Episode 171: Hiring Tips for Finding Staff During the Holidays

Its that time of the year again! When September/October hit and everything turns into all holidays, all the time. The time when every store is confused about what to celebrate first with multiple isles of Halloween, Thanksgiving and the MASSIVE Christmas section. I think we can all admit that September through December, Holiday preparation takes over. What's wrong with that, right? The holiday season is loved by so many! But not everyone has to deal with the stress of trying to hire during the Holidays. We get burnt out trying to find staff during the holidays because people are either only seasonal or not applying at all! Then we get burnt out and it results in an altogether disappointing feeling. Take back your Holiday season! Dive in with me as I discuss tips and mindset shifts that we all need in order to take over hiring during the Holiday season. Biggest Takeaways You Don't Want To Miss Finding staff during the Holidays can and needs to be taken advantage of! What you need to do is first, check your mindset, make sure you're going in with a positive, go-getter mentality. Second, streamline your process now! Don't wait until you're in extreme need of staff. You need to set up a process now, create a fast system, delegate the hiring tasks, and find your ideal Holiday candidate. You can take back your Holiday! Show Highlights Embrace hiring in the Holidays [2:07] Streamline your process [3:06] Create a fast system [5:52] Delegate [6:25] Find your ideal candidate [7:44] Should you hire for long term or seasonal? [11:30] Links Get started with JazzHR Join the Jump Mastermind Share the Show Did you enjoy the show? We would love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review! Click this link – Bella In Your Business Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section Click on ‘Write a Review’ Transcript: This is episode 171 of Bella in Your Business. Hi there, I'm Bella Vasta from Jump Consulting. You might know me from CBS, NBC, Fox, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, or maybe you've seen me speak on stage or read my book, The Four Dogs That Every Business Owner Needs. In any case, get ready because you're about to get your hashtag Bella Butt Kickin' in this next episode of Bella in Your Business. So what do you say? Let's get ready and jump. Welcome to another episode of Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta, and today we're going to talk about something that not a lot of people like to talk about—and that is hiring tips during the holidays. Yes, yes, yes, the holidays are upon us. It is about the beginning of November as this podcast episode is coming out. Things have been jingling and jangling in Costco, in the supermarkets, in the malls, and everything already. The Hallmark Channel is coming out with 60 days of awesome shows. If you're like me and you like those sappy love stories, yay, finally! But one thing that we don't like during the holidays is hiring, right? We get really burnt out. We really hate all the hiring that we're doing. And it's really disappointing because what happens is that people are either in it for the seasonal work or they don't apply at all. And here we are, busy pet sitters and dog walkers trying to figure out what the heck to do because we need people to work for us. Am I right or am I right? Okay, so today I'm going to give you some awesome tips and mindset shifts that you can actually get going so that you don't have to burn yourself out and hate the holidays because we can take advantage of this. Seasonal people are really great for pet sitting and boarding because they're always home on the busy days. Now, I remember when I used to have my pet sitting company of 14 years, Bella’s House & Pet Sitting, I always loved hiring during the holiday season because the people that I hired for the holiday season were there for pet sitting and they were only there for that time when we had this major influx. And when you have this major influx and you need people to help come on board, they're there during the holidays, during the three-day weekends, during spring break, during school vacations—so it actually works out great. I want you to try to embrace the fact that the people that you can hire during those times are actually really good. Now, the caveat is if you're actually a dog walking company, because if you're a dog walking company, it's not going to work as well because your dog walking probably drops off during this time since a lot more people are staying home from work. But if you're a pet sitting company, go ahead and embrace the fact that people are looking for seasonal help because chances are if you're like just about everyone in the United States, your January numbers kind of start dropping. And that's pretty typical in our industry. If you're new to the industry, know that your pet sitting business will typically drop in numbers in January and February, which is actually perfect timing to be working in the Mastermind with me on your goals—because that's what we talk about in January. Side note: this whole month in November, we're actually talking about hiring. Funny enough that we're talking about hiring on the podcast, right? So I want you also to think about the fact that everybody is busy. You included—you’re busy. The people that you're trying to hire are going to be busy. So I highly recommend that you check out one of my partners, JazzHR. There's going to be a link in the bottom of the show notes here for you. All you’ve got to do is go back to the podcast episode or just ping me anywhere online and I will get it to you. With my recommendation, you actually get $100 off, which is totally bomb.com, if I may say so myself. All right, so the thing about JazzHR is that it moves the process along really fast. I was just talking to someone on a coaching call today and they told me that their hiring process actually takes two to three weeks. You guys, that ain't gonna cut it because what happens is people lose momentum. They lose the excitement for it. We need to move them through that in four or five days and get them to go through three to five different phases of that hiring process. It is like dating. It is not just about you wanting to marry them—they also need to marry you. So I want you to think about what both of you are getting from each side of the equation. And JazzHR can really help you streamline that workflow. Now, the ninja tip for this JazzHR thing—I actually want to read it to you from one of my Mastermind members. A brand-new feature came out with JazzHR recently, and that's texting. Now, you might say, “Bella, I can totally text from my own phone,” but honestly, who wants the creepos—the creepy people—actually texting your phone after you've rejected them? Probably not. So we’ve got to think ahead about safety and stuff. And so what JazzHR does is, for $29 extra a month, they actually allow you to text the applicant. Now, you might think this is dumb and they’re just trying to get extra money, but honestly, some of my people have tested it out, and here’s what they found out. One sitter said, “I’ve been using the text option for a month and a half. It really does help with the drop-off of applications. Turns out that sometimes the surveys end up in spam or they have questions about entering their social security number. If I don't receive a response in 24 hours, I shoot them a text message making sure they've received everything I sent.” She said she would rate this a must-have for the industry where you need to get someone in place within the next two weeks. It’s only $29 a month to text 50 applicants—like heck yeah! So you guys, I love how this sitter actually went out and tested it. And true to what JazzHR has been saying, most blue-collar jobs see a very high rate of increase when hiring through text communication. So since we’re talking about hiring tips during the holidays and you’re busy and your applicants are busy, that text message ninja tip might really help. So take a look at it. If you’re a JazzHR customer and you have no idea what I’m talking about, go ahead and reach out to me and let’s have a conversation. So you also don’t have any extra time, so you have to make sure that your process is written out and mathematically gradable. I was talking about this on my coaching call today too. This person was looking to scale their business and they’re already at a quarter million dollars a year. What happens, though, is people end up plateauing out. When they plateau, they stall—they can’t keep growing. And most of the time it’s because they’re too involved in their company. So in order to fix this—and JazzHR is the backbone for it, though you could manually do all of it (but I don’t recommend it)—you make those hiring processes happen in phases. Phase one, two, three, four, five. In phase one, all you’re doing is looking for someone whose character or personality would fit your company culture. At the end of the day, we are pet sitters and dog walkers. You can teach anybody to do this, but you cannot teach them how to have a good attitude. So I always say, “Hire for attitude, train for skill.” Keep that in mind, okay? So while you’re going through all of these different questions and phases, it’s important to have a number system. This will help you save time during the holidays. If you answer five questions for me and I grade them on a scale of one to five, I can just add it up and then either move you to the next phase or not, based on the score I’ve already determined. You can also have other people on your team push applicants through phases and grade them so you, the business owner, don’t even have to get involved until the very end. The other tip I have for you is to go where your avatar hangs out. If your avatar is hanging out at pet holiday parties,