Recruiting seasonal hotel employees in 2020

The benefits of low-cost travel have made the tourism industry one of the most profitable economic sectors to date, but it has also put a strain on hotel managers who now have to deal with additional employment issues. Recruiting seasonal hotel employees in 2020 will continue to create plenty of problems. Here is a simple guide that will help you sift through the job applications and hire the best workers for the high-season period:

Make your hotel attractive to potential employees

Every hotel goes through a peak season at any point during the year. For some lodgings, it could be wintertime, while for others it could be the hot summer days. For some very lucky accommodation houses, the high season lasts all year long.

Regardless of when the peak season is for your lodging, you must make your hotel attractive to potential seasonal employees. It means that you will have to offer the minimum legal conditions, such as:

• Minimum wage
• Overtime payment benefits
• Extra pay for working during the night, weekends and bank holidays
• Health insurance
• Special conditions for teens aged 14-17

Additionally, you will have to come up with a unique recruitment strategy that will make job applicants choose your hotel over other lodgings. Include the following tips in your employment policy to get the best seasonal workers in 2020:

Be clear about what you offer

Seasonal workers are interested in one thing more than others: the salary. Most recruiting agencies and employers like to make a long presentation about their payment package before revealing it. Or, in worse cases, they do not even mention it at all. The problem is that not a lot of applicants read the overly extensive proposition.

When constructing your job advertisement, you can include the salary figure in the title along with the job name. Remember that you are dealing with mostly millennials. People from this generation prefer quick answers and succinct information. You might have a better chance of getting some stellar seasonal workers with this small tweak of your job offering.

Explain compensations and obligations

Other aspects that seasonal workers are interested in when applying for a job are the compensations that they will receive. The best ones will look for employee benefits like:

• Contract period
• Housing
• Included meals (the more the better)
• Training period length
• Teambuilding opportunities
• End-of-season bonuses
• Re-hiring possibilities for future seasons

If this is the first time that you hire seasonal workers, you might want to check with other people in the industry and see what the trend is like for each of these conditions. By explaining most of them in your job offer the potential employees will get a crystal-clear idea of what they will receive in exchange for their work.

Now, it is time to present your terms or job requirements that will help you identify the right candidates for the job even easier.

Working schedule

Depending on the job, seasonal employees may have to work during the night, weekends and even religious holidays. Some of them may have early morning shifts while others would only start their bout at midnight.

Position-required skills

These requirements include the minimum, fundamental skills that a seasonal worker should have for a position. For example, waiters need to have excellent verbal communication, customer service, and high energy. Receptionists must have multitasking abilities, outstanding organization skills, and dependability traits among others.

Special abilities

Potential candidates must also comply with the special requirements of their seasonal jobs. For example, a seaside resort will need expert swimmers ad lifeguards. Sky resorts will need people that have reliable experience in skiing, snowboarding and dealing with the harsh weather conditions in the area.

Teamwork traits

When building a team of seasonal workers you must pick job applicants that have high teamwork skills. The perfect candidate should have high points for communication, conflict resolution, decision-making, reliability, and patience.

Where to recruit seasonal workers

The best place to look for seasonal hotel employees is online. There are unique new networks available today that didn’t exist previously, and we need to stay creative in order to remain competitive.

Next, you have social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. In this day and age, you cannot attract young workers to your company if you do not advertise heavily on these networks.

You can always go recruiting seasonal workers in the traditional way, which is newspaper advertising, street billboard promotions, and spreading leaflets and brochures in the surrounding area.

If your time and budget allow it, you may very well visit community centers, high schools, and universities where you can meet some of the job candidates in person. If that is not a realistic option, targeting resources that specialize in that area is your next best bet. Check out our friends at:
www.aboriginaljobboard.ca for indigenous recruitment options

www.canadayouthworks.ca for younger job seekers

www.newcanadianjobs.ca for newcomers and new immigrants

www.jobboard.lgbt for job seekers who self-identify as part of a diverse community

Last, but not least, you should always rent a stand at job fairs that take place in large university cities. Here, you can present your offer in detail and enhance your network of connections to recruit potential employees even easier in the future.

How to employ seasonal hotel workers in 2020

After receiving a substantial number of job applications it is time to go to the next stage of evaluating the candidates. Create a shortlist of potential employees that match the skills and requirements needed for your hotel job. Next, proceed to contact them and invite them to an interview, which may be in person or online through a visual conference.

You may even organize a recruitment event where they can all come and take part in relevant activities for the job. These events often operate as workshops in a friendly and relaxed environment. Here, you can test the social skills and the teamwork abilities of your future employees and determine if they fit the culture and standards of your lodging facility.

How to retain seasonal employees

When the high season ends, many hotels like to retain some of the seasonal workers as full-time employees. If you want to keep some of the people who have hammered away all season long, you can offer them a better salary package, additional free days and the opportunity to advance their career while working for your company.

If your business does not provide you with significant profits during the off-season, you will most likely not be able to retain any of the seasonal employees. In this case, you will want to ease the task of recruiting other workers when the new season will come along.

To make seasonal employees accept to work for you again, you can offer them loyalty bonuses for returning staff, significant end-of-the-season benefits and a competitive wage enhancement when they come back.

All in all, you will have to be honest, direct and approachable when recruiting seasonal hotel employees in 2020. By carefully constructing an employment strategy you can employ the services of high-quality workers for the next season and many more to come.