Brace yourself for an unfulfilled Christmas this year. Even if you are planning to spend time with your family, partying with friends, watching the kids at their nativity plays, singing hymns with your congregation or feasting on Christmas dinner, be sure to prepare yourself for disappointment.

The alarming news I woke up to this morning is that there is a shortage of Elves. You may laugh or even snigger, but in the UK alone there are over 30 job ads online with companies looking for people with the right skills to fulfil this seasonal position.

So, what is the best way to recruit for seasonal positions? What should you be doing to manage the spikes of seasonal recruitment needs?

How To Advertise Seasonal Vacancies

See below for 5 actions you can take to ensure you don’t come unstuck when you need to recruit high volumes of staff quickly.

1. Write a job description that is considerate of all the skills that are required, but don’t be too specific on the ‘must-haves’ unless they truly are essential. You want applicants and the more you generate, the easier it will be to recruit. Sell the company, the opportunity and consider who the target market is and why this person may be looking for work. It might be that flexi hours are important or that double pay for unsociable hours is an attractive factor. Your job description needs to stand out to ensure you engage with your target audience.

2. Advertise your positions on as many job boards as possible. There are solutions available which enable you to advertise on 100’s of job boards in a single process, often for less money than the leading job boards will charge per advert. If you have a contract with a leading job board, run a pilot with a job board reseller to see how well it performs compared to your current provider. Often contracts aren’t necessary, so it is a useful exercise to see whether you are getting the best return possible.

3. Use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Companies like Hiring People provide this software for free. The software enables you to post a job advert across the leading and niche job boards and to manage the applicants in a single place. Collectively, you and your colleagues can drive recruitment campaigns from this platform, scoring each candidate’s suitability and engaging with candidates to either set up interviews or to reject unsuccessful candidate applications.

Read Centralising Recruitment With ATS.

4. If this is a position that you have recruited for previously within your ATS, you may have made note of suitable candidates that you engaged with before or candidates that weren’t previously considered. By using your talent pool, which was generated from previous recruitment, you can engage with multiple, already qualified candidates quickly and for no cost, thus allowing you to interview and recruit candidates immediately.

Visit our Interview hub for employers.

5. Video Interviewing is essential when recruiting high volumes of candidates. Video Interviewing simply allows you to upload questions for candidates to reply too. You and your colleagues watch and rate a candidate’s suitability, helping you select the best candidates for face to face interviews. By interviewing the best candidates, you can appoint candidates within the timescales required, enabling your company to meet their seasonal recruitment demands.

If you are now wondering what it takes to be an elf, please read our post containing an elf job description here.