This seasonal hiring audio is courtesy of the team at Phenom, the talent experience platform.
Tom Tate:
This is Talent Experience Live. As I mentioned at the top of the show, I'm your host, Tom Tate. I'm on the marketing team here at Phenom, and the show is proudly brought to you by the team here at Phenom. We have a purpose of helping a billion people find the right job. It's a bold purpose. It's not a typo. It's a true billion. We are well on our way. We do that with our talent experience platform that helps candidates find the right fit faster. It helps employees evolve in their current role and beyond. It helps recruiters achieve some of that next level productivity and efficiency, and it helps managers build better teams with data analytics and automation.
Tom Tate:
As I mentioned, today we are talking about seasonal hiring, and you're probably thinking, Tom, it's May, why are we talking about seasonal hiring in May? Black Friday is 197 days away, and I know that's a very oddly specific number to know off the top of my head, but why are we talking about this right now when the season of seasonal hiring that we typically think about is so far away? But the reality is that even though it's just May, it's hire o'clock somewhere. Right. And to dive deeper into this, we are super excited to talk with Phenom product director, Adam Thompson, all about this topic. He's going to shade some light on some tactics and strategies that companies can employ to better their seasonal hiring.
Tom Tate:
So without any further ado, let's bring on Adam Thompson. Adam, how are you?
Adam Thompson:
Hey, Tom, doing great.
Tom Tate:
I am super excited to have you back on the show. You were with us in February talking all about high volume hiring, and this is very complimentary to that. So we're excited to have your expertise back to cover this topic. I have to hit you with the icebreaker though. Do you have a favorite season of the year that you typically look forward to?
Adam Thompson:
Oh, definitely. I think I've got to agree with almost everybody that's responded so far. It's got to be autumn for me. My reasons may be a little bit cornier than most. I heard this hilarious British joke that the season's called autumn, Americans call it fall because that's when the leaves fall off the trees. So[inaudible 00:03:33]autumn.
Tom Tate:
It's great. It's great. And here in Pennsylvania, it's a beautiful time of the year. You drive around, even up north towards the mountains, the Poconos, like it's great to see the colors changing. And again, for me it's that crisp in the air. I love it. It's just so nice. I'm going to ask you another question to kick things off. Have you ever had kind of a seasonal job? Did you ever work a seasonal role?
Adam Thompson:
I've never worked a seasonal role. My actual first job was as a cashier at Target though, so I've worked through busy seasons, but I wasn't a seasonal employee myself.
Tom Tate:
For me personally, I did work at a Best Buy. It was a very short stint, two and a half months. I worked during the Black Friday season. I was in the TV section, this was a long time ago, where you needed to know the differences between LED and LCD and all those things that were very new at the time, you needed to educate buyers. So that was a lot of, I want to say fun, but I'm not sure I would characterize it as fun. But it was a good experience nonetheless. It was definitely a valuable experience to have kind of in my repertoire back in the early aughts. But yeah, Adam, before we really dive into this for anyone who missed our episode back in February, why don't you just let us know who you are and what you do here at Phenom?
Adam Thompson:
Yeah, sure. So my name's Adam Thompson, I'm a director of product for all of our high volume solutions. Maybe I'll just... I'll probably tease out a couple times during today's conversation, but we've got a super exciting new high volume solution that is just about two weeks away from launch to the general public. So this is pretty perfect timing to kind of prime the pump for everybody.
Tom Tate:
Yeah. And when we think about some of the challenges that HR has been faced with over the past couple of years, the timing is perfect, right, for us really kind of lifting the veil on a lot of the solutions that you've been working on specifically, and the team has been working on. And one of the use cases of course, is seasonal hiring. Right. And kind of leveraging technology and leveraging intelligence to be able to do this effectively and efficiently. And when we think about seasonal hiring, for me personally, it's always been the fall. Right. It's always been Black Friday, it's always been retail based. But maybe that's not necessarily the case. Right. So when you think about seasonal hiring and when the team is thinking about seasonal hiring and how to solve for it, and when you're working with our clients, how would you define it? What is seasonal hiring to you?
