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Your staffing plan probably begins with recruiting—and rightfully so. After all, hiring the right hourly employees can determine the success of your business. So, where can you find quality hourly employees?
To help you kick off your recruiting strategy, here are six ways you can reach (more and quality) hourly job seekers.
1. Post on social media
Today, it’s imperative that your company establishes and maintains an active social media presence. That’s because 72% of people use at least one form of social media. It not only reaches potential and current customers, but it also showcases your company’s culture to reel in prospective hourly employees. With that in mind, leveraging social media to advertise your job openings can help you reach a larger audience that falls within your target segment. At the very least, you'll be connecting with people who already know your brand and know what you're about.
Search Facebook for Groups in your area. People in your local community come to these pages to share events, discuss pertinent issues, and even buy and sell their own products. By posting in these groups, you’re getting your job listing directly in front of potential workers in your geographical community.
Twitter is another great platform you can use to find and hire quality candidates. Up to 58% of job seekers use Twitter in their job search. Most Twitter users range from ages 25-34 (28.9%) and 35-49 (28.2%), which means that you’d be sharing your job opening with a large pool of Millennials and Gen Xers. With plenty of features—like fast-trending hashtags, engaging with employees via retweets and quote tweets, or even searching for potential candidates through keywords—Twitter makes recruiting seamless and creative.
If you're hoping to reach a younger demographic, consider TikTok. The majority of users on this trending platform are Gen Zs. TikTok serves bite-sized content that’s entertaining and educational, and is a great way for potential candidates to find out more about your organization and its culture.
Most importantly, if you're using online channels to recruit, make the experience easy for your applicants. Most people today use smartphones to look for jobs, so optimize your job posting for the mobile experience.
2. Don't neglect your community
Hourly job seekers often prioritize jobs that are in close proximity to their homes. To let them know you’re hiring, place signs outside your storefront. This works especially well if you position your sign toward the high-traffic side of your restaurant. If you’re looking to elevate the experience, consider using text-to-apply posters, which make it easy for potential candidates to find out more information about your available positions. By scanning the QR code or texting the number on the poster, they can jump straight to all your job listings.
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See how Cinnabon uses Workstream’s text-to-apply poster to reach more prospective applicants. |
Another method worth considering is placing advertisements in public library bulletin boards and your local newspaper. This allows you to reach broader groups of active job seekers at once.
3. Use online job boards
Online job sites like Indeed and Craigslist are great for advertising your job listings. These job boards are visited by thousands of active job seekers on a daily basis.
And, if you’re looking to broaden your reach—consider broadening the job boards you post to. With Workstream, you can post your job listings to 14 job boards at once and view all applicants within a single dashboard. This streamlines the entire recruiting process, and saves you from the hassle of copying and pasting job descriptions across multiple job boards.
4. Ask for referrals
If you are giving thanks to your employees and have a great relationship with them, employee referrals are one of the best ways to source for quality employees. Chances are that your valued employee knows someone who shares their same worth ethic and hence, will be able to recommend someone that is the right fit for the job opening. In fact, Harvard Business Review found that referrals generated 70% more good hires than non-referrals, for every 100 applicants. What’s more, the retention rate of these referred employees is at a high of 46%, reducing the costs and effort needed to look for new employees.
You can also choose to incentivize your employees to get more referrals. To ensure that the recommended hires are the right fit, you can opt to make rewards payable only after the new hire has successfully completed the probationary period.
5. Tap into educational institutions
High schools, colleges and universities are brimming with potential hourly workers that are often seeking jobs during their term break to earn extra cash. To reach out to this candidate pool, contact school administrators to post job ads on campus or online boards.
6. Spruce up your job posts and recruiting solutions
Making your job posts stand out is another effective recruiting solution. When more people are intrigued enough to click on your job posting, it automatically increases the chances of them applying for the role.
Consider creative job postings in different forms. This could include hiring parties, monthly newsletters or even recruiting webinars.
Text messaging recruiting is another way to optimize your recruiting strategy. Not only does it help reduce ghosting, it will also help in elevating a candidate's recruitment experience with the increasing preference for mobile text notifications and willingness to be contacted via text.
