Finding the right people: improving the efficiency of your hiring process.

• Author: Dee, Kevin M.
• Position: HR Matters

Recently we received an email from friends who spend the winter working in Antarctica and the summer in Alaska running a seasonal guiding business. Their email read, "hope to see you before summer sucks us all in." It really brought home the explosion of activity and wondrousness that is spring, summer, and fall for most Alaskans. There's just so much to do and only twenty hours a day of sunlight to get it done. For many businesses this is a time of ramping up for the summer with new seasonal hires and the busiest time of the year by far. Hiring the right people that will help you get your job done and do credit to your company can be a mammoth task. There are several options for making seasonal hiring less chaotic and painful and improving the efficiency of your hiring process.

Is your process the best it could be?

The first and most important thing to do is to map out the workflow process you currently use for seasonal hiring. Mapping out the sources of your seasonal hires identifies ways for you to leverage your recruiting activities. It will also help you identify chokepoints where you are inefficient in your processing of potential hires and in bringing people online. For example, if it takes you five days to process applications, and another seven days before interviews happen, and another ten days before an offer is made, this may be too slow. The amount of time taken from receiving an application until a person starts work is a critical metric for seasonal hiring. If it's too slow, your workforce will not be ready when you need it most. By mapping out the hiring process visually, everyone can get on the same page as far as how much time it takes to process, interview, offer the job, and orient a new employee. Efficiencies and clear expectations can then be driven into the hiring process.

Finding the Right People

Some managers take a Forrest Gump attitude toward seasonal hiring. They see applicants "like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get." This doesn't have to be the case. Managers generally know the type of person they want working for them. With targeted recruiting that focuses on where similar people hang out, a better quality of applicant can be achieved. For example, a rural health clinic was having difficulty recruiting professional people that wanted to live in rural Alaska--despite having a higher pay...