Adam Thompson:
Yeah. So seasonal hiring, you're definitely right, that's usually... Most people's perception that it just kind of begins right after Thanksgiving and goes all the way through the Christmas holidays. That's definitely not what it is for other certain organizations. The way that we think about seasonal hiring is when a company needs to hire a large amount of employees for a set period of time. And that can be definitely different for organizations that are not necessarily in retail, or maybe they are in retail. I'm thinking maybe about a Lowe's or a Home Depot. And when I go to Lowe's and home Depot today, they are packed full of people buying all their gardening supplies right now. And they've got a little bit of a seasonal hiring peak at this moment right now. Some of our other clients might be lawn care companies. They might be healthcare companies that are staffing up to get ready for flu season. So it really just kind of depends on the organization.
Seasonal Hiring Timeline
Tom Tate:
Yeah. Do you think about it in terms of those peaks and dips? And it's not necessarily going to always be this huge peak. Right. This huge boom. It might be a slight peak in the spring and then maybe a huge boom in the fall. So is that kind of how your team thinks about it in terms of meeting the needs of the client?
Adam Thompson:
Yeah, it's definitely when there's going to be a peak at a certain period of time for that company, and then that peak will taper off as they're kind of coming out of their peak season. But again, it's just when that timing falls in the year it can be different for different organizations.
Tom Tate:
So I want to dive a little bit deeper. I know there are a lot of different myths that surround seasonal hiring, a lot of misconceptions. Right. And we just touched on one, it's only for the winter holidays. Right. So what are some of the different areas that you've been seeing where seasonal hiring does kind of hit that peak or that bump? You mentioned lawn care, but are there any other seasons where industries really need to start ramping up or think about ramping up?
Seasonal Hiring Misconceptions
Adam Thompson:
Well, actually my favorite holidays coming up in June and it is a big seasonal peak in June for Prime Day. I don't think it's an officially recognized American holiday, but everybody who uses Amazon Prime knows when Prime Day is on in June. So they'll actually be ramping up by about 75,000 employees ahead of Prime Day. And then some of that need will taper off right after Prime Day is kind of completed and all those packages have gotten shipped out. If we think, maybe not so American centric, and think about singles day in China, China has a tremendous peak. Singles Day, if you're not aware it's November 11th. So 11/11 is the big holiday kind of a parallel to Prime Day, but in China. So tremendous, tremendous hiring peak we'll hit them at that time.
Tom Tate:
And I think a lot of times we also bucket in seasonal hiring and seasonal jobs with entry level jobs. Right. Entry level retail jobs, or entry level fulfillment jobs in the case of Amazon, not always the case though. So when do you typically see seasonal hiring kind of branch out from those jobs that require entry level skills versus things that are a bit more specialized?
Adam Thompson:
So you're right. The predominant seasonal hiring is more towards kind of the entry level roles. Though entry level doesn't necessarily mean low qualifications in some cases. So if we think about kind of going back to Amazon, or if we look maybe more broadly at delivery like FedEx, UPS, they all need a tremendous number of people that have, for example, CDL licenses to help deliver those packages and anybody who's hiring CDL drivers right now knows that tracking down hiring and retaining CDL drivers is incredibly difficult. So that's kind of maybe a role that could be a seasonal hire, but has a little bit higher level of qualification needed.
Seasonal Hiring in Healthcare
Adam Thompson:
And then if we look maybe beyond that, we could be thinking about going back to healthcare, coming up on the flu season, there's going to be a lot of need to hire a high number of people for kind of some of those acute care roles. And though it's probably people's least favorite day of the year, but in April when it comes time for tax season and then the three to four months preceding that a lot of those companies thinking about Intuit or any of the other like H&R Blocks that need to hire an extremely high number of tax professionals, it really begins in January and kind of begins to taper off at the end of April. H&R Block, for example, I believe last year hired around 80,000 tax professionals to go from January to April huge[inaudible 00:11:07].
