With the holidays rapidly approaching, many hotels and restaurants will experience a surge in customer traffic. While this is traditionally a slow time for hotel occupancy, other aspects of your business will be running at peak capacity. Corporate holiday parties often provide a steady supply of events throughout December, and holiday banquets on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years will bring in large numbers of guests who don’t have a family gathering to attend. These events can place a great deal of stress on your banquet, culinary and stewarding teams.
In many instances, your existing staff may not have the bandwidth to manage the volume of events occurring over the holiday season, and you may need to hire seasonal staff to help ensure all positions have adequate coverage. Therefore, it’s important to start thinking about your seasonal staffing needs now to get ahead of the busy rush.
The success of your holiday events often depends on your ability to hire quality seasonal workers. These employees play a critical role in delivering the exceptional service necessary to ensure you’re able to maintain a reputation as a top choice for companies to host their holiday parties, and for families to visit for holiday banquet meals. Make sure you have a plan in place to address this important need.
When planning your staffing needs for the holiday season, it’s important to identify the specific positions you’ll need to fill. Will you need to beef up your banquet staffing to accommodate the increased number of events you host? Do you need additional kitchen staff for specific events? Is your support staff team large enough to ensure each event runs smoothly?
You can determine your staffing needs by analyzing your holiday event sales and the number of seasonal holiday employees you’ve hired over the past few years. This will help you to more accurately predict the number of employees you’ll need for this upcoming season.
While possessing the skills necessary to do the job is essential for any employee, the traits that contribute to success in seasonal roles can be different than the traits you value in a person applying for a full-time position.
Some traits to prioritize when hiring seasonal holiday staff include:
Your prior seasonal employees are a great resource to mine when looking to fill the same roles for your upcoming holiday season. These individuals provide several important benefits:
Obviously, not all prior seasonal employees will be a great fit to rehire. You’ll want to focus on those employees who demonstrated that they are a good fit for the role.
After seeing which roles can be filled with prior seasonal employees, it’s time to conduct a thorough hiring process to fill your remaining open holiday positions. The following tips will help ensure this process runs as smoothly as possible and provides you with the best possible candidates.
When posting open seasonal holiday positions, make sure your job description is very detailed and accurately conveys the scope of the role. This will help avoid a situation where you receive a large number of applications from unqualified candidates.
Make sure your job descriptions include the following information:
You’re more likely to fill your seasonal roles with highly qualified candidates if you cast a wide net. Make sure to advertise your holiday positions on the following recruitment channels to reach the broadest possible audience:
Anytime you’re trying to fill a position at your business, it’s important to conduct effective interviews that help you determine which candidate(s) will be the best fit for the role. Seasonal holiday jobs are no exception to this rule. We’ve prepared a breakdown of the best interview questions for hospitality staff to help you get this important task right.
Your seasonal holiday employees are placed in a challenging position. They must jump right in and perform at a high level during one of your busiest times of the year. To set them up for success, you’ll need to provide effective training that will get them up to speed quickly.
Make sure your holiday employee training program includes the following elements:
Managing seasonal holiday staffing needs can be challenging and create headaches for your management team. It can often be easier to have a dedicated staffing partner to help you address this important function. At Xclusive Services, we have you covered.
Xclusive provides staffing solutions for a wide range of hospitality industry positions. We provide line level (hourly/entry and skilled level) staff, and our managers are available to support the recruitment, placement and partnership management of the staff we supply.
With our Xclusive Excellence™ commitment, you’ll have peace of mind that our seasonal holiday staff will be highly qualified and fit into your team with very little direction. In addition, we work with seasoned hospitality industry workers who take their jobs seriously and are committed to delivering the exceptional customer service your guests have come to expect.
As part of our Xclusive Excellence™ commitment, you can count on:
To learn more about how Xclusive Services can help address your seasonal hospitality staffing needs, please request a quote, or call a local office for immediate staffing needs.