Hiring temporary workers is an essential practice for most businesses. Whether you’re gearing up for a seasonal spike in demand, covering employee leave, or need more hands on deck for new projects, finding the right temporary workers is key to maintaining operational efficiency.
Just as it’s important to hire the right permanent workers, hiring temps also requires care and diligence. Poor hires, even for temporary roles, can create cost and time wastage that is otherwise avoidable.
Before you start hiring temps, it’s best to be prepared with processes that will help your business make sound decisions.
Clearly Define Your Needs
Begin by clearly defining the scope of the temporary role. As with permanent roles, it’s essential to outline specific job responsibilities, required skills, and qualifications for temporary positions.
Having a detailed understanding of your staffing needs sets the foundation for a targeted and successful recruitment process.
Implement a Thorough Screening Process
Develop a robust screening process to evaluate the skills, experience, and adaptability of potential candidates.
Skills and qualifications are just the starting point when it comes to evaluating candidates for temporary jobs, however. As temp roles are transient by nature, determining a candidate’s motivations and attitude is just as important as their technical abilities.
To uncover what makes a candidate tick, ensure you’re asking behavioural questions in the interview and conducting thorough reference checks. This will help you understand their attitudes towards work, safety on site, and their past performance.
Communicate Clearly with Candidates
To hire temps without the hassle, open and transparent communication is key throughout the entire hiring process. Clearly communicate the expectations of the role in job postings and when interviewing candidates.
In interviews, ensure you’re explaining to candidates the workplace culture and environment, so they’re able to see how they may fit in with your team.
Providing this overview not only helps candidates understand their role, but can also make them more committed and ready to hit the ground running when they’re hired.
Don’t Overlook Onboarding
Comprehensive onboarding, particularly for temporary workers, can be easily overlooked during urgent business demands. However, effective onboarding is essential when hiring temporary workers. Onboarding temps carefully allows them to quickly become reliable and productive on the job.
To give new temporary workers the best chance of success, ensure the basics are taken care of the day before they begin (e.g. building access, logins). On their first day, provide them with company resources and information about who to approach when they have questions.
Make new temps feel welcome by introducing them to current team members and encouraging them to participate in discussions, lunches and social gatherings.
Engage a Temporary Recruitment Specialist
Partnering with a reputable recruitment agency that specialise in temporary placements will enable your organisation to do all the above more efficiently and with minimal disruption to your work schedules.
Hiring temps can be just as resource intensive as permanent recruitment, so it’s worthwhile engaging the services of an expert to take care of the admin start interviewing candidates as soon as possible.
Engaging a temporary recruitment agency gives you access to specialists who can do the legwork of interviewing and reference checks, while providing you with critical feedback and advice related to these activities.
Look for high quality agencies that have extensive networks of pre-screened candidates with skills relevant to your industry. Experienced agencies can easily demonstrate their knowledge of your industry and will be able to present qualified candidates quickly.
Start Hiring Temps Today
With adequate processes in place, it’s that much easier to hire temps that will make a positive impact on your business.
By implementing these steps, you can not only meet your company’s immediate staffing needs but also build a strong foundation for future engagements with skilled workers.
Need to hire temporary workers today? If you’re on the lookout for work-ready Industrial, Manufacturing and Construction professionals, contact the team at OneStaff to get started. With more than a dozen branches across New Zealand, we can help you find temporary workers to meet your needs and help your business thrive.