Tom Tate:
Even the IRS I saw were hiring to be able to manage kind of the load. Right.[inaudible 00:11:14]-
Adam Thompson:
Absolutely.
Tom Tate:
... the backfill of all the returns that needed to be processed. When we think about kind of the traditional way that organizations would have handled seasonal hiring, we talked a lot about this in our previous episode though.
Adam Thompson:
Yeah, exactly. We did.
Tom Tate:
We'll drop a link to that so people can go back and check out that full episode. But the traditional way. Right. Staff up your staffing organization and what does that look like traditionally for an organization who just... They just throw more people at the problem?
Adam Thompson:
Yep. Throw a bunch of people at the problem, hire a whole bunch of recruiters, which... By the way, it is incredibly difficult to hire recruiters right now. Just a quick anecdote, last I checked, there were eight recruiter roles available for every one recruiter that's in the job market. So trying to even find those people to throw out the problem will be a challenge for a lot of businesses. And then of course hitting as many... A big push on digital marketing for their roles, which can be quite expensive, and then we will obviously begin to see tons and tons of in-store displays go up. That traditionally, it wasn't great, but it could kind of get the job done for some companies. Unfortunately, the job market is incredibly tight right now. There's 11.5 million open jobs in the economy today. So those traditional methods are probably not going to get the job done when you need to hire thousands and thousands of people in a really short amount of time.
Tom Tate:
Have you found that kind of the competitive landscape for these types of roles have amped up over the past couple of years maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago, probably longer? When I'm thinking about when I worked at Best Buy, being an Amazon driver wasn't really something that was a competitive point for me. You know what I mean?
Adam Thompson:
Absolutely.
Tom Tate:
Here at my local retail stores, and I was an available worker, so I would get in there and apply. But I'm curious did you run into over the past couple of years, organizations facing more competition to try to attract and engage these types of seasonal workers?
Seasonal Hiring Challenges
Adam Thompson:
Absolutely. So there's kind of two axis to look at this problem through. One is you're competing against a wider set of competitors for talent today. So retailers are not just competing against other retailers. Retailers are competing against different delivery companies. They're competing against gig work like Uber drivers, Lyft. They're competing against just an absolute, tremendous host of opportunities that talent has today. So that's one really important element to keep in mind. The other element is when it comes to just kind of the experience and process that candidates are having to go through. There are organizations today that a candidate can find an opportunity, apply for it, get screened and get an offer within 30 minutes without ever having to talk to a human.
Adam Thompson:
So if your process takes three to five days to get back in touch with a qualified applicant and kind of, oh, by the way, it took that applicant quite a long time to get through the process of finding a job that might match them and apply for it, and you're probably experiencing fairly high drop off throughout that process, you're going to be much less competitive than a company that can get an offer in a candidate's hands quickly.
Tom Tate:
Yeah. So speed and velocity matters now more than ever-
Adam Thompson:
More than ever.
Tom Tate:
... when we think about it. So let's get into it. Let's get into how companies can really stay ahead of seasonal hiring needs and not feel like the season crept up on them and they're struggling to compete, especially with so much competition. And also this new wave of contingent and kind of gig workers that are out there. When we think about the great resignation and many who have chosen that path, there are more workers now than there were maybe two or three years ago that are available, but it's just a matter of reaching them, engaging with them and getting them on board. So what are some of the ways that you've really point to for these organizations to stay ahead of their hiring needs?
Seasonal Hiring Should Start Early
Adam Thompson:
Start early is going to be one of the first answers. You've got to begin to prime that pump as early as you possibly can and keep your pipeline full at all times, and then keep regular engagement going out to those potential hires. If you know that your big hiring push is going to be 60 days from now, priming the pump could look like sending emails out, sending SMS campaigns out to those individuals and just kind of signaling and letting them know, Hey, we're about to have a bunch of opportunities opening up in 60 days, here's what those opportunities are going to be. Let's start exploring, let's start opening up that conversation early. So that's going to be one way that companies can kind of better cope with this challenge.
