The coming holiday season promises another increase in consumer spending, and staffing and recruiting agencies can benefit as well as retailers. Here are five ways recruiters, staffing and temp employment agencies can get a piece of the holiday hiring pie.

‘Tis the Season for Holiday Hiring

Retailers, distributors and shipping companies are about to beef up staff, big time, in anticipation of another banner year for holiday ecommerce sales and many of them are going to turn to staffing and temporary employment agencies to get the job done. Amazon, Target and UPS will be hiring hundreds of thousands of seasonal workers this year.

And job seekers are interested, too. RetailDive reported “according to a recent Indeed holiday hiring survey, holiday job searches per million job seekers rose 11% in August from the year-ago period.” While some companies will create their own hiring systems, others will turn to temporary employment, staffing and recruiting agencies for help filling seasonal jobs.

5 Ways to Help Your Staffing Agency Grow by Satisfying Holiday Hiring Demand

1. Build a large pool of potential seasonal workers ahead of time.

Any of your current and past contacts could be looking to make a change or willing to take on a second job during the holidays, even if they are not technically looking for a new job. Reach out to your contacts now and ask for referrals as well.

Set up an online form just for people interested in seasonal work with a short application and create an expedited version of your normal recruiting and hiring process so that when opportunity knocks, you have a long list of potential seasonal workers who are ready to hit the shop floor – or warehouse floor – running.

2. Use invoice factoring to finance expanded recruiting and hiring activities.

Having a list of candidates who have already been vetted could give your agency a competitive advantage during the holidays that extends into repeat business next year. Job ads, background checks, time spent interviewing candidates and checking references – it all takes time. You might even need to hire your own seasonal help just to handle the increased workload it will take to build a large pool of seasonal workers.

Invoice factoring speeds up cash flow and gives you access to working capital that is tied up in client invoices; this is working capital that you can then deploy to ramp up recruiting efforts and develop a pool of seasonal workers who are ready to go to work immediately. Even if you are already factoring, we would be happy to provide you with a quote for staffing invoice factoring to ensure that you have the best cash flow solution in place for your agency.

3. Keep quality standards high.

Yes, you want to have a pool of candidates large enough to quickly meet employer’s demands for temporary workers during the holidays, but that doesn’t mean low-quality seasonal workers should get through the door. Your value as a temporary employer, staffing agency or recruiter lies in saving your clients time and money after the worker hits the floor. Any time a client has to deal with a less-than-stellar placement, the cost of using your services goes up, and your value to the client goes down. Don’t skimp on quality of candidates even during the holiday seasonal hiring rush.

4. Point out the value of getting a foot in the door.

If your initial call for seasonal workers doesn’t produce the number of potential placements you envisioned or you are looking to get a few really stellar candidates to consider seasonal work, remind contacts that the road to getting their dream job at their dream company might start by getting their foot in the door as a seasonal holiday worker.

5. Send out a packet of potential seasonal worker resumes.

You’ve got a pool of seasonal holiday hires ready to place; now what? In addition to reaching out by phone and email to clients, put together a marketing packet that highlights the number and quality of candidates that you have who are ready to rock and roll, by speaking to candidates backgrounds and experience, and using testimonials from their references – think of it as a holiday staffing catalog and design it accordingly as collateral that you can use throughout the holidays online and off.