Five Winning Tactics to Meet Your Seasonal Hiring Needs Even in a Slow Economy

joseph cole·October 3, 2023·0 comments

With the holiday season, companies across the United States begin the process of augmenting their workforce to meet seasonal hiring demands. Big tech and many retailers anticipate high volume hiring, different sources reporting:

Amazon to hire 250,000 seasonal employees (compared to 150,000 in 2022)
Target to hire 100,000 seasonal employees
Bath & Body Works to hire 30,000 seasonal associates and 2,500 warehouse workers

Seasonal Jobs

Despite headlines about a slowing economy, recent Glider AI research reveals a staggering 725,500+ open part-time jobs, 243,000+ contract jobs, and 114,000+ temporary jobs in the United States. This data demonstrates an urgent need for companies to fill these positions quickly with qualified talent. Though these figures sound alarming, the number of open roles for seasonal workers this holiday season is the lowest since 2008–perhaps an indication of lower consumer spending.

In light of lower consumer spending expectations and slightly lower seasonal hiring jobs, filling staffing requirements is critical given historically low unemployment and a high average time-to-fill rate across industries ranging from 14 to 62 days. With the vast number of open jobs and low unemployment, compounded by long time-to-fill, companies still struggle to hire skilled talent.

High Demand for Skilled Talent

What makes some recruiting teams for permanent and contingent staffing successful during high-demand, high-volume seasonal hiring?

Historical customer data from Glider AI shows that seasonal hiring is an excellent opportunity for companies to improve talent quality, meeting both skill requirements and diversity goals, with a more robust screening process. Though counter-intuitive, the extra step reduced time-to-fill and reduced costs even for the most highly demanded roles.

Beyond early outreach to prep for seasonal hiring demand, data collected from over 300+ enterprises and staffing firms shows seasonal hiring success is predicated on the following five practices:

Use pre-screening tools, like text recruiting and AI chat, to engage and qualify candidates at high volumes.
Use AI and automation to help scale the creation of interview questions and next-step automation for qualified candidates.
Scale interviews with asynchronous video interviews, allowing recruiters to gauge fit and skill over pre-recorded conversations.
Initiate skill assessments to validate hard like technical competency and soft skills like communication and attention to detail.
Validate candidate integrity with AI proctoring that eliminates potential cases of interview fraud.

While some news headlines may suggest caution about hiring, many companies are still rammping up for the holiday shopping season.

While some news headlines may suggest caution about hiring, many companies are still ramping up for the holiday shopping season. With low unemployment and demand for skilled talent, the best approach is to validate skill and fit early vs. rushing and hiring the wrong people.