7 Reasons to Recruit Staff in the Summer

Faced with the holiday season and looking at your resource requirements, you may be left in a quandary about whether to start your hiring process or not.  Your business may feel like it is slowing down as your staff and clients take their holidays so should you plough on and recruit for the talent that you need for your business or wait until things get back on an even keel?

Hiring in the summer period doesn’t come without its challenges. However, if you need people now, waiting another 4-6 week before you activate your recruitment plans may not be the ideal solution for your business either. The average time of a hiring process is 6 weeks, add this to the 6 weeks you have stalled in setting the wheels in motion and you have now had your vacancy for a quarter of a year! This will impact the morale of your staff that are working harder to compensate for the gap and may even create issues with holiday cover and productivity.  

Just because candidates may not be aggressively job seeking, does not mean that there isn’t any talent about. And here is the first reason to recruit staff in summer:  Advertising when your competition is not advertising can mean that your vacancy will have a greater reach and attract more of the right job seekers.  This is because you do not have to compete with everyone else in the market and because the good candidates, who are looking for the right opportunity, will be continuing their job search regardless.

More reasons to consider starting your recruitment plans in the summer include:

1. Holidays, flexible working and time off is the norm for the next 6 weeks, so your applicants will find getting last minute time off to attend interviews far easier than usual

2. Whilst the boss is away, more people will be using work time to look on job boards and they will also be more available to communicate with you during the day

3. Graduates are now aggressively job hunting as they are keen to get a permanent position.  Many may have holiday or contract jobs to see them through the summer, but they will be eager to get going with their careers by the beginning of September

4. You may have more time over the summer too.  Come September though, when you want to activate your recruitment strategy, your time (and your managers’ time) will become very precious.  This will probably mean you have less flexibility for interviews and could put unnecessary pressure on the whole recruitment process in general which can result in poor last-minute hiring decisions

5. Ensuring the resource gaps are filled ASAP to continue good morale and staff engagement should be a priority (after all you don’t want to lose anyone over this period).  You will need to train and induct your new starters and these slower months will allow you to do this in a more relaxed and welcoming environment.  Wouldn’t it be great to have a full complement of trained staff ready for when you’re busy period kicks off again?

6. Because you have less competition for talent, the candidates will be out on fewer interviews too.  This means that you have a much better chance of your offers being accepted and it will allow you to take them out of the market before the talent bun fight commences

We are not saying that it is easy – but then when is recruitment ever easy? Unfortunately, recruitment is a year-round occupation and just because it feels a bit slower (and hopefully hotter) does not mean that it should stop.  We have put together some key tips to help you beat most of the challenges that you will be faced with and you can download our “6 Step Guide to Summer Recruiting” here.

In the meantime, before you get your bikini on, have a think about your resourcing requirements and your time plans.  Many of our customers are getting their job adverts drafted before they go away so that we can push the recruitment advertising button whilst they are away, this means they can start interviewing immediately upon their return.