For companies looking to hire hourly employees, an efficient recruitment process is essential to secure the employees you need for a fully-staffed team. Whether you’re hiring seasonal sales roles, need assistance in the stock room or are looking to fill service industry positions, use these seven strategies to streamline hourly-position recruitment to help attract and hire talent.
1. Use social media to tap existing customers
Existing customers are already familiar with your company and engaged with your brand. This customer base can be a valuable resource to hire for hourly roles. Leverage social media to tap into current customers by sharing information about job opportunities. With recruiting technology, automate posts to social networks, to convert customers into new employees.
2. Accelerate the application process
Does your job application require candidates spend 30 minutes completing a detailed questionnaire? Hourly workers often apply to many jobs, casting a wide net to secure a role as quickly as possible. A long job application will lead these candidates to drop out before hitting submit. Instead of using the same application across all roles, implement an application process specific to hourly or seasonal positions. Simplify the application by collecting only essential information, optimize for mobile and test to ensure the application takes less than five minutes to complete. Increase the likelihood that an hourly candidate submits their information, so you can quickly move applicants to the next step of the hiring process.
3. Leverage texting to connect with candidates
Hourly employees often work in jobs that aren’t behind a desk or in front of a computer. Relying on traditional email communications may not be effective to reach these groups. To hire for hourly or seasonal roles, post signs in your storefront encouraging candidates to text a short number for more information on job opportunities. Leverage mobile recruiting apps to automatically direct these candidates to a job application or talent community sign-up form, and quickly capture candidate data. After a prospect shows initial interest, leverage text campaigns to advance applicants through the recruitment process without lengthy emails or phone calls.
4. Share talent pools across business locations
When a candidate applies for a job at a retail location that isn’t currently hiring, how is this information shared with nearby, actively hiring locations? If a central candidate database doesn’t exist to share talent data, the result will be a lost prospect. Implement recruitment CRM software to build a candidate database and share it between company locations. With recruitment CRM technology, every stakeholder has a real-time view into candidates who may be qualified, and when they last applied. Speed hiring by cultivating a pipeline of talent for future positions. Every business location can access, source and hire from this pipeline when the next role opens.
5. Provide tools every team member can easily use
How do you support hiring initiatives when a store or restaurant manager leads recruitment for a location? Hourly employee hiring is often decentralized, and isn’t always managed by an experienced recruiting team. To recruit efficiently, these hiring managers need tools to oversee candidate pipelines, while quickly and easily reviewing candidate qualifications. Talent acquisition software enables hiring managers to build and manage candidate pools. They can quickly review digital resumes and search through millions of candidates in less than a second, to successfully source, recruit and hire hourly employees. Retail managers aren’t recruiters; set them up for talent acquisition success with tools to streamline hiring.
Learn more about the tools your team needs to effectively manage the hiring process.
6. Enable candidates to schedule interviews instantly
With many employers ramping up holiday season hiring, hourly workers won’t wait weeks to hear back from your company or coordinate scheduling logistics. Incorporate brief pre-screening questions into the application to advance candidates directly to the interview, without a delay to facilitate scheduling. Self-service scheduling lets candidates pick an interview time based on pre-determined slots. Automate candidate advancement directly from application to interview, to provide immediate reward on a prospect’s initial engagement with your company. Self-scheduling also helps hiring managers achieve hiring goals without the significant time investment of reviewing and scheduling every candidate.
7. Simplify candidate feedback collection
Waiting on interview feedback can delay the hiring process and lead a seasonal candidate to accept another position. Accelerate hiring by simplifying the candidate evaluation process. Eliminate lengthy paper forms and illegible interview notes. Instead, enable hiring managers to quickly evaluate candidates on a mobile device after the interview. Include only critical evaluation criteria interviewers can quickly fill out from their phones. Streamline the evaluation process to speed time-to-hire and quickly bring hourly employees on board.
