It’s Not Just a Job

Do your seasonal recruitment efforts result in babysitting “warm bodies” all summer? Many organizations struggle with how to recruit quality applicants for seasonal positions. When they promote the opening as a “fun” job, they end up with staff who quit when things get challenging. Approaching the process in a more serious manner produces few applicants to choose from, especially for summer jobs.

Every summer, a colleague hires a large number of college students to work construction jobs in her firm. Over the past several years, she’s seen a noticeable decline in motivation. Her seasonal employees won’t work over time. They are consistently late, and fun seems more important than money to many of them. Is it her, or is this a national trend? Either way, what should she do about it?

It’s not her. Even in a slow economy we hear from employers around the country that the drive to earn summer money does not have the urgency for some that it once did. We can attribute this to a number of factors including larger allowances from older, more affluent Boomer parents. We might add to this the heavily-scheduled lives that teenagers lead. If you’re competing with sports and social activities, you’ll lose a good deal of the time. Finally, some students have simply budgeted for what they need. When they’ve earned that money, the life-balance argument wins out.

We’ve all found ourselves in similar situations. Perhaps you’re preparing right now to hire employees for this summer. In recruiting for seasonal positions, you’ll need to consider several factors:

• Your target market. What kind of students do you attract? Ivy League or community college? That’s not to say one is better than the other, but they certainly have different agendas. Where you advertise, and the job description you use, will have a direct impact on the applicants who knock on your door.

• Your selection practices. What questions do you ask? What methods do you use to determine attitudes about work and work ethic? Taking the time to put applicants “thru their paces” is just as important for part-timers as it is for full-timers.

• Your engagement efforts. What do you do to engage these young workers? Help them to understand the valuable work they contribute to the job. If you show you care, they will show that they care.

• Your retention efforts. Do you make a practice of recruiting students for multiple summers? What’s in it for them? Do you stay in touch during the year? Can they pick up work during spring and winter vacations? Maintaining the relationship is the key to retaining them over time.

This is the bottom line: Approach your seasonal hiring with the same care that you would approach the hiring for your full-time positions. If your attitude is that you need “warm bodies,” then you’ll get nothing short of that. In both your recruitment and retention efforts, target young applicants who are not only out to fill their coffers, but also who are looking either for consecutive summer employment or for a transition out of college and into a career.