket while numerous hospitality businesses all battle for a limited pool of talent, creating specific challenges:

• Intense 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.
• A short and sharp season: the window for festive trade is concentrated, meaning you have very little time to get new starters trained and ready.
• Skill requirements: to meet seasonal demands, you might need staff with specific skills, like cocktail-making for festive parties or even ice-skating marshals for a temporary rink.
• Maintaining morale: the festive season is demanding for everyone, with long hours and high pressure taking their toll on both new and permanent staff.

Four ways software can support hospitality recruitment

Let’s get down to the practical advice.

Here are our top tips for using software to help you manage recruitment during your busiest periods.

Vacancy authorisations   

Thanks to automation, recruitment software helps reduce the time-consuming back-and-forth of the vacancy authorisation process, avoiding bottlenecks that often happen with manual processes.   

For example, if a vacancy is waiting on approval, recruitment software will send the relevant person automated reminders, helping minimise delays.  

Within the system, you should also be able to get a clear view of where each of your vacancies is up to, enabling you to quickly spot hold-ups to avoid delays.  

Role advertising   

When it comes to advertising your roles, recruitment software is equally handy.   

The software enables you to post job openings across multiple platforms with just a few clicks, reaching a broader audience with far less hassle.   

Note: you can even automate the process entirely for repetitive or frequent roles!  

Additionally, with recruitment software, you can easily manage and monitor responses from various channels in one place, helping save time and ensuring you don’t miss any potential candidates.

Application forms  

The overall aim of your application form is to ensure that you have enough information from which you can make informed selection decisions, without asking candidates to jump through hoops or dedicate an excessive amount of time.  

However, the level of information required can vary significantly from one role to another.  

This can be made simple through the clever use of software.  

Recruitment software provides customisable templates so you can quickly set up forms that gather all the necessary information without overwhelming or losing quality applicants.     

Shortlisting   

If you’re suffering from success and you’ve been inundated with high volumes of applications, recruitment software can also help.   

The system can quickly highlight those that don’t meet the minimum requirements and help rank those that do.

Additionally, you can quickly see whether candidates have the specific skills or experience you’re looking for, ready to submit to the next stage.

Five additional tips for hospitality recruitment

While software should form the backbone of your recruitment process, there are some additional steps you can take to tackle seasonal demands.

Build relationships with local schools

Your local schools, colleges and universities can be a great source of talent.

Connect with these institutes to find students interested in hospitality, leisure and tourism.

Offering internships or chances for on-the-job learning can make your business particularly attractive.

Clear job descriptions

Ensure your job descriptions are clear, outlining the contract’s duration and the role’s expectations.

Some seasonal staff can also feel they aren’t offered the same benefits as full-time employees.

Make the effort to address this perception from the start.

Offer flexibility

Seasonal work is often attractive due to its inherent flexibility.

Try to meet these requests for flexibility by offering different shift patterns and supporting a healthy work-life balance.

It’s a simple way to keep your team happy and motivated.

To take flexibility a step further, look into Earned Wage Access (EWA) solutions, which allow staff to withdraw a portion of their earned wages before payday – this can be a fantastic perk for seasonal workers.

Create a positive environment

Fostering a positive and inclusive work environment can help boost morale and improve retention among your seasonal and full-time teams.

As a starting point, acknowledge and reward great performance, organise team social events and set up clear communication channels.

Reflect and adapt

Review and reflect on your recruitment strategies, identifying what worked well and what could be improved.

Learning from your experiences and making adjustments will improve your efforts in the long term.

Onboarding: set staff up for success

To set your new hires up for success, make candidate engagement your number one job, moving them through the final part of the recruitment journey via a high-touch process. 

Use recruitment software to provide a digital onboarding portal – something personalised that welcomes them to the team, outlines what they need to do, houses all the necessary documentation and gives them plenty of opportunities to engage before their first day. 

You can also improve the onboarding process by using software to automate a lot of the journey, such as sending key documents and supporting online signatures. 

Having these mundane, but essential, tasks automated goes a long way in also tackling common pitfalls, such as a lack of communication or delays in the process. 

 Mapping out a good onboarding process  

We often advise businesses to start with the basics and map out what their onboarding journey should look like. 

Consider the following as a template:  

• Verbal offer to the candidate   
• Referencing   
• Qualification and license checks   
• Background checks  
• Occupational health check   
• Offer authorisation   
• Generate contracts   
• Contracts signatures   
• Provide key information to new hire  
• Start dates, corporate docs, training links, etc.    
• Request key information from new hires (new starter forms, banking details, uniform size)  
• Confirm candidate as hired and send details to HR/payroll system  

Make HR simple with IRIS

Hopefully you’ve found the above useful!

At IRIS, we understand the pressure hospitality businesses are facing, which is why we proudly recommend our people-focused HR solutions.

Our systems and services are designed to empower businesses, giving them the tools needed to succeed.