Adam Thompson:
Another is to really reboot and get back to face-to-face events. Face-to-face events are a great way to get people in the door, get candidates to be able to meet other candidates and kind of develop some early friendships with people that they might be working with. And I think a lot of people are kind of hungry to get out and meet each other again. So finding really easy ways to help facilitate bringing people back for face-to-face is a great one.
Adam Thompson:
And the there's two others that I would dive into. One is reach back out to the candidates who were with you last season. That is something that, kind of surprisingly, a lot of organizations struggle to do, whether it be because they don't have a great way to track actually, who was with them and be able to campaign back out to those folks. But being able to use, for example, a CRM and automations to retarget your previous hires can give you a really good leg up. And one thing that I would include in that is a way for those people who were with you last season to refer other friends. So maybe I can't come back this season, but Hey, I'll get a $25 gift card, if I can refer one of my friends and if they get hired, I get a quick 25 bucks. Of course, I'm going to take that opportunity to recommend somebody.
Adam Thompson:
So that can be a really, really good mechanism to help get some of those hires filled early. And I would say probably the most important thing is to begin to make it faster and easier for candidates to get through your process. That is ultimately, what's going to give you the biggest advantage against your competitors. And that comes from making it easier for candidates to discover jobs that are going to be a match for them. And one thing we know is a lot of candidates are very location conscious. So anything that you can do to better match them to the location closest to them is going to give you a nice leg up. Make it super quick and easy for them to apply.
Adam Thompson:
We're definitely seeing best practices no longer the multi page application form, where you've got to... It's almost like 50 questions in order to get a job. Really best practice now is more like eight, bare minimum, let's get the basics questions answered so that we can help push this person through the process and then not leave them hanging at the end, waiting for a human to review. Use automation to review and see if this person is potentially qualified and schedule them for the next step of your process in an automated way right up front. Those are really what the best practices look like.
Tom Tate:
And they don't sit in a vacuum. Right. They don't sit isolated. You could really use these in combination. Right.
Adam Thompson:
That's right.
Seasonal Hiring Apply Should Be Easy
Tom Tate:
As you're describing it, I'm thinking about reaching out to the alumni, reaching out to the potential boomerang employees that have served you last season. If you do that through SMS, you could potentially prompt them with kind of a apply by text experience. Right. So you're not even really making them jump through hoops after that.
Adam Thompson:
I want to take it a step further, and that's to say, don't think that a one size fits all process is going to work well. For example, if it's those people who are former employees, why not wrap them immediately to come in, have a quick conversation with a hiring manager and get an offer on the spot versus somebody who maybe hasn't worked with you previously. If they're a previous employee and they're on your rehire list, make that process super quick and easy for them don't maybe make them go through the same hoops that somebody who hasn't worked with you has to go through.
Tom Tate:
Yeah. And that's where CRM is critical. Right. Because you're able to have all of that data, all the historical data kind of consolidated. You can see what the previous employee or new candidate experiences have been like to date. You can see what the touchpoints have been, and it makes it easy to create those segments so that you aren't pushing everyone through the spray and pray one size fits all-
Adam Thompson:
That's right.
Tom Tate:
... method, which is super helpful. And then with your face-to-face hiring events that you mentioned, great tactic there. Are you also seeing or thinking about or recommending kind of the apply on the spot type of flow there as well, or is it mostly just for generating leads for future follow-up?
Adam Thompson:
So definitely what we're seeing is having an upfront, kind of a lead capture mechanism that could then route somebody to come in for an onsite or a hiring day. That's definitely a best practice that's out there. So to get somebody to come on site, maybe all you need is help them see that there's an opportunity nearby that's going to be a good fit for them, get their basic contact information and get them scheduled to come in for that hiring event and then convert them when they show up. That's definitely a best practice instead of making the candidate jump through a lot of hoops upfront. For passive events, kind of like setting up an event that might take place at a retail store or anything like that, where it's kind of like almost an evergreen event that's happening onsite, those are still always going to be a great way to really convert your customers to become your employees.
