You may not realize this from the fact that 60% of U.S. employees work at an hourly rate, but there’s a serious dearth in qualified hourly candidates for a lot of essential jobs. If you don’t believe this, just look around at all the employment advertising going on in the Bay Area. For some companies, being able to get that talent is the difference between being successful and going under. With this in mind, here are some key things to keep in mind when it comes to hourly employees.
For one thing, one issue that you need to deal with is turnover, which is approximately 3 ½ times more than salaried workers and a huge drain on profitability. Turnover isn’t likely to ever stop completely. As a result, you need to take this challenge head-on, and have a regular cycle of help wanted advertising in the Bay Area in order to keep appealing to new potential candidates. However, you can try and stem the tide by getting a better understanding of what hourly employees want and need. For example, many people are trying to target full-time hours for younger people, but only a third of people fall into that category. In fact, the number of hourly workers over 45 is only slightly less.
There are several other fallacies in a lot of the ways that companies try to fill their hourly roles. For example, it’s one thing to try and target the unemployed, but there are also plenty of top candidates who are working but may be interested in something better. The added benefit here is that you know the person you are trying to recruit is successful and capable in their position. Another common issue with hourly recruiting for jobs is that many times, you’re putting someone with limited experience in charge of hiring due to lack of funding for proper professionals. If this happens, this happens, but you still want to have a concrete process to make sure you are finding proper talent.
Finally, just because you’re a small brand looking for hourly help doesn’t mean you can’t put together a good reputation. Try to leverage what you have to get across that you are a good place to work at, and applicants will come. The key, along with targeting ideal candidates, is making it easy as possible for those who respond to your job ads to apply. This means either having someone on the phone or an online setup to try and get the ball rolling.
