2023 Holiday Hiring Survival Kit

As the warm weather wanes and the leaves fall from the trees, it’s becoming clear that the 2023 holiday season is right around the corner. That means it’s time for employers everywhere to start planning and executing their holiday hiring strategies. 

Now is the time that hourly workers start looking for seasonal jobs to make some extra cash for the holidays and try out new employers, but this year—between a rocky economic outlook, high inflation, and an ongoing (but cooling) labor shortage—things are shaking out a little differently. 

Keep reading to learn how to prepare your organization for the upcoming holiday hiring season. 

Holiday Hiring Stats

Now that the pandemic has ended, workers are again seeking seasonal, holiday work at levels approaching pre-pandemic norms, but interestingly, employers are not as readily offering those jobs.

With the exception of Amazon, which said it plans to add 250,000 U.S. workers for the holiday shopping season (67% more than the number of people it hired for the past two years), holiday hiring is expected to drop to its lowest since 2008—due to higher labor costs and weak consumer confidence. 

Demand for seasonal work is high, and supply is low, and these oppositional forces are beginning to show themselves in the data. According to Indeed Hiring Lab: 

• Searches for seasonal jobs are up 19% from 2022 to their highest level in several years and just 4% below their pre-pandemic 2019 baseline. 
• Seasonal job postings are currently down 6% compared to last year, continuing a downward trend in demand for seasonal workers.
• Just 3% of job postings note an urgent need to be filled this year, down from a peak of 10% in 2021.

Based on the data and holiday hiring trends, here are our top tips for surviving 2023. 

Get Your Job Postings Up Early 

With the current lull in holiday hiring, there’s an opportunity to get to the best talent first and lock them in before other employers scramble as holiday business picks up. Post your open roles as soon as possible, and get the word out with targeted marketing to beat your competitors to the punch. More importantly, hiring holiday workers early creates a wider window for quality, well-paced training and onboarding—ensuring that new hires perform better during the holiday rush so you can meet business goals. 

Get Laser-Focused With Recruiting 

With labor costs at all-time highs, employers need to get smarter than ever about hiring people with the right skill sets. This means meticulously crafting job descriptions to ensure that the right candidates apply and marketing jobs on the right channels to ensure you’re reaching the right people (since there’s little room for error this year). 

Conduct Background Checks On All New Hires

On that note, to hire the right people, employers still need to run background checks on all seasonal and holiday workers—especially since over half of Americans (55%) admit to lying on their resumes. While it can be tempting to bring many employees on board quickly—with no barriers—to meet demand, don’t forget your risk management best practices. 

Create a Quality Candidate and Employee Experience 

Though demand is high for seasonal work, America is still experiencing a labor shortage from a holistic, high-level perspective. That means you should take extra care when onboarding, training, and managing new employees during the holidays since some of those employees might turn out to be keepers. To promote retention, you should treat seasonal employees like full-time staff and create pathways for top talent to continue their careers with your organization. 

Speed Up Holiday Hiring Cycles

As holiday hiring picks up, competition for top talent will get increasingly competitive (despite the current lull). Top organizations nationwide are already solving this by speeding up their hiring cycles—and marketing that efficiency. 

This year, UPS launched a new program for holiday hiring (advertised as “Get a Job Offer in 20 Minutes”) in which qualified applicants can receive a job offer in as little as 20 minutes for key roles like package handlers, warehouse workers, and seasonal support via their streamlined, digital application process. Eighty percent of their seasonal positions do not even require an interview. A recent study by leading recruiting platform Top Echelon reports that 40% of candidates reject offers because another company made an offer faster, so it’s in your best interest to reduce the hiring time. 

P.S. If you’re looking to speed up hiring cycles while thoroughly vetting applicants to protect the business, partner with a background screening service that offers faster-than-average turnaround times, like S2Verify.