How to Hire Effectively for Your Upcoming Event

How to Hire Effectively for Your Upcoming Event

A day in the life of an event planner can be stressful. With organizing vendor payments and deliveries, day-of-event logistics, getting approval and input from clients, and several other things, you have enough on your plate without having to worry about hiring new staff for your event.

But there are ways to make this necessary step easier for you.

Knowing how to hire event staff effectively for your event can save you a lot of time and headaches in your event planning process.

Read this article for tips on how and where to advertise for your events, how to select the right candidates to interview, and what to do after you’ve hired staff to prepare them for the event itself.

Advertise in the right places

You want to post your position where the people you want to hire will be. Advertise your event in a place where temporary job seekers are looking for work. There are many sites that cater to temporary workers, so you just need to find the ones right for you.

Use reputable sites that allow you to filter for various categories, such as by work type for temporary workers.

For example:

• Monster
• Zip Recruiter
  
  

Some also allow you to filter by position and skills as well. 

Avoid sites that don’t filter candidates such as Craigslist, online newspapers, and social media sites. These sites also don’t allow you to filter applicants for relevant experience and skills. They just flood your inbox with cover letters and resumes.

Once you have a set of applicants who have applied for the position, filter your pool of applicants for candidates with experience in setting-up, managing, or catering events and who can provide several references to validate their experiences and work ethic.

People can say they have experience, but you want someone who can show and prove that they have that skill.

Use knockout screener questions such as

“Do you have a reliable transportation method to get you to and from the event venue?”

“Are you able to lift 10 lbs?”

"Can you be on your feet for X period of time?"

All to make sure you don’t waste time interviewing candidates who don’t fit the requirements of what you’re looking for.

Also, ask candidates what they will do in certain situations on the day of the event such as how would they handle a catering mix-up or how they will handle a language barrier.

Summary: 

• Advertise on popular job sites
• Avoid 3rd party sites
• Apply filters for applicants using experience and background
• Filter more using questions on application

Perform group interviews

Interviewing qualified candidates can be time consuming and can sometimes conflict with your ever-changing schedule as an event planner.

One way to deal with this time crunch, is to do group interviews with multiple applicants all at once.

Give candidates a few choices of dates and times to come in for a group interview. 

Bring a list of hard-hitting questions. With interviews, however you decide to conduct them, the important thing is to ask the same set of questions for everyone applying for that position.

It is okay to ask different questions for different positions. But, to cover yourself legally, ask everyone applying for a certain position, such as catering manager, the same set of questions.

Create a scoring sheet to quickly be able to score each candidate on their answer to your questions for your future reference.

Pass around a sheet of paper to quickly collect each candidates’ up-to-date personal information and what times the are available to work the day of the event. 

Summary: 

• Ask everyone the same set of questions so the interviewing process is fair
• Create a scoring sheet for future reference
• Don't forget to collect more personal data in regards to availability and work schedules
  

Make it legal 

Because your event workers are working with the public, handling money, and maybe even working an event in your clients’ home, you will want to make sure that they have a clean background.

Because 1 in 4 employee background checks contain a criminal record, you’ll want to make sure you run background checks on each event employee.

You can do this more efficiently by using an online platform to batch-check employees. 

After selecting the best candidates to work your event, make sure you file the required documentation and tax information for each event worker.

Have each event worker sign a contract that covers what’s expected of them and discusses legal issues.

Collect necessary information regarding payment for payroll.

Also, be sure to let them know when to expect payment and what the pay rate is per hour or in total, if you have not gone over that already. It is important for people to get paid fully and on time.

Also, make sure it covers you from top to bottom by having an event insurance policy that covers the payment of employees should the client should cancel the event.

Summary:

• Run a background check 
• File required documents 
• Have every staff member sign a contract covering all basics
• Collect payroll information 
• Get an event insurance policy 
  
  

Make sure that workers come prepared to the event

After you’ve hired your event staff for your event, email each worker event guidelines and information about:

1. parking
2. weather
3. uniform
4. schedule
5. map of event
   
   

It is important for your workers to know what to expect at the event and what they are expected to do during the event. 

Go out and hire your event staff!

Hiring for your next event as an event planner can be made simpler by advertising in the right places, performing group interviews, filing all the necessary legal documents, and ensuring your event staff comes prepared to the event. 

As with anything these steps involve planning beforehand to make sure that everything goes smoothly and that all your bases are covered before, during, and after the hiring process.

Follow these steps to make sure your hiring process for your next event is as painless and efficient as possible!

Author: Samantha Rupp

Samantha Rupp holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and is a contributing editor for 365BusinessTips.com. She lives in San Diego, California and enjoys spending time on the beach, reading up on current industry trends, and traveling.