Get rolling early on a holiday hiring story
By Flickr user Pacific Northwest USCG
The calendar still says summer but it’s none too soon for a holiday hiring story.
Merchants, shippers and other businesses with strong seasonal swings have held staffing low – as this Friday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics employment situation report likely will attest; the national unemployment rate still hovers near double digits. And as this CNN Money report points out, the rate continues to climb in many states.
So holiday jobs will mean more than pin money to many workers; they’ll be a means of tiding households through a few more months of our stumbling economic recovery. And the ebb and flow of these temporary positions will help you illustrate the lingering tough times in your region.
Interestingly this year, some chains are starting the call for Halloween workers. (In 2009, what hiring there was tended to take place late.) I’m on many national merchants’ consumer e-mail lists (good habit for reporters to get into though it does clog the inbox) and was amused to see a bulletin last week from Party City, exhorting the general public to “Join our team for Halloween!” right next to the store’s weekly sales promotions. The ad noted that associates get a 30-percent store discount and featured a button that clicks directly through to the application form at AllRetailJobs.com.
Considering all the tales of employers being swamped with thousands of applications per position, I found it interesting that Party City would send its plea to such a wide audience. Perhaps a quirk on their part; perhaps a sign that holiday hiring will perk up this year?
The other factor to keep in mind: Halloween new hires will have the edge for Christmas season jobs, obviously. So would-be winter elves are going to need to step it up and get their spook on soon rather than slip into a part-time gig a few weeks before Thanksgiving.
This excellent article by the Orange County Register’s Mary Ann Milbourn points out that even non-Halloween merchants are starting to hire early for the holidays, to allow time for training or just to get pick of the crop. (Note all of the other good story ideas in Milbourn’s Handling Hard Times blog, too.)
If you get a start on seasonal hiring angle now, your options for interesting storytelling are far greater than if you wait a month or two. Consider job-seeker blogs or diaries, charts comparing the wages, hours, perks and discounts of various positions in your area, tips for job hunters, a Q&A with a panel of hiring managers (don’t overlook Main Street merchants as well as chains) all are viable alternatives that will engage and inform readers. You also can try to connect with a local economist willing to analyze job postings and ads to quantify the amount and impact of seasonal hiring in your market.
Here are some stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on what they call the holiday ‘build-up’ — keep your eyes also on Monster.com, the National Retail Federation and Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which may issue their own holiday hiring forecasts in due time.
ZIP code searches at hourly-job sites like SnagAJob.com can help you get a feel for what’s available in your area.
But do go beyond retail. Don’t overlook temporary staffing firms, from small independents to global giants like Kelly Services and Manpower. And canvass small businesses like restaurants, inns, warehouse operations, even waste haulers, because more buying means more garbage. Charities may need more help these days, too, processing year-end donations, manning those coin kettles or filling gift kits for disadvantaged folks.
On a lighter note, holiday staffing stories also can be fun. Shadow a delivery driver, be an elf or a ghoul for a day, or tell the story of a mailroom shift by the numbers – how many envelopes, how many packages, how many glitches do postal workers sift in a daily stint?