Tom Tate:
When we think about the peaks and valleys. Right. And these types of organizations that are maybe more specialized, they need those certifications, they need people who are specifically scaled in a certain manner, do you feel like there's emphasis on retention that also needs to be put on those? I know that they're being hired for a seasonal role, but do you recommend that organizations also try to bake in opportunities or bake in strategy to make sure that we don't lose touch or that we are able to really keep those folks engaged if we want to keep them on longer or reach back out to them?
Adam Thompson:
Yeah. So, that's a great point. So one thing that we definitely have seen, I'll just use an example of when it comes to healthcare. There's obviously a lack of qualified employees in the healthcare industry overall, but if you're a company, a healthcare company, who's going to be doing some seasonal hiring. Once those people have been brought on board, there's definitely tools out there that can really help quickly match those people as they're kind of coming to the end of that seasonal employment with either another gig, kind of a based opportunity so that they can continue to be employed at the organization or quickly link this person to potential full-time opportunities within the business, instead of... So you're able to make use of the people that you've already got in hand who have been with you for a little while, instead of having to hire fresh from outside for roles that are already open, and that[inaudible 00:23:43]across the board.
Tom Tate:
Yeah. I can just imagine the cost savings like when we think about the full process. Whereas before, if you weren't using automation and you weren't using any type of technology to streamline the process, you're investing a ton to bring in seasonal hires-
Adam Thompson:
That's right.
Tom Tate:
... only to let them go when the time period ends. Right.
Adam Thompson:
That's right.
Tom Tate:
And then you're revving up the engine a year later and doing the same thing. Right. And maybe not necessarily bringing on the same employees, bringing on a whole new trough of employees. So if you're doing that, I can only imagine that you're just investing so much that you could otherwise be saving. And we also talk about the time investment of our recruiters. Because I also imagine that a lot of recruiters they're still hiring for those full-time employees. Right.
Adam Thompson:
That's right.
Tom Tate:
Those full-time employees that are specialized and this could really take them away from opportunities to engage with the 12 month, a year initiatives and challenges that they're also faced with. So if you're able to cut down on the time and kind of the efficiency challenges on that end, I can only imagine it leaves them free to continue to focus on the non-seasonal roles. Right.
Adam Thompson:
That's right. I guess Tom, if we reach back into your history as a seasonal employee with Best Buy. So if you had spent two and a half, three months helping them stock shelves, imagine coming out of that season, if you could have been instantly matched to maybe a cashier position and maybe there's not one available at the location you've been at for the past three months, but Hey, by the way, there is one available two miles down the way at the next location. There's definitely tools that Phenom has available in our wheelhouse that could have helped you match to that opportunity.
Tom Tate:
Yeah. And creating that more unified ecosystem of data of candidates, of opportunities, of skills is all going to unlock those possibilities versus we just don't have the insight, so therefore thank you for your time and maybe we'll see you next year. Right.
Adam Thompson:
That's right.
Tom Tate:
Which is typically what we see. Awesome. So I want to make sure we kind of rehash and again, we'll put the link. Patrick already put the link in the chat here for our previous conversation on high volume hiring. But I wanted to just give you the opportunity, Adam, really just to reemphasize some of the basic needs that we covered for organizations and some of the best practices that you covered there too. I know there were at least three or four things that we really touched on because I think it's critical that we keep talking about these and keep these at the forefront, and they're all super relevant to seasonal hiring as well.
Adam Thompson:
Yep. So maybe the quick recap, reach out to last season's hires, get them to see... Push a referral program to them, offer some kind of a reward, so maybe even if they can't come back, they can invite somebody else that they know. I would also say, bring back the face-to-face. Face-to-face should to be here to stay again, and that could be a great channel to kind of reignite. Pull in automation. You can't just throw humans at this problem any longer. Automation to help streamline and make this process easy for candidates, recruiters and hiring managers is going to be a big key.
