How does the onboarding/training program work to get a lot of seasonal hires onboarded and productive?

By: Renae Cruz

6 Steps for Creating a Kick-Ass Team of Seasonal Employees

Whether creating a process from scratch or looking to revamp your existing program, here are six steps to include in your onboarding and training process!

Hi there! My name is Renae Cruz. For the past three years, I’ve been part of a team that hires, trains and manages Seasonals at YNAB for four months of the year. These people have to hit the ground running so they’ll be ready to help with our busy season. Here’s how we accomplish that:

• Hire the right people.

• Clearly outline expectations and communicate them often.

• Start slow and gradually increase the pace.

• Training should be ongoing.

• Help your team gain confidence.

• Foster a community.

1. Hire the Best People for the Job

Workers who join your organization for a short time need to have the ability to get up to speed quickly. This means that hiring the right people for the job will be essential - focus on finding people who will save you time during training. 

•  Maybe they’re already a user of your product. They’ll be able to grasp the ins and outs more quickly than someone who’s brand new.

• You might focus on people who already write or speak with the tone your company uses. Tone can be difficult to teach. Hiring folks who already naturally write in a way that jives with your company tone can be a game changer!

• Lastly, reconsider an applicant who might have applied for a permanent position. Give them a try during a seasonal time period. Dig in and determine if what might have seemed less than stellar was actually just nerves during an interview or a joke that didn’t land right.

Any time I think of hiring for a seasonal role, I consider the case of “Molly Brown” (not her real name). Molly was great on paper! She wrote with clarity and a deep level of empathy which is rare. In our correspondence, she seemed engaged and friendly. In her final interview, however, Molly seemed distant. Disinterested, even. She appeared to be an entirely different person than she was on paper! 

We chose not to hire her at that time, but we kept coming back to her written correspondence with us. Later that same year, we decided to bring her on during our seasonal time period. Molly was amazing! She achieved high marks in every review, she asked relevant, thought-provoking questions, and she gave great feedback about our training program. We were thrilled that we hired Molly, and after the seasonal time period ended, we asked her to stay on. She’s still with the company, and she’s still doing stellar work.

✅Put it into Action: When hiring for a seasonal role, look through past candidates who didn’t quite make it through the final hiring round. Is there anyone worth a second look at? Hiring them for a seasonal role is a great way of giving them an extended trial period!

2. Clearly outline expectations and communicate them often.

“Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind,” says Brene Brown. Your seasonal specialists should know from day one what will be expected of them. Give clear timelines of how long training will last and at what point you expect them to be able to handle X amount of tickets.

Without an understanding of your metrics and expectations, specialists will either fail to meet your (unstated) expectations or they will work so hard to achieve they’ll burn themselves out and end in frustration. This is neither fair to your worker nor is it sustainable.

✅Put it into action: Make chatting about metrics a part of your check-ins. If the specialist is doing well, they’ll be encouraged and if they need some work, they’ll know where they stand and you can work on a plan together to get them where they need to be.

3. Start slow and gradually increase the pace.

Seasonals have a great deal to learn and not a lot of time to do it. Most of their mental energy in the first few days or weeks will be taken up with learning new knowledge, processes, and the programs that your support team uses. Allow them to start with smaller than average KPI’s and gradually increase them.

In our program, we start seasonals off at half the usual speed. In fact, we don’t have them working with live tickets at all for their first week! We gradually increase their speed every week or every two until they’re expected to meet the same metrics as a regular specialist. Allowing time for deep learning at the beginning pays off in the
end!

Reinforce training with hands-on exercises. Hands-on exercises help put learning into practice, cementing new knowledge that they’ll use later on when working directly with customers. When they’re answering similar tickets live later on, they’ll have the foundation in place to move more quickly.

✅Put it into action: Determine when you need seasonal specialists to be up-to-speed. Is it for a special release or a holiday rush? Pinpoint when you need them to be most effective, then work back from there to determine how long training will take and how long it should take for them to increase their speed. If training will take three weeks at your organization, consider hiring them 4 weeks before you’ll need them at their most impactful to give them time to reach those numbers before that crunch time hits.

4. Training should be ongoing.

Once a specialist has learned the basics, they’ll move into a new phase of their seasonal period where they’re answering live tickets. Training shouldn’t end here, though! As they dig into the queue, they’ll see all kinds of questions that weren’t covered during training.

If you’ve hired the right people, your seasonals will want to help with these users, too! Give them the tools they’ll need to continue learning each week so they can help more users, perfect the right tone, or dig deeply into a more difficult issue.

After the initial week of training in our program, we move to an 80/20 formula for how much time they’ll spend in the queue vs learning. Much of their learning during this time is structured using our LMS (Lessonly), but they’re also able to choose to take time to dig into our other knowledge resources if they’ve got additional time.

An addition to our program during the past year is making space for hour-long live work sessions. Seasonals are actively working in the queue and have the chance to meet in a group of 5-6 with an experienced specialist to ask questions as they work through tickets. They learn from getting immediate answers to their questions, from what others are asking, and they gain confidence any time an experienced specialist admits they don’t know an answer.

✅Put it into action: Consider how you can add ongoing training to your seasonal program.

5. Help your team gain confidence.

Confidence can make or break your team. A lack of confidence will lead to specialists who move slowly, accomplish little, and require more from your management team. On the other hand, helping specialists gain confidence will have the opposite effect. They’ll move more quickly, tackle more tickets, and will self-manage more effectively.

More feedback is the number one request from every group of seasonals I’ve ever managed. This feedback helps them learn and grow, but it also shows them what they’re already doing well. To this end, it’s important to highlight specific areas where specialists have excelled. After all, who doesn’t want to hear that they’re doing a great job?

All feedback is not going to be positive, so don’t be afraid to coach your seasonal on areas where they could improve. Monitor those areas and praise them when you’ve noticed a positive change. Overcoming a difficult challenge like this is one of the best things you can help them do to grow their confidence.

✅Put it into action: Make feedback a regular part of your check-ins. If you’ve been following along, you’ll already be chatting about metrics, so make sure your feedback is related to the actual work they’re doing, not just the numbers. Did they get a fabulous response from a customer? Maybe you’ve noticed that they could work on their personalization when writing to users. Whatever the feedback, make it genuine and follow up with them about it when improvements are made.

6. Foster a community.

Though they are a part of your organization for only a short time, people have a need to feel connected. Employees who are engaged and happy perform better than those who don’t.

In our organization, we have found an added benefit of seasonal specialists working together to find a tough answer or craft a difficult reply without the need for a manager or team member to provide assistance, freeing them from other work. We use a dedicated Slack channel where seasonals can post their questions. This channel is monitored by experienced specialists, but often, before they’re able to chime in, another seasonal will share something they’ve picked up.

Creating a community can be difficult to achieve in a short time, particularly if you work remotely/asynchronously. Focus on providing a space where specialists can share personal details and encourage them to share by sharing something personal yourself. In many cases, all it takes for the floodgates to open is for one person to open up.

✅Put it into action: Consider how you can create a community for seasonals at your organization. Foster interaction by being an example. Share personal detail, photo, or weekend plans.