FEATURE
Seasonal
Hiring Strategies
in a Pandemic
Strategies for club managers when it comes to effectively
hiring a seasonal workforce
By Eric Sargent, CCM
There is no doubt that seasonal
staff play a key role in determining
whether or not a club has a
successful year.
“Hiring qualified seasonal staff is
crucial,” said Laurie O’Brien, the assistant
general manager at Camelot Golf & Country
Club (Camelot G&CC) in Ottawa, Ont.
These words ring true, especially for
clubs that recruit a large proportion of their
staff on a seasonal basis. While every club
has their own approach, the following are
some of the insights and strategies that you
can use to get the best people on your team.
Determining where the accessible
pool of applicants can be found
Many clubs in rural areas of the country
recruit seasonal staff from urban
areas. The pandemic has also changed
what opportunities are available for
people to move around the country for
seasonal positions.
“Our recruitment strategy has been
simplified with a more regional approach,”
said Jillian Janega-Connell, the director
of strategy and planning at Cabot Links
in Cape Breton, N.S. “We are recruiting
mainly from Cape Breton, most definitely
within the province. We have certainly
hired from out of province, but not as
many individuals that we may have seen in
years past.”
Screening
With the current ubiquity of employmentrelated
search engines, applying for a
job has never been easier. This ease of
application results in a hiring manager
receiving a tremendous number of resumes,
and it can be a lot of work to screen all of
them and subsequently miss a qualified
candidate. To solve this problem, O’Brien
trained one of the current team members
at Camelot G&CC to be a “resume screener.”
This system allowed O’Brien to be more
efficient with her time without overlooking
great candidates early in the hiring process.
Interviewing
Some clubs needed to make changes to their
interview process, and some didn’t. Janega-
Connell and Cabot Links were ahead of the
curve when it came to virtual interviews.
“Much of our hiring process remains
the same,” she said. “Given that our location
is somewhat remote, many of the interviews
for our team members happen over the
phone or virtually, in any given season.”
For those of us who weren’t ahead of
this curve, one of the major obstacles was
to get a sense of a candidate’s personality
through a computer screen or behind
a mask.
O’Brien was able to facilitate in-person
interviews, but with masks worn at all
times. It’s amazing how, in this age of
mask wearing, we’ve learned to recognize
facial expressions.
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CMQ § Spring 2021 § 29