Its that time of the year again when everything turns into all holidays, all the time. The time when every store is confused about what to celebrate first with multiple isles of Halloween, Thanksgiving and the MASSIVE Christmas section.
I think we can all admit that September through December, Holiday preparation takes over.
What’s wrong with that, right?
Except if you are hiring. Dealing with the stress of hiring during the holidays is intense.
Here are my Tips and Mindset Shifts Needed to Hire During the Holidays
- Embrace the process
- Streamline
- Have a Fast System
- Delegate
- Go Where Your Avatar Hangs Out
- Always be Hiring
Embrace the Process
There’s nothing more important than taking over your mindset and truly embracing the hard stuff. In order to be successful in hiring for your pet business during the holidays, it’s going to be necessary to first ensure your thoughts are where they should be.
Are you thinking about how awful it is?
Or are you thinking about how you’re going to completely rock out hiring and get amazing new staff?
Embrace people looking for seasonal help.
Keep in mind, your business will become very busy during this time of the year. From family vacations to people maybe not wanting to walk their dogs in the snow, holidays can be great for business.
Streamline
You’ve heard me talk about the importance of streamlining your social media process and with the same importance, you also need to streamline your hiring process.
Everyone’s busy and no one has time to wait around for a two or three-week hiring process. They want to jump in with a four to five day hiring process. Trust me, it’s true!
Not only is this beneficial to the applicant but it’s faster for you to get through more applicants at a time. At the end of the day, being quick will make you look better to the applicant because it appears that you are engaged and serious about hiring.
The easiest way to do this is by using hiring software, like JazzHR, that will allow you to automate and add in hiring phases. Recently, one of the Mastermind group members tested out the new JazzHR text option, where you can text applicants from the software.
Here’s what she had to say:
Fast System
A fast system doesn’t just mean creating a quick work flow through applicants, it also means setting up your system in a way where you’re able to quickly find each applicant, where they are at in the hiring phases, and how they responded to each phase. I like having about three to five different phases for the applicant.
In the first phase, I will ask them questions to get to know their character. For each question, I score them from one to five.
In the end, I’ll add up their total points and if they meet the score I decided ahead of time that they needed to meet, then I will move them on to the next phase.
I’ll always recommend that at least one of these preliminary phases either be through knock out questions or a video recorded by the applicant.
This gives you the opportunity to weed out people further based on an actual interaction or, for video, their comfort level in getting out there and doing something out of the ordinary.
Delegate
Delegation is one of the most underrated methods of self-care. The simple act of allowing others to do the work that you don’t need to do yourself takes some stress off your plate and frees up your schedule to focus on more important things.
If you have phases with scoring involved, delegating the task of hiring can be super easy. All you need to do is ensure that the person in charge of hiring knows what you’re looking for and what your ideal applicant looks like. Make it a mathematical equasion.
Before the final meeting phase, you can review the applicants and schedule them for an in-person interview with yourself. That way, you saved a bunch of time not reviewing all of their answers and you’re ultimately still the person in charge of if they work at your business or not.
Go Where Your Avatar Hangs Out
In order to properly set up your hiring process, you need to know who your ideal applicant is. For the holidays, it can be anyone from a snowbird traveling south for the winter or a college student home for the holidays that are looking to pick up some extra cash. I actually did a free 3 hour clas on this that you can take called Jump and Scale.
If you’re open to the idea of temporary workers, make sure that’s known in your hiring posting and advertise directly to that audience.
Imagine this: “Are you home for the holidays and looking to earn some extra Christmas money while loving on pets? This job may be the perfect one for you!”
I actually liked temporary applicants when I had my business becasue they were typically avaialble during the times when my pet sitting company had in influx of clients like the holidays, school vacations, and the summer.
Once you identify your ideal applicant, figure out where they would spend their time. Are they people who would hang out in your local coffee shop in the middle of the day? Maybe people attending pet holiday parties?
Figure out where they are and attract them.
Always Be Hiring
Do you hire for the Holidays or hire for long term employment?
The answer is simple.
Do both.
Don’t limit yourself by looking for employees that are only going to be long term if you’re able to staff for your Holiday rush.
Always be hiring. It’s the best opportunity for your company to ensure there are always going to be enough staff. I like to say to have more staff than what you need. I know the next thing you are thinking is “But what if I don’t have work for them?” and I would say that isn’t your problem. Be honest with them about where you are at, why you are attracted to them, and opportunities for them to help you market for new clients while we wait for their route to build up.
Hiring Doesn’t Have To Be Stressful
Hiring doesn’t have to be a stressful event where you burn yourself out keeping track of every applicant at different stages in the hiring process. You do not have to waste your time searching through resume after resume and doing endless amounts of interviews that just don’t match up with your company culture.
Embrace the idea of hiring for your pet business during the holidays, streamline your hiring process, make the system fast and apply phases, delegate the task of sorting through applicants, go where your avatar hangs out and always be hiring.
Interested in learning more about JazzHR?
Check out my post Secrets to Success on JazzHR vs. Indeed for Pet Sitters and Dog Walkers.
You can also get started with JazzHR here.
