How to Hire Seasonal Employees

Knowing how to hire seasonal employees sounds easy until you’re two weeks into your busiest season and half your staff isn’t working out.

It happens every year. Fast applications, quick interviews, gut-feel decisions. Then the season starts and reality shows up.

Here’s what actually changes it.

How to Hire Seasonal Employees: TL;DR

Seasonal hiring feels low-stakes until a bad hire costs you three weeks of your busiest season. Hospitality turnover is high, and the average cost per hire is $4,700 whether the role lasts 10 weeks or 10 years.

A short skills test before interviews, customer service aptitude, cognitive aptitude, or data entry accuracy depending on the role, takes 20 minutes and saves you from finding out the hard way.

The “Short Role, Short Process” Trap

Seasonal hiring feels low-stakes. Three months, limited training, probably won’t see them again after Labor Day.

That thinking is exactly how you end up short-staffed in August.

The hospitality industry runs annual turnover of 73.8%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics as reported by InfoMart. The healthy benchmark across industries is 10 to 15 percent.

In 2024, quit rates in leisure and hospitality ran 204 percent above the national average, with monthly separation rates averaging 5 to 6 percent.

These aren’t abstract industry numbers. They show up in individual businesses, individual seasons, individual bad hires who don’t last long enough to matter.

A Bad Seasonal Hire Costs More Than You Think

With a permanent role, you have time to recover. You can coach, manage, or backfill over weeks or months.

With a 10-week summer position, a hire who doesn’t work out is the season.

According to SHRM, the average cost per hire is $4,700. That’s before lost productivity, coverage gaps, and the damage that happens when a front-facing role is underperforming during your peak weeks.

You don’t get a second shot at the guests who walked in when your team was struggling.

What to Screen For When Hiring Seasonal Employees

The goal with seasonal candidates isn’t perfection. It’s finding people who get up to speed fast and do the job reliably for a defined window.

That comes down to three things.

Customer service aptitude: Some people are wired for it. Others aren’t, and a five-minute interview at a job fair won’t tell you which is which. A behavioral assessment shows you how someone responds when a guest is frustrated or a situation gets tense.

Cognitive aptitude: Can this person learn your systems in the first week? Or will they still be figuring out the basics in week four? A short aptitude test tells you before anyone shows up for their first shift.

Attention to detail: For billing support, admin, or data entry roles, errors from a seasonal hire don’t disappear when summer ends. They stay in your records.

One or two targeted tests is enough. You don’t need an exhaustive battery for a 90-day role.

Match the Test to the Role

Customer-facing positions (front desk, guest services, recreation programs): start with a customer service aptitude assessment. Pair it with skills tests if you also want to check specific things 

Admin, billing, or data entry: a cognitive aptitude test combined with a data entry accuracy assessment tells you speed, accuracy, and whether someone can handle repetitive detail work without burning out.

Any role with written communication: a grammar and business writing test takes 15 minutes and immediately separates strong candidates from weak ones.

Browse the full library including the Attention to Detail test and customer service assessments at employtest.com/tests.

Volume Hiring Is When Structure Matters Most

“We’re hiring 15 people at once. There’s no time to test everyone.”

Think about what that actually looks like. Fifteen back-to-back interviews. Gut-feeling your way through all of them. Hoping each conversation gives you something useful.

A 20-minute assessment gives you the same objective data point on every single candidate, regardless of who’s running the session or what day it is. You get a ranked view of your pool before interviews even start.

Volume hiring is exactly when a fast, consistent filter pays off.

Start Before You Think You Need To

Hiring experts recommend starting seasonal recruitment three to four months before peak season. Most businesses wait too long, then make rushed calls under pressure.

That’s how the week-three problem starts.

Build a short assessment into your standard application process before the season ramps up. Strong candidates go to interviews. The ones who aren’t ready yet save you both time. You still make the final call. You’re just making it with better information.

Test the skill that matters. Start here.