Adam Thompson:
And if I had to kind of say a last word of wisdom here, start making some of these process changes now and test them out now, before you're needing to hire in bulk. For example, if you were going to begin to apply an automation framework to help candidates, maybe get through your process more easily to be turning that on for the first time when it's kind of game day versus testing it out in 20, 30, 40 locations and feeling out how that process change is going to impact the business in advance, much better to begin to do it early.
Tom Tate:
And you can do pilots. Right. You can test stop pilots. You don't have to roll it off to your entire organization at once.
Adam Thompson:
That's right.
Tom Tate:
And a lot of these types of roles that have availability at different locations makes it easy to run pilot programs. When we think about the technology that you're working on here at Phenom around this, kind of my last question, what are you most excited for? I know we're a couple weeks away. Right. So we don't want to really pull the lid off too much of what's coming. But I'm kind of curious if there's one element, if there's one piece of technology that when you think about it, it's really like this one thing gets me excited, this one thing is really going to change the game. What is that for you?
Adam Thompson:
All right. I'll tease out two things.
Tom Tate:
Sure. Yeah.
Adam Thompson:
But I can't show you pictures. I can't-
Tom Tate:
That's fine. Yeah. No screen sharing. That's fine.
Adam Thompson:
Yeah. I won't share my screen, but I'm super excited about what we're calling a workflow automation engine that allows you to build different workflows for different types of jobs, different locations, potentially, and can fast track different types of candidates based on qualifications they may possess. So for example, we can help fast track a candidate who's a referral versus somebody who maybe doesn't have a relationship with the company yet.
Adam Thompson:
So that's one thing I'm super excited about. I'm also incredibly excited about our new candidate experience, where a candidate can discover an opportunity, apply for it, get screened, and the candidate can actually select the next step that's right for them. A company can decide which ones they want to make available, but the candidate could either go through an inline video interview. They could schedule an interview or if it's a role that's in high need, they could select, I want to talk now and be instantly put in touch with a recruiter or hiring manager. Think about maybe where there roles where there's a big gap, like CDL drivers, nurses, et cetera. So allowing some of this to be in the candidates hands and really let the candidate drive their own experience and their own hiring process. I'm super excited to get that out to the world.
Tom Tate:
Yeah. Employees, candidates, everyone has individual preferences. Everyone wants to feel their own agency.
Adam Thompson:
Yeah. That's right.
Tom Tate:
So to build that into the platform. I love it. So we'll be on standby to check that out in full force in just a couple weeks. Adam, we'll be happy to have you back on a future episode or I'm sure we'll have plenty of content that we'll be creating here on the Phenom side to showcase that. Again, any final, final thoughts before we wrap things up. This has been super helpful for me just to glean some of your wisdom, but any final thoughts for any organizations out there?
Adam Thompson:
Don't wait, get started. We're here to help.
Tom Tate:
Awesome. Well, Adam, thank you so much. This has been super helpful and we will definitely definitely catch you on a future episode. Hope you have an awesome one.
Adam Thompson:
My pleasure, Tom. Thanks for having me.
Tom Tate:
Yeah. There you have it. Adam Thompson going through the dos and don'ts the ins and outs of seasonal hiring. Again, it's not just Black Friday through Christmas. It's happening now. It's happening now in different industries. It'll continue to happen in peaks and valleys and you want to be prepared. You want to have the right technology. You want to have the right strategies and tactics in place. One thing that we didn't really touch on, but I really hope that it was implied was how valuable this is for the candidate. Right. And how valuable this is for the candidate experience to be able to fast track their hiring experience, to have less friction, to not force them into that three page form with 60 questions, you've already scanned my resume, why am I re-entering all this information all over again, or I was already employee last year, why don't you have this kind of stuff on file? Why can't you help